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A wireless LAN (WLAN) is a wireless computer network that links two or more devices using wireless communication to form a local area network (LAN) within a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, campus, or office building. This gives users the ability to move around within the area and remain connected to the network. Through a gateway, a WLAN can also provide a connection to the wider Internet. Most modern WLANs are based on IEEE 802.11 standards and are marketed under the Wi-Fi brand name. Wireless LANs have become popular for use in the home, due to their ease of installation and use. They are also popular in commercial properties that offer wireless access to their employees and customers. Norman Abramson, a professor at the University of Hawaii, developed the world's first wireless computer communication network, ALOHAnet. The system became operational in 1971 and included seven computers deployed over four islands to communicate with the central computer on the Oahu island without using phone lines. Wireless LAN hardware initially cost so much that it was only used as an alternative to cabled LAN in places where cabling was difficult or impossible. Early development included industry-specific solutions and proprietary protocols, but at the end of the 1990s these were replaced by standards, primarily the various versions of IEEE 802.11 (in products using the Wi-Fi brand name). Beginning in 1991, a European alternative known as HiperLAN/1 was pursued by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) with a first version approved in 1996. This was followed by a HiperLAN/2 functional specification with ATM influences accomplished February 2000. Neither European standard achieved the commercial success of 802.11, although much of the work on HiperLAN/2 has survived in the physical specification (PHY) for IEEE 802.11a, which is nearly identical to the PHY of HiperLAN/2. In 2009 802.11n was added to 802.11. It operates in both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands at a maximum data transfer rate of 600 Mbit/s. Most newer routers are able to utilise both wireless bands, known as dualband. This allows data communications to avoid the crowded 2.4 GHz band, which is also shared with Bluetooth devices and microwave ovens. The 5 GHz band is also wider than the 2.4 GHz band, with more channels, which permits a greater number of devices to share the space. Not all channels are available in all regions. A HomeRF group formed in 1997 to promote a technology aimed for residential use, but it disbanded at the end of 2002. All components that can connect into a wireless medium in a network are referred to as stations (STA). All stations are equipped with wireless network interface controllers (WNICs). Wireless stations fall into two categories: wireless access points, and clients. Access points (APs), normally wireless routers, are base stations for the wireless network. They transmit and receive radio frequencies for wireless enabled devices to communicate with. Wireless clients can be mobile devices such as laptops, personal digital assistants, IP phones and other smartphones, or non-portable devices such as desktop computers, printers, and workstations that are equipped with a wireless network interface. The basic service set (BSS) is a set of all stations that can communicate with each other at PHY layer. Every BSS has an identification (ID) called the BSSID, which is the MAC address of the access point servicing the BSS. There are two types of BSS: Independent BSS (also referred to as IBSS), and infrastructure BSS. An independent BSS (IBSS) is an ad hoc network that contains no access points, which means they cannot connect to any other basic service set. An IBSS is a set of STAs configured in ad hoc (peer-to-peer)mode. An extended service set (ESS) is a set of connected BSSs. Access points in an ESS are connected by a distribution system. Each ESS has an ID called the SSID which is a 32-byte (maximum) character string. A distribution system (DS) connects access points in an extended service set. The concept of a DS can be used to increase network coverage through roaming between cells. DS can be wired or wireless. Current wireless distribution systems are mostly based on WDS or MESH protocols, though other systems are in use. The IEEE 802.11 has two basic modes of operation: infrastructure and ad hoc mode. In ad hoc mode, mobile units transmit directly peer-to-peer. In infrastructure mode, mobile units communicate through an access point that serves as a bridge to other networks (such as Internet or LAN). Since wireless communication uses a more open medium for communication in comparison to wired LANs, the 802.11 designers also included encryption mechanisms: Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP, now insecure), Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA, WPA2, WPA3), to secure wireless computer networks. Many access points will also offer Wi-Fi Protected Setup, a quick (but now insecure) method of joining a new device to an encrypted network. Most Wi-Fi networks are deployed in infrastructure mode. In infrastructure mode, a base station acts as a wireless access point hub, and nodes communicate through the hub. The hub usually, but not always, has a wired or fiber network connection, and may have permanent wireless connections to other nodes. Wireless access points are usually fixed, and provide service to their client nodes within range. Wireless clients, such as laptops and smartphones, connect to the access point to join the network. Sometimes a network will have a multiple access points, with the same 'SSID' and security arrangement. In that case connecting to any access point on that network joins the client to the network. In that case, the client software will try to choose the access point to try to give the best service, such as the access point with the strongest signal. An ad hoc network (not the same as a WiFi Direct network) is a network where stations communicate only peer to peer (P2P). There is no base and no one gives permission to talk. This is accomplished using the Independent Basic Service Set (IBSS). A WiFi Direct network is another type of network where stations communicate peer to peer. In a Wi-Fi P2P group, the group owner operates as an access point and all other devices are clients. There are two main methods to establish a group owner in the Wi-Fi Direct group. In one approach, the user sets up a P2P group owner manually. This method is also known as Autonomous Group Owner (autonomous GO). In the second method, also called negotiation-based group creation, two devices compete based on the group owner intent value. The device with higher intent value becomes a group owner and the second device becomes a client. Group owner intent value can depend on whether the wireless device performs a cross-connection between an infrastructure WLAN service and a P2P group, remaining power in the wireless device, whether the wireless device is already a group owner in another group and/or a received signal strength of the first wireless device. A peer-to-peer network allows wireless devices to directly communicate with each other. Wireless devices within range of each other can discover and communicate directly without involving central access points. This method is typically used by two computers so that they can connect to each other to form a network. This can basically occur in devices within a closed range. If a signal strength meter is used in this situation, it may not read the strength accurately and can be misleading, because it registers the strength of the strongest signal, which may be the closest computer. IEEE 802.11 defines the physical layer (PHY) and MAC (Media Access Control) layers based on CSMA/CA (Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance). This is in contrast to Ethernet which uses CSMA-CD (Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection). The 802.11 specification includes provisions designed to minimize collisions, because two mobile units may both be in range of a common access point, but out of range of each other. A bridge can be used to connect networks, typically of different types. A wireless Ethernet bridge allows the connection of devices on a wired Ethernet network to a wireless network. The bridge acts as the connection point to the Wireless LAN. A wireless distribution system (WDS) enables the wireless interconnection of access points in an IEEE 802.11 network. It allows a wireless network to be expanded using multiple access points without the need for a wired backbone to link them, as is traditionally required. The notable advantage of a WDS over other solutions is that it preserves the MAC addresses of client packets across links between access points. An access point can be either a main, relay or remote base station. A main base station is typically connected to the wired Ethernet. A relay base station relays data between remote base stations, wireless clients or other relay stations to either a main or another relay base station. A remote base station accepts connections from wireless clients and passes them to relay or main stations. Connections between clients are made using MAC addresses rather than by specifying IP assignments. All base stations in a WDS must be configured to use the same radio channel, and share WEP keys or WPA keys if they are used. They can be configured to different service set identifiers. WDS also requires that every base station be configured to forward to others in the system as mentioned above. WDS capability may also be referred to as repeater mode because it appears to bridge and accept wireless clients at the same time (unlike traditional bridging). Throughput in this method is halved for all clients connected wirelessly. When it is difficult to connect all of the access points in a network by wires, it is also possible to put up access points as repeaters. There are two definitions for wireless LAN roaming: 1. Internal roaming: The Mobile Station (MS) moves from one access point (AP) to another AP within a home network if the signal strength is too weak. An authentication server (RADIUS) performs the re-authentication of MS via 802.1x (e.g. with PEAP). The billing of QoS is in the home network. A Mobile Station roaming from one access point to another often interrupts the flow of data among the Mobile Station and an application connected to the network. The Mobile Station, for instance, periodically monitors the presence of alternative access points (ones that will provide a better connection). At some point, based on proprietary mechanisms, the Mobile Station decides to re-associate with an access point having a stronger wireless signal. The Mobile Station, however, may lose a connection with an access point before associating with another access point. In order to provide reliable connections with applications, the Mobile Station must generally include software that provides session persistence. 2. External roaming: The MS (client) moves into a WLAN of another Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP) and takes their services (Hotspot). The user can use a foreign network independently from their home network, provided that the foreign network allows visiting users on their network. There must be special authentication and billing systems for mobile services in a foreign network. Wireless LANs have a great deal of applications. Modern implementations of WLANs range from small in-home networks to large, campus-sized ones to completely mobile networks on airplanes and trains. Users can access the Internet from WLAN hotspots in restaurants, hotels, and now with portable devices that connect to 3G or 4G networks. Oftentimes these types of public access points require no registration or password to join the network. Others can be accessed once registration has occurred and/or a fee is paid. Existing Wireless LAN infrastructures can also be used to work as indoor positioning systems with no modification to the existing hardware. Local area network, Wireless WAN, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Direct Base station (or base radio station) is – according to the International Telecommunication Union's (ITU) Radio Regulations (RR) – a "land station in the land mobile service." The term is used in the context of mobile telephony, wireless computer networking and other wireless communications and in land surveying. In surveying, it is a GPS receiver at a known position, while in wireless communications it is a transceiver connecting a number of other devices to one another and/or to a wider area. In mobile telephony, it provides the connection between mobile phones and the wider telephone network. In a computer network, it is a transceiver acting as a switch for computers in the network, possibly connecting them to a/another local area network and/or the Internet. In traditional wireless communications, it can refer to the hub of a dispatch fleet such as a taxi or delivery fleet, the base of a TETRA network as used by government and emergency services or a CB shack. In the context of external land surveying, a base station is a GPS receiver at an accurately-known fixed location which is used to derive correction information for nearby portable GPS receivers. This correction data allows propagation and other effects to be corrected out of the position data obtained by the mobile stations, which gives greatly increased location precision and accuracy over the results obtained by uncorrected GPS receivers. In the area of wireless computer networking, a base station is a radio receiver/transmitter that serves as the hub of the local wireless network, and may also be the gateway between a wired network and the wireless network. It typically consists of a low-power transmitter and wireless router. In radio communications, a base station is a wireless communications station installed at a fixed location and used to communicate as part of one of the following: a push-to-talk two-way radio system, or;, a wireless telephone system such as cellular CDMA or GSM cell site., Terrestrial Trunked Radio Base stations use RF power amplifiers (radio-frequency power amplifiers) to transmit and receive signals. The most common RF power amplifiers are metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs), particularly LDMOS (power MOSFET) RF amplifiers. RF LDMOS amplifiers replaced RF bipolar transistor amplifiers in most base stations during the 1990s, leading to the wireless revolution. In professional two-way radio systems, a base station is used to maintain contact with a dispatch fleet of hand-held or mobile radios, and/or to activate one-way paging receivers. The base station is one end of a communications link. The other end is a movable vehicle-mounted radio or walkie-talkie. Examples of base station uses in two-way radio include the dispatch of tow trucks and taxicabs. Professional base station radios are often one channel. In lightly used base stations, a multi-channel unit may be employed. In heavily used systems, the capability for additional channels, where needed, is accomplished by installing an additional base station for each channel. Each base station appears as a single channel on the dispatch center control console. In a properly designed dispatch center with several staff members, this allows each dispatcher to communicate simultaneously, independently of one another, on a different channel as necessary. For example, a taxi company dispatch center may have one base station on a high- rise building in Boston and another on a different channel in Providence. Each taxi dispatcher could communicate with taxis in either Boston or Providence by selecting the respective base station on his or her console. In dispatching centers it is common for eight or more radio base stations to be connected to a single dispatching console. Dispatching personnel can tell which channel a message is being received on by a combination of local protocol, unit identifiers, volume settings, and busy indicator lights. A typical console has two speakers identified as select and unselect. Audio from a primary selected channel is routed to the select speaker and to a headset. Each channel has a busy light which flashes when someone talks on the associated channel. Base stations can be local controlled or remote controlled. Local controlled base stations are operated by front panel controls on the base station cabinet. Remote control base stations can be operated over tone- or DC-remote circuits. The dispatch point console and remote base station are connected by leased private line telephone circuits, (sometimes called RTO circuits), a DS-1, or radio links. The consoles multiplex transmit commands onto remote control circuits. Some system configurations require duplex, or four wire, audio paths from the base station to the console. Others require only a two-wire or half duplex link. minimum receiver specifications and filtering., analysis of other frequencies in use nearby., in the US, coordination of shared frequencies by coordinating agencies., locating equipment so that terrain blocks interfering signals., use of directional antennas to reduce unwanted signals. Base stations are sometimes called control or fixed stations in US Federal Communications Commission licensing. These terms are defined in regulations inside Part 90 of the commissions regulations. In US licensing jargon, types of base stations include: A fixed station is a base station used in a system intended only to communicate with other base stations. A fixed station can also be radio link used to operate a distant base station by remote control. (No mobile or hand-held radios are involved in the system.), A control station is a base station used in a system with a repeater where the base station is used to communicate through the repeater., A temporary base is a base station used in one location for less than a year., A repeater is a type of base station that extends the range of hand-held and mobile radios. In amateur radio, a base station also communicates with mobile rigs but for hobby or family communications. Amateur systems sometimes serve as dispatch radio systems during disasters, search and rescue mobilizations, or other emergencies. An Australian UHF CB base station is another example of part of a system used for hobby or family communications. Wireless telephone differ from two-way radios in that: wireless telephones are circuit switched: the communications paths are set up by dialing at the start of a call and the path remains in place until one of the callers hangs up., wireless telephones communicate with other telephones usually over the public switched telephone network. A wireless telephone base station communicates with a mobile or hand-held phone. For example, in a wireless telephone system, the signals from one or more mobile telephones in an area are received at a nearby base station, which then connects the call to the land-line network. Other equipment is involved depending on the system architecture. Mobile telephone provider networks, such as European GSM networks, may involve carrier, microwave radio, and switching facilities to connect the call. In the case of a portable phone such as a US cordless phone, the connection is directly connected to a wired land line. While low levels of radio-frequency power are usually considered to have negligible effects on health, national and local regulations restrict the design of base stations to limit exposure to electromagnetic fields. Technical measures to limit exposure include restricting the radio frequency power emitted by the station, elevating the antenna above ground level, changes to the antenna pattern, and barriers to foot or road traffic. For typical base stations, significant electromagnetic energy is only emitted at the antenna, not along the length of the antenna tower. Because mobile phones and their base stations are two-way radios, they produce radio-frequency (RF) radiation in order to communicate, exposing people near them to RF radiation giving concerns about mobile phone radiation and health. Hand-held mobile telephones are relatively low power so the RF radiation exposures from them are generally low. The World Health Organization has concluded that "there is no convincing scientific evidence that the weak RF signals from base stations and wireless networks cause adverse health effects." The consensus of the scientific community is that the power from these mobile phone base station antennas is too low to produce health hazards as long as people are kept away from direct access to the antennas. However, current international exposure guidelines (ICNIRP) are based largely on the thermal effects of base station emissions, NOT considering the non-thermal effects harmless. Fuel cell backup power systems are added to critical base stations or cell sites to provide emergency power. Base transceiver station, Mobile switching center, Macrocell, Microcell, Picocell, Femtocell, Access point base station, Cell site, Cellular repeater, Mobile phone, Mobile phone radiation and health, Portable phone, Signal strength, Audio level compression, OpenBTS, Bandstacked Occupational Safety and Health Admin. Non-Ionizing Radiation Exposure Guidelines. AirPort is the name given to a series of products by Apple Inc. using the Wi- Fi protocols (802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n and 802.11ac). These products comprise a number of wireless routers and wireless cards. The AirPort Extreme name was originally intended to signify the addition of the 802.11g protocol to these products. In Japan, the line of products is marketed under the brand AirMac due to previous registration by I-O Data. On April 26, 2018, Apple discontinued the AirPort product line. The remaining inventory was sold off, and Apple partnered with Linksys and Netgear to sell their routers in Apple retail stores. AirPort debuted on July 21, 1999, at Macworld New York, with Steve Jobs picking up an iBook supposedly to give the cameraman a better shot as he surfed the Web. The initial offering consisted of an optional expansion card for Apple's new line of iBook notebooks and an AirPort Base Station. The AirPort card (a repackaged Lucent ORiNOCO Gold Card PC Card adapter) was later added as an option for almost all of Apple's product line, including PowerBooks, eMacs, iMacs, and Power Macs. Only Xserves do not have it as a standard or optional feature. The original AirPort system allowed transfer rates up to 11 Mbit/s and was commonly used to share Internet access and files between multiple computers. On January 7, 2003, Apple introduced AirPort Extreme, based on the 802.11g specification, using Broadcom's BCM4306/BCM2050 two-chip solution. AirPort Extreme allows theoretical peak data transfer rates of up to 54 Mbit/s, and is fully backward-compatible with existing 802.11b wireless network cards and base stations. Several of Apple's desktop computers and portable computers, including the MacBook Pro, MacBook, Mac Mini, and iMac shipped with an AirPort Extreme (802.11g) card as standard. All other modern Macs have an expansion slot for the card. AirPort and AirPort Extreme cards are not physically compatible: AirPort Extreme cards cannot be installed in older Macs, and AirPort cards cannot be installed in newer Macs. The original AirPort card was discontinued in June 2004. On June 7, 2004, Apple released the AirPort Express base station as a "Swiss Army knife" product. It can be used as a portable travel router, using the same AC connectors as on Apple's AC adapters; as an audio streaming device, with both line-level and optical audio outputs; and as a USB printer sharing device, through its USB host port. On January 9, 2007, Apple unveiled a new AirPort Extreme (802.11 Draft-N) Base Station, which introduced 802.11 Draft-N to the Apple AirPort product line. This implementation of 802.11 Draft-N can operate in both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz ISM bands, and has modes that make it compatible with 802.11b/g and 802.11a. The number of Ethernet ports was increased to four—one nominally for WAN, three for LAN, but all can be used in bridged mode. A USB port was included for printers and other USB devices. The Ethernet ports were later updated to Gigabit Ethernet on all ports. The styling is similar to that of the Mac Mini and Apple TV. On January 15, 2008, Apple introduced Time Capsule, an AirPort Extreme (802.11 Draft-N) with an internal hard drive. The device includes software to allow any computer running a reasonably recent version of Mac OS or Windows to access the disk as a shared volume. Macs running Mac OS X 10.5 and later, which includes the Time Machine feature, can use the Time Capsule as a wireless backup device, allowing automatic, untethered backups of the client computer. As an access point, the unit is otherwise equivalent to an AirPort Extreme (802.11 Draft-N), with four Gigabit Ethernet ports and a USB port for printer and disk sharing. On March 17, 2008, Apple released an updated AirPort Express Base Station with 802.11 Draft-N 2x2 radio. All other features (analog and digital optical audio out, single Ethernet port, USB port for printer sharing) remained the same. At the time, it was the least expensive ($99) device to handle both frequency bands (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz) in 2x2 802.11 Draft-N. On March 3, 2009, Apple unveiled AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule products with simultaneous dual-band 802.11 Draft-N radios. This allows full 802.11 Draft-N 2x2 communication in both 802.11 Draft-N bands at the same time. On October 20, 2009, Apple unveiled the updated AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule products with antenna improvements (the 5.8 GHz model). On June 21, 2011, Apple unveiled an updated AirPort Extreme base station, referred to as AirPort Extreme 802.11n (5th Generation). Current AirPort base stations and cards work with third-party base stations and wireless cards that conform to the 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11 Draft-N and 802.11 Final-N networking standards. It is not uncommon to see wireless networks composed of several types of AirPort base station serving old and new Macintosh, Microsoft Windows and Linux systems. Apple's software drivers for AirPort Extreme also support some Broadcom and Atheros-based PCI Wireless adapters when fitted to Power Mac computers. Due to the nature of Draft-N hardware, there is no assurance that the new model will work with 802.11 Draft-N routers and access devices from other manufacturers. On Thursday, April 26, 2018, Apple officially discontinued all AirPort and Time Capsule lines. An AirPort router is used to connect AirPort-enabled computers to the Internet, each other, a wired LAN, and/or other devices. The original AirPort Base Station (known as Graphite, model M5757, part number M7601LL/B) features a dial-up modem and an Ethernet port. It employs a Lucent WaveLAN Silver PC Card as the Radio, and uses an embedded AMD Elan processor. It was released July 21, 1999. The Graphite AirPort Base Station is functionally identical to the Lucent RG-1000 wireless base station and can run the same firmware. Due to the original firmware-locked limitations of the Silver card, the unit can only accept 40-bit WEP encryption. Later aftermarket tweaks can enable 128-bit WEP on the Silver card. Aftermarket Linux firmware has been developed for these units to extend their useful service life. A second generation model (known as Dual Ethernet or Snow, model M8440, part number M8209LL/A) was introduced on November 13, 2001. It features a second Ethernet port when compared to the Graphite design, allowing for a shared Internet connection with both wired and wireless clients. Also new (but available for the original model via software update) was the ability to connect to and share America Online's dial-up service—a feature unique to Apple base stations. This model is based on Motorola's PowerPC 855 processor and contained a fully functional original AirPort Card, which can be removed and used in any compatible Macintosh computer. Three different configurations of model A1034 are all called the "AirPort Extreme Base Station": 1\. M8799LL/A – 2 ethernet ports, 1 USB port, external antenna connector, 1 56k (V.90) modem port 2\. M8930LL/A – 2 ethernet ports, 1 USB port, external antenna connector. 3\. M9397LL/A – 2 ethernet ports, 1 USB port, external antenna connector, powered over ethernet cable (PoE/UL2043) The AirPort Base Station was discontinued after the updated AirPort Extreme was announced on January 7, 2003. In addition to providing wireless connection speeds of up to a maximum of 54 Mbit/s, it adds an external antenna port and a USB port. The antenna port allows the addition of a signal-boosting antenna, and the USB port allows the sharing of a USB printer. A connected printer is made available via Bonjour's "zero configuration" technology and IPP to all wired and wireless clients on the network. The CPU is an AU1500-333MBC Alchemy (processor). A second model (M8930LL/A) lacking the modem and external antenna port was briefly made available, but then discontinued after the launch of AirPort Express (see below). On April 19, 2004, a third version, marketed as the AirPort Extreme Base Station (with Power over Ethernet and UL 2043), was introduced that supports Power over Ethernet and complies to the UL 2043 specifications for safe usage in air handling spaces, such as above suspended ceilings. All three models support the Wireless Distribution System (WDS) standard. The model introduced in January 2007 does not have a corresponding PoE, UL-compliant variant. An AirPort Extreme base station can serve a maximum of 50 wireless clients simultaneously. The AirPort Extreme was updated on January 9, 2007, to support the 802.11n protocol. This revision also adds two LAN ports for a total of three. It now more closely resembles the square-shaped 1st generation Apple TV and Mac Mini, and is about the same size as the mini. The new AirPort Disk feature allows users to plug a USB hard drive into the AirPort Extreme for use as a network- attached storage (NAS) device for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows clients. Users may also connect a USB hub and printer. The performance of USB hard drives attached to an AirPort Extreme is slower than if the drive were connected directly to a computer. This is due to the processor speed on the AirPort extreme. Depending on the setup and types of reads and writes, performance ranges from 0.5 to 17.5 MB/s for writing and 1.9 to 25.6 MB/s for reading. Performance for the same disk connected directly to a computer would be 6.6 to 31.6 MB/s for writing and 7.1 to 37.2 MB/s for reading. The AirPort Extreme has no port for an external antenna. On August 7, 2007, the AirPort Extreme began shipping with Gigabit Ethernet, matching most other Apple products. On March 19, 2008, Apple released a firmware update for both models of the AirPort Extreme to allow AirPort Disks to be used in conjunction with Time Machine, similar to the functionality provided by Time Capsule. On March 3, 2009, Apple unveiled a new AirPort Extreme with simultaneous dual-band 802.11 Draft-N radios. This allows full 802.11 Draft-N 2x2 communication in both 802.11 Draft-N bands at the same time. On October 20, 2009, Apple unveiled an updated AirPort Extreme base station with antenna improvements. On June 21, 2011, Apple unveiled an updated AirPort Extreme base station, referred to as AirPort Extreme 802.11n (5th Generation). The AirPort Express is a simplified and compact AirPort Extreme base station. It allows up to 50 networked users, and includes a feature called AirTunes (predecessor to AirPlay). The original version (M9470LL/A, model A1084) was introduced by Apple on June 7, 2004, and includes an analog–optical audio mini-jack output, a USB port for remote printing or charging the iPod (iPod Shuffle only), and a single Ethernet port. The USB port cannot be used to connect a hard disk or other storage device. The AirPort Express functions as a wireless access point when connected to an Ethernet network. It can be used as an Ethernet-to-wireless bridge under certain wireless configurations. It can be used to extend the range of a network, or as a printer and audio server. In 2012, the AirPort Express took on a new shape, similar to that of the second and third generation Apple TV. The new product also features two 10/100 Mbit/s Ethernet LAN ports. The AirPort Time Capsule is a version of AirPort Extreme with a built-in hard- drive currently coming in either 2 TB or 3 TB sizes, with a previous version having 1 TB or 500 GB. It features a built-in design that, when used with Time Machine in Mac OS X Leopard, automatically makes incremental data backups. Acting as a wireless file server, AirPort Time Capsule can serve to back up multiple Macs. It also includes all AirPort Extreme (802.11 Draft-N) functionality. On March 3, 2009, the Time Capsule was updated with simultaneous dual-band 802.11 Draft-N capability, remote AirPort Disk accessibility through Back to My Mac, and the ability to broadcast a guest network at the same time as an existing network. On October 20, 2009, Apple unveiled the updated Time Capsule with antenna improvements resulting in wireless performance gains of both speed and range. Also stated is a resulting performance improvement/time reduction on Time Capsule backups of up to 60%. In June 2011, Apple unveiled the updated Time Capsule with a higher capacity 2 TB and 3 TB. They also changed the wireless card from a Marvell chip to a Broadcom BCM4331 chip. When used in conjunction with the latest 2011 MacBooks, MacBook Pros, and MacBook Airs (which also use a Broadcom BCM4331 wireless chip), the wireless signal is improved due to Broadcom's Frame Bursting technology. On June 10, 2013, Apple renamed the Time Capsule to the AirPort Time Capsule and added support for the 802.11ac standard. An AirPort card is an Apple-branded wireless card used to connect to wireless networks such as those provided by an AirPort Base Station. The original model, known as simply AirPort card, was a re-branded Lucent WaveLAN/Orinoco Gold PC card, in a modified housing that lacked the integrated antenna. It was designed to be capable of being user-installable. It was also modified in such a way that it could not be used in a regular PCMCIA slot (at the time it was significantly cheaper than the official WaveLAN/Orinoco Gold card). An AirPort card adapter is required to use this card in the slot- loading iMacs. Corresponding with the release of the AirPort Extreme Base Station, the AirPort Extreme card became available as an option on the current models. It is based on a Broadcom 802.11g chipset and is housed in a custom enclosure that is mechanically proprietary, but is electrically compatible with the Mini PCI standard. It was also capable of being user-installed. Variants of the user-installable AirPort Extreme card are marked A-1010 (early North American spec), A-1026 (current North American spec), A-1027 (Europe/Asia spec (additional channels)) and A-1095 (unknown). A different 802.11g card was included in the last iteration of the PowerPC-based PowerBooks and iBooks. A major distinction for this card was that it was the first "combo" card that included both 802.11g as well as Bluetooth. It was also the first card that was not user-installable. It was again a custom form factor, but was still electrically a Mini PCI interface for the Broadcom WLAN chip. A separate USB connection was used for the on-board Bluetooth chip. The AirPort Extreme (802.11g) card was discontinued in January 2009. As 802.11g began to come standard on all notebook models, Apple phased out the user-installable designs in their notebooks, iMacs and Mac Minis by mid-2005, moving to an integrated design. AirPort continued to be an option, either installed at purchase or later, on the Power Mac G5 and the Mac Pro. With the introduction of the Intel-based MacBook Pro in January 2006, Apple began to use a standard PCI Express mini card. The particular brand and model of card has changed over the years; in early models, it was Atheros brand, while since late 2008 they have been Broadcom cards. This distinction is mostly of concern to those who run other operating systems such as Linux on MacBooks, as different cards require different device drivers. The MacBook Air Mid 2012 13", MacBook Air Mid 2011 13" and MacBook Air Late 2010 (11", A1370 and 13", Model A1369) each use a Broadcom BCM 943224 PCIEBT2 Wi-Fi card (main chip BCM43224: 2 × 2 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz). The MacBook Pro Retina Mid 2012 uses Broadcom BCM94331CSAX (main chip BCM4331: 3 x 3 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, up to 450Mbit/s). In early 2007, Apple announced that most Intel Core 2 Duo-based Macs, which had been shipping since November 2006, already included AirPort Extreme cards compatible with the draft-802.11 Draft-N specification. Apple also offered an application to enable 802.11 Draft-N functionality on these Macs for a fee of $1.99, or free with the purchase of an AirPort Extreme base station. Starting with Leopard, the Draft-N functionality was quietly enabled on all Macs that had Draft-N cards. This card was also a PCI Express mini design, but used three antenna connectors in the notebooks and iMacs, in order to use a 2 × 3 MIMO antenna configuration. The cards in the Mac Pro and Apple TV have two antenna connectors and support a 2 × 2 configuration. The Network Utility application located in Applications → Utilities can be used to identify the model and supported protocols of an installed AirPort card. The Macbook Air Mid 2013 uses a Broadcom BCM94360CS2 (main chip BCM4360: 2 x 2 : 2). AirPort and AirPort Extreme support a variety of security technologies to prevent eavesdropping and unauthorized network access, including several forms of cryptography. The original graphite AirPort base station used 40-bit Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP). The second-generation model (known as Dual Ethernet or Snow) AirPort base station, like most other Wi-Fi products, used 40-bit or 128-bit Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP). AirPort Extreme and Express base stations retain this option, but also allow and encourage the use of Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) and, as of July 14, 2005, WPA2. AirPort Extreme cards, which use the Broadcom chipset, have the Media Access Control layer in software. The driver is closed source. The AirPort Disk feature shares a hard disk connected to an AirPort Extreme or Time Capsule (though not AirPort Express), as a small-scale NAS. AirPort Disk can be accessed from Windows and Linux as well as Mac OS X using the SMB/CIFS protocol for FAT volumes, and both SMB/CIFS and AFP for HFS+ partitions. NTFS- or exFAT-formatted volumes are not supported. Although Windows does not natively support HFS+, an HFS+ volume on an AirPort Disk can be easily accessed from Windows. This is because the SMB/CIFS protocol used to access the disk, and hence access from Windows is filesystem-independent. Therefore, HFS+ is a viable option for Windows as well as OS X users, and more flexible than FAT32 as the latter has a 4 GiB file size limit. Recent firmware versions cause the internal disk and any external USB drives to sleep after periods of time as short as 2 minutes. A caveat of the use of AirPort Disk is that the AFP port 548 is reserved for the service, which then does not allow for simultaneous use of port forwarding to provide AFP services to external users. This is also true of a Time Capsule setup for use as a network-based Time Machine Backup location, its main purpose and default configuration. An AirPort administrator must choose between using AirPort Disk and providing remote access to AFP services. The AirPort Extreme or Time Capsule will recognize multiple disks connected via a USB hub. Hard drives over 3 TB are not recognized. Apple's specifications pages do not mention this limitation. As of March 2013, no firmware upgrade is available to remedy this issue. AirPlay, Apple TV, iTunes, Sleep Proxy Service, AirPort Time Capsule, Timeline of Apple products, Wi-Fi, Wireless access point, Wireless LAN, IEEE 802.11 Current AirPort products, All AirPort products, AirPort manuals, AirPort software compatibility table, Apple AirPort 802.11 N first look at ifixit

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"I'm on My Way" is a song by Scottish folk pop duo The Proclaimers for their 1988 album Sunshine on Leith. In 1989, it was released as a single, which made it to number 43 in the United Kingdom, and number 3 in Australia. The lyrics "I'm on my way from misery to happiness today" differ from I'm on My Way the spiritual of the same name. The song was used on the soundtrack of the 2001 DreamWorks Animation animated film Shrek, and also as the theme music of the BBC Radio Four comedy series The Maltby Collection. An instrumental version was used on Are We There Yet?. In keeping with the group's support of Scottish football club Hibernian, "I'm on My Way" was played amidst jubilant scenes at Hampden Park immediately after Hibernian's victory in the 2007 Scottish League Cup Final. Kikki Danielsson has covered the song with lyrics in Swedish, written by Ulf Söderberg. This version was named "Jag är på väg", and is on her 1989 album Canzone d'Amore and her 2006 compilation album I dag & i morgon. Scottish trials cyclist Danny MacAskill used the song as the soundtrack for his 2020 cycling stunt video Danny MacAskill's Gymnasium. I'm On My Way at Last.FM "I'm on My Way" is a 1978 song by Captain & Tennille. It is a track on their LP Dream. The single was released a month prior to the release of the LP. The song became a hit in the U.S. on the Pop, Country and Adult Contemporary charts. It did best on the Adult Contemporary charts, where it reached number six in the U.S. as well as number 13 in Canada. "I'm on My Way" was first recorded by Andrew Gold. It was included on his 1978 LP, All This and Heaven Too, which was issued one week prior to the release of the Captain & Tennille's single. (Captain & Tennille), (Andrew Gold) "I'm on My Way" is a song and single by American soul singer, Dean Parrish. Written by Doug Morris and Eliot Greenberg, it was first released in the US 1967 without any chart success. It was released in the UK in 1975 and found chart success due to its popularity with the Northern soul scene. Released in the US in 1967 on the Laurie label, in the UK in the 1970s, "I'm on My Way" came to the attention of Russ Winstanley, a disc jockey at the Wigan Casino. He began playing the record and it became one of the more popular records at the venue. It was re-released in 1975 on the UK Records label and was the last record to be played every week at the Wigan Casino. The single reached number 38 in the UK Singles Chart in February 1975. Wigan Casino's spin-off record label Casino Classics re-released it on the Three Before Eight EP in 1978 and compilation in 1979. The Wigan Casino closed in 1981 and "I'm on My Way" was the last record ever played there. Parrish had remained unaware of the song's revival having stopped performing in the 1960s. Since its success, it has had a regular presence on Northern soul compilation albums, and is considered one of the most popular songs of the Northern soul genre.

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The Virginia State Capitol is the seat of state government of the Commonwealth of Virginia, located in Richmond, the third capital city of the U.S. state of Virginia. (The first two were Jamestown and Williamsburg.) It houses the oldest elected legislative body in North America, the Virginia General Assembly, first established as the House of Burgesses in 1619. The Capitol was conceived of by Thomas Jefferson and Charles-Louis Clérisseau in France, based on the Maison Carrée in Nimes. Construction began in 1785 and was completed in 1788. The current Capitol is the eighth built to serve as Virginia's statehouse, primarily due to fires during the Colonial period. In the early 20th century, two wings were added, leading to its present appearance. In 1960, it was designated a National Historic Landmark. During the American Colonial period, Virginia's first capital was Jamestown, where the first legislative body, the Virginia House of Burgesses, met in 1619. The new government used four state houses at different times at Jamestown due to fires. The first Representative Legislative Assembly convened on July 30, 1619 at the Jamestown Church which served as the first Capitol. With the decision to relocate the government inland to Williamsburg in 1699, a grand new Capitol building was completed in November 1705. Nearby was the grand Governor's Palace. It burned in 1747 and was replaced in 1753. On June 29, 1776, Virginians declared their independence from Great Britain and wrote the state's first constitution, thereby creating an independent government four days before Congress voted for the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on July 4. The Capitol at Williamsburg served until the American Revolutionary War began, when Governor Thomas Jefferson urged that the capital be relocated to Richmond. The building was last used as a capitol on December 24, 1779, when the Virginia General Assembly adjourned to reconvene in 1780 at the new capital, Richmond. It was eventually destroyed. When it convened in Richmond on May 1, 1780, the legislature met in a makeshift building near Shockoe Bottom. By 1788, the "Old Capitol" where the Virginia Ratifying Convention met was at the New Academy by the Chevalier Quesnay. Plans were begun for a new building to serve a new state, the Commonwealth of Virginia. The site selected for a new, permanent building was on Shockoe Hill, a major hill overlooking the falls of the James River. Thomas Jefferson is credited with the overall design of the new Capitol, together with French architect Charles-Louis Clérisseau. The design was modeled after the Maison Carrée at Nîmes in southern France, an ancient Roman temple. The only other state to accurately copy an ancient model is the Vermont State House, which based its portico on the Temple of Hephaestus in Athens. Jefferson had Clérisseau substitute the Ionic order over the more ornate Corinthian column designs of the prototype in France. At the suggestion of Clérisseau, it used a variant of the Ionic order designed by Italian student of Andrea Palladio, Vincenzo Scamozzi. The cornerstone was laid on August 18, 1785, with Governor Patrick Henry in attendance, prior to the completion of its design. In 1786, a set of architectural drawings and a plaster model were sent from France to Virginia, where it was executed by Samuel Dobie. It was sufficiently completed for the General Assembly to meet there in October 1792. It is one of only twelve Capitols in the United States without an external dome. (The others are the Capitols of Alaska, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio and Tennessee.) The building also served as the Capitol of the Confederacy during the American Civil War (1861–65) (It was the Confederacy's second home, the first being the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery, Alabama). The Capitol, the adjacent Virginia Governor's Mansion, and the White House of the Confederacy (about three blocks to the north on East Clay Street) were spared when departing Confederate troops were ordered to burn the city's warehouses and factories, and fires spread out of control in April 1865. The first Flag of the United States to fly over the capitol since secession was hoisted by Lieutenant Johnston L. de Peyster. U.S. President Abraham Lincoln toured the Capitol during his visit to Richmond about a week before his assassination in Washington, DC. From April 6 until April 10, 1865 Lynchburg served as the Capital of Virginia. Under Gov. William Smith, the executive and legislative branches of the commonwealth moved to Lynchburg for the few days between the fall of Richmond and the fall of the Confederacy. After the end of the American Civil War, during the Reconstruction period, Virginia was under military rule for almost five years, ending in January 1870. In the ensuing months, a dispute over leadership of the Richmond government resulted in the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals holding a hearing on April 27, 1870, in the large courtroom on the second floor of the Capitol. Several hundred people crowded in. Before the proceedings could begin, the gallery gave way and fell to the courtroom floor. This added weight, in addition to the crowd already there, caused the entire courtroom floor to give way, falling into the House of Delegates chamber. The injured stumbled, crawled or were carried out onto the Capitol lawn during the mayhem that followed. Sixty-two people were killed and 251 injured. There were no women believed to have been present when the collapse occurred. The dead included a grandson of Patrick Henry, and three members of the General Assembly. Injured included both men contesting the Richmond mayoral position, the speaker of the House of Delegates, a judge and ex-governor Henry H. Wells. Former Confederate general Montgomery D. Corse was partially blinded by the collapse. Despite demands for the building's demolition, the damage from the tragedy of 1870 was repaired. In 1904, two wings (not in the original plans) were added to the east and west ends of the building to provide much-needed additional space for the growing legislature. In 2003, the assembly approved $83.1 million for the renovation, restoration and expansion of the Capitol. Work began in 2004 and was completed on May 1, 2007. Among major changes are a completely new HVAC control system, updated mechanical, storm water and plumbing systems, and construction of a expansion beneath the hill on the south lawn. The expansion provides a visitor's entrance that is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, plus office space and meeting rooms, and better security management. The final cost of the restoration was approximately $104 million. The extension was designed by architect Sonja Bijelić. June 1806: George Wythe, Signer of the Declaration of Independence from Virginia January 21, 1862: John Tyler, Tenth President of the United States; 23rd Governor of Virginia May 15, 1863: Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, Confederate General June 15, 1971: J. Sargeant Reynolds, then-Lieutenant Governor of Virginia September 30, 1991: A. L. Philpott, then-Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates February 11, 2011: Leroy R. Hassell, Sr., then- Chief Justice of the Virginia Supreme Court (First African-American person in Virginia to be afforded the honor) January 29–30, 2013 Harry L. Carrico, Former Chief Justice with over 42 years of service as an active Justice on the Virginia Supreme Court September 6, 2017: Lacey E. Putney, Former House Speaker and longest serving legislator in Virginia history (1962–2014) The area around the Capitol is known as Capitol Square. It contains several monuments to prominent Virginians and events in Virginia: Washington Monument, 1858, General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson Statue, 1875, Governor William "Extra Billy" Smith Statue, 1906, Dr. Hunter Holmes McGuire Statue, 1904, Zero Milestone, 1929, for measuring highway distances from the city of Richmond, Edgar Allan Poe Statue, 1958, Harry F. Byrd Sr. Statue, 1976, Virginia Civil Rights Memorial, 2008, The Bell Tower was built in 1824–1825. It is still used for ceremonial ringing., Oliver Hill Building (1892-1894) Given its Classical Revival style of architecture along with the fact that its color is white, the Capitol was the double for the exterior shots of The White House featured in the movie The Contender (2000) starring Gary Oldman, Jeff Bridges, Christian Slater. In the 1993 comedy-drama film Dave with Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Frank Langella; the House of Delegates chamber served as the set for the United States House of Representatives, where the title character President addresses a joint session of Congress. In the 2012 film Lincoln, the Virginia State Capitol was used as a stand-in for the United States Capitol in Washington D.C. during the Civil War era with some film retouching. List of National Historic Landmarks in Virginia, National Register of Historic Places listings in Richmond, Virginia, List of state and territorial capitols in the United States Visiting Information from the Virginia General Assembly, State Library of Virginia – Virginia State Capitol online exhibit, "A Brief History of the Public Privy on Capitol Square" at Virginia Memory, Virginia State Capitol, Bank and 10th Streets, Capitol Square, Richmond, Independent City, VA: 155 photos, 12 color transparencies, 48 measured drawings, 88 data pages, and 12 photo caption pages at Historic American Buildings Survey, The Bell Tower, Capitol Square, Richmond, Independent City, VA: 2 photos, 2 measured drawings, and 6 data pages at Historic American Buildings Survey The New Jersey State House is located in Trenton and is the capitol building for the U.S. state of New Jersey. Built in 1790, it is the third-oldest state house in continuous legislative use in the United States; only the Maryland State Capitol in Annapolis and the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond are older. The building houses both chambers of the Legislature (the Senate and the General Assembly), as well as offices for the Governor, Lieutenant Governor and several state government departments. The building is the closest capitol building to a state border of any state capitol, with the bridge to Pennsylvania being within walking distance a few blocks away. After the Legislature relocated to Trenton from Perth Amboy in 1790, it purchased land for £250 and 5 shillings. Construction on the new state house, designed by Philadelphia-based architect Jonathan Doane, began in 1792. The Doane building was covered in stucco, measured and housed the senate and house chambers in opposite wings. To meet the demands of the growing state, the structure was expanded several times during the 19th century, by noted architects such as John Notman of Philadelphia who created office wing on north side in 1845 and Samuel Sloan, also of Philadelphia who designed new wings to house both legislative chambers in 1871. On March 21, 1885, a large fire destroyed the State Street wing. Lewis Broome, of Jersey City led the reconstruction of the building. He used a rare pigmented brick from the Lippincott Brick Co. of Farmingdale. The brick used was a one-of-a-kind color for the region. Merchantville architect Arnold Moses reconstructed the Senate wing in the American Renaissance style. The New Jersey State House attained its current size in 1911 when a four-story office block replaced the original 1792 structure. The only major change since has been modernization of the main corridor in 1950. A 1960 plan, called for the replacement of the oldest sections of the structure with modern legislative chambers, however it was never implemented. A renovation project began in 1987. The project restored the legislative section of the building and upgraded mechanical and electrical systems in the building. This began an ongoing effort to restore the oldest portions of the building. A complete restoration of the building began in 2017 and is expected to be completed in 2020. The New Jersey State House is unusual among state capitol buildings in the United States, the majority of which are reminiscent of the US Capitol. The building consists of two parallel structures connected by the dome-capped rotunda, resembling the letter H, with its long arm parallel to State Street. A long portico wing, added by Notman and subsequently enlarged, extends west from the rotunda toward the Delaware River. To this portico, a number of architecturally dissimilar, unusually-shaped structures have been added. These structures have been the subject of subsequent renovations to blend them with the original wing. The State House is set not on a park-like campus, as are many state houses, rather it is integrated into an urban setting along historic State Street and is surrounded by other legislative buildings. The most scenic view of the building is from the west, near the Delaware River, and is the side dominated by the various additions. Viewed from State Street, the dome is scarcely visible and there is little sense of the scale or design of the building. The Governor's office occupies the remaining portion of the original 1792 State House. Tours are offered daily Monday through Saturday, except state holidays. The tours typically include the Senate and Assembly chambers galleries, party conference rooms, the rotunda and Governor's Office reception room. Middle and high school teachers can receive a grant from the Eagleton Institute to cover the cost of transportation for field trips to take tours of the New Jersey State House. List of the oldest buildings in New Jersey, List of state and territorial capitols in the United States History of State Capitol, NJ Legislature - Welcome to the State House, State House Virtual Tour The Alabama State Capitol, listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the First Confederate Capitol, is the state capitol building for Alabama located on Capitol Hill, originally Goat Hill, in Montgomery that was declared a National Historic Landmark on December 19, 1960. Alabama has had five political capitals during its history. The first was the territorial capital in St. Stephens in 1817, followed by the state convention in Huntsville in 1819, then the first "permanent" capital in Cahaba in 1820. It was then moved to Tuscaloosa in 1826 to a new three-story building, until coming to rest in Montgomery in 1846. The 1826 State House later became home to Alabama Central Female College, burned in 1923 and now ruins within Capitol Park. The current structure is the state's fourth purpose-built capitol building, with the first at Cahaba, the second at Tuscaloosa, and the last two in Montgomery. The first capitol building in Montgomery, located where the current building stands, burned after only two years. The current building was completed in 1851, although additional wings were added over the course of the following 140 years. The current capitol building temporarily served as the Confederate Capitol while Montgomery served as the first political capital of the Confederate States of America in 1861, before being moved to Richmond, Virginia. Meeting in the Senate Chamber, the Provisional Constitution of the Confederate States was drawn up by the Montgomery Convention on February 4, 1861. The convention also adopted the Permanent Constitution here on March 11, 1861. Over one hundred years later the third Selma to Montgomery march ended at the front marble staircase of the Capitol, with the marches and events surrounding them directly leading to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Architecturally, the building is Greek Revival in style with some Beaux-Arts influences. The central core of the building, as well as the east wing to the rear of the structure, is three stories over a below-grade basement. The north and south wings are two-stories over a raised basement. The front facade that is seen today is approximately wide and tall from ground level to the top of the lantern on the dome. The first capitol building to be built in Montgomery was designed by Stephen Decatur Button of Philadelphia. Andrew Dexter, one of Montgomery's founders, kept a prime piece of property empty in anticipation of the capital eventually being moved to Montgomery from Tuscaloosa. This property, atop what was then known as Goat Hill due to its use as a pasture, was chosen as the site for the new capitol building. Construction began in 1846, with the new building presented to the state on December 6, 1847. Button credited much of his architectural inspiration to Minard Lafever's Beauties of Modern Architecture. Button's building was stuccoed brick, with two full stories set over a rusticated raised basement. A two-story monumental portico with six Composite columns, topped by a broad pediment, was centered on the middle five bays of the front elevation. A central dome, in diameter, sat directly on a supporting ring at the main roof level behind the portico. The dome was crowned with an elaborate lantern patterned after the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates. This first capitol building burned on December 14, 1849, little more than two years after its completion. The ruins were cleared by March 1850, with a new building soon to follow. The current capitol building was built from 1850 to 1851, with Barachias Holt as supervising architect. Holt, originally from Exeter, Maine, was a master mechanic by trade. Following his work on the capitol he created a successful sash, door, and blind factory in Montgomery. The new building utilized the brick foundations and general layout of Button's previous structure, with modifications by Holt. The modifications included a full three-story building over a basement and a three-story front portico, this time without a pediment. Holt's dome was a departure from the previous work also, this time the wood and cast iron dome was supported on a ring of Corinthian columns and topped with a simple twelve-sided glazed lantern. John P. and James D. Randolph were the principal contractors. had previously completed extensive brickwork on the William Nichols-designed campus for the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. Randolph was in charge of the carpentry work, which was at least partially accomplished by subcontractors. Nimrod E. Benson and Judson Wyman were the building supervisors. The new capitol building was first occupied by the Alabama Legislature on October 1, 1851. The clock over the portico was installed in February 1852. The clock, along with a bell, was purchased by the City of Montgomery and presented to the state in 1852. In proportion to the capitol building, the clock appears as a square white box with black dials and crowned with a gabled roof. The dials are in diameter with minute hands and a hour hands. It has been criticized as architecturally inappropriate on various occasions since its initial installation. With the secession of Alabama and six other Deep South states and subsequent formation of the Confederacy in February 1861, the building served as its first capitol until May 22, 1861. A commemorative brass marker in the shape of a six-pointed star is set into the marble floor of the front portico at the precise location where Jefferson Davis stood on February 18, 1861, to take his oath of office as the only President of the Confederate States of America. In 1961 Governor John Patterson flew a seven-starred version of the Stars and Bars over the capitol for several days in celebration of the centennial of the Civil War. His successor, George Wallace, raised the Confederate Battle Flag over the dome on April 25, 1963, the date of his meeting with U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to discuss desegregation at the University of Alabama, as a symbol of defiance to the federal government. The flag remained there for almost 30 years. Several African American legislators and members of the state chapter of the NAACP were arrested in 1988 after attempting to remove the flag. The flag was removed during renovations to the dome in 1991, and its return was barred by a 1993 state court decision, which ruled that a state statute from 1895 allows only the national and state flags to fly over the capitol building. The building served as home to the Alabama Legislature until 1985, when it moved to the Alabama State House. Officially, this move was temporary, since the Alabama Constitution requires that the Legislature meet in the capitol. In 1984, a constitutional amendment was passed that allowed the Legislature to move to another building if the capitol were to be renovated. The renovation started in 1985 and was completed in 1992 by the architecture group Holmes and Holmes. Upon the reopening of the building, the Governor of Alabama and numerous other state offices moved back into the building, but the legislature remained at the State House. On May 7, 2009, the legislature reconvened in the capitol building for the first time since September 20, 1985, due to flooding in the State House. This required some adapting, as the capitol did not have desks in the House chamber and those in the Senate chamber were 1861 replicas. Neither chamber has a computerized voting system. The capitol building's heating and air conditioning is supplied from the State House. Because the electricity had been turned off in the State House due to the flooding, there was no air conditioning in the capitol. The original core of the building, as well as the subsequent additions, is essentially Greek Revival in style. The 1851 three-story core of the building features bays delineated by Doric pilasters and a monumental three-story hexastyle portico utilizing the Composite order. The original core of the building is , with an original central rear judiciary wing measuring . The first extension to the rear added another . Each side-wing is . The additions started with an extension to the east wing on the building's rear facade in 1885. Then a south wing with Beaux-Arts influences was added in 1906. An externally identical north wing was completed in 1912. The matching side-wings were designed by Montgomery architect Frank Lockwood, in consultation with Charles Follen McKim of McKim, Mead & White. The symmetrical north and south side-wings are each joined to the 1851 structure with a hyphen. Each hyphen features a recessed two-story Ionic portico on the west facade. Both of the adjoining side-wings feature two-story hexastyle Ionic entrance porticoes on their north and south elevations, respectively. The west and east facades of these wings also feature decorative two-story hexastyle pseudo-porticoes with engaged Ionic columns. A new east wing addition with a new three-story tetrastyle portico was built during the 1985–92 restoration. The new portico includes columns that match the Composite order originals of the main entrance portico on the 1851 west elevation. Upon entering the ground floor of the capitol building, one enters the main stair-hall. It is the location of cantilevered stairways that spiral up to the third floor. The twin cantilevered spiral staircases are among the building's finest original architectural features. They were designed and built by architect Horace King, a former slave who was freed in 1846. Due to his renown in Alabama and surrounding states as a bridge builder, the Alabama Legislature passed a special law that exempted him from the state's manumission laws, which normally required that freed slaves leave the state within one year of gaining their freedom. During the post-war Reconstruction Era he served two terms in the Alabama House of Representatives, in the building that he had helped to design and build. Immediately east of the stair-hall is the ground floor of the rotunda. The ground floor of the rotunda, not physically open to the upper rotunda floors, contains the memorial sculpture Lurleen Burns Wallace (1968) by F. R. Schoenfeld. Wallace was Alabama's first female governor and died while in office in 1968. From there, hallways leading to offices branch off into the north and south wings. The next major room on the ground floor is the old Supreme Court Chamber, part of the original capitol plan. Located in the east (rear) wing, it is the only portion of the wing dating back to 1851. It is a large rectangular room, one story high, with a concave entry wall and two robust Ionic columns visually dividing the space near the center of the room. Later east wing expansions continue on eastward from this room. The second floor is accessed via the main stairhall. From there the open rotunda is accessed to the east. The rotunda leads to the east wing offices, the old Senate Chamber to the north and the old House of Representatives Chamber to the south. The interior of the capitol building is centered on the axial rotunda, which is topped by a large dome. The rotunda is open from the second floor and through the third floor to the top of the dome. The dome interior is decorated with eight painted murals by Roderick MacKenzie, a Scottish-born artist who relocated to Alabama. The murals illustrate MacKenzie's artistic interpretation of the history of Alabama. They were executed on canvas from 1926 to 1930 at his Mobile studio and then shipped to Montgomery by railroad for installation in July 1930. The murals depict the hostile meeting of Hernando de Soto and Tuskaloosa in 1540, the establishment of the colonial French capital of Mobile by Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville and Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville from 1702 to 1711, the surrender of William Weatherford to Andrew Jackson in 1814, pioneers settling the Alabama wilderness in 1816, the drafting of the Constitution of Alabama in 1818, wealth and leisure during the antebellum era from 1840 to 1860, the inauguration of Confederate President Jefferson Davis on the capitol steps in 1861, and, finally, prosperity following the development of resources from 1874 to 1930. Both legislative chambers date to the original 1851 construction. Both of them are rectangular in shape and extend upward through the third floor, with a mezzanine gallery on that level. The galleries in both chambers are supported by Corinthian columns. Those in the old Senate Chamber are gilded, while those in the old House of Representatives Chamber are simply painted. The old Senate Chamber is the smaller of the two legislative chambers, with a mezzanine in a circular pattern stretching around all four sides of the room, broken only above lectern platform. The old House Chamber is larger, with a curvilinear mezzanine on three walls that merges into each side wall before reaching the lectern platform wall. The Old Senate Chamber was the site of several events leading to the Civil War. The Alabama Succession Convention met here on January 11, 1861, and voted to withdraw from the Union. Then, the Confederate States of America was organized here via a provisional constitution on February 4, 1861, Jefferson Davis was elected as its first president on February 9, 1861, and finally the permanent Confederate constitution brought into effect on March 11, 1861. The landscape plan for Capitol Hill surrounding the capitol building was originally designed by the firm of Frederick Law Olmsted in 1889. The grounds of Capitol Hill were surrounded by a cast iron fence from the 19th century into the first decades of the 20th. It was later removed and reused to enclose the Old Augusta Cemetery on Wares Ferry Road. The grounds still contain many trees and scrubs from the Olmsted design, in addition to numerous monuments. Other major features of the grounds include the marble steps leading to the front portico, the Confederate Memorial Monument and the Avenue of Flags. Statuary on the capitol grounds includes Albert Patterson (1961), Duty Called (1986) by Branko Medenica, James Marion Sims (1939) by Biancio Melarango, Jefferson Davis (1940) by Frederick Cleveland Hibbard, John Allan Wyeth (1920s) by Gutzon Borglum, and Joseph Lister Hill (1969) by Gualberto Rocchi. The principal access to the capitol building was originally via a long flight of steps leading to the front portico. These were much narrower than those in place today. They were replaced by new steps fabricated from Alabama marble in 1942. The modern steps are the same width as the portico and are edged with raised marble planters. It was here that the third Selma to Montgomery march ended on March 25, 1965, with 25,000 protesters at the foot of the capitol steps on Dexter Avenue. Prominent protesters included Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Coretta Scott King, Ralph Bunche, Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, John Lewis, James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte, and Joan Baez. A delegation from the protestors attempted to see Governor George Wallace to give him a petition that asked for an end to racial discrimination in Alabama. The governor had sent word that he would see the delegation, but they were denied entry to the capitol grounds twice and told no one would be let through. State police surrounded the capitol and prevented the marcher's delegation entry to the grounds. Martin Luther King, Jr. then gave an impassioned speech at the base of the steps: The delegation was later let through into the capitol, but were told that Wallace's office was closed for the day. The delegation later left, without having been able to give their petition to anyone. It read: These steps remain as they were in 1965, although repairs were made during the 1992 renovation of the building. The steps have continued to be the rallying point for civil demonstrations over the succeeding years. Memorial Selma to Montgomery marches have ended at the steps on several occasions. The most recent, in honor of what would have been King's 83rd birthday, was held on January 15, 2012. On this occasion the marchers were greeted by Governor Robert J. Bentley. The steps have seen protests by LGBT groups and immigration groups in recent years as well. The annual Vigil for Victims of Hate and Violence, sponsored by Equality Alabama, took place on the capitol steps on February 20, 2011, to heighten awareness of the lack of hate crime legislation to protect LGBT people in the state. Hundreds of protesters converged at the steps on December 17, 2011, to protest the passage of Alabama's strict new immigration law, Alabama HB 56. The Avenue of Flags is another major feature of the Alabama State Capitol grounds. It is a grouping of the flags of the U.S. states, with a native stone from each state, engraved with its name, set at the base of each flagpole. The flagpoles are arranged in a semi-circle between the Ionic portico of the capitol building's south wing and Washington Avenue. It was completed during the term of Governor Albert Brewer, being officially dedicated on April 6, 1968. The areas that are open for tourists are the entry stairhall, the old Governor's Office, the old State Supreme Court, the old Supreme Court Library, the rotunda, the old House of Representatives, and the old Senate Chamber. Its buildings and grounds are maintained by the Alabama Historical Commission. List of National Historic Landmarks in Alabama, First White House of the Confederacy, across the street from the capitol building, Virginia State Capitol, second and last capitol building of the Confederacy, List of state and territorial capitols in the United States Alabama State Capitol - visitor information, Alabama State Legislature Visitor's Guide

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I Can Only Imagine is a 2018 American Christian drama film directed by the Erwin Brothers and written by Alex Cramer, Jon Erwin, and Brent McCorkle, based on the story behind the group MercyMe's song "I Can Only Imagine", the best-selling Christian single of all time. The film stars J. Michael Finley as Bart Millard, the lead singer who wrote the song about his relationship with his father (Dennis Quaid). Madeline Carroll, Trace Adkins, Priscilla Shirer, and Cloris Leachman also star. I Can Only Imagine was released in the United States on March 16, 2018. It was a box office success, grossing $86 million worldwide against a production budget of $7 million, earning more than twelve times its budget. It is the fifth highest-grossing music biopic and sixth highest-grossing Christian film of all-time in the United States. Some critics praised it as inspiring and noted it as an improvement compared to other faith-based films, while others called it flat and by-the-numbers. At the 2018 Dove Awards, the film won "Inspirational Film of the Year". 10-year-old Bart Millard lives with his mother and abusive father Arthur in Texas. One day his mother drops him off at a Christian camp where he meets Shannon. Upon his return from camp, Bart finds his mother has left and movers are removing her belongings. He angrily confronts his father, who denies that his abusiveness was the reason she left. Years later, in high school, Bart and Shannon are dating. Bart plays football to please his father, but is injured, breaking both ankles and ending his career. The only elective with openings is music class, so he reluctantly signs up. Initially, Bart is assigned to be a sound technician, but after overhearing him singing, the director casts him in the lead role in the school production of Oklahoma!. Bart overcomes his reluctance and gives an impressive performance, but does not tell his father, who finds out the night of the show when he happens to see a flyer for the show in a diner. Arthur suddenly collapses in pain, and finds out he has cancer, which he hides from Bart. The following morning, Bart antagonizes his father, who smashes a plate over his head. At church, Shannon sees the blood and presses Bart to open up, but he responds by breaking up with her, and leaves town to seek his fortune in the city. He joins a band in need of a singer, and convinces Christian music producer Scott Brickell to manage the band and secure a showcase in Nashville. Bart surprises Shannon and invites her to tour with the band, and is confused when she flatly refuses. In Nashville, Brickell introduces Bart to established artists Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith, but is unable to convince several record execs to sign the band, who do not believe the band, now performing as "MercyMe", is good enough. Devastated, Bart quits the band, but Brickell perceives that Bart needs to resolve issues in his personal life, so Bart reconciles with the band and asks them to wait for him, and leaves to return home. Bart returns home late at night and is confused to find that his father has prepared breakfast for him the next morning. His father claims to have become a Christian, but Bart is skeptical and refuses to forgive him, and leaves. In anger and despair, his father smashes his old Jeep, which he had asked Bart to help him restore. Bart attempts to drive away in his father's pickup, but discovers the terminal cancer diagnosis, and returns to his father. He finally forgives his father, and the two form a deep bond, but Arthur soon dies of his illness. After Arthur's funeral, Bart rejoins the band and writes "I Can Only Imagine", and also calls Shannon and apologizes for the first time since their breakup. Brickell sends the demo tape to several artists, including Grant, who, deeply moved by the song, asks to record it herself as her next single, and Bart, who just wants the song to be heard, accepts. On stage, Grant begins the song, but can't bring herself to sing it, and calls Bart on stage from the audience to sing it himself. Bart's performance earns an enthusiastic ovation, and he reunites with Shannon, who was also in attendance. The band releases the song as their first single, achieving success on both Christian and mainstream radio. J. Michael Finley as Bart Millard, Brody Rose as Young Bart, Tanya Clarke as Adele, Cloris Leachman as Meemaw, Bart's grandmother, Madeline Carroll as Shannon, Bart's girlfriend, Taegan Burns as Young Shannon, Dennis Quaid as Arthur Millard, Bart’s abusive father, Trace Adkins as Scott Brickell, MercyMe's manager, Craig Lembke as Konoa Wheeler, Priscilla Shirer as Mrs. Fincher, Bart's teacher, Nicole DuPort as Amy Grant, Jake B. Miller as Michael W. Smith, Mark Furze as Nathan The film was announced in December 2016. Dennis Quaid joined the cast in January 2017. Broadway actor J. Michael Finley, who sang all the songs in the movie, makes his film debut as Bart Millard. The same month, it was announced that the film was slated for release in the spring of 2018. In August 2017, Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions signed on as distributors for the film for a nationwide release in the United States. I Can Only Imagine grossed $83.4 million in the United States, and Canada and $1.8 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $85.2 million, against a production budget of $7 million. It is the fourth-highest grossing music biopic of all-time in the United States, behind Bohemian Rhapsody, Straight Outta Compton and Walk the Line. It is also the highest-grossing independent film of 2018. I Can Only Imagine was released on March 16, 2018, alongside Tomb Raider and Love, Simon, and was originally projected to gross $2–4 million from 1,620 theaters in its opening weekend. However, after making $6.2 million on its first day (including $1.3 million from Thursday night previews), weekend estimates were increased to $14 million. It ended up grossing $17.1 million, exceeding expectations and finishing third at the box office behind Black Panther and Tomb Raider. 67% of the opening weekend audience was female while 80% was over the age of 35. It was the fourth best- ever opening for a faith-based film, following The Passion of the Christ ($83.8 million), Son of God ($25.6 million) and Heaven Is for Real ($22.5 million). In its second weekend the film was added to 624 additional theaters and dropped just 19% to $13.8 million, again finishing third. It was added to another 395 venues and finished fourth in its third weekend, making $10.4 million (including $3 million on Easter Sunday). The film has been translated and distributed in several countries, including China, according to co- director Jon Erwin: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 63% based on 27 reviews, with an average rating of 5.9/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "I Can Only Imagines message will have the most impact among Christian audiences, but overall, its performances and storytelling represent a notable evolution in faith-based cinema." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 30 out of 100, based on 8 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A+" on an A+ to F scale, one of fewer than 90 films in the history of the service to earn such a score. The Arizona Republics James Ward gave the film 4 stars out of 5 and wrote, "Too often faith-based films — say anything with Kirk Cameron or the terrible God's Not Dead series — tend to preach to the choir or hector their audience. The Erwins’ films — I Can Only Imagine definitely among them — are more inclusive, charitable of spirit and hopeful, all qualities that are always appreciated, be they rooted in Christian faith or otherwise." David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film a "C–" saying: "There’s a reason why all of these movies are so amateurishly made; why they all end with links to religious websites; why they all look like they were shot on an iPhone by a Walmart-brand Janusz Kaminski who lit each interior like the white light of heaven was streaming through every window...Art can be affirmation, but affirmation cannot be art." Faith-based reviewers mostly gave the movie positive reviews. Megan Basham of World magazine called Quaid "the real workhorse" and added that he "bears the heavy load of convincingly giving us both a monster and a repentant dad longing to connect with his son. Quaid impresses on both counts." Michael Foust of the Southern Baptist Texan gave the film 5 out of 5 stars and wrote, "The screenplay is gripping, the soundtrack is perfect, and the performances by Quaid and Finley had me squirming, laughing and crying." The film was released on iTunes and Google Play on June 5, 2018, and on DVD and Blu-ray on June 12, 2018. I Can Only Imagine was the no. 1 film in DVD sales and rentals for the weeks ending June 17 and June 24, 2018. As of December 2019, I Can Only Imagine has earned $23.7 million in home media sales. I Can Only Imagine at History vs. Hollywood "I Can Only Imagine" is a song by Christian rock band MercyMe. Written and composed by lead singer Bart Millard, the song was originally written for the band's 1999 independent album The Worship Project before being included on their 2001 major-label debut album Almost There. The song was the last to be written for The Worship Project; in writing it, Millard drew upon his thoughts about his father's death. Lyrically, it imagines what it would be like to be before God in heaven; it opens with just a piano before building to include guitar and drums. After being released on October 12, 2001 as the second single from Almost There, "I Can Only Imagine" became a major success on Christian radio; it spent two weeks at No. 1 on the Radio & Records Christian AC chart and became the most-played Christian single of 2002. It became an unexpected mainstream hit in 2003, peaking at No. 71 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 5 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart while also hitting top 40, adult top 40, and country radio. The song returned to the charts after its story was adapted into a 2018 film of the same name, peaking at No. 1 on the Billboard Christian Songs chart and No. 10 on the Billboard Digital Songs chart. "I Can Only Imagine" received positive reviews from critics, with some calling it the best song on Almost There; it received particular praise for its lyrics. It received the Dove Awards for Song of the Year and Pop/Contemporary Recorded Song of the Year at the 33rd GMA Dove Awards, also garnering Millard the award for Songwriter of the Year; he also won the Songwriter of the Year award at the 25th American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) Christian Music Awards. In 2004, CCM Magazine ranked it as the fourth-best song in Christian music, and it has since become the most-played song in the history of Christian radio as well as the best- selling Christian song of all time; it has been certified quadruple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and as of April 2018 it has sold over 2.5 million copies. MercyMe was formed in 1994 by vocalist Bart Millard, guitarist Mike Scheuchzer, and keyboardist Jim Bryson. The band later brought on drummer Robby Shaffer and bassist Nathan Cochran. In their early years, they independently released four Christian alternative rock albums, drawing influence from the grunge style of rock music popular at the time. However, they realized that their original songs from these albums failed to connect with their audiences while their covers of popular worship songs were much more impactful. Because of this, the band decided to write and produce an album of original worship songs. This album, The Worship Project, would utilize a simple verse–chorus format designed to easily fit on a PowerPoint screen. In the last phases of the album's production, MercyMe needed one more song to include on the album. Late at night on the band's bus, Millard found an old notebook with the phrase "I can only imagine" written in it. Millard began to write a song, basing it off on his personal feelings about his father Arthur's death. Early in Bart's life, Arthur had been physically and emotionally abusive towards his family, with Bart being beaten severely at points; Arthur and his wife Adele eventually divorced, and Bart was sent to live with his mother after an especially extreme whipping. Bart kept in contact with his father, however, who was later diagnosed with pancreatic cancer when Bart was 15. His father began to make amends for his actions and started becoming more religiously observant, reading the Bible and going to church regularly. As Arthur progressively became more ill, his relationship with his son improved dramatically; by the time Arthur died in 1991, when Bart was 18, the two were very close. Millard said that "I got a front row seat to see this guy go from being a monster to falling desperately in love with Jesus. By the time he passed away when I was a freshman in college, not only was he my best friend, he was like the Godliest man I’d ever known". After Arthur's death, Bart became obsessed with the phrase "I can only imagine" after hearing his grandmother say that she could only imagine what Arthur was seeing in heaven. Millard found comfort in the thought and began to write it on anything he could find. Once Millard started writing the song, he estimated that it took him only about ten minutes to write the lyrics. Millard said that it was one of the few songs he had ever written where there was not any mistakes in the writing process; "it was just written the way it is and left at that". MercyMe initially attempted to record "I Can Only Imagine" as a fast song After several failed attempts, Millard talked with Bryson about arranging the song into a slower version. As the band was tearing down the equipment in their recording studio, Bryson began playing a piano intro. Millard immediately decided to use the intro, and the rest of the song was completed in around five minutes. Although the rest of the band did not see how it would fit on the record, as it didn't meet the basic verse-chorus format the rest of the album had, they felt it needed to be included on it because it meant so much to Millard. The Worship Project was released on October 14, 1999. Sales for the album far exceeded the band's previous efforts; Millard estimated the album's overall sales at 100,000, which other sources peg the album's sales as of 2006 at 60,000 or 65,000 copies. The difficulty of meeting sales demands when selling the album directly, in addition to having to book and manage for themselves, led the band to pursue a contract with a record label. After releasing one final independent record in 2000, the band signed with INO Records. "I Can Only Imagine" was one of several songs from the band's independent records that were selected to be included on the band's debut album with INO, Almost There (2001). "I Can Only Imagine" is set in the key of E major and has a tempo of 80 beats per minute. Bart Millard's vocal range in the song spans from the low note of B to the high note of G. Millard is credited with writing and composing the song. A contemporary Christian and pop song, "I Can Only Imagine" has been considered both a ballad and a power ballad. The song opens up with only a piano, building up to include guitar and drums. The song has a directly Christian message; its religious lyrics weren't edited for mainstream radio. In the song, the narrator wonders what it would be like to stand before God in Heaven; in the refrain, the singer ponders "Will I dance for You Jesus/or in awe of you be still/Will I stand in Your presence or to my knees will I fall/Will I sing hallelujah/will I be able to speak at all/I can only imagine/I can only imagine". Regarding the lyrical theme of "I Can Only Imagine", Millard explained to Fox News that "I was always told that if [my father] could choose, he would rather be in Heaven than here with me. As a Christian I believed that, but as an 18-year-old it was a little hard to swallow. So the questions in the song came from me asking God what was so great about Him that my dad would rather be there." Critical reception for "I Can Only Imagine" was positive. Steve Losey of AllMusic praised it as being "passionate" and "emotionally compelling". Kevin Chamberlin of Jesus Freak Hideout said the song's lyrics were "amazing". Kevin McNeese of New Release Tuesday called it the "definite highlight" of Almost There; he praised its piano intro, saying it "instantly invokes chills", as well as the song's lyrical content. Charisma writer Margaret Feinburg called "I Can Only Imagine" "heart-gripping". Megumi Nakamura of Cross Rhythms praised "I Can Only Imagine" as being "beautiful and touching" and called it the album's centerpiece. Writing for CCM Magazine, Adam Woodroof called the song "heavenly" and said it was the highlight of Almost There. Russ Breimeier of Christianity Today praised the song as being "beautiful and inspiring", but questioned if it was actually a worship song. "I Can Only Imagine" earned two GMA Dove Awards at the 33rd GMA Dove Awards in 2002; 'Pop/Contemporary Recorded Song of the Year' and 'Song of the Year'. Millard won 'Songwriter of the Year' at the same ceremony as well as at the 25th American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) Christian Music Awards, held on June 2, 2003. In 2004, CCM Magazine ranked "I Can Only Imagine" as the fourth- greatest song in Christian music. "I Can Only Imagine" has been regarded as MercyMe's "breakthrough hit" as well as their signature song. It is the most-played song in the history of Christian radio and one of the most-played songs in the history of contemporary music. As of April 2018, it is the best-selling Christian song of all-time. It has constantly ranked among the best-selling Christian songs each year in the Billboard year-end charts, ranging from No. 19 in 2016 to No. 3 in 2018. It is often requested to be played at funerals. "I Can Only Imagine" was named the official inspirational song for the state of Oklahoma in 2018; the measure was passed by the Oklahoma Legislature and signed by Governor Mary Fallin. The story behind "I Can Only Imagine" was adapted into a film. Directed by the Erwin Brothers and starring J. Michael Finley as Bart Millard and Dennis Quaid as Arthur Millard, the movie was released to theaters on March 16, 2018 It received mixed to positive reviews from critics and exceeded initial expectations at the box office, grossing $17.1 million in its opening week. This was the fourth best-ever opening for a faith-based film, behind only The Passion of the Christ, Son of God, and Heaven Is for Real. The film finished its theatrical run having grossed $83.4 million in the United States and Canada and $1.8 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $85.2 million. It ranks as the fourth-highest grossing music biopic of all- time in the United States, behind only Bohemian Rhapsody, Straight Outta Compton and Walk the Line. It was also the highest-grossing independent film of 2018. Originally, "I Can Only Imagine" was set to be released by fellow Christian artist Amy Grant. Millard had initially declined a request from Grant's record label to allow her to record the song; some segments of the Christian community had reacted negatively to her divorce, and Millard wasn't sure if he wanted to be involved. After consulting with his pastor, who felt Millard should accept the opportunity, Millard began to reconsider, and finally agreed to let her cover it after talking with Grant over the phone. Grant had planned to release her version of the song as the first single from her upcoming album and MercyMe would release a different song as their first single, hoping to capitalize on having written what would presumably become a major hit for Grant. The band released their first single from the album, "Bless Me Indeed (Jabez's Song)", which performed poorly at Christian radio, leading to poor sales of Almost There. Plans were made to release a second single from the record, but the band's manager, Scott Brickell, decided to reach out to Grant to see if she still planned to release her version as a single. Grant gave MercyMe her blessing to release the song as their second single and signed the rights back to the band; "I Can Only Imagine" was released on October 12, 2001 as the album's second single. The song debuted on the Christian AC chart on November 2, 2001, reached the No. 1 position on February 22, 2002, and spent two weeks at the top spot. It also peaked at No. 15 on the Radio & Records Christian CHR chart. The song became the most-played song on Christian in 2002. As a result of its success on radio, Almost There experienced a "surge" in sales, debuting on the Billboard 200 in December 2001 and entering the top ten on the Christian Albums chart in January 2002. The song stayed on Christian radio for so long that plans to release a third single from Almost There were cancelled, with the band instead beginning work on a new album. In 2003, a Dallas mainstream radio station, 100.3 Wild-FM, first played the song on its morning show, The Fitz Radio Program. They had responded to a caller's repeated requests and the urgings of the program's producer, Todd Sheppard, a former seminary student. Although it had been played almost as joke, it soon became the most requested and most played song on the station. After hearing the song played on the station, Millard called-in and spoke with the crew, and MercyMe then came in and played the song live. Big Gay Steven, one of the show's hosts, described their audience's response to the song as "overwhelming". As other stations around the country began to play the song, MercyMe's label, INO Records, partnered with Curb Records to market the single to mainstream radio. Its initial success was seen as surprising due to its overtly religious themes, although several other Christian artists had begun achieving mainstream success at the same time, including Stacie Orrico, whose singles "Stuck" and "(There's Gotta Be) More to Life" had both hit the Billboard Hot 100. Curb began to promote the song to adult contemporary and Top 40 radio, and INO and Curb released a double A-side physical single, "I Can Only Imagine/Word of God Speak", in September 2003. "I Can Only Imagine" debuted on the Adult Contemporary chart on May 23, 2003, eventually peaking at No. 5 for the chart week of September 8, 2003. "I Can Only Imagine" spent 30 weeks on the chart. The song debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 for the chart week of October 11, 2003 at No. 76. The song peaked at No. 71 and spent 16 non-consecutive weeks on the chart. "I Can Only Imagine" also peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Sales chart, a component chart of the Billboard Hot 100 that ranks the best-selling physical single releases, for 10 weeks. During the week of November 22, 2003, it became the first No. 1 physical single to be outsold by the highest-selling digital single of the week; for that week, "I Can Only Imagine" sold 7,500 physical copies in the United States, while Outkast's "Hey Ya!" sold 8,500 digital downloads in the United States in the same week. The song also charted on the Mainstream Top 40, Adult Top 40, and Country Songs charts. In 2012, the song appeared on France's Syndicat National de l'Édition Phonographique (SNEP) chart, spending two weeks and peaking at No. 65. In March 2018, following the release of the film I Can Only Imagine, which was based on the song's story, the song appeared on the Billboard Christian Songs chart; because the chart had been created after the song's original run on Christian radio, it was eligible to chart for the first time. The song debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard Christian Songs chart and also spent a third week at No. 1 on the Billboard Christian Digital Songs chart; the song had spent 425 weeks on the chart at that point, the longest run of any song in the chart's history. "I Can Only Imagine" peaked at No. 1 on the Christian Songs chart on March 31, 2018, and spent three weeks at the top spot. It also peaked at No. 10 on the Billboard Digital Songs chart. The song ranked at No. 8 on the 2018 year-end Christian Songs chart. In April 2010, "I Can Only Imagine" was certified platinum by the RIAA, signifying sales of over 1 million digital downloads. It is the first single by any artist in the Christian music genre to go platinum. The song was certified double platinum in September 2014 and triple platinum in June 2018. As of March 2018, it has sold 2.5 million copies, making it the best-selling Christian single of all time. A music video was released for "I Can Only Imagine". According to Millard, the video's inspiration came from seeing people holding empty picture frames at their concerts, symbolizing their deceased loved ones. Millard said that the "I've had so many people after a show pull out a picture of someone they've lost. These people embrace these photos and I just thought how can we tap into that". The video features everyday people as well as several music artists including Michael Tait, Tammy Trent, Bob Herdman, and Jesse Katina, each holding an empty picture frame to signify their loss of a loved one; as the video progresses, they are holding pictures of their loved ones including Millard with his father's photograph. Despite including "I Can Only Imagine" on The Worship Project, the band initially did not perform the song in concerts because they felt it did not fit with the rest of the record. The band’s first performance of the song did not come until the summer after the release of The Worship Project at a summer camp at the request of a camp counselor. The band has played the song at every show since as of February 2009 MercyMe's 2004 concert tour, the Imagine Tour (with Amy Grant and Bebo Norman) and 201819 Imagine Nation Tour (featuring Tenth Avenue North in the 2018 leg and Crowder and Micah Tyler in the 2019 leg) both took their name from the song. MercyMe performed "I Can Only Imagine" at the 33rd GMA Dove Awards, with an accompanying "inspiring video that underscored the emotional and inspirational power of song". The band also performed the song at the 40th GMA Dove Awards, held on April 23, 2009, in a medley with "Finally Home". The band performed the song at the 2017 National Prayer Breakfast, with President Donald Trump in attendance. In March 2018, MercyMe performed "I Can Only Imagine" live on Fox & Friends in promotion of the upcoming film release; Millard was also interviewed after the performance. Both an acoustic and live version of "I Can Only Imagine" were included in the Platinum edition of Almost There, which was released in August 2006. MercyMe recorded a new version of the song for their iTunes Originals album, which was released in March 2008. Two more versions were included on their compilation album 10; a symphony version featuring the London Session Orchestra as well as a live version. For their 2018 compilation album I Can Only Imagine: The Very Best of MercyMe, released to commemorate the release of the movie, the band recorded an updated version titled "I Can Only Imagine (The Movie Session)". This version charted on the Billboard Christian Songs chart, peaking at No. 19. "I Can Only Imagine" has been covered by several artists. In 2002 Amy Grant released a reworked version of the song, titled "Imagine" and paired with "Sing the Wondrous Love of Jesus", on her album Legacy... Hymns and Faith. Country singer Jeff Carson's 2003 cover peaked at No. 50 on the Country Songs chart. "I Can Only Imagine" was covered by Wynonna Judd in 2005 and Emerson Drive in 2007. Country singer Marie Osmond covered the song on her 2010 album I Can Do This, with all proceeds from the album going to Children's Miracle Network Hospitals, a charity she co-founded. In 2014, gospel singer Tamela Mann's cover of the song spent 13 atop the Billboard Gospel Songs chart. In May 2017, Aliyah Moulden, the third-place finisher on the 12th season of the reality competition show The Voice, performed the song on the show. Moulden's version debuted and peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Christian Songs chart, selling 15,000 copies in its first week and spending two weeks on the chart in total. CD release 1. "I Can Only Imagine" – 4:06 2. "Word of God Speak" – 3:07 MercyMe Bart Millard – vocals, Jim Bryson – keyboards, Nathan Cochran – bass guitar, background vocals, Mike Scheuchzer – guitar, background vocals, Robby Shaffer – drums Additional performers Paltrow Performance Group – strings Technical Julian Kindred – engineer, Pete Kipley – producer, programming, Skye McCaskey – engineer, Salvo – mixing, Shane Wilson – mixing Weekly charts Year-end charts Certifications "Word of God Speak" is a song by Christian rock band MercyMe. Written by Bart Millard and Pete Kipley, "Word of God Speak" uses sparse instrumentation, featuring only piano and strings to accompany Millard's vocals. The lyrics to "Word of God Speak" reflect on the idea that it is impossible to speak of an infinite God with a limited vocabulary. Released as the second single from MercyMe's 2002 album Spoken For, Billboard magazine ranked the song at the top spot on their 2000s decade-end Christian Songs and Hot Christian AC charts. "Word of God Speak" spent 23 weeks atop the Billboard Christian Songs chart, the fifth longest running record for that chart; it spent a total of 76 weeks on that chart altogether. It also topped the Billboard Hot Christian AC chart and the Radio & Records Christian AC and INSPO charts, and peaked at No. 25 on the Christian CHR chart. "Word of God Speak" also won the Dove Awards for Song of the Year and Pop/Contemporary Song of the Year at the 35th GMA Dove Awards. MercyMe's lead singer Bart Millard wrote "Word of God Speak" while touring in support of their single "I Can Only Imagine". The travel was exhausting, and Millard commented in an interview that, on one of the nights on tour, he "went to bed just really frustrated... It started feeling like everything I was saying was the same. I just thought, I have nothing else to say. So I went to bed with that on my mind". After falling asleep, Millard woke up early in the morning and wrote several lines to the song in his journal before going back to sleep. Several weeks later, he was searching through his journal and found the notes again; when he went to the band's studio, he showed the notes to his producer, Pete Kipley. The two finished the lyrics to the song in less than thirty minutes, and recorded the piano track the same night; they also brought in someone to compose a string track for the song. Millard wanted "Word of God Speak" to contain only piano, avoiding the big production that could assure the song success on the radio, as he felt the simple production would mirror the lyrics. "Word of God Speak" was written by Bart Millard and Pete Kipley; it was also produced by Kipley. It was recorded at several locations; Luminous Sound in Dallas, Texas, The Sound Kitchen in Franklin, Tennessee, Indigo Room in Franklin, Tennessee, HydeAway Sound Lab in Jeckyll Island, Georgia, The Scwoodio in Greenville, Texas, Mountain View Recorders in Glorieta, New Mexico, and Playground Recording in Wylie, Texas. It was mastered by Richard Dodd at Vital Recordings, and mixed by Salvo at Salvo Mix. "Word of God Speak" is a contemporary Christian song with a length of three minutes and seven seconds. It is set in the key of C major and has a tempo of 69 beats per minute, with Millard's vocal range spanning from C-F. The music to "Word of God Speak" is stripped down, featuring piano and vocals; a string track is also present. The simple production was intended to mirror the lyrics of the song, which reflect on the concept that it is impossible to speak of an infinite God with the limited vocabulary of humanity. A critic, Russ Breimier, also noted the song reminds that "prayer and worship are not flowery orations". On his review of Spoken For, Russ Breimeier commented that "I particularly liked the brief "Word of God Speak," which simply reminds us that prayer and worship aren't about flowery orations... This song is to prayer what "Heart of Worship" is to worship". "Word of God Speak" won the awards for Song of the Year and Pop/Contemporary Song of the Year at the 35th GMA Dove Awards. "Word of God Speak" peaked at number one on the Billboard Christian Songs chart, and spent 23 weeks at the top of the chart, and a total of 76 weeks on the chart. On the Billboard Hot Christian AC chart, the song spent 21 weeks atop the chart, and spent 61 weeks on it in total. On the Radio & Records Christian AC chart, "Word of God Speak" spent 10 weeks at the top, and stayed on the chart for 46 weeks in total; on the Radio & Records INSPO chart, the song spent nine weeks atop the chart, and spent 21 weeks on it in total. Additionally, the song peaked at No. 25 on the Radio & Records Christian CHR chart, and spent 12 weeks on that chart in total. "Word of God Speak" ranked at No. 5 on the 2004 year-end Billboard Hot Christian Singles & Tracks Titles chart, and at No. 9 on the 2004 year-end Billboard Hot Christian Adult Contemporary Titles chart. It ranked at No. 1 on both the 2000s decade-end Christian Songs chart and the 2000s decade-end Hot Christian AC chart. "Word of God Speak" has been covered by several artists. In 2005, actress Kristin Chenoweth covered the song on her album As I Am, and Christian rock band Kutless recorded a version of the song on their 2005 album Strong Tower. In 2004, contemporary Christian band Big Daddy Weave recorded a version of the song that was included on the compilation album . CD release "I Can Only Imagine" – 4:08, "Word of God Speak" – 3:07 Credits adapted from the album liner notes. MercyMe Bart Millard – lead vocals, Jim Bryson – keys, recording Additional performers Roy G. Biv String Vibe \- strings Production Csaba Petozz \- recording, J. R. McNeely \- recording, Lee Bridges \- recording, Richard Dodd \- mastering, Salvo \- mixing Year-end charts Decade-end charts Notes Footnotes

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Whose Line is it Anyway? (shortened to Whose Line? or WLIIA) is a short-form improvisational comedy television show created by Dan Patterson and Mark Leveson, and hosted by Clive Anderson. Beginning as a BBC radio programme, it was successfully adapted for television after its acquisition by Channel 4, and aired ten series from 23 September 1988 to 4 February 1999. Whose Line? consists of a panel of four performers who create characters, scenes or songs on the spot in the style of short-form improvisation games, based on topics either prompted from audience suggestions or predetermined by the host. The show's participants consisted of a rotating cast of noted comedians from Britain, Canada and the United States, including Stephen Fry, Paul Merton, Ryan Stiles, John Sessions, Colin Mochrie, Josie Lawrence, Greg Proops, Tony Slattery, Mike McShane, Wayne Brady, and Jim Sweeney. The success of Whose Line? spawned several domestic and international adaptations. An American version aired on ABC between 1998 and 2007 and was revived on The CW in 2013, and is broadcast in multiple countries. Whose Line Is It Anyway? Australia debuted on The Comedy Channel in 2016. Two similarly-themed British comedy programmes, Mock the Week (2005) and Fast and Loose (2011), were created by Patterson. In 1988, Dan Patterson and Mark Leveson came up with the concept for the show, revolving around games focused on creating improvisational comedy, using a group of performers. As part of their concept, Patterson and Leveson devised the show's title as a comedic riposte to a radio programme that had recently moved to television at the time, What's My Line, merged with the title of a 1972 teleplay (and eventual theatrical play) Whose Life Is It Anyway?. After pitching it to the BBC, the show was given the green light to run as a radio programme on BBC Radio 4 - this early incarnation ran for six episodes, with Clive Anderson as host, and both John Sessions and Stephen Fry as the programme's regulars. During its run, the show's creators decided to adopt the approach used by an earlier BBC radio show, I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again - rather than having the show's credit read out by a traditional BBC Radio announcer, the performers in each episode were tasked with doing this themselves, but in an amusing, comedic style. Following the end of the radio series, Patterson and Leveson began discussions with the BBC on creating a televised adaption of their concept. However, the broadcaster was hesitant on making the move and delayed making a decision until after further debate on the matter, leading to Channel 4, who eagerly liked the idea, making an offer during this time that the pair accepted. Believing the adaptation of the radio show would become a hit, the first series of Whose Line was arranged to feature a total of thirteen episodes, which is uncommon in the UK as most TV series in their first year often begin with just six episodes. The move to television came with an immediate problem - although the adaptation was aimed at maintaining the same regular cast as the radio show alongside a rotation of guest performers, Fry had begun to dislike performing improvisational comedy and opted to pull out of the show before filming began, leaving Sessions, convinced by him, to remain as a regular performer for the first series. Whose Line was a success, effectively helping with the careers of its regular performers, Paul Merton, Josie Lawrence, and Tony Slattery, and was boosted by the introduction of Ryan Stiles, Colin Mochrie, and Greg Proops, reaching its peak by the end of the sixth series. The latter halves of the third and fourth series were filmed in New York, while the tenth series was filmed entirely at the Raleigh Studios in Hollywood. By the end of the tenth series, having run for 136 episodes between 1988 and 1999, Channel 4 decided to axe the programme following the eventual slump in the show's viewing figures. Reruns of Whose Line continued following its cancellation, though with episodes edited and reformatted as a result. The format itself was later picked up by ABC, after Stiles introduced Whose Line to Drew Carey, who subsequently pitched an American version of the same name to the TV network with great success. On 6 March 2011, over twelve years after the series finale, a special edition of the show was recorded for "24 Hour Panel People", a marathon of UK panel shows, in aid of Comic Relief. The recording was broadcast live on the Comic Relief website at about 9:30am, while the edited compilation shows for the event were shown between 13–17 March on BBC Three. Alongside Anderson hosting the show, the format was adjusted to feature five performers, and featured performances by Humphrey Ker, Josie Lawrence, Neil Mullarkey, Tony Slattery and David Walliams. In 2017, a stage-version of the show appeared at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with some members of the original cast. The initial shows were a sell-out and extra dates and shows were put on. Sell-out runs followed at the London Palladium and The Royal Albert Hall. In April 2019, it was announced that the stage-version of the show would be returning to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, with Tony Slattery returning as one of the original cast members. Most television episodes of Whose Line Is It Anyway? featured four performers (with an exception of six in a 1989 Christmas special) who sit in a line of chairs at the back of the stage. The host sat at a desk facing the large performance area in front of the performers. The host introduced each performer with a joke or pun, usually all related on a common theme or topic. The show is made up of games that are scored by the host, who declared arbitrary point values after the game, often citing a humorous reason for his decision. The points are purely decorative, served no practical purpose, and were often awarded to audience members or other arbitrary third persons. The style of the games are varied (see Games, below). Some feature all four performers, while others feature fewer. The performers who are not involved in a game remain in their seats at the back of the stage. Humorous banter between the host and the performers between games is also sometimes featured. At the conclusion of each episode, a winner or several winners are chosen arbitrarily by the host. The "prize" for winning the show is to read the credits in a certain style, chosen by the host, as they scrolled. Episodes were culled down from longer recording sessions with the best game performances chosen to compile into one or more episodes. Each series includes one or two compilation shows of unaired games from different taping sessions in that series. The number and type of games played vary from episode to episode, and whilst some games such as "Questions Only" and "Hoedown" became more common over time, others such as "Authors" and "Remote Control" faded from use. New games were created throughout the show's run. Some games, such as "Tag," are based on traditional improv games, while others are uniquely created for the series. Most games consist of a single long skit performed by the chosen performers, but some, such as "World's Worst" and "Scenes from a Hat," are played as a rapid-fire series of short skits. While all games are designed to test the performer's improvisational skill, some also test other skills, such as singing or doing impressions. Whose Line? features a number of musical games, which feature one or more of the show's resident musicians playing live backing music. Occasionally, pre-recorded music is also used. While they were good sports about it, many of the performers despised the musical games. In one episode, Stephen Fry is asked to perform a rap, and starts to do so halfheartedly, but gives up after a few words, and Ryan Stiles would frequently inject insults into the Hoedown whenever he is forced to sing it, usually pointed at the host or the Hoedown itself. Colin Mochrie would generally speak his lines instead of singing them for musical games. Some games require suggestions or topics. Depending on the game, these may be solicited directly from the studio audience during the taping, or written down by the audience and/or production staff in advance and then randomly drawn for the performers' use. The host uses a buzzer to signal the end of a game, or of individual sections in the rapid-fire games. The original BBC Radio 4 broadcasts consists of host Clive Anderson along with two guests and the two regular contestants, Stephen Fry and John Sessions. Clive Anderson stayed on as host when the show moved to television, with John Sessions resuming his role as the only regular in the first series. He subsequently became a rotating regular in the second and third series. However he appears only twice in the third series, these being his final appearances. Stephen Fry appears only occasionally on the television series. Ryan Stiles and Colin Mochrie first appear in the second and third series respectively; they each gradually increase the frequency of their appearances to the point that both appear in every episode from the eighth series on. Stiles is the most prolific performer on the show, having appeared in 76 of the series' 136 episodes (including compilations). Wayne Brady, who became a regular on the US version, appears in the final UK series for five episodes, including compilations. Many of the show's performers, including Paul Merton, Josie Lawrence and Sandi Toksvig, were regulars with The Comedy Store Players, an improvisational group based at London's Comedy Store. Other regular performers from the British version include a variety of British, American, and Canadian comedians such as Greg Proops, Tony Slattery, Mike McShane, Stephen Frost, Brad Sherwood, Chip Esten and Jim Sweeney. The series also occasionally features celebrities in the fourth chair, such as Peter Cook, George Wendt, and Jonathan Pryce. On the original BBC Radio series, the music was provided by Colin Sell, but when the show migrated to television, Richard Vranch (also of The Comedy Store Players) became the resident musician until the last series of the British show, playing electric guitar and piano and other instruments. For the tenth series in Hollywood, Laura Hall took over, playing mainly keyboards, and went on to be the in-house musician for the American series. The first release of the U.K. show, featuring the first two series, was released on DVD in America on 27 March 2007 by A&E; Home Entertainment, and in the UK on 25 January 2008 by Channel 4. The U.K. edition is edited to remove references to the ad breaks. Also, British episodes were released on VHS (in the UK only) in the mid-1990s. Additionally, a play-at-home book was printed in 1989, related to the British series. Almost all of the UK versions (135 of 136 episodes) of Whose Line Is It Anyway? are available for free to those living in the UK on All 4. Mock the Week, Fast and Loose, Thank God You're Here, Kwik Witz, Improvisation My Dear Mark Watson, ComedySportz, Boom Chicago, The Second City, The Comedy Store Players Whose Line Is It Anyway? (often known as simply Whose Line?) is an improvisational comedy television show in the United States, an adaptation of the British show of the same name. It aired on ABC and ABC Family from August 5, 1998, to December 15, 2007, hosted by Drew Carey. A revival of the show, hosted by Aisha Tyler, began airing on The CW on July 16, 2013. The series features Ryan Stiles, Colin Mochrie, and Wayne Brady as its regular performers with the fourth seat occupied by a guest panelist. The place consists of a panel of four performers who create characters, scenes, and songs on the spot, in the style of short-form improvisation games. Topics for the games are based on either audience suggestions or predetermined prompts from the host, who would set up a game and situation that the performers would improvise. The original host Drew Carey awarded arbitrary point values after each game, often citing a humorous reason for his decision. The points were purely decorative and served no practical purpose. He would reiterate this at the beginning of, and multiple times throughout, each episode by describing Whose Line as "the show where everything's made up and the points don't matter". The style of the games were varied (see Games, below). Some featured all four performers, while others featured fewer. Between games, the performers sat in four chairs facing the audience. The performers who were not involved in a game remained in their seats. Additionally, the show was marked by humorous banter among the performers and host. At the conclusion of each episode, a winner or several winners were chosen arbitrarily by Carey. The "prize" was either to play a game with the host, or to sit out while the other performers did so. After this game during the first season of the series, credits simply rolled under the show's theme. In the second season, the reading of the credits was performed by one or more cast members in a comedic fashion, based on a theme announced by Carey that often derived from a successful joke earlier in the show. The show's "short- form" approach to improv received criticism from some improv actors. However, performer Colin Mochrie has stated the show was never intended to be the "be- all and end-all" of improv, but that it was meant to introduce improv to the masses. Whose Line Is It Anyway? features four performers, two of whom, Colin Mochrie and Ryan Stiles, were featured prominently in the UK original. Another performer who made frequent, recurring appearances was Wayne Brady. During his tenure as host, Drew Carey also took part, though only in one game, after one of the performers was declared the "winner" and allowed to take his place at his desk in the studio; host Aisha Tyler does not take part in games, but occasionally joins in for quick scenes on different games (mostly Scenes from a Hat). Alongside Mochrie and Stiles, other veterans of the UK series who appeared on the U.S. version included Greg Proops, Brad Sherwood, and Chip Esten. The U.S. version introduced several newcomers that took part, including Denny Siegel, Kathy Greenwood, Jeff Davis, Patrick Bristow, Stephen Colbert, Kathy Kinney, and Ian Gomez, though mainly in the early seasons of the show. Unlike the UK original, the US version occasionally featured a celebrity guest performer, such as Robin Williams, Kathy Griffin, and Whoopi Goldberg, while on other occasions, a celebrity made a guest appearance for individual games; such appearances have included Sid Caesar, David Hasselhoff, Florence Henderson, Jerry Springer, Joanie "Chyna" Laurer, Richard Simmons, Katie Harman, Jayne Trcka, the Loyola Marymount University cheerleaders, Hugh Hefner, and Lassie. Celebrity guests became a regular feature of the show beginning with season 9. Improvisational musician Laura Hall, who appeared in the final season of the UK original, joined the original U.S. format for its entire run and performed piano and keyboards in games featuring improvisational singing by the cast members. From the second season onward, other musicians joined Hall – Linda Taylor made frequent appearances playing guitar and occasionally keyboards, while Cece Worrall-Rubin, Anne King, Candy Girard, and Anna Wanselius appeared alongside Hall (and sometimes also Taylor) on occasion. The number and type of games played varied from episode to episode, yet while some games became more common over time, others faded from use. Some games are based on traditional improv games, with a considerable number brought over from the UK original, including Scenes from a Hat, Greatest Hits, Props, Hoedown, Helping Hands, Questions Only and Party Quirks. Others were new and uniquely created for both the U.S. original format, and the revived show, with several only being played once or twice, due either to the games not having been well-received by audiences, or to Stiles' reluctance to perform certain rounds. There are eight games that have been performed at least once in every season; these are Scenes from a Hat, Greatest Hits, Props, Let's Make a Date, Weird Newscasters, Duet, Helping Hands, and Questions Only. All games are designed to test the performers' improvisational comedy skills, with some games requiring the host to ask the studio audience for suggestions for specific topics or situations, while at other times these suggestions were written by the production staff, or submitted by the audience in advance, and chosen from among these. In addition, the host would control a buzzer which would signify the end of most games, or the end of individual sections of rapid-fire games such as "Scenes from a Hat". In addition to being tested on their comedy skills in improv games, the performers are also tested on other skills, such as singing, dancing, or impressions, as Whose Line features a number of musical games, with one or more of the show's resident musicians playing live backing music for them, except on a few occasions when pre- recorded music was also used. Although they had no bad feelings about these sort of games, many of the performers disliked them; while Wayne Brady turned out to be well suited to them, having Chip Esten, Jeff Davis, Brad Sherwood and Gary Anthony Williams making frequent appearances as his duet partner, Stiles frequently expressed open disdain towards the "Hoedown" game, which became a bit of a running gag, while Mochrie, who cannot sing, rarely sings any lyrics, mainly preferring to deliver his lines in a spoken word fashion, much like in the UK original. Whose Line Is It Anyway? was created by Dan Patterson and Mark Leveson in 1988 as a radio show on BBC Radio 4 in the United Kingdom. This early incarnation of the show is notable as being the origin of its tradition of having the performers read the credits in an amusing style; as it was a radio show, it was necessary for somebody to read the credits, and it was decided that it might as well be done as part of the program, rather than being done by a traditional BBC Radio announcer. This approach to reading credits was pioneered by the earlier BBC radio show I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again. Indeed, the title of the show itself is a comedic riposte to another radio show, What's My Line, merged with the title of a 1972 teleplay (and eventual theatrical play) Whose Life Is It Anyway?. The radio series lasted for six episodes, after which Channel 4 developed the franchise for television. The British television version lasted for a total of 10 seasons, with 136 episodes, all of which were hosted by Clive Anderson. Colin Mochrie and Ryan Stiles, who would later star in the U.S. version, became regular cast members in the seventh and eighth seasons. The format of the American version was very similar to the British program. A major difference was Carey's use of the game-show facade, explicitly stating at the start of each episode that "the points don't matter," and sometimes emphasizing this throughout the episodes. The difference in standards in the UK compared to U.S. prime time meant stricter censoring of both language and content on the U.S. series. Production of the American version was canceled by ABC in 2003 because of low ratings, with already-produced episodes airing first-run into 2004. The ABC Family cable channel, which had been airing repeats of the show since 2002, also showed "new" episodes from 2005 to 2006, formed from previously filmed but unaired performances. Following the cancellation, Drew Carey went on to create the short-lived Drew Carey's Green Screen Show, which premiered in 2004 on the WB. The series was very similar to Whose Line?, and featured many of the same cast. The major gimmick on that series was that the acting was done in front of a green screen, and animators later added cartoon imagery to the scenes. Carey and several cast members also started touring North America with a live-action show called (Drew Carey's) Improv All-Stars. The show was a live stage show similar to Whose Line?, and featuring many of the same games, though also with some new ones. The live shows started in 2003, and since 2006, are only seen on occasion, mostly due to Carey's current television obligations. Colin Mochrie, Brad Sherwood and Drew Carey performed at the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal as "Improv All-Stars" in 2003 and 2004. Since 2005, Mochrie and Sherwood have toured semi-regularly as An Evening With Colin and Brad. The show was recorded on Stage 29 at Paramount Studios. Greg Proops and Ryan Stiles presented Stiles & Proops Unplanned which was a live improv comedy show based on the successful Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned format that took place at Centaur Theatre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in July 2008. They also tour with former co-star Jeff Davis under the name Whose Live Anyway? doing live improv. Proops appeared as Max Madigan on Nickelodeon's True Jackson, VP, and is currently hosting Head Games on The Science Channel and was the host of "Odd News" segments for Yahoo! (now called Broken News Daily) while Esten has made multiple appearances in various TV series including The Office, ER (also produced by Warner Bros.) and Big Love and guest-starred in Enlightened. In 2007, Mochrie was host of a five-episode run of Are You Smarter Than a Canadian 5th Grader? on Global TV in Canada. Carey, Stiles, Brady, and Esten were all later employed by American television network CBS; Carey succeeded Bob Barker as the host of the long-running game show The Price Is Right (after a short stint as host of another game show, Power of 10). In addition, Sherwood and Davis served as guest announcers for the 2010-11 season of The Price Is Right, after the departure of Rich Fields, who was eventually replaced by George Gray. Stiles appeared as a supporting character on the sitcom Two and a Half Men. Esten had a recurring role on The New Adventures of Old Christine and made a guest appearance in , before moving to star in the ABC drama Nashville. Brady had a summer variety show on ABC in 2001, The Wayne Brady Show and then hosted a daytime talk show of the same name for two seasons, starting in September 2002. He also was the host of Fox's Don't Forget the Lyrics. In 2007, he made a guest appearance in one episode of 30 Rock, and has made several appearances on How I Met Your Mother as Barney Stinson's homosexual brother. He also had a couple of guest appearances on Chappelle's Show. Since October 5, 2009, Brady has been the host of CBS' revival of the classic game show Let's Make a Deal. Featuring Jonathan Mangum as announcer and Co-Host, this new iteration utilized some classic elements of improv from Whose Line, most notably Brady's singing and comedic abilities, occasionally breaking out into spontaneous musical improv in front of or involving contestants, and not being a stipulated aspect of the particular game to be played. As of 2009, every main Whose Line participant has hosted at least one game show except Ryan Stiles. On November 18, 2010, Variety announced that Drew Carey would start a primetime improv show on GSN. The series, entitled Drew Carey's Improv-A-Ganza, debuted on April 11, 2011, and featured most of the Whose Line regular cast before ending in June 2011; Rich Fields was the announcer for the series. A second season was not ordered and the show was terminated. On July 10, 2012, ABC premiered a new improv comedy series featuring several of the Whose Line alumni called Trust Us With Your Life. Some of the players included Colin Mochrie, Wayne Brady, Greg Proops, Jonathan Mangum, and Nicole Parker. However, on July 30, after only six episodes had aired, ABC pulled the remaining episodes after its host Fred Willard was arrested on a lewd-conduct charge at the Tiki Theater, an adult movie theater in Hollywood, California. In February 2013, Ryan Stiles revealed in an interview that he would be returning to Los Angeles in April for a new season of Whose Line, hosted by Aisha Tyler and featuring the original cast of the U.S. version. Colin Mochrie would later confirm the revival. Whose Line Is It Anyway? returned to television, this time on The CW, with Colin Mochrie, Ryan Stiles, and Wayne Brady, and Aisha Tyler taking the role of the host (Brady also continued to host Let's Make a Deal at the time). In addition to the traditional rotating fourth improv player (often drawn from same pool of regulars that appeared on the original show), a new feature was that of a "special guest". This fifth player would not necessarily have an improv background, but would still participate in some of the improv games. The initial summer run was made up of twelve half-hour episodes with the three veteran players joined by a featured player, along with a different special guest for each episode who would play in some of the games. On July 29, 2013, The CW announced that it had renewed the show for a 24-episode season, airing Fridays at 8 ET/PT starting March 21, 2014, due to solid ratings. Illness prevented Stiles from appearing in two season 10 episodes, the first Whose Line shows he had missed in nearly 20 years, dating back to the original British series. Frequent guest Greg Proops filled in for Stiles on these occasions. On July 18, 2014, The CW announced that the show would be returning for a 24-episode eleventh season (and third season on The CW) which started airing on April 17, 2015. On August 11, 2015, the series was renewed for a twelfth season (fourth on The CW) to start airing May 23, 2016. On October 24, 2016, The CW renewed the show for a thirteenth season (fifth season on The CW) to start airing May 29, 2017. On October 26, 2017, The CW renewed the show for a fourteenth season (sixth season on the CW). The first two episodes aired June 4, 2018. On October 9, 2018, The CW renewed the show for a fifteenth season (seventh season on the CW) that began airing June 17, 2019. Several of the performers, including the three regulars Brady, Mochrie and Stiles, had previously appeared in the original UK run of Whose Line; other performers who had made appearances in the British version are Greg Proops, Brad Sherwood, Chip Esten, Karen Maruyama and Josie Lawrence, as well as musician Laura Hall. Mochrie and Stiles have been regulars since the show started airing in the States, whilst Brady became a regular from season 2 to 7, and from season 9 onwards, appearing as a recurring performer in seasons 1 and 8. Mochrie is the only performer to have appeared in every episode of the U.S. series of Whose Line?, with Stiles having missed two recordings due to illness. Proops and Sherwood are the two most prolific recurring performers, having appeared in almost 70 episodes each. The original host of the U.S. show was Drew Carey, who appeared in every episode of seasons 1–8. Carey notably took more of an active role in the show than his predecessor Clive Anderson, as following the announcement of the "winner" of each show, Carey would perform a game with the other performers. After the CW revival in 2013, Aisha Tyler took over as host, as Carey was the host of The Price is Right, which ran at the same time as Whose Line; however, Carey is mentioned numerous times by Tyler and the other performers. Unlike Carey, Tyler does not perform full games with the other performers; however, she does occasionally interject in quick fire games such as Scenes from a Hat with her own suggestions or to help another performer with their scene. Greg Proops – 71 episodes, Brad Sherwood – 70 episodes, Charles "Chip" Esten – 42 episodes, Jeff Davis – 40 episodes, Kathy Greenwood – 33 episodes, Gary Anthony Williams – 22 episodes, Jonathan Mangum – 19 episodes, Denny Siegel – 14 episodes, Heather Anne Campbell – 11 episodes, Keegan-Michael Key – 9 episodes, Nyima Funk – 4 episodes, Kathy Griffin – 4 episodes, Karen Maruyama – 3 episodes Laura Hall – 294 episodes, Linda Taylor – 185 episodes, Cece Worrall – 37 episodes, Anne King – 10 episodes, Anna Wanselius – 6 episodes Seasons 1–8 Patrick Bristow – 2 episodes, Stephen Colbert – 2 episodes, Whoopi Goldberg – 2 episodes, Ian Gomez – 2 episodes, Josie Lawrence – 2 episodes, Jerry Springer – 2 episodes, Kathy Kinney (season 1, episode 6), Robin Williams (season 3, episode 9), Lassie and Sid Caesar (season 4, episode 15), Hugh Hefner, Ava Fabian, and Victoria Fuller (season 4, episode 24), Katie Harman, Miss America 2002 (Season 5, episode 2), Florence Henderson (season 5, episode 4), Joanie "Chyna" Laurer (season 5, episode 8), Richard Simmons (season 5, episode 17), David Hasselhoff (Season 5, episode 19), Jayne Trcka (Season 5, episode 21), Veena and Neena Bidasha (Season 5, episode 25), Undarma Darihu (Season 5, episode 28), Loyola Marymount University Cheerleaders (Season 6, episode 6), Santa Claus and Donner (Season 8, episode 6) Season 9 Lauren Cohan (episode 1), Kevin McHale (episode 2), Candice Accola (episode 3), Kyle Richards (episode 4), Mary Killman and Mariya Koroleva (episode 5), Wilson Bethel (episode 6), Lisa Leslie (episode 7), Laila Ali (episode 9), Maggie Q (episode 10), Chloe Butler (episode 11), Shawn Johnson (episode 12) Season 10 Kat Graham (episode 1), Tara Lipinski (episode 2), Verne Troyer (episode 3), Darren Criss (episode 4), Michael Weatherly (episode 5), Byambajav Ulambayar (episode 6), Nolan Gould (episode 7), Mircea Monroe (episode 8), Jack Osbourne (episode 10), Rob Gronkowski (episode 11), Robbie Amell (episode 12), Misha Collins (episode 13), Sheryl Underwood (episode 14), Mel B. (episode 15), Kunal Nayyar (episode 16), Padma Lakshmi (episode 18), Matt Barnes (episode 20), Brian Shaw (episode 22), Wendi McLendon-Covey (episode 23) Season 11 Cedric the Entertainer (episode 1), Adelaide Kane (episode 2), Jaime Camil (episode 4), Scott Porter (episode 5), Willie Robertson (episode 6), Heather Morris (episode 7), Vernon Davis (episode 8), Penn & Teller (episode 10), Kathie Lee Gifford (episode 11), Randy Couture (episode 12), Gina Rodriguez (episode 13), Nina Agdal (episode 15), Bill Nye (episode 17), Carson Kressley (episode 19) Season 12 Alfonso Ribeiro (episode 1), Karla Souza (episode 3), Yvette Nicole Brown (episode 4), Kaitlin Doubleday (episode 5), Lolo Jones (episode 6), Joey Fatone (episode 8), Tamera Mowry (episode 9), Misty May-Treanor (episode 11), Lyndie Greenwood (episode 12), Chris Jericho (episode 13), Rachel Bloom (episode 14), Lea Thompson (episode 15), Katie Cassidy (episode 16), Brett Dier (episode 17), Emily Bett Rickards (episode 18), Cheryl Hines (episode 20) Season 13 Tony Hawk (episode 1), The Bella Twins (episode 2), Candice Patton (episode 3), Malcolm Goodwin (episode 4), Wil Wheaton (episode 5), Kearran Giovanni (episode 6), Ralph Macchio (episode 8), Tony Cavalero (episode 9), Jillian Michaels (episode 10), Wanya Morris (episode 12), Danielle Panabaker (episode 13), Marisol Nichols (episode 14), Grace Byers (episode 15) Season 14 Ross Mathews (episode 1), Andrea Navedo (episode 3), Carmen Electra (episode 12), Cornelius Smith Jr. (episode 15), Lance Bass (episode 17) Season 15 Chris Hardwick (episode 1), Tinashe (episode 2), Elizabeth Gillies (episode 4), Adam Rippon (episode 6), Christopher Jackson (episode 8), Adrienne Houghton (episode 10) Won: 2003: Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program for Wayne Brady Nominated: 2001: Emmy Award for 'Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program' for Wayne Brady, 2002: Emmy Award for 'Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program' for Wayne Brady, 2002: Emmy Award for 'Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program' for Ryan Stiles The U.S. version of Whose Line? has been broadcast in the UK, originally on Channel 4. Challenge was the first non-terrestrial channel to broadcast the show for a brief period in 2005. From 2007 to 2012, 5USA aired the show. In Canada, the show also ran on the CTV network from 1998 to 2003, and then on The Comedy Network from 2003 onwards. The show's original run in Australia was on the Nine Network in an early morning time slot; One repeated the program from 2011. It also airs on The Comedy Channel. In New Zealand, the show was broadcast on the Box. From 2014, South African youth channel Vuzu started airing the CW revival. In India, the earlier seasons were aired on FX while the revived series has been aired on Comedy Central. The first DVD, Season 1, Volume 1, of the U.S. version of Whose Line? was released on September 26, 2006. It comes in "censored" or "uncensored" versions. Both releases include the first ten episodes of the first season, with the episodes being the same on either version. The first seven episodes have had their original theme music (including all credits and ad bumpers) replaced with the version used for the rest of the episodes. Warner Home Video released Season 1, Volume 2 on October 9, 2007, but only in an "uncensored" version. Warner Home Video released a two-disc "best of" compilation with ten episodes on June 9, 2009. Featured in this release were celebrity guest episodes including appearances by David Hasselhoff, Florence Henderson, Jerry Springer, Richard Simmons and bodybuilder Jayne Trcka, along with the hour- long "Best of Whose Line" compilation episode aired at the beginning of season three. List of Whose Line Is It Anyway? episodes, Drew Carey's Green Screen Show, Drew Carey's Improv-A-Ganza, Kwik Witz, Trust Us With Your Life, Wild 'n Out Whose Line Is It Anyway?, The CW website, includes all past U.S. episodes, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Hat Trick Productions website Drew Allison Carey (born May 23, 1958) is an American comedian, actor, voice actor, sports executive, and game show host. After serving in the U.S. Marine Corps and making a name for himself in stand-up comedy, he gained stardom in his own sitcom, The Drew Carey Show, and as host of the U.S. version of the improv comedy show Whose Line Is It Anyway?, both of which aired on ABC. He then appeared in several films, television series, music videos, a made-for- television film, and a computer game. He has hosted the game show The Price Is Right since 2007 on CBS. Carey is interested in a variety of sports and has worked as a photographer at U.S. National Team soccer games. He is a minority owner of the Major League Soccer team Seattle Sounders FC, which won MLS Cup, first in 2016 and again in 2019. He briefly participated in professional wrestling, most notably entering the 2001 Royal Rumble, and was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2011. Carey's autobiography, Dirty Jokes and Beer: Stories of the Unrefined, details his early life and television career. Carey was born on May 23, 1958. He is the youngest of Lewis and Beulah Carey's three sons (Neil, born 1946 and Roger, born 1952) and was raised in the Old Brooklyn neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio. When Drew was eight years old, his father died from a heart attack. Drew played the cornet and trumpet in the marching band of James Ford Rhodes High School, from which he graduated in 1975. He continued on to college at Kent State University (KSU) and was a part of Delta Tau Delta Fraternity. He was expelled twice for poor academic performance. He left KSU after three years. Upon leaving the university, Carey enlisted into the United States Marine Corps Reserve in 1980 and served for six years as a field radio operator in the 25th Marine Regiment in Ohio. He moved to Las Vegas for a few months in 1983, and for a short time worked as a bank teller and a waiter at Denny's. In 1985, he began his comedy career by following up on a suggestion by David Lawrence (a disc jockey friend who had been paying Drew to write jokes for David's radio show in Cleveland) to go to the library and borrow books on how to write jokes. The following year, after winning an open mic contest, he became Master of Ceremonies at the Cleveland Comedy Club. He performed at comedy clubs over the next few years in Cleveland and Los Angeles. He first came to the national eye as a comedian when he competed in the 1988 Star Search. Carey was working as a stand-up comedian when he appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in November 1991. His performance that night impressed Carson, who invited Carey to the couch next to his desk; this was considered a rare honor for any comedian. In that same year, Carey joined the 14th Annual Young Comedians Special on HBO and made his first appearance on Late Night with David Letterman. In 1994, Carey wrote his own stand-up comedy special, Drew Carey: Human Cartoon, which aired on Showtime and won a CableACE Award for Best Writing. His early stand-up career led to supporting roles on television shows, during which he developed the character of a hapless middle-class bachelor. In 1993, Carey had a small role in the film Coneheads as a taxi passenger. In 1994, Carey co-starred with John Caponera in The Good Life, a short-lived sitcom on NBC. After the show was cancelled, Bruce Helford, a writer on the show, hired Carey as a consultant for the television show Someone Like Me. After their stint on Someone Like Me, Carey and Helford developed and produced the storyline for The Drew Carey Show. The sitcom revolved around a fictionalized version of Carey, as he took on the stresses of life and work with his group of childhood friends. The show premiered on September 13, 1995, on ABC. In his autobiography, Carey revealed his frustration with having to deal with censors and being unable to employ the off-color humor common in his stand-up routines. Carey initially earned $60,000 per episode in the first seasons, then renegotiated for $300,000. By the final season, he was earning $750,000 per episode. The show had high ratings for its first few seasons, but declining ratings and increasing production costs (around $3 million per episode) precipitated its cancellation. The program had a total of 233 episodes over its nine-year run, and Carey was one of four actors to appear in every episode. While still starring in The Drew Carey Show, Carey began hosting the American version of the improvisational comedy show Whose Line Is It Anyway? in 1998. He would announce the improv guests, direct the games, and then would usually involve himself in the final game of the episode. The show ran for a total of 220 episodes until the show's cancellation in 2006. In 1998, the New York Friars' Club made Carey the newest inductee of the group's Comedy Central Roast. His friend Ryan Stiles (who costarred in The Drew Carey Show and Whose Line Is It Anyway?) served as the roastmaster. Carey's income from Whose Line Is It Anyway? and The Drew Carey Show led to his inclusion on the Forbes list of highest-paid entertainers of 1998, at 24th with $45.5 million. For the WB's 2004–2005 prime time schedule, Carey co-produced and starred in Drew Carey's Green Screen Show, a spin-off of Whose Line Is It Anyway?. It was canceled by the WB, but picked up shortly afterward by Comedy Central. The show's premise relied on the use of a green screen for some of the actors' improv interaction with each other. Animation on the screen was visible to the live audience and it was also inserted during post-production for the television audience. In April 2011, Carey began hosting a primetime improv show, called Drew Carey's Improv-A-Ganza. It was filmed at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada, and first aired on April 11. The show took on the premise of Whose Line? and Drew Carey's Green Screen Show in that it features many of the same performers from both shows and did improv based on audience-provided suggestions. Carey was one of the founders of the Improv All-Stars, a group of eleven actors who perform in unscripted skits. The group joined Carey in all three of his improv shows, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Drew Carey's Green Screen Show, and Drew Carey's Improv-A-Ganza, and some members had major roles or guest- starred on The Drew Carey Show. The Improv All-Stars travel on comedy tours, performing at comedy clubs throughout the United States. Beginning in 2007, Carey began hosting game shows, beginning with his April selection as host of the CBS game show pilot Power of 10. The show ran from August 7, 2007 to January 23, 2008, and aired twice weekly during the late summer and early fall. Each game featured contestants predicting how a cross- section of Americans responded to questions covering a wide variety of topics in polls conducted by CBS. After taping the pilot episode for Power of 10, Carey was contacted by CBS about replacing Bob Barker—who had earlier announced his own retirement—as host of The Price Is Right. After initially turning down the offer, Carey announced on Late Show with David Letterman that he would succeed Barker as host of the program beginning in the fall of 2007. His first episode of The Price Is Right was taped on August 15, 2007, and his shows began airing on October 15, 2007. In response to replacing Barker as host of the game show, Carey stated "You can't replace Bob Barker. I don't compare myself to anybody... It's only about what you're doing and supposed to do, and I feel like I'm supposed to be doing this." When Carey began hosting, the set, theme music, and show logo were updated. Carey has retained Barker's closing comment about spaying and neutering pets. In 2017, Carey celebrated his 10 years as host of the show, joining Barker as the only two to have hosted for at least a decade. Carey began appearing in commercials for restaurants in the late 1990s in Canada with The Great Root Bear, but his two-year contract with A&W; Food Services of Canada was cut short in November 1998 after an episode of The Drew Carey Show featured McDonald's. As a result of his dismissal, Carey sued A&W; for compensation. Disney's Hollywood Studios (then "Disney-MGM Studios"), part of Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, debuted a 12-minute attraction in 1999 titled Sounds Dangerous!. In the show, a camera follows Carey through a day as an undercover detective. When his video camera fails, the audience is left in complete darkness, wearing earphones, following his adventure through sound cues. The attraction is now closed. In 2000, Carey was given a cameo appearance in the expansion pack of the computer game The Sims. To make him appear, the characters in the game must throw a successful party, which causes Carey to arrive in a limo and join the festivities. Carey is a fan of The Sims series, and during one April Fool's episode of The Drew Carey Show, a scene takes place completely within The Sims. Carey made several other cameo appearances in music videos, including "Weird Al" Yankovic's 1999 video for "It's All About the Pentiums" and Fountains of Wayne's 2004 video for "Mexican Wine", giving an introduction to the video as if it were on a stage. On January 21, 2001, Drew entered as Vince McMahon's guest entrant in the Royal Rumble match. Although primarily known for his television work, Carey has done limited film work, with his first appearance in 1993's Coneheads. His next film was the 2000 television film Geppetto, which debuted on The Wonderful World of Disney. The film, an adaptation of Pinocchio, included actor Wayne Brady, who had joined Carey on his improv shows. Carey took singing lessons to prepare for the role. In 2005, Carey appeared in three films: the animated film Robots, where he provided a voice-over for the character Crank; The Aristocrats, where he retold a dirty joke along with other celebrities; and the documentary Fuck, where he was interviewed. Carey provided the entertainment for the 2002 Annual White House correspondents' dinner. Once Carey completed his stand-up routine for the 1,800 guests, President George W. Bush, noting Carey's improv work, made a joke of his own: "Drew? Got any interest in the Middle East?" In 2003, he joined Jamie Kennedy to host the WB's live special Play for a Billion. In September 2003, Carey led a group of comedians, including Blake Clark and The Drew Carey Show's Kathy Kinney, on a comedy tour of Iraq. On June 8, 2006, Drew Carey's Sporting Adventures debuted on the Travel Channel. In this series, Carey traveled throughout Germany to photograph multiple FIFA World Cup soccer games while he immerses himself in the culture of the towns and states he visits. In early 2008, Carey appeared in Matt Groening's The Simpsons as part of the episode "All About Lisa" as a guest on the Krusty the Clown Show. He also surfaced in the second season of Community, playing a well-liked former boss to Jeff Winger. On March 4, 2014, it was announced on Good Morning America that Carey would compete on the season 18 of Dancing with the Stars. He was partnered with professional dancer Cheryl Burke. The couple was eliminated on the sixth week of competition, finishing in 8th place. Carey has also been a longtime host on SiriusXM channel, Little Steven’s Underground Garage (Ch. 21) where for 10 years, he hosted a three-hour radio show called “Drew Carey’s Friday Night Dance Party” which aired the last Friday of every month. In August 2018, Carey turned his monthly show into a weekly show called, “The Friday Night Freak Out” which airs every Friday from 8:00pm – 11:00pm ET. SiriusXM. On March 6, 2018, Carey appeared in an episode of NCIS as a retired Marine. His character was a sergeant, the last rank he held in real life. Real pictures of him in dress blues and everyday garb were on the plasma screen in the squadroom. Carey has routinely written throughout his career, including developing his stand-up comedy routines in his early stand-up career, and then moving on to assist in writing sitcoms. In 1997, Carey published his autobiography, , wherein he shared memories of his early childhood and of his father's death when he was eight. He also revealed that he was once molested, had suffered bouts of depression, and had made two suicide attempts by swallowing a large amount of sleeping pills. The book discusses his college fraternity years while attending Kent State University and his professional career up to that time. The book featured large amounts of profanity and, as the title suggests, includes multiple dirty jokes (there is one at the start of each chapter) and references to beer. The book was featured on The New York Times bestseller list for three months. He adopted his crew cut hairstyle while serving in the United States Marine Corps. Carey has had refractive surgery to correct his vision and therefore did not really require glasses (any glasses he wore in public were merely props to help the audience recognize him). However, while this was true for several years, on the May 17, 2006, episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! he revealed that when he turned 40, he actually developed a need for bifocals. As of 2007, Carey resides in Los Angeles and New York City. Carey is a father figure to Nicole Jaracz's son, Connor, from a previous relationship; they have no children together. Nicole and Connor have appeared alongside Carey on The Price Is Right several times. Although he proposed to Jaracz in 2007, the pair did not wed, as the engagement was called off in January 2012. Carey announced his engagement to therapist Amie Harwick in January 2018, but they later split. After suffering chest pains while filming The Drew Carey Show in August 2001, Carey went to the hospital, where he underwent a coronary angioplasty. Although his weight was a comedic topic throughout his sitcom and improv shows, in 2010, he began a diet and exercise plan, resulting in an extensive weight loss. He also claimed that he had cured his Type 2 diabetes as a direct result. Carey is a Buddhist. Carey is an outspoken libertarian. He has expressed his political philosophy in the following terms: "I believe the answers to all the problems we face as a society won't come from Washington, it will come from us. So the way we decide to live our lives and our decisions about what we buy or don't buy are much more important than who we vote for." Carey expressed his distaste for the Bush administration's management of the Iraq War, specifically on the September 14, 2007, episode of Real Time with Bill Maher. He made donations to Ron Paul's presidential campaign for the 2008 election. On the September 26, 2008, episode of The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Carey defined "libertarian" to host Craig Ferguson as "a conservative who still gets high." In 2016, he supported Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson in his run for office, and was made an Honorary Chair of the campaign for California. Carey has spoken about his various political beliefs in several interviews, and in 1998, he led a "smoke-in" in defiance of California's newly passed no-smoking ordinance inside bars and restaurants. Carey has hosted a series of mini-documentaries called The Drew Carey Project on Reason.tv, an online project of Reason Foundation, a libertarian-oriented nonprofit think tank (for which Carey sits as a member of the board of trustees). The first episode, "Gridlock", addresses private highway ownership and was released on October 15, 2007. Other episodes discuss topics such as eminent domain, urban traffic congestion, and medical marijuana. Carey is a devoted fan of the U.S. National Soccer Team, Cleveland Browns, Cleveland Cavaliers, Cleveland Indians, and the Columbus Blue Jackets. In 1999, Carey was part of the pregame ceremonies at the first game of the return of the Cleveland Browns, televised on ESPN. Carey attended the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany and the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. Carey is a minority owner of the Seattle Sounders FC, who began play in Major League Soccer on March 19, 2009, and won two MLS Cups (2016, 2019). Carey is a fan of FC Barcelona and of the Scottish team Rangers. In 2006, he was a season ticketholder for the Los Angeles Galaxy. Carey has shown his support for the Indians by throwing the first pitch at an August 12, 2006, game against the Kansas City Royals. He was rewarded by the Cleveland Indians for being "the greatest Indians fan alive" with a personal bobblehead doll made in his likeness that was given to fans. Carey responded to his bobblehead likeness by saying "Bobblehead Day, for me, is as big as getting a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame." In 2001, Carey was the first television actor to enter World Wrestling Federation's 30-man "Royal Rumble" match, which he did to promote an improv comedy pay-per-view at the time. He appeared in a few backstage segments before his brief participation in the match. Upon entering the ring, Carey stood unopposed for more than half a minute, but after the next entrant, Kane, refused a monetary bribe, Carey eliminated himself from the match by jumping over the top rope and retreating from ringside. On April 2, 2011, Carey was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame by Kane. Carey competed against five other celebrities in the first celebrity edition of the 2003 World Poker Tour. He placed fifth, beating out only actor Jack Black. Carey won $2,000 for his charity. On May 15, 2011, Carey completed the "Marine Corps Historic Half Marathon" in 1:57:02; then, on September 4, 2011, he improved to complete the Disneyland Half Marathon in 1:50:46. And on October 30, 2011, he finished the Marine Corps Marathon with a chip time of 4:37:11, placing 10,149th out of 20,940. Carey is a supporter of libraries, crediting them for beginning his successful comedy career. On May 2, 2000, in a celebrity edition of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, he selected the Ohio Library Foundation to receive his $500,000 winnings. He later went on to win an additional $32,000 on the second celebrity Millionaire, making him one of the biggest winning contestants on Millionaire who did not win the top prize. Carey also has played on the World Poker Tour in the Hollywood Home games for the Cleveland Public Library charity. In June 2007, Carey offered to donate up to $100,000 (in $10,000 increments) to the Mooch Myernick Memorial Fund if anybody could beat him at the video game FIFA Soccer 07 for the Xbox 360. He dared five players from both the U.S. Men's and Women's National Teams to compete against him. Carey ended up donating $100,000, plus $60,000 for losing two games out of the six games he played. In October 2009, Carey made a bid of $25,000 in a charity auction for the @drew Twitter account. He later increased his offer to $100,000 if the number of followers of his account @DrewFromTV reached 100,000 by the end of the auction. In an interview with CBS News, he said he would instead donate $1 million to the charity Livestrong Foundation if his follower count reached one million by December 31, 2009. Another of Carey's offers to contribute in helping others came in September 2014 when he promised $10,000 to help find the perpetrators of a faked "ice bucket challenge" involving an autistic 14-year-old Ohio boy who, instead of being doused in ice cubes and water, received a shower of feces, urine, tobacco spit, and cigarette butts. Shortly thereafter, celebrities Donnie Wahlberg, Jenny McCarthy and Montel Williams matched Carey's offer. Carey can sometimes be seen on the sidelines of U.S. National Team soccer games as a press photographer. His images are sold via wire services under the pseudonym Brooks Parkenridge. He was at the 2006 FIFA World Cup in the summer of 2006, for his television show Drew Carey's Sporting Adventures. Carey has starred in only a few television shows and films, but has made numerous guest-star appearances in a variety of sitcoms and comedy shows. 1994: Cable Ace Award for Best Writing: Drew Carey: Human Cartoon, 1995: TV Guide "10 Hottest New Faces of 1995", 1998: Satellite Award for Best Actor – Musical or Comedy Series, 2000: Honorary DHL from Cleveland State University, 2000: People's Choice Award for Favorite Male Television Performer, 2003: Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, 2004: Comedy Central's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time (#84), 2011: Southern California Journalism "Best Advocacy Journalism" Award winner, 2011: WWE Hall of Fame, Two-time MLS Cup champion (as co-owner of the Seattle Sounders - 2016, 2019) Drew Carey's blog, Drew Carey's WWE Hall of Fame Profile

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"Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu" is a song written and originally recorded by Huey 'Piano' Smith in 1957, who scored a minor hit with the song (No. 52 Billboard). 1972 saw the song as an international hit single for Johnny Rivers with instrumental backing from L.A. sessions musicians from the Wrecking Crew. "Rockin' Pneumonia" reached number six on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 during the winter of 1973. It was only Rivers' fifth highest charting song, but spent much longer on the chart (19 weeks) than any of his two dozen hits to that date. On the U.S. Cash Box Top 100 the song peaked at number five, and in Canada it reached number three. Rivers' cover of "Rockin' Pneumonia" became his third Gold record. His last Gold record would be five years later with the 1977 hit, "Swayin' to the Music (Slow Dancing)." In 1957 the tune was recorded by Larry Williams on Specialty Records. The back-up band included René Hall, guitar, Earl Palmer, drums, and Plas Johnson, tenor sax., The song was covered by Flamin' Groovies in 1969 on their album Supersnazz., Aerosmith covered the song in 1987 for the Less Than Zero soundtrack., Grateful Dead covered the song on their Europe '72 tour at The Strand Lyceum, London, England 5/23 and 5/24/1972, James Booker covered the song on his albums Gonzo: Live 1976 and King Of New Orleans Keyboard. Lyrics of this song, (Huey "Piano" Smith), (Johnny Rivers) Lawrence William Knechtel (August 4, 1940 – August 20, 2009) was an American keyboard player and bassist, best known as a member of the Wrecking Crew, a collection of Los Angeles-based session musicians who worked with such renowned artists as Simon & Garfunkel, Duane Eddy, the Beach Boys, the Mamas & the Papas, the Monkees, the Partridge Family, the Doors, the Grass Roots, Jerry Garcia, and Elvis Presley, and as a member of the 1970s band Bread. Born in Bell, California, in 1940, Knechtel began his musical education with piano lessons. In 1957, he joined the Los Angeles-based rock and roll band Kip Tyler and the Flips. In August 1959, he joined instrumentalist Duane Eddy as a member of his band the Rebels. After four years on the road with the band, and continuing to work with Eddy in the recording studio, Knechtel became part of the Los Angeles session musician scene, working with Phil Spector as a pianist to help create Spector's famous "Wall of Sound". Knechtel became a prominent member of session musicians the Wrecking Crew, performing on many hit songs of the period and earning him entry into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2007. Knechtel was Jewish. In 1970 Knechtel won a Grammy Award for his piano work on "Bridge over Troubled Water" by Simon and Garfunkel. He also played the piano on Johnny Rivers' 1972 hit "Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu". Knechtel was proficient on other musical instruments, notably the harmonica, guitar and bass, which can be heard on "Mr. Tambourine Man" by the Byrds, "Stoney End" by Barbra Streisand, "If I Can Dream" by Elvis Presley, and the Doors' debut album. In 1971, he joined the band Bread, where his contributions include the guitar solo on the hit single "The Guitar Man". He also played on sessions for Nancy Sinatra. During the late 1980s, Knechtel moved to Nashville, where he was signed to a solo recording contract. He released two solo albums in quick succession, Mountain Moods (1989) and Urban Gypsy (1990). In later years, Knechtel lived in semi-retirement in Yakima, Washington, until his death. He had, however, worked with record producer Rick Rubin, contributing keyboards to albums by Neil Diamond, Arlen Roth and the Dixie Chicks, touring with Elvis Costello and with the Dixie Chicks in support of their Grammy Award-winning album Taking the Long Way. During this time Knechtel contributed guest spots on many recordings for dozens of Northwest artists including Wayman Chapman, Ken Stringfellow (Posies, R.E.M., Big Star), Quakers On Probation, Dimestore Mystery, Elba, Animals at Night, Zera Marvel, Colin Spring, Lesley Rostron & Lovejunkie, and his son, Lonnie Knechtel. Knechtel died on August 20, 2009, in Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital, Washington, at the age of 69 of an apparent heart attack. In 2007 Knechtel, along with the other members of The Wrecking Crew, was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tennessee. Mountain Moods (1989), Urban Gypsy (1990) With The Byrds Mr. Tambourine Man (Columbia, 1965) With The We Three Trio The We Three Trio (Mainstream S/6055,56055, 1965) With The Beach Boys Pet Sounds (Capitol, 1966) With The Doors The Doors (Elektra, 1967) With Simon & Garfunkel Bookends (Columbia, 1967), Bridge over Troubled Water (Columbia, 1970) With [The Mamas and the Papas] The Papas and the Mamas (Dunhill, 1968) With Chet Baker Blood, Chet and Tears (Verve, 1970) With Dave Mason Alone Together (Blue Thumb/Harvest, 1970) With Howard Roberts Antelope Freeway (Impulse!, 1971) With Lalo Schifrin Rock Requiem (Verve, 1971) With Art Garfunkel Angel Clare (Columbia, 1973) With Barry McGuire Seeds (Myrrh, 1973), Lighten Up (Myrrh, 1974) With Chet Atkins Read My Licks (Columbia, 1994) With Arlen Roth Toolin' Around (Blue Plate, 1993, Aquinnah, 2015) List of Larry Knechtel's session contributions Johnny Rivers (born John Henry Ramistella; November 7, 1942) is an American rock 'n' roll singer, songwriter, guitarist, and record producer. His repertoire includes pop, folk, blues, and old-time rock 'n' roll. Rivers charted during the 1960s and 1970s but remains best known for a string of hit singles between 1964 and 1968, among them "Memphis" (a Chuck Berry cover), "Mountain of Love" (a Harold Dorman cover), "The Seventh Son" (a Willie Mabon cover), "Secret Agent Man", "Poor Side of Town" (a US #1), "Baby I Need Your Lovin'" (a 1967 cover of (the) Four Tops single from 1964), and "Summer Rain". Rivers was born as John Henry Ramistella in New York City, of Italian ancestry. His family moved from New York to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Influenced by the distinctive Louisiana musical style, Rivers began playing guitar at age eight, taught by his father and uncle. While still in junior high school, he started sitting in with a band called the Rockets, led by Dick Holler, who later wrote a number of hit songs, including "Abraham, Martin and John" and the novelty song, "Snoopy vs. the Red Baron". Ramistella formed his own band, the Spades, and made his first record at 14, while he was a student at Baton Rouge High School. Some of their music was recorded on the Suede label as early as 1956. On a trip to New York City in 1958, Ramistella met Alan Freed, who advised him to change his name to "Johnny Rivers" after the Mississippi River, which flows through Baton Rouge. Freed also helped Rivers gain several recording contracts on the Gone label. From March 1958 to March 1959, Johnny Rivers released three records which did not sell well. Rivers returned to Baton Rouge in 1959, and began playing throughout the American South alongside comedian Brother Dave Gardner. One evening in Birmingham, Rivers met Audrey Williams, Hank Williams' first wife. She encouraged Rivers to move to Nashville, where he found work as a songwriter and demo singer. Rivers also worked alongside Roger Miller. By this time, Rivers had decided he would never make it as a singer, and song writing became his priority. In 1958, Rivers met fellow Louisianan James Burton, a guitarist in a band led by Ricky Nelson. Burton later recommended one of Rivers' songs, "I'll Make Believe," to Nelson who recorded it. They met in Los Angeles in 1961, where Rivers subsequently found work as a songwriter and studio musician. His big break came in 1963, when he filled in for a jazz combo at Gazzarri's, a nightclub in Hollywood, where his instant popularity drew large crowds. In 1964, Elmer Valentine gave Rivers a one-year contract to open at the Whisky a Go Go, on Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. The Whisky had been in business just three days when the Beatles song "I Want to Hold Your Hand" entered the Billboard Hot 100. The subsequent British Invasion knocked almost every American artist off the top of the charts, but Rivers was so popular that record producer Lou Adler decided to issue Johnny Rivers Live at the Whisky A Go Go, which reached #12. Rivers recalled that his most requested live song then was "Memphis", which reached #2 on Cash Box on 4–11 July 1964 and also on the Hot 100 on 11–18 July 1964. It sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc. According to Elvis Presley's friend and employee, Alan Fortas, Presley played a test pressing of "Memphis" for Rivers that Presley had made but not released. Rivers was impressed and, much to Presley's chagrin, Rivers recorded and released it, even copying the arrangement. (Fortas writes: "After that, Johnny was on Elvis's shit list" and was persona non grata from then on.) Rivers' version far outsold the Chuck Berry original from August 1959, which stalled at #87 in the US. Rivers continued to record mostly live performances throughout 1964 and 1965, including Go-Go-style records with songs featuring folk music and blues rock influences including "Maybellene" (another Berry cover), after which came "Mountain of Love", "Midnight Special", "Seventh Son" (written by Willie Dixon), plus Pete Seeger's" Where Have All the Flowers Gone?", all of which were hits. In 1963, Rivers began working with writers P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri on a theme song for the American broadcast of a British television series Danger Man, starring Patrick McGoohan. At first Rivers balked at the idea but eventually changed his mind. The American version of the show, titled Secret Agent, went on the air in the spring of 1965. The theme song was very popular and created public demand for a longer single version. Rivers' recording of "Secret Agent Man" reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1966. It sold one million copies, also winning gold disc status. In 1966, Rivers began to record ballads that featured background vocalists. He produced several hits including his own "Poor Side of Town", which would be his biggest chart hit and his only #1 record. He also started his own record company, Soul City Records which included the 5th Dimension, whose recordings of "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" and "Wedding Bell Blues" were #1 hits for the new label. In addition, Rivers is credited with giving songwriter Jimmy Webb a major break when the 5th Dimension recorded his song "Up, Up, and Away". Rivers also recorded Webb's "By the Time I Get to Phoenix". It was covered by Glen Campbell, who had a major hit with it. Rivers continued to record more hits covering other artists, including "Baby I Need Your Lovin'", originally recorded by the Four Tops, and "The Tracks of My Tears" by the Miracles, both going Top 10 in 1967. In 1968, Rivers put out Realization, a #5 album that included the #14 pop chart single "Summer Rain", written by a former member of the Mugwumps, James Hendricks. The album included some of the psychedelic influences of the time and marked a change in Rivers' musical direction, with more introspective songs including "Look To Your Soul" and "Going Back to Big Sur". In the 1970s Rivers continued to record more songs and albums that were successes with music critics, but did not sell well. L.A. Reggae (1972) reached the LP chart as a result of the #6 hit "Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu," a cover version of the Huey "Piano" Smith and the Clowns song. The track became Rivers' third million seller, which was acknowledged with the presentation of a gold disc by the Recording Industry Association of America (R.I.A.A.) on January 29, 1973. Reviewing L.A. Reggae in (1981), Robert Christgau said, "there are modernization moves, of course—two get-out- the-vote songs (just what George needs) plus the mysterious reggae conceit plus a heartfelt if belated antiwar song—but basically this is just Johnny nasalizing on some fine old memories. 'Rockin' Pneumonia' and 'Knock on Wood' are especially fine." Other hits from that time period were 1973's "Blue Suede Shoes," (recorded in 1955 by Carl Perkins), that would reach the top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100, and "Help Me Rhonda" in 1975, (originally a #1 hit for the Beach Boys), on which Brian Wilson sang back-up vocals. Rivers' last Top 10 entry was his 1977 recording of "Swayin' to the Music (Slow Dancing)" originally released by Funky Kings and written by Jack Tempchin. Rivers' last Hot 100 entry, also in 1977, was "Curious Mind (Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um)," originally released by Major Lance and written by Curtis Mayfield. In addition, Rivers recorded the title song for the late night concert-influenced TV show The Midnight Special. Rivers continued releasing material into the 1980s (e.g., 1980s Borrowed Time LP), garnering an interview with Dick Clark on American Bandstand in 1981, although his recording career was winding down. Around this time, Rivers turned to Christianity. Rivers is still touring, however, performing 50 to 60 shows a year. Increasingly he has returned to the blues that inspired him initially. In 1998 Rivers reactivated his Soul City Records label and released Last Train to Memphis. In early 2000, Rivers recorded with Eric Clapton, Tom Petty and Paul McCartney on a tribute album dedicated to Buddy Holly's backup band, the Crickets. Johnny Rivers career total is 9 Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 and 17 in the Top 40 from 1964 to 1977; he has sold well over 30 million records. Rivers is one of a small number of performers including Mariah Carey, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Pink Floyd (from 1975's Wish You Were Here onward), Queen, Genesis (though under the members' individual names and/or the pseudonym Gelring Limited) and Neil Diamond, who have their names as the copyright owner on their recordings (most records have the recording company as the named owner of the recording). This development was spearheaded by the Bee Gees with their $200 million lawsuit against RSO Records, the largest successful lawsuit against a record company by an artist or group. On June 12, 2009, Johnny Rivers was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame. His name has been suggested many times for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but he has never been selected. Rivers, however, was a nominee for 2015 induction into America's Pop Music Hall of Fame. On April 9, 2017, Rivers performed a song, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, at the funeral for Chuck Berry, at The Pageant, in St. Louis, Missouri. One of Rivers' biggest and earliest hits was his cover of Berry's "Memphis, Tennessee".

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Kamar-Taj is a fictional location appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. It first appeared in Strange Tales #110 (July 1963) and was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. The name "Kamar-Taj" does not appear in early Lee/Ditko Doctor Strange stories, but was created later as the country's backstory was fleshed out. Kamar-Taj is "a hidden land high in the Himalayas" and the homeland of Doctor Strange's mentor, the Ancient One, and of the evil sorcerer Kaluu. Strange's majordomo Wong also stems from a family of monks living in Kamar-Taj. Over 500 years ago, the man who would one day become the Ancient One was born in Kamar- Taj. With his friend Kaluu, he discovered the power of magic but the two friends disagreed on how to use it to protect their village. Kaluu sought to conquer neighboring villages and build a large empire. The two cast a spell eliminating sickness, disease and age from Kamar-Taj and shortly afterwards Kaluu was crowned king by the villagers under Kaluu's mind-control spell. The Ancient One tried to stop Kaluu and in their battle the village of Kamar-Taj was wiped out. Kaluu was banished to an alternate dimension. The Ancient One left Kamar-Taj and traveled the Earth for centuries, battling evil creatures, gaining the Amulet of Agamotto and the Book of the Vishanti. He finally settled down in the Himalaya Mountains near Kamar-Taj, building a palace as his home with an order of monks to protect and assist him. In a tournament organized by the sorcerer Aged Genghis, the Ancient One won the title of Earth's Sorcerer Supreme. He took a student, who would one day become Mister Jip, but banned him from his home when he found out the student had been studying the forbidden books to increase his own power. Feeling himself getting older and weaker, the Ancient One set out to find a student. He taught such beings as Doctor Druid and Baron Mordo but found his true apprentice in Stephen Strange, claiming that this boy would become the new Sorcerer Supreme. Mordo began to plot against Strange, though the Ancient One kept protecting him. Mordo soon left the palace and Stephen became the Ancient One's successor. The Ancient One would often assist Stephen, until Shuma-Gorath killed the Ancient One's physical body. In the 2016 film Doctor Strange, Wong is depicted as one of the Masters of Mystic Arts, tasked with protecting some of Kamar-Taj's most valuable relics and books. Actor Benedict Wong was pleased with the changes made to the character, and described him as "a drill sergeant to Kamar-Taj" rather than a manservant, who does not practice martial arts in the film, another racial stereotype. In the film, in Kathmandu, the sorcerer Kaecilius and his zealots enter the secret compound Kamar-Taj and murder its librarian, keeper of ancient and mystical texts. They steal a forbidden ritual from a book in the personal library of Ancient One, a sorcerer who has lived for an unknown time and taught all at Kamar-Taj, including Kaecilius, in the ways of the mystic arts., Kamar-Taj will also appear in the upcoming film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2021). Shangri-La The Infinity Gems (originally referred to as Soul Gems and later as Infinity Stones) are six gems appearing in Marvel Comics. The six gems are the Mind, Power, Reality, Soul, Space, and Time Gems. (Some later storylines, crossovers and other media feature a seventh of some sort.) The Gems have been used by various characters in the Marvel Universe. The gems played a prominent role in the first three phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where they are referred to as the Infinity Stones. The first appearance of an Infinity Gem occurred in 1972 in Marvel Premiere #1. It was originally called a "Soul Gem". In 1976, a second "Soul Gem" appeared in a Captain Marvel story which established that there were six Soul Gems, each with different powers. One year later, two more "Soul Gems" were introduced in a Warlock crossover involving Spider-Man. The full set of six Gems appeared when the death-obsessed villain Thanos attempted to use them to extinguish every star in the universe. In a 1988 storyline in Silver Surfer vol. 3, the Elders of the Universe tried to use the "Soul Gems" to steal the energy of the world-eating entity Galactus. In the 1990 limited series The Thanos Quest, Thanos refers to the entire set as "Infinity Gems" for the first time. In this storyline, he steals the Gems for the second time and reveals the Gems to be the last remains of an omnipotent being. Thanos then places all six gems within his left gauntlet. In the miniseries The Infinity Gauntlet, Thanos uses the Gems to become nearly omnipotent and kills half the universe's population as a gift to his love, the cosmic embodiment of Death. Although he easily repels an attack by Earth's heroes and other cosmic entities including Eternity, the Gauntlet is eventually stolen from him by Nebula, who undoes the last 24 hours, including his mass killings. Adam Warlock then recovers the Gauntlet and, by order of the Living Tribunal, divides the Gems among a group he calls "the Infinity Watch", consisting of himself, the superheroes Gamora, Pip the Troll, Drax the Destroyer, Moondragon, and his former adversary Thanos. The group's adventures in defending the Gems appear in the series Warlock and the Infinity Watch (1992–1995). The Gems are next gathered by Warlock's evil alter ego, the Magus, in the 1992 limited series The Infinity War, where he is defeated by Warlock and Earth's heroes, including Thanos. In the 1993 limited series The Infinity Crusade, the embodiment of Warlock's goodness, the Goddess, attempts to destroy evil in the universe by destroying free will. The Gems are then once again retrieved by the Infinity Watch. In a story arc of the Thanos series (2003–2004), Galactus gathers the six Gems but accidentally allows an interdimensional entity named Hunger access to the Marvel universe. Thanos and Galactus banish the entity and the Gems are scattered again with the exception of the Soul Gem, which Thanos retains for its customary custodian Adam Warlock. In , a 2007–2008 limited series, a cabal of Earth's heroes gather the Gems and attempt to wish them out of existence but discover that they must exist as part of the cosmic balance. Instead, the Illuminati divide and hide the Gems. In a 2010 Avengers storyline, the human criminal known as the Hood steals several Gems but is defeated by use of the remaining Gems; the Illuminati attempt to hide them again. The Illuminati later wield the Gems to stop another universe from collapsing into their own but the Gems are shattered by the effort. Afterwards, the previously vanished Time Gem appears to Captain America and some of the Avengers and transports them into future realities, shattering time in the process. As a result of the Incursions, the entire Multiverse is destroyed. However, Doctor Doom combines fragments of several alternate realities into Battleworld. Doctor Strange gathers Infinity Gems from various realities into a new Infinity Gauntlet, which he leaves hidden until the surviving heroes of Earth-616 return. The Gauntlet is subsequently claimed by T'Challa (the Black Panther), who uses it to keep the Beyonder-enhanced Doom occupied until Mister Fantastic can disrupt his power source. Following the recreation of the Multiverse, the Infinity Gems (now known as the Infinity Stones) are recreated and scattered across the universe, with their colors switched and some taking on uncut ingot forms. In Marvel Legacy #1, the Space Stone (now colored blue) appears on Earth where a Frost Giant working for Loki steals it from a S.H.I.E.L.D. storage facility, however he is intercepted and defeated by a resurrected Wolverine. Star-Lord discovers an extra-large Power Stone (now colored purple) being protected by the Nova Corps, and an alternate universe Peter Quill named Starkill has the Reality Stone (now colored red). A future version of Ghost Rider is revealed to possess a shard of the Time Stone (now colored green), while in the present the complete stone restores the ruined planet of Sakaar and is claimed by the Super-Skrull. The Mind Stone (now colored yellow) is found on Earth in the hands of petty crook Turk Barrett, and the Soul Stone (now colored orange) is mentioned to Adam Warlock to be in the hands of his dark aspect, the Magus; however, Ultron is able to claim it after ambushing and killing him. The Stones are shown to have a pocket universe existing within each of them. Adam Warlock uses the Soul Stone to grant sentience to each of the Stones, which then travel the universe, finding a suitable host and bonding with them. Each Gem is shaped like a small oval and is named after, and represents, a different characteristic of existence. Possessing any single Gem grants the user the ability to command whatever aspect of existence the Gem represents. The Gems are not immutable. For instance, on two occasions, one or more of the Gems have appeared as deep pink spheres several feet in diameter, while on other occasions, the Gems have appeared in their small oval shape but with different coloring. (e.g. the Soul Gem being colored red when worn by the Gardener). In the Ultraverse, after merging into their original form of Nemesis, the Gems were again separated after a battle with Ultraforce and the Avengers. As part of the Marvel Legacy initiative, the Infinity Gems (now known as the Infinity Stones), had their colors altered to match the colors of the Infinity Stones from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The six Infinity Gems include: Additional Gems have appeared in crossover media and alternate universes outside the Marvel Universe, often comedic in nature. The Reed Richards of Earth-616, in an attempt to "solve everything", meets with a council of alternate universe Reeds. Three of them wear Infinity Gauntlets, which only work in their respective universes. During the "Incursion" storyline, the Avengers travel to a parallel Earth where a pastiche of the Justice League have replaced this Earth's Avengers who all died in a previous cataclysm. Here the Gems are all square planes which are assembled into the "Wishing Cube", a composite of the concepts of the Infinity Gems and the Cosmic Cube. After various alternate universes are combined into Battleworld, Doctor Strange gathers Infinity Gems from other universes into a new Infinity Gauntlet that works in the area where Doom has built his palace. Strange leaves the Gauntlet hidden until he has access to someone he can trust it with. After his death, the Gauntlet is claimed by T'Challa, who uses it against Doom in the final battle. A separate section of Battleworld known as New Xandar also has a Gauntlet fought over by multiple factions until the majority of the Stones, except the Reality Stone, were taken by Thanos. Thanos eventually tracks the missing Stone to Nova Corps member Anwen Bakian. When Thanos confronts her to get the Stone, Anwen gives him a duplicate of the Reality Stone she created called the 'Death Stone'. When used along with the other five Stones, the Death Stone corrupts Thanos with black matter and turns him to dust. In the Ultimate Marvel universe, an Infinity Gauntlet is seen in Project Pegasus. The Mind Gem (stolen by Hydra) is used by Modi (Thor's son) to control both Director Flumm and Cassie Lang, but are stopped by the Ultimates. The Power Gem is later revealed to be in the possession of former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Sayuri Kyota, while a second Infinity Gauntlet is recovered from an A.I.M. base by Thor and Susan Storm. Kang the Conqueror later allies himself with the Hulk, Reed Richards and Quicksilver as part of a plan to steal the two Gauntlets, which results in the destruction of the Triskelion. Quicksilver recovers two additional Gems allowing the villains to teleport away. Richards is later able to recover another of the Gems, which is found lodged in Tony Stark's brain. He informs Stark that the Infinity Gems are needed to save the world from a coming cataclysm that will destroy the entire universe. After brainwashing Johnny Storm and forcing him to travel to the Earth's core, the Dark Ultimates are able to recover the final gem, but are defeated by the Ultimates. The gems then shatter, rendering the Gauntlets useless. In a reality where Doctor Doom retained the power of the Beyonder, Doom acquired the Infinity Gems from the Elders of the Universe and used them to defeat the Celestials in a 407-year-long war before finally forsaking his power. In an alternate reality where the original Fantastic Four died, a new Fantastic Four – consisting of Spider-Man, Hulk, Wolverine, and Ghost Rider – was formed. With Iron Man replacing Ghost Rider, they were the only heroes available to fight Thanos when he initially assembled the Infinity Gauntlet. Despite Iron Man's use of Negative Zone-enhanced Celestial armor, Thanos still easily defeated the team until Wolverine tricked Thanos into erasing Mephisto from existence before cutting off Thanos's left arm, and therefore the Infinity Gauntlet. With Thanos powerless, Spider-Man used the gauntlet to undo the events of Thanos's godhood. In the Contest of Champions miniseries, an alternate version of Tony Stark uses the Reality Gem to win the superhero civil war and affect the outcome of a presidential election. When he tries to use the Gem on Battleworld, he is killed by the Maestro, who says the Gems do not work in any universe other than their own. The Infinity Gauntlet and the Infinity Gems appear in The Super Hero Squad Show television show., The Infinity Gauntlet and the Infinity Gems appear in Avengers Assemble; there are only five Infinity Gems as the Soul Stone is not present. The Infinity Stones are significant in the first three phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), playing important roles in several films. In Guardians of the Galaxy, the Collector explains that the Infinity Stones are the remnants of six singularities that existed before the Big Bang, which were compressed into Stones by cosmic entities after the universe began and were dispersed throughout the cosmos. In , it is further explained by Wong and Doctor Strange that each stone embodies and controls an essential aspect of existence. Throughout the series, the Mad Titan Thanos seeks to collect them all and use them to wipe out half of all life in the universe, believing that his plan will save it from extinction. Having completed this goal in Infinity War, Thanos then uses the Stones' power to destroy them so that his actions cannot be undone. Despite this, in Endgame, the Avengers use the quantum realm to travel back in time and retrieve past versions of the Stones, allowing them to restore everyone who Thanos killed. When a past version of the Mad Titan followed them to the present and attempted to use the Past Infinity Stones to destroy and recreate the universe, the Avengers use the Past Infinity Stones to defeat him before returning them to the points in time they had taken them from. In order of introduction, they are: Space Stone (Blue):Housed in a cube-like object called the Tesseract, the Space Stone first appears briefly in the post-credits scene of Thor, with Nick Fury showing the object to Erik Selvig; not knowing that Loki was there as well. In , the Red Skull steals the Tesseract from a church and uses it to power Hydra's weaponry during WWII. Amidst Captain America's final fight with the Red Skull, the Tesseract transported the latter to another location (later revealed to be the planet Vormir in Avengers: Infinity War) before falling into the Arctic Ocean where it was later recovered by Howard Stark and taken to a secret base. Captain Marvel revealed that Dr. Wendy Lawson tried to use the Tesseract in 1989 to unlock light-speed travel in order to help the Skrulls find a new home, but was unsuccessful. The Tesseract is eventually recovered by Carol Danvers, who hands the object over to S.H.I.E.L.D. In The Avengers, the Tesseract is shown to be capable of generating wormholes after Loki steals it from S.H.I.E.L.D. and uses it to transport the Chitauri army to New York City in an attempt to conquer Earth. After the Avengers repel the invasion, Thor returns it to Asgard for safekeeping in Odin's Vault and it is used to repair the Bifrost Bridge; which had been destroyed during the events of Thor. Loki later steals the Tesseract once more before Asgard's destruction during , and gives the object to Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War to save Thor's life. Thanos then crushes the Tesseract to acquire the Space Stone so he can use its ability to open wormholes. In , Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Scott Lang and Bruce Banner time travel to the Battle of New York during the events of The Avengers in 2012, where Stark and Lang attempt to steal the 2012 version of the Tesseract before it can be returned to Asgard in the aftermath of the battle, but 2012 Hulk accidentally knocks Stark down and the 2012 Tesseract slides over to 2012 Loki, who uses it to open a portal and escape. Stark and Rogers then travel to 1970 and steal the 1970 version of the Tesseract from a S.H.I.E.L.D. base in New Jersey., Mind Stone (Yellow):Housed in a scepter, the Mind Stone was first seen in The Avengers when Thanos and the Other give Loki said scepter to help locate the Tesseract and conquer Earth with its ability to control people's minds and project energy blasts. After Loki's defeat, the scepter fell into the hands of Hydra leader Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, who is shown in the mid-credits scene of to have been using it to experiment on humans. revealed that the only surviving subjects of Strucker's experiments are the siblings Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, in whom superhuman abilities were unlocked before Strucker's base was attacked by the Avengers, who took back the scepter. The scepter is later revealed to contain the Mind Stone, which itself contains an artificial intelligence that grants sentience to the computer program Ultron, who steals the scepter and removes the Mind Stone to create a newly upgraded body. The Avengers steal the Mind Stone-infused body from Ultron and upload the A.I. J.A.R.V.I.S. into it, giving birth to the android Vision. The Mind Stone can also enhance the user's intelligence, grant them immense knowledge, and create new life. In Avengers: Infinity War, Vision is injured by the Black Order in their attempts to get the Mind Stone and is taken to Wakanda to have it removed; in the hope that he'll be able to live without it. When the removal operation is interrupted, Wanda is forced to destroy Vision and the Mind Stone, only for Thanos to use the Time Stone to repair them both and collect the latter, killing Vision again. In Avengers: Endgame, Rogers, having traveled back in time to the events of The Avengers in 2012, retrieves the 2012 version of the scepter from Hydra operatives from within S.H.I.E.L.D. in the aftermath of the Battle of New York. Rogers then uses the scepter to render his 2012 counterpart unconscious after he mistook him for a disguised Loki., Reality Stone (Red):Transformed into a fluid-like weapon called the Aether, it first appears in when Malekith the Accursed attempts to use the Aether to destroy the Nine Realms and return the universe to its pre-Big Bang state; only to be thwarted by Bor, who had it hidden. Jane Foster becomes infected by the Aether after coming across its resting place, though Malekith later draws it out of her. After Malekith is defeated by Thor, Sif and Volstagg seal the Aether in a lantern-like container and entrust it to the Collector to keep it separate from the Tesseract; as they consider it unwise to have multiple Infinity Stones close to each other (unaware that the Collector planned to obtain the other five). The Aether, once bonded to a host, can turn anything into dark matter as well as suck the life force out of humans and other mortals. The Aether can also disrupt the laws of physics and repel threats if it senses any. In Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos acquires the Aether from the Collector and turns it back into the Reality Stone off-screen; allowing him to repel the Guardians of the Galaxy's attacks by turning Drax the Destroyer to stone, Mantis into ribbon strips, and causing Star-Lord's gun to shoot bubbles. In Avengers: Endgame, Thor and Rocket Raccoon time travel to Asgard during the events of Thor: The Dark World in 2013 to extract the 2013 version of the Aether from 2013 Jane., Power Stone (Purple):Housed in an orb hidden on the planet Morag, the Power Stone can increase the user's strength and destroy entire civilizations with a single blast. However, the stone is too much for most mortal beings to physically handle as its power will destroy them on contact. In Guardians of the Galaxy, Ronan the Accuser seeks the orb for Thanos, but Star-Lord finds and steals the orb from Morag's resting spot before Ronan’s men could. An all-out war occurs between Ronan's forces and the Guardians of the Galaxy for the orb, with Ronan successfully acquiring it in the end. After learning about the Power Stone; however, Ronan betrays Thanos and tries to use its destructive power to destroy the planet Xandar, only to be stopped and defeated by the Ravagers, the Nova Corps, and the Guardians of the Galaxy; who seal the Power Stone in a new orb and entrust it to the Nova Corps for safekeeping. Avengers: Infinity War revealed that the Power Stone was the first to be obtained by Thanos, who "decimates" Xandar in the process. In Avengers: Endgame, James Rhodes and Nebula time travel to Morag during the events of Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014, subduing 2014 Star-Lord before taking the 2014 Power Stone in its orb., Time Stone (Green):Housed in the Eye of Agamotto by Earth's first sorcerer, a Master of the Mystic Arts can use the Time Stone to alter and manipulate time. In Doctor Strange, Dr. Stephen Strange finds the Eye of Agamotto and learns how to use it to save the Earth from Dormammu by trapping them in a time loop until the demon abandons his plans for Earth. Strange returns the Eye of Agamotto to the Masters of the Mystic Arts' secret compound Kamar-Taj in Kathmandu, Nepal, though he is seen wearing it again in the mid-credits scene, which takes place during Thor: Ragnarok. During the events of Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos' lieutenants attempt to steal the Eye of Agamotto from Strange, but are foiled by Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Wong. While on the planet Titan (Thanos' homeworld), Strange uses the Time Stone to look into future timelines; viewing millions of possible outcomes of their conflict with the Mad Titan and learning of only one future in which they win. To ensure that future comes to pass, Strange later surrenders the Time Stone to Thanos to save Stark. During the confrontation in Wakanda, Thanos uses the Time Stone to undo the Mind Stone's destruction. In Avengers: Endgame, Bruce Banner traveled back in time to 2012 and went to the New York Sanctum during the Battle of New York to convince the Ancient One to relinquish the 2012 version of the Time Stone., Soul Stone (Orange):An object that has the ability to manipulate the soul and essence of a person, control life and death, and contains a pocket dimension called the Soulworld. The Soul Stone is first seen in Avengers: Infinity War. At some point in his past, Thanos tasked Gamora to find the Soul Stone, as there is little record of its existence compared to the other Infinity Stones. Gamora found it hidden in a shrine on the planet Vormir, but chose not to tell Thanos; only telling Nebula of it and swearing her to secrecy (little realizing that Thanos wasn't fooled). After Thanos captures and tortures Nebula, Gamora agrees to take him to Vormir, where they encounter the Red Skull (having been transported to the planet by the Tesseract and cursed to serve as the Stonekeeper). Thanos willingly yet reluctantly sacrificed Gamora in order to fulfill the requirements to obtain the Soul Stone once the Red Skull explains them. After using all six Infinity Stones to wipe out half of all life in the universe, Thanos is briefly transported into the Soulworld and briefly encounters a vision of Gamora as a child. In Avengers: Endgame, Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton travel to Vormir in the past, where each attempts to sacrifice themselves to allow the other to return with the Stone. Ultimately, the former wins the struggle and jumps to her death so that Barton can return to be with his family. The Infinity Gauntlet also appears in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A right- handed gauntlet appears in Thor, where it's stored in Odin's vault; though this one was later revealed to be a fake by Hela in Thor: Ragnarok. The mid- credits scene of Avengers: Age of Ultron revealed Thanos had acquired a left- handed gauntlet (the real one). Avengers: Infinity War elaborates on this, revealing Thanos forced Eitri to create the gauntlet by threatening to kill his people, though he did so once it was completed anyway as well as crippled Eitri's hands to prevent him from making anything else. In Avengers: Endgame, after Thanos wipes out half of all life in the universe – in the event that is now known as "The Blip" – and destroys the Infinity Stones to prevent his work from being undone, the Avengers use nanotechnology to create a third, right- handed gauntlet in order to use the Infinity Stones they had acquired from the past. Bruce Banner in his "Professor Hulk" form, due to being the most immune to the gamma radiation the Infinity Stones' combined powers emit, uses the gauntlet to reverse the Blip (though not without strain also caused by the combined powers). Immediately afterwards, the Avengers are besieged by a past version of Thanos and his army, with the Mad Titan now intending to use the Past Infinity Stones to destroy the universe and build it anew once he erases all memory of the original. In the ensuing battle, Tony Stark sacrifices himself by using the Past Infinity Stones–having incorporated them into his armor–to disintegrate Past Thanos and his forces; removing them from the timeline altogether. After Stark's funeral, Steve Rogers returns the Past Infinity Stones (without their former containers and with the Past Reality Stone remaining in its solid form) and Past Mjolnir (which Thor had acquired from 2013) to the times and places they'd come from to prevent alternate timelines from forming. The Infinity Gems are featured in Marvel Super Heroes In War of the Gems (based on the "Infinity Gauntlet" saga) and Marvel Super Heroes., The Infinity Gems are seen in when Thanos uses Power, Soul, Reality, and Space for his Supers., The Infinity Gems, including the Infinity Sword, appear as a driving part of the video game., The Infinity Stones play a major role in . During gameplay, using an Infinity Stone will grant player characters a specific enhancement based on the Infinity Stone being used. In the game's story, Ultron and Sigma use the Space Stone and Reality Stone to be Ultron Sigma and merge the worlds into one under their control, and the heroes must retrieve the other four stones to stop the fused supervillain. The Infinity Stones in the game use the Infinity Stones' naming and color scheme from the Marvel Cinematic Universe rather than the Infinity Gems' naming and color scheme from previous Marvel video games. The Collector's Edition of the game comes with a replica of the Infinity Stones housed in a small box with an LED display., From January to August 2012, Wizkids presented the Infinity Gauntlet program at stores that host HeroClix tournaments. An Infinity Gauntlet prop was released, followed by a different Gem each month. Each Gem can be added to the Gauntlet, increasing its power in game. The Gems can be displayed on a stand that comes with the Gauntlet or on each Elder that Thanos encountered in the story Thanos Quest., Replica Infinity Gauntlets were given out as trophies at Ultimate Fighting Game Tournament 8, a 2012 Road to Evo tournament., In a tie-in with the film Avengers: Infinity War, Marvel and Epic Games announced the "Infinity Gauntlet Limited Time Mashup" mode for Fortnite Battle Royale, where players can find the Gauntlet hidden on the game map and become Thanos with added abilities., The Infinity Stones appear in . A key part of the game's story, Thanos and the Black Order attempt to collect the Infinity Stones in order to achieve galactic conquest and are opposed by the Avengers, the X-Men, the Guardians of the Galaxy, the Defenders, the Inhumans, the Midnight Sons, the Spider-Verse, the Fantastic Four and Marvel Knights. Doctor Strange is a 2016 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. Produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, it is the fourteenth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The film was directed by Scott Derrickson from a screenplay he wrote with Jon Spaihts and C. Robert Cargill, and stars Benedict Cumberbatch as surgeon Stephen Strange along with Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachel McAdams, Benedict Wong, Michael Stuhlbarg, Benjamin Bratt, Scott Adkins, Mads Mikkelsen, and Tilda Swinton. In the film, Strange learns the mystic arts after a career-ending car crash. Various incarnations of a Doctor Strange film adaptation had been in development since the mid-1980s, until Paramount Pictures acquired the film rights in April 2005 on behalf of Marvel Studios. Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer were brought on board in June 2010 to write a screenplay. In June 2014, Derrickson was hired to direct, with Spaihts re-writing the script. Cumberbatch was chosen for the eponymous role in December 2014, necessitating a schedule change to work around his other commitments. This gave Derrickson time to work on the script himself, for which he brought Cargill on to help. The film began principal photography in November 2015 in Nepal, before moving to the United Kingdom and Hong Kong, and concluding in New York City in April 2016. Doctor Strange had its world premiere in Hong Kong on October 13, 2016, and was released in the United States on November 4, in 3D and IMAX 3D. The film grossed over $677 million worldwide, was met with praise for its visuals and cast, and received awards attention, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects. A sequel, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, is scheduled for release on May 7, 2021. In Kathmandu, the sorcerer Kaecilius and his zealots enter the secret compound Kamar-Taj and behead its librarian. They steal a few pages from an ancient, mystical text belonging to the Ancient One, a long-lived sorcerer who has taught every student at Kamar-Taj, including Kaecilius, in the mystic arts. The Ancient One pursues the traitors, but Kaecilius and his followers escape. In New York City, Stephen Strange, a wealthy, acclaimed, and arrogant neurosurgeon, severely injures his hands in a car crash, leaving him unable to operate. Fellow surgeon Christine Palmer tries to help him move on, but Strange vainly pursues experimental surgeries to heal his hands, nearly bankrupting himself. Strange learns about Jonathan Pangborn, a paraplegic who mysteriously regained use of his legs. Pangborn directs Strange to Kamar-Taj, where he is taken in by Mordo, a sorcerer under the Ancient One. The Ancient One demonstrates her power to Strange, revealing the astral plane and other dimensions such as the Mirror Dimension. She reluctantly agrees to train Strange, whose arrogance and ambition remind her of Kaecilius. Strange studies under the Ancient One and Mordo, and from ancient books in the library that is now guarded by Master Wong. Strange learns that Earth is protected from threats from other dimensions by a shield generated from three buildings called Sanctums, in New York City, London, and Hong Kong, which are all connected and accessible from Kamar-Taj. The sorcerers' task is to protect the Sanctums, though Pangborn instead chose to channel mystical energy only into walking again. Strange progresses quickly, and secretly reads the text from which Kaecilius stole pages, learning to bend time with the mystical Eye of Agamotto. Mordo and Wong warn Strange against breaking the laws of nature, drawing a comparison to Kaecilius' desire for eternal life. Kaecilius uses the stolen pages to contact Dormammu of the Dark Dimension, where time is non- existent. Kaecilius destroys the London Sanctum to weaken Earth's protection. The zealots then attack the New York Sanctum, killing its guardian, but Strange holds them off with the help of the Cloak of Levitation, only to be critically injured during a skirmish. He teleports himself back to the hospital where Palmer saves him. Upon returning to the Sanctum, Strange reveals to Mordo that the Ancient One has been drawing power from the Dark Dimension to sustain her long life, and Mordo becomes disillusioned with the Ancient One. After a fight in the Mirror Dimension of New York, Kaecilius mortally wounds the Ancient One and escapes to Hong Kong. Before dying, she tells Strange that he too will have to bend the rules to complement Mordo's steadfast nature in order to defeat Kaecilius. Strange and Mordo arrive in Hong Kong to find Wong dead, the Sanctum destroyed, and the Dark Dimension engulfing Earth. Strange uses the Eye to reverse time and save Wong, then enters the Dark Dimension and creates a time loop around himself and Dormammu. After repeatedly killing Strange to no avail, Dormammu finally gives in to Strange's demand that he permanently leave Earth alone and take Kaecilius and his zealots with him in return for Strange breaking the loop. Disillusioned by Strange and the Ancient One defying nature's laws, Mordo renounces his sorcerer career and departs. Strange returns the Eye to Kamar-Taj and takes up residence in the New York Sanctum to continue his studies with Wong. In a mid- credits scene, Strange decides to help Thor, who has brought his brother Loki to Earth to search for their father, Odin. In a post-credits scene, Mordo confronts Pangborn and steals the mystical energy he uses to walk, telling him that Earth has "too many sorcerers". Benedict Cumberbatch as Dr. Stephen Strange: A neurosurgeon who, after a car crash that led to a journey of healing, discovers the hidden world of magic and alternate dimensions. Cumberbatch described Strange as arrogant, with the film "about him going from a place where he thinks he knows it all to realizing he knows nothing." He compared the character to the version of Sherlock Holmes that he portrays in Sherlock, calling both characters "intelligent" and having "smatterings of the same colors". The film's mysticism resonated with Cumberbatch, for whom spirituality has been important since he spent his gap year teaching English at a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Darjeeling, India. Strange's abilities in the film include casting spells with "tongue-twisty fun names", creating mandalas of light for shields and weapons, and creating portals for quick travel around the world. Strange is also aided by a Cloak of Levitation for flight, and the Eye of Agamotto, a relic containing an Infinity Stone that can manipulate time. Cumberbatch took great care in defining the physical movements and gestures for the spells, knowing that they would be noted and studied by fans. He described these gestures as "balletic" and "very dynamic", and received help with finger-tutting movements from dancer JayFunk., Chiwetel Ejiofor as Karl Mordo: A Master of the Mystic Arts, close to the Ancient One and a mentor to Strange. This version of Mordo is a combination of different characters from the Doctor Strange mythos, and unlike in the comics is not introduced as villainous. Ejiofor noted this, calling Mordo "a very complex character that, really, I don't think can be nailed down either way". Director Scott Derrickson added that the change in character stemmed from casting Ejiofor and conversations the director had with him. Ejiofor described Mordo's relationship with the Ancient One as "long and intense", while noting a "growing respect" between the character and Strange, until "things get complicated". Derrickson felt Mordo was a fundamentalist, saying "When someone gives themselves over to an extraordinarily strict moral code, the process of breaking out of that is a violent one. He becomes disillusioned with the Ancient One's [moral contradictions]. The difference is Strange can accept that contradiction. Mordo cannot cope with it," which leads to the "antagonism between Mordo and Strange" to explore in future films. Discussing the diversity of the film's cast when addressing the controversial casting of the characters the Ancient One and Wong, Derrickson was confident that the decision to cast Ejiofor as Mordo, and thus changing the character "from white to black", was the right one to make., Rachel McAdams as Christine Palmer: An emergency surgeon initially written as a love interest for Strange, but shortly before filming, Derrickson suggested that this trope be subverted by making the two characters lovers as part of their backstory and coming "out the other side of it as friends". McAdams described this dynamic by saying, "The love is between them no matter what stage they're at in the actual relationship." With this change in characterization, producer Kevin Feige described Palmer as a "lynchpin to [Strange's] old life, once he steps into the role of a sorcerer. She is someone he connects with at the beginning, and reconnects with, and helps anchor his humanity." He explained that having this character be a "connection to Strange's life in New York City, in the normal world" after his journey was important to the studio, which is why Palmer was chosen for the character over the more prominent, but more fantastical character Clea. Palmer is also known as the hero Night Nurse in the comics, a storyline that does not play into the film, but that Feige hinted could be explored in future films. Rosario Dawson portrays another Night Nurse character, Claire Temple, in Marvel's Netflix television series., Benedict Wong as Wong: A Master of the Mystic Arts, tasked with protecting some of Kamar-Taj's most valuable relics and books. The character is depicted in the comics as Strange's Asian, "tea-making manservant", a racial stereotype that Derrickson did not want in the film, and so the character was not included in the film's script. After the non-Asian actress Tilda Swinton was cast as the other significant Asian character from the Doctor Strange comics, the Ancient One—which was also done to avoid the comics' racial stereotypes—Derrickson felt obligated to find a way to include Wong in the film. The character as he ultimately appears is "completely subverted as a character and reworked into something that didn't fall into any of the stereotypes of the comics", which Derrickson was pleased gave an Asian character "a strong presence in the movie". Actor Wong was also pleased with the changes made to the character, and described him as "a drill sergeant to Kamar-Taj" rather than a manservant. He does not practice martial arts in the film, avoiding another racial stereotype. Derrickson added that Wong will have "a strong presence in the Marvel Cinematic Universe" moving forward., Michael Stuhlbarg as Nicodemus West: A rival surgeon to Strange., Benjamin Bratt as Jonathan Pangborn: A paraplegic who learned from the Ancient One how to heal himself through the mystic arts., Scott Adkins as Lucian: One of Kaecilius' followers., Mads Mikkelsen as Kaecilius: A Master of the Mystic Arts who broke away from the Ancient One. A combination of several antagonists from the comics, Kaecilius was used in the film to drive the introduction and development of bigger villains for the future, including "certain individuals who live in other dimensions". Derrickson compared this dynamic to that of Saruman and Sauron in The Lord of the Rings, giving the film a "huge and fantastical" villain like Sauron, but also having "human relateability" with Kaecilius, like Saruman, for Strange to face throughout the film. Derrickson admitted that Marvel's villains are often criticized, and noted that MCU films dedicate little time to developing antagonists. For Doctor Strange, he just hoped to show "Kaecilius's point of view and what makes him tick" in the time that he could, feeling that the character is a "man of ideas" with "watertight logic" like John Doe from Seven and the Joker from The Dark Knight. On these motivations, Feige explained that Kaecilius believes the Ancient One is a hypocrite, protecting her own power base, and that the world may be better off "if we were to allow some of these other things through." Mikkelsen's makeup took between 2–3 hours to apply., Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One: A Celtic mystic who becomes Strange's mentor. The character in the comics is a Tibetan man, a situation which co-writer C. Robert Cargill compared to the Kobayashi Maru, an unwinnable training exercise in the Star Trek universe. He explained that adapting the character as the comics portrayed him would be realizing the major Asian Fu Manchu stereotype, and would involve the film with the Tibetan sovereignty debate, but not giving one of few significant Asian roles to an Asian actor would also understandably be received negatively. Derrickson wanted to change the character to an Asian woman, but felt that an older Asian woman would invoke the Dragon Lady stereotype, while a younger Asian woman would be perceived as exploiting Asian fetish and "a fanboy's dream girl". To avoid the character filling any of those three stereotypes, or enabling the stereotype of a "Western character coming to Asia to learn about being Asian", Derrickson decided to cast a non-Asian actor in the role, but to still take the opportunity to cast "an amazing actress in a male role". Feeling that Swinton was the obvious choice to play "domineering, secretive, ethereal, enigmatic, [and] mystical", Derrickson wrote the Ancient One in the film specifically for the actress, before she was offered the role. Additionally, though the film uses the terms "her" and "she", Swinton chose to portray the character as androgynous, while Feige explained that the Ancient One and Sorcerer Supreme are mantles in the film held by multiple characters through time, so a more comic-accurate Ancient One could exist within the MCU. Still, Swinton's casting was widely criticized as whitewashing. In response to this, Derrickson said that though he was pleased with the diversity of the film's cast, in terms of both gender and ethnicity, "Asians have been whitewashed and stereotyped in American cinema for over a century and people should be mad or nothing will change. What I did was the lesser of two evils, but it is still an evil." Cumberbatch also portrays, uncredited, the villainous entity Dormammu. The actor suggested he take on the role to Derrickson, feeling that having the character be a "horrific" reflection of Strange would work better than just "being a big ghoulish monster". The director agreed, elaborating that the casting implies that Dormammu does not have a normal physical form in his own dimension, and so is simply imitating Strange for their confrontation. To create the character, Cumberbatch provided motion-capture reference for the visual effects team, and his voice was blended with that of another uncredited British actor, whom Derrickson described as having "a very deep voice". The producers also had Tony Todd record voice over for Dormammu as an alternative to Cumberbatch, but ultimately decided on using Cumberbatch for the voice. Chris Hemsworth reprises his role of Thor from previous MCU films in the film's mid-credits scene. Additionally, Linda Louise Duan appears, unnamed, as Tina Minoru, Mark Anthony Brighton portrays Daniel Drumm, and Topo Wresniwiro portrays Hamir, all Masters of the Mystic Arts under the Ancient One. The latter is based on Hamir the Hermit, Wong's father in the comics, who was the Ancient One's personal manservant. The character is neither a manservant nor Wong's father in the film. Zara Phythian, Alaa Safi, and Katrina Durden portray zealots under Kaecilius, and Pat Kiernan appears as himself. Doctor Strange co-creator Stan Lee makes a cameo appearance as a bus rider reading Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception. Amy Landecker was cast as anesthesiologist Bruner, but the majority of her role was cut from the finished film. A film based on the Marvel Comics character Doctor Strange was initially listed as being in development at New World Pictures, with a script dated January 21, 1986 by Bob Gale. For unknown reasons, Gale's film never went further into production. By 1989, Alex Cox had co-written a script with Doctor Strange co-creator Stan Lee. The script had the character traveling to the Fourth Dimension before facing the villain Dormammu on Easter Island, Chile. A film using this script was almost made by Regency, but the company's films were distributed by Warner Bros. at the time, which was in a dispute with Marvel over merchandising. By December 1992, Wes Craven had signed to write and direct Doctor Strange for release in either 1994 or 1995, with Savoy Pictures distributing. In 1995, David S. Goyer had completed a script for the film. By April 1997, Columbia Pictures had purchased the film rights and Jeff Welch was working on a new screenplay, with Bernie Brillstein and Brad Grey producing. By April 2000, Columbia dropped Doctor Strange, which then had Michael France attached to write a script and interest from Chuck Russell and Stephen Norrington to direct. By June 2001, Dimension Films acquired the film rights, with Goyer back on board as writer and director. Goyer hinted scheduling conflicts might ensue with a film adaptation of Murder Mysteries, and promised not to be highly dependent on computer-generated imagery. However, by August 2001, Miramax acquired the film rights from Dimension, and by March 2002, Goyer had dropped out of the project. A 2005 release date was announced the next March, while in June 2004, a script still had yet to be written. Marvel Studios CEO Avi Arad stated, "We are nowhere with that. That's a tough one to write, but we are working on it. We are trying to find the real Jerry Garcia of the writing community." In April 2005, Paramount Pictures acquired Doctor Strange from Miramax, as part of Marvel Studios' attempt to independently produce their own films. At the time, the film was projected to have a budget of no more than $165 million. In 2007, Guillermo del Toro and Neil Gaiman pitched a version of the film to Marvel, with Gaiman writing and del Toro directing. Gaiman was especially interested in including the character Clea, but the studio was not interested. In March 2009, Marvel hired writers to help come up with creative ways to launch its lesser-known properties, including Doctor Strange. In June 2010, Marvel Studios hired Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer to write Doctor Strange. While promoting in April 2011, actor Patrick Dempsey indicated he was lobbying to play the title character. In January 2013, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige confirmed that Doctor Strange would appear in some capacity as part of "" of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Feige then reiterated that a Doctor Strange feature film was in development at Marvel Studios that May, and again in November. In February 2014, The Hollywood Reporter wrote that Marvel was considering Mark Andrews, Jonathan Levine, Nikolaj Arcel and Dean Israelite to direct the film, and was considering Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger to rewrite the film's script. Feige denied this report, but confirmed that Marvel was considering prospective candidates. By March, Marvel was considering Andrews, Levine, and Scott Derrickson to direct the film. In June 2014, Derrickson was chosen to direct the film. He had written a 12-page scene for the film featuring Strange and an assailant fighting in the astral plane while a doctor attempts to save Strange's physical body in a hospital, based on a sequence from the comic . Derrickson illustrated the sequence with his own concept art, alongside storyboards from professional artists and an animatic, which he presented in a 90-minute pitch to the studio. This cost Derrickson an "obnoxious amount" of his own money, but he felt it necessary to prove "that I wanted [the job] more than anyone", especially after Marvel told him that more people had lobbied to direct Doctor Strange than any of their other films. Derrickson ultimately had eight meetings with Marvel for the film. After he was hired, Marvel bought the 12-page scene from Derrickson, and it became one of the film's main set pieces. On transitioning from horror films to a superhero film, Derrickson said, "It was nice to work on something more positive. And not have my headspace in something so dark for so long. But it was also weirdly similar because of the fantastical nature of the movie". In his horror films, Derrickson tried to use "real characters and real character drama played by good actors ... [to] encounter the fantastical", and so he wanted actors of the same high caliber for Doctor Strange through which he could introduce the more fantastical elements to the MCU. Derrickson and Marvel had originally discussed him writing the film alongside his Sinister co-writer C. Robert Cargill, with Derrickson also directing, but Marvel felt that they would not be able to reach their intended release date of July 2016 if Derrickson filled both roles. When Derrickson was chosen as director, Marvel passed on Cargill as an individual writer, with Jon Spaihts hired to rewrite the script instead. Spaihts, a big fan of Doctor Strange as a child, had started "pestering" Marvel as soon as he read reports of the company searching for a director for the film. This eventually led to him meeting with the studio, before they actually began looking for writers for the film. Spaihts said that they talked "all afternoon, and the fit was right", but he received a call from Marvel several days later saying that they were not completely sure they wanted to take the film in the same direction as Spaihts, and were going to look at other writers. Spaihts told his agent to not "take that answer. Call them back, tell them there's a lot of right answers, and get me back in the room", and after talking with Marvel for "another three or four hours" he was given the job. Marvel never seriously looked at any other writer for the film. Derrickson was already hired when Spaihts joined, and the pair spent several months working on the film's story with Feige and executive producer Stephen Broussard. They started writing the film from the beginning, and initially were unsure whether it would be an origin story, or if it would begin with Strange already as a "fully-formed" sorcerer. Spaihts ultimately felt that "the origin story of this character, as depicted in the comics, is so operatic and beautiful, and so tragic and epic in its sweep, that it was unavoidable. We had to tell that story, and tell our best version of it." Elements from Spaihts' early drafts that he later stated were still in the final film include many of the film's set pieces, such as the climactic battle, which came straight from Derrickson, as well as "little things" from Spaihts, "like a bandaged hand running down a row of prayer bells in a Nepalese temple." Derrickson wanted Nightmare to be the film's antagonist, along with the concept of "nightmares themselves as being a dimension", but Feige felt "getting across the idea of the Dream Dimension as another dimension" would have been challenging alongside everything else that the film introduces. Dormammu, "the most present villain in the comics", became the film's main villain. During the early development process, Marvel, Derrickson, and Spaihts all envisioned Benedict Cumberbatch playing the title role. By the end of June, Marvel had reportedly been looking at Tom Hardy and Jared Leto for the film's lead as well, while Édgar Ramírez, who worked with Derrickson on 2014's Deliver Us from Evil, had discussed a possible role with the director. In July, after fans and the media had also championed Cumberbatch for the role of Doctor Strange, the actor explained at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con International that he would be unable to accept the role due to commitments to other projects. Feige stated that a lead actor would be announced "relatively quickly", and by the end of that month Joaquin Phoenix entered talks to play the character. By September 2014, Marvel Studios was in negotiations to shoot Doctor Strange at Pinewood-Shepperton in the UK, with crews being assembled for a move into Shepperton Studios in late 2014/early 2015, for filming in May 2015. Negotiations with Phoenix ended in October 2014, as the actor felt that blockbuster films would never be "fulfilling", with "too many requirements that went against [his] instincts for character." Marvel then placed Leto, Ethan Hawke, Oscar Isaac, Ewan McGregor, Matthew McConaughey, Jake Gyllenhaal, Colin Farrell, and Keanu Reeves on their shortlist for the character. Ryan Gosling also had discussions to play the character, while Reeves was not approached about the role, and Cumberbatch was still considered to be in contention. In October, Cumberbatch entered negotiations to play the character, and was officially cast in December. Feige explained that Marvel had kept returning to him for the role while considering other actors, with Derrickson noting that even during discussions with Phoenix, he and Marvel still wanted to cast Cumberbatch in the role. The company eventually decided to change the film's production schedule to fit around Cumberbatch's commitments, allowing him to join the project. With the film's new production schedule, its intended release date was pushed back to November 2016, and Derrickson was able to do some work on the script himself. He brought Cargill in to work with him on this as was originally planned. Describing the film, Cargill called it both a superhero film and a fantasy film, saying "it's a very magical fantasy universe, but at the same time it plays by some of the superhero tropes that people enjoy." Spaihts returned later in the process to "do some more writing and help bring the movie home", and said he was "delighted" by the work that Derrickson and Cargill had done in the interim. Feige and Derrickson have noted that, in addition to The Oath and Steve Ditko's original work on Doctor Strange, an influence on all the film's writers was the Doctor Strange comic book Into Shamballa. In January 2015, Chiwetel Ejiofor entered preliminary talks with Marvel for a role in the film, later revealed to be Baron Mordo. Ejiofor's role was confirmed during the 2015 D23 Expo. In April, Derrickson and members of the production team visited New York City to scout potential filming locations, while Feige revealed that filming would begin that November. A month later, Tilda Swinton was in talks to play the Ancient One. In June 2015, Derrickson announced that he was going to London to begin work on the film, and Feige confirmed that Strange's Sanctum Sanctorum would appear, located on Bleecker Street in New York City's Greenwich Village, as in the comics. Swinton confirmed her role in the film in July, when Rachel McAdams was being considered for the female lead. McAdams cautioned that "it's still super-early, and I don't know where that's gonna go, if it's gonna go anywhere at all", but she ultimately confirmed her role during the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. Mads Mikkelsen entered into early negotiations to play a villain in August, "one of a number of actors being considered for the unspecified villianous role." In September 2015, Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn stated that many of the crew that worked on that film were unable to return for its sequel, because they had committed to Doctor Strange. Derrickson also revealed that Gunn had provided notes on the script, beyond the general conversing the MCU directors have between themselves for their films. At the end of the month, Feige stated that additional casting announcements would be made "before the end of the year", and by early November, Michael Stuhlbarg entered negotiations to appear in the film as Nicodemus West, a rival of Strange. Derrickson had offered the role to Stuhlbarg because he was interested in working with the actor, and he agreed to join the cast after reading some Doctor Strange comics and being drawn to the character's "guilt-ridden arc" where West "blames himself for ruining the surgery on Strange's hands and robbing him of his ability to operate". Feige felt that the visuals of the film needed "to be a Ditko/Kubrick/Miyazaki/The Matrix mind-trip", and said that "You don't get into it in Harry Potter, but if a scientist went to Hogwarts he'd find out how some of that stuff is happening! We're not going to spend a lot of time on that, but there will be some of that. And particularly for a character like Strange, who goes from a man of science to a man of faith and who traverses both worlds." In developing the film's magic, Derrickson felt a responsibility to not repeat the representation of magic from previous films, like Fantasia and Harry Potter, wanting "to find a new way to make it feel more tactical and real and surreal. And to root it in gestures as opposed to spoken incantations and things like that." Feige called Doctor Strange the "doorway" into the supernatural side of the MCU, a role that Derrickson noted was also served by the character in the early comics, when the Doctor Strange comics "broke open the Marvel comic book universe into the Marvel multiverse". Discussing the portrayal of other dimensions in the film, Feige stated that it would not explore parallel realities like the comics' "Earth-616 and Earth 617", but would instead feature "dimensions that are so mind-bending that you can barely perceive them", like the Astral plane, Dark Dimension, and Mirror Dimension. Astrophysicist Adam Frank served as a scientific consultant on the film, having already known Derrickson and been a Marvel fan since childhood. Frank advised on "the human experience of space and time", helping Marvel conceive ideas for their cinematic multiverse, and suggesting dialogue for characters based on their beliefs, whether they were materialist, rationalist, reductionist, or "had this enlarged perspective." He noted that modern movie goers may not necessarily understand these complex scientific ideas, but do appear to appreciate that "amazing things happen from science. So by grounding your stories enough in science to not so much make them plausible, but to allow that science to open up new possibilities—people are used to that in their lives. So I think it makes sense to them, and it's exciting to them". This was an aspect of previous MCU films that Frank called a "great thing ... speaking as a scientist", saying that "they build a coherent and consistent universe that respects the scientific process and that uses enough of real science to make things plausible or build off them." Principal photography began in Nepal on November 4, 2015, under the working title Checkmate. Ben Davis, serving as cinematographer for the film after doing the same on Guardians of the Galaxy and , described Doctor Strange as Marvel's Fantasia, and noted that a lot of previsualization was required to figure out how to shoot the "psychedelic", M. C. Escher-inspired imagery. Davis used the Arri Alexa 65 camera for the film, along with the Arri Alexa XT Plus. Vision Research Phantom Flex 4Ks, which shoot up to 1000 fps, were used for high speed sequences like Strange's car crash. Derrickson chose Nepal as a location to feature an "Eastern city" that would not be familiar to most audiences. After scouting and deciding on locations in the country, many of those areas were destroyed by the April 2015 Nepal earthquake. Rather than choosing another country, Derrickson and Cumberbatch felt that bringing attention and tourism to Nepal following the event "was all the more reason to shoot there". Cumberbatch said that shooting in Nepal was "absolutely vital to this film, I think not least because it's so based in something that is exotic. It was a magical way to start the shoot. It's important to a film like this—which has a profound gearshift into a spiritual and otherworldly dimension—that the portal for that be in a place that actually happens in itself to be incredibly spiritual and marvelous." The eventual filming locations around the Kathmandu Valley included the Pashupatinath and Swayambhunath Temples; Thamel and New Road in Kathmandu; and the Patan Durbar Square in Patan. Production moved to Longcross Studios in the UK on November 11, and was scheduled to stay there until March 2016. The real Kathmandu street that led into the fictional Kamar-Taj courtyard was replicated at Longcross, which production designer Charles Wood described as "very hard because Kathmandu is a most beautiful city and it's steeped in history. To transition from that level of detail and history, with the shape of the streets, the warping of the buildings, these ancient bricks and these ancient tiles, was a real challenge." For authenticity, the set was dressed with real food, and populated with dogs, pigeons, and Nepalese extras, many of whom were relatives of people who live on the real Kathmandu street. The inside of Kamar-Taj was also constructed at Longcross, with "sculptors creating beautiful columns and wall decorations and craftsmen building screens and doors to evoke the exotic feel of the ancient sanctuary." Wood's goal was to make the set feel like the Ancient One and her disciples actually lived there, and give it a "truly spiritual, truly magical" feel, while integrating it into a real building that the production filmed in Kathmandu. This and the Kathmandu street were two of twenty-one sets that the crew built at Longcross. Others included Doctor Strange's Sanctum Sanctorum, and a Hong Kong street "complete with over 80 neon signs and a giant roof to keep the rain out." Filming also took place in Hong Kong, and in New York City's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood. Additional New York City-set scenes were shot at Shepperton Studios, and later in London. By the end of November, the casting of Mikkelsen and Stuhlbarg was confirmed, alongside Amy Landecker and Scott Adkins in unspecified roles. Additionally, Benedict Wong heard about the film from his friend Ejiofor, and sought a role in it himself. He was cast as Wong in January, and immediately joined the production for filming. Lamborghini provided six Huracán LP 610-4s for use in the film, one of which the production wrecked during filming. Lamborghini said that they felt "there are a lot of characteristics of Doctor Strange that are connected with the Lamborghini philosophy." The Lamborghini crash scene was filmed at Northfleet, Kent by the River Thames. Also in January 2016, filming took place at Exeter College, Oxford. The next month, Feige revealed that the film originally had a prologue that took place in CERN, due to the real world research being done at the facility on alternate dimensions and parallel universes. Production moved to New York City's Flatiron District in April, where set photos revealed that Zara Phythian had joined the cast. Principal photography wrapped in New York City on April 3, 2016. In June 2016, a Diamond Select Toys press release for Doctor Strange toys, in their Marvel Minimates line, named Mikkelsen's character Kaecilius and McAdams' character Christine Palmer. Mikkelsen's role was confirmed in an official tie-in comic for the film, while McAdams' was confirmed at San Diego Comic Con 2016. Additionally, Benjamin Bratt was revealed to have been cast as Jonathan Pangborn; Adkins' role was revealed to be Lucian, a follower of Kaecilius; and Landecker's role was later revealed to be anesthesiologist Dr. Bruner. The latter was mostly cut from the film, with Landecker explaining that she had been cast in the small role, for two scenes at the beginning of the film, because Derrickson was a fan of her performance in A Serious Man, which also starred Stuhlbarg. After filming her first scene, in which she assists Strange with a surgery, Landecker asked not to be involved in the other scene because she had no lines for it and was only seen from behind, and instead wished to attend a special premiere at the White House for her series Transparent. The actress believed she was later cut from the first scene, but she is still credited for a brief appearance. Also, Derrickson revealed that Lulu Wilson had been cast as Strange's sister, for a scene depicting her drowning at a young age. The scene had been shot, and Derrickson thought it was "great [as a] self-contained scene", but it "didn't work" with the rest of the film, and was cut. Also at San Diego Comic Con, Derrickson noted that there were still "a couple pickup shoots" to do for the film to "clarify the logic". Further content for the film's training sequence was also shot during these reshoots, as early test audiences "loved [the training portion of the film] and wanted more". Wong indicated that the reshoots had been completed in August. Dan Harmon wrote material for these additional scenes, which Derrickson described as "script analysis and dialogue work", not enough to receive credit in the film. Feige said that in addition to any humor that Harmon could add to the film, he was brought on to "give us his opinions on the sci-fi concepts." Before the film's sets were demolished, director Taika Waititi took advantage by writing and filming a scene featuring Strange meeting Chris Hemsworth's Thor. The scene was for Ragnarok and shot before that film began production. Derrickson and Marvel felt the scene was "kind of perfect" to show Strange joining the wider MCU after his stand alone introduction, and so added it to Doctor Strange as a mid-credits scene. A post-credits scene, directed by Derrickson, teases Mordo's role as an antagonist to Strange in a potential Doctor Strange sequel. Stan Lee's cameo in the film was directed by Gunn on the set of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. This was alongside several other Lee cameos, to limit the amount of travel he had to do for the next four MCU films. Gunn contacted Derrickson during the shoot to ensure that the shot matched up with the respective Doctor Strange scene, and "kept throwing lines at" Lee on the day to give Derrickson and Marvel plenty of options to choose from for the film. Additional options Gunn filmed included Lee reading a book and asking a gentleman next to him if he knew what the word excelsior meant; Lee laughing really hard and stating he was laughing for no reason, being "totally crazy"; and Lee laughing hysterically at a Garfield book, noting how the character "HATES Mondays but he LOVES lasagna!". Gunn felt the Garfield option was originally meant to appear in the final version of the film, but ended up being too long for the scene. By October 10, 2016, Derrickson had completed the film. Feige described the film's use of 3D as serving the storytelling, saying, "hopefully it helps bend people's minds even more than with just the flat screen." He said that "there are sequences of the film that 3D is actually necessary to tell the dimensional story that is happening through visuals". However, he noted that during visual effects reviews for the film it became apparent that these sequences were adversely affecting the story when viewed in 2D, which necessitated adjustments so the sequences would work in all formats. Over one hour of footage in the film was "specially formatted" for IMAX. Visual effects for Doctor Strange were provided by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Method Studios, Framestore, Lola VFX, Luma Pictures, Rise FX, Crafty Apes, and SPOV, contributing to 1450 effects shots. Previsualization was handled by The Third Floor. All vendors worked on the common magical elements (mandalas, magical runes shields, whips, stalks and aerial 'lily pads', and portals). Visual effects supervisor Stephane Ceretti, who also worked on Guardians of the Galaxy, explained the similarities and differences between the two films, saying, "there's some resemblance in some of the things that we've done. In the same way, it's a totally different world. In [Guardians], it's more sci-fi oriented and crazy colors. More of a comedy kind of take on things as well. This one is a little bit more serious. It's also a little bit more trippy. We use very different techniques, actually. Guardians was also for us a huge animation film. This one was less of it. This one was more about the environments and effects". Further discussing the film's visuals, Derrickson described influences as "the Steve Ditko, Stan Lee comics [which] were all about these weird visuals", as well as "a fair amount of surrealist art and photography and M.C. Escher". Additional inspiration for the film's visuals came from "a bunch of experimental, fractal videos from YouTube" that Derrickson found, and the mobile video game Monument Valley. Derrickson's "ambition was to use cutting-edge visual effects to do things that are fresh and new—to not just blow things up." Feige explained that one of the more difficult areas to be inventive was the action sequences, as Derrickson did not want them "to simply be: someone shoots a bolt of lightning, and someone blocks a ball of lightning, so someone throws another bolt of lightning..." Instead, they tried to incorporate the use of different dimensions into the action "in the interest of creating a visual tapestry that is totally different in terms of an action scene we've seen in any other movies." On the film's set pieces, Derrickson reiterated that the film's astral fight scene was based on The Oath comic, while adding that the end fight was "an attempt to capture the quality of that artwork" from the original comics, and the mirror dimension chase was an attempt to take Inception "to the Nth degree and take it way more surreal and way farther. But I certainly owe something to that movie." Specifically for the climax of the film, Derrickson wanted to play on the superhero trope of "a big fight scene where they're tearing up a city, and there's a portal opening up and they have to close it", subverting it by having the villain defeated with an intelligent use of power rather than showing "which CGI thing can hit the other CGI thing harder". ILM worked on the folding Manhattan mirror sequence (chosen because of their work creating a digital New York in The Avengers) and the time fight sequence in Hong Kong, which consisted of 200 and 150 shots, respectively. They began work on the film 10 months before filming began to plan out the Manhattan sequence; it was mainly CGI, though some New York location shots were used. The sequence was mainly handled by ILM's San Francisco and Vancouver offices. The Hong Kong time sequence was done mainly by ILM's London office. ILM also created digital doubles for many of the actors, which were shared with the other vendors. Method Studios, who worked on the Quantum Realm in Ant-Man, worked on the "magical mystery tour" sequence, with Strange hurtling through various dimensions. The sequence was handled by Method's Los Angeles studio, with their Vancouver studio contributing the opening shot of the sequence. The only shot Method did not work on in the sequence was the one that linked to Dormammu, as Luma Pictures assisted in his creation (they handled his other appearances in the film). Method created 7 dimensions for the sequence: the initial wormhole to the "Speaker Cone"; the Bioluminesce world; the fractals of "soft solid" world; a version of the Quantum Realm; Strange falling through his own eye and Cosmic Scream; the Dark Dimension; and the Shape Shifting realm. The Shape Shifting realm originally had Strange morphing and changing shape, but that was ultimately removed as Derrickson felt the audience needed to see Cumberbatch. Method's Vancouver studio created Strange's car crash, the rooftop training, and the sequence in which Strange experiments with time on an apple in the Kamar-Taj library. The car crash blended the high speed photography and some green screen sequences, with digital assets for both Cumberbatch and the car. In total, Method worked on 270 effects shots. Framestore was chosen to work on the Cloak of Levitation, due to their work creating Rocket in Guardians of the Galaxy. Ceretti called Cloak's actions "kind of scripted but not as deeply" as the end result, and said that during the pre-visualization process "we had a big discussion about the arc of the story of the Cloak in the film". Framestore also worked on environment shots, the Mandelbrot set sequences, high resolution digital doubles, the astral form, and the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak restraint for Kaecilius, totaling over 365 shots. Alexis Wajsbrot, Framestore's CG Supervisor, called the astral form "one of the hardest effects we've had to deal with at Framestore; finding the right balance of a look that was subtle but also beautiful." Lola VFX worked on the Zealots' eyes, supplementing the make-up work with effects based on a geode. They also created digital tears for Kaecilius when he is in the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak. In addition to Dormammu and the Dark Dimension, Luma Pictures also created the first mirror sequence at the beginning of the film. In creating Dormammu, Ceretti stated that they wanted to avoid the fiery head look from the comics as "it had been done before. The whole idea is he's a character that lives in-between dimensions. He can also take whatever shapes he wants to take. [When he is talking to Strange] you can feel all these ripples in his face and all that stuff… these kind of opening windows to other dimensions, and all the reflective qualities of it. We really wanted to add the evocation of that fire, but we didn't want to do fire so we went for [a] multicolored approach to try and keep the psychedelic [look] of the entire space." On the Dark Dimension, Ceretti said, "We tried to make it alive all the time—the whole idea of the Dark Dimension is that it's a dynamic environment," with the Luma team referencing the Ditko art and a poster that when lit "with a blacklight it becomes very saturated [with] colors, crazy blacklight colors." He continued, "It was all about finding the right balance between all these elements to pay homage to and to tribute the work of Steve Ditko, but to make it more current to the 21st century. If you look at the detail of the shapes that we have in the Dark Dimension, you can almost point to things in the comic books [that] we really tried to be faithful to." In May 2016, Michael Giacchino revealed that he would score the film. Derrickson called the score "magic in the literal sense of the word," adding Giacchino "is doing what good scorers do, which is he is not just creating music that supports the images, he's adding a third thing to the movie. It becomes something new with his music in there that it didn't have with temp music." The score was recorded at Abbey Road Studios. During a recording session, Paul McCartney heard one of Giacchino's cues being recorded and likened it to The Beatles song "I Am the Walrus". Derrickson, a Bob Dylan fan, looked for a place in the film to include one of his songs, but could not find one. However, he was able to include the song "Interstellar Overdrive" by Pink Floyd. Derrickson had hoped to use either "Interstellar Overdrive" or The Jimi Hendrix Experience's "Are You Experienced?" for the film's credits, but the royalties to use either in the credits were too expensive, resulting in Giacchino creating the track "The Master of the Mystic End Credits". A soundtrack album from Hollywood Records was released digitally on October 21, 2016, with a physical release on November 18, 2016. In August 2015, a concept art trailer narrated by Derrickson was shown at the D23 Expo. The images showed artwork of Cumberbatch in a traditional Doctor Strange outfit from the comics, as well as a rough sequence of the plot, highlighting points such as Strange's car crash, his journey for healing, and fighting Ejiofor as Mordo (before the character was moved away from a villainous role in the film per discussions between Derrickson and the actor). The trailer was met with "a very big reaction from the gathered crowd." On April 12, 2016, the first teaser trailer for the film debuted on Jimmy Kimmel Live!. Clark Collis of Entertainment Weekly compared the "series of kaleidoscopic, world-bending scenes" featured in the trailer to the film Inception, as did Scott Mendelson of Forbes. Forbes added that the structure of the trailer resembled early marketing for the film Batman Begins. The Hollywood Reporters Graeme McMillian criticised these similarities, as well as similarities to The Matrix and between Cumberbatch's American accent and that of Hugh Laurie's Gregory House from House, calling them not "necessarily a real problem, of course ... [but] there's nothing there outside the derivative aspects: due to the nature of the trailer, there's no story beyond the 'white man finds enlightenment in Asia' trope and barely any dialogue to let audiences decide that maybe the performances will elevate the material." McMillian did enjoy the visual effects and the visual of "Tilda Swinton literally knock[ing] Benedict Cumberbatch's soul out of his body," but concluded, "as an introduction to not only a brand new franchise for Marvel, but a potential new genre, this feels far less bold and assured" than the first trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy. In July 2016, Marvel Comics released a prelude tie-in comic written by Will Corona Pilgrim, with art by Jorge Fornés. The issue sees four Masters of the Mystic Arts–Kaecilius, Wong, Tina Minoru and Daniel Drumm–pursue a woman who has stolen a mystical relic. A second issue, centered on the Ancient One training apprentices in the magical arts at Kamar-Taj, was released a month later. Derrickson, Cumberbatch, Swinton, Ejiofor, McAdams, Mikkelsen, and Wong attended San Diego Comic-Con 2016, where they debuted an exclusive clip and the second trailer for the film. The next month, the same Comic-Con clip was screened at the Asia Pop Comic Convention Manila. In September 2016, an additional prelude comic was released, centered on Kaecilius, while behind the scenes footage was released as a special feature on the Blu-ray. Also in September, Marvel, in partnership with Dolby Laboratories, Broadcom, Synchrony Bank, and Society for Science & the Public, announced "The Magic of STEM Challenge", aimed at females aged 15 through 18 in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics education) fields. The challenge was for contestants to submit videos of them finding mentors to explore ideas once thought to only be possible with magic. Five winners would attend the world premiere of the film, and receive a tour of Walt Disney Studios, as well as a $1,000 saving account from Synchrony Bank, with one grand prize winner receiving a mentorship with Walt Disney Studio's Digital Team. On October 10, 2016, approximately 15 minutes of footage was screened at 115 IMAX 3D locations in North America, and select 3D and IMAX 3D locations worldwide. Fans attending the event received an exclusive IMAX poster for the film. Umberto Gonzales of TheWrap called the footage "stunning to behold". He added that a sequence shown in which the Ancient One sends Strange "on his first trippy tour through the multiverse" was "where the IMAX 3D really shines. The audience is given an incredible visual tour of the multiverse which features other dimensions and other realities. It really is something to behold in IMAX 3D," concluding that "after being shown only 15 minutes of incredible preview footage, IMAX 3D is the definitive format to see the film." Britt Hayes for Screen Crush felt the footage was "dizzying" and "far weirder and wilder than [the] trailers are letting on," though felt it was a bit difficult "to judge some of what was shown out of context (especially earlier scenes)". Regarding the same sequence where the Ancient One sends Strange through the multiverse, Hayes said, "Seth Rogen's comedic drug trip sequences have nothing on the psychedelic visuals employed here. It's astounding, elaborate stuff, and easily provides the most entertaining moments in the footage." IGN's Terri Schwartz said the sequences shown were where "Derrickson's horror aesthetics shine through". Marvel provided Twitter stickers, Giphy content, Facebook Live, Snapchat lenses and filter, Tumblr stunts, and Instagram special content related to the film. Additionally, Microsoft Surface had a promotional sponsorship of the film, due to the use of the device in the filmmaking process. A partnership with Google's Tilt Brush app featured a "Mixed Reality" "stunt with artists across Los Angeles, London and Hong Kong, inspired by different dimensions in Doctor Strange and recreating the worlds in VR for an immersive visual experience. Doctor Strange held its world premiere in Hong Kong on October 13, 2016, and had its premiere in Hollywood at the TCL Chinese Theatre and El Capitan Theatre on October 20, 2016. The film was released in the United Kingdom on October 25, 2016, alongside a total of 33 markets in its first weekend, with 213 IMAX screens in 32 of those markets. It was screened at the EW PopFest on October 28, 2016 in Los Angeles. Doctor Stranges North America release on November 4 took place in 3,882 venues, of which 3,530 were in 3D, along with 379 IMAX theaters, 516 premium large-format (Disney's biggest release in that format to date), and 189 D-Box locations. Overall, Doctor Strange had the widest IMAX release ever globally, along with being the first film to release on more than 1,000 IMAX screens. It was previously reported to have been scheduled for a July 8, 2016 release, before the production schedule shifted to accommodate Cumberbatch's other commitments. Doctor Strange was released on digital download by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on February 14, 2017, and on Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D and DVD on February 28, 2017. The digital and Blu-ray releases include behind-the-scenes featurettes; audio commentary; deleted scenes; a blooper reel; an exclusive preview of the Phase Three films Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, and ; and Team Thor: Part 2, a continuation of the "mockumentary" short film Team Thor, that was directed by Waititi. Best Buy released an exclusive collector's edition steelbook case for the regular and 3D Blu-ray release, featuring art based on the Book of Cagliostro and the Eye of Agamotto. Target's Blu-ray versions have an additional exclusive featurette, while the digital version also features an exclusive featurette. Doctor Strange grossed $232.6 million in the United States and Canada and $445.1 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $677.7 million. The film became the biggest IMAX opening in November domestically ($12.2 million), internationally ($24 million), and globally ($24.2 million), overtaking Interstellars records. By November 27, 2016, the film had become the biggest single-character introduction film in the MCU. Deadline Hollywood calculated the net profit of the film to be $122.65 million, accounting for "production budgets, P&A;, talent participations and other costs, with box office grosses and ancillary revenues from" home media, placing it 11th on their list of 2016's "Most Valuable Blockbusters". Doctor Strange earned $32.6 million on its opening day in the United States and Canada, including Thursday previews, with a total weekend gross of $85.1 million; IMAX contributed $12.2 million to the opening weekend gross, with 3D contributing $24 million. The film was the number one film for the weekend, and became the second largest opening in November for Disney. Initial projections for the film in late August 2016 had it earning as low as $50 million to as high as $88 million in its opening weekend, with projections revised to $65–75 million closer to the film's release. Doctor Strange remained the top film in its second weekend, and fell to second in its third, behind Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. In its fourth weekend, Doctor Strange was the third highest-grossing film, behind Fantastic Beasts and Moana. It fell to fifth in its fifth and sixth weekends, and by its seventh weekend had fallen to the ninth-highest- grossing place. It was projected to earn $255 million for its total domestic gross. Outside the United States and Canada, Doctor Strange earned $87.7 million in its first weekend from 33 markets, becoming the top film in all markets except Lithuania and Finland. South Korea was the top market overall with $18.1 million, locally the biggest opening weekend ever for an original Marvel release, along with an all-time best opening for an IMAX film. IMAX garnered a record $7.8 million, the best international IMAX debut for a film in the month of October, with Russia seeing its biggest Saturday IMAX gross for a Marvel film. Additionally, Hong Kong ($3.2 million), Thailand ($2.5 million), Malaysia ($2.4 million), and Singapore ($2.2 million) also had the biggest opening weekend ever for an original Marvel film. In its second weekend, the film opened in 22 additional markets, becoming the top film in China with $44.4 million, the highest 3-day opening weekend for a first installment superhero film there. China's opening was also the third highest for an MCU film, behind Avengers: Age of Ultron and Captain America: Civil War, as well as the best 3-day opening for an IMAX film in November with $6.3 million. IMAX also set November opening records in India, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador. Brazil was also a top market, earning $7.9 million. Doctor Strange remained the number one film in its third weekend for the third consecutive week in Denmark, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Australia, Hong Kong, South Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Singapore, and number one for the second week in China and Russia. It also became the highest-grossing original MCU release in India, Hong Kong, South Korea, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Its fourth weekend saw China's total gross surpass $100 million, "an increasingly rare feat in 2016." The next weekend, Doctor Strange opened in Argentina, where it was the number one film and earned $1 million. The film's fourteenth weekend saw it open in Japan, where it was number one with $4.5 million. , the film's largest markets were China ($110.3 million), South Korea ($41.3 million), and the United Kingdom and Ireland ($27.9 million). The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports an 89% approval rating with an average score of 7.3/10, based on 358 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "Doctor Strange artfully balances its outré source material against the blockbuster constraints of the MCU, delivering a thoroughly entertaining superhero origin story in the bargain." On Metacritic, the film holds a score of 72 out of 100, based on reviews from 49 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it a 91% overall positive score and a 73% "definite recommend". The Hollywood Reporters Todd McCarthy called Doctor Strange "an engaging, smartly cast and sporadically eye-popping addition" to the franchise, adding "this action movie ostensibly rooted in the mind-expanding tenets of Eastern mysticism is different enough to establish a solid niche alongside the blockbuster combine's established money machines." McCarthy, in addition to praising the acting, felt that there were certain sequences that "go far beyond [Inception] in visual spectacle" and that the time manipulation sequences, "seen to outstanding advantage in 3D, [were what] mind-trip-seeking audiences back in Doctor Strange's origin days would have called 'far-out' but today's fans will simply deem 'amazing'." Peter Debruge of Variety called the film "Marvel's most satisfying entry since Spider-Man 2," and wrote that despite having "the same look, feel, and fancy corporate sheen" as the other MCU films, it "boasts an underlying originality and freshness missing from the increasingly cookie-cutter comic-book realm of late." Debruge also praised the casting along with the multitude of visual effects the film was able to achieve. Alonso Duralde, reviewing for TheWrap said, "True, Doctor Strange is an origin story, and occasionally hemmed in by the genre's narrative requirements, but it's smart enough to bring in great British actors to make the predictable paces and life lessons feel fresh and fascinating." Regarding the film's visuals, Duralde praised them, exclaiming, "In a year where bloated, empty spectacles have induced a crushing level of CG fatigue, this funny, freaky adventure reminds us of how effective VFX can be when they've got some imagination behind them." Manohla Dargis of The New York Times said, "The giddily enjoyable Doctor Strange ... is part of Marvel's strategy for world domination, yet it's also so visually transfixing, so beautiful and nimble that you may even briefly forget the brand." Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times said, "Within the familiar narrative contours of the origin story, writer-director Scott Derrickson crams in enough out-of-body experiences, spatial-temporal shenanigans and dazzlingly kaleidoscopic visuals to make you wonder if he and his co-writers ... were dropping acid behind the scenes." Conversely, Angelica Jade Bastién, writing for RogerEbert.com, said, "For all of its wondrous world-building and trippy effects, Doctor Strange isn't the evolutionary step forward for Marvel that it needs to be storytelling-wise. Underneath all of its improvements, the core narrative is something we've seen countless times." Mara Reinstein of US Weekly called the film "joyless" and wrote, "Despite [Benedict Cumberbatch's] alluring powers, he can't save an overly convoluted film that relies on a galaxy of derivative 3-D special-effect tricks... Nobody is having much fun here – save for the doctor's Cloak of Levitation that has its own devilish personality and can whisk him out of scary situations." Rex Reed of the New York Observer called Doctor Strange "an awkwardly cliché-riddled mix of hamstrung imagination and bizarro reality" and said, "None of it makes any sense... For characterization, dialogue, narrative arc, acceptable acting and coherence, go elsewhere." Adam Graham of The Detroit News said, "Cumberbatch is wildly charismatic in the lead role... But that's the thing: He's a better party guest than he is a host. Doctor Strange is a fine introduction, but by the end, you're not sad to be headed for the door." In April 2016, co-writer Cargill stated that Marvel felt some initial ideas for the film from him and Derrickson highlighted too much of the "weird stuff" associated with the character to feature in an origin story, but told the duo to hold onto them for potential future films. In October 2016, Derrickson confirmed he had plans for a sequel, saying, "I love the character, I love the visual possibilities, and I know the comics so well—[the first movie is] the tip of an iceberg. There's so much progress that can be made." He would like to follow the example of The Dark Knight and "bring in a villain where you really got to go deep [and have] a more visceral experience". Cumberbatch added that he had signed on for at least one more Doctor Strange solo film. Derrickson hoped to feature Nightmare in a potential sequel, and expressed interest in further exploring the characters Jonathan Pangborn and Hamir in a sequel, after their smaller roles in the first film. He also explained that he is being "kept in the loop" about how the Avengers films will use Strange, because of his close relationships with Feige and co-director Joe Russo. Spaihts has also expressed interest in seeing Clea appear in a potential sequel. By April 2017, it was reported that Derrickson would return for a potential sequel, beginning work on it after fulfilling his commitments to the television series, Locke & Key. Despite no official announcements, Wong said in October 2018 that he expected filming on a sequel to begin by the end of that year. By December 2018, Derrickson had "quietly" finalized a deal to return to direct the sequel, and Cumberbatch and Wong were confirmed to reprise their roles from the first film, with McAdams stated as likely to return. In July 2019, the sequel was announced as Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, with a release date of May 7, 2021. Feige and Derrickson revealed that the sequel would have more of a horror tone than the first film, that Elizabeth Olsen would reprise her MCU role of Wanda Maximoff / Scarlet Witch, and that her Disney+ series WandaVision would tie into the events of the film. The film would also tie into the Disney+ series Loki. In October 2019, Collider reported that Jade Bartlett would be the film's screenwriter. In January 2020, Marvel and Derrickson announced that he would no longer direct the film due to creative differences, but would remain an executive producer on the film. No delays were expected for the start of filming that May.

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Lost in Space is an American science fiction television series and is a reimagining of the 1965 series of the same name (itself a reimagining of the 1812 novel The Swiss Family Robinson), following the adventures of a family of space colonists whose spaceship veers off course. Produced by Legendary Television, Synthesis Entertainment, Clickety-Clack Productions, and Applebox Entertainment, the show is written by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless, with Zack Estrin serving as showrunner. Netflix released the series on April 13, 2018, renewing it the following month for a second season. The second season premiered on December 24, 2019. In the aftermath of an impact event that threatens the survival of humanity, the Robinson family is selected for the 24th mission of the Resolute (24th Colonist Group), an interstellar spacecraft carrying selected families to colonize the Alpha Centauri star system. Before they reach their destination, an alien robot breaches the Resolutes hull. Forced to evacuate the mothership in short-range Jupiter spacecraft, scores of colonists, among them the Robinsons, crash on a nearby habitable planet. There they must contend with a strange environment and battle their own personal demons as they search for a way back to the Resolute. Molly Parker as mission commander Maureen Robinson, an aerospace engineer taking her family on the mission to colonize Alpha Centauri in hopes of building a new life on a better world. Married to John Robinson, she is the mother of Judy, Penny, and Will Robinson., Toby Stephens as John Robinson, former U.S. Navy SEAL and husband to Maureen. He is father to Penny and Will and the adoptive father to Judy., Maxwell Jenkins as 11-year-old (12 year old in season 2) Will Robinson, who forms a tight bond with the Robot, which he saves from destruction during a forest fire., Taylor Russell as 18-year-old (19 year old in season 2) Judy Robinson, who serves as mission doctor, having received accelerated medical training., Mina Sundwall as 15-year-old (16 year old in season 2) Penny Robinson., Ignacio Serricchio as Don West, a ship mechanic and smuggler of luxury goods. He is accompanied by his lucky chicken, Debbie., Parker Posey as June Harris / Dr. Smith, a petty criminal who assumes the identity of her sister, Jessica, to take her place on the Resolute. She subsequently impersonates Dr. Zachary Smith during the first attack to take his seat on an evacuating Jupiter ship. The theft of the doctor's identity is a reference to the corresponding character of Dr. Smith in the original television series (also, her character, June Harris, is named for Jonathan Harris, who played Smith on the original series)., Brian Steele as the Robot, an alien robot being that Will encounters following the crash. The robot has a different form from the ones that appeared in the previous series and film., Ajay Friese as Vijay Dhar (season 2; recurring season 1), Victor's son and Penny's love interest, Sibongile Mlambo as Angela Goddard (season 2; recurring season 1), an engineer and fellow survivor struggling with post traumatic stress disorder in the wake of her husband's death during the attack on the Resolute. Raza Jaffrey as Victor Dhar, the representative of the 24th Colony group and father to Vijay., Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa as Hiroki Watanabe, a biologist and friend of Maureen, Yukari Komatsu as Naoko Watanabe, Hiroki's daughter and considered the best pilot among the colonists, Kiki Sukezane as Aiko Watanabe, Hiroki's granddaughter, Veenu Sandhu as Prisha Dhar, Victor's wife, Adam Greydon Reid as Peter Beckert, a survivor of the Resolute and Victor's associate., Amelia Burstyn as Diane, the communications officer on the Resolute., Iain Belcher as Evan, an electrician and survivor on the unknown planet., Shaun Parkes as Captain Radic, commander of the Resolute in charge of security operations, Douglas Hodge as Officer Hastings, an intelligence officer on the Resolute who wants to get the ship to Alpha Centauri at all costs; including stranding hundreds of colonists on an alien planet., AnnaMaria Demara as Tam Roughneck, a mechanic and friend to Don West; dies in episode "Diamonds in the Sky." JJ Feild as Officer Ben Adler, head of the Advanced Technology unit on the Resolute. He seeks to understand the robots and their technology, Sakina Jaffrey as Captain Kamal, becomes commander of the Resolute following the incapacitation of Captain Radic., Tattiawna Jones as Ava, the head mechanic on the Resolute and Don's superior., Jarret John as Neil Caird, head of security on the Resolute, Aria DeMaris as Isabel Azevedo, a physicist and passenger on the Resolute. She is wife of Aubrey and mother of Elise., Alison Araya as Aubrey Azevedo, a physicist and passenger on the Resolute, she is the wife of Isabel and mother to Elise., Rob LaBelle as Mr. Jackson, the school teacher aboard the Resolute, Nevis Unipan as Samantha, a little girl who was left on the Resolute following the evacuation. She befriends the Robinson's. Selma Blair as Jessica Harris, June's wealthy younger sister, Bill Mumy as Dr. Zachary Smith, the real Dr. Smith, whose identity June steals. As a child, Mumy portrayed Will Robinson in the original Lost in Space series from 1965 to 1968, Angela Cartwright as Selma Harris, June's mother. As a child, Cartwright portrayed Penny Robinson in the original Lost in Space series from 1965 to 1968, Rowan Schlosburg as Connor, a survivor of the Resolute on the unknown planet. In October 2014, it was announced that Legendary Television and Synthesis Entertainment were developing a new reboot of Lost in Space and had hired screenwriting duo Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless to pen the pilot episodes. In November 2015, Netflix landed the project. On June 29, 2016, Netflix ordered a full 10 episode season of Lost in Space, with Zack Estrin as executive producer and showrunner. Sazama, Sharpless, Kevin Burns, Jon Jashni, Neil Marshall, and Marc Helwig also serve as executive producers. Production on the first season began in February 2017, in Vancouver, British Columbia, and concluded in July 2017. Season 2 began production in September 2018, in Iceland, and was set to conclude in January 2019. On March 31, 2018, the series pilot was screened at Awesome Con in Washington, D.C. The first season was released on April 13, 2018, on Netflix. On June 4, 2019, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released DVDs and Blu-rays of the first season titled "Lost In Space: The Complete First Season". The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 68% approval rating for Season 1 with an average rating of 6.43/10, based on 75 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads: "Lost in Spaces production values are ambitious enough to attract sci-fi adventure fans, while the story's large heart adds an emotional anchor to all the deep space derring-do." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a normalized score of 58 out of 100 based on 27 critics for Season 1, indicating "mixed or average reviews". David Griffin of IGN gave the first season a rating of 8.5/10, calling it "an excellent sci-fi adventure with a slight villain problem," giving particular praise to the Robinson family, while criticizing Parker Posey's Dr. Smith as an unsophisticated and one-dimensional character who lacks redeeming qualities. In contrast, Jen Chaney of Vulture characterized Posey's performance as providing "understated, sly comedic touches", and Beth Elderkin of Gizmodo agrees: "Her performance definitely includes the character’s trademark levity and humor." The second season was received more positively with Rotten Tomatoes reporting a 82% approval rating for Season 2 with an average rating of 6.6/10, based on 11 reviews. Charles William Mumy Jr. (; born February 1, 1954) is an American actor and musician and a figure in the science-fiction community/comic book fandom. He came to prominence in the 1960s as a child actor, when he was credited as Billy Mumy—an era which included his appearing on television in The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and on film in Dear Brigitte, followed by an iconic three-season role as Will Robinson in the 1960s CBS sci-fi series Lost in Space. He later appeared as lonely teenager Sterling North in the Disney film Rascal (1969) and Teft in the film Bless the Beasts and Children (1971). In the 1990s, he performed the role of Lennier in all five seasons of the syndicated sci-fi TV series Babylon 5 and narrated A&E; Network's Emmy Award-winning series Biography. Mumy is also known for his musical career as a guitarist, singer, songwriter and composer: he is an Emmy nominee for original music in Adventures in Wonderland (1991). As a musician Mumy performs as a solo artist, an occasional guest performer, and as half of the duo Barnes & Barnes. From 1988 through the 90s he performed at the San Diego Comic-Con and other comics related events as part of the band Seduction of the Innocent (named after the book by Fredric Wertham) along with Miguel Ferrer, Steve Leialoha, Max Allan Collins and John "Chris" Christensen. The band released one CD, The Golden Age. Mumy was born in San Gabriel, California to Charles William Mumy, a cattle rancher, and Muriel Gertrude Mumy (née Gould). He began his professional career at age six, and has worked on more than four hundred television episodes, eighteen films, various commercials, and scores of voice-over projects. He has also worked as a musician, songwriter, recording artist, and writer. Among Mumy's earliest television roles was six-year-old Willy in the "Donald's Friend" (1960) episode of the NBC-TV family drama series National Velvet, starring Lori Martin. He starred in three episodes of CBS-TV's original Twilight Zone: "It's a Good Life" (November 1961), as a child who terrorizes his town with psychic powers (a role he later reprised along with his daughter Liliana in the It's Still a Good Life episode of the second revival series); "In Praise of Pip" (September 1963), as a vision of Jack Klugman's long- neglected dying son; and "Long Distance Call" (March 1961) as Billy Bayles, who talks to his dead grandmother through a toy telephone. In 1961, Billy was cast on CBS-TV's Alfred Hitchcock Presents series in "The Door Without a Key", featuring John Larch, who played his father in "It's a Good Life". The same year, Mumy starred as little Jackie in the episode "Bang! You're Dead", featuring Marta Kristen, who later played his sister Judy on Lost in Space. Mumy was cast as Mark Murdock in the "Keep an Eye on Santa Claus" (1962) episode of the ABC-TV drama series Going My Way, starring Gene Kelly. His fellow guest stars were Cloris Leachman (who played his mother in "It's a Good Life"), Steve Brodie, and Frank McHugh. At age eight, Mumy appeared in Jack Palance's ABC-TV circus drama The Greatest Show on Earth (1963); he was cast as Miles, a parentless boy, in the Perry Mason episode "The Case of the Shifty Shoebox" (1963); and he portrayed Freddy in the "End of an Image" (1963) episode of NBC-TV's modern Western series Empire, starring Richard Egan. In 1964, he was cast as Richard Kimble's nephew in ABC-TV's The Fugitive episode, "Home Is the Hunted"; as Barry in the NBC-TV medical drama The Eleventh Hour episode "Sunday Father"; as himself three times in the ABC sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet; in the Disney film For the Love of Willadena; and as a troubled orphan taken in by the Stephenses in the Bewitched fantasy sitcom episode "A Vision of Sugarplums" (December 1964), on ABC-TV. Mumy was reportedly the first choice to portray Eddie Munster in the 1964 CBS situation comedy The Munsters, but his parents objected to the extensive makeup requirements. The role instead went to Butch Patrick. Mumy appeared in one episode as a friend of Eddie's. Mumy guest starred in an episode of NBC-TV's I Dream of Jeannie, "Whatever Became of Baby Custer?" (1965). That same year, he also appeared in an episode of Bewitched entitled "Junior Executive" (1965), in which he played a young Darrin Stevens. Mumy starred in Dear Brigitte (1965), a film adaptation of the novel Erasmus with Freckles, as Erasmus Leaf, a child mathematical genius who develops a crush on Brigitte Bardot (played by herself in the film). His parents, played by James Stewart and Glynis Johns, attempt to manage his obsession. While noted for several roles as both a child and adult actor, Mumy is perhaps best known for his iconic television role the 60s science fiction series. From 1965 to 1968, Mumy portrayed Will Robinson in Lost in Space, who was the recipient of numerous warnings, (most famously "Danger, Will Robinson") from the show's robot character, voiced by Dick Tufeld. Mumy was later cast in Bless the Beasts and Children (1971) as Teft, a leader in a group of misfit teenage boys resolved to save a herd of bison from hunters. He also played a musician friend of Cliff DeYoung's character in the TV movie Sunshine (1973), and later reprised the role in Sunshine Christmas and in the TV series Sunshine. In 1974, he played Nick Butler in the pilot episode of NBC's The Rockford Files and also made an appearance in a later episode in season 1, as a sidewalk artist. In 1988, he played Ben Matlock's genius nephew, Dr. Irwin Bruckner, on Matlock. In 1996, Mumy was a writer and co-creator of Space Cases, a Nickelodeon television show with themes similar to those of Lost in Space. Between 1994–1998 he played the ambassadorial aide Lennier in the syndicated science fiction series Babylon 5. In November 1998, he played Kellin, a Starfleet officer, in the episode "The Siege of AR-558", in which he assists in defeating a Jem'Hadar detachment. To Mumy's delight, his character was human this time; while playing Lennier in Babylon 5, he was required to wear prosthetic makeup. He was more recently seen in a 2006 episode of Crossing Jordan and in the Sci Fi original film A.I. Assault. In 2018, Mumy appeared in the pilot episode of the Netflix remake series, Lost in Space. His character's name is Dr. Z. Smith, in homage to the character played by Jonathan Harris in the 1965 television series. Mumy has narrated over 50 episodes of the Arts & Entertainment Channel's Biography series, as well as hosted and narrated several other documentaries and specials for A & E, Animal Planet network, The Sci-Fi Channel, and E!. His voice acting talents can be heard on animated shows like Ren and Stimpy, Scooby-Doo, , Steven Spielberg's Animaniacs, Little Wizard Adventures, The Oz Kids and Disney's Buzz Lightyear of Star Command and Doc McStuffins. He has done voice over work in national commercials for such businesses as Bud Ice, Farmers Insurance, Ford, Blockbuster, Twix, Oscar Mayer and McDonald's. Mumy is an accomplished musician who plays the banjo, bass, guitar, harmonica, keyboards, mandolin, and percussion. His various musical credits include songs he has written and recorded with America, performed on tour with Shaun Cassidy, and played with Rick Springfield's band in the film Hard to Hold. He created the band The Be Five with other Babylon 5 actors. Mumy has released a number of solo CDs, including Dying to Be Heard, In the Current, Pandora's Box, After Dreams Come True, Los Angeles Times and Ghosts, as well as nine albums with music partner Robert Haimer as Barnes and Barnes. Their most famous hit is the song "Fish Heads", which Rolling Stone magazine named one of the top 100 videos of all time. He also performs with the Jenerators, a blues- rock band based in Los Angeles featuring Tom Hebenstreit on vocals, electric guitars, and keyboards; Mumy on vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, harmonica, keyboards and percussion; Gary Stockdale on vocals and bass; Miguel Ferrer on vocals, percussion and drums; David Jolliffe on guitar, percussion and vocals; and Chris Ross on drums and percussion. Additionally, Mumy released a Byrds-tribute song, "When Roger Was Jim" (2012). In 2017, along with John Cowsill (The Cowsills) and Vicki Peterson (The Bangles) he founded the band Action Skulls. Their first CD (Angels Hear), which also included posthumous contributions from the bassist Rick Rosas, was released on September 27, 2017. Mumy produces and hosts The Real Good Radio Hour, a weekly series on KSAV Internet Radio focusing on various styles of music and the artists who pioneered them. In 1996, Mumy and his Lost in Space costar Jonathan Harris were reunited at a Walt Disney convention in Orlando, Florida. Mumy worked again with Harris on the retrospective special Lost In Space: Forever (1998), where they reprised their roles in a scene written by Mumy (Harris rewrote his own lines). This occurred the year after the rest of the cast (including both Mumy and Harris) stated in a TV Guide article that the Sci Fi Channel planned to do a Lost in Space marathon while promoting a new movie. Harris was to appear in the planned TV movie, Lost in Space: The Journey Home, but died before production was scheduled to start, in 2002, and it was subsequently cancelled. Mumy read the eulogy at Harris' funeral and was asked to narrate an account of his longtime friend's life on A&E; Biography that year. In a 2010 interview on Blog Talk Radio's Lessons Learned, Rick Tocquigny was asked if Mumy was a Jonathan Harris fan before they appeared together on Lost in Space. Tocquigny said that at age five, Mumy was too young to watch his mentor's show The Third Man, which would have been aired late at night, but he was old enough to see The Bill Dana Show. On June 14, 2006, Mumy got to work with Harris one last time, though posthumously. Years before Harris died, he recorded voice work for the animated short The Bolt Who Screwed Christmas, narrating the film and playing the part of The Bolt. As a tribute to Harris, writer-director John Wardlaw added a scene that reunited Lost in Space cast members Mumy, Marta Kristen, and Angela Cartwright as the animated Ratchett family. In May 2013, 11 years after Harris' death in November 2002, Mumy commented on his connection with his friend and acting mentor offscreen and their onscreen connection while working in character as Will Robinson and Dr. Smith onscreen, in Lost in Space. Mumy noted: "I never really had too many uncomfortable moments working with any actor. I was comfortable working with most everybody. It's just the more that Jonathan and I did together, the more he changed the character. He really changed the character of Dr. Smith himself. He really turned him from a snarling saboteur villain to this bumbling insulting kook. The more he played it for comedy, the more Irwin Allen liked it. The show really went the way that Jonathan led it. But we had great chemistry together, and we never had a bad day. We were always prepared, as was Bobby May who was inside the robot. When we had our work to do—and I think this is a very big reason [for] the way it went—they’d get us done in a couple of takes. Nobody screwed up. It was easier for the crew and it was easier for us, and people seemed to like it." Mumy attends Lost in Space reunions and shows, and co- authored a 2015 book, Lost (and Found) in Space with Angela Cartwright. Mumy and co-author Peter David published a short story, "The Black '59" (1992), in the anthology Shock Rock, edited by F. Paul Wilson. He has also written a number of comics. With his friend Miguel Ferrer Mumy created Comet Man and Trypto the Acid Dog. They also co-wrote the Marvel Graphic Novel The Dreamwalker. Mumy, his wife, Eileen, and their two children, Seth (b. 1989) and Liliana (b. 1994), live in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles. Holmstrom, John. The Moving Picture Boy: An International Encyclopaedia from 1895 to 1995. Norwich, Michael Russell, 1996, p. 303-304., Dye, David. Child and Youth Actors: Filmography of Their Entire Careers, 1914-1985. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1988, p. 166. Bill Mumy interviews on Outsight Radio Hours, Bill Mumy at SBV Talent, Bill Mumy speaks about the character Will Robinson Star Trek is an American science-fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry that follows the adventures of the starship and its crew. It later acquired the retronym of Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS) to distinguish the show within the media franchise that it began. The show is set in the Milky Way galaxy, roughly during the 2260s. The ship and crew are led by Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner), First Officer and Science Officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and Chief Medical Officer Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley). Shatner's voice-over introduction during each episode's opening credits stated the starship's purpose: The series was produced from September 1966 to December 1967 by Norway Productions and Desilu Productions, and by Paramount Television from January 1968 to June 1969. Star Trek aired on NBC from September 8, 1966, to June 3, 1969, and was actually seen first on September 6, 1966, on Canada's CTV network. Star Treks Nielsen ratings while on NBC were low, and the network cancelled it after three seasons and 79 episodes. Several years later, the series became a hit in broadcast syndication, remaining so throughout the 1970s, achieving cult classic status and a developing influence on popular culture. Star Trek eventually spawned a franchise, consisting of six television series, 13 feature films, and numerous books, games, and toys, and is now widely considered one of the most popular and influential television series of all time. The series contains significant elements of Space Western, as described by Roddenberry and the general audience. On March 11, 1964, Gene Roddenberry, a long-time fan of science fiction, drafted a short treatment for a science-fiction television series that he called Star Trek. This was to be set on board a large interstellar spaceship named S.S. Yorktown in the 23rd century bearing a crew dedicated to exploring the Milky Way galaxy. Roddenberry noted a number of influences on his idea, some of which includes A. E. van Vogt's tales of the spaceship Space Beagle, Eric Frank Russell's Marathon series of stories, and the film Forbidden Planet (1956). Some have also drawn parallels with the television series Rocky Jones, Space Ranger (1954), a space opera that included many of the elements integral to Star Trek—the organization, crew relationships, missions, part of the bridge layout, and some technology. Roddenberry also drew heavily from C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower novels that depict a daring sea captain who exercises broad discretionary authority on distant sea missions of noble purpose. He often humorously referred to Captain Kirk as "Horatio Hornblower in Space". Roddenberry had extensive experience in writing for series about the Old West that had been popular television fare in the 1950s and 1960s. Armed with this background, the first draft characterized the new show as "Wagon Train to the stars." Like the familiar Wagon Train, each episode was to be a self-contained adventure story, set within the structure of a continuing voyage through space. Most future television and movie realizations of the franchise adhered to the "Wagon Train" paradigm of the continuing journey, with the notable exception of the serialized , , and the of . In Roddenberry's original concept, the protagonist was Captain Robert April of the starship S.S. Yorktown. This character was developed into Captain Christopher Pike, first portrayed by Jeffrey Hunter. April is listed in the Star Trek Chronology, The Star Trek Encyclopedia, and at startrek.com as the Enterprises first commanding officer, preceding Captain Pike. The character's only television/movie appearance is in the episode "The Counter-Clock Incident" In April 1964, Roddenberry presented the Star Trek draft to Desilu Productions, a leading independent television production company. He met with Herbert F. Solow, Desilu's director of production. Solow saw promise in the idea and signed a three-year program-development contract with Roddenberry. Lucille Ball, head of Desilu, was not familiar with the nature of the project, but she was instrumental in getting the pilot produced. The idea was extensively revised and fleshed out during this time—"" pilot filmed in late 1964 differs in many respects from the March 1964 treatment. Solow, for example, added the "stardate" concept. Desilu Productions had a first-look deal with CBS. Oscar Katz, Desilu's Vice President of Production, went with Roddenberry to pitch the series to the network. They refused to purchase the show, as they already had a similar show in development, the 1965 Irwin Allen series Lost in Space. In May 1964, Solow, who had previously worked at NBC, met with Grant Tinker, then head of the network's West Coast programming department. Tinker commissioned the first pilot—which became "The Cage". NBC turned down the resulting pilot, stating that it was "too cerebral". However, the NBC executives were still impressed with the concept, and they understood that its perceived faults had been partly because of the script that they had selected themselves. NBC made the unusual decision to pay for a second pilot, using the script called "Where No Man Has Gone Before". Only the character of Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy, was retained from the first pilot, and only two cast members, Majel Barrett and Nimoy, were carried forward into the series. This second pilot proved to be satisfactory to NBC, and the network selected Star Trek to be in its upcoming television schedule for the fall of 1966. The second pilot introduced most of the other main characters: Captain Kirk (William Shatner), Chief Engineer Lt. Commander Scott (James Doohan) and Lt. Sulu (George Takei), who served as a physicist on the ship in the second pilot, but subsequently became a helmsman throughout the rest of the series. Paul Fix played Dr. Mark Piper in the second pilot; ship's doctor Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley) joined the cast when filming began for the first season, and he remained for the rest of the series, achieving billing as the third star of the series. Also joining the ship's permanent crew during the first season were the communications officer, Lt. Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), the first African-American woman to hold such an important role in an American television series; the captain's yeoman, Janice Rand (Grace Lee Whitney), who departed midway through the first season; and Christine Chapel (Majel Barrett), the ship's nurse and assistant to McCoy. Walter Koenig joined the cast as Ensign Pavel Chekov in the series' second season. In February 1966, before the first episode was aired, Star Trek was nearly cancelled by Desilu Productions. Desilu had gone from making just one half-hour show (The Lucy Show) to deficit-financing a portion of two expensive hour-long shows, and Star Trek. Solow was able to convince Lucille Ball that both shows should continue. Once the series had been picked up by NBC, the production moved to what was then Desilu Productions' Gower Street location. It had previously been the main studio complex used by RKO Pictures, and is now part of the Paramount Pictures lot. The series used what are now stages 31 and 32. The show's production staff included art director Matt Jefferies, who designed the starship Enterprise and most of its interiors. His contributions to the series were honored in the name of the "Jefferies tube", an equipment shaft depicted in various Star Trek series. In addition to working with his brother, John Jefferies, to create the hand-held phaser weapons of Star Trek, Jefferies also developed the set design for the bridge of the Enterprise (which was based on an earlier design by Pato Guzman). Jefferies used his practical experience as an airman during World War II and his knowledge of aircraft design to devise a sleek, functional, and ergonomic bridge layout. The costume designer for Star Trek, Bill Theiss, created the striking look of the Starfleet uniforms for the Enterprise, the costumes for female guest stars, and for various aliens, including the Klingons, Vulcans, Romulans, Tellarites, Andorians, and Gideonites, among others. Artist and sculptor Wah Chang, who had worked for Walt Disney Productions, was hired to design and manufacture props: he created the flip-open communicator, often credited as having influenced the configuration of the portable version of the cellular telephone. Chang also designed the portable sensing-recording-computing "tricorder" device, and various fictitious devices for the starship's engineering crew and its sick bay. As the series progressed, he helped to create various memorable aliens, such as the Gorn and the Horta. NBC ordered 16 episodes of Star Trek, besides "Where No Man Has Gone Before". The first regular episode of Star Trek, "The Man Trap", aired on Thursday, September 8, 1966 from 8:30 to 9:30 as part of an NBC "sneak preview" block. Reviews were mixed; while The Philadelphia Inquirer and San Francisco Chronicle liked the new show, The New York Times and The Boston Globe were less favorable, and Variety predicted that it "won't work", calling it "an incredible and dreary mess of confusion and complexities". Debuting against mostly reruns, Star Trek easily won its time slot with a 40.6 share. The following week against all-new programming, however, the show fell to second (29.4 share) behind CBS. It ranked 33rd (out of 94 programs) over the next two weeks, then the following two episodes ranked 51st in the ratings. Frederik Pohl, editor of Galaxy Science Fiction, wrote in February 1967 of his amazement that Star Treks "regular shows were just as good" as the early episodes that won an award at Tricon in September. Believing that the show would soon be cancelled because of low ratings, he lamented that it "made the mistake of appealing to a comparatively literate group", and urged readers to write letters to help save the show. Star Treks first-season ratings would in earlier years likely have caused NBC to cancel the show. The network had pioneered research into viewers' demographic profiles in the early 1960s, however, and by 1967, it and other networks increasingly considered such data when making decisions; for example, CBS temporarily cancelled Gunsmoke that year because it had too many older and too few younger viewers. Although Roddenberry later claimed that NBC was unaware of Star Treks favorable demographics, awareness of Star Treks "quality" audience is what likely caused the network to retain the show after the first and second seasons. NBC instead decided to order 10 more new episodes for the first season, and order a second season in March 1967. The network originally announced that the show would air at 7:30–8:30 pm Tuesday, but it was instead given an 8:30–9:30 pm Friday slot when the 1967–68 NBC schedule was released, making watching it difficult for the young viewers that the show most attracted. Star Treks ratings continued to decline during the second season. Although Shatner expected the show to end after two seasons and began to prepare for other projects, NBC nonetheless may have never seriously considered cancelling the show. As early as January 1968, the Associated Press reported that Star Treks chances for renewal for a third season were "excellent". The show had better ratings for NBC than ABC's competing Hondo, and the competing CBS programs (number-three Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. and the first half-hour of the number-12 CBS Friday Night Movie) were in the top 15 in the Nielsen ratings. Again, demographics helped Star Trek survive. Contrary to popular belief among its fans, the show did not have a larger audience of young viewers than its competition while on NBC. The network's research did, however, indicate that Star Trek had a "quality audience" including "upper-income, better-educated males", and other NBC shows had lower overall ratings. The show was unusual at the time in its serious discussion of contemporary societal issues in a futuristic context, unlike Lost in Space which was more "campy" in nature. The enthusiasm of Star Treks viewers surprised NBC. The network had already received 29,000 fan letters for the show during its first season, more than for any other except The Monkees. When rumors spread in late 1967 that Star Trek was at risk of cancellation, Roddenberry secretly began and funded an effort by Bjo Trimble, her husband John, and other fans to persuade tens of thousands of viewers to write letters of support to save the program. Using the 4,000 names on a mailing list for a science-fiction convention, the Trimbles asked fans to write to NBC and ask 10 others to also do so. NBC received almost 116,000 letters for the show between December 1967 and March 1968, including more than 52,000 in February alone; according to an NBC executive, the network received more than one million pieces of mail but only disclosed the 116,000 figure. Newspaper columnists encouraged readers to write letters to help save what one called "the best science-fiction show on the air". More than 200 Caltech students marched to NBC's Burbank, California studio to support Star Trek in January 1968, carrying signs such as "Draft Spock" and "Vulcan Power". Berkeley and MIT students organized similar protests in San Francisco and New York City. The letters supporting Star Trek, whose authors included New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller, were different in both quantity and quality from most mail that television networks receive: In addition: NBC—which used such anecdotes in much of its publicity for the show—made the unusual decision to announce on television, after the episode "The Omega Glory" on March 1, 1968, that the series had been renewed. The announcement implied a request to stop writing, but instead caused fans to send letters of thanks in similar numbers. NBC at first planned to move Star Trek to Mondays for the show's third season, likely in hopes of increasing its audience after the enormous letter campaign that surprised the network. In March 1968, though, NBC instead moved the show to 10:00 pm Friday night, an hour undesirable for its younger audience, so as not to conflict with the highly successful Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In on Monday evenings, from whose time slot Laugh-In producer George Schlatter had angrily demanded it not be rescheduled. In addition to the undesirable time slot, Star Trek was now being seen on only 181 of NBC's 210 affiliates. Roddenberry was frustrated, and complained, "If the network wants to kill us, it couldn't make a better move." He attempted to persuade NBC to give Star Trek a better day and hour, but was not successful. As a result of this and his own growing exhaustion, he chose to withdraw from the stress of the daily production of Star Trek, though he remained nominally in charge as its "executive producer". Roddenberry reduced his direct involvement in Star Trek before the start of the 1968–69 television season, and was replaced by Fred Freiberger as the producer of the television series. NBC next reduced Star Trek's budget by a significant amount per episode, as the per-minute commercial price had dropped from $39,000 to $36,000 compared to the season-two time slot. This caused what many perceive as a significant decline in quality for the 1968–69 season. William Shatner felt that the main characters became increasingly compromised or exaggerated while being involved in growingly improbable story lines. Leonard Nimoy added that mercenary concerns came to predominate. Associate Producer Bob Justman, who left during the third season, says that the budget cuts caused the crew to become necessarily limited in the type of filming that could be done, such as outdoor work, with only one episode, "The Paradise Syndrome", shot largely outdoors. Nichelle Nichols described the budget- cutting during the final year as an intentional effort to kill off Star Trek: The last day of filming for Star Trek was January 9, 1969, and after 79 episodes NBC cancelled the show in February despite fans' attempt at another letter-writing campaign. One newspaper columnist advised a protesting viewer: In 2011, the decision to cancel Star Trek by NBC was ranked number four on the TV Guide Network special, 25 Biggest TV Blunders 2. Although many of the third season's episodes were considered of poor quality, it gave Star Trek enough episodes for television syndication. Most shows require at least four seasons for syndication, because otherwise not enough episodes are available for daily stripping. Kaiser Broadcasting, however, purchased syndication rights for Star Trek during the first season for its stations in several large cities. The company arranged the unusual deal because it saw the show as effective counterprogramming against the Big Three networks' 6 pm evening news programs. Paramount began advertising the reruns in trade press in March 1969; as Kaiser's ratings were good, other stations, such as WPIX in New York City and WKBS in Philadelphia, also purchased the episodes for similar counterprogramming. Through syndication, Star Trek found a larger audience than it had on NBC, becoming a cult classic. Airing the show in the late afternoon or early evening attracted many new viewers, often young. By 1970, Paramount's trade advertisements claimed that the show had significantly improved its stations' ratings, and the Los Angeles Times commented on Star Treks ability to "acquire the most enviable ratings in the syndication field". By 1972, what the Associated Press described as "the show that won't die" aired in more than 100 American cities and 60 other countries; and more than 3,000 fans attended the first Star Trek convention in New York City in January 1972. Fans of the show became increasingly organized, gathering at conventions to trade merchandise, meet actors from the show, and watch screenings of old episodes. Such fans came to be known as "trekkies", who were noted (and often ridiculed) for their extreme devotion to the show and their encyclopedic knowledge of every episode. Unlike other syndicated reruns, prices for Star Trek rose, instead of falling, over time, because fans enjoyed rewatching each episode many, often dozens of, times; People in 1977 stated that the show "threatens to rerun until the universe crawls back into its little black hole". By 1986, 17 years after entering syndication, Star Trek was the most popular syndicated series; by 1987, Paramount made $1 million from each episode; and by 1994, the reruns still aired in 94% of the United States. From September 1 to December 24, 1998, the Sci-Fi Channel broadcast a "Special Edition" of all the original series episodes in an expanded 90-minute format hosted by William Shatner. Now titled Star Trek: The Original Series, these broadcasts restored scenes that had been edited out of the syndicated episodes. In addition to introductory and post-episode commentary by Shatner, the episodes included interviews with members of the regular production team and cast, writers, guest stars, and critics (titled as "Star Trek Insights"). The episodes were broadcast in the original broadcast sequence, followed by "The Cage", to which a full 105-minute segment was devoted. (For details on each episode's original airdate, see .) Leonard Nimoy hosted a second run from December 28, 1998 to March 24, 1999, but not all the episodes were broadcast because the show was abruptly cancelled before completion. In September 2006, CBS Paramount Domestic Television (now known as CBS Television Distribution, the current rights holders for the Star Trek television franchises) began syndication of an enhanced version of Star Trek: The Original Series in high definition with new CGI visual effects. Under the direction of Star Trek producer David Rossi, who consulted with Mike and Denise Okuda, the visual and special effects were recreated to give Star Trek: The Original Series a more modern look. Special attention was given to such elements as the Enterprise, alien planets and their images depicted from space, planets seen from orbit, alien spacecraft, and technology such as computer readouts, viewscreen images, and phaser beams. The restoration and enhancement was performed by CBS Digital. All live-action footage was scanned in high definition from its first-generation 35 mm film elements. While it was possible to retouch and remaster some visual effects, all new exterior ship, space, and planet shots were recreated under the supervision of Emmy-nominated visual-effects supervisor Niel Wray. As noted in the "making of" DVD feature, first-generation "original camera negatives" were used for all live-action footage, but not for external shots of the ship and planets. Notable changes include new space shots with a CGI Enterprise, and other new models (for example, a Gorn ship is shown in ""), redone matte background shots, and other minor touches such as tidying up viewscreens. A small number of scenes were also recomposed, and sometimes new actors were placed into the background of shots. The opening theme music was also re-recorded in digital stereo. The first episode to be released to syndication was "Balance of Terror" on the weekend of September 16, 2006. Episodes were released at the rate of about one a week and broadcast in a 4:3 aspect ratio. Despite the HD remastering, CBS chose to deliver the broadcast syndication package in Standard Definition (SD TV). The HD format was made commercially available through Blu-ray, or by download such as iTunes, Netflix, and Xbox Live. While the CGI shots were mastered in a 16:9 aspect ratio for future applications, they were initially broadcast in the U.S. and Canada—along with the live-action footage—in a 4:3 aspect ratio to respect the show's original composition. If the producers were to choose to reformat the entire show for the 16:9 ratio, live-action footage would be cropped, significantly reducing the height of the original image. On July 26, 2007, CBS Home Entertainment (with distribution by Paramount Home Entertainment) announced that the remastered episodes of TOS would be released on an HD DVD/DVD hybrid format. Season one was released on November 20, 2007. Season two had been scheduled for release in the summer of 2008, but it was cancelled when Toshiba (which had been helping finance the remastering of the show) pulled out of the HD DVD business. On August 5, 2008, the remastered season two was released on DVD only. For this release, CBS and Paramount used discs without any disc art, making them look like the "Season 1 Remastered" HD DVD/DVD combo discs, despite having content only on one side. Season 3 was released on DVD only on November 18, 2008. On February 17, 2009, Paramount announced the season one of TOS on Blu-ray Disc for a May release to coincide with the new feature film coming from Paramount. The second season was released in a seven disc set on Blu-ray in the U.S. on September 22, 2009. The third season was released on Blu-ray in the U.S. on December 15. With the release of the "Alternate Realities" box set, remastered Original Series episodes were included in a multi-series compilation for the first time. If future compilation releases would exclusively use the remastered episodes or not was unknown. In regions two and four, all three seasons of the remastered Original Series became available on DVD in the slimline edition (in the UK and Germany in steelbook editions) on April 27, 2009, as well as the first season in Blu-ray. While still casting the roles, Gene Roddenberry did not mandate Bones McCoy and Spock be male. According to Nichelle Nichols, "They gave me a three-page script to read from that had three characters named Bones, Kirk and somebody called Spock, and they asked me if I would read for the role of Spock. When I looked at this great text, I said to myself, 'I'll take any one of these roles,' but I found the Spock character to be very interesting, and I asked them to tell me what she [Spock] was like." It was intended that Sulu's role be expanded in the second season, but owing to Takei's part in John Wayne's The Green Berets, he appeared in only half the season, his role being filled by Walter Koenig as the relatively young, mop-topped Russian navigator Ensign Pavel Chekov. When Takei returned, the two had to share a dressing room and a single episode script. The two appeared together at the Enterprise helm for the remainder of the series. There may be some truth to the unofficial story that the Soviet Union's newspaper Pravda complained that among the culturally diverse characters there were no Russians, seen as a personal slight to that country since the Soviet Russian Yuri Gagarin had been the first man to make a spaceflight. Gene Roddenberry said in response that "The Chekov thing was a major error on our part, and I'm still embarrassed by the fact we didn't include a Russian right from the beginning." However, documentation from Desilu suggests that the intention was to introduce a character into Star Trek with more sex appeal to teenaged girls. Walter Koenig noted in the 2006 40th anniversary special of Star Trek: The Original Series that he doubted the rumor about Pravda, since Star Trek had never been shown on Soviet television. It has also been claimed that the former member of The Monkees, Davy Jones, was the model for Mr. Chekov. In addition, the series frequently included characters (usually security personnel wearing red uniforms) who are killed or injured soon after their introduction. So prevalent was this plot device that it inspired the term "redshirt" to denote a stock character whose sole purpose is to die violently in order to show the danger facing the main characters. Star Trek made celebrities of its cast of largely unknown actors. Kelley had appeared in many films and television shows, but mostly in smaller roles that showcased him as a villain. Nimoy also had previous television and film experience but was not well known either. Nimoy had partnered previously with Shatner in a 1964 episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., "The Project Strigas Affair," and with Kelley (as a doctor) in a 1963 episode of The Virginian, "Man of Violence," both more than two years before Star Trek first aired. Before Star Trek, Shatner was well known in the trade, having appeared in several notable films, played Cyrano de Bergerac on Broadway, and even turned down the part of Dr. Kildare. However, when roles became sparse he took the regular job after Jeffrey Hunter's contract was not renewed. After the episodes aired, many performers found themselves typecast because of their defining roles in the show. (Star Trek: The Next Generation actor Michael Dorn stated in 1991, however: "If what happened to the first cast is called being typecast, then I want to be typecast. Of course, they didn't get the jobs after Trek. But they are making their sixth movie. Name me someone else in television who has made six movies!") The three main characters were Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, with writers often playing the different personalities off each other: Kirk was passionate and often aggressive, but with a sly sense of humor; Spock was coolly logical; and McCoy was sardonic, emotional, and illogical, but always compassionate. In many stories the three clashed, with Kirk forced to make a tough decision while Spock advocated the logical but sometimes callous path and McCoy (or "Bones", as Kirk nicknamed him) insisted on doing whatever would cause the least harm. McCoy and Spock had a sparring relationship that masked their true affection and respect for each other, and their constant arguments became popular with viewers. The show so emphasized dialogue that writer and director Nicholas Meyer (involved with the Star Trek films) called it a radio drama, playing an episode for a film class without video to prove that the plot was still comprehensible. The Spock character was at first rejected by network executives, who were apprehensive that his vaguely "Satanic" appearance (with pointed ears and eyebrows) might prove upsetting to some viewers, and (according to Leonard Nimoy) they repeatedly urged Roddenberry to "drop the Martian." Roddenberry was also dismayed to discover that NBC's publicity department deliberately airbrushed out Spock's pointed ears and eyebrows from early publicity stills sent to network affiliates, because they feared that his "demonic" appearance might offend potential buyers in the religiously conservative southern states. Spock, however, went on to become one of the most popular characters on the show, as did McCoy's impassioned country-doctor personality. Spock, in fact, became a sex symbol of sorts—something no one connected with the show had expected. Leonard Nimoy noted that the question of Spock's extraordinary sex appeal emerged "almost any time I talked to someone in the press...I never give it a thought...to try to deal with the question of Mr. Spock as a sex symbol is silly." The sequel to the original series, , which premiered in 1987, was set about 100 years after the events of TOS. As that show and its spin-offs progressed, several TOS actors made appearances reprising their original characters: Leonard "Bones" McCoy, now a crusty 137-year-old admiral and head of Starfleet's Medical Division, inspects the Enterprise-D before her first mission in "Encounter at Farpoint," briefly meeting the android officer Lt. Cdr. Data, telling him, "Well, this is a new ship. But she's got the right name. Now, you remember that, you hear? ... You treat her like a lady, and she'll always bring you home.", Scotty, now chronologically 147 years old, but still only physically 72 years old after spending 75 years trapped in a transporter buffer, is rescued by the Enterprise-D crew and resumes his life in "." Working along with Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge, Scotty uses some creative engineering to save the Enterprise. A grateful Captain Picard lends him a shuttlecraft indefinitely., Spock, now a Vulcan ambassador, goes underground in the Romulan Empire in hopes of fostering peaceful coexistence with the Federation and reunification with Vulcan society (""). He also appears in the 2009 reboot film where his science vessel originated from the 24th century–era of TNG. He ends up stranded in the 23rd century of the film series, where he settles on new Vulcan; in the sequel film Star Trek Into Darkness, he is contacted by his younger self regarding the villainous Khan Noonien Singh. While not appearing in Star Trek Beyond, it is mentioned in the film that the character has died, as an homage to the real-life passing of actor Leonard Nimoy., Sarek, Spock's father, continues to be an ambassador for the next century until his final mission during which he and Captain Picard mind-meld together because Sarek shows signs of Bendii Syndrome ("Sarek"). He later dies suffering from this affliction, but not before giving Captain Picard key information for locating his missing son ("Unification")., James Kirk disappears in 2293 during the maiden voyage of the Enterprise-B as seen in the film Star Trek: Generations. However, 78 years later Kirk is recovered from The Nexus, an alternative plane of existence, by Enterprise-D Captain Jean-Luc Picard in the same film. Kirk's time in the 24th century is short however; he is killed while helping to defeat Dr. Tolian Soran., Kang, Koloth, and Kor, the three Klingons featured in "Day of the Dove" (Kang), "The Trouble with Tribbles" (Koloth) and "Errand of Mercy" (Kor), continue to serve the Empire well into the 24th century. They appear in the episode "" in which Kang and Koloth are killed. Kor later appears in two more episodes: "The Sword of Kahless" and finally in "" where, fighting in the Dominion War, he dies honorably in battle. A younger version of Kang, from the era of , later appears in the episode ""., Hikaru Sulu, promoted to captain of the USS Excelsior in , reprises his role from that performance in the episode "Flashback". Janice Rand also appears in that same episode., Arne Darvin, the Klingon disguised as a human in "The Trouble with Tribbles", appears in the episode "Trials and Tribble-ations" with the intent to return to Deep Space Station K7 in 2267 and assassinate Kirk, whom Darvin blamed for his disgrace in the Klingon Empire. Besides the above examples, numerous non-canon novels and comic books have been published over the years in which The Original Series era crew are depicted in The Next Generation era, either through time-travel or other means. In addition, many actors who appeared on The Original Series later made guest appearances as different characters in later series, most notably Majel Barrett, who not only provided the voice for most Starfleet computers in episodes of every spin-off series (including a single appearance on , where the computers normally did not speak at all), but also had the recurring role of Lwaxana Troi in The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. Diana Muldaur, a guest star in the episodes "Return to Tomorrow" and "Is There in Truth No Beauty?" of the original Star Trek series, played series regular Dr. Katherine Pulaski in the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Guest roles on the series have featured actors such as: Gary Lockwood and Sally Kellerman in "Where No Man Has Gone Before";, Diana Muldaur in "Return to Tomorrow" and "Is There in Truth No Beauty?";, Ricardo Montalbán as Khan Noonien Singh in "Space Seed". He then reprised the role in the film ;, Madlyn Rhue as Lieutenant Marla McGivers in "Space Seed". An early draft of the script for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan included her role, but she was wheelchair-bound thanks to multiple sclerosis (which eventually killed her) and unable to play the role, and director Nicolas Meyer didn't wish to re-cast;, Michael Ansara as Klingon commander Kang in "Day of the Dove", reprising the role in the Deep Space Nine episode "Blood Oath" and the Voyager episode "Flashback";, William Marshall in "The Ultimate Computer";, Julie Newmar in "";, Kim Darby and Michael J. Pollard in "";, Robert Lansing and Teri Garr in "";, William Windom in "";, John Colicos as the Klingon Commander Kor in "Errand of Mercy," reprising the role in three episodes of Deep Space Nine;, Robert Walker Jr. in "Charlie X";, Lee Meriwether in "That Which Survives";, Roger C. Carmel and Karen Steele in "Mudd's Women" and "I, Mudd";, France Nuyen in "Elaan of Troyius," an appearance believed to be the first by a Vietnamese actress on American television.;, Mark Lenard, the only actor to play members of three major non-human races, as the Romulan commander in "Balance of Terror," the Klingon Commander in , and most notably as Spock's father Sarek in "Journey to Babel," reprising this role in the films , , and , as well as in the TNG episodes "Sarek" and "Unification, Part 1";, Jane Wyatt as Spock's mother Amanda Grayson in "Journey to Babel," reprising the role in the film ;, Glenn Corbett and Elinor Donahue in "";, Elisha Cook Jr. and Joan Marshall in "";, Nancy Kovack in "A Private Little War";, Vic Tayback in "";, Jeff Corey and Fred Williamson in "The Cloud Minders";, Barbara Bouchet and Warren Stevens in "By Any Other Name";, Michael Forest and Leslie Parrish in "Who Mourns for Adonais?";, Charles Napier in "The Way to Eden";, Frank Gorshin and Lou Antonio in "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield";, Ted Cassidy and Sherry Jackson in "What Are Little Girls Made Of?"; Cassidy also appeared as the barbarian warrior in the original pilot , voiced the Balok mannequin in , and voiced the Gorn in ;, Mariette Hartley in "";, Joan Collins in "The City on the Edge of Forever";, Celia Lovsky and Arlene Martel in "Amok Time";, David Soul in "";, James Gregory in "Dagger of the Mind";, Barbara Anderson in "The Conscience of the King";, James Daly in "Requiem for Methuselah";, Jill Ireland in "";, Melvin Belli in "And the Children Shall Lead";, Keye Luke and Yvonne Craig in "";, Michael Dunn in "Plato's Stepchildren";, Clint Howard in "The Corbomite Maneuver";, Barbara Luna in "";, David Opatoshu in "A Taste of Armageddon";, Barbara Babcock in "A Taste of Armageddon" and "Plato's Stepchildren". Her voice was also heard in "The Squire of Gothos", "Assignment: Earth", "The Tholian Web" and "The Lights of Zetar"., Morgan Woodward in "Dagger of the Mind" and "The Omega Glory";, Arnold Moss as mysterious actor Anton Karidian, who proves to have originally been the tyrannical Governor Kodos of Tarsus IV in "The Conscience of the King";, Marianna Hill in "Dagger of the Mind";, Joanne Linville in "The Enterprise Incident";, Louise Sorel in "Requiem for Methuselah";, John Fiedler in "Wolf in the Fold.", Vic Perrin in "Mirror, Mirror." His voice was also heard in "The Menagerie", "Arena" and "The Changeling"., Susan Oliver in ""., Antionette Bower in ""., Angelique Pettyjohn in "Gamesters of Triskelion". In its writing, Star Trek is notable as one of the earliest science-fiction TV series to use the services of leading contemporary science fiction writers, such as Robert Bloch, Norman Spinrad, Harlan Ellison, and Theodore Sturgeon, as well as established television writers. Series script editor Dorothy C. Fontana (originally Roddenberry's secretary) played a key role in the success of Star Trek—she edited most of the series' scripts and wrote several episodes. Her credits read D.C. Fontana at the suggestion of Gene Roddenberry, who felt a female science fiction writer might not be taken seriously in the majority-male field. Roddenberry often used the setting of a space vessel set many years in the future to comment on social issues of 1960s America, including sexism, racism, nationalism, and global war. In November 1968, just a few months after the first televised interracial touch, the episode "Plato's Stepchildren" went incorrectly down in history as the first American television show to feature a scripted interracial kiss between characters (Capt. Kirk and Lt. Uhura), although the kiss was only mimed (obscured by the back of a character's head) and depicted as involuntary. "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" presented a direct allegory about the irrationality and futility of racism. Anti-war themes appear in episodes such as "", depicting a planet-destroying weapon as an analogy to nuclear weapons deployed under the principle of mutually assured destruction, and "A Taste of Armageddon" about a society which has "civilized" war to the point that they no longer see it as something to avoid. Episodes such as "", "Who Mourns for Adonais?", "The Mark of Gideon" and "The Return of the Archons" display subtle anti-religious (owing mainly to Roddenberry's own secular humanism) and anti-establishment themes. "" and "The Omega Glory" have themes that are more pro-Christian or patriotic. The show experienced network and/or sponsor interference, up to and including wholesale censorship of scripts and film footage. This was a regular occurrence in the 1960s and Star Trek suffered from its fair share of tampering. Scripts were routinely vetted and censored by the staff of NBC's Broadcast Standards Department, which copiously annotated every script with demands for cuts or changes (e.g. "Page 4: Please delete McCoy's expletive, 'Good Lord or "Page 43: Caution on the embrace; avoid open-mouthed kiss"). The series was noted for its sense of humor, such as Spock and McCoy's pointed, yet friendly, bickering. Certain episodes, such as "The Trouble with Tribbles", "I, Mudd" and , were written and staged as comedies with dramatic elements. Most episodes were presented as action/adventure dramas, frequently including space battles or fist fights between the ship's crew and guest antagonists. Several episodes used the concept of planets developing parallel to Earth, allowing reuse of stock props, costumes and sets. "Bread and Circuses", "" and "The Omega Glory" depict such worlds; "A Piece of the Action", and "Plato's Stepchildren" are based on alien planets that have adopted period Earth cultures (Prohibition-era Chicago, Nazi Germany and ancient Greece, respectively). Two episodes depicting time travel ("Tomorrow Is Yesterday" and "") conveniently place Enterprise in orbit above 1960s Earth; a third ("The City on the Edge of Forever") places members of the crew on 1930s Earth. Several publications have ranked the ten best episodes of Star Trek: In 1983, Leonard Nimoy hosted a one-hour special as a promotional tie-in with the film , in which he recounted his memories of working on the original series and explained the origins of things such as the Vulcan nerve pinch and the Vulcan salute, as well as a re-airing of the TOS episode "Space Seed". Television channels were the primary method of viewing until the advent of home videocassette tapes of Star Trek in the 1980s. The show's theme tune, immediately recognizable by many, was written by Alexander Courage, and has been featured in several Star Trek spin-off episodes and motion pictures. Gene Roddenberry subsequently wrote a set of accompanying lyrics, even though the lyrics were never used in the series, nor did Roddenberry ever intend them to be; this allowed him to claim co-composer credit and hence 50% of the theme's performance royalties. Courage considered Roddenberry's actions, while entirely legal, to be unethical. Series producer Robert Justman noted in the book Inside Star Trek The Real Story, that work on the film Doctor Dolittle kept Courage from working on more than two episodes of the first season. However, Justman also believed that Courage lost enthusiasm for the series because of the "royalty" issue. Courage did not score any episodes of the second season; however he did conduct a recording session for about 30 minutes of "library cues" for the second season, on June 16, 1967. Courage returned to score two episodes of the third season. Later episodes used stock recordings from Courage's earlier work. Jazz trumpeter Maynard Ferguson recorded a jazz fusion version of the tune with his band during the late 1970s, and Nichelle Nichols performed the song live complete with lyrics. The Lyrics for the song are: Beyond the rim of the starlight My love is wandering in star flight I know he'll find In star clustered reaches Love, strange love A starwoman teaches I know his journey ends never His Star Trek will go on forever But tell him while He wanders his starry sea Remember Remember me For budgetary reasons, this series made significant use of "tracked" music, or music written for other episodes that was reused in later episodes. Of the 79 episodes that were broadcast, only 31 had complete or partial original dramatic underscores created specifically for them. The remainder of the music in any episode was tracked from other episodes and from cues recorded for the music library. Which episodes would have new music was mostly the decision of Robert H. Justman, the Associate Producer during the first two seasons. Screen credits for the composers were given based on the amount of music composed for, or composed and reused in, the episode. Some of these final music credits were occasionally incorrect. Beyond the short works of "source" music (music whose source is seen or acknowledged onscreen) created for specific episodes, eight composers were contracted to create original dramatic underscore during the series run: Alexander Courage, George Duning, Jerry Fielding, Gerald Fried, Sol Kaplan, Samuel Matlovsky, Joseph Mullendore, and Fred Steiner. The composers conducted their own music. Of these composers, Steiner composed the original music for thirteen episodes and it is his instrumental arrangement of Alexander Courage's main theme that is heard over many of the end title credits of the series. The tracked musical underscores were chosen and edited to the episode by the music editors, principal of whom were Robert Raff (most of Season One), Jim Henrikson (Season One and Two), and Richard Lapham (Season Three). Some of the original recordings of the music were released in the United States commercially on the GNP Crescendo Record Co. label. Music for a number of the episodes was re-recorded by Fred Steiner and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for the Varèse Sarabande label; and by Tony Bremner with the Royal Philharmonic for the Label X label. Finally in December 2012, the complete original recordings were released by La-La Land Records as a 15-CD box set, with liner notes by Jeff Bond. Listed in production order. Episodes that were only partially scored are in italics. Season 1: 1. "The Cage" (Alexander Courage) 2. "Where No Man Has Gone Before" (Alexander Courage) 3. "The Corbomite Maneuver" (Fred Steiner) 4. "Mudd's Women" (Fred Steiner) 5. "The Enemy Within" (Sol Kaplan) 6. "The Man Trap" (Alexander Courage) 7. "The Naked Time" (Alexander Courage) 8. "Charlie X" (Fred Steiner) 9. "Balance of Terror" (Fred Steiner) 10. "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" (Fred Steiner) 11. "The Conscience of the King" (Joseph Mullendore) 12. "Shore Leave" (Gerald Fried) 13. "The City on the Edge of Forever" (Fred Steiner) Season 2: 1. "Catspaw" (Gerald Fried) 2. "Metamorphosis" (George Duning) 3. "Friday's Child" (Gerald Fried) 4. "Who Mourns for Adonais?" (Fred Steiner) 5. "Amok Time" (Gerald Fried) 6. "The Doomsday Machine" (Sol Kaplan) 7. "Mirror, Mirror" (Fred Steiner) 8. "I, Mudd" (Samuel Matlovsky) 9. "The Trouble with Tribbles" (Jerry Fielding) 10. "By Any Other Name" (Fred Steiner) 11. "Patterns of Force" (George Duning) 12. "The Omega Glory" (Fred Steiner) 13. "Return to Tomorrow" (George Duning) Season 3: 1. "Spectre of the Gun" (Jerry Fielding) 2. "Elaan of Troyius" (Fred Steiner) 3. "The Paradise Syndrome" (Gerald Fried) 4. "The Enterprise Incident" (Alexander Courage) 5. "And the Children Shall Lead" (George Duning) 6. "Spock's Brain" (Fred Steiner) 7. "Is There in Truth No Beauty?" (George Duning) 8. "The Empath" (George Duning) 9. "Plato's Stepchildren" (Alexander Courage) Note: Although "The Way to Eden" had no original score, the episode had special musical material by Arthur Heinemann (the episode's writer), guest star Charles Napier and Craig Robertson. "Requiem for Methuselah" contains a Johannes Brahms interpretation by Ivan Ditmars. Although this series never won any Emmys, Star Trek was nominated for the following Emmy Awards: Outstanding Dramatic Series (Gene Roddenberry and Gene L. Coon), 1967, Outstanding Dramatic Series (Gene Roddenberry), 1968, Outstanding Supporting Actor (Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock), 1967, 1968, 1969, Individual Achievement in Art Direction and Allied Crafts (Jim Rugg), 1967, Individual Achievement in Cinematography (Darrell Anderson, Linwood G. Dunn, and Joseph Westheimer), 1967, Individual Achievement in Film and Sound Editing (Douglas Grindstaff), 1967, Outstanding Achievement in Film Editing (Donald R. Rode), 1968, Special Classification of Individual Achievement for Photographic Effects (The Westheimer Company), 1968, Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction and Scenic Design (John Dwyer and Walter M. Jefferies), 1969, Outstanding Achievement in Film Editing (Donald R. Rode), 1969, Special Classification Achievements for Photographic Effects (The Howard A. Anderson Company, The Westheimer Company, Van der Veer Photo Effects, Cinema Research), 1969. Eight of its episodes were nominated for one of science-fiction's top awards, the Hugo Award, in the category "Best Dramatic Presentation". In 1967, the nominated episodes were "The Naked Time", "The Corbomite Maneuver", and "". In 1968, all nominees were Star Trek episodes: "Amok Time", "", "", "The Trouble with Tribbles", and "The City on the Edge of Forever". Star Trek won both years for the episodes "The Menagerie" and "The City on the Edge of Forever", respectively. In 1968, Star Trek (the T.V. show) won a special Hugo Award for Dramatic Presentation. No episode was named. This was the show's 3rd Hugo Award. In 1967, Star Trek was also one of the first television programs to receive an NAACP Image Award. In 1968, Star Treks most critically acclaimed episode, "The City on the Edge of Forever," written by Harlan Ellison, won the prestigious Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Teleplay, although this was for Ellison's original draft script, and not for the screenplay of the episode as it aired. In 1997, "The City on the Edge of Forever" was ranked #92 on TV Guides 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time. In 2004 and 2007, TV Guide ranked Star Trek as the greatest cult show ever. In 2013, TV Guide ranked Star Trek as the greatest sci-fi show (along with Star Trek: The Next Generation) and the #12 greatest show of all time. Episodes of the Original Series were among the first television series to be released on the VHS and laserdisc formats in North America in the 1980s, with all episodes eventually being released on both formats. With the advent of DVD in the mid-1990s, single DVDs featuring two episodes each in production order were released. In the early 2000s, Paramount Home Video reissued the series to DVD in a series of three deluxe season boxes with added featurettes and documentaries. In February 2009 CBS and Paramount announced that they would release the Original Series on Blu-ray. Season one, two, and three were released on April 28, September 22, and December 15, respectively. The Blu-ray releases let the user choose between "Enhanced Effects" or "Original Effects" via a technique called multi-angle. This first Star Trek episode on VHS for home sale was released in 1982, as prior to this titles were rental only. This market was called the "sell through" market at that time. Star Trek was quite popular on VHS cassette, and in 1986 sales of original series episodes on VHS reached 1 million units. All 79 episodes of the series have been digitally remastered by CBS Home Entertainment (distributed by Paramount) and have since been released on DVD. CBS Home Entertainment released season one of The Original Series on Blu-ray on April 28, 2009. The Blu-ray release contains both Original and Remastered episodes by seamless branching. CBS Interactive is presenting all 3 seasons of the series via the tv.com iPhone app. The full-length episodes, without the new CGI but digitally processed to remove the original celluloid artifacts, are available to users in the US at no charge but with embedded ads. Short clips from the shows are also viewable at their web site. The company has recently presented all 3 seasons of the series via its CBS All Access premium streaming service. It has all full-length episodes, without the new CGI, like the tv.com app, and is available to users in the US with subscription without ad interruptions. In January 2007, the first season of Star Trek: The Original Series became available for download from Apple's iTunes Store. Although consumer reviews indicate that some of the episodes on iTunes are the newly "remastered" editions, iTunes editors had not indicated such, and if so, which are which. All first-season episodes that had been remastered and aired were available from iTunes, except "Where No Man Has Gone Before", which remains in its original form. On March 20, 2007, the first season was again added to the iTunes Store, with separate downloads for the original and remastered versions of the show, though according to the customer reviews, the original version contains minor revisions such as special effect enhancements. Netflix began online streaming of five of the six Star Trek television series on July 1, 2011; followed on October 1, 2011. Star Trek: The Original Series has inspired many commercial products, including toys, comic books, and many other materials. The comics are generally considered non-canon. In the early 1970s the Mego Corporation acquired the license to produce Star Trek action figures, which the company successfully marketed from 1974–1976. During this period, the company produced a line of 8" figures featuring Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Leonard McCoy, Mr. Scott, Lt. Uhura, "Aliens" (a Klingon, a Neptunian, , a Gorn, a Cheron, a Romulan, a , an Andorian, and a Mugato), and numerous playsets. (Mego also produced a "life-size" toy tricorder.) In the mid-2000s, Paul "Dr. Mego" Clarke and Joe Sena founded EMCE Toys (pronounced "MC") to bring Mego toys back to the marketplace. (Mego went out of business in 1983.) Working with Diamond Select Toys, current holders of the Star Trek license, these figures have been selling in comics shops. New characters are currently being produced that Mego did not originally make, such as Lt. Sulu, Ensign Chekov, and "Space Seed" villain Khan Noonien Singh. The Gorn that Mego produced had a brown Lizard head (identical to the Marvel Comics villain) on a brown body wearing a Klingon outfit. Star Trek fans had frequently wished that Mego had made a "TV-accurate" Gorn; EMCE Toys and DST produced a new green Gorn based on the TV episode "". EMCE Toys hired original Mego packaging artist Harold Schull to illustrate new artwork for Sulu, Chekov, Khan, and the Gorn. EMCE Toys is continuing the Mego revival with the production of more Star Trek figures, including Captain Pike and the Salt Vampire. The first Star Trek comics were published by Gold Key Comics between 1967 and 1978. These comics were highly stylized and diverged wildly from the TV series continuity. Most storylines used in the Gold Key series featured original characters and concepts, although later issues did include sequels to the original series episodes "The City on the Edge of Forever", "" and "I, Mudd". Writers included George Kashdan, Arnold Drake and Len Wein. Originally they were illustrated by Alberto Giolitti, an Italian artist who had never seen the series and only had publicity photos to use as references. Since Giolitti didn't have a publicity photo of James Doohan, early issues of the series had Mr. Scott drawn differently. The original issues, most of which featured photographic covers showing images from the series, are highly collectable. They are fondly remembered by fans, and a series of reprints ("The Key Collection") of these original titles began to appear in 2004, published by Checker. The Gold Key series had a run of 61 issues. Gold Key lost the Star Trek license to Marvel Comics in 1979 (although Marvel's license from Paramount prohibited them from utilizing concepts introduced in the original series). From 1969 to 1973, a series of weekly Star Trek comic strips ran in the British comics magazine eventually known as TV Century 21. A total of 258 issues were produced, as well as various annuals and specials. All were original stories. Two more annuals, under the Mighty TV Comic banner, also produced original Star Trek materials. In addition, the weekly TV Comic reprinted serialized versions of the U.S. Gold Key comics. In 1977–1978, before home video was widely available, Mandala Productions and Bantam Books published FotoNovels of TOS that included direct adaptations of actual color television episode frames (with word balloons) in comics format. From February 1984 through February 1996, DC Comics held the license to publish comic books based upon the Star Trek franchise, including Star Trek: The Original Series. The main DC Comics Star Trek title was published in two series, comprising 136 issues, 9 annuals, and a number of special issues, plus several mini-series that linked TOS and the subsequent series (TNG). Marvel Comics again obtained the Star Trek license in 1996. Marvel (under the "Marvel/Paramount comics" imprint) published various one-shots and the quarterly Star Trek Unlimited series, which covered TOS as well as TNG. They also introduced the new series , which dealt with Christopher Pike's adventures as captain of the Enterprise (as depicted in the rejected TOS pilot ""). Fan acceptance of these comics got off to a shaky start when Marvel's inaugural publication of its new Star Trek line turned out to be a crossover between TOS and Marvel's popular superhero team, the X-Men. However, the series turned out to be relatively popular, registering strong sales. Beginning in 2006, Tokyopop published two projects based upon the original series. The new comic anthologies, produced by Joshua Ortega, were released annually in September 2006 (Shinsei Shinsei) and 2007 (Kakan ni Shinkou). Five artists and writer teams presented five new stories, per volume, based on the original series. Roddenberry was "committed to a liberalism that believed in prosperity, technological progress, and universal humanity" and at odds with the New Left, which "saw the evils of society as the consequence not merely of capitalism but of technology and reason itself." The Original Series has been parodied many times in other television series. Saturday Night Live produced two famous sketches parodying The Original Series, "The Last Voyage of the Starship Enterprise" in 1976 and William Shatner's own "Get a life" sketch in 1986 (which parodied the show's "trekkie" followers). "The Last Voyage of the Starship Enterprise" is a twelve-minute sketch, written by Michael O'Donoghue. It was described by TrekMovie.com as "one of the best Star Trek parody sketches of all time". TVSquad ranked Shatner's "Get a life" sketch alongside "The Last Voyage..." as one of the most famous parodies of the show. The Canadian comedy duo Wayne and Shuster parodied Star Trek as Star Schtick in the late 1970s. An entire Finnish parody series Star Wreck was produced starting in 1992, culminating with in 2005, all available as legal downloads on the web. The series has also been parodied on The Simpsons, Family Guy and notably in the Futurama episode "Where No Fan Has Gone Before", which was described by Wired magazine as a "touchstone" for fans. The 1999 film Galaxy Quest portrays the lives of a once-popular television space-drama crew who are kidnapped by real aliens who have mistaken the fictional series for reality. The main characters are parodies of Star Trek characters, and many of the plot elements refer to or parody popular 1960s TV-series customs. On Adult Swims FishCenter Live, a parody of the USS Enterprise was featured called the "USS FishCenterprise NCC-1065." John Scalzi's novel Redshirts, winner of the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novel, uses the theme of red-shirted Star Fleet officers as cannon fodder. Star Trek has inspired many fans to produce stories for free Internet distribution. Many of these are set in the time of The Original Series, including which was nominated for a Hugo Award and received support from actors and writers who were involved with The Original Series. "Star Trek: Continues" chronicles the last year of the 5 year voyage of The Enterprise. Gene Roddenberry's son, "Rod" announced after a showing in 2014 that this series would have been considered Cannon by his father. Comprising 11 full episodes and numerous additional materials, Star Trek: Continues was produced from 2013 to 2017 and funded by a kickstarter. Rod Serling said of the series that "Star Trek was again a very inconsistent show which at times sparkled with true ingenuity and pure science fiction approaches. At other times it was more carnival-like, and very much more the creature of television than the creature of a legitimate literary form." Isaac Asimov and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry developed a unique relationship during Star Treks initial run in the late 1960s. Asimov wrote a critical essay on Star Treks scientific accuracy for TV Guide magazine. Roddenberry retorted respectfully with a personal letter explaining the limitations of accuracy when writing a weekly series. Asimov corrected himself with a follow-up essay to TV Guide claiming despite its inaccuracies, that Star Trek was a fresh and intellectually challenging science fiction television show. The two remained friends to the point where Asimov even served as an adviser on a number of Star Trek projects. In 2016, in a listing that included each Star Trek film and TV series together, this series was ranked first by the L.A. Times, ahead of the 1982 film and , in third place. In 2017, Vulture ranked the original Star Trek the third best live-action Star Trek television show, while at the same time praising it for "laying down the foundation". In 2018, IndieWire ranked Star Trek the original series as the 8th best space science fiction show set in outer space, including 18 overall shows from this genre. In 2018, Io9/Gizmodo ranked the fictional spacecraft design shown in this television series, the Enterprise, as the number one best version of starship Enterprise of the Star Trek franchise. They felt that the original design was still superior to almost a dozen different later versions. In 2019, Nerdist ranked the original series number one best out seven Star Trek franchise television series, including up to the second season of . In 2019, Popular Mechanics ranked Star Trek the 6th best science fiction television show ever. Cultural influences of Star Trek, "Beam me up, Scotty", Outline of Star Trek, Timeline of Star Trek Star Trek: The Original Series at CBS, Star Trek: The Original Series collected news and commentary at The New York Times

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Beauty and the Beast is a 1991 American animated musical romantic fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The 30th Disney animated feature film and the third released during the Disney Renaissance period, it is based on the French fairy tale of the same name by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont (who was only credited in the French dub), and ideas from the 1946 French film of the same name directed by Jean Cocteau. Beauty and the Beast focuses on the relationship between the Beast (voice of Robby Benson), a prince who is magically transformed into a monster and his servants into household objects as punishment for his arrogance, and Belle (voice of Paige O'Hara), a young woman whom he imprisons in his castle to become a prince again. To break the curse, Beast must learn to love Belle and earn her love in return before the last petal falls from an enchanted rose or else the Beast will remain a monster forever. The film also features the voices of Richard White, Jerry Orbach, David Ogden Stiers, and Angela Lansbury. Walt Disney first attempted to adapt Beauty and the Beast into an animated film during the 1930s and 1950s, but was unsuccessful. Following the success of The Little Mermaid (1989), Walt Disney Pictures decided to adapt the fairy tale, which Richard Purdum originally conceived as a non-musical. Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg eventually dismissed Purdum's idea and ordered that the film be a musical similar to The Little Mermaid instead. The film was directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, with a screenplay by Linda Woolverton story first credited to Roger Allers. Lyricist Howard Ashman and composer Alan Menken wrote the film's songs. Ashman, who additionally served as the film's executive producer, died of AIDS-related complications six months before the film's release, and the film is thus dedicated to his memory. Beauty and the Beast premiered as an unfinished film at the New York Film Festival on September 29, 1991, followed by its theatrical release as a completed film at the El Capitan Theatre on November 13. The film grossed $425 million at the box office worldwide on a $25 million budget. Beauty and the Beast won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, the first animated film to ever win that category. It also became the first animated film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture at the 64th Academy Awards, where it won the Academy Award for Best Original Score and Best Original Song for its title song and received additional nominations for Best Original Song and Best Sound. In April 1994, Beauty and the Beast became Disney's first animated film to be adapted into a Broadway musical. The success of the film spawned two direct-to-video follow-ups: (1997) and Beauty and the Beast: Belle's Magical World (1998), both of which take place in the timeline of the original. This was followed by a spin-off television series, Sing Me a Story with Belle. An IMAX version of the film was released in 2002, and included "Human Again", a new five-minute musical sequence that was previously included in the 1994 musical. That same year, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". After the success of the 3D re- release of The Lion King, the film was reissued in 3D in 2012. A live-action adaptation of the film directed by Bill Condon was released on March 17, 2017. An enchantress disguised as a beggar arrives at a French castle and offers a cruel and selfish prince a rose in return for shelter. When he refuses, she reveals her identity. To punish the prince for his lack of compassion, the enchantress metamorphoses him into a beast and his servants into household objects. She casts a spell on the rose and warns the prince that the spell will only be broken if he learns to love another and earn her love in return before the last petal falls in his 21st year, or else he will remain a beast forever. Ten years later, in a nearby village, a beautiful, book-loving woman named Belle dreams of adventure and brushes off advances from Gaston, a handsome, narcissistic, conceited hunter, and his bumbling sidekick Lefou. On his way to a fair and lost in the forest, Belle's father Maurice seeks refuge in the Beast's castle, but the Beast imprisons him for trespassing. When Maurice's horse returns without him, Belle ventures out in search for him, and finds him locked in the castle dungeon. The Beast agrees to let her take Maurice's place. Belle befriends the castle's servants, who invite her to a spectacular dinner. When she wanders into the forbidden west wing and finds the rose, the enraged Beast scares her into fleeing the castle. In the woods, she is ambushed by a pack of wolves, but the Beast rescues her, and is injured in the process. As Belle nurses his wounds, a friendship develops between them, they become close and even get close to falling in love. Meanwhile, Maurice returns to the village and fails to convince the townsfolk of Belle's predicament. Gaston then bribes Monsieur D'Arque, the warden of the town's insane asylum to have Maurice locked up if Belle refuses to marry Gaston, which D'Arque delightedly accepts. After sharing a romantic dance with the Beast, Belle discovers her father collapsing in the woods using a magic mirror. The Beast releases her to save Maurice, giving her the mirror to remember him with. After taking Maurice to the village, an angry mob led by Gaston, Lefou and Monsieur D'Arque arrive to arrest Maurice. Belle then reveals the Beast in the mirror to the townsfolk, proving her father's sanity. Realizing that Belle loves the Beast, Gaston has her thrown into the basement with her father. He rallies the villagers to follow him to the castle to slay the Beast. Maurice and Belle escape and they rush back to the castle. During the battle, the Beast's servants fend off the villagers and LeFou. Gaston attacks the Beast in his tower, who is too heartbroken from Belle's departure to fight back, but regains his spirit upon seeing Belle return. He defeats Gaston, but spares his life before reuniting with Belle. However, Gaston ungratefully stabs the Beast with a knife and falls to his death after losing his footing from the Beast's thrashing. The Beast dies in her arms before the last petal falls. Belle tearfully professes her love to the Beast and the spell is undone, reviving the Beast and restoring his human form along with all his servants and his castle. The Prince and Belle host a ball for the kingdom, where they dance happily. Paige O'Hara as Belle – A bibliophilic young woman who seeks adventure, and offers her own freedom to the Beast in return for her father's. In their effort to enhance the character from the original story, the filmmakers felt that Belle should be "unaware" of her own beauty and made her "a little odd". Wise recalls casting O'Hara because of a "unique tone" she had, "a little bit of Judy Garland", after whose appearance Belle was modeled. James Baxter and Mark Henn served as the supervising animators for Belle. Robby Benson as Beast – A young prince who is transformed into a talking beast by an enchantress as punishment for his arrogance. The animators drew him with the head structure and horns of an American bison, the arms and body of a bear, the ears of a deer, the eyebrows of a gorilla, the jaws, teeth, and mane of a lion, the tusks of a wild boar, and the legs and tail of a wolf. Chris Sanders, one of the film's storyboard artists, drafted the designs for the Beast and came up with designs based on birds, insects, and fish before coming up with something close to the final design. Glen Keane, supervising animator for the Beast, refined the design by going to the zoo and studying the animals on which the Beast was based. Benson commented, "There's a rage and torment in this character I've never been asked to use before." The filmmakers commented that "everybody was big fee-fi-fo-fum and gravelly" while Benson had the "big voice and the warm, accessible side" so that "you could hear the prince beneath the fur"., Richard White as Gaston – A vain hunter who vies for Belle's hand in marriage and is determined not to let anyone else win her heart. He serves as a foil personality to the Beast, who was once as egotistical as Gaston prior to his transformation. Gaston's supervising animator, Andreas Deja, was pressed by Jeffrey Katzenberg to make Gaston handsome in contrast to the traditional appearance of a Disney villain, an assignment he found difficult at first. In the beginning, Gaston is depicted as more of a narcissist than a villain, but later he threatens to put Maurice in a mental institution if Belle doesn't marry him, and eventually leads all the villagers to kill the beast, enraged that Belle would love a Beast more than him., Jerry Orbach as Lumière – The kind-hearted but rebellious valet of the Beast's, who has been transformed into a candlestick. He has a habit of disobeying his master's strict rules, sometimes causing tension between them, but the Beast often turns to him for advice. He is depicted as flirtatious, as he is frequently seen with the Featherduster and immediately takes a liking to Belle. A running gag throughout the movie is Lumière burning Cogsworth. Nik Ranieri served as the supervising animator for Lumière., David Ogden Stiers as Cogsworth / Narrator – Majordomo, the head of the household staff and Lumière's best friend, who has been transformed into a clock. He is extremely loyal to the Beast so as to save himself and anyone else any trouble, often leading to friction between himself and Lumière. Will Finn served as the supervising animator for Cogsworth. Stiers also narrates the prologue., Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Potts – The castle cook, turned into a teapot, who takes a motherly attitude toward Belle. The filmmakers went through several names for Mrs. Potts, such as "Mrs. Chamomile", before Ashman suggested the use of simple and concise names for the household objects. David Pruiksma served as the supervising animator for Mrs. Potts., Bradley Pierce as Chip – Mrs. Potts' son, who has been turned into a teacup. Originally intended to only have one line, the filmmakers were impressed with Pierce's performance and expanded the character's role significantly, eschewing a mute Music Box character. Pruiksma also served as the supervising animator for Chip., Rex Everhart as Maurice – Belle's inventor father. The villagers see him as insane for crafting devices believed impossible to construct in reality, but his loyal daughter believes he will be famous one day. Ruben A. Aquino served as the supervising animator for Maurice., Jesse Corti as Lefou – Gaston's often abused yet loyal sidekick. He looks up to Gaston as his hero, and sings a song with the other villagers to cheer him up. His name is French for "The Madman" and also a phonetic play on "The Fool". Chris Wahl served as the supervising animator for Lefou., Jo Anne Worley as the Wardrobe – The castle's authority over fashion, and a former opera singer, who has been turned into a wardrobe. The character of Wardrobe was introduced by visual development person Sue C. Nichols to the then entirely male cast of servants, and was originally a more integral character named "Madame Armoire". Wardrobe is known as "Madame de la Grande Bouche" (Madame Big Mouth) in the stage adaptation of the film and is the only major enchanted object character whose human form does not appear in the film. Tony Anselmo served as the supervising animator for the Wardrobe., Hal Smith as Philippe – Belle's Belgian horse. Russ Edmonds served as the supervising animator for Philippe., Mary Kay Bergman and Kath Soucie as the Bimbettes – A trio of village maidens who constantly fawn over Gaston, known as the "Silly Girls" in the stage adaptation., Brian Cummings as the Stove – The castle's chef who has been transformed into a stove. He is named Chef Bouche in 1998's Belle's Magical World., Alvin Epstein as the Bookseller – The owner of a book shop in Belle's hometown., Tony Jay as Monsieur D'Arque – The sadistic warden of the Asylum de Loons. Gaston bribes him to help in his plan to blackmail Belle., Alec Murphy as the Baker – The owner of a bakery in Belle's hometown., Kimmy Robertson as the Featherduster – A maid and Lumière's sweetheart, who has been turned into a feather duster. She is never mentioned by name in the 1991 film (listed as Featherduster in the credits); Babette is the name given to this character later in the 1994 stage adaptation of the film; Fifi in the 1998 animated musical film Belle's Magical World and Plumette in the 2017 live-action remake., Frank Welker as Sultan – The castle's pet dog turned into a footstool. After the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, Walt Disney sought out other stories to adapt into feature films, with Beauty and the Beast being among the stories he considered. Attempts to develop the Beauty and the Beast story into a film were made in the 1930s and 1950s, but were ultimately given up because it "proved to be a challenge" for the story team. Peter M. Nichols states Disney may later have been discouraged by Jean Cocteau having already done his 1946 version. Decades later, during the production of Who Framed Roger Rabbit in 1987, the Disney studio resurrected Beauty and the Beast as a project for the satellite animation studio it had set up in London, England to work on Roger Rabbit. Richard Williams, who had directed the animated portions of Roger Rabbit, was approached to direct but declined in favor of continuing work on his long-gestating project The Thief and the Cobbler. In his place, Williams recommended his colleague, English animation director Richard Purdum, and work began under producer Don Hahn on a non- musical version of Beauty and the Beast set in 19th-century France. At the behest of Disney CEO Michael Eisner, Beauty and the Beast became the first Disney animated film to use a screenwriter. This was an unusual production move for an animated film, which is traditionally developed on storyboards rather than in scripted form. Linda Woolverton wrote the original draft of the story before storyboarding began, and worked with the story team to retool and develop the film. Upon seeing the initial storyboard reels in 1989, Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg ordered that the film be scrapped and started over from scratch. A few months after starting anew, Purdum resigned as director. The studio had approached Ron Clements and John Musker to direct the film, but they turned down the offer, saying they were "tired" after just having finished directing Disney's recent success The Little Mermaid. Disney then hired first-time feature directors Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale. Wise and Trousdale had previously directed the animated sections of Cranium Command, a short film for a Disney EPCOT theme park attraction. In addition, Katzenberg asked songwriters Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, who had written the song score for The Little Mermaid, to turn Beauty and the Beast into a Broadway- style musical film in the same vein as Mermaid. Ashman, who at the time had learned he was dying of complications from AIDS, had been working with Disney on a pet project of his, Aladdin, and only reluctantly agreed to join the struggling production team. To accommodate Ashman's failing health, pre- production of Beauty and the Beast was moved from London to the Residence Inn in Fishkill, New York, close to Ashman's New York City home. Here, Ashman and Menken joined Wise, Trousdale, Hahn, and Woolverton in retooling the film's script. Since the original story had only two major characters, the filmmakers enhanced them, added new characters in the form of enchanted household items who "add warmth and comedy to a gloomy story" and guide the audience through the film, and added a "real villain" in the form of Gaston. These ideas were somewhat similar to elements of the 1946 French film version of Beauty and the Beast, which introduced the character of Avenant, an oafish suitor somewhat similar to Gaston, as well as inanimate objects coming to life in the Beast's castle. The animated objects were, however, given distinct personalities in the Disney version. By early 1990, Katzenberg had approved the revised script, and storyboarding began again. The production flew story artists back and forth between California and New York for storyboard approvals from Ashman, though the team was not told the reason why. Disney had originally considered casting Jodi Benson from The Little Mermaid as Belle. They eventually decided upon Broadway actress and singer Paige O'Hara in favor of having a heroine who sounded "more like a woman than a girl". According to co-director Kirk Wise, O'Hara was given the role because she "had a unique quality, a tone she would hit that made her special", reminiscent to that of American actress and singer Judy Garland. O'Hara, who, after reading about the film in The New York Times, competed for the role against 500 hopefuls, believes the fact that lyricist Howard Ashman admired her cast recording of the musical Show Boat proved integral in her being cast. Production of Beauty and the Beast was to be completed on a compressed timeline of two years rather than the traditional four-year Disney Feature Animation production schedule; this was due to the loss of production time spent developing the earlier Purdum version of the film. Most of the production was done at the main Feature Animation studio, housed in the Air Way facility in Glendale, California. A smaller team at the Disney-MGM Studios theme park in Lake Buena Vista, Florida assisted the California team on several scenes, particularly the "Be Our Guest" number. Beauty and the Beast was the second film, after The Rescuers Down Under, produced using CAPS (Computer Animation Production System), a digital scanning, ink, paint, and compositing system of software and hardware developed for Disney by Pixar. The software allowed for a wider range of colors, as well as soft shading and colored line effects for the characters, techniques lost when the Disney studio abandoned hand inking for xerography in the early 1960s. CAPS/ink & paint also allowed the production crew to simulate multiplane effects: placing characters and/or backgrounds on separate layers and moving them towards/away from the camera on the Z-axis to give the illusion of depth, as well as altering the focus of each layer. In addition, CAPS/ink & paint allowed an easier combination of hand-drawn art with computer-generated imagery, which before had to be plotted to animation paper and then xeroxed and painted traditionally. This technique was put to significant use during the "Beauty and the Beast" waltz sequence, in which Belle and Beast dance through a computer-generated ballroom as the camera dollies around them in simulated 3D space. The filmmakers had originally decided against the use of computers in favor of traditional animation, but later, when the technology had improved, decided it could be used for the one scene in the ballroom. Before that, CGI environments had first been printed out as wireframe, but this was the first time Disney made use of 3D rendering. The success of the ballroom sequence helped convince studio executives to further invest in computer animation. The final dance between Belle and the Prince was reused from the final dance sequence between Princess Aurora and Prince Phillip from the 1959 film Sleeping Beauty. According to Trousdale, this was done because production of the film was nearing the deadline, and this was the easiest way to do that sequence. Ashman and Menken wrote the Beauty song score during the pre-production process in Fishkill, the opening operetta-styled "Belle" being their first composition for the film. Other songs included "Be Our Guest," sung (in its original version) to Maurice by the objects when he becomes the first visitor to eat at the castle in a decade, "Gaston," a solo for the swaggering villain and his bumbling sidekick, "Human Again," a song describing Belle and Beast's growing love from the objects' perspective, the love ballad "Beauty and the Beast (Tale as Old as Time)" and the climactic "The Mob Song." As story and song development came to a close, full production began in Burbank while voice and song recording began in New York City. The Beauty songs were mostly recorded live with the orchestra and the voice cast performing simultaneously rather than overdubbed separately, in order to give the songs a cast album- like "energy" the filmmakers and songwriters desired. During the course of production, many changes were made to the structure of the film, necessitating the replacement and re-purposing of songs. After screening a mostly animated version of the "Be Our Guest" sequence, story artist Bruce Woodside suggested that the objects should be singing the song to Belle rather than her father. Wise and Trousdale agreed, and the sequence and song were retooled to replace Maurice with Belle. The film's title song went through a noted bit of uncertainty during production. Originally conceived as a rock-oriented song, it was changed to a slow, romantic ballad. Howard Ashman and Alan Menken asked Angela Lansbury to perform the song, but she did not think her voice was suited for the melody. When she voiced her doubts, Menken and Ashman asked her for at least one take and told her to perform the song as she saw fit. Lansbury reportedly reduced everyone in the studio to tears with her rendition, nailing the song in the one take asked of her. This version went on to win the Oscar for Best Original Song. "Human Again" was dropped from the film before animation began, as its lyrics caused story problems about the timeline over which the story takes place. This required Ashman and Menken to write a new song in its place. "Something There," in which Belle and Beast sing (via voiceover) of their growing fondness for each other, was composed late in production and inserted into the script in place of "Human Again." Menken would later revise "Human Again" for inclusion in the 1994 Broadway stage version of Beauty and the Beast, and another revised version of the song was added to the film itself in a new sequence created for the film's Special Edition re-release in 2002. Ashman died of AIDS-related complications at the age of 40 on March 14, 1991, eight months before the film's release. He never saw the finished film, though he did get to see it in its unfinished format. Ashman's work on Aladdin was completed by another lyricist, Tim Rice. Before Ashman's death, members of the film's production team visited him after the film's well-received first screening, with Don Hahn commenting that "the film would be a great success. Who'd have thought it?", to which Ashman replied with "I would." A tribute to the lyricist was included at the end of the credits crawl: "To our friend, Howard, who gave a mermaid her voice, and a beast his soul. We will be forever grateful. Howard Ashman: 1950–1991." A pop version of the "Beauty and the Beast" theme, performed by Céline Dion and Peabo Bryson over the end credits, was released as a commercial single from the film's soundtrack, supported with a music video. The Dion/Bryson version of "Beauty and the Beast" became an international pop hit and performed considerably well on charts around the world. The song became Dion's second single to land within the top-10 of the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number nine. The song peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot Adult Contemporary chart. In Canada, "Beauty and the Beast" peaked at number two. Outside of North America, the song peaked within the top ten in New Zealand and the United Kingdom, while peaking within the top twenty in Australia, Netherlands, and Ireland. The song sold over a million copies worldwide. This version of the song was also nominated for Record of the Year and Song of the Year at the Grammys, and it won the Grammy for Dion and Bryson for Best Pop Duo/Group Vocal Performance. In a first-time accomplishment for The Walt Disney Company, an unfinished version of Beauty and the Beast was shown at the New York Film Festival on September 29, 1991. The film was deemed a "work in progress" because roughly only 70% of the animation had been completed; storyboards and pencil tests were used in replacement of the remaining 30%. Additionally, certain segments of the film that had already been finished were reverted to previous stages of completion. At the end of the screening, Beauty and the Beast received a ten- minute-long standing ovation from the film festival audience. The completed film was also screened out of competition at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival. The finished film premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood on November 13, 1991, beginning a limited release before expanding wide on November 22. The film was restored and remastered for its New Year's Day, 2002 re-release in IMAX theatres in a special-edition edit, including a new musical sequence. For this version of the film, much of the animation was cleaned up, a new sequence set to the deleted song "Human Again" was inserted into the film's second act, and a new digital master from the original CAPS production files was used to make the high-resolution IMAX film negative. A sing along edition of the film, hosted by Jordin Sparks, was released in select theaters on September 29 and October 2, 2010. Prior to the showing of the film, Sparks showed an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the newly restored film and the making of her new Beauty and the Beast music video. There was also commentary from producer Don Hahn, interviews with the cast and an inside look at how the animation was created. A Disney Digital 3D version of the film, the second of a traditionally animated film, was originally scheduled to be released in US theatres on February 12, 2010, but the project was postponed. On August 25, 2011, Disney announced that the 3D version of the film would make its American debut at Hollywood's El Capitan Theatre from September 2–15, 2011. Disney spent less than $10 million on the 3D conversion. After the successful 3D re- release of The Lion King, Disney announced a wide 3D re-release of Beauty and the Beast in North America beginning January 13, 2012. The film was released to VHS on October 30, 1992 as part of the Walt Disney Classics series, and was later put on moratorium on April 30, 1993, it was not included in the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection line. This version contains a minor edit to the film: skulls that appear in Gaston's pupils for two frames during his climactic fall to his death were removed for the original home video release. No such edit was made to later reissues of the film. The "work- in-progress" version screened at the New York Film Festival was also released on VHS and LaserDisc at this time; however, said version was the only one available on the latter format until the fall of 1993, when the completed theatrical version was released. This measure was to diminish the threat of video pirates making copies derived from the LaserDisc (which are not copy- protected) and selling them in international markets, where the film was yet to be available for home release. Beauty and the Beast: Special Edition, as the enhanced version of the film released in IMAX/large-format is called, was released on two-disc "Platinum Edition" DVD and VHS on October 8, 2002. The DVD set features three versions of the film: the extended IMAX Special Edition with the "Human Again" sequence added, the original theatrical version, and the New York Film Festival "work-in-progress" version. This release went to "Disney Vault" moratorium status in January 2003, along with its direct-to- video follow-ups and Belle's Magical World. The film was released from the vault on October 5, 2010 as the second of Disney's Diamond Editions, in the form of a three-disc Blu-ray Disc and DVD combination pack—the first release of Beauty and the Beast on home video in high-definition format. This edition consists of four versions of the film: the original theatrical version, an extended version, the New York Film Festival storyboard-only version, and a fourth iteration displaying the storyboards via picture-in-picture alongside the original theatrical version. Upon its first week of release, the Blu-ray sold 1.1 million units, topping the Blu-ray sales chart and finishing in third place on the combined Blu-ray and DVD sales chart for the week ending on October 10, 2010. It was the second-best-selling Blu-ray of 2010, behind Avatar. A two-disc DVD edition was released on November 23, 2010. A five-disc combo pack, featuring Blu-ray 3D, Blu-ray 2D, DVD and a digital copy, was released on October 4, 2011. The 3D combo pack is identical to the original Diamond Edition, except for the added 3D disc and digital copy. The Blu-ray release went into the Disney Vault along with the two sequels on April 30, 2012. A 25th-anniversary Signature Edition was released on Digital HD September 6, 2016 and was followed by Blu-ray/DVD combo pack on September 20, 2016. Upon its first week of release on home media in the U.S., the film topped the Blu-ray Disc sales chart, and debuted at number 3 in the Nielsen VideoScan First Alert chart, which tracks overall disc sales, behind and . Upon release, Beauty and the Beast earned high acclaim from critics and audiences alike for its animation, story, characters and performances. Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 94% based on reviews from 115 critics, with an average rating of 8.49/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Enchanting, sweepingly romantic, and featuring plenty of wonderful musical numbers, Beauty and the Beast is one of Disney's most elegant animated offerings." The film also holds a 95/100 on Metacritic, which indicates the reviews as "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a rare "A+" grade. Janet Maslin of The New York Times praised the film with the following statement, "Two years ago, Walt Disney Pictures reinvented the animated feature, not only with an eye toward pleasing children, but also with an older, savvier audience in mind. Disney truly bridged a generation gap with The Little Mermaid … Now, lightning has definitely struck twice with Beauty and the Beast." Awarding the film a perfect score of four stars, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times compared Beauty and the Beast positively to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio, writing, "Beauty and the Beast reaches back to an older and healthier Hollywood tradition in which the best writers, musicians and filmmakers are gathered for a project on the assumption that a family audience deserves great entertainment, too." In 2001 Ebert again gave the IMAX re- release a full 4 out of 4 stars. James Berardinelli of ReelViews rated the film similarly while hailing it as "the finest animated movie ever made", writing, "Beauty and the Beast attains a nearly-perfect mix of romance, music, invention, and animation." The use of computer animation, particularly in the ballroom sequence, was singled out in several reviews as one of the film's highlights. Hal Hinson of The Washington Post gave the film a positive review, calling the film "A delightfully satisfying modern fable, a near-masterpiece that draws on the sublime traditions of the past while remaining completely in sync with the sensibility of its time." Janet Maslin of The New York Times gave the film a positive review, saying "It is a surprise, in a time of sequels and retreads, that the new film is so fresh and altogether triumphant in its own right." Dave Kehr of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three out of four stars, saying "Beauty and the Beast is certainly adequate holiday entertainment for children and their more indulgent parents … But the film has little of the technical facility, vivid characterization and emotional impact of Disney past." Jay Boyar of the Orlando Sentinel gave the film four out of five stars, saying "It's not an especially scary movie, but right from the start, you can tell that this Beauty and the Beast has a beauty of a bite." John Hartl of The Seattle Times gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, saying "It's exceptionally difficult to make an audience care for animated characters unless they're mermaids or anthropomorphized animals or insects, yet the Disney animators, with a big assist from the vocal talents of a superb cast, have pulled it off." Gene Siskel, also of the Chicago Tribune, gave the film four out of four stars, saying "Beauty and the Beast is one of the year's most entertaining films for both adults and children." On their Beauty and the Beast edition of Siskel & Ebert, both Siskel and Roger Ebert proclaimed that the film is "a legitimate contender for Oscar consideration as Best Picture of the Year." Michael Sragow of The New Yorker gave the film a positive review, saying "It's got storytelling vigor and clarity, bright, eclectic animation, and a frisky musical wit." Eric Smoodin writes in his book Animating Culture that the studio was trying to make up for earlier gender stereotypes with this film. Smoodin also states that, in the way it has been viewed as bringing together traditional fairy tales and feminism as well as computer and traditional animation, the film's "greatness could be proved in terms of technology narrative or even politics". Animation legend Chuck Jones praised the film, in a 1992 guest appearance on Later with Bob Costas he claimed he "Loved it. I think it should have won [Best Picture] … I think the animation on the beast is one of the greatest pieces of animation I've seen". Animation historian Michael Barrier wrote that Belle "becomes a sort of intellectual less by actually reading books, it seems, than by hanging out with them", but says that the film comes closer than other "Disney-studio" films to "accepting challenges of the kind that the finest Walt Disney features met". David Whitley writes in The Idea of Nature in Disney Animation that Belle is different from earlier Disney heroines in that she is mostly free from the burdens of domestic housework, although her role is somewhat undefined in the same way that "contemporary culture now requires most adolescent girls to contribute little in the way of domestic work before they leave home and have to take on the fraught, multiple responsibilities of the working mother". Whitley also notes other themes and modern influences, such as the film's critical view of Gaston's chauvinism and attitude towards nature, the cyborg-like servants, and the father's role as an inventor rather than a merchant. Beauty and the Beast has been named one of Disney's most critically acclaimed films. In 2010, IGN named Beauty and the Beast as the greatest animated film of all time, directly ahead of WALL-E, The Incredibles, Toy Story 2, and The Iron Giant. Several critics regard the 1991 animated film as superior to the 2017 live-action remake. Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune said that the 1991 film "worked wonderfully because it was pure Broadway, written for the screen, blending comedy and romance and magic and just enough snark in the margins", while the 2017 remake got lost in translation since "The movie takes our knowledge and our interest in the material for granted. It zips from one number to another, throwing a ton of frenetically edited eye candy at the screen, charmlessly." Phillips also wrote of the 2017 film that "too often we're watching highly qualified performers, plus a few less conspicuously talented ones (Watson, primarily), stuck doing karaoke, or motion-capture work of middling quality". Dana Schwartz of the Observer criticized some of the 2017 film changes to the characters like Gaston and the Beast as regressive by watering down their distinguishing personalities from the 1991 film, also arguing that the added backstory to the characters in the 2017 version failed to "advance the plot or theme in any meaningful way". David Sims of The Atlantic wrote that the 2017 film "feels particularly egregious, in part, because it's so slavishly devoted to the original; every time it falls short of its predecessor (which is quite often), it's hard not to notice". During its initial release in 1991, the film grossed $145.9 million in revenues in North America and $331.9 million worldwide. It ranked as the third-most successful film of 1991 in North America, surpassed only by the summer blockbusters and . At the time Beauty and the Beast was the most successful animated Disney film release, and the first animated film to reach $100 million in the United States and Canada in its initial run. In its IMAX re-release, it earned $25.5 million in North America and $5.5 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $31 million. It also earned $9.8 million from its 3D re-release overseas. During the opening weekend of its North American 3D re-release in 2012, Beauty and the Beast grossed $17.8 million, coming in at the No. 2 spot, behind Contraband, and achieved the highest opening weekend for an animated film in January. The film was expected to make $17.5 million over the weekend; however, the results topped its forecast and the expectations of box office analysts. The re-release ended its run on May 3, 2012, and earned $47.6 million, which brought the film's total gross in North America to $219 million. It made an estimated $206 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $425 million. Alan Menken and Howard Ashman's song "Beauty and the Beast" won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, while Menken's score won the award for Best Original Score. Two other Menken and Ashman songs from the film, "Belle" and "Be Our Guest", were also nominated for Best Original Song. Beauty and the Beast was the first picture to receive three Academy Award nominations for Best Original Song, a feat that would be repeated by The Lion King (1994), Dreamgirls (2006), and Enchanted (2007). Academy rules have since been changed to limit each film to two nominations in this category, due to the consecutive unintentional failures of Dreamgirls and Enchanted to win the award. The film was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Sound. It was the first animated film ever to be nominated for Best Picture, and remained the only animated film nominated until 2009 when the Best Picture field was widened to ten nominees, and it remains the only animated film nominated for the award when it had five nominees. It became the first musical in twelve years to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture of the Year, following All That Jazz (1979), and the last one to be nominated until Moulin Rouge! (2001), ten years later. It lost the Best Picture award to The Silence of the Lambs as it became the third film to complete the big five Oscar sweep. With six nominations, the film currently shares the record for the most nominations for an animated film with WALL-E (2008), although, with three nominations in the Best Original Song category, Beauty and the Beasts nominations span only four categories, while WALL-Es nominations cover six individual categories. While The Little Mermaid was the first to be nominated, Beauty and the Beast became the first animated film to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. This feat was later repeated by The Lion King and Toy Story 2. In 2002, Beauty and the Beast was added to the United States National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." In June 2008, the American Film Institute revealed its "Ten Top Ten" lists of the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres, based on polls of over 1,500 people from the creative community. Beauty and the Beast was acknowledged as the seventh-best film in the animation genre. In previous lists, it ranked number 22 on the Institute's list of best musicals and number 34 on its list of the best romantic American films. On the list of the greatest songs from American films, Beauty and the Beast ranked number 62. American Film Institute recognition: AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies – Nominated, AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions – No. 34, AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains:, Belle – Nominated Hero, AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs:, "Beauty and the Beast" – No. 62, "Be Our Guest" – Nominated, AFI's Greatest Movie Musicals – No. 22, AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – Nominated, AFI's 10 Top 10 – No. 7 Animated film According to an article in the Houston Chronicle, "The catalyst for Disney's braving the stage was an article by The New York Times theater critic Frank Rich that praised Beauty and the Beast as 1991's best musical Theatre Under The Stars executive director Frank Young had been trying to get Disney interested in a stage version of Beauty about the same time Eisner and Katzenberg were mulling over Rich's column. But Young couldn't seem to get in touch with the right person in the Disney empire. Nothing happened till the Disney execs started to pursue the project from their end … When they asked George Ives, the head of Actors Equity on the West Coast, which Los Angeles theater would be the best venue for launching a new musical, Ives said the best theater for that purpose would be TUTS. Not long after that, Disney's Don Frantz and Bettina Buckley contacted Young, and the partnership was under way." A stage condensation of the film, directed by Robert Jess Roth and choreographed by Matt West, both of whom moved on to the Broadway development, had already been presented at Disneyland at what was then called the Videopolis stage. Beauty and the Beast premiered in a joint production of Theatre Under The Stars and Disney Theatricals at the Music Hall, Houston, Texas, from November 28, 1993 through December 26, 1993. On April 18, 1994, Beauty and the Beast premiered on Broadway at the Palace Theatre in New York City to mixed reviews. The show transferred to the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on November 11, 1999. The commercial (though not critical) success of the show led to productions in the West End, Toronto, and all over the world. The Broadway version, which ran for over a decade, received a Tony Award, and became the first of a whole line of Disney stage productions. The original Broadway cast included Terrence Mann as the Beast, Susan Egan as Belle, Burke Moses as Gaston, Gary Beach as Lumière, Heath Lamberts as Cogsworth, Tom Bosley as Maurice, Beth Fowler as Mrs. Potts, and Stacey Logan as Babette the feather duster. Many well-known actors and singers also starred in the Broadway production during its thirteen-year run, including Kerry Butler, Deborah Gibson, Toni Braxton, Andrea McArdle, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Christy Carlson Romano, Ashley Brown, and Anneliese van der Pol as Belle; Chuck Wagner, James Barbour, and Jeff McCarthy as the Beast; Meshach Taylor, Patrick Page, Bryan Batt, Jacob Young, and John Tartaglia as Lumière; and Marc Kudisch, Christopher Sieber, and Donny Osmond as Gaston. The show ended its Broadway run on July 29, 2007 after 46 previews and 5,461 performances. , it is Broadway's tenth-longest-running show in history. In June 2014, Walt Disney Pictures announced that a live-action film adaptation of the original film was in the works, with Bill Condon directing and Evan Spiliotopoulos writing the script. Condon originally planned on not only drawing inspiration from the original film, but also to include most, if not all, of the Menken/Rice songs from the Broadway musical, with the intention of making the film as a "straight-forward, live-action, large-budget movie musical". In September 2014, it was announced that Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower) would re-write the script. In January 2015, Emma Watson announced on her Facebook page that she would portray Belle in the new live action remake film. In March 2015, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans, Emma Thompson, Josh Gad, Audra McDonald, and Kevin Kline joined the film as the Beast, Gaston, Mrs. Potts, Lefou, Garderobe, and Maurice, respectively. The following month, Ian McKellen, Ewan McGregor, Stanley Tucci, and Gugu Mbatha- Raw joined the cast, as Cogsworth, Lumière, Cadenza, and Plumette, respectively. Composer Alan Menken returned to score the film's music, with new material written by Menken and Tim Rice. In June 2015, Menken said the film would not include the songs that were written for the Broadway musical. Filming began on May 18, 2015 in London, and production officially wrapped in August 2015. The film was released on March 17, 2017. Beauty and the Beast merchandise cover a wide variety of products, among them storybook versions of the film's story, a comic book based on the film published by Disney Comics, toys, children's costumes, and other items. In addition, the character of Belle has been integrated into the "Disney Princess" line of Disney's Consumer Products division, and appears on merchandise related to that franchise. In 1995, a live-action children's series entitled Sing Me a Story with Belle began running in syndication, remaining on the air through 1999. Two direct-to-video followups (which take place during the timeline depicted in the original film) were produced by Walt Disney Television Animation: in 1997 and Belle's Magical World in 1998; in contrast to the universal acclaim of the original, reception to the sequels was extremely negative. Disney on Ice produced an ice version of the movie that opened in 1992 in Lakeland, Florida. The show was such a huge commercial and critical success, touring around the world to sell-out crowds, that a television special was made when it toured Spain in 1994. The show ended its run in 2006, after 14 years. There are several video games that are loosely based on the film: The first video game based on the film was titled Beauty and the Beast: Belle's Quest and is an action platformer for the Sega Genesis. Developed by Software Creations, the game was released in North America in 1993. It is one of two video games based on the film that Sunsoft published for the Genesis, the other being Beauty and The Beast: Roar of the Beast. Characters from the film like Gaston can help the player past tricky situations. As Belle, the player must reach the Beast's castle and break the spell to live happily ever after. To succeed, she must explore the village, forest, castle, and snowy forest to solve puzzles and mini-games while ducking or jumping over enemies. Belle's health is represented by a stack of blue books, which diminishes when she touches bats, rats, and other hazards in the game. Extra lives, keys and other items are hidden throughout the levels. While there is no continue or game saving ability, players can use a code to start the game at any of the seven levels. The second video game based on the film was titled Beauty and the Beast: Roar of the Beast and is a side-scrolling video game for the Genesis. As the Beast, the player must successfully complete several levels, based on scenes from the film, in order to protect the castle from invading villagers and forest animals and rescue Belle from Gaston. The third and fourth video games based on the film are action platformers developed by Probe Software and published by Hudson Soft. One, titled Beauty and the Beast, was released in Europe in 1994 for the NES, while the other, Disney's Beauty and the Beast, was released in North America in July 1994 and in Europe on February 23 1995 for the SNES. The entire games are played through the perspective of the Beast. As the Beast, the player must get Belle to fall in love so that the curse cast upon him and his castle will be broken. The final boss of the game is Gaston. The Beast can walk, jump, swipe, stomp, super stomp, and roar, the last of which is used to both damage enemies and reveal hidden objects. The fifth video game based on the film was titled Disney's Beauty and the Beast: A Boardgame Adventure and is a Disney Boardgame adventure for the Game Boy Color. It was released on October 25, 1999. The video game series Kingdom Hearts features a world based on the film, named "Beast's Castle", along with several of the film's characters. In the first game, the world has been destroyed and Belle kidnapped by the Heartless, led by Maleficent, but the Beast travels to Maleficent's stronghold and works with Sora to defeat Maleficent and rescue Belle and the other captured princesses. In Kingdom Hearts II, the world has since been restored following Ansem's defeat, but Beast and Belle are having difficulties due to the enigmatic Xaldin of Organization XIII attempting to bring out the Beast's darker side in order to turn him into a Heartless and a Nobody, but the Beast eventually comes to his senses and works with Sora once again to defeat Xaldin once and for all. In the game's ending credits, the Beast turns back into the Prince. In , the world is featured as a playable level but the story is not essential to the main plot. In Kingdom Hearts χ, the world is featured again, this time as a hallucination that follows the plot of the movie more closely. The characters featured in the series are Beast, Belle, Lumiere, Gaston, Cogsworth, Mrs. Potts, Chip, Maurice, and the Wardrobe. After Gaston is defeated, the Beast transforms back into the Prince. Gaston does not appear in Kingdom Hearts II, the world's primary antagonist being Xaldin, an original character created for the series, but who shares several traits with Forte, the main antagonist of Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas. List of Disney animated features, List of Disney animated films based on fairy tales Beauty and the Beast ( – also the UK title) is a 1946 French romantic fantasy film directed by French poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau. Starring Josette Day as Belle and Jean Marais as the Beast, it is an adaptation of the 1757 story Beauty and the Beast, written by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont and published as part of a fairy tale anthology. The plot of Cocteau's film revolves around Belle's father who is sentenced to death for picking a rose from Beast's garden. Belle offers to go back to the Beast in her father's place. Beast falls in love with her and proposes marriage on a nightly basis which she refuses. Belle eventually becomes more drawn to Beast, who tests her by letting her return home to her family and telling her that if she doesn't return to him within a week, he will die of grief. Beauty and the Beast is now recognized as a classic of French cinema. While scrubbing the floor at home, Belle (Josette Day) is interrupted by her brother's friend Avenant (Jean Marais) who tells her she deserves better and suggests they get married. Belle rejects Avenant, as she wishes to stay home and take care of her father, who has suffered much since his ships were lost at sea and the family fortune along with them. Belle's father (Marcel André) arrives home announcing he has come into a great fortune that he will pick up the next day, along with gifts for his daughters, Belle and her shrewish sisters Adelaide and Felicie. Belle's roguish brother Ludovic (Michel Auclair), believing they will soon be wealthy, signs a contract from a moneylender (Raoul Marco) allowing him the ability to sue Ludovic's father if he can't pay. Belle's sisters ask for a monkey and a parrot as gifts, but Belle asks only for a rose. However, the next day, Belle's father finds on his arrival that his fortune has been seized to clear his debts and he is as penniless as before. He has no money for lodging and is forced to return home through a forest at night. Belle's father gets lost in the forest and finds himself at a large castle whose gates and doors magically open themselves. On entering the castle, he is guided by an enchanted candelabra that leads him to a laden dinner table where he falls asleep. Awakened by a loud roar, he wanders the castle's grounds. Remembering that Belle asked for a rose, he plucks a rose from a tree which makes the Beast (Jean Marais) appear. The Beast threatens to kill him for theft but suggests that one of his daughters can take his place. The Beast offers his horse Magnificent to guide him through the forest and to his home. Belle's father explains the situation to his family and Avenant. Belle agrees to go and take her father's place. She rides Magnificent to the castle. Upon meeting the Beast. Belle faints at his monstrous appearance and is carried to her room in the castle. Belle awakens to find a magic mirror which allows her to see anything. The Beast invites Belle to dinner, where he tells her that she's in equal command to him and that she will be asked every day to marry him. Days pass as Belle grows more accustomed to and fond of the Beast, but she continues to refuse marriage. Using the magic mirror, Belle sees that her father has become deathly ill. Belle begs for permission to visit her family. The Beast reluctantly grants her permission to leave for a week. He gives Belle two magical items: a glove that can transport her wherever she wishes and a golden key that unlocks Diana's Pavilion, the source of the Beast's true riches. He tells Belle that he gives her these precious items to show his trust in her, and says that if she does not return at the end of the week, he will die of grief. Belle uses the glove to appear in her bedridden father's room, where her visit restores him to health. Belle finds her family living in poverty, having never recovered from Ludovic's deal with the moneylender. Jealous of Belle's rich life at the castle, Adelaide and Felicie steal her golden key and devise a plan to turn Ludovic and Avenant against the Beast. Avenant and Ludovic devise a plan of their own to kill the Beast, and agree to aid Belle's sisters. To stall Belle, her sisters trick her into staying past her seven-day limit by pretending to love her. Belle reluctantly agrees to stay. The Beast sends Magnificent with the magic mirror to retrieve Belle but Ludovic and Avenant find Magnificent first, and ride him to the castle. Belle later finds the mirror which reveals the Beast's sorrowful face in its reflection. Belle realizes she is missing the golden key as the mirror breaks. Distraught, Belle returns to the castle using the magic glove and finds the Beast in the courtyard, near death from a broken heart. Meanwhile, Avenant and Ludovic stumble upon Diana's Pavilion. Thinking that their stolen key may trigger a trap, they scale the wall of the Pavilion. As the Beast dies in Belle's arms, Avenant breaks into the Pavilion through its glass roof, whereupon he is shot with an arrow by an animated statue of the Roman goddess Diana and is himself turned into a Beast. As this happens, arising from where the Beast lay dead, is Prince Ardent (Jean Marais) who is cured of being the Beast. He explains that because his parents did not believe in spirits, in revenge the spirits turned him into the Beast. Prince Ardent and Belle embrace, then fly away to his kingdom where she will be his Queen. He promises that her father will stay with them and Belle's sisters will carry the train of her gown. Jean Marais as La Bête (The Beast) / The Prince / Avenant, Josette Day as Belle, Marcel André as Belle's Father, Mila Parély as Félicie, Nane Germon as Adélaïde, Michel Auclair as Ludovic, Raoul Marco as The Usurer After the opening credits, Cocteau briefly breaks the fourth wall with a written preamble: The set designs and cinematography were intended to evoke the illustrations and engravings of Gustave Doré and, in the farmhouse scenes, the paintings of Jan Vermeer. The cinematography was performed by Henri Alekan. Christian Bérard and Lucien Carré covered production design. As mentioned in the DVD extras the exteriors were shot in the Château de la Roche Courbon (Indre-et- Loire). The score was composed by Georges Auric. Upon the film's December 1947 New York City release, critic Bosley Crowther called the film a "priceless fabric of subtle images...a fabric of gorgeous visual metaphors, of undulating movements and rhythmic pace, of hypnotic sounds and music, of casually congealing ideas"; according to Crowther, "the dialogue, in French, is spare and simple, with the story largely told in pantomime, and the music of Georges Auric accompanies the dreamy, fitful moods. The settings are likewise expressive, many of the exteriors having been filmed for rare architectural vignettes at Raray, one of the most beautiful palaces and parks in all France. And the costumes, too, by Christian Bérard and Escoffier, are exquisite affairs, glittering and imaginative." According to Time magazine, the film is a "wondrous spectacle for children of any language, and quite a treat for their parents, too"; but the magazine concludes "Cocteau makes about a half-hour too much of a good thing—and few things pall like a dream that cannot be shaken off." In 1999 Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert added the film to his The Great Movies list, calling it "one of the most magical of all films" and a "fantasy alive with trick shots and astonishing effects, giving us a Beast who is lonely like a man and misunderstood like an animal." A 2002 Village Voice review found the film's "visual opulence" "both appealing and problematic", writing "Full of baroque interiors, elegant costumes, and overwrought jewelry (even tears turn to diamonds), the film is all surface, and undermines its own don't-trust-a- pretty-face and anti-greed themes at every turn." In 2010, the film was ranked #26 in Empire magazine's "100 Best Films of World Cinema". Jacques Demy's 1970 film Donkey Skin is a musical farce adapted from Charles Perrault's incestuous fairy tale about a widowed king who wishes to marry his beautiful daughter. Demy pays homage to Cocteau in numerous references to Beauty and the Beast, including the casting of actor Jean Marais as the king. At one point, the king woos the princess by reading from Cocteau's poem, "Ode à Picasso.", American singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks wrote her 1983 ballad "Beauty and the Beast" after screening the film for the second time. While she performs the song, the film plays on the screen behind her and the band., The fourteenth episode of Faerie Tale Theatre, broadcast in August 1984, featured an adaptation of Beauty And The Beast which was an homage to this film. It borrowed many visual elements, including the makeup for the beast, along with segments of the dialogue translated from French into English. It featured Susan Sarandon as Belle and Klaus Kinski as the Beast., In 1994, composer Philip Glass created an opera version — also called La Belle et la Bête — one of a "Cocteau Trilogy" of operas. In its initial incarnation the musicians and singers would perform the work on stage with a restored, newly subtitled print of the film playing on a screen behind them. In the original presentation, Belle was sung by the mezzo-soprano Janice Felty. (The current Criterion Collection DVD and Blu-ray release offers the ability to view the movie while listening to either Glass's score or the original soundtrack.), The 2003 American miniseries Angels in America features a dream sequence which duplicates the set design of the Beast's castle. A character is shown reading a book about Cocteau before the dream begins., The Vienna Art Orchestra's 1995 production "The Vienna Art Orchestra plays for Jean Cocteau" was performed with a showing of the film, and uses its texts. Marie-Cathérine d'Aulnoy, La Chatte blanche, in: Les Contes des Fées, Paris 1697–1698, reprinted in German in: Französische Märchen, Auswahl und Einleitung von Jack Zipes, Frankfurt/Main, Verlag Zweitausendeins, Lizenausgabe des Insel-Verlages, Mainz/Leipzig 1991, S. 123–156., Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont, La Belle et la bête, in: Le Magasin des Enfants, ou Dialogues entre une sage gouvernante et ses élèves, London 1757, reprinted in German in: Französische Märchen, Auswahl und Einleitung von Jack Zipes, Frankfurt/Main, Verlag Zweitausendeins, Lizenausgabe des Insel-Verlages, Mainz/Leipzig 1991, S. 321–336. Beauty and the Beast: Dark Magic an essay by Geoffrey O'Brien at the Criterion Collection, On the Making of Beauty and the Beast an essay by Francis Steegmuller at the Criterion Collection Beauty and the Beast is a musical with music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Howard Ashman and Tim Rice, and book by Linda Woolverton. Adapted from Walt Disney Pictures' Academy Award-winning 1991 animated musical film of the same name – which in turn had been based on the classic French fairy tale by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont – Beauty and the Beast tells the story of a cold-blooded prince who has been magically transformed into an unsightly creature as punishment for his selfish ways. To revert into his true human form, the Beast must first learn to love a bright, beautiful young woman whom he has imprisoned in his enchanted castle before it is too late. Critics, who hailed it as one of the year's finest musicals, immediately noted the film's Broadway musical potential when it was first released in 1991, encouraging Disney CEO Michael Eisner to venture into Broadway. All eight songs from the animated film were reused in the musical, including a resurrected musical number which had been cut from the motion picture. Original songwriter Menken composed six new songs for the production alongside lyricist Rice, replacing Ashman who had died during production of the film. Woolverton, who had written the film's screenplay, adapted her own work into the musical's libretto, and specifically expanded upon the characterization of the Beast. Woolverton also expanded the storylines of the castle staff from servants who had already been transformed into household objects into humans who were gradually turning into inanimate objects. Costumes were designed by Ann Hould-Ward, who based her creations on both the animators' original designs as well as the Rococo art movement after researching how clothing and household objects looked during the 18th century. After completing tryouts in Houston, Beauty and the Beast premiered on Broadway on April 18, 1994, starring Susan Egan and Terrence Mann as the eponymous Belle and Beast, respectively. The musical opened to mixed reviews from theatre critics, but was a massive commercial success and well received by audiences. Beauty ran on Broadway for 5,461 performances for thirteen years (1994 - 2007), becoming Broadway's tenth longest-running production in history. The musical has grossed more than $1.4 billion worldwide and played in thirteen countries and 115 cities. It has also become a popular choice for junior, amateur and high school productions. Still recovering from Walt Disney's demise, Disney's animated films continued to experience a noticeable decline in quality while struggling to attain critical and commercial success during the 1970s and 1980s. The Walt Disney Company CEO Michael Eisner was hired to ensure the performance of the studio's next animated projects, despite having virtually no animation experience. Eisner himself had been a theatre major in college. Eisner's first hire as Disney's CEO was theatrical producer Peter Schneider, who subsequently became responsible for hiring more artists who shared similar theatrical backgrounds to contribute to the studio's next animated releases, among them lyricist Howard Ashman and his long-time collaborator, composer Alan Menken. Ashman and Menken had previously amassed great live musical success with their Off- Broadway production Little Shop of Horrors, but the performance of Ashman's first Broadway venture Smile had been disappointing. Eager to redeem himself, Ashman agreed to work on Disney's animated film The Little Mermaid (1989), which he and Menken would famously decide to approach as though they were scoring a Broadway musical. Upon release, The Little Mermaid was a massive critical and commercial success, garnering two Academy Awards, both of them for Ashman and Menken's original music. Disney established a successful renaissance period, during which Ashman and Menken became responsible for teaching the art of transforming traditional animated films into animated musicals. Inspired by Mermaids success, production on an animated musical adaptation of the "Beauty and the Beast" fairy tale began shortly afterward, during which Ashman finally confessed to Menken that he was dying of AIDS, a secret he had been keeping from the studio in fear of being discriminated against or fired. Before the film had even been completed, executive vice president Ron Logan suggested to Eisner that he consider adapting Beauty and the Beast for Broadway, an idea Eisner quickly deflected. While the film, written by screenwriter Linda Woolverton, was premiering at the New York Film Festival, an ailing Ashman was being cared for at St. Vincent's Hospital; the lyricist succumbed to his disease four days later on March 14, 1991, dying eight months before the film's November release. Beauty and the Beast became the last project on which Menken worked with Ashman. The film was released to immediate critical acclaim and commercial success, outperforming The Little Mermaid by becoming the highest-grossing animated film in history, as well as the first animated film to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. Once again, Academy Awards were won for Ashman and Menken's music. Several critics noticed the film's live musical potential, among them prolific New York Times theatre critic Frank Rich. Lamenting the Broadway selection at the time, Rich famously praised the songwriting duo for having written "[t]he best Broadway musical score of 1991", while hailing the film as a "better [musical] ... than anything he had seen on Broadway" in 1991. Rich's review would ultimately provide Eisner and Katzenberg with the confidence needed to seriously consider the film as a potential Broadway project. Disney was also inspired by the successes of Broadway musicals such as Cats, Les Misérables and The Phantom of the Opera strongly believing their production could be just as profitable. Virtually unknown at the time, Robert Jess Roth was appointed the production's director based on his various successes directing live shows at the Disney theme parks. Eisner and Katzenberg had opted against hiring a more established director in order to retain creative control over the project, believing that an A-list director would likely feel more inclined to challenge their vision. Roth himself had previously pursued Eisner about investing in a Broadway show – originally suggesting a stage adaptation of Mary Poppins into a Broadway musical in 1984 – only to have his idea declined, citing cost of investment and time concerns. However, Eisner invited Roth to ask him about pursuing Broadway again in the future once he had finished directing three additional Disney theme park shows. Ultimately impressed with Roth's adaptation of The Nutcracker, Eisner finally suggested an adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, inspired by the success of a condensed stage version of the film at Disneyland, although briefly discouraged by the idea of having humans instantly transformed into inanimate objects live. Since the film had not yet been released on home video, Roth spent an entire day re-watching Beauty and the Beast in theaters while brainstorming how to present its fantastical elements onstage, and eventually worked with choreographer Matt West and set designer Stan Meyer on their own proposal, with contributions from Menken and Woolverton. In a hotel in Aspen, Roth convinced Eisner and Katzenberg to green-light a Broadway adaptation of Beauty and the Beast using a combination of 140 storyboards, costume sketches, fabric swatches and demonstrating one illusion. Eisner retained final approval over all creative elements of the production, "from the lowest chorus swing performer to the director, stars and design team." Menken was initially skeptical of Roth's qualifications, as he had never directed a Broadway show before. Meanwhile, the producers were concerned that audiences might not be interested in seeing the same story that they have enjoyed on film on the Broadway stage. Among the skeptics was theatrical producer Steven Suskin, author of Opening Night and Broadway, who argued that the production was more likely to be successful in reverse: "(The movie is) basically written as a theater piece. I'm sure it would've worked in the theater first, and it then would've worked in the movies," believing audiences would have difficulties accepting a new version of such an immensely popular work. Beauty and the Beast became Disney's first Broadway venture, although Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, a stage adaptation of Disney's animated film of the same name, had premiered in New York in 1979, produced by Radio City Music Hall Productions, Inc. Theatre Under the Stars' executive director Frank Young campaigned heavily to have the show open in Houston, Texas even getting Governor Ann Richards involved in order to secure the stage rights. Roth summarized Beauty and the Beast as a story about "seeing past the exterior of a person and into his or her heart". Woolverton learned that Disney had commissioned her to adapt the animated film she had written into a Broadway musical while she was vacationing with her family in Maui, and her initial response to the idea was "Yikes." In the process of adapting her own animated screenplay into a full-length, two-act libretto for the stage, Woolverton contributed several distinct changes to the material, specifically instilling more emotional "depth" into each main character. The writer expanded the story by both "fleshing out" each character and allowing room for new musical numbers. Namely, Woolverton made the Beast a more threatening yet sympathetic figure; the writer expanded upon his characterization by developing the Beast into "a fuller character", aided by the addition of his own song, "If I Can't Love Her". Meanwhile, the book-loving Belle was adapted into a more headstrong and determined heroine. Belle and the Beast's relationship benefits from a new scene Woolverton wrote specifically for the stage, during which the couple read in the castle's library; Belle introduces the Beast to the tale of King Arthur and reads the book to him, to which the Beast responds by showing genuine vulnerability for the first time. In 1993, Woolverton explained to the Los Angeles Times that "the mythology in the story would be changed to explain, for example, a 6-foot-tall candelabra." Perhaps Woolverton's most significant modification involves the enchanted objects, and the decision to have the enchantress' spell gradually transform the castle's staff of loyal servants into household objects throughout the entire duration of the musical, as opposed to having already done so immediately at the beginning. Essentially, becoming completely inanimate if the spell is not broken in time would equate to each character dying, which ultimately augments the story's drama. Consequently, this plot decision enhanced the story into a tale about people being forced to make difficult decisions, as opposed to solely a story of a man struggling to retain his humanity, in turn providing the audience with an opportunity to care about the supporting characters dramatically. Generally, Woolverton's book remained quite faithful to the original text; the plot is essentially the same, but particular detail has been added in order to "flesh out" the story. The feather duster and wardrobe characters – only minor characters in the animated film – were broadened into fully realized supporting characters and named for the first time; Woolverton named them Babette and Madame de la Grande Bouche, respectively. Taking her job seriously, Woolverton worked relentlessly on revising the script, and often took the cast's suggestions into consideration (though not always yielding to their opinions). Despite the musical having been based on a pre- existing story by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, Woolverton retains a sole writing credit for her work, as the story had long lapsed into the public domain by that time. Broadway producers are usually eager to cast big-named performers in their musicals, but Katzenberg, famous at the time for avoiding working with actors of such caliber, decided against this practice for Beauty and the Beast. Eisner concluded that most of the film's original voice actors would be too busy to reprise their roles onstage. In her Broadway debut, then-22-year-old actress Susan Egan was cast as the musical's original Belle. Egan, who had not yet seen the film, had been auditioning for several other Broadway projects at the time – namely My Fair Lady, Carousel and Grease – in which she was much more interested. Despite longing to originate a Broadway role, the actress was initially reluctant to audition for Beauty and the Beast because she thought that "it was a terrible idea for Disney to put a cartoon on Broadway." Additionally, Egan felt she was not attractive enough to play a character touted "the most beautiful girl in the village", but her agent managed to convince her otherwise. Without any film to reference, Egan determined that Belle is supposed to be a "quirky" character and approached her funnier than how she is depicted in the film, in turn garnering laughs from the producers – who were amused by her unique interpretation – and eventually earning several callbacks. Meanwhile, her competition of 500 actresses, many of whom were simply offering imitations of voice actress Paige O'Hara's original performance, continued to be eliminated. Egan's final week of auditions, during which she sang for Menken for the first time, was particularly challenging. On her last day of auditioning, Egan auditioned opposite several different actors trying out for the roles of the Beast and Gaston. As the day concluded, Roth directed Egan to approach the role as "a straight ingénue", and she was ultimately cast upon proving capable of playing Belle both straight and comically. Only afterward did Egan celebrate by finally renting and watching the entire film for the first time. Although Egan did not feel particularly pressured about the role, she was grateful to be surrounded by a supporting cast of veteran Broadway performers. Actor Terrence Mann was cast as the Beast. Mann had previously performed as Javert in Les Misérables, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award. For his final audition for Disney management, Mann performed for a large audience comprising Disney executives and secretaries in a theatre located on 42nd Street, which he felt was in stark contrast to the usual method of auditioning for six to eight people in a dark theatre. Actor Gary Beach was cast as Lumiere. Beach had seen Beauty and the Beast premiere at the El Capitan Theatre, prior to which he had watched a stage rendition of the film, and thoroughly enjoyed both. Beach was particularly drawn to Jerry Orbach's rendition of "Be Our Guest" in his role as Lumiere, thinking, "Now why can't I get a part like that". Two years later, Beach received a call from casting director Jay Binder inviting him to play Lumiere during their workshop of Beauty and the Beast, but kept turning down the offer due to having prior commitments to an upcoming show starring comedian Carol Burnett. It was only at Burnett's insistence that Beach finally accepted. Amidst a cast of relatively obscure actors, Tom Bosley, famous for his roles on the television series Happy Days and Murder, She Wrote, became the show's most recognizable performer when he was cast as Belle's father Maurice. All eight of the film's original songs were retained for the Broadway adaptation. The song "Human Again" had originally been written for the film, but it was ultimately abandoned due to time and story constraints; the musical number was finally resurrected for and included in the production. Composer Alan Menken, who had both scored and written the film's songs alongside lyricist Howard Ashman, returned to the project to write six new songs for the musical. Lyricist Tim Rice joined Menken to co-write the new numbers, replacing Ashman who had died in 1991, before the film was released. Both Menken and Rice initially approached the project with some resistance; Menken's emotional attachment to the music he had written with Ashman made him fear Disney's vision of a Broadway musical would transform Beauty and the Beast into an attraction too similar to what one would find at Walt Disney World. Meanwhile, Rice, who had previously worked as composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's lyricist on the Broadway musicals Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita, was hesitant to replace Ashman in fear of worsening Beauty and the Beast. Notably, Rice had similarly replaced Ashman to write the remaining songs for Disney's Aladdin (1992) after the lyricist died. Ultimately, the collaboration resulted in approximately half of the Broadway score having co-writing credits by Menken and Ashman, while the remaining half are Menken and Rice compositions. The Menken-Rice songs are sometimes billed as "additional songs composed by [Alan] Menken and lyrics by Tim Rice." On working on the musical without Ashman, Menken explained that "The main challenge ... was blending the lyrics of Tim Rice with those of Howard. In the end, the finished score has a quality all its own; a hybrid between" Ashman and Rice's styles. Elaborating on the main difference between writing songs for the stage as opposed to film, Menken stated that the lack of close-ups and montages in a live musical production creates a requirement for more singing material in order "to provide the same kind of illumination that intimate facial expression provides." Most of the new material focused on character development, such as Gaston's "Me", Belle's "Home" and the Beast's "If I Can't Love Her". Some new songs, Maurice's fatherly ballad "No Matter What" and Gaston, Lefou, and Monseuir's D'Arque villainous number "Maison des Lunes", for example, were written to serve as "time-servers". In 1998, a seventh song entitled "A Change in Me" was written four years into production's run specifically for R&B; singer Toni Braxton when she joined the cast to play Belle, and appears during the show's second act. The idea for the song originated while Braxton was still in negotiations with Disney to appear in the show for a total of three months, but various circumstances led to the singer constantly delaying signing the contract. It was not until Braxton had dinner with Menken, Rice and West that she finally agreed to sign the contract under the condition that a brand new song be written specifically for her, which an intoxicated Rice had drunkenly offered and promised. When confronted by Roth about his promise upon learning of it from Braxton a few days later, within 24 hours Rice successfully discovered a location within the musical in which to include a new song, specifically "Where Belle tells Maurice about how the time that she spent with the Beast in his castle has changed her." That song ultimately became the ballad "A Change in Me", which lyrically addresses the ways in which Belle's initial motivations have ultimately changed during her imprisonment, explaining to Maurice that she has matured and no longer longs for what she originally cited in "Belle (Reprise)". Braxton premiered the song in the form of a live performance on The Rosie O'Donnell Show. Both the song and Braxton's performance were well received, and "A Change in Me" has been included in the musical ever since. Eisner especially enjoyed the song, demanding that it be included in international productions as well, to which he personally traveled in order to teach it to the cast. Music supervision was handled by Michael Kosarin, with sound design by John Petrafesa Jr. Unlike in the film, Belle actually performs and dances alongside the enchanted objects during "Be Our Guest", which resembles "a high-energy Vegas number" similar to the musical Ziegfeld Follies. The original Broadway cast recording of Beauty and the Beast was released by Walt Disney Records in 1994. Similar cast albums followed suit, including Australian and Japanese recordings in 1994 and 1996, respectively. "A Change in Me" has yet to be included on any official English- language cast recordings. Stanley Meyer designed the production's set. Following Disney's instructions "to make the animated film come to life", Meyer's set was very much a literal interpretation of the film. Meyer found it "tricky" to translate two- dimensional environments into a three-dimensional world. The West Wing's appearance mirrors that of its resident the Beast, being hideous on the outside but beautiful when the audience is finally taken inside of it. In stark contrast to popular musicals The Phantom of the Opera and Into the Woods, Beauty and the Beasts set resembles a hybrid of Gothic Victorian and Louis Quinze. Disney hired costume designer Ann Hould-Ward to design the musical's costumes because the studio enjoyed a "certain aesthetic" she had used in her previous work, and thus allowed her much creative freedom. Roth was particularly impressed with the designer's contributions to the musicals Sunday in the Park With George and Into the Woods. Hould-Ward accepted Disney's offer because she was interested in seeing exactly how a corporate company producing a Broadway musical for the first time would "change the Broadway world." Conceptualization began in summer 1992. For research purposes, Disney encouraged Hould-Ward to reference the animated film; she also researched clothing worn throughout the late 18th century, during which the original fairy tale was written, and spent one year discovering how household items looked during the mid-1700s. Additionally, Hould-Ward visited with Beauty and the Beasts original animators, spending one week learning how they created their characters to ensure that they would be recognizable to those who had seen the film. However, the designer also decided that her own creations would not exactly replicate the film's. Basing the costumes on the Rococo art movement, Hould-Ward presented her initial ideas to Eisner and then-Disney president Frank Wells. Once approved, Hould-Ward and her team spent the following year creating prototypes of each major costume. With an unusually long work schedule of two years, Hould-Ward recalled that "this kind of timeline ... wasn't the norm in a Broadway musical" at the time. The process of designing Beauty and the Beasts costumes was more collaborative between designer and actor than most other Broadway productions Hould-Ward had previously worked on, and she frequently sought input from the cast to make sure they were able to move. Designing Belle's costumes was an "easy" task for Hould-Ward; the character is initially dressed in standard Disney heroine attire until replaced by more elaborate costumes once Belle meets the Beast. Hould-Ward based the character's famous yellow ballgown on several historic portraits. The gown became the first costume built for the production in order to accommodate Disney's mandate to market the dress in photoshoots and commercials starring Egan and Mann, six months prior to rehearsals. Weighing 45 pounds, the dress is a combination of various patterns and materials, including a hoop skirt, silk, brocade, beading, flowers and bows. Too large to fit inside Egan's dressing room after the ballroom sequence, undressing required assistance from three backstage crew members who used wires to hoist the dress up into the rafters, where it would be stored until the next performance. A lot of time was spent designing the Beast's costume, the creation of which was especially challenging due to requirements to "allow enough of the performer to show through." Hould-Ward's initial designs for the Beast were constantly rejected by Katzenberg, who reiterated that she "put the movie onstage" until the producer realized that the excessive prosthetics were limiting Mann's vocal performance. A wire frame was also used to maintain the costume's shape, which evokes heavy metal fashion until ultimately substituted for a black Oscar de la Renta-inspired velvet suit when the Beast finally transforms back into a prince. Hould-Ward designed the leads' costumes from the perspective of her daughter Leah, explaining, "when Leah comes to see it, she remembers from the movie that the Beast was in that blue jacket. Leah expects that blue jacket, and if you don't give it to her, she and a lot of other ten-year-olds are going to be sad". At the same time, the designer wanted her creations to be equally as interesting on an intellectual level for parents to enjoy also. The challenge of designing Belle and the Beast's costumes paled in comparison to the difficulty of creating the enchanted objects, a combination of intricate wiring, prosthetics and pyrotechnics. Scale was the most prominent "obstacle" for Hould-Ward's to overcome: "The problem was the presentation of an actor as a life-sized teapot when the characters in the film were so little in comparison". Because the castle's enchanted staff is slowly transforming into objects, shown at various stages of transformation without ever completely becoming the objects themselves, Hould-Ward was required to create several different costumes for each character in order to depict the transformation as the show progresses. Meanwhile, the costume of Lumiere alone was built by a team of forty people, including a creator of the prosthetic candle, hair and Vacuform specialist; the pyrotechnician, man responsible for equipping the costume's pyro unit with butane and man operating the butane tank were each separate people. While transforming animation into real life, Hould-Ward also worked on incorporating the human body each costume, explaining, "I wanted the reality of the real person rather than the fantasy of the object ... The essence of my job is to allow my real actors to take you to this fantastical place." A system of wired frames was used to help the actors support their characters' heavy garments. Such elaborate costumes had never been designed for a Broadway production before. Cogsworth's costume features a fully functioning clock on his face. Meanwhile, Madame de la Grande Bouche was the production's most expensive costume. The musical originally relied on heavy prosthetics and elaborate costumes in an attempt to make the musical resemble the film as closely as possible. In an attempt to replicate the film's famous movie poster, Egan was dressed in flats while Mann was positioned on stilts to establish a more dramatic height difference. According to Egan, the studio "didn't trust the audience's ability to suspend disbelief, something theater-goers are routinely asked to do." However, the company finally began to relent as the production neared Houston tryouts after a final run-through during which the actors did not wear costumes; thus, the prosthetics were gradually lessened and replaced by make up for the Beast and enchanted objects during 1993 previews. The elaborate costumes resulted in their fair share of technical difficulties, malfunctions and performance restrictions, many of which manifested during the seven-week tryouts in Houston. The costumes left little room for the performers to change between scenes, and air conditioners were fastened to them to regulate their temperatures. In general, the weight of the enchanted objects' costumes limited their dancing. Chiropractors and therapists remained on standby to assist Fowler, whose Mrs. Potts costume required her to always keep one arm in the air. Beach compared holding up the two propane tanks used to represent Lumiere's candles to carrying two hams around a grocery store two and a half hours. To build his stamina, Beach would carry the tanks during rehearsal. Beach's hand caught fire during one performance, which he did not notice until Mann subtly pointed it out using "furtive head nods". While dancing, the inertia of Egan's heavy ballgown caused its skirt to constantly pull her in the opposite direction of whichever way she turned. Mann likened performing in the Beast's costume to wearing several heavy winter coats, comparing the wig to "four Angora cats and gaffer taping them to your head and then running around the block 10 or 12 times." Disney was outraged when, after their first performance at the Palace Theatre, The New York Times published caricaturist Al Hirschfeld's line drawing interpretation of Belle and the Beast's pose, in which Belle's yellow gown was colored pink, and the Beast's tuxedo appeared greenish as opposed to royal blue. When Disney confronted Hirschfeld, the artist defended his work, explaining, "The costumes may have been blue and yellow, but they made me feel green and pink." Hould-Ward adjusted the costumes to accommodate the locations as the production traveled to various theaters. Lighting designer Natasha Katz was hired to work on Beauty and the Beast. When Disney first approached Katz to offer her the job, several of Katz's cohorts – specifically other lighting designers – attempted to discourage her from accepting in fear of changing the appearance of musical theatre forever. In hindsight, Katz defended Disney's work, explaining, "Beauty and the Beast didn't bring theatre back to New York, but it did change the dynamic, no question about it, of the business." Known for assisting David Copperfield with his illusions, Roth hired Jim Steinmeyer to work on Beauty and the Beast. Steinmeyer had previously contributed to the musical Merlin. The Beast's transformation sequence during the second act was much-discussed. It took about 11 weeks to set the design. On a cold winter's night, an old beggar woman comes to a young spoiled prince's castle, offering him a single rose in return for shelter. But the prince turns her away solely for her appearance. The old woman warns him not to be fooled by appearances, as true beauty lies within, only to be rejected again. She then transforms into a beautiful enchantress and turns the prince into a hideous Beast and his servants into various household objects. She gives him the rose to use as an hour-glass. The only way he can break the spell is to learn to love another and earn her love in return by the time the last petal falls ("Prologue"). Ten years later, a beautiful young girl named Belle makes her way into town one morning in order to get a book from the local bookseller. On the way she expresses her wish to live in a world like her books, full of adventure, while the townspeople note her unparalleled beauty but find her love of books odd ("Belle"). Belle has also attracted the attention of Gaston (the local hunter and town hero), who admires her only for her beauty. Belle, however, is not oblivious to her peers' views of her. She voices her concerns about it to her eccentric father and inventor, Maurice who assures her that she is anything but strange ("No Matter What"). The two then put the finishing touches on his invention and Maurice heads off to an invention fair donning a scarf knitted for him by Belle ("No Matter What (Reprise)"), but becomes lost in the woods and attacked by a pack of wolves. After surviving a wolf attack, he enters the Beast's castle and meets the servants, including Lumière, a maître d' turned into a candelabra, Cogsworth, the head of household turned into a clock, Babette, a maid turned into a feather duster that still seems to retain her flirtatious tendencies, Mrs. Potts, the head of the kitchen turned into a teapot, and Chip, her son turned into a teacup. They welcome him, but the horrid Beast arrives and locks Maurice away in the dungeon for trespassing. Back in town, Gaston proposes to Belle, which she politely rejects ("Me"). Appalled by Gaston's forwardness, Belle once again voices her need for a life outside this provincial life ("Belle (Reprise)"). Gaston's sidekick, LeFou, returns from the woods wearing the scarf Belle knitted for Maurice. Belle realizes her father is in danger and heads into the woods to look for him. She ends up at the castle where she finds her father locked away in a dungeon. She makes a deal with the Beast, Maurice goes free but she remains instead. They agree and Maurice is sent back to town without being allowed to say goodbye. Belle is given a guest room and ordered by the Beast to join him for dinner. She mourns her situation ("Home"), but Mrs. Potts and Madame de la Grande Bouche, an operatic wardrobe, attempt to cheer her up ("Home (Reprise)"). Back in town, at the local tavern, Gaston sulks at his loss of a bride. LeFou and the patrons attempt to cheer him up ("Gaston"), when Maurice rushes in claiming a Beast has Belle locked away, they laugh at him but Gaston formulates a plan ("Gaston (Reprise)"). Back at the castle, the Beast grows impatient as Belle has yet to join him for dinner. Cogsworth informs him she refuses to come, after a shouting match between Belle and the Beast (which ends in a victory for Belle) he tells her if she cannot eat with him then she will not eat at all. In his quarters, he sulks and notes his fate should the spell not break ("How Long Must This Go On?"). Eventually, Belle does become hungry and ventures into the kitchen where the servants offer her dinner despite their master's orders. They treat her to an amazing cabaret show ("Be Our Guest"). After dinner, Belle gets a tour of the castle courtesy of Cogsworth and Lumière, her curiosity leads her to enter the West Wing, a place the Beast told her was forbidden. Mesmerized by a mysterious rose floating in a bell jar, she reaches out to touch it but before she can, the Beast stops her and orders her to get out accidentally shoving her in the process. Fearing for her life, Belle flees from the castle. Realizing his deadly mistake, the Beast knows he will be a monster forever if he cannot learn to love her ("If I Can't Love Her"). In the woods, Belle is attacked by wolves and is only rescued when the Beast comes to her aid, but he is injured during the fight and collapses ("Entr'acte/Wolf Chase"). Instead of taking the chance to run home Belle helps him back to the castle. She cleans his injuries and after a brief argument about whose fault this is, the Beast thanks her for her kindness and thus their friendship is born. Wanting to give her a thank-you gift, the Beast gives Belle his huge library, which excites her. She notes a change in the Beast's personality as the servants note a change in Belle and the Beast's relationship ("Something There"). They express their hope of being human once more ("Human Again") while Belle asks the Beast to accompany her to dinner that night. Back in the village, Gaston meets with the asylum owner Monsieur D'Arque. They plan to lock Maurice away to blackmail Belle into marrying Gaston ("Maison des Lunes"). In the castle, the Beast and Belle attend a lovely dinner and personal ball, where they dance together in the ballroom ("Beauty and the Beast"). The Beast, who plans to tell Belle he loves her, asks Belle if she is happy here, to which she responds positively but notes that she misses her father. He offers her his Magic Mirror to view him. She sees that Maurice is sick and lost in the woods and fears for his life. But even though the Beast knows there are only a few hours left till the last petal falls from the rose, he allows Belle to leave in order to save her father; she departs after a tearful goodbye ("If I Can't Love Her (Reprise)"). Belle finds her father and brings him back to their house in the village. After she is able to nurse him back to health, she explains the transformation she seems to have gone through while she was with the Beast ("A Change in Me"). A mob arrives, led by Gaston to take Maurice to the asylum. Belle proves her father's sanity by showing the townspeople the Beast is real using the Magic Mirror, but does not realize the error in her gesture. The townspeople immediately fear the Beast, but Belle insists that he is gentle and kind. Gaston catches her tone and recognizes the Beast as his rival for Belle's affections and organizes the mob to kill the Beast ("Mob Song"). In order to warn the Beast, Belle and Maurice decide to beat the mob to the castle. However, Gaston and the mob had already reached the castle before Belle and Maurice did. At the castle, the servants are able to keep the lynch mob at bay, but Gaston breaks through and finds the Beast in his tower. He engages in a fight with him, mercilessly beating and taunting him ("Battle"). The Beast has lost the will to live at Belle's departure. As Gaston moves in for the killing blow, Belle arrives. The Beast immediately turns on Gaston and is prepared to kill him, but spares his life after seeing the fear in his eyes. The Beast and Belle are reunited, but this reunion is cut short as Gaston fatally stabs the Beast. This act of violence causes Gaston to lose his footing and he falls to his death. On the balcony, Belle assures the Beast he'll live but they both know she is helpless to save him. She begs him not to leave her because she has found home in his company ("End Duet"), but despite this, he dies; Belle sobs on his body and says she loves him just before the last rose petal falls. A transformation takes place ("Transformation") and the Beast is alive and human once more. Though Belle does not recognize him for the first time, she looks into his eyes and sees the Beast within and they kiss. The two of them sing of how their lives have changed because of love and they dance once more as the company, now changed back to their human form, gathers in the ballroom ("Beauty and the Beast (Reprise)"). Beauty and the Beast premiered in a joint production of Theatre Under The Stars and Disney Theatrical at the Music Hall, Houston, Texas, from November 28, 1993, through December 26, 1993. The musical opened on Broadway at the Palace Theatre on April 18, 1994, and ran there until September 5, 1999. The show then transferred to the Lunt- Fontanne Theatre on November 11, 1999, with an official opening date of November 16, 1999. The musical closed on July 29, 2007, after 46 previews and 5,461 performances, and is Broadway's tenth-longest running production in history (). The production holds the record of being the longest running production at both the Palace Theatre, where it opened, and the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, where it closed its Broadway run. The production cost an estimated $12 million, arguably higher, becoming the most costly Broadway musical at the time. However, some analysists estimate the cost to be closer to $20 million. Directed by Robert Jess Roth with choreography by Matt West and assisted by Dan Mojica, the original Broadway cast included Susan Egan as Belle, Terrence Mann as the Beast, Burke Moses as Gaston, Gary Beach as Lumière and Beth Fowler as Mrs. Potts. Orchestrations were by Danny Troob (after his own orchestrations and arrangements of the film), scenic designer was Stan Meyer, costume designer Ann Hould-Ward, lighting designer Natasha Katz, sound was by T. Richard Fitzgerald, hair designer David H. Lawrence, and prosthetics were by John Dods. Illusions were by Jim Steinmeyer and John Gaughan, and pyrotechnic design was by Tyler Wymer. The Broadway production closed to make way for Disney's next musical venture, The Little Mermaid. With Disney set to open its Broadway version of The Little Mermaid on November 3, 2007, at the time, it was believed that having two Disney princess films on Broadway at the same time would divide audiences and cause competition between the two shows. At this point, Disney also had three other shows running at the same time: The Lion King, Tarzan, and Mary Poppins. It was reported that Disney Theatrical planned to revive the show on Broadway for the 2008 holiday season, but Disney did not pursue this. The West End production opened at London's Dominion Theatre on April 29, 1997, starring Julie-Alanah Brighten as Belle and Alasdair Harvey as the Beast. It also featured Burke Moses as Gaston, Derek Griffiths as Lumiere, Mary Millar as Mrs. Potts, Norman Rossington as Maurice, Barry James as Cogsworth, Di Botcher as Madame de la Grande Bouche, Richard Gauntlett as LeFou, and Rebecca Thornhill as Babette. Over the course of the production, notable replacements included Michelle Gayle and Annalene Beechey as Belle, John Barrowman and Earl Carpenter as the Beast, Alex Bourne as Gaston, and Billy Boyle and Terry Doyle as Maurice. The production ended on December 11, 1999. The production won the 1998 American Express Award for Best New Musical Olivier Award, against other nominees Enter the Guardsman, The Fix and Lady in the Dark. The show had four US national tours. The first opened on November 15, 1995, and closed in 1999. It featured Kim Huber as Belle, Fred Inkley as the Beast, Patrick Page as Lumiere and Paige Davis as Babette. Patrick Page and Paige Davis met and fell in love during the tour and married. A second national tour opened in 1999 with Susan Owen as Belle and Grant Norman as The Beast. This production closed in 2003. The third national tour opened in 2001 and closed in 2003. This production starred Jennifer Shraeder as Belle and Roger Befeler as the Beast with Marc G. Dalio as Gaston. Notable replacements on the tours have included Sarah Litzsinger, Erin Dilly and Danyelle Bossardet as Belle. The three touring companies visited 137 venues in 90 North American cities. About 5.5 million people in the United States and Canada saw these tours. The fourth national tour of Beauty and the Beast began February 2010, opening in Providence, Rhode Island, starring Liz Shivener as Belle and Justin Glaser as the Beast. Under the direction of the original Broadway creative team, the show featured all new sets and costumes. The tour was the longest in the show's history, running until July 2016. The UK National tour (prior to the closure of the West End Production in 1999) began on November 2, 2001, at the Empire Theatre in Liverpool with stops in Bristol, Birmingham, Dublin, Southampton, Manchester and ended on April 12, 2003, at the Playhouse Theatre in Edinburgh. The tour starred Annalene Beechey (reprising her role from the London production) as Belle, Alistair Robins as the Beast, Ben Harlow as Gaston, Julia Goss as Mrs. Potts, Stephen Matthews as Lumiere Barry James (reprising his role from the London production) as Cogsworth, Billy Boyle (reprising his role from the London production) as Maurice, Karen Davies as Madame de la Grande Bouche, Kate Graham (reprising her role from the London production) as Babette, Anthony Clegg as LeFou, and Oliver Taylor (reprising his role from the London production) and Sion Eifion sharing the role of Chip. Notable replacements included Dianne Pilkington as Belle, Alex Bourne as the Beast, Earl Carpenter as Gaston, Marilyn Cutts as Mrs. Potts, Richard Tate as Maurice, and Drew Varley as LeFou. Los Angeles A Los Angeles production opened at the Shubert Theatre on April 12, 1995, and closed on September 29, 1996. Most of the original Broadway cast, including Susan Egan, Terrence Mann, Gary Beach, Beth Fowler, Burke Moses and Tom Bosley reprised their roles. Notable replacements included James Stacy Barbour as the Beast. The sets in this production were widely considered to be the largest out of all the musical's productions in the world. After the show closed in Los Angeles, all of the sets were transferred for the production in Mexico City in 1997. Canada: The Toronto production opened at the Princess of Wales Theatre on July 25, 1995, and closed on August 30, 1997. The production starred Kerry Butler as Belle and Chuck Wagner as the Beast, and Terry Doyle as Maurice. Notable replacements included Melissa Thomson as Belle and Steve Blanchard as the Beast. The lesser known Halifax production at the Neptune Theatre was the longest running production in the theatre's history. Beauty and the Beast has been performed in more than 30 countries, including Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Philippines, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and United States. Over 35 million people have seen the show worldwide and it has grossed more than $1.7 billion. On July 15, 1995, the musical began its original Australian run in Melbourne at The Princess Theatre, before moving on to Sydney. The original Australian cast included Michael Cormick as The Beast, Rachael Beck as Belle, Hugh Jackman as Gaston, and Ernie Bourne as Maurice. In 1995, the musical opened in Japan and was performed by the Shiki Theatre Company. The musical continued to tour Japan until May 2017. In December 1997, the musical opened in Stuttgart at the Palladium Theatre, Stuttgart and played there until December 22, 2000. Leah Delos Santos played Belle and Uwe Kröger played the Beast and Marc G. Dalio played Gaston. In 1999, the musical opened in China. On March 4, 2005, Beauty and the Beast had its Scandinavian premiere at The Göteborg Opera with Fred Johanson as the Beast and Annica Edstam as Belle. On June 16, 2005, the musical began its Philippine run at the Meralco Theater. Produced by Atlantis Productions, it featured KC Concepcion alternating with Karel Marquez as Belle, Jett Pangan as the Beast, and Calvin Millado as Gaston. In South America, Argentina was the first country to produce it, with Marisol Otero as Belle, Juan Rodó as Beast, Diego Jaraz as Gaston, Gustavo Monje as LeFou, Pablo Lizaso as Lumière, Mónica Nuñez as Mrs. Potts, Omar Pini as Cogsworth, Alejandra Radano as Babette and Rodolfo Valss as Maurice. It ran from November 26, 1998, at the Teatro Ópera in Buenos Aires until August 15, 1999, before opening again in 2010. Brazil was the second country to host the musical. Disney had plans to bring it to the country in 1999, after the success in Argentina, but nobody really knew if it would work. Three years later, in 2002, Beauty and the Beast finally opened in Brazil at Teatro Abril, one of the biggest theaters in the country. It was a huge hit, for more than one and a half years, it was presented with Kiara Sasso playing Belle and Saulo Vasconcelos playing the Beast. In 2009, a new Belle and a new Beast were cast, Lissah Martins and Ricardo Vieira, as the musical came back to Brazil, Kiara Sasso was playing Maria in The Sound of Music. Beauty and the Beast remained for six months at Teatro Abril. Even though the play was brought back as a way to try to recoup some of the money lost in Brazil's version of Miss Saigon, this second incarnation of Beauty and the Beast failed to create any critical buzz, or to be a box office success. In Spain there have been three productions of the show. The first one, based on the original Broadway production, had its Madrid debut on December 2, 1999, at Teatro Lope de Vega. The original cast included Xenia Reguant (later replaced by Julia Möller) as Belle, Carlos Marín (later replaced by Joe Luciano) as Beast, Lisardo Guarinos (later replaced by Manuel Bandera) as Gaston, Víctor Ullate Roche as LeFou, Germán Torres as Lumière, Kirby Navarro as Mrs. Potts, David Venancio Muro as Cogsworth, Dulcinea Juárez as Babette, Laura Inclán as Madame de la Grande Bouche and Miguel de Grandy as Maurice. After a successful run of 27 months and about 900 performances, the production finally closed on March 3, 2002, becoming the longest-running musical ever in Madrid at that time. In 2007, a second version produced by Stage Entertainment premiered on October 3, at Teatro Coliseum, Madrid, for a limited run of six months, but the closing was postponed due to a successful season. The original cast included Julia Möller reprising her role as Belle (later replaced by María Adamuz), David Ordinas as Beast, Pablo Puyol as Gaston, Raúl Peña as LeFou, Armando Pita as Lumière, Angels Jiménez as Mrs. Potts (later replaced by Rita Barber), Esteban Oliver as Cogsworth, Silvia Luchetti as Babette, María José Oquendo as Madame de la Grande Bouche and Lorenzo Valverde as Maurice. The production closed on January 11, 2009, and was transferred to Barcelona, where it ran from February 26, 2009, to January 10, 2010, at BTM, with some changes in the cast, including Mercè Martínez as Mrs. Potts, Marta Capel as Babette, Patricia Paisal as Madame de la Grande Bouche and Albert Muntanyola as Maurice. In 2012, the Stage Entertainment version was relaunched as a touring production, beginning performances on September 6, at Teatro Calderón, Valladolid. The original cast of this third Spanish production included Talía del Val as Belle, Ignasi Vidal as Beast, Daniel Diges as Gaston, Raúl Peña as LeFou, Diego Rodríguez as Lumière, Mone as Mrs. Potts, Frank Capdet as Cogsworth, Marta Capel as Babette, Eva Diago as Madame de la Grande Bouche and Enrique R. del Portal as Maurice. In 2005, Disney and Stage Entertainment produced a new version of the show using brand new sets and costumes. After touring the Netherlands and playing in Antwerp, Belgium, Disney and Stage Entertainment brought the show to Berlin, Germany, in 2006 after a (approx.) one-year run at the Metronom Theater in Oberhausen. This production opened in 2007 in Madrid, Spain, and in 2009 in Milan, Italy, with Arianna as Belle and Michel Altieri as the Beast. The Broadway production played a second time in Mexico City beginning in September 2007 and in Hiroshima, Japan, beginning in February 2008. The Broadway production opened in South Africa in September 2008 and ran until March 2009. In 2004, Disney began to license the show to other companies for touring, and the show has been performed by professional and amateur companies in many countries. On October 24, 2013, Beauty and the Beast opened at Théâtre Mogador in Paris, France. Beginning October 2014, Disney Theatrical Productions, NETworks and Broadway Entertainment Group launched an international tour in celebration of Beauty and the Beasts 20th anniversary on stage. The tour opened at the Zorlu Center in Istanbul, Turkey, and closed in January 2016 at Dubai World Trade Centre, having visited Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Greece, Italy, Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, China, Taiwan, Egypt, Lebanon, Romania, and Qatar. In December 2015, Beauty and the Beast came back to the Netherlands for a run at Circustheater in The Hague. In 2016, Disney and Marmelade produced an updated version for the Flemish Region of Belgium. The original cast included Josje Huisman as Belle, Jan Schepens as Beast, Dieter Troubleyn as Gaston, Peter Van de Velde as Lumière, Frank Hoelen as Maurice, Ivan Pecnik as Cogsworth (called Tickens), Eline De Munck as Babette, Peter Thyssen as LeFou, Barbara Dex as Mrs. Potts and Saskia Schäfer as Madame de la Grande Bouche (called La Commodia). The show premiered on December 10, 2016, at Flanders Expo in Ghent. The show's rights became available (in association with Josef Weinberger Ltd.) to amateur performing groups and regional musical societies. The show has been performed in numerous countries, by theatre companies on both an amateur and professional level. On April 24, 2019 Disney Theatrical Groups revealed that Beauty and the Beast would return to Broadway. Thomas Schumacher announced that the Broadway revival would be updated. Theatre and dates have not been announced. Act I Overture*# — Orchestra, Prologue — Narrator, Belle — Belle, Gaston, Silly Girls, Ensemble, No Matter What*# - Maurice, Belle, No Matter What [Reprise]/Wolf Chase*# — Maurice, Me*# — Gaston, Belle, Belle (Reprise) — Belle, Home, — Belle, Home (Reprise), — Mrs. Potts, Gaston† — LeFou, Gaston, Silly Girls, Ensemble, Gaston (Reprise)† — Gaston, LeFou, How Long Must This Go On?*# — Beast, Be Our Guest† — Lumiere, Mrs. Potts, Ensemble, If I Can't Love Her*# — Beast Act II Entr'acte/Wolf Chase, — Orchestra, Something There — Belle, Beast, Lumiere, Mrs. Potts, Cogsworth, Human Again*‡ — Lumiere, Mrs. Potts, Chip, Madame de la Grande Bouche, Babette, Cogsworth, Ensemble, Maison Des Lunes*# - Gaston, LeFou, Monsieur D' Arque, Beauty and the Beast — Mrs. Potts, If I Can't Love Her (Reprise)*# — Beast, A Change in Me*§# — Belle, The Mob Song — Gaston, Ensemble, The Battle, - The Company, Home (Reprise II), — Belle, End Duet/Transformation, — Beast, Belle, Beauty and the Beast (Reprise) — The Company, New song or instrumental cue † Expanded vocal or instrumental content, using either cut lyrics by Ashman or dance arrangements by Glen Kelly, or both. ‡ "Human Again" was written by Menken and Ashman for the movie, but was cut, due to the complications it made on the film's timeline. It was repurposed for the Broadway play, and on account of the musical's great success, an entirely new animated sequence based on the Broadway version was set to this song and inserted into 2002's Special Edition DVD release. § "A Change in Me" was written into the show in 1998 for the debut of Toni Braxton and was retained thereafter. 1. not in the Junior Broadway show Music Theatre International offers two orchestrations for Beauty and the Beast. The principal, larger orchestration is based on the original Broadway orchestration. It is scored for three synthesizers, a drum kit, a percussion section, double bass, three woodwind players, three French horns in F, two trumpets in B-flat, trombone, divided violins, cellos, and harp. The first woodwind player doubles on flute and piccolo, the second on English horn and oboe, and the third on clarinet, bass clarinet, and flute. The trombonist doubles on bass trombone and tuba. The original Broadway orchestration featured two additional woodwind players. The first played flute and piccolo, the second oboe and English horn, the third piccolo, flute and clarinet in B-flat, the fourth piccolo, flute, clarinet in B-flat and bass clarinet in B-flat, and the fifth on bassoon and contrabassoon. The excised reed parts were used for the synthesizer parts upon their removal for the licensed orchestration. The optional reduced orchestration is scored for two synthesizers, a percussion section, double bass, three woodwind players, a trumpet, a French horn, and solo violin and cello. Notable Broadway cast replacements (approximate dates given where available) Belle: Sarah Uriarte Berry (1995–1996 & 2006), Kerry Butler (1996–1997), Deborah Gibson (1997–1998), Toni Braxton (1998–1999; first African American to play Belle on Broadway), Andrea McArdle (1999–2000), Sarah Litzsinger (2000–2002, 2003 & 2006), Jamie-Lynn Sigler (2002–2003, Broadway debut), Megan McGinnis (2003–2004), Christy Carlson Romano (2004), Ashley Brown (2005–2006, Broadway debut), Anneliese van der Pol (2007, Broadway debut, closing cast). A total of seventeen actresses have played the part of Belle in the Broadway production, with Litzsinger playing it the longest., Beast: Jeff McCarthy (1995–1997 & 2004), Chuck Wagner (1997–1998), James Barbour (1998–1999), Steve Blanchard (who played the Beast for the last eight years of the Broadway run)., Lumière: Lee Roy Reams (1995), Meshach Taylor (1998–1999, Broadway debut), Patrick Page (1999–2001 & 2003), Paul Schoeffler (2001), Bryan Batt (2001–2002), Jacob Young (2006, Broadway debut), John Tartaglia (2006–2007), Cogsworth: Peter Bartlett, Jonathan Freeman (2006–2007), Gaston: Marc Kudisch (1995), Steve Blanchard (1997 – he later played Beast), Christopher Sieber (2001), Donny Osmond (2006 & final Broadway performance), Chip: Nick Jonas (2002), Harrison Chad, Henry Hodges, Andrew Keenan-Bolger, Babette: Ann Mandrella (2007, Broadway debut, closing cast) The Original Broadway Cast Recording was released on April 26, 1994. The CD included Susan Egan as Belle, Terrence Mann as Beast, Burke Moses as Gaston, Gary Beach as Lumière, Tom Bosley as Maurice, Anna McNeeley as Madame de la Grande Bouche and Beth Fowler as Mrs. Potts. The Original Australian Cast Recording was released in 1995. The principal cast included Rachael Beck as Belle, Michael Cormick as Beast, Hugh Jackman as Gaston, Ernie Bourne as Maurice, Toni Lamond as Madame de la Grande Bouche, Grant Smith as Lumière, Robyn Arthur as Mrs. Potts and Bert Newton as Cogsworth. The Original Vienna Cast Recording was released in 1996. The principal cast included Ethan Freeman as Beast, Caroline Vasicek as Belle, Kevin Tarte as Gaston, Viktor Gernot as Lumière, Ann Mandrella as Babette, and Rosita Mewis as Mrs. Potts. The Original London Cast Recording was released in 1997. The principal cast included Julie-Alanah Brighten as Belle, Alasdair Harvey as Beast, Burke Moses as Gaston, Derek Griffiths as Lumière and Mary Millar as Mrs. Potts. The Original Stuttgart Cast Recording was released in 1998. The principal cast included Uwe Kroger as Beast and Leah Delos Santos as Belle and Ann Mandrella as Babette. The Original Madrid Cast Recording was released in 1999. The principal cast included Xenia Reguant as Belle, Carlos Marín as Beast, Lisardo Guarinos as Gaston, Víctor Ullate Roche as LeFou, Germán Torres as Lumière, David Venancio Muro as Cogsworth and Kirby Navarro as Mrs. Potts. A second cast recording for the new production was released in May 2008, starring Julia Möller as Belle, David Ordinas as Beast, Pablo Puyol as Gaston, Raúl Peña as LeFou, Armando Pita as Lumière, Esteban Oliver as Cogsworth and Angels Jiménez as Mrs. Potts. A "junior" version of the musical for middle and high school students was published by MTI. This version only included a selected number of the songs, including "Belle", "Belle (Reprise)", "Home", "Home (Tag)", "Gaston", "Gaston (Reprise)", "Be Our Guest", "Something There", "Human Again", "Beauty and the Beast", "The Mob Song", "Home (Reprise)", and "Beauty and the Beast (Reprise)". Also in "Belle (Reprise)", The Silly Girls take Belle's part in the beginning of the song instead of Belle having to sing the whole song. Also in "Something There", Madame de la Grande Bouche and Babette sing as well. Reception towards the tryouts in Houston were so enthusiastic that the production was extended for two weeks. Jerome Weeks of Variety responded to the show with a positive review, praising the performances of Egan, Mann and Moses, as well as the Beast's new song "If I Can't Love Her". At the same time, Weeks felt that the production "gets close to slipping into a big-budget kiddie show or magic act with its overdone showbiz glitz and sparkly stage- illusion effects"at times, but in the end predicted that "'Beauty and the Beast' could well be the big new musical hit this Broadway season has been waiting for." However, in 1994, Beauty and the Beast finally premiered on Broadway to reviews that ranged from mixed to negative, leaving critics mostly unimpressed. Reactions from the New York theatre community and Broadway producers were particularly harsh, ridiculing Disney for deciding to produce the musical themselves as opposed to enlisting traditional theatre companies. Egan recalled that "the same five families [had] produced Broadway shows for a hundred years and Disney shook that up." Nearly universally panned by theatre critics, they concurred that Beauty and the Beast was a "great spectacle, but not great theater". Likening the musical to the Empire State Building, David Richards of The New York Times called the show "hardly a triumph of art, but it'll probably be a whale of a tourist attraction." While awarding specific praise towards its musical numbers, choreography, costumes and cast – particularly Mann's ability to "convey the delicacy of awakening love" despite the physical demands of his costume, at the same time Richards criticized the production's set and special effects for lacking subtlety, ultimately accusing them of leaving little "to the imagination". Richards concluded, "The result is a sightseer's delight, which isn't the same thing as a theatergoer's dream." Also writing for The New York Times, Vincent Canby disparaged the musical entirely as "relentlessly bland, busy, upbeat and robotlike", criticizing the production for resembling "a dinner theater." Canby felt that the new Menken-Rice songs were "inferior" to the originals, likened the special effects to Fourth of July sparklers, criticized the sound engineering for ranging from too loud to barely audible, and panning Woolverton's book for failing to supplement her screenplay. Minor praise was awarded to the performances of Lamberts, Beach and Fowler, as well as Mann's climactic beast- to-prince transformation. In addition to predicting that Beauty and the Beast would be derided by traditional Broadway theatre-goers and critics alike, Variety writer Jeremy Gerard was largely negative in his own review. While admitting that the production "boasts several real pluses", Gerard criticized the show for appearing "bloated, padded, gimmick-ridden, tacky and ... utterly devoid of imagination." The critic voiced his strong disapproval of the costumes while dismissing the set as "something designed to be seen by people in moving seats, maybe at Disneyland", panning West's choreography and ultimately deriding Roth's directing and blocking of actors who "look generally like they're following dotted lines on the stage." Critics agreed that Roth's direction and West's were equally uninspired. In a mixed review with a headline reading "Beauty and the Beast isn't magical in the least, even if it does bristle with magic tricks", New Yorks John Simon wrote that the production resembles "a belated infomercial" for the film by which he was bored, yet impressed by its special effects and illusions. Simon also felt that the actors struggled to resemble their animated counterparts despite Hould-Ward's, criticizing Egan's acting, Woolverton's dialogue and the new Menken-Rice numbers while praising Moses', Beach's and Fowler's performances. Audiences did not share critics' negative opinions, and the musical famously resonated with the public and families. Children were especially delighted by the idea of their favorite movie performed on stage by live actors. Subsequent productions have gradually attracted kinder remarks; the national tours in particular have been well received. Reviewing a performance of the musical at the Shubert Theatre in Los Angeles in 1995, Tom Jacobs of Variety wrote, "Born in Hollywood as an animated film, Disney's version of 'Beauty and the Beast' has returned home as an opulent stage musical, a year after its Broadway bow. Both good and bad choices have been made in adapting the 1991 film, but with its outstanding performances, fantastic production values and memorable score, this show should warm the hearts of all but the most curmudgeonly theatergoers." However, Jacobs felt that the production suffered from the lack of danger felt watching the film. After having been left unimpressed upon viewing the original Broadway production, Varietys Matt Wolf was pleasantly surprised by the musical's West End debut one year later. "Be Our Guest" was used as the commercial for the 1994 Tony Awards. Michael Goldstein of New York correctly predicted that Mann would earn a Tony Award nomination for his performance. Despite having been nominated for a total of nine individual awards, Beauty and the Beast was ultimately shunned at the ceremony, winning only one award – Best Costume Design – for Hould-Ward. Nominated for the Tony Award for Best Musical, the production famously lost to Stephen Sondheim's Passion, which is considered to be his own version of the "Beauty and the Beast" fairy tale. In 1995, some of Hould-Ward's costumes, namely Lumiere, were put on display in Nordstrom stores. Meanwhile, Belle and the Beast's ballroom costumes were exhibited at Westside Pavilion, and Mrs. Potts and LeFou appeared at South Coast Plaza. Largely due to audience reception, Beauty and the Beast remains one of Broadway's biggest successes of the current era. Beauty and the Beast established itself as a musical that could survive on Broadway despite its unenthusiastic reviews. Several detractors had thought that musicals like Beauty and the Beast would be a one-time event, but the results ultimately turned out to be quite the opposite. According to theatrical producer Stuart Oken, Disney's success with Beauty and the Beast is responsible for today's biggest Broadway hits and making the medium "better than it has ever been". The groundbreaking performance of Beauty and the Beast inspired other major Hollywood studios to produce Broadway renditions of some of their own films. Disney soon began to commission Broadway adaptations of several of the studio's most popular musical films, namely The Lion King (1997), Mary Poppins (2004), Tarzan (2006), The Little Mermaid (2008), Newsies (2012) and Aladdin (2014), in addition to producing the musical Aida. After completing her run in Beauty and the Beast, Egan would famously go on to voice Meg in Disney's animated musical Hercules (1997), establishing herself as a popular voice and film actress. Following the success of "Human Again", the song was later incorporated into reissues of the animated film in the form of an animated musical sequence. Beauty and the Beast is considered to be Broadway's first legitimate family show, responsible for birthing an entirely new generation of young theatregoers. The family demographic of the musical established inspired international productions of Aladdin and Matilda. According to The Complete Book of 1990s Broadway Musicals author Dan Dietz, "the show's resounding success opened the floodgates for a spate of ... productions based on Disney and other family-oriented films", transforming Broadway into "a theme park with a parade of musicals aimed at kids and teenagers." Dietz believes that the plethora of Broadway musicals that came after Beauty and the Beast have unfortunately resembled "feel-good family show[s] whose goal was to emulate its film source." Additionally, the success of the musical inspired a legion of Broadway productions geared towards young women, including Hairspray (2002), Wicked (2003), Legally Blonde (2007), Matilda (2013) and Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella (2013). While these musicals flourished on Broadway, it seems as though more serious, adult-oriented fare struggled to perform as well. New York theatre critic Howard Kissel famously despised "the Kiddy Komponent of New York theatergoing" spearheaded by the successful 13-year Broadway run of Beauty and the Beast. The success of Beauty and the Beast inspired Eisner to invest in his own theatre to house future stage adaptations of the studio's animated classics. Information about Regional US and International productions Indianapolis Civic Theatre (Production Photos), Chattanooga Theatre Centre (Production Photos) – Chattanooga, TN Others Beauty and the Beast on Tour, Beauty and the Beast Belgium, Beauty and the Beast info page on StageAgent.com – Beauty and the Beast plot summary and character descriptions Beauty and the Beast is a 2017 American musical romantic fantasy film directed by Bill Condon from a screenplay written by Stephen Chbosky and Evan Spiliotopoulos. Co-produced by Walt Disney Pictures and Mandeville Films, it was filmed in the UK with predominantly British principal actors. The film is a live action adaptation of Disney's 1991 animated film of the same name, itself an adaptation of Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont's 18th-century fairy tale. The film features an ensemble cast that includes Emma Watson and Dan Stevens as the eponymous characters with Luke Evans, Kevin Kline, Josh Gad, Ewan McGregor, Stanley Tucci, Audra McDonald, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Ian McKellen, and Emma Thompson in supporting roles. A live-action Beauty and the Beast remake was first announced in April 2014, with Condon hired to direct it; Watson, Stevens, Evans, and the rest of the cast signed on between January and April 2015. Principal photography began at Shepperton Studios in Surrey, England in May 2015 and wrapped that August. With an estimated budget of around $255 million, it is one of the most expensive films ever made. Beauty and the Beast premiered at Spencer House in London on February 23, 2017, and was released in the United States in standard, Disney Digital 3-D, RealD 3D, IMAX, and IMAX 3D formats, along with Dolby Cinema on March 17, 2017. The film received generally positive reviews, with many praising the performances of the cast (particularly Watson and Stevens), and its faithfulness to the original animated film, as well as elements from the Broadway musical, visual style, production values, and musical score, though it received criticism for some of the character designs and its excessive similarity to the original. The film grossed over $1.2 billion worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing live-action musical film, making it the second-highest-grossing film of 2017, and the 10th-highest-grossing film of all time. The film received four nominations at the 23rd Critics' Choice Awards and two nominations at the 71st British Academy Film Awards. It also received Academy Award nominations for Best Production Design and Best Costume Design at the 90th Academy Awards. A beautiful enchantress disguised as an old beggar woman arrives at a castle during a ball and offers the host, a cruel and selfish prince, a rose in return for shelter from a storm. When he refuses, she reveals her identity. To punish the prince for his lack of compassion, the enchantress transforms him into a beast and his servants into household objects, then erases the castle, the prince and his servants from the memories of their loved ones. She casts a spell on the rose and warns the prince that the curse will only be broken if he learns to love another, and earn their love in return, before the last petal falls, or he will remain a beast forever. Some years later, in the small town of Villeneuve, Belle, the book-loving daughter of an inventor Maurice, dreams of adventure and brushes off advances from Gaston, an arrogant former soldier. On his way to a convention and lost in the forest, Maurice seeks refuge in the Beast's castle, but the Beast imprisons him for stealing a rose from his garden as a gift to Belle. When Maurice's horse returns without him, Belle ventures out in search for him, and finds him locked in the castle dungeon. The Beast agrees to let her take Maurice's place. Belle befriends the castle's servants, who invite her to a spectacular dinner. When she wanders into the forbidden west wing and finds the rose, the Beast scares her into the woods. She is ambushed by a pack of wolves, but the Beast rescues her, and is injured in the process. As Belle nurses his wounds, a friendship develops between them. The Beast shows Belle a gift from the enchantress, a book that transports readers wherever they want. Belle uses the book to visit her childhood home in Paris, where she discovers a plague doctor mask and realizes that she and her father were forced to leave when her mother succumbed to the plague. In Villeneuve, Maurice fails to convince the other villagers of the Beast and Belle's imprisonment. Gaston, seeing rescuing Belle as an opportunity to win her hand in marriage, agrees to help Maurice. When Maurice learns of his ulterior motive and rejects him, Gaston abandons him to be eaten by the wolves. Maurice is rescued by the hermit Agathe, but when he tells the townsfolk of Gaston's crime and is unable to provide solid evidence, Gaston convinces them to send Maurice to an insane asylum. After sharing a romantic dance with the Beast, Belle discovers her father's predicament using a magic mirror. The Beast releases her to save Maurice, giving her the mirror to remember him with. At Villeneuve, Belle reveals the Beast in the mirror to the townsfolk, proving her father's sanity. Realizing that Belle loves the Beast, a jealous Gaston claims she has been charmed by dark magic, and has her thrown into the asylum carriage with her father. He rallies the villagers to follow him to the castle to slay the Beast before he curses the whole village. Maurice and Belle escape, and Belle rushes back to the castle. During the battle, Gaston abandons his companion LeFou, who then sides with the servants to fend off the villagers. Gaston attacks the Beast in his tower, who is too depressed to fight back, but regains his spirit upon seeing Belle return. He defeats Gaston, but spares his life before reuniting with Belle. Ungrateful and unrepentant, Gaston fatally shoots the Beast from a bridge, but it collapses when the castle crumbles, and he falls to his death. The Beast dies as the last petal falls, and the servants become inanimate. As Belle tearfully professes her love to the Beast, Agathe reveals herself as the enchantress and undoes the curse, repairing the crumbling castle, and restoring the Beast's and servants' human forms and the villagers' memories. The Prince and Belle host a ball for the kingdom, where they dance happily. Stephen Merchant also appeared in the film as Monsieur Toilette, a servant who was turned into a toilet. This character was cut from the film, but is featured in the deleted scenes. In the initial theatrical release, Mitchell was miscredited as Rudi Goodman in the cast, but listed under his real name in the soundtrack credits Previously, Disney had begun work on a film adaptation of the 1994 Broadway musical. However, in a 2011 interview, composer Alan Menken stated the planned film version of the Beauty and the Beast stage musical "was canned". By April 2014, Walt Disney Pictures had already begun developing a new live-action version of Beauty and the Beast after making other live-action fantasy films such as Alice in Wonderland, Maleficent, Cinderella, and The Jungle Book. Two months later, Bill Condon signed on to direct the film from a script by Evan Spiliotopoulos. Later in September of that same year, Stephen Chbosky (who had previously directed Watson in The Perks of Being a Wallflower) was hired to re-write the script. Before Condon was hired to direct the film, Disney approached him with a proposal to remake the film in a more radical way as Universal Studios had remade Snow White and the Huntsman (2012). Condon later explained that "after Frozen opened, the studio saw that there was this big international audience for an old-school-musical approach. But initially, they said, 'We're interested in a musical to a degree, but only half full of songs.' My interest was taking that film and doing it in this new medium—live- action—as a full-on musical movie. So I backed out for a minute, and they came back and said, 'No, no, no, we get it, let's pursue it that way. Walt Disney Pictures president of production Sean Bailey credited Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan F. Horn with the decision to make the film as a musical: "We worked on this for five or six years, and for 18 months to two years, Beauty was a serious dramatic project, and the scripts were written to reflect that. It wasn't a musical at that time. But we just couldn't get it to click and it was Alan Horn who championed the idea of owning the Disney of it all. We realized there was a competitive advantage in the songs. What is wrong with making adults feel like kids again?" The film's ending originally featured Gaston being cursed by the Enchantress, througth the idea was scrapped. In late January 2015, Emma Watson had been cast as Belle, the female lead. She was the first choice of Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan F. Horn, as he had previously overseen Warner Bros., which released the eight Harry Potter films that co-starred Watson as Hermione Granger. Two months later, Luke Evans and Dan Stevens were revealed to be in talks to play Gaston and the Beast respectively, and Watson confirmed their casting the following day via Twitter. The rest of the principal cast, including Josh Gad, Emma Thompson, Kevin Kline, Audra McDonald, Ian McKellen, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Ewan McGregor, and Stanley Tucci were announced between March and April to play LeFou, Mrs. Potts, Maurice, Madame de Garderobe, Cogsworth, Plumette, Lumière, and Cadenza, respectively. Susan Egan, who originated the role of Belle on Broadway, commented on the casting of Watson as "perfect". Paige O'Hara, who voiced Belle in the original animated film and its sequels, offered to help Watson with her singing lessons. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Watson was reportedly paid $3 million upfront, together with an agreement that her final take-home pay could rise as high as $15 million if the film generated gross box office income similar to Maleficent's $759 million worldwide gross. Principal photography on the film began at Shepperton Studios in Surrey, England, on May 18, 2015. Filming with the principal actors concluded on August 21. Six days later, co-producer Jack Morrissey confirmed that the film had officially wrapped production. The Beast was portrayed with a "more traditional motion capture puppeteering for the body and the physical orientation", where actor Dan Stevens was "in a forty-pound gray suit on stilts for much of the film". The facial capture for the Beast was done separately in order to "communicate the subtleties of the human face" and "[capture the] thought that occurs to him" which gets "through [to] the eyes, which are the last human element in the Beast." The castle servants who are transformed into household objects were created with CGI animation. Before the release of the film, Bill Condon refilmed one certain sequence in the "Days of the Sun" number, due to confusion among test audiences caused by actress Harriet Jones, who looked similar to Hattie Morahan, who portrayed Agathe. In the original version of the scene, it was Jones's character, the Prince's mother, who sings the first verse of the song, with Rudi Goodman playing the young Prince and Henry Garrett playing his father; but in the reshot version of the scene, the singing part is given to the Prince (now played by Adam Mitchell). The King was also recast to Tom Turner, although Harriet Jones was still the Queen, albeit with dark hair. Both Goodman and Garrett's names were mistakenly featured in the original theatrical release's credits, but was later corrected in home releases. When released in 1991, Beauty and the Beast marked a turning point for Walt Disney Pictures by appealing to millions of fans with its Oscar-winning musical score by lyricist Howard Ashman and composer Alan Menken. In Bill Condon's opinion, that original score was the key reason he agreed to direct a live-action version of the movie. "That score had more to reveal", he says, "You look at the songs and there's not a clunker in the group. In fact, Frank Rich described it as the best Broadway musical of 1991. The animated version was already darker and more modern than the previous Disney fairy-tales. Take that vision, put it into a new medium, make it a radical reinvention, something not just for the stage because it's not just being literal, now other elements come into play. It's not just having real actors do it". Condon initially prepared on only drawing inspiration from the original film, but he also planned to include most of the songs composed by Alan Menken, Howard Ashman and Tim Rice from the Broadway musical, with the intention of making the film as a "straight-forward, live-action, large-budget movie musical". Menken returned to score the film's music, which features songs from the original film by him and Howard Ashman, plus new material written by Menken and Tim Rice. Menken said the film would not include songs that were written for the Broadway musical and instead, created four new songs. However, an instrumental version of the song "Home", which was written for the musical, is used during the scene where Belle first enters her room in the castle. On January 19, 2017, both Disney and Céline Dion — singer of the original 1991 "Beauty and the Beast" duet song, with singer Peabo Bryson — confirmed that Dion would be performing one of the new original songs "How Does a Moment Last Forever" to play over the end titles. She originally had doubts about whether or not to record the song due to the recent death of her husband and manager René Angélil, who had previously helped her secure the 1991 pop duet. While ultimately accepting the opportunity, she said: "[The] first Beauty and the Beast decision was made with my husband. Now I'm making decisions on my own. It's a little bit harder. I couldn't say yes right away, because I felt like I was kind of cheating in a way". She eventually felt compelled to record the song because of the impact Beauty and the Beast has had on her career. According to Dion, "I was at the beginning of my career, it put me on the map, it put me where I am today". Also, Josh Groban was announced to be performing the new original song "Evermore" six days later. The 2017 film features a remake of the 1991 original song recorded as a duet by Ariana Grande and John Legend. Grande and Legend's updated version of the title song is faithful to the original, Grammy-winning duet, performed by Céline Dion and Peabo Bryson for the 1991 Disney film. Disney debuted the music video for Ariana Grande and John Legend's interpretation of the title song on Freeform television network on March 5, 2017, and it has since been viewed over 100 million views on the Vevo video-hosting service. Emma Thompson also performed a rendition of the title song, which was performed by Angela Lansbury in the original 1991 animated film. On March 16, 2015, Disney announced the film would be released in 3D on March 17, 2017. The first official presentation of the film took place at Disney's three-day D23 Expo in August 2015. The world premiere of Beauty and the Beast took place at Spencer House in London on February 23, 2017; and the film later premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California, on March 2, 2017. The stream was broadcast onto YouTube. A sing along version of the film released in over 1,200 US theaters nationwide on April 7, 2017. The United Kingdom received the same version on April 21, 2017. The film was re-released in New York and Los Angeles for a one-week engagement starting December 1, 2017. The move was an awards push as awards season heats up. Disney spent around $140 million to market the film worldwide. Following an announcement on May 22, 2016, Disney premiered the first official teaser trailer on Good Morning America the next day. In its first 24 hours, the teaser trailer reached 91.8 million views, which was the largest number ever seen for a trailer in that amount of time. This record has since been broken by , It, and . The first official teaser poster was released on July 7, 2016. On November 2, 2016, Entertainment Weekly debuted the first official image on the cover of their magazine, along with nine new photos. One week later, Emma Watson and Disney debuted a new poster. On November 14, 2016, the first theatrical trailer was released, again on Good Morning America. This reached 127.6 million views in its first 24 hours, setting a new record for the most views in one day, beating Fifty Shades Darker; this record has since been broken by The Fate of the Furious. A TV spot with Watson singing was shown during the 74th Golden Globe Awards. Disney released the final trailer on January 30, 2017. Beauty and the Beast was released on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD on June 6, 2017. The film debuted at No. 1 on the NPD VideoScan overall disc sales chart, with all other titles in the top 20, collectively, selling only 40% as many units as Beauty and the Beast. The movie regained the top spot on the national home video sales charts during its third week of release. The movie became available on Netflix on September 19, 2017. Beauty and the Beast grossed $504 million in the United States and Canada and $759.5 million in other countries for a worldwide gross of $1.263 billion. With a production budget of $254 million, it is the most expensive musical ever made. In just ten days, it became the highest-grossing live-action musical of all time, beating the nine-year-old record held by Mamma Mia!. It is currently the second-biggest musical ever overall, behind Disney's Frozen (2013). Worldwide, the film proved to be a global phenomenon, earning a total of $357 million over its four-day opening weekend from 56 markets. Critics said the film was playing like superhero movies amongst women. It was the second-biggest March global opening, behind only , the thirteenth-biggest worldwide opening ever and the seventh-biggest for Disney. This includes $21 million from IMAX plays on 1,026 screens, a new record for an IMAX PG title. It surpassed the entire lifetime total of the original film in just six days. Beauty and the Beast was the 300th digitally remastered release in IMAX company's history, which began with the re-release of Apollo 13 in 2002. Its robust global debut helped push the company past $6 billion for the first time, and led to analysts believing that the film had a shot of passing $1 billion worldwide from theatrical earnings. On April 12, it passed the $1 billion threshold, becoming the first film of 2017, the fourteenth Disney film, and the twenty-ninth film overall to pass the mark. It became the first film since Rogue One (also a Disney property) in December 2016 to make over a billion dollars, and did so on its 29th day of release. It is currently the second-highest-grossing film of 2017 (behind ), the highest-grossing March release, the highest-grossing remake of all time, and the sixth-biggest Disney film. Even after inflation adjusted, it is still ahead of the $425 million gross ($760 million in 2017 dollars) of the original film. Deadline Hollywood calculated the net profit of the film to be $414.7 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues, making it the second-most profitable release of 2017. In the United States and Canada, Beauty and the Beast topped Fandango's pre- sales and became the fastest-selling family film in the company's history, topping the studio's own animated film Finding Dory released the previous year. Early tracking had the film grossing around $100 million in its opening weekend, with some publications predicting it could reach $130 million. By the time the film's release was 10 days away, analysts raised projections to as high as $150 million. It earned $16.3 million from Thursday previews night, marking the biggest of 2017 (breaking Logan's record), the biggest ever for a Disney live-action film (breaking Maleficent's record), the second-biggest ever for both a G- or PG-rated film (behind the sixth Harry Potter film Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince which also starred Watson), and the third- biggest ever in the month of March (behind and The Hunger Games). An estimated 41% of the gross came from IMAX, 3D and premium large format screenings which began at 6 pm, while the rest—59%—came from regular 2D shows which began at 7 pm. The numbers were considered more impressive given that the film played during a school week. On its opening day, the film made $63.8 million from 4,210 theaters across 9,200 screens, marking the third biggest in the month of March, trailing behind Batman v Superman ($81.5 million) and The Hunger Games ($67 million). It was also the biggest opening day ever for a film that wasn't PG-13, displacing the $58 million opening Wednesday of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Its opening day alone (which includes Thursday's previews) almost matched the entire opening weekend of previous Disney live-action films, Maleficent ($69.4 million) and Cinderella ($67.9 million). Unlike all previous four Disney live-action films witnessing a hike on their second day, Saturday, Beauty and the Beast actually fell 2% but, nevertheless, the dip was paltry, and the grosses are so much bigger compared to the other titles. Earning a total of $174.8 million on its opening weekend, it defied all expectations and went on to set numerous notable records. This includes the biggest opening of the year as well as the biggest for the month of March and pre-summer/spring opening, beating Batman v Superman, the biggest start ever for a PG title (also for a family film), surpassing Finding Dory until it was later surpassed by Incredibles 2, the biggest debut of all time for a female- fueled film, ahead of , the biggest for a Disney live-action adaptation, ahead of Alice in Wonderland and the biggest musical debut ever, supplanting Pitch Perfect 2. Furthermore, it is also Watson's highest-opening, beating Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 same with Emma Thompson, director Bill Condon's biggest debut ever ahead of and the biggest outside of summer, save for , not accounting for inflation. It became the forty-third film to debut with over $100 million and the fifteenth film to open above $150 million. Its three-day opening alone surpassed the entire original North American run of the first film ($146 million; before the 3D re-release), instantly becoming the second-biggest film of the year, behind Logan ($184 million), and also the second-highest-grossing musical, behind Grease's $188 million cumulative gross in 1978. Seventy percent of the total ticket sales came from 2D showings signifying that people who don't go to theaters frequently came out in bulk to watch the film. About 26% of the remaining tickets were for 3D. IMAX accounted for 7% ($12.5 million) of the total weekend's gross, setting a new record for a PG title, ahead of Alice in Wonderland ($12.1 million) while PLF repped 11% of the box office. Seventy percent of the film's opening day demographic was female, dropping to 60% through the weekend. According polling service PostTrak, about 84 percent of American parents who saw the film on its opening day said they would "definitely" recommend it for families. The film's opening was credited to positive word of mouth from audiences, good reviews from critics, effective marketing which sold the title not just as a family film but also as a romantic drama, the cast's star power (especially Emma Watson), lack of competition, being the first family film since The Lego Batman Movie a month earlier, nostalgia, and the success and ubiquity of the first film and Disney's brand. On Monday, its fourth day of release, the film fell precipitously by 72% earning $13.5 million. The steep fall was due to a limited marketplace where only 11% K-12 and 15% colleges were off per ComScore. Nevertheless, it is the second-biggest March Monday, behind Batman v Superman ($15 million). This was followed by the biggest March and pre-summer Tuesday with $17.8 million, a 32% increase from its previous day. The same day, the film passed $200 million in ticket sales. It earned $228.6 million in the first week of release, the sixth-biggest seven-day gross of all time. In its second weekend, the film continued to maintain the top positioning and fell gradually by 48% earning another $90.4 million to register the fourth- biggest second weekend of all time, and the third-biggest for Disney. In terms of percentage drop, its 48% decline is the third-smallest drop for any film opening above $125 million (behind Finding Dory and The Force Awakens). The hold was notable considering how the film was able to fend off three new wide releases: Power Rangers, Life, and CHiPs. As a result, it passed the $300 million threshold becoming the first film of 2017 the pass said mark. The film grossed $45.4 million in its third weekend, finally being overtaken for the top spot by newcomer The Boss Baby ($50.2 million). On April 4, 2017, its nineteenth day of release, it passed the $400 million threshold becoming the first film of 2017 to do so. By its fourth weekend, the film began was playing in 3,969 cinemas, a fall of 241 theaters from its previous weekend. Of those, approximately 1,200 cinemas were sing-along versions. It earned $26.3 million (−48%) and retained second place. By comparison, previous Disney films Moana (−8%) and Frozen (−2%) both witnessed mild percentage declines the weekend their sing-alone versions were released. Its seventh weekend of release was in contemporaneous with another Emma Watson-starring new film The Circle. That weekend, The Circle was number four, while Beauty and the Beast was at number six. By May 28, the film had earned over $500 million in ticket sales becoming the first film of 2017 (until it was later surpassed by The Last Jedi), the third female-fueled film (after The Force Awakens and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story followed by Wonder Woman and The Last Jedi) and the eighth overall film in cinematic history to pass the mark. It has already become the biggest March release, dethroning The Hunger Games (2012), the biggest musical film (both animated and live-action), as well as the biggest film of 2017 (alongside The Last Jedi). Outside the US and Canada, the film began playing on Thursday, March 16, 2017. Through Sunday, March 19, it had a total international opening of $182.3 million from 55 markets, 44 of which were major territories, far exceeding initial estimations of $100 million and opened at No. 1 in virtually all markets except Vietnam, Turkey, and India. Its launch is the second-biggest for the month of March, behind Batman v Superman ($256.5 million). In IMAX, it recorded the biggest debut for a PG-rated title (although it carried varying certificate amongst different markets) with $8.5 million from 649 screens, the second-biggest for a PG title behind The Jungle Book. In its second weekend, it fell just by 35% earning another $120.6 million and maintaining its first position hold. It added major markets like France and Australia. It topped the international box office for three consecutive weekends before finally being dethroned by Ghost in the Shell and The Boss Baby in its fourth weekend. Despite the fall, the film helped Disney push past the $1 billion thresold internationally for the first time in 2017. It scored the biggest opening day of the year in Hong Kong and the Philippines, the biggest March Thursday in Italy ($1 million, also the biggest Disney Thursday debut), the biggest March opening day in Austria, and the second-biggest in Germany ($1.1 million), Disney's biggest March in Denmark, the biggest Disney live-action debut in China ($12.6 million), the UK ($6.2 million), Mexico ($2.4 million) and Brazil ($1.8 million) and the third-biggest in South Korea with $1.2 million, behind only and . In terms of opening weekend, the largest debut came from China ($44.8 million), followed by the UK ($24.3 million), Korea ($11.8 million), Mexico ($11.8 million), Australia ($11.1 million), Brazil ($11 million), Germany ($10.7 million), France ($8.4 million), Italy ($7.6 million), Philippines ($6.3 million), Russia ($6 million), and Spain ($5.8 million). In the United Kingdom and Ireland, the film recorded the biggest opening ever for a PG-rated film, the biggest Disney live-action opening of all time, the biggest March opening weekend, the biggest opening for a musical (ahead of 2012's Les Misérables), the number one opening of 2017 to date and the fifth- biggest-ever overall with £19.7 million ($24.5 million) from 639 theatres and almost twice that of The Jungle Book (£9.9 million). This included the second- biggest Saturday ever (£7.9 million), only behind . It witnessed a decline in its second weekend, earning £12.33 million ($15.4 million). Though the film was falling at a faster rate than The Jungle Book, it had already surpassed the said film and its second weekend is the third-biggest ever (behind the two James Bond films Skyfall (2012) and Spectre). In India, despite facing heavy competitions from four new Hindi releases, two Tamils films and a Malayalam and a Punjabi release, the film managed to take an occupancy of 15% on its opening day, an impressive feat despite tremendous competitions. It earned around nett on its opening day from an estimated 600 screens which is more than the three Hindi releases—Machine, Trapped, and Aa Gaya Hero—combined. Disney reported a total of gross for its opening weekend there. It was ahead of all new releases and second overall behind Bollywood film Badrinath Ki Dulhania. In Russia, despite receiving a restrictive 16 rating, the film managed to deliver a very successful opening with $6 million. In China, expectations were high for the film. The release date was announced on January 24, giving Disney and local distributor China Film Group Corporation ample time—around two months—to market the film nationwide. The release date was strategically chosen to coincide with White Day. Preliminary reports suggested that it could open to $40–60 million in its opening weekend. Largely driven by young women, its opening day pre-sales outpaced that of The Jungle Book. The original film was, however, never widely popular in the country. Although China has occasionally blocked gay-themed content from streaming video services, in this case, Chinese censors decided to leave the gay scene intact. According to local box office tracker Ent Group, the film grossed an estimated $12.1 million on its opening day (Friday), representing 70% of the total receipts. Including previews, it made a total of $14.5 million from 100,000 screenings, which is 43% of all screenings in the country. It climbed to $18.5 million on Saturday (102,700 showings) for a three-day total of $42.6 million, securing 60% of the total marketplace. Disney on the other hand reported a different figure of $44.8 million. Either ways, it recorded the second-biggest opening for a Disney live-action film, with $3.4 million coming from 386 IMAX screens. Japan—a huge Disney market—served as the film's final market and opened there on April 21. It debuted with a better-than-expected $12.5 million on its opening weekend helping the film push past the $1.1 billion threshold. An estimated $1.1 million came from IMAX screenings, the fourth-biggest ever in the country. The two-day gross was $9.7 million, outstripping Frozens previous record of $9.5 million. Due to positive reviews, good word-of-mouth and benefitting from the Golden Week, the film saw a 9% increase on its second weekend. The hold was strong enough to fend off newcomer The Fate of the Furious from securing the top spot. The total there is now over $98 million after seven weekends and is the biggest film release of the year and, overall, the eleventh-biggest of all time. It topped the box office there for eight consecutive weekends. The only markets where the film did not top the weekend charts were Vietnam (behind ), Turkey (with two local movies and Logan ahead) and India (where Badrinath Ki Dulhania retained No. 1). It topped the box office for four straight weekends in Germany, Korea, Austria, Finland, Poland, Portugal, Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, Switzerland and the UK (exclusive of previews). In the Philippines, it emerged as the most successful commercial film of all time—both local and foreign—with over $13.5 million. In just five weeks, the film became one of the top 10 highest-grossing film of all time in the United Kingdom and Ireland, ahead of all but one Harry Potter film (Deathly Hallows – Part 2) and all three The Lord of the Rings movies (which also starred Ian McKellen). It is currently the eighth-biggest grosser with £70.1 million ($90 million), overtaking Mamma Mia! to become the biggest musical production ever there. The biggest international earning markets following the UK are Japan ($108 million), China ($85.8 million), Brazil ($41.5 million), Korea ($37.5 million), and Australia ($35 million). In Europe alone, the cumulative total is $267 million, which led it to become the second-highest-grossing film in the past year (behind Rogue One: A Star Wars Story). Beauty and the Beast received generally positive reviews, with praise for its ensemble cast, visuals, production values, musical score, songs, and faithfulness to the original film with a few elements of the Broadway musical version, while the designs of the Beast and the servants' household object forms received mixed reviews. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 71% based on 348 reviews, with an average rating of 6.69/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "With an enchanting cast, beautifully crafted songs, and a painterly eye for detail, Beauty and the Beast offers a faithful yet fresh retelling that honors its beloved source material." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 65 out of 100, based on 47 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". In CinemaScore polls, audiences gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale. Leslie Felperin of The Hollywood Reporter wrote: "It's a Michelin-triple-starred master class in patisserie skills that transforms the cinematic equivalent of a sugar rush into a kind of crystal-meth-like narcotic high that lasts about two hours." Felperin also praised the performances of Watson and Kline as well the special effects, costume designs and the sets, while commending the inclusion of Gad's character of LeFou as the first LGBT character in Disney. Owen Gleiberman of Variety, in his positive review of the film, wrote: "It's a lovingly crafted movie, and in many ways a good one, but before that it's an enraptured piece of old-is-new nostalgia." Gleiberman compared Steven's character of the Beast to a royal version of the titular character in The Elephant Man and the 1946 version of the Beast in Jean Cocteau's original adaptation. A. O. Scott of The New York Times praised the performances of both Watson and Stevens, and wrote: "It looks good, moves gracefully and leaves a clean and invigorating aftertaste. I almost didn't recognize the flavor: I think the name for it is joy." Likewise, The Washington Posts Ann Hornaday complimented Watson's performance, describing it as "alert and solemn" while noting her singing ability as "serviceable enough to get the job done". Richard Roeper of Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film three and a half out of five and lauded the performances of Watson and Thompson which he drew a comparison to Paige O'Hara's and Angela Lansbury's performances in the 1991 animated version while appreciating the performances of the other cast. He also commented on the advantage of its using both motion capture and CGI technology, writing: "Almost overwhelmingly lavish, beautifully staged and performed with exquisite timing and grace by the outstanding cast". Mike Ryan of Uproxx praised the cast, production design and the new songs while noting the film doesn't try anything different, saying: "There's certainly nothing that new about this version of Beauty and the Beast (well, except it isn't a cartoon anymore), but it's a good recreation of a classic animated film that should leave most die-hards satisfied." In her A- review, Nancy Churnin of The Dallas Morning News praised the film's emotional and thematic depth, remarking: "There's an emotional authenticity in director Bill Condon's live- action Beauty and the Beast film that helps you rediscover Disney's beloved 1991 animated film and 1994 stage show in fresh, stirring ways." James Berardinelli of ReelViews described the 2017 version as "enthralling". Brian Truitt of USA Today commended the performances of Evans, Gad, McGregor and Thompson alongside Condon's affinity with musicals, the production design, visual effects featured in some of the song numbers including new songs made by the composers Alan Menken and Tim Rice, particularly Evermore which he described the new song with a potential for an Academy Award for Best Original Song. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone rated the film three out of four, deeming it an "exhilarating gift" while he remarked that "Beauty and the Beast does justice to Disney's animated classic, even if some of the magic is M.I.A (Missing in Action)". Stephanie Zacharek of Time magazine gave a positive review with a description as "Wild, Vivid and Crazy-Beautiful" as she wrote "Nearly everything about Beauty and the Beast is larger than life, to the point that watching it can be a little overwhelming." and added that "it's loaded with feeling, almost like a brash interpretive dance expressing the passion and elation little girls (and some boys, too) must have felt upon seeing the earlier version." The San Francisco Chronicles Mick LaSalle struck an affirmative tone, calling it one of the joys of 2017, stating that "Beauty and the Beast creates an air of enchantment from its first moments, one that lingers and builds and takes on qualities of warmth and generosity as it goes along" while referring the film as "beautiful" and also praised the film for its emotional and psychological tone as well Steven's motion capture performance. Tim Robey of The Daily Telegraph gave the film four out of five and wrote that "It dazzles on this chocolate box of a picture that feels almost greedy yet to make this film work, down to a sugar-rush finale to grasp the nettle and make an out-an-out, bells-and-whistles musical" while he praised the performances of Watson, McKellen, Thompson, McGregor, Evans and Gad. Mark Hughes of Forbes also praised the film, which he wrote "could revive the story in a faithful but entirely new and unique way elevating the material beyond expectations, establishing itself as a cinematic equal to the original”. He also complimented the importance of undertaking a renowned yet problematic masterpiece as well addressing changes in the elements of the story while acknowledging the film's effectiveness in resonating to the audiences. Stephen Whitty of the New York Daily News called it "this year's best new old musical" and "the most magical thing of all" while describing Watson's performance of Belle as "breakthrough". Several critics regarded the film as inferior to its 1991 animated predecessor. David Sims of The Atlantic wrote that the 2017 film "feels particularly egregious, in part, because it's so slavishly devoted to the original; every time it falls short of its predecessor (which is quite often), it's hard not to notice". Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune said that the 2017 film "takes our knowledge and our interest in the material for granted. It zips from one number to another, throwing a ton of frenetically edited eye candy at the screen, charmlessly." Phillips wrote that the film featured some "less conspicuously talented" performers who are "stuck doing karaoke, or motion-capture work of middling quality", though he praised Kline's performance as the "best, sweetest thing in the movie; he brings a sense of calm, droll authority". Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian praised Watson's performance and wrote that the film was "lit in that fascinatingly artificial honey-glow light, and it runs smoothly on rails—the kind of rails that bring in and out the stage sets for the lucrative Broadway touring version." In the same newspaper, Wendy Ide criticized the film as "ornate to the point of desperation" in its attempt to emulate the animated film. Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B-, writing that the new songs were "not transporting". He felt the film needed more life and depth, but praised Watson's performance as the "one of the film's stronger elements". Dana Schwartz of The New York Observer felt that some of the characters, such as Gaston and the Beast, had been watered down from the 1991 film, and that the additional backstory elements failed to "advance the plot or theme in any meaningful way" while adding considerable bloat. Schwartz considered the singing of the cast to be adequate but felt that their voices should have been dubbed over, especially for the complex songs. Controversy erupted after director Bill Condon said there was a "gay moment" in the film, when LeFou briefly waltzes with Stanley, one of Gaston's friends. Afterwards in an interview with Vulture.com, Condon stated, "Can I just say, I'm sort of sick of this. Because you've seen the movie—it's such a tiny thing, and it's been overblown." Condon also added that Beauty and the Beast features much more diversity than just the highly talked-about LeFou: "That was so important. We have interracial couples—this is a celebration of everybody's individuality, and that's what's exciting about it." GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis praised the move, stating, "It is a small moment in the film, but it is a huge leap forward for the film industry." In Russia, Vitaly Milonov agitated the culture minister for banning the film, but instead it was given a 16+ rating (children under the age of 16 can only be admitted to see it in theaters with accompanying adults). Additionally, a theater in Henagar, Alabama did not screen the film because of the subplot. In Malaysia, the Film Censorship Board insisted the "gay moment" scene be cut, prompting an indefinite postponement of its release by Disney, followed by their decision to withdraw it completely if it could not be released uncensored. The studio moved the release date to March 30, to allow more time for Malaysia's censor board to make a decision on whether or not to release the film without changes. The distributors and producers then submitted an appeal to the Film Appeal Committee of Malaysia, which allowed the film to be released without any cuts and a P13 rating on the grounds that "the gay element was minor and did not affect the positive elements featured in the film". In Kuwait, the movie was withdrawn from cinemas by National Cinema Company which owns most of the cinemas in the country. A board member of the company stated that the Ministry of Information's censorship department had requested it to stop its screening and edit it for things deemed offensive by it. The film also received criticism over its portrayal of LeFou, as many felt that it relied on stereotypes and was used as a way of teasing LGBT+ viewers without providing adequate representation. LeFou's status as a sidekick to the main villain brought about criticism over Disney's queercoding of villains in the past, and his infatuation with Gaston was seen as relying on a stereotype of gay men being predatory towards straight men. Furthermore, the only gay interaction LeFou has is a three-second clip of him dancing with another man at the end of the film, which many saw this as Disney cheating its LGBT+ audiences. Disney has sought to portray Belle as an empowered young woman, but a debate questioning whether it is possible for a captor to fall in love with their prisoner, and whether this is a problematic theme, has resulted. As was the case with the original animated film, one argument is that Belle suffers from Stockholm syndrome (a condition that causes hostages to develop a psychological alliance with their captors as a survival strategy during captivity). Emma Watson studied whether Belle is trapped in an abusive relationship with the Beast before signing on and concluded that she does not think the criticism fits this version of the folk tale. Watson described Stockholm Syndrome as "where a prisoner will take on the characteristics of and fall in love with the captor. Belle actively argues and disagrees with [Beast] constantly. She has none of the characteristics of someone with Stockholm Syndrome because she keeps her independence, she keeps that freedom of thought", also adding that Belle defiantly "gives as good as she gets" before forming a friendship and romance with the Beast. Psychiatrist Frank Ochberg, who was responsible for defining the term "Stockholm syndrome", said he does not think Belle exhibits the trauma symptoms of prisoners suffering from the syndrome because she does not go through a period of feeling that she is going to die. Some therapists, while acknowledging that the pairing's relationship does not meet the clinical definition of Stockholm syndrome, argue that the relationship depicted is dysfunctional and abusive and does not model healthy romantic relationships for young viewers. Following this viewpoint, Constance Grady of Vox wrote that Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont's Beauty and the Beast was a fairy tale originally written to prepare young girls in 18th-century France for arranged marriages, and that the power disparity is amplified in the Disney version. Additionally, Anna Menta of Elite Daily argued that the Beast does not apologize to Belle for imprisoning, hurting, or manipulating her, and that his treatment of Belle is not painted as wrong. Shortly after the release of the film, Sean Bailey said that Walt Disney Pictures will "explore possible [live-action] spin-off and prequel scenarios" for animated and live-action Disney films, including Beauty and the Beast. Both Dan Stevens and Emma Watson expressed interest in reprising their roles in potential sequel or prequel to the film.

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Movable type (US English; moveable type in British English) is the system and technology of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual alphanumeric characters or punctuation marks) usually on the medium of paper. The world's first movable type printing technology for printing paper books was made of porcelain materials and was invented around 1040 AD in China during the Northern Song Dynasty by the inventor Bi Sheng (990–1051). The oldest extant book printed with movable metal type, Jikji, was printed in Korea in 1377 during the Goryeo dynasty. The diffusion of both movable-type systems was, to some degree, limited to primarily East Asia. The development of the printing press in Europe may have been influenced by various sporadic reports of movable type technology brought back to Europe by returning business people and missionaries to China. Some of these medieval European accounts are still preserved in the library archives of the Vatican and Oxford University among many others. However, none of these early European accounts before Gutenberg discuss printing. Around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg introduced the metal movable-type printing press in Europe, along with innovations in casting the type based on a matrix and hand mould. The small number of alphabetic characters needed for European languages was an important factor. Gutenberg was the first to create his type pieces from an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony—and these materials remained standard for 550 years. For alphabetic scripts, movable-type page setting was quicker than woodblock printing. The metal type pieces were more durable and the lettering was more uniform, leading to typography and fonts. The high quality and relatively low price of the Gutenberg Bible (1455) established the superiority of movable type in Europe and the use of printing presses spread rapidly. The printing press may be regarded as one of the key factors fostering the Renaissance and due to its effectiveness, its use spread around the globe. The 19th-century invention of hot metal typesetting and its successors caused movable type to decline in the 20th century. The technique of imprinting multiple copies of symbols or glyphs with a master type punch made of hard metal first developed around 3000 BC in ancient Sumer. These metal punch types can be seen as precursors of the letter punches adapted in later millennia to printing with movable metal type. Cylinder seals were used in Mesopotamia to create an impression on a surface by rolling the seal on wet clay. They were used to "sign" documents and mark objects as the owner's property. Cylinder seals were a related form of early typography capable of printing small page designs in relief (cameo) on wax or clay—a miniature forerunner of rotogravure printing used by wealthy individuals to seal and certify documents. By 650 BC the ancient Greeks were using larger diameter punches to imprint small page images onto coins and tokens. The designs of the artists who made the first coin punches were stylized with a degree of skill that could not be mistaken for common handiwork—salient and very specific types designed to be reproduced ad infinitum. Unlike the first typefaces used to print books in the 13th century, coin types were neither combined nor printed with ink on paper, but "published" in metal—a more durable medium—and survived in substantial numbers. As the portable face of ruling authority, coins were a compact form of standardized knowledge issued in large editions, an early mass medium that stabilized trade and civilization throughout the Mediterranean world of antiquity. Seals and stamps may have been precursors to movable type. The uneven spacing of the impressions on brick stamps found in the Mesopotamian cities of Uruk and Larsa, dating from the 2nd millennium BC, has been conjectured by some archaeologists as evidence that the stamps were made using movable type. The enigmatic Minoan Phaistos Disc of 1800–1600 BC has been considered by one scholar as an early example of a body of text being reproduced with reusable characters: it may have been produced by pressing pre-formed hieroglyphic "seals" into the soft clay. A few authors even view the disc as technically meeting all definitional criteria to represent an early incidence of movable- type printing. Recently it has been alleged by Jerome Eisenberg that the disk is a forgery. The Prüfening dedicatory inscription is medieval example of movable type stamps being used. Following the invention of paper in the 2nd century AD during the Chinese Han Dynasty, writing materials became more portable and economical than the bones, shells, bamboo slips, metal or stone tablets, silk, etc. previously used. Yet copying books by hand was still labour-consuming. Not until the Xiping Era (172–178 AD), towards the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty did sealing print and monotype appear. It was soon used for printing designs on fabrics, and later for printing texts. Woodblock printing, invented by about the 8th century during the Tang Dynasty, worked as follows. First, the neat hand-copied script was stuck on a relatively thick and smooth board, with the front of the paper, which was so thin that it was nearly transparent, sticking to the board, and characters showing in reverse, but distinctly, so that every stroke could be easily recognized. Then carvers cut away the parts of the board that were not part of the character, so that the characters were cut in relief, completely differently from those cut intaglio. When printing, the bulging characters would have some ink spread on them and be covered by paper. With workers' hands moving on the back of paper gently, characters would be printed on the paper. By the Song Dynasty, woodblock printing came to its heyday. Although woodblock printing played an influential role in spreading culture, there remained some apparent drawbacks. Firstly, carving the printing plate required considerable time, labour and materials; secondly, it was not convenient to store these plates; and finally, it was difficult to correct mistakes. Bi Sheng (毕昇/畢昇) (990–1051) developed the first known movable-type system for printing in China around 1040 AD during the Northern Song dynasty, using ceramic materials. As described by the Chinese scholar Shen Kuo (沈括) (1031–1095): In 1193, Zhou Bida, an officer of Southern Song Dynasty, made a set of clay movable-type method according to the method described by Shen Kuo in his Dream Pool Essays, and printed his book Notes of The Jade Hall (《玉堂雜記》). The claim that Bi Sheng's clay types were "fragile" and "not practical for large-scale printing" and "short lived" was refuted by facts and experiments. Bao Shicheng (1775–1885) wrote that baked clay moveable type was "as hard and tough as horn"; experiments show that clay type, after being baked in an oven, becomes hard and difficult to break, such that it remains intact after being dropped from a height of two metres onto a marble floor. The length of clay movable types in China was 1 to 2 centimetres, not 2mm, thus hard as horn. But similar to metal type, ceramic type did not hold Chinese ink well, and had an added disadvantage of uneven matching of the type which could sometimes result from the uneven changes in size of the type during the baking process. There has been an ongoing debate regarding the success of ceramic printing technology as there have been no printed materials found with ceramic movable types. However, it is historically recorded to have been used as late as 1844 in China from the Song dynasty through the Qing dynasty. Bi Sheng (990–1051) also pioneered the use of wooden movable type around 1040 AD, as described by the Chinese scholar Shen Kuo (1031–1095). However, this technology was abandoned in favour of clay movable types due to the presence of wood grains and the unevenness of the wooden type after being soaked in ink. In 1298, Wang Zhen (王祯/王禎), a Yuan dynasty governmental official of Jingde County, Anhui Province, China, re-invented a method of making movable wooden types. He made more than 30,000 wooden movable types and printed 100 copies of Records of Jingde County (《旌德縣志》), a book of more than 60,000 Chinese characters. Soon afterwards, he summarized his invention in his book A method of making moveable wooden types for printing books. Although the wooden type was more durable under the mechanical rigors of handling, repeated printing wore down the character faces, and the types could only be replaced by carving new pieces. This system was later enhanced by pressing wooden blocks into sand and casting metal types from the depression in copper, bronze, iron or tin. This new method overcame many of the shortcomings of woodblock printing. Rather than manually carving an individual block to print a single page, movable type printing allowed for the quick assembly of a page of text. Furthermore, these new, more compact type fonts could be reused and stored. The set of wafer-like metal stamp types could be assembled to form pages, inked, and page impressions taken from rubbings on cloth or paper. In 1322，a Fenghua county officer Ma Chengde (馬称德) in Zhejiang, made 100,000 wooden movable types and printed the 43-volume Daxue Yanyi (《大學衍義》). Wooden movable types were used continually in China. Even as late as 1733, a 2300-volume Wuying Palace Collected Gems Edition (《武英殿聚珍版叢書》) was printed with 253,500 wooden movable types on order of the Qianlong Emperor, and completed in one year. A number of books printed in Tangut script during the Western Xia (1038–1227) period are known, of which the Auspicious Tantra of All-Reaching Union that was discovered in the ruins of Baisigou Square Pagoda in 1991 is believed to have been printed sometime during the reign of Emperor Renzong of Western Xia (1139–1193). It is considered by many Chinese experts to be the earliest extant example of a book printed using wooden movable type. If one used movable type to produce multiple copies of the same document, the speed of printing would increase relatively. At least 13 material finds in China indicate the invention of bronze movable type printing in China no later than the 12th century, with the country producing large-scale bronze-plate-printed paper money and formal official documents issued by the Jin (1115–1234) and Southern Song (1127–1279) dynasties with embedded bronze metal types for anti-counterfeit markers. Such paper-money printing might date back to the 11th-century jiaozi of Northern Song (960–1127). The typical example of this kind of bronze movable type embedded copper-block printing is a printed "check" of the Jin Dynasty with two square holes for embedding two bronze movable-type characters, each selected from 1,000 different characters, such that each printed paper note has a different combination of markers. A copper-block printed note dated between 1215 and 1216 in the collection of Luo Zhenyu's Pictorial Paper Money of the Four Dynasties, 1914, shows two special characters – one called Ziliao, the other called Zihao – for the purpose of preventing counterfeiting; over the Ziliao there is a small character (輶) printed with movable copper type, while over the Zihao there is an empty square hole – apparently the associated copper metal type was lost. Another sample of Song dynasty money of the same period in the collection of the Shanghai Museum has two empty square holes above Ziliao as well as Zihou, due to the loss of the two copper movable types. Song dynasty bronze block embedded with bronze metal movable type printed paper money was issued on a large scale and remained in circulation for a long time. The 1298 book Zao Huozi Yinshufa (《造活字印书法》/《造活字印書法》) by the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) official Wang Zhen mentions tin movable type, used probably since the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279), but this was largely experimental. It was unsatisfactory due to its incompatibility with the inking process.. But by the late 15th century these concerns were resolved and bronze type was widely used in Chinese printing. During the Mongol Empire (1206–1405), printing using movable type spread from China to Central Asia. The Uyghurs of Central Asia used movable type, their script type adopted from the Mongol language, some with Chinese words printed between the pages – strong evidence that the books were printed in China. During the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), Hua Sui in 1490 used bronze type in printing books. In 1574 the massive 1000-volume encyclopedia Imperial Readings of the Taiping Era (《太平御览》/《太平御覧》) was printed with bronze movable type. In 1725 the Qing Dynasty government made 250,000 bronze movable-type characters and printed 64 sets of the encyclopedic Gujin Tushu Jicheng (《古今图书集成》/《古今圖書集成》, Complete Collection of Illustrations and Writings from the Earliest to Current Times). Each set consisted of 5,040 volumes, making a total of 322,560 volumes printed using movable type. In 1234 the first books known to have been printed in metallic type set were published in Goryeo Dynasty Korea. They form a set of ritual books, Sangjeong Gogeum Yemun, compiled by Choe Yun-ui. While these books have not survived, the oldest book in the world printed in metallic movable types is Jikji, printed in Korea in 1377. The Asian Reading Room of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. displays examples of this metal type. Commenting on the invention of metallic types by Koreans, French scholar Henri-Jean Martin described this as "[extremely similar] to Gutenberg's". However, Korean movable metal type printing differed from European printing in the materials used for the type, punch, matrix, mould and in method of making an impression. The techniques for bronze casting, used at the time for making coins (as well as bells and statues) were adapted to making metal type. The Joseon dynasty scholar Seong Hyeon (성현, 成俔, 1439–1504) records the following description of the Korean font-casting process: A potential solution to the linguistic and cultural bottleneck that held back movable type in Korea for 200 years appeared in the early 15th century—a generation before Gutenberg would begin working on his own movable-type invention in Europe—when Sejong the Great devised a simplified alphabet of 24 characters (hangul) for use by the common people, which could have made the typecasting and compositing process more feasible. But Korea's cultural elite, "appalled at the idea of losing hanja, the badge of their elitism", stifled the adoption of the new alphabet. A "Confucian prohibition on the commercialization of printing" also obstructed the proliferation of movable type, restricting the distribution of books produced using the new method to the government. The technique was restricted to use by the royal foundry for official state publications only, where the focus was on reprinting Chinese classics lost in 1126 when Korea's libraries and palaces had perished in a conflict between dynasties. Scholarly debate and speculation has occurred as to whether Eastern movable type spread to Europe between the late 14th century and early 15th centuries. For example,authoritative historians Frances Gies and Joseph Gies claimed that "The Asian priority of invention movable type is now firmly established, and that Chinese-Korean technique, or a report of it traveled westward is almost certain." However, Joseph P.McDermott claimed that "No text indicates the presence or knowledge of any kind of Asian movable type or movable type imprint in Europe before 1450. The material evidence is even more conclusive." Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz, Germany, is acknowledged as the first to invent a metal movable-type printing system in Europe: the printing press. Gutenberg, as a goldsmith, knew techniques of cutting punches for making coins from moulds. Between 1436 and 1450 he developed hardware and techniques for casting letters from matrices using a device called the hand mould. Gutenberg's key invention and contribution to movable-type printing in Europe, the hand mould, was the first practical means of making cheap copies of letterpunches in the vast quantities needed to print complete books, making the movable-type printing process a viable enterprise. Before Gutenberg, scribes copied books by hand on scrolls and paper, or print-makers printed texts from hand-carved wooden blocks. Either process took a long time; even a small book could take months to complete. Because carved letters or blocks were flimsy and the wood susceptible to ink, the blocks had a limited lifespan. Gutenberg and his associates developed oil-based inks ideally suited to printing with a press on paper, and the first Latin typefaces. His method of casting type may have differed from the hand-mould used in subsequent decades. Detailed analysis of the type used in his 42-line Bible has revealed irregularities in some of the characters that cannot be attributed to ink spread or type wear under the pressure of the press. Scholars conjecture that the type pieces may have been cast from a series of matrices made with a series of individual stroke punches, producing many different versions of the same glyph. It has also been suggested that the method used by Gutenberg involved using a single punch to make a mould, but the mould was such that the process of taking the type out disturbed the casting, causing variants and anomalies, and that the punch- matrix system came into use possibly around the 1470s. This raises the possibility that the development of movable type in the West may have been progressive rather than a single innovation. Gutenberg's movable-type printing system spread rapidly across Europe, from the single Mainz printing press in 1457 to 110 presses by 1480 – 50 of them in Italy. Venice quickly became the center of typographic and printing activity. Significant contributions came from Nicolas Jenson, Francesco Griffo, Aldus Manutius, and other printers of late 15th-century Europe. Gutenberg's movable type printing system offered a number of advantages over previous movable types The lead-antimony-tin alloy used by Gutenberg had half the melting temperature of bronze, making it easier to cast the type and aided the use of reusable metal matrix molds instead of the expendable sand and clay molds. The use of antimony alloy increased hardness of the type compared to lead and tin for improved durability of the type. The reusable metal matrix allowed a single experienced worker to produce 4,000 to 5,000 individual types a day, while Wang Chen had artisans working 2 years to make 60,000 wooden types Type-founding as practiced in Europe and the west consists of three stages. Punchcutting: If the glyph design includes enclosed spaces (counters) then a counterpunch is made. The counter shapes are transferred in relief (cameo) onto the end of a rectangular bar of mild steel using a specialized engraving tool called a graver. The finished counterpunch is hardened by heating and quenching (tempering), or exposure to a cyanide solution (case hardening). The counterpunch is then struck against the end of a similar rectangular steel bar—the letterpunch—to impress the counter shapes as recessed spaces (intaglio). The outer profile of the glyph is completed by scraping away with a graver the material outside the counter spaces, leaving only the stroke or lines of the glyph. Progress toward the finished design is checked by successive smoke proofs; temporary prints made from a thin coating of carbon deposited on the punch surface by a candle flame. The finished letter punch is finally hardened to withstand the rigors of reproduction by striking. One counterpunch and one letterpunch are produced for every letter or glyph making up a complete font. Matrix: The letterpunch is used to strike a blank die of soft metal to make a negative letter mould, called a matrix. Casting: The matrix is inserted into the bottom of a device called a hand mould. The mould is clamped shut and molten type metal alloy consisting mostly of lead and tin, with a small amount of antimony for hardening, is poured into a cavity from the top. Antimony has the rare property of expanding as it cools, giving the casting sharp edges. When the type metal has sufficiently cooled, the mould is unlocked and a rectangular block approximately long, called a sort, is extracted. Excess casting on the end of the sort, called the tang, is later removed to make the sort the precise height required for printing, known as "type height". The type-height was quite different in different countries. The Monotype Corporation Limited in London UK produced moulds in various heights: : United Kingdom, Canada, U.S., : France, Germany, Switzerland and most other European countries, : Belgium height, : Dutch height A Dutch printers manual mentions a tiny difference between French and German Height: 62.027 points Didot = = English height, 62.666 points Didot = = French height, 62.685 points Didot = = German height, 66.047 points Didot = = Dutch Height Tiny differences in type-height will cause quite bold images of characters. At the end of the 19th century there were only two typefoundries left in the Netherlands: Johan Enschedé & Zonen, at Haarlem, and Lettergieterij Amsterdam, voorheen Tetterode. They both had their own type-height: Enschedé: 65 23/24 points Didot, and Amsterdam: 66 1/24 points Didot. Enough difference to prevent a combined use of fonts of both typefoundries: Enschede would be to light, or otherwise the Amsterdam-font would print rather bold. A perfect way of binding clients. In 1905 the Dutch governmental , later: "State-printery" () decided during a reorganisation to use a standard type-height of 63 points Didot. , actually Belgium-height, but this fact was not widely known. Modern, factory-produced movable type was available in the late 19th century. It was held in the printing shop in a job case, a drawer about 2 inches high, a yard wide, and about two feet deep, with many small compartments for the various letters and ligatures. The most popular and accepted of the job case designs in America was the California Job Case, which took its name from the Pacific coast location of the foundries that made the case popular. Traditionally, the capital letters were stored in a separate drawer or case that was located above the case that held the other letters; this is why capital letters are called "upper case" characters while the non-capitals are "lower case". Compartments also held spacers, which are blocks of blank type used to separate words and fill out a line of type, such as em and en quads (quadrats, or spaces. A quadrat is a block of type whose face is lower than the printing letters so that it does not itself print.). An em space was the width of a capital letter "M" – as wide as it was high – while an en space referred to a space half the width of its height (usually the dimensions for a capital "N"). Individual letters are assembled into words and lines of text with the aid of a composing stick, and the whole assembly is tightly bound together to make up a page image called a forme, where all letter faces are exactly the same height to form a flat surface of type. The forme is mounted on a printing press, a thin coating of viscous ink is applied and impressions made on paper under great pressure in the press. "Sorts" is the term given to special characters not freely available in the typical type case, such as the "@" mark. Sometime it is erroneously stated that printing with metal type replaced the earlier methods. In the industrial era printing methods would be chosen to suit the purpose. For example, when printing large scale letters in posters etc. the metal type would have proved too heavy and economically unviable. Thus, large scale type was made as carved wood blocks as well as ceramics plates. Also in many cases where large scale text was required, it was simpler to hand the job to a sign painter than a printer. Images could be printed together with movable type if they were made as woodcuts or wood engravings as long as the blocks were made to the same type height. If intaglio methods, such as copper plates, were used for the images, then images and the text would have required separate print runs on different machines. History of printing in East Asia, History of Western typography, Letterpress printing, Odhecaton – the first sheet music printed with movable type, Spread of European movable type printing, Type foundry, Typesetting, Style guides Nesbitt, Alexander. The History and Technique of Lettering (c) 1957, Dover Publications, Inc. , Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 57-13116. The Dover edition is an abridged and corrected republication of the work originally published in 1950 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. under the title Lettering: The History and Technique of Lettering as Design., The classic manual of hand-press technology is International Printing Museum Web site, – Articles related to typographical symbols Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (; – February 3, 1468) was a German blacksmith, goldsmith, inventor, printer, and publisher who introduced printing to Europe with the printing press. His introduction of mechanical movable type printing to Europe started the Printing Revolution and is regarded as a milestone of the second millennium, ushering in the modern period of human history. It played a key role in the development of the Renaissance, Reformation, the Age of Enlightenment, and the scientific revolution and laid the material basis for the modern knowledge-based economy and the spread of learning to the masses. Gutenberg in 1439 was the first European to use movable type. Among his many contributions to printing are: the invention of a process for mass-producing movable type; the use of oil- based ink for printing books; adjustable molds; mechanical movable type; and the use of a wooden printing press similar to the agricultural screw presses of the period. His truly epochal invention was the combination of these elements into a practical system that allowed the mass production of printed books and was economically viable for printers and readers alike. Gutenberg's method for making type is traditionally considered to have included a type metal alloy and a hand mould for casting type. The alloy was a mixture of lead, tin, and antimony that melted at a relatively low temperature for faster and more economical casting, cast well, and created a durable type. In Renaissance Europe, the arrival of mechanical movable type printing introduced the era of mass communication which permanently altered the structure of society. The relatively unrestricted circulation of information—including revolutionary ideas—transcended borders, captured the masses in the Reformation and threatened the power of political and religious authorities; the sharp increase in literacy broke the monopoly of the literate elite on education and learning and bolstered the emerging middle class. Across Europe, the increasing cultural self-awareness of its people led to the rise of proto- nationalism, accelerated by the flowering of the European vernacular languages to the detriment of Latin's status as lingua franca. In the 19th century, the replacement of the hand-operated Gutenberg-style press by steam-powered rotary presses allowed printing on an industrial scale, while Western-style printing was adopted all over the world, becoming practically the sole medium for modern bulk printing. The use of movable type was a marked improvement on the handwritten manuscript, which was the existing method of book production in Europe, and upon woodblock printing, and revolutionized European book-making. Gutenberg's printing technology spread rapidly throughout Europe and later the world. His major work, the Gutenberg Bible (also known as the 42-line Bible), was the first printed version of the Bible and has been acclaimed for its high aesthetic and technical quality. Gutenberg was born in the German city of Mainz, the youngest son of the patrician merchant Friele Gensfleisch zur Laden, and his second wife, Else Wyrich, who was the daughter of a shopkeeper. It is assumed that he was baptized in the area close to his birthplace of St. Christoph. According to some accounts, Friele was a goldsmith for the bishop at Mainz, but most likely, he was involved in the cloth trade. Gutenberg's year of birth is not precisely known, but it was sometime between the years of 1394 and 1404. In the 1890s the city of Mainz declared his official and symbolic date of birth to be June 24, 1400. John Lienhard, technology historian, says "Most of Gutenberg's early life is a mystery. His father worked with the ecclesiastic mint. Gutenberg grew up knowing the trade of goldsmithing." This is supported by historian Heinrich Wallau, who adds, "In the 14th and 15th centuries his [ancestors] claimed a hereditary position as ... retainers of the household of the master of the archiepiscopal mint. In this capacity they doubtless acquired considerable knowledge and technical skill in metal working. They supplied the mint with the metal to be coined, changed the various species of coins, and had a seat at the assizes in forgery cases." Wallau adds, "His surname was derived from the house inhabited by his father and his paternal ancestors 'zu Laden, zu Gutenberg'. The house of Gänsfleisch was one of the patrician families of the town, tracing its lineage back to the thirteenth century." Patricians (the wealthy and political elite) in Mainz were often named after houses they owned. Around 1427, the name zu Gutenberg, after the family house in Mainz, is documented to have been used for the first time. In 1411, there was an uprising in Mainz against the patricians, and more than a hundred families were forced to leave. As a result, the Gutenbergs are thought to have moved to Eltville am Rhein (Alta Villa), where his mother had an inherited estate. According to historian Heinrich Wallau, "All that is known of his youth is that he was not in Mainz in 1430. It is presumed that he migrated for political reasons to Strasbourg, where the family probably had connections." He is assumed to have studied at the University of Erfurt, where there is a record of the enrolment of a student called Johannes de Altavilla in 1418—Altavilla is the Latin form of Eltville am Rhein. Nothing is now known of Gutenberg's life for the next fifteen years, but in March 1434, a letter by him indicates that he was living in Strasbourg, where he had some relatives on his mother's side. He also appears to have been a goldsmith member enrolled in the Strasbourg militia. In 1437, there is evidence that he was instructing a wealthy tradesman on polishing gems, but where he had acquired this knowledge is unknown. In 1436/37 his name also comes up in court in connection with a broken promise of marriage to a woman from Strasbourg, Ennelin. Whether the marriage actually took place is not recorded. Following his father's death in 1419, he is mentioned in the inheritance proceedings. Around 1439, Gutenberg was involved in a financial misadventure making polished metal mirrors (which were believed to capture holy light from religious relics) for sale to pilgrims to Aachen: in 1439 the city was planning to exhibit its collection of relics from Emperor Charlemagne but the event was delayed by one year due to a severe flood and the capital already spent could not be repaid. When the question of satisfying the investors came up, Gutenberg is said to have promised to share a "secret". It has been widely speculated that this secret may have been the idea of printing with movable type. Also around 1439–40, the Dutch Laurens Janszoon Coster came up with the idea of printing. Legend has it that the idea came to him "like a ray of light". Until at least 1444 Gutenberg lived in Strasbourg, most likely in the St. Arbogast parish. It was in Strasbourg in 1440 that he is said to have perfected and unveiled the secret of printing based on his research, mysteriously entitled Aventur und Kunst (enterprise and art). It is not clear what work he was engaged in, or whether some early trials with printing from movable type may have been conducted there. After this, there is a gap of four years in the record. In 1448, he was back in Mainz, where he took out a loan from his brother-in-law Arnold Gelthus, quite possibly for a printing press or related paraphernalia. By this date, Gutenberg may have been familiar with intaglio printing; it is claimed that he had worked on copper engravings with an artist known as the Master of Playing Cards. By 1450, the press was in operation, and a German poem had been printed, possibly the first item to be printed there. Gutenberg was able to convince the wealthy moneylender Johann Fust for a loan of 800 guilders. Peter Schöffer, who became Fust's son-in-law, also joined the enterprise. Schöffer had worked as a scribe in Paris and is believed to have designed some of the first typefaces. Gutenberg's workshop was set up at Hof Humbrecht, a property belonging to a distant relative. It is not clear when Gutenberg conceived the Bible project, but for this he borrowed another 800 guilders from Fust, and work commenced in 1452. At the same time, the press was also printing other, more lucrative texts (possibly Latin grammars). There is also some speculation that there may have been two presses, one for the pedestrian texts, and one for the Bible. One of the profit-making enterprises of the new press was the printing of thousands of indulgences for the church, documented from 1454 to 1455. In 1455 Gutenberg completed his 42-line Bible, known as the Gutenberg Bible. About 180 copies were printed, most on paper and some on vellum. Some time in 1456, there was a dispute between Gutenberg and Fust, and Fust demanded his money back, accusing Gutenberg of misusing the funds. Gutenberg's two rounds of financing from Fust, a total of 1,600 guilders at 6% interest, now amounted to 2,026 guilders. Fust sued at the archbishop's court. A November 1455 legal document records that there was a partnership for a "project of the books," the funds for which Gutenberg had used for other purposes, according to Fust. The court decided in favor of Fust, giving him control over the Bible printing workshop and half of all printed Bibles. Thus Gutenberg was effectively bankrupt, but it appears he retained (or restarted) a small printing shop, and participated in the printing of a Bible in the town of Bamberg around 1459, for which he seems at least to have supplied the type. But since his printed books never carry his name or a date, it is difficult to be certain, and there is consequently a considerable scholarly debate on this subject. It is also possible that the large Catholicon dictionary, 300 copies of 754 pages, printed in Mainz in 1460, was executed in his workshop. Meanwhile, the Fust–Schöffer shop was the first in Europe to bring out a book with the printer's name and date, the Mainz Psalter of August 1457, and while proudly proclaiming the mechanical process by which it had been produced, it made no mention of Gutenberg. In 1462, during the devastating Mainz Diocesan Feud, Mainz was sacked by archbishop Adolph von Nassau, and Gutenberg was exiled. An old man by now, he moved to Eltville where he may have initiated and supervised a new printing press belonging to the brothers Bechtermünze. In January 1465, Gutenberg's achievements were recognized and he was given the title Hofmann (gentleman of the court) by von Nassau. This honor included a stipend, an annual court outfit, as well as 2,180 litres of grain and 2,000 litres of wine tax-free. It is believed he may have moved back to Mainz around this time, but this is not certain. Gutenberg died in 1468 and was buried in the Franciscan church at Mainz, his contributions largely unknown. This church and the cemetery were later destroyed, and Gutenberg's grave is now lost. In 1504, he was mentioned as the inventor of typography in a book by Professor Ivo Wittig. It was not until 1567 that the first portrait of Gutenberg, almost certainly an imaginary reconstruction, appeared in Heinrich Pantaleon's biography of famous Germans. Between 1450 and 1455, Gutenberg printed several texts, some of which remain unidentified; his texts did not bear the printer's name or date, so attribution is possible only from typographical evidence and external references. Certainly several church documents including a papal letter and two indulgences were printed, one of which was issued in Mainz. In view of the value of printing in quantity, seven editions in two styles were ordered, resulting in several thousand copies being printed. Some printed editions of Ars Minor, a schoolbook on Latin grammar by Aelius Donatus may have been printed by Gutenberg; these have been dated either 1451–52 or 1455. In 1455, Gutenberg completed copies of a beautifully executed folio Bible (Biblia Sacra), with 42 lines on each page. Copies sold for 30 florins each, which was roughly three years' wages for an average clerk. Nonetheless, it was significantly cheaper than a manuscript Bible that could take a single scribe over a year to prepare. After printing, some copies were rubricated or hand- illuminated in the same elegant way as manuscript Bibles from the same period. 48 substantially complete copies are known to survive, including two at the British Library that can be viewed and compared online. The text lacks modern features such as page numbers, indentations, and paragraph breaks. An undated 36-line edition of the Bible was printed, probably in Bamberg in 1458–60, possibly by Gutenberg. A large part of it was shown to have been set from a copy of Gutenberg's Bible, thus disproving earlier speculation that it was the earlier of the two. Gutenberg's early printing process, and what texts he printed with movable type, are not known in great detail. His later Bibles were printed in such a way as to have required large quantities of type, some estimates suggesting as many as 100,000 individual sorts. Setting each page would take, perhaps, half a day, and considering all the work in loading the press, inking the type, pulling the impressions, hanging up the sheets, distributing the type, etc., it is thought that the Gutenberg–Fust shop might have employed as many as 25 craftsmen. Gutenberg's technique of making movable type remains unclear. In the following decades, punches and copper matrices became standardized in the rapidly disseminating printing presses across Europe. Whether Gutenberg used this sophisticated technique or a somewhat primitive version has been the subject of considerable debate. In the standard process of making type, a hard metal punch (made by punchcutting, with the letter carved back to front) is hammered into a softer copper bar, creating a matrix. This is then placed into a hand-held mould and a piece of type, or "sort", is cast by filling the mould with molten type-metal; this cools almost at once, and the resulting piece of type can be removed from the mould. The matrix can be reused to create hundreds, or thousands, of identical sorts so that the same character appearing anywhere within the book will appear very uniform, giving rise, over time, to the development of distinct styles of typefaces or fonts. After casting, the sorts are arranged into type cases, and used to make up pages which are inked and printed, a procedure which can be repeated hundreds, or thousands, of times. The sorts can be reused in any combination, earning the process the name of "movable type". (For details, see Typography.) The invention of the making of types with punch, matrix and mold has been widely attributed to Gutenberg. However, recent evidence suggests that Gutenberg's process was somewhat different. If he used the punch and matrix approach, all his letters should have been nearly identical, with some variation due to miscasting and inking. However, the type used in Gutenberg's earliest work shows other variations. In 2001, the physicist Blaise Agüera y Arcas and Princeton librarian Paul Needham, used digital scans of a Papal bull in the Scheide Library, Princeton, to carefully compare the same letters (types) appearing in different parts of the printed text. The irregularities in Gutenberg's type, particularly in simple characters such as the hyphen, suggested that the variations could not have come either from ink smear or from wear and damage on the pieces of metal on the types themselves. Although some identical types are clearly used on other pages, other variations, subjected to detailed image analysis, suggested that they could not have been produced from the same matrix. Transmitted light pictures of the page also appeared to reveal substructures in the type that could not arise from traditional punchcutting techniques. They hypothesized that the method involved impressing simple shapes to create alphabets in "cuneiform" style in a matrix made of some soft material, perhaps sand. Casting the type would destroy the mould, and the matrix would need to be recreated to make each additional sort. This could explain the variations in the type, as well as the substructures observed in the printed images. Thus, they speculated that "the decisive factor for the birth of typography", the use of reusable moulds for casting type, was a more progressive process than was previously thought. They suggested that the additional step of using the punch to create a mould that could be reused many times was not taken until twenty years later, in the 1470s. Others have not accepted some or all of their suggestions, and have interpreted the evidence in other ways, and the truth of the matter remains uncertain. A 1568 history by Hadrianus Junius of Holland claims that the basic idea of the movable type came to Gutenberg from Laurens Janszoon Coster via Fust, who was apprenticed to Coster in the 1430s and may have brought some of his equipment from Haarlem to Mainz. While Coster appears to have experimented with moulds and castable metal type, there is no evidence that he had actually printed anything with this technology. He was an inventor and a goldsmith. However, there is one indirect supporter of the claim that Coster might be the inventor. The author of the Cologne Chronicle of 1499 quotes Ulrich Zell, the first printer of Cologne, that printing was performed in Mainz in 1450, but that some type of printing of lower quality had previously occurred in the Netherlands. However, the chronicle does not mention the name of Coster, while it actually credits Gutenberg as the "first inventor of printing" in the very same passage (fol. 312). The first securely dated book by Dutch printers is from 1471, and the Coster connection is today regarded as a mere legend. The 19th-century printer and typefounder Fournier Le Jeune suggested that Gutenberg was not using type cast with a reusable matrix, but wooden types that were carved individually. A similar suggestion was made by Nash in 2004. This remains possible, albeit entirely unproven. It has also been questioned whether Gutenberg used movable types at all. In 2004, Italian professor Bruno Fabbiani claimed that examination of the 42-line Bible revealed an overlapping of letters, suggesting that Gutenberg did not in fact use movable type (individual cast characters) but rather used whole plates made from a system somewhat like a modern typewriter, whereby the letters were stamped successively into the plate and then printed. However, most specialists regard the occasional overlapping of type as caused by paper movement over pieces of type of slightly unequal height. Although Gutenberg was financially unsuccessful in his lifetime, the printing technologies spread quickly, and news and books began to travel across Europe much faster than before. It fed the growing Renaissance, and since it greatly facilitated scientific publishing, it was a major catalyst for the later scientific revolution. The capital of printing in Europe shifted to Venice, where visionary printers like Aldus Manutius ensured widespread availability of the major Greek and Latin texts. The claims of an Italian origin for movable type have also focused on this rapid rise of Italy in movable-type printing. This may perhaps be explained by the prior eminence of Italy in the paper and printing trade. Additionally, Italy's economy was growing rapidly at the time, facilitating the spread of literacy. Christopher Columbus had a geography book (printed with movable type) bought by his father. That book is in a Spanish museum. Finally, the city of Mainz was sacked in 1462, driving many (including a number of printers and punch cutters) into exile. Printing was also a factor in the Reformation. Martin Luther's 95 Theses were printed and circulated widely; subsequently he issued broadsheets outlining his anti- indulgences position (certificates of indulgences were one of the first items Gutenberg had printed). The broadsheet contributed to development of the newspaper. In the decades after Gutenberg, many conservative patrons looked down on cheap printed books; books produced by hand were considered more desirable. Today there is a large antique market for the earliest printed objects. Books printed prior to 1500 are known as incunabula. There are many statues of Gutenberg in Germany, including the famous one by Bertel Thorvaldsen (1837) at Gutenbergplatz in Mainz, home to the eponymous Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz and the Gutenberg Museum on the history of early printing. The latter publishes the Gutenberg-Jahrbuch, the leading periodical in the field. Project Gutenberg, the oldest digital library, commemorates Gutenberg's name. The Mainzer Johannisnacht commemorates the person Johannes Gutenberg in his native city since 1968. In 1952, the United States Postal Service issued a five hundredth anniversary stamp commemorating Johannes Gutenberg invention of the movable-type printing press. In 1961 the Canadian philosopher and scholar Marshall McLuhan entitled his pioneering study in the fields of print culture, cultural studies, and media ecology, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Regarded as one of the most influential people in human history, Gutenberg remains a towering figure in the popular image. In 1999, the A&E; Network ranked Gutenberg the No. 1 most influential person of the second millennium on their "Biographies of the Millennium" countdown. In 1997, Time–Life magazine picked Gutenberg's invention as the most important of the second millennium. In space, he is commemorated in the name of the asteroid 777 Gutemberga. Two operas based on Gutenberg are G, Being the Confession and Last Testament of Johannes Gensfleisch, also known as Gutenberg, Master Printer, formerly of Strasbourg and Mainz, from 2001 with music by Gavin Bryars; and La Nuit de Gutenberg, with music by Philippe Manoury, premiered in 2011 in Strasbourg. In 2018, WordPress, the open-source CMS platform, named its new editing system Gutenberg in tribute to him. Laurens Janszoon Coster, History of books Blake Morrison, The Justification of Johann Gutenberg (2000) [Novel, describing social and technical aspects of the invention of printing], Albert Kapr, Johann Gutenberg: the Man and his Invention. Translated from the German by Douglas Martin, Scolar Press, 1996. "Third ed., revised by the author for...the English translation., [More recent, abridged version] English homepage of the Gutenberg-Museum Mainz, Germany., The Digital Gutenberg Project: the Gutenberg Bible in 1,300 digital images, every page of the University of Texas at Austin copy., Treasures in Full – Gutenberg Bible View the British Library's Digital Versions Online, Giovanni Balbi. Catholicon. Mainz: Printed by Johann Gutenberg? 1460, at The Library of Congress. Printing in East Asia evolved from ink rubbings made on paper or cloth from texts on stone tables in China during the Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 CE). Mechanical woodblock printing on paper started in China during the Tang dynasty before the 8th century CE. The use of woodblock printing quickly spread to other East Asian countries. While the Chinese used only clay and wood movable type at first, use of metal movable type was pioneered in Korea by the 13th century. The Western-style printing press became known in East Asia by the 16th century but was not fully adopted until centuries later. Traditionally, there have been two main printing techniques in East Asia: woodblock printing (xylography) and moveable type printing. In the woodblock technique, ink is applied to letters carved upon a wooden board, which is then pressed onto paper. With moveable type, the board is assembled using different lettertypes, according to the page being printed. Wooden printing was used in the East from the 8th century onwards, and moveable metal type came into use during the 12th century. The earliest specimen of woodblock printing on paper, whereby individual sheets of paper were pressed into wooden blocks with the text and illustrations carved into them, was discovered in 1974 in an excavation of Xi'an (then called Chang'an, the capital of Tang China), Shaanxi, China. It is a dharani sutra printed on hemp paper and dated to 650 to 670 AD, during the Tang dynasty (618–907). Another printed document dating to the early half of the Chinese Tang dynasty has also been found, the Saddharmapunṇḍarīka sutra or Lotus Sutra printed from 690 to 699. In Korea, an example of woodblock printing from the eighth century was discovered in 1966. A copy of the Buddhist Dharani Sutra called the Pure Light Dharani Sutra (), discovered in Gyeongju, South Korea in a Silla dynasty pagoda that was repaired in 751 AD, was undated but must have been created sometime before the reconstruction of the Shakyamuni Pagoda of Bulguk Temple, Kyongju Province in 751 AD. The document is estimated to have been created no later than 704 AD. The manuscript is transcribed onto thin slightly waxed sheets of paper by a professional calligrapher. The wax prevents the ink from being as readily absorbed into the paper, allowing more ink to be absorb onto another surface. The paper is placed ink side down onto a wooden block on which a thin layer of rice paste has been thinly spread. The back of the paper is rubbed with a flat palm-fibre brush so that the wet rice paste absorbs some of the ink and an impression of the inked area is left on the block. The engraver uses a set of sharp-edged tools to cut away the uninked areas of the wood block in essence raising an inverse image of the original calligraphy above the background. While carving, the knife is held like a dagger in the right hand and guided by the middle finger of the left hand, drawing towards the cutter. The vertical lines are cut first, then the block is rotated 90 degrees and the horizontal lines cut. Four proof-readings are normally required – the transcript, the corrected transcript, first sample print from block and after any corrections have been made. A small correction to a block can be made by cutting a small notch and hammering in a wedge-shaped piece of wood. Larger errors require an inlay. After this the block is washed to remove any refuse. To print, the block is fixed firmly on a table. The printer takes a round horsehair inking brush and applies ink with a vertical motion. The paper is then laid on the block and rubbed with a long narrow pad to transfer the impression to the paper. The paper is peeled off and set to dry. Because of the rubbing process, printing is only done on one side of the paper, and the paper is thinner than in the west, but two pages are normally printed at once. Sample copies were sometimes made in red or blue, but black ink was always used for production. It is said that a skilled printer could produce as many as 1500 or 2000 double sheets in a day. Blocks can be stored and reused when extra copies are needed. 15,000 prints can be taken from a block with a further 10,000 after touching up. Printing started in China in 593 AD. Printing was promoted by the spread of Buddhism. The Buddhist scroll known as the "Great Dharani Sutra of Immaculate and Pure Light" or "Spotless Pure Light Dharani Sutra" () is currently the oldest surviving woodblock print. It was published in Korea before the year 751 A.D. during the Silla Kingdom. This Darani Sutra was found inside the Seokga Pagoda of Bulguksa Temple in Gyeongju, Korea. Bulguksa Temple in Gyeongju in October 1966 within the seokgatap (释迦塔) while dismantling the tower to repair much of the sari was found with the prints. One row of the darani gyeongmun 8–9 are printed in the form of a roll. Tripitaka Koreana was printed between 1011 and 1082. It is the world's most comprehensive and oldest intact version of Buddhist canon. A reprint in 1237–51 used 81,258 blocks of magnolia wood, carved on both sides, which are still kept almost intact at Haeinsa. A printing office was established in the National Academy in 1101 and the Goryeo government collection numbered several tens of thousands. In Japan, one thousand copies of the Lotus sutra were printed in 1009 as a pious work, not intended to be read and therefore legibility was not so important. The spread of printing outside Buddhist circles didn't develop until the end of the 16th century. The westward movement of printing started from eastern Turkestan where printing in the Uyghur language appeared in about 1300, though the page numbers and descriptions are in Chinese. Both blocks and moveable type printing has been discovered at Turfan as well as several hundred wooden type for Uighur. After the Mongols conquered Turfan, a great number of Uighurs were recruited into the Mongol army and after the Mongols incorporated Persia in the middle of the 13th century, paper money was printed in Tabriz in 1294, following the Chinese system. The was made by Rashid-al-Din Hamadani in 1301–11 in his history of the world. Some fifty pieces of printed matter have been found in Egypt printed between 900 and 1300 in black ink on paper by the rubbing method in the Chinese style. Although there is no transmission evidence, experts believe there is a connection. According to the American art historian A. Hyatt Mayor, "it was the Chinese who really discovered the means of communication that was to dominate until our age." Both woodblock and movable type printing were replaced in the second half of the 19th century by western-style printing, initially lithography. Bi Sheng (毕昇) (990–1051) developed the first known movable-type system for printing in China around 1040 AD during the Northern Song dynasty, using ceramic materials. As described by the Chinese scholar Shen Kuo (沈括) (1031–1095): In 1193, Zhou Bida, an officer of Southern Song Dynasty, made a set of clay movable-type method according to the method described by Shen Kuo in his Dream Pool Essays, and printed his book Notes of The Jade Hall (《玉堂杂记》). Clay type printing was practiced in China from the Song dynasty through the Qing dynasty. As late as 1844 there were still books printed in China with ceramic movable types. (However, ceramic type was not used during the Ming dynasty, and it was not until the middle of the middle of the Qing dynasty that its usage revived). Ceramic type not holding Chinese ink well and distortion of the type sometimes occurring during the baking process contributed in preventing it from being popular Wooden movable type was also first developed around 1040 AD by Bi Sheng (990–1051), as described by the Chinese scholar Shen Kuo (1031–1095), but was abandoned in favour of clay movable types due to the presence of wood grains and the unevenness of the wooden type after being soaked in ink. In 1298, Wang Zhen (), a Yuan dynasty governmental official of Jingde County, Anhui Province, China, re-invented a method of making movable wooden types. He made more than 30,000 wooden movable types and printed 100 copies of Records of Jingde County (《旌德县志》), a book of more than 60,000 Chinese characters. Soon afterwards, he summarized his invention in his book A method of making moveable wooden types for printing books. This system was later enhanced by pressing wooden blocks into sand and casting metal types from the depression in copper, bronze, iron or tin. This new method overcame many of the shortcomings of woodblock printing. Rather than manually carving an individual block to print a single page, movable type printing allowed for the quick assembly of a page of text. Furthermore, these new, more compact type fonts could be reused and stored. The set of wafer-like metal stamp types could be assembled to form pages, inked, and page impressions taken from rubbings on cloth or paper. In 1322，a Fenghua county officer Ma Chengde (马称德) in Zhejiang, made 100,000 wooded movable types and printed 43 volume Daxue Yanyi (《大学衍义》). Wooden movable types were used continually in China. Even as late as 1733, a 2300-volume Wuying Palace Collected Gems Edition (《武英殿聚珍版丛书》) was printed with 253500 wooden movable type on order of the Yongzheng Emperor, and completed in one year. A number of books printed in Tangut script during the Western Xia (1038–1227) period are known, of which the Auspicious Tantra of All-Reaching Union that was discovered in the ruins of Baisigou Square Pagoda in 1991 is believed to have been printed sometime during the reign of Emperor Renzong of Western Xia (1139–1193). It is considered by many Chinese experts to be the earliest extant example of a book printed using wooden movable type. A particular difficulty posed the logistical problems of handling the several thousand logographs whose command is required for full literacy in Chinese language. It was faster to carve one woodblock per page than to composit a page from so many different types. However, if one was to use movable type for multitudes of the same document, the speed of printing would be relatively quicker. Although the wooden type was more durable under the mechanical rigors of handling, repeated printing wore the character faces down, and the types could only be replaced by carving new pieces. In addition, wooden type could apparently absorb moisture and the print form would be uneven when set up, and the wooden type could be more difficult to remove from the paste used in the form. Bronze movable type printing was invented in China no later than the 12th century, according to at least 13 material finds in China, in large scale bronze plate printing of paper money and formal official documents issued by Jin (1115–1234) and Southern Song (1127–1279) dynasties with embedded bronze metal types for anti counterfeit markers. Such paper money printing might date back to the 11th-century jiaozi of Northern Song (960–1127). However, problems existed in using metal type in printing text, and it was not until the late 15th century that metal movable type was widely used in China. The typical example of this kind of bronze movable type embedded copper-block printing is a printed "check" of Jin Dynasty with two square holes for embedding two bronze movable type characters, each selected from 1000 different characters, such that each printed paper money has different combination of markers. A copper block printed paper money dated between 1215–1216 in the collection of Luo Zhenyu's Pictorial Paper Money of the Four Dynasties, 1914, shows two special characters one called Ziliao, the other called Zihao for the purpose of preventing counterfeit; over the Ziliao there is a small character (輶) printed with movable copper type, while over the Zihao there is an empty square hole, apparently the associated copper metal type was lost. Another sample of Song dynasty money of the same period in the collection of Shanghai Museum has two empty square holes above Ziliao as well as Zihou, due to the loss of two copper movable types. Song dynasty bronze block embedded with bronze metal movable type printed paper money was issued in large scale and in circulation for a long time. In the 1298 book Zao Huozi Yinshufa () by the early Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) official Wang Zhen, there is mention of tin movable type, used probably since the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279), but this was largely experimental. It was unsatisfactory due to its incompatibility with the inking process. During the Mongol Empire (1206–1405), printing using movable type spread from China to Central Asia. The Uyghurs of Central Asia used movable type, their script type adopted from the Mongol language, some with Chinese words printed between the pages, a strong evidence that the books were printed in China. During the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), Hua Sui in 1490 used bronze type in printing books. In 1574 the massive 1000 volume encyclopedia Imperial Readings of the Taiping Era () were printed with bronze movable type. In 1725, the Qing dynasty government made 250,000 bronze movable-type characters and printed 64 sets of the encyclopedic Gujin Tushu Jicheng (, Complete Collection of Illustrations and Writings from the Earliest to Current Times). Each set consisted of 5040 volumes, making a total of 322,560 volumes printed using movable type. The transition from wood type to movable metal type occurred in Korea during the Goryeo dynasty, some time in the 13th century, to meet the heavy demand for both religious and secular books. A set of ritual books, Sangjeong Gogeum Yemun were printed with movable metal type in 1234. The credit for the first metal movable type may go to Choe Yun-ui of the Goryeo Dynasty in 1234. The techniques for bronze casting, used at the time for making coins (as well as bells and statues) were adapted to making metal type. Unlike the metal punch system thought to be used by Gutenberg, the Koreans used a sand-casting method. The following description of the Korean font casting process was recorded by the Joseon dynasty scholar Song Hyon (15th century): While metal movable type printing was developed in Korea and the oldest extant metal print book had been printed in Korea, Korea never witnessed a printing revolution comparable to Europe's: A potential solution to the linguistic and cultural bottleneck that held back movable type in Korea for two hundred years appeared in the early 15th century—a generation before Gutenberg would begin working on his own movable type invention in Europe—when King Sejong devised a simplified alphabet of 24 characters called Hangul for use by the common people, which could have made the typecasting and compositing process more feasible. Though the Jesuits operated a Western movable type printing-press in Nagasaki, Japan, printing equipment brought back by Toyotomi Hideyoshi's army in 1593 from Korea had far greater influence on the development of the medium. Four years later, Tokugawa Ieyasu, even before becoming shōgun, effected the creation of the first native movable type, using wooden type-pieces rather than metal. He oversaw the creation of 100,000 type-pieces, which were used to print a number of political and historical texts. An edition of the Confucian Analects was printed in 1598 using metal moveable type printing equipment at the order of Emperor Go-Yōzei. This document is the oldest work of Japanese moveable type printing extant today. Despite the appeal of moveable type, however, it was soon decided that the running script style of Japanese writings would be better reproduced using woodblocks, and so woodblocks were once more adopted; by 1640 they were once again being used for nearly all purposes. Despite the introduction of movable type from the 11th century, printing using woodblocks remained dominant in East Asia until the introduction of lithography and photolithography in the 19th century. To understand this it is necessary to consider both the nature of the language and the economics of printing. Given that the Chinese language does not use an alphabet it was usually necessary for a set of type to contain 100,000 or more blocks, which was a substantial investment. Common characters need 20 or more copies, and rarer characters only a single copy. In the case of wood, the characters were either produced in a large block and cut up, or the blocks were cut first and the characters cut afterwards. In either case the size and height of the type had to be carefully controlled to produce pleasing results. To handle the typesetting, Wang Zhen used revolving tables about 2m in diameter in which the characters were divided according to the five tones and the rhyme sections according to the official book of rhymes. The characters were all numbered and one man holding the list called out the number to another who would fetch the type. This system worked well when the run was large. Wang Zhen's initial project to produce 100 copies of a 60,000 character gazetteer of the local district was produced in less than a month. But for the smaller runs typical of the time it was not such an improvement. A reprint required resetting and re-proofreading, unlike the wooden block system where it was feasible to store the blocks and reuse them. Individual wooden characters didn't last as long as complete blocks. When metal type was introduced it was harder to produce aesthetically pleasing type by the direct carving method. It is unknown whether metal movable types used from the late 15th century in China were cast from moulds or carved individually. Even if they were cast, there were not the economies of scale available with the small number of different characters used in an alphabetic system. The wage for engraving on bronze was many times that for carving characters on wood and a set of metal type might contain 200,000–400,000 characters. Additionally, the ink traditionally used in Chinese printing, typically composed of pine soot bound with glue, didn't work well with the tin originally used for type. As a result of all this, movable type was initially used by government offices which needed to produce large number of copies and by itinerant printers producing family registers who would carry perhaps 20,000 pieces of wooden type with them and cut any other characters needed locally. But small local printers often found that wooden blocks suited their needs better. Mechanical presses as used in European printing remained unknown in East Asia. Instead, printing remained an unmechanized, laborious process with pressing the back of the paper onto the inked block by manual "rubbing" with a hand tool. In Korea, the first printing presses were introduced as late as 1881–83, while in Japan, after an early but brief interlude in the 1590s, Gutenberg's printing press arrived in Nagasaki in 1848 on a Dutch ship. History of Western typography, Hua Sui, Printing press, Publishing industry in China, Samuel Dyer, Typography, Wang Zhen (official) Carter, Thomas Frances. The Invention of Printing in China, and its spread Westward 2nd ed., revised by L. Carrington Goodrich. NY:Ronald Press, 1955. (1st ed, 1925), Fifty Wonders of Korea: Volume 1. Seoul: Samjung Munhwasa, 2007. ., Lane, Richard. (1978). Images from the Floating World, The Japanese Print. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ; OCLC 5246796, ; also published in Taipei: Caves Books, Ltd., 1986., Twitchett, Denis. Printing and Publishing in Medieval China. New York, Frederick C. Beil, 1983. Chinese woodblock prints from SOAS University of London

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Bear in the Big Blue House is an American children's television series created by Mitchell Kriegman and produced by Jim Henson Television for Disney Channel's Playhouse Disney preschool television block. Debuting on October 20, 1997, it aired its last episode on April 28, 2006. Bear lives in the Big Blue House where he is caregiver for his friends bear cub Ojo, mouse Tutter, lemur Treelo, otters Pip, Pop, and narrator Shadow. He and his friends have many adventures together. Those normally include solving problems, sharing, cooperating with each other, and developing social/life skills. Each episode opens with the welcome song and appearance of the characters. Each show focuses on a theme (ex; "sleep", "doctors", "Thanksgiving") which folds into a lesson at the end. Songs and jokes accompany the episode. The character "Shadow" narrates a segment with shadow puppets in each episode. Most of the segments are in song, while some are simply a short story relating to the episode's theme. At the end of the program, Bear sings the goodbye song with Luna, the moon. Bear (performed by Noel MacNeal) – The protagonist of the series, he is a large bear who is very kind and lovable. He is tall and has light brown fur. Bear acts a caregiver to Pip, Pop, Ojo, Treelo and Tutter. He was designed by Paul Andrejco., Tutter (performed by Peter Linz) – A small light blue mouse who loves cheese. He lives in a mousehole in the kitchen of Bear's house. He is considered the show's breakout character. He was designed and built by Paul Andrejco., Pip and Pop (performed by Peter Linz and Tyler Bunch) – Two purple otter twins who live in the otter pond by the Big Blue House. They were designed by Paul Andrejco., Ojo (performed by Vicki Eibner) – A curious red bear cub who has a wild imagination and is good friends with Treelo. She was designed and built by Paul Andrejco., Treelo (performed by Tyler Bunch) – A white, blue, and green lemur who is playful, loves to dance, always active and good friends with Ojo. He was designed by Paul Andrejco., Shadow (performed by Peter Linz, voiced by Tara Mooney) – A shadow girl who is always laughing, telling stories, and sneaking up on Bear., Luna the Moon (operated by Peter Linz, voiced by Lynne Thigpen) – A talking moon. At the end of every episode Bear walks out onto the balcony and discusses the episode's theme with her and sings "The Goodbye Song" with her at the end while a montage of the day's events play. She was designed by Paul Andrejco and built by Ed Christie. "Luna" means "moon" in Italian and Spanish., Ray the Sun (operated by Peter Linz, voiced by Geoffrey Holder) – A talking sun who would often rise (or set) at the beginning of some episodes, starting from Season Two. He will also occasionally tell Bear what the weather will be like throughout the day. Sometimes, he also sings the "Good Morning song". He was designed by Paul Andrejco. Grandma Flutter (performed by Alice Dinnean in 1997–1998, Vicki Eibner from 1998–2003) – Tutter's grandmother who has a dance called "The Grandma Mambo". She has a granddaughter named Baby Blotter. She was designed by Paul Andrejco and built by Michael Schupbach and Kip Rathke., Cousin Whiner (performed by Victor Yerrid) – One of Tutter's cousins., Uncle "Jet Set Tutter" (performed by Tim Lagasse) – Tutter's uncle., Doc Hogg (performed by Tyler Bunch) – A pig who is the local physician. He was designed by Paul Andrejco and built by Eric Englehardt., Benny the Bat (performed by James Kroupa) – A fruit bat living in the attic of the house. He is a recycled version of Leah the Fruit Bat from "Jim Henson's Animal Show.", Jeremiah Tortoise (performed by James Kroupa) – An elderly tortoise living in Woodland Valley. He is a recycled and hair-added version of Penelope the Yellow-Footed Tortoise from "Jim Henson's Animal Show.", Lois (performed by Vicki Eibner) – A Blue-footed booby living in Woodland Valley. She usually mishears things that her friends are saying. She is a recycled version of Milton the Blue-footed Booby from "Jim Henson's Animal Show.", Annette (performed by Vicki Eibner) – An armadillo who runs the Woodland Valley Cinema and is very shy. She is a recycled version of Dooley the Armadillo from "Jim Henson's Animal Show"., Henrietta Vanderpreen (performed by Vicki Eibner) – An ostrich who is the editor of Woodland House Wonderful, a magazine of interest to residents of Woodland Valley. She is a recycled version of Lydia the Ostrich from "Jim Henson's Animal Show"., Skippy - A blind red squirrel living in Woodland Valley that wears sunglasses and uses a cane. He is good friends with Treelo. He is a recycled version of Gabe the Squirrel from "Telling Stories with Tomie dePaola"., Big Old Bullfrog (performed by Peter Linz) – A bullfrog living in Woodland Valley. He is a recycled version of Bufo the Toad from "Jim Henson's Animal Show"., Jacques the Beaver (performed by Peter Linz) – A French beaver living in Woodland Valley. He is a recycled version of Morton the Beaver from "Jim Henson's Animal Show"., Miss Maxwell (performed by Jennifer Barnhart) – A mouse who is a teacher at the Mouse School., Rita Mouse (performed by Anney McKilligan) – A mouse who attends Mouse School with Tutter. She needs some help with painting but is very good at soccer., Keisha (performed by Vicki Eibner) – A mouse who attends Mouse School with Tutter., Moss (performed by Noel MacNeal) – A mouse who attends Mouse School with Tutter., Cousin Titter (performed by Sean Choi), Harry the Duck (performed by Eric Jacobson) – A duck who has been seen several times through the show who addresses bear as "Mister Bear" and quacks repeatedly when he is upset. He was designed by Paul Andrejco., Otto and Etta Otter (performed by James Kroupa and Vicki Eibner) – Pip and Pop's grandparents who run the Woodland Valley Library., Ursa (performed by Carmen Osbahr) – Bear's old friend from Mexico that appeared twice in "And to All a Good Night" and "You Never Know." Several of these characters appeared in a music video for the We Are Family Foundation. Bear also appeared as a celebrity in the 2002 revival of The Hollywood Squares; he notably appeared in Whoopi Goldberg's final episode. Woodland Valley – Woodland Valley is the area/village in which events on the show are situated. The Big Blue House is the main landmark, but there is also a general store, post office, mall, library, movie theater, mouse school, and many other locations. Many of these are not seen (or not seen in much detail) until the fourth season. In "History, Herstory, Bearstory," Jeremiah Tortoise reveals that his grandfather Hepahestus Tortoise was the town's first settler. He initially decided to call it Who'd Have Thought I Would Land in This Valley Valley, but decided it was too long and changed it to Would Land Valley. Jeremiah says he's been trying to get the official spelling changed for years. Sequoia City is a neighboring town of Woodland Valley., The Big Blue House – The Big Blue House is where most of the main action of the series Bear in the Big Blue House takes place. Located in Woodland Valley, it looks somewhat small from the outside, but large and roomy on the inside. Bear lives here and runs a sort of daycare/group-home. Tutter has his mousehole in the house, while most of the other young characters only spend the day here. The Big Blue House is often described as warm and cozy. The Big Blue House has five rooms. The kitchen and the living room are downstairs. Bear has his very own swing where he sometimes sits and reads in the living room. Tutter's mousehole is in the kitchen. The front-door, where Bear greets the viewers at the beginning of each episode, is also downstairs. Upstairs are the bathroom and Bear's bedroom. Finally, Bear stores various items in the attic. There's also a landing there where Bear visits each night to talk with his friend Luna, the moon. Bear once gave the following directions on how to reach the Big Blue House: just take the path that leads into the woods, make the right past the big oak, go right, past the pond and then you're there., Otter Pond – Pip and Pop often hang out at the Otter Pond. It is also home to Harry the Duck, his mom, and his sister, Hallie. Additionally, various other creatures sometimes hang out at the Otter Pond, including Benny, Christine, and Big Old Bullfrog. The general area of the Otter Pond is filled with plants, including bushes filled with berries. Bear and Ojo visit there to pick berries for triple-berry pie in "If at First You Don't Succeed..." The Otter Pond was the site of a special nighttime party in "And to All a Good Night.", Woodland Valley Library – The Woodland Valley Library is a place for everyone in Woodland Valley to go for research and resources. It is managed by Otto and Etta Otter. It is located directly in the center of the town. In addition to books, it also offers DVDs, CD-ROMs, Internet access and various other resources. Woodland Valley Library is featured in the two-part "Welcome to Woodland Valley" story. A tree falls on the library and the entire community works together to help get it cleaned up. There is damage to the collection and so donations are made. When Ojo discovers two unnamed opossums (voiced by Gilbert Gottfried and Brad Garrett) living in the tree that fell, the tree itself is made into a part of the library as the Book Nook. The library is featured in the song, "Everything's Great About the Library." Harry the Duck wonders what's so great about the library and so Tutter, Treelo, Pip and Pop sing a song to explain it. They tell him that there's something for everyone at the library, but the library is a place to read, so you have to keep your voices down; no disturbing allowed., Woodland Valley Cinema – The Woodland Valley Cinema is a local movie theater for everyone in Woodland Valley to relax and watch films. Annette is the owner of the movie theater and does all the jobs from box office to ticket taker. The screening room has three rows of seats in the auditorium and a concession stand. The concession stand accepts dollars and cents as payment instead of clams, Woodland Valley's official currency. Woodland Valley Cinema was first introduced in "Welcome to Woodland Valley." However, in "Words, Words, Words," the Woodland Valley Gazette says the movie theater is named "Woodland Valley Multiplex.", Woodland Valley Post Office – The Woodland Valley Post Office is Woodland Valley's own facility for posting, receipt, sorting, handling, transmission or delivery of mail. The post office also sells stamps for stamp collections and does clammygrams if asked. Jeremiah Tortoise works there in addition to running his general store. Most of the mail ends up arriving late due to Jeremiah Tortoise, who is slow at delivering the mail. In "A Strange Bird," Bear received a two-week-old postcard from a penguin named Puck from the South Pole and finds out Puck is paying a visit to the Big Blue House today. The store accepts clams, Woodland Valley's official currency, as payment and it has to be exact change only. Woodland Valley Post Office was first introduced in "Read My Book" and was seen more in later episodes., Mouse School – The Mouse School is a fun place to learn for Tutter and his classmates, including Keisha, Luke, Lily, Rita, and Moss. Learning and other activities are overseen by Miss Maxwell. It's a one-room schoolhouse, but there's plenty of places to play and an occasional field trip. Tutter first begins attending Mouse School in the fourth season. He joins the school soccer team, coached by Bear, but considers quitting in "Show Your Stuff." In "Teacher Appreciation Day," Tutter joins with Lily to figure out a way to show Miss Maxwell how much the mice kids all appreciate her. Tutter holds a sleepover for his Mouse School classmates in "Tutter's First Big Sleepover Bash.", Doc Hogg's Office – Doc Hogg's Office is where Doc Hogg treats his patients on Bear in the Big Blue House. Bear, Tutter and Ojo visited the office when Tutter hurt his tail in "That Healing Feeling." The office has a waiting room with toys and books to keep children entertained., Sequoia City – Sequoia City is a neighboring town of Woodland Valley, and Woodland Valley may be considered a suburb of it. They are known to have a baseball team called the "Big Bats." Sequoia City is the hometown for two radio stations that reach Woodland Valley; WWTL (a news and weather station) and Bear's favorite music station WCHA-CHA. Sequoia City was one of the locations on a signpost in "The Great Bandini." The other location names on that signpost (other than the library) have not been used again, but Sequoia City has been mentioned in other episodes. Bear and the kids of the Big Blue House went on vacation at a nice hotel in Sequoia City in "This Is Your Life, Bear.", River City – River City is a town mentioned on Bear in the Big Blue House. Not much is known about it, but Grandma Flutter was an all-star player for their baseball team: the River City Rodents. Bear in the Big Blue House was initially produced from 1997 to 2003. The sudden death of Lynne Thigpen, who voiced 'Luna' the moon, led to production being put on hiatus for three years, along with a planned film. In 2005, two years after Thigpen's death, Tara Mooney, who voiced Shadow, told Irish radio station Today FM that "the crew's hearts just weren't in it anymore". Thigpen's friends and family established a non-profit foundation, The Lynne Thigpen - Bobo Lewis Foundation, to help young actors and actresses learn how to survive and succeed in New York theater and to mentor the next generation of Broadway stars. After the hiatus and the spin-off Breakfast with Bear, a final run of new episodes aired on the Disney Channel in April 2006, with the very last episode airing on April 28, 2006. Repeats of the show ceased altogether in May 2007 (December 2010 in the UK). Thigpen was posthumously nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for voicing Luna the moon in Bear in the Big Blue House, but lost to Jeff Corwin. "Welcome to the Blue House", "What's That Smell?", "The Bear Cha-Cha-Cha", "Dear Grandma", "Happy, Happy Birthday", "Good Morning", "Brush, Brush Bree", "Look at You Now", "That's My Name", "Everybody Say Ah", "Great to Be at Home", "Go to Bed, Sleepy Head", "Take Time to Smell the Cheese", "Clean Up the House", "Oops! I Goofed Again", "Quiet Time", "Otter Love", "Shape of a Bear", "Baby, Baby", "When You Make Yourself a Friend", "Oh, Boy", "You Go, Ojo", "Need a Little Help Today", "Goodbye Song" The show was shown throughout the world including in the United Kingdom on five and Playhouse Disney UK, on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Australia and on RTÉ Two in Ireland. Daytime Emmy Awards, Parent's Choice Gold Award Winner – 2000, 2002, Director's Guild Award – Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Children's Programs - "Episode 225: Love Is All You Need" It's a Big Big World is an American children's television show on PBS Kids, that debuted January 2, 2006. It was originally part of Miss Lori and Hooper's schedule block, but was cancelled and replaced on January 8, 2010, though it still aired in reruns on most PBS stations until September 2010 and was released on DVD. The show revolves around a group of animals living in "The World Tree" in the rainforest along the Amazon River with the Pico da Neblina mountain background. The main character and host is Snook the sloth. The series was taped at Wainscott Studios at the East Hampton Airport industrial complex in Wainscott, New York. The only studio to use Shadowmation, a technique created by Mitchell Kriegman, to bring the puppets to life by combining live action animatronic characters with computer generated animation in real time, high definition virtual environments powered by video game engines. Snook – A pale-throated three-toed sloth, Snook helps his friends learn all about the 'Big Big World' around them. He's slow-moving (but smart) and often takes naps, but is always up for a scientific investigation. He also enjoys singing and dancing with all of his friends in the World Tree. In addition to interacting with the other characters, Snook regularly breaks the fourth wall, often to explain a fact or ask a question. Like Bear from Bear in the Big Blue House, Snook is a full-bodied character, as well as the only one not requiring 3 performers., Burdette – Burdette the resplendent quetzal bird sometimes seems like a controlling older sister, who thinks she knows more than everyone around her. However, Burdette is sincere, and while investigating things with her friends in the World Tree, she's sometimes surprised to learn new things about herself too., Bob – Bob the southern tamandua loves the ants (eating them really) that live all around him in the World Tree, and he's always trying new things out to make them like him more. Bob also worries a lot about things that he thinks might happen. He also gets a little timid around Greenie because of Greenie's deep, loud voice and gruff demeanor., Smooch and Winslow – Smooch and Winslow are two playful sibling monkeys - common marmosets to be exact - who're always stirring things up. Smooch, the girl monkey, is always trying to figure out the mysteries of the world around her, and Winslow is the goofy creative thinker. With such different personalities, these two monkeys don't always see eye to eye, but their little disagreements frequently lead to great adventures., Madge – Madge is a Galápagos tortoise. Madge has a map of the world on her shell. She's the oldest and wisest creature in the World Tree, and the one everyone comes to when they have a problem to solve. She traveled all over the world and shares her experiences with everyone. Her library is the place to visit for answers to scientific questions. Madge isn't in Season 2 and is replaced by Riona the baby sloth., Oko – An old brown howler, Oko is a trickster who always shows up when least expected. Oko can be grouchy and mischievous, but he also shares mysterious stories and little bits of wisdom with the others. A tai chi master, he carries an old walking stick that he can twirl from his feet to his hands and back again in the blink of an eye. Oko, along with Greenie, appears less often and did not return in season 2. He has a friend named Tsetse, who sometimes gives good advice., Wartz – Wartz is a red-eyed tree frog. Wartz has gone through his metamorphosis, growing from a tadpole into a frog. Best friends with Smooch and Winslow, Wartz wants to get along with everyone and will agree with anyone, no matter what they're saying. Although he is seen in the intro on both seasons, he is not in Season 2., Ick – Ick is a redtail catfish who lives in the pond under the world tree. In "The Sting," where it's revealed that Greenie is afraid of bees, Ick stirs up a little joke by making a buzzing sound, showing his naughty side. Ick has misanthropic tendencies and isn't in Season 2 ., Riona – Snook's niece, a baby sloth that first appeared in Season 2. Peter Linz: Snook/Oko, Melissa Creighton: Burdette, Aymee Garcia: Smooch, Tyler Bunch: Winslow/Riona, James Godwin: Bob, Tim Lagasse: Ick /Wartz/Greenie/Oko (pilot), Julie Westwood (voice): Madge Additional puppetry was provided by Carol Binion, Eric Engelhardt, Jim Kroupa, Paul McGinnis, John Kennedy, Jodi Eichelberger, Heather Asch, Amanda Maddock, David Jordan, Lara MacLean. Many of the puppeteers come from similar shows, primarily Bear in the Big Blue House, Jellybean Jungle, and The Book of Pooh, another show involving Shadowmation, a technique that combines live-action, bunraku-style puppetry, and computer-generated animation. Each episode begins with the opening theme song, "It's a Big Big World" that's followed by a short (10-12 minute) story involving some or all of the main characters. In season 1, this first story was followed by another song, called "Curve of the World", sung by all the characters. (In the Miss Lori and Hooper block, this song wasn't shown.) Then comes a second 10-12 minute story, which may be thematically linked to the first story but isn't usually a direct continuation of the plot. In season 2, both stories were followed by Snook singing "Tell Me 'Bout the Best Parts of your Day" to Riona, which led to a discussion about what the characters did and learned that day. At the end of all episodes, Snook sings the closing song, "Try to Touch the Sky", although this is often followed by short segments in which Snook ends an exploring or scientific activity and gives some fun facts about the various species of animals that live in the World Tree. The show debuted on PBS Kids on January 2, 2006 and aired as part of the Miss Lori and Hooper block, until 2010, when it was replaced by Super Why!. It also aired on Nick Jr. in Australia. It premiered in Latin America on May 28, 2007 on Discovery Kids, but the series was shortly cancelled afterwards, due to low ratings. Six DVDs were released by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. They're: The Sky Above (2007) released January 30, 2007., Safe and Sound (2007) released May 22, 2007, Let's Investigate the World (2007) released, The Earth Needs You (2007) released, You Can Do It (2007) released, The Big Big Sleep (2007) released Other DVDs: Be Healthy and Happy (2008) released, Everyone's Different (2008) released Sony TV (2006-2007) Viewers Like You wainscottstudios.com, Website Disney Junior – Live on Stage! (originally Playhouse Disney – Live on Stage! until 2011) was a live show attraction featuring puppets of characters from Disney Junior's popular television programs, located at three Disney theme parks: Walt Disney Studios Park at Disneyland Paris, Disney California Adventure at the Disneyland Resort and Disney's Hollywood Studios at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. Prior to Disney Junior – Live on Stage!, the theater was the Soundstage Restaurant from the park's opening date until November 14, 1998; the restaurant featured sets over the years from Big Business, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. Following that, the theater hosted Bear in the Big Blue House – Live on Stage from June 7, 1999 until August 4, 2001. That show closed to make room for Playhouse Disney – Live on Stage!, which opened on October 1, 2001, featuring returning characters from Bear in the Big Blue House, as well as new characters from Rolie Polie Olie, Stanley, and The Book of Pooh. In April 2005, the show replaced Rolie Polie Olie with JoJo's Circus. A re- imagined version of Playhouse Disney – Live on Stage! opened in February 2008, with some new characters from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Handy Manny, Little Einsteins, and My Friends Tigger & Pooh. The show was renamed in March 2011, following the rebranding of Playhouse Disney to Disney Junior, replacing My Friends Tigger & Pooh with Jake and the Never Land Pirates. In February 2013, the show replaced both Handy Manny and Little Einsteins, respectively, with Sofia the First and Doc McStuffins, when it was revamped again. On December 22, 2018, the Hollywood Studios version was replaced by a new show named Disney Junior Dance Party!, featuring characters from Mickey and the Roadster Racers, Vampirina, Doc McStuffins, and The Lion Guard. The California version of the show follows exactly the same pattern as the Florida version. Before Disney Junior – Live on Stage!, the theater was originally housed to the ABC Soap Opera Bistro from the park's opening date until November 3, 2002, which featured dining areas that are replicas of the sets from All My Children, One Life to Live, and General Hospital. Due to its unpopularity, however, the restaurant closed to make way for Playhouse Disney – Live on Stage!, which was essentially the 2001 edition from Disney's Hollywood Studios (then known as Disney-MGM Studios), before being updated over the years up until the transition of Playhouse Disney to Disney Junior. On May 26, 2017, the California version was replaced by a new show named Disney Junior Dance Party!, featuring characters from Mickey and the Roadster Racers, Sofia the First, Doc McStuffins, and The Lion Guard. When Playhouse Disney – Live on Stage! first opened, it was essentially the 2008 edition from Disney's Hollywood Studios. Despite its name change at the time of the block's rebranding, the show itself had not been updated for unknown reasons. In April of 2019, it closed to make way for the new interactive show "Studio D", set to open in 2020. The original Playhouse Disney – Live on Stage! began inside the world of Bear in the Big Blue House. As the show started, a cast member named Jamie (he or she) told guests they were going to visit Bear in his home. After some audience participation, Bear appeared on stage having just returned home from a walk. He and Jamie then lead the audience in singing "Welcome to the Blue House." As they were singing, other characters from the television series including Tutter, Ojo, Treelo, Pip and Pop joined in. After the song ended, the cast decided to dance in order to do something special for their guests. Although all the other characters were dancing, Tutter the mouse reluctantly admitted that he couldn't dance due to the fact that he was too shy. In order to help Tutter, Bear and Jamie decided to tell him some stories. Jamie then turned Bear's house into a book, which then turned its page to reveal Olie Polie and his friends from Rolie Polie Olie. In the story, Zowie (Olie's sister) is supposed to be pretending to be a monster. In order to help her, Jamie suggested that the audience also pretend. Zowie, Olie, and their friend Billy Bevel all pretended that they were trapped in a vortex and began to twirl. Jamie then told the audience to twirl with them. After the story, Tutter appeared back on stage; he agreed that although it was fun to laugh and play with your friends, he still felt too shy. Bubbles also fill the room while the song is playing. Since Tutter was still feeling shy, Jamie decided to tell Tutter another story, this time from Stanley. Stanley told Dennis that he was sad, because he had to wash up and go to bed. Stanley then said that he wished he was a gorilla, so that he didn't have to wash. After Dennis told him that gorillas are very clean, he and Stanley decided to look up the animal in the Great Big Book of Everything. Inside the book, Stanley learned that gorillas were large animals that were very clean. After reading about the ape, a large gorilla appeared in Stanley’s room. Stanley and the audience then pounded on their chest in order to say hello. The gorilla picked through Stanley's hair, helping to clean him, before going back into the book. As the gorilla leaves, Stanley agreed that he should brush his teeth and go to bed, thanking Dennis for helping him learn. After the scene, Tutter agreed that your friends can help you learn, but he still wanted one more story. The third story took place in The Book of Pooh. The narrator told guests that Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore, and Piglet were enjoying a day in the Hundred Acre Wood. Pooh, after realizing that he has a pot of honey, declared that it was a perfect day. Although Eeyore wants to take a nap, Tigger tells him that it is the perfect day for bouncing. Jamie then told guests they should join in with him. After the bouncing, Pooh observes that all of his friends have different ideas of what a perfect day is, and he wondered how they could all be right. Piglet suggested that they should ask the narrator what a perfect day is. The narrator told them that everyone has their own perfect day, because everyone is different. Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore and Tigger then sang a song, celebrating their differences. After the song, Pooh realized that they forgot to ask Piglet what his perfect day is. Piglet responded that as long as he's with his friends, every day is a perfect day. The narrator then said goodbye, ending the story. The scene then shifted back to Bear's house, where Bear suggested that if everyone danced, Tutter would too. Pip and Pop then sang a song, encouraging the audience (and Tutter) to dance. Tutter then thanks the audience for being such good friends. After the others left, Bear realized that they hadn’t seen Luna yet. Bear then told Luna the events of the day, before concluding that with friends, there is nothing you can't do. Bear and Luna, along with the rest of the gang, then sing the "Goodbye Song" as the show ends. In 2005, the Rolie Polie Olie segment was replaced with a JoJo's Circus segment. In this scene, JoJo and her friend Skeebo were looking for Goliath the Lion who was hiding. With the audience's help, JoJo eventually found Goliath inside a cannon. After being reunited, JoJo realizes that Goliath had the hiccups. Skeebo then suggested that they surprise Goliath to get rid of the hiccups, and the audience was told to stand up and yell as loud as they could. When the whole audience yelled together, Goliath's hiccups disappeared. JoJo then taught everyone (including the audience) how to bow. Jamie then asked JoJo what she learned today, to which she replied, "some things are more fun if you have good friends," ending the scene. Tutter then reappeared, agreeing that it was fun when friends laughed and sang together. The show was completely refreshed in 2008, replacing the sets and the entire shows featured. The storybook styling and puppets however remained. This is the version used in France as well, and that version has remained the same even with the name change. It begins with a cast member named Casey/Sammy (he or she) running on stage while the Playhouse Disney theme song plays. Casey/Sammy then asks the audience to yell out their names. While everyone is yelling, Mickey Mouse himself yells out his name, and then invites the audience to his clubhouse. As guests arrive at the clubhouse, Mickey and Casey/Sammy sing the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse theme song, during which Donald, Daisy, Goofy and Minnie also appear. At the clubhouse, Mickey informs guests that it's Minnie's birthday. In order to help out, Daisy agrees to hang up a "Happy Birthday” sign, Goofy agrees to make a cake, and Donald says that he can write a birthday song. The three then explain that it is going to be difficult for them to accomplish their tasks. Mickey and Casey/Sammy agree that the best way to solve your problems is to study stories. In order to hear some stories, Mickey and his friends call on Toodles to give them tools to help them. The three items Toodles carries, relate to other Playhouse Disney shows: Handy Manny, Little Einsteins, and My Friends Tigger and Pooh. The first tool that the gang uses is the toolbox from Handy Manny. Manny and his tools need to fix a bubble machine in time for the new park to open. As the tools begin work, they sing the "Hop Up, Jump In" song. Pat the hammer decides that he can fix the machine all by himself. His hammering, however, breaks the wooden base of the machine. After Pat decides he’s going to get out of the way, Manny decides that the machine's hose is broken. The rest of the tools then chip in to fix the machine, which they do while singing the "We Work Together" song. Although they initially thought they fixed the machine, the motor of the machine falls down, and Manny realizes he needs Pat to fix it. With the audience’s help, Manny and Casey/Sammy find Pat, who is able to fix the machine, while the audience chants "Go, Pat, go." After Pat fixes the machine, bubbles fill the room and guests sing the "We Work Together" song one more time as the scene ends. After the Handy Manny story, Donald decides that everybody should have a part in his song and then leaves the scene happily. Goofy complains that he is having a hard time making the cake. Casey/Sammy then decides to use another tool (Rocket), this time transporting guests to the world of Little Einsteins. Guests are informed that today’s episode is known as "The Great Sky Race" with music by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Leo and the gang then tell guests that Rocket needs their help to zoom across the sky and win the sky race, although Big Jet (another airplane) also wants to win the race. The Einsteins then agree that the best way to help Rocket is to cheer him on. To help Rocket, the audience is instructed to pat their lap slowly, and then clap their hands faster before finally raising their hands and shaking. All of these actions are done to the tune of Flight of the Bumblebee. Their encouragement leads Rocket to catch up to and eventually pass Big Jet, winning the race and ending the scene. After the Little Einsteins story, Goofy felt that he should find a friend to help him with the cake. Daisy is upset because she hasn't been able to hang up her banner. Casey/Sammy then tells Daisy that they need to hear one more story, this time from My Friends Tigger & Pooh, as the third and final tool is the Finder Flag. The scene begins with Tigger, Pooh, and Darby hearing the Super Sleuth siren. They, along with the audience, say the Super Sleuth oath, before Roo appeared on stage, telling them that his kite was stuck in the Changing Tree. When Pooh asked how the kite got there, Roo explained that the wind knocked it into the tree. After shortly brainstorming, Tigger decided that he could bounce high enough to get the kite. Tigger then sang a short song about bouncing, while Casey/Sammy encouraged the audience to bounce along with him. After the song, the team decided that they were going to have to think some more. Pooh then suggested that everyone (including the audience) should blow the kite out of the tree. This plan worked, freeing the kite and ending the scene. After Pooh's story, Daisy learned that like Roo, she too has friends in high places, which are the Handy Helpers. Goofy, Donald, and Mickey appear back on stage at the clubhouse. All of them were able to accomplish their tasks. Mickey then tells everyone to yell surprise when Minnie enters the room. After Minnie thanks everyone, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Daisy and Casey/Sammy sing the song that Donald wrote for the occasion. Casey/Sammy then tells the audience to stand up and dance with them. Minnie later says that this is her best birthday ever, and Mickey says what made it more special was having the whole audience as their new pals. The gang then says goodbye, with Minnie and Mickey reminding the guests that they love them and will "see them real soon," ending the show. When the show ends, the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Theme Song (Instrumental) plays. With the name change of Playhouse Disney to Disney Junior, the show also changed its name, this time to Disney Junior – Live on Stage! The My Friends Tigger & Pooh segment was replaced with a segment based on Jake and the Never Land Pirates. The third and final tool is the Team Treasure Chest from Jake and the Never Land Pirates, as the scene changes to the shores of Neverland. The crew finds out that Captain Hook has stolen their treasure chest. Jake uses his spyglass to try and find his chest. He eventually sees the treasure on a shipwrecked beach. As the crew goes to find their treasure, the scene shifts to Captain Hook and Mr. Smee on the island. Hook attempts to open the lock on the chest with his hook, but to no avail. Jake and his crew are then able to sneak up on Hook by disguising themselves as bushes. In order to get Hook away from the chest, Jake decides that he needs the audience to pretend that they are Tick- Tock the Crocodile. Their plan proves successful, and Jake, his crew, and the audience sing “Weigh Hey Well Done Crew,” ending the scene. The Handy Manny and Little Einsteins segments were replaced with segments based on Sofia the First and Doc McStuffins. The first tool that the gang uses is the tiara from Sofia the First, as the scene shifts to the Kingdom of Enchancia. Sofia is attempting to make the flowers outside her castle sparkle for the Royal Ball, but is having no luck. Joined by Prince James and Princess Amber, Sofia eventually decides to go find Cedric for help. Cedric then appears on stage and begins to sing about how he wants to make a name for himself by impressing the King and making it snow. When Sofia asks for the sorcerer's help, Cedric eventually agrees. He tells the princess that all she needs to do is say the spell with confidence. Although Sofia wants to do her spell, Cedric tells her that she cannot because he needs to do his own spell to make it snow for the ball. Unfortunately, Cedric says the spell too fast and his spell book disappears. As the book darts around the room, Casey asks the audience to help Cedric find it. After retrieving the book, Cedric is about to try his spell again, when the group hears the announcement that the Royal Guests are arriving. Cedric becomes too nervous to perform the spell. Sofia, along with the audience, says the spell together, which makes it begin to snow. Taking what she has learned, Sofia tries her spell again, this time "slow and steady." The princess' spell works and the flowers outside the castle begin to sparkle. Seeing her success, Sofia sings the song, "Anything." After hearing Sofia's story, Donald learned he should write a "sing together" song for a party for everyone. The second tool is the stethoscope from Doc McStuffins, as the scene changes to Doc's clinic playhouse. Here, she is joined by Lambie, Chilly, Hallie and Stuffy. Doc asks what everyone wants to do, after which Lambie suggests that everyone should dance with her; they start to "boogie." After the dance, Stuffy gets out of control and knocks over Lambie, causing her tutu to rip. Lambie then says she knows Stuffy didn't mean to rip her tutu, and she asks Doc to fix her. The whole group then sing "Time for Your Check Up," before Doc says that she is diagnosing Lambie with the "rippies." Hallie then says they need to look in the Big Book of Boo Boos. Doc agrees, but also says that she needs her magnifying glass. Stuffy tries to help by reaching it, but instead drops it, knocking the soap which causes bubbles to go everywhere. Doc notes that she cannot fix Lambie with bubbles all everywhere. Casey then encourages the audience to help pop all the bubbles, which they do. After the bubbles are popped, Doc asks Lambie if she needs anything else before she starts. Lambie agrees says that she is a little scared, and she could use a cuddle. Hallie then pops up with a magnifying glass and begins to chant "you can do it" as Doc fixes Lambie. Lambie then sings, "I Feel Better." Doc then tells Lambie that "when your friends cheer you on, there's nothing you can't do." Lambie then says that now that she feels better, they should start dancing again. After everyone dances, Doc and her friends leave the stage as Goofy reappears. Casey then asks Goofy what he learned from the story, and Goofy says he is going to find a friend to cheer him on as he'll try to bake the cake. Outside the theater at Disney's Hollywood Studios, there are meet-and-greet areas for Pluto and the titular characters from Vampirina, Fancy Nancy and Doc McStuffins.

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On October 20, 1977, a Convair CV-240 passenger aircraft ran out of fuel and crashed in a wooded area near Gillsburg, Mississippi. Chartered by the rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd from L&J; Company of Addison, Texas, it was near the end of its flight from Greenville, South Carolina, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Lead vocalist/founding member Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist and vocalist Steve Gaines, backing vocalist Cassie Gaines (Steve's older sister), assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick, pilot Walter McCreary, and co-pilot William Gray all died as a result of the crash; 20 others survived. On October 20, 1977, three days after releasing their album Street Survivors, Lynyrd Skynyrd performed at the Greenville Memorial Auditorium in Greenville, South Carolina, and boarded a Convair CV-240 airplane to take them to Baton Rouge, where they were to perform at Louisiana State University. The plane ran out of fuel near the end of the flight. Upon realizing that the plane had insufficient fuel, the pilots attempted to navigate to McComb Airport, about 10 miles northeast of the eventual crash site, but soon realized that the plane wouldn't make it. As a last resort, they attempted an emergency landing in an open field about 300 yards from where the plane eventually went down. Despite their efforts, at approximately 6:47 PM the plane skimmed about 100 yards along the top of the tree line before smashing into a large tree and splitting into pieces near Gillsburg, Mississippi. Early in the flight, witnesses recall that vocalist Ronnie Van Zant was lying on the floor with a pillow as he nursed a mild hangover. Several other passengers passed the time by playing cards. At some point the passengers became aware that something was wrong, and drummer Artimus Pyle recalls entering the cabin and being told by a terrified pilot Walter McCreary to go back and strap himself in. With the gravity of the situation clear, the band sat in silence, praying. Guitarist Gary Rossington recalls hearing what sounded like hundreds of baseball bats hitting the plane's fuselage as it began striking trees. The sound got louder and louder until Rossington was knocked unconscious; he awoke some time later on the ground with the plane's door on top of him. Lead singer/founding member Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist/vocalist Steve Gaines, backing vocalist Cassie Gaines, assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick, pilot Walter McCreary, and copilot William Gray all died in the crash. Most of the survivors had been seated toward the back of the plane. The survivors, all of whom were seriously injured, were transported to different hospitals for treatment and were not immediately aware of the fatalities. Days later, Rossington was informed in hospital by his mother that Van Zant had been killed. Cassie Gaines had been so fearful of flying in the Convair that she had preferred to travel in the band's cramped equipment truck instead, but Van Zant convinced her to board the plane on October 20. Keyboard player Billy Powell's nose was nearly torn off as he suffered severe facial lacerations and deep lacerations to his right leg. Decades later, Powell gave an account of the flight's final moments on a VH1 Behind The Music special. He said Van Zant, who was not wearing a seat belt, was thrown violently from his seat and died immediately when his head impacted a tree as the plane broke apart. Some elements of Powell's version of the events, however, have been disputed by both drummer Artimus Pyle and Van Zant's widow Judy Van Zant Jenness, who posted the autopsy reports on the band's web site in early 1998, while confirming other aspects of Powell's account. Pyle suffered broken ribs but managed to leave the crash site and notify a nearby resident. Another member of the band's trio of back-up singers (collectively known as the "Honkettes"), JoJo Billingsley, was not on the plane, as she was under a doctor's care in Senatobia, Mississippi, dealing with health problems brought about by drug and alcohol abuse. She planned on re-joining the tour in Little Rock, Arkansas, on October 23. Billingsley said that she had dreamed of the plane crash and begged guitarist and founding member Allen Collins by telephone not to continue using the Convair. The band's ex-guitarist Ed King said later that he "always knew it wasn't gonna end well" for Lynyrd Skynyrd due to their penchant for drinking and brawling, but he could never have envisioned it ending the way it did, and recalls being overcome with sadness upon learning of the crash. It was later discovered that the very same aircraft had earlier been inspected by members of Aerosmith's flight crew for possible use in their 1977 American tour, but it was rejected because it was felt that neither the plane nor the crew were up to standards. Aerosmith's assistant chief of flight operations, Zunk Buker, told of observing pilots McCreary and Gray sharing a bottle of Jack Daniel's while he and his father inspected the plane. Aerosmith's touring family were quite shaken after receiving word of the crash, as Steven Tyler and Joe Perry had pressured their management into renting that specific plane for use on their tour. The doomed flight of October 20, 1977 was intended to be the last Lynyrd Skynyrd would make on the Convair CV-240. "We were flying in a plane that looked like it belonged to the Clampett family," said Pyle, and the band had decided that their status as one of the world's top rock acts warranted an upgrade. After arriving in Baton Rouge, the band planned on acquiring a Learjet to replace the 30-year-old plane, which all in the band's circle agreed was well past its prime. Rescuers had to cross a 20-foot-wide, waist-deep creek and dig through an overgrown forest, while digging out rescue vehicles that got stuck in the mud. Locals worked with rescue officials and drove victims to the hospital in the back of pick-up trucks. One local resident recalled, "I found someone on the ground alive. When I walked to the other side of the plane, I tripped on another person." Another resident commended the actions of all those who helped, and highlighted that, "Some of them were out on that highway directing traffic. Some of them went home and got tractors. My wife was home on a CB radio. I'm relaying messages on CB to her, 10 miles away." Powell, among others, spoke of seeing flames shooting out of the plane's right engine during a flight just days before the crash. The subsequent NTSB report listed "an engine malfunction of undetermined nature" in that same engine as a contributing factor in the crash Pyle told Howard Stern years later in an interview that the fuel gauge in the older-model plane was known to malfunction and the pilots had neglected to manually check the tanks before taking off. In his 2003 book Lynyrd Skynyrd: Remembering the Free Birds of Southern Rock, Gene Odom, a bodyguard for Van Zant who was on board the plane and survived the crash, comes to the conclusion that pilot Gray was potentially impaired and had been observed using cocaine the previous evening; however, toxicology reports from both pilots' autopsies found no traces of alcohol or other drugs. "Crew inattention to fuel supply" was ultimately determined to be responsible for the crash. After the accident, the NTSB removed, inspected, and tested the right engine's ignition magneto and found it to be operating normally, concluding, "No mechanical or electrical discrepancies were found during the examination of the right magneto." The inspection also determined that, "All of the fuel cross-feed and fuel dump valves were in the closed position." The accident Report records that the aircraft was both owned and operated by L & J Company, but the lease to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s production company specified that Lynyrd Skynyrd was the operator and therefore was responsible for regulatory compliance (including managing the flight crew). The flight crew were employed by a third party, and the lease period was three weeks. The Report records the FAA as taking legal action against L&J; in relation to the operator responsibility, and the Analysis section concludes with a discussion of the safety problem of “how does the system in such a case protect a lessee who is uninformed either by design, by inadvertence, or by his own carelessness”. The band's record label MCA replaced the album cover of the Street Survivors album as it showed the band surrounded by flames. The site of the crash has turned into a memorial for fans, rescuers and survivors with an oak tree that has been carved with Lynyrd Skynyrd iconography; the site was also the location of a 40th anniversary memorial by survivors and rescuers. In 2017, surviving members of the band and family of those that died in the crash filed a lawsuit to block production and distribution of a film entitled . The dispute stemmed from a "blood oath" by survivors, reportedly taken after the crash, to never use the name Lynyrd Skynyrd again in an effort not to capitalize on the tragedy that had befallen the group. The movie was finally released 1 Dec 2017. The Day the Music Died, 1963 Camden PA-24 crash, 1969 Newton Cessna 172 crash US NTSB Report on Plane Crash, The Lynyrd Skynyrd Plane Crash, Check-Six.com – Lynyrd Skynyrd's Crash – includes full crew and passenger list, Gillsburg, MS Plane Crash Kills Lynyrd Skynyrd Band Members, Oct 1977, Official Lynyrd Skynyrd website, Official Lynyrd Skynyrd History site Cassie LaRue Gaines (January 9, 1948 – October 20, 1977) was an American singer, best known for her work with Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd. Gaines was invited by JoJo Billingsley and Ronnie Van Zant to join Lynyrd Skynyrd as a backup singer. She had never heard of the band at the time, so Billingsley lent her a copy of the band's first two albums: (Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd) and Second Helping. In late 1975, Gaines, Billingsley, and Leslie Hawkins formed The Honkettes, a female gospel vocal trio for Skynyrd. When Lynyrd Skynyrd was in need of a guitar player to replace recently departed Ed King, Cassie recommended her younger brother, Steve, who joined the band soon after. On October 20, 1977, a Convair CV-240 carrying the band between shows from Greenville, South Carolina, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, crashed outside of Gillsburg, Mississippi. The crash killed Ronnie Van Zant, Steve and Cassie Gaines, assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick, as well as pilot Walter McCreary and co-pilot William Gray. Gaines had initially refused to board the flight and was convinced by other members against her better judgment. Her hesitation was due to a small fire on one of the engines the previous day. She intended to travel in the tour trucks but boarded the flight due to Van Zant's persuasion. Gaines survived the initial accident but bled to death while rescuers attempted to reach the accident site and remove victims for medical treatment. According to controversial claims by survivor Billy Powell, Gaines bled to death after the accident in Powell's arms from deep lacerations. Cassie and Steve Gaines were buried in Orange Park, Florida. On February 15, 1979, the mother of Steve and Cassie, also named Cassie LaRue Gaines, was killed in an automobile accident near the cemetery where Steve and Cassie are buried. She was buried near her children. Larkin Allen Collins Jr. (July 19, 1952 – January 23, 1990) was one of the founding members and guitarists of Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, and co- wrote many of the band's songs with late frontman Ronnie Van Zant. He was born in Jacksonville, Florida. Collins started playing guitar at 12 years of age, with a few lessons from his stepmother, Leila Collins, a country-and-western guitarist, teaching him a few notes, and receiving his first guitar and amplifier from his father after a falling-out between the two. Collins attended Nathan B. Forrest High School. In 1970, Collins married Kathy Johns. All of his bandmates were in his wedding party, but Kathy worried that the band's long haired appearance would disturb her parents. To solve this problem, she required all the band members to keep their hair under wigs at the wedding ceremony. The wedding reception was one of the first public performances of "Free Bird" complete with the trademark extended guitar jam at the end. Collins's family grew with the birth of his daughter Amie, followed quickly by Allison. Collins was also fond of cars, and had a fairly extensive car collection, one of his favorites being a 1932 Plymouth coupe nicknamed "Dixie Blue". Allen Collins joined Skynyrd in Jacksonville, Florida, just two weeks after its formation by Ronnie Van Zant and Gary Rossington, along with Bob Burns and Larry Junstrom. Knowing that Collins played guitar and owned his own equipment, the band decided to approach him about joining them. Van Zant and Burns both had a reputation for trouble, and Collins fled on his bicycle and hid up a tree when he saw them pull up in his driveway. They soon convinced him that they were not there to beat him up and he agreed to join the band, then known as The One Percent. Collins and lead singer Ronnie Van Zant co- wrote many of the biggest Skynyrd hits, including "Free Bird", "Gimme Three Steps", and "That Smell". The band received national success beginning in 1973 while opening for The Who on their Quadrophenia tour. On October 20, 1977, an airplane carrying the band crashed into a forest in Mississippi, killing three band members, including Van Zant. Collins was seriously injured in the crash, suffering two broken vertebrae in his neck and severe damage to his right arm. While amputation was recommended, Collins' father refused and he eventually recovered. During the early 1980s, Collins continued to perform on stage in The Rossington-Collins Band which enjoyed modest success, releasing two albums (Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere, and This Is the Way), and charting a few singles (notably "Don't Misunderstand Me"). Tragedy struck again just as the Rossington Collins Band was getting off the ground. In 1980, during the first days of the debut concert tour, Collins's wife, Kathy, suddenly died of a hemorrhage during the miscarriage of their third child. This forced the tour's cancellation. With the lingering effects of losing his friends in the plane crash, Kathy's death devastated Collins. The Rossington-Collins Band disbanded in 1982. Collins continued to pursue music, starting the Allen Collins Band, which released one album, Here, There & Back in 1983. The six members were Skynyrd keyboardist Billy Powell and bassist Leon Wilkeson, along with lead singer Jimmy Dougherty, drummer Derek Hess, and guitarists Barry Lee Harwood and Randall Hall. In 1984, Collins tried to resurrect the band, hiring Jacksonville guitarist Mike Owings and bassist Andy Ward King. Later members included guitarist-vocalist Michael Ray FitzGerald and bassist "Filthy Phil" Price. On January 29, 1986, Collins was driving a new black Ford Thunderbird when he was involved in a car accident that claimed the life of his girlfriend, Debra Jean Watts, and paralyzed the guitarist from the waist down, with limited use of his arms and hands. Collins pleaded no contest to vehicular manslaughter as well as driving under the influence of alcohol. He would never play guitar on stage again. Collins' last performance with Lynyrd Skynyrd was at the band's first reunion after the plane crash at the 1979 Volunteer Jam V in Nashville, Tennessee. All remaining members of Lynyrd Skynyrd reunited officially in 1987, but due to his injury, Collins only served as musical director. As part of his plea bargain for the 1986 accident, Collins addressed fans at every Skynyrd concert with an explanation of why he could not perform, citing the dangers of drinking and driving, as well as drugs and alcohol. Also because of Collins' accident, the band donated a sizable amount of concert proceeds from the 1987–88 tour to the Miami Project, which is involved in treatment of paralysis. Collins founded Roll For Rock Wheelchair Events and Benefit Concerts in 1988 to raise awareness and to provide opportunities for those living with spinal cord injuries and other physical challenges. Allen Collins died on January 23, 1990, from chronic pneumonia, a complication of the paralysis. He is buried beside his wife in Jacksonville, Florida. In 2006, Collins was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Lynyrd Skynyrd. In the early days of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Collins used a black Gibson Flying V. However, after a gig the band's van was broken into and the guitar, along with Gary Rossington's white Gibson SG, was stolen. For most of his tenure in Skynyrd, Collins used a Gibson Firebird guitar fitted with a chrome, dog-eared P-90 pickup in the bridge position and a Gibson "teaspoon" nickel vibrato arm. In 1976, he switched to a natural-finished korina 1958 Gibson Explorer that he bought for about $3,000 and used that guitar throughout his tenure with the Allen Collins Band. In late 1977, Collins began occasionally playing a Gibson Les Paul Jr. On "Gimme Back My Bullets", "Sweet Home Alabama", "Every Mothers Son" Collins used a Sunburst Fender Stratocaster after Ed King left. Collins has been filmed playing an all-black, rosewood fingerboard Stratocaster with white single-coil pickups and white control knobs. In 2003, Gibson Guitars honored Allen with a limited edition Explorer. The guitar is made of African limba wood (korina) and features an aged finished, Maestro vibrola, and classic humbucking pickups. Lynyrd Skynyrd (Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd) (1973), Second Helping (1974), Nuthin' Fancy (1975), Gimme Back My Bullets (1976), One More from the Road (1976), Street Survivors (1977) Rossington-Collins Band Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere (1980), This is the Way (1981) Allen Collins Band Here, There, and Back (1983) Brant, Marley. Freebirds: The Lynyrd Skynyrd Story. Billboard Books; New York; 2002., Odom, Gene with Frank Dorman. Lynyrd Skynyrd: Remembering the Free Birds of Southern Rock. Broadway Books; New York; 2002. .

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Web standards are the formal, non-proprietary standards and other technical specifications that define and describe aspects of the World Wide Web. In recent years, the term has been more frequently associated with the trend of endorsing a set of standardized best practices for building web sites, and a philosophy of web design and development that includes those methods. Web standards include many interdependent standards and specifications, some of which govern aspects of the Internet, not just the World Wide Web. Even when not web-focused, such standards directly or indirectly affect the development and administration of web sites and web services. Considerations include the interoperability, accessibility and usability of web pages and web sites. Web standards, in the narrow sense, consist of the following: Recommendations published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), such as HTML/XHTML, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), the Document Object Model (DOM), image formats such as Portable Network Graphics (PNG) and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), as well as accessibility technologies like WAI-ARIA, Standards published by Ecma International (formerly ECMA) such as JavaScript (also known as "standard Ecma Script"), Standards published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), such as JPEG More broadly, the following technologies may be referred to as "web standards" as well: Request for Comments (RFC) documents published by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), The Unicode Standard and various Unicode Technical Reports (UTRs) published by the Unicode Consortium, Name and number registries maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), "Living Standard" made by the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) Web standards are evolving specifications of web technologies. Web standards are developed by standards organizations—groups of interested and often competing parties chartered with the task of standardization—not technologies developed and declared to be a standard by a single individual or company. It is crucial to distinguish those specifications that are under development from the ones that already reached the final development status (in case of W3C specifications, the highest maturity level). The earliest visible manifestation of the web standards movement was the Web Standards Project, launched in August 1998 as a grassroots coalition fighting for improved web standards support in browsers. The web standards movement supports concepts of standards-based web design, including the separation of document structure from a web page or application's appearance and behavior; an emphasis on semantically structured content that validates (that is, contains no errors of structural composition) when tested against validation software maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium; and progressive enhancement, a layered approach to web page and application creation that enables all people and devices to access the content and functionality of a page, regardless of personal physical ability (accessibility), connection speed, and browser capability. Prior to the web standards movement, many web page developers used invalid, incorrect HTML syntax such as "table layouts" and "spacer" GIF images to create web pages — an approach often referred to as "tag soup". Such pages sought to look the same in all browsers of a certain age (such as Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 and Netscape Navigator 4), but were often inaccessible to people with disabilities. Tag soup pages also displayed or operated incorrectly in older browsers, and required code forks such as JavaScript for Netscape Navigator and JScript for Internet Explorer that added to the cost and complexity of development. The extra code required, and the lack of a caching page layout language, made web sites "heavy" in terms of bandwidth, as did the frequent use of images as text. These bandwidth requirements were burdensome to users in developing countries, rural areas, and wherever fast Internet connections were unavailable. The Web Standards movement pioneered by Glenn Davis, George Olsen, Jeffrey Zeldman, Steven Champeon, Todd Fahrner, Eric A. Meyer, Tantek Çelik, Dori Smith, Tim Bray, Jeffrey Veen, and other members of the Web Standards Project replaced bandwidth-heavy tag soup with light, semantic markup and progressive enhancement, with the goal of making web content "accessible to all". The Web Standards movement declared that HTML, CSS, and JavaScript were more than simply interesting technologies. "They are a way of creating Web pages that will facilitate the twin goals of sophisticated and appropriate presentation and widespread accessibility." The group succeeded in persuading Netscape, Microsoft, and other browser makers to support these standards in their browsers. It then set about promoting these standards to designers, who were still using tag soup, Adobe Flash, and other proprietary technologies to create web pages. When a web site or web page is described as complying with web standards, it usually means that the site or page has valid HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The HTML should also meet accessibility and semantic guidelines. Full standard compliance also covers proper settings for character encoding, valid RSS or valid Atom news feed, valid RDF, valid metadata, valid XML, valid object embedding, valid script embedding, browser- and resolution-independent codes, and proper server settings. When web standards are discussed, the following publications are typically seen as foundational: Recommendations for markup languages, such as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML), and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) from W3C., Recommendations for stylesheets, especially Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), from W3C., Standards for ECMAScript, more commonly JavaScript, from Ecma International., Recommendations for Document Object Models (DOM), from W3C., Properly formed names and addresses for the page and all other resources referenced from it (URIs), based upon RFC 2396, from IETF., Proper use of HTTP and MIME to deliver the page, return data from it and to request other resources referenced in it, based on RFC 2616, from IETF. Web accessibility is normally based upon the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines published by the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative. Work in the W3C toward the Semantic Web is currently focused by publications related to the Resource Description Framework (RDF), Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects of Languages (GRDDL) and Web Ontology Language (OWL). A W3C Recommendation is a specification or set of guidelines that, after extensive consensus-building, has received the endorsement of W3C Members and the Director. An IETF Internet Standard is characterized by a high degree of technical maturity and by a generally held belief that the specified protocol or service provides significant benefit to the Internet community. A specification that reaches the status of Standard is assigned a number in the IETF STD series while retaining its original IETF RFC number. HTML 5 contains numerous "willful violations" of other specifications, in order to accommodate limitations of existing platforms. W3C Markup Validation Service, Web Standards Project, Designing with Web Standards, Acid3, Open Web Foundation (OWF), Responsive web design (RWD), WebPlatform.org W3C homepage, The Internet Engineering Task Force In computer network engineering, an Internet Standard is a normative specification of a technology or methodology applicable to the Internet. Internet Standards are created and published by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Engineering contributions to the IETF start as an Internet Draft, may be promoted to a Request for Comments, and may eventually become an Internet Standard. An Internet Standard is characterized by technical maturity and usefulness. The IETF also defines a Proposed Standard as a less mature but stable and well-reviewed specification. A Draft Standard is a third classification that was discontinued in 2011. A Draft Standard was an intermediary step that occurred after a Proposed Standard but prior to an Internet Standard. As put in RFC 2026: In general, an Internet Standard is a specification that is stable and well-understood, is technically competent, has multiple, independent, and interoperable implementations with substantial operational experience, enjoys significant public support, and is recognizably useful in some or all parts of the Internet. An Internet Standard is documented by a Request for Comments (RFC) or a set of RFCs. A specification that is to become a Standard or part of a Standard begins as an Internet Draft, and is later, usually after several revisions, accepted and published by the RFC Editor as an RFC and labeled a Proposed Standard. Later, an RFC is elevated as Internet Standard, with an additional sequence number, when maturity has reached an acceptable level. Collectively, these stages are known as the Standards Track, and are defined in RFC 2026 and RFC 6410. The label Historic is applied to deprecated Standards Track documents or obsolete RFCs that were published before the Standards Track was established. Only the IETF, represented by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), can approve Standards Track RFCs. The definitive list of Internet Standards is maintained in the Official Internet Protocol Standards. Previously, STD 1 used to maintain a snapshot of the list. Becoming a standard is a two-step process within the Internet Standards Process: Proposed Standard and Internet Standard. These are called maturity levels and the process is called the Standards Track. If an RFC is part of a proposal that is on the Standards Track, then at the first stage, the standard is proposed and subsequently organizations decide whether to implement this Proposed Standard. After the criteria in RFC 6410 is met (two separate implementations, widespread use, no errata etc.), the RFC can advance to Internet Standard. The Internet Standards Process is defined in several "Best Current Practice" documents, notably BCP 9 ( RFC 2026 and RFC 6410). There were previously three standard maturity levels: Proposed Standard, Draft Standard and Internet Standard. RFC 6410 reduced this to two maturity levels. RFC 2026 originally characterized Proposed Standards as immature specifications, but this stance was annulled by RFC 7127. A Proposed Standard specification is stable, has resolved known design choices, has received significant community review, and appears to enjoy enough community interest to be considered valuable. Usually, neither implementation nor operational experience is required for the designation of a specification as a Proposed Standard. Proposed Standards are of such quality that implementations can be deployed in the Internet. However, as with all technical specifications, Proposed Standards may be revised if problems are found or better solutions are identified, when experiences with deploying implementations of such technologies at scale is gathered. Many Proposed Standards are actually deployed on the Internet and used extensively, as stable protocols. Actual practice has been that full progression through the sequence of standards levels is typically quite rare, and most popular IETF protocols remain at Proposed Standard. In October 2011, RFC 6410 merged the second and third maturity levels into one Draft Standard. Existing older Draft Standards retain that classification. The IESG can reclassify an old Draft Standard as Proposed Standard after two years (October 2013). An Internet Standard is characterized by a high degree of technical maturity and by a generally held belief that the specified protocol or service provides significant benefit to the Internet community. Generally Internet Standards cover interoperability of systems on the Internet through defining protocols, message formats, schemas, and languages. The most fundamental of the Internet Standards are the ones defining the Internet Protocol. An Internet Standard ensures that hardware and software produced by different vendors can work together. Having a standard makes it much easier to develop software and hardware that link different networks because software and hardware can be developed one layer at a time. Normally, the standards used in data communication are called protocols. All Internet Standards are given a number in the STD series. The series was summarized in its first document, STD 1 (RFC 5000), until 2013, but this practice was retired in RFC 7100. The definitive list of Internet Standards is now maintained by the RFC Editor. Documents submitted to the IETF editor and accepted as an RFC are not revised; if the document has to be changed, it is submitted again and assigned a new RFC number. When an RFC becomes an Internet Standard (STD), it is assigned an STD number but retains its RFC number. When an Internet Standard is updated, its number is unchanged but refers to a different RFC or set of RFCs. For example, in 2007 RFC 3700 was an Internet Standard (STD 1) and in May 2008 it was replaced with RFC 5000. RFC 3700 received Historic status, and RFC 5000 became STD 1. The list of Internet standards was originally published as STD 1 but this practice has been abandoned in favor of an online list maintained by the RFC Editor. Standardization, Web standards RFC Editor The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and currently led by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations which maintain full-time staff working together in the development of standards for the World Wide Web. , the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has 443 members. The consortium also engages in education and outreach, develops software and serves as an open forum for discussion about the Web. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee after he left the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in October, 1994. It was founded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Computer Science (MIT/LCS) with support from the European Commission, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which had pioneered the ARPANET, one of the predecessors to the Internet. It was located in Technology Square until 2004, when it moved, with CSAIL, to the Stata Center. The organization tries to foster compatibility and agreement among industry members in the adoption of new standards defined by the W3C. Incompatible versions of HTML are offered by different vendors, causing inconsistency in how web pages are displayed. The consortium tries to get all those vendors to implement a set of core principles and components which are chosen by the consortium. It was originally intended that CERN host the European branch of W3C; however, CERN wished to focus on particle physics, not information technology. In April 1995, the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation (INRIA) became the European host of W3C, with Keio University Research Institute at SFC (KRIS) becoming the Asian host in September 1996. Starting in 1997, W3C created regional offices around the world. As of September 2009, it had eighteen World Offices covering Australia, the Benelux countries (Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium), Brazil, China, Finland, Germany, Austria, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, South Korea, Morocco, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and, as of 2016, the United Kingdom and Ireland. In October 2012, W3C convened a community of major web players and publishers to establish a MediaWiki wiki that seeks to document open web standards called the WebPlatform and WebPlatform Docs. In January 2013, Beihang University became the Chinese host. Sometimes, when a specification becomes too large, it is split into independent modules which can mature at their own pace. Subsequent editions of a module or specification are known as levels and are denoted by the first integer in the title (e.g. CSS3 = Level 3). Subsequent revisions on each level are denoted by an integer following a decimal point (for example, CSS2.1 = Revision 1). The W3C standard formation process is defined within the W3C process document, outlining four maturity levels through which each new standard or recommendation must progress. After enough content has been gathered from 'editor drafts' and discussion, it may be published as a working draft (WD) for review by the community. A WD document is the first form of a standard that is publicly available. Commentary by virtually anyone is accepted, though no promises are made with regard to action on any particular element commented upon. At this stage, the standard document may have significant differences from its final form. As such, anyone who implements WD standards should be ready to significantly modify their implementations as the standard matures. A candidate recommendation is a version of a standard that is more mature than the WD. At this point, the group responsible for the standard is satisfied that the standard meets its goal. The purpose of the CR is to elicit aid from the development community as to how implementable the standard is. The standard document may change further, but at this point, significant features are mostly decided. The design of those features can still change due to feedback from implementors. A proposed recommendation is the version of a standard that has passed the prior two levels. The users of the standard provide input. At this stage, the document is submitted to the W3C Advisory Council for final approval. While this step is important, it rarely causes any significant changes to a standard as it passes to the next phase. This is the most mature stage of development. At this point, the standard has undergone extensive review and testing, under both theoretical and practical conditions. The standard is now endorsed by the W3C, indicating its readiness for deployment to the public, and encouraging more widespread support among implementors and authors. Recommendations can sometimes be implemented incorrectly, partially, or not at all, but many standards define two or more levels of conformance that developers must follow if they wish to label their product as W3C-compliant. A recommendation may be updated or extended by separately-published, non- technical errata or editor drafts until sufficient substantial edits accumulate for producing a new edition or level of the recommendation. Additionally, the W3C publishes various kinds of informative notes which are to be used as references. Unlike the ISOC and other international standards bodies, the W3C does not have a certification program. The W3C has decided, for now, that it is not suitable to start such a program, owing to the risk of creating more drawbacks for the community than benefits. The Consortium is jointly administered by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL, located in Stata Center) in the United States, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) (in Sophia Antipolis, France), Keio University (in Japan) and Beihang University (in China). The W3C also has World Offices in eighteen regions around the world. The W3C Offices work with their regional web communities to promote W3C technologies in local languages, broaden the W3C's geographical base and encourage international participation in W3C Activities. The W3C has a staff team of 70–80 worldwide . W3C is run by a management team which allocates resources and designs strategy, led by CEO Jeffrey Jaffe (as of March 2010), former CTO of Novell. It also includes an advisory board which supports in strategy and legal matters and helps resolve conflicts. The majority of standardization work is done by external experts in the W3C's various working groups. The Consortium is governed by its membership. The list of members is available to the public. Members include businesses, nonprofit organizations, universities, governmental entities, and individuals. Membership requirements are transparent except for one requirement: An application for membership must be reviewed and approved by the W3C. Many guidelines and requirements are stated in detail, but there is no final guideline about the process or standards by which membership might be finally approved or denied. The cost of membership is given on a sliding scale, depending on the character of the organization applying and the country in which it is located. Countries are categorized by the World Bank's most recent grouping by GNI ("Gross National Income") per capita. In 2012 and 2013, the W3C started considering adding DRM-specific Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) to HTML5, which was criticised as being against the openness, interoperability, and vendor neutrality that distinguished websites built using only W3C standards from those requiring proprietary plug-ins like Flash. On September 18, 2017, the W3C published the EME specification as a Recommendation, leading to the Electronic Frontier Foundation's resignation from W3C. W3C/IETF standards (over Internet protocol suite): About the World Wide Web Consortium, W3C Technical Reports and Publications, W3C Process Document, W3C History, How to read W3C specs

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Norman Edwin Phillips (September 20, 1944 – September 20, 2017) was a middle relief pitcher in Major League Baseball who played briefly for the Boston Red Sox during the season. Listed at tall and , Phillips batted and threw right- handed. The Ardmore, Oklahoma, native grew up in Portland, Maine, where he graduated from Deering High School. He attended Colby College, and in 1963 he played collegiate summer baseball for Chatham of the Cape Cod Baseball League. He was selected by the Red Sox in the 16th round of the 1966 MLB Draft. In 18 relief appearances with Boston, Phillips posted a 0–2 record with a 5.32 ERA without a save, giving up 14 runs on 29 hits and 10 walks while striking out 23 in 23⅔ innings of work. He died of cancer on his 73rd birthday, September 20, 2017. 1970 Boston Red Sox season, Boston Red Sox all-time roster, List of Colby College people Baseball Reference, Retrosheet Brandon Emil Phillips (born June 28, 1981) is an American professional baseball second baseman who is a free agent. He has played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Cleveland Indians, Cincinnati Reds, Atlanta Braves, Los Angeles Angels and Boston Red Sox. Listed at and , Phillips both bats and throws right-handed. A native of Raleigh, North Carolina, Phillips was drafted by the Montreal Expos in 1999. In 2002, while in the minor leagues of the Montreal organization, he was traded to the Cleveland Indians. After making his major league debut that same year for the Indians, he spent several years moving back and forth between the Indians' major-league team and the minor leagues. Phillips was traded to the Cincinnati Reds in 2006. After joining the Reds, Phillips developed into one of the best second basemen in baseball. During his tenure in Cincinnati, he won four Rawlings Gold Glove Awards, one Silver Slugger Award, and was selected to three National League All-Star teams. He became the first player in MLB history to record two three-run home runs, seven RBIs, and two stolen bases in one game. Following this performance, the uniform and pair of cleats he wore during that game were put on display in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Phillips' father, James Phillips, runs the Phillips Baseball Center in Pine Lake, Georgia. His sister is WNBA player Porsha Phillips of the San Antonio Silver Stars and his younger brother PJ Phillips is the manager of the Vallejo Admirals of the independent Pacific Association professional baseball league. Phillips attended Redan High School in Stone Mountain, Georgia, where he played basketball and baseball. His #7 at Redan was retired by the school in December 2003. He was the star baseball player at his high school. Phillips' favorite baseball player growing up was Cincinnati Reds shortstop Barry Larkin. Phillips was selected in the second round of the 1999 draft by the Montreal Expos as a shortstop after signing a letter of intent to play both baseball and football at the University of Georgia. He instead signed with the Expos on June 21, 1999. After several years in the Expos farm system, Phillips was part of a six- player trade that sent him from the Montreal Expos to the Cleveland Indians on June 27, 2002. Phillips was dealt with Grady Sizemore, Cliff Lee, and Lee Stevens in exchange for Bartolo Colón and Tim Drew. In 2003, Phillips won the starting job at second base for the Indians. During the season, he had a season-high six-game hitting streak. Against the Detroit Tigers on May 20, he hit the first three-run walk-off home run of his career. After that he went 0-for-29 and was sent down to the Triple-A Buffalo Bisons after the All-Star break. He was recalled soon after that due to an injury to one of his teammates and finished the season with a .208 average, six homers, 33 RBIs and four stolen bases. Phillips also totaled a .981 fielding percentage. In 2004, he started the season in Buffalo. He hit .303 with 14 stolen bases on the season and recorded 18-game and 16-game hitting streaks. In the minor league play-offs, Phillips hit .308. He joined the Indians at the end of the season and played six games for them. Phillips remained with the Bisons for most of 2005. He appeared in six games for the Indians in July but was sent back down following the stint. In his four seasons with the Indians, Phillips appeared in 135 major league games, batting .206 with six home runs and 38 RBIs. On April 7, 2006, Cleveland's frustration with Phillips' slow progress peaked and he was traded to the Cincinnati Reds for a player to be named later (pitcher Jeff Stevens). He made an immediate impact, starting the season by being named NL Player of the Week the same month he was acquired by the Reds, hitting .452 (14–31) with 3 home runs and 17 runs batted in for the week of April 17–23. Phillips' 17 RBI were the most for an NL Player of the Week since Sammy Sosa had 19 RBI the week of August 4–10, 2002. Phillips had his first career grand slam that month and 16 straight stolen bases. leading the Reds in hits (148) and multi-hit games (36). He also led all National League second basemen in stolen bases with 25. He produced two 9-game hitting streaks over the season and ended with a batting average of .276, 17 home runs and 75 RBI. In 2007, Phillips hit 30 home runs and stole 32 bases to become the first Reds second baseman to join the 30–30 club and just the third 30–30 Red, joining Eric Davis (37 HR, 50 SB in 1987) and Barry Larkin (33 HR, 36 SB in 1996). He also joined Alfonso Soriano as just the second second baseman in the 30–30 club. In the fourth inning on August 1, 2007, game, against John Lannan of the Washington Nationals Phillips stole two bases on one pitch while the Nationals had a shift on Adam Dunn. On August 30, Phillips made the play of the month to win the game for the Reds against the Pittsburgh Pirates. With the Reds winning 5–4 in the bottom of the 9th, Nate McLouth of the Pirates hit a single into right field. The runner from second, Josh Phelps, appeared likely to score but Phillips grabbed the ball in shallow right field bare-handed and threw Phelps out at home plate to win the game. On September 5, he hit his 28th home run of the season, breaking the Reds' single-season record for home runs by a second baseman, formerly held by Joe Morgan. On September 26, 2007, Phillips hit his 30th home run of the season. In addition to the home runs and steals, Phillips ended the 2007 season with 187 hits, 107 runs, 26 doubles, 6 triples, 94 RBIs, and a .288 batting average. He led the Reds in runs, hits, triples, and stolen bases and was second on the team in doubles and home runs. Phillips received a four-year, $27 million contract extension on February 15, 2008, instead of going to arbitration. On April 2, 2008, Phillips hit his first home run of the season against the Arizona Diamondbacks. At the All-Star Break, Phillips was batting .287 with 15 home runs, 58 RBI, 18 stolen bases, and 18 doubles. He ended the season batting .261/.312/.442 with 21 home runs and 23 stolen bases. Phillips won his first gold glove in 2008, leading National League 2nd basemen with a .990 fielding percentage having made just 7 errors in 706 chances, in addition to a 78-game error-less streak. He also won a Fielding Bible Award as the top fielding second baseman in MLB. In 2009, Phillips hit .276/.329/.447, with 30 doubles, 20 home runs, 98 RBI and 25 stolen bases. In 2010, Phillips had his first All-Star season. He finished the season batting .275, with 18 homers, 59 RBI, and 16 stolen bases. In early August, Phillips made national sports headlines with unflattering remarks about the St. Louis Cardinals, a team the Reds were in a hotly contested race with for lead in the National League Central division. Phillips was quoted by the Dayton Daily News as saying "I hate the Cardinals. All they do is bitch and moan about everything, all of them, they're little bitches, all of them. ... I hate the Cardinals." The next night, August 10, Phillips was involved in a large bench-clearing brawl between the Reds and Cardinals at home plate. Coming to bat in the bottom of the 1st inning, Phillips customarily tapped his bat against the shin pads of Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina and the umpire. Molina kicked Phillips' bat, which led to seven minutes of pushing and shoving between both teams before both team managers were ejected and order was restored. On November 10, 2010, it was announced that Phillips had won the second Gold Glove of his Major League career. On May 3, 2011, against the Houston Astros, Phillips threw out speedy Jason Bourgeois by picking up the ball barehanded as it rolled to him and throwing it to first baseman Joey Votto between his legs to record the out. On July 1, Phillips hit 2 home runs against the Cleveland Indians, the 2nd homer being his 1,000th career hit. After several great plays in the field earned him notoriety around the country and his average stayed around .300 the whole first half, Phillips made his second straight All-Star game. He was in first place in voting for most of the year until Milwaukee's Rickie Weeks passed him, getting the starting nod. On November 1, 2011, it was announced that Phillips had won the third Gold Glove of his major league career. His fielding percentage for the season was .992 in 721 chances. The next day, it was announced that Phillips had won the first Silver Slugger of his Major League career. He hit an even .300 with 183 hits, 38 doubles, 2 triples, 18 homers, and 82 RBI. His on-base percentage was .353. On April 10, 2012, it was announced that Phillips and the Reds had agreed to a 6-year, $72.5 million contract, through the 2017 season. Phillips was represented in contract negotiations by ACES Inc. When the All-Star game roster was announced on July 1, Phillips was not amongst those voted in by either fans or National League players and coaches. Reds manager Dusty Baker took exception at retired St. Louis Cardinals manager but the National League's All-Star Game manager Tony La Russa, claiming Phillips and fellow Reds teammate Johnny Cueto were left off the roster because they were at the heart of an on-field fight involving Baker's Reds and La Russa's Cardinals in 2010. Baker stated "it just kind of looks bad that Johnny and Brandon were at the center of the skirmish between us and the Cardinals. Some of the Cardinals that aren't there any more are making some of the selections." Phillips, who was hitting just under .290 with 10 HR and 46 RBI at the time the selections were announced, declined to comment on the matter. USA Today's Mike Jones mentioned the large number of votes for San Francisco Giants players, including Pablo Sandoval (.300, 6 HR, 25 RBI) who was named the All-Star game's third baseman over New York Mets' David Wright (over .350, 9 HR, 50 RBI) was responsible for "taking away an infield spot." In 2012, Brandon Phillips had a .281 batting average, 18 home runs, and 77 runs batted in. He did not win a Gold Glove for the first time since 2009. He batted .375 in the National League Division Series versus the San Francisco Giants, despite their loss of the series. Phillips was the Reds' Opening Day second baseman and number two hitter; however, he became the cleanup hitter after left fielder Ryan Ludwick tore his shoulder on opening day. César Izturis was his backup. He had a 12-game hitting streak from May 12 to 25. He hit .266 with 12 HR and 74 RBI, good enough to earn him the starting second baseman spot on the National League team in the All-Star Game. On August 28, Phillips was moved to the second spot in the lineup, and Jay Bruce became the cleanup hitter. While hitting second in 2013, he hit .240 with 2 HR and 6 RBI in 23 games. In 127 games while hitting 4th, he hit .265/.310/.396 with 16 HR and 96 RBI. In 151 games in 2013, he hit .261 with 18 HR and 103 RBI. He won a Gold Glove, having a .987 fielding percentage with 9 errors. Phillips was placed on the disabled list July 11, 2014, after suffering a torn thumb ligament while diving for a ground ball in a game against the Chicago Cubs. At the time, he was hitting .272 with 7 home runs and 40 RBI, and had only committed one error in 86 games at second base. He was reinstated from the DL on August 18. Phillips finished the season hitting .266 with 8 home runs and 56 RBI. On October 23, 2014, he was nominated for his potential 5th Gold Glove for second base. The 86th All-Star Game was played at Great American Ball Park, and Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina was selected to play. In the Reds' clubhouse for the All-Star Game, he was assigned Phillips' locker. Since the brawl between the Cardinals and Reds in 2010, the two mended their schism, and Molina has a photograph of their families together. When informed of whose locker he was using, he replied, "This is Phillips' locker? How about that? I'll have to write something to him." However, during pregame roster introductions, Reds fans booed all six Cardinals players in jest who were selected, including Molina, and even former Cardinal Albert Pujols, who was then with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Phillips finished the season hitting .294 (16th in the National League) with 173 hits (8th in the NL), 12 home runs, 70 RBI, and 23 stolen bases (10th in the NL). On October 29, 2015, he was named a finalist for the Gold Glove for second base. In 2016, Phillips appeared in 141 games, batting .291 with 11 home runs and 64 RBIs. He also stole 14 bases while being caught eight times. On February 12, 2017, Phillips waived his no-trade clause and was traded to the Atlanta Braves in exchange for minor league pitchers Andrew McKirahan and Carlos Portuondo. The Reds also sent $13 million in the deal, leaving the Braves to pay $1 million of Phillips' remaining salary. He made a late-season position switch to third base to facilitate the promotion of Ozzie Albies to the major leagues. On August 30, Phillips hit a bloop single to drive in Ender Inciarte for his 2,000th career hit. In 120 games for the Braves, Phillips batted .291 with 11 home runs and 52 RBIs. On August 31, 2017, Phillips was traded to the Los Angeles Angels for cash considerations and Tony Sanchez. In 24 games played with the Angels, Phillips had a slash line of .255/.269/.382 in 102 at bats. On June 27, 2018, Phillips signed a minor league contract with the Boston Red Sox, and was assigned to the Triple-A Pawtucket Red Sox. Phillips appeared in 38 games with Pawtucket and six games with the Class A Short Season Lowell Spinners, batting a combined .304 with five home runs and 26 RBIs. Phillips was added to Boston's active roster on September 4. He made his Red Sox debut the following day, hitting a two-run home run in the ninth inning to carry the Red Sox to a 9–8 victory over the Atlanta Braves, completing a comeback from Atlanta's 7–1 and 8–7 leads late in the game. Phillips was the first player in Red Sox history to wear uniform number 0. Overall with the 2018 Red Sox, Phillips appeared in nine games, batting 3-for-23 (.130) with one home run and two RBIs. The Red Sox finished the year 108–54, clinching the AL East pennant. Phillips was not included on the team's postseason roster, as the Red Sox went on to win the World Series over the Los Angeles Dodgers. He elected free agency on October 29. On June 25, 2019, Phillips signed with the Vallejo Admirals of the independent Pacific Association. The team is managed by his younger brother P.J. Phillips. Phillips played four games for the Admirals before being granted his release. On July 15, 2019, Phillips signed with the Diablos Rojos del México of the Mexican League. During the season he played in 36 games. He batted .267/.327/.420 with 35 hits in 131 at bats. He had 3 home runs, 11 doubles and 15 RBIs. Phillips elected free agency on October 5, 2019. List of Major League Baseball career runs scored leaders, List of Major League Baseball career hits leaders, List of Gold Glove Award winners at second base, List of Silver Slugger Award winners at second base , or Retrosheet George Andrew "Andy" Phillips (born April 6, 1977) is the current assistant coach for The University of Alabama's baseball team. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the New York Yankees, New York Mets, and Cincinnati Reds. Phillips was raised in Demopolis, Alabama, where he played baseball for the Demopolis Academy Generals. Phillips played college baseball for the University of Alabama's former coach, Jim Wells. Phillips was an All-American for the Tide. Phillips was drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers as a shortstop in the 41st round of the draft as a high school senior and again by the New York Yankees in the 7th round of the 1999 draft as a college graduate of the University of Alabama. He signed with the Yankees, but did not reach the Major Leagues until a call-up session towards the end of the 2004 season; he made his Major League debut on September 14, 2004. In his first Major League AB, he hit a home run over the Green Monster in Fenway Park off Terry Adams of the Boston Red Sox. Phillips is one of ten players to homer in his first at bat as a Yankee, along with Marcus Thames, Bubba Crosby, Todd Zeile, Wilson Betemit, Cody Ransom, Mark Reynolds, Curtis Granderson, Tyler Austin, and Aaron Judge. He became the 21st player in Major League history to hit a home run on the first pitch of his Major League career. Also, in 2004, Phillips received the Yankees' Kevin Long "Minor-League Player of the Year" Award in a season where he led all Yankees minor leaguers in batting average (.321) and RBI (101), ranked second in home runs (30), and was voted the Most Valuable Player of the International League All Star Game after hitting a 10th inning walk-off home run. In , Phillips earned the James P. Dawson Award as the Yankees' most outstanding rookie during spring training. Phillips's time previous to at the Major League level had been limited to defensive replacement and late season call-up. In 2006, Phillips started the year as the primary backup at first base, behind Jason Giambi. This changed, however, when Gary Sheffield went on the disabled list. Primary designated hitter Bernie Williams took over the starting right field job, leaving the DH spot open. With Giambi's bad knees and his sub-par defense in the field, he became the primary DH. Phillips took over at first base and played well. This proved manager Joe Torre correct when he said all that Phillips needed was more at bats. He led the team with a .333 batting average in June and continued with his .333 average for the first 22 games of July. His average on July 26 was .300, with 30 hits in 100 at bats. Earlier, his light hitting triggered GM Brian Cashman to go out and trade for Craig Wilson of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Phillips was kept on the roster mostly because of his versatility to play second base or third base. Also, he could play first if Wilson was forced to play the outfield or catch. A family emergency (his mother Linda was hurt in a car crash) caused Phillips to miss much of his 2007 spring training with the Yankees. In the end, he only played in 15 games, saw 26 at bats, and had a .192 average. Due to his inability to make up for lost time and Josh Phelps's (Phillips opponent for a roster spot on the Yankees) outstanding performance (spring training stats include 3 home runs, 14 hits, a .667 slugging percentage, and .389 batting average), Phillips was passed over for a roster spot on the 2007 team. When informed of manager Joe Torre's decision to go with Phelps over Phillips, Phillips reportedly thanked Torre for the opportunity and asked if Phelps had been informed of the decision yet so he could congratulate him. Phillips was called up to the Yankees on June 19, 2007, after Phelps was designated for assignment. Throughout the 2007 season, Phillips became an important part of the team as a result of injuries to first baseman Jason Giambi and Doug Mientkiewicz. Due to these injuries, Phillips found himself used in the role of primary first baseman for the Yankees. He enjoyed great success through the months of July (hitting .320 with 16 RBI) and August (hitting .273 with 7 RBI). On September 2, while batting in the 5th inning against Devil Rays starter Jason Hammel, Phillips was hit on the wrist by a pitch. He would later leave the game and get an MRI and an X-Ray taken. It was announced on September 3 that Phillips had a fractured wrist and surgery would be required, needing 4–6 weeks, ending his season. Phillips was designated for assignment on December 3, 2007, to make room for Jose Molina. He cleared waivers on December 7, was offered an outright assignment to Triple-A Scranton, but declined the assignment and opted to become a free agent. In 2013, Andy appeared in the Old Timers Day game at Yankee Stadium. On January 4, 2008, Phillips signed a minor league contract with the Cincinnati Reds. On March 28, after hitting .277 in 2008 spring training, he was reassigned to minor-league camp, and he began the season with the Reds' Triple-A affiliate, the Louisville Bats. On May 28, the Reds purchased his contract, and he was added to the active roster. On June 22, 2008, Phillips was designated for assignment to make room for Jeff Keppinger, who was coming off of the disabled list. Three days later, Phillips was claimed by the New York Mets and added to their 25-man roster. He was then designated for assignment by the Mets on July 1, 2008. He was reclaimed by the Cincinnati Reds off waivers on July 3. On December 22, 2008, he signed to a minor league contract with the Pittsburgh Pirates, and was invited to Spring Training as a "non-roster invitee", the same status in which he was invited to Spring Training with the Reds in 2008. He played so well early in spring training that he was considered a lock to make the opening day roster, but a back injury sidelined him for three weeks, and he ended up assigned to Indianapolis instead. On April 17, 2009, Phillips was traded to the Chicago White Sox in exchange for pitcher Michael Dubee, and assigned to the Charlotte Knights of the International League. He filed for free agency on June 15, 2009. On June 23, 2009 Phillips signed with the Hiroshima Toyo Carp of Nippon Professional Baseball. Following the 2009 season, the Carp did not pick up Phillips' option for the 2010 season and he signed with the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles in January 2010. On December 22, 2010 Phillips was introduced as the Alabama Crimson Tide baseball team's hitting coach beginning in 2011. Home run in first Major League at-bat

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The President of the Czech Republic is the elected formal head of state of the Czech Republic and the commander-in-chief of the Military of the Czech Republic. Unlike counterparts in other Central European countries such as Austria and Hungary, who are generally considered figureheads, the Czech president has a considerable role in political affairs. Because many powers can only be exercised with the signatures of both the President and the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, responsibility over some political issues is effectively shared between the two offices. The framers of the Constitution of the Czech Republic intended to set up a parliamentary system, with the Prime Minister as the country's leading political figure and de facto chief executive and the president as a ceremonial head of state. However, the stature of the first president, Václav Havel, was such that the office acquired greater influence than the framers intended. The President of the Czech Republic has the authority to act independently in a number of substantive areas. One of the office's strongest powers is that of veto, which returns a bill to parliament. Although the veto may be overridden by parliament with an absolute majority vote (over 50%) of all deputies, the ability to refuse to sign legislation acts as a check on the power of the legislature. The only kind of bills a President can neither veto nor approve are acts that would change the constitution. The president also has the leading role in the appointment of persons to key high offices, including appointment of judges to the Supreme and Constitutional Courts (with the permission of the Senate), and members of the Bank Board of the Czech National Bank. There are some powers reserved to the President, but can be exercised only under limited circumstances. Chief among these is the dissolution of the Chamber of Deputies. While the president can dissolve the Chamber on his own authority, forcing a new election of that body within 60 days, this can be done only under conditions prescribed by the constitution. Many of the President's powers can only be exercised with the assent of the Government, as expressed by the signature of the Prime Minister. These include all matters having to do with foreign relations and the use of the military, the appointment of judges to lower courts, and the granting of amnesty. Except when the Chamber of Deputies has been dissolved because of its failure to form or maintain a government, the President may call for elections to the Chamber and the Senate only with the Prime Minister's approval. The President also shares responsibility with the Chamber of Deputies for appointing the president and vice president of the Supreme Control Officethe body in charge of implementing the national budgetalthough this appointment does not technically require the signature of the Prime Minister. Under Art. 54 (3) and 65 (3) of the constitution, the President may not be held liable for any alleged criminal acts while executing the duties of office. Such prosecution may not occur either while the president is in office or at any time thereafter. Furthermore, Art 65 (1) prevents trial or detention for prosecution of a criminal offense or tort while in office. The only sort of prosecution allowed for a sitting President is that of high treason, which can only be carried out by the Senate, and can only result in removal from office and a ban on regaining the office at a later date. Many of the duties of the Czech President can be said to be ceremonial to one degree or another, especially since the President has relatively few powers independent of the will of the Prime Minister. A good example of this is the status as commander in chief of the military. No part of these duties can take place but through the assent of the Prime Minister. In matters of war, he is in every sense merely a figurehead, since the constitution gives all substantive constitutional authority over the use of the armed forces to the parliament. In fact, the only specific thing the constitution allows the president to do with respect to the military is to appoint its generalsbut even this must be done with the signature of the Prime Minister. Many of the President's ceremonial duties fall under provisions of the constitution that allow the exercise of powers "not explicitly defined" in the constitution, but allowed by a lesser law. In other words, Parliament has the power to allow the President whatever responsibilities they deem proper, without necessarily having to amend the constitution. Such a law was passed in 1994 with respect to the awarding of state decorations. While the constitution explicitly allows the conferring of honors and awarding of medals by the president only with the signature of the Prime Minister, parliament acted in 1994 to grant the president power to do so on his own authority. Hence, this particular duty is effectively shared between the parliament and the president. The act even allows the president to choose someone to perform the actual presentation ceremony. Until 1956, the office of president was filled following an indirect election by the Parliament of the Czech Republic. In February 2012, a change to a direct election was passed by the Senate, and after the related implementation law also was passed by both chambers of the parliament, it was enacted by presidential assent on 1 August 2012; meaning that it legally entered into force on 1 October 2012. The term of office of the President is 5 years. A newly elected president will begin the five-year term on the day of taking the official oath. Candidates standing for office must be 40 years of age, and must not have already been elected twice consecutively. Since the only term limit is that no person can be elected more than twice consecutively, a person may theoretically achieve the presidency more than twice. Prospective candidates must either submit petitions with the signatures of 50,000 citizens, or be nominated by 20 deputies or 10 senators. The constitution does not prescribe a specific date for presidential elections, but stipulates that elections shall occur in the window between 30 and 60 days before the end of the sitting president's term, provided that it was called at least 90 days prior to the selected election day. In the event of a president's death, resignation or removal, the election can be held at the earliest 10 days after being called and at the latest 80 days after vacancy of the presidential seat. If no candidate receives a majority, a runoff is held between the top two candidates. The constitution makes specific allowances for the failure of a new president to be elected. If a new president has not been elected by the end of a president's term, or if 30 days elapse following a vacancy, some powers are conferred upon the Prime Minister, some are moved to the chairman of the Chamber of Deputies or to the chairman of the Senate, if parliament is in a state of dissolution at the time of the vacancy. The first direct presidential election in the Czech Republic was held 11–12 January 2013, with a runoff on 25–26 January. Under Article 58 of the current Czech Constitution, nominees to the office must be put forward by no fewer than 10 Deputies or 10 Senators. Once nominees are in place, a ballot can begin. Each ballot can have at most three rounds. In the first round, a victorious candidate requires an absolute majority in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. Given a 200-seat Chamber and an 81-seat Senate, a successful first-round candidate requires 101 deputies and 41 senators. If no single candidate gets a majority of both the Chamber and the Senate, a second round is then called for. At this stage, a candidate requires an absolute majority of merely those actually present at the time of voting in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. The actual number of votes required in the second round might be the same as in the first round, but as in 2008, it can be a little less, due to the absence of a few parliamentarians. Nevertheless, in this second round, a single candidate would need to win a majority in both the Chamber and the Senate. Should no single candidate achieve a majority of both houses then present, a third round is necessitated. In this final round, which can happen within 14 days of the first round, an absolute majority of deputies and senators present suffices. At this stage, the individual houses of parliament are not considered separately. Assuming that all members of parliament are present, all that is required to win is 141 votes, regardless of the house of origin. If no candidate wins in the third round, another ballot has to be considered in a subsequent joint session of parliament. The process continues under the same rules until a candidate prevails. In 1993, the Republic's first president, Václav Havel, had little difficulty achieving victory on the first round of the first ballot, but his re-election bid proved bumpier. In 1998, he was elected with a cumulative seven-vote margin on the second round of the first ballot. By contrast, his successor, Václav Klaus, has required the full measure of the process. He narrowly won election on the third ballot at the 2003 election and on the sixth (second attempt, third ballot) in 2008. Both his elections were won in the third round. His biggest margin of victory was two votes. Following the 2003 and 2008 elections, which both required multiple ballots, some in the Czech political community expressed dissatisfaction with this method of election. In 2008, Martin Bursík, leader of the Czech Green Party, said of the 2008 vote, "We are sitting here in front of the public somewhat muddied by backstage horse-trading, poorly concealed meetings with lobbyists and intrigue." There were calls to adopt a system with a direct election, in which the public would be involved in the voting. However, opponents of this plan pointed out that the presidency had always been determined by indirect vote, going back through several predecessor states to the presidency of Tomáš Masaryk. Charles University political scientist Zdeněk Zbořil suggested that direct voting could result in a president and prime minister who were hostile to each other's goals, leading to deadlock. A system of direct elections was supported by figures including Jiří Čunek (Christian and Democratic Union – Czechoslovak People's Party) and Jiří Paroubek (Czech Social Democratic Party), whereas the ruling Civic Democratic Party, under both President Václav Klaus and Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek, was more skeptical. Topolánek commented that it was an advantage that "our presidential elections are not preceded by some campaign, that is unavoidable in a direct election and causes rifts among citizens". Using Poland as an unfavourable example, he said that "when someone talks about how our method of selecting the head of state is undignified, he should first weigh the consequences of a direct vote". Aside from death, there are only three things that can effect a president's removal from office: 1. A President can resign by notifying the President of the Senate. 2. The President may be deemed unable to execute his duties for "serious reasons" by a joint resolution of the Senate and the Chamberalthough the president may appeal to the Constitutional Court to have this resolution overturned. 3. The President may be impeached by the Senate for high treason and convicted by the Constitutional Court. Since the first Czechoslovak president Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the presidential fanfare has been the introduction to Bedřich Smetana's opera Libuše, which is symbol of the patriotism of the Czech people during the Czech National Revival under the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. The office of president carries with it an iconography, established through laws passed by the parliament. Perhaps the most visible of these is the flag of the president, as seen at top right. His official motto is the same as that of the Republic: "Pravda vítězí" ("Truth prevails"). Inasmuch as the president is the titular sole administrator of Prague Castle, the presidency may also be said to control the heraldry of that institution as well, including but not limited to the special designs worn by the Castle Guard, which is a special unit of the armed forces of the Czech Republic, organized under the Military Office of the President of the Czech Republic, directly subordinate to the president. Furthermore, the president, while in office, is entitled to wear the effects of the highest class of the Republic's two ceremonial orders, the Order of the White Lion and the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. By the power of being inaugurated, the President becomes the holder of the highest class of both orders for the duration of his term in office as well as their supreme administrator. By convention, the Parliament allows a retiring President to remain a life-long member of both institutions, with the order decorations returning to the State upon the former President's death. The official residence of the president of the Czech Republic is Prague Castle. However, the living quarters are small and not particularly comfortable, so recent presidents (Václav Havel and Václav Klaus) have chosen to live elsewhere. The last president to reside more or less full-time in the residence in the Prague Castle was Gustáv Husák. The president also maintains a summer residence at the castle in the village of Lány, 35 km west of Prague. There is one living former Czech President: Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, List of prime ministers of the Czech Republic, List of presidents of Czechoslovakia, List of Czech presidential candidates The Czech constitution. Articles 54–66 are particularly relevant to the presidency., The official site of Prague Castle This is a list of presidents of the Czech Republic, a political office that was created in 1993 following the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. The Czech Republic is a parliamentary representative democracy, with the President acting as head of state and the prime minister acting as head of government. The first president of the Czech Republic was Václav Havel. The current president is Miloš Zeman, in office since 8 March 2013. Until 2012, the president was elected by the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, for a term lasting five years. Since 2013 the president is elected by popular vote. The only living former president of the Czech Republic is Václav Klaus. Parties There is one living former Czech President: List of rulers of Bohemia, List of Presidents of Czechoslovakia, List of Prime Ministers of Czechoslovakia, List of Prime Ministers of the Czech Socialist Republic, List of rulers of the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia, List of Prime Ministers of the Czech Republic, Lists of incumbents The Czech constitution. Articles 54-66 are particularly relevant to the presidency., The official site of Prague Castle Miloš Zeman (; born 28 September 1944) is a Czech politician serving as the third and current President of the Czech Republic since 8 March 2013. He previously served as Prime Minister of the Czech Republic from 1998 to 2002. As Leader of the Czech Social Democratic Party during the 1990s, he transformed his party into one of the country's major political forces. Zeman was Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Czech parliament, from 1996 until he became Prime Minister two years later in 1998. In January 2013, Zeman was elected President of the Czech Republic. He is the first directly elected President in Czech history; both of his predecessors, Václav Havel and Václav Klaus, were elected by the Czech Parliament. In 2018, he was re-elected for a second term. Zeman was born in Kolín. His parents divorced when he was two years old and he was raised by his mother, who was a teacher. He studied at a high school in Kolín, then from 1965 he studied at the University of Economics in Prague, graduating in 1969. In 1968, during the Prague Spring, he became a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, but was expelled in 1970 due to his opposition to the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. He was dismissed from his job and spent more than ten years working for the sports organisation Sportpropag (1971–84). From 1984, he worked at the company Agrodat, but he lost his job again in 1989, as a result of a critical article he had written in Technický magazine in August 1989, entitled "Prognostika a přestavba" (Forecasting and Perestroika). In summer 1989, he appeared on Czechoslovak Television criticising the poor state of the Czechoslovak economy. His speech caused a scandal, but his views helped him join the leaders of the Civic Forum a few months later, during the Velvet Revolution. In 1990 Zeman became a member of the House of the Nations of the Czechoslovak Federal Assembly. In 1992, he ran successfully for the House of the People of the Federal Assembly, already as a member of the Czechoslovak Social Democracy (ČSSD), which he joined the same year. In 1993, he was elected chairman of the party, and in the following years he transformed it into one of the country's major parties. The success of ČSSD in the 1996 legislative election allowed him to prevent his rival Václav Klaus and his Civic Democratic Party (ODS) from forming a majority government. Zeman became the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies and held this post until the early election in 1998. In 1998, ČSSD won the election and Zeman became Prime Minister of a minority government, which he led for the next four years. In April 2001, he was replaced as leader by Vladimír Špidla. Zeman then retired and moved to live in the countryside in the Vysočina Region. He won a presidential primary in 2002 to become the ČSSD nominee for president, but lost the 2003 presidential election to Václav Klaus, due to party disunity. Zeman became an outspoken critic of his former party's leaders. He left ČSSD on 21 March 2007, due to conflicts with the party leader and chairman, Jiří Paroubek. In October 2009, he founded a new party, Party of Civic Rights – Zemanovci. The party did not win any seats in the 2010, 2013 or 2017 legislative elections. In February 2012 Miloš Zeman announced his return to politics and intention to run in the first direct presidential election in the Czech Republic. Polls indicated that he was one of the two strongest candidates in the election, alongside Jan Fischer. Zeman narrowly won the first round of the elections and progressed to the second round to face Karel Schwarzenberg, winning by a clearer margin. His term began in March 2013. Zeman's alleged excessive alcohol consumption became a subject of public discussion and media attention on several occasions. Many Czechs believed he was drunk during his appearances at Czech TV headquarters, shortly after his victory in the 2013 presidential election, and during the exhibition of the Bohemian Crown Jewels. In May 2013, Zeman refused to grant a tenured professorship to literary historian Martin C. Putna, due to Putna's appearance at 2011 Prague Gay Pride. In June 2013, the coalition government led by Petr Nečas collapsed due to a corruption and spying scandal. Zeman, ignoring the political balance of power in the Czech Parliament, appointed his friend and long-term ally Jiří Rusnok as Prime Minister, and tasked him with forming a new government. This was described in parts of the Czech and foreign media as a political power grab, undermining parliamentary democracy and expanding his powers. On 10 July, during the appointment of Rusnok's cabinet, Zeman advised the new cabinet members not to "let yourself get annoyed by media criticism from jealous fools who have never in their lives done anything useful". Rusnok's government was short-lived, and resigned after losing a vote of confidence. Zeman played an important role in a scandal that occurred in October 2013, shortly after the Czech legislative election. ČSSD First Deputy Chairman Michal Hašek and his allies in the party called for chairman Bohuslav Sobotka to resign following the party's poor election result, and excluded him from the team negotiating the next government. However, it subsequently emerged that Hašek and his allies had attended a secret post-election meeting with Zeman, where they were rumoured to have negotiated a 'coup' in ČSSD. Hašek initially denied the accusations, stating on Czech Television that "there was no meeting". However, his allies (deputies Milan Chovanec, Zdeněk Škromach, Jeroným Tejc and Jiří Zimola) later admitted that the meeting took place. The event sparked public protests in the country and eventually led to Hašek apologising and resigning his position in the party. Zeman denied having initiated the meeting. His Party of Civic Rights – Zemanovci (SPOZ) received 1.5% of the vote in the election, winning no seats. On 6 April 2014, in the wake of the annexation of Crimea, Zeman called for strong action to be taken, possibly including sending NATO forces into Ukraine, if Russia tried to annex the eastern part of the country. Speaking on a radio show he said that, "The moment Russia decides to widen its territorial expansion to the eastern part of Ukraine, that is where the fun ends. There I would plead not only for the strictest EU sanctions, but even for military readiness of the North Atlantic Alliance, like for example NATO forces entering Ukrainian territory." The Czech Republic has been a NATO member since 1999, when Zeman was prime minister. In the Czech constitutional system it is the government that has the main responsibility for foreign policy, although the President is commander-in-chief of the armed forces. The ČSSD government of Bohuslav Sobotka resisted strong EU sanctions against Russia after the annexation, because of the negative economic impact such sanctions would have had on the country. In November 2014, while Czechs celebrated the 25th anniversary of the 1989 Velvet Revolution against the Soviet-style communist regime, the festivities turned into an appeal for Zeman to resign. Many Czechs believe that Miloš Zeman has betrayed the legacy of Václav Havel who helped Czechoslovakia and then Czech Republic become a champion of human rights. Protesters see Zeman as too sympathetic to authoritarian regimes and too close to Russia and China. They carried football-style red penalty cards as a warning of ejection to Zeman and pelted eggs at him. An opinion poll conducted by the CVVM agency in March 2016 reported that 62% of Czechs trusted President Miloš Zeman, up from 55% in September 2015. By December 2016, his approval rating had fallen to 48% following a series of scandals, with around 49% of those surveyed stating that they didn't trust him. On 9 March 2017, during a meeting with his supporters, Zeman announced his intention to run again for the presidency, confirming his decision the next day in a press conference. He said that he had been persuaded by the support of the people. He stated that he does not think he is the favourite in the election, and that he won't run a political campaign, attack his rivals, or participate in debates. He also announced that he would participate in a television programme called A week with the President. On 26 March 2017, during a radio interview, Zeman stated that someone had placed child pornography onto a computer in the official residence. Zeman claimed that he had called "IT guys", who had found out that the hackers were from Alabama in the United States. Later, Zeman's spokesman added that "the President, like every night, googled his own name on the internet and one of the pages contained child pornography". According to police, there was no evidence of a hacking attack on Zeman's computer. Zeman decided to run for a second term and stood in the presidential elections in 2018. Observers compared the election to other elections such as the 2016 United States and 2017 French presidential elections, which saw a liberal internationalist and a right-wing populist running against each other. Zeman won the election with 51.37% in the second round. During his premiership and term as leader of the Social Democrats, Zeman was considered a center-left politician, but during his time as president he began to be associated with far-right anti-immigration policies in response to the European migrant crisis. The Guardian described Zeman as "left-of-centre" in the run-up to the 2013 presidential election, but as "far-right" and a populist in 2018. The New York Times described Zeman as a "populist leftist". Other outlets have simply labeled Zeman a populist. He has been compared to United States President Donald Trump and endorsed Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. Zeman has drawn criticism over his closeness to China. In 2014, he attracted criticism when he said he wished to learn how China had "stabilized" its society. In 2016 he invited Chinese president Xi Jinping on a state visit, which sparked a wave of protest. He labeled pro-Tibet protestors "mentally impaired individuals" and used police to prevent protesters from reaching Prague Castle. Police also entered a building of the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU) to remove a Tibetan flag which had been hung out of a window. Deputy Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek accused Zeman of "bootlicking authoritarian and unfree regimes". Those actions were seen as a contravention of Czech society's freedom of expression, and protests were held by at least 50 members of the two chambers of the Parliament, opposition leaders and civil society groups as well as hundreds of supporters of Taiwan, Tibet, and Turkic Uyghur separatists in Xinjiang. Zeman has appointed Ye Jianming, the founder and chairman of CEFC China Energy, as his economic adviser. The company is linked to the People's Liberation Army. CEFC China Energy has acquired multiple assets in the Czech Republic, including travel agencies and media companies. Ye was placed under investigation for economic crimes in 2018. In 2016, following a number of terror attacks around Europe, Zeman joined a number of other Czech politicians and security professionals in urging the 240,000 gun owners in the country with concealed carry licences to carry their firearms, in order to be able to contribute to the protection of soft targets. Zeman's wife also obtained a concealed carry license and a revolver. Zeman has a mixed record on his positions regarding the European Union. As prime minister, he helped bring the Czech Republic into the EU, and he has described himself as a "federalist" who supports EU membership. Before becoming president, he promised to fly the flag of Europe at Prague Castle, something that Zeman's predecessor, Václav Klaus, refused to do; he did so shortly after taking office. On the same day, Zeman ratified the Treaty Establishing the European Stability Mechanism, which Klaus had also refused to do, making the Czech Republic the last country to do so. In June 2017, Zeman stated that Czech people are "irrationally afraid" of adopting the Euro as the Czech Republic's currency. Despite his pro-EU statements and actions, Zeman supports holding a referendum on Czech EU membership similar to the Brexit referendum held in the United Kingdom in 2016. He also has been labelled a Eurosceptic and opposes the EU's migrant quotas. He is seen by some critics as having pro-Russia leanings, favouring it over the EU. Like his predecessor and former opponent Václav Klaus, Zeman is a climate change skeptic. He has said that in his opinion, human activity probably cannot influence global warming. When the environmental movement Hnutí DUHA tried to protect a national park from illegal logging, Zeman said he would treat them in a "good old medieval way: burn them, piss on them and salt them". Zeman is a long-standing supporter of the State of Israel. Zeman was one of the most prominent international leaders to support the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital under President Donald Trump, and he voiced support for following the US in moving its Israeli embassy to Jerusalem. He criticized the EU's position on Jerusalem, calling its member states "cowards" and stating that they "are doing all they can so a pro-Palestinian terrorist movement can have supremacy over a pro-Israeli movement." Zeman is opposed to having a Czech embassy in Kosovo. He said that he is against the recognition of Kosovo, and has described it as a "terror regime financed by the illegal drug trade". Whilst visiting Belgrade in 2014, he stated his opposition to the formation of an independent Kosovan army, equating it to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). He commented on the history of terrorist acts committed by the KLA, and noted that its disbanding was a component of the peace agreements. During the same visit, he said he hoped Serbia would join the European Union soon. Zeman has expressed concern about the growth of Islamic terrorism and of ISIL. In June 2011, Zeman said, referring to Islam, "The enemy is the anti- civilisation spreading from North Africa to Indonesia. Two billion people live in it and it is financed partly from oil sales and partly from drug sales." He likened Muslims who believe in the Qur'an to followers of Nazism. Zeman called for unified armed operation against Islamic State (ISIL) led by the U.N. Security Council. In June 2015, Zeman commented that: "If European countries accept a wave of migrants, there will be terrorist groups among them, of which also a Libyan minister has warned. By accepting the migrants, we strongly facilitate Islamic State’s expansion to Europe." Zeman described the Middle Eastern refugees arriving in Europe as an "organized invasion". In September 2015, Zeman rejected the European Union's proposal of compulsory migrant quotas, saying, "Only the future will show that this was a big mistake". Zeman said that Turkey should not be in the European Union and criticised Turkish President Erdoğan's anti-European rhetoric. He also accused Turkey of allying with ISIL in its fight against Syrian Kurds. Zeman, who played a role in achieving NATO membership for the Czech Republic, has called for a referendum on NATO membership, though he supports remaining in the organization. In November 2012, during a speech at the University of Economics, Prague, Zeman explained his dislike for Madeleine Albright, former US Secretary of State. Zeman stated that Albright had promised that there would be no bombardment of civilians during the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia. "And Madeleine Albright made a promise, and Madeleine Albright didn't keep the promise. Since then, I don't like her." In March 2015, Zeman criticised protests against the US Army's military convoy (called the "Dragoon Ride") crossing the Czech Republic following NATO exercises in Poland and the Baltic states: In March 2016, Zeman defended Poland's newly elected Law and Justice government, saying: “I expressed the view that the Polish government, which was created as a result of free elections, has every right to carry out activities for which it received a mandate in these elections. It should not be subject to moralising or criticism from the European Union, which should finally focus on its primary task – to protect the external borders of the Union.” Zeman has described the war in Donbass as "a civil war between two groups of Ukrainian citizens" that have foreign support, and compared it to the Spanish Civil War. As for the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, he has noted that the Kosovo precedent has been used as an argument for the separation of Crimea from Ukraine. Zeman announced that he intended to visit Moscow for the 2015 Victory Day celebrations and the 70th anniversary of the liberation from Nazi Germany. He said that he was not going to look at military equipment, but rather to honour the soldiers who had sacrificed their lives. He described his visit to Moscow as an "expression of thankfulness that we in this country don't have to speak German, if we would have become submissive collaborators of Aryan origin", and that "we don't have to say Heil Hitler, Heil Himmler, Heil Göring, and eventually Heil Heydrich, that would have been particularly interesting". Most other EU leaders declared that they would not attend the events due to the conflict in eastern Ukraine. U.S. ambassador Andrew H. Schapiro criticized the decision, saying that it would "be awkward" if Zeman was the only politician from the EU at the ceremony. Zeman responded by banning him from the Prague Castle. The ban was later lifted by Zeman's office. In December 2019, at odds with his generally pro- Russian stance, Zeman criticised Russian protests against the Czech decision to recognise the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia as a day commemorating the victims, describing it as "absolute insolence". In 2015, Zeman, in response to a letter from a group of Czech and Ukrainian historians defending Stepan Bandera, leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), wrote: "I would like to point out that President Yushchenko declared Bandera a national hero, and a similar declaration in the case of Roman Shukhevych, who became known to have shot thousands of Jews in Lvov in 1941, is now being prepared. I can not congratulate Ukraine on such national heroes." In 1996, before the legislative election, Zeman met with Czech-Swiss entrepreneur Jan Vízek in the German city of Bamberg. In the so-called "Bamberg Memorandum", a group of Swiss entrepreneurs allegedly agreed to fund the ČSSD pre-election campaign in exchange for economic influence in the Czech Republic after the election. The investigation ended in 2000, with Vízek convicted of falsification of the memorandum by copying signatures from earlier documents. He later admitted that he had intentionally publicised the case in order to compromise Zeman before the next elections in 1998. Zeman was never charged with any wrongdoing, but the reason for the meetings between Zeman and Vízek in 1996 was never revealed. In 1999, one of Zeman's advisers, Jaroslav Novotný, allegedly blackmailed the director of the state-owned Štiřín Castle, Václav Hrubý. Novotný allegedly pressured him to falsify evidence in order to prove that former Foreign Minister Josef Zieleniec corrupted journalists. The police confirmed the blackmail, but no charges were ever brought. Zeman has been criticized for his contacts with the powerful Czech lobbyist Miroslav Šlouf, formerly his chief adviser. While Zeman was prime minister, Šlouf maintained contact with the controversial entrepreneur František Mrázek, nicknamed the "Godfather of Czech Organized Crime". Šlouf and Mrázek met and exchanged information at the Office of the Czech Government. Mrázek was assassinated in 2006. In leaked wiretapping records, he nicknames Zeman mlha ("fog") and claims that Zeman "could not be bribed, and wanted only a sandwich, three pickles and for people to like him." In 2010, Šlouf and Martin Nejedlý, a representative of the Russian oil company LUKoil in the Czech Republic, were the main donors to his Party of Civic Rights – Zemanovci, but Zeman denied that he had any connection with Lukoil. In 2002, German chancellor Gerhard Schröder cancelled an official visit to Prague after Zeman called the ethnic Germans in pre-war Czechoslovakia "Hitler's Fifth column". Zeman stated that "the Czechs and Slovaks were doing the Sudeten Germans a favor by expelling them, because they granted them their wish to go Heim ins Reich". Later, Zeman called Karel Schwarzenberg, his rival in the presidential campaign of 2013, a "sudeťák" (Sudeten German), leading the Austrian Die Presse to ascribe Zeman's victory to an "unprecedented anti- German dirty campaign." On 26 May 2014, during festivities celebrating the independence of Israel, Zeman said "So let me quote one of their [Islamic] sacred texts to support this statement: "A tree says, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. A stone says, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him." I would criticize those calling for the killing of Arabs, but I do not know of any movement calling for mass murdering of Arabs. However, I know of one anti-civilisation movement calling for the mass murder of Jews." When criticized and urged to apologise by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, his office replied "President Zeman definitely does not intend to apologise. For the president would consider it blasphemy to apologise for the quotation of a sacred Islamic text." Zeman's comments on the Jewish Museum of Belgium shooting and "Islamic ideology" in June 2014 caused a diplomatic dispute with Saudi Arabia. The diplomatic source said: "The Saudis had an exact list of what Zeman said on the issue in the past. The list had several pages. The [Czech] ambassador was in a very unpleasant situation as the protest had never gone so far before." On 17 November 2014, the 25th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, thousands of Czechs took part in a demonstration against Zeman, protesting his pro-Russian stance and vulgar language. Eggs were also thrown, with one accidentally hitting the German president, Joachim Gauck; German officials said it was just a piece of eggshell. On the same day, a group of about 60 people held a counter-demonstration in support of president Zeman. In September 2017 Zeman suggested that Bosnia and Herzegovina could become a base for Islamic State, causing a diplomatic row and provoking criticism from Bakir Izetbegović and the Bosniak public. Zeman has a long history of losing lawsuits regarding his public comments. In 1993 Zeman lost his lawsuit over his defamatory statement towards former police officer Milan Hruška. He falsely accused him of lack of intelligence and inadequate education. Zeman was fined, but ignored the court ruling and never apologised. In 1997 Zeman accused his party colleague Jozef Wagner of wanting to join the Communist Party after leaving his faction in the Chamber of Deputies. Zeman lost the lawsuit and was ordered to apologise and pay compensation. Zeman initially ignored the ruling, before apologising in 2001. In 2000, Prague City court ordered Zeman to apologise to politician Miroslav Macek after he described him as a "thief". In 2007, Prague City court ruled that Zeman had unlawfully accused journalist Ivan Brezina of corruption. Zeman was ordered to publicly apologise by means of a newspaper article and pay 50,000 CZK in damages. On 19 February 2012, the Supreme Administrative Court ruled that Zeman's campaign team had lied during the presidential campaign. According to the court ruling, this did not affect the outcome of the elections. On 2 March 2016, The Prague 1 District Court ruled that Zeman had falsely accused well-known journalist Ferdinand Peroutka of comments that appeared to be positive about Adolf Hitler. According to the preliminary judgement the Office of the President had to publicly apologise to Terezie Kaslová, Peroutka's descendant. After the final appeal failed, the president's office announced on 23 September that it would appeal in the Supreme Court. Zeman said that he was not suffering from senile dementia and insisted that the article existed. His spokesperson Jiří Ovčáček has been looking for it since February 2015. The office was fined 100,000 Kč in October 2016 for failing to apologise. However, the Supreme Court stated on 28 October 2016 that the apology would not be necessary until the court had ruled on the Office's appeal. In the 1970s, Zeman was married to Blanka Zemanová; the couple divorced in 1978. In 1993, he married his assistant Ivana Bednarčíková (born 29 April 1965). He has an adult son named David from his first marriage. His daughter from the second, Kateřina Zemanová (born 1 January 1994), was one of the most visible faces in Zeman's presidential election team. In a post-election speech, Zeman asked her to be his "informal First Lady", as his wife is reportedly shy and does not like media attention. When asked about his religious beliefs, he describes himself as a "tolerant atheist". Zeman is a heavy drinker and long-term chain smoker. He only slightly curbed his consumption of alcohol and cigarettes after being diagnosed with diabetes in 2015. He is also suffering from diabetic neuropathy in the feet, which causes him difficulties when walking. Curriculum Vitae at the website of the Prague Castle, Miloš Zeman at the website of the Government of the Czech Republic

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"And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" (also known in short as just "And I Am Telling You") is a torch song from the Broadway musical Dreamgirls, with lyrics by Tom Eyen and music by Henry Krieger. In the context of the musical, "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" is sung by the character Effie White, a singer with the girl group The Dreams, to her manager, Curtis Taylor Jr., whose romantic and professional relationship with Effie is ending. The lyrics to "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going", often considered the show's signature tune, describe Effie's love for Curtis, both strongly devoted and defiant. She refuses to let Curtis leave her behind, and boldly proclaims to him, "I'm staying and you ... you're gonna love me." In addition to its presence in the musical, "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" is also notable as the debut single of two women who portrayed Effie. Jennifer Holliday originated the role on Broadway in 1981 and won a Tony Award for her performance as well as the Grammy for Best R&B; Performance, Female for its re-release in 1982 for which it became a number-one R&B; hit for Holliday. Jennifer Hudson portrayed Effie in the 2006 film adaptation of Dreamgirls, winning an Oscar for the role. Hudson's version became a Top 20 R&B; single, and a number-one dance hit. In 1982, Jennifer Holliday, the actress who portrayed Effie in the original Broadway production, released the song as a single. It was her first single release and it met with great success, topping the Billboard R&B; charts and attaining top forty positions on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Singles Chart. In 1983, Holliday won the Grammy Award for Best R&B; Vocal Performance, Female for the single. "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" was designed as the closing number of Dreamgirls' first act. Holliday's performance of the song, in a style owing much to gospel music singing traditions, was regularly staged to thunderous applause; it was hailed as the highlight of the show in several printed reviews of the musical. In his review of Dreamgirls, New York Times theatre critic Frank Rich referred to Holliday's "And I Am Telling You" as "one of the most powerful theatrical coups to be found in a Broadway musical since Ethel Merman sang "Everything's Coming Up Roses" at the end of Act I of " "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" remains Holliday's signature song. "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" was recorded in 2006 by former American Idol contestant Jennifer Hudson, who portrayed Effie White in the DreamWorks/Paramount motion picture adaptation of Dreamgirls. Her recording of the song, the Dreamgirls film soundtrack's second single, peaked at number 60 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, and number 14 on the R&B; chart. Hudson won the 2006 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Dreamgirls; she thanked Holliday in her acceptance speech. The song can be heard on her debut album Jennifer Hudson (2008). Hudson's version received outstanding reviews from multiple movie and music critics, which highlighted her strength as both a vocalist and an actress. New York Observer described Hudson's performance as "five mellifluous, molto vibrato minutes..." Newsweek said that when moviegoers hear Hudson sing the song, she "is going to raise goose bumps across the land." Variety wrote that Hudson's performance "calls to mind debuts like Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl or Bette Midler in The Rose, with a voice like the young Aretha." On June 26, 2007, the 7th Annual BET Awards opened with Jennifer Holliday and Jennifer Hudson performing "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" live in their first duet together. Although it in essence is Hudson's first single release, it became her fourth top 75 hit in the United Kingdom after a performance on The X Factor in 2009 after being sung by Danyl Johnson. Hudson performed the song again at the 85th Academy Awards, as part of the Dreamgirls section in the tribute to movie musicals. A club remix was created for this single, engineered by Richie Jones and Eric Kupper, and appears as a bonus track on the "Deluxe Edition" of the Dreamgirls soundtrack album. This version of Hudson's "And I Am Telling You" was a chart success, reaching the top of the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart in early 2007. A shortened edit of the full remix appeared on a Columbia Records promotional-only CD accompanying the Jones & Kupper remix of another Dreamgirls song, the Beyoncé Knowles/Anika Noni Rose/Sharon Leal/Jennifer Hudson rendition of "One Night Only". Also included were the Freemasons remixes of Beyoncé's singles "Déjà Vu" and "Ring the Alarm". Whitney Houston performed the song at the beginning of a medley with "I Have Nothing" at the 1994 American Music Awards. This performance is included on her 2014 CD/DVD release, . Houston also performed the tune as part of the set list during her Bodyguard Tour in 1993. In 1994, Donna Giles scored a minor club hit in the US and UK with her rendition of the song. The track remained a sleeper club hit in the UK throughout 1995, prompting a spate of re-releases and remixes, including Stonebridge, culminating in a major release on Ore Records in 1996. This last release would finally take the track to number 27 on the UK Singles Chart in February of that year. On November 20, 2007, the original master, Produced by critically acclaimed Eve Nelson, was released digitally by Breaking Records and is available on all major download sites. Jake Gyllenhaal performed it on Saturday Night Live shortly after the film's release in a pastiche of Jennifer Hudson. He wore a wig and a black sequined dress, with three of the female regulars on SNL as his "backup singers", dressed in red glittery dresses, heels, and wigs. In 2006, the then 12-year- old Bianca Ryan sang this song at her first audition on America's Got Talent. Ryan subsequently won the contest that year. In 2009, it was performed by Amber Riley as her character Mercedes Jones in the first-season Glee episode "Sectionals". Riley also performed the song, as the character Effie, in the 2016 London Premiere performance of Dreamgirls. American Idol runner-up Jessica Sanchez performed the song as one of her two songs in the Top 4. Her performance during the Top 4 was praised by Jennifer Holliday. She later performed the song with Holliday during the finale of the show's eleventh season in 2012. Dami Im, the 2013 winner of the Australian version of The X Factor, performed this song as one of her final three songs. Her performance received a rapturous response from all four judges and the audience. All four judges stood up on the judges table as an indication of their overwhelming adulation of her exquisite performance while the audience applauded strongly for 70 seconds. Her performance debuted number 29 on the Australian ARIA Charts. On 1 December 2013, Im released a version of the song as part of her self-titled album, which debuted at number one in Australia, and was certified Platinum. Also in 2013, Sam Bailey performed it with Nicole Scherzinger as her celebrity duet choice during the first part of the tenth-season finale of The X Factor in the UK. The duet also appeared on her 2014 debut album The Power of Love. Also in 2013, Jacquie Lee performed this song in season 5 of The Voice. Also in 2013, Tituss Burgess performed a rendition of the song at the event "Broadway Backwards" for the charity Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. In an episode of Martin, Gina (Tisha Campbell) performs the song while interrupting Pam's performance of the song "Home" (from The Wiz) on Martin's talk show "Word on the Street". As they both are auditioning for Biggie Smalls, they attempt to out-sing each other, ultimately resulting in embarrassing Martin. Renditions of the song appear in several episodes of Everybody Hates Chris, often sung by Chris' mother Rochelle (Tichina Arnold), or by off-screen performers watched by Rochelle. In the 2001 movie Down to Earth, the song is performed by several people at the Apollo Theater, with the audience only approving of it when sung by Phil Quon (John Cho). In Britain's Got Talent 2017, Sarah Ikumu sang this song as her audition piece. It won her the Golden Buzzer from Simon Cowell which got her an unchallenged pass into the live finals. Jennifer Holliday version Rosabel with Jennifer Holliday version Jennifer Hudson version List of number-one dance singles of 2007 (U.S.) "I Am Changing" is a song from the second act of the long-running Broadway musical Dreamgirls. Written by Henry Krieger and Tom Eyen, the song was performed by the character Effie White, originally portrayed on Broadway by Jennifer Holliday. "I Am Changing" tells the story of a woman who wants to leave behind the mistakes of her past and "change her life"--she sings, "I need you, I need a hand" and "I need a friend to help me start all over again". After the unexpected success of Holliday's first single, "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going", "I Am Changing" was released as the second single from the Dreamgirls cast album. However, the song didn't perform as well as "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going", peaking at #22 on Billboard's Black Singles Chart and failing to chart on Billboard's Pop Singles Chart. "I Am Changing" has been covered several times. Whitney Houston performed the song at the 10th Anniversary of Arista Records ceremony in 1984. This performance is included on her 2010 CD/DVD reissue of Whitney Houston – The Deluxe Anniversary Edition. She also performed the song during the duration of her Greatest Love World Tour in 1986 in a slower, soulful version, influenced by gospel music. Ex-Supreme Mary Wilson included it in her album Walk the Line, and in a compilation of her solo singles. Lillias White, who was Holliday's original understudy, has performed the song in concert. Jennifer Hudson performs the song as Effie White in the 2006 DreamWorks/Paramount Dreamgirls motion picture adaptation. The song was performed by Bianca Ryan on the first season of NBC's America's Got Talent, a reality show which Ryan became the winner of that year. The eleven-year-old's performance of "I Am Changing" prompted show judge (and onetime teen star) Brandy to shake her head and proclaim that Ryan "makes me want to go practice … that's how good you are." In 2014, the song was performed in the Glee episode "New Directions" by Kurt Hummel (Chris Colfer) and Mercedes Jones (Amber Riley). Jack Vidgen (born 17 January 1997) is an Australian singer, best known for winning the fifth season of Australia's Got Talent as a teenager. He subsequently signed a recording contract with Sony Music Australia with his debut single, "Yes I Am", and studio album, of the same name, were released in August 2011. The album debuted at number three on the ARIA Albums Chart, and was certified gold. His second studio album, Inspire, was released in April 2012, reaching number 23 on the ARIA Albums Chart. In 2019 Vidgen auditioned for The Voice (Australian season 8), and appeared on . Vidgen is the son of Steve Vidgen and Rachel Hayton. From 2007 to 2010, Vidgen performed at various events in Sydney, including Schools Spectacular, Eisteddfod, and the local Christmas carols. He also taught himself how to play the piano and guitar. He attended Balgowlah Boys High School. Following his win on Australia's Got Talent in 2011, Vidgen withdrew from his high school to continue by distance education. In March 2014, it was reported that he had had a lesion removed from behind his eye. Vidgen auditioned for the fifth season of Australia's Got Talent in 2011, singing a rendition of Whitney Houston's "I Have Nothing". The performance earned a standing ovation from both the judges and the audience. Judge Kyle Sandilands said before the audition, "You're either gonna be amazing or dreadful – both I will enjoy", while judge Brian McFadden was so moved by the performance he ran up on stage to kiss Vidgen's cheek once it was over. The performance has received over 23 million views on YouTube. Vidgen was dubbed Australia's answer to Justin Bieber and inundated with international and local interest. He also attracted the attention of celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton, who posted several blogs of Vidgen's performances on his website. Vidgen performed on the first semi-final show, singing a cover of "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" from the Dreamgirls soundtrack. After the performance, he earned another standing ovation from the judges and audience. Sandilands told Vidgen that he made him believe in reincarnation as he was sure Vidgen had a black woman inside him, while McFadden said Vidgen had one of the best voices he had ever heard. After winning the public vote from the first semi-final show, Vidgen progressed through to the next round, the final showdown. During this round, Vidgen performed a cover of Adele's "Set Fire to the Rain". After his performance, judge Dannii Minogue said, "Your voice lifts everybody who listens to it", while McFadden joked that he was jealous of Vidgen because he spelled the end for other guys in the music industry. Vidgen once again won the public vote, which made him progress through to the grand final. During this round, Vidgen performed an original song titled, "Yes I Am". A few days later, Vidgen was the centre of criticism over the song when it was revealed that it was co-written with two other people. Critics questioned how involved Vidgen was in the writing of the song. On 7 August 2011, Vidgen appeared on Sunday Night and said, "I sort of wrote the lyrics, and then I took them to vocal coach Erana Clark's studio, and we had the producer – I didn't write the music, I can say that, but I did write the lyrics." Vidgen was announced as the winner of the season during the grand final decider show, which aired on 2 August 2011. He was awarded a prize of $250,000. Following his win on Australia's Got Talent, Vidgen signed a recording contract with Sony Music Australia. "Yes I Am" was released for digital download on 3 August 2011, as Vidgen's debut single. The song peaked at number 35 on the ARIA Singles Chart. Vidgen co-wrote the gospel soul-inspired song with former Australian Idol vocal coach Erana Clark and producer A2, who also penned the song, "Fly", for Vidgen's debut studio album also titled Yes I Am. The album was rush-released on 19 August 2011. It contained cover versions Vidgen performed on Australia's Got Talent, which were all produced by musical director Chong Lim, as well as the two original songs. The album debuted and peaked at number three on the ARIA Albums Chart, and was certified gold by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), for shipments of 35,000 units. Vidgen's second studio album, Inspire, was released on 27 April 2012. It featured more covers of songs from artists including Michael Jackson, Bill Withers, Cyndi Lauper, John Lennon, and Beyoncé. The album peaked at number 23 on the ARIA Albums Chart, failing to match the success of his debut album. Vidgen's second single "Finding You", which was written by The Potbelleez' IIan Kidron, was released digitally on 10 July 2012. He performed the song on Australia's Got Talent the next day. As of 2014, Vidgen is no longer signed to Sony Music Australia. On 2 June 2019, Vidgen returned to television on The Voice Australia. In an interview with Who magazine, Vidgen said “"After winning Australia’s Got Talent there was Facebook pages with death threats... life was hard..." adding "I stopped singing five years ago. I think I just burnt out. I just fell out of love with singing." Vidgen was selected to coach Guy Sebastian's team, eventually finished as a semi-finalist. In December 2019, Vidgen was announced as a participant in Australia Decides 2020; in an attempt to represent Australia in the Eurovision Song Contest 2020 with the song "I Am King I Am Queen".

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This is a list of all teams, players and coaches who have won the FIFA World Cup tournament since its inception in 1930. The 21 World Cup tournaments have been won by eight different nations. Brazil has won the most titles, five. The current champion is France, who won the title in 2018. Participating teams have to register squads for the World Cup, which consisted of 22 players until 1998 and of 23 players from 2002 onwards. Since 1978, winners' medals are given to all members of the winning squads. Prior to that, only players who were on the pitch during the final matches received medals. FIFA decided in 2007 to retroactively award winners' medals to all members of the winning squads between 1930 and 1974. A total of 445 players have been in the winning team in the World Cup. Brazil's Pelé is the only one to have won three times, while another 20 have won twice. No player has won two World Cups both as captain. Italy's Giuseppe Meazza (1938), Brazil's Bellini (1958), Mauro (1962) and Cafu (2002), and Argentina's Daniel Passarella (1978) lifted the trophy once as captain, but were not captain for the other tournament they won. Argentina's Diego Maradona (1986, 1990) and Brazil's Dunga (1994, 1998) captained their sides in two final matches, but only won on their first occasions, while West Germany's Karl-Heinz Rummenigge (1982, 1986) lost both final matches as captain., Brazil's Pelé and Vavá are the only two players to score in two final matches for winning teams. West Germany's Paul Breitner (1974, 1982) and France's Zinedine Zidane (1998, 2006) also scored in two final matches, but only won on their first occasions., Cafu is the only player to play in three final matches, 1994 (as a substitute), 1998 and 2002., Luis Monti is the only player to play in two final matches for different national teams. He appeared in the 1930 final for Argentina, who lost, and the 1934 final for Italy, who won. Attilio Demaría was also in Argentina's 1930 squad and Italy's 1934 squad, but appeared in neither final., Brazil's Mário Zagallo, having won in 1958 and 1962 as player, went on to win in 1970 as the head coach, becoming the first to win both as player and coach. West Germany's Franz Beckenbauer is the second, winning as both captain (1974) and coach (1990). Didier Deschamps is the third. He led the France team to win in 1998 as captain, and in 2018 as coach., Germany's Miroslav Klose is the only player to have won four World Cup medals: 2002 (silver), 2006, 2010 (both bronze) and 2014 (gold). 20 different coaches have won the World Cup, Italy's Vittorio Pozzo being the only one to win twice. Four other coaches finished as winners once and runners-up once: West Germany's Helmut Schön (winner in 1974, runner-up in 1966) and Franz Beckenbauer (winner in 1990, runner-up in 1986), Argentina's Carlos Bilardo (winner in 1986, runner-up in 1990), and Brazil's Mário Zagallo (winner in 1970, runner-up in 1998). Zagallo (twice), Beckenbauer and France's Didier Deschamps also won the title as players. All winning head coaches have been natives of the country they coached. Only two foreign coaches have reached the final match: George Raynor of England, with Sweden in 1958, and Ernst Happel of Austria, with the Netherlands in 1978. List of FIFA World Cup finals Squad lists: Player profiles: World Cup Champions Squads 1930–2014, RSSSF.com, FIFA.com The United States women's national soccer team (USWNT) represents the United States in international women's soccer. The team is the most successful in international women's soccer, winning four Women's World Cup titles (including the first Women's World Cup in 1991), four Olympic gold medals (including the first Olympic women's soccer tournament in 1996), and eight CONCACAF Gold Cups. It medaled in every World Cup and Olympic tournament in women's soccer history from 1991 to 2015, before being knocked out in the quarterfinal of the 2016 Summer Olympics. The team is governed by United States Soccer Federation and competes in CONCACAF (the Confederation of North, Central American, and Caribbean Association Football). After being ranked No. 2 on average from 2003 to 2008 in the FIFA Women's World Rankings, the team was ranked No. 1 continuously from March 2008 to November 2014, falling back behind Germany, the only other team to occupy the No. 1 position in the ranking's history. The team dropped to 2nd on March 24, 2017, due to its last-place finish in the 2017 SheBelieves Cup, then returned to 1st on June 23, 2017, after victories in friendlies against Russia, Sweden, and Norway. The team was selected as the U.S. Olympic Committee's Team of the Year in 1997 and 1999, and Sports Illustrated chose the entire team as 1999 Sportswomen of the Year for its usual Sportsman of the Year honor. On April 5, 2017, U.S. Women's Soccer and U.S. Soccer reached a deal on a new collective bargaining agreement that would, among other things, lead to a pay increase. The passing of Title IX in 1972, which outlawed gender-based discrimination for federally-funded education programs, spurred the creation of college soccer teams across the United States at a time when women's soccer was rising in popularity internationally. The U.S. Soccer Federation tasked coach Mike Ryan to select a roster of college players to participate in the 1985 Mundialito tournament in Italy, its first foray into women's international soccer. The team played its first match on August 18, 1985, losing 1–0 to Italy, and finished the tournament in fourth place after failing to win its remaining matches against Denmark and England. University of North Carolina coach Anson Dorrance was hired as the team's first full-time manager in 1986 with the goal of fielding a competitive women's team at the next Mundialito and at future tournaments. In their first Mundialito under Dorrance, the United States defeated China, Brazil, and Japan before finishing as runners-up to Italy. Dorrance gave national team appearances to teenage players, including future stars Mia Hamm, Julie Foudy, and Kristine Lilly, instead of the college players preferred by the federation. The United States played in the 1988 FIFA Women's Invitation Tournament in China, a FIFA-sanctioned competition to test the feasibility of a regular women's championship, and lost in the quarterfinals to eventual champions Norway. Following the 1988 tournament, FIFA announced plans for a new women's tournament, named the 1st FIFA World Championship for Women's Football for the M&M;'s Cup until it was retroactively given the "World Cup" name. The United States qualified for the tournament by winning the inaugural CONCACAF Women's Championship, hosted by Haiti in April 1991, outscoring their opponents 49–0 for the sole CONCACAF berth in the tournament. The team played several exhibition matches abroad against European opponents to prepare for the world championship, while its players quit their regular jobs to train full-time with meager compensation. Dorrance utilized a 4–3–3 formation that was spearheaded by the "Triple-Edged Sword" of forward Michelle Akers-Stahl and wingers Carin Jennings and April Heinrichs. At the Women's World Cup, the United States won all three of its group stage matches and outscored its opponents 11–2. In the opening match against Sweden, the U.S. took a 3–0 lead early in the second half, but conceded two goals to end the match with a narrower 3–2 victory. The U.S. proceeded to win 5–0 in its second match against Brazil and 3–0 in its third match against Japan in the following days, clinching first place in the group and a quarterfinal berth. The United States proceeded with a 7–0 victory in the quarterfinals over Chinese Taipei, fueled by a five-goal performance by Akers-Stahl in the first fifty minutes of the match. In the semifinals against Germany, Carin Jennings scored a hat-trick in the first half as the team clinched a place in the final with a 5–2 victory. The team's lopsided victories in the earlier rounds had brought attention from American media outlets, but the final match was not televised live in the U.S. The United States won the inaugural Women's World Cup title by defeating Norway 2–1 in the final, played in front of 65,000 spectators at Tianhe Stadium in Guangzhou, as Akers-Stahl scored twice to create and restore a lead for the Americans. Akers-Stahl finished as the top goalscorer at the tournament, with ten goals, and Carin Jennings was awarded the Golden Ball as the tournament's best player. Despite their Women's World Cup victory, the U.S. team remained in relative obscurity and received a small welcome from several U.S. Soccer Federation officials upon arrival at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. The team were given fewer resources and little attention from the federation as they focused on improving the men's national team in preparation for the 1994 men's World Cup that would be hosted in the United States. The women's team was placed on hiatus after the tournament, only playing twice in 1992, but returned the following year to play in several tournaments hosted in Cyprus, Canada, and the United States, including a second CONCACAF Championship title. The program was still supported better than those of the former Soviet Union, where football was considered a "men's game". The United States played in several friendly tournaments to prepare for the 1995 FIFA Women's World Cup and its qualification campaign. The first was the inaugural staging of the Algarve Cup in Portugal, which saw the team win its two group stage matches but lose 1–0 to Norway in the final. It followed by a victory in the Chiquita Cup, an exhibition tournament hosted in August on the U.S. East Coast against Germany, China, and Norway. Dorrance resigned from his position as head coach in early August and was replaced by his assistant, Tony DiCicco, a former professional goalkeeper who played in the American Soccer League. DiCicco led the United States to a berth in the Women's World Cup by winning the 1994 CONCACAF Championship, where the team scored 36 goals and conceded only one. In February 1995, the U.S. women's program opened a permanent training and treatment facility in Sanford, Florida, and began a series of warm-up friendlies that were paid for by American company Nike. The team topped their group in the Women's World Cup, despite a 3–3 tie with China in the opening match and losing goalkeeper Brianna Scurry to a red card in their second match. The United States proceeded to beat Japan 4–0 in the quarterfinals, but lost 1–0 to eventual champions Norway in the semifinals. The team finished in third place, winning 2–0 in its consolation match against China. The team won the gold medal in the inaugural Olympic women's soccer tournament in the 1996 Summer Olympics, defeating China 2–1 in the final before a crowd of 76,481 fans. Julie Foudy, Kristine Lilly, and the rest of the 1999 team started a revolution towards women's team sports in America. An influential victory came in the 1999 World Cup, when they defeated China 5–4 in a penalty shoot-out following a 0–0 draw after extended time. With this win they emerged onto the world stage and brought significant media attention to women's soccer and athletics. On July 10, 1999, over 90,000 people (the largest ever for a women's sporting event and one of the largest attendances in the world for a tournament game final) filled the Rose Bowl to watch the United States play China in the Final. After a back and forth game, the score was tied 0–0 at full-time, and remained so after extra time, leading to a penalty kick shootout. With Briana Scurry's save of China's third kick, the score was 4–4 with only Brandi Chastain left to shoot. She scored and won the game for the United States. Chastain dropped to her knees and whipped off her shirt, celebrating in her sports bra, which later made the cover of Sports Illustrated and the front pages of newspapers around the country and world. This win influenced many girls to want to play on a soccer team. In the 2003 FIFA Women's World Cup, the U.S. defeated Norway 1–0 in the quarterfinals but lost 0–3 to Germany in the semifinals. The team then defeated Canada 3–1 to claim third place. Abby Wambach was the team's top scorer with three goals, while Joy Fawcett and Shannon Boxx made the tournament's all-star team. At the 2007 FIFA Women's World Cup, the U.S. defeated England 3–0 in the quarterfinals but then suffered its most lopsided loss in team history when it lost to Brazil 0–4 in the semifinals. The U.S. recovered to defeat Norway to take third place. Abby Wambach was the team's leading scorer with 6 goals, and Kristine Lilly was the only American named to the tournament's all-star team. The team earned gold medals in both the 2004 and 2008 Olympics, but interest in the Women's National Team had diminished since their performance in the '99 World Cup. However, the second women's professional league was created in March 2009, Women's Professional Soccer. In the quarterfinal of the 2011 Women's World Cup in Germany, the U.S. defeated Brazil 5–3 on penalty kicks. Abby Wambach's goal in the 122nd minute to tie the game 2–2 has been voted the greatest goal in U.S. soccer history and the greatest goal in Women's World Cup history. The U.S. then beat France 3–1 in the semifinal, but lost to Japan 3–1 on penalty kicks in the Final after drawing 1–1 in regulation and 2–2 in overtime. Hope Solo was named the tournament's best goalkeeper and Abby Wambach won the silver ball as the tournament's second best player. In the 2012 Summer Olympics, the U.S. won the gold medal for the fourth time in five Olympics by defeating Japan 2–1 in front of 80,203 fans at Wembley Stadium, a record for a women's soccer game at the Olympics. The United States advanced to face Japan for the gold medal by winning the semifinal against Canada, a 4–3 victory at the end of extra time. The 2012 London Olympics marked the first time the USWNT won every game en route to the gold medal and set an Olympic women's team record of 16 goals scored. The National Women's Soccer League started in 2013, and provided competitive games as well as opportunities to players on the fringes of the squad. The U.S. had a 43-game unbeaten streak that spanned two yearsthe streak began with a 4–0 win over Sweden in the 2012 Algarve Cup, and came to an end after a 1–0 loss against Sweden in the 2014 Algarve Cup. The USA defeated Japan 5–2 in the final of the 2015 World Cup, becoming the first team in history to win three Women's World Cup titles. In the 16th minute, Carli Lloyd achieved the fastest hat-trick from kick-off in World Cup history, and Abby Wambach was greeted with a standing ovation for her last World Cup match. Following their 2015 World Cup win, the team was honored with a ticker tape parade in New York City, the first for a women's sports team, and honored by President Barack Obama at the White House. On December 16, 2015, however, a 0–1 loss to China in Wambach's last game meant the team's first home loss since 2004, ending their 104-game home unbeaten streak. In the 2016 Summer Olympics, the U.S. drew against Sweden in the quarterfinal; in the following penalty kick phase, Sweden won the game 4–3. The loss marked the first time that the USWNT did not advance to the gold medal game of the Olympics, and the first time that the USWNT failed to advance to the semifinal round of a major tournament. After the defeat in the 2016 Olympics, the USWNT underwent a year of experimentation which saw them losing 3 home games. If not for a comeback win against Brazil, the USWNT was on the brink of losing 4 home games in one year, a low never before seen by the USWNT. 2017 saw the USWNT play 12 games against teams ranked in the top-15 in the world. Throughout 2018, the U.S. would pick up two major tournament wins, winning both the SheBelieves Cup and the Tournament of Nations. The team would enter qualifying for the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup on a 21-game unbeaten streak and dominated the competition, winning all five of its games and the tournament whilst qualifying for the World Cup as well as scoring 18 goals and conceding none. On November 8, 2018, the U.S. earned their 500th victory in team history after a 1–0 victory over Portugal. The start of 2019 saw the U.S. lose an away game to France, 3–1, marking the end of a 28-game unbeaten streak and their first loss since a 1–0 defeat to Australia in July 2017. The USWNT started off their 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup campaign with a 13–0 victory against Thailand, setting a new Women's World Cup record. Alex Morgan equaled Michelle Akers' record of scoring five goals in a single World Cup match, while four of her teammates scored their first World Cup goals in their debut at the tournament. The U.S. would win its next match against Chile 3–0 before concluding the group stage with a win of 2–0 over Sweden. The team emerged as the winners of Group F and would go on to face Spain in the Round of 16, whom they would defeat 2–1 thanks to a pair of Megan Rapinoe penalties. The team would achieve identical results in their next two games. With 2–1 victories over France and then England seeing them advance to a record third straight World Cup final, they played against the Netherlands for the title. They beat the Netherlands 2-0 in the final on July 7, 2019, becoming the first team in history to win four Women's World Cup titles. On July 30, 2019, Jill Ellis announced that she would step down as head coach following the conclusion of the team's post- World Cup victory tour on October 6, 2019. Vlatko Andonovski was hired as head coach in October 2019 to replace Ellis. U.S. TV coverage for the five Women's World Cups from 1995 to 2011 was provided by ESPN/ABC and Univision, while coverage rights for the three Women's World Cups from 2015 to 2023 were awarded to Fox Sports and Telemundo. In May 2014 a deal was signed to split TV coverage of other USWNT games between ESPN, Fox Sports, and Univision through the end of 2022. The USWNT games in the 2014 CONCACAF Women's Championship and the 2015 Algarve Cup were broadcast by Fox Sports. NBC will broadcast the Olympic tournament through 2032. The 1999 World Cup final set the original record for largest US television audience for a women's soccer match with 18 million viewers on average and was the most viewed English-language US broadcast of any soccer match until the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup Final between the United States and Japan. The 2015 Women's World Cup Final between the US and Japan was the most watched soccer match – men's or women's – in American broadcast history. It averaged 23 million viewers and higher ratings than the NBA finals and the Stanley Cup finals. The final was also the most watched US-Spanish language broadcast of a FIFA Women's World Cup match in history. Overall, there were over 750 million viewers for the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup, making it the most watched Women's World Cup in history. The FIFA Women's World Cup is now the second most watched FIFA tournament, with only the men's FIFA World Cup attracting more viewership. The 1999 World Cup final, in which the USA defeated China, set a world attendance record for a women's sporting event of 90,185 in a sellout at the Rose Bowl in Southern California. The record for Olympic women's soccer attendance was set by the 2012 Olympic final between the USWNT and Japan, with 80,023 spectators at Wembley Stadium. In recent years, the players of the USWNT have waged an escalating legal fight with the United States Soccer Federation over gender discrimination. Central to their demands is equal pay. The players point to their lower paychecks as compared to the U.S. men's national team, despite their higher record of success in recent years. In April 2016, five players filed a wage- discrimination action against the U.S. Soccer Federation with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The group consisted of Hope Solo, Carli Lloyd, Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe, and Becky Sauerbrunn. One year later, in April 2017, it was announced that a new collective bargaining agreement, or CBA, with U.S soccer had been made. The agreement stated that the players would have an increased base pay and improved match bonuses. These changes could increase their previous pay from $200,000 to $300,000. This 2017 CBA, however, does not guarantee the U.S national women's team equal pay with the men's national team. The CBA's five-year term, through 2021, ensured that the next negotiation would not become an issue for the team in its next major competitions. On top of this CBA, U.S Soccer had agreed to pay the players for two years' worth of unequal per-diem payments. On March 8, 2019, all 28 members of the U.S. team filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against the United States Soccer Federation. The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court in Los Angeles, accused the Federation of "institutional gender discrimination." The lawsuit claims that the discrimination affects not only the amount the players are paid but also their playing, training, and travel conditions. Coaching staff Technical staff The following 20 players were named to the squad for the 2020 CONCACAF Women's Olympic Qualifying Championship. Caps and goals are current as of November 10, 2019, after match against . The following players were also named to a squad in the last 12 months. Notes: : Preliminary squad, : Provisional roster The following is a list of match results in the last 12 months, as well as any future matches that have been scheduled. US Football Schedule, US Football Results, USA: Fixtures and Results – FIFA.com The two highest-profile tournaments the U.S. team participates in are the quadrennial FIFA Women's World Cup and the quadrennial Olympic Games. The team has participated in every World Cup through 2019 and won a medal in each. The team has participated in every Olympic tournament through 2016 and reached the gold medal game in each until 2016, when they were eliminated in the quarterfinals on a penalty shootout loss to Sweden. The US team directly qualified for the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup as hosts of the event. Because of this, they did not participate in the 1998 CONCACAF Championship, which was the qualification tournament for the World Cup. The Algarve Cup is a global invitational tournament for national teams in women's football hosted by the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF). Held annually in the Algarve region of Portugal since 1994, it has been one of the more prestigious women's football events other than the Women's World Cup and Women's Olympic Football. Since 2016, the SheBelieves Cup replaced it on the US team's schedule. The SheBelieves Cup is a global invitational tournament for national teams in women's football hosted in the United States. The Tournament of Nations is a global invitational tournament for national teams in women's football hosted in the United States in non-World Cup and non-Olympic years. . Active players are shown in Bold. The women's national team boasts the first six players in the history of the game to have earned 200 caps. These players have since been joined in the 200-cap club by several players from other national teams, as well as by five more Americans: Kate Markgraf, Abby Wambach, Heather O'Reilly, Carli Lloyd and Hope Solo. Kristine Lilly and Christie Rampone are the only players to earn more than 300 caps. In March 2004, Mia Hamm and Michelle Akers were the only two women and the only two Americans named to the FIFA 100, a list of the 125 greatest living football players chosen by Pelé as part of FIFA's centenary observances. The USWNT All- Time Best XI was chosen In December 2013 by the United States Soccer Federation: Goalkeeper: Briana Scurry, Defenders: Brandi Chastain, Carla Overbeck, Christie Rampone, Joy Fawcett, Midfielders: Kristine Lilly, Michelle Akers, Julie Foudy, Forwards: Mia Hamm, Abby Wambach, Alex Morgan Source Source Source The goal record is five for most scored in a match by a member of the USWNT, which has been accomplished by eight players. Source World Cup Olympic Games CONCACAF Championship and Gold Cup CONCACAF Women's Olympic Qualifying Tournament Algarve Cup U.S. Cup Four Nations Tournament Peace Queen Cup Albena Cup SheBelieves Cup Tournament of Nations DFB Centenary Tournament Pacific Cup Brazil Cup North America Cup Canada Cup Australia Cup Tournoi International Chiquita Cup Tri-Nations Tournament Goodwill Games Columbus Cup USWNT All-Time Best XI, – 2005 HBO documentary, List of United States women's national soccer team hat-tricks, List of women's national football teams, Women's association football around the world, United States U-17 women's national soccer team, United States U-20 women's national soccer team, United States U-23 women's national soccer team, Women's United Soccer Association (WUSA), 2001–03, Women's Professional Soccer (WPS), 2009–11, National Women's Soccer League (NWSL), 2013–present, Soccer in the United States, United States men's national soccer team, NWSL Player Allocation, Women's sports FIFA profile, Scorum The FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup finals are matches which are the last of the competition, and the results determine which country's team is declared world champions. If after 36 minutes of regular play the score is a draw, an additional 3-minute period of play, called extra time, is added. If such a game is still tied after extra time it is decided by kicks from the penalty mark, commonly called a penalty shootout, under the sudden death rules. The winning penalty shoot-out team are then declared champions. The 2011 final between Brazil and Russia was the highest ever scoring final with 20 goals in all. The lowest scoring final was in 1998, when Brazil beat Uruguay by just 3 goals to nil. In the fifteen world cups, only one has ever gone past normal time being the first FIFA controlled world cup, the 2005 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup, when France and Portugal were drawn 3–3 after 36 minutes. The game eventually went to penalties, with Eric Cantona's side winning 1–0. In the fifteen tournaments held, thirty-eight nations have appeared at least once. Of these, ten have made it to the final match, and three have won. With thirteen titles, Brazil are clearly the most successful and powerful nation who compete in the World Cup and also one of two nations to have participated in every World Cup finals tournament. The other champions are Portugal, who won in 2001 and, as previously stated, France, who won in 2005. Match was won on a penalty shootout FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup, National team appearances in the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup

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The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise, preemptive military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States (a neutral country at the time) against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii, just before 08:00, on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941. The attack led to the United States' formal entry into World War II the next day. The Japanese military leadership referred to the attack as the Hawaii Operation and Operation AI, and as Operation Z during its planning. Japan intended the attack as a preventive action to keep the United States Pacific Fleet from interfering with its planned military actions in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States. Over the course of seven hours there were coordinated Japanese attacks on the U.S.-held Philippines, Guam and Wake Island and on the British Empire in Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong. The attack commenced at 7:48 a.m. Hawaiian Time (18:18 GMT). The base was attacked by 353 Imperial Japanese aircraft (including fighters, level and dive bombers, and torpedo bombers) in two waves, launched from six aircraft carriers. All eight U.S. Navy battleships were damaged, with four sunk. All but were later raised, and six were returned to service and went on to fight in the war. The Japanese also sank or damaged three cruisers, three destroyers, an anti-aircraft training ship, and one minelayer. 188 U.S. aircraft were destroyed; 2,403 Americans were killed and 1,178 others were wounded. Important base installations such as the power station, dry dock, shipyard, maintenance, and fuel and torpedo storage facilities, as well as the submarine piers and headquarters building (also home of the intelligence section) were not attacked. Japanese losses were light: 29 aircraft and five midget submarines lost, and 64 servicemen killed. One Japanese sailor, Kazuo Sakamaki, was captured. Japan announced a declaration of war on the United States later that day (December 8 in Tokyo), but the declaration was not delivered until the following day. The following day, December 8, Congress declared war on Japan. On December 11, Germany and Italy each declared war on the U.S., which responded with a declaration of war against Germany and Italy. There were numerous historical precedents for the unannounced military action by Japan, but the lack of any formal warning, particularly while peace negotiations were still apparently ongoing, led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to proclaim December 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy". Because the attack happened without a declaration of war and without explicit warning, the attack on Pearl Harbor was later judged in the Tokyo Trials to be a war crime. War between Japan and the United States had been a possibility that each nation had been aware of, and planned for, since the 1920s. The relationship between the two countries was cordial enough that they remained trading partners. Tensions did not seriously grow until Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931. Over the next decade, Japan expanded into China, leading to the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. Japan spent considerable effort trying to isolate China, and endeavored to secure enough independent resources to attain victory on the mainland. The "Southern Operation" was designed to assist these efforts. Starting in December 1937, events such as the Japanese attack on USS Panay, the Allison incident, and the Nanking Massacre swung Western public opinion sharply against Japan. Fearing Japanese expansion, the United States, United Kingdom, and France assisted China with its loans for war supply contracts. In 1940, Japan invaded French Indochina, attempting to stymie the flow of supplies reaching China. The United States halted shipments of airplanes, parts, machine tools, and aviation gasoline to Japan, which the latter perceived as an unfriendly act. The United States did not stop oil exports, however, partly because of the prevailing sentiment in Washington: given Japanese dependence on American oil, such an action was likely to be considered an extreme provocation. In mid-1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the Pacific Fleet from San Diego to Hawaii. He also ordered a military buildup in the Philippines, taking both actions in the hope of discouraging Japanese aggression in the Far East. Because the Japanese high command was (mistakenly) certain any attack on the United Kingdom's Southeast Asian colonies, including Singapore, would bring the U.S. into the war, a devastating preventive strike appeared to be the only way to prevent American naval interference. An invasion of the Philippines was also considered necessary by Japanese war planners. The U.S. War Plan Orange had envisioned defending the Philippines with an elite force of 40,000 men; this option was never implemented due to opposition from Douglas MacArthur, who felt he would need a force ten times that size. By 1941, U.S. planners expected to abandon the Philippines at the outbreak of war. Late that year, Admiral Thomas C. Hart, commander of the Asiatic Fleet, was given orders to that effect. The U.S. finally ceased oil exports to Japan in July 1941, following the seizure of French Indochina after the Fall of France, in part because of new American restrictions on domestic oil consumption. Because of this decision, Japan proceeded with plans to take the oil-rich Dutch East Indies. On August 17, Roosevelt warned Japan that America was prepared to take opposing steps if "neighboring countries" were attacked. The Japanese were faced with a dichotomy—either withdraw from China and lose face, or seize new sources of raw materials in the resource-rich European colonies of Southeast Asia. Japan and the U.S. engaged in negotiations during 1941, attempting to improve relations. In the course of these negotiations, Japan offered to withdraw from most of China and Indochina after making peace with the Nationalist government. It also proposed to adopt an independent interpretation of the Tripartite Pact and to refrain from trade discrimination, provided all other nations reciprocated. Washington rejected these proposals. Japanese Prime Minister Konoye then offered to meet with Roosevelt, but Roosevelt insisted on reaching an agreement before any meeting. The U.S. ambassador to Japan repeatedly urged Roosevelt to accept the meeting, warning that it was the only way to preserve the conciliatory Konoye government and peace in the Pacific. However, his recommendation was not acted upon. The Konoye government collapsed the following month, when the Japanese military rejected a withdrawal of all troops from China. Japan's final proposal, delivered on November 20, offered to withdraw from southern Indochina and to refrain from attacks in Southeast Asia, so long as the United States, United Kingdom, and Netherlands ceased aid to China and lifted their sanctions against Japan. The American counter-proposal of November 26 (November 27 in Japan), the Hull note, required Japan completely evacuate China without conditions and conclude non-aggression pacts with Pacific powers. On November 26 in Japan, the day before the note's delivery, the Japanese task force left port for Pearl Harbor. The Japanese intended the attack as a preventive action to keep the United States Pacific Fleet from interfering with its planned military actions in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States. Over the course of seven hours there were coordinated Japanese attacks on the U.S.-held Philippines, Guam and Wake Island and on the British Empire in Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Additionally, from the Japanese viewpoint, it was seen as a preemptive strike 'before the oil gauge ran empty'. Preliminary planning for an attack on Pearl Harbor to protect the move into the "Southern Resource Area" (the Japanese term for the Dutch East Indies and Southeast Asia generally) had begun very early in 1941 under the auspices of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, then commanding Japan's Combined Fleet. He won assent to formal planning and training for an attack from the Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff only after much contention with Naval Headquarters, including a threat to resign his command. Full-scale planning was underway by early spring 1941, primarily by Rear Admiral Ryūnosuke Kusaka, with assistance from Captain Minoru Genda and Yamamoto's Deputy Chief of Staff, Captain Kameto Kuroshima. The planners studied the 1940 British air attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto intensively. Over the next several months, pilots were trained, equipment was adapted, and intelligence was collected. Despite these preparations, Emperor Hirohito did not approve the attack plan until November 5, after the third of four Imperial Conferences called to consider the matter. Final authorization was not given by the emperor until December 1, after a majority of Japanese leaders advised him the "Hull Note" would "destroy the fruits of the China incident, endanger Manchukuo and undermine Japanese control of Korea." By late 1941, many observers believed that hostilities between the U.S. and Japan were imminent. A Gallup poll just before the attack on Pearl Harbor found that 52% of Americans expected war with Japan, 27% did not, and 21% had no opinion. While U.S. Pacific bases and facilities had been placed on alert on many occasions, U.S. officials doubted Pearl Harbor would be the first target; instead, they expected the Philippines would be attacked first. This presumption was due to the threat that the air bases throughout the country and the naval base at Manila posed to sea lanes, as well as to the shipment of supplies to Japan from territory to the south. They also incorrectly believed that Japan was not capable of mounting more than one major naval operation at a time. The Japanese attack had several major aims. First, it intended to destroy important American fleet units, thereby preventing the Pacific Fleet from interfering with Japanese conquest of the Dutch East Indies and Malaya and to enable Japan to conquer Southeast Asia without interference. Second, it was hoped to buy time for Japan to consolidate its position and increase its naval strength before shipbuilding authorized by the 1940 Vinson-Walsh Act erased any chance of victory. Third, to deliver a blow to America's ability to mobilize its forces in the Pacific, battleships were chosen as the main targets, since they were the prestige ships of any navy at the time. Finally, it was hoped that the attack would undermine American morale such that the U.S. government would drop its demands contrary to Japanese interests, and would seek a compromise peace with Japan. Striking the Pacific Fleet at anchor in Pearl Harbor carried two distinct disadvantages: the targeted ships would be in very shallow water, so it would be relatively easy to salvage and possibly repair them; and most of the crews would survive the attack, since many would be on shore leave or would be rescued from the harbor. A further important disadvantage—this of timing, and known to the Japanese—was the absence from Pearl Harbor of all three of the U.S. Pacific Fleet's aircraft carriers (, , and ). IJN top command was attached to Admiral Mahan's "decisive battle" doctrine, especially that of destroying the maximum number of battleships. Despite these concerns, Yamamoto decided to press ahead. Japanese confidence in their ability to achieve a short, victorious war also meant other targets in the harbor, especially the navy yard, oil tank farms, and submarine base, were ignored, since—by their thinking—the war would be over before the influence of these facilities would be felt. On November 26, 1941, a Japanese task force (the Striking Force) of six aircraft carriers—, , , , , and —departed Hittokapu Bay on Kasatka (now Iterup) Island in the Kurile Islands, en route to a position northwest of Hawaii, intending to launch its 408 aircraft to attack Pearl Harbor: 360 for the two attack waves and 48 on defensive combat air patrol (CAP), including nine fighters from the first wave. The first wave was to be the primary attack, while the second wave was to attack carriers as its first objective and cruisers as its second, with battleships as the third target. The first wave carried most of the weapons to attack capital ships, mainly specially adapted Type 91 aerial torpedoes which were designed with an anti-roll mechanism and a rudder extension that let them operate in shallow water. The aircrews were ordered to select the highest value targets (battleships and aircraft carriers) or, if these were not present, any other high value ships (cruisers and destroyers). First wave dive bombers were to attack ground targets. Fighters were ordered to strafe and destroy as many parked aircraft as possible to ensure they did not get into the air to intercept the bombers, especially in the first wave. When the fighters' fuel got low they were to refuel at the aircraft carriers and return to combat. Fighters were to serve CAP duties where needed, especially over U.S. airfields. Before the attack commenced, the Imperial Japanese Navy launched reconnaissance floatplanes from cruisers and , one to scout over Oahu and the other over Lahaina Roads, Maui, respectively, with orders to report on U.S. fleet composition and location. Reconnaissance aircraft flights risked alerting the U.S., and were not necessary. U.S. fleet composition and preparedness information in Pearl Harbor were already known due to the reports of the Japanese spy Takeo Yoshikawa. A report of the absence of the U.S. fleet in Lahaina anchorage off Maui was received from the Tone's floatplane and fleet submarine . Another four scout planes patrolled the area between the Japanese carrier force (the Kidō Butai) and Niihau, to detect any counterattack. Fleet submarines , , , , and each embarked a Type A midget submarine for transport to the waters off Oahu. The five I-boats left Kure Naval District on November 25, 1941. On December 6, they came to within of the mouth of Pearl Harbor and launched their midget subs at about 01:00 local time on December 7. At 03:42 Hawaiian Time, the minesweeper spotted a midget submarine periscope southwest of the Pearl Harbor entrance buoy and alerted the destroyer . The midget may have entered Pearl Harbor. However, Ward sank another midget submarine at 06:37 in the first American shots in the Pacific Theater. A midget submarine on the north side of Ford Island missed the seaplane tender with her first torpedo and missed the attacking destroyer with her other one before being sunk by Monaghan at 08:43. A third midget submarine, Ha-19, grounded twice, once outside the harbor entrance and again on the east side of Oahu, where it was captured on December 8. Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki swam ashore and was captured by Hawaii National Guard Corporal David Akui, becoming the first Japanese prisoner of war. A fourth had been damaged by a depth charge attack and was abandoned by its crew before it could fire its torpedoes. Japanese forces received a radio message from a midget submarine at 00:41 on December 8 claiming damage to one or more large warships inside Pearl Harbor. In 1992, 2000, and 2001, Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory's submersibles found the wreck of the fifth midget submarine lying in three parts outside Pearl Harbor. The wreck was in the debris field where much surplus U.S. equipment was dumped after the war, including vehicles and landing craft. Both of its torpedoes were missing. This correlates with reports of two torpedoes fired at the light cruiser at 10:04 at the entrance of Pearl Harbor, and a possible torpedo fired at destroyer at 08:21. The attack took place before any formal declaration of war was made by Japan, but this was not Admiral Yamamoto's intention. He originally stipulated that the attack should not commence until thirty minutes after Japan had informed the United States that peace negotiations were at an end. However, the attack began before the notice could be delivered. Tokyo transmitted the 5000-word notification (commonly called the "14-Part Message") in two blocks to the Japanese Embassy in Washington. Transcribing the message took too long for the Japanese ambassador to deliver it on schedule; in the event, it was not presented until more than an hour after the attack began. (In fact, U.S. code breakers had already deciphered and translated most of the message hours before he was scheduled to deliver it.) The final part is sometimes described as a declaration of war. While it was viewed by a number of senior U.S government and military officials as a very strong indicator negotiations were likely to be terminated and that war might break out at any moment, it neither declared war nor severed diplomatic relations. A declaration of war was printed on the front page of Japan's newspapers in the evening edition of December 8 (late December 7 in the U.S.), but not delivered to the U.S. government until the day after the attack. For decades, conventional wisdom held that Japan attacked without first formally breaking diplomatic relations only because of accidents and bumbling that delayed the delivery of a document hinting at war to Washington. In 1999, however, Takeo Iguchi, a professor of law and international relations at International Christian University in Tokyo, discovered documents that pointed to a vigorous debate inside the government over how, and indeed whether, to notify Washington of Japan's intention to break off negotiations and start a war, including a December 7 entry in the war diary saying, "[O]ur deceptive diplomacy is steadily proceeding toward success." Of this, Iguchi said, "The diary shows that the army and navy did not want to give any proper declaration of war, or indeed prior notice even of the termination of negotiations ... and they clearly prevailed." In any event, even if the Japanese had decoded and delivered the 14-Part Message before the beginning of the attack, it would not have constituted either a formal break of diplomatic relations or a declaration of war. The final two paragraphs of the message read: [[File:Pearlmap2.png|thumb|upright=1.5| [[Category:Attack on Pearl Harbor]] [[Category:1941 in Hawaii]] [[Category:1941 in the United States]] [[Category:Conflicts in 1941]] [[Category:December 1941 events]] [[Category:Explosions in 1941]] USS Nevada (BB-36), the second United States Navy ship to be named after the 36th state, was the lead ship of the two s. Launched in 1914, Nevada was a leap forward in dreadnought technology; four of her new features would be included on almost every subsequent US battleship: triple gun turrets, oil in place of coal for fuel, geared steam turbines for greater range, and the "all or nothing" armor principle. These features made Nevada, alongside its sister ship , the first US Navy "standard-type" battleships. Her only disadvantage against her continental contemporaries was her slower speed, however, her superior armor, firepower, and secondaries meant she was vastly superior. Nevada served in both World Wars. During the last few months of World War I, Nevada was based in Bantry Bay, Ireland, to protect supply convoys that were sailing to and from Great Britain. In World War II, it was one of the battleships trapped when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Nevada was the only battleship to get underway during the attack, making the ship "the only bright spot in an otherwise dismal and depressing morning" for the United States. Still, it was hit by one torpedo and at least six bombs while steaming away from Battleship Row, forcing the crew to beach the stricken ship on a coral ledge. The ship continued to flood and eventually slid off the ledge and sank to the harbor floor. Nevada was subsequently salvaged and modernized at Puget Sound Navy Yard, allowing it to serve as a convoy escort in the Atlantic and as a fire-support ship in five amphibious assaults (the invasions of Attu, Normandy, Southern France, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa). At the end of World War II, the Navy decided that Nevada was too old to be retained, so they assigned it to be a target ship in the atomic experiments at Bikini Atoll in July 1946 (Operation Crossroads). The ship was hit by the blast from the first atomic bomb, Able, and was left heavily damaged and radioactive. Unfit for further service, Nevada was decommissioned on 29 August 1946 and sunk for naval gunfire practice on 31 July 1948. As the first second-generation battleship in the US Navy, Nevada has been described as "revolutionary" and "as radical as was in her day" by present-day historians. At the time of its completion in 1916, The New York Times remarked that the new warship was "the greatest [battleship] afloat" because it was so much larger than other contemporary American battleships: its tonnage was nearly three times that of the obsolete 1890 pre-dreadnought , almost twice that of the 1904 battleship , and almost greater than that of one of the first American dreadnoughts, —built just seven years prior to Nevada. Nevada was the first battleship in the US Navy to have triple gun turrets, a single funnel, and an oil-fired steam power plant. In particular, the use of the more- efficient oil gave the ship an advantage over earlier coal-fired plants. Nevada was also the first US battleship with geared turbines, which also helped increase fuel economy and thus range compared to earlier direct drive turbines. The ability to steam great distances without refueling was a major concern of the General Board at that time. In 1903, the Board felt all American battleships should have a minimum steaming radius of so that the US could enforce the Monroe Doctrine. One of the main purposes of the Great White Fleet, which sailed around the world in 1907–1908, was to prove to Japan that the US Navy could "carry any naval conflict into Japanese home waters". Possibly as a result of this, battleships after 1908 were mainly designed to "steam 8,000 miles at cruising speeds"; given the distance between San Pedro, where the fleet would be based, and Manila, where the Fleet was expected to have to fight under War Plan Orange, was , endurance was obviously a major concern for the U.S. Navy. Also, oil allowed for the boiler-room crew to be reduced – the engineer on estimated that 100 firemen (stokers) and 112 coal passers could be adequately replaced by just 24 men, which would allow some crew's quarters to be eliminated; this would save weight and also reduce the amount of fresh water and provisions that the ship would have to carry. In addition to all of this, Nevada had maximum armor over critical areas, such as the magazines and engines, and none over less important places, even though previous battleships had armor of varying thickness depending on the importance of the area it was protecting. This radical change became known as the "all or nothing" principle, which most major navies later adopted for their own battleships. With this new armor scheme, the armor on the battleship was increased to 41.1% of the displacement. As a result of all of these design modifications from previous battleships, Nevada was the first of the US Navy's "Standard" type battleships. "Standards" were characterized by the use of oil fuel, the "all or nothing" armor scheme, and the arrangement of the main armament in four triple or twin turrets without any turrets located in the middle of the ship. The Navy was to create a fleet of modern battleships similar in long-range gunnery, speed, turning radius, and protection. Nevada was followed by 11 other battleships of this type, although significant improvements were made in subsequent designs as naval technology rapidly progressed. An additional seven standard type battleships ( and the six of the ) were never completed due to the Washington Naval Treaty. The two battleships of the Nevada-class were virtually identical except in their propulsion. Nevada and her sister were fitted with different engines to compare the two, putting them 'head-to-head': Oklahoma received older vertical triple expansion engines, which had proven more fuel-efficient and reliable than the direct drive turbines of some earlier battleships, while Nevada received geared Curtis steam turbines. Nevadas construction was authorized by an Act of Congress on 4 March 1911. The contract went to Fore River Shipbuilding Company on 22 January 1912 for a total of $5,895,000 (not including the armor and armament), and the time of construction was originally to be 36 months. A secondary contract was signed on 31 July 1912 for $50,000 to cover the additional cost of a geared cruising unit on each propeller shaft; this also extended the planned construction time by five months. Her keel was laid down on 4 November 1912, and by 12 August 1914, the ship was 72.4% complete. Nevada was launched on 11 July 1914; she was sponsored by Miss Eleanor Anne Seibert, niece of Governor Tasker Oddie of Nevada and a descendant of the first Secretary of the Navy, Benjamin Stoddert. The launch was attended by several prominent members of the government, including Governor Oddie, Governor David I. Walsh of Massachusetts, Senator Key Pittman of Nevada, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels and Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt, who would later become the 32nd President of the United States. Nevada then had to undergo many different tests and trials prior to her commissioning to ensure that she met the terms of the original contract. These began on 4 November 1915, when the ship conducted a twelve-hour endurance run "up and down the New England coast", reaching a top speed of . Though her "acceptance trials" were interrupted on 5 November because of a gale and rough seas, they were continued on the 6th with a test of her fuel economy; this consisted of a 24-hour run where Nevada steamed at . The test results were positive: the oil consumption of the battlewagon was 6 lb per knot lower than the contract had demanded. Another test was conducted for 12 hours at , with an even better result of 10 lb per knot lower than the contract specifications. After completing all of these tests and running trials off Rockland, Maine, Nevada sailed to the Boston and New York Navy Yards for equipment, torpedo tubes, and ammunition hoists. When all of the preliminaries were completed, Nevada was commissioned on 11 March 1916 at the Charlestown Navy Yard, and William S. Sims was the first captain of the new ship, followed by Joseph Strauss on 30 December 1916. After fitting out in the Boston and New York Navy Yards, Nevada joined the Atlantic Fleet in Newport, Rhode Island on 26 May 1916. Prior to the United States' entry into World War I, she conducted many training cruises and underwent many exercises out of her base in Norfolk, Virginia, sailing as far south as the Caribbean on these cruises. The US entered the war in April 1917, but Nevada was not sent to the other side of the Atlantic because of a shortage of fuel oil in Britain. Instead, four coal-fired battleships of Battleship Division 9 (BatDiv 9) (, , , and ) departed the US to join the British Grand Fleet on 25 November 1917. They arrived on 7 December and were designated as the 6th Battle Squadron of the Grand Fleet. joined them after damage from a grounding on Block Island was repaired; she departed on 30 January and arrived in Scotland on 11 February. It was not until 13 August 1918 that Nevada, then under command of Andrew T. Long , left the US for Britain, becoming the last American ship to join the Fleet overseas. After a 10-day voyage, she arrived in Berehaven, Ireland, on 23 August. Along with and her sister , the three were nicknamed the "Bantry Bay Squadron"; officially, they were Battleship Division Six (BatDiv 6) under the command of Rear Admiral Thomas S. Rodgers, who chose Utah as his flagship. For the rest of the war, the three ships operated from the bay, escorting the large and valuable convoys bound for the British Isles to ensure no German heavy surface ships could slip past the British Grand Fleet and annihilate the merchant ships and their weak escorts of older cruisers. This never came to pass, and the war ended on 11 November with Nevada, then under command of William Carey Cole , not getting a chance to engage an enemy during the war. On 13 December, 10 battleships, including Nevada, and 28 destroyers escorted the ocean liner , with president Woodrow Wilson embarked, into Brest, France, during the last day of Wilson's journey to the country so he could attend the Paris Peace Conference. The flotilla met George Washington and her escorts (Pennsylvania and four destroyers) just off Brest and escorted them into the port. The 10 battleships sailed for home at 14:00 on the next day, 14 December. They took less than two weeks to cross the Atlantic, and arrived in New York on 26 December to parades and celebrations. Between the two World Wars, Nevada, under the successive commands of Thomas P. Magruder , followed by William Dugald MacDougall , served in both the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets. Though she had originally been equipped with 21 five-inch (127 mm)/51 cal guns to defend against enemy destroyers, this number was reduced to 12 in 1918, due to the overly wet bow and stern positions of the other nine. Nevada, then under command of Luke McNamee , and with the battleship , represented the United States at the Peruvian Centennial Exposition in July 1921. A year later, with Douglas E. Dismukes in command, and in company with this time, Nevada returned to South America as an escort to the steamer Pan America with Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes embarked; they all attended the Centennial of Brazilian Independence in Rio de Janeiro, celebrated from 5 to 11 September 1922. The New York Times later credited the crew of Nevada for bringing baseball and that sport's unique terminology to Brazil, allowing the country to "make the Yankee game an institution of their own". At the end of 1922, John M. Luby assumed command. Three years later, then under command of David W. Todd , Nevada took part in the US Fleet's "goodwill cruise" to Australia and New Zealand, from July–September 1925. During this cruise, the ships had only limited replenishment opportunities, but they still made it to Australia and back without undue difficulty. This demonstrated to those allies and Japan that the US Navy had the ability to conduct transpacific operations and meet the Imperial Japanese Navy in their home waters, where both Japanese and American war plans expected the "decisive battle" to be fought, if it should come. After the cruise, Nevada, with Clarence S. Kempff commanding, put into Norfolk Naval Shipyard to be modernized between August 1927 and January 1930. Hilary H. Royall took over command during this period. Work on the ship included exchange of her "basket" masts for tripod masts and her steam turbines for those from the recently stricken battleship . These were geared turbines that had been retrofitted to North Dakota in 1917, replacing her original direct drive turbines to increase her range. Additionally, many different adaptations and additions were made: her main guns' elevation was increased to 30° (which upped the range of the guns from to ), anti-torpedo bulges were added, her 12 original Yarrow boilers were replaced with 6 more efficient Bureau Express boilers in a new arrangement to accommodate those bulges, two catapults were added for three Vought O2U-3 Corsair biplane spotter aircraft, eight /25 cal AA guns were added, a new superstructure was installed, and her 5 inch (127 mm) 51 cal secondary battery was relocated above the hull in an arrangement similar to that of the . Nevada then served in the Pacific Fleet for the next eleven years. During this time, she would be commanded by John J. Hyland , William S. Pye , Adolphus Staton , Robert L. Ghormley , Claude B. Mayo , Robert Alfred Theobald and Francis W. Rockwell. As of 6 December 1941, a Saturday, all of the Pacific Fleet's battleships were in port for the weekend for the first time since 4 July. Normally they took turns spending time in port, six would be out with Vice Admiral William S. Pye's battleship Task Force One one weekend, while the next weekend would find three ranging with Vice Admiral William Halsey, Jr.'s aircraft carrier task force. However, because Halsey could not afford to take the slow battleships with his fast carriers on his dash to reinforce Wake Island's Marine detachment with fighters and because it was Pye's turn to rest in port and the harbor was where it was considered safe, none of the battleships were sailing on that morning. When the sun rose over Nevada on the 7th, the ship's band was playing "Morning Colors"; but planes then appeared on the horizon and the attack on Pearl Harbor began. Aft of Arizona during the attack, Nevada was not moored alongside another battleship off Ford Island, and therefore was able to maneuver, unlike the other seven battleships present. Commanding officer Francis W. Scanland , was ashore when the attack began. The Officer of the Deck, Ensign Joe Taussig (son of the admiral of the same name), had earlier that morning ordered a second boiler lit off, planning to switch the power load from one boiler to the other around 0800. As Nevada's gunners opened fire and her engineers started to raise steam, a single Type 91 Mod 2 torpedo exploded against Frame 41 about above the keel at 0810. Seconds later, the same Kate torpedo bomber that dropped the torpedo was shot down by the Nevadas gunners. The torpedo bulkhead held, but leaking through joints caused flooding of port side compartments below the first platform deck between frames 30 and 43 and a list of 4–5°. Her damage control crew corrected the list by counter- flooding and Nevada got underway at 0840, her gunners already having shot down four planes. Ensign Taussig's efficiency paid off, likely saving his ship, but he lost a leg in the attack. Nevada became a prime target for Japanese Val dive bombers during the second wave. Japanese pilots intended to sink her in the channel ostensibly to block the harbor. Tactically target selection was wrong as 14–18 dive bombers attacking her wouldn't be able to sink a battleship with 250 kg bombs and the channel's width of 1200 feet made the idea of bottling up the harbor impossible. As she steamed past Ten-Ten Dock at about 09:50, Nevada was struck by five bombs. One exploded over the crew's galley at Frame 80. Another struck the port director platform and exploded at the base of the stack on the upper deck. Yet another hit near No. 1 turret inboard from the port waterway and blew large holes in the upper and main decks. Two struck the forecastle near Frame 15; one passed out through the side of the second deck before exploding, but the other exploded within the ship near the gasoline tank; leakage and vapors from this tank caused intense fires around the ship. The gasoline fires that flared up around Turret 1 might have caused more critical damage if the main magazines had not been empty. For several days prior to the attack, all of the 14-inch-gun (356 mm) battleships had been replacing their standard-weight main battery projectiles with a new heavier projectile that offered greater penetration and a larger explosive charge in exchange for a slight decrease in range. All of the older projectiles and powder charges had been removed from the magazines of Nevada, and the crew had taken a break after loading the new projectiles in anticipation of loading the new powder charges on Sunday. As bomb damage became evident, Nevada was ordered to proceed to the west side of Ford Island to prevent her from sinking in deeper water. Instead, she was grounded off Hospital Point at 10:30, with the help of and , though she managed to force down three planes before she struck the shore. Gasoline fires prevented damage control parties from containing flooding forward of the main torpedo defense system. Flooding the main magazine and counterflooding to keep the ship stable lowered the bow allowing water to enter the ship at the second deck level. Lack of watertight subdivision between the second and main decks from frame 30 to frame 115 allowed water entering through bomb holes in the forecastle to flow aft through the ship's ventilation system to flood the dynamo and boiler rooms. Over the course of the morning, Nevada suffered a total of 60 killed and 109 wounded. Two more men died aboard during salvage operations on 7 February 1942 when they were overcome by hydrogen sulfide gas from decomposing paper and meat. The ship suffered a minimum of six bomb hits and one torpedo hit, but "it is possible that as many as ten bomb hits may have been received, [...] as certain damaged areas [were] of sufficient size to indicate that they were struck by more than one bomb." On 12 February 1942, now with Henry L. Thompson commanding, Nevada was refloated and underwent temporary repairs at Pearl Harbor so she could get to Puget Sound Navy Yard for major repairs and modernization. Then under command of Howard F. Kingman , the overhaul was completed in October 1942, and it changed the old battleship's appearance so she slightly resembled a South Dakota from a distance. Her 5"/51s and 5"/25s were replaced with sixteen 5"/38 caliber guns in new twin mounts. Nevada, with Willard A. Kitts, III commanding, then sailed for Alaska, where she provided fire support from 11–18 May 1943 for the capture of Attu. Nevada then departed for Norfolk Navy Yard in June for further modernization. After this was completed, Nevada went on Atlantic convoy duty. Old battleships such as Nevada were attached to many convoys across the Atlantic to guard against the chance that a German capital ship might head out to sea on a raiding mission. After completing more convoy runs, Nevada set sail for the United Kingdom to prepare for the Normandy Invasion, arriving in April 1944, with Powell M. Rhea in command. Her float plane artillery observer pilots were temporarily assigned to VOS-7 flying Spitfires from RNAS Lee-on-Solent (HMS Daedalus). She was chosen as Rear Admiral Morton Deyo's flagship for the operation. During the invasion, Nevada supported forces ashore from 6–17 June, and again on 25 June; during this time, she employed her guns against shore defenses on the Cherbourg Peninsula, "[seeming] to lean back as [she] hurled salvo after salvo at the shore batteries." Shells from her guns ranged as far as inland in attempts to break up German concentrations and counterattacks, even though she was straddled by counterbattery fire 27 times (though never hit). Nevada was later praised for her "incredibly accurate" fire in support of beleaguered troops, as some of the targets she hit were just from the front line. Nevada was the only battleship present at both Pearl Harbor and the Normandy landings. After D-Day, the Allies headed to Toulon for another amphibious assault, codenamed Operation Dragoon. To support this, many ships were sent from the beaches of Normandy to the Mediterranean, including five battleships (the United States' Nevada, , , the British , and the Free French ), three US heavy cruisers (, and ), and many destroyers and landing craft were transferred south. Nevada supported this operation from 15 August to 25 September 1944, "dueling" with "Big Willie": a heavily reinforced fortress with four 340 mm (13.4 in) guns in two twin turrets. These guns had been salvaged from the French battleship Provence after the scuttling of the French fleet in Toulon; the guns had a range of nearly 19 nautical miles (35 km) and they commanded every approach to the port of Toulon. In addition, they were fortified with heavy armor plate bedded into the rocky sides of the island of Saint Mandrier. Due to these dangers, the fire-support ships assigned to the operation were ordered to level the fortress. Beginning on 19 August, and continuing on subsequent days, one or more heavy warships bombarded it in conjunction with low-level bomber strikes. On the 23rd, a bombardment force headed by Nevada struck the "most damaging" blow to the fort during a 6½ hour battle, which saw 354 salvos fired by Nevada. Toulon fell on the 25th, but the fort, though it was "coming apart at the seams", held out for three more days. Nevada then headed to New York to have her gun barrels relined. In addition, the three 14"/45 caliber guns (356 mm) of Turret 1 were replaced with Mark 8 guns formerly on and in the relining process at the time of Pearl Harbor; these new guns were relined to Mark 12 specifications. After that was completed, and with Homer L. Grosskopf commanding, she sailed for the Pacific, arriving off Iwo Jima on 16 February 1945 to "[prepare] the island for invasion with heavy bombardment"; which she did through 7 March. During the invasion, she moved to be within from shore to provide maximum firepower for the troops that were advancing. On 24 March 1945, Nevada joined Task Force 54 (TF 54), the "Fire Support Force", off Okinawa as pre-invasion bombardment began. The ships of TF 54 then moved into position on the night of the 23rd, beginning their bombardment missions at dawn on the 24th. Along with the rest of the force, Nevada shelled Japanese airfields, shore defenses, supply dumps, and troop concentrations. However, after the fire support ships retired for the night, dawn "came up like thunder" when seven kamikazes attacked the force while it was without air cover. One plane, though hit repeatedly by antiaircraft fire from the force, crashed onto the main deck of Nevada, next to turret No. 3. It killed 11 and wounded 49; it also knocked out both guns in that turret and three 20 mm anti- aircraft weapons. Another two men were lost to fire from a shore battery on 5 April. Until 30 June, she was stationed off Okinawa; she then departed to join the 3rd Fleet from 10 July to 7 August, which allowed Nevada to come within range of the Japanese home islands during the closing days of the war, though she did not bombard them. Nevada, then with her final commanding officer, Cecil C. Adell , returned to Pearl Harbor after a brief stint of occupation duty in Tokyo Bay. Nevada was surveyed and, at 32⅓ years old, was deemed too old to be kept in the post-war fleet. As a result, she was assigned to be a target ship in the first Bikini atomic experiments (Operation Crossroads) of July 1946. The experiment consisted of detonating two atomic bombs to test their effectiveness against ships. Nevada was the bombardier's target for the first test, codenamed 'Able', which used an air-dropped weapon. To help distinguish the target from surrounding vessels, Nevada was painted a reddish-orange. However, even with the high-visibility color scheme, the bomb fell about off-target, exploding above the attack transport instead. Due in part to the miss, Nevada survived. The ship also remained afloat after the second test—'Baker', a detonation some below the surface of the water—but was damaged and extremely radioactive from the spray. Nevada was later towed to Pearl Harbor and decommissioned on 29 August 1946. After she was thoroughly examined, and two other vessels used Nevada as a practice gunnery target 65 miles southwest of Pearl Harbor on 31 July 1948. The ships did not sink Nevada, so she was given a coup de grâce with an aerial torpedo hit amidships. One of the former Arizona guns mounted on Nevada is paired with a gun formerly on Missouri at the Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza just east of the Arizona state capitol complex in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. It is part of a memorial representing the start and end of the Pacific War for the United States. Battleship row Print sources Online sources New York Times – 1912–1919, Navy photos of Nevada (BB-36) (Listed as: 404 - File or directory not found), Navy photos of Nevada during the Pearl Harbor attack (Listed as: 404 - File or directory not found), MaritimeQuest USS Nevada BB-36 Photo Gallery, Nevada Damage Report following the Pearl Harbor Attack, Overview of "Operation Crossroads" (Listed as: Not Found) Doris "Dorie" Miller (October 12, 1919November 24, 1943) was an American sailor in the United States Navy. He manned anti-aircraft guns during the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, for which he had no training, and he tended to the wounded. He was recognized by the Navy for his actions and awarded the Navy Cross. He was the first black American to be awarded the Navy Cross, the third highest honor awarded by the Navy at the time, after the Medal of Honor and the Navy Distinguished Service Medal. The Navy Cross now precedes the Navy Distinguished Service Medal. Miller's acts were heavily publicized in the black press, making him an iconic emblem of the war for black Americans. Nearly two years after Pearl Harbor, he was killed in action when his ship was sunk by a Japanese submarine during the Battle of Makin. On January 19, 2020, the Navy announced that CVN-81 would be named after him, a Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier scheduled to be laid down in 2023 and launched in 2028. Miller was born in Waco, Texas on October 12, 1919 to Connery and Henrietta Miller. He was named Doris, as the midwife who assisted his mother was convinced that the baby would be female. He was the third of four sons and helped around the house, cooking meals and doing laundry, as well as working on the family farm. He was a fullback on the football team at Waco's A.J. Moore High School. He began attending the eighth grade again on January 25, 1937 at age 17 but was forced to repeat the grade the following year, so he decided to drop out of school. He filled his time squirrel hunting with a .22 rifle and completed a correspondence course in taxidermy. He applied to join the Civilian Conservation Corps, but was not accepted. At that time, he was tall and weighed more than . Miller worked on his father's farm until shortly before his 20th birthday, then enlisted in the United States Navy on September 16, 1939. He did his training at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia, then was promoted to Mess Attendant Third Class, one of the few ratings open at the time to black sailors. After training school, he was assigned to the ammunition ship and then transferred on January 2, 1940 to the battleship . It was on the West Virginia where he started competition boxing, becoming the ship's heavyweight champion. He was promoted to Mess Attendant Second Class on February 16, 1941. In July, he was on temporary duty aboard the at Secondary Battery Gunnery School. He returned to the West Virginia in August 1941. Miller's nickname "Dorie" may have originated from a typographical error. He was nominated for recognition for his actions on December 7, 1941, and the Pittsburgh Courier released a story on March 14, 1942 which gave his name as "Dorie Miller". Since then, some writers have suggested that it was a "nickname to shipmates and friends." Miller was a crewman aboard the West Virginia and awoke at 6 a.m. on December 7, 1941. He served breakfast mess and was collecting laundry at 7:57 a.m. when Lieutenant Commander Shigeharu Murata from the launched the first of nine torpedoes that hit West Virginia. The "Battle Stations" alarm went off, and Miller headed for his battle station, an anti-aircraft battery magazine amidship, only to discover that a torpedo had destroyed it. He went then to "Times Square", a central spot aboard the ship where the fore-to-aft and port- to-starboard passageways crossed, and reported himself available for other duty. Lieutenant Commander Doir C. Johnson, the ship's communications officer, spotted Miller and saw the potential of his powerful build, so he ordered him to accompany him to the bridge to assist in moving Captain Mervyn Bennion, who had a gaping wound in his abdomen where he had apparently been hit by shrapnel. Miller and another sailor lifted the skipper but were unable to remove him from the bridge, so they carried him from his exposed position on the damaged bridge to a sheltered spot behind the conning tower. The captain refused to leave his post, questioned his officers about the condition of the ship, and gave orders. Lieutenant Frederic H. White ordered Miller to help him and Ensign Victor Delano load the unmanned number 1 and number 2 Browning .50 caliber anti-aircraft machine guns aft of the conning tower. Miller was not familiar with the weapon, but White and Delano instructed him on how to operate it. Delano expected Miller to feed ammunition to one gun, but his attention was diverted and, when he looked again, Miller was firing one of the guns. White then loaded ammunition into both guns and assigned Miller the starboard gun. Miller fired the gun until he ran out of ammunition, when he was ordered by Lieutenant Claude V. Ricketts to help carry the captain up to the navigation bridge out of the thick oily smoke generated by the many fires on and around the ship. Bennion was only partially conscious at this point and died soon afterward. Japanese aircraft eventually dropped two armor-piercing bombs through the deck of the battleship and launched five 18-inch (460 mm) aircraft torpedoes into her port side. When the attack finally lessened, Miller helped move injured sailors through oil and water to the quarterdeck, thereby "unquestionably saving the lives of a number of people who might otherwise have been lost." The ship was heavily damaged by bombs, torpedoes, and resulting explosions and fires, but the crew prevented her from capsizing by counter-flooding a number of compartments. Instead, West Virginia sank to the harbor bottom as her surviving crew abandoned ship, including Miller. On December 15, Miller was transferred to the heavy cruiser . On January 1, 1942, the Navy released a list of commendations for actions on December 7. Among them was a single commendation for an unnamed Negro. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had asked President Franklin D. Roosevelt to award the Distinguished Service Cross to the unknown Negro sailor. The Navy Board of Awards received a recommendation that the sailor be considered for recognition. On March 12, 1942, an Associated Press story named Miller as the sailor, citing the African-American newspaper Pittsburgh Courier; additional news reports credited Dr. Lawrence D. Reddick with learning the name through correspondence with the Navy Department. In the following days, Senator James M. Mead (D-NY) introduced a Senate bill [] to award Miller the Medal of Honor, and Representative John D. Dingell, Sr. (D-MI) introduced a matching House bill []. Miller was recognized as one of the "first US heroes of World War II". He was commended in a letter signed by Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox on April 1, and the next day, CBS Radio broadcast an episode of the series "They Live Forever," which dramatized Miller's actions. Negro organizations began a campaign to honor Miller with additional recognition. On April 4, the Pittsburgh Courier urged readers to write to members of the congressional Naval Affairs Committee in support of awarding the Medal of Honor to Miller. The All-Southern Negro Youth Conference launched a signature campaign on April 17–19. On May 10, the National Negro Congress denounced Knox's recommendation against awarding Miller the Medal of Honor. On May 11, President Roosevelt approved the Navy Cross for Miller. On May 27, 1942, Miller was personally recognized by Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, aboard the aircraft carrier in Pearl Harbor. Nimitz presented Miller with the Navy Cross, at the time the third- highest Navy award for gallantry during combat, after the Medal of Honor and the Navy Distinguished Service Medal. (On August 7, 1942, Congress revised the order of precedence, placing the Navy Cross above the Distinguished Service Medal in precedence.) The citation reads as follows: For distinguished devotion to duty, extraordinary courage and disregard for his own personal safety during the attack on the Fleet in Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, by Japanese forces on December 7, 1941. While at the side of his Captain on the bridge, Miller, despite enemy strafing and bombing and in the face of a serious fire, assisted in moving his Captain, who had been mortally wounded, to a place of greater safety, and later manned and operated a machine gun directed at enemy Japanese attacking aircraft until ordered to leave the bridge. Nimitz said of Miller's commendation, "This marks the first time in this conflict that such high tribute has been made in the Pacific Fleet to a member of his race and I'm sure that the future will see others similarly honored for brave acts." Miller was advanced to Mess Attendant First Class on June 1, 1942. On June 27, the Pittsburgh Courier called for him to be allowed to return home for a war bond tour along with white war heroes. On July 25, the Pittsburgh Courier ran a photo of Miller with the caption "He Fought... Keeps Mop" next to a photo of a white survivor of the Pearl Harbor attack receiving an officer's commission. The photo caption stated that the Navy felt that Miller was "too important waiting tables in the Pacific" for him to return to the United States. On November 23, 1942, Miller returned to Pearl Harbor and was ordered on a war bond tour while still attached to Indianapolis. In December and January 1943, he gave presentations in Oakland, California, in his hometown of Waco in Dallas, and to the first graduating class of black sailors from Great Lakes Naval Training Station. He then reported to Puget Sound Navy Yard on May 15, 1943, and he was advanced to Cook Third Class on June 1 when he reported to the escort carrier . He was featured on the 1943 Navy recruiting poster "Above and beyond the call of duty", designed by David Stone Martin. After training in Hawaii, Liscome Bay took part in the Battle of Makin beginning November 20, 1943. On November 24, the ship was struck in the stern by a torpedo from the . The aircraft bomb magazine detonated a few moments later, causing the ship to sink in 23 minutes. There were 272 survivors from the crew of over 900, but Miller was among the two-thirds of the crew listed as "presumed dead". His parents were informed that he was missing in action on December 7, 1943, two years after his heroic actions at Pearl Harbor. A memorial service was held on April 30, 1944 at the Second Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, sponsored by the Victory Club. On May 28, a granite marker was dedicated at Moore High School in Waco to honor him. Miller was officially declared dead by the Navy on November 25, 1944, a year and a day after the loss of Liscome Bay. Memorials Doris Miller Memorial, a public art installation honoring Miller on the banks of the Brazos River in Waco, Texas. Groundbreaking held in October 2015. A nine-foot bronze statue was unveiled on December 7, 2017, temporarily located at nearby Bledsoe-Miller Park., A bronze commemorative plaque at the Doris Miller Park housing community located near Naval Station Pearl Harbor; organized by the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority and dedicated on October 12, 1991, which would have been Miller's 72nd birthday., Plaque in the Memorial Courtyard at the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas. Schools Dorie Miller Intermediate School, Ennis, Texas, Doris Miller Elementary School, San Antonio, Texas (opened 1947), Doris Miller Elementary School, San Diego, California (dedicated April 28, 1976), Dorie Miller Elementary School, Waco, Texas (closed 2012), Doris Miller Middle School, San Marcos, Texas Community-related (e.g. streets & parks) Bledsoe-Miller Community Center, recreation facility in Waco, Texas, jointly named for Jules Bledsoe, Dorie Miller Community Center, recreation facility in San Antonio, Texas, Dorie Miller Drive, Champaign, Illinois, Dorie Miller Homes, a housing community in Gary, Indiana, Dorie Miller Houses, a housing cooperative complex built in 1953 in the Corona neighborhood of Queens, New York, Dorie Miller Park, Lewisburg, West Virginia, Doris Miller Auditorium, in Rosewood Park in Austin, Texas, Doris Miller Community Center, recreation facility in Newport News, Virginia, Doris Miller Family YMCA, Waco, Texas, Doris Miller Loop, Honolulu, Hawaii, with monument located at north end of street, Doris Miller Memorial Park, a cemetery on the border of Waco and Bellmead, Texas, Dorie Miller Recreation Center, San Antonio, Texas Military-related , a was commissioned on June 30, 1973, in honor of Miller (decommissioned October 15, 1991), Bachelor Enlisted Quarters at Naval Station Great Lakes was dedicated in Miller's memory on December 7, 1971, Dorie Miller Galley, the main galley for Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, Doris Miller Dining Hall, located at Recruit Training Command, Great Lakes, Illinois, Doris Miller Dining Hall, located at Naval Air Station Chase Field, Beeville, Texas, Doris Miller Park, a housing community for military personnel in Honolulu, , a future . (Officially announced January 19, 2020) Veteran-related Dorie Miller Chapter 14 – Disabled American Veterans chapter in Washington, D.C., Dorie Miller Post 546 – American Legion post in Racine, Wisconsin, Dorie Miller Post 915 – American Legion post in Chicago, Dorie E. Miller Post 817 – American Legion post in Beaumont, Texas, Doris Miller Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Waco, Texas; includes monument and a road named Doris Miller Circle Radio In 1942, Miller's actions were dramatized on the CBS Radio series They Live Forever., The April 25, 1944, episode of the CBS Radio series Columbia Presents Corwin, titled "Dorie Got a Medal", starred Canada Lee and Josh White in Norman Corwin's "jazz-and-jive opera" about Miller., On the December 9, 1945, broadcast of his ABC radio series Orson Welles Commentaries, Orson Welles presented a tribute to Doris Miller and spoke to his father, Connery Miller. Broadcast from the U. S. Naval Training and Distribution Center on Treasure Island, San Francisco, the program announced the naming of three theater complexes to honor three World War II heroes killed in action. Theater One was named for Doris Miller; the other two theaters were named for Medal of Honor recipients John Basilone and Edward O'Hare. Film Although he is not identified by name, Miller is portrayed by Elven Havard in the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora!, In Michael Bay's 2001 film Pearl Harbor, Miller is portrayed by actor Cuba Gooding Jr., Miller being awarded the Navy Cross was portrayed in the 2019 film Midway. Other Founded in 1943, the Dorie Miller Foundation began giving an annual award in 1947 to an individual or group considered outstanding in the field of race relations. Recipients included Jackie Robinson, Jesse Owens, and Eleanor Roosevelt. The award later became the American Heritage & Freedom Award., The Gwendolyn Brooks poem Negro Hero (1945) is narrated from Miller's point of view., In 2002, Molefi Kete Asante included Miller on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans., Miller was honored by the United States Postal Service as one of four Distinguished Sailors, with a 44-cent commemorative stamp issued on February 4, 2010. Also honored were William Sims, Arleigh Burke, and John McCloy., Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) proposed bills in 2016 and 2017 that would authorize the Medal of Honor for Miller. List of people who disappeared mysteriously at sea USS West Virginia Action Report, for December 7, 1941, via Naval History and Heritage Command, "Dorie Got A Medal" (audio) from April 25, 1944, via radioechoes.com, "Orson Welles Commentaries" (audio) from December 9, 1945, via indiana.edu, The Texas Experience - Tom Landry Presents Dorie Miller (video), Texas Archive of the Moving Image, Doris Miller Memorial, Cultural Arts of Waco

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A moment of silence (sometimes referred to as a minute's silence or a one- minute silence) is a period of silent contemplation, prayer, reflection, or meditation. Similar to flying a flag at half-mast, a moment of silence is often a gesture of respect, particularly in mourning for those who have died recently or as part of a tragic historical event. One minute is a common length of time for the commemoration, though organizers may choose other periods of time, normally connected in some way with the event being commemorated (there might be a minute given for every death commemorated, for example). During the moment of silence, participants may typically bow their heads, remove hats, and refrain from speaking or moving for the duration. The first recorded instance of an official moment of silence dedicated to a person's death took place in Portugal on February 13, 1912. The Portuguese Senate dedicated 10 minutes of silence to José Maria da Silva Paranhos Júnior, baron of Rio Branco, Brazil, and Minister of the Exterior of the Brazilian government, who had died three days earlier on February 10. This moment of silence was registered in the Senate's records of that day. In the same year, large parts of the US kept a ceremonial silence to honour the dead of the Maine and the Titanic. Many people in the Commonwealth observe the two-minute silence at 11:00am on November 11 each year (Armistice Day) to remember sacrifices of members of the armed forces and of civilians in times of war. In addition, a two minutes of silence is also observed in the United Kingdom on the Sunday closest to 11th of November which is known as Remembrance Sunday and is televised with a close up image of the Big Ben clock chiming 11 and the buglers sounding the Last Post at 11:02am. In Israel, moments of silence are held in memory of the victims of the Holocaust on Yom HaShoah and in memory of fallen soldiers and of terrorist victims on the day before Israel's independence day. Moments of silence are often observed prior to sports matches, with reasons for silences ranging from national and international tragedies, to the death of individuals connected to the sport or specific clubs. Quakers have practised silent prayer, including moments of silence during other group activities, for more than 300 years. Since silence contains no statements or assumptions concerning beliefs and requires no understanding of language to interpret, it is more easily accepted and used than a spoken prayer or observance when persons of different religious and cultural backgrounds participate together. In the colonial period Pennsylvania Quakers and other Americans worshipped silently together on occasions, yet both groups thought that this implied that they had altered their traditional belief system in doing so. Over time, the effectiveness of Quaker-style silence for non-sectarian and non-controversial public observances has led to its almost universal use in the English-speaking world as well as in other plural societies. This is also the case within many institutions where diverse groups are expected to participate but not necessarily share beliefs - such as in government, schools, commercial companies and the military. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1962 that official organization, sponsorship, or endorsement of school prayer in public schools is forbidden by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Teachers and school officials may not lead classes in prayer, but prayer is permitted at voluntary religious clubs, and students are not prohibited from praying themselves. Other rulings have forbidden public, organized prayer at school assemblies, sporting events, and similar school-sponsored activities. Public moments of silence in the United States both arise from and contribute to this debate over prayer and the separation of church and state. A moment of silence lacks any specific religious formulation, and therefore it has been presented as a way of creating reflection and respect without endorsing any particular religion. President Ronald Reagan was a supporter of a moment of silence in American schools. In 1981 Reagan formally proposed a constitutional amendment permitting organized prayer in public schools. In his 1984 state of the union address, Reagan asked Congress, who begin their day with an invocation: "If you can begin your day with a member of the clergy standing right here leading you in prayer, then why can't freedom to acknowledge God be enjoyed again by children in every schoolroom across this land?" The Lubavitcher rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson was a strong advocate of a moment of silence every morning in public schools, citing the many polls as proof that it reduces crime. Colin Powell, a longtime advocate, has recommended a simple moment of silence at the start of each school day. Further, he states that students could use this interval to pray, meditate, contemplate or study. However, critics often view the moment of silence as publicly endorsing prayer "in disguise". This issue has been especially raised by atheists groups and advocates, who argue that no non-religious purpose is served by designating an official moment of silence. They point out, for example, that many schools have entire class periods dedicated to silent study, which can equally be used for silent prayer or meditation. Moments of silence point to the tension in the U.S. Constitution and society between accommodation and endorsement. Accommodation of religion is to ensure an environment where a person or student can practice their religion. A question with "moments of silence" laws is whether accommodation was already achieved by the fact that a student can pray or meditate on his/her own without an official moment of silence. Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State said, on a "moment of silence" case, "Students were already allowed to pray, meditate, or reflect under the statute before it was amended. The addition of the word 'pray' where it wasn't needed clearly shows that legislators intended to promote religion, and that's not their job." Courts have stated on these moments of silence cases that a secular purpose is necessary and according to Wallace v. Jaffree, a "statute must be invalidated if it is entirely motivated by a purpose to advance religion." Although since 1976 the state Virginia law permitted school districts to implement 60 seconds of silence at the start of each school day, in 1985, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an Alabama "moment of silence or voluntary prayer" law was unconstitutional, in the case Wallace v. Jaffree. In April 2000, a new law came into being; requiring all Virginian public school students to observe a moment of silence. Also, in 2005, a law was passed in Indiana requiring all public schools to give students a chance to say the pledge of allegiance and observe a moment of silence every day. In October 2007, Illinois enacted legislation to require public schools to provide students with a moment of silence at the start of the school day, a statute that is currently being challenged in Illinois state courts. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia also require such moments of quiet in the classroom. In more than 20 other states, teachers are allowed to decide whether they want such a classroom time-out. In October 2000, the U.S. District Judge Claude M. Hilton ruled that the "moment of silence" law was constitutional. Judge Hilton stated, "The court finds that the Commonwealth's daily observance of one minute of silence act is constitutional. The act was enacted for a secular purpose, does not advance or inhibit religion, nor is there excessive entanglement with religion... Students may think as they wish – and this thinking can be purely religious in nature or purely secular in nature. All that is required is that they sit silently." His ruling was upheld in the 4th circuit. Others argued that the law was not enacted for a secular purpose, pointing to statements made by supporters of the legislation. State Senator Charles R. Hawkins (R-Pennsylvania) stated the moment of silence is "a very small measure to address a very large problem." He also said, "Prayer is not a bad word in my vocabulary." Kent Willis, Executive Director of the ACLU of Virginia, stated lawmakers are "at the very least placing Virginia law right on the line of separation of church and state or they are crossing it . . . the state is playing with fire here." The American Civil Liberties Union was opposed to a proposed constitutional amendment by Newt Gingrich in the early 1990s which would have set aside a voluntary moment of prayer during the school day, which was later independently described by President Bill Clinton as a "moment of silence". They considered this a stealth endorsement of prayer in school. Remembrance Day, Separation of church and state in the United States, Silent Minute, Two-minute silence, Vow of silence Nothing Really Matters, an article about the moment of silence by a Chabad rabbi, Moment of Silence lawsuit in Texas Remembrance Day (sometimes known informally as Poppy Day owing to the tradition of the remembrance poppy) is a memorial day observed in Commonwealth member states since the end of the First World War to remember the members of their armed forces who have died in the line of duty. Following a tradition inaugurated by King George V in 1919, the day is also marked by war remembrances in many non-Commonwealth countries. Remembrance Day is observed on 11 November in most countries to recall the end of hostilities of First World War on that date in 1918. Hostilities formally ended "at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month", in accordance with the armistice signed by representatives of Germany and the Entente between 5:12 and 5:20 that morning. ("At the 11th hour" refers to the passing of the 11th hour, or 11:00 am.) The First World War officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919. The tradition of Remembrance Day evolved out of Armistice Day. The initial Armistice Day was observed at Buckingham Palace, commencing with King George V hosting a "Banquet in Honour of the President of the French Republic" during the evening hours of 10 November 1919. The first official Armistice Day was subsequently held on the grounds of Buckingham Palace the following morning. During the Second World War, many countries changed the name of the holiday. Member states of the Commonwealth of Nations adopted Remembrance Day, while the US chose Veterans Day. The common British, Canadian, South African, and ANZAC tradition includes a one- or two-minute silence at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month (11:00 am, 11 November), as that marks the time (in the United Kingdom) when the armistice became effective. The Service of Remembrance in many Commonwealth countries generally includes the sounding of the "Last Post", followed by the period of silence, followed by the sounding of "Reveille" or sometimes just "The Rouse" (often confused for each other), and finished by a recitation of the "Ode of Remembrance". The "Flowers of the Forest", "O Valiant Hearts", "I Vow to Thee, My Country" and "Jerusalem" are often played during the service. Services also include wreaths laid to honour the fallen, a blessing, and national anthems. The central ritual at cenotaphs throughout the Commonwealth is a stylised night vigil. The Last Post was the common bugle call at the close of the military day, and The Rouse was the first call of the morning. For military purposes, the traditional night vigil over the slain was not just to ensure they were indeed dead and not unconscious or in a coma, but also to guard them from being mutilated or despoiled by the enemy, or dragged off by scavengers. This makes the ritual more than just an act of remembrance but also a pledge to guard the honour of war dead. The act is enhanced by the use of dedicated cenotaphs (literally Greek for "empty tomb") and the laying of wreaths—the traditional means of signalling high honours in ancient Greece and Rome. In Australia, Remembrance Day is always observed on 11 November, regardless of the day of the week, and is not a public holiday; it is a time when people can pay their respects to the substantial number of soldiers who died in battle. Some institutions observe two-minutes' silence at 11 am through a programme named Read 2 Remember, children read the Pledge of Remembrance by Rupert McCall, and teachers deliver specially developed resources to help children understand the significance of the day and the resilience of those who have fought for their country and call on children to also be resilient when facing difficult times. Services are held at 11 am at war memorials and schools in suburbs and cities across the country, at which the "Last Post" is sounded by a bugler and a one-minute silence is observed. When Remembrance Day falls on a normal working day in Melbourne and other major cities, buglers from the Australian Defence Force often play the "Last Post" at major street corners in the CBD. While this occurs, the majority of passers-by stop and observe a moment of silence while waiting for the bugler to finish the recital. In interwar Australia, Remembrance Day (then often referred to as Armistice Day) was a popular public commemoration. But from 1946 to the 1970s, Australians observed Remembrance Sunday following the British pattern. It is only in the 1980s and 1990s that Remembrance Day was once again systematically observed on 11 November. The resurgence of Remembrance Day became official on 30 October 1997, when the Governor-General, under the Howard government, proclaimed that ‘(a) 11 November in each year shall be known and observed as Remembrance Day; and (b) all Australians are urged to observe, unless impracticable, one minute’s silence at 11:00 on Remembrance Day each year’. In recent decades, Remembrance Day has been largely eclipsed as the national day of war commemoration by ANZAC Day (25 April), which is a public holiday in all states. Attendance at Anzac Day services boomed, while that to Remembrance Day services continued to decline. Historian Romain Fathi explains: “In Australia, Anzac Day has addressed the question of the meaning of the war far better than Remembrance Day or Remembrance Sunday. It can acknowledge loss and suffering with a nod to the sacred, while simultaneously representing imagined distinct national values such as mateship, laconic humour and stoicism. This capacity to connect the national community to the numinous explains Anzac Day’s primacy over Remembrance Day.” In Barbados, Remembrance Day is not a public holiday. It is recognised as 11 November, but the parade and ceremonial events are carried out on Remembrance Sunday. The day is celebrated to recognise the Barbadian soldiers who died fighting in the First and Second World Wars. The parade is held at National Heroes' Square, where an interdenominational service is held. The Governor- General and Barbadian Prime Minister are among those who attend, along with other government dignitaries and the heads of the police and military forces. During the main ceremony a , wreaths, and prayers are also performed at the war memorial Cenotaph at the heart of Heroes' Square in Bridgetown. In Belize, Remembrance Day is observed on 11 November. It is not a public holiday. In Bermuda, which sent the first colonial volunteer unit to the Western Front in 1915, and which had more people per capita in uniform during the Second World War than any other part of the Empire, Remembrance Day is still an important holiday. The parade in Hamilton had historically been a large and colourful one, as contingents from the Royal Navy, British Regular Army and Territorial Army units of the Bermuda Garrison, the Canadian Forces, the US Army, Air Force, and Navy, and various cadet corps and other services all at one time or another marched with the veterans. Since the closing of British, Canadian, and American bases in 1995, the parade has barely grown smaller. In addition to the ceremony held in the City of Hamilton on Remembrance Day itself, marching to the Cenotaph (a smaller replica of the one in London), where wreaths are laid and orations made, the Royal Navy and the Bermuda Sea Cadet Corps held a parade the same day at the memorial in Hamilton, and a smaller military parade is also held in St. George's on the nearest Sunday to Remembrance Day. In Canada, Remembrance Day (Jour du Souvenir) is a statutory holiday in all three territories and in six of the ten provinces. Nova Scotia recognises the day separately under their provincial Remembrance Day act; but Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec do not treat the day as an official holiday in any capacity. From 1921 to 1930, the Armistice Day Act provided that Thanksgiving would be observed on Armistice Day, which was fixed by statute on the Monday of the week in which 11 November fell. In 1931, the federal parliament adopted an act to amend the Armistice Day Act, providing that the day should be observed on 11 November and that the day should be known as Remembrance Day. A bill (C-597) intended to make Remembrance Day a federal statutory holiday was tabled in the House of Commons during the 41st parliament, but died on the order paper when parliament was dissolved for a federal election. In a more informal manner, there has been the opinion voiced against the marketing trend called Christmas creep that the conclusion of Remembrance Day should be the earliest acceptable time in which to mark the Christmas holidays. The federal department of Veterans Affairs Canada states that the date is of "remembrance for the men and women who have served, and continue to serve our country during times of war, conflict and peace"; particularly the First and Second World Wars, the Korean War, and all conflicts since then in which members of the Canadian Armed Forces have participated. The department runs a program called Canada Remembers with the mission of helping young and new Canadians, most of whom have never known war, "come to understand and appreciate what those who have served Canada in times of war, armed conflict and peace stand for and what they have sacrificed for their country." The official national ceremonies are held at the National War Memorial in Ottawa. These are presided over by the Governor General of Canada and attended by the prime minister, other dignitaries, the Silver Cross Mother, and public observers. Occasionally, a member of the Canadian Royal Family may also be present (such as Prince Charles in 2009 and Princess Anne in 2014). Before the start of the event, four sentries and three sentinels (two flag sentinels and one nursing sister) are posted at the foot of the cenotaph. The commemoration then typically begin with the tolling of the carillon in the Peace Tower, during which current members of the armed forces arrive at Confederation Square, followed by the Ottawa diplomatic corps, ministers of the Crown, special guests, the Royal Canadian Legion (RCL), the royal party (if present), and the viceregal party. The arrival of the governor general is announced by a trumpeter sounding the "Alert", whereupon the viceroy is met by the Dominion President of the RCL and escorted to a dais to receive the Viceregal Salute, after which the national anthem, "O Canada", is played. The moment of remembrance begins with the bugling of "Last Post" immediately before 11:00 am, at which time the gun salute fires and the bells of the Peace Tower toll the hour. Another gun salute signals the end of the two minutes of silence, and cues the playing of a lament, the bugling of "The Rouse", and the reading of the Act of Remembrance. A flypast of Royal Canadian Air Force craft then occurs at the start of a 21-gun salute, upon the completion of which a choir sings "In Flanders Fields". The various parties then lay their wreaths at the base of the memorial; one wreath is set by the Silver Cross Mother (a recent recipient of the Memorial Cross) on behalf of all mothers whose children died in conflicts in which Canada participated. The viceregal and/or royal group return to the dais to receive the playing of the Canadian Royal Anthem, "God Save the Queen", prior to the assembled armed forces personnel and veterans performing a march past in front of the viceroy and any royal guest, bringing about the end of the official ceremonies. A tradition of paying more personal tribute has emerged since erection of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the War Memorial in 2000: after the official ceremony the general public place their poppies atop the tomb. Similar ceremonies take place in provincial capitals across the country, officiated by the relevant lieutenant governor, as well as in other cities, towns, and even hotels or corporate headquarters. Schools will usually hold special assemblies for the first half of the day, or on the school day prior, with various presentations concerning the remembrance of the war dead. The largest indoor ceremony in Canada is usually held in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, with over 9,000 gathering in Credit Union Centre in 2010; the ceremony participants include veterans, current members of the Canadian forces, and sea, army, and air cadet units. In 1994, National Aboriginal Veterans Day was inaugurated to recognise the contribution of Aboriginal soldiers. In 2001, Merchant Navy Remembrance Day was created by the Canadian parliament, designating 3 September as a day to recognise the contributions and sacrifice of Canadian merchant mariners. In India, the day is usually marked by tributes and ceremonies in army cantonments. There are memorial services in some churches such as St. Mark's Cathedral and St. John's Church in Bangalore. At Kohima and Imphal in the remote hillsides of North East India, services of remembrance supported by the Indian Army are observed at Kohima and Imphal War Cemeteries (maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission). The day is also marked at the Delhi War Cemetery. In other places in India this event is not observed. In 2013, Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, marked the day in Mumbai's St. John the Evangelist Church. In Kenya, the Kenya Armed Forces Old Comrades Association (KAFOCA) was established in Kenya immediately in 1945 to cater for the welfare of the Ex- servicemen of the First and the Second World Wars. The KAFOCA and Kenyan government recognise Remembrance Day. New Zealand's national day of remembrance is Anzac Day, 25 April. "Poppy Day" usually occurs on the Friday before Anzac Day. The reason for New Zealand having their remembrance on Anzac Day happened in 1921. The paper Poppies for Armistice that year arrived by ship too late for 11 November 1921, so an RSA branch distributed them at the next commemoration date (25 April 1922, which happened to be Anzac Day) and that date stuck as the new Poppy Day in New Zealand. Armistice Day was observed in New Zealand between the World Wars, although it was always secondary to Anzac Day. As in other countries, New Zealand's Armistice Day was converted to Remembrance Day after World War II, but this was not a success. By the mid-1950s the day was virtually ignored, even by churches and veterans' organisations. Since the Unknown Warrior being returned to New Zealand for Armistice Day 2004, more ceremonies are now being held in New Zealand on Armistice Day and more churches are now observing Remembrance Sunday. Like Barbados, St. Lucia does not recognise Remembrance day as a public holiday. Instead, ceremonial events such as parades and other activities are held on Remembrance Sunday. The parade is held at the central square, namely the Derek Walcott Square, where the Cenotaph is located. There, members of the Royal St Lucia Police Force and other uniformed groups such as the St Lucia Cadet Corps pay tribute through commemoration of St. Lucian men and women who fought in the war. In South Africa, Remembrance Day is not a public holiday. Commemoration ceremonies are usually held on the nearest Sunday, at which the "Last Post" is played by a bugler followed by the observation of a two-minute silence. Ceremonies to mark the event in South Africa are held at the Cenotaph in Cape Town, and in Pretoria at the Voortrekker Monument cenotaph and the War Memorial at the Union Buildings. Many high schools hold Remembrance Day services to honour the past pupils who died in the two World Wars and the Border war. In addition, the South African Legion of Military Veterans holds a street collection on the nearest Saturday to gather funds to assist in welfare work among military veterans. Wreath-laying ceremonies, usually organised by local branches of the Royal British Legion, are observed on Remembrance Day at most war memorials across the UK at 11 am on 11 November, with two minutes of silence observed; a custom which had lapsed before a campaign for its revival began in the early 1990s. The silence is also broadcast as a special programme on BBC with a voice over usually saying "This is BBC One. Now on the 11th hour, of the 11th day of the 11th month. The traditional two minute silence for Armistice Day." The programme starts with a close up of the Big Ben clock chiming 11 and then the programme shows different parts of the world observing the silence. The programme ends with a bugler sounding The Rouse and then normal programming is resumed. Many employers and businesses invite their staff and customers to observe the two minutes' silence at 11:00 am. The beginning and end of the two minutes' silence is often marked in large towns and cities by the firing of ceremonial cannon. The first two-minute silence held in London (11 November 1919) was reported in the Manchester Guardian on 12 November 1919: The first stroke of eleven produced a magical effect. The tram cars glided into stillness, motors ceased to cough and fume, and stopped dead, and the mighty- limbed dray horses hunched back upon their loads and stopped also, seeming to do it of their own volition. Someone took off his hat, and with a nervous hesitancy the rest of the men bowed their heads also. Here and there an old soldier could be detected slipping unconsciously into the posture of 'attention'. An elderly woman, not far away, wiped her eyes, and the man beside her looked white and stern. Everyone stood very still ... The hush deepened. It had spread over the whole city and become so pronounced as to impress one with a sense of audibility. It was a silence which was almost pain ... And the spirit of memory brooded over it all. In the United Kingdom, the main observance is Remembrance Sunday, held on the Sunday nearest to 11 November. There is a National Service of Remembrance in London, as well as other services and ceremonies in the regions. Typically, poppy wreaths are laid by representatives of the Crown, the armed forces, and local civic leaders, as well as by local organisations including ex-servicemen organisations, cadet forces, the Scouts, Guides, Boys' Brigade, St John Ambulance and the Salvation Army. A minute's or two minutes' silence is also frequently incorporated into church services. In 2014 the Royal Mint issued a colour-printed Alderney £5 coin, designed by engraver Laura Clancy, to commemorate Remembrance Day. Also in 2014, to commemorate the outbreak of World War I a huge display called Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, consisting of 888,246 ceramic poppies was installed in the moat of the Tower of London, each poppy representing a British Empire fatality. On 5 November 2018 and set to continue for 4 months, about 10,000 torches were lit at the foot of the Tower's walls, in its dry moat to mark the centenary of the end of the World War I. Remembrance Day is officially observed in Northern Ireland in the same way as in the rest of United Kingdom, although it tends to be associated more with the unionist community. Most Irish nationalists and republicans do not take part in the public commemoration of British soldiers organised by the Royal British Legion. This is mainly due to the actions of the British Army during The Troubles. However, some moderate nationalists began to attend Remembrance Day events as a way to connect with the unionist community. In 1987 a bomb was detonated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) just before a Remembrance Sunday ceremony in Enniskillen, killing eleven people. The IRA said it had made a mistake and had been targeting soldiers parading to the war memorial. The bombing was widely condemned and attendance at Remembrance events, by both nationalists and unionists, rose in the following years. The Republic of Ireland has a National Day of Commemoration in July for all Irish people who have died in war. Remembrance Day (11 November) is a national holiday in France and Belgium. It commemorates the armistice signed between the Allies and Germany at Compiègne, France, for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front, which took effect at 11:00 am—the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month." Armistice Day is one of the most important military celebrations in France, since it was a major French victory and the French paid a heavy price in blood to achieve it. The First World War was considered in France as the "Great Patriotic War". Almost all French villages feature memorials dedicated to those fallen during the conflict. In France the blue cornflower (Bleuet de France) is used symbolically rather than the poppy. In 2009 the Danish government established Veterans' Day with early events on 5 September where past and present members of the armed forces, who have done service in armed conflict, are remembered. The German national day of mourning is the secular public holiday of Volkstrauertag, which since 1952 has been observed two Sundays before the first Sunday of Advent; in practice this is the Sunday closest to 16 November. The anniversary of the Armistice itself is not observed in Germany. Each of the major German churches has its own festivals for commemorating the dead, observed in November: All Souls Day in the case of the Roman Catholic Church, Ewigkeitssonntag or "Eternity Sunday" in the case of the Lutheran church. Though not a public holiday since July 1997, Remembrance Sunday is observed in Hong Kong, and is marked by a multi-faith memorial service at the Cenotaph in Central, Hong Kong. The service is organised by the Hong Kong ex-servicemen Association, and is attended by various Government officials and the representatives of various religious traditions such as the Anglican Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Buddhist community, the Taoist community, the Muslim community and the Sikh community. Although Hong Kong ceased to be part of the Commonwealth of Nations in 1997, the memorial service still resembles those in many other Commonwealth countries. The service includes the sounding of "Last Post", two minutes of silence, the sounding of "Reveille", the laying of wreaths, and prayers, and ends with a recitation of the "Ode of Remembrance". The Hong Kong Police Band continues to perform their ceremonial duty at the service. Members of the Hong Kong Air Cadet Corps (including the Ceremonial Squadron), Hong Kong Adventure Corps, Hong Kong Sea Cadet Corps and scouting organisations are also in attendance. In the Republic of Ireland, Armistice or Remembrance Day is not a public holiday. In July there is a National Day of Commemoration for Irish men and women who have died in war. Nevertheless, Remembrance Sunday is marked by a ceremony in St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, which the President of Ireland attends. During World War I, many Irishmen served in the British Army, but official commemoration of them (and other British soldiers) has been controversial. The British Army was used to suppress the Easter Rising (1916) and fought the forces of the Irish Republic during the Irish War of Independence (1919–22). A very small number of people living in the Republic still enlist in the British Army, although the British Army is banned from recruiting there under the Defence Act 1954. The Irish National War Memorial Gardens in Dublin is dedicated to the memory of the 49,400 Irish soldiers who were killed in action in World War I. In Israel there are two ceremonies, the first being in Jerusalem, at the British War Cemetery on the Saturday before Remembrance Sunday, organised by the British Consul in Jerusalem. The second ceremony is in Ramleh on the Sunday itself, organised by the British embassy in Tel Aviv. The Ramleh ceremony is the larger, and is also attended by veterans of the Second World War. In Italy, soldiers who died for the nation are remembered on 4 November, when the ceasefire that followed the Armistice of Villa Giusti in 1918 began. The Day is known as the Day of National Unity Day of the Armed Forces, Giorno dell'Unità Nazionale Giornata delle Forze Armate in Italian. Since 1977, this day has not been a public holiday; now, many services are held on the first Sunday in November. In the Netherlands, Remembrance Day is commemorated annually on 4 May. It is not a public holiday. Throughout the country, military personnel and civilians fallen in various conflicts since World War II are remembered. The main ceremonies are at the Waalsdorpervlakte near The Hague, the Grebbeberg near Wageningen and Dam Square in Amsterdam. Two minutes of silence are observed at 8:00 pm. Remembrance Day is followed by Liberation Day on 5 May. In Norway the Norwegian Armed Forces commemorate Veteran's Day. The Norwegian Parliament, the Storting, decreed that Veteran's Day would be observed on the same day as Victory in Europe Day, in Norway known as "Frigjøringsdagen", or Liberation Day. The ceremonies are held annually in Akershus Fortress, with the King of Norway, Harald V, present. The first of such ceremonies was held on 8 May 2011, with two Norwegian Special Forces Operators being awarded the War Cross for deployments in the recent War in Afghanistan. The ceremonies are observed with memorials and military salutes. 11 November is a public holiday in Poland called Independence Day, as the ending of First World War allowed Polish people to regain the freedom and unity of their country after 123 years of partition. Major events include laying flowers on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by members of the government and highest authorities, other public ceremonies and church services and school celebrations. It has been a statutory holiday in Serbia since 2012. Serbia is an Allied force that suffered the biggest casualty rate in World War I. To commemorate their victims, people in Serbia wear Natalie's ramonda as a symbol of remembrance. Veterans Day is observed in the United States on 11 November, and is both a federal holiday and a state holiday in all states. However, the function of the observance elsewhere is more closely matched by Memorial Day in May. In the United States, and some other allied nations, 11 November was formerly known as Armistice Day; in the United States it was given its new name in 1954 at the end of the Korean War to honour all veterans. Veterans Day is observed with memorial ceremonies, salutes at military cemeteries, and parades. Armistice Day, Armed Forces Day, American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, Earl Haig Fund, Heroes' Day, Remembrance Day bombing, Remembrance of the Dead (The Netherlands), Remembrance Poppy, Remembrance Sunday, Returned and Services League of Australia, Royal New Zealand Returned and Services' Association, The Soldier, Two-minute silence, The Unknown Warrior, Veterans' Bill of Rights, Victory Day, Victory Day (Eastern Front), Volkstrauertag, White poppy (symbol) Royal New Zealand Returned and Services Association, Commemoration – Red poppies, Royal Canadian Legion, Returned & Services League of Australia, South African Legion, Canadian Poppy Coin Annual Sikh Remembrance Day Service, Remembrance Day Single Remember Poppy Day by Olly Wedgwood, Remembrance Day For All – Towards discussion that includes everyone in our Remembrance of Canada’s wars., The Poppy Appeal (Royal British Legion), Memorable Order of Tin Hats (South Africa), Free On-line Remembrance Day and Remembrance Week Lessons for Canadian Educators (Reading and Remembrance), Jonathan F. Vance: Commemoration and Cult of the Fallen (Canada), in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War. In the United States, Patriot Day occurs on September 11 of each year in memory of the people killed in the September 11 attacks of the year 2001. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, President George W. Bush proclaimed Friday, September 14, 2001, as a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance for the Victims of the Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001. A bill to make September 11 a national day of mourning was introduced in the U.S. House on October 25, 2001, by Rep. Vito Fossella (R-NY) with 22 co-sponsors, among them 11 Democrats and 11 Republicans. The bill requested that the President designate September 11 of each year as Patriot Day. Joint Resolution 71 passed the House by a vote of 407–0, with 25 members not voting. The bill passed the Senate unanimously on November 30. President Bush signed the resolution into law on December 18 as . On September 4, 2002, President Bush used the authority of the resolution to proclaim September 11, 2002, as the first Patriot Day. Original co-sponsors in the House were: Gary Ackerman (D-NY), Rick Boucher (D-VA), Eliot Engel (D-NY), Phil English (R-PA), Randy Forbes (R-VA), Benjamin Gilman (R-NY), Felix Grucci (R-NY), Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), Steve Israel (D-NY), Peter T. King (R-NY), Ray LaHood (R-IL), Nita Lowey (D-NY), Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Michael R. McNulty (D-NY), Jim Moran (D-VA), Jerry Nadler (D-NY), John E. Peterson (R-PA), Thomas M. Reynolds (R-NY), Ed Schrock (R-VA), Don Sherwood (R-PA), Ed Towns (D-NY), James T. Walsh (R-NY) From 2009 to 2016, President Barack Obama proclaimed September 11 as Patriot Day and National Day of Service and Remembrance, in observance of , the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act. In 2017, 2018 and 2019, President Donald Trump proclaimed September 8–10 as National Days of Prayer and Remembrance, and proclaimed September 11 as Patriot Day. The flag of the United States is flown at half-mast at the White House and on all U.S. government buildings and establishments throughout the world; Americans are also encouraged to display flags in and outside their homes. Additionally, a moment of silence is observed to correspond with the attacks, beginning at 8:46 a.m. (Eastern Daylight Time), the time the first plane, American Airlines Flight 11, struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Patriot Day is not a federal holiday; schools and businesses remain open in observance of the occasion, although memorial ceremonies for the victims are often held. Volunteer and service opportunities are coordinated by the Corporation for National and Community Service. Text of the statute, Public Law 107-89, 2001 proclamation, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, , 2010, 2011, Detailed information on the bill from THOMAS, U.S. Army's Patriot Day Website

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Lyra (; Latin for lyre, from Greek λύρα) is a small constellation. It is one of 48 listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy, and is one of the 88 constellations recognized by the International Astronomical Union. Lyra was often represented on star maps as a vulture or an eagle carrying a lyre, and hence is sometimes referred to as Vultur Cadens or Aquila Cadens ("Falling Vulture" or "Falling Eagle"), respectively. Beginning at the north, Lyra is bordered by Draco, Hercules, Vulpecula, and Cygnus. Lyra is nearly overhead in temperate northern latitudes shortly after midnight at the start of summer. From the equator to about the 40th parallel south it is visible low in the northern sky during the same (thus winter) months. Vega, Lyra's brightest star, is one of the brightest stars in the night sky, and forms a corner of the famed Summer Triangle asterism. Beta Lyrae is the prototype of a class of binary star known as Beta Lyrae variables. These binary stars are so close to each other that they become egg-shaped and material flows from one to the other. Epsilon Lyrae, known informally as the Double Double, is a complex multiple star system. Lyra also hosts the Ring Nebula, the second-discovered and best-known planetary nebula. In Greek mythology, Lyra represents the lyre of Orpheus. Made by Hermes from a tortoise shell, given to Apollo as a bargain, it was said to be the first lyre ever produced. Orpheus's music was said to be so great that even inanimate objects such as trees, streams, and rocks could be charmed. Joining Jason and the Argonauts, his music was able to quell the voices of the dangerous Sirens, who sang tempting songs to the Argonauts. At one point, Orpheus married Eurydice, a nymph. While fleeing from an attack by Aristaeus, she stepped on a snake that bit her, killing her. To reclaim her, Orpheus entered the Underworld, where the music from his lyre charmed Hades. Hades relented and let Orpheus bring Eurydice back, on the condition that he never once look back until outside. Unfortunately, near the very end, Orpheus faltered and looked back, causing Eurydice to be left in the Underworld forever. Orpheus spent the rest of his life strumming his lyre while wandering aimlessly through the land, rejecting all marriage offers from women. There are two competing myths relating to the death of Orpheus. According to Eratosthenes, Orpheus failed to make a necessary sacrifice to Dionysus due to his regard for Apollo as the supreme deity instead. Dionysus then sent his followers to rip Orpheus apart. Ovid tells a rather different story, saying that women, in retribution for Orpheus's rejection of marriage offers, ganged up and threw stones and spears. At first, his music charmed them as well, but eventually their numbers and clamor overwhelmed his music and he was hit by the spears. Both myths then state that his lyre was placed in the sky by Zeus, and Orpheus' bones buried by the muses. Vega and its surrounding stars are also treated as a constellation in other cultures. The area corresponding to Lyra was seen by the Arabs as a vulture or an eagle carrying a lyre, either enclosed in its wings, or in its beak. In Wales, Lyra is known as King Arthur's Harp (Talyn Arthur), and King David's harp. The Persian Hafiz called it the Lyre of Zurah. It has been called the Manger of the Infant Saviour, Praesepe Salvatoris. In Australian Aboriginal astronomy, Lyra is known by the Boorong people in Victoria as the Malleefowl constellation. Lyra was known as Urcuchillay by the Incas and was worshipped as an animal deity. Lyra is bordered by Vulpecula to the south, Hercules to the east, Draco to the north, and Cygnus to the west. Covering 286.5 square degrees, it ranks 52nd of the 88 modern constellations in size. It appears prominently in the northern sky during the Northern Hemisphere's summer, and the whole constellation is visible for at least part of the year to observers north of latitude 42°S. Its main asterism consists of six stars, and 73 stars in total are brighter than magnitude 6.5. The constellation's boundaries, as set by Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a 17-sided polygon. In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between and , while the declination coordinates are between and . The International Astronomical Union (IAU) adopted the three-letter abbreviation "Lyr" for the constellation in 1922. German cartographer Johann Bayer used the Greek letters alpha through nu to label the most prominent stars in the constellation. English astronomer John Flamsteed observed and labelled two stars each as delta, epsilon, zeta and nu. He added pi and rho, not using xi and omicron as Bayer used these letters to denote Cygnus and Hercules on his map. The brightest star in the constellation is Vega (Alpha Lyrae), a main-sequence star of spectral type A0Va. Only 7.7 parsecs distant, is a Delta Scuti variable, varying between magnitudes −0.02 and 0.07 over 0.2 days. On average, it is the second-brightest star of a northern hemisphere (after Arcturus) and the fifth-brightest star in all, surpassed only by Arcturus, Alpha Centauri, Canopus, and Sirius. Vega was the pole star in the year 12,000 BCE, and will again become the pole star around 14,000 CE. Vega is one of the most-magnificent of all stars, and has been called "arguably the next most important star in the sky after the Sun". Vega was the first star other than the Sun to be photographed, as well as the first to have a clear spectrum recorded, showing absorption lines for the first time. The star was the first single main-sequence star other than the Sun to be known to emit X-rays, and is surrounded by a circumstellar debris disk, similar to the Kuiper Belt. Vega forms one corner of the famous Summer Triangle asterism; along with Altair and Deneb, these three stars form a prominent triangle during the northern hemisphere summer. Vega also forms one vertex of a much smaller triangle, along with Epsilon and Zeta Lyrae. Zeta forms a wide binary star visible in binoculars, consisting of an Am star and an F-type subgiant. The Am star has an additional close companion, bringing the total number of stars in the system to three. Epsilon is a more famous wide binary that can even be separated by the naked eye under good conditions. Both components are themselves close binaries which can be seen with telescopes to consist of A- and F-type stars, and a faint star was recently found to orbit component C as well, for a total of five stars. In contrast to Zeta and Epsilon Lyrae, Delta Lyrae is an optical double, with the two stars simply lying along the same line of sight east of Zeta. The brighter and closer of the two, Delta Lyrae, is a 4th-magnitude red bright giant that varies semiregularly by around 0.2 magnitudes with a dominant period of 79 days, while the fainter Delta Lyrae is a spectroscopic binary consisting of a B-type primary and an unknown secondary. Both systems, however, have very similar radial velocities, and are the two brightest members of a sparse open cluster known as the Delta Lyrae cluster. South of Delta is Gamma Lyrae, a blue giant and the second-brightest star in the constellation. Around 190 parsecs distant, it has been referred to as a "superficially normal" star. The final star forming the lyre's figure is Beta Lyrae, also a binary composed of a blue bright giant and an early B-type star. In this case, the stars are so close together that the larger giant is overflowing its Roche lobe and transferring material to the secondary, forming a semidetached system. The secondary, originally the less massive of the two, has accreted so much mass that it is now substantially more massive, albeit smaller, than the primary, and is surrounded by a thick accretion disk. The plane of the orbit is aligned with Earth and the system thus shows eclipses, dropping nearly a full magnitude from its 3rd-magnitude baseline every 13 days, although its period is increasing by around 19 seconds per year. It is the prototype of the Beta Lyrae variables, eclipsing semidetached binaries of early spectral types in which there are no exact onsets of eclipses, but rather continuous changes in brightness. Another easy-to-spot variable is the bright R Lyrae, north of the main asterism. Also known as 13 Lyrae, it is a 4th-magnitude red giant semiregular variable that varies by several tenths of a magnitude. Its periodicity is complex, with several different periods of varying lengths, most notably one of 46 days and one of 64 days. Even further north is FL Lyrae, a much fainter 9th-magnitude Algol variable that drops by half a magnitude every 2.18 days during the primary eclipse. Both components are main-sequence stars, the primary being late F-type and the secondary late G-type. The system was one of the first main-sequence eclipsing binaries containing G-type star to have its properties known as well as the better- studied early-type eclipsing binaries. At the very northernmost edge of the constellation is the even fainter V361 Lyrae, an eclipsing binary that does not easily fall into one of the traditional classes, with features of Beta Lyrae, W Ursae Majoris, and cataclysmic variables. It may be a representative of a very brief phase in which the system is transitioning into a contact binary. It can be found less than a degree away from the naked-eye star 16 Lyrae, a 5th-magnitude A-type subgiant located around 37 parsecs distant. The brightest star not included in the asterism and the westernmost cataloged by Bayer or Flamsteed is Kappa Lyrae, a typical red giant around 73 parsecs distant. Similar bright orange or red giants include the 4th-magnitude Theta Lyrae, Lambda Lyrae, and HD 173780. Lambda is located just south of Gamma, Theta is positioned in the east, and HD 173780, the brightest star in the constellation with no Bayer or Flamsteed designation, is more southernly. Just north of Theta and of almost exactly the same magnitude is Eta Lyrae, a blue subgiant with a near-solar metal abundance. Also nearby is the faint HP Lyrae, a post-asymptotic giant branch (AGB) star that shows variability. The reason for its variability is still a mystery: first cataloged as an eclipsing binary, it was theorized to be an RV Tauri variable in 2002, but if so, it would be by far the hottest such variable discovered. In the extreme east is RR Lyrae, the prototype of the large class of variables known as RR Lyrae variables, which are pulsating variables similar to Cepheids, but are evolved population II stars of spectral types A and F. Such stars are usually not found in a galaxy's thin disk, but rather in the galactic halo. Such stars serve as standard candles, and thus are a reliable way to calculate distances to the globular clusters in which they reside. RR Lyrae itself varies between magnitudes 7 and 8 while exhibiting the Blazhko effect. The easternmost star designated by Flamsteed, 19 Lyrae, is also a small-amplitude variable, an Alpha Canum Venaticorum variable with a period of just over one day. Another evolved star is the naked-eye variable XY Lyrae, a red bright giant just north of Vega that varies between 6th and 7th magnitudes over a period of 120 days. Also just visible to the naked eye is the peculiar classical Cepheid V473 Lyrae. It is unique in that it is the only known Cepheid in the Milky Way to undergo periodic phase and amplitude changes, analogous to the Blazhko effect in RR Lyrae stars. At 1.5 days, its period was the shortest known for a classical Cepheid at the time of its discovery. W and S Lyrae are two of the many Mira variables in Lyra. W varies between 7th and 12th magnitudes over approximately 200 days, while S, slightly fainter, is a silicate carbon star, likely of the . Another evolved star is EP Lyrae, a faint RV Tauri variable and an "extreme example" of a post-AGB star. It and a likely companion are surrounded by a circumstellar disk of material. Rather close to Earth at a distance of only is Gliese 758. The sunlike primary star has a brown dwarf companion, the coldest to have been imaged around a sunlike star in thermal light when it was discovered in 2009. Only slightly farther away is V478 Lyrae, an eclipsing RS Canum Venaticorum variable whose primary star shows active starspot activity. One of the most peculiar systems in Lyra is MV Lyrae, a nova-like star consisting of a red dwarf and a white dwarf. Originally classified as a VY Sculptoris star due to spending most time at maximum brightness, since around 1979 the system has been dominantly at minimum brightness, with periodic outbursts. Its nature is still not fully understood. Another outbursting star is AY Lyrae, an SU Ursae Majoris-type dwarf nova that has undergone several superoutbursts. Of the same type is V344 Lyrae, notable for an extremely short period between superoutbursts coupled with one of the highest amplitudes for such a period. The true nova HR Lyrae flared in 1919 to a maximum magnitude of 6.5, over 9.5 magnitudes higher than in quiescence. Some of its characteristics are similar to those of recurring novae. M57, also known as the "Ring Nebula" and NGC 6720, has a diameter of one light-year and is at a distance of 2,000 light-years from Earth. It is one of the best known planetary nebulae and the second to be discovered; its integrated magnitude is 8.8. It was discovered in 1779 by Antoine Darquier, 15 years after Charles Messier discovered the Dumbbell Nebula. Astronomers have determined that it is between 6,000 and 8,000 years old; it is approximately one light-year in diameter. The outer part of the nebula appears red in photographs because of emission from ionized hydrogen. The middle region is colored green; doubly ionized oxygen emits greenish-blue light. The hottest region, closest to the central star, appears blue because of emission from helium. The central star itself is a white dwarf with a temperature of 120,000 kelvins. In telescopes, the nebula appears as a visible ring with a green tinge; it is slightly elliptical because its three-dimensional shape is a torus or cylinder seen from a slight angle. It can be found halfway between Gamma Lyrae and Beta Lyrae. Another planetary nebula in Lyra is Abell 46. The central star, V477 Lyrae, is an eclipsing post-common-envelope binary, consisting of a white dwarf primary and an oversized secondary component due to recent accretion. The nebula itself is of relatively low surface brightness compared to the central star, and is undersized for the primary's mass for reasons not yet fully understood. NGC 6791 is a cluster of stars in Lyra. It contains three age groups of stars: 4 billion year-old white dwarfs, 6 billion year-old white dwarfs and 8 billion year-old normal stars. NGC 6745 is an irregular spiral galaxy in Lyra that is at a distance of 208 million light- years. Several million years ago, it collided with a smaller galaxy, which created a region filled with young, hot, blue stars. Astronomers do not know if the collision was simply a glancing blow or a prelude to a full-on merger, which would end with the two galaxies incorporated into one larger, probably elliptical galaxy. A remarkable long-duration gamma-ray burst was GRB 050525A, which flared in 2005. The afterglow re-brightened at 33 minutes after the original burst, only the third found to exhibit such an effect in the timeframe, and unable to be completely explained by known phenomena. The light curve observed over the next 100 days was consistent with that of a supernova or even a hypernova, dubbed SN 2005nc. The host galaxy proved elusive to find at first, although it was subsequently identified. In orbit around the orange subgiant star HD 177830 is one of the earliest exoplanets to be detected. A jovian-mass planet, it orbits in an eccentric orbit with a period of 390 days. A second planet closer to the star was discovered in 2011. Visible to the naked eye are HD 173416, a yellow giant hosting a planet over twice the mass of Jupiter discovered in 2009; and HD 176051, a low-mass binary star containing another high-mass planet. Just short of naked-eye visibility is HD 178911, a triple system consisting of a close binary and a visually separable sunlike star. The sunlike star has a planet with over 6 Jupiter masses discovered in 2001, the second found in a triple system after that of 16 Cygni. One of the most-studied exoplanets in the night sky is TrES-1b, in orbit around the star GSC 02652-01324. Detected from a transit of its parent star, the planet has around 3/4 the mass of Jupiter, yet orbits its parent star in only three days. The transits have been reported to have anomalies multiple times. Originally thought to be possibly due to the presence of an Earth-like planet, it is now accepted that the irregularities are due to a large starspot. Also discovered by the transit method is WASP-3b, with 1.75 times the mass of Jupiter. At the time of its discovery, it was one of the hottest known exoplanets, in orbit around the F-type main-sequence star WASP-3. Similar to TrES-1b, irregularities in the transits had left open the possibility of a second planet, although this now appears unlikely as well. Lyra is one of three constellations (along with neighboring Cygnus and Draco) to be in the Kepler Mission's field of view, and as such it contains many more known exoplanets than most constellations. One of the first discovered by the mission is Kepler-7b, an extremely low-density exoplanet with less than half the mass of Jupiter, yet nearly 1.5 times the radius. Almost as sparse is Kepler-8b, only slightly more massive and of a similar radius. The Kepler-20 system contains five known planets; three of them are only slightly smaller than Neptune, and two while the other two are some of the first Earth-sized exoplanets to be discovered. Kepler-37 is another star with an exoplanet discovered by Kepler; the planet is the smallest known extrasolar planet known as of February 2013. In April 2013, it was announced that of the five planets orbiting Kepler-62, at least two—Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f—are within the boundaries of the habitable zone of that star, where scientists think liquid water could exist, and are both candidates for being a solid, rocky, earth- like planet. The exoplanets are 1.6 and 1.4 times the diameter of Earth respectively, with their star Kepler-62 at a distance of 1,200 light-years. Uttara Ashadha Warburg Institute Iconographic Database (over 180 medieval and early modern images of Lyra) Delphinus (Eng. U.S. ) Eng. oth: ) is a constellation in the northern sky, close to the celestial equator. Its name is the Latin version for the Greek word for dolphin (δελφίνι). Delphinus was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains among the 88 modern constellations recognized by the International Astronomical Union. It is one of the smaller constellations, ranked 69th in size. Delphinus' brightest stars form a distinctive asterism that can easily be recognized. It is bordered (clockwise from north) by Vulpecula the fox, Sagitta the arrow, Aquila the eagle, Aquarius the water-carrier, Equuleus the foal and Pegasus the flying horse. Delphinus lacks stars above fourth (apparent) magnitude; its brightest star is of magnitude 3.8. The main asterism in Delphinus is Job's Coffin, nearly a 45°-apex lozenge diamond of the four brightest stars: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta Delphini. Delphinus is in a rich Milky Way star field. Alpha and Beta Delphini have 19th century names Sualocin and Rotanev, read backwards: Nicolaus Venator, the Latinized name of a Palermo Observatory director, Niccolò Cacciatore (d. 1841). Alpha Delphini is a blue-white hued main sequence star of magnitude 3.8, 241 light-years from Earth. Beta Delphini, called Rotanev. The gap between its close binary stars is visible from large amateur telescopes. To the unaided eye, it appears to be a white star of magnitude 3.6. It has a period of 27 years and is 97 light-years from Earth. Gamma Delphini is a celebrated binary star among amateur astronomers. The primary is orange-gold of magnitude 4.3; the secondary is a light yellow star of magnitude 5.1. The pair form a true binary with an estimated orbital period of over 3,000 years. 125 light-years away, the two components are visible in a small amateur telescope. The secondary, also described as green, is 10 arcseconds from the primary. Struve 2725, called the "Ghost Double", is a pair that appears similar but dimmer. Its components of magnitudes 7.6 and 8.4 are separated by 6 arcseconds and are 15 arcminutes from Gamma Delphini itself. Delta Delphini is a type A7 IIIp star of magnitude 4.43. Epsilon Delphini, Deneb Dulfim (lit. "tail [of the] Dolphin"), or Aldulfin, is a star of stellar class B6 III and magnitude 4, at 330 ly. In Delphinus, in extremes of distance, Gliese 795 is the closest known star at 54.95 ly and rapidly moves east over a period of centuries (863±3 arcseconds per year); whereas the giant of blue colour, W Delphini is at 2203.81 ly at 9.76 magnitude. Its brightness ranges from a magnitude of 12.3 to a magnitude of 9.7 over its variable period as it is a Beta Persei star-type semi-detached system. Other variable stars of large amateur telescopic visibility include R Delphini, a Mira-type variable star with a period of 285.5 days. Its magnitude ranges between a maximum 7.6 and a minimum 13.8. Rho Aquilae at magnitude 4.94 is at about 150 light years. Due to its proper motion it has been in the (round-figure parameter) bounds of the constellation since 1992. HR Delphini was a nova that brightened to magnitude 3.5 in December 1967. A nova was discovered by amateur astronomer Koichi Itagaki, Nova Delphini 2013. Giants Giants within our galaxy in Delphinus aside from Delta, Gamma and Epsilon include: Its rich Milky Way star field means many modestly deep-sky objects. NGC 6891 is a planetary nebula of magnitude 10.5; another is NGC 6905 or the Blue Flash nebula. NGC 6934 is a globular cluster of magnitude 9.75. At a distance of about 185,000 light-years, the globular cluster NGC 7006 is at the outer reaches of the galaxy. It is also fairly dim at magnitude 11.5. Delphinus is associated with two stories from Greek mythology. According to the first Greek god Poseidon wanted to marry Amphitrite, a beautiful nereid. However, wanting to protect her virginity, she fled to the Atlas mountains. Her suitor then sent out several searchers, among them a certain Delphinus. Delphinus accidentally stumbled upon her and was able to persuade Amphitrite to accept Poseidon's wooing. Out of gratitude the god placed the image of a dolphin among the stars. The second story tells of the Greek poet Arion of Lesbos (7th century BC), who was saved by a dolphin. He was a court musician at the palace of Periander, ruler of Corinth. Arion had amassed a fortune during his travels to Sicily and Italy. On his way home from Tarentum his wealth caused the crew of his ship to conspire against him. Threatened with death, Arion asked to be granted a last wish which the crew granted: he wanted to sing a dirge. This he did, and while doing so, flung himself into the sea. There, he was rescued by a dolphin which had been charmed by Arion's music. The dolphin carried Arion to the coast of Greece and left. In Chinese astronomy, the stars of Delphinus are located within the Black Tortoise of the North (北方玄武, Běi Fāng Xuán Wǔ). In Polynesia, two cultures recognized Delphinus as a constellation. In Pukapuka, it was called Te Toloa and in the Tuamotus, it was called Te Uru-o-tiki. USS Delphinus (AF-24) and USS Delphinus (PHM-1), two United States Navy ships, are named after the constellation. A house at Sutton Girls is named Delphinus Delphinus (Chinese astronomy) Ian Ridpath and Wil Tirion (2017). Stars and Planets Guide, Collins, London. . Princeton University Press, Princeton. ., University of Wisconsin, "Delphinus" The Deep Photographic Guide to the Constellations: Delphinus, Star Tales – Delphinus, Warburg Institute Iconographic Database (over 150 medieval and early modern images of Delphinus) Gemini is one of the constellations of the zodiac. It was one of the 48 constellations described by the 2nd century AD astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations today. Its name is Latin for "twins," and it is associated with the twins Castor and Pollux in Greek mythology. Its symbol is (Unicode ♊). Gemini lies between Taurus to the west and Cancer to the east, with Auriga and Lynx to the north and Monoceros and Canis Minor to the south. In classical antiquity, Cancer and not Gemini was the location of the Sun on the first day of summer (June 21). During the first century AD, axial precession shifted it into Gemini. In 1990, the location of the Sun on the first day of summer moved from Gemini into Taurus, where it will remain until the 27th century AD and then move into Aries. The Sun will move through Gemini from June 21 to July 20 through 2062. Gemini is prominent in the winter skies of the Northern Hemisphere and is visible the entire night in December-January. The easiest way to locate the constellation is to find its two brightest stars Castor and Pollux eastward from the familiar “V” shaped asterism of Taurus and the three stars of Orion’s belt. Another way is to mentally draw a line from the Pleiades star cluster located in Taurus and the brightest star in Leo, Regulus. In doing so, an imaginary line that is relatively close to the ecliptic is drawn, a line which intersects Gemini roughly at the midpoint of the constellation, just below Castor and Pollux. The constellation contains 85 stars of naked eye visibility. The brightest star in Gemini is Pollux, and the second-brightest is Castor. Castor's Bayer designation as "Alpha" arose because Johann Bayer did not carefully distinguish which of the two was the brighter when he assigned his eponymous designations in 1603. α Gem (Castor) is a sextuple star system 52 light-years from Earth, which appears as a magnitude-1.6 blue-white star to the unaided eye. Two spectroscopic binaries are visible at magnitudes 1.9 and 3.0 with a period of 470 years. A wide-set red dwarf star is also a part of the system; this star is an Algol-type eclipsing binary star with a period of 19.5 hours; its minimum magnitude is 9.8 and its maximum magnitude is 9.3. β Gem (Pollux) is an orange-hued giant star of magnitude 1.14, 34 light-years from Earth. Pollux has an extrasolar planet revolving around it, as do two other stars in Gemini, HD 50554, and HD 59686. γ Gem (Alhena) is a blue-white hued star of magnitude 1.9, 105 light-years from earth. δ Gem (Wasat) is a long-period binary star 59 light-years from Earth. The primary is a white star of magnitude 3.5, and the secondary is an orange dwarf star of magnitude 8.2. The period is over 1000 years; it is divisible in medium amateur telescopes. ε Gem (Mebsuta), a double star, includes a primary yellow supergiant of magnitude 3.1, nine hundred light-years from Earth. The optical companion, of magnitude 9.6, is visible in binoculars and small telescopes. ζ Gem (Mekbuda) is a double star, whose primary is a Cepheid variable star with a period of 10.2 days; its minimum magnitude is 4.2 and its maximum magnitude is 3.6. It is a yellow supergiant, 1,200 light-years from Earth, with a radius that is 60 times solar, making it approximately 220,000 times the size of the Sun. The companion, a magnitude-7.6 star, is visible in binoculars and small amateur telescopes. η Gem (Propus) is a binary star with a variable component. 380 light-years away, it has a period of 500 years and is only divisible in large amateur telescopes. The primary is a semi-regular red giant with a period of 233 days; its minimum magnitude is 3.9 and its maximum magnitude is 3.1. The secondary is of magnitude 6. κ Gem is a binary star 143 light-years from Earth. The primary is a yellow giant of magnitude 3.6; the secondary is of magnitude 8. The two are only divisible in larger amateur instruments because of the discrepancy in brightness. ν Gem is a double star divisible in binoculars and small amateur telescopes. The primary is a blue giant of magnitude 4.1, 550 light-years from Earth, and the secondary is of magnitude 8. 38 Gem, a binary star, is also divisible in small amateur telescopes, 84 light-years from Earth. The primary is a white star of magnitude 4.8 and the secondary is a yellow star of magnitude 7.8. U Gem is a dwarf nova type cataclysmic variable discovered by J. R. Hind in 1855. Mu Gem is the Bayer designation for a star in the northern constellation of Gemini. It has the traditional name Tejat Posterior, which means back foot, because it is the foot of Castor, one of the Gemini twins. Since the sky area of Gemini is directed away from the Milky Way, there are comparatively few deep-sky objects of note. M35 (NGC 2168) is a large, elongated open cluster of magnitude 5, discovered in the year 1745 by Swiss astronomer Philippe Loys de Chéseaux. It has an area of approximately 0.2 square degrees, the same size as the full moon. Its high magnitude means that M35 is visible to the unaided eye under dark skies; under brighter skies it is discernible in binoculars. The 200 stars of M35 are arranged in chains that curve throughout the cluster; it is 2800 light-years from Earth. Another open cluster in Gemini is NGC 2158. Visible in large amateur telescopes and very rich, it is more than 12,000 light-years from Earth. The Eskimo Nebula or Clown Face Nebula (NGC 2392) is a planetary nebula with an overall magnitude of 9.2, located 4,000 light-years from Earth. In a small amateur telescope, its 10th magnitude central star is visible, along with its blue-green elliptical disk. It is named for its resemblance to the head of a person wearing a parka. The Medusa Nebula is another planetary nebula, some 1,500 light-years distant. Geminga is a neutron star approximately 550 light-years from Earth. Other objects include NGC 2129, NGC 2158, NGC 2266, NGC 2331, NGC 2355, and NGC 2395. The Geminids are a bright meteor shower that peaks on December 13–14. It has a maximum rate of approximately 100 meteors per hour, making it one of the richest meteor showers. The Epsilon Geminids peak between October 18 and October 29 and have only been recently confirmed. They overlap with the Orionids, which make the Epsilon Geminids difficult to detect visually. Epsilon Geminid meteors have a higher velocity than Orionids. In Babylonian astronomy, the stars Castor and Pollux were known as the Great Twins. The Twins were regarded as minor gods and were called Meshlamtaea and Lugalirra, meaning respectively 'The One who has arisen from the Underworld' and the 'Mighty King'. Both names can be understood as titles of Nergal, the major Babylonian god of plague and pestilence, who was king of the Underworld. In Greek mythology, Gemini was associated with the myth of Castor and Pollux, the children of Leda and Argonauts both. Pollux was the son of Zeus, who seduced Leda, while Castor was the son of Tyndareus, king of Sparta and Leda's husband. Castor and Pollux were also mythologically associated with St. Elmo's fire in their role as the protectors of sailors. When Castor died, because he was mortal, Pollux begged his father Zeus to give Castor immortality, and he did, by uniting them together in the heavens. Gemini is dominated by Castor and Pollux, two bright stars that appear relatively very closely together forming an o shape, encouraging the mythological link between the constellation and twinship. The twin above and to the right (as seen from the Northern Hemisphere) is Castor, whose brightest star is α Gem; it is a second-magnitude star and represents Castor's head. The twin below and to the left is Pollux, whose brightest star is β Gem (more commonly called Pollux); it is of the first magnitude and represents Pollux's head. Furthermore, the other stars can be visualized as two parallel lines descending from the two main stars, making it look like two figures. H. A. Rey has suggested an alternative to the traditional visualization that connected the stars of Gemini to show twins holding hands. Pollux's torso is represented by the star υ Gem, Pollux's right hand by ι Gem, Pollux's left hand by κ Gem; all three of these stars are of the fourth magnitude. Pollux's pelvis is represented by the star δ Gem, Pollux's right knee by ζ Gem, Pollux's right foot by γ Gem, Pollux's left knee by λ Gem, and Pollux's left foot by ξ Gem. γ Gem is of the second magnitude, while δ and ξ Gem are of the third magnitude. Castor's torso is represented by the star τ Gem, Castor's left hand by ι Gem (which he shares with Pollux), Castor's right hand by θ Gem; all three of these stars are of the fourth magnitude. Castor's pelvis is represented by the star ε Gem, Castor's left foot by ν Gem, and Castor's right foot by μ Gem and η Gem; ε, μ, and η Gem are of the third magnitude. The brightest star in this constellation is Pollux. In Meteorologica (1 343b30) Aristotle mentions that he observed Jupiter in conjunction with and then occulting a star in Gemini. This is the earliest- known observation of this nature. A study published in 1990 suggests the star involved was 1 Geminorum and the event took place on 5 December 337 BC. When William Herschel discovered Uranus on 13 March 1781 it was located near η Gem. In 1930 Clyde Tombaugh exposed a series of photographic plates centred on δ Gem and discovered Pluto. In Chinese astronomy, the stars that correspond to Gemini are located in two areas: the White Tiger of the West (西方白虎, Xī Fāng Bái Hǔ) and the Vermillion Bird of the South (南方朱雀, Nán Fāng Zhū Què). , the Sun appears in the constellation Gemini from June 21 to July 20. In tropical astrology, the Sun is considered to be in the sign Gemini from May 21 to June 22, and in sidereal astrology, from June 16 to July 15. Geminga, Gemini gamma-ray source, Gemini in Chinese astronomy, IC 444, reflection nebula, Messier 35 open cluster ., Princeton: Princeton University Press. . The Deep Photographic Guide to the Constellations: Gemini, Astrojan Astronomical Picture Collection: The clickable Gemini, WikiSky: Gemini constellation, Ian Ridpath's Star Tales: Gemini, APOD Pictures of Gemini and Deep Sky Objects: 1. [http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090506.html A Spring Sky Over Hirsau Abbey] 2. [http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090503.html The Eskimo Nebula from Hubble] 3. [http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100612.html The Medusa Nebula] 4. [http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap031215.html Open Star Clusters M35 and NGC 2158] 5. [http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap050319.html NGC 2266: Old Cluster in the NGC] Warburg Institute Iconographic Database (over 300 medieval and early modern images of Gemini)

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Moana (also known as Vaiana or Oceania, in some markets) is a 2016 American 3D computer-animated musical adventure film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is the 56th Disney animated feature film. Directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, co-directed by Don Hall and Chris Williams, the film introduces Auliʻi Cravalho as Moana and features the voices of Dwayne Johnson, Rachel House, Temuera Morrison, Jemaine Clement, Nicole Scherzinger, and Alan Tudyk. The film features songs written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Opetaia Foa'i and Mark Mancina, and an orchestral score also composed by Mancina. The film tells the story of Moana, the strong-willed daughter of a chief of a Polynesian village, who is chosen by the ocean itself to reunite a mystical relic with the goddess Te Fiti. When a blight strikes her island, Moana sets sail in search of Maui, a legendary demigod, in the hope of returning the relic to Te Fiti and saving her people. Moana was released theatrically in the United States on November 23, 2016 to positive reviews from critics, with particular praise going towards its animation, music, and vocal performances. The film went on to gross over $690 million worldwide. Along with Zootopia, it marked the first time since 2002 that Walt Disney Animation Studios released two feature films in the same year. It received two Academy Award nominations at the 89th Academy Awards: one for Best Animated Feature and another for Best Original Song ("How Far I'll Go"). On the Polynesian island of Motunui, the inhabitants worship the goddess Te Fiti, who brought life to the ocean using a pounamu stone as her heart and the source of her power. Maui, the shapeshifting demigod and master of sailing, steals the heart to give humanity the power of creation. However, Te Fiti disintegrates, and Maui is attacked by another who seeks the heart: Te Kā, a volcanic demon. Maui is blasted out of the sky, losing both his magical giant fishhook and the heart to the depths of the sea. A millennium later, the ocean chooses Moana, daughter of Motunui's chief Tui, to return the heart to Te Fiti. Tui takes Moana away, causing her to lose the heart. Tui and Sina, Moana's mother, try to keep her away from the ocean to prepare her for ascension as the island's chief. Sixteen years later, a blight strikes the island, killing vegetation and shrinking the fish catch. Moana suggests going beyond the island's reef to find more fish and figure out what is happening, but Tui forbids it. Moana tries conquering the reef but is overpowered by the tides and shipwrecked back to Motunui with Pua the pig. Moana's grandmother Tala shows her a secret cave of ships, revealing that their people were voyagers until Maui stole Te Fiti's heart; the ocean was no longer safe without it. Tala explains that Te Kā's darkness is poisoning the island, but can be cured if Moana finds Maui and makes him restore the heart of Te Fiti, which she gives to Moana. Tala falls ill and, on her death bed, tells Moana that she must depart to find Maui. Setting sail on a camakau from the cavern, Moana is caught in a typhoon and shipwrecked on an island where she finds Maui, who boasts about his achievements. She demands that Maui return the heart, but he refuses and traps her in a cave. She escapes and confronts Maui, who reluctantly lets her on the camakau. They are attacked by Kakamora – small, coconut-armored pirates – who seek the heart, but Moana and Maui outwit them. Moana realizes Maui is no longer a hero since he stole the heart and cursed the world, and convinces him to redeem himself by returning the heart. Maui first needs to retrieve his magical fishhook in Lalotai, the Realm of Monsters, from Tamatoa, a giant coconut crab. While Moana distracts Tamatoa, Maui retrieves his hook but discovers he can no longer control his shapeshifting. He is overpowered by Tamatoa, but Moana's quick thinking allows them to escape with the hook. Maui reveals that his first tattoo was earned when his mortal parents rejected him. After reassurance from Moana, Maui teaches her the art of sailing, regaining control of his powers, and the two grow closer. They arrive at Te Fiti's island, only to be attacked by Te Kā. Moana refuses to turn back, resulting in Maui's hook being badly damaged. Unwilling to lose his hook in another confrontation with Te Kā, Maui abandons Moana, who tearfully asks the ocean to find someone else to restore the heart. The ocean obliges and takes the heart, but Tala's spirit appears, inspiring Moana to find her true calling. She retrieves the heart and sails back to confront Te Kā. Maui returns, having had a change of heart, and buys Moana time to reach Te Fiti by fighting Te Kā, destroying his hook in the process. Moana discovers Te Fiti is missing, and realizes Te Kā is Te Fiti, corrupted without her heart. Moana tells the ocean to clear a path, allowing her to return Te Fiti's heart, and the restored goddess heals the ocean and islands of the blight. Maui apologizes to Te Fiti, who restores his hook and gives Moana a new boat before falling into a deep sleep and becoming a mountain. Moana bids farewell to Maui, returning home where she reunites with her parents. She takes up her role as chief and wayfinder, leading her people on a voyage. Auliʻi Cravalho as Moana, the curious daughter of village chief Tui and his wife Sina, who is chosen by the ocean to restore the heart of Te Fiti, Cravalho reprised her role in the Hawaiian-language version of the movie., Louise Bush as a younger Moana, Dwayne Johnson as Maui, a legendary strong-willed yet easily annoyed shapeshifting demigod who sets off with Moana on her journey, Rachel House as Tala, Tui's mother and Moana's paternal grandmother. Like Moana, Tala shares a passion for the ocean and the two have a very deep bond., House reprised her role in the Māori-language version of the movie., Temuera Morrison as Tui, Moana's overprotective father, who is Tala's son, chief of Motunui Island, Morrison reprised his role in the Māori-language version of the movie., Christopher Jackson as Tui's singing voice, Jemaine Clement as Tamatoa, a giant flamboyant treasure-hoarding coconut crab from Lalotai, the Realm of Monsters, Clement reprised his role in the Māori-language version of the movie., Nicole Scherzinger as Sina, Moana's mother and Tui's wife and the chieftainess of the village., Scherzinger also reprised her role in the Hawaiian-language version of the movie., Alan Tudyk as Heihei, Moana's pet rooster, Tudyk also voices Villager No. 3, an old man who suggests cooking Heihei, Oscar Kightley as a fisherman, Troy Polamalu as Villager No. 1, Puanani Cravalho (Auliʻi's mother) as Villager No. 2 After directing The Princess and the Frog (2009), Clements and Musker started working on an adaptation of Terry Pratchett's Mort, but problems with acquiring the necessary film rights prevented them from continuing with that project. To avoid a recurrence of that issue, they pitched three original ideas. The genesis of one of those ideas (the one that was ultimately green- lighted) occurred in 2011, when Musker began reading up on Polynesian mythology, and learned of the heroic exploits of the demigod Māui. Intrigued with the rich culture of Polynesia, he felt it would be a suitable subject for an animated film. Shortly thereafter, Musker and Clements wrote a treatment and pitched it to John Lasseter, who recommended that both of them should go on research trips. Accordingly, in 2012, Clements and Musker went on research trips to Fiji, Samoa, and Tahiti to meet the people of the South Pacific Ocean and learn about their culture. At first, they had planned to make the film entirely about Maui, but their initial research trips inspired Clements to pitch a new idea focused on the young daughter of a chief. Clements and Musker were fascinated to learn during their research that the people of Polynesia abruptly stopped making long-distance voyages about three thousand years ago. Their navigational traditions predated those of European explorers, beginning around 300 CE. Native people of the Pacific possessed knowledge of the world and their place in it prior to the incursion of foreigners. For example, Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) were well aware of the existence of far away islands, had names for these places, and were interested in exploring them to benefit their societies. This voyaging heritage was made possible by a geographical knowledge system based on individual perspective rather than the European cardinal direction system. The reasons for the halt of this voyaging tradition remain unknown, but scholars have offered climate change and resulting shifts in ocean currents and wind patterns as one possible explanation. Native peoples of the Pacific resumed voyaging again a thousand years later. Clements and Musker set the film at that point in time, about two thousand years ago, on a fictional island in the central Pacific Ocean, which drew inspiration from elements of the real-life island nations of Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga. Over the five years it took to develop and produce the film, Clements and Musker recruited experts from across the South Pacific to form an Oceanic Story Trust, who consulted on the film's cultural accuracy and sensitivity as the story evolved through nine versions. The Trust responded negatively, for example, to a depiction of Maui as bald, and to a proposed scene in which Moana threw a tantrum by throwing coconuts. In response, Maui was reworked with long hair and the coconut scene was scrapped. During the 2015 D23 Expo's panel for Disney's slate of upcoming animated films, Moana's last name was given as "Waialiki", but that name was not retained in the final film. Taika Waititi wrote the initial screenplay, but went home to New Zealand in 2012 to focus on his newborn first child and What We Do in the Shadows. Years later, Waititi joked that all that was left of his original draft was "EXT: OCEAN – DAY". The first draft focused on Moana as the sole daughter in a family with "five or six brothers", in which gender played into the story. However, the brothers and gender-based theme were deleted from the story, as the directors thought Moana's journey should be about finding herself. A subsequent draft presented Moana's father as the one who wanted to resume navigation, but it was rewritten to have him oppose navigation so he would not overshadow Moana. Instead, Pamela Ribon came up with the idea of a grandmother character for the film, who would serve as a mentor linking Moana to ancient traditions. Another version focused on Moana rescuing her father, who had been lost at sea. The film's story changed drastically during the development phase (which happens with most Disney films), and that idea ultimately survived only as a subtle element of the father's backstory. Te Kā was referred to in early drafts of the film as Te Pō, a reference to the Māori goddess Hine-nui-te-pō, who was originally the life-giving goddess Hine-tītama, but became the goddess of death upon discovering that her husband the god Tāne was also her father. Māui set out to defeat her in order to bring immortality to humans, but failed and was himself killed. Aaron and Jordan Kandell joined the project during a critical period to help deepen the emotional story architecture of the film. They are credited with developing the core relationship between Moana and Maui, the prologue, the Cave of the Wayfinders, the Kakamora, and the collector crab Tamatoa (played by Jemaine Clement). Jared Bush received sole credit as the writer of the final version of the screenplay. Like most Disney and Pixar animated films, several major story problems were identified in 2015 only after the film had already transitioned from development into production, but computer-generated films tend to have much shorter production schedules and much larger animation teams (in this case, about 90 animators) than traditionally animated films. Since Clements and Musker were already working 12-hour days (and Saturdays) directing such a large team of animators, Don Hall and Chris Williams (who had just finished directing Big Hero 6) came on board as co-directors to help fix the film's story issues. The scene in which Maui and Moana encounter the Kakamora is an intentional homage to . After the filmmakers sat through auditions of hundreds of candidates from across the Pacific, 14-year-old high school freshman Auliʻi Cravalho was cast as the lead character Moana. At that point in time, the design of Moana's face and personality was already complete, and Cravalho's obvious physical resemblance to her character was simply a coincidence. During animation production, Disney animators were able to integrate some of Cravalho's mannerisms into Moana's behavior as depicted onscreen. The majority of the film's cast members are of Polynesian descent: Auliʻi Cravalho (Moana) and Nicole Scherzinger (Sina, Moana's mother) were born in Hawaii and are of Native Hawaiian heritage; Dwayne Johnson (Maui), Oscar Kightley (Fisherman), and Troy Polamalu (Villager No. 1) are of Samoan heritage; and New Zealand–born Rachel House (Tala, Moana's grandmother), Temuera Morrison (Tui, Moana's father), and Jemaine Clement (Tamatoa) are of Māori heritage. Moana is Clements and Musker's first fully computer-animated film. One of the reasons for using computer animation was that the environment, including the ocean, benefited much more from the use of CGI as opposed to traditional animation. The filmmakers have also suggested that three-dimensional computer animation is well-suited to the "beautiful sculpturing" of the faces of the people of the South Pacific. Eric Goldberg worked on the hand-drawn animation used to depict Maui's sentient tattoos. During early development, the filmmakers considered the possibility of making the film with hand-drawn traditional animation, but only a few early animation tests were made in that style. In the final cut, only Maui's tattoos are hand-drawn. Moana was produced in makeshift quarters in a giant warehouse in North Hollywood (together with Zootopia), while Disney Animation's headquarters building in Burbank was being renovated. Musker observed that Moana was similar in that respect to The Little Mermaid, which was produced in a warehouse in Glendale. Production wrapped on October 20, 2016. The film's soundtrack was released by Walt Disney Records on November 18, 2016. The songs were written by Opetaia Foa'i, Mark Mancina, and Lin-Manuel Miranda, while the score was written by Mancina. The lyrics are in English, Samoan, and the Tokelauan language. The soundtrack peaked at number two on the Billboard 200. In many European countries, the name of the titular character, Moana, was changed to Vaiana due to a trademark conflict. The film was released in those countries to bear the alternative name in the title. In Italy, the film was released with the title Oceania: media outlets speculated that the name change was to avoid confusion with Italian pornographic actress Moana Pozzi, and Disney Italy's head of theatrical marketing, Davide Romani, acknowledged they were "thinking about the issue" at a meeting of Italian exhibitors in 2015. Following the success brought by international productions of Disney's Frozen, which led to the release of a complete set album which included all the official versions of "Let It Go" released at the time, Disney decided to produce a special Tahitian dubbing for the movie. On October 25, 2016, at a press conference in Papeete, it was announced that the film will be the first motion picture to be fully dubbed in the Tahitian language. This marks the second time Disney has released a special dubbing dedicated to the culture which inspired the film: the first case was The Lion King (1994), for which the directors travelled to South Africa to cast voice actors for a Zulu-dubbed version. In June 2017, a Māori-language dubbing of the movie was announced, premiering in Auckland on September 11, with 30 theatres screening it for free as part of Māori Language Week. Rachel House, Jemaine Clement, Temuera Morrison, and Oscar Kightley reprised their respective roles in this version, directed by Rachel House herself. In November 2017, a Hawaiian-language dubbing was announced to be under way, with Aulii Cravalho reprising her role as Moana. The movie premiered on June 10, 2018. On October 20, 2014, Walt Disney Pictures announced that it would be releasing the film in late 2016, and hinted that it might be the November 23, 2016 release window previously announced by the studio in March 2014 for a then- untitled film. In November 2014, Disney confirmed that it would be releasing the film on November 23, 2016. The film is accompanied by the short film, Inner Workings. The film's world premiere was held at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles on November 14, 2016. On January 27, 2017, a sing-along version of Moana was released in more than 2,000 theaters in the United States, featuring on-screen lyrics. On October 15, 2016, Hawaiian Airlines unveiled their Moana-themed livery for three of their Airbus A330-200 fleet. Disney initiating a partnership with Hawaiian Airlines to promote the film has been perceived as having the motive of fetishizing Polynesian island nations as exotic vacation spots, the people and culture of which exist only to entertain foreign audiences, as well as Auliʻi Cravalho speaking with The New York Times in an interview sharing travel tips for visitors to Hawaii. Critiques of these promotional tactics focus on how adverse effects of tourism have devastated native communities in the Pacific, resulting in environmental degradation and poverty. A Maui "skin suit" costume made to tie in with the film was pulled by Disney from its online store following complaints about it being culturally insensitive and for appearing to promote brownface. There are currently meet-and-greets with Moana at Disneyland, Walt Disney World, Disneyland Paris, and at Aulani, a Disney Resort and Spa. At Hong Kong Disneyland, there will be a stage show called Moana's Village Festival, which is scheduled to open in 2018. Moana was released by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on Blu-ray (2D and 3D) and DVD in the United States on March 7, 2017, with a digital release on February 21, 2017. The releases include the short film, Inner Workings. The Blu-ray release also introduces a short film featuring Maui and Moana, titled Gone Fishing. Moana grossed $248.7 million in the U.S. and Canada, and $394.5 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $643.3 million. On January 22 and March 16, 2017, respectively, the film reached the $500 million and $600 million marks, becoming the fourth consecutive Walt Disney Animation Studios film to reach both milestones after Frozen (2013), Big Hero 6 (2014), and Zootopia (2016). Although Disney has not disclosed the film's production budget, most of its animated films cost around $150 million. Deadline Hollywood calculated the net profit of the film to be $121.3 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues for the film, making it the 12th- most profitable release of 2016. In the United States, Moana was released during the Thanksgiving weekend. The film played in 3,875 theaters of which a majority of them (80%) screened it in 3D. It also played in 50 premium large-format screens and more than 400 D-Box screens. It was projected to take in around $50 million in three days, with $75–85 million in five days (some estimates going as high as $90 million). Deadline.com said the numbers were good for the original Disney film and marked a great rebound for the company in the wake of Pixar's The Good Dinosaur the previous year, which had made $55 million over five days off a production budget of $175–200 million. Moana made $2.6 million from Tuesday paid previews which began at 7 pm, the highest ever for a Walt Disney Animation Studios film and for a non-Pixar Disney animated film. On its opening day, it made $15.5 million, a new record for a Walt Disney Animation Studios film opening on Wednesday (breaking Frozens record) and the biggest opening day ever for a film released on pre-Thanksgiving Day. On Thanksgiving Day, it earned $9.9 million, a decrease of 36% from its previous day. On Black Friday—the highest-grossing day of the Thanksgiving stretch—it made $21.8 million, a 127% increase from the day before. Through Sunday, the film posted a three-day opening weekend worth $56.6 million over its Friday-to-Sunday debut and $82.1 million from Wednesday to Sunday, the third biggest three-day Thanksgiving opening (behind Frozen and Toy Story 2) and the second-biggest five-day Thanksgiving opening (behind Frozen), dethroning Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them off the top spot. Among all films that did not necessarily open in this weekend but may have played, Moana ranks sixth among three-day weekends and fifth among five-day weekends. The film's opening was considered to be another animated success for the studio after Zootopia and Pixar's Finding Dory posted huge openings, respectively, the same year in March and June. In its second weekend, the film dropped by about 50% for a total of $28.3 million, a smaller drop than Toy Story 2, Frozen, Tangled, and The Good Dinosaur. The film managed to top the box office for its third weekend, despite competition from newcomers and holdovers, earning $18.5 million while falling by 34%. It became the sixth film of 2016 to top the box office three times, following Deadpool, Zootopia, The Jungle Book, Finding Dory, and Suicide Squad. The film was overtaken by Disney's own Rogue One: A Star Wars Story in its fourth weekend, despite only a marginal decline. It fell to number six in its fifth weekend, due to competition from four new releases—Sing, Passengers, Why Him?, and Assassin's Creed—despite a small drop again; it grossed $2.9 million on Christmas Day. On the holiday week of December 23–29, the film finished at number four with a gross of $26 million, which was 14% up from the previous week, despite losing over 300 theaters. It finished at number four in its sixth weekend, going up 42% and 97%, respectively, during the three-day and four-day weekends; it grossed $3.6 million on New Year's Day. It fell outside the top ten in its eighth weekend (which included Martin Luther King Jr. Day), dropping 33% and 4%, respectively, during the three-day and four-day weekends. Internationally, the film earned $17.2 million in its first weekend from 12 markets, the bulk of which came from China. In its second weekend, the film expanded to a total of 30 markets, adding an additional $33.7 million. In China, the film had a November 25 opening day with $1.9 million from 38,000 screenings. However, it enjoyed a big weekend bump on Saturday—even though its screens dipped—and Sunday. In total, it scored an opening weekend of $12.3 million, the second best for a Disney animated title, behind only Zootopia. It was No. 2 behind Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Strong social media numbers showed among the highest the studio has seen there, similar to how Zootopia started off slow and later became a blockbuster phenomenon. The film slipped 55% in its second weekend, earning $5.8 million, and $21.8 in total in China. It would eventually earn a total of $32.7 million in China. It had similar successful number-one debuts in France, Russia, Mexico and Spain. The film also saw success in Belgium, the Netherlands and French-speaking Switzerland. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, the film faced competition from Fantastic Beasts—which was playing in its third weekend—and as a result, it posted a low opening of only £2.2 million ($2.8 million). The biggest earning markets to date have been Japan ($45.9 million), followed by France ($35.5 million), China ($32.8 million), the UK ($25.3 million), Brazil ($22.9 million), Australia ($19 million), Germany ($17 million), Italy ($15.9 million), and South Korea ($15.5 million). On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Moana holds an approval rating of 96% based on 271 reviews, and an average rating of 7.87/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "With a title character as three-dimensional as its lush animation and a story that adds fresh depth to Disney's time-tested formula, Moana is truly a family-friendly adventure for the ages." Subsequently, the film is also listed as number 11 on the website's "75 Best Computer Animated Movies" list. On Metacritic, the film holds a weighted average score of 81 out of 100, based on 44 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on a scale ranging from A+ to F, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave an 89% overall positive score and a 71% "definite recommend". Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal proclaimed that "Moana is beautiful in more ways than I can tell, thanks to the brilliance of more animators than I could count." Animator Eric Goldberg received praise from critics and audiences for his hand-drawn animation of Maui's tattoos, which they claimed "stole the show" from the actual CGI-animated motion picture. Wai Chee Dimock, writing in the Los Angeles Review of Books, compared the ocean in Moana to the one in "The Water Baby", a short story by Jack London, saying that both are animated: one, by the tension between digital and analog animation, and the other, by the tension between an encroaching future and a past in retreat still capable of pushing back. Christy Lemire of RogerEbert.com gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars, stating that Moana' would have been enormously entertaining regardless of when it came out, but its arrival at this particular moment in history gives it an added sense of significance—as well as inspiration." Peter Debruge of Variety praised the film, calling it "a return to the heights of the Disney Renaissance". List of Walt Disney Animation Studios films, Polynesians, Austronesian peoples Sina and the Eel is a myth of origins in Samoan mythology, which explains the origins of the first coconut tree. In the Samoan language the legend is called Sina ma le Tuna. Tuna is the Samoan word for 'eel'. The story is also well known throughout Polynesia including Tonga, Fiji and Māori in New Zealand. Different versions of the legend are told in different countries in Oceania. The coconut tree (Cocos nucifera) has many uses and is an important source of food. It is also used for making coconut oil, baskets, sennit rope used in traditional Samoan house building, weaving and for the building of small traditional houses or fale. The dried meat of the coconut or copra has been an important export product and a source of income throughout the Pacific. The legend of Sina and the Eel is associated with other figures in Polynesian mythology such as Hina, Tinilau, Tagaloa and Nafanua. Sina is also the name of various female figures in Polynesian mythology. The word sina also means 'white' or silver haired (grey haired in age) in the Samoan language. There is also an old Samoan song called Soufuna Sina based on a Sina legend. On the island of Savai'i in Samoa, one version of the legend tells of a beautiful girl called Sina whose beauty was known across the Pacific. This beauty reached the Tui Fiti or the King of Fiji who was older than Sina. He took to heart and decided that he shall see to what the fuss was about. Using his Mana(Magic) he transformed himself to an eel and went to the village of which Sina resided. As he got to the village pool, he had seen the beauty that is Sina. However, when Sina looked into the pool, she saw the eel staring up at her. Angry, she cried 'You stare at me, with eyes like a demon!' (). But quickly Sina noticed that the eel was very nice and made it her pet. Years and years had passed and the Tui Fiti grew old and with it his magic. He had grown weak and decided to reveal himself. Explaining to Sina that he was once the King of Fiji and have come to see her beauty but knew that he had no chance due to his age. He had then asked Sina to plant its head in the ground. Sina followed the eel's request, and planted its head in the ground. A coconut tree grew from the ground. When the husk is removed from a coconut, there are three round marks which appear like the face of the fish with two eyes and a mouth. One of the marks is pierced for drinking the coconut, and hence when Sina takes a drink, she is kissing the eel. In Samoa, the fresh spring pool Mata o le Alelo in the small village of Matavai, Safune, is associated with the legend of Sina and the Eel. The pool is named after Sina's words to the eel in the legend. The pool is open to visitors. Another version of the story says that Sina was from the village of Laloata on the island of Upolu, and her father's name was Pai., On Mangaia in the Cook Islands the version of the story is about a beautiful woman named ‘Ina-moe-Aitu who lived in a cave near Tamarua village and bathed in a stream in her cave. The song "You're Welcome" from the 2016 Walt Disney Pictures film Moana references Sina and the Eel, but with the Polynesian demigod Maui having killed an eel and buried its guts in the ground to grow coconut trees. While singing the song to Moana, Maui plays with a coconut that has three round marks on its surface., Although it goes unspoken in the film, the credits list Moana's mother as "Sina." During the song "Where You Are," Sina is shown teaching Moana how to harvest coconuts and use the various parts of the coconut tree. Read the legend in the Samoan language, Legend at National Park of American Samoa website The Moana Hotel is a historic hotel building on the island of Oahu, at 2365 Kalākaua Avenue in Honolulu, Hawaii. Built in the late 19th century as the first hotel in Waikiki, the Moana opened in 1901. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The building is currently part of the resort complex known as Moana Surfrider, A Westin Resort & Spa. The wealthy Honolulu landowner Walter Chamberlain Peacock, in an effort to establish a fine resort in the previously neglected Waikiki area of Honolulu, incorporated the Moana Hotel Company in 1896. Working with a design by architect Oliver G. Traphagen and $150,000 in capital, The Lucas Brothers contractors completed the structure in 1901. Construction of The Moana marked the beginning of tourism in Waikiki, becoming the first hotel amidst the bungalows and beach houses. In Hawaiian, moana means open sea or ocean. The Moana's architecture was influenced by European styles popular at the time, with Ionic columns and intricate woodwork and plaster detailing throughout the building. The Moana was designed with a grand porte cochere on the street side and wide lānais on the ocean side. Some of the 75 guest rooms had telephones and bathrooms (unusual at the time), and the hotel featured a billiard room, saloon, main parlor, reception area, and library. Peacock installed the first electric-powered elevator in the islands at the Moana, which is still in use today. Design features of the original structure that survive to this day include extra-wide hallways (to accommodate steamer trunks), high ceilings, and cross-ventilation windows (to cool the rooms prior to air conditioning). The Moana officially opened on March 11, 1901. Its first guests were a group of Shriners, who paid $1.50 per night for their rooms. Peacock did not find success with his endeavor and sold the hotel on May 2, 1905 to Alexander Young, a prominent businessman with other hotel holdings. After Young died in 1910, his Territorial Hotel Company operated the hotel until they went bankrupt in the Great Depression, and the Matson Navigation Company bought the property in 1932 for $1.6 million. The Moana grew along with the popularity of Hawaiian tourism. Two floors were added in 1918, along with Italian Renaissance-styled concrete wings on each side of the hotel, creating its H-shape seen today. In the 1930s, the hotel was known as the Moana-Seaside Hotel & Bungalows. The bungalows were additional buildings constructed on the large plot of land directly across Kalakaua Avenue where the ʻĀinahau estate of Princess Kaʻiulani had been located. The hotel's outward appearance was altered slightly over the years, including "updates" to such designs as Art Deco in the 1930s and Bauhaus in the 1950s. From 1935 to 1975, the Moana's courtyard hosted the Hawaii Calls live radio broadcast. Legend has it that listeners mistook the hiss of the radio transmission as the waves breaking on the beach. Upon learning of this, the host instructed the sound man to run down to the waterfront to actually record the sound, which became a staple of the show. In 1952, Matson built a new hotel adjacent to the Moana on the southeast side, called the SurfRider Hotel. In 1953, Matson demolished the Moana's bungalows across the street and, two years later, opened the new Princess Kaiulani Hotel on the site. Matson sold all of their Waikiki hotel properties to the Sheraton Company in 1959. Sheraton sold the Moana and the SurfRider to Japanese industrialist Kenji Osano and his Kyo-Ya Company in 1963, though Sheraton continued to manage them. In 1969, Kyo-Ya built a towering new hotel on the Moana's northwest side. They named it the Surfrider Hotel. The older SurfRider Hotel on the other side was turned into part of the Moana, named the Diamond Head Wing. In 1989, a $50 million restoration (designed by Hawaii architect Virginia D. Murison) restored the Moana to its 1901 appearance and incorporated the 1969 Sheraton Surfrider Hotel and the 1952 SurfRider Hotel buildings with the 1901 Moana Hotel building into one beachfront resort, the Sheraton Moana Surfrider. The new resort included 793 rooms (including 46 suites), a freshwater swimming pool, three restaurants, a beach bar and a poolside snack bar. The property has been recognized with the President's Historic Preservation Award, the National Preservation Honor Award, the Hawaii Renaissance Award, and the Hotel Sales and Marketing Association International Golden Bell Award. The main historic section of the hotel, the Banyan Wing, has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The hotel was the base of operations for about 24 White House staffers who accompanied President Barack Obama to his Winter White House at Plantation Estate during Christmas visits. In 2007, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, the management company of the Moana, rebranded the hotel from a Sheraton Hotel to a Westin Hotel. The name of the hotel became Moana Surfrider, A Westin Resort & Spa. The 1901 wing is now known as the Historic Banyan Wing. The low-rise 1952 SurfRider Hotel building is today the Diamond Wing. The 1969 Surfrider Hotel building is now called the Tower Wing. In the center of the Moana Surfrider's courtyard stands a large banyan tree. The Indian banyan tree was planted in 1904 by Jared Smith, Director of the Department of Agriculture Experiment Station. When planted, the tree was nearly seven feet tall and about seven years old. It now stands 75 feet high and spans 150 feet across the courtyard. In 1979, the historic tree was one of the first to be listed on Hawaii's Rare and Exceptional Tree List. It has also been selected by the Board of Trustees of the America the Beautiful Fund as the site for a Hawaii Millennium Landmark Tree designation, which selects one historic tree in each state for protection in the new millennium. As soon as the Moana Hotel opened, a non-stop flood of tourists from the mainland United States poured through its doors. Its most famous guest came in 1920. The Prince of Wales, who would later become King Edward VIII, gallivanted around the Moana Hotel property and reportedly fell in love with the private pier, from which he frequently dove into the ocean. In August 1922, author Agatha Christie and her husband, Colonel Archie Christie, stayed on holiday. They were traveling around the world as part of the Dominion Mission of the British Empire Exhibition, promoting the exhibition to be held in England in 1924. In February 1905, Jane Stanford, co-founder of Stanford University, died of strychnine poisoning in a room at the Moana Hotel. Stanford is believed to have been murdered, but the source of the strychnine was never identified. Stan Cohen. 1996. A Pictorial History of the Sheraton Moana Surfrider, Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, Inc., Robert W. P. Cutler. 2003. The Mysterious Death of Jane Stanford, Stanford University Press., Glen Grant. 1996. Waikīkī Yesteryear, Mutual Publishing Co., Don Hibbard and David Franzen. 1995. The View from Diamond Head: Royal Residence to Urban Resort, Editions Ltd., George S. Kanahele. 1996. Waikīkī, 100 BC to 1900 AD: An Untold Story, University of Hawaii Press., Pukui, Mary K., Samuel H. Elbert, and Esther T. Mookini. 1976. Place Names of Hawaii, Revised & expanded edition. Univ. Press of Hawaii, Honolulu. 289 pp. Official website

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The Indian cricket team are two times World Champions. In addition to winning the 1983 Cricket World Cup, they triumphed over Sri Lanka in the 2011 Cricket World Cup on home soil- "A remarkable achievement". They were also runners-up at the 2003 Cricket World Cup, and semifinalists four times(1987, 1996, 2015, 2019). They came last in the Super Six stage in the 1999 Cricket World Cup and have been knocked out 4 times in the Group stage (1975, 1979, 1992 and 2007). India's historical win-loss record at the cricket world cup is 53-29, with 1 match being tied and another one being abandoned due to rain. White: Group/round-robin stage The 1975 Cricket World Cup was the first Cricket World Cup. It was held in England in June 1975 and consisted of two weeks of one-day matches played 60-overs-a-side. The format consisted of a group stage, in which each team played the other three teams in its group of four. The top two teams from both groups would progress to the semifinals. India competed in Group B against England, New Zealand and East Africa, a team of cricketers from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Northern Rhodesia. The Indian team was led by off spinner Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan and included leading batsmen Sunil Gavaskar, Gundappa Vishwanath, and Farokh Engineer as well as Venkataraghavan's teammate from the Indian spin quartet, Bishen Singh Bedi. The team was relatively inexperienced at one-day cricket, having played their first ODI only a year earlier during their disastrous tour of England. India's first match, the first match of the Cup, was against England at Lord's in London. This match became notorious for Gavaskar's controversial knock. Chasing a mammoth 335 for victory, Gavaskar carried his bat for the entire 60 overs to score only 36 runs off 174 balls with just a solitary boundary. As a result, India could only score 132/3 in 60 overs, losing the match by 202 runs, which severely affected their chances of making the semifinals. The match was a national disgrace for India with Gavaskar, in particular, castigated from all sides for his disgraceful innings. Even today, it is not fully clear as to why he played so slowly in that match, although Gavaskar claimed that he was out of form at the time. India next played East Africa at Headingley in Leeds and as expected, won the match, thanks to disciplined bowling from medium pacer Madan Lal (3/15) which restricted East Africa to 120. In the chase, Gavaskar made amends for his atrocious innings against England with a fine half-century (65 not out from 86 balls, 9 fours). Supported by Engineer (54 not out from 93 balls, 7 fours), the duo hammered the amateurish East African bowling and steered India to a facile victory without losing a wicket. India's last match in the Group stage was a must-win encounter against New Zealand at Old Trafford in Manchester. Batting first, India scored 230, with Syed Abid Ali scoring a half-century (70 from 98 balls, 5 fours and 1 six) to make up for the top-order failure. However, the Indian bowlers were then completely hammered by Kiwi opener Glenn Turner, who scored his second century of the tournament (114 not out from 177 balls, 13 fours) as New Zealand chased down the target without much hassle. India crashed out of the tournament with this loss and finished 3rd in their group with 1 win and 2 losses. Not much positives could come out of India's campaign in the inaugural World Cup. From an Indian perspective, the tournament continues to be known for Gavaskar's notorious innings against England. Still, Gavaskar scored the highest number of runs for India in the tournament, with 113. Among the bowlers, Abid Ali, with his 6 wickets, was the best bowler for India. The Indian Squad that took part in the 1975 World Cup comprised Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan (captain), Bishen Singh Bedi (vice-captain), Anshuman Gaekwad, Brijesh Patel, Eknath Solkar, Farokh Engineer (wicketkeeper), Gundappa Vishwanath (reserve wicketkeeper), Karsan Ghavri, Madan Lal, Mohinder Amarnath, Sunil Gavaskar, Syed Abid Ali, India's record: 1−2 (Group B, 3rd place), West Indies's record: 5−0 (Champions) The second edition of the Cricket World Cup was held in 1979 once again in England and with the same tournament format as in 1975. Like in 1975, India were not having much experience in playing ODI cricket and were still neglecting the limited-overs format of the game, so they were not considered favourites to win the Cup. Still, India were expected to put up a decent show as the team for the World Cup had world-class batsmen in Sunil Gavaskar, Gundappa Vishwanath and Dilip Vengsarkar, two members of the Indian spin quartet in captain Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan and Bishen Singh Bedi and decent all rounders in Mohinder Amarnath and a rising talent in Kapil Dev, though regular wicketkeeper Syed Kirmani was surprisingly dropped. India were grouped along with the defending champions, the West Indies, who were now the best team in international cricket, New Zealand and non-Test playing nation Sri Lanka in Group B in the Group stage. India opened their campaign with a massive loss against the West Indies at Edgbaston in Birmingham. The West Indian fast bowling attack led by Michael Holding (4/33) and Andy Roberts (2/32) never allowed the Indian batsmen to settle down, and with only Vishwanath (75 from 134 balls, 7 fours) showing resistance, India were bowled all out for 190 in the 54th over. In reply, West Indian opener Gordon Greenidge scored an unbeaten century as the Caribbeans effortlessly chased down the target with the loss of just a single wicket. India were knocked out of the tournament in their next match against New Zealand at Headingley in Leeds, which was another one-sided match. A combined effort from the New Zealand bowling attack saw India crash to 182 all out, with the only significant contribution coming from Gavaskar (55 from 144 balls, 5 fours). Kiwi opener Bruce Edgar then scored an unbeaten 84 in the chase as New Zealand won without any hassle. India played for pride in their last match of the tournament against Sri Lanka at Old Trafford in Manchester and were expected to win against the minnows. But they lost this match too. Chasing 239 to win, none of the Indian batsmen could manage even a half-century against the Sri Lankan bowling attack comprising Tony Opatha (3/31), Stanley de Silva (2/36) and Somachandra de Silva (3/29). India were bowled all-out for just 191, finishing their World Cup campaign winless and last in their group. It was a nightmarish campaign for India, with no wins and none of the players contributing. The fact that India as a team were not able to score even 200 runs in a single match, that only Vishwanath crossed three-figures in terms of the total number of individual runs scored (106) with only him and Gavaskar scoring a half-century each, and that only Amarnath, with 4 wickets, and Kapil, with 2 wickets, took wickets in all the 3 matches, showed how horrible and pathetic the Indian performance was in the World Cup. This dismal performance generated an uproar in India. The tournament marked the end of the road for the now struggling Indian spin quartet, with its two members in the World Cup side, Bedi and Venkataraghavan, bowling really poorly and not even taking a single wicket. Following the World Cup and the subsequent series against England, Bedi retired from international cricket, while Venkataraghavan was sacked as captain and also dropped from the team. None of the 4 members of the spin quartet ever played in a World Cup again. The Indian Squad that took part in the 1979 World Cup comprised Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan (captain), Sunil Gavaskar (vice-captain), Anshuman Gaekwad, Bharath Reddy (reserve wicketkeeper), Bishen Singh Bedi, Brijesh Patel, Dilip Vengsarkar, Gundappa Vishwanath, Kapil Dev, Karsan Ghavri, Mohinder Amarnath, Surinder Khanna (wicketkeeper), Yashpal Sharma, India's record: 0−3 (Group B, 4th place), West Indies's record: 4−0 and 1 washout (Champions) Going by India's past record in one-day internationals and in the World Cup, they were not expected to even progress beyond the Group stage of the 1983 Cricket World Cup which was yet again held in England, despite having the likes of Sunil Gavaskar, Krishnamachari Srikkanth, Dilip Vengsarkar, Yashpal Sharma and Sandeep Patil in batting and a decent set of all-rounders in captain Kapil Dev, who was now one of the best all-rounders in world cricket, Mohinder Amarnath, Madan Lal, Ravi Shastri and Roger Binny. This time, the tournament format was slightly different from the previous editions. Teams were still divided among 2 groups of 4, but now each team in a group played each other twice. India were placed in Group B in the Group stage, which was considered to be the tougher of the 2 groups as it included 2 stronger opponents in the defending champions, the West Indies, whose dominance in world cricket at the time was at its peak, and Australia. World Cup debutants Zimbabwe were also in the group. The fact that the West Indies and Australia were in India's group only worsened India's prospects of putting a decent showing this time around. India's first match in the tournament was against the West Indies at Old Trafford in Manchester. The West Indians were expected to steamroll India, but India caused a massive upset, winning the game by 34 runs in a match spread over 2 days. Middle-order batsman Sharma withstood the West Indian pace attack to score a fine half-century (89 from 120 balls, 9 fours) as India scored 262/8. Then, a disciplined performance from the Indian bowlers led by all-rounders Binny (3/48) and Shastri (3/26) ensured that the West Indian batsmen could not settle down after their starts, as a result of which the West Indies were bowled all out for 228. India followed this victory with another win against Zimbabwe at Leicester. In a one-sided match, India, bowling first, restricted Zimbabwe to 155 with Madan Lal taking 3/27, following which a half-century by Patil (50 from 54 balls, 7 fours, 1 six) ensured that India chased down the paltry total easily. However, despite the good start, 2 consecutive defeats against Australia at Trent Bridge in Nottingham and the West Indies at The Oval in London followed, and with other results going Australia's and the West Indies' way, India were once again staring at another early exit from the World Cup. Trevor Chappell scored 110 to ensure that Australia scored a mammoth 320/9, with India dishing out a listless bowling performance. Only Kapil bowled well, taking a 5-wicket haul (5/43). Australian medium-pacer Ken MacLeay took 6/39 as India were bowled all out for just 150, losing by 162 runs, with none of the Indian batsmen contributing. Against the West Indies, India, chasing 283 to win, never really got going despite Amarnath's patient knock (80 from 139 balls). A combined effort from the West Indian pace attack saw India crash to 216 all out, losing by 66 runs. To add to India's woes, Vengsarkar was ruled out for the rest of the tournament after a Malcolm Marshall bouncer injured his jaw. To reach the semifinals now, India had to beat Zimbabwe and Australia by huge margins, a daunting prospect. Should India lose even one of the matches, they would be knocked out of the tournament. India began their match against Zimbabwe at Tunbridge Wells on 18 June 1983 disastrously. The Zimbabwean bowling attack, led by Peter Rawson (3/47) and Kevin Curran (3/65), destroyed the Indian top order, reducing them to 17/5. A massive upset by the Zimbabweans and another early exit for India was now very much on the cards, until Kapil arrived. Kapil completely changed the course of the match with a breathtaking innings (175 not out from 138 balls, 16 fours, 6 sixes). With the support of the tailenders, he ransacked the Zimbabwean bowling as he played his most famous innings, which was also the highest individual score in ODI cricket at the time and the first ever ODI century scored by an Indian batsman. As a result of his astounding knock, India finished the innings at 266/8. Then, a good performance with the ball from Madan Lal (3/42) saw Zimbabwe being bowled all out for 235, despite Curran's 73, to set up a famous win. Unfortunately, this match was not telecasted live due to a strike by the BBC staff on that day. But India's woes weren't over yet; they needed to beat Australia comprehensively to have any hope of reaching the semifinals. India's must-win match against the Aussies took place at Chelmsford, two days after the famous victory against Zimbabwe. Despite Rodney Hogg (3/40) and Jeff Thomson (3/51) taking 3 wickets each, a combined effort from the Indian batsmen saw India reach 247 all out. Australia, chasing 248 to win, were rocked by the innocuous but penetrative medium-pace of Madan Lal (4/20) and Binny (4/29) and crashed to 129 all out, losing the match by a whopping 118 runs. With another win under their belt, India finished second in their group and qualified for the semifinals for the first time ever in the Cricket World Cup. India's semifinal match was against hosts England at Manchester. Despite England being the favourites, India produced yet another upset. England won the toss and batted first. Despite an opening stand of 69, the English batsmen mistimed many balls and used the bat's edge frequently, as the restrictive Indian bowling led England to 213 all out. English opener Graeme Fowler top scored with 33. Kapil Dev was the pick of the Indian bowlers (3/35), with Amarnath (2/27) and Binny (2/43) also being among the wickets. In reply, Sharma (61 from 115 balls, 3 fours, 2 sixes) and Sandeep Patil (51 not out from 32 balls, 8 fours) made half-centuries, with Amarnath (46 from 92 balls, 4 fours, 1 six) too contributing, as India reached their target comfortably, winning by 6 wickets in a classic victory over the hosts. Amarnath picked up the Man of the Match award for his all-round performance. This win brought India to the World Cup final for the very first time, which was to be played against the West Indies on 25 June 1983 at Lord's in London. A third consecutive tournament victory for the West Indies was widely predicted by most pundits and fans. In the final, India lost the toss and were made to bat first on a seaming wicket against the mighty West Indian pace attack. Only Srikkanth (38 from 57 balls, 7 fours and 1 six) and Amarnath (26 from 80 balls, 3 fours) put up any significant resistance as the West Indian fast bowling attack comprising Marshall (2/24), Andy Roberts (3/32), Joel Garner (1/24) and Michael Holding (2/26) ripped through the Indian batting, ably supported by part-timer Larry Gomes (2/49). Only surprising resistance by the tail allowed India to reach 183 all out in the 55th over. It seemed to be all over for India, as the West Indies had a power-packed batting line-up comprising openers Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes, followed by Vivian Richards and captain Clive Lloyd which was capable of destroying any bowling attack and were widely expected to make mincemeat out of the "mediocre" Indian bowling attack. Despite the early loss of Greenidge, Haynes and Richards steadied the innings and the West Indies was soon cruising to another World Cup win at 57/2. At this stage, Kapil ran a great distance (18-20 yards) to take the wicket of Richards off Madan Lal's bowling. This proved to be the turning point of the match, as the Indian bowling then exploited the weather and pitch conditions perfectly to blow away the rest of the West Indian batting. Amarnath (3/12) and Madan Lal (3/31) took three wickets each, as the West Indies crashed to 140 all out in the 53rd over, setting up a famous tournament victory for India which was one of the biggest upsets not only in cricket, but in sport in general. India's win ended the title defence of the West Indies, who never reached the final of the Cricket World Cup again. Amarnath was awarded a second consecutive Man of the Match award for another all-round effort. Apart from the win, there were statistically many other achievements for India in the 1983 World Cup. Binny and Madan Lal, with 18 and 17 wickets respectively, were the tournament's top two bowlers. While Kapil, with 303 runs, was India's best batsman and one of the top 10 batsmen in terms of total individual runs, he also took the most catches in the tournament, with 7, and was India's only centurion. Kapil's 175 not out against Zimbabwe was the first ODI century scored by an Indian batsman and remained the highest individual score in ODI cricket until Vivian Richards broke that record the following year. It also remained the highest individual score by an Indian batsman in ODI cricket until Sourav Ganguly broke that record in 1999. Wicketkeeper Syed Kirmani, with 14 dismissals, finished just below West Indian wicketkeeper Jeff Dujon in the most dismissals taken by a wicketkeeper in the tournament. India's 1983 World Cup victory was a major turning point for Indian as well as world cricket. The win boosted the popularity of cricket in India, which was until then restricted to the urban areas. It also increased the popularity of one-day cricket in India as well as in general. India began to take ODI cricket seriously after the World Cup win and soon emerged as one of the best teams in ODI cricket. Indian corporates too started to take an interest in cricket and began to sponsor many international tournaments, marking the start of the rise of India as the leading financial power in cricket. The Indian Squad that won the 1983 World Cup comprised Kapil Dev (captain), Sunil Gavaskar, Balwinder Singh Sandhu, Dilip Vengsarkar, Kirti Azad, Krishnamachari Srikkanth, Madan Lal, Mohinder Amarnath(vice captain), Ravi Shastri, Roger Binny, Sandeep Patil, Sunil Valson, Syed Kirmani (wicketkeeper), Yashpal Sharma (reserve wicketkeeper), India's record: 6−2 (Champions) The World Cup moved out of England for the first time in 1987, with India and Pakistan co-hosting this edition of the World Cup. India were billed pre- tournament favourites and were widely expected to defend their title successfully in familiar conditions. India's team for the World Cup did not have some important members of the World Cup-winning squad of 1983, notably Mohinder Amarnath, Syed Kirmani, Madan Lal, Yashpal Sharma and Sandeep Patil, but all-rounder Kapil Dev once again led the side, which included world-class batsmen in veteran Sunil Gavaskar, who was to retire from all forms of cricket after the tournament, Krishnamachari Srikkanth, Dilip Vengsarkar, Ravi Shastri, Mohammed Azharuddin and Kapil. The bowling too was decent enough, with Kapil leading the attack, supported by Shastri, Maninder Singh, Manoj Prabhakar, Chetan Sharma and Roger Binny. The 1983 World Cup format was again used for the tournament, but the matches were reduced to 50-overs-a-side, keeping in mind the shorter days in the Indian subcontinent. In the Group stage, India were placed alongside Australia, New Zealand and then-associates Zimbabwe in Group A, which was considered to be the easier of the 2 groups. India played the very first match of the tournament against Australia at Madras, which was arguably the most eventful match of the tournament. Australia won the match by just 1 run, after piling up 270/6 in their first innings, helped by opener Geoff Marsh's 110. India began their innings brightly and were cruising to an easy victory at 207/2, thanks to half- centuries from Srikkanth (70 from 83 balls, 7 fours) and debutant Navjot Singh Sidhu (73 from 79 balls, 4 fours and 5 sixes), until Sidhu fell. This was followed by a spectacular middle-order collapse that made India lose their last 8 wickets for just 62 runs. India were all out for 269 with one ball remaining in the match, which was a heartbreaking loss for the defending champions. Their next match against New Zealand at Bangalore was also dramatic, with Sidhu (75 from 71 balls, 4 fours and 4 sixes) once again rescuing India after India had fallen to 21/3, and along with Kapil (72 not out from 58 balls, 4 fours and 1 six), destroyed the New Zealand bowling attack to take India to 252/7. India eventually pulled off a 16-run victory thanks to some economical bowling from Shastri (2/45) and part-timer Azharuddin (1/11), India thus registering its first win in the tournament. India dominated the rest of the Group stage with 2 one-sided victories against Zimbabwe at Bombay and Ahmedabad, followed by wins against Australia and New Zealand at New Delhi and Nagpur respectively. India dished out a clinical performance against the Aussies, with 4 Indian batsmen: Gavaskar (61 from 72 balls, 7 fours), Sidhu (51 from 70 balls, 2 fours), Vengsarkar (63 from 60 balls, 3 fours and 2 sixes) and Azharuddin (54 not out from 45 balls, 5 fours and 1 six): scoring half-centuries as India posted an imposing 289/6. Maninder (3/34) and Azharuddin (3/19) then contributed with the ball as Australia crashed to 233 all out in the 49th over. India's last match in the Group stage against New Zealand was noted as the match in which Gavaskar scored his first and only ODI century (103 not out from 88 balls, 10 fours and 3 sixes). Supported by Srikkanth (75 from 58 balls, 9 fours and 3 sixes), Gavaskar toyed with the New Zealand bowling attack with an attacking innings uncharacteristic of his typical dour and rock-like approach as India chased down New Zealand's modest score of 221/9 with the loss of only Srikkanth's wicket and 18 overs to spare. Gavaskar and Srikkanth added 136 runs for the 2nd wicket. Also notable in this match was Chetan Sharma's hat-trick, the first ever both by an Indian bowler and in the World Cup. His hat-trick involved the wickets of Ken Rutherford, wicketkeeper Ian Smith and tailender Ewen Chatfield. Sharma finished with figures of 3/51. With 5 wins and 1 loss from 6 matches, India topped their group and qualified for the semifinals, where they were to play England at Bombay. The semifinal, which took place on 5 November 1987, saw India winning the toss and choosing to field first. England dominated the match from the start, with opener Graham Gooch scoring an impressive 115 and ably supported by captain Mike Gatting, who contributed with 56, the duo sharing a partnership of 117 for the 3rd wicket. England posted a strong score of 254/6, with only Maninder (3/54) and Kapil (2/38) bowling well for India. India faltered in the chase, with only Azharuddin (64 from 74 balls, 7 fours) making any significant contribution for India. The Indian batsmen completely faltered against off-spinner Eddie Hemmings (4/52) and fast bowler Neil Foster (3/47) as India were bowled all out for 219 in the 46th over. It was a heartbreaking loss for India, ending their title defence. This was Gavaskar's last ever cricket match. Though India were unable to defend their title successfully, there were a lot of positives for India. Firstly, Gavaskar, in his final tournament, scored 300 runs, the highest for India, and was one of the top ten batsmen in terms of runs scored and the only centurion for India. Secondly, the partnership of 136 between Gavaskar and Srikkanth against New Zealand at Nagpur was the highest partnership for any wicket in the tournament. Thirdly, left-arm spinner Maninder Singh was the best bowler for India with 14 wickets and was the best spinner of the tournament, coming at 4th place among the tournament's highest wicket takers, with only fast bowlers Craig McDermott, Imran Khan and Patrick Patterson above him. Finally, wicketkeeper Kiran More, with 11 dismissals, effected the most dismissals in the tournament, while Kapil, with 6 catches, took the most catches. The Indian Squad that made the semifinals of the 1987 World Cup comprised Kapil Dev (captain), Dilip Vengsarkar (vice-captain), Chandrakant Pandit (reserve wicketkeeper), Chetan Sharma, Kiran More (wicketkeeper), Krishnamachari Srikkanth, Laxman Sivaramakrishnan, Maninder Singh, Manoj Prabhakar, Mohammed Azharuddin, Navjot Singh Sidhu, Ravi Shastri, Roger Binny, Sunil Gavaskar, India's record: 5−2 (Semifinalists), Australia's record: 7−1 (Champions) India were not expected to perform well in the 1992 World Cup co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand, despite playing a Test series (and also the World Series Cup involving both Australia and the West Indies) in Australia just prior to the World Cup. The Indian team for the World Cup had a good batting line up consisting of captain Mohammed Azharuddin, destructive opener Krishnamachari Srikkanth, all rounders Kapil Dev and Ravi Shastri, Sanjay Manjrekar and a rising talent in Sachin Tendulkar. The bowling wasn't too strong though. Kapil led the bowling line up, which also included Shastri, Manoj Prabhakar and Venkatapathy Raju. A new format was introduced for the 1992 World Cup, with the group format being scrapped in favour of a round- robin format, where each team would play all the other 8 teams in the tournament once, with the top 4 teams at the end of the Round-Robin stage progressing to the semifinals. It was also the first Cricket World Cup played with coloured jerseys and which had day-night matches. India's first match in the tournament was against England at Perth. Chasing 237, India never really got going despite a 63-run opening stand shared by Shastri (57 from 112 balls, 2 fours) and Srikkanth (39 from 50 balls, 7 fours) and a good knock from Tendulkar (35 from 44 balls, 5 fours). India crashed to 227 all out, losing by nine runs, with Dermot Reeve (3/38) taking the most wickets for England. Three of India's batsmen: Shastri, Pravin Amre and Kiran More: were run out. India's next match against Sri Lanka at Mackay was abandoned due to rain after just 2 balls and a run scored by Srikkanth, giving India its first points in the tournament. India then played co-hosts and defending champions Australia at Brisbane. The match was a thriller. Australia scored 237/9 in its 50 overs, with Dean Jones scoring 90. Kapil and Prabhakar were the pick of the bowlers with identical figures of 3/41. Due to rain, India's target was revised to 235 and the overs reduced to 47. Azharuddin led India's reply with a near-century (93 from 102 balls, 10 fours), but the rest of India's batsmen were unable to cross 50 and with Prabhakar (1 from 1 ball) and Raju (0 from 1 ball) run out in successive balls, India crashed to 234 all out in the second-last ball of the innings, ensuring that Australia scraped to victory by 1 run. India's next match was against arch-rivals Pakistan at Sydney. It was the first time ever in the history of the Cricket World Cup that India and Pakistan played each other and therefore, the match was highly anticipated. India won the toss and batted first, posting a modest 216/7 in a match reduced to 49 overs due to rain, with the top contributors being Tendulkar (54 not out from 62 balls, 3 fours) and rookie opener Ajay Jadeja (46 from 77 balls, 2 fours). Pakistan's leg-spinner Mushtaq Ahmed was the pick of Pakistan's bowlers, taking 3/59, while fast bowler Aaqib Javed was economical, taking 2/28 in his 8 overs. In Pakistan's reply, only opener Aamer Sohail, who scored 62, could cross 50 runs with Kapil (2/30), Prabhakar (2/22) and rookie Javagal Srinath (2/37) taking 2 wickets each, as Pakistan crashed to 173 all out in the 49th over, losing by 43 runs, earning India its first win in the tournament, a famous victory which would begin an all-win record over the arch-rivals in subsequent Cricket World Cups (both 50-over and 20-over). The match also had its share of drama which is a regular feature in Indo-Pak cricket matches, with Javed Miandad imitating Indian wicketkeeper Kiran More's appealing behind the stumps. Tendulkar won his first Man of the Match award in a World Cup for his allround performance (54* and 1/37, picking up the prized wicket of Aamer Sohail). However, India's time was running out and they had to play really well from then on to have any chance of reaching the semifinals. India then moved on to New Zealand for the second half of the tournament. Their first match in New Zealand was against minnows Zimbabwe at Hamilton. India won the rain-curtailed match as expected, with Tendulkar (81 from 77 balls, 8 fours and 1 six) playing an aggressive knock as India posted 203/7. Zimbabwe, chasing 159 in 19 overs after a rain delay, could only score 104/1 in the 19 overs, Tendulkar taking the lone wicket. Tendulkar received his second Man of the Match award in the Cricket World Cup for his contribution in the match. But now India needed to win their last three matches comprehensively and also depend on other results to reach the semifinals. India next played the West Indies at Wellington. The West Indies were slowly declining at the time with the retirements of several key players, yet were still a dangerous opponent. India lost the match. Only Azharuddin (61 from 84 balls, 4 fours) showed any sort of resistance against the pace attack of Curtly Ambrose (2/24) and Anderson Cummins (4/33) as India were bowled all out for 197. The West Indies comfortably reached their target of 195 (with the score and number of overs being reduced by rain again) with 6 overs to spare. India crashed out of the tournament with this loss, with their last two matches against co-hosts New Zealand at Dunedin and World Cup debutants South Africa back in Australia at Adelaide reduced to dead rubbers. India lost both the one-sided matches. Only Tendulkar (84 from 107 balls, 6 fours) and Azharuddin (55 from 98 balls, 3 fours and 1 six) made any significant contribution in India's score of 230/6, which New Zealand easily chased down. Against South Africa, in a match reduced to 30 overs due to rain, the only person who contributed for India was Azharuddin (79 from 77 balls, 6 fours). India scored 180/6, which South Africa chased down without much effort. With only 2 wins and 1 abandoned match, India finished 7th in the Round-Robin stage, just above Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe. It was the first time since 1979 that India could not qualify for the semifinals of the World Cup. Ironically, Pakistan, one of the only 2 teams which India defeated, would go on to win the World Cup. There were not much positives India could take from the tournament. No Indian batsman was able to score a century and no Indian bowler could take more than 3 wickets in an innings. India's highest scorer in the tournament was Azharuddin, who scored 332 runs. Tendulkar followed with a total score of 283 runs. Among the bowlers, Prabhakar was the best for India, taking 12 wickets. The tournament marked the end of Srikkanth's international career, as he was dropped after the World Cup and retired from all forms of cricket the following year. The Indian Squad that took part in the 1992 World Cup comprised Mohammed Azharuddin (captain), Ravi Shastri (vice-captain), Ajay Jadeja, Javagal Srinath, Kapil Dev, Kiran More (wicketkeeper), Krishnamachari Srikkanth, Manoj Prabhakar, Pravin Amre, Sachin Tendulkar, Sanjay Manjrekar (reserve wicketkeeper), Subroto Banerjee, Venkatapathy Raju, Vinod Kambli, India's record: 2−5 and 1 abandoned match (Round-Robin, 7th place), Pakistan's record: 6−3 and 1 abandoned match (Champions) India were the co-hosts of the 1996 Cricket World Cup along with Pakistan and Sri Lanka and were expected to perform well at home. Their batting was their strongest point, with Sachin Tendulkar, captain Mohammed Azharuddin, Ajay Jadeja, Navjot Singh Sidhu, Vinod Kambli and Sanjay Manjrekar together forming the strongest batting line-up in the tournament. While the bowling was a bit suspect, the team had a decent set of bowlers who were good at home conditions in Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath, Manoj Prabhakar and Venkatapathy Raju. The group format was reintroduced for the tournament, with teams divided into 2 groups of 6 teams each, with the top 4 teams from each group entering the quarterfinals, where a team from one group in the Group stage would play a single match against a team which qualified from the other group. In the Group stage, India were placed in Group A with co-hosts Sri Lanka, Australia, the West Indies, Zimbabwe and World Cup debutants Kenya. India started their World cup campaign well by defeating Kenya at Cuttack, first restricting them to 199/6 with Kumble taking 3/28 and then chasing it down easily to win by 7 wickets due to Tendulkar's century (127 not out from 138 balls, 15 fours, 1 six). India's next match against the West Indies at Gwalior went much the same way: after bowling the West Indies side out for 173 with Kumble capturing 3/35 and Prabhakar 3/39, Tendulkar (70 runs, 91 balls, 8 fours) led the way to another victory. India then faced tournament favourites Australia at Bombay, and the tourists batted first after winning the toss. Mark Waugh's 126 and Australian captain Mark Taylor's 59 set the foundation with a 103 run opening stand. Australia suffered five run-outs, four in the last ten overs whilst chasing quick runs, with medium-pacer Venkatesh Prasad and Raju taking two wickets each. India's chase started poorly, with Jadeja and Vinod Kambli dismissed by Damien Fleming with only seven runs scored. Tendulkar (90 from 84 balls, 14 fours, 1 six) counter-attacked ferociously, and India were well ahead of the required run rate at 143/3 when Tendulkar charged a wide from Mark Waugh and was stumped for 90. From there onward, the run chase began to falter, with only Manjrekar managing a half century (62 from 91 balls, 7 fours), resulting in a 16-run loss, dismissed for 242 in the 48th over. India next faced Sri Lanka at New Delhi. Tendulkar hit another run-a-ball century (137 from 137 balls, 8 fours, 5 sixes) and Azharuddin made 72 from 80 balls in a 175 run partnership as India compiled 271/3. However, the opening pair of Romesh Kaluwitharana and Sanath Jayasuriya launched Sri Lanka to 42 after just three overs. Jayasuriya managed to score 79 from 77 balls, leaving the score at 4/141. With the run-rate under control, Sri Lankan captain Arjuna Ranatunga (46 not out from 63 balls) and Hashan Tillakaratne (70 not out from 98 balls) made a 131 run partnership to steer them to a six wicket win with eight balls remaining. Kumble led the bowling with 2/39 whilst Prabhakar was punished for 47 runs in four overs. India ended the group stage with a win against Zimbabwe at Kanpur, who won the toss and sent the Indians in to bat. After slumping to 32/3, opener Sidhu (80 from 116 balls, 5 fours) and Kambli (106 from 110 balls, 11 fours) put on 142 runs before Jadeja finished off the innings with 44 not out from 27 balls, with India scoring 247/5. The Zimbabweans lost wickets at regular intervals and fell 40 runs short, with Raju taking 3/30 and Kumble, Srinath and Jadeja two each. With this win, India finished third in their group and qualified for the quarterfinals, setting up a match against arch-rivals and defending champions Pakistan at Bangalore. The match was widely anticipated and had a huge leadup. Pakistani captain Wasim Akram withdrew due to injury. India elected to bat after winning the toss, with Sidhu (93 from 115 balls, 11 fours) and Tendulkar (31 off 59 balls, 3 fours) reaching 90 before Tendulkar was dismissed by Pakistan fast bowler Ata-ur- Rehman. Although wickets fell regularly, with all Pakistani bowlers barring part-timer Salim Malik among the wickets, the Indians continued to score quickly, with Jadeja making a rapid 45 from 25 balls in the final overs, including 40 from Waqar Younis' last two overs. India scored 287/8 in their 50 overs. Prasad and Kumble then took three wickets each to restrict Pakistan to 248/9, despite their strong start due to a quick 55 from Pakistan's stand-in- captain and opener Aamer Sohail, to complete a memorable victory and qualify for the semifinals, making it 2 wins in 2 World Cup matches against the arch- rivals. This resulted in widespread disappointment in Pakistan, leading to a government inquiry, crowd demonstrations outside players' homes and the suicide of one distraught fan. In the semifinals at the Eden Gardens in Calcutta on 13 March 1996, India played Sri Lanka in a match which became notorious for the extremely poor crowd behaviour. India won the toss and chose to field first. Both the openers Kaluwitharana and Jayasuriya were dismissed in Srinath's first over, uppercutting wide balls down to third man. Srinath then removed veteran Asanka Gurusinha to leave the score at 35/3. However half centuries from Aravinda de Silva and Roshan Mahanama helped Sri Lanka reach a formidable total of 251/8. India made a solid start, with Sachin Tendulkar (65 from 88 balls, 9 fours) scoring a half-century and taking India to 1/98. However, the pitch began to crumble and take more spin, and when Tendulkar was stumped, the remaining Indian batsmen were unable to cope with the four pronged spin-attack of Jayasuriya, Muttiah Muralitharan and part timers de Silva and Kumar Dharmasena, who altogether took 6 wickets as India lost 7 wickets for 22 runs to slump to 120/8 in the 35th over, with still 132 runs to win. At this point, sections of the crowd began setting fire to the stands and throwing missiles onto the field. Play was stopped as the crowd's anger began to develop into a dangerous riot. The umpires and match referee Clive Lloyd decided to award the game to Sri Lanka because India had no chance of winning from their current position in the match even if the match were to resume, knocking them out of the World Cup. India's campaign was highlighted by the consistency of Tendulkar, who managed 50 plus scores in all but two matches. With 523 runs at an average of 87.16, Tendulkar was the leading run scorer in the tournament, with two of his six dismissals due to run outs rather than batting errors. His 137 against Sri Lanka was the 4th highest score in the tournament and his partnership of 175 with Azharuddin the 4th highest partnership in the tournament. No other Indian batsmen aggregated 250 runs. India were also bolstered by the performances of leg-spinner Kumble, who was the leading wicket taker in the tournament with 15 wickets at 18.73 apiece and also made the most catches (eight). Raju, Prasad and Srinath were tied in 10th spot with eight wickets each. Veteran all-rounder Manoj Prabhakar retired from international cricket in the middle of the tournament after being dropped for poor performance. The Indian Squad that made the semifinals of the 1996 World Cup comprised Mohammed Azharuddin (captain), Sachin Tendulkar (vice-captain), Aashish Kapoor, Ajay Jadeja, Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath, Manoj Prabhakar, Navjot Singh Sidhu, Nayan Mongia (wicketkeeper), Salil Ankola, Sanjay Manjrekar (reserve wicketkeeper), Venkatapathy Raju, Venkatesh Prasad, Vinod Kambli, India's record: 4−3 (Semifinalists), Sri Lanka's record: 8−0 with 2 matches won by walkovers (Champions) The 1999 Cricket World Cup in England was one in which India were not expected to perform too well. Despite having the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, Ajay Jadeja and captain Mohammed Azharuddin in batting and Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath and Venkatesh Prasad in bowling, they weren't having too much of a good run, losing to arch-rivals Pakistan in the finals of 2 consecutive triangular tournaments at home and at Sharjah. The format used for the tournament was slightly different from the 1996 format. Teams were divided into 2 groups of 6 teams each, with the top 3 teams in each group progressing to the Super Six stage, where a team belonging to one group in the Group stage would play once against all 3 teams belonging to the other group. India were placed in Group A in the Group stage along with hosts England, defending champions Sri Lanka, South Africa, Zimbabwe and minnows Kenya. India began their campaign with a close loss to South Africa at Hove in the final overs of the match. Although South Africa won by 4 wickets, the match was not without drama as South Africa had to score had approximately a run a ball in the last 10 overs. The match featured a good performance from Ganguly (97 from 142 balls, 11 fours, 1 six) and Dravid (54 from 75 balls, 5 fours). None of the bowlers backed up the batting performance however, with Srinath the leading wicket-taker despite being very expensive, taking 2 wickets and conceding 69 runs. South Africa scored runs more quickly than India did, with Jacques Kallis (96 from 128 balls) leading the way. India next played Zimbabwe at Leicester, without the services of Tendulkar, as the star batsman had returned to India due to his father's death. The match was a thriller, with India losing in the end by 3 runs. The tailenders embarrassed supporters as India, chasing 252, went from 246/7 to 249 all out with 3 overs left, with Zimbabwean fast bowler Henry Olonga taking 3/22. India made up for their early losses with a very convincing win over Kenya at Bristol by 94 runs four days later. India scored a massive 329/2 through centuries from Tendulkar (140 not out from 101 balls, 16 fours, 3 sixes), who had rejoined the team, and Dravid (104 not out from 109 balls, 10 fours). The pair scored 237 in 29 overs at a run rate of 8.17 before medium pacer Debashish Mohanty wiped up the Kenyan batsmen with a 4-wicket haul (4/56). Tendulkar, declared Man of the Match, later dedicated his ton to his late father. India followed this victory with a record win against Sri Lanka at Taunton by 157 runs. Ganguly (183 from 158 balls, 17 fours, 7 sixes) and Dravid (145 from 129 balls, 17 fours, 1 six) picked up two centuries at over a run a ball to get India to a mammoth total of 373/6, sharing a partnership of 318 runs in 44.9 overs. Sri Lanka were then rattled due to Robin Singh's 5/31, crashing to 216 all out. India then went on to seal a place in the Super Six stage with a win against hosts England at Edgbaston in Birmingham by 63 runs; in a match extended by a day due to rain, once again Ganguly (40 from 59 balls, 6 fours) and Dravid (53 from 82 balls, 6 fours) starred with the bat to score 232/8, while a strong team effort with the ball, led by Ganguly's 3/27, got England all out for just 169. Despite India finishing second in Group A, they began the Super Six stage with no points due to the controversial Byzantine points system which gave a team 2 points at the start of the Super Six stage for beating a team in the Group stage which had also qualified for the Super Six stage (India did not win against fellow qualifiers South Africa and Zimbabwe). India's first match in the Super Six stage was against Australia at The Oval in London, which they lost badly by 77 runs, with only Jadeja (100 not out from 138 balls, 7 fours, 2 sixes) and Robin Singh (75 from 94 balls, 5 fours, 3 sixes) putting up any resistance. Mark Waugh's 83 and Glenn McGrath's 3/34 took the match away from India. Due to this loss, India, in order to reach the semifinals, now not only had to beat Pakistan and New Zealand, they also had to depend on other results. India beat Pakistan in their next match at Old Trafford in Manchester by 47 runs, maintaining their all-win record over their arch-rivals in the World Cup. Dravid (61 from 89 balls, 4 fours) and Azharuddin (59 from 77 balls, 3 fours, 1 six), led the way as India posted a total of 227/6 in their 50 overs. Prasad then ripped through the Pakistani batting line-up, taking 5/27 as Pakistan were bowled all out for 180. The match was even more significant than usual as the two nations were at war with each other (see 1999 Kargil Conflict). Unfortunately, despite the win against Pakistan, India were soon eliminated from the tournament due to other results and their handicap in terms of points in the Super Six stage. India's last match in the Super Six stage against New Zealand at Trent Bridge in Nottingham was also the team's last match in the tournament. The match, reduced to a dead rubber since New Zealand had already qualified for the semifinals, was a thriller, with India losing in the end by 5 wickets as New Zealand achieved the target of 252 with just 8 balls to spare, despite a strong performance from Jadeja (76 from 103 balls, 6 fours, 2 six). Despite having a mediocre tournament, there were many plus-points for India. The tournament marked the start of the domination of the Big 3 of Indian batting viz. Tendulkar, Dravid and Ganguly, all of whom showed remarkable consistency. Dravid, who until the start of the World Cup was criticised for not being good enough for one-day cricket, was involved in two mammoth partnerships and was the leading run-scorer of the entire tournament with 461 runs at an average of 65.85. The top 3 highest scores of the tournament were from Indians, which were Ganguly's 183, Dravid's 145 and Tendulkar's 140 not out. However, following the World Cup, Azharuddin, who had an indifferent tournament, was sacked as captain and was dropped from the team too. The Indian Squad that took part in the 1999 World Cup comprised Mohammed Azharuddin (captain), Ajay Jadeja (vice-captain), Ajit Agarkar, Amay Khurasiya, Anil Kumble, Debashish Mohanty, Javagal Srinath, Nayan Mongia (wicketkeeper), Nikhil Chopra, Rahul Dravid (reserve wicketkeeper), Robin Singh, Sachin Tendulkar, Sadagoppan Ramesh, Sourav Ganguly, Venkatesh Prasad, India's record: 4−4 (Super Six, 6th place), Australia's record: 7−2 and 1 tie (Champions) Like in the previous World Cup, India began their 2003 Cricket World Cup campaign in South Africa and Zimbabwe on a string of poor performances, having just come off a disastrous tour of New Zealand. The 1999 World Cup format was retained for the tournament. The Indian team was somewhat stronger than the team representing them in the 1999 World Cup, but still contained the batting trio of Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly and the pace-spin duo of Javagal Srinath and Anil Kumble, now accompanied by rising talents Yuvraj Singh, Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh, Mohammed Kaif and Virender Sehwag. In the Group stage, India were placed in Group A, accompanied by co-hosts Zimbabwe, defending champions Australia, arch-rivals Pakistan, England and minnows Holland and Namibia, who were playing their first World Cup. India had a horrid beginning to the tournament. Their first match was against minnows Holland at Paarl, who tumbled the Indian batsmen out for just 204 (all out, 48.5 overs, 206 minutes), with only Tendulkar (52 from 72 balls, 7 fours) putting up resistance, although veterans Srinath and Kumble reverted the damage with 4 wickets each and India ended up winning by 68 runs, the unconvincing victory setting the stage for immense criticism. India's next match was against Australia at Centurion. The Indian team, batting first, was steadily making progress at 41/1 when disaster struck. Sehwag's wicket triggered a middle order collapse that left India struggling at 50/5 having lost 4 wickets for 9 runs. Tendulkar and Harbhajan offered some resistance but the damage was done as India were out for 125 (all out, 41.4 overs, 176 minutes). Australia scored the target in 22.2 overs, only losing one wicket. The Indian team's mediocre performance in the first two matches triggered uproar in India. Player effigies were said to be burnt on streets and the Board of Control for Cricket in India was under immense pressure to reshuffle the team at the end of the World Cup. This reaction at home may have triggered the Indian team's performance for the remainder of the World Cup. India then travelled to Zimbabwe to play their third match against the co-hosts at Harare, lacking confidence. Tendulkar (81 from 91 balls, 10 fours) took India to 255 (7 wickets, 50 overs) and 3 wickets from Ganguly set the stage for a strong 83 run win by the Indians. This was followed by a 181 run thrashing handed out to minnows Namibia, back in South Africa at Pietermaritzburg. Tendulkar (152 from 151 balls, 18 fours) and Ganguly (112 from 119 balls, 6 fours, 4 sixes) both scored centuries, contributing to a second-wicket partnership of 244 runs in 39.5 overs to take India to 311 (2 wickets, 50 overs, 207 minutes). Namibia were then all out for 130 (all out, 42.3 overs, 163 minutes) thanks to 4 wickets from part-timer Yuvraj. The Man of the match was Tendulkar in both matches. India finished off their engagements in Group A with an 82 run victory over England at Durban and a 6 wicket victory over Pakistan at Centurion. Paceman Ashish Nehra achieved 6/23 against England to help India defend 250 as England were all out for 168. The Indian batting was bolstered by half-centuries from Dravid (62 from 72 balls, 3 fours and 1 six) and Tendulkar (50 from 52 balls, 8 fours and 1 six), and an attacking cameo from Yuvraj (42 from 38 balls, 4 fours and 1 six). The match against Pakistan, the most anticipated match of the tournament, lived up to its billing and was a thriller. It was (and still is) noted for being a match in which Tendulkar played one of his best-ever ODI innings. Chasing 274, Tendulkar (98 from 75 balls, 12 fours, 1 six) pulled off a near century, only to get out after suffering from cramps, to guide India to an unlikely victory, maintaining India's unbeaten record over Pakistan in World Cups. Tendulkar was once again awarded the Man of the Match. With 5 victories and 1 loss from 6 matches, India finished second in Group A and qualified for the Super Six stage. India were untroubled in the Super Six stage and continued their streak of strong performances with three wins out of three matches, earning them a berth in the semifinals. The wins were comfortable, beating Kenya at Cape Town by 6 wickets through a century from Ganguly (107 from 120 balls, 11 fours, 2 sixes);beating Sri Lanka at Johannesburg by 183 runs thanks to Tendulkar (97 from 120 balls, 7 fours and 1 six), Sehwag (66 from 76 balls, 5 fours, 3 sixes) and veteran Srinath's 4/35; and winning against New Zealand at Centurion by 7 wickets, due to Zaheer's 4/42 which bundled out the Black Caps for 146, followed by patient knocks from Kaif (68 not out off 129 balls, 8 fours) and Dravid (53 not out off 89 balls, 7 fours) in the chase. In the semifinals, India played the surprise package of the tournament, Kenya, at Durban. The match was not dramatic. Tendulkar (83 from 101 balls, 5 fours, 1 six) and Ganguly (111 from 114 balls, 5 fours, 5 sixes) took India to 270/4 in their 50 overs, from where a combined bowling effort from India's bowlers got Kenya all out for 179. This brought India into the finals for the first time since 1983, where they faced a strong Australia, who had dominated the tournament from the start with an all-win record. The final, played on 23 March 2003 at the Wanderers Stadium in Johannesburg, saw Ganguly electing to field first after winning the toss, in the hope that his pacers would exploit a damp pitch. However, the plan backfired completely on India as the Australians dominated from the very start, with the openers Adam Gilchrist and Matthew Hayden sharing a partnership of 105 runs for the 1st wicket, which was achieved in only 14 overs. Australian captain Ricky Ponting and Damien Martyn then scored 140 not out and 88 not out respectively, taking Australia to an Australian record of 359/2, a record that would not be beaten until 2006. Chasing a mammoth 360 to win, India never stood a chance after Tendulkar (4 from 5 balls, 1 four) lost his wicket early. Sehwag (82 from 81 balls, 10 fours, 3 sixes) and Dravid (47 from 57 balls, 2 fours) then steadied the innings, sharing a partnership of 88 runs which brought India to a decent 147/3 in the 24th over. With India scoring at 5.96 runs an over, it seemed that they would end up creating a miracle by winning the match, but the remaining Indian batsmen struggled against the Aussie pace attack of Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee and fell to cheap shots while trying to accelerate the scoring rate. India lost their last 7 wickets for only 87 runs and crashed to 234 all out in the 40th over, losing the match by 125 runs. Though they finished the tournament as the runner up, there were a huge amount of bright sides for India. Firstly, Tendulkar was awarded the Man of the Tournament award for being the leading run scorer with 673 runs. Ganguly ended up as the second leading run scorer in the tournament, but 208 runs behind Tendulkar. Tendulkar's 152 against Namibia was the second highest score of the tournament and he achieved an average of 61.18. Secondly, there were upsides in the bowling department as well with Zaheer 4th on the wicket takers list. Finally, India as a team had achieved a streak of 9 wins and 2 losses from 11 matches, with both losses coming against the tournament winners Australia. However, the 2003 World Cup would be the last cricket tournament for Srinath, who retired eight months later due to injury-related issues. The Indian Squad that finished as the runner up of the 2003 World Cup comprised Sourav Ganguly (captain), Rahul Dravid (vice-captain and wicketkeeper), Ajit Agarkar, Anil Kumble, Ashish Nehra, Dinesh Mongia, Harbhajan Singh, Javagal Srinath, Mohammad Kaif, Parthiv Patel (reserve wicketkeeper), Sachin Tendulkar, Sanjay Bangar, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Zaheer Khan, India's record: 9−2 (Runner up), Australia's record: 11−0 (Champions) India, this time, had gone to the West Indies with 2 convincing home series wins against the West Indies and Sri Lanka. For the 2007 tournament, India had what was considered a decent World Cup squad, as they had three batsmen who had scored more than 10,000 ODI runs (Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid), world class spin bowlers (Harbhajan Singh and Anil Kumble), destructive batsmen (Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Robin Uthappa and Mahendra Singh Dhoni), and a decent pace bowling attack led by Zaheer Khan. The format of this tournament was completely different from the 1999 format. Teams were divided into groups of 4, with the top two teams from each group moving on to the Super Eight stage, where each team would play each other in a round-robin format. In the Group stage, India were placed in Group B, pitted against Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and World Cup debutants Bermuda. All of India's Group matches were played at the Queen's Park Oval in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. India's World Cup campaign started disastrously, as they unexpectedly lost to minnows Bangladesh in their opening match, leaving them with two must- win matches in their group. All the Indian batsmen, barring Ganguly (63 from 129 balls, 4 fours) and Yuvraj (47 from 58 balls, 3 fours and 1 six), faltered against the pace of Mashrafe Mortaza (4/38) and the left arm spin of Abdur Razzak (3/38) and Mohammad Rafique (3/35) as India were bowled all out for 191. None of the Indian bowlers could make an impact as Bangladesh chased down the target with ease. India next scored 413/5 against Bermuda, the highest team total in a World Cup game. Sehwag played a brilliant knock (114 from 87 balls, 17 fours and 3 sixes), exposing the amateur Bermudan bowling. Ganguly (89 from 114 balls, 6 fours and 2 sixes), Yuvraj (83 from 46 balls, 3 fours and 7 sixes) and Tendulkar (57 not out from 29 balls, 2 fours and 4 sixes) too contributed, with Ganguly and Sehwag sharing a 202-run partnership for the 2nd wicket, followed by Tendulkar and Yuvraj sharing a 122-run partnership for the 5th wicket. Agarkar and Kumble then contributed with identical bowling figures of 3/38 as Bermuda were bowled all out for 156 in the 44th over, India winning the lopsided game by 257 runs. But they still needed to beat Sri Lanka in their last group match in order to enter the Super Eight stage. The match against Sri Lanka on 23 March 2007 turned out to be a one-sided contest. Chasing 255, the Indian batting crumbled against the Sri Lankan bowling attack with off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan and pace bowler Chaminda Vaas taking 2/39 and 3/41 respectively, crashing to 185 all out in the 44th over. Only Dravid (60 from 82 balls, 6 fours) and Sehwag (48 from 46 balls, 5 fours and 1 six) made any significant contribution for India. With one victory and two losses, India's hopes of entering the Super Eight stage were now grim and depended on a Bermuda victory over Bangladesh by a heavy margin in the last Group B match. But with Bangladesh beating Bermuda, India crashed out of the World Cup in the first round, the first time since 1992. There were no positives India could take from the tournament, barring the heavy win against Bermuda. Apart from Sehwag, Ganguly and Yuvraj, who scored 164, 162 and 136 runs respectively, no other Indian batsman could accumulate even 100 runs. Sehwag, with his 114 against Bermuda, was India's only centurion in the tournament. The bowling was even more pathetic, with Zaheer being India's best bowler with 5 wickets. After the debacle, Kumble retired from ODI cricket, while coach Greg Chappell resigned after reports that none of the senior players, including Tendulkar, were happy with him and his coaching methods. However, Dravid retained the captaincy. There were several attacks on players homes and protests by infuriated fans, especially in Bangalore and Mumbai. The Indian Squad that took part in the 2007 World Cup comprised Rahul Dravid (captain), Sachin Tendulkar (vice-captain), Ajit Agarkar, Anil Kumble, Dinesh Karthik (reserve wicketkeeper), Harbhajan Singh, Irfan Pathan, Mahendra Singh Dhoni (wicketkeeper), Munaf Patel, Robin Uthappa, Shanthakumaran Sreesanth, Sourav Ganguly, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Zaheer Khan, India's record: 1−2 (Group B, 3rd place), Australia's record: 11−0 (Champions) As one of the host nations for the 2011 World Cup, India were expected to perform well in familiar conditions, and were considered pre-tournament favourites by the media and press. Like in 2007, India came into the World Cup on a string of strong performances, with back-to-back series wins against Australia and New Zealand at home, followed by a moderately successful tour of South Africa. The Indian team were generally considered to be the strongest batting side in the tournament, comprising the openers Virender Sehwag and veteran Sachin Tendulkar, playing in his 6th consecutive World Cup, followed by Gautam Gambhir and Virat Kohli, with Yuvraj Singh, skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Yusuf Pathan and Suresh Raina completing the star-studded batting line- up. While the bowling attack was considered more suspect, three veterans in pacers Zaheer Khan and Ashish Nehra and offspinner Harbhajan Singh were joined by Munaf Patel, Piyush Chawla, Ravichandran Ashwin, and Shantakumaran Sreesanth. The 1996 World Cup format was used for the tournament, following widespread criticism, particularly from the BCCI, over the 2007 format. India were placed in Group B in the Group stage alongside co-hosts Bangladesh, South Africa, England, the West Indies and associates Holland and Ireland. India's 2011 World Cup campaign started with an 87-run win against Bangladesh at Dhaka. With centuries from Sehwag (175 from 140 balls, 14 fours, 5 sixes) and Kohli (100 not out from 83 balls, 8 fours, 2 sixes) India scored 4/370. Fast bowler Munaf (4-48) took 4 wickets during the Bangladesh reply, including that of opener Tamim Iqbal (70 from 86 balls, 3 fours, 1 six) as Bangladesh scored 9/283 in 50 overs to fall short. India next played England at Bangalore, which was a thriller. On a batting-friendly track at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, India chose to bat first. Tendulkar (120 from 115 balls, 10 fours, 5 sixes) lashed his way through the English attack, ably supported by Gambhir (51 from 61 balls, 5 fours) and Yuvraj (58 from 50 balls, 9 fours). After the 45th over, India were 305/3 and were looking to pass 350 during the batting Powerplay. Instead, English bowler Tim Bresnan (5-48) engineered a collapse with four quick wickets in 16 deliveries, as India slumped to a still- formidable total of 338 all out. England started their run chase by blasting 77 runs off the first 10 overs. Skipper Andrew Strauss (158 from 145 balls, 18 fours, 1 six) decimated the Indian bowling attack with unparalleled ferocity, and was supported by Ian Bell (69 from 71 balls, 4 fours, 1 six). At 2/280 in the 43rd over, England was cruising to an extraordinary victory. However, Zaheer responded by taking the wickets of Strauss, Bell, and Paul Collingwood in 11 deliveries, as England were reduced to 289/6. Tailenders Bresnan, Graeme Swann, and Ajmal Shahzad each hit massive sixes in the final few overs to regain some momentum, and Swann scored 13 runs off the final over to salvage a tie with India (338/8 in 50 overs). It was only the fourth tied match in World Cup history. In their third group match, India defeated minnows Ireland, again at Bangalore, by 5 wickets. After winning the toss and choosing to field, India's bowling attack proved superior to the Irish batting lineup. Yuvraj (5-31) was the best bowler for India, taking five successive wickets – including the top scorer for Ireland, William Porterfield (75 from 104 balls, 6 fours, 1 six). Ireland was eventually bowled for 207 all out. During their reply, India slumped to 100/4, as the batting lineup struggled to cope with the tight and accurate Irish bowling. Once again however, Yuvraj (50 not out from 75 balls, 3 fours) helped the Indian side with an unbeaten half-century, and guided India to a five-wicket victory. India followed this victory with a win over Holland at New Delhi. After choosing to bat first, Holland was restricted to 189 all out, with Zaheer (3-20) and Yuvraj (2-43) doing most of the damage. Despite Sehwag's blistering start, India's run-chase started out poorly, as they slumped to 4/99. And, once again, it was Yuvraj (51 not out from 73 balls, 7 fours) who guided India to victory in a crucial 5th-wicket stand with Dhoni (19 not out off 56 balls, 2 fours). India next played South Africa at Nagpur in what was one of the most anticipated matches of the tournament. India started well, riding on the power hitting of Sehwag (73 from 66 balls, 12 fours), as well as brilliant knocks from Tendulkar (111 from 101 balls, 8 fours, 3 sixes) and Gambhir (69 from 75 balls, 7 fours). However, India, from a very strong position of 267/2 in the 40th over, lost their last 8 wickets for just 29 runs in a massive collapse, slumping to 296 all out, with South African fast bowler Dale Steyn ripping through the Indian batting line up, generating figures of 5-50 in his 9.4 overs. Hashim Amla (61 from 72 balls, 5 fours) and Jacques Kallis (69 from 88 balls, 4 fours) top-scored in reply, as South Africa chased down the total with only 3 wickets and 2 deliveries to spare. AB de Villiers (52 from 39 balls, 6 fours, 1 six) scored a quick half-century to keep South Africa ahead of the required run rate. It was India's first and only loss in their World Cup campaign. India's final group match was against the West Indies at Chennai. India chose to bat first. Yuvraj (113 from 123 balls, 10 fours, 2 sixes) and Kohli (59 from 76 balls, 5 fours) batted well but received little support from the rest of the lineup, as India were all out for 268. With Devon Smith (81 from 97 balls, 7 fours, 1 six) leading the way, the West Indies reached 154/2 in the 30th over before losing their last 8 wickets for 34 runs due to Zaheer's 3-26, allowing India to coast to an 80-run victory. With this victory, India reached the quarterfinals and finished second in Group B. In the quarterfinals, India faced defending champions Australia at Ahmedabad. Australia won the toss and chose to bat first. Captain Ricky Ponting (104 from 118 balls, 7 fours, 1 six) and wicketkeeper Brad Haddin (53 from 62 balls, 6 fours, 1 six) scored fluently, but Ashwin, Zaheer and Yuvraj took wickets at regular intervals to restrict Australia to 260/6 in 50 overs. Tendulkar (53 from 68 balls, 7 fours) Gambhir (50 from 64 balls, 2 fours) and Yuvraj (57 not out from 65 balls, 8 fours) all scored half-centuries in reply, as India chased down the target with 5 wickets and 14 deliveries to spare. With this win, Australia's title defence ended and India entered the semifinals. India played arch-rival Pakistan in the semifinals at Mohali. India won the toss and chose to bat first. Despite Sehwag's customary fast start (38 from 25 balls, 9 fours), the Indian batsmen had trouble coping with the Pakistani bowling attack. Pakistani fast bowler Wahab Riaz (5-46) took a 5-wicket haul for Pakistan and Tendulkar (85 from 115 balls, 11 fours) top-scored for India despite being dropped four times in the field. With India slumping at 187/5 in the 37th over, Suresh Raina (36 not out from 39 balls, 3 fours) shored up the tail as India reached 260/9 in 50 overs. All five Indian bowlers (Zaheer, Munaf, Nehra, Harbhajan and Yuvraj) took two wickets in the Pakistani reply, as Pakistan fell behind the run rate and were bowled all out for 231 with 1 delivery remaining. Misbah-ul-Haq (56 from 76 balls, 5 fours, 1 six) top scored for Pakistan, but his slow start allowed the required run-rate to balloon beyond Pakistan's reach. The win ensured that India maintained their all-win record over their arch-rivals in the World Cup and set up a final with Sri Lanka at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai on 2 April 2011. On a batting-friendly pitch, Sri Lanka won the toss and chose to bat first. Zaheer (2-60), using the new ball, bowled three maiden overs and took the wicket of Upul Tharanga to leave Sri Lanka at 31/1 after 10 overs – their lowest 10-over score in the tournament. However, Mahela Jayawardene (103 not out from 88 balls, 13 fours) rebuilt the Sri Lankan innings with a superb century, helped by captain Kumar Sangakkara (48 from 67 balls, 5 fours). Nuwan Kulasekara (32 from 30 balls, 1 four, 1 six) and Thisara Perera (22 from 9 balls, 3 fours, 1 six) plundered 91 runs from the last 10 overs, lifting Sri Lanka to a formidable total of 274/6 after 50 overs. India's run chase began badly, as Sehwag and Sachin were bowled cheaply by Lasith Malinga (2-42) to leave India at 31/2 at the 7th over. However, Gambhir (97 from 122 balls, 9 fours) rebuilt the Indian innings with an 83-run partnership for the third wicket with Kohli (35 from 49 balls, 4 fours). After Kohli was caught and bowled to leave India at 114/3, Gambhir and Dhoni (91 not out from 79 balls, 8 fours, 2 sixes) scored 109 runs for the fourth wicket, in a vicious attack on the tiring Sri Lankan bowlers. After Gambhir was bowled by Perera, Yuvraj and Dhoni ensured that India would successfully chase Sri Lanka's score, with Dhoni blasting a massive six off the final delivery. India won the match by six wickets. With the win, India secured their second World Cup, the first since 1983. It was also the first time that the World Cup was won by the host nation in their own backyard (Sri Lanka, though co-hosts of the 1996 World Cup, played the final at Lahore in Pakistan). Dhoni was named Man of the Match for his blistering innings of 91. Apart from the win, there were other achievements for India in the tournament. Tendulkar scored 482 runs, and was the second-highest run scorer in the tournament after Sri Lankan opener Tillakaratne Dilshan, who scored 500 runs. Zaheer took 21 wickets, and was the leading wicket-taker in the World Cup along with Pakistan's Shahid Afridi. Yuvraj, who scored 362 runs and took 15 wickets, was named Man of the Tournament for his all-round performance. Yuvraj's performance in particular was very significant as he played the tournament battling germ cell cancer.. The Indian Squad that won the 2011 World Cup comprised Mahendra Singh Dhoni (captain and wicketkeeper), Virender Sehwag (vice-captain), Ashish Nehra, Gautam Gambhir, Harbhajan Singh, Munaf Patel, Piyush Chawla, Ravichandran Ashwin, Sachin Tendulkar, Shanthakumaran Sreesanth, Suresh Raina, Virat Kohli, Yusuf Pathan, Yuvraj Singh, Zaheer Khan, India's record: 7-1 and 1 tie (Champions) As the defending champions, India went into the 2015 World Cup co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand with high expectations and were billed pre- tournament favourites. Unlike in 2007 and 2011, this time India went into the World Cup on the back of poor results, with a mediocre Australian tour preceding the event. Despite this, it was expected that India would still do well in the World Cup due to their familiarity with the Australian conditions, having already spent more than 2 months there. The Indian team for the 2015 World Cup comprised only 4 members from the 2011 World Cup-winning squad, which included captain and wicketkeeper Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Virat Kohli, who was now the vice-captain of the side and one of the best batsmen in ODI cricket, Suresh Raina and Ravichandran Ashwin. For the first time since the 1992 World Cup, the Indian World Cup squad was without Sachin Tendulkar, who had retired from all forms of cricket in 2013, while the other stars of the 2011 World Cup such as Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Gautam Gambhir, Harbhajan Singh and Zaheer Khan were dropped due to poor form. Despite the absence of these key performers, the Indian World Cup squad was still a strong side, with a power-packed batting lineup comprising Kohli, Dhoni, Raina, destructive openers Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan and the stylish middle- order bat Ajinkya Rahane, and a strong bowling attack comprising pacers Mohammed Shami, Umesh Yadav, Mohit Sharma and Bhuvneshwar Kumar, supplemented by the spinners Ashwin and all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja. The 1996 World Cup format, which was also used in 2011, was used for the last time in the World Cup, as the 2019 World Cup would see the return of the round-robin format last used in 1992. In the Group Stage, India were placed in Group B with arch- rivals Pakistan, South Africa, the West Indies, minnows Zimbabwe and associates Ireland and the UAE. India's 2015 World Cup campaign began with a highly anticipated match against Pakistan at Adelaide. Batting first, India lost Rohit (15 from 20 balls, 2 fours) early, but a century from Kohli (107 from 126 balls, 8 fours) along with half-centuries from Raina (74 from 56 balls, 5 fours and 3 sixes) and Dhawan (73 from 76 balls, 7 fours and 1 six) looked to steer India to a big total. However, excellent death bowling by the Pakistani bowlers, with fast bowler Sohail Khan (5-55) taking a 5-wicket haul, restricted India to exactly 300/7, with India losing 5 wickets for just 27 runs. Pakistan's reply, however, had little effect. Barring captain Misbah-ul- Haq, who scored 76, the Pakistani batting crumbled against the Indian pace attack, with Shami taking 4/35, and crashed to 224 all out. India won the match by 76 runs, their biggest win against Pakistan in the World Cup by margin of runs, and as a result, once again maintained their all-win record over their arch-rivals in the World Cup. India next played South Africa at Melbourne, which was another highly anticipated match, in front of a packed crowd comprising mostly Indian supporters. Once again India batted first. Though India lost Rohit early for a duck, they recovered from the early setback thanks to a brilliant century from Dhawan (137 from 146 balls, 16 fours and 2 sixes) and a classy half-century from Rahane (79 from 60 balls, 7 fours and 3 sixes). However, the lower middle-order then crumbled due to good death bowling from the South African pace attack, with India losing 5 wickets for just 31 runs to finish their innings at 307/7. In the chase, despite losing the openers Hashim Amla and Quinton de Kock early, South Africa were going steady at 108/3, with Faf du Plessis scoring a half-century. But the Indian bowlers led by Ashwin (3/41) then struck back as the Proteas lost their last 7 wickets for 69 runs to be bowled all out for 177, India winning by 130 runs. It was the first time that India defeated South Africa in the World Cup, having lost to them in 3 previous Cup encounters in 1992, 1999 and 2011 and was the heaviest defeat for South Africa in the Cricket World Cup. India ended their Australian leg of the Group stage with back-to-back victories against the UAE and the West Indies at Perth. Ashwin once again starred with the ball in the match against the UAE with his 4/25 as the minnows crashed to 102 all out, which was the lowest score ever registered by a team against India in the World Cup, following which an attacking half-century from Rohit (57 not out from 55 balls, 10 fours and 1 six) ensured that India won the match by 9 wickets, a facile victory which was achieved even before the floodlights could be turned on at the WACA Ground. The match against the West Indies was a low- scoring thriller. Bowling first on a typical fast and bouncy Perth wicket, India restricted the West Indies to 182 all out, with Shami taking 3/35. In reply, the Indian top-order were unable to successfully negotiate the West Indian fast bowling attack of Kemar Roach, Jerome Taylor and Andre Russell and were soon struggling at 107/5, before Dhoni (45 not out from 56 balls, 3 fours and 1 six) took India to victory by 4 wickets. The win against the Caribbeans ensured India's passage into the quarterfinals. India travelled to New Zealand to play their remaining Group matches. Their first match in New Zealand in this World Cup was against Ireland at Hamilton. Batting first on a perfect batting track, the Irish captain William Porterfield and middle-order batsman Niall O'Brien gave a massive scare to India as they scored half-centuries to propel Ireland to a formidable 206/3 in the 39th over, with the probability of them achieving a 300+ score high. However, Shami (3/41) and Ashwin (2/38) then triggered a collapse, with the Irish losing their last 7 wickets for just 53 runs to collapse to 259 all out. In reply, India were untroubled by the Irish bowling, with a blistering century from Dhawan (100 from 85 balls, 11 fours and 5 sixes), his second in the tournament, along with a half-century from Rohit (64 from 66 balls, 3 fours and 3 sixes) reducing the match to a no- contest as India scaled down the required target with 13 overs and 8 wickets to spare. India topped Group B with 1 match remaining due to the win. India's last match in the Group stage was against Zimbabwe at Auckland, a dead rubber since India had already topped Group B and Zimbabwe were no longer in contention for the quarterfinals with just a single win in this World Cup until this match. However, the match proved to be a thriller. Bowling first, the Indian pace attack struck early to leave Zimbabwe tottering at 33/3. But Zimbabwean skipper Brendan Taylor, who was playing his last match for Zimbabwe, scored a belligerent 138, toying with the spinners. With the support of Sean Williams, who scored 50, and then Craig Ervine, Taylor brought Zimbabwe to a solid position of 235/5 in the 42nd over after which he departed. A 300+ score was imminent at the time, but good death bowling from the Indian fast bowlers comprising Yadav (3/43) as well as Shami and Mohit, who both took identical figures of 3/48, saw Zimbabwe lose their last 5 wickets for 52 runs to be bowled all out for 287. India's reply began shakily, with a 2-wicket maiden over from Tinashe Panyangara accounting for both openers Rohit (16 from 21 balls, 2 fours) and Dhawan (4 from 20 balls, 1 four) early in the innings. Due to good bowling and fielding from the Zimbabweans, the defending champions were soon struggling at 92/4 in the 23rd over and an upset win by Zimbabwe seemed likely. But Raina (110 not out from 104 balls, 9 fours and 4 sixes) scored a breathtaking century under pressure. Though he began his innings scratchily, struggling against the short ball, he soon developed confidence and hammered the Zimbabwean bowling with the support of Dhoni (85 not out from 76 balls, 8 fours and 2 sixes), who secured yet another victory in the World Cup for India in his trademark style by hitting a sixer with just 6 runs to win in the 49th over. India finished the Group stage with an all-win record. India returned to Australia to play the knockout matches. In the quarterfinals, India played Bangladesh at Melbourne, which they won comfortably by 109 runs. India, batting first, scored 302/6, thanks to an attacking century from Rohit (137 from 126 balls, 14 fours and 3 sixes), who dominated the Bangladeshi bowling with support from Raina (65 from 57 balls, 7 fours and 1 six). The duo shared a partnership of 122 runs for the 4th wicket. Then the Indian pacers, led by Yadav (4/31) and Shami (2/37), never allowed the Bangladeshi batsmen to settle down as they were bowled all out for 193. The match became controversial due to an erroneous umpiring decision involving Rohit. During the 40th over, Rohit, who was batting on 90, pulled a full toss bowled by Bangladeshi bowler Rubel Hossain and was caught at square-leg. However, the umpire Aleem Dar thought that the ball was above waist height and declared it a no-ball, meaning that Rohit was not out. Replays showed that the ball was waist height, and therefore a legal delivery. This decision led to an uproar in Bangladesh, with irate Bangladeshi fans burning effigies of Dar in protest. Even the ICC President Mustafa Kamal, who hails from Bangladesh, and the Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina opposed the controversial decision. Nevertheless, this incident did not remove the shine from India's clinical victory, which brought them to the semifinals, where they played co- hosts Australia at Sydney. India lost the toss and were made to bowl first on a perfect batting pitch. Australia recovered from the early loss of opener David Warner due to a brilliant century from vice-captain Steve Smith. Supported by a half-century from opener Aaron Finch, the duo put on 182 runs for the 2nd wicket. However, after that the Australian innings wobbled due to good bowling from Yadav (4/72), who achieved a second consecutive 4-wicket haul and provided the important breakthroughs, but due to a late blitz by fast bowler Mitchell Johnson, who scored 27 not out from just 14 balls, the Australians finished their innings at 328/7. A score of 329, though a huge one, was considered gettable taking into account the strength of the Indian batting lineup. The Indians started the chase well with an opening stand of 76 between Rohit (34 from 48 balls, 1 four and 2 sixes) and Dhawan (45 from 41 balls, 6 fours and 1 six). But following the dismissal of Dhawan, the rest of the Indian batsmen succumbed to a combined effort from the Australian pace attack. A slow 70 run stand between Rahane (44 from 68 balls, 2 fours) and Dhoni (65 from 65 balls, 3 fours and 2 sixes) for the 5th wicket only delayed the inevitable as India crashed to 233 all out in the 47th over, losing the match by 95 runs and ending their title defence. It was the second time since 1987 that India failed to defend their World Cup title. Although India could not successfully defend their World Cup title, several positives emerged from the tournament from an Indian point of view. For the first time ever in a Cricket World Cup, India finished the Group stage unbeaten, with their only loss in the tournament coming against the eventual champions Australia in the semifinal. They achieved 11 consecutive World Cup match victories starting from 2011 during the tournament, which is just below the Cup record of 25 wins in a row, held by Australia. Barring the semifinal, the Indian team bowled out the opposition in every match, a remarkable feat for a bowling attack traditionally considered to be weaker than the batting. With 412 runs from 8 matches including 2 centuries, opener Dhawan was the fifth highest run scorer of the tournament, while the fast bowlers Yadav and Shami bagged the third and fourth spots respectively among the tournament's leading bowlers with 18 and 17 wickets respectively. Skipper and wicketkeeper Dhoni effected 15 dismissals in the Cup, coming second among the leading wicketkeepers in the tournament. The Indian Squad that made the semifinals of the 2015 World Cup comprised Mahendra Singh Dhoni (captain and wicketkeeper), Virat Kohli (vice-captain), Ajinkya Rahane, Ambati Rayudu (reserve wicketkeeper), Axar Patel, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohammed Shami, Mohit Sharma, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, Stuart Binny, Suresh Raina, Umesh Yadav, India's record: 7-1 (Semifinalists), Australia's record: 7-1 and 1 no result (Champions) India were considered one of the favourites to win the 2019 Cricket World Cup hosted in England and Wales. Their record prior to the tournament had been excellent, with highly successful tours of Australia and New Zealand, which was followed by a narrow 2-3 loss in an ODI series at home against Australia. The team for this World Cup was considered to be a strong one, with a powerful batting line comprising captain Virat Kohli, openers Rohit Sharma and K. L. Rahul and veteran wicketkeeper-batsman Mahendra Singh Dhoni, a fast bowling line-up comprising Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami and Bhuvneshwar Kumar hailed by experts as the best fast-bowling unit India has ever produced, two brilliant wrist spinners including Yuzvendra Chahal and chinaman bowler Kuldeep Yadav and quality all-rounders in Hardik Pandya, Kedar Jadhav and Ravindra Jadeja. The round-robin format last used in the 1992 World Cup was used for this tournament, with India playing all the other nine participating teams once. India began their campaign with a win against South Africa at Southampton. Batting first, the South Africans struggled against the pace of Bumrah (10-1-35-2), who accounted for both openers Hashim Amla and Quinton de Kock, as well as Chahal's leg spin (10-0-51-4) and were 80/4 at one stage, however an eighth-wicket partnership of 76 runs between Chris Morris and Kagiso Rabada ensured that the Proteas finished their innings with a score of 227/9. India chased down the target with ease for the loss of just 4 wickets due to Rohit's century (122 off 144 balls, 13 fours, 2 sixes), ably supported by Rahul (26 off 42 balls, 2 fours) and Dhoni (34 off 46 balls, 2 fours). India next played Australia at The Oval, London, which also turned out to be another one-sided game in favour of India. India, batting first after winning the toss, scored 352/5, with Dhawan cracking a brilliant century (117 off 109 balls, 16 fours) with support from Rohit (57 off 70 balls, 3 fours, 1 six) and Kohli (82 off 77 balls, 4 fours, 1 six), all of whom made a mockery of the Australian bowling attack. There were also late cameos from Pandya (48 off 27 balls, 4 fours, 3 sixes) and Dhoni (27 off 14 balls, 3 fours, 1 six). In response, Australia put up a strong fight, with good contributions from David Warner, Steve Smith and wicketkeeper Alex Carey, who scored 56, 69 and 55 respectively, but India's total was beyond their reach as they folded for 316 all out, India thus winning by 36 runs. Unfortunately for India, Dhawan fractured his thumb during his century knock, ruling him out for the rest of the tournament. He was replaced by wicketkeeper-batsman Rishabh Pant. India's third match against New Zealand at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, was abandoned without a ball being bowled due to rain. The much-awaited India vs Pakistan clash took place at Old Trafford, Manchester on 16 June. However, this match turned out to be another no-contest in favour of India. India were made to bat first in a match which was affected by rain. Once Pakistan missed the chance to get Rohit run out in the seventh over, the game was over for Pakistan as Rohit went on to make a brilliant century (140 off 113 balls, 14 fours, 3 sixes), ably supported by Rahul (57 off 78 balls, 3 fours, 2 sixes) and Kohli (77 off 65 balls, 7 fours), however a good death-bowling performance from Mohammad Amir, who took 3/47, restricted India to 336/5 when at one stage, they were cruising towards a post-350 score. Pakistan's reply, however, had little effect. Barring a 104-run second-wicket stand between Babar Azam and Fakhar Zaman, the rest of the Pakistan batting crumbled against India's bowling attack, with a combined bowling effort from Pandya (8-0-44-2), who took the wickets of veterans Mohammad Hafeez and Shoaib Malik in consecutive deliveries, Vijay Shankar (5.2-0-2-22) and Kuldeep (9-1-2-32) leaving Pakistan at 166/6 in the 35th over before the rain began to fall. After the rain, Pakistan's target was reduced to 302 which had to be scored within an impossible 5 overs by the Duckworth–Lewis–Stern method, thus handing India yet another win against their arch-rivals and maintaining their all-win record against them in the World Cup. Pakistan managed to finish their innings at 212/6. India won the match by 89 runs (D/L). Unfortunately for India, Bhuvneshwar sustained a hamstring niggle during the match while bowling, ruling him out until the match against Bangladesh. India then played the teams who had qualified for the World Cup through the qualifying tournament, Afghanistan and the West Indies, at Southampton and Old Trafford respectively. The match against Afghanistan was a thriller which India managed to win by 11 runs. On a slow pitch, barring Kohli (67 off 63 balls, 5 fours) and Jadhav (52 off 68 balls, 3 fours and 1 six), the rest of the Indian batsmen struggled to make runs against the Afghan bowling attack, with Afghan's spin attack of Rashid Khan, Mujeeb Ur Rahman and Mohammad Nabi, as well as the medium-pace of captain Gulbadin Naib, never allowing the Indian batsmen to settle down. India limped its way to 224/8 in their 50 overs, which was their lowest total batting first and completing their 50 overs since 2010. In the chase, Afghanistan played sedately, with Naib, Rahmat Shah and Nabi making significant contributions, with Nabi going on to score 52 off 55 balls. However a strong bowling performance from India, with contributions from Bumrah (10-1-2-39), Shami (9.5-1-40-4) and Chahal (10-0-36-2) and especially Bumrah and Shami's death-over bowling, kept a check on the Afghan run rate. In the final over, the Afghans needed 16 runs to win the match. Once Shami got Nabi out in the third ball of the final over, the match was over for Afghanistan as he got the wickets of tailenders Aftab Alam and Mujeeb in consecutive deliveries to achieve a hat-trick, which was only the second by an Indian bowler in a World Cup since Chetan Sharma in 1987. Afghanistan was all out for 213 in 49.5 overs. This was also India's 50th win in world cups -third team to achieve the feat after Australia and New zealand The match against the Caribbeans on the other hand, witnessed a clinical performance from India, with the team winning by a huge margin of 125 runs. Though India, who batted first, lost Rohit (18 off 23 balls, 1 four and 1 six) early, a good knock from Kohli (72 off 82 balls, 8 fours), supplemented from Dhoni (56 off 61 balls, 3 fours, 2 sixes), which averted a potential middle-order collapse, and also a cameo from Pandya (46 off 38 balls, 5 fours), brought India to a respectable 268/7 in 50 overs. This was followed by yet another strong performance with the ball, with Shami (6.2-0-4-16) taking 4 wickets again, as the Windies were bowled out for just 143 in the 35th over. India's first loss in the 2019 World Cup came against hosts England in the first of 2 back-to-back matches at Edgbaston, Birmingham, the other match being against Bangladesh. India, who were put to bowl first, bowled poorly for the first time in the tournament, including Shami (10-1-5-72), who was expensive despite taking a 5-wicket haul, as the English batsman, including openers Jason Roy and Jonny Bairstow, who cracked an attacking century, as well as all-rounder Ben Stokes, who scored 79 off just 54 balls, made merry of the Indian bowling attack. England posted 337/7 in their 50 overs. Chasing 338 to win, India lost Rahul early for a duck and from there, they were never able to recover, batting slowly due to a deteriorating pitch. In their first 10 overs, India was only able to score 27 runs for the loss of 1 wicket. Despite Rohit's third century of the tournament (102 off 109 balls, 15 fours) along with Kohli's fifth-consecutive half- century (66 off 76 balls, 7 fours), England's total proved to be beyond India's reach and they ended their innings at 306/5, losing by 31 runs. Dhoni (42 off 31 balls, 4 fours, 1 six) in particular was criticised by former players and fans for his inability to accelerate the scoring rate in the end overs. In contrast, the match against Bangladesh which took place two days later was for the most part, a one-sided affair in favour of India, though Bangladesh put up a strong fight. India started in the strongest possible manner, with Rohit (104 off 92 balls, 7 fours, 5 sixes) scoring his fourth century in the tournament. Along with Rahul (77 off 92 balls, 6 fours, 1 six), the duo put up a partnership of 180 runs for the first wicket, which was the highest partnership by India for the first wicket in the World Cup at the time, beating the previous record of 172 by Rohit and Dhawan against Ireland in 2015. A score of 400 plus seemed likely at one stage, but once Rohit departed, there was a middle-order collapse due to pacer Mustafizur Rahman's 5/59 off his 10 overs. However cameos from Pant (48 off 41 balls, 6 fours and 1 six) and Dhoni (35 off 33 balls, 4 fours) brought India to 314/9 in their 50 overs. In response, Bangladesh fought back, with all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan scoring 66, but a spirited bowling performance from India, courtesy Bumrah (10-1-55-4) and Pandya (10-1-60-3), who also took Shakib's wicket, brought Bangladesh down to 179/6 in the 34th over. Despite a valiant rearguard action from the Bangladesh lower middle-order, with a 66-run partnership for the seventh wicket between Mohammad Saifuddin, who scored a fighting half-century, and Sabbir Rahman, Bangladesh folded for 286, India winning by 28 runs. With this win, India qualified for the semifinals of the 2019 Cricket World Cup. India ended the round robin stage with an easy 7-wicket win over Sri Lanka at Headingley, Leeds. Batting first, Sri Lanka were 55/4 in the 12th over with Bumrah (10-2-37-3) doing the initial damage, but a century from Angelo Mathews, who was part of a 124-run stand for the fifth wicket with Lahiru Thirimanne, brought Sri Lanka to a respectable 264/7 in 50 overs. India easily chased down the target, with both openers Rohit (103 from 94 balls, 14 fours, 2 sixes) and Rahul (111 from 118 balls, 11 fours, 1 six) putting up a 189-run opening wicket partnership, breaking their own record for India's highest 1st wicket partnership in a Cricket World Cup which was achieved in just their previous match against Bangladesh. Rohit's century was his 5th in the tournament, making him the first ever batsman to hit five centuries in a single Cricket World Cup. With this win, and also South Africa's win over Australia in a match held on the same day, India topped the round robin stage with 7 wins, 1 loss and 1 no-result. In the semifinals, India played with New Zealand at Old Trafford. The match, spread over two days due to rain, was a thriller. On a slow and seaming wicket in overcast conditions, New Zealand, who were batting first, struggled to accelerate for most of their innings, and only half-centuries from Ross Taylor and Kiwi captain Kane Williamson ensured that the Black Caps reached a score of 239/8 in their 50 overs. For India, Bhuvneshwar (10-1-3-43) was the standout performer among the bowlers. India started their chase very badly, with the top three (Rohit, Rahul and Kohli) going for just 1 run each, courtesy brilliant opening spells from the Kiwi new-ball bowlers Matt Henry and Trent Boult, leaving them in deep trouble at 5/3 in the fourth over. However, a rearguard action from Dhoni (50 from 72 balls, 1 four, 1 six) and Jadeja (77 from 59 balls, 4 fours, 4 sixes), who both shared a partnership of 116 runs for the seventh wicket, which was the highest for India in a Cricket World Cup, brought India from 92/6 to 208/7, giving the Men in Blue a slim chance of winning the match. But once Jadeja and Dhoni got out in successive overs, the match was all over for India as they crashed to 221 all out. The Black Caps won the match by 18 runs, and as a result, India crashed out of the 2019 Cricket World Cup, the second consecutive Cricket World Cup in which they went out in the semifinal stage. The Indian Squad that made the semifinals of the 2019 World Cup comprised Virat Kohli (captain), Rohit Sharma (vice-captain), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Dinesh Karthik (reserve wicketkeeper), Hardik Pandya, Jasprit Bumrah, K. L. Rahul, Kedar Jadhav, Kuldeep Yadav, Mahendra Singh Dhoni (wicketkeeper), Mayank Agarwal (replacement for Vijay Shankar), Mohammed Shami, Ravindra Jadeja, Rishabh Pant (reserve wicketkeeper, replacement for Shikhar Dhawan), Shikhar Dhawan, Vijay Shankar, Yuzvendra Chahal, India's record: 7-2 and 1 washout (Semifinalists), England's record: 7-3 and 1 tie(Champions) The 1996 Cricket World Cup, also called the Wills World Cup 1996 after its official sponsors, ITC's Wills brand, was the sixth Cricket World Cup, organised by the International Cricket Council (ICC). It was the second World Cup to be hosted by Pakistan and India, and for the first time by Sri Lanka. The tournament was won by Sri Lanka, who defeated Australia in the final at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore, Pakistan. The World Cup was played in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. India hosted 17 matches at 17 different venues, while Pakistan hosted 16 matches at 6 venues and Sri Lanka hosted 4 matches at 3 venues. Controversy dogged the tournament before any games were played; Australia and the West Indies refused to send their teams to Sri Lanka following the bombing of Central Bank in Colombo by the Tamil Tigers in January 1996. Sri Lanka, in addition to offering maximum security to the teams, questioned the validity of citing security concerns when the International Cricket Council had determined it was safe. After extensive negotiations, the ICC ruled that Sri Lanka would be awarded both games on forfeit. As a result of this decision, Sri Lanka automatically qualified for the quarter-finals before playing a game. Two matches were scheduled to be played at Premadasa Stadium, but neither took place as Australia and the West Indies declined to play in Sri Lanka. All the Test-playing nations participated in the competition, including Zimbabwe, who became the ninth Test-status member of the ICC following the last World Cup. The three Associate teams (previously one) to qualify through the 1994 ICC Trophy – the United Arab Emirates, Kenya and the Netherlands – also made their World Cup debuts in 1996. The Netherlands lost all of their five matches, including a defeat to the UAE, while Kenya recorded a surprise victory over the West Indies in Pune. The Sri Lankans, coached by Dav Whatmore and captained by Arjuna Ranatunga, used Man of the Series Sanath Jayasuriya and Romesh Kaluwitharana as opening batsmen to take advantage of the fielding restrictions during the first 15 overs of each innings. At a time when 50 or 60 runs in the first 15 overs was considered adequate, Sri Lanka scored 117 runs in those overs against India, 123 against Kenya, 121 against England in the quarter-final and 86 against India in the semi-final. Against Kenya, Sri Lanka made 398 for 5, a new record for the highest team score in a One Day International that stood until April 2006. Gary Kirsten scored 188 not out against United Arab Emirates at Rawalpindi, Pakistan. This became the highest individual score ever in any World Cup match until it was surpassed by first Chris Gayle of the West Indies and later Martin Guptill who scored 215 and 237 respectively in the 2015 Cricket World Cup. Sri Lanka won the first semi-final over India at Eden Gardens in Calcutta, in front of a crowd unofficially estimated at 110,000. Chasing Sri Lanka's innings of 251 for 8, India had slumped to 120 for 8 in the 35th over when sections of crowd began to throw fruit and plastic bottles onto the field. The players left the field for 20 minutes in an attempt to quieten the crowd. When the players returned for play, more bottles were thrown onto the field and fires were lit in the stand. Match referee Clive Lloyd awarded the match to Sri Lanka, the first default ever in a Test or One Day International. In the second semi-final in Mohali, Australia recovered from 15 for 4 to reach 207 for 8 from their 50 overs. The West Indians had reached 165 for 2 in the 42nd over before losing their last 8 wickets for 37 runs in 50 balls. Sri Lanka won the toss in the final and sent Australia in to bat despite the team batting first having won all five previous World Cup finals. Mark Taylor top scored with 74 in Australia's total of 241 for 7. Sri Lanka won the match in the 47th over with Aravinda de Silva following his 3 for 42 with an unbeaten 107 to win the Player of the Match award. It was the first time a tournament host or co-host had won the cricket World Cup. Sri Lanka won the toss and chose to field. Mark Taylor (74 from 83 balls, 8 fours, 1 six) and Ricky Ponting (45 from 73 balls, 2 fours) shared a second- wicket partnership of 101 runs. When Ponting and Taylor were dismissed, however, Australia fell from 137/1 to 170/5 as the famed four-pronged spin attack of Sri Lanka took its toll. Despite the slump, Australia struggled on to 241/7 from their 50 overs. Cricket World Cup 1996 from ESPNcricinfo The 2011 Cricket World Cup Final was a One Day International (ODI) match played between India and Sri Lanka at the Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai, India on 2 April 2011, Saturday. The culmination of the tenth edition of the World Cup, it was the first time that these two teams had met each other at this stage in the tournament history. India won the match by six wicketsits second World Cup win after the 1983 tournamentand became the third team to have won the title more than once, after Australia (1987, 1999, 2003, 2007 and 2015) and the West Indies (1975 and 1979). Both teams had progressed through three stages to reach the final. India had won all the matches to that point except for the game against South Africa, and against England, which ended in a tie. Sri Lanka had won all but one match against Pakistan. The Sri Lanka captain Kumar Sangakkara chose to bat first after winning the toss. The team scored slowly until the 17th over when they lost both their openers. Sangakkara added 62 runs with Mahela Jayawardene before being dismissed for 48 runs. Although wickets kept falling at one end, Jayawardene scored 103 runs in 88 balls; he was involved in a partnership of 66 runs with Thisara Perera. The pair took Sri Lanka's total to 274 runs at the close of the innings. In reply, India lost their opener Virender Sehwag in the second ball of the innings. Sachin Tendulkar, too, got out in quick succession. The next set of batsmen, Gautam Gambhir and Virat Kohli, added 83 runs in 15 overs before the latter got out in the 22nd over. India captain MS Dhoni, promoting himself up the order, joined Gambhir and they both added 109 runs, an Indian record in a World Cup final. Gambhir got out for 97 runs in the 42nd over. India chased down the total and won the match by six wickets in the 49th over. Dhoni was declared the "man of the match" for scoring 91 runs, while his compatriot Yuvraj Singh was awarded the "man of the tournament". The match was watched by about 42,000 spectators at the venue and about 135 million viewers on television in India. This was the second time in World Cup history that a host nation won the final and the first time to win on their home ground. The 2011 Cricket World Cup was the tenth World Cup, organised by the International Cricket Council (ICC). The competition took place between 19 February and 2 April 2011. Co-hosted by India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, the tournament was the third World Cup to be played in the Indian subcontinent. The ICC ruled out Pakistan citing security reasons. There were 14 participating teams, which included four associate members of the ICCKenya, Canada, Ireland and Netherlands. The match was the tenth World Cup final and was hosted at the Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai. It was the first time the city has hosted a World Cup final, and was the second final to be hosted by India, after the 1987 final held at Eden Gardens, Kolkata. The 2011 final was the first to feature two teams from the same continent, and the first time that two co-hosts contested the final. India were making their 3rd appearance in a World Cup final. Previously, they won the final in 1983, and lost in 2003. Sri Lanka was appearing in their third World Cup final; breakthrough winners against Australia in 1996 they finished as runners up (also to Australia) in the previous World Cup in 2007. Prior to this match, India and Sri Lanka had met each other seven times in World Cup history with Sri Lanka ahead with four wins and two defeats and one game ending in a no-result. In One Day Internationals, India led Sri Lanka with 75 victories against 52 victories for Sri Lanka, while 11 matches had ended with no result. The final generated huge interest. The President of Sri Lanka Mahinda Rajapaksa, a known cricket enthusiast, announced he would attend the match along with his sons. Following this, the Indian President Pratibha Patil also announced her decision to attend the match. Sri Lanka qualified for the knockouts with a second-place finish in Group A. They won four of their six games, suffered a defeat against Pakistan and against Australia was washed out. Being level on points with Australia, they were placed second in the group due to their better net run rate. India were drawn in Group B where they finished second behind South Africa. They managed wins in four of their six games, lost one against South Africa while their game against England was a high scoring tie. Sri Lanka had clinically demolished England in the quarter final, defeating them by 10 wickets. Both the Sri Lankan openers, Tillakaratne Dilshan and Upul Tharanga made unbeaten centuries and put up a world-record stand for the first wicket in a World Cup. The New Zealand semi-final was more keenly contested, but was still won with relative ease by Sri Lanka. The matches showcased the effective unconventional bowling of pace spearhead Lasith Malinga, restrictive fielding, and the batting prowess of the Sri Lankan top order. Both of India's knockout matches were high-pressure contests. Australia was a strong team and the defending champions, and India had to give a very good performance to restrict Australia to 260 and then successfully chase down the target even as wickets fell regularly. Pakistan and India have historically been rivals, and there was immense public pressure on both teams. The match was attended by the Prime Ministers of both India and Pakistan. India batted first and ultimately defeated Pakistan by 29 runs. India largely retained the same team it had in the semi-final against Pakistan, with just one change. Ashish Nehra, left-arm medium pacer, had suffered a finger fracture while fielding in that match, and he was replaced by another pacer, Sreesanth. India was widely rated as having the strongest batting line-up in the tournament, and chose to back this strength throughout the campaign by playing seven batsmen and four bowlers. Due to Yuvraj Singh performing well with both bat and ball in the tournament, India could afford to play with only four specialist bowlers. Yuvraj bowled his full quota of 10 overs in many matches, including the semi-final against Pakistan. Among the four bowling slots, Zaheer Khan was the pace spearhead supported in most matches by Munaf Patel, while Harbhajan Singh was the regular off-spinner. The fourth slot was taken by different bowlers in different matches, including Sreesanth, Nehra, leg-spinner Piyush Chawla, or off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin. The captain had chosen Nehra over Ashwin in the match against Pakistan also. Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni had then said he preferred having three seamers because it gave him more options. He already had proven spinners in Harbhajan and Yuvraj, and could call upon many other Indian players who can bowl part-time spin (including Sachin Tendulkar, Suresh Raina, and Virender Sehwag). Sri Lanka made four changes to their side from the semi-final. All- rounder Angelo Mathews had suffered a torn quadriceps and could not play. Sri Lanka knew the Indians' strength was batting, and thus they needed to take wickets to put them under pressure. This led to their choosing a full complement of bowlers. Spin bowler Ajantha Mendis had performed well throughout the tournament, but he had a poor record against India in pre-World Cup clashes and was not chosen for the final. Spinner Rangana Herath was also dropped. Off-spinner Suraj Randiv and batsman Chamara Kapugedera were flown in from Sri Lanka to strengthen the side. Seamers Nuwan Kulasekara and Thisara Perera, who had played matches in the earlier group stage, were drafted into the team. Legendary spinner Muttiah Muralitharan was carrying minor injuries, but was retained. He had announced that he would retire from One Day International cricket after the World Cup, so this was his last match. The semi-final held at the Premadasa Stadium in Colombo was his last ODI match on home soil, and there he had been carried around the stadium, perched on his teammates' shoulders, on a lap of honour after that match. The on-field umpires were Simon Taufel of Australia and Aleem Dar of Pakistan, with Ian Gould being the third (TV) umpire. All of these umpires are highly rated; Taufel has won 5 ICC Umpire of the Year awards, while Dar has won two. Taufel had never been able to officiate in a World Cup final because Australia had been qualifying for the finals in the last four editions. Jeff Crowe was the match referee and Steve Davis the reserve umpire. A controversy developed when Kumar Sangakkara called the toss. The toss came up as heads, but the match referee Jeff Crowe did not hear the call over the crowd. It was decided that there would be a re-toss. Sangakkara called heads as the coin was spun the second time. He won the re-toss and decided to bat. Sri Lanka started the innings slowly, constrained by good bowling from Zaheer Khan and committed fielding from Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, and Virat Kohli inside the 30-yard circle. Zaheer began with three consecutive maidens and the wicket of Upul Tharanga, conceding only six runs in his five-over spell. Sri Lankan opener Tillakaratne Dilshan was bowled by Harbhajan Singh when a delivery carried on to the stumps after deflecting off his gloves. Captain Kumara Sangakkara came in after Tharanga's dismissal, and was building a solid foundation with Dilshan before the latter was dismissed. Mahela Jayawardene came to the crease when Sri Lanka were 60/2 in the 17th over. Sangakkara and Mahela went about the task of consolidating the innings, but eventually Sangakkara was caught behind by Dhoni at 48. New batsman Thilan Samaraweera was adjudged not out by the umpire when a ball hit his thigh pad off the bowling of Yuvraj Singh. The Indians decided to review the decision and he was ultimately given out. Chamara Kapugedera, who was playing his first World Cup match, was caught off a deceptive slower ball by Zaheer Khan. Jayawardene, meanwhile, continued with his quality batting, ultimately scoring 103 not out from 88 balls in a high-class batting display. Helped by the hard-hitting of Nuwan Kulasekara and Thisara Perera, Sri Lanka scored 91 runs in the last 10 overs, including 63 in the batting powerplay (45–50 overs) to take the score to 274/6. India had a shaky start, with Virender Sehwag and Sachin Tendulkar both dismissed early by Lasith Malinga, leaving them struggling at 31 for two. Sehwag was trapped LBW for a duck on the second ball of the innings. Tendulkar started with some good strokes, racing to 18 off 14 balls, but then edged a catch to wicketkeeper Sangakkara. Virat Kohli and Gautam Gambhir started the recovery with some fluent stroke play and quick running between wickets, taking India to 114 before Kohli was caught-and-bowled by Tillakaratne Dilshan for 35. When he was on 30, Gambhir mistimed a shot off the bowling of Suraj Randiv, sending the ball high up in the air, but Nuwan Kulasekara could not hold on to a difficult chance at long off. Kohli and Gambhir put together an 83-run partnership before Kohli's dismissal. Dhoni came in after Kohli to bat at number five, usually the position of Yuvraj Singh. Both Kohli and Dhoni are right-handed batsmen, while Gambhir and Yuvraj are left-handed. Along with other considerations, by coming ahead of Yuvraj, Dhoni ensured there would be a right-left batting combination between him and Gambhir, which makes it difficult for the bowlers to get into a rhythm, and necessitates frequent field changes. Both Gambhir and Dhoni emphasised on preserving the wickets, and later accelerating with a greater flow of boundaries. Gambhir and Dhoni added 109 for the fourth wicket with Gambhir scoring 97. Gambhir tried to finish his century with a boundary, but his heaving bat failed to connect with the ball, and he was bowled by Thisara Perera. Following Gambhir's dismissal, 52 runs were required off 52 balls. Yuvraj Singh was the new batsman and along with Dhoni took India to victory, and Dhoni sealed the match hitting a six off Nuwan Kulasekara, when only 4 runs were required off 11 balls. Dhoni finished on 91 not out from 79 deliveries. Like in many other day-night matches in the subcontinent, dew started to form on the outfield grass in the night, making the ball damp and difficult to grip especially in the later part of India's batting. However, this was a known factor and was taken into consideration by the Sri Lankan captain when he chose to bat first after winning the toss. By crossing the target of 274, India had set a record for the highest successful run-chase in a World Cup final. At the end of the match, the batting strength of both the teams stood out. The three top run scorers of this tournament were from these finalists: Tillekaratne Dilshan (500 runs), Sachin Tendulkar (482), and Kumar Sangakkara (465). In the top 10 tournament scorers, there were 3 from Sri Lanka (Upul Tharanga (395) in addition to the previous two), and 4 from India (Gautam Gambhir (393), Virender Sehwag (380), and Yuvraj Singh (362) in addition to Sachin). 1st innings Fall of wickets: 1–17 (Tharanga, 6.1 ov), 2–60 (Dilshan, 16.5 ov), 3–122 (Sangakkara, 27.5 ov), 4–179 (Samaraweera, 38.1 ov), 5–182 (Kapugedera, 39.5 ov), 6–248 (Kulasekara, 47.6 ov) 2nd innings Fall of wickets: 1–0 (Sehwag, 0.2 ov), 2–31 (Tendulkar, 6.1 ov), 3–114 (Kohli, 21.4 ov), 4–223 (Gambhir, 41.2 ov) In the post-match presentation, the Sri Lankan captain Kumar Sangakkara said that the Indians batted very well, and "looks like you need to make something like 350 runs to put them under pressure." The then Indian captain MS Dhoni said that he had added motivation to play well to justify some unexpected decisions he had made for this match, like playing Sreesanth instead of Ashwin, and promoting himself up the order above Yuvraj. MS Dhoni was named Man of the Match for his powerful and match-winning batting display under pressure. Yuvraj Singh was named Man of the Tournament for good all-round performance with both bat and ball throughout the tournament. After the presentation, an ecstatic Indian team first held the Cup amid showers of champagne and confetti. Some Indian players, including Harbhajan Singh, Sachin Tendulkar, and Yuvraj Singh, had tears in their eyes. The team then carried iconic player Tendulkar on a victory lap around the stadium. Coach Gary Kirsten was also carried around the ground later. The Indian players dedicated their victory to Tendulkar; Virat Kohli said, "he has carried the burden of the nation for 21 years. It is time we carried him on our shoulders." Gautam Gambhir dedicated the victory to the victims of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, and to the soldiers guarding India's borders. Celebrations went on through the night in the team hotel. The victory prompted several firework displays and celebrations throughout India. In Sri Lanka, however there were only a few firework displays. The final match was broadcast live in India on ESPN Star Sports' website and state-run free-to-air broadcasters Doordarshan and DD1. In Sri Lanka the match was on Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation's Channel Eye. The ratings agencies TAM and aMap respectively recorded that 135 million people in India watched the final live, including 67.6 million Indian cable and satellite viewers. The game was watched by 13.6% of Indian TV-equipped households on average, with a peak of 21.44% at the end of the game. Though Sri Lankan spectators were initially disappointed, they eventually rallied behind their team and welcomed them at the airport with garlands, cheers, and celebration. Sri Lanka's excellent performance through the world cup was appreciated, and it was recognised that reaching the final was a significant achievement in itself. Opening batsman Tillekaratne Dilshan was the highest run scorer in the tournament, with Sangakkara being the third highest (the second highest was Sachin Tendulkar of India). The Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa hosted High Tea for the Sri Lankan players and spouses on the grounds of the Presidential residence, Temple Trees. Indian fans were ecstatic at the win, and at the overall performance of the team through the tournament. Celebrations went on through most of India over the weekend. The Indian President Pratibha Patil hosted High Tea for the Indian players and spouses on the grounds of the Raj Bhavan (Governor's House) in Mumbai. There was no ticker tape parade for the team on an open bus (as was organised after the 2007 Twenty20 World Cup win) because of the hectic schedule, with the 2011 edition of the Indian Premier League starting on 8 April. Apart from the World Cup trophy itself, the Indian team was given many prizes from the cricket boards, various state governments, and public and private companies. The BCCI declared reward for each member of World Cup-winning squad. Also, cash rewards of and were announced for each member of support staff and selection committee respectively., was awarded to Dhoni and awarded to four Delhi players in the victorious team from the Delhi government., Various motor companies awarded cars including Hyundai India gave Vernas to the team, Ferrari gave a 599 GTO India edition to Dhoni, and Audi gave a car to Man of the Tournament Yuvraj Singh, The Gujarat state government decided that both Munaf Patel and Yusuf Pathan would be awarded with the highest sports honours of the state – Eklavya Award., The Punjab government announced each for both Harbhajan Singh and Yuvraj Singh., MAHARASHTRA government awarded cash prize for Sachin Tendulkar, Zaheer Khan., Karnataka government announced to each of the 15 members in India's World Cup squad., Uttarakhand offered Dhoni a residential plot or house in the hill station of Mussoorie and a stadium will be built in the state in his honour., A real-estate firm gifted luxury villas worth a total of to Team India. After some days of deliberation, Kumar Sangakkara, the Sri Lankan captain, announced on 5 April that he was resigning from the post of captain of the One Day International and Twenty20 sides in the long-term interest of the team. According to him, as he would be 37 by the time of the 2015 World Cup, could not be sure of his place in the side then and it would be better for a new captain to be groomed now, who would be at the peak of his career during that tournament. He stated he was willing to captain the team for the upcoming tours of England and possibly Australia if the selectors felt this would aid the transition to a new captaincy. A day after Sangakkara's announcement, Mahela Jayawardene resigned from the post of vice-captain, and Aravinda de Silva from the post of Chairman of Selectors. The match formed the climax of 2016 Indian film , the biopic of then Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni. The archived footages of the actual match were used and the face of the lead actor was used instead of Dhoni's face. M.S. Dhoni was portrayed by Sushant Singh Rajput. In Sachin Tendulkar biopic movie the match is also a significant part of the story plot. International Cricket Council (ICC) official 2011 World Cup website, 2011 Cricket World Cup Final at the Daily Telegraph, Cricket World Cup final: India v Sri Lanka – in pictures

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Rascal Flatts is an American country band formed in Columbus, Ohio, in 1999. It is composed of lead vocalist Gary LeVox, his second cousin Jay DeMarcus on bass guitar, and Joe Don Rooney on guitar and banjo. DeMarcus is also a brother-in-law of country music singer James Otto, and formerly one-half of the Christian music duo East to West. They are widely regarded as one of the most influential country music groups of all time. From 2000 to 2010, they recorded for Disney Music Group's Lyric Street Records. While on that label, they released seven albums, all of which have been certified platinum or higher by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). In order of release, these albums are Rascal Flatts (2000), Melt (2002), Feels Like Today (2004), Me and My Gang (2006), Still Feels Good (2007), Greatest Hits Volume 1 (2008) and Unstoppable (2009). After Lyric Street closed in 2010, they moved to Big Machine Records, for which they have released five albums: Nothing Like This (2010), Changed (2012), Rewind (2014), The Greatest Gift of All (2016), and Back to Us (2017). Their studio albums have accounted for more than 25 singles, of which 14 have reached No. 1 on Billboard Hot Country Songs and/or Country Airplay. Their longest-lasting No. 1 single, a cover of Marcus Hummon's "Bless the Broken Road", spent five weeks in that position in 2005. In 2005–06, "What Hurts the Most" was No. 1 on both the Hot Country Songs and Adult Contemporary charts, and peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100. On January 7, 2020, the band announced that they would be disbanding following a farewell tour after twenty years together. Rascal Flatts' founding was at Fiddle and Steel Guitar Bar in Nashville, Tennessee. Gary LeVox and Jay DeMarcus are second cousins from a musical family. DeMarcus moved to Nashville in 1992, earning his first record deal as part of a Christian group called East to West; his brother-in-law, James Otto, is also a country music singer. In 1997, DeMarcus called LeVox, and convinced him to come to Nashville and provide some harmonies on Michael English's album Gospel, which he was producing. They engineered the album together, and became English's back-up band. At the same time, DeMarcus had become the bandleader of Chely Wright's band, where he met Joe Don Rooney, the guitarist in that band. DeMarcus and LeVox were working in a Printer's Alley nightclub and when their part-time guitarist could not make it one night, DeMarcus invited Rooney to join them. Jim Riley was the drummer and bandleader for the band. The group covered the hit Shenandoah single "The Church on Cumberland Road" that night. To the group's recollection, a bond was formed instantly. Singer Mila Mason recommended the group to record producers Mark Bright and Marty Williams, who played Lyric Street Records A&R; Doug Howard a three-song demo and Howard thought they were "just incredible." After he'd heard the demos, the band went into the Lyric Street offices the next day, sat down with acoustic guitars, and played a couple of songs. According to Howard in an interview with HitQuarters: "The vocals and harmonies, it was all there—I was just blown away. The lead singer has such a unique and compelling voice." The band was signed to Lyric Street in late 1999. In early 2000, the group made its debut with the single "Prayin' for Daylight". This song had been on the three-song demo that had gotten the band signed. The song, which reached No. 3 on the Billboard country charts, was the first single from their self-titled debut, which was issued in early 2000 on Lyric Street. Following "Prayin' for Daylight", the album's other three singles all made the Top 10 on that chart with "This Everyday Love", "While You Loved Me", and "I'm Movin' On", which respectively peaked at numbers 9, 7, and 4. "I'm Movin' On" was awarded Song of the Year by the Academy of Country Music in 2002. Stephen Thomas Erlewine reviewed the album with favor, calling it "a sunny, pleasing modern country-pop album". Their second album, entitled Melt, was released in 2002. Unlike their previous album, Rascal Flatts co- produced this one. The album's first single, "These Days", became the band's first number one hit on the U.S. country charts. The album included two more Top 10 hits with "Love You Out Loud" "I Melt", and "Mayberry". The latter became the band's second number one. The music video for "I Melt" featured partial nudity and was banned from the Great American Country (GAC) network. Rascal Flatts's third album, Feels Like Today, was released in late 2004. The album's title track was released as its first single. Following it was "Bless the Broken Road". That song was originally recorded by its co-writer, Marcus Hummon, and had also been recorded by Melodie Crittenden (whose version made the country chart in 1998), the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and Sons of the Desert. In early 2005, Rascal Flatts's version became the band's third number one hit on the U.S. country charts and spent five weeks at that position. The third single, "Fast Cars and Freedom", hit number one as well. While the latter was climbing the charts, some radio stations began playing a hidden track on the album, titled "Skin". This airplay caused "Skin" to enter the top 40. The song was released as a single under the title "Skin (Sarabeth)" and officially added to the album's track list. Rascal Flatts's thirteenth chart entry, "What Hurts the Most", was released in December 2005. This song had previously been recorded by Mark Wills in 2003. Rascal Flatts' version of that song was released as the first single from their fourth album Me and My Gang, which was released in 2006. For this album, the band worked with producer Dann Huff. They switched producers to create a more band-oriented album. Rascal Flatts' rendition of "What Hurts the Most" was a crossover hit for the band, reaching No. 1 on both the country and adult contemporary charts, as well as peaking with the top 10 on the "Billboard Hot 100. After it, the album's title track was released as the second single and charted in the Top 10 at number 6. The third and fourth singles, "My Wish" and "Stand", both reached number one. Also in 2006, the group charted in the top 10 of the Hot 100 with a cover of Tom Cochrane's "Life Is a Highway", which they recorded for the Pixar film Cars. Although "Life Is a Highway" was not released to country radio, several country stations did begin playing the song, causing it to chart within the top 20 of Hot Country Songs. Me and My Gang had the highest US debut of 2006, with 722,000 units in April. The album spent 15 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart and was the second-best selling album of 2006 (behind High School Musical), with sales totaling to about 3.5 million by year's end. The album's success led the band to take the spot of top-selling artist for all genres of music, which had not been accomplished in 15 years by a country group. Carrie Underwood and Rascal Flatts performed together at the 2007 Grammy Awards ceremony. Later the same year, the group released the single "Take Me There", a song which Kenny Chesney co-wrote and had initially planned to record himself. That song became a number-one country hit in September and served as the first single from the album Still Feels Good. It was followed by "Winner at a Losing Game", which was the first single which the band wrote themselves. Both it and its followup "Every Day" peaked at No. 2 on the country charts. The fourth single from the album, "Bob That Head", became the band's first single to miss the Top 10 on the chart. The fifth and final single, "Here", was released in August 2008 and became the band's ninth Number One hit on the chart week of January 3, 2009. Rascal Flatts released their first compilation album, Greatest Hits Volume 1, on October 28, 2008. The album contains 13 of their biggest songs, starting with "Prayin' for Daylight" and going through "Life Is a Highway". The limited edition of the album contains a second disc with three Christmas songs: "White Christmas", "Jingle Bell Rock", and "I'll Be Home for Christmas". A year later in October 2009, they released a second edition of their greatest hits collection, this time with a second disc containing live performances of "Take Me There", "Summer Nights", "Me & My Gang", and "Winner at a Losing Game". In January 2009, Rascal Flatts released the song "Here Comes Goodbye" as the first single from the album Unstoppable, which was released on April 7 of that year. Co-written by American Idol season six finalist Chris Sligh, "Here Comes Goodbye" became the group's tenth number one hit. The second single form the Unstoppable album, "Summer Nights", which was co-written by Gary LeVox, was released in early May 2009. That song debuted at No. 57 and topped out at No. 2 on the country charts. The group performed "Summer Nights" at the CMT Music Awards, Oprahs Kickoff Party, and the finale of America's Got Talent. The third single off the album, "Why", peaked at No. 18 on the country charts. Rascal Flatts performed that song on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. The title track was released as the album's fourth single in January 2010. A special release version of their album Unstoppable was sold at JCPenney stores nationwide. It features a special release song entitled "American Living" only available on the albums sold at JCPenney stores. JCPenney is an official sponsor of Rascal Flatts' Unstoppable American Living Tour in a two-year partnership and $1 of every CD sold at JCPenney will be donated to the JCPenney Afterschool Fund. On July 16, 2009, as part of the JCPenney American Living Tour, Rascal Flatts made history as the first country music group to play Chicago's Wrigley Field. The trio was joined by fellow artists Vince Gill and Darius Rucker for a near-sellout crowd. After the closure of Lyric Street in April 2010, Rascal Flatts signed to Big Machine Records in July of that year. The group's first single from the label was the song "Why Wait". The song was first single single from the album Nothing Like This, which was released November 16, 2010. In December 2010, "Why Wait" became the trio's eleventh number one hit on the U.S. country charts. In March 2011, Rascal Flatts was featured on a remix of Justin Bieber's song "That Should Be Me". The second single from Nothing Like This was "I Won't Let Go". That song went to number 2 in early 2011. Following it was the band's first collaborative release to country radio, "Easy", which is a duet with British pop singer Natasha Bedingfield. "I Won't Let Go", and "Easy" peaked at numbers 2 and 3 respectively on the country charts. On November 8, 2011, Hollywood Records released The Best of Rascal Flatts Live. Rascal Flatts' eighth studio album, Changed, was released on April 3, 2012. It was produced by Dann Huff and Rascal Flatts. The first single from that album, "Banjo", became their twelfth number one on the country charts. The second single off the album, "Come Wake Me Up", reached the top five on the Country Airplay chart. The third single from the album is the title track. Band member Jay DeMarcus and his wife, CMT Insider correspondent Allison Alderson DeMarcus, welcomed the arrival of their second child, Dylan Jay DeMarcus, on July 20 in Nashville. Rascal Flatts received the 2,480th star in the category of recording of the Hollywood Walk of Fame on September 17, 2012. The star is located in front of the Sergeant Supply Store at 6664 Hollywood Boulevard. They became the second country artist with Oklahoma ties to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame that month after Vince Gill received his star the previous week. On November 19, Rascal Flatts released their second DVD, All Access & Uncovered: The Making of Changed and Beyond, inviting the public into their inner circle. The DVD project reveals a more intimate side of Gary LeVox, Joe Don Rooney and Jay DeMarcus' lives during the making of their Changed album and more. The project made a one-night-only debut in movie theaters across the country in conjunction with the album release earlier that year, with the band celebrating with fans at the AMC Theater in New York City's Times Square. On November 20, the band made a guest appearance on NBC's The Voice to promote their new DVD. They performed "Changed" with Cody Belew and Cassadee Pope, contestants from the show. In 2012, Rascal Flatts announced they will get into the restaurant business. Rascal Flatts Restaurant Group was formed by Philip Lama, CEO and Eric Soe, President, who partnered with Rascal Flatts to create and develop themed restaurants throughout the U.S. and Canada. They call it the Rascal Flatts American Bar & Grill. The first location is at 5455 E. High Street in Phoenix, Arizona. Additional locations will be opened in 2013 and 2014. In December 2012, Rascal Flatts and Nashville actress Hayden Panettiere hosted the third annual 2012 CMT Artists of the Year to honor the top country acts of the year. Rascal Flatts also hosted The 14th Annual A Home for the Holidays with Rascal Flatts. The show earned a 4.91(million) rating. Lionheart Music Group, a Swedish independent company within the Universal Music Group, announced they will release Rascal Flatts' album, Changed, on January 2, 2013, in Sweden. Earlier, Rascal Flatts re- recorded their hit "Come Wake Me Up" with Swedish country/pop female singer, Jill Johnson, who is also under Lionheart Music Group, as a duet version on Johnson's new album, A Woman Can Change Her Mind. The duet version was also released as a digital download internationally on November 16, 2012. The record label also released their former album, Nothing Like This, on January 23, 2013. Rascal Flatts and Journey headlined the Super Bowl XLVII CMT Crossroads concert at the New Orleans Sugar Mill on February 2, 2013. This marked the second collaboration for Rascal Flatts and Journey. In June 2012, Rascal Flatts closed the CMT Music Awards by inviting Journey to perform their hit "Don't Stop Believin'" with them on stage. Rascal Flatts was nominated for International Artist of the Year and International Music Video of the Year (for "Banjo" and "Come Wake Me Up") at the 2013 CMC Music Awards. On April 8, 2013, Jay DeMarcus tweeted that Rascal Flatts was working on a new album The lead single, "Rewind", was issued in January 2014 from the album of the same name, which was released on May 13, 2014. The band admitted they were lip-syncing to a recording of their song "Rewind" during Academy of Country Music (ACM) awards show on April 6, 2014. In response to the controversy, Rascal Flatts communicated afterwards that lead singer Gary LeVox had lost his voice and so they made a last-minute decision to lip-sync. "Rewind" became a Top 5 hit on the Country Airplay chart in 2014. Rewind has produced three more singles with "Payback", which peaked at 21, "Riot", which reached 20, and "I Like the Sound of That", which was released to country radio on September 14, 2015. The latter song, co-written by Shay Mooney of Dan + Shay and pop musician Meghan Trainor, reached number 1 on the Country Airplay chart in April 2016. That year, Rascal Flatts were selected as one of 30 artists to perform on "Forever Country", a mash-up track of Take Me Home, Country Roads, On the Road Again and I Will Always Love You which celebrates 50 years of the CMA Awards. On January 5, 2017, Rascal Flatts released a new single entitled "Yours If You Want It" to country radio. The track served as the lead single from their tenth studio album Back to Us, which was released on May 19. It topped the Billboard Country Airplay chart. The title track was released as the second single. On September 28, 2018, Rascal Flatts released a new single titled "Back to Life". Rascal Flatts embarked on their Summer Playlist tour in summer 2019. On January 7, 2020, Rascal Flatts appeared on CBS This Morning to announce their farewell tour, "Rascal Flatts: Life Is a Highway Tour" to celebrate their twentieth anniversary. They also promised new music. Rascal Flatts helped support music education in disadvantaged U.S. public schools by filming a PSA with Little Kids Rock. Through their encouragement for music education, giving the gift of "music" is possible in children's lives. The band supports charities such as the Make A Wish Foundation. They helped raise one million dollars for the Central Ohio foundation. The event was Ohio State University's second annual "Big Wish Gala". Their chart-topping song, "My Wish" is also used on ESPN as the soundtrack for its series that follows the Make-a-Wish Foundation as they turn dreams into reality for children with life-threatening illnesses. Since then, they have also contributed countable hours of their time—and $4 million—to Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt which is among the nation's leading pediatric facilities, where the Rascal Flatts Pediatric Surgery Center was named in recognition of the trio's long-standing involvement. The group has an uncommon youth demographic (18–25) for country music. In September 2007, Weekly Reader Research conducted a poll of more than 2,000 children and Rascal Flatts ranked as the sixth-most-popular act among ages 10–12. They have raised and donated millions of dollars to the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt. They are also involved with the American Red Cross as they are members on the celebrity cabinet board. Rascal Flatts has enjoyed financial success as touring artists. Nielsen reported that the band was the top selling artist in 2006: "Rascal Flatts was the biggest selling artist, with nearly 5 million physical album sales and nearly 4 million digital track sales." They had their first headlining tour beginning in Fall 2002, and by 2005 they were among the top 25 tours of the year, grossing $26.3 million in 777,384 tickets sold, according to Billboard Boxscore. Their follow-up tour in 2006 grossed $46.2 million, drawing more than a million people to 79 shows. Rascal Flatts had the third-highest US country tour in 2007, grossing $34 million from 588,009 tickets sold. The group grossed $16.8 million from their summer tour. Rascal Flatts' shows are heavy on special effects, including videos, pyrotechnics and laser lights. In 2013, Rascal Flatts headed to Australia for the first time to headline CMC Rocks The Hunter 2013, which is a three-day festival from March 15 to March 17. They closed the proceedings. Between 2004 and 2012, Rascal Flatts sold over 7 million tickets, making them one of the top selling country music acts in that time. In 2012, Rascal Flatts began the year with their "Thaw Out 2012" tour adding 47 additional dates on the Farmers Insurance Presents "Changed Tour" to bring the 2012 year-end total to just over 60 concerts and 1 million fans attending shows in this year alone. On April 9, 2013, the group announced that they would co-headline a show with Journey on August 1 at Hersheypark Stadium with The Band Perry and Cassadee Pope as openers. In 2016, Rascal Flatts celebrated a career milestone of 10 million tickets sold. Headlining 2002–03: CMT Most Wanted Live/I Melt Tour, 2004–05: Here's to You Tour, 2006–07: Me & My Gang Tour, 2007–08: Still Feels Good Tour, 2008–09: Bob That Head Tour, 2009–10: American Living Unstoppable Tour, 2010–11: Nothing Like This Tour, 2011: Flatts Fest Tour, 2012: Thaw Out 2012 Tour, 2012–13: Changed Tour, 2013: Live & Loud Tour, 2014: Rewind Tour, 2015: Riot Tour, 2016: Rhythm and Roots Tour, 2018: Back To Us Tour, 2019: Summer Playlist Tour, 2020: Rascal Flatts: Life Is a Highway Farewell Tour Supporting 2000–01: Burn Tour, 2002: Alan Jackson's Drive Tour, 2003: Neon Circus & Wild West Show, 2004: Guitars, Tiki Bars & Whole Lotta Love Tour Rascal Flatts' members have also contributed to the work of other artists. LeVox, along with Jason Sellers and Wendell Mobley, co-wrote Phil Stacey's 2008 debut single "If You Didn't Love Me". DeMarcus has co-produced albums for several artists, including Chely Wright's 2002 album Never Love You Enough, Chicago's Chicago XXX, and James Otto's 2008 album Sunset Man, the last of which had John Rich of Big & Rich as a co-producer. He also produced New to This Town, the first solo album released by Kix Brooks following his split from Brooks & Dunn, The group has also contributed portions of the soundtrack, with acoustic versions of "Bless the Broken Road" and "Backwards". In 2011, they did a remix of "That Should Be Me" by Justin Bieber on his remix album Never Say Never – The Remixes. In the same year, Anna Wilson's Countrypolitan Duets album also included a song featuring Rascal Flatts and Ray Price, "You're the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me". Also in 2011, the band collaborated with Michael Bolton on his album Gems, on the song "Love Is Everything". In 2012, Lionel Richie featured Rascal Flatts on his duet album, Tuskegee, on the song "Dancing on the Ceiling". Also in 2012, Swedish country/pop female singer Jill Johnson featured Rascal Flatts on her album A Woman Can Change Her Mind, on a cover of their single "Come Wake Me Up". The band appears on the track Until Grace by Tauren Wells, on his second studio album Citizen of Heaven. Rascal Flatts (2000), Melt (2002), Feels Like Today (2004), Me and My Gang (2006), Still Feels Good (2007), Unstoppable (2009), Nothing Like This (2010), Changed (2012), Rewind (2014), The Greatest Gift of All (2016), Back to Us (2017) "These Days" (2002), "Mayberry" (2004), "Bless the Broken Road" (2005), "Fast Cars and Freedom" (2005), "What Hurts the Most" (2006), "My Wish" (2006), "Stand" (2007), "Take Me There" (2007), "Here" (2009), "Here Comes Goodbye" (2009), "Why Wait" (2010), "Banjo" (2012), "I Like the Sound of That" (2016), "Yours If You Want It" (2017) Notes A ^ "What Hurts the Most" also became Rascal Flatts' first number-one adult hit in the U.S., reaching No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Adult Contemporary chart for one week in November, three weeks in December, and five weeks in January. 2000 ACM Top New Vocal Duo Or Group (presented 2001) 2002 CMA Horizon Award, ACM Song of the Year ("I'm Movin' On") (presented 2003), ACM Top Vocal Group (presented 2003) 2003 CMT Flameworthy Video Music Award for Group/Duo of the Year ("These Days"), CMA Vocal Group of the Year, ACM Top Vocal Group (presented 2004) 2004 CMT Flameworthy Music Video Award for Group/Duo of the Year ("I Melt"), CMA Vocal Group, ACM Top Vocal Group (presented 2005) 2005 CMT Music Award for Group/Duo of the Year ("Feels Like Today"), CMA Vocal Group of the Year, ACM Top Vocal Group (presented 2006), Radio Music Awards for Song of the Year/Country Radio ("Bless The Broken Road"), Billboard Roadworks '05 Touring Awards for Breakthrough Act 2006 CMT Music Award for Group/Duo of the Year ("Skin (Sarabeth)"), CMA Vocal Group of the Year, AMA Favorite Country Band, Duo or Group, AMA T-Mobile Text-In Award, People's Choice Awards Favorite Song from a Movie ("Life Is A Highway"), People's Choice Awards Favorite Song Remake ("Life Is A Highway"), CMT Loaded Awards – Number One Digitally Active Group/Duo, CMT Loaded Awards – Number One Streamed Music Video ("What Hurts the Most"), Grammy Awards Best Country Song ("Bless the Broken Road"); songwriter award 2007 CMT Music Awards for Group Video of the Year ("What Hurts the Most"), ACM Top Vocal Group (presented 2008), CMA Vocal Group of the Year, AMA Favorite Country Band, Duo or Group, BMI Song of The Year ("What Hurts The Most") 2008 People's Choice Awards Favorite Country Song ("Stand"), CMT Music Award for Group Video of the Year ("Take Me There"), ACM Top Vocal Group (presented 2009), ACM Humanitarian Award, CMA Vocal Group of the Year, AMA Favorite Country Band, Duo or Group 2009 People's Choice Awards Favorite Group, CMT Music Award for Group Video of the Year ("Every Day"), AMA Favorite Country Band, Duo or Group 2010 Star on the Music City Walk of Fame, ACA Decade Artist award 2011 Tony Martell Lifetime Entertainment Achievement Award, CMT Music Award for Collaborative Video of the Year ("That Should Be Me"), Member of the Grand Ole Opry 2012 CRS 2012 Artist Humanitarian Award, Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame 2013 ACM Jim Reeves International Award (presented 2014) Rascal Flatts, along with David Hartley, contributed "Walk The Llama Llama" to the sound track of The Emperor's New Groove. In addition to Tom Cochrane's "Life Is a Highway," the group covered "The Beatles" hit "Revolution" for Evan Almighty. Their version of the song did not appear on the soundtrack. Rascal Flatts appear as themselves in "The Limo" episode of Yes, Dear. After being kidnapped in a limo by the main characters, the group performs "Bless the Broken Road" for them as an anniversary gift. The group appears as themselves in singing their song "Backwards" during the scene of Miley's grandma's birthday party, and then "Bless the Broken Road" in an evening scene on the front porch. They appeared as themselves, promoting Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution in Huntington, West Virginia. The group appears as themselves on ( episode 14), in which they perform in concert. In the episode entitled "Unshockable", DeMarcus is electrocuted by what turned out to be their bass tech Travis Murray. On the commentary they said what a great opportunity it was to work with such fine actors who are so good at what they do, LeVox stated, "It's one of my favorite shows and it was an honor to add a little piece of Rascal Flatts to the episode." They also appeared in a 2009 Hershey Chocolate commercial. On April 28, 2010, Rascal Flatts appeared as themselves on American Idol. They also sang with Shakira. They recorded a live concert during the January 20, 2011 show in St. Paul, Minnesota, that was broadcast on ABC, March 12, 2011. On April 17, 2011, the group appeared as themselves on West Coast Customs. West Coast Customs builds them a custom Chevrolet Camaro inspired by their song, "Red Camaro". On May 23, 2011, Rascal Flatts performed on 'Surprise, Oprah! A Farewell Spectacular Part 1' along with other artists including Josh Groban, Patti LaBelle, and Beyoncé. On April 5, 2012, Rascal Flatts hit the big screen for their special Changed: One Night Exclusive Theater Event. The special in-theater concert hit movie screens nationwide for one night only. It included live performance footage, Q&A; sessions, and welcome messages from the band. The event showcased many tracks from the upcoming studio album. On June 7, 2017, Rascal Flatts performed the national anthem before Game 3 of the 2017 NBA Finals. The Voice Season 13 Battle Advisor from Team Blake Drop the Mic (vs. Boyz II Men) "Why" is a song recorded by American country music band Rascal Flatts. It is the third single from their sixth studio album, Unstoppable. It was released to radio stations on September 29, 2009 and debuted at number 44 on the U.S. Billboard US Billboard Hot Country Songs chart for the week of October 10, 2009. It was written by Rob Mathes and Allen Shamblin. The song was recorded earlier by Faith Hill for a possible inclusion on her 2005 album Fireflies, but ultimately did not make the cut. It was eventually released in 2016 on Deep Tracks. The song is a slow-tempo song, sung from the perspective of a man whose close friend has died by suicide. All three members of Rascal Flatts stated that they had experienced some degree of difficulty recording the song, because each member knew someone close to them that suffered the same fate. Roughstock gave the song a favorable review. Bobby Peacock of the website says of the song, “The lyrics alone are beautiful.” Chris Neal of Country Weekly gave it three stars out of five, saying that lead singer Gary LeVox "handles the lyric as delicately as its subject matter[…] calls for" but said that the "climactic arena rock guitar solo[…]rob[s] some of the song of its intimacy." "Why" peaked at No. 18 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts dated for November 14, 2009. It held the peak before falling to No. 19 on the week of November 28 before returning to number 18 a week later. The song did not reach the Billboard Hot 100 proper, but peaked at number 2 on the Bubbling Under Hot 100, which is equivalent to number 102 on Hot 100. It was the lowest-peaking official single release of Rascal Flatts' career until "Back to Us" reached number 46 in 2017. "Every Day" is a song written by Jeffrey Steele and Alissa Moreno and recorded by American country music group Rascal Flatts. It was released in March 2008 as the third single from their album Still Feels Good. It became their nineteenth consecutive Top 10 hit, reaching #2 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts. The song is a mid-tempo ballad set in triple meter and primarily accompanied by piano, in which the narrator addresses someone else, telling of how that person keeps the narrator from making mistakes in life ("every day, you save my life"). Jeffrey Steele, one of the song's co-writers, was inspired to write down the title after meeting singer Sarah Buxton at a restaurant in Nashville, Tennessee. Buxton told Steele about her roommate, saying "Every day, she saves my life". Steele then went home thinking about a lyric. Later on, while at a songwriting seminar in Colorado, Steele met songwriter Alissa Moreno, who was playing a melody on the piano. Steele then sang the title that he had written alongside Moreno's melody, they worked on the lyric and melody, and the song was completed. He then sent the song to record producer Dann Huff, who recommended the song to Rascal Flatts. The group then recorded it for their Still Feels Good album, giving Moreno her second outside cut as a songwriter. A music video for the song was issued on April 17, 2008. It features actors portraying various dramatic scenes based on "the concept that a single act of kindness… making a difference in the lives of others", according to CMT. The video was created by Deaton Flanigen Productions. The song debuted at number 42 on the Hot Country Songs chart dated March 8, 2008, reaching a peak of number 2 on that chart on the chart week of June 14, 2008.

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The Sundarbans is a mangrove area in the delta formed by the confluence of Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna Rivers in the Bay of Bengal. It spans from the Hooghly River in India's state of West Bengal to the Baleswar River in Bangladesh. It comprises closed and open mangrove forests, agriculturally used land, mudflats and barren land, and is intersected by multiple tidal streams and channels. Four protected areas in the Sundarbans are enlisted as UNESCO World Heritage Sites, viz Sundarbans National Park, Sundarbans West, Sundarbans South and Sundarbans East Wildlife Sanctuaries. The Sundarbans mangrove forest covers an area of about , of which forests in Bangladesh's Khulna Division extend over and in West Bengal, they extend over across the South 24 Parganas and North 24 Parganas districts. The most abundant tree species are sundri (Heritiera fomes) and gewa (Excoecaria agallocha). The forests provide habitat to 453 faunal wildlife, including 290 bird, 120 fish, 42 mammal, 35 reptile and eight amphibian species. Despite a total ban on all killing or capture of wildlife other than fish and some invertebrates, it appears that there is a consistent pattern of depleted biodiversity or loss of species in the 20th century, and that the ecological quality of the forest is declining. The Directorate of Forest is responsible for the administration and management of Sundarban National Park in West Bengal. In Bangladesh, a Forest Circle was created in 1993 to preserve the forest, and Chief Conservators of Forests have been posted since. Despite preservation commitments from both Governments, the Sunderbans are under threat from both natural and human-made causes. In 2007, the landfall of Cyclone Sidr damaged around 40% of the Sundarbans. The forest is also suffering from increased salinity due to rising sea levels and reduced freshwater supply. Again in May 2009 Cyclone Aila devastated Sundarban with massive casualties. At least 100,000 people were affected by this cyclone. The proposed coal-fired Rampal power station situated north of the Sundarbans at Rampal Upazila of Bagerhat District in Khulna, Bangladesh, is anticipated to further damage this unique mangrove forest according to a 2016 report by UNESCO. The Bengali name Sundarban means "beautiful forest." It may have been derived from the word Sundari or Sundri, the local name of the mangrove species Heritiera fomes. Alternatively, it has been proposed that the name is a corruption of Samudraban, Shomudrobôn ("Sea Forest"), or Chandra-bandhe, the name of a tribe. The history of the area can be traced back to 200–300 AD. A ruin of a city built by Chand Sadagar has been found in the Baghmara Forest Block. During the Mughal period, the Mughal Kings leased the forests of the Sundarbans to nearby residents. Many criminals took refuge in the Sundarbans from the advancing armies of Emperor Akbar. Many have been known to be attacked by tigers. Many of the buildings which were built by them later fell to hands of Portuguese pirates, salt smugglers and dacoits in the 17th century. Evidence of the fact can be traced from the ruins at Netidhopani and other places scattered all over Sundarbans. The legal status of the forests underwent a series of changes, including the distinction of being the first mangrove forest in the world to be brought under scientific management. The area was mapped first in Persian, by the Surveyor General as early as 1769 following soon after proprietary rights were obtained from the Mughal Emperor Alamgir II by the British East India Company in 1757. Systematic management of this forest tract started in the 1860s after the establishment of a Forest Department in the Province of Bengal, in British India. The management was entirely designed to extract whatever treasures were available, but labour and lower management mostly were staffed by locals, as the British had no expertise or adaptation experience in mangrove forests. The first Forest Management Division to have jurisdiction over the Sundarbans was established in 1869. In 1875 a large portion of the mangrove forests was declared as reserved forests under the Forest Act, 1865 (Act VIII of 1865). The remaining portions of the forests were declared a reserve forest the following year and the forest, which was so far administered by the civil administration district, was placed under the control of the Forest Department. A Forest Division, which is the basic forest management and administration unit, was created in 1879 with the headquarters in Khulna, Bangladesh. The first management plan was written for the period 1893–98. In 1911, it was described as a tract of waste country which had never been surveyed nor had the census been extended to it. It then stretched for about from the mouth of the Hooghly River to the mouth of the Meghna river and was bordered inland by the three settled districts of the 24 Parganas, Khulna and Bakerganj. The total area (including water) was estimated at . It was a water-logged jungle, in which tigers and other wild beasts abounded. Attempts at reclamation had not been very successful. The Sundarbans were intersected by river channels and creeks, some of which afforded water communication throughout the Bengal region both for steamboats and ships. The Sundarban forest lies in the vast delta on the Bay of Bengal formed by the super confluence of the Ganges, Hooghly, Padma, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers across southern Bangladesh. The seasonally flooded Sundarbans freshwater swamp forests lie inland from the mangrove forests on the coastal fringe. The forest covers of which about are in Bangladesh. It became inscribed as a UNESCO world heritage site in [1987]. The Indian part of Sundarbans is estimated to be about , of which about is occupied by water bodies in the forms of river, canals and creeks of width varying from a few metres to several kilometres. The Sundarbans is intersected by a complex network of tidal waterways, mudflats and small islands of salt-tolerant mangrove forests. The interconnected network of waterways makes almost every corner of the forest accessible by boat. The area is known for the Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris), as well as numerous fauna including species of birds, spotted deer, crocodiles and snakes. The fertile soils of the delta have been subject to intensive human use for centuries, and the ecoregion has been mostly converted to intensive agriculture, with few enclaves of forest remaining. The remaining forests, taken together with the Sundarbans mangroves, are important habitat for the endangered tiger. Additionally, the Sundarbans serves a crucial function as a protective barrier for the millions of inhabitants in and around Khulna and Mongla against the floods that result from the cyclones. The Sundarbans has also been enlisted among the finalists in the New7Wonders of Nature. The mangrove-dominated Ganges Delta – the Sundarbans – is a complex ecosystem comprising one of the three largest single tracts of mangrove forests of the world. Larger part is situated in Bangladesh, a smaller portion of it lies in India. The Indian part of the forest is estimated to be about 40 percent, while the Bangladeshi part is 60 percent. To the south the forest meets the Bay of Bengal; to the east it is bordered by the Baleswar River and to the north there is a sharp interface with intensively cultivated land. The natural drainage in the upstream areas, other than the main river channels, is everywhere impeded by extensive embankments and polders. The Sundarbans was originally measured (about 200 years ago) to be of about . Now it has dwindled into about 1/3 of the original size. The total land area today is , including exposed sandbars with a total area of ; the remaining water area of encompasses rivers, small streams and canals. Rivers in the Sundarbans are meeting places of salt water and freshwater. Thus, it is a region of transition between the freshwater of the rivers originating from the Ganges and the saline water of the Bay of Bengal. The Sundarbans along the Bay of Bengal has evolved over the millennia through natural deposition of upstream sediments accompanied by intertidal segregation. The physiography is dominated by deltaic formations that include innumerable drainage lines associated with surface and subaqueous levees, splays and tidal flats. There are also marginal marshes above mean tide level, tidal sandbars and islands with their networks of tidal channels, subaqueous distal bars and proto-delta clays and silt sediments. The Sundarbans' floor varies from above sea level. Biotic factors here play a significant role in physical coastal evolution, and for wildlife a variety of habitats have developed which include beaches, estuaries, permanent and semi-permanent swamps, tidal flats, tidal creeks, coastal dunes, back dunes and levees. The mangrove vegetation itself assists in the formation of new landmass and the intertidal vegetation plays a significant role in swamp morphology. The activities of mangrove fauna in the intertidal mudflats develop micromorphological features that trap and hold sediments to create a substratum for mangrove seeds. The morphology and evolution of the eolian dunes is controlled by an abundance of xerophytic and halophytic plants. Creepers, grasses and sedges stabilise sand dunes and uncompacted sediments. The Sunderbans mudflats (Banerjee, 1998) are found at the estuary and on the deltaic islands where low velocity of river and tidal current occurs. The flats are exposed in low tides and submerged in high tides, thus being changed morphologically even in one tidal cycle. The tides are so large that approximately one third of the land disappears and reappears every day. The interior parts of the mudflats serve as a perfect home for mangroves. Sundarbans features two ecoregions — "Sundarbans freshwater swamp forests" (IM0162) and "Sundarbans mangroves" (IM1406). The Sundarbans freshwater swamp forests are a tropical moist broadleaf forest ecoregion of Bangladesh. It represents the brackish swamp forests that lie behind the Sundarbans Mangroves, where the salinity is more pronounced. The freshwater ecoregion is an area where the water is only slightly brackish and becomes quite fresh during the rainy season, when the freshwater plumes from the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers push the intruding salt water out and bring a deposit of silt. It covers of the vast Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta, extending from the northern part of Khulna District and finishing at the mouth of the Bay of Bengal with scattered portions extending into India's West Bengal state. The Sundarbans freshwater swamp forests lie between the upland Lower Gangetic plains moist deciduous forests and the brackish-water Sundarbans mangroves bordering the Bay of Bengal. A victim of large-scale clearing and settlement to support one of the densest human populations in Asia, this ecoregion is under a great threat of extinction. Hundreds of years of habitation and exploitation have exacted a heavy toll on this ecoregion's habitat and biodiversity. There are two protected areas – Narendrapur (110 km) and Ata Danga Baor (20 km) that cover a mere 130 km of the ecoregion. Habitat loss in this ecoregion is so extensive, and the remaining habitat is so fragmented, that it is difficult to ascertain the composition of the original vegetation of this ecoregion. According to Champion and Seth (1968), the freshwater swamp forests are characterised by Heritiera minor, Xylocarpus molluccensis, Bruguiera conjugata, Sonneratia apetala, Avicennia officinalis, and Sonneratia caseolaris, with Pandanus tectorius, Hibiscus tiliaceus, and Nipa fruticans along the fringing banks. The Sundarbans Mangroves ecoregion on the coast forms the seaward fringe of the delta and is the world's largest mangrove ecosystem, with of an area covered. The dominant mangrove species Heritiera fomes is locally known as sundri or sundari. Mangrove forests are not home to a great variety of plants. They have a thick canopy, and the undergrowth is mostly seedlings of the mangrove trees. Besides the sundari, other tree species in the forest include Avicennia, Xylocarpus mekongensis, Xylocarpus granatum, Sonneratia apetala, Bruguiera gymnorhiza, Ceriops decandra, Aegiceras corniculatum, Rhizophora mucronata, and Nypa fruticans palms. Twenty-six of the fifty broad mangrove species found in the world grow well in the Sundarbans. The commonly identifiable vegetation types in the dense Sundarbans mangrove forests are salt water mixed forest, mangrove scrub, brackish water mixed forest, littoral forest, wet forest and wet alluvial grass forests. The Bangladesh mangrove vegetation of the Sundarbans differs greatly from other non-deltaic coastal mangrove forests and upland forests associations. Unlike the former, the Rhizophoraceae are of minor importance. Ecological succession is generally defined as the successive occupation of a site by different plant communities. In an accreting mudflats the outer community along the sequence represents the pioneer community which is gradually replaced by the next community representing the seral stages and finally by a climax community typical of the climatic zone. Robert Scott Troup suggested that succession began in the newly accreted land created by fresh deposits of eroded soil. The pioneer vegetation on these newly accreted sites is Sonneratia, followed by Avicennia and Nypa. As the ground is elevated as a result of soil deposition, other trees make their appearance. The most prevalent, though one of the late species to appear, is Excoecaria. As the level of land rises through accretion and the land is only occasionally flooded by tides, Heritiera fomes begins to appear. A total 245 genera and 334 plant species were recorded by David Prain in 1903. While most of the mangroves in other parts of the world are characterised by members of the Rhizophoraceae, Avicenneaceae or Combretaceae, the mangroves of Bangladesh are dominated by the Malvaceae and Euphorbiaceae. The Sundarbans flora is characterised by the abundance of sundari (Heritiera fomes), gewa (Excoecaria agallocha), goran (Ceriops decandra) and keora (Sonneratia apetala) all of which occur prominently throughout the area. The characteristic tree of the forest is the sundari (Heritiera littoralis), from which the name of the forest had probably been derived. It yields a hard wood, used for building houses and making boats, furniture and other things. New forest accretions is often conspicuously dominated by keora (Sonneratia apetala) and tidal forests. It is an indicator species for newly accreted mudbanks and is an important species for wildlife, especially spotted deer (Axis axis). There is abundance of dhundul or passur (Xylocarpus granatum) and kankra (Bruguiera gymnorhiza) though distribution is discontinuous. Among palms, Poresia coaractata, Myriostachya wightiana and golpata (Nypa fruticans), and among grasses spear grass (Imperata cylindrica) and khagra (Phragmites karka) are well distributed. The varieties of the forests that exist in Sundarbans include mangrove scrub, littoral forest, saltwater mixed forest, brackish water mixed forest and swamp forest. Besides the forest, there are extensive areas of brackish water and freshwater marshes, intertidal mudflats, sandflats, sand dunes with typical dune vegetation, open grassland on sandy soils and raised areas supporting a variety of terrestrial shrubs and trees. Since Prain's report there have been considerable changes in the status of various mangrove species and taxonomic revision of the man-grove flora. However, very little exploration of the botanical nature of the Sundarbans has been made to keep up with these changes. Differences in vegetation have been explained in terms of freshwater and low salinity influences in the Northeast and variations in drainage and siltation. The Sundarbans has been classified as a moist tropical forest demonstrating a whole mosaic of seres, comprising primary colonisation on new accretions to more mature beach forests. Historically vegetation types have been recognised in broad correlation with varying degrees of water salinity, freshwater flushing and physiography. The Sundarbans provides a unique ecosystem and a rich wildlife habitat. According to the 2015 tiger census in Bangladesh, and the 2011 tiger census in India, the Sundarbans have about 180 tigers (106 in Bangladesh and 74 in India). Earlier estimates, based on counting unique pugmarks, were much higher. The more recent counts have used camera traps, an improved methodology that yields more accurate results. Tiger attacks are frequent in the Sundarbans, with up to 50 people being killed each year. There is much more wildlife there than just the endangered Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris). Most importantly, mangroves are a transition from the marine to freshwater and terrestrial systems, and provide critical habitat for numerous species of small fish, crabs, shrimps and other crustaceans that adapt to feed and shelter, and reproduce among the tangled mass of roots, known as pneumatophores, which grow upward from the anaerobic mud to get the supply of oxygen. Fishing cats, macaques, wild boars, common grey mongooses, foxes, jungle cats, flying foxes, pangolins, and spotted deer are also found in abundance in the Sundarbans. A 1991 study has revealed that the Indian part of the Sundarbans supports diverse biological resources including at least 150 species of commercially important fish, 270 species of birds, 42 species of mammals, 35 reptiles and 8 amphibian species, although new ones are being discovered. This represents a significant proportion of the species present in Bangladesh (i.e. about 30% of the reptiles, 37% the birds and 34% of the mammals) and includes many species which are now extinct elsewhere in the country. Two amphibians, 14 reptiles, 25 aves and five mammals are endangered. The Sundarbans is an important wintering area for migrant water birds and is an area suitable for watching and studying avifauna. The management of wildlife is restricted to, firstly, the protection of fauna from poaching, and, secondly, designation of some areas as wildlife sanctuaries where no extraction of forest produce is allowed and where the wildlife face few disturbances. Although the fauna of Bangladesh have diminished in recent times and the Sundarbans has not been spared from this decline, the mangrove forest retains several good wildlife habitats and their associated fauna. Of these, the tiger and dolphin are target species for planning wildlife management and tourism development. There are high profile and vulnerable mammals living in two contrasting environments, and their statuses and management are strong indicators of the general condition and management of wildlife. Some species are protected by legislation, notably by the Bangladesh Wildlife (Preservation) Order, 1973 (P.O. 23 of 1973). The fertile soils of the delta have been subject to intensive human use for centuries, and the ecoregion has been mostly converted to intensive agriculture, with few enclaves of forest remaining. The remaining forests, together with the Sundarbans mangroves, are important habitats for the Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris). The forest also provides habitat for small wild cats such as the jungle cat (Felis chaus), fishing cat (Prionailurus viverrinus), and leopard cat (P. bengalensis). Several predators dwell in the labyrinth of channels, branches and roots that poke up into the air. This is the only mangrove ecoregion that harbours the Indo-Pacific region's largest terrestrial predator, the Bengal tiger. Unlike in other habitats, tigers live here and swim among the mangrove islands, where they hunt scarce prey such as the chital deer (Axis axis), Indian muntjacs (Muntiacus muntjak), wild boar (Sus scrofa), and rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta). It is estimated that there are now 180 Bengal tigers and about 30,000 spotted deer in the area. The tigers regularly attack and kill humans who venture into the forest, human deaths ranging from 30–100 per year. The forest is also rich in bird life, with 286 species including the endemic brown-winged kingfishers (Pelargopsis amauroptera) and the globally threatened lesser adjutants (Leptoptilos javanicus) and masked finfoots (Heliopais personata) and birds of prey such as the ospreys (Pandion haliaetus), white- bellied sea eagles (Haliaeetus leucogaster) and grey-headed fish eagles (Ichthyophaga ichthyaetus). The Bangladeshi portion of Sundarbans was designated a Ramsar site on 21 May 1992, and the Indian portion on 30 January 2019. Some more popular birds found in this region are open billed storks, black-headed ibis, water hens, coots, pheasant-tailed jacanas, pariah kites, brahminy kites, marsh harriers, swamp partridges, red junglefowls, spotted doves, common mynahs, jungle crows, jungle babblers, cotton teals, herring gulls, Caspian terns, gray herons, brahminy ducks, spot-billed pelicans, great egrets, night herons, common snipes, wood sandpipers, green pigeons, rose- ringed parakeets, paradise flycatchers, cormorants, white-bellied sea eagles, seagulls, common kingfishers, peregrine falcons, woodpeckers, whimbrels, black-tailed godwits, little stints, eastern knots, curlews, golden plovers, pintails, white-eyed pochards and lesser whistling ducks. The Sundarbans National Park is home to olive ridley turtle, hawksbill turtle, green turtle, sea snake, dog-faced water snake, estuarine crocodile, chameleon, king cobra, Russell's viper, house gecko, monitor lizard, pythons, common krait, green vine snake, checkered keelback and rat snake. The river terrapin, Indian flap-shelled turtle (Lissemys punctata), peacock soft-shelled turtle (Trionyx hurum), yellow monitor, Asian water monitor, and Indian python. Fish and amphibians found in the Sundarbans include sawfish, butter fish, electric ray, common carp, silver carp, barb, river eels, starfish, king crab, fiddler crab, hermit crab, prawn, shrimps, Gangetic dolphins, skipper frogs, common toads and tree frogs. One particularly interesting fish is the mudskipper, a gobioid that climbs out of the water into mudflats and even climbs trees. Forest inventories reveal a decline in standing volume of the two main commercial mangrove species – sundari (Heritiera spp.) and gewa (Excoecaria agallocha) — by 40% and 45% respectively between 1959 and 1983. Despite a total ban on all killing or capture of wildlife other than fish and some invertebrates, it appears that there is a consistent pattern of depleted biodiversity or loss of species (notably at least six mammals and one important reptile) in the 20th century, and that the "ecological quality of the original mangrove forest is declining". The endangered species that live within the Sundarbans and extinct species that used to be include the royal Bengal tigers, estuarine crocodile, northern river terrapins (Batagur baska), olive ridley sea turtles, Gangetic dolphin, ground turtles, hawksbill sea turtles and king crabs (horse shoe). Some species such as hog deer (Axis porcinus), water buffalos (Bubalus bubalis), barasingha or swamp deer (Cervus duvauceli), Javan rhinoceros (Rhinoceros sondaicus), single horned rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) and the mugger crocodiles or marsh crocodiles (Crocodylus palustris) started to become extinct in the Sundarbans towards the middle of the 20th century, because of extensive poaching and man hunting by the British. There are other threatened mammal species, such as the capped langurs (Semnopithecus pileatus), smooth-coated otters (Lutrogale perspicillata), Oriental small-clawed otters (Aonyx cinerea), and great Bengal civets (Viverra zibetha). The physical development processes along the coast are influenced by a multitude of factors, comprising wave motions, micro and macro-tidal cycles and long shore currents typical to the coastal tract. The shore currents vary greatly along with the monsoon. These are also affected by cyclonic action. Erosion and accretion through these forces maintains varying levels, as yet not properly measured, of physiographic change whilst the mangrove vegetation itself provides a remarkable stability to the entire system. During each monsoon season almost all the Bengal Delta is submerged, much of it for half a year. The sediment of the lower delta plain is primarily advected inland by monsoonal coastal setup and cyclonic events. One of the greatest challenges people living on the Ganges Delta may face in coming years is the threat of rising sea levels caused mostly by subsidence in the region and partly by climate change. In many of the Bangladesh's mangrove wetlands, freshwater reaching the mangroves was considerably reduced from the 1970s because of diversion of freshwater in the upstream area by neighbouring India through the use of the Farakka Barrage bordering Rajshahi, Bangladesh. Also, the Bengal Basin is slowly tilting towards the east because of neo-tectonic movement, forcing greater freshwater input to the Bangladesh Sundarbans. As a result, the salinity of the Bangladesh Sundarbans is much lower than that of the Indian side. A 1990 study noted that there "is no evidence that environmental degradation in the Himalayas or a 'greenhouse' induced rise in sea level have aggravated floods in Bangladesh"; however, a 2007 report by UNESCO, "Case Studies on Climate Change and World Heritage" has stated that an anthropogenic rise in sea level (likely by the end of the 21st century, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), combined with other forms of anthropogenic stress on the Sundarbans, could lead to the destruction of 75 percent of the Sundarbans mangroves. Already, Lohachara Island and New Moore Island/South Talpatti Island have disappeared under the sea, and Ghoramara Island is half submerged. In a study conducted in 2012, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) found out that the Sunderban coast was retreating up to in a year. Agricultural activities had destroyed around of mangroves within three decades (1975–2010). Shrimp cultivation had destroyed another . Researches from the School of Oceanographic Studies, Jadavpur University, estimated the annual rise in sea level to be in 2010. It had doubled from recorded in 2000. The rising sea levels had also submerged around of forest areas. This, coupled with an around rise in surface water temperatures and increased levels of salinity have posed a problem for the survival of the indigenous flora and fauna. The Sundari trees are exceptionally sensitive to salinity and are being threatened with extinction. Loss of the mangrove forest will result in the loss of the protective biological shield against cyclones and tsunamis. This may put the surrounding coastal communities at high risk. Moreover, the submergence of land mass have rendered up to 6,000 families homeless and around 70,000 people are immediately threatened with the same. This is causing the flight of human capital to the mainland, about 13% in the decade of 2000–2010. A 2015 ethnographic study, conducted by a team of researchers from Heiderberg university in Germany, found a crisis brewing in the Sunderbans. The study contended that poor planning on the part of the India and Bangladesh governments coupled with natural ecological changes were forcing the flight of human capital from the region According to a report created by UNESCO, the landfall of Cyclone Sidr damaged around 40% of Sundarbans in 2007. In August 2010, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) and India's state-owned National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) where they designated to implement the coal-fired Rampal power station by 2016. The proposed project, on an area of over 1,834 acres of land, is situated north of the Sundarbans. This project violates the environmental impact assessment guidelines for coal-based thermal power plants. Environmental activists contend that the proposed location of the Rampal Station would violate provisions of the Ramsar Convention. The government of Bangladesh rejected the allegations that the coal-based power plant would adversely affect the world's largest mangrove forest. On 9 December 2014 an oil-tanker named Southern Star VII, carrying of furnace oil, was sunk in the Sela river of Sundarbans after it had been hit by a cargo vessel. The oil spread over area after the clash, as of 17 December. The slick spread to a second river and a network of canals in the Sundarbans and blackened the shoreline. The event was very threatening to trees, plankton, vast populations of small fishes and dolphins. The event occurred at a protected Sundarbans mangrove area, home to rare Irrawaddy and Ganges dolphins. Until 15 December 2014 only of oil from the area were cleaned up by local residents, Bangladesh Navy and the government of Bangladesh. Some reports indicated that the event killed some wildlife. On 13 December 2014, a dead Irrawaddy dolphin was seen floating on the Harintana-Tembulbunia channel of the Sela River. The Sundarbans plays an important role in the economy of the southwestern region of Bangladesh as well as in the national economy. It is the single largest source of forest produce in the country. The forest provides raw materials for wood-based industries. In addition to traditional forest produce like timber, fuelwood, pulpwood etc., large-scale harvest of non-wood forest products such as thatching materials, honey, beeswax, fish, crustacean and mollusc resources of the forest takes place regularly. The vegetated tidal lands of the Sundarbans function as an essential habitat, produces nutrients and purifies water. The forest also traps nutrient and sediment, acts as a storm barrier, shore stabiliser and energy storage unit. Last but not the least, the Sunderbans provides an aesthetic attraction for local and foreign tourists. The forest has immense protective and productive functions. Constituting 51% of the total reserved forest estate of Bangladesh, it contributes about 41% of total forest revenue and accounts for about 45% of all timber and fuel wood output of the country. A number of industries (e.g., newsprint mill, match factory, hardboard, boat building, furniture making) are based on raw materials obtained from the Sundarbans ecosystem. Non-timber forest products and plantations help generate considerable employment and income opportunities for at least half a million poor coastal people. It provides natural protection to life and properties of the coastal population in cyclone-prone Bangladesh. Part of the Sundarbans is shielded from tidal inflow by leaves and there one finds villages and agriculture. During the monsoon season, the low lying agricultural lands are waterlogged and the summer crop (kharif crop) is therefore mainly deepwater rice or floating rice. In the dry winter season the land is normally uncropped and used for cattle grazing. However, the lands near the villages are irrigated from ponds that were filled up during monsoon, and vegetable crops (Rabi crops) can be grown here. The Sundarbans has a population of over 4 million but much of it is mostly free of permanent human habitation. Despite human habitations and a century of economic exploitation of the forest well into the late 1940s, the Sundarbans retained a forest closure of about 70% according to the Overseas Development Administration (ODA) of the United Kingdom in 1979. The Sundarbans area is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, and the population is increasing. As a result, half of this ecoregion's mangrove forests have been cut down to supply fuelwood and other natural resources. Despite the intense and large-scale exploitation, this still is one of the largest contiguous areas of mangroves in the world. Another threat comes from deforestation and water diversion from the rivers inland, which causes far more silt to be brought to the estuary, clogging up the waterways. The Directorate of Forest is responsible for the administration and management of Sundarban National Park in West Bengal. The Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF), Wildlife & Bio-Diversity & ex-officio Chief Wildlife Warden, West Bengal is the senior most executive officer looking over the administration of the park. The Chief Conservator of Forests (South) & Director, Sundarban Biosphere Reserve is the administrative head of the park at the local level and is assisted by a Deputy Field Director and an Assistant Field Director. The park area is divided into two ranges, overseen by range forest officers. Each range is further sub-divided into beats. The park also has floating watch stations and camps to protect the property from poachers. The park receives financial aid from the State Government as well as the Ministry of Environment and Forests under various Plan and Non-Plan Budgets. Additional funding is received under the Project Tiger from the Central Government. In 2001, a grant of US$20,000 was received as a preparatory assistance for promotion between India and Bangladesh from the World Heritage Fund. A new Khulna Forest Circle was created in Bangladesh back in 1993 to preserve the forest, and Chief Conservators of Forests have been posted since. The direct administrative head of the Division is the Divisional Forest Officer, based at Khulna, who has a number of professional, subprofessional and support staff and logistic supports for the implementation of necessary management and administrative activities. The basic unit of management is the compartment. There are 55 compartments in four Forest Ranges and these are clearly demarcated mainly by natural features such as rivers, canals and creeks. The Bangladesh part of the forest lies under two forest divisions, and four administrative ranges viz Chandpai (Khulna District), Sarankhola (Khulna), and Burigoalini (Satkhira District) and has sixteen forest stations. It is further divided into fifty-five compartments and nine blocks. There are three wildlife sanctuaries established in 1977 under the Bangladesh Wildlife (Preservation) Order, 1973 (P.O. 23 of 1973). The West Bengal part of the forest lies under the district of South & North 24 Parganas. Protected areas cover 15% of the Sundarbans mangroves including Sundarbans National Park and Sajnakhali Wildlife Sanctuary, in West Bengal, Sundarbans East, Sundarbans South and Sundarbans West Wildlife Sanctuaries in Bangladesh. In May 2019, the local authorities in Bangladesh killed 4 tiger poachers in a shootout in the Sunderbans mangrove area where currently 114 tigers dwell. The Sundarban National Park is a National Park, Tiger Reserve, and a Biosphere Reserve in West Bengal, India. It is part of the Sundarbans on the Ganges Delta, and adjacent to the Sundarbans Reserve Forest in Bangladesh. The delta is densely covered by mangrove forests, and is one of the largest reserves for the Bengal tiger. It is also home to a variety of bird, reptile and invertebrate species, including the salt-water crocodile. The present Sundarbans National Park was declared as the core area of Sundarbans Tiger Reserve in 1973 and a wildlife sanctuary in 1977. On 4 May 1984 it was declared a National Park. Sundarbans West Wildlife Sanctuary is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The region supports mangroves, including: sparse stands of Gewa (Excoecaria agallocha) and dense stands of Goran (Ceriops tagal), with discontinuous patches of Hantal palm (Phoenix paludosa) on drier ground, river banks and levees. The fauna of the sanctuary is very diverse with some 40 species of mammals, 260 species of birds and 35 species of reptiles. The greatest of these being the Bengal tiger of which an estimated 350 remain in the Bangladesh Sundarbans. Other large mammals are wild boar, chital horin (spotted deer), Indian otter and macaque monkey. Five species of marine turtles frequent the coastal zone and two endangered reptiles are present – the estuarine crocodile and the Indian python. Sundarbans East Wildlife Sanctuary extends over an area of . Sundari trees (Heritiera fomes) dominate the flora, interspersed with Gewa (Excoecaria agallocha) and Passur (Xylocarpus mekongensis) with Kankra (Bruguiera gymnorhiza) occurring in areas subject to more frequent flooding. There is an understory of Shingra (Cynometra ramiflora) where, soils are drier and Amur (Aglaia cucullata) in wetter areas and Goran (Ceriops decandra) in more saline places. Nypa palm (Nypa fruticans) is widespread along drainage lines. Sundarbans South Wildlife Sanctuary extends over an area of . There is evidently the greatest seasonal variation in salinity levels and possibly represents an area of relatively longer duration of moderate salinity where Gewa (Excoecaria agallocha) is the dominant woody species. It is often mixed with Sundri, which is able to displace in circumstances such as artificially opened canopies where Sundri does not regenerate as effectively. It is also frequently associated with a dense understory of Goran (Ceriops tagal) and sometimes Passur. Sajnakhali Wildlife Sanctuary is a area in the northern part of the Sundarbans delta in South 24 Parganas district, West Bengal, India. It is mainly mangrove scrub, forest and swamp. It was set up as a sanctuary in 1976. It is home to a rich population of different species of wildlife, such as water fowl, heron, pelican, spotted deer, rhesus macaques, wild boar, tigers, water monitor lizards, fishing cats, otters, olive ridley turtles, crocodiles, batagur terrapins, and migratory birds. The Sundarbans is celebrated through numerous Bengali folk songs and dances, often centred around the folk heroes, gods and goddesses specific to the Sunderbans (like Bonbibi and Dakshin Rai) and to the Lower Gangetic Delta (like Manasa and Chand Sadagar). The Bengali folk epic Manasamangal mentions Netidhopani and has some passages set in the Sundarbans during the heroine Behula's quest to bring her husband Lakhindar back to life. The area provides the setting for several novels by Emilio Salgari, (e.g. The Mystery of the Black Jungle). Sundarbaney Arjan Sardar, a novel by Shibshankar Mitra, and Padma Nadir Majhi, a novel by Manik Bandopadhyay, are based on the rigors of lives of villagers and fishermen living in the Sunderbans region, and are woven into the Bengali psyche to a great extent. Part of the plot of Salman Rushdie's Booker Prize winning novel, Midnight's Children is set in the Sundarbans. This forest is adopted as the setting of Kunal Basu's short story "The Japanese Wife" and the subsequent film adaptation. Most of the plot of an internationally acclaimed novelist, Amitav Ghosh's 2004 novel, The Hungry Tide, is set in the Sundarbans. The plot centres on a headstrong American cetologist who arrives to study a rare species of river dolphin, enlisting a local fisherman and translator to aid her. The book also mentions two accounts of the Bonbibi story of "Dukhey's Redemption". Manik Bandopadhyay's Padma Nadir Majhi was made into a movie by Goutam Ghose. The Sunderbans has been the subject of a detailed and well-researched scholarly work on Bonbibi (a 'forest goddess' venerated by Hindus), on the relation between the islanders and tigers and on conservation and how it is perceived by the inhabitants of the Sundarbans, as well as numerous non-fiction books, including The Man-Eating Tigers of Sundarbans by Sy Montegomery for a young audience, which was shortlisted for the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award. In Up The Country, Emily Eden discusses her travels through the Sunderbans. Numerous documentary movies have been made about the Sunderbans, including the 2003 IMAX production Shining Bright about the Bengal tiger. The acclaimed BBC TV series Ganges documents the lives of villagers, especially honey collectors, in the Sundarbans. Sundarbans Tiger Project, Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education, Sangu Wildlife Sanctuary, Environmental impact of development in the Sundarbans Laskar Muqsudur Rahman, The Sundarbans: A Unique Wilderness of the World; at USDA Forest Reserve; McCool, Stephen F.; Cole, David N.; Borrie, William T.; O'Loughlin, Jennifer, comps. 2000. Wilderness science in a time of change conference, Volume 2: Wilderness within the context of larger systems; 1999 May 23–27; Missoula, MT. Proceedings RMRS-P-15-VOL-2. Ogden, UT: US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station., Terminal Report, Integrated Resource Development of the Sundarbans Reserved Forest: Project Findings and Recommendations, Food and Agriculture Organization (acting as executing agency for the United Nations Development Programme), United Nations, Rome, 1998 (prepared for the Government of Bangladesh), Blasco, F. (1975). The Mangroves of India. Institut Francis de Pondichéry, Travaux de las Section Scientifique et Technique, Tome XIV, Facicule 1. Pondicherry, India., Jalais, Annu. (2005). "Dwelling on Morichjhanpi: When Tigers Became 'Citizens', Refugees 'Tiger-Food'"; Economic and Political Weekly, 23 April 2005, pp. 1757 – 1762., Jalais, Annu. (2007). "The Sundarbans: Whose World Heritage Site?", Conservation and Society, (vol. 5, no. 4)., Jalais, Annu. (2008). "Unmasking the Cosmopolitan Tiger", Nature and Culture, (vol. 3, no. 1), pp. 25–40., Jalais, Annu. (2008). "Bonbibi: Bridging Worlds", Indian Folklore, serial no. 28, Jan 2008., Jalais, Annu. (2009). "Confronting Authority, Negotiating Morality: tiger prawn seed collection in the Sundarbans", International Collective in Support of Fishworkers, Yemaya, 32, Nov. ; Also in French: http://base.d-p-h.info/en/fiches/dph/fiche-dph-8148.html, Jalais, Annu. (2010). "Braving Crocodiles with Kali: Being a prawn-seed collector and a modern woman in the 21st century Sundarbans", Socio-Legal Review, Vol. 6., Montgomery, Sy (1995). Spell of the Tiger: The Man-Eaters of Sundarbans. Houghton Mifflin Company, New York., Rivers of Life: Living with Floods in Bangladesh. M. Q. Zaman. Asian Survey, Vol. 33, No. 10 (October 1993), pp. 985–996, Sundarbans on United Nations Environment Programme, Environmental classification of mangrove wetlands of India. V. Selvam. Current Science, Vol. 84, No. 6, 25 March 2003. UNESCO World Heritage Centre: The Sundarbans, UNESCO: Sundarban Biosphere Reserve Information, World Heritage Site: The Sundarbans, United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre Protected Areas Programme: The Sundarbans, The Sundarban of Bangladesh: A Rich Biodiversity of the World's Largest Mangrove Ecosystem, Greenpeace: Sinking Sundarbans – Climate voices, Tiger Conservation Project in the Bangladeshi Sundarbans, Research on water management and control in the Sunderbans, West Bengal, India, Finfishes of Sundarbans, Nasa images: set 01 and set 2, Bong Blogger: Sundarban Tour with SHER A mangrove is a shrub or small tree that grows in coastal saline or brackish water. The term is also used for tropical coastal vegetation consisting of such species. Mangroves occur worldwide in the tropics and subtropics, mainly between latitudes ° N and ° S. The total mangrove forest area of the world in 2000 was , spanning 118 countries and territories. Mangroves are salt-tolerant trees, also called halophytes, and are adapted to life in harsh coastal conditions. They contain a complex salt filtration system and complex root system to cope with salt water immersion and wave action. They are adapted to the low oxygen conditions of waterlogged mud. The word is used in at least three senses: (1) most broadly to refer to the habitat and entire plant assemblage or mangal, for which the terms mangrove forest biome, and mangrove swamp are also used, (2) to refer to all trees and large shrubs in a mangrove swamp, and (3) narrowly to refer just to "true" mangrove trees of the genus Rhizophora of the family Rhizophoraceae. The mangrove biome, or mangal, is a distinct saline woodland or shrubland habitat characterized by depositional coastal environments, where fine sediments (often with high organic content) collect in areas protected from high-energy wave action. The saline conditions tolerated by various mangrove species range from brackish water, through pure seawater (3 to 4%), to water concentrated by evaporation to over twice the salinity of ocean seawater (up to 9%). Mangrove forests move carbon dioxide "from the atmosphere into long-term storage" in greater quantities than other forests, making them "among the planet's best carbon scrubbers" according to a NASA-led study based on satellite data. The term "mangrove" comes to English from Spanish (perhaps by way of Portuguese), and is likely to originate from Guarani. It was earlier "mangrow" (from Portuguese ' or Spanish '), but this word was corrupted via folk etymology influence of the word "grove". Mangrove swamps (mangals) are found in tropical and subtropical tidal areas. Areas where mangroves occur include estuaries and marine shorelines. The intertidal existence to which these trees are adapted represents the major limitation to the number of species able to thrive in their habitat. High tide brings in salt water, and when the tide recedes, solar evaporation of the seawater in the soil leads to further increases in salinity. The return of tide can flush out these soils, bringing them back to salinity levels comparable to that of seawater. At low tide, organisms are also exposed to increases in temperature and reduced moisture before being then cooled and flooded by the tide. Thus, for a plant to survive in this environment, it must tolerate broad ranges of salinity, temperature, and moisture, as well as a number of other key environmental factors—thus only a select few species make up the mangrove tree community. About 110 species are considered "mangroves", in the sense of being a tree that grows in such a saline swamp, though only a few are from the mangrove plant genus, Rhizophora. However, a given mangrove swamp typically features only a small number of tree species. It is not uncommon for a mangrove forest in the Caribbean to feature only three or four tree species. For comparison, the tropical rainforest biome contains thousands of tree species, but this is not to say mangrove forests lack diversity. Though the trees themselves are few in species, the ecosystem that these trees create provides a home (habitat) for a great variety of other species, including as many as 174 species of marine megafauna. Mangrove plants require a number of physiological adaptations to overcome the problems of low environmental oxygen levels, high salinity and frequent tidal flooding. Each species has its own solutions to these problems; this may be the primary reason why, on some shorelines, mangrove tree species show distinct zonation. Small environmental variations within a mangal may lead to greatly differing methods for coping with the environment. Therefore, the mix of species is partly determined by the tolerances of individual species to physical conditions, such as tidal flooding and salinity, but may also be influenced by other factors, such as crabs preying on plant seedlings. Once established, mangrove roots provide an oyster habitat and slow water flow, thereby enhancing sediment deposition in areas where it is already occurring. The fine, anoxic sediments under mangroves act as sinks for a variety of heavy (trace) metals which colloidal particles in the sediments have scavenged from the water. Mangrove removal disturbs these underlying sediments, often creating problems of trace metal contamination of seawater and organisms of the area. Mangrove swamps protect coastal areas from erosion, storm surge (especially during hurricanes), and tsunamis. The mangroves' massive root systems are efficient at dissipating wave energy. Likewise, they slow down tidal water enough so its sediment is deposited as the tide comes in, leaving all except fine particles when the tide ebbs. In this way, mangroves build their own environments. Because of the uniqueness of mangrove ecosystems and the protection against erosion they provide, they are often the object of conservation programs, including national biodiversity action plans. Mangrove swamps' effectiveness in terms of erosion control can sometimes be overstated. Wave energy is typically low in areas where mangroves grow, so their effect on erosion is measured over long periods. Their capacity to limit high-energy wave erosion is in relation to events such as storm surges and tsunamis. The unique ecosystem found in the intricate mesh of mangrove roots offers a quiet marine region for young organisms. In areas where roots are permanently submerged, the organisms they host include algae, barnacles, oysters, sponges, and bryozoans, which all require a hard surface for anchoring while they filter feed. Shrimps and mud lobsters use the muddy bottoms as their home. Mangrove crabs munch on the mangrove leaves, adding nutrients to the mangal mud for other bottom feeders. In at least some cases, export of carbon fixed in mangroves is important in coastal food webs. Mangrove plantations in Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines and India host several commercially important species of fishes and crustaceans. Despite restoration efforts, developers and others have removed over half of the world's mangroves in recent times. Mangrove forests can decay into peat deposits because of fungal and bacterial processes as well as by the action of termites. It becomes peat in good geochemical, sedimentary and tectonic conditions. The nature of these deposits depends on the environment and the types of mangrove involved. In Puerto Rico the red (Rhizophora mangle), white (Laguncularia racemosa) and black (Avicennia germinans) mangroves occupy different ecological niches and have slightly different chemical compositions so the carbon content varies between the species as well between the different tissues of the plant e.g. leaf matter vs roots. In Puerto Rico there is a clear succession of these three trees from the lower elevations which are dominated by red mangroves to farther inland with a higher concentration of white mangroves. Mangrove forests are an important part of the cycling and storage of carbon in tropical coastal ecosystems. Using this it is possible to attempt to reconstruct the environment and investigate changes to the coastal ecosystem for thousands of years by using sediment cores. However, an additional complication is the imported marine organic matter that also gets deposited in the sediment due to tidal flushing of mangrove forests. In order to understand peat formation by mangroves, it is important to understand the conditions they grew in, and how they decayed. Termites are an important part of this decay, and so an understanding of their action on the organic matter is crucial to the chemical stabilization of mangrove peats. Mangroves are an important source of blue carbon. Globally, mangroves stored 4.19 Pg of carbon in 2012. Two percent of global mangrove carbon was lost between 2000 and 2012, equivalent to a maximum potential of 316,996,250 t of CO emissions. Mangroves are shown to provide measurable economic protections to coastal communities to tropical storm impacted communities globally. Of the recognized 110 mangrove species, only about 54 species in 20 genera from 16 families constitute the "true mangroves", species that occur almost exclusively in mangrove habitats. Demonstrating convergent evolution, many of these species found similar solutions to the tropical conditions of variable salinity, tidal range (inundation), anaerobic soils and intense sunlight. Plant biodiversity is generally low in a given mangrove. The greatest biodiversity occurs in the mangal of New Guinea, Indonesia and Malaysia. Red mangroves, which can survive in the most inundated areas, prop themselves above the water level with stilt roots and can then absorb air through pores in their bark (lenticels). Black mangroves live on higher ground and make many pneumatophores (specialised root-like structures which stick up out of the soil like straws for breathing) which are also covered in lenticels. These "breathing tubes" typically reach heights of up to 30 cm, and in some species, over 3 m. The four types of pneumatophores are stilt or prop type, snorkel or peg type, knee type, and ribbon or plank type. Knee and ribbon types may be combined with buttress roots at the base of the tree. The roots also contain wide aerenchyma to facilitate transport within the plants. Because the soil is perpetually waterlogged, little free oxygen is available. Anaerobic bacteria liberate nitrogen gas, soluble ferrum (iron), inorganic phosphates, sulfides and methane, which make the soil much less nutritious. Pneumatophores (aerial roots) allow mangroves to absorb gases directly from the atmosphere, and other nutrients such as iron, from the inhospitable soil. Mangroves store gases directly inside the roots, processing them even when the roots are submerged during high tide. Red mangroves exclude salt by having significantly impermeable roots which are highly suberised (impregnated with suberin), acting as an ultra-filtration mechanism to exclude sodium salts from the rest of the plant. Analysis of water inside mangroves has shown 90% to 97% of salt has been excluded at the roots. In a frequently cited concept that has become known as the "sacrificial leaf", salt which does accumulate in the shoot (sprout) then concentrates in old leaves, which the plant then sheds. However, recent research suggests the older, yellowing leaves have no more measurable salt content than the other, greener leaves. Red mangroves can also store salt in cell vacuoles. White and grey mangroves can secrete salts directly; they have two salt glands at each leaf base (correlating with their name—they are covered in white salt crystals). Because of the limited fresh water available in salty intertidal soils, mangroves limit the amount of water they lose through their leaves. They can restrict the opening of their stomata (pores on the leaf surfaces, which exchange carbon dioxide gas and water vapour during photosynthesis). They also vary the orientation of their leaves to avoid the harsh midday sun and so reduce evaporation from the leaves. Anthony Calfo, a noted aquarium author, observed anecdotally a red mangrove in captivity only grows if its leaves are misted with fresh water several times a week, simulating frequent tropical rainstorms. In this harsh environment, mangroves have evolved a special mechanism to help their offspring survive. Mangrove seeds are buoyant and are therefore suited to water dispersal. Unlike most plants, whose seeds germinate in soil, many mangroves (e.g. red mangrove) are viviparous, meaning their seeds germinate while still attached to the parent tree. Once germinated, the seedling grows either within the fruit (e.g. Aegialitis, Avicennia and Aegiceras), or out through the fruit (e.g. Rhizophora, Ceriops, Bruguiera and Nypa) to form a propagule (a ready-to-go seedling) which can produce its own food via photosynthesis. The mature propagule then drops into the water, which can transport it great distances. Propagules can survive desiccation and remain dormant for over a year before arriving in a suitable environment. Once a propagule is ready to root, its density changes so the elongated shape now floats vertically rather than horizontally. In this position, it is more likely to lodge in the mud and root. If it does not root, it can alter its density and drift again in search of more favorable conditions. The following listing (modified from Tomlinson, 1986) gives the number of species of mangroves in each listed plant genus and family. Mangrove environments in the Eastern Hemisphere harbor six times as many species of trees and shrubs as do mangroves in the New World. Genetic divergence of mangrove lineages from terrestrial relatives, in combination with fossil evidence, suggests mangrove diversity is limited by evolutionary transition into the stressful marine environment, and the number of mangrove lineages has increased steadily over the Tertiary with little global extinction. Mangroves can be found in over 118 countries and territories in the tropical and subtropical regions of the world. The largest percentage of mangroves is found between the 5° N and 5° S latitudes. Approximately 75% of world's mangroves are found in just 15 countries. Asia has the largest amount (42%) of the world's mangroves, followed by Africa (21%), North/Central America (15%), Oceania (12%) and South America (11%). The latest remotely-sensed global synthesis, estimates global mangrove forest area post-2000 as 141,333 km ±6% (CI 0.9, n = 4). There are important mangrove swamps in Kenya, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Madagascar, with the latter even admixing at the coastal verge with dry deciduous forests. Nigeria has Africa's largest mangrove concentration, spanning 36,000 km. Oil spills and leaks have destroyed many in the last 50 years, damaging the local fishing economy and water quality. Along the coast of the Red Sea, both on the Egyptian side and in the Gulf of Aqaba, mangroves composed primarily of Avicennia marina and Rhizophora mucronata grow in about 28 stands that cover about 525 hectares. Almost all Egyptian mangrove stands are now protected. There are mangroves off the east coast of South Africa extending as far south as the Tylomnqa River (33°13'26.1"S 27°34'50.2"E). Some mangrove stands exist in the St Lucia estuary within iSimangaliso Wetland Park. Mangroves live in many parts of the tropical and subtropical coastal zones of North and South America. Because of their sensitivity to subfreezing temperatures, mangroves in the continental United States are found mainly in the Florida peninsula (see Florida mangroves), Louisiana and South Texas, as well as other isolated areas along the wider Gulf Coast. They can be found, at their northernmost extent, at the Georgia coast. In Mexico, four species of mangrove predominate: Rhizophora mangle, Laguncularia racemosa, Avicennia germinans and Conocarpus erectus. During an inventory conducted by CONABIO between 2006 and 2008, 770,057 hectares of mangrove were counted. Of this total, 55% are located in the Yucatán Peninsula. Significant mangals include the Marismas Nacionales-San Blas mangroves found in Sinaloa and Nayarit. Mangroves occur on the Pacific and Caribbean coasts of Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama. Mangroves can also be found in many of the Antilles including Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Hispaniola, as well as other islands in the West Indies such as the Bahamas. The nation of Belize has the highest overall percentage of forest cover of any of the Central American countries. In terms of Belize's mangrove cover—which assumes the form not only of mangrove 'forest', but also of scrubs and savannas, among others—a 2010 satellite-based study of Belize's mangroves by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Water Center for the Humid Tropics of Latin America and the Caribbean found, in 2010, mangroves covered some 184,548 acres (74,684 hectares) or 3.4% of Belize's territory. In 1980, by contrast, mangrove cover stood at 188,417 acres (76,250 hectares)—also 3.4% of Belize's territory, although based on the work of mangrove researcher Simon Zisman, Belize's mangrove cover in 1980 was estimated to represent 98.7% of the precolonial extent of those ecosystems. Belize's mangrove cover in 2010 was thus estimated to represent 96.7% of the precolonial cover. Assessing changes in Belize's mangrove cover over a 30-year period was possible because of Belize's participation in the Regional Visualization and Monitoring System, a regional observatory jointly implemented by CATHALAC, RCMRD, ICIMOD, NASA, USAID, and other partners. Brazil contains approximately 26,000 km of mangals, 15% of the world's total. Ecuador has substantial remaining mangrove forests in the provinces of El Oro, Guayas, Manabi and Esmeraldas with limited forest remaining in Santa Elena. The northern portion of Esmeraldas province has a large pristine mangrove forest that is preserved as the Reserva Ecológica Cayapas-Mataje (REMACAN) and is an original Ramsar site. This forest is the most preserved within Ecuador and likely the most pristine forest along the Pacific Coast of the Americas. The only other major mangrove holding in Esmeraldas is in-and-around the community of Muisne and the Rio Muisne Estuary Swampland Wildlife Refuges. The mangroves in-and-around the estuaries of Muisne have decreased in area from 3222 ha in 1971 to 1065 ha as of 2005, during this time commercial shrimp aquaculture has become the dominant land-cover within this estuary environment. On the border of Esmeraldas province and Manabí province is a formerly large area of mangrove within Cojimies Estuary. The mangroves in this estuary are some of the most degraded in Ecuador with only 19% of 1971 mangrove area remaining as of 1998, although mangrove has recovered since this date. Within Manabí the major mangrove holding estuary is the Chone estuary situated near the city of Bahía de Caráquez. Again, Chone has undergone substantial mangrove deforestation since the advent of commercial aquaculture in Ecuador. Although mangrove loss appears to have halted in this estuary and mangrove regrowth driven by local fisherman is now occurring. Peru has a very small region of mangrove located in the north-west of the country on the Ecuadorian Border. Venezuela's northern Caribbean island, Margarita, possesses mangrove forests in the Parque nacional Laguna de La Restinga. Venezuela has 4% of the world's mangroves, with an extension of 6735 km. Colombia possesses large mangrove forests on both its Caribbean and Pacific coasts. The Mangrove forests of Suriname have a height of 20–25 m and are found mainly in the coastal area. There are six types of mangroves, namely two types of parwa or black mangroves, three types of red mangroves (mangro) and a small mangrove species (white mangrove, akira or tjila). As per the ISFR 2017 report, the total area of mangrove cover of India is 4921 km, (181 km positively changed with respect to 2015 mangrove cover assessment) which contributes 3.3% to the global mangrove cover. The deltas of the Ganges, Mahanadi, Krishna, Godavari, and Kaveri rivers contain mangrove forests. Backwaters in Kerala have high density of mangrove forest on the shores. Indian mangroves consist of 46 species (4 of which are natural hybrids) belonging to 22 genera and 14 families, representing about 57% of the world's mangrove species. The following table shows the prevalence of mangroves in the states of India and the total area covered by them in square kilometres. The Sundarbans in the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta extend from the Hooghly River in West Bengal to the Baleswar River in Bangladesh, covering an area of about . This area comprises closed and open mangrove forests, agriculturally used land, mudflats and barren land. It is intersected by tidal streams and channels. Four protected areas in the Sundarbans, viz Sundarbans National Park, Sundarbans West, Sundarbans South and Sundarbans East Wildlife Sanctuaries are enlisted as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Biodiversity includes at least 27 mangrove species, 40 mammal, 35 reptile and 260 bird species. More than 2.5 million people are estimated to live in the vicinity of the Sundarbans, making them one of the world's most densely populated areas. It is the largest mangrove region and the largest single block of tidal halophytic mangrove forest in the world. Sundri (Heritiera fomes) trees provide durable hard timber. Palm, coconut, keora, agar, also grow in some parts of the delta. India's mangrove forests are habitat for saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus), turtles, and snakes. This region is part of the Great Sundarbans and covers a National Park, Tiger reserve and a Biosphere Reserve. Sundarbans was designated a Ramsar site on May 21, 1992. The fertile soils of the delta have been subject to intensive human use for centuries, and the ecoregion has been mostly converted to intensive agriculture, with few enclaves of forest remaining. The remaining forests, together with the Sundarbans mangroves, are important habitat for the endangered tiger. Additionally, the Sundarbans serves a crucial function as a protective flood barrier for the millions of inhabitants in and around Kolkata against the result of cyclone activity. Sundarbans is home to many different species of birds, mammals, insects, reptiles and fish. It is estimated that there may be found more than 120 species of fish and over 260 species of birds and more than fifty species of reptiles and eight amphibians. The Bhitarkanika mangroves form India's second largest forest, located in the state of Odisha. Bhitarkanika is created by the two river deltas of Brahmani and Baitarani river and one of the important Ramsar Wetland in India. It is also the home of saltwater crocodiles and nesting olive ridley sea turtles. The Godavari-Krishna mangroves lie in the delta of the Godavari and Krishna rivers in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Mangroves ecoregion is under protection for Calimere Wildlife and Pulicat Lake Bird Sanctuary. The Pichavaram mangroves are situated at Pichavaram near Chidambaram in the state of Tamil Nadu. Pichavaram ranks amongst one of the most exquisite scenic spots in Tamil Nadu and has many species of aquatic birds. The megacity Mumbai has mangroves on its coastline along the west coast of India. A total of 10 mangrove species were reported in this area, dominated by Avicennia marina. These mangroves support a rich diversity of life forms, especially molluscs. The total mangrove area in Mumbai is 50 km. Mumbai's single largest mangrove belt is the western bank of Thane Creek. The Government of Maharashtra has declared much of the area on the western bank of Thane Creek as the Thane Creek Flamingo Sanctuary. Mangrove areas on the government lands are governed by the Maharashtra Forest Department. An extensive area of mangroves on the private lands in Vikhroli has been conserved by Soonabai Pirojsha Godrej Marine Ecology Centre, Vikhroli, Mumbai. The Baratang Island mangroves are located within the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The mangrove swamps of Baratang Island are situated between Middle and South Andaman Island. Pakistani mangroves are located mainly along the delta of the Indus River (the Indus River Delta-Arabian Sea mangroves ecoregion). Major mangrove forests are found on the coastline of the provinces of Sindh and Balochistan. In Karachi, land reclamation projects have led to the cutting down of mangrove forests for commercial and urban development. On 22 June 2013, Sindh Forest Department, Govt. of Sindh, Pakistan, with the help of 300 local coastal volunteer planters set the Guinness World Record by planting 847,250 mangrove saplings at Kharo Chan, Thatta, Sindh, Pakistan in a little over 12 hours. This is the highest number of saplings planted within a day under the Guinness World Record category of "Maximum Number of Trees Planted in a Day". Sindh Forest Department, Government of Sindh Mangrove has played pioneer role for the conservation and protection of the mangroves in the Indus Delta since late 1950s when it was handed over the areas. A breakthrough success is the re- introduction of Rhizophora mucronata into the Indus Delta, which had become extinct there. More recently, a threatened mangrove shrub, Ceriops tagal, has also been successfully re-introduced. A third species, Aegiceras corniculatum, is under trials at the nursery stage. A major initiative is currently underway in Sindh, Pakistan, to rehabilitate degraded mangrove mudflats. Since 2010 alone, around 55,000 hectares of former mangrove forest have been planted and rehabilitated. During this period, through concerted efforts and a rigorous conservation policy adopted by the Sindh Forest Department, the government of Sindh and the federal government, a mangrove resource base of 150,000 plus hectares has been created, with the support of local coastal communities. International organizations like IUCN and WWF are also playing critical role to support this initiative. Other achievements include: (1) Declaring all the mangrove forests in the Indus Delta as Protected Forests in December 2010; Constitution of a Mangrove Conservation Committee at the provincial level which includes all stakeholders as members and overall awareness of the importance of mangroves and its ecosystem. Mangroves occur on Asia's south coast, throughout the Indian subcontinent, in all Southeast Asian countries, and on islands in the Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, South China Sea, East China Sea and the Pacific. The mangal is particularly prevalent in the deltas of large Asian rivers. The Sundarbans is the largest mangrove forest in the world, located in the Ganges River delta in Bangladesh and West Bengal, India. The Pichavaram mangroves in Tamil Nadu is India's one of the largest mangrove forests. The Bhitarkanika Mangroves Forest of Odisha, by the Bay of Bengal, is India's second largest mangrove forest. Other major mangals occur on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and the Gulf of Kutch in Gujarat. Mangroves occur in certain muddy swampy islands of the Maldives. On the Malayan Peninsula, mangroves cover an estimated , while most of the remaining mangroves in Malaysia are on the island of Borneo. In Vietnam, mangrove forests grow along the southern coast, including two forests: the Can Gio Mangrove Forest biosphere reserve and the U Minh mangrove forest in the sea and coastal region of Kiên Giang, Cà Mau and Bạc Liêu provinces. The mangrove forests of Kompong Sammaki in Cambodia are of major ecological and cultural importance, as the human population relies heavily on the crabs and fish that live in the roots. The three most important mangrove forests of Taiwan are: Tamsui River in Taipei, Jhonggang River in Miaoli and the Sihcao Wetlands in Tainan. According to research, four main types of mangrove exist in Taiwan. Some places have been developed as scenic areas, such as the log raft routes in Sihcao. The most extensive mangrove forests of the Ryukyu Islands in East China Sea occur on Iriomote Island of the Yaeyama Islands, Okinawa, Japan. Seven types of mangroves are recognised on Iriomote Island. The northern limit of mangrove forests in the Indo-Malaya ecozone is considered to be Tanegashima Island, Kyushu, Japan. In the Indonesian Archipelago, mangroves occur around much of Papua province, Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi, Maluku and the surrounding islands. Further north, they are found along the coast of the Malay Peninsula. Indonesia has around 9.36 million hectares of mangrove forests, but 48% is categorized as 'moderately damaged' and 23% as 'badly damaged'. Mangrove forests are present in Iran between 25°11′N to 27°52′N, in the northern parts of the Persian Gulf and Sea of Oman. Pockets of the biome extend (from southwest to southeast) along the shores of the maritime provinces Bushehr, Hormozgan, and Sistan and Balouchestan. Forests on and near the island of Qeshm in the Persian Gulf are dominated by the species Avicennia marina, known locally as the "hara" or "harra" tree, and cover an area of approximately . This area is protected as the UNESCO Hara Biosphere Reserve, where commercial use is restricted to fishing (mainly shrimp), tourist boat trips, and limited mangrove cutting for animal feed. The wide and shallow shelf on Yemen's Red Sea coast consists of unconsolidated sediments, which support 11 species of seagrasses up to offshore on the shoreward side of sand spits, islands and reefs. Fragmented mangrove patches cover around along the coast, are wide along a stretch. The mangrove forest of Kamaran island was logged in the early 20th century, and the timber used for construction in Aden. The mangrove forests that cover thousands of hectares of land along the shoreline of the United Arab Emirates are an integral part of its coastal ecosystem. The Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi (EAD) is currently working on rehabilitation, conservation and protection of mangrove forests in seven key sites in Abu Dhabi including: Saadiyat Island, Jubail Island, Marawah Marine Biosphere Reserve (which also comprises Bu Tinah Island), Bu Sayeef Protected Area, Ras Gharab, the Eastern Corniche and Ras Ghanada. Oman supports large areas of mangroves near Muscat, in particular at Shinas, Qurm Park and Mahout Island. In Arabic, mangrove trees are known as qurm (), thus the mangrove area in Oman is known as Qurm Park. A small mangrove area is present in the Kingdom of Bahrain. Australia and Papua New Guinea both rank in the top five mangrove holding nations globally. More than five species of Rhizophoraceae grow in Australasia, with particularly high biodiversity on the island of New Guinea and northern Australia. As of 2012 Australia has slightly below 1 million ha of mangrove and Papua New Guinea has just under approximately 500,000 ha +- 12% (CI 0.9, n = 7) of mangrove. New Zealand also has mangrove forests extending to around 38°S (similar to Australia's latitudinal limit): the southernmost examples are at Raglan Harbour (37°48′S) on the west coast and Ohiwa Harbour (near Opotiki, 38°00′S) on the east coast. Avicennia marina australasica is the only mangrove in New Zealand. Twenty-five species of mangrove are found on various Pacific islands, with extensive mangals on some islands. Mangals on Guam, Palau, Kosrae and Yap have been badly affected by development. Mangroves are not native to Hawaii, but the red mangrove, Rhizophora mangle, and Oriental mangrove, Bruguiera sexangula, have been introduced and are now naturalized. Both species are considered invasive species and classified as pests by the University of Hawaii Botany Department. Adequate data are only available for about half of the global area of mangroves. However, of those areas for which data has been collected, it appears that 35% of the mangroves have been destroyed. The United Nations Environment Programme and Hamilton (2013), estimate that shrimp farming causes approximately a quarter of the destruction of mangrove forests. Likewise, the 2010 update of the World Mangrove Atlas indicated that approximately one fifth of the world's mangrove ecosystems have been lost since 1980, although this rapid loss rate appears to have decreased since 2000 with global losses estimated at between 0.16% and 0.39% annually between 2000 and 2012. Despite global loss rates decreasing since 2000, Southeast Asia remains an area of concern with loss rates between 3.58% and 8.08% between 2000 and 2012. Grassroots efforts to save mangroves from development are becoming more popular as their benefits become more widely known. In the Bahamas, for example, active efforts to save mangroves are occurring on the islands of Bimini and Great Guana Cay. In Trinidad and Tobago as well, efforts are underway to protect a mangrove threatened by the construction of a steelmill and a port. In Thailand, community management has been effective in restoring damaged mangroves. Within northern Ecuador mangrove regrowth is reported in almost all estuaries and stems primarily from local actors responding to earlier periods of deforestation in the Esmeraldas region. Mangroves have been reported to be able to help buffer against tsunami, cyclones, and other storms, and as such may be considered a flagship system for ecosystem-based adaptation to the impacts of climate change. One village in Tamil Nadu was protected from tsunami destruction—the villagers in Naluvedapathy planted 80,244 saplings to get into the Guinness Book of World Records. This created a kilometre-wide belt of trees of various varieties. When the tsunami struck, much of the land around the village was flooded, but the village itself suffered minimal damage. In some areas, mangrove reforestation and mangrove restoration is also underway. Red mangroves are the most common choice for cultivation, used particularly in marine aquariums in a sump to reduce nitrates and other nutrients in the water. Mangroves also appear in home aquariums, and as ornamental plants, such as in Japan. In Senegal, Haïdar El Ali has started the project, which (amongst others) focuses on reforesting several areas with mangroves. The Manzanar Mangrove Initiative is an ongoing experiment in Arkiko, Eritrea, part of the Manzanar Project founded by Gordon H. Sato, establishing new mangrove plantations on the coastal mudflats. Initial plantings failed, but observation of the areas where mangroves did survive by themselves led to the conclusion that nutrients in water flow from inland were important to the health of the mangroves. Trials with the Eritrean Ministry of Fisheries followed, and a planting system was designed to provide the nitrogen, phosphorus, and iron missing from seawater. The propagules are planted inside a reused galvanized steel can with the bottom knocked out; a small piece of iron and a pierced plastic bag with fertilizer containing nitrogen and phosphorus are buried with the propagule. , after six years of planting, 700,000 mangroves are growing; providing stock feed for sheep and habitat for oysters, crabs, other bivalves, and fish. Seventy percent of mangrove forests have been lost in Java, Indonesia. Mangroves formerly protected the island's coastal land from flooding and erosion. Wetlands International, an NGC based in the Netherlands, in collaboration with nine villages in Demak where lands and homes had been flooded, began reviving mangrove forests in Java. Wetlands International introduced the idea of developing tropical versions of techniques traditionally used by the Dutch to catch sediment in North Sea coastal salt marshes. Originally, the villagers constructed a sea barrier by hammering two rows of vertical bamboo poles into the seabed and filling the gaps with brushwood held in place with netting. Later the bamboo was replaced by PVC pipes filled with concrete. As sediment gets deposited around the brushwood, it serves to catch floating mangrove seeds and provide them with a stable base to germinate, take root and regrow. This creates a green belt of protection around the islands. As the mangroves mature, more sediment is held in the catchment area; the process is repeated until a mangrove forest has been restored. Eventually the protective structures will not be needed. By late 2018, of brushwood barriers along the coastline had been completed. A concern over reforestation is that although it supports increases in mangrove area it may actually result in a decrease in global mangrove functionality and poor restoration processes may result in longer term depletion of the mangrove resource. In terms of local and national studies of mangrove loss, the case of Belize's mangroves is illustrative in its contrast to the global picture. A recent, satellite-based study—funded by the World Wildlife Fund and conducted by the Water Center for the Humid Tropics of Latin America and the Caribbean (CATHALAC)—indicates Belize's mangrove cover declined by a mere 2% over a 30-year period. The study was born out of the need to verify the popular conception that mangrove clearing in Belize was rampant. Instead, the assessment showed, between 1980 and 2010, under of mangroves had been cleared, although clearing of mangroves near Belize's main coastal settlements (e.g. Belize City and San Pedro) was relatively high. The rate of loss of Belize's mangroves—at 0.07% per year between 1980 and 2010—was much lower than Belize's overall rate of forest clearing (0.6% per year in the same period). These findings can also be interpreted to indicate Belize's mangrove regulations (under the nation's) have largely been effective. Nevertheless, the need to protect Belize's mangroves is imperative, as a 2009 study by the World Resources Institute (WRI) indicates the ecosystems contribute US$174–249 million per year to Belize's national economy. In May 2019, ORNL DAAC News announced that NASA's Carbon Monitoring System (CMS), using new satellite-based maps of global mangrove forests across 116 countries, had created a new dataset to characterize the "distribution, biomass, and canopy height of mangrove-forested wetlands". Mangrove forests move carbon dioxide "from the atmosphere into long-term storage" in greater quantities than other forests, making them "among the planet's best carbon scrubbers" according to a NASA-led study. Mangrove swamp, Blue carbon, Ecological values of mangrove, Mangrove restoration, Salt marsh Saenger, Peter (2002). Mangrove Ecology, Silviculture, and Conservation. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht. ., Thanikaimoni, Ganapathi (1986). Mangrove Palynology UNDP/UNESCO and the French Institute of Pondicherry, ISSN 0073-8336 (E)., Tomlinson, Philip B. (1986). The Botany of Mangroves. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, ., Teas, H. J. (1983). Biology and Ecology of Mangroves. W. Junk Publishers, The Hague. ., Agrawala, Shardul; Hagestad; Marca; Koshy, Kayathu; Ota, Tomoko; Prasad, Biman; Risbey, James; Smith, Joel; Van Aalst, Maarten. 2003. Development and Climate Change in Fiji: Focus on Coastal Mangroves. Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris, Cedex 16, France., Barbier, E.B., Sathirathai, S., 2001. Valuing Mangrove Conservation in Southern Thailand. Contemporary Economic Policy. 19 (2) 109–122., Bosire, J.O., Dahdouh-Guebas, F., Jayatissa, L.P., Koedam, N., Lo Seen, D., Nitto, Di D. 2005. How Effective were Mangroves as a Defense Against the Recent Tsunami? Current Biology Vol. 15 R443-R447., Bowen, Jennifer L., Valiela, Ivan, York, Joanna K. 2001. Mangrove Forests: One of the World's Threatened Major Tropical Environments. Bio Science 51:10, 807–815., Jin-Eong, Ong. 2004. The Ecology of Mangrove Conservation and Management. Hydrobiologia. 295:1–3, 343–351., Glenn, C. R. 2006. "Earth's Endangered Creatures", Lewis, Roy R. III. 2004. Ecological Engineering for Successful Management and Restoration of Mangrove Forest. Ecological Engineering. 24:4, 403–418., Lucien-Brun H. 1997. Evolution of world shrimp production: Fisheries and aquaculture. World Aquaculture. 28:21–33., Twilley, R. R., V.H. Rivera-Monroy, E. Medina, A. Nyman, J. Foret, T. Mallach, and L. Botero. 2000. Patterns of forest development in mangroves along the San Juan River estuary, Venezuela. Forest Ecology and Management., Spalding, Mark; Kainuma, Mami and Collins, Lorna (2010) World Atlas of Mangroves Earthscan, London, ; 60 maps showing worldwide mangrove distribution, Massó i Alemán, S., C. Bourgeois, W. Appeltans, B. Vanhoorne, N. De Hauwere, P. Stoffelen, A. Heaghebaert & F. Dahdouh-Guebas, 2010. The ‘Mangrove Reference Database and Herbarium’. Plant Ecology and Evolution 143(2): 225–232. In May 2011, the VOA Special English service of the Voice of America broadcast a 15-minute program on mangrove forests. A transcript and MP3 of the program, intended for English learners, can be found at Mangrove Forests Could Be a Big Player in Carbon Trading A jungle is land covered with dense forest and tangled vegetation, usually in the tropics. Application of the term has varied greatly during the past recent centuries. Before the 1970s, tropical rainforests were generally referred to as jungles, but this terminology has fallen out of usage. Jungles in Western literature and film can represent an uncivilised space beyond the control of European colonialism. The word jungle originates from the Sanskrit word Jangla (), meaning dry, dry ground, desert. Although the Sanskrit word refers to dry land, it has been suggested that an Anglo-Indian interpretation led to its connotation as a dense "tangled thicket" while others have argued that a cognate word in Urdu did refer to forests. The term is prevalent in many languages of the Indian subcontinent, and the Iranian Plateau, where it is commonly used to refer to the plant growth replacing primeval forest or to the unkempt tropical vegetation that takes over abandoned areas. Because jungles occur on all inhabited landmasses and may incorporate numerous vegetation and land types in different climatic zones, the wildlife of jungles can not be straightforwardly defined. One of the most common meanings of jungle is land overgrown with tangled vegetation at ground level, especially in the tropics. Typically such vegetation is sufficiently dense to hinder movement by humans, requiring that travellers cut their way through. This definition draws a distinction between rainforest and jungle, since the understorey of rainforests is typically open of vegetation due to a lack of sunlight, and hence relatively easy to traverse. Jungles may exist within, or at the borders of, rainforests in areas where rainforest has been opened through natural disturbance such as hurricanes, or through human activity such as logging. The successional vegetation that springs up following such disturbance of rainforest is dense and tangled and is a ‘typical’ jungle. Jungle also typically forms along rainforest margins such as stream banks, once again due to the greater available light at ground level. Monsoon forests and mangroves are commonly referred to as jungles of this type. Having a more open canopy than rainforests, monsoon forests typically have dense understoreys with numerous lianas and shrubs making movement difficult, while the prop roots and low canopies of mangroves produce similar difficulties. Because European explorers initially travelled through tropical rainforests largely by river, the dense tangled vegetation lining the stream banks gave a misleading impression that such jungle conditions existed throughout the entire forest. As a result, it was wrongly assumed that the entire forest was impenetrable jungle. This in turn appears to have given rise to the second popular usage of jungle as virtually any humid tropical forest. Jungle in this context is particularly associated with tropical rain forest, but may extend to cloud forest, temperate rainforest, and mangroves with no reference to the vegetation structure or the ease of travel. The word "rainforest" has largely replaced "jungle" as the descriptor of humid tropical forests, a linguistic transition that has occurred since the 1970s. "Rainforest" itself did not appear in English dictionaries prior to the 1970s. The word "jungle" accounted for over 80% of the terms used to refer to tropical forests in print media prior to the 1970s; since then it has been steadily replaced by "rainforest", although "jungle" still remains in common use when referring to tropical rainforests. As a metaphor, jungle often refers to situations that are unruly or lawless, or where the only law is perceived to be "survival of the fittest". This reflects the view of "city people" that forests are such places. Upton Sinclair gave the title The Jungle (1906) to his famous book about the life of workers at the Chicago Stockyards, portraying the workers as being mercilessly exploited with no legal or other lawful recourse. The term "The Law of the Jungle" is also used in a similar context, drawn from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book (1894)—though in the society of jungle animals portrayed in that book and obviously meant as a metaphor for human society, that phrase referred to an intricate code of laws which Kipling describes in detail, and not at all to a lawless chaos. The word "jungle" itself carries connotations of untamed and uncontrollable nature and isolation from civilisation, along with the emotions that evokes: threat, confusion, powerlessness, disorientation and immobilisation. The change from "jungle" to "rainforest" as the preferred term for describing tropical forests as has been a response to an increasing perception of these forests as fragile and spiritual places, a viewpoint not in keeping with the darker connotations of "jungle". Cultural scholars, especially post-colonial critics, often analyse the jungle within the concept of hierarchical domination and the demand western cultures often places on other cultures to conform to their standards of civilisation. For example: Edward Said notes that the Tarzan depicted by Johnny Weissmuller was a resident of the jungle representing the savage, untamed and wild, yet still a white master of it; and in his essay "An Image of Africa" about Heart of Darkness Nigerian novelist and theorist Chinua Achebe notes how the jungle and Africa become the source of temptation for white European characters like Marlowe and Kurtz. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak compared Israel to "a villa in the jungle" - a comparison which had been often quoted in Israeli political debates. Barak's critics on the left side of Israeli politics strongly criticised the comparison. For example, Uri Avnery charged that comparing "civilised" Israel with "a villa" and Israel's Arab neighbors with the "wild beasts" of the "jungle" tends to throw the blame for the absence of peace on the "wild" Arab and Palestinian side, and absolve Israel of responsibility. Monsoon forest, Arid Forest Research Institute (AFRI), Rainforest, Wilderness, Tropical vegetation BBC - Science and Nature: Jungle -, Jungle: Definition, Synonyms from Answers.com, Amazon Rainforest Fund -, Link illustrating Biomes -, Link Indonesia Rain Forest exploration and Jungle trek Guide

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X2 (also marketed as X2: X-Men United and internationally as X-Men 2) is a 2003 American superhero film directed by Bryan Singer and written by Michael Dougherty, Dan Harris and David Hayter, from a story by Singer, Hayter and Zak Penn. The film is based on the X-Men superhero team appearing in Marvel Comics. It is the sequel to 2000's X-Men, as well as the second installment in the X-Men film series, and features an ensemble cast including Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, Halle Berry, Famke Janssen, James Marsden, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Brian Cox, Alan Cumming, Bruce Davison, and Anna Paquin. Its plot, inspired by the graphic novel , concerns the genocidal Colonel William Stryker leading an assault on Professor Xavier's school to build his own version of Xavier's mutant-tracking computer Cerebro, in order to destroy every mutant on Earth and to "save" the human race from them, forcing the X-Men to team up with the Brotherhood of Mutants, their former enemies, to stop Stryker and save the mutant race. Development on the sequel began shortly after the first film was released in 2000. David Hayter and Zak Penn wrote separate scripts, combining what they felt to be the best elements of both scripts into one screenplay. Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris were eventually hired to rewrite the work, and changed the characterizations of Beast, Angel, and Lady Deathstrike. Sentinels and the Danger Room were set to appear before being deleted because of budget concerns. The film's premise was influenced by the Marvel Comics storylines Return to Weapon X and . Filming began in June 2002 and ended that November, mostly taking place at Vancouver Film Studios, the largest North American production facility outside of Los Angeles. Production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas adapted similar designs by John Myhre from the previous film. X2 was released in the United States on May 2, 2003 by 20th Century Fox, and received positive reviews for its storyline, action sequences, and performances. The film grossed $407 million worldwide, and received eight Saturn Awards nominations. A sequel, , was released in 2006. At the White House, brainwashed teleporting mutant Nightcrawler attempts to assassinate the President of the United States but before he can do so, is shot and retreats. Meanwhile, Wolverine explores an abandoned military installation at Alkali Lake in Alberta for clues to his past, but finds nothing. Jean has been having premonitions and struggles to concentrate as her powers become increasingly difficult to control. Later, Wolverine returns to Professor Xavier's school for mutants, and Xavier tracks Nightcrawler using Cerebro. Xavier and Cyclops go to question the imprisoned Magneto about the attack, while X-Men Storm and Jean Grey retrieve Nightcrawler. Military scientist Colonel William Stryker approaches the president and receives approval to investigate Xavier's mansion for their ties to mutants in the wake of the recent attack. Stryker's forces invade the school and abduct some of the students. Colossus leads the remaining students to safety while Wolverine, Rogue, Iceman, and Pyro escape, and Stryker's assistant Yuriko Oyama captures Cyclops and Xavier. During the attack Wolverine confronts Stryker, who addresses him by name and seems to know about his past. The shape-shifting Mystique gains information about Magneto's prison and helps him escape while also discovering schematics for a second Cerebro. Wolverine, Rogue, Iceman, and Pyro visit Iceman's parents in Boston and meet up with Storm, Jean, and Nightcrawler. The X-Jet is attacked by fighter jets while flying back to the mansion and is shot down, but Magneto saves them from crashing. Magneto explains to the group that Stryker has built the second Cerebro to use it, and Xavier, to telepathically kill every mutant on the planet. Stryker's son, Jason, is a mutant with mind-controlling powers, which Stryker will use to force Xavier to do this. Stryker had also previously used Jason's powers to orchestrate Nightcrawler's attack as a pretense to gain approval to invade Xavier's mansion. Magneto also tells Wolverine that Stryker was the man who grafted his adamantium skeleton onto his bones and is responsible for his amnesia. Jean reads Nightcrawler's mind and determines that Stryker's base is underground in a dam at Alkali Lake. Disguised as Logan, Mystique infiltrates Stryker's base. She lets the rest of the mutants in and Magneto and Mystique go to disable Cerebro before the brainwashed Xavier can activate it. Storm and Nightcrawler rescue the captured students, and Jean fights a mind-controlled Cyclops; their battle frees Cyclops but damages the dam, which begins to rupture. Wolverine finds Stryker in an adamantium smelting lab and remembers it as where he received his adamantium skeleton. Wolverine fights and kills Yuriko, then chases Stryker to a helicopter pad and chains him to the helicopter's wheel. Magneto stops Cerebro and, using Mystique impersonating Stryker to command Jason, has Xavier redirect its powers on normal humans. The two subsequently use Stryker's helicopter to escape, accompanied by Pyro who has been swayed to Magneto's views. Nightcrawler teleports Storm inside Cerebro, where she creates a snowstorm to break Jason's concentration and free Xavier from his control. The X-Men flee the dam as water engulfs it, killing Stryker, but the X-Jet loses all power and struggles to take flight as the flood water rushes towards them. Jean sneaks off the jet and telepathically wishes the team goodbye. She holds back the water and raises the jet above it as flames erupt from her body, until she lets go and allows the flood to crash down upon her; presumably killing her. The X-Men give the president Stryker's files, and Xavier warns him that humans and mutants must work together to build peace. Back at the school, Xavier, Cyclops, and Wolverine remember Jean, and Xavier begins to hold a class. A Phoenix-like shape rises from the flooded Alkali Lake. Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier / Professor X: A powerful telepathic mutant confined to a wheelchair who founded a School for "Gifted Youngsters", Xavier is a pacifist who believes humans and mutants can live together in harmony. He uses the Cerebro device, designed by Magneto and himself, to track and locate mutants across the world. A natural genius, Xavier is regarded as an authority on genetic mutation., Hugh Jackman as Logan / Wolverine: A mutant who lost all memory of his life before he was grafted with an indestructible adamantium skeleton. Wolverine is a gruff loner, but is in love with Jean Grey and acts as a father figure to Rogue. He wields three blades that come out of each of his fists, has keen animal-like senses, the ability to heal rapidly from virtually any injury, and is a ruthless and aggressive fighter., Ian McKellen as Erik Lehnsherr / Magneto: Once Xavier's ally, Magneto now believes mutants are superior to humans and that a genetic war is coming. Magneto wields the ability to manipulate metal magnetically, as well as the power to create magnetic fields and fly. He wears a helmet that renders him immune to Xavier's powers and all related telepathic powers. Imprisoned after his scheme in the first film, he is drugged by William Stryker for information over Cerebro and the Xavier Institute, before making his escape and forming an alliance with the X-Men to stop Stryker. He has demonstrated sophisticated knowledge in matters of genetic manipulation and engineering. The character's helmet was slightly redesigned as McKellen found wearing it uncomfortable in X-Men., Halle Berry as Ororo Munroe / Storm: An African mutant and teacher at Xavier's School who can control the weather with her mind. Storm befriends Nightcrawler. Berry dropped out of Jennifer Lopez's role in Gigli to reprise the role., Famke Janssen as Dr. Jean Grey: A teacher at Xavier's school and the X-Mansion's doctor, Jean has begun to experience a growth in her telepathy and telekinetic powers since the X-Men's battle with Magneto. She is Cyclops' fiancé, even though she is attracted to Wolverine., James Marsden as Scott Summers / Cyclops: The field leader of the X-Men, and a teacher at Xavier's Institute, he shoots uncontrollable beams of concussive force from his eyes and wears a visor to control them. He is engaged to Jean. Cyclops is taken prisoner and brainwashed by Stryker., Rebecca Romijn-Stamos as Raven Darkhölme / Mystique: Magneto's shapeshifting henchwoman, Mystique is blue, covered in scales, and acts as a spy. She injects a prison guard with metal, with which Magneto makes his escape, and also sexually tempts Wolverine. Romijn's makeup previously took nine hours to apply during the filming of X-Men, but the make-up department was able to bring it down to six hours for X2., Brian Cox as Colonel William Stryker: A human military scientist who plans a worldwide genocide of mutants using Xavier and Cerebro. Stryker has experimented on mutants in the past, including Wolverine, and uses a serum to control them. Singer opted to cast Cox in the role as he was a fan of his performance as Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter., Alan Cumming as Kurt Wagner / Nightcrawler: A kindly German mutant with a strong Catholic faith, yet ironically he has the appearance of a blue demon. Nightcrawler was used by Stryker in an assassination attempt on the President of the United States and gives help to the X-Men. He is capable of teleporting himself (and others) instantly from one location to another. On his body are many tattoos, one for every sin. Cumming had always been Singer's choice for the role, but Cumming could not accept the part due to scheduling conflicts. Ethan Embry had been reported to be in contention for the role, but the film labored in development long enough for Cumming to accept the part. Singer also felt comfortable in casting Cumming since he is fluent in German. The drawings of Adam Kubert were used as inspiration for Nightcrawler's makeup design, which took four hours to apply. For the scene where Nightcrawler has his shirt off, Cumming went through nine hours. To best pose as Nightcrawler, Cumming studied comic books and illustrations of the character., Bruce Davison as Senator Robert Kelly: Although Kelly was killed in the first film, Davison reprised the role for scenes where Mystique uses his persona to infiltrate the government., Anna Paquin as Marie / Rogue: A girl who can absorb any person's memories and abilities by touching them. As she cannot control this power, Rogue can easily kill anyone and thus is unable to be close to people., Shawn Ashmore as Bobby Drake / Iceman: Rogue's boyfriend, he can freeze objects and create ice. His family is unaware that he is a mutant and simply believe he is at a boarding school. After returning home, Bobby reveals to them what he actually is, much to his brother's derision., Aaron Stanford as John Allerdyce / Pyro: A friend of Bobby and Rogue, Pyro has anti-social tendencies and has the ability to control (although not create) fire. Magneto tells him that "You are a God amongst insects; never let anyone tell you different." The filmmakers cast Stanford in the role after they were impressed with his performance in Tadpole., Kelly Hu as Yuriko Oyama / Deathstrike: A female mutant who has a healing ability like Wolverine's and is controlled by Stryker. She wields long adamantium fingernails. Only her first name is mentioned in dialogue. Additionally, Michael Reid McKay portrayed Jason Stryker / Mutant 143, William Stryker's son who had the ability to create illusions. Keely Purvis portrayed the little girl whom Jason used as an avatar when controlling Xavier. Cotter Smith portrayed US President McKenna. Cameo appearances include Katie Stuart as Kitty Pryde, a girl who can walk through walls; Bryce Hodgson as Artie; Kea Wong as Jubilation Lee / Jubilee; and Shauna Kain as Theresa Rourke / Siryn, who is able to emit loud screams that alert the students to Stryker's attack. Also in the final scene with Xavier, a girl is seen dressed in a Native American style jacket, as well as a blond haired boy dressed in blue, played by Layke Anderson. These were confirmed to be Danielle Moonstar and Douglas Ramsey.Michael Dougherty, Dan Harris, David Hayter, Lauren Shuler Donner, Ralph Winter, DVD audio commentary, 2003, 20th Century Fox Daniel Cudmore appeared as Peter Rasputin / Colossus. Cudmore was set to use a Russian accent, but Singer dropped the idea for unknown reasons, and onset rewrites minimized the character's importance to a cameo. Jubilee, Psylocke and Multiple Man were to have cameos for the scene when Stryker and his troops storm the X-Mansion. Beast, Gambit and Marrow were to have appearances during the Dark Cerebro sequence. Gambit's cameo was actually shot, but the footage was not used in the final cut. Beast's scene was to show Dr. Hank McCoy transforming into his notable blue fur but was eventually narrowed down to a brief cameo in the final cut where in he was seen being interviewed in a television news show portrayed by Steve Bacic, while Marrow was to be seen lying on a ground in New York City. Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris, the film's writers, cameo in scenes of Wolverine's Weapon X flashbacks as surgeons. The financial and critical success of X-Men persuaded 20th Century Fox to immediately commission a sequel. Starting in November 2000,The Second Uncanny Issue of X-Men: Making X2 Documentary, 2003, 20th Century Fox Bryan Singer researched various storylines (one of them being the Legacy Virus) of the X-Men comic book series. Singer wanted to study, "the human perspective, the kind of blind rage that feeds into warmongering and terrorism," citing a need for a "human villain". Bryan and producer Tom DeSanto envisioned X2 as the film series' The Empire Strikes Back, in that the characters are "all split apart, and then dissected, and revelations occur that are significant... the romance comes to fruition and a lot of things happen." Producer Avi Arad announced a planned November 2002 theatrical release date, while David Hayter and Zak Penn were hired to write separate scripts. Hayter and Penn combined what they felt to be the best elements of both scripts into one screenplay. Singer and Hayter worked on another script, finishing in October 2001. Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris were hired to rewrite Hayter and Penn's script in February 2002, turning down the opportunity to write . Angel and Beast appeared in early drafts, but were deleted because there were too many characters. Dr. Hank McCoy can be seen on a television interview in one scene. Beast's appearance was to resemble Jim Lee's 1991 artwork of the character in the series . Angel was to have been a mutant experiment by William Stryker, transforming into Archangel. A reference to Dougherty's and Harris's efforts to include Angel remains in the form of an X-ray on display in one of Stryker's labs. Tyler Mane was to reprise as Sabretooth before the character was deleted. In Hayter's script, the role eventually filled by Lady Deathstrike was Anne Reynolds, a character who appeared in God Loves, Man Kills as Stryker's personal assistant/assassin. Singer changed her to Deathstrike, citing a need for "another kick-ass mutant". There was to be more development on Cyclops and Professor X being brainwashed by Stryker. The scenes were shot, but Fox cut them out because of time length and story complications. Hayter was disappointed, feeling that James Marsden deserved more screentime. Rewrites were commissioned once more, specifically to give Halle Berry more screen time. This was because of her recent popularity in Monster's Ball, earning her the Academy Award for Best Actress. A budget cut meant that the Sentinels and the Danger Room were dropped. Guy Hendrix Dyas and a production crew had already constructed the Danger Room set. In the words of Dyas, "The control room [of the danger room] was a large propeller that actually rotated around the room so that you can sit up [in that control room] and travel around the subject who is in the middle of the control room. The idea for the traveling is that if it's a mutant has some kind of mind control powers they can't connect." Producer Lauren Shuler Donner had hoped to start filming in March 2002, but production did not begin until June 17, 2002 in Vancouver and ended by November. Over sixty-four sets were used in thirty-eight different locations. The film crew encountered problems when there was insufficient snow in Kananaskis, Alberta for them to use for some scenes. A large amount of fake snow was then applied. The idea to have Jean Grey sacrifice herself at the end and to be resurrected in a third installment was highly secretive. Singer did not tell Famke Janssen until midway through filming. Cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel and two stunt drivers nearly died when filming the scene in which Pyro has a dispute with police officers. John Ottman composed the score. Ottman established a new title theme, as well as themes specifically for Magneto, Jean Grey, Nightcrawler, Mystique, and Pyro. Singer and Sigel credited Road to Perdition as a visual influence. Though Sigel shot the first X-Men in anamorphic format, he opted to shoot X2 in Super 35. Sigel felt the recent improvements in film stocks and optics increased the advantages of using spherical lenses, even if the blowup to anamorphic must be accomplished optically instead of digitally. Sigel noted, "If you think about it, every anamorphic lens is simply a spherical lens with an anamorphizer on it. They'll never be as good as the spherical lenses that they emulate." Cameras that were used during filming included two Panaflex Millenniums and a Millennium XL, as well as an Aaton 35mm. Singer also used zoom lenses more often than he did in his previous films, while Sigel used a Frazier lens specifically for dramatic moments. The Blackbird was redesigned and increased in virtual size from 60 feet to 85 feet. John Myhre served as the production designer on the first film, but Singer hired Guy Hendrix Dyas for X2, which was his first film as a production designer. For scenes involving Stryker's Alkali Base, Vancouver Film Studios, the largest sound stage in North America, was reserved. Visual effects supervisor Mike Fink was not satisfied with his work on the previous film, despite the fact it nearly received an Academy Award nomination. Up to 520 shots were created for X-Men, while X2 commissioned roughly 800. A new computer program was created by Rhythm and Hues for the dogfight tornado scene. Cinesite was in charge of scenes concerning Cerebro, enlisting a 20-man crew. The Alkali Lake Dam miniature was high and wide. Cinesite created 300 visual effects shots, focusing on character animation, while Rhythm and Hues created over 100. The first cut of X2 was rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America, due to violent shots with Wolverine when Stryker's army storms the X-Mansion. A few seconds were cut to secure a PG-13 rating. X2 opened in North America on May 2, 2003, accumulating $85,558,731 on its opening weekend in 3,749 theaters. The film grossed $214,949,694 in North America, earning $192,761,855 worldwide, for a total of $407,711,549. X2 was a financial success as it recouped its production budget three times. X2 debuted simultaneously in 93 countries, the largest North American and international opening ever at the time. In addition, the film was the sixth-highest-grossing film of 2003, also earning $107 million in its first five days of DVD release. X2 received positive reviews, with praise aimed at the acting, action, and story. The review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 85% of critics gave the film a positive review, based on 244 reviews with an average score of 7.5/10. The website's consensus states: "Tightly scripted, solidly acted, and impressively ambitious, X2: X-Men United is bigger and better than its predecessor—and a benchmark for comic sequels in general." Metacritic calculated a weighted average score of 68/100 based on reviews from 37 critics, indicating generally favorable reviews. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade A on scale of A to F. Roger Ebert was impressed by how Singer was able to handle so many characters in one film, but felt "the storyline did not live up to its potential". In addition, Ebert wrote that the film's closing was perfect for a future installment, giving X2 three out of four stars. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote that it was rare for a sequel to be better than its predecessor. Turan observed that the film carried emotional themes that are present in the world today and commented that "the acting was better than usual [for a superhero film]". Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote that Hugh Jackman heavily improved his performance, concluding "X2 is a summer firecracker. It's also a tribute to outcasts, teens, gays, minorities, even Dixie Chicks." Empire called X2 the best comic book movie of all time in 2006, while Wizard named the film's ending as the 22nd greatest cliffhanger of all time. In May 2007, Rotten Tomatoes listed X2 as the fifth greatest comic book film of all time. The film won the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film. In addition, Bryan Singer (Direction), Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty (Writing), and John Ottman (Music) all received nominations. It also received nominations for its costumes, makeup, special effects and DVD release, amounting to a total of eight nominations. The Political Film Society honored X2 in the categories of Human Rights and Peace, while the film was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form). Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle was critical of the storyline, special effects and action scenes. Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal specifically referred to the film as "fast-paced, slow-witted". Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post wrote "Of the many comic book superhero movies, this is by far the lamest, the loudest, the longest". Richard Corliss of Time argued that Singer depended too much on seriousness and that he did not have enough sensibilities to communicate to an audience. The film's score was composed by John Ottman, a regular collaborator with film director Bryan Singer. The soundtrack album X2: Original Motion Picture Score was released on April 29, 2003. Ottman used a sample of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem as the basis for the music in scenes featuring Nightcrawler. As well as the music on the album, tracks by Conjure One and 'N Sync also featured in the film. On July 19, 2012, La-La Land Records issued an expanded version of Ottman's score, including the specially recorded version of Alfred Newman's Twentieth Century Fox fanfare incorporating Ottman's film theme. Boldface and a indicate previously unreleased material. X2 was released on DVD in widescreen and full frame formats in 2003. The two- disc DVD includes over three hours of special features. X2 was also released on Blu-ray, and additionally as a Blu-ray, DVD and digital-copy combination in 2011 with special features. X2 is included in the X-Men Trilogy 4K UHD Blu-Ray set which was released on September 25, 2018. After the success of the second film in the franchise, a sequel titled, was released in 2006, albeit not directed by Singer. X2: Wolverine's Revenge (released as X-Men 2: Wolverine's Revenge in Europe) is an action beat'em up video game released in 2003 for the GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox, Windows, and Game Boy Advance to coincide with the release date of the film X2: X-Men United, developed by British game developer GenePool Software and published by Activision. The Game Boy Advance version was also released on a Twin Pack cartridge bundled with in 2005. The game was released as a promotional tie-in to X2 but featured an original story by famed comic book writer Larry Hama, and does not take place in the continuity of the film series, but had a closer resemblance to the Marvel Universe instead. In X2: Wolverine's Revenge, the player helps Wolverine fight his way past the heavily guarded areas of the Weapon X Facility to piece together fragmented clues to Wolverine's murky past and to save his life. Wolverine has 48 hours to find an antidote to the deadly Shiva Virus circulating in his bloodstream and the clues point to the Weapon X facility, the Canadian fortress where he had his skeletal structure fused with adamantium. A significant feature has Mark Hamill providing the voice-over for Wolverine in game. While Hugh Jackman's likeness is on the cover and promotional material, the character model in game is based on the comic books. Patrick Stewart reprises his film role as Professor X in game. The game received generally mixed reviews upon release, with reviewers praising the voice acting, especially of Hamill and Stewart, and unlockables, while criticising the slow combat, lack of mid-level checkpoints, and for being too hard and requiring too many retries. It was also the last console game focused on Wolverine until six years later. The action is played from a third-person perspective as players fight a number of armored soldiers, mutant creatures, and archenemies such as Sabretooth, Magneto, Wendigo, Lady Deathstrike, and Juggernaut. While Professor X is able to assist Wolverine with powers of telepathy, the surly comic book hero must ultimately carry out his adventure alone. To that end, players must tap into Wolverine's unique talents to overcome all manner of obstacles. Wolverine will be able to hunt and track his prey using his heightened sense of smell and ability to detect body heat. As Wolverine makes his way through the military compounds, he will need to avoid defense systems and guards, and find ways into locked rooms to discover the information he needs to survive. When engaged in combat, Wolverine can retract and release his adamantium claws at any time to perform slashing attacks, aerial combos, and a number of different throws. The strike moves used in battle are the Combat Strike Moves, which initiate a short cut-scene where Wolverine attacks the enemy. In addition to Combat Strikes, there are special Stealth Strikes, Situation-Specific Strikes and Boss-Specific Strikes which become available at certain points in the game. Stealth Strikes are used to take out enemies silently. For example, Wolverine can do a wall-hug to creep up on an enemy and stab him before he can sound the alarm. Wolverine's unusual healing ability allows him to withstand punishment that would kill an average human being, but he can become wounded over time. Sustaining major injuries triggers a feral rage, imbuing Wolverine with greater strength and the ferocity to take on multiple foes at once. The story begins in 1968. Logan (Mark Hamill) is walking along a backstreet, when behind him come some agents from the Weapon X program. They try to capture Logan so they can take him to the Weapon X facility. Logan tries to defend himself, but he is shot with a tranquilizer dart and knocked unconscious. Logan is taken to the Facility and subjected to the adamantium bonding process. Soon after, he escapes from the experiment chamber and tries to get outside. The Professor (Don Morrow) calls him an animal, which enrages Logan and helps him escape the Professor's control. Logan tries to get to The Professor to confront him but he is stopped by Sabretooth (Fred Tatasciore). He defeats Sabretooth and he confronts The Professor while telling Dr. Abraham Cornelius (Don Morrow) and Dr. Carol Hines (Jennifer Hale) to take their leave. When Weapon X restrains him at claw-point, The Professor reveals that all Weapon X subjects were implanted with a dormant and deadly virus known as the "Shiva Strain" as a failsafe. The Professor also reveals that the virus would kill a normal human in one year but has no idea how long the virus would kill a human mutant. Later in the present, Logan, who now goes by "Wolverine", is now a member of the X-Men and he has told Beast (Richard Portnow) what he remembers of his past. Beast tells Wolverine that the Shiva Virus has bypassed his healing factor and will kill him in two days if the cure is not found (ironically, which is on Logan's birthday). Professor X (Patrick Stewart) tells Wolverine to try to find the cure in the Weapon X Facility while Beast provides Wolverine with an implanted wristwatch telling him how much time he has left. After being flown to Edmonton by Cyclops and Jean Grey, Wolverine uses a private plane flown by a female pilot (Mayim Bialik) to get to the Weapon X Facility. However, the plane is shot down. He survives the plane crash and starts making his way towards the Weapon X facility. Wolverine fights his way to a cavern where the spirit of the Wendigo lives. Wolverine fights with Wendigo and wins. Wendigo gets up and throws Logan out of the cavern where he lands on snow. Logan sees a Weapon X truck and jumps on it. Logan reaches the Weapon X Facility and sneaks in. On the way in, he is ambushed by a group of GIs. The sound of gunfire starts and Wolverine is surprised that he is not shot. He then sees another GI who shot down the ambushers. When Wolverine asks him why he let him live by asking "Am I supposed to thank you, or are you just a lousy shot?", the GI states, "Lets just say it's not your time to die...yet." Wolverine examines him a moment and he asks "You're not quite human, are you?" To which the GI states, "You should talk." As he walks away. After fighting through the base, he accesses a database and finds that the Weapon X scientists are at the Void (a maximum security mutant detention center that's similar to the Vault) so he makes his way there. Leaving, he is attacked by Sabretooth again. Sabretooth is defeated and grudgingly gives Wolverine the Part B of the virus cure after stating that he knew about the Shiva Virus a long time ago. Later, Logan goes to The Void where he sees Colossus (Ted Nordblum) who lets him enter the facility after he was informed by Professor X about Logan's condition. While Logan is fighting his way on the Facility, Sabretooth comes to the Void and takes out some of its security on his way to get to the Weapon X scientists. Sabretooth then releases Alpha-Class mutants Omega Red, Magneto, and Juggernaut from their prisons. Meanwhile, Logan finds Dr. Abraham Cornelius and Dr. Carol Hines. Abraham Cornelius gives Logan the formula of Part A of the cure. Due to the Void blocking Logan's contact with Professor X, he ends up having to head outside to relay the info to him. Upon leaving, he warns Abraham Cornelius and Carol Hines that Sabretooth is also looking for them. However, when Logan reaches the roof, he is faced by Juggernaut (Fred Tatasciore). When Logan defeats him, Colossus tells Wolverine that Magneto and Omega Red were the other two Alpha-Class mutants that were freed. As Colossus drags the unconscious Juggernaut back to his cell, he points to the device that will help Logan get out. Logan destroys the Void Shield and relays the info of the Part A cure to Professor X after being told that Beast has synthesized the Part B of the Shiva Virus cure. Logan then heads out to find and defeat Magneto after Professor X detects magnetic signatures. After Logan escapes, May Deuce (Mayim Bialik) the Mutant Hunter Boss comes to the Void to lead the Mutant Hunters into hunting down Wolverine and the other escaped mutants. While looking for Magneto, Logan is contacted by Professor X stating that the Magnetic Flux Limiter Collar on him has suppressed Magneto's magnetic powers long enough for him to become more powerful. Logan comes across a ruined highway and uses a motorcycle which he rides into a ruined town. Logan manages to find Magneto (Fred Tatasciore) in a steel mill. Logan tries to stop Magneto's moves, but he has to kill all the Mutant Hunters at the same time. Logan defeats Magneto and knocks him unconscious. Upon being told by Professor X that too much magnetic interference is preventing Rogue from homing in on him, Logan then makes his way to the city leaving Magneto for any Mutant Hunters sent from the Void. When Logan is heading to the city to meet up with Rogue, a helicopter comes to him. In the helicopter is May Deuce. She thanks Logan because he defeated Magneto and offers to take him to the top of the Xenon Building. But when the helicopter reaches the top of a building, May Deuce throws Wolverine on the roof. Logan sees Lady Deathstrike (Gwendoline Yeo) and he realizes that the pilot, the Army GI, and May Deuce were some of Lady Deathstrike's robots who were to direct Wolverine to her so she could kill him. She also revealed that she paid Sabretooth to cause him pain. Wolverine defeats Lady Deathstrike and reaches a helicopter land platform where she follows him. Logan throws Lady Deathstrike off the roof and Rogue comes with the virus cure. Wolverine drinks it and goes home. Sabretooth finds Lady Deathstrike. He takes a vial from her and drinks it (most likely the cure for the virus), takes her, and leaves. Meanwhile, Apocalypse (Christopher Corey Smith) and Mister Sinister (also Christopher Corey Smith) watch every move from Wolverine as they prepare their Horsemen of Apocalypse. Wolverine lies on his bed and then suddenly realizes that he has not found and defeated Omega Red upon remembering the escaped mutants that Colossus told him about. In all versions (except for the Game Boy Advance version) if the player collects all dog tags, a deleted scene is unlocked. As Wolverine visits a ruined town to find and defeat Magneto, he is stalked by a shadowy figure. As the figure gets close, Wolverine nearly kills the figure who is revealed to be Spider-Man (Rino Romano). When Wolverine states that Spider-Man is off his home turf, Spider-Man sarcastically explains that he heard about the big breakout down at the Void and rode a charter bus with other superheroes who could not fly or teleport. When Spider-Man asks if Wolverine needs help battling Magneto, Wolverine tells him to deal with the chaos until Damage Control arrives as he goes to battle Magneto. X2: Wolverine's Revenge was met with average to mixed reviews upon release. GameRankings gave it a score of 67.25% for the GameCube version; 61.79% for the PlayStation 2 version; 76.67% for the GBA version; 60.83% for the PC version; and 65.07% for the Xbox version. Likewise, Metacritic gave it a score of 62 out of 100 for the GameCube version; 58 out of 100 each for the PS2 and Xbox versions; 72 out of 100 for the GBA version; and 55 out of 100 for the PC version. Common criticisms include clunky and alienating stealth mechanics, bland visuals, and high and unforgiving difficulty, making the game unfairly hard. Official UK PlayStation 2 Magazine gave the game 7 out of 10, describing it as follows: "a quality action adventure that blends stealth with hand-to- hand combat. Only a few irritations deny this a higher score." Of the said irritations, the most prominently criticized element was the lack of mid- mission checkpoints, forcing players to replay large sections upon death. Maxim gave the game a score of eight out of ten and said, "While most of Revenge’s game play involves turning bad guys into kebab, the game’s strict homage to the comic gives it more depth." The Village Voice gave the Xbox version a score of seven out of ten and said, "Deploying your special powers is motivation enough to move through the game's booby-trapped military complexes, crash sites, mines, caves, and places that look like mines or caves." The Cincinnati Enquirer also gave it three-and-a-half stars out of five and stated that "Controlling Wolverine during combat can prove difficult, especially when there are multiple enemies onscreen simultaneously." However, Entertainment Weekly gave it a C− and stated that "The pacing is sluggish, the gameplay irritating, and ultimately it feels like Wolverine is exacting revenge on the wrong person: the player." X2: The Threat (stylized as X²: The Threat) is a space simulation video game developed by Egosoft for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. It is part of the X Computer Game Series. It was released in 2003 and is a sequel to . Freeverse Software ported the game to Mac OS X in 2004/2005, while Linux Game Publishing produced their Linux port in 2005/2006. The sequel to this game is (2005). As with the originals, X2: The Threat is a Space trading and combat simulator set in the fictional X-Universe, a network of sectors, linked by large space gates. The game features a new graphics engine, a much expanded Universe and 60 different flyable ships, along with a number of new missions available to the player. Unlike the expansion pack, , which was almost entirely open-ended, X2: The Threat has a clear background story involving an aggressive alien race known as the Khaak. However, the game remains open-ended and the players are free to pursue the plot at their own pace, if at all. The player takes the role of Julian Gardna, a Pirate and thief. Early on, the Khaak, a hostile alien race, emerge to threaten the X-Universe. The player is asked to undertake a series of missions to uncover their origins, their intentions, and to determine their connection to his missing father. Ultimately, Julian must fight off a massive attack by Khaak, rescuing numerous other characters in the process. Key non-player characters include: Bret Serra: rogue, pirate and Julian's closest friend;, Ban Danna: the head of Argon Secret Service who shares a close relationship with Julian's father dating back to the previous game, ;, Elena Kho, Chief Executive in the influential Terracorp corporation;, Saya Kho, daughter of Elena Kho;, Kyle Brennan, Julian's father, founder of Terracorp, and protagonist from the previous games. Due to the expense of completing the plot, the players are periodically prompted to break away from the plot and increase their resources through trade and other open-ended play. X2 is set within the X-Universe, which consists of 130 sectors connected by two-way jumpgates. The main area of each sector typically contains several stations and at least one gate. The game is open-ended allowing the player to go where they like, when they like, doing whatever they like; a player is limited only by their in-game status and resources. As such, a driving force of the game is to acquire credits, the universal currency and status. Using credits, a player can buy wares from a station. These wares may then be flown to another station where they can be sold, ideally for a higher price. However, prices vary - from minute to minute, second to second - depending on demand. The less of a ware there is, the higher its price. As such, the X-Universe has a truly dynamic market-driven economy. A player can capitalize on emergent trends to make vast profits; or as easily, can waste money and time on a bad cargo choice. As a player builds profits they can buy equipment, weapons, ships and stations. The player can acquire an unlimited number of ships and stations, of varying size, shape and function. The player can build factories to produce goods (including weapons and shields) to sell or consume. As the factories require resources, the player can set up ships to perform trading tasks for factories such as buying resources from other stations or selling the product. The game contains numerous races. Several races feature a full economy and can be interacted with by the player through trading, reputation and missions. Several hostile races limit the amount of interactivity to combat. Reputation between the player and the social races can be built up through missions, defending their space, or trading in their space. The reputation affects how these individuals of that races respond to the player, and what kind of missions are offered. A player status is categorized according to 'Mercantile' skill, 'Combat' skill, and a 'Notoriety' ranking for each race. An expansion pack called X2: The Return was in development but was cancelled in favour of X3. X2: The Threat received "average" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. Many reviewers praised the graphics and the amount of freedom offered to the player. Common complaints were that the game, like its predecessors, was quite slow paced and had a steep learning curve. IGN gave the game an average review, praising the visuals and display, but expressing frustration with elements of gameplay. Wrote IGN, "there are better places to go for trading simulations, and better places to go for space combat. X2s ambitions in trying to meld both themes ended up falling short of what most people would find entertaining... its complexity [as a trading simulator] is wasted when the money is really made with only one type of product." GameSpot referred to the game as a "diamond in the rough" for patient players, as well as "extremely ambitious but not very accessible." Eurogamer criticized the game for being for "hardcore fans only" because of its complexity, also calling it a "superbly ambitious game which achieves much of what it sets out to do." List of PC games Official page

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This article presents a list of United States states and territories sorted by their life expectancy at birth and by race/ethnicity in every state where the population of that racial or ethnic group is sufficiently large for robust estimates. The data in the 2017 column is taken from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation for the states (2017 data), and from the CIA World Factbook for the territories (2018 data). Data in the 2010 columns comes from Measure of America's third national human development report, The Measure of America 2013–2014. Overall, life expectancy at birth in Hawaii, Puerto Rico and California are among the longest in the nation, while life expectancy at birth in Mississippi and American Samoa are among the shortest in the nation. The life expectancy in most states has fallen in recent years; for example, Minnesota's life expectancy in 2010 was 81.1 years, and in 2017 it was 80.7 years. The Washington Post noted in November 2018 that overall life expectancy in the United States is declining. In the U.S. territories, the life expectancy values given by the CIA World Factbook (included in the table above) and those of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) are not the same. The table below shows the 2017 / 2018 values given by both organizations for these territories. List of U.S. congressional districts by life expectancy, List of U.S. counties with shortest life expectancy, List of U.S. counties with longest life expectancy, List of U.S. states by changes in life expectancy, 1985–2010, List of Mexican states by life expectancy, List of European regions by life expectancy, List of U.S. states and territories by poverty rate, Thank God for Mississippi The Okinawa diet describes the eating habits of the indigenous people of the Ryukyu Islands (belonging to Japan), which is believed to contribute to their exceptional longevity. It is also the name of a weight-loss diet based on this. People from the Ryukyu Islands (of which Okinawa is the largest) have a life expectancy among the highest in the world, although the male life expectancy rank among Japanese prefectures has plummeted in recent years. Okinawa had the longest life expectancy in all prefectures of Japan for almost 30 years prior to 2000. The relative life expectancy of Okinawans has since declined, due to many factors including westernization. In fact, in 2000 Okinawa dropped in its ranking for longevity advantage for men to 26th out of 47 within the prefectures of Japan. Japan has the highest life expectancy of any country: 90 for women and for men, 84. Compare this to the USA where the average life expectancy for women is 81 years old, and 76 for men. There are more than 400 centenarians in Okinawa. Although there are myriad factors that could account for differences in life expectancy, cuisine could be the largest factor. People from all around the world have tried to emulate the "Okinawa diet" to reap its health benefits, believed to be because it is nutritionally dense yet low in calories. The traditional diet of the islanders contains 30% green and yellow vegetables. Although the traditional Japanese diet usually includes large quantities of rice, the traditional Okinawa diet consists of smaller quantities of rice; instead the staple is the purple-fleshed Okinawan sweet potato. The Okinawan diet has only 30% of the sugar and 15% of the grains of the average Japanese dietary intake. While the traditional diet has been subjected to repeated claims, population surveys by the Statistics Bureau of Japan reveals that, of all 47 prefectures, Okinawa has the single lowest average intake of vegetables and fruit, and the single highest average intake of beer, KFC, and raw meat. Okinawan cuisine consists of smaller meal portions of green and yellow vegetables, fish, relatively smaller amounts of rice compared to mainland Japan, as well as pork, soy and other legumes. Pork and fish are often served in broth with a variety of ingredients and herbs. The center of the Okinawa diet is the Satsuma sweet potato. The sweet potato also contributes the self-sufficiency of the island. Contrary to the regular potato, the Okinawa sweet potato does not have a large effect on blood sugar. Not only is the potato used but so are the leaves from the plant. The leaves are used often in miso soup. The Okinawan bitter melon is proven to have some anti-diabetic effects. In Okinawa the bitter melon is called goyain and is served in the national dish, goya champuru. The bitter melon is effective in regulating blood sugar similar to the sweet potato. The traditional diet also includes a tiny amount of fish (less than half a serving per day) and more in the way of soy and other legumes (6% of total caloric intake). Pork is highly valued, yet eaten very rarely. Every part of the pig is eaten, including internal organs. Between a sample from Okinawa where life expectancies at birth and 65 were the longest in Japan, and a sample from Akita Prefecture where the life expectancies were much shorter, intakes of calcium, and vitamins A, B1, B2, and C, and the proportion of energy from proteins and fats were significantly higher in Okinawa than in Akita. Conversely, intake of salt was lower in Okinawa than in Akita. The small quantity of pork consumption per person (only 3g per day) in Okinawa is still larger than that of the Japanese national average. For example, the quantity of pork consumption per person a year in Okinawa in 1979 was which exceeded by about 50% that of the Japanese national average. The pig's feet, ears, and stomach are considered healthy everyday foodstuffs. The dietary intake of Okinawans compared to other Japanese circa 1950 shows that Okinawans consumed: fewer total calories (1785 vs. 2068), less polyunsaturated fat (4.8% of calories vs. 8%), less rice (154g vs. 328g), significantly less wheat, barley and other grains (38g vs. 153g), less sugars (3g vs. 8g), more legumes (71g vs. 55g), significantly less fish (15g vs. 62g), significantly less meat and poultry (3g vs. 11g), less eggs (1g vs. 7g), less dairy (<1g vs. 8g), much more sweet potatoes (849g vs. 66g), less other potatoes (2g vs. 47g), less fruit (<1g vs. 44g), and no pickled vegetables (0g vs. 42g). In addition to their high life expectancy, islanders are noted for their low mortality from cardiovascular disease and certain types of cancers. Wilcox (2007) compared age-adjusted mortality of Okinawans versus Americans and found that, during 1995, an average Okinawan was 8 times less likely to die from coronary heart disease, 7 times less likely to die from prostate cancer, 6.5 times less likely to die from breast cancer, and 2.5 times less likely to die from colon cancer than an average American of the same age. The traditional Okinawan diet as described above was widely practiced on the islands until about the 1960s. Since then, dietary practices have been shifting towards Western and Japanese patterns, with fat intake rising from about 6% to 27% of total caloric intake and the sweet potato being supplanted with rice and bread. This shifting trend has also coincided with a decrease in longevity, where Okinawans now have a lower life expectancy than the Japanese average. Another low-calorie staple in Okinawa is seaweed, particularly, konbu or kombu. This plant, like much of the greenery from the island, is rich in protein, amino acids and minerals such as iodine. Another seaweed commonly eaten is wakame. Like konbu, wakame is rich in minerals like iodine, magnesium and calcium. Seaweed and tofu in one form or other are eaten on a daily basis. According to gerontologist Kazuhiko Taira, the most common cooking fat used traditionally in Okinawa is a monounsaturated fat-lard. Although often called a “saturated fat,” lard is 50 percent monounsaturated fat (including small amounts of health-producing antimicrobial palmitoleic acid), 40 percent saturated fat and 10 percent polyunsaturated. Taira also reports that healthy and vigorous Okinawans eat 100 grams each of pork and fish each day. Turmeric is prevalent in the Okinawan diet. It has been noted throughout history, especially in South Asia for its supposed health benefits. The Okinawan use turmeric as a spice and also as tea. Overall, the diet leads to many benefits seen among people of Okinawa. These include little weight gain with age, low BMI throughout life, and low risk from age related disease. Not only is the diet healthy in preventing disease, many of the foodstuffs contain combative ingredients as well. As mentioned earlier the diet is rich in ingredients that supposedly possess anti-aging and antioxidant properties. However, no ingredients or foods of any kind have ever been scientifically shown to possess anti-aging properties. Research using 100 items from the Okinawa diet shows that some of the diet contains anti-obesity properties or "anti-obese activity". The diet consists of a relatively high energy intake, and contains similar foods to the traditional Okinawan diet. The principal focus of the diet consists of knowing the food energy density of each food item. The proponents of this diet divide food into four categories based on caloric density. The "featherweight" foods, less than or equal to which one can eat freely without major concern, the "lightweight" foods with a caloric density from 0.8 to 1.5 calories per gram which one should eat in moderation, the "middleweight" foods with a caloric density from 1.5 to 3.0 calories per gram which one should eat only while carefully monitoring portion size and the "heavyweight" foods from 3 to 9 calories per gram which one should eat only sparingly. Caloric restriction (CR) or dietary restriction (DR) are helpful tools in understanding age and diet related health complications. In the 1972 Japan National Nutrition Survey it was determined that Okinawan adults consumed 83% of what Japanese adults did and that Okinawan children consumed 62% of what Japanese children consumed. Today the difference in life expectancy between Okinawan and mainland Japanese is decreasing as the Okinawan are losing their dietary advantage. Recently, there is a decreasing trend in the life expectancy in Okinawa. This is evidenced by low birth weight, poor lactation, and the fact that the life expectancy for Okinawan men is lower than the national average. Le Bourg poses that the Okinawa diet has more of a deleterious effect then beneficial one, arguing that the low protein intake can cause harmful effects in later generations. Research done on animals showed that individuals with a lower protein consumption may be more vulnerable to pathogens. However, Gavrilova and Gavrilov reject this claim, arguing that dietary restrictions are a valid method for humans to extend their lives and that Okinawa has a naturally low infectious load. They instead hypothesize that the decrease in life expectancy has been due to westernization and erosion of the traditional diet. After World War II, Okinawans started to consume more calories. This in large part was due to the Americanization of the diet, such as with the rapid spread of fast food places. The spread of primarily American fast food chains was linked with an increase in cardiovascular diseases, much like the ones noted in Japanese migrants to the United States. Okinawa and Japan have food-centered cultures. Festivities often include food or are food-based. Moreover, the food in Japan tends to be seasonal, fresh and raw. Portion sizes are small and meals are brought out in stages that starts with appetizers, many main courses including sashimi (raw fish) and suimono (soup), sweets and tea. Since food culture is linked to ancestral traditions, the food culture and presentation is preserved, passing low-calorie food from generation to generation. A belief still prevalent in Okinawa is the healing power of food. Food is regarded as medicine which helps contribute to the longevity of Okinawa. The concept of "food is medicine" came to the island from China. Calorie restriction, Hara hachi bu, List of diets, Longevity in Okinawa, Okinawan cuisine, Mediterranean diet Health in Russia deteriorated rapidly following the collapse of the Soviet Union, particularly for men, as a result of social and economic changes. Before the revolution annual mortality was 29.4 per 1000 and infant mortality 260 per 1000 births. In 1913 life expectancy was 32 years. The cholera epidemic of 1910 killed 100,000 people. A typhus epidemic between 1918 and 1922 caused 2.5 million deaths, and doctors were particularly affected. There was an outbreak of malaria in 1920. The Institute of Tropical Medicine in Moscow instituted a programme of registration of cases and free distribution of quinine. The famine of 1921/2 caused widespread starvation. As many as 27 million people were affected. Another cholera outbreak between 1921 and 1923 caused an estimated 13 million deaths. By 1926 life expectancy had reached 44 years. As of 2013, the average life expectancy in Russia was 65.1 years for males and 76.5 years for females. The average Russian life expectancy of 71.6 years at birth is nearly 5 years shorter than the overall average figure for the European Union, or the United States. The biggest factor contributing to this relatively low life expectancy for males is a high mortality rate among working-age males from preventable causes (e.g., alcohol poisoning, stress, smoking, traffic accidents, violent crimes). Mortality among Russian men rose by 60% since 1991, four to five times higher than European average. As a result of the large difference in life expectancy between men and women, (the greatest in the world) the gender imbalance remains to this day and there are 0.859 males to every female. In 2008, 1,185,993, or 57% of all deaths in Russia were caused by cardiovascular disease. The second leading cause of death was cancer which claimed 289,257 lives (14%). External causes of death such as suicide (1.8%), road accidents (1.7%), murders (1.1%), accidental alcohol poisoning (1.1%), and accidental drowning (0.5%), claimed 244,463 lives in total (11%). Other major causes of death were diseases of the digestive system (4.3%), respiratory disease (3.8%), infectious and parasitic diseases (1.6%), and tuberculosis (1.2%). The infant mortality rate in 2008 was 8.5 deaths per 1,000, down from 9.6 in 2007. Since the Soviet collapse, there has been a dramatic rise in both cases of and deaths from tuberculosis, with the disease being particularly widespread amongst prison inmates. Until 2007 Russia was the world leader in smoking. According to a survey reported in 2010 by Russia’s Health and Social Development Ministry, 43.9 million adults in Russia are smokers. Among Russians aged 19 to 44 years, 7 in 10 men smoke and 4 in 10 women smoke. It is estimated that 330,000-400,000 people die in Russia each year due to smoking-related diseases. A smoking ban was introduced in 2014. Alcohol consumption and alcoholism are major problems in Russia. It is estimated that Russians drink 15 litres (26 pints) of pure alcohol each year. This number is nearly 3 times as much as it was in 1990. In Moscow on September 24 of 2009, Russia's interior minister Rashid Nurgaliyev cited the average intake at an estimated 18 liters a year; "In Russia, each person, including babies, accounts for about 18 liters of spirits per year. In the opinion of WHO experts, consumption of more than 8 liters per year poses a real threat to the health of the nation. Russia has long exceeded this level". It has even been reported that excessive alcohol consumption is to blame for nearly half of all premature deaths in Russia. A recent study blamed alcohol for more than half the deaths (52%) among Russians aged 15 to 54 from 1990 to 2001. For the same demographic, this compares to 4% of deaths for the rest of the world. HIV/AIDS, virtually non-existent in the Soviet era, rapidly spread following the collapse, mainly through the explosive growth of intravenous drug use. According to a 2008 report by UNAIDS, the HIV epidemic in Russia continues to grow, but at a slower pace than in the late 1990s. At the end of December 2007 the number of registered HIV cases in Russia was 416,113, with 42,770 new registered cases that year. The actual number of people living with HIV in Russia is estimated to be about 940,000. In 2007, 83% of HIV infections in Russia were registered among injecting drug users, 6% among sex workers, and 5% among prisoners. However, there is clear evidence of a significant rise in heterosexual transmission. In 2007, 93.19% of adults and children with advanced HIV infection were receiving antiretroviral therapy. In April 2006, the State Council met with the Russian President to set goals for developing a strategy for responding to AIDS; improving coordination, through the creation of a high-level multisectoral governmental commission on AIDS; and establishing a unified monitoring and evaluation system. A new Federal AIDS Program for 2007 - 2011 was also developed and adopted. Federal funding for the national AIDS response in 2006 had increased more than twentyfold compared to 2005, and the 2007 budget doubled that of 2006, adding to the already substantial funds provided by the main donor organizations. Coordination of activities in responding to AIDS remains a challenge for Russia, despite increased efforts. In 2006, treatment for some patients was interrupted due to delays in tender procedures and unexpected difficulties with customs. Additionally, lack of full commitment to an in-depth program for education on sex and drugs in schools hinders effective prevention programs for children. In 2008, suicide claimed 38,406 lives in Russia. With a rate of 27.1 suicides per 100,000 people, Russia has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, although it has been steadily decreasing since it peaked at around 40 per 100,000 in the mid-late 90s, including a 30% drop from 2001 to 2006. In 2007 about 22% of all suicides were committed by people aged 40–49, and almost six times as many Russian males commit suicide than females. Heavy alcohol use is a significant factor in the suicide rate, with an estimated half of all suicides a result of alcohol abuse. This is evidenced by the fact that Russia's suicide rate since the mid-90s has declined alongside per capita alcohol consumption, despite the economic crises since then; alcohol consumption is more of a factor than economic conditions. The pulmonary TB death rate in Russia around 1900 was 4 per 1000, more than double the rate in London. The All Russia League for the Struggle Against TB was set up in 1909. In 1919 the Commissariat of Public Health established a TB Commission. The incidence of tuberculosis in Moscow was about three times that in London in 1922. The director of the Institute of Control of Serums and Vaccines in Russia, Tarasevich, brought a serum of the BCG vaccine from the Pasteur Institute in 1925 and a vaccination programme started shortly afterwards, starting with children in homes with an active TB patient, but there was initially very low take up. It was not until the 1930s that rates increased significantly. Healthcare in Russia, Timeline of healthcare in Russia, List of federal subjects of Russia by incidence of substance abuse World Health Organization - Russia

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USS Maine (ACR-1) was a United States Navy ship that sank in Havana Harbor in February 1898, contributing to the outbreak of the Spanish–American War in April. American newspapers, engaging in yellow journalism to boost circulation, claimed that the Spanish were responsible for the ship's destruction. The phrase "Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!" became a rallying cry for action. Although the Maine explosion was not a direct cause, it served as a catalyst that accelerated the events leading up to the war. Maine was commissioned in 1895 as an armored cruiser, the first U.S. Navy ship to be named after the state of Maine. Maine and the similar battleship , were both represented as an advance in American warship design, reflecting the latest European naval developments. Both ships had two gun turrets staggered en échelon, and full masts were omitted due to the increased reliability of steam engines. Due to a protracted 9-year construction period, Maine and Texas were obsolete by the time of completion.. Far more advanced vessels were either in service or nearing completion that year. Maine was sent to Havana Harbor to protect U.S. interests during the Cuban War of Independence. She blew up and sank on the evening of 15 February 1898, killing three-quarters of her crew. In 1898, a U.S. Navy board of inquiry ruled that the ship had been sunk by an external explosion from a mine. However, some U.S. Navy officers disagreed with the board, suggesting that the ship's magazines had been ignited by a spontaneous fire in a coal bunker. The coal used in Maine was bituminous, which is known for releasing firedamp, a gas that is prone to spontaneous explosions. An investigation by Admiral Hyman Rickover in 1974 agreed with the coal fire hypothesis. The cause of her sinking remains a subject of debate. The ship lay at the bottom of the harbor until 1911, when a cofferdam was built around it. The hull was patched up until the ship was afloat, then she was towed to sea and sunk. Maine now lies on the sea-bed below the surface. The ship's main mast is now a memorial in Arlington National Cemetery. The delivery of the in 1883 and the acquisition of other modern armored warships from Europe by Brazil, Argentina and Chile the House Naval Affairs Committee, Hilary A. Herbert, stated to Congress: "if all this old navy of ours were drawn up in battle array in mid-ocean and confronted by Riachuelo it is doubtful whether a single vessel bearing the American flag would get into port." These developments helped bring to a head a series of discussions that had been taking place at the Naval Advisory Board since 1881. The board knew at that time that the U.S. Navy could not challenge any major European fleet; at best, it could wear down an opponent's merchant fleet and hope to make some progress through general attrition there. Moreover, projecting naval force abroad through the use of battleships ran counter to the government policy of isolationism. While some on the board supported a strict policy of commerce raiding, others argued it would be ineffective against the potential threat of enemy battleships stationed near the American coast. The two sides remained essentially deadlocked until Riachuelo manifested. The board, now confronted with the concrete possibility of hostile warships operating off the American coast, began planning for ships to protect it in 1884. The ships had to fit within existing docks and had to have a shallow draft to enable them to use all the major American ports and bases. The maximum beam was similarly fixed, and the board concluded that at a length of about , the maximum displacement would be about 7,000 tons. A year later the Bureau of Construction and Repair (C & R) presented two designs to Secretary of the Navy William Collins Whitney, one for a 7,500-ton battleship and one for a 5,000-ton armored cruiser. Whitney decided instead to ask Congress for two 6,000-ton warships, and they were authorized in August 1886. A design contest was held, asking naval architects to submit designs for the two ships: armored cruiser Maine and battleship . It was specified that Maine had to have a speed of , a ram bow, and a double bottom, and be able to carry two torpedo boats. Her armament was specified as: four guns, six guns, various light weapons, and four torpedo tubes. It was specifically stated that the main guns "must afford heavy bow and stern fire." Armor thickness and many details were also defined. Specifications for Texas were similar, but demanded a main battery of two guns and slightly thicker armor. The winning design for Maine was from Theodore D. Wilson, who served as chief constructor for C & R and was a member on the Naval Advisory Board in 1881. He had designed a number of other warships for the navy. The winning design for Texas was from a British designer, William John, who was working for the Barrow Shipbuilding Company at that time. Both designs resembled the Brazilian battleship Riachuelo, having the main gun turrets sponsoned out over the sides of the ship and echeloned. The winning design for Maine, though conservative and inferior to other contenders, may have received special consideration due to a requirement that one of the two new ships be American–designed. Congress authorized construction of Maine on 3 August 1886, and her keel was laid down on 17 October 1888, at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. She was the largest vessel built in a U.S. Navy yard up to that time. Maines building time of nine years was unusually protracted, due to the limits of U.S. industry at the time. (The delivery of her armored plating took three years and a fire in the drafting room of the building yard, where Maines working set of blueprints were stored, caused further delay.) In the nine years between her being laid down and her completion, naval tactics and technology changed radically and left Maines role in the navy ill-defined. At the time she was laid down, armored cruisers such as Maine were intended to serve as small battleships on overseas service and were built with heavy belt armor. Great Britain, France and Russia had constructed such ships to serve this purpose and sold others of this type, including Riachuelo, to second-rate navies. Within a decade, this role had changed to commerce raiding, for which fast, long-range vessels, with only limited armor protection, were needed. The advent of lightweight armor, such as Harvey steel, made this transformation possible. As a result of these changing priorities, Maine was caught between two separate positions and could not perform either one adequately. She lacked both the armor and firepower to serve as a ship-of-the-line against enemy battleships and the speed to serve as a cruiser. Nevertheless, she was expected to fulfill more than one tactical function. In addition, because of the potential of a warship sustaining blast damage to herself from cross-deck and end-on fire, Maines main-gun arrangement was obsolete by the time she entered service. Maine was long overall, with a beam of , a maximum draft of and a displacement of . She was divided into 214 watertight compartments. A centerline longitudinal watertight bulkhead separated the engines and a double bottom covered the hull only from the foremast to the aft end of the armored citadel, a distance of . She had a metacentric height of as designed and was fitted with a ram bow. Maines hull was long and narrow, more like a cruiser than that of Texas, which was wide-beamed. Normally, this would have made Maine the faster ship of the two. Maines weight distribution was ill-balanced, which slowed her considerably. Her main turrets, awkwardly situated on a cut-away gundeck, were nearly awash in bad weather. Because they were mounted toward the ends of the ship, away from its center of gravity, Maine was also prone to greater motion in heavy seas. While she and Texas were both considered seaworthy, the latter's high hull and guns mounted on her main deck made her the drier ship. The two main gun turrets were sponsoned out over the sides of the ship and echeloned to allow both to fire fore and aft. The practice of en echelon mounting had begun with Italian battleships designed in the 1870s by Benedetto Brin and followed by the British Navy with , which was laid down in 1874 but not commissioned until October 1881. This gun arrangement met the design demand for heavy end-on fire in a ship-to-ship encounter, tactics which involved ramming the enemy vessel. The wisdom of this tactic was purely theoretical at the time it was implemented. A drawback of an en echelon layout limited the ability for a ship to fire broadside, a key factor when employed in a line of battle. To allow for at least partial broadside fire, Maines superstructure was separated into three structures. This technically allowed both turrets to fire across the ship's deck (cross-deck fire), between the sections. This ability was limited as the superstructure restricted each turret's arc of fire. This plan and profile view show Maine with eight six- pounder guns (one is not seen on the port part of the bridge but that is due to the bridge being cut away in the drawing). Another early published plan shows the same. In both cases the photographs show a single extreme bow mounted six-pounder. Careful examination of Maine photographs confirms that she did not carry that gun. Maines armament set up in the bow was not identical to the stern which had a single six-pounder mounted at extreme aft of the vessel. Maine carried two six-pounders forward, two on the bridge and three on the stern section, all one level above the abbreviated gun deck that permitted the ten-inch guns to fire across the deck. The six-pounders located in the bow were positioned more forward than the pair mounted aft which necessitated the far aft single six-pounder. Maine was the first U.S. capital ship to have its power plant given as high a priority as its fighting strength. Her machinery, built by the N. F. Palmer Jr. & Company's Quintard Iron Works of New York, was the first designed for a major ship under the direct supervision of Arctic explorer and soon-to-be commodore, George Wallace Melville. She had two inverted vertical triple- expansion steam engines, mounted in watertight compartments and separated by a fore-to-aft bulkhead, with a total designed output of . Cylinder diameters were (high-pressure), (intermediate-pressure) and (low-pressure). Stroke for all three pistons was . Melville mounted Maines engines with the cylinders in vertical mode, a departure from conventional practice. Previous ships had had their engines mounted in horizontal mode, so that they would be completely protected below the waterline. Melville believed a ship's engines needed ample room to operate and that any exposed parts could be protected by an armored deck. He therefore opted for the greater efficiency, lower maintenance costs and higher speeds offered by the vertical mode. Also, the engines were constructed with the high-pressure cylinder aft and the low-pressure cylinder forward. This was done, according to the ship's chief engineer, A. W. Morley, so the low-pressure cylinder could be disconnected when the ship was under low power. This allowed the high and intermediate-power cylinders to be run together as a compound engine for economical running. Eight single-ended Scotch marine boilers provided steam to the engines at a working pressure of at a temperature . On trials, she reached a speed of , failing to meet her contract speed of . She carried a maximum load of of coal in 20 bunkers, 10 on each side, which extended below the protective deck. Wing bunkers at each end of each fire room extended inboard to the front of the boilers. This was a very low capacity for a ship of Maines rating, which limited her time at sea and her ability to run at flank speed, when coal consumption increased dramatically. Maines overhanging main turrets also prevented coaling at sea, except in the calmest of waters; otherwise, the potential for damage to a collier, herself or both vessels was extremely great. Maine also carried two small dynamos to power her searchlights and provide interior lighting. Maine was designed initially with a three-mast barque rig for auxiliary propulsion, in case of engine failure and to aid long-range cruising. This arrangement was limited to "two-thirds" of full sail power, determined by the ship's tonnage and immersed cross-section. The mizzen mast was removed in 1892, after the ship had been launched, but before her completion. Maine was completed with a two-mast military rig and the ship never spread any canvas. Maines main armament consisted of four /30 caliber Mark II guns, which had a maximum elevation of 15° and could depress to −3°. Ninety rounds per gun were carried. The ten-inch guns fired a shell at a muzzle velocity of to a range of at maximum elevation. These guns were mounted in twin hydraulically powered Mark 3 turrets, the fore turret sponsoned to starboard and the aft turret sponsoned to port. The 10" guns were initially to be mounted in open barbettes (the C & R proposal blueprint shows them as such). During Maines extended construction, the development of rapid-fire intermediate-caliber guns, which could fire high-explosive shells, became a serious threat and the navy redesigned Maine with enclosed turrets. Because of the corresponding weight increase, the turrets were mounted one deck lower than planned originally. Even with this modification, the main guns were high enough to fire unobstructed for 180° on one side and 64° on the other side. They could also be loaded at any angle of train; initially the main guns of Texas, by comparison, with external rammers, could be loaded only when trained on the centerline or directly abeam, a common feature in battleships built before 1890. By 1897, Texas turrets had been modified with internal rammers to permit much faster reloading. The en echelon arrangement proved problematic. Because Maines turrets were not counterbalanced, she heeled over if both were pointed in the same direction, which reduced the range of the guns. Also, cross-deck firing damaged her deck and superstructure significantly due to the vacuum from passing shells. Because of this, and the potential for undue hull stress if the main guns were fired end-on, the en echelon arrangement was not used in U.S. Navy designs after Maine and Texas. The six /30 caliber Mark 3 guns were mounted in casemates in the hull, two each at the bow and stern and the last two amidships. Data is lacking, but they could probably depress to −7° and elevate to +12°. They fired shells that weighed with a muzzle velocity of about . They had a maximum range of at full elevation. The anti-torpedo boat armament consisted of seven Driggs-Schroeder six-pounder guns mounted on the superstructure deck. They fired a shell weighing about at a muzzle velocity of about at a rate of 20 rounds per minute to a maximum range of . The lighter armament comprised four each Hotchkiss and Driggs-Schroeder one-pounder guns. Four of these were mounted on the superstructure deck, two were mounted in small casemates at the extreme stern and one was mounted in each fighting top. They fired a shell weighing about at a muzzle velocity of about at a rate of 30 rounds per minute to a range about . Maine had four above-water torpedo tubes, two on each broadside. In addition, she was designed to carry two steam-powered torpedo boats, each with a single torpedo tube and a one-pounder gun. Only one was built, but it had a top speed of only a little over so it was transferred to the Naval Torpedo Station at Newport, Rhode Island, as a training craft. The main waterline belt, made of nickel steel, had a maximum thickness of and tapered to at its lower edge. It was long and covered the machinery spaces and the 10-inch magazines. It was high, of which was above the design waterline. It angled inwards for at each end, thinning to , to provide protection against raking fire. A 6-inch transverse bulkhead closed off the forward end of the armored citadel. The forward portion of the protective deck ran from the bulkhead all the way to the bow and served to stiffen the ram. The deck sloped downwards to the sides, but its thickness increased to . The rear portion of the protective deck sloped downwards towards the stern, going below the waterline, to protect the propeller shafts and steering gear. The sides of the circular turrets were 8 inches thick. The barbettes were 12 inches thick, with their lower portions reduced to 10 inches. The conning tower had 10-inch walls. The ship's voicepipes and electrical leads were protected by an armored tube thick. Two flaws emerged in Maines protection, both due to technological developments between her laying-down and her completion. The first was a lack of adequate topside armor to counter the effects of rapid-fire intermediate- caliber guns and high-explosive shells. This was a flaw she shared with Texas. The second was the use of nickel-steel armor. Introduced in 1889, nickel steel was the first modern steel alloy armor and, with a figure of merit of 0.67, was an improvement over the 0.6 rating of mild steel used until then. Harvey steel and Krupp armors, both of which appeared in 1893, had merit figures of between 0.9 and 1.2, giving them roughly twice the tensile strength of nickel steel. Although all three armors shared the same density (about 40 pounds per square foot for a one-inch-thick plate), six inches of Krupp or Harvey steel gave the same protection as 10 inches of nickel. The weight thus saved could be applied either to additional hull structure and machinery or to achieving higher speed. The navy would incorporate Harvey armor in the s, designed after Maine, but commissioned at roughly the same time. Maine was launched on 18 November 1889, sponsored by Alice Tracey Wilmerding, the granddaughter of Navy Secretary Benjamin F. Tracy. Not long afterwards, a reporter wrote for Marine Engineer and Naval Architect magazine, "it cannot be denied that the navy of the United States is making rapid strides towards taking a credible position among the navies of the world, and the launch of the new armoured battleship Maine from the Brooklyn Navy Yard ... has added a most powerful unit to the United States fleet of turret ships." In his 1890 annual report to congress, the Secretary of the Navy wrote, "the Maine ... stands in a class by herself" and expected the ship to be commissioned by July 1892. A three-year delay ensued, while the shipyard waited for nickel steel plates for Maines armor. Bethlehem Steel Company had promised the navy 300 tons per month by December 1889 and had ordered heavy castings and forging presses from the British firm of Armstrong Whitworth in 1886 to fulfil its contract. This equipment did not arrive until 1889, pushing back Bethlehem's timetable. In response, Navy Secretary Benjamin Tracy secured a second contractor, the newly expanded Homestead mill of Carnegie, Phipps & Company. In November 1890, Tracy and Andrew Carnegie signed a contract for Homestead to supply 6000 tons of nickel steel. Homestead was, what author Paul Krause calls, "the last union stronghold in the steel mills of the Pittsburgh district." The mill had already weathered one strike in 1882 and a lockout in 1889 in an effort to break the union there. Less than two years later, came the Homestead Strike of 1892, one of the largest, most serious disputes in U.S. labor history. A photo of the christening shows Mrs. Wilmerding striking the bow near the plimsoll line depth of 13 which lead to many comments (much later of course) that the ship was "unlucky" from the launching. Maine was commissioned on 17 September 1895, under the command of Captain Arent S. Crowninshield. On 5 November 1895, Maine steamed to Sandy Hook Bay, New Jersey. She anchored there two days, then proceeded to Newport, Rhode Island, for fitting out and test firing of her torpedoes. After a trip, later that month, to Portland, Maine, she reported to the North Atlantic Squadron for operations, training manoeuvres and fleet exercises. Maine spent her active career with the North Atlantic Squadron, operating from Norfolk, Virginia along the East Coast of the United States and the Caribbean. On 10 April 1897, Captain Charles Dwight Sigsbee relieved Captain Crowninshield as commander of Maine. The ship's crew consisted of 355: 26 officers, 290 sailors, and 39 marines. Of these, there were 261 fatalities: Two officers and 251 sailors and marines either killed by the explosion or drowned, Seven others were rescued but soon died of their injuries, One officer later died of "cerebral affection" (shock) Of the 94 survivors, 16 were uninjured. In January 1898, Maine was sent from Key West, Florida, to Havana, Cuba, to protect U.S. interests during the Cuban War of Independence. Three weeks later, at 21:40, on 15 February, an explosion on board Maine occurred in the Havana Harbor (). Later investigations revealed that more than of powder charges for the vessel's six- and ten-inch guns had detonated, obliterating the forward third of the ship. The remaining wreckage rapidly settled to the bottom of the harbor. Most of Maines crew were sleeping or resting in the enlisted quarters, in the forward part of the ship, when the explosion occurred. In total, 260 men lost their lives as a result of the explosion or shortly thereafter, and six more died later from injuries. Captain Sigsbee and most of the officers survived, because their quarters were in the aft portion of the ship. Altogether there were 89 survivors, 18 of whom were officers. The cause of the accident was immediately debated. Waking up President McKinley to break the news, Commander Francis W. Dickins referred to it as an "accident." Commodore George Dewey, Commander of the Asiatic Squadron, "feared at first that she had been destroyed by the Spanish, which of course meant war, and I was getting ready for it when a later dispatch said it was an accident." Navy Captain Philip R. Alger, an expert on ordnance and explosives, posted a bulletin at the Navy Department the next day saying that the explosion had been caused by a spontaneous fire in the coal bunkers. Assistant Navy Secretary Theodore Roosevelt wrote a letter protesting this statement, which he viewed as premature. Roosevelt argued that Alger should not have commented on an ongoing investigation, saying, "Mr. Alger cannot possibly know anything about the accident. All the best men in the Department agree that, whether probable or not, it certainly is possible that the ship was blown up by a mine." The New York Journal and New York World, owned respectively by William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, gave Maine intense press coverage, employing tactics that would later be labeled "yellow journalism." Both papers exaggerated and distorted any information they could obtain, sometimes even fabricating news when none that fitted their agenda was available. For a week following the sinking, the Journal devoted a daily average of eight and a half pages of news, editorials and pictures to the event. Its editors sent a full team of reporters and artists to Havana, including Frederic Remington, and Hearst announced a reward of $50,000 "for the conviction of the criminals who sent 258 American sailors to their deaths." The World, while overall not as lurid or shrill in tone as the Journal, nevertheless indulged in similar theatrics, insisting continually that Maine had been bombed or mined. Privately, Pulitzer believed that "nobody outside a lunatic asylum" really believed that Spain sanctioned Maines destruction. Nevertheless, this did not stop the World from insisting that the only "atonement" Spain could offer the U.S. for the loss of ship and life, was the granting of complete Cuban independence. Nor did it stop the paper from accusing Spain of "treachery, willingness, or laxness" for failing to ensure the safety of Havana Harbor. The American public, already agitated over reported Spanish atrocities in Cuba, was driven to increased hysteria. Maines destruction did not result in an immediate declaration of war with Spain, but the event created an atmosphere that precluded a peaceful solution. The Spanish investigation found that the explosion had been caused by spontaneous combustion of the coal bunkers, but the Sampson Board ruled that the explosion had been caused by an external explosion from a torpedo. The episode focused national attention on the crisis in Cuba. The McKinley administration did not cite the explosion as a casus belli, but others were already inclined to go to war with Spain over perceived atrocities and loss of control in Cuba. Advocates of war used the rallying cry, "Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!" The Spanish–American War began on April 21, 1898, two months after the sinking. In addition to the inquiry commissioned by the Spanish government to naval officers Del Peral and De Salas, two Naval Courts of Inquiry were ordered: The Sampson Board in 1898 and the Vreeland board in 1911. In 1976, Admiral Hyman G. Rickover commissioned a private investigation into the explosion, and the National Geographic Society did an investigation in 1999, using computer simulations. All investigations agreed that an explosion of the forward magazines caused the destruction of the ship, but different conclusions were reached as to how the magazines could have exploded. The Spanish inquiry, conducted by Del Peral and De Salas, collected evidence from officers of naval artillery, who had examined the remains of the Maine. Del Peral and De Salas identified the spontaneous combustion of the coal bunker, located adjacent to the munition stores in Maine, as the likely cause of the explosion. The possibility that other combustibles, such as paint or drier products, had caused the explosion was not discounted. Additional observations included that: Had a mine been the cause of the explosion, a column of water would have been observed., The wind and the waters were calm on that date and hence a mine could not have been detonated by contact, but only by using electricity, but no cables had been found., No dead fish were found in the harbor, as would be expected following an explosion in the water., Munition stores do not usually explode when a ship is sunk by a mine. The conclusions of the report were not reported at that time by the American press. In order to find the cause of the explosion, a naval inquiry was ordered by the United States shortly after the incident, headed by Captain William T. Sampson. Ramón Blanco y Erenas, Spanish governor of Cuba, had proposed instead a joint Spanish-American investigation of the sinking. Captain Sigsbee had written that "many Spanish officers, including representatives of General Blanco, now with us to express sympathy." In a cable, the Spanish minister of colonies, Segismundo Moret, had advised Blanco "to gather every fact you can, to prove the Maine catastrophe cannot be attributed to us." According to Dana Wegner, who worked with U.S. Admiral Hyman G. Rickover on his 1974 investigation of the sinking, the Secretary of the Navy had the option of selecting a board of inquiry personally. Instead, he fell back on protocol and assigned the commander-in-chief of the North Atlantic Squadron to do so. The commander produced a list of junior line officers for the board. The fact that the officer proposed to be court president was junior to the captain of Maine, Wegner writes, "would indicate either ignorance of navy regulations or that, in the beginning, the board did not intend to examine the possibility that the ship was lost by accident and the negligence of her captain." Eventually, navy regulations prevailed in leadership of the board, Captain Sampson being senior to Captain Sigsbee. The board arrived on 21 February and took testimony from survivors, witnesses, and divers (who were sent down to investigate the wreck). The Sampson Board produced its findings in two parts: the proceedings, which consisted mainly of testimonies, and the findings, which were the facts, as determined by the court. Between the proceedings and the findings, there was what Wegner calls, "a broad gap", where the court "left no record of the reasoning that carried it from the often-inconsistent witnesses to [its] conclusion." Another inconsistency, according to Wegner, was that of only one technical witness, Commander George Converse, from the Torpedo Station at Newport, Rhode Island. Captain Sampson read Commander Converse a hypothetical situation of a coal bunker fire igniting the reserve six-inch ammunition, with a resulting explosion sinking the ship. He then asked Commander Converse about the feasibility of such a scenario. Commander Converse "simply stated, without elaboration, that he could not realize such an event happening". The board concluded that Maine had been blown up by a mine, which, in turn, caused the explosion of her forward magazines. They reached this conclusion based on the fact that the majority of witnesses stated that they had heard two explosions and that that part of the keel was bent inwards. The official report from the board, which was presented to the Navy Department in Washington on 21 March, specifically stated the following: In 1910, the decision was made to have a second Court of Inquiry. Besides the desire for a more thorough investigation, this would also facilitate the recovery of the bodies of the victims, so they could be buried in the United States. The fact that the Cuban government wanted the wreck removed from Havana harbor might also have played a role: it at least offered the opportunity to examine the wreck in greater detail than had been possible in 1898, while simultaneously obliging the now-independent Cubans. Wegner suggests that the fact that this inquiry could be held without the threat of war, which had been the case in 1898, lent it the potential for greater objectivity than had been possible previously. Moreover, since several of the members of the 1910 board would be certified engineers, they would be better qualified to evaluate their findings than the line officers of the 1898 board had been. Beginning in December 1910, a cofferdam was built around the wreck and water was pumped out, exposing the wreck by late 1911. Between 20 November and 2 December 1911, a court of inquiry headed by Rear Admiral Charles E. Vreeland inspected the wreck. They concluded that an external explosion had triggered the explosion of the magazines. This explosion was farther aft and lower powered than concluded by the Sampson Board. The Vreeland Board also found that the bending of frame 18 was caused by the explosion of the magazines, not by the external explosion. After the investigation, the newly located dead were buried in Arlington National Cemetery and the hollow, intact portion of the hull of Maine was refloated and ceremoniously scuttled at sea on 16 March 1912. Admiral Hyman G. Rickover became intrigued with the disaster and began a private investigation in 1974, using information from the two official inquiries, newspapers, personal papers, and information on the construction and ammunition of Maine. He concluded that the explosion was not caused by a mine, and speculated that spontaneous combustion was the most likely cause, from coal in the bunker next to the magazine. He published a book about this investigation in 1976 entitled How the Battleship Maine Was Destroyed. In the 2001 book Theodore Roosevelt, the U.S. Navy and the Spanish–American War, Wegner revisits the Rickover investigation and offers additional details. According to Wegner, Rickover interviewed naval historians at the Energy Research and Development Agency after reading an article in the Washington Star-News by John M. Taylor. The author claimed that the U.S. Navy "made little use of its technically trained officers during its investigation of the tragedy." The historians were working with Rickover on a study of the Navy's nuclear propulsion program, but they said that they knew no details of Maines sinking. Rickover asked whether they could investigate the matter, and they agreed. Wegner says that all relevant documents were obtained and studied, including the ship's plans and weekly reports of the unwatering of Maine in 1912 (the progress of the cofferdam) written by William Furgueson, chief engineer for the project. These reports included numerous photos annotated by Furgueson with frame and strake numbers on corresponding parts of the wreckage. Two experts were brought in to analyze the naval demolitions and ship explosions. They concluded that the photos showed "no plausible evidence of penetration from the outside," and they believed that the explosion originated inside the ship. Wegner suggests that a combination of naval ship design and a change in the type of coal used to fuel naval ships might have facilitated the explosion postulated by the Rickover study. Up to the time of the Maines building, he explains, common bulkheads separated coal bunkers from ammunition lockers, and American naval ships burned smokeless anthracite coal. With an increase in the number of steel ships, the Navy switched to bituminous coal, which burned at a hotter temperature than anthracite coal and allowed ships to steam faster. Wegner explains that anthracite coal is not subject to spontaneous combustion, but bituminous coal is considerably more volatile and is known for releasing the largest amounts of firedamp, a dangerous and explosive mixture of gases (chiefly methane). Firedamp is explosive at concentrations between 4% and 16%, with most violence at around 10%. In addition, there was another potential contributing factor in the bituminous coal: iron sulfide, also known as pyrite, was likely present. The presence of pyrites presents two additional risk factors, the first involving oxidation. Pyrite oxidation is sufficiently exothermic that underground coal mines in high-sulfur coal seams have occasionally experienced spontaneous combustion in the mined-out areas of the mine. This process can result from the disruption caused by mining from the seams, which exposes the sulfides in the ore to air and water. The second risk factor involves an additional capability of pyrites to provide fire ignition under certain conditions. Pyrites derive their name from the Greek root word pyr, meaning fire, as they can cause sparks when struck by steel or other hard surfaces. Pyrites were used to strike sparks to ignite gunpowder in wheellock guns, for example. The pyrites could have provided the ignition capability needed to create an explosion. A number of bunker fires of this type had been reported aboard warships before the Maines explosion, in several cases nearly sinking the ships. Wegner also cites a 1997 heat transfer study which concluded that a coal bunker fire could have taken place and ignited the ship's ammunition. In 1998, National Geographic magazine commissioned an analysis by Advanced Marine Enterprises (AME). This investigation, done to commemorate the centennial of the sinking of USS Maine, was based on computer modeling, a technique unavailable for previous investigations. The results reached were inconclusive. National Geographic reported that "a fire in the coal bunker could have generated sufficient heat to touch off an explosion in the adjacent magazine [but] on the other hand, computer analysis also shows that even a small, handmade mine could have penetrated the ship's hull and set off explosions within." The AME investigation noted that "the size and location of the soil depression beneath the Maine 'is more readily explained by a mine explosion than by magazine explosions alone'". The team noted that this was not "definitive in proving that a mine was the cause of the sinking" but it did "strengthen the case". Some experts, including Admiral Rickover's team and several analysts at AME, do not agree with the conclusion. Wegner claims that technical opinion among the Geographic team was divided between its younger members, who focused on computer modeling results, and its older ones, who weighed their inspection of photos of the wreck with their own experience. He adds that AME used flawed data concerning the Maines design and ammunition storage. Wegner was also critical of the fact that participants in the Rickover study were not consulted until AME's analysis was essentially complete, far too late to confirm the veracity of data being used or engage in any other meaningful cooperation. In 2002, the Discovery Channel produced an episode of the Unsolved History documentaries, entitled "Death of the U.S.S. Maine". It used photographic evidence, naval experts, and archival information to argue that the cause of the explosion was a coal bunker fire, and it identified a weakness or gap in the bulkhead separating the coal and powder bunkers that allowed the fire to spread from the former to the latter. The official view in Cuba is that the sinking was a false flag operation conducted by the U.S. Cuban officials argue that the U.S. deliberately sank the ship to create a pretext for military action against Spain. The Maine monument in Havana describes Maines sailors as "victims sacrificed to the imperialist greed in its fervor to seize control of Cuba", which claims that U.S. agents deliberately blew up their own ship. Eliades Acosta was the head of the Cuban Communist Party's Committee on Culture and a former director of the José Martí National Library in Havana. He offered the standard Cuban interpretation in an interview to The New York Times, but he adds that "Americans died for the freedom of Cuba, and that should be recognized." This claim has also been made in Russia by Mikhail Khazin, a Russian economist who once ran the cultural section at Komsomolskaya Pravda. Operation Northwoods was a series of proposals prepared by Pentagon officials for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1962, setting out a number of proposed false flag operations that could be blamed on the Cuban Communists in order to rally support against them. One of these suggested that a U.S. Navy ship be blown up in Guantanamo Bay deliberately. In an echo of the yellow press headlines of the earlier period, it used the phrase "A 'Remember the Maine' incident". For several years, the Maine was left where she sank in Havana harbor, but it was evident she would have to be removed sometime. It took up valuable space in the harbor, and the buildup of silt around her hull threatened to create a shoal. In addition, various patriotic groups wanted mementos of the ship. On 9 May 1910, Congress authorized funds for the removal of the Maine, the proper interment in Arlington National Cemetery of the estimated 70 bodies still inside, and the removal and transport of the main mast to Arlington. Congress did not demand a new investigation into the sinking at that time. The Army Corps of Engineers built a cofferdam around the Maine and pumped water out from inside it. By 30 June 1911, the Maines main deck was exposed. The ship forward of frame 41 was entirely destroyed; a twisted mass of steel out of line with the rest of the hull, all that was left of the bow, bore no resemblance to a ship. The rest of the wreck was badly corroded. Army engineers dismantled the damaged superstructure and decks, which were then dumped at sea. About halfway between bow and stern, they built a concrete and wooden bulkhead to seal the after-section, then cut away what was left of the forward portion. Holes were cut in the bottom of the after-section, through which jets of water were pumped, to break the mud seal holding the ship, then plugged, with flood cocks, which would later be used for sinking the ship. The Maine had been outfitted with Worthington steam pumps. After lying on the bottom of Havana harbor for fourteen years these pumps were found to be still operational, and were subsequently used to raise the ship. On 13 February 1912, the engineers let water back into the interior of the cofferdam. Three days later, the interior of the cofferdam was full and Maine floated. Two days after that, the Maine was towed out by the tug . The bodies of its crew were then removed to the armored cruiser for repatriation. On 16 March, the Maine was towed four miles from the Cuban coast by Osceola, escorted by North Carolina and the light cruiser . Its sea cocks were opened and it sank in of water to the salutes of Birmingham and North Carolina. During the salvage, remains of 66 more were found, of whom only one, Harry J. Keys (an engineering officer), was identified and returned to his home town; the rest were reburied at Arlington Cemetery, making a total of 229 buried there. In 2000, the wreck of Maine was rediscovered by Advanced Digital Communications, a Toronto-based expedition company, in about 3,770 feet (1,150 m) of water roughly 3 miles (4.8 km) northeast of Havana Harbor. The company had been working with Cuban scientists and oceanographers from the University of South Florida College of Marine Science, on testing underwater exploration technology. The ship had been discovered east of where it was believed it had been scuttled; according to the researchers, during the sinking ceremony and the time it took the wreck to founder, currents pushed Maine east until it came to rest at its present location. Before the team identified the site as Maine, they referred to the location as the "square" due to its unique shape, and at first they did not believe it was the ship, due to its unexpected location. The site was explored with an ROV. According to Dr. Frank Muller- Karger, the hull was not oxidized and the crew could "see all of its structural parts". The expedition was able to identify the ship due to the doors and hatches on the wreck, as well as the anchor chain, the shape of the propellers, and the holes where the bow was cut off. Due to the 1912 raising of the ship, the wreck was completely missing its bow; this tell-tale feature was instrumental in identifying the ship. The team also located a boiler nearby, and a debris field of coal. In February 1898, the recovered bodies of sailors who died on Maine were interred in the Colon Cemetery, Havana. Some injured sailors were sent to hospitals in Havana and Key West, Florida. Those who died in hospitals were buried in Key West. In December 1899, the bodies in Havana were disinterred and brought back to the United States for burial at Arlington National Cemetery. In 1915, President Woodrow Wilson dedicated the USS Maine Mast Memorial to those who died. The memorial includes the ship's main mast. Roughly 165 were buried at Arlington, although the remains of one sailor were exhumed for his home town, Indianapolis, Indiana. Of the rest, only 62 were known. Nine bodies were never recovered and 19 crewmen, several unidentified, are buried in Key West Cemetery under a statue of a U.S. sailor holding an oar. The explosion-bent fore mast of Maine is located at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. In 1926, the Cuban government erected a memorial to the victims of Maine on the Malecon, near the Hotel Nacional, to commemorate United States assistance in acquiring Cuban independence from Spain. The monument features two of Maines four 10-inch guns. In 1961, the memorial was damaged by crowds, following the Bay of Pigs Invasion, and the eagle on top was broken and removed. The Communist government then added its own inscription blaming "imperialist voracity in its eagerness to seize the island of Cuba" for Maines sinking. The monument was cleaned and restored in 2013. The eagle's head was retained by the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, and the body by the city's museum. In 1898, Georges Méliès made his movie, Divers at Work on the Wreck of the "Maine", about rescuers freeing bodies from the sunken Maine., In 1912, a porthole cover and a section of the base mast was given to the City of Newburgh Heights, Ohio. The relics were mounted on a large rock in the city's Washington Park in 1948., In 1914, one of Maines six anchors was taken from the Washington Navy Yard to City Park in Reading, Pennsylvania, and dedicated during a ceremony presided over by Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was then assistant secretary of the navy., A brass torpedo tube hatch recovered from Maine is on display at Lakeside Park in Oakland, California. It was stolen from its mount in the park in May 2011, but quickly recovered by authorities after the thieves attempted to sell it for scrap metal. The large piece was relocated and mounted by OPW Facility Services in front of Oakland's Veterans building on Grand Ave., A memorial including the shield and scrollwork from the bow of the ship is located in Bangor, Maine., A 6-inch gun from Maine is in Washington, D.C. at the National Museum of the United States Navy., A 6-inch gun from Maine is in Fort Allen Park in Portland, Maine., A 6-inch gun from Maine is displayed on the front lawn of city hall in Alpena, Michigan, as well as a bronze plaque made from the vessel., The base of Maines conning tower is currently on display at Westbrook Veterans' Memorial Park in Canton, Ohio, hometown of President McKinley., Shells from the main battery were placed along with small plaques as memorials at the Soldier's Home in Marion, Indiana (now a VA hospital and national cemetery), at the St. Joseph County Courthouse lawn in South Bend, Indiana, and at Point Defiance Park in Tacoma, Washington. A shell from the main battery is located in Veterans Park in Lewiston, Maine., A monument for Maine with a portion of a bronze engine room ventilator shaft is located in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey., The capstan of the ship was secured for Charleston, South Carolina where it was displayed on the Battery until 2006; it is currently awaiting reinstallation., A shell from the Maine is on display at the Hoboken Public Library in Hoboken, New Jersey., There is a plaque dedicated to Maine at the war memorial in Stephen R. Gregg Park in Bayonne, New Jersey. The plaque is made from metal salvaged from the ship., A 6-pound deck gun from Maine is on the North lawn of the South Carolina State House in Columbia, South Carolina., A 6-pound deck gun from Maine is at the White Plains Public Works Yard in White Plains, New York, after being removed from Battle Whitney Park., One of the ship's anchors was donated to the city of Reading, Pennsylvania. Then Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt was present at its installation in City Park., A bronze torpedo tube and armoured hatch form part of a memorial in West Park, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, just south of West North Avenue., There is also a USS Maine Memorial plaque (visible in photographs and physically in situ) at the south door of the Jefferson County Courthouse, in Steubenville, Ohio. List of battleships of the United States Navy, U.S. Navy memorials, Monument to the Victims of the USS Maine (Havana) Allen, Thomas B. "Remember the Maine?" National Geographic, Vol. 193, No 2 (February 1998): 92–111., Allen, Thomas B. ed. "What Really Sank the Maine?" Naval History 11 (March/April 1998): 30–39., Blow, Michael. A Ship to Remember: The Maine and the Spanish–American War. New York: William Morrow & Co., 1992. ., Foner, Phiip S. The Spanish-Cuban-American War and the Birth of American Imperialism 1895–1902. 2 Volumes, New York/London 1972 (very detailed with plenty of sources from US archives)., Samuels, Peggy and Harold. Remembering the Maine. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC and London 1995 ., Weems, John Edward. The Fate of the Maine College Station, Texas: Texas A&M; University Press, 1992. . USS Maine Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, Hartshorn, Byron, "Visiting the USS Maine around Washington, DC", Naval History & Heritage Command (history.navy.mil):, USS Maine, The Destruction of the USS Maine, United States Navy, Bureau of Steam Engineering, Specifications for triple-expansion twin-screw propelling machinery for U.S.S. Maine at Google Books. Retrieved 6 April 2012., From spanamwar.com:, Background information on the Maine, Theories on the loss of the Maine, Official 1898 Court of Inquiry Report, How Likely was a Coal Bunker Fire Aboard the Battleship Maine?, USS Maine Pictures from the Library of Congress American Memory website, – Construction – Active Service, USS Maine from NARA, Google Books:, Black, William F. "The Story of the Maine" in Proceedings of the Municipal Engineers of the City of New York John Henry "Dick" Turpin (20 August 1876 – 10 March 1962) was a sailor in the United States Navy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Turpin was one of the first African American Chief Petty Officers in the U.S. Navy. He is also notable for surviving the catastrophic explosions of two U.S. Navy ships: in 1898, and in 1905. Turpin was born on 20 August 1876 in Long Branch, New Jersey and enlisted in the U.S. Navy in New York City on 4 November 1896. He was a Mess Attendant on the battleship when it exploded in Havana Harbor, Cuba under mysterious circumstances on the night of 15 February 1898. Turpin was in the pantry of the wardroom when the explosion occurred, and felt the ship "heave and lift" before all went dark. He worked his way aft and climbed out of the wardroom on the captain's ladder and up onto the deck. He dove overboard and was rescued by a motor launch. Turpin was one of 90 out of the 350 officers and men aboard Maine that night to survive the explosion. According to an obituary that appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Turpin (whose next ship assignment was not reported) saw action in China during the 1900 Boxer Rebellion. By mid-1905, Turpin had been assigned to the gunboat . When that ship was raising steam for a departure from San Diego, California, on 21 July 1905, she suffered a boiler explosion that sent men and machinery into the air and killed 66 of the 102 men aboard. Turpin reportedly saved three officers and twelve men by swimming them to shore one at a time. Eleven men were awarded the Medal of Honor for "extraordinary heroism displayed at the time of the explosion", but Turpin was not among them. Before and following the Bennington explosion, Turpin was assigned to Mare Island Naval Shipyard in California. It was during this time he probably learned to be a diver. In 1915 Turpin worked as a diver in efforts to raise the sunken submarine USS F-4 in Honolulu, Hawaii. He became qualified as a "Master Diver" - most probably the first African-American sailor to do so. (It is often erroneously reported that Master Chief Petty Officer Carl Brashear held this honor.) Turpin was also credited with being involved with the development of the underwater cutting torch. Turpin served on several other ships before leaving active duty service in 1916. After the United States entered World War I in April 1917, Turpin was recalled to service. On 1 June 1917, he became a Chief Gunner's Mate on the cruiser , which made him among the first African American Chief Petty Officers in the U.S. Navy. Turpin served at that rank until he was transferred to the Fleet Reserve in March 1919. In October 1925, Turpin retired at the rank of Chief Gunner's Mate. During his time in the Navy, he was the Navy boxing champion in several different weight classifications throughout is Navy career and was a boxing instructor at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. In addition to the above mentioned ships, Turpin was assigned to the following ships during his career: USS Badger, USS Cheyenne (BM-10), USS Pittsburgh (ACR-4), USS Severn, USS Hartford, USS Independence, USS South Dakota, USS Alert, USS Ranger, USS Montgomery (C-9), USS Vermont (BB-20). After his retirement from the Navy, Turpin was employed as a Master Rigger at the Puget Sound Navy Yard in Bremerton, Washington; he was also qualified as a Master Diver in his civilian duties. During World War II, Turpin tried to return to active service but was denied on account of his age. He volunteered to tour Navy training facilities and defense plants to make "inspirational visits" to African-American sailors. Turpin died in Bremerton, Washington on 10 March 1962. He was survived by his wife Faye Alice. At his funeral, his pall bearers were six Navy chief stewards. Good Conduct Medal, Navy Expeditionary Medal, Spanish Campaign Medal, China Relief Expedition Medal, Nicaraguan Campaign Medal, Mexican Service Medal, World War I Victory Medal with two service stars Carl Brashear Havana harbor is the port of Havana, the capital of Cuba, and it is the main port in Cuba (not including Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, a territory on lease by the United States). Other port cities in Cuba include Cienfuegos, Matanzas, Manzanillo, and Santiago de Cuba. The harbor was created from the natural Havana Bay. It is entered through a narrow inlet and divides into three main harbors: Marimelena, Guanabacoa, and Atarés. It was fortified by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century who in 1553 transferred the governor's residence to Havana from Santiago de Cuba on the eastern end of the island, thus making Havana the de facto capital. The importance of these fortifications was early recognized as English, French, and Dutch sea marauders attacked the city in the 16th century. Later fortifications included the Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabaña, known as La Cabaña or Fort of Saint Charles, built in the 18th-century on the elevated eastern side of the harbor entrance as the largest fortress complex in the Americas. The fort rises above the 200-foot (60 m) hilltop, beside Morro Castle. Castillo de la Real Fuerza and San Salvador de la Punta Fortress, both constructed in sixteenth century, sit on the western side of the harbor in Old Havana. The Battle of Havana was a two-month siege of the harbor defenses by the British in 1762. The sinking of the U.S. battleship Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898 was the immediate cause of the Spanish–American War. In January 1898 the USS Maine, the largest vessel to come out of an American shipyard, was dispatched to Cuba to protect US interests there. At the time more than 8,000 US citizens resided in the country, and their safety could not be assured in the state of affairs at that time. On February 15, 1898 the Maine exploded and sank in the harbor. It became a major rallying call for the Spanish–American War, and it caused the US to finally intercede on Cuba's behalf. In 1910 the wreck was removed from the harbor as it was posing a hazard to navigation. It was sunk in deep water in the Gulf of Mexico with proper military ceremonies. On March 4, 1960, the harbor was the scene of a deadly explosion when the French freighter La Coubre, carrying 76 tons of Belgian munitions, was being unloaded. The cause of the blast, which killed an estimated 100 people, is often attributed to the CIA who wished to overthrow the new government of Fidel Castro. Havana Harbor has the distinction of having the first recorded shark attack, which occurred in 1749 to British sailor Brook Watson. The town or Regla on Ensenada de Marimelena is a commercial and industrial suburb with the Galainela shipyard, ENA drydock, until recently operated as a joint venture with Curacao CDM, and the Navy's shipyard at Casablanca. Other docks include the Havana Container Terminal (TCH), the Ñico Lopez oil refinery, formerly a Shell refinery; and flour and wheat mills and aviation fuel depots. Least developed of the harbor arms. The harbor in Old Havana offers cruise ship terminals, shipping and vessel repair services operated by Asticar. As a harbor almost completely surrounded by shipping and industrial activities, the waters of the bay suffer from environmental stress. This in turn affects the water quality of the Caribbean Sea into which it flows. Water entering the bay as river flows or effluent from industrial processes has a residence in the harbor of 8 days, on average. It receives approximately 48,000 m3 of waste water per day, which carries about 4,800 kg of nitrogen and 1,200 kg of phosphorus, which results in elevated concentrations of nutrients. Havana Bay is strongly affected by sewage dumping, and it also receives suspended solids, hydrocarbons, heavy metals and pollutants from agriculture, industry and port activities. The leading sources of pollution in the bay have been identified as the Luyano River which contains organic material, nutrients, sewage, solid waste, the Regla oil refinery, fish hatcheries, and port activities. The high concentration of hydrocarbons, heavy metals and other pollutants is of concern as the harbor is an important fishing port.

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The following is a list of cast members who have portrayed characters in The Chronicles of Narnia film series. The Chronicles of Narnia is based upon the novels of the same name by C. S. Lewis. Key A dark grey cell indicates the character is not in the film. List of actors who have played Narnia characters Cast and crew at NarniaWeb This is a list of characters in the series of fantasy novels by C. S. Lewis called The Chronicles of Narnia. See also a list of portrayals. Ahoshta: a 60-year-old Tarkaan of Calormen who later becomes the Grand Vizier, chief adviser to the Tisroc (king). Aravis' stepmother arranged for her to marry him, but Aravis hated him because of his age, appearance, character, and base birth. (HHB), Alambil: "Lady of Peace", a planet (moving star) in the heavens above Narnia (PC), Alimash: Calormene nobleman, cousin of Aravis (HHB), Anradin Tarkaan: Calormene nobleman, former owner of Bree, who wants to buy Shasta (HHB), Aravis Tarkheena: the daughter of a Calormene nobleman; she flees when her stepmother attempts to marry her to Ahoshta. She escapes from Calormen with Shasta, and becomes Queen of Archenland after marrying him. (HHB), Ardeeb Tisroc: Great-great-great-great-grandfather of Aravis. (HHB), Argoz, Lord: One of the Seven Great Lords of Narnia. (VDT), Arlian, Lord: Killed by Miraz (PC), Arsheesh: a northern fisherman who lived in far south of the empire of Calormen. After finding a small boat with a dead man and a baby boy inside, Arsheesh kept the child and named him Shasta, but did not treat him in a fatherly manner (HHB), Aslan: The Great Lion, the Son of the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea, the Lord of Cair Paravel, the Emperor of the Lone Islands, High King of All High Kings and the Creator and Lord of Narnia. (All), Axartha Tarkaan: Grand Vizier before Ahoshta Tarkaan (HHB), Azaroth: Calormene deity (HHB), Azrooh: Calormene, killed by King Lune (HHB) Bacchus: Incarnate spirit of wine and ecstasy. Named for the Roman god of wine. (PC), Badger: (see Trufflehunter), Bannister, "Big": One of "the Gang" at Experiment House (SC), Bar, Lord: Former Lord Chancellor of Archenland, traitor who kidnaps Prince Cor (HHB), Beaver, Mr.: Builder of the dam near Beaversdam, he is the first Narnian to meet all four Pevensie children. He and his wife shelter the children and tell them of Narnia before leading them to Aslan (LWW), Beaver, Mrs.: She and Mr. Beaver provide shelter, food, and information for the four Pevensie children. When the White Witch sends an army of wolves after the children, Mr. and Mrs. Beaver escort the children to the Stone Table to meet Aslan. She makes good tea, but according to Mr Beaver is an indifferent cook. (LWW), Beech Dryad: A dryad who warns Tirian and his friends of the slaughter of the living trees before her tree is felled, resulting in her death (LB), Belisar, Lord: Killed by Miraz (PC), Bern, Lord: One of the Seven Great Lords of Narnia, Duke of Lone Islands (VDT), Betty: Servant to Professor Digory Kirke (LWW), Breehy-hinny-brinny-hoohy-hah (Bree for short): Horse, escaped captivity from Calormen and carries Shasta in his travels with Aravis (HHB), Bricklethumb: Red dwarf, brother of Duffle and Rogin (HHB), Bulgy Bears, the: Part of Caspian X's army of Old Narnians, in which one of the three becomes a general. They are very fond of supper, but are prone to suck their paws (PC) Camillo: Talking hare who leads a group of animals to the Great Council (PC), Carter: Student at Experiment House (SC), Caspian the Conqueror (Caspian I): First Telmarine King of Narnia after the Telmarine invasion and founder of the Caspian dynasty. (PC), Caspian VI: Great-Great-Grandfather of Caspian X; builder of the Castle of Caspian (PC), Caspian VIII: Father of Caspian IX and Miraz (PC), Caspian IX: Father of Caspian X and brother of Miraz (PC), Caspian X (titled "The Seafarer" or "The Navigator"): born Prince Caspian, crowned King of Narnia with the help of Aslan and the Pevensie children. Afterwards, he voyages to the edge of the world in his ship, the Dawn Treader. Husband of Ramandu's daughter. Father of Prince Rilian. (PC, VDT, SC, LB), Chervy: Stag, warns of Calormene invasion (HHB), Chief Voice: "Leader" of the Dufflepuds (VDT), Chlamash: Calormene, surrenders to Edmund (HHB), Cholmondeley Major: Of "The Gang" at Experiment House(SC), Clipsie: Duffer, daughter of Chief Voice (VDT), Clodsley Shovel: Leader of the Moles (PC). The name is a pun on that of Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell., Cloudbirth: Centaur, famous healer (SC), Coalblack: Horse of Prince Rilian (SC), Col: First King of Archenland, son of Frank V (Timeline), Cole: Colin's elder brother, Archenland nobility (HHB), Colin: Cole's younger brother, Archenland nobility (HHB), Cor:, Coriakin: Former star, sent as punishment to tend the Duffers (VDT), Corin : is the younger twin of Cor (Shasta), he is younger by 20 minutes. He is the son of King Lune and a famous boxer. His nickname is "Corin Thunderfist". He boxed the Lapsed Bear of Stormness, who was really a Talking bear but had returned to wild habits. (HHB), Cornelius: Half-dwarf, half-human, tutor to Caspian X; called a "half-and-halfer" by Nikabrik (PC), Corradin: Calormene, killed by Edmund (HHB) Dar: Lord of Archenland, brother of Darrin (HHB), Darrin: Lord of Archenland, brother of Dar (HHB), Destrier: Horse of Prince Caspian. (The name is archaic English for "war-horse".) (PC), Diggle: Dwarf, leader of renegades (LB), D.L.F. (Dear Little Friend): Nickname for Trumpkin (PC), Drinian, Lord: Captain of the Dawn Treader, friend of Prince Rillian and his father King Caspian X (VDT), (SC), Duffle: Red Dwarf, brother of Rogin and Bricklethumb, assists Shasta (HHB), Dumnus: Faun, dances for Caspian X (PC) Edward: Uncle Andrew's cousin, member of the yeomanry, frequents pawnshops. (MN), Emeth Tarkaan: Calormene Lord, befriends Narnians (LB), The Emperor-Over-the-Sea: a mysterious and powerful authority over Narnia. He is the father of Aslan, and the laws of Deep Magic and Deeper Magic are said to come from him. (LWW), (VDT), Erimon, Lord: Killed by Miraz (PC), Erlian: Father of King Tirian and the sixth king of Narnia in the line of Rilian (LB), Emerald Witch: See Lady of the Green Kirtle (SC) Farsight: Eagle, brings news to Tirian (LB), Father Christmas: Bringer of Christmas gifts for Peter, Susan, Lucy, and the Beavers (LWW), Father Time: Giant, awakens at the end of the world (SC), (LB), Featherstone, Anne: schoolmate of Lucy's. Anne is jealous of Lucy's friendship with Marjorie Preston. Lucy overhears (via magic), a conversation between Anne and Marjorie in which Anne scolds her for befriending Lucy. (VDT), Fenris Ulf: See Maugrim, Fledge: formerly Strawberry, the father of all the winged horses; once a London cab-horse. (MN), Frank I: First King of Narnia, formerly a London cabby (MN), Frank V: King of Narnia, father of Col of Archenland (timeline) Gale: Tenth King of Narnia (LB), "The Gang": A gang of bullies at Experiment House, who bully students including Eustace and Jill. The ones at the moment when Eustace and Jill leave and return to our world are:"Big" Bannister, Adela Pennyfather, Cholmondeley Major, Edith Winterblott, "Spotty" Sorner, and the "loathsome" Garrett twins. All of these are given thrashings by Eustace, Jill, and Caspian when they return from Narnia, and are ultimately expelled. (SC), Garrett Twins: Of "The Gang" at Experiment House (SC), Ginger: Cat, in league with Shift. As Shift becomes more and more a puppet of the Calormenes, Ginger gains more power as well, through being in league with the Calormenes against Shift and the other animals they are manipulating. (LB), Girbius: Faun, dances for Caspian X (PC), Glenstorm: Centaur, prophet and stargazer (PC), Glimfeather: Owl, carries Jill Pole and Eustace Scrubb to the Parliament of Owls (SC), Glozelle, Lord: Counselor to Miraz, killed in battle by High King Peter. (PC), Golg: Earthman, questioned by Puddleglum & Prince Rilian (SC), Griffle: Black Dwarf, disloyal to Tirian (LB), Gumpas: Governor of the Lone Islands, deposed by Caspian X. (VDT), Gwendolen: Narnian/Telmarine schoolgirl who follows Aslan. (PC) Harpa Tarkaan: Father of Emeth (LB), Helen I: First queen of Narnia (MN), Hermit of the Southern March: Magician, took in Aravis, Bree, and Hwin. (HHB), Hogglestock: Representative of the hedgehogs (PC), Hwin: Talking mare from Narnia, but brought up in captivity in Calormen; carries Aravis in her travels with Shasta (HHB) Ilgamuth: Calormene, killed by Darrin (HHB), Ilsombreh Tisroc: Great-great-grandfather of Aravis. (HHB), Ivy: Servant to Professor Kirke (LWW) Jackdaw: Name never given. Member of a bird species related to the crows, first joke of Narnia (MN), Jackle, Edith: Hanger-on and talebearer for "the Gang" at Experiment House (SC), Jadis: See White Witch Jewel: Unicorn, best friend of King Tirian, never deceived by the False Aslan (LB) Ketterley, Andrew: A magician, Digory's "mad" Uncle Andrew, brother of Digory's mother Mabel. Andrew invented the rings that bring Digory and Polly to the Wood between the Worlds. Though initially portrayed as an egotistical, cowardly and selfish character, his own experiences teach him to mend his ways. (MN), Ketterley, Letitia: Digory's aunt Letty, sister to Andrew Ketterley and Mabel Kirke (MN), Kidrash Tarkaan: Father of Aravis (HHB), Kirke, Digory: Friend of Narnia, second to leave the Earth (MN), (LWW), (LB), Kirke, Mabel: Née Ketterley, mother of Digory, sister of Andrew and Letitia (MN), Kirke, Mr: (First name unknown) Digory's Father, "away" in India, conveniently inherits a fortune and comes home forever. (MN) Lady of the Green Kirtle: Queen of the Underland, a powerful sorceress who kidnapped and enslaved Prince Rilian for several years and planned to use him in a plot to take over Narnia. (SC), Lapsed Bear of Stormness: Reformed by Corin (HHB), Lasaraleen Tarkheena: Calormene noblewoman, a friend of Aravis; despite being vain, gossipy, and featherbrained, she helps Aravis escape Tashbaan safely with Hwin and Bree. (HHB), Lefay, Mrs.: Andrew's fairy godmother, who bequeathed him the Atlantean dust with which he made the magic rings that transport Digory and Polly to the Wood between the Worlds. (MN), Lilith: Adam's supposed first wife; purported ancestor of Jadis, though events of The Magician's Nephew prove this latter supposition untrue. (LWW), Liln: Wife of Fair Olvin of Archenland (HHB), Lilygloves: Chief Mole, helps plant orchard (PC), Lune, King: King of Archenland, widower, father of Cor and Corin (HHB) Macready, Mrs.: Housekeeper to Professor Kirke (LWW), Maenads: Bacchus' wild, madcap band of girls, from Greek mythology. (PC), Margaret: Servant to Professor Kirke (LWW), Maugrim: Talking Wolf, Captain of the White Witch's secret police during her 100-year wintry reign of Narnia. Killed by King Peter. He is called Fenris Ulf in some American editions of the books. (LWW), Mavramorn, Lord: One of the Seven Great Lords of Narnia, (VDT), Mentius: Faun, dances for Caspian X (PC), Miraz: Usurping king of Narnia, son of Caspian VIII, brother of Caspian IX and uncle of Caspian X (Prince Caspian) (PC), Moonwood: Hare, gifted with acute hearing (LB), Mullugutherum: Earthman (SC) Nain, King: King of Archenland during reign of Miraz (PC), Nausus: Faun, dances for Caspian X (PC), Nikabrik: Traitorous Black Dwarf who fights with Caspian X against Miraz, killed when he tries to bring the White Witch back to life with the aid of a hag and a wer-wolf. (PC), Nimienus: Faun, dances for Caspian X (PC), The Nurse: Caretaker of Caspian X, tells stories of Old Narnia (PC) Oak: Hamadryad, member of Aslan's council (MN), Octesian, Lord: One of the Seven Great Lords of Narnia, died on Dragon Isle (VDT), Olvin: Called Fair Olvin; legendary warrior of Archenland, turned Pire to stone (HHB), Obentinus: Faun, dances for Caspian X (PC), Orruns: Faun (SC), Oscuns: Faun, dances for Caspian X (PC) Passarids: Noble family of Narnia, killed fighting giants (PC), Pattertwig: Talkative, but trustworthy squirrel (PC), Peepiceek: Second Mouse under Reepicheep (PC), Pennyfather, Adela: Of "The Gang" at Experiment House, terrorized Jill and Eustace. (SC), Peridan, Lord: Narnian courtier at embassy to Tashbaan (HHB), Pevensie, Edmund: Friend of Narnia, King of Narnia, The Just (LWW), (HHB), (PC), (VDT), (LB), Pevensie, Lucy: Friend of Narnia, Queen of Narnia, The Valiant (LWW), (HHB), (PC), (VDT), (LB), Pevensie, Peter: Friend of Narnia, High King of Narnia, The Magnificent, Lord of Cair Paravel, Emperor of the Lone Islands (LWW), (PC), (LB), Pevensie, Susan: Friend of Narnia, Queen of Narnia, The Gentle (LWW), (HHB), (PC), Pire: a terrible two-headed giant who threatened Archenland. (HHB), Pittencream: Sailor who was left on Ramandu's Island (VDT), Plummer, Polly: Friend of Narnia, first to leave Earth (MN), (LB), Poggin: Dwarf, the last dwarf loyal to King Tirian (LB), Pole, Jill: Friend of Narnia, adventuress (SC), (LB), Pomona: Wood-People, put spells on apple orchard (PC); from the Roman goddess Pomona., Preston, Marjorie: Schoolmate of Lucy (VDT), Miss Prizzle: Schoolmistress in Narnia (PC), Professor Kirke: See Kirke, Digory, Prunaprismia: Wife of Miraz (PC). The name refers to Charles Dickens' Little Dorrit, where a character recommends prunes and prism as words that will keep one's mouth pursed in a prim and proper pose., Puddleglum: Marshwiggle, acts as a guide to Eustace and Jill as they journey through Ettinsmoor in search of Prince Rilian. He is incredibly pessimistic, yet up to any challenge. (SC), Pug: Pirate and slaver on Felimath (VDT), Pulverulentus Siccus: Telmarine Narnian grammarian, author of the Grammatical Garden (PC); the name means "dusty dry" in Latin. Puzzle: A donkey tricked into becoming the false Aslan by Shift the ape. He eventually joins the protagonists and redeems himself to Aslan. (LB) Rabadash: Crown Prince and later Tisroc of Calormen. Led failed Calormene invasion of Narnia. Called "Rabadash the Peacemaker" to his face, and "Rabadash the Ridiculous" behind his back. He is punished by Aslan after defying & insulting Him to his face (HHB), Ram the Great: the "most famous" King of Archenland, son of King Cor and Queen Aravis (HHB), Ramandu: Star, father-in-law of Caspian X (VDT), Ramandu's Daughter : The daughter of Ramandu, she is unnamed in the books. A producer of the BBC TV serial (and Lewis's stepson), Douglas Gresham, coined the name "Lilliandil". for her. She marries Caspian X, and is killed by a green serpent, later revealed as the Lady of the Green Kirtle. (VDT), (SC), Raven of Ravenscaur: Leader of the Ravens (PC) Reepicheep: Chief Mouse of Narnia, member of the Most Noble Order of the Lion, famed for his courage and skill with a rapier. He fights for Prince Caspian and later travels with him to the end of the world, where he continued onward towards Aslan's Country. (PC), (VDT), (LB), Restimar, Lord: One of the Seven Great Lords of Narnia, died on Deathwater (VDT), Revilian, Lord: One of the Seven Great Lords of Narnia, one of the three sleepers on Ramandu's island (VDT), Rhince: First mate of the Dawn Treader (VDT), Rhoop, Lord: One of the Seven Great Lords of Narnia, rescued from the Dark Island (VDT), Rilian: the only son of King Caspian X, who fell under the enchantment of the Green Witch for ten years. (SC), Rishda Tarkaan: Calormene, plots with Shift to take over Narnia (LB), Rishti Tarkaan: Grandfather of Aravis (HHB), River-God: Of the Great River, Father and leader of the Naiads, unchained by Bacchus near Beruna (PC), Rogin: Red Dwarf, brother of Bricklethumb and Duffle (HHB), Roonwit: Centaur, reads stars, friend to Tirian (LB), Rumblebuffin, Giant: a 20 foot tall Narnian giant who was turned into stone by the White Witch, and was later freed by Aslan (LWW), Rynelf: Loyal sailor on the Dawn Treader (VDT) Sallowpad: Raven, of Narnian embassy to Calormen. From sealwigpada "dark-coated" (Old English poetic term for a raven). (HHB)., Sarah: Andrew's housemaid, good natured (MN), Scrubb, Alberta: Eustace's mother (VDT), Scrubb, Eustace Clarence: Friend of Narnia, cousin of the Pevensies, reformed pest (VDT, SC, LB), Scrubb, Harold: Father of Eustace (VDT), Shasta: a young boy brought up by Arsheesh, meets the talking horse Bree, who persuades him to escape Calormen by riding north for Narnia. Shasta discovers he is really Prince Cor of Archenland, and helps to save Narnia from invasion. He eventually becomes the King Cor of Archenland. (HHB), Shar: Archenlander (HHB), Shift: Ape, influenced the donkey Puzzle to impersonate Aslan and gain control over Narnia. The Calormenes were later able to take over Narnia because of this. Ultimately, Shift is devoured by Tash. (LB), Silenus: Fat old man, attendant of Bacchus, rides a donkey. He shouts, "Refreshments, refreshments!" (PC) From Greek mythology., Slinkey: Fox, traitor, killed by Eustace (LB), Snowflake: Horse of the Emerald Witch (SC), Sopespian, Lord: Telmarine, killed by Peter (PC), Sorner, "Spotty": One of "the Gang" at Experiment House (SC), Spivvins: Schoolmate of Eustace (SC), Stonefoot: Giant, summoned by Roonwit to Tirian (LB), Strawberry: See Fledge, Swanwhite: Queen of Narnia. She was so beautiful that when she looked into a forest pool, her reflection shone for a year and a day afterward. (LB) Tacks: Pug's fellow slave dealer on Felimath. (VDT), Tarva: "Lord of Victory", a planet (moving star) in the heavens above Narnia (PC), Tash: The inexorable god of the Calormenes, a skeletal figure with the head of a vulture and four arms, who demands blood sacrifices (HHB), (LB), Thornbut: Red Dwarf, placed in charge of Prince Corin at the time of the Calormene invasion of Archenland, and tries to prevent the prince from joining in the battle (HHB), Tirian: Last King of Narnia, seventh in descent from King Rilian. (LB), Tran: Member of Archenland nobility (HHB), Tisroc: The supreme ruler of Calormen (HHB), Trufflehunter: is a talking Badger, who cares for Caspian X when he is injured while fleeing from Miraz. He remains loyal to Aslan throughout. (PC), Trumpkin: Red Dwarf, seeks out Pevensies (PC), (VDT), (SC), Tumnus: Faun, befriends Lucy when she first arrives in Narnia and saves her from the White Witch. (LWW), (HHB), (LB) Urnus: Faun, holds Trumpkin's ear trumpet (SC), Uvilas: Lord of Narnia, killed by Miraz, Uncle to Prince Caspian (PC) Voltinus: Faun, dances for Caspian X (PC), Voluns: Faun, dances for Caspian X (PC) Warden: Of the Marches of the Underland (SC), White Stag: Hunted by the Pevensies; rumoured to grant wishes if caught (LWW), (SC), White Witch: or Queen Jadis of Charn. Once ruler of the dead world of Charn, she subsequently enslaved Narnia in a 100-year winter (MN), (LWW), Wimbleweather: Of Deadman's Hill, a rather dim 10 foot tall giant (PC), Winterblott, Edith: Of "The Gang" at Experiment House (SC), Wraggle: Satyr, traitor, killed by Jill (LB) Zardeenah: Calormene goddess, "Lady of the Night". Unmarried Calormene women dedicate themselves to her and offer secret sacrifice to her. (HHB) Narnian characters that are not mentioned in Lewis' books but that appear in film or game adaptations of The Chronicles of Narnia include the following: Badger: Mr. Beaver's best friend, seen only when Mr. Beaver discovers that he has been turned to stone by the White Witch., Green Dryad: A dryad who lives in a Cherry Blossom tree. First seen waving to Lucy along with another dryad behind her. Next shown alerting Peter and Edmund of Aslan's death witnessed by Susan and Lucy. Voiced by Katrina Browne., Mr. Fox: Helps the Pevensies escape from the wolves in the movie. He was sent by Aslan to gather additional troops, during which he was captured by the White Witch's wolves. He is petrified by the White Witch, but restored by Aslan. Voiced by Rupert Everett., Gael: a Lone Islander whose mother was sacrificed to the green mist in the . She sneaks aboard the Dawn Treader to follow her father, Rhince, who joins the crew to look for his wife., Ginarrbrik: The White Witch's right-hand dwarf, who is given a name only in the movie. He is killed by Susan when he tries to kill a wounded Edmund during the battle. Played by Kiran Shah., Gryphons: creatures with the hind body of a lion and the front body of an eagle. They appear in none of the Narnia books but were created for the recent film. One of them, voiced by Cameron Rhodes, alerts Peter of the approach of the Witch's army., Oreius: Centaur, created for the movie. General of Aslan's army and fights alongside Peter. He successfully kills Otmin during the battle of Beruna, but is unsuccessful when he tries to kill the White Witch and is turned to a stone. Played by Patrick Kake., Lilliandil : The daughter of Ramandu. She is unnamed in the books, so a producer of the BBC TV serial (and Lewis's stepson), Douglas Gresham, coined the name "Lilliandil". She marries Caspian X, and is killed by a green serpent, later revealed as the Lady of the Green Kirtle. (VDT), (SC), Otmin, General: Minotaur, created for movie. General of the White Witch's army. Killed by Oreius in the battle of Beruna. Played by Shane Rangi., Pevensie, Helen: Mother to Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy. She does not appear in the books, but in the film assists her children into an air-raid shelter and waves good-bye at the train station. Named "Helen", after the mother of Georgie Henley, who plays Lucy and has a line referring to her mother's given name. Played by Judy McIntosh., Asterius: Minotaur who served Prince Caspian is killed by multiple Telmarine Bolts., Tyrus: The Head Satyr in the Old Narnian Army, met his death at Miraz's Castle via a Crossbow Bolt from General Glozelle., Diomedus: White Furred Minotaur and Member of the Old Narnian Army, Lightning Bolt: Child Centaur and one of the Old Narnians is Shown at Aslan's How, Tavros: a Minotaur who served as first mate aboard the Dawn Treader List of actors who have played Narnia characters Much of the original text for this article provided by Joshua Bell of NarniaMUSH Lucy Pevensie is a fictional character in C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia series. She is the youngest of the four Pevensie children, and the first to find the Wardrobe entrance to Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Of all the Pevensie children, Lucy is the closest to Aslan. Also, of all the humans who have visited Narnia, Lucy is perhaps the one that believes in Narnia the most. She is ultimately crowned Queen Lucy the Valiant, co-ruler of Narnia along with her two brothers and her sister. Lucy is the central character of the four siblings in the novels. Lucy is a principal character in three of the seven books (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader), and a minor character in two others (The Horse and His Boy and The Last Battle). Lucy is portrayed by Georgie Henley in the 2005 film and she returned to reprise her role in the 2008 film . Georgie's elder sister, Rachael Henley, portrays the older Queen Lucy at the end of the first film. Georgie Henley also reprised her role in the 2010 film , which is the third of the film series. The character of Lucy Pevensie was inspired by June Flewett, a devout Catholic London girl evacuated by her convent to The Kilns, Lewis' country home in 1942, and named after Lewis' goddaughter Lucy Barfield, to whom he dedicated The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Lucy is described in the book as being fair-haired: "But as for Lucy, she was always gay and golden-haired, and all princes in those parts desired her to be their Queen, and her own people called her Queen Lucy the Valiant." Lucy was the most faithful of the four and never stopped believing in Narnia. She and her brothers Peter and Edmund, after dying in a train crash in England, were transported to Aslan's Country with the other Narnians. Lucy is the most sensitive and faithful out of all her siblings; which is why she is written as seeing Aslan across the gorge in Prince Caspian and her brothers and sister written as cynical and less inclined to go on blind faith. As a young child in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in a strange house without her mother about, she is also extremely vulnerable and is looking for security, wonder and something to believe in. She is teased mercilessly by Edmund about Narnia, being accused of playing "childish games". Once she knows he also has visited the land in the wardrobe and he still maintains that they were only playing a game, her anguish knows no bounds, as her faith in humanity and the security of her own beliefs about her own siblings are now also under threat. Lucy loves animals, and befriends many creatures; and is devastated in Prince Caspian to discover that not only has Narnia been invaded by the Telmarines; but that they have suppressed the many creatures and divine and semi-divine beings that made Narnia the extraordinary place it was. Her heartfelt night-time roam through the woods, craving to see the tree spirits dance and share in their communion with nature and life once again is one of the very deep moments of love, hope and disappointment that we share with Lucy in her spiritual journey. Lucy also never stops believing in Narnia and is full of courage because of her faith; and is thus more adventurous than her sister Susan. Lucy has a great desire to help others, which is symbolized by the healing cordial that was given to her by Father Christmas for others in need and only with sparing use. The lesson from Aslan on the battlefield in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is to use this power impartially and not dwell on the needs of those she loves most. Lucy Pevensie was born in 1932, the youngest of four children. She grew up in London with her parents, eldest brother Peter, sister Susan, and brother Edmund. In 1940, the Blitz began, and Lucy and her siblings were evacuated from London for their safety, taking up a temporary residence in the country manor of an old man known as Professor Kirke. The siblings discovered that due to magic, their fifteen years in Narnia had taken up no time at all in England, and they were again children in the Professor's house. They told only the professor of their adventure, and he in turn admitted that he, too, had been to Narnia. The children were slightly dismayed to be told that the wardrobe had sealed and would no longer carry them between the worlds, but were reassured that they would find another route into Narnia one day. A year later, at the age of nine, Lucy set out for her first year at a girl's boarding school with Susan. While en route to school, all four children felt a peculiar tug, recognized as magic, and were within moments drawn back out of Earth. In England again, Lucy spent her first year at boarding school. While there, she made several friends. In summer of 1942, she and Edmund were sent to stay with their Aunt and Uncle while their parents went away on a trip. Afterwards, Lucy grew up fairly normally, eventually becoming one of the self- titled Seven Friends of Narnia, those who had been to the world of Narnia by magic. In 1949, Lucy, Edmund, and Peter were having dinner with Eustace, Jill Pole, Polly Plummer and Digory Kirke, reminiscing about their days in Narnia when a Narnian-dressed figure appeared to them as a specter. The figure did not speak, even when Peter demanded as High King that it do so. After the specter disappeared again, they all felt sure that something was dreadfully wrong in their beloved country, and they needed to find a way to get there on their own. Remembering the magic rings capable of carrying humans from world to world, the seven set up a plan to get young Jill and Eustace to Narnia. While the rings were retrieved, Lucy and the others got on a train to take Eustace and Jill to school, intending to use the rings on the way. They never made it, as their train crashed on the way, killing all aboard. By all accounts, Lucy and the others (except Susan, who was not on board) died instantly as a result of the crash. The four-part reign lasted fifteen years, and was known as the Golden Age of Narnia. Lucy grew up to become a sweet and beloved queen, dubbed 'Queen Lucy the Valiant' by her people. Not only a lovely lady and an accomplished queen, she was also a fierce warrior, known to ride into battle in times of need. She remained close friends with Mr. Tumnus. In 1014, Narnia's ally of Archenland was under attack. Lucy rode with her brother King Edmund to wage battle for their defense, and helped to win the day. In 1015 NT, Mr. Tumnus brought the news that the magical White Stag had returned to Narnia. Lucy and her siblings set out on a hunt, in the course of which they got lost in the woods. Stumbling through the woods, they found themselves in England again, back on the other side of the magic wardrobe. Lucy was born in 1932 and is 8 years old when she appears in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. By The Last Battle, she is 17 years old. Lucy's siblings, Peter, Susan and Edmund, do not believe her about Narnia at first, but later they all find their way to Narnia. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lucy is the first of the Pevensies to enter Narnia through a magical wardrobe in the Professor's old house, into Narnia in the One Hundred Year Winter, under the rule of the White Witch, the evil self-proclaimed Queen of Narnia. There she meets Mr. Tumnus the Faun and, then later, the Beavers. However, her brother Edmund had also slipped into Narnia on the second occasion Lucy had entered, and encountered the White Witch while she was visiting Mr Tumnus. Edmund, who had already jeered at Lucy about her "magical" country, continued to be spiteful towards Lucy by denying that either of them had been in Narnia. When the children all enter Narnia, Edmund slips away from the house of the Beavers and defects to the White Witch. While traveling with Peter, Susan and Mr. and Mrs. Beaver to the Stone Table, they meet Father Christmas, who gives them gifts. Lucy is given a vial with magical cordial that can heal almost any injury, and a small dagger with which to defend herself "at great need". Edmund, meanwhile, had tried to betray the Beavers and joined the White Witch; he had first met her and been seduced by promises of power after first entering the wardrobe when trying to follow Lucy on her second entry to Narnia. She and her companions arrive at Aslan's camp, and later that night, she and Susan comfort Aslan as he walks to his death – although they don't know of his fate at the time. Both girls also witness his sacrifice. While their brothers are going to war, Lucy and her sister see Aslan come back to life and help him wake the creatures in the White Witch's castle, which the White Witch had turned to stone. They meet with their brothers at the end of the battle. At Cair Paravel, she is crowned as Her Majesty Queen Lucy by Aslan to the throne as co-ruler of Narnia, this marking the fulfilling of the ancient prophecy and the end of the White Witch's reign. During her reign, the people name her Queen Lucy the Valiant. She and her siblings make a Golden Age in Narnia. Late in the Golden Age, while hunting the white stag through Lantern Waste, she notices the lantern where she met Mr. Tumnus. She stops her siblings and they look and wonder what it is. Lucy, in a dreamy voice, says Spare Oom, Mr. Tumnus's phrase for the land from which they came 15 years earlier, and the children run through the wardrobe into England, where no time has passed and they are children again. The events in The Horse and His Boy take place after the siblings are crowned, and before they return to England, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Queen Lucy is a young woman who rides to the aid of Archenland. She is described by Prince Corin as being more like a tomboy, unlike her sister, Queen Susan, who is a "proper lady". She helps King Lune to welcome Aravis to Anvard, and helps to get Aravis's room and clothes ready. Lucy (who is now 9) travels to Narnia again with her three siblings in Prince Caspian. In that book, Lucy is the only one to see Aslan at first, and she has a terrible time convincing her brothers and sister as well as Trumpkin the dwarf that he had returned, echoing her trials early in the first book. However, Edmund believes her and backs her up, due to her being right about Narnia itself existing. Aslan tells her to try again, and says that she must follow him alone if they refuse to come with her. Lucy comments that Aslan has grown larger, but really she is the one that has grown. While Susan travels with Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie to America and Peter studies with Professor Digory Kirke, Lucy (age 11), Edmund and their cousin Eustace are drawn into Narnia through a magical painting in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. This is very much Lucy's book, written largely from her point of view. However, at the end Aslan firmly tells her and Edmund that they have become, like Susan and Peter, too old to further experience the wonders of Narnia. In The Last Battle, she plays a minor part as she returns to Narnia again with her brothers, High King Peter and King Edmund, along with Eustace Scrubb, Jill Pole, Polly Plummer, and Digory Kirke. There, she witnesses the destruction of Narnia and lives in the new Narnia created by Aslan. In the new Narnia, all the people and animals who lived in the previous Narnia during its existence return and join together. Lucy also meets her old friend Mr. Tumnus the Faun again, and Aslan tells her about a railway accident that occurs in England in which she, her brothers, her parents, Polly, Digory, Eustace and Jill die. She and Digory, Polly, Peter, Edmund, Eustace and Jill stay in Aslan's homeland for eternity, however Susan remains living on Earth, her final fate undetermined. Lucy – along with Edmund, Peter, Digory, and Polly – are instantly transported to a great green field with fruit trees and a door that leads to nowhere, clothed in Narnian royal garb. Several people come in or out of the door, but most seem unable to see the fields or Lucy and her companions. After some time, Eustace, and then Jill, walk through the door, explaining that they had been to Narnia on the other side of it. Once everything in Narnia has been straightened out and many other Narnians had join them, the Friends of Narnia stand by as Aslan brings about the end of Old Narnia. Then Aslan gave a great roar and began to lead all the remaining Narnians. All run after him up the field, realizing that this is not Narnia, but that the real Narnia and the afterlife of the world they had known. They all run "further up and further in" until they reach Cair Paravel, and meet all of their old friends from all of their adventures in the Shadowlands. After reuniting with Mr. Tumnus, Lucy and her brothers look across a valley and see their parents in the Real England. Lucy is not quite so happy in the New Narnia as Aslan meant her to be, however. She explains that she is dissatisfied because they (the English Narnians) are so afraid of being sent home. Aslan explains that there had been a train accident back in England, and that in their world, the children (and their parents) are all dead. He explains further that the Real Narnia is his country, and a Narnian equivalent of heaven. Lucy is permitted to live forever with her siblings and friends in the Real Narnia. In the 1980s BBC serial, Lucy is portrayed by English actress Sophie Wilcox., In Walden Media's The Chronicles of Narnia films, Lucy is portrayed by English actress Georgie Henley as a child and Rachael Henley (her older sister) as an adult. Although reviews of The Oz/Wonderland Chronicles issue 0 indicated that Alice, Wendy Darling and Dorothy Gale shared their dorm with Susan Pevensie, a recent review of the now-released issue 1 indicates many fans are believing this is actually meant to be Lucy, and not Susan. She is spoofed in the 2007 film Epic Movie, played by Jayma Mays. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader at Narnia Fans, NarniaWeb

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They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa! is a 1966 novelty record written and performed by Jerry Samuels (billed as Napoleon XIV), and released on Warner Bros. Records. The song became an instant success in the United States, peaking at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 popular music singles chart on August 13, number 1 on the Cash Box Top 100 charts, number 2 in Canada, and reaching No. 4 on the UK Singles Chart. The lyrics appear to describe a man's mental anguish after a break-up with a woman, and his descent into madness leading to his committal to a "funny farm" (slang for a mental hospital). It’s finally revealed in last line of the third verse that he’s not being driven insane by the loss of a woman — but by a runaway dog: "They'll find you yet and when they do, they'll put you in the ASPCA, you mangy mutt". According to Samuels, he was concerned the record could be seen as making fun of the mentally ill, and intentionally added that line so "you realize that the person is talking about a dog having left him, not a human". Said Samuels, "I felt it would cause some people to say 'Well, it's alright.' And it did. It worked." The song is driven by a snare drum, tambourine and hand clap rhythm. The vocal is spoken rhythmically rather than sung melodically, while the vocal pitch rises and falls at key points to create an unusual glissando effect, augmented by the sound of wailing sirens. According to Samuels, the vocal glissando was achieved by manipulating the recording speed of his vocal track, a multitrack variation on the technique used by Ross Bagdasarian in creating the original Chipmunks novelty songs. At the time the song was written, Samuels was working as a recording engineer at Associated Recording Studios in New York. Samuels discovered he could use a Variable Frequency Oscillator to alter the 60Hz frequency of the hysteresis motor of a multitrack tape recording machine in order to raise or lower the pitch of a voice without changing the tempo. This gave him the idea for a song based on the rhythm of the old Scottish tune "The Campbells Are Coming". After recording a percussion track at the standard speed, he played it back through headphones while recording the vocal on another track and gradually adjusting the VFO and the pace of his vocals to produce the desired effect. Some tracks were treated with intermittent tape-based echo effects created by an Echoplex. Samuels also layered in siren effects that gradually rose and fell with the pitch of his vocals. Continuing the theme of insanity, the flip or B-side of the single was simply the A-side played in reverse, and given the title "!aaaH-aH ,yawA eM ekaT oT gnimoC er'yehT" (or "Ha-Haaa! Away, Me Take to Coming They're") and the performer billed as "XIV NAPOLEON". Most of the label affixed to the B-side was a mirror image of the front label (as opposed to simply being spelled backward), including the letters in the "WB" shield logo. Only the label name, disclaimer, and record and recording master numbers were kept frontward. The reverse version of the song is not included on the original Warner Bros. album, although the title is shown on the front cover, whereas the title is actually spelled backward. In his Book of Rock Lists, rock music critic Dave Marsh calls the B-side the "most obnoxious song ever to appear in a jukebox", saying the recording once "cleared out a diner of forty patrons in three minutes flat." The song charted at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts on August 13, number 1 on the Cash Box Top 100 charts on July 30, number 2 in Canada, and reaching No. 4 on the UK Singles Chart. Within weeks of its release, WABC and WMCA stopped playing the song in response to complaints about its content from mental health professionals and organizations. The BBC also refused to play the song. Warner Bros. Records reissued the original single (#7726) in 1973. It entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number 87 but stalled at number 101 at the Week Ahead charts which was an addition to the Cash Box Top 100 charts. The reissue featured the "Burbank/palm trees" label. As with the original release, the labels for the reissue's B-side also included mirror-imaged print except for the disclaimer, record catalog, and track master numbers. The "Burbank" motto at the top of the label was also kept frontward as well as the "WB" letters in the shield logo, which had been printed in reverse on the originals. "I'm Happy They Took You Away, Ha-Haaa!" was recorded by CBS Radio Mystery Theater cast member Bryna Raeburn, credited as "Josephine XV", and was the closing track on Side Two of the 1966 Warner Bros. album. (Josephine was the name of the spouse of the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.) A variation of "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!" was also done by Jerry Samuels, from that same album entitled Where the Nuts hunt the Squirrels, where Samuels, towards the end of the track, repeats the line: "THEY'RE TRYING TO DRIVE ME SANE!!! HA HA," before the song's fade, in a fast-tracked higher voice. In 1966, KRLA DJ "Emperor Bob" Hudson recorded a similarly styled song titled I'm Normal, including the lines "They came and took my brother away/The men in white picked him up yesterday/But they'll never come take me away, 'cos I'm O.K./I'm normal." Another line in the song was: "I eat my peas with a tuning fork." The record was credited simply to "The Emperor." In 1988, Samuels wrote and recorded "They're Coming To Get Me Again, Ha Haaa!", a sequel to the original record. It was included on a single two years later on the Collectables label. Recorded with the same beat as the original, and portraying Napoleon XIV relapsing to madness after being released from an insane asylum, it never charted, and was combined with the original 1966 recording on side A. (Both sequels are included on Samuels' 1996 Second Coming album.) In the song, instead of a "mangy mutt," for his lost dog, Napoleon bemoans the loss of his pet monkey. ("I'll swing you by your tail, you hairy ape!") In the song, instead of the "funny farm" and the "happy home" Napoleon XIV is being taken away to the "loony bin" and the "rubber room." Towards the end of the song, he relapses into the "funny farm" and "happy home"—until when reality sinks in, he cries out at a fast tracked double voice with the words: "OH NO!!!" before the beat ends with a door slam, indicating that he has been locked up in the insane asylum. The recording appeared on disk releases by Dr. Demento in 1975 as part of Dr. Demento's Delights, then in subsequent Dr. Demento LP records released in 1985, 1988 and 1991. Kim Fowley released a cover of the song as his second single, after "The Trip". In the UK a cover version was also released in November 1966 by the humorous pop group The Barron Knights where it was included on the B-side of their single "Under New Management". The Monkees' song "Gonna Buy Me a Dog", sung by Micky Dolenz, features Davy Jones teasing Dolenz toward the fade of the song with the words "they're coming to take us away" taken from Napoleon XIV's song. In Argentina Pedro Pelusa Suero (a well known actor, announcer, and voice over) recorded, as "Napoleón Puppy", a cover in Spanish of this song titled "Ellos me quieren llevar". Jeff Duff, as "Cyril Trotts", covered "They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha! Ha!" in 1984 on his To Bogna LP. Experimental music band Nurse With Wound used some of the lyrics from the song for their limited 7" release "No Hiding from the Blackbird/Burial Of The Sardine". Biz Markie also covers this song on Make the Music with Your Mouth, Biz, but he changes most of the lyrics. Jello Biafra covered this song with his band Lard on their album The Last Temptation of Reid in 1990. In 1998, Amanda Lear included this song in her compilation Made in Blood & Honey. The song is referenced in the lyrics of the Mudvayne song "Internal Primates Forever" on L.D. 50. Stone Sour also covered this song on their 2001 demo CD, giving it the name "Death Dance of the Frog Fish", and has also used it as exit music while on tour. Swedish death industrialists Brighter Death Now included a version of the song on their 2005 recording Kamikaze Kabaret. German industrial/EBM act Neuroticfish covered the song on Gelb in 2005. A new version by Napoleon's Ghost was produced by Les Fradkin in 2006. The flip or B-side of the single was recreated as well by Napoleon's Ghost "!AaaH-aH ,yawA eM ekaT oT gnimoC er'yehT". The russian psytrance artist Psykovsky sampled parts of the song on his piece "Badinerie Dreaming", released on his album "Na Ve Ka" from 2011. Ray Stevens covered the song in 2012 for his nine-CD Encyclopedia of Recorded Comedy Music collection, complete with vocal speed changes, a drum beat, sirens, and a funny sped-up laugh. Butcher Babies covered the song on their EP Uncovered in 2014. The 2018 Kids See Ghosts song "Fire" samples the percussion intro of the recording. Austen Tayshus covered the song on his 1988 album Whispering Joke and also as a single. The B-side (a reversed version) was recreated as well. A novelty song is a comical or nonsensical song, performed principally for its comical effect. Novelty songs achieved great popularity during the 1920s and 1930s. They had a resurgence of interest in the 1950s and 1960s. The term arose in Tin Pan Alley to describe one of the major divisions of popular music; the other two divisions were ballads and dance music. Humorous songs, or those containing humorous elements, are not necessarily novelty songs. Novelty songs are often a parody or humor song, and may apply to a current event such as a holiday or a fad such as a dance or TV programme. Many use unusual lyrics, subjects, sounds, or instrumentation, and may not even be musical. For example, the 1966 novelty song "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!" has little music and is set to a rhythm tapped out on a snare drum and tambourine. A book on achieving an attention-grabbing novelty single is The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way), written by The KLF. It is based on their achievement of a UK number-one single with "Doctorin' the Tardis", a 1988 dance remix mashup of the Doctor Who theme music released under the name of 'The Timelords.' It argued that (at the time) achieving a number one single could be achieved less by musical talent than through market research, sampling and gimmicks matched to an underlying danceable groove. Novelty songs were a major staple of Tin Pan Alley from its start in the late 19th century. They continued to proliferate in the early years of the 20th century, some rising to be among the biggest hits of the era. Varieties included songs with an unusual gimmick, such as the stuttering in "K-K-K-Katy" or the playful boop-boop-a-doops of "I Wanna Be Loved By You", which made a star out of Helen Kane and inspired the creation of Betty Boop; silly lyrics like "Yes! We Have No Bananas"; playful songs with a bit of double entendre, such as "Don't Put a Tax on All the Beautiful Girls"; and invocations of foreign lands with emphasis on general feel of exoticism rather than geographic or anthropological accuracy, such as "Oh By Jingo!", "The Sheik of Araby", and "The Yodeling Chinaman". These songs were perfect for the medium of Vaudeville, and performers such as Eddie Cantor and Sophie Tucker became well-known for such songs. Zez Confrey's 1920s instrumental compositions, which involved gimmicky approaches (such as "Kitten on the Keys") or maniacally rapid tempos ("Dizzy Fingers"), were popular enough to start a fad of novelty piano pieces that lasted through the decade. The fad was brought about by the increasing availability of audio recordings by way of the player piano and the phonograph; whereas much of Tin Pan Alley's repertoire was sold in the form of sheet music and thus had to be simple enough for an amateur pianist to play, novelty piano brought virtuoso-level performance to the home and to those who would not normally attend classical concerts. A 1940s novelty song was Spike Jones' 1942 "Der Fuehrer's Face", which included raspberries in its chorus. Tex Williams's "Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette)" topped the Billboard best-sellers chart for six weeks and the country music chart for 16 weeks in 1947 and 1948. Hank Williams, Sr.'s "Move It On Over," his first hit song, has some humor and novelty elements (about a man having to share the doghouse when his lover kicks him out of the house), but contemporaries (among them Jerry Rivers) disputed this and noted that many men had been faced with eviction under similar circumstances. The 1953 #1 single "(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window?" became notable both for its extensive airplay and the backlash from listeners who found it increasingly annoying. Satirists such as Stan Freberg and Tom Lehrer used novelty songs to poke fun at contemporary pop culture in the 1950s and early 1960s. In 1951, Frank Sinatra was paired in a CBS television special with TV personality Dagmar. Mitch Miller at Columbia Records became intrigued with the pairing and compelled songwriter Dick Manning to compose a song for the two of them. The result was "Mama Will Bark", a novelty song performed by Sinatra with interspersed spoken statements by Dagmar, saying things like "mama will bark", "mama will spank", and "papa will spank". The recording even includes the sound of a dog yowling. It is regarded by both music scholars and Sinatra enthusiasts to be perhaps the worst song he ever recorded. Sinatra would in fact record a few others before he left Columbia and joined Capitol Records in 1952. Dickie Goodman faced a lawsuit for his 1956 novelty song "The Flying Saucer", which sampled snippets of contemporary hits without permission and arranged them to resemble interviews with an alien landing on Earth. Goodman released more hit singles in the same vein for the next two decades including his gold record RIAA certified hit with Mr. Jaws in 1975 which charted #1 in Cash Box and Record World and was based on the movie Jaws. Among the more far out songs of this genre was the two released in 1956 by Nervous Norvus, "Transfusion" and "Ape Call". The Coasters had novelty songs such as "Charlie Brown" and "Yakety Yak". "Yakety Yak" became a #1 single on July 21, 1958, and is the only novelty song (#346) included in the Songs of the Century. "Lucky Ladybug" by Billy and Lillie was popular in December 1958. Lonnie Donegan's 1959 cover of the 1924 novelty song "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour (On the Bedpost Overnight?)" was a transatlantic hit, reaching #5 on the Billboard charts two years after its release; it was one of the earliest top-5 hits to come from the United Kingdom in the rock era, preceding the British Invasion. Three songs using a sped-up recording technique became #1 hits in the United States in 1958-59: David Seville's "Witch Doctor" and Ragtime Cowboy Joe, Sheb Wooley's "The Purple People Eater", and Seville's "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)", which used a speeded-up voice technique to simulate three chipmunks' voices. The technique (which Dickie Goodman had also used on "The Flying Saucer") would inspire a number of other knockoffs, including The Nutty Squirrels and Russ Regan's one-off group Dancer, Prancer and Nervous. In 1960, 16-year-old Brian Hyland had a novelty hit with the song "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini", by Paul Vance and Lee Pockriss, which topped the Billboard single chart. The Trashmen reached the top 5 with "Surfin' Bird", a surf rock medley of two novelty songs originally recorded by The Rivingtons. In 1964, the Grammy for Best Country and Western Album was awarded to Roger Miller. Miller was known to sing novelty songs. In 1965, "A Windmill in Old Amsterdam", a song written by Ted Dicks and Myles Rudge, became a UK hit for Ronnie Hilton. The song spent a total of 13 weeks on the UK Singles Chart peaking at No. 23 in the chart of 17 February 1965. The song's composers were granted an Ivor Novello Award in 1966 for the Year’s Outstanding Novelty Composition. Chuck Berry's "My Ding-a-Ling" reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1972, and Ray Stevens, known for such novelty hits as "Ahab the Arab", "Gitarzan", and "Mississippi Squirrel Revival", had a #1 hit with "The Streak" in 1974. Comedy act Cheech & Chong recorded a number of musical bits that can be classified as novelty songs, including "Basketball Jones"(1973) and "Earache My Eye" (1974). Warren Zevon's lone chart hit was the novelty number "Werewolves of London." Other novelty songs in the '70s are Jimmy Castor Bunch "King Kong"(1975), Rick Dees' "Disco Duck" (1976) and The Fools' "Psycho Chicken" (1978). "Weird Al" Yankovic would emerge as one of the most prolific parody acts of all time in the 1980s, with a career that would span four decades; he would join Cliff Richard in being one of the few acts to have at least one top-40 hit in the U.S. in four consecutive decades (1950s through the 1980s for Richard, 1980s to 2010s for Yankovic). Randy Brooks wrote a Christmas novelty song and it was originally recorded by then husband-wife recording duo Elmo Shropshire and his wife Patsy in 1979, called "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer". It tells the tragic-comic story of a family grandmother who meets her end on Christmas Eve. After having drunk too much eggnog and forgetting to take her medicine, she staggers out of her family's house late Christmas Eve. She is mauled over by Santa Claus' entourage, and found trampled at the scene the next morning. It has become a staple of Christmas music playlists on American radio since its original release. An underground novelty music scene began to emerge in the 1960s, beginning with the homosexually themed songs of Camp Records and the racist humor of Johnny Rebel, then in the 1970s and 1980s with X-rated albums by David Allan Coe and Clarence "Blowfly" Reid. Novelty songs have been popular in the UK as well. In 1991, "The Stonk" novelty song raised over £100,000 for the Comic Relief charity. In 1993, "Mr Blobby" became the second novelty song to reach the coveted Christmas number one slot in the UK, following Benny Hill's 1971 chart-topper "Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West)". Many popular children's TV characters would try to claim the Christmas number one spot after this. In 1997, the Teletubbies who reached number one the previous week failed to gain it with their single "Say Eh-oh!". They came second in the charts to The Spice Girls second of three consecutive Christmas number ones, with "Too Much". Later on at the turn of the millennium, Bob the Builder was successful in achieving a Christmas number one in 2000, with "Can We Fix It?". However, Bob the Builder did have another number one single a year later with a cover of Lou Bega's "Mambo No.5", and also had another less successful single in 2008 with "Big Fish Little Fish". Some novelty music draws its appeal from its unintentional novelty; so-called "outsider musicians" with little or no formal musical training often will produce comical results (see for instance, Florence Foster Jenkins, Mrs. Miller, the Portsmouth Sinfonia, The Shaggs and William Hung). After the fictitious composer P.D.Q. Bach repeatedly won the "Best Comedy Album" Grammy from 1990 to 1993, the category was changed to "Best Spoken Comedy Album". When "Best Comedy Album" was reinstated in 2004, "Weird Al" Yankovic won for Poodle Hat. Novelty songs were popular on U.S. radio throughout the 1970s and 1980s, to the point where it was not uncommon for novelty songs to break into the top 40. Freeform and album-oriented rock stations made use of novelty songs; some of the best-known work from progressive rocker Frank Zappa, for instance, is his extensive body of mostly adult-oriented novelty music. Zappa's "Bobby Brown (Goes Down)" was a smash hit in Europe despite its explicit storyline, and his "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" and "Dancin' Fool" also reached the top 100 in his native United States. Beginning in 1970, Dr. Demento's nationally syndicated radio show gave novelty songs an outlet for much of the country; this lasted through the mid-2000s, when the show (mirroring trends in the genre) faded in popularity until its terrestrial cancellation in June 2010. In the 21st century, novelty songs had found a new audience online; the hit song "The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)" by Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis was featured on the kids compilation album So Fresh Pop Party 13 in 2014. Likewise, British comedian Michael Dapaah's 2017 hit "Man's Not Hot", which depicts a man who refuses to take off his jacket, received widespread attention and inspired countless memes as a result of its success. The children's novelty song "Baby Shark" received widespread attention when Korean education brand Pinkfong's cover version from an online viral video reached the top 40 in the U.S. and several other countries. Novelty, Comedy Aquila, Richard, That Old-time Rock & Roll: A Chronicle of an Era, 1954-1963. University of Illinois Press, 2000., Axford, Elizabeth C. Song Sheets to Software: A Guide to Print Music, Software, and Web Sites for Musicians. Scarecrow Press, 2004., Hamm, Charles (ed.). Irving Berlin Early Songs. Marcel Dekker, 1995., Tawa, Nicholas E. Supremely American: Popular Song in the 20th Century . Scarecrow Press, 2005., Otfonoski, Steve, The Golden Age of Novelty Songs. Billboard Books, 2000 The Last Temptation of Reid is the debut studio album by Lard, released in 1990. The album includes a cover of "They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha- Haaa!", originally performed by Napoleon XIV, with the addition of a guitar part and an extra verse (written by Jello Biafra) to the original song's setup. The album also includes the song "Forkboy" which was used on the Natural Born Killers soundtrack and covered by Flotsam and Jetsam (on their album, High) and industrial rock act Black Light Burns. The vinyl LP version of the album does not include the track "I Am Your Clock", which was instead released as a separate EP. The album's title is a reference to the Martin Scorsese film, The Last Temptation of Christ. A movie poster for the film is included in the liner notes of the album, only with the name "Reid" pasted over "Christ" in the title. "Reid" refers to Reid Hyams, who recorded the group's first EP, The Power of Lard, and co-owned Chicago Trax. A photo of Hyams can be seen on the back cover of the vinyl issue of the album and in the booklet of the CD. All songs written by Biafra/Jourgensen/Barker/Ward, except when noted. 1. "Forkboy" – 3:53 2. "Pineapple Face" – 6:37 3. "Mate Spawn & Die" – 4:55 4. "Drug Raid At 4 AM" – 5:01 5. "Can God Fill Teeth?" – 4:20 6. "Bozo Skeleton" – 4:30 7. "Sylvestre Matuschka" – 3:54 8. "They're Coming to Take Me Away" – 8:28 9. "I Am Your Clock" – 15:29 Jello Biafra – lead vocals (all but 4), deprogramming, sleeve concept, back cover photo, Alien Jourgensen – guitars, programming, production, Paul Barker – bass, programming, production, Jeff Ward – drums (2, 4–9), backing and lead (4) vocals William Rieflin – drums (1, 3), Jeff Newell – engineer, Winston Smith – front cover artwork & "Ant People", John Yates – sleeve design

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The 2018 Summer Youth Olympics (), officially known as the III Summer Youth Olympic Games, and commonly known as Buenos Aires 2018, were an international sports, cultural, and educational event held in Buenos Aires, Argentina between 6 and 18 October 2018. They were the first Summer Youth Olympic Games held outside of Asia (also first in the Southern and Western Hemispheres), and the first Youth Games for either summer or winter held outside Eurasia. It was the second Olympic Games held in South America after the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Six bids were initially submitted for the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics. Buenos Aires confirmed their bid in September 2011. On 13 February 2013, the IOC selected Buenos Aires as one of the three Candidate Cities for the 2018 Summer Youth Olympic Games. The other two candidate cities were Glasgow and Medellín. Guadalajara and Rotterdam failed to become candidates. Poznań withdrew their bid before the candidate cities were selected. The host city election vote was held at an IOC Session in Lausanne. The results were as follows: In October 2013, International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach appointed Namibian sprinter and four-time Olympic silver medalist Frank Fredericks as Chairman of the Coordination Commission for the 3rd Summer Youth Olympic Games — Buenos Aires 2018. Fredericks was heading the six-person IOC Coordination Commission made up of several Olympians including Danka Bartekova, the youngest IOC Member and Young Ambassador from the inaugural Youth Olympic Games in Singapore in 2010. This commission was completed by two other IOC members, China's Li Lingwei, winner of three World Badminton Championships, and Barry Maister, a member of New Zealand's hockey team that won the Olympic gold medals at 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal; and Adham Sharara, Canadian President of the International Table Tennis Federation, and Henry Nuñez, head of the National Olympic Committee of Costa Rica. Working along with them there was the Buenos Aires Youth Olympic Games Organising Committee (BAYOGOC), that includes member of the , the local government and the national government, and which CEO was Leandro Larrosa. The local organising committee involves young people in all levels of the organization; including an ‘Athlete Commission’ and a newly established ‘Youth Commission’ – a group of young consultants chosen by the AOC from local schools and universities – and the employees within BAYOGOC from junior to director level. The first Coordination Commission meeting took place in Buenos Aires on 27–28 September 2014. During June 2015 a small delegation from Nanjing Youth Olympic Games Organizing Committee (NYOGOC) visited Buenos Aires for a series of debriefing workshops and seminars to pass on their expertise focusing on strategic decisions to be made in the early stages such as legacy, the use of the YOG to impact youth and sport, and benefits of the YOG to engage communities. The CEOs of Singapore 2010, Lillehammer 2016 and Innsbruck 2012 also took part of these meetings that were presided over by Frank Fredericks. Football player and Olympic gold medalist Lionel Messi, originally not from Buenos Aires but from Rosario, was named as an ambassador of the 2018 YOG in March 2014, and he delivered a video welcoming message for the young athletes to Buenos Aires during the closing ceremony of the 2014 Summer Youth Olympics. In December 2015, the four-time olympic medalist Luciana Aymar was also named as an ambassador of Buenos Aires 2018. In July 2017, Olympic gold medalist Luis Scola was named ambassador of the 2018 YOG. Joining the Olympic programme for the first time at Buenos Aires 2018 were BMX freestyle, kitesurfing, cross country running, beach handball, sport climbing, karate, breakdancing, and roller sports; and the event programme saw an increased gender balance. FIFA also decided to replace football with futsal at the Buenos Aires Youth Olympics, while other sports such as skateboarding were being considered for the programme. Roller speed skating was added to the Olympic programme on 17 March 2017. Three years before the event, a survey showed that public support had reached 82.3 percent in favour of the Youth Olympic games in Buenos Aires. During the second visit of the International Olympic Committee's Coordination Commission to the city, on 13 and 14 August 2015, Mr. Fredericks highlighted the implementation of 13 of the recommendation of the Agenda 2020 by BAYOGOC. The original plan was based on the bid for the 2004 Summer Olympics, in which a 15 km long Olympic Corridor would have worked instead of a more concentrated Olympic Park. For the Buenos Aires bid for the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics the Olympic Corridor was adapted into a Green Corridor, one of the two main sports zones as the primary sites of the Games in Buenos Aires 2018, being the other one Parque Roca, to the south of the city. The Green Corridor and the Olympic Corridor shared River Plate Stadium, , Gimnasia y Esgrima de Buenos Aires, Parque Tres de Febrero, La Bombonera, La Rural and CeNARD as venues. In order to group the sports in a more compact framework, in September 2014 a new four- clusters concept was revealed, dropping out venues such as La Rural. It was announced then that each cluster will include an area called YOG FEST where sporting experiences, family entertainment and cultural activities will take place. But at the 129th IOC Session, in August 2016, a new venues masterplan was presented, including two new stand-alone venues, adding La Rural once again and replacing with Tecnópolis. The International Olympic Committee members stayed at the Sheraton Hotel, located in the district of Retiro and close to Retiro railway station, one of the most important transportation hubs in Buenos Aires. After numerous changes, in February 2018, the definitive venues plan was presented. The Opening Ceremony was held at the Obelisco de Buenos Aires. Adjacent to downtown Buenos Aires and stretching three kilometres along the scenic banks of the River Plate, this area was distinguished by swathes of parks. It included the barrios of Núñez and Palermo. The Palermo Woods, a highly popular retreat for porteños and visitors alike, was the triathlon and cycling venue. Venues located in Núñez can be reached by Belgrano Norte Line (at Ciudad Universitaria railway station) or by nearby Mitre Line (at ) or Buenos Aires underground Line D (at Congreso de Tucumán Station). Venues located in Palermo can be reached by Mitre Line ( and ). Located to the South of Buenos Aires, Roca Park is a vast area of 200 hectares in the district of Villa Soldati, a neighborhood that has been targeted by the local Government in need of urban development. One of the greenest areas in the metropolis, it is adjacent to the City Park and the Buenos Aires Automotive Racetrack. The Park, inaugurated in the 1980s, has many sports venues and recreational facilities, including the iconic Roca Park Athletics Stadium and the Roca Park Tennis Stadium. This area was also the site of the Youth Olympic Village (YOV), from where 65 percent of the athletes were able to walk to their competition venues, and after the event it will become the new location for the CeNARD. The Parque Polideportivo Roca was fully renovated before the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics in order to be used as main Olympic Park. Six pavilions were built: Asia Pavilion (judo and wrestling), Africa Pavilion (fencing and modern pentathlon), Europe Pavilion (karate and weightlifting), Oceania Pavilion (boxing and taekwondo), America Pavilion (gymnastics) and natatorium. The complex also includes hockey and athletics field. Olympic Park can be reached by Premetro tram at Cecilia Grierson station, or by the southern Metrobus line. Located to the east of the city, this cluster occupies a significant portion of the Río de la Plata riverbank and includes the old Puerto Madero docks as venue for water sports. Rowing competitions were held over 500 metres rather than the usual 2,000 metres. This area can be reached by Buenos Aires Underground lines A, B, D and E. Located west of the city and next to the General Paz Avenue which marks the limit of Buenos Aires city, the 50 hectares science, technology, industry and art mega exhibition Tecnópolis was inaugurated in 2011 and was the venue for four sports competitions. This area can be access by Mitre Line Railway at Migueletes station or by Belgrano Norte Line at Saavedra or Padilla stations. Athens (Greece) - La Plata (Buenos Aires) - Parana (Entre Rios) - Santa Fe (Santa Fe) - Iguazu (Misiones) - Corrientes (Corrientes) - Jujuy (Jujuy) - Salta (Salta） - Tucuman (Tucuman) - Catamarca (Catamarca) - La Rioja (La Rioja) - Mendoza (Mendoza) - San Juan (San Juan) - Cordoba (Cordoba) - Neuquen (Neuquen) - Bariloche (Rio Negro) - Ushuaia (Tierra del Fuego) - Buenos Aires (Federal Capital) (Argentina) The opening ceremony of the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics was held at the Obelisco de Buenos Aires on 6 October 2018 at 20:00 (8 PM) Argentina Time. The 2018 Summer Youth Olympics featured 239 events in 32 sports. 239 events, there will be 12 mixed team events (Mixed-NOCs), 9 mixed team events (NOCs), 1 open event (Equestrian), 113 men's events, and 102 women's events. Aquatics These were the demonstration sports in the games: A total of 206 countries sent at least one athlete to compete in the Games., Kosovo and South Sudan made their Youth Olympics debut., It was the first Olympic participation of Eswatini (formerly known as Swaziland) The schedule for the 2018 Summer Youth Olympic Games was released on 9 May 2018, exactly 150 days before the starting of the games on its official website. The closing ceremony of the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics was held at the Youth Olympic Village on 18 October 2018. The Olympic flag was handed over to the next host city, Senegalese capital Dakar for the 2022 Summer Youth Olympics. Supatchanin Khamhaeng of Thailand originally won the gold medal at the Girls' +63 kg Weightlifting event, but was disqualified in 2019 after testing positive for a banned substance. The official emblem of the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics was presented in July 2015, three years before the games. The emblem reflects the diversity of Buenos Aires and it is inspired by the city's vibrant colours, eclectic culture, iconic architecture and the many neighbourhoods that make up the Argentine capital. Each letter represents a famous landmark, including the Floralis Genérica, Space Tower, the Columbus Theatre, the National Library and the Obelisk. A short video produced by the Buenos Aires Youth Olympic Games Organising Committee (BAYOGOC) shows what each letter on the emblem relates to. The slogan of these games is "Feel the Future" was unveiled on 8 April 2018. The olympic mascot of these games was unveiled on 29 May 2018. The mascot is a young Jaguar, its name "Pandi" is a combination of the scientific name of the species (Panthera onca) and the relationship of the mascot with the "digital world". The president of the Buenos Aires 2018 Organising Committee, Gerardo Werthein, said that the mascot "seeks to inspire young people on the transformative power of Olympism and sport". The mascot was created by the Argentine agency Human Full Agency with direction of Peta Rivero y Hornos. While the animation short was made by the local production company Buda TV. The official song of Buenos Aires 2018 is Alive, performed by Candelaria Molfese and Fernando Dente. It was produced by Radio Disney. The name of the song in Spanish is "Vamos Juntos" ("Let's go together"), which was also the name of the governing coalition for the 2017 legislative elections in Buenos Aires city. 1951 Pan American Games, 2006 South American Games, 125th IOC Session, 133rd IOC Session Official website, Buenos Aires 2018 Official Twitter account, Buenos Aires 2018 Official Facebook site The 2018 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XXIII Olympic Winter Games (; ) and commonly known as PyeongChang 2018, was an international winter multi-sport event that was held between 9 and 25 February 2018 in Pyeongchang County, Gangwon Province, South Korea, with the opening rounds for certain events held on 8 February 2018, the day before the opening ceremony. Pyeongchang was elected as the host city in July 2011, at the 123rd IOC Session in Durban, South Africa. This was the second time that South Korea had hosted the Olympic Games, having previously hosted the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, but it was only the first Winter Olympics to be held in the country. It was the first of three consecutive Olympics to be held in East Asia, the following two being Tokyo 2020 (summer) and Beijing 2022 (winter). It was the third time that an East Asian country had hosted the Winter Games, after Sapporo (1972) and Nagano (1998), both of these cities in Japan. It was also the first Winter Olympics to be held in mainland Asia. The Games featured 102 events over 15 disciplines, a record number of events for the Winter Games. Four events made their Olympic debut in 2018: "big air" snowboarding, mass start speed skating, mixed doubles curling, and mixed team alpine skiing. A total of 2,914 athletes from 92 NOCs competed, including the national debuts of Ecuador, Eritrea, Kosovo, Malaysia, Nigeria and Singapore. After a state- sponsored doping program was exposed following the 2014 Winter Olympics, the Russian Olympic Committee was suspended, but selected athletes were allowed to compete neutrally under the special IOC designation of "Olympic Athletes from Russia" (OAR). North Korea agreed to participate in the Games despite tense relations with South Korea; the two nations paraded together at the opening ceremony as a unified Korea, and fielded a unified team (COR) in the women's ice hockey. Norway led the total medal tally with 39, followed by Germany's 31 and Canada's 29. Germany and Norway were tied for the highest number of gold medals, both winning 14. Host nation South Korea won 17 medals, their highest medal haul at a Winter Olympics, five of which were gold. Pyeongchang bid to host both the 2010 and 2014 Winter Olympics, but lost in the final rounds of voting to Vancouver and Sochi respectively. Munich also launched a bid to host these Games. Prior to Beijing's successful 2022 Winter Olympics bid, Munich would have become the first city to host both the Winter and the Summer Games, having previously hosted the 1972 Summer Olympics, but received only 25 votes. Annecy (in southeastern France) launched their own bid, which failed to secure public support from the local citizens. Their bid ended up receiving seven votes. Pyeongchang was elected as the host city at the 123rd IOC Session in Durban in 2011, earning the necessary majority of at least 48 votes in just one round of voting, more votes than its competitors combined. With this, Pyeongchang became the third Asian city to host the Winter Games; the first two were in Japan, at Sapporo (1972) and Nagano (1998). On 5 August 2011, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced the formation of the Pyeongchang 2018 Coordination Commission. On 4 October 2011, it was announced that the Organizing Committee for the 2018 Winter Olympics would be headed by Kim Jin-sun. The Pyeongchang Organizing Committee for the 2018 Olympic & Paralympic Winter Games (POCOG) was launched at its inaugural assembly on 19 October 2011. The first tasks of the organizing committee were putting together a master plan for the Games as well as forming a design for the venues. The IOC Coordination Commission for the 2018 Winter Olympics made their first visit to Pyeongchang in March 2012. By then, construction was already underway on the Olympic Village. In June 2012, construction began on a high-speed rail line that would connect Pyeongchang to Seoul. The International Paralympic Committee met for an orientation with the Pyeongchang 2018 organizing committee in July 2012. Then-IOC President Jacques Rogge visited Pyeongchang for the first time in February 2013. The Pyeongchang Organizing Committee for the 2018 Olympic & Paralympic Winter Games created Pyeongchang WINNERS in 2014 by recruiting university students living in South Korea to spread awareness of the Olympic Games through social networking services and news articles. The design for the Games' medals was unveiled on 21 September 2017. Created by Lee Suk-woo, the design features a pattern of diagonal ridges on both sides, with the Olympic rings on the front, and the obverse showing the 2018 Olympics' emblem, the event name and the discipline. The edge of each medal is marked with extrusions of hangul alphabets, while the ribbons are made from a traditional South Korean textile. The torch relay started on 24 October 2017 in Greece and lasted for 101 days, ending at the start of the Olympics on 9 February 2018. The Olympic torch entered South Korea on 1 November 2017. There were 7,500 torch bearers to represent the combined Korean population of approximately 75 million people. There were also 2,018 support runners to guard the torch and act as messengers. The torch and its bearers traveled by a diverse means of transportation, including by turtle ship in Hansando Island, sailboat on the Baengmagang River in Buyeo, marine cable car in Yeosu, zip-wire over Bamseom Island, steam train in the Gokseong Train Village, marine rail bike along the east coast in Samcheok, and by yacht in Busan Metropolitan City. There were also robot torch relays in Jeju and Daejeon. Most of the outdoor snow events were held in the county of Pyeongchang, while some of the alpine skiing events took place in the neighboring county of Jeongseon. The indoor ice events were held in the nearby city of Gangneung. The Alpensia Sports Park in Daegwallyeong-myeon, Pyeongchang, was the focus of the 2018 Winter Olympics. It was home to the Olympic Stadium, the Olympic Village and most of the outdoor sports venues. Alpensia Ski Jumping Centre – ski jumping, Nordic combined, snowboarding (big air), Alpensia Biathlon Centre – biathlon, Alpensia Cross-Country Skiing Centre – cross-country skiing, Nordic combined, Alpensia Sliding Centre – luge, bobsleigh, skeleton, Yongpyong Alpine Centre – alpine skiing (slalom, giant slalom) Additionally, a stand-alone outdoor sports venue was located in Bongpyeong- myeon, Pyeongchang: Phoenix Snow Park – freestyle skiing, snowboarding Another stand-alone outdoor sports venue was located in neighboring Jeongseon county: Jeongseon Alpine Centre – alpine skiing (downhill, super-G, combined) The Gangneung Olympic Park, in the neighborhood of Gyo-dong in Gangneung city, includes four indoor sports venues, all in close proximity to one another. Gangneung Hockey Centre – ice hockey (men's competition), Gangneung Curling Centre – curling, Gangneung Oval – long track speed skating, Gangneung Ice Arena – short track speed skating, figure skating In addition, a stand-alone indoor sports venue was located in the grounds of Catholic Kwandong University. Kwandong Hockey Centre – ice hockey (women's competition) Ticket prices for the 2018 Winter Olympics were announced in April 2016 and tickets went on sale in October 2016. Event tickets ranged in price from ₩20,000 South Korean won (approx. US$) to ₩900,000 (~US$) while tickets for the opening and closing ceremonies ranged from ₩220,000 (~US$) to ₩1.5 million (~US$). The exact prices were determined through market research; around 50% of the tickets were expected to cost about ₩80,000 (~US$) or less, and tickets in sports that are relatively unknown in the region, such as biathlon and luge, were made cheaper in order to encourage attendance. By contrast, figure skating and the men's ice hockey gold-medal game carried the most expensive tickets of the Games. As of 11 October 2017, domestic ticket sales for the Games were reported to be slow. Of the 750,000 seats allocated to South Koreans, only 20.7% had been sold. International sales were more favorable, with 59.7% of the 320,000 allocated tickets sold. However, as of 31 January 2018, 77% of all tickets had been sold. The opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics was held at the Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium on 9 February 2018; the US$100 million facility was only intended to be used for the opening and closing ceremonies of these Olympics and the subsequent Paralympics, and was demolished following their conclusion. The 2018 Winter Olympics featured 102 events over 15 disciplines in 7 sports, making it the first Winter Olympics to surpass 100 medal events. Six new events in existing sports were introduced to the Winter Olympic program in Pyeongchang: men's and ladies' big air snowboarding, mixed doubles curling, men's and ladies' mass start speed skating, and mixed team alpine skiing. Numbers in parentheses indicate the number of medal events contested in each separate discipline. A total of 92 teams qualified at least one athlete to compete in the Games. The number of athletes who qualified per country is listed in the table below (number of athletes shown in parentheses). Six nations made their Winter Olympics debut: Ecuador, Eritrea, Kosovo, Malaysia, Nigeria and Singapore. Athletes from three further countries – the Cayman Islands, Dominica and Peru – qualified to compete, but all three National Olympic Committees returned the quota spots back to the International Ski Federation (FIS). Under an historic agreement facilitated by the IOC, qualified athletes from North Korea were allowed to cross the Korean Demilitarized Zone into South Korea to compete in the Games. The two nations marched together under the Korean Unification Flag during the opening ceremony. A unified Korean team, consisting of 12 players from North Korea and 23 from South Korea, competed in the women's ice hockey tournament under a special IOC country code designation (COR) following talks in Panmunjom on 17 January 2018. The two nations also participated separately: the South Korea team competed in every sport and the North Korea team competed in alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, figure skating and short track speed skating. On 5 December 2017, the IOC announced that the Russian Olympic Committee had been suspended due to the Russian doping controversy and the investigation into the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Individual Russian athletes, who qualified and could demonstrate they had complied with the IOC's doping regulations, were given the option to compete at the 2018 Games as "Olympic Athletes from Russia" (OAR) under the Olympic flag and with the Olympic anthem played at any ceremony. The IOC has allowed NBC to influence the Olympic event scheduling to maximize U.S. television ratings when possible, due to the substantial fees paid by NBC for rights to the Olympics (which have been extended through 2032 with a nearly $8 billion agreement). As figure skating is one of the most popular Winter Olympic sports among U.S. viewers, the figure skating events were scheduled with morning start times to accommodate primetime broadcasts in the Americas. This scheduling practice affected the events themselves, including skaters having to adjust to the modified schedule, as well as lower attendance levels at the sessions. Conversely, and somewhat controversially, eight of the eleven biathlon events were scheduled at night, making it necessary for competitors to ski and shoot under floodlights, with colder temperatures and blustery winds. Three podium sweeps were recorded during the Games. Noriaki Kasai of Japan became the first athlete in history to participate in eight Winter Olympics when he took part in the ski jumping qualification the day before the opening of the Games. The previous record of seven Winter Olympics was held by Russian luger Albert Demchenko., Japanese athlete Yuzuru Hanyu became the fourth male figure skater (after Gillis Grafström, Karl Schäfer, and Dick Button) to win two consecutive Olympic gold medals., American Nathan Chen became the first figure skater to land five quadruple jumps in one program., German figure skaters Aliona Savchenko and Bruno Massot set a new ISU best free skating score of 159.31 in pair skating., Canadian figure skaters Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir set a new ISU best short dance score of 83.67 and a new ISU best combined total score of 206.07 in ice dance. French ice dancers Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron set a new ISU best free dance score of 123.35., Russian figure skater Alina Zagitova set a new ISU best short program score of 82.92 in Ladies' single skating., Dutch speed skater Sven Kramer won gold in the men's 5000 m event, becoming the only male speed skater to win the same Olympic event three times. He was also the first man to win a total of eight Olympic medals in speed skating., Dutch speed skater Ireen Wüst won an individual gold medal for the fourth Olympics in a row, the first time this had been achieved by a Winter Olympian. She also became the first speed skater (male or female) to win ten Winter Olympic medals and the first female Winter Olympian to win nine individual medals., Chinese short track speed skater Wu Dajing beat the men's 500 m world record twice en route to winning a gold medal, becoming only the second person in history to skate the discipline in under 40 seconds (after American J. R. Celski), and the first to achieve this at "sea level"., Dutch athlete Jorien ter Mors became the first female athlete to win Olympic medals in two different sports at a single Winter Games; she won a speed skating gold medal in the 1000 m and she was also part of the Dutch short track team that won bronze in the 3000 m relay., Ester Ledecká of the Czech Republic won gold in the super-G skiing event and another gold in the snowboarding parallel giant slalom, making her the first female athlete to win Olympic gold medals in two different sports at a single Winter Games., Norwegian cross-country skier Marit Bjørgen won bronze in the women's team sprint and gold in the 30 km classical event, bringing her total Olympic medal haul to fifteen, the most won by any athlete (male or female) in Winter Olympics history. The record was previously held by fellow Norwegian athlete Ole Einar Bjørndalen who has thirteen Olympic medals., Germany and Canada tied for gold in the two-man bobsleigh event, only the second time in history that two countries had tied for a gold medal in this particular event, the first time being in the 1998 Winter Olympics twenty years earlier., Norway won a total of 39 medals, setting a new record for the highest number of medals won at a single Winter Olympics. Their 39th medal was the gold won by cross-country skier Marit Bjørgen in the 30 km classical event. The record was previously held by the USA who won 37 medals in Vancouver in 2010. The closing ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics was held at the Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium on 25 February 2018. IOC president Thomas Bach declared the Games closed, and the cauldron was extinguished. Broadcast rights to the 2018 Winter Olympics were already sold in some countries as part of long-term broadcast rights deals, including the Games' local rightsholder SBS, which in July 2011 had extended its rights to the Olympics through 2024. SBS sub-licensed its rights to MBC and KBS. On 29 June 2015, the IOC announced that Discovery Communications (now Discovery Inc.) had acquired exclusive rights to the Olympics across all of Europe (excluding Russia) from 2018 through 2024. Discovery's pan-European Eurosport channels were promoted as the main broadcaster of the Games, but Discovery's free-to- air channels such as DMAX in Spain, Kanal 5 in Sweden, and TVNorge in Norway, were also involved in the overall broadcasting arrangements. Discovery was required to sub-license at least 100 hours of coverage to free-to-air broadcasters in each market; some of these agreements required certain sports to be exclusive to Eurosport and its affiliated networks. The deal did not initially cover France due to the broadcast rights of France Télévisions, which run through to the 2020 Games. In the United Kingdom, Discovery held exclusive pay television rights under licence from the BBC, in return for the BBC sub-licensing the free-to-air rights to the 2022 and 2024 Olympics from Discovery. Russian state broadcaster Channel One, and sports channel Match TV, committed to covering the Games with a focus on Russian athletes. Russia was not affected by the Eurosport deal, due to a pre-existing contract held by a marketing agency which extends to 2024. In the United States, the Games were once again broadcast by NBCUniversal properties under a long-term contract. On 28 March 2017, NBC announced that it would adopt a new format for its primetime coverage of the 2018 Winter Olympics, with a focus on live coverage in all time zones to take advantage of Pyeongchang's 14-hour difference with U.S. Eastern Time (and 17-hour difference with U.S. Pacific Time), and to address criticism of its previous tape delay practices. As before, the primetime block began at 8:00 p.m. ET (5:00 p.m. PT), and unlike previous Olympics, was available for streaming. Figure skating events were deliberately scheduled with morning sessions so they could be aired during primetime in the Americas (and in turn, NBC's coverage; due to the substantial fees NBC has paid for rights to the Olympics, the IOC has allowed NBC to have influence on event scheduling to maximize U.S. television ratings when possible; NBC agreed to a $7.75 billion contract extension on 7 May 2014, to air the Olympics through the 2032 games, is also one of the major sources of revenue for the IOC). Coverage took a break in the East for late local news, after which coverage continued into "Primetime Plus", featuring additional live coverage into the Eastern late night and Western primetime hours. NHK and Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) once again filmed portions of the Games in high- dynamic-range 8K resolution video, including 90 hours of footage of selected events and the opening ceremonies. ATSC 3.0 digital terrestrial television, using 4K resolution, was introduced in South Korea in 2017 in time for the Olympics. This footage was delivered in 4K in the U.S. by NBCUniversal parent Comcast to participating television providers, including its own Xfinity, as well as DirecTV and Dish Network. NBC's Raleigh-based affiliate WRAL-TV also held demonstration viewings as part of its ATSC 3.0 test broadcasts. The 2018 Winter Olympics were used to showcase 5G wireless technologies, as part of a collaboration between domestic wireless sponsor KT, and worldwide sponsor Intel. Several venues were outfitted with 5G networks to facilitate features such as live camera feeds from bobsleds, and multi-camera views from cross- country and figure skating events. These were offered as part of public demonstrations coordinated by the two sponsors. The winners of the Olympic Golden Rings Awards were announced in June 2019. There were 75 pieces of broadcast content from the 2018 Olympics submitted over ten categories (plus one category for the 2018 Youth Olympics). NBC won a total of eight awards, winning four of the main categories: Best Olympic Feature, Best Olympic Digital Service, Best Olympic Programme and Best Documentary Film; they came second in the Best On-Air Promotion and Best Social Media Content/Production categories. Discovery/Eurosport won four categories: Best On-Air Promotion, Best Production Design, Best Innovation and Best Social Media Content/Production; they also came second in the Best Olympic Digital Service category. The BBC and NHK took the other two main awards: Most Sustainable Operation and Best Athlete Profile respectively. The title of Best Feature at the Youth Olympic Games Buenos Aires 2018 was also awarded to the BBC. The official emblem, reflecting ice crystals and derived from the hangul letters and (the initial sounds of the "Pyeong" and "Chang"), was unveiled on 3 May 2013. In all official materials, the name of the host city was stylized in CamelCase as "PyeongChang", in order to alleviate potential confusion with Pyongyang, the similarly-named capital of neighboring North Korea. New international sponsorship deals also debuted in Pyeongchang: Toyota was introduced as the new "Mobility" sponsor of the Olympics, although the company waived its domestic sponsorship to the local competitors Hyundai and Kia Alibaba Group and Intel also debuted as e-commerce/cloud services and technology sponsors respectively. Due to the state of relations between North and South Korea, concerns were raised over the security of the 2018 Winter Olympics, especially in the wake of tensions over North Korean missile and nuclear tests. On 20 September 2017, South Korean president Moon Jae-in stated that the country would ensure the security of the Games. The next day, Laura Flessel-Colovic, the French Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports, stated that France would pull out of the Games if the safety of its delegation could not be guaranteed. The next day, Austria and Germany raised similar concerns and also threatened to skip the Games. France later reaffirmed its participation. In early December 2017, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, told Fox News that it was an "open question" whether the United States was going to participate in the Games, citing security concerns in the region. However, days later the White House Press Secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, stated that the United States would participate. In his New Year's address on 1 January 2018, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un proposed talks in Seoul over the country's participation in the Games, which would be the first high-level talks between the North and South in over two years. Because of the talks, held on 9 January, North Korea agreed to field athletes in Pyeongchang. On 17 January 2018, it was announced that North and South Korea had agreed to field a unified Korean women's ice hockey team at the Games, and to enter together under a Korean Unification Flag during the opening ceremony. These moves were met with opposition in South Korea, including protests and online petitions; critics argued that the government was attempting to use the Olympics to spread pro-North Korean sentiment, and that the unified hockey team would fail. A rap video entitled "The Regret for Pyeongchang" (평창유감), which echoed this criticism and called the event the "Pyongyang Olympics", went viral in the country. Japan's foreign affairs minister Tarō Kōno warned South Korea to be wary of North Korea's "charm offensive", and not to ease its pressure on the country. The South Korean President, Moon Jae-in, at the start of the Olympics shook hands with Kim Yo-jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and a prominent figure of the regime. This marked the first time since the Korean War that a member of the ruling Kim dynasty had visited South Korea. In contrast, U.S. vice president Mike Pence met with Fred Warmbier (father of Otto Warmbier, who had died after being released from captivity in North Korea) and a group of North Korean defectors in Pyeongchang. American officials said that North Korea cancelled a meeting with Pence at the last minute. At the closing ceremony, North Korea sent general Kim Yong-chol as its delegate. His presence was met with hostility from South Korean conservatives, as there were allegations that he had a role in the ROKS Cheonan sinking and other past attacks. The Ministry of Unification stated that "there is a limitation in pinpointing who was responsible for the incident." Although he is subject to sanctions, they did not affect his ability to visit the country for the Games. Russia's participation in the 2018 Winter Olympics was affected by the aftermath of its state-sponsored doping program. As a result, the IOC suspended the Russian Olympic Committee in December 2017, although Russian athletes whitelisted by the IOC were allowed to compete neutrally under the OAR (Olympic Athletes from Russia) designation. The official sanctions imposed by the IOC included: the exclusion of Russian government officials from the Games; the use of the Olympic flag and Olympic Anthem in place of the Russian flag and anthem; and the submission of a replacement logo for the OAR uniforms. By early January 2018, the IOC had banned 43 Russian athletes from competing in the 2018 Winter Olympics and all future Olympic Games (as part of the Oswald Commission). Of those athletes, 42 appealed against their bans to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and 28 of the appeals were successful, but eleven of the athletes had their sanctions upheld due to the weight of evidence against them. The IOC found it important to note that CAS Secretary General "insisted that the CAS decision does not mean that these 28 athletes are innocent" and that they would consider an appeal against the court's decision. Hearings for the remaining three athletes were postponed. The eventual number of neutral Russian athletes that participated at the 2018 Games was 168. These were selected from an original pool of 500 athletes that was put forward for consideration and, in order to receive an invitation to the Games, they were obliged to meet a number of pre-games conditions. Two athletes, who met the conditions and were cleared by the IOC, subsequently failed drug tests during the Games. Russian president Vladimir Putin and other officials had signalled in the past that it would be a humiliation if Russian athletes were not allowed to compete under the Russian flag. However, there were never actually any official plans to boycott the 2018 Games and in late 2017 the Russian government agreed to allow their athletes to compete at the Games as individuals under a neutral designation. Despite this public show of co-operation, there were numerous misgivings voiced by leading Russian politicians, including a statement from Putin himself saying that he believed the United States had used its influence within the IOC to "orchestrate the doping scandal". 86% of the Russian population opposed participation at the Olympics under a neutral flag, and many Russian fans attended the Games wearing the Russian colors and chanting "Russia!" in unison, in an act of defiance against the ban. The IOC's decision was heavily criticized by Jack Robertson, primary investigator of the Russian doping program on behalf of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), in whose opinion the judgement was commercially and politically motivated. He argued that not only was doping rife amongst Russian athletes but that there was no sign of it being eradicated. The CAS decision to overturn the life bans of 28 Russian athletes and restore their medals was also fiercely criticized, by Olympic officials, IOC president Thomas Bach and whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov's lawyer. 2018 Winter Paralympics, 2018 Summer Youth Olympics, Winter Olympic Games, Olympic Games, International Olympic Committee, List of IOC country codes, Soohorang and Bandabi Pyeongchang 2018, Pyeongchang 2018 (IOC) The Youth Olympic Games (YOG) is an international multi-sport event organized by the International Olympic Committee. The games are held every four years in staggered summer and winter events consistent with the current Olympic Games format, though in reverse order with Winter Games held in leap years instead of Summer Games. The first summer version was held in Singapore from 14 to 26 August 2010 while the first winter version was held in Innsbruck, Austria from 13 to 22 January 2012. The age limitation of the athletes is 14 to 18. The idea of such an event was introduced by Johann Rosenzopf from Austria in 1998. On 6 July 2007, International Olympic Committee (IOC) members at the 119th IOC session in Guatemala City approved the creation of a youth version of the Olympic Games, with the intention of sharing the costs of hosting the event between the IOC and the host city, whereas the travelling costs of athletes and coaches were to be paid by the IOC. These Games will also feature cultural exchange programs and opportunities for participants to meet Olympic athletes. Several other Olympic events for youth, like the European Youth Olympic Festival held every other year with summer and winter versions, and the Australian Youth Olympic Festival, have proven successful. The Youth Games are modelled after these sporting events. The YOG are also a successor to the discontinued World Youth Games. The Summer Youth Olympic Games of Singapore in 2010 and Nanjing in 2014 each played host to 3600 athletes and lasted 13 days, whereas the Winter YOG of Innsbruck in 2012 had 1059 athletes and Lillehammer in 2016 had 1100 athletes and lasted 10 days. Even though this exceeded initial estimates, the YOG are still both smaller in size as well as shorter than their senior equivalents. The most recent Summer YOG was the 2018 Summer Youth Olympic Games of Buenos Aires. The next Winter YOG to take place will be the 2020 Winter Youth Olympic Games of Lausanne while the 2022 Summer Youth Olympics will take place in Dakar. The 2024 Winter Youth Olympics will take place in Gangwon, South Korea. The concept of the Youth Olympic Games came from Austrian industrial manager Johann Rosenzopf in 1998. This was in response to growing global concerns about childhood obesity and the dropping participation of youth in sport activities, especially amongst youth in developed nations. It was further recognized that a youth version of the Olympic Games would help foster participations in the Olympic Games. Despite these reasons for having an Olympic event for young people, the IOC's response of holding a purely sporting event was negative. IOC delegates wanted the event to be as much about cultural education and exchange as it was about sports, which is why the Culture and Education Program (CEP) was developed as a component of each celebration of the Games. Jacques Rogge, IOC President, formally announced plans for the Youth Olympic Games at the 119th IOC session in Guatemala City on 6 July 2007. There are several goals for the YOG, and four of them include bringing together the world's best young athletes, offering an introduction into Olympism, innovating in educating and debating Olympic values. The city of Singapore was announced as the host of the inaugural Summer Youth Olympics on 21 February 2008. On 12 December 2008 the IOC announced that Innsbruck, host of the 1964 and 1976 Winter Olympics, would be the host of the inaugural Winter Youth Olympics in 2012. The scale of the Youth Olympic Games is smaller than that of the Olympics, which is intentional and allows for smaller cities to host an Olympic event. Potential host cities are required to keep all events within the same city and no new sports venues should be built. Exceptions to this building moratorium include a media centre, amphitheatre facilities for classes and workshops, and a village for coaches and athletes. This village is to be the heart of the Games for the athletes, and the hub of activity. No new or unique transportation systems are required as all athletes and coaches will be transported by shuttles. According to bid procedures, the track and field stadium for the opening and closing ceremonies must hold 10,000 people, and a city must have a 2,500-seat aquatics facility (for Summer editions). The original estimated costs for running the Games were US$30 million for the Summer and $15 million to $20 million for Winter Games, these costs do not include infrastructure improvements for venue construction. The IOC has stipulated that costs for infrastructure and venues is to be paid by the host city. The IOC will pay travel costs to the host city and room and board for the athletes and judges, estimated at $11 million. The funding will come from IOC funds and not revenues. The budgets for the final two bids for the inaugural Summer Games as submitted by the IOC came in at $90 million, much higher than the estimated costs. The cost of the first games in Singapore escalated to an estimated S$387 million ($284 million). Sponsors have been slow to sign on for the YOG, due to the fact that it is a new initiative and corporations are not sure what level of exposure they will get. The budget for the inaugural Winter Games to be held in Innsbruck has been estimated at $22.5 million, which does not include infrastructure improvements and venue construction. Over 200 countries and 3,600 athletes participated in the inaugural 2010 Youth Summer Olympics. Participants are placed in the following age groups: 14–15 years, 16–17 years, and 17–18 years. The athlete's age is determined by how old he or she is by 31 December of the year they are participating in the YOG. Qualification to participate in the Youth Olympics is determined by the IOC in conjunction with the International Sport Federations (ISF) for the various sports on the program. To ensure that all nations are represented at the YOG the IOC instituted the concept of Universality Places. A certain number of spots in each event are to be left open for athletes from under-represented nations regardless of qualifying marks. This is to ensure that every nation will be able to send at least four athletes to each Youth Olympic Games. For team tournaments one team per continent will be allowed to compete along with a sixth team either representing the host nation or as proposed by the IF with IOC approval. There is a cap of two teams (one boys' and one girls') per nation. Finally, no nation may enter more than 70 athletes in individual sports. 37 sports from 2010 to 2022 Olympic program at one point to another. Twenty- seven sports were introduced in the 2010 Games, two new sports were introduced in 2014 Games which were beach volleyball (replacing volleyball) and field hockey. In the 2018 Games six sports were introduced which were beach handball (replacing handball), breakdancing, futsal (replacing football), karate, roller speed skating and sport climbing. 28 core sports are expected to feature in the 2022 Games, being confirmed in 2019. 16 sports, 46 disciplines in the Winter Youth Olympics between the 2012 Games to the 2020 Games. In the 2012 Games at Innsbruck and the 2016 Games at Lillehammer, there were only 15 sports. In the next Games which will be the 2020 Games at Lausanne, there will be a new sport added which is ski mountaineering. Education and culture are also key components for the Youth edition. Not only does the education/culture aspect apply to athletes and participants, but also youth around the world and inhabitants of the host city and surrounding regions. To this end, a Culture and Education Program (CEP) will be featured at each Games. The first CEP at the 2010 Singapore Games featured events that fostered cooperation amongst athletes of different nations. It had classes on topics ranging from health and fitness to the environment and career planning. Local students from Singapore made booths at the World Culture Village that represented each of the 205 participating National Olympic Committee. The Chat with Champions sessions were the most popular portion of the program. Participants were invited to hear inspirational talks given by former and current Olympic athletes. Also part of the CEP is the Young Ambassadors Programme, Young Reporters Programme and Athlete Role Models. Under the Young Ambassadors Programme, a group of youths aged 18 to 25 years old are nominated by the NOCs to help promote the YOG in their regions and communities, and encourage the athletes to participate in the CEP programmes. The Young Reporters Programme provides journalism students or those who have recently started their journalism careers a cross-platform journalist-training programme and on-the-job experience during the YOG. Young Reporters, between the ages of 18 and 24, are selected by the Continental Associations of National Olympic Committees and will represent each of the five continents. Acting as mentors to help support and advise young Olympians are the Athlete Role Models, who are typically active or recently retired Olympians nominated by the IFs, such as Japanese wrestler Kaori Icho, Italian Simone Farina and Namibian Frank Fredericks. Emphasis on exchange goes beyond the CEP. Another unique feature of the Youth Olympic Games is mixed-gender and mixed-national teams. Triathlon relays, fencing, table tennis, archery and mixed swimming relays are a few of the sports in which athletes from different nations and mixed genders can compete together. YOG organizers are also using social media such as Facebook, Flikr, and Twitter as key platforms for engaging young athletes before, during, and after each celebration of the Games. Multi- lingual, multi-cultural, and multi-age requirements are the targets of the program, which stress the themes of "Learning to know, learning to be, learning to do, and learning to live together". In early November 2007, Athens, Bangkok, Singapore, Moscow, and Turin were selected by the IOC as the five candidate cities to host the inaugural Youth Olympic Games. In January 2008, the candidates were further pared down to just Moscow and Singapore. Finally, on 21 February 2008, Singapore was declared host of the inaugural Youth Olympic Games 2010 via live telecast from Lausanne, Switzerland, winning by a tally of 53 votes to 44 for Moscow. On 2 September 2008 IOC announced that the executive board had shortlisted four cities among the candidates to host the first Winter Youth Olympic Games in 2012. The four candidate cities were Harbin, Innsbruck, Kuopio, and Lillehammer. IOC president Jacques Rogge appointed Pernilla Wiberg to chair the commission which analysed the projects. As with the Summer Games, the list was then shortened to two finalists, Innsbruck and Kuopio, in November 2008. On 12 December 2008, it was announced that Innsbruck beat Kuopio to host the games. Nanjing, China was selected by the IOC over Poznan, Poland to be the host-city of the 2014 Youth Olympics. The election was held on 10 February 2010, two days before the start of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Lillehammer, Norway hosted the 2016 Winter Youth Olympics. 1998 World Youth Games, International Children's Games (ages 12–15), Gymnasiade (ages 13–18), Universiade (ages 17–25), Youth (athletics)

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Lobbying, persuasion, or interest representation is the act of attempting to influence the actions, policies, or decisions of officials, most often legislators or members of regulatory agencies. Lobbying, which usually involves direct, face-to-face contact, is done by many types of people, associations and organized groups, including individuals in the private sector, corporations, fellow legislators or government officials, or advocacy groups (interest groups). Lobbyists may be among a legislator's constituencies, meaning a voter or bloc of voters within their electoral district; they may engage in lobbying as a business. Professional lobbyists are people whose business is trying to influence legislation, regulation, or other government decisions, actions, or policies on behalf of a group or individual who hires them. Individuals and nonprofit organizations can also lobby as an act of volunteering or as a small part of their normal job. Governments often define and regulate organized group lobbying that has become influential. The ethics and morals involved with lobbying are complicated. Lobbying can, at times, be spoken of with contempt, when the implication is that people with inordinate socioeconomic power are corrupting the law in order to serve their own interests. When people who have a duty to act on behalf of others, such as elected officials with a duty to serve their constituents' interests or more broadly the public good, can benefit by shaping the law to serve the interests of some private parties, a conflict of interest exists. Many critiques of lobbying point to the potential for conflicts of interest to lead to agent misdirection or the intentional failure of an agent with a duty to serve an employer, client, or constituent to perform those duties. The failure of government officials to serve the public interest as a consequence of lobbying by special interests who provide benefits to the official is an example of agent misdirection. In a report carried by the BBC, an OED lexicographer has shown that "lobbying" finds its roots in the gathering of Members of Parliament and peers in the hallways ("lobbies") of the UK Houses of Parliament before and after parliamentary debates where members of the public can meet their representatives. One story held that the term originated at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC, where it was supposedly used by President Ulysses S. Grant to describe the political advocates who frequented the hotel's lobby to access Grant—who was often there in the evenings to enjoy a cigar and brandy—and then tried to buy the president drinks in an attempt to influence his political decisions. Although the term may have gained more widespread currency in Washington, D.C. by virtue of this practice during the Grant Administration, the OED cites numerous documented uses of the word well before Grant's presidency, including use in Pennsylvania as early as 1808. The term "lobbying" also appeared in print as early as 1820: Dictionary definitions: 'Lobbying' (also 'lobby') is a form of advocacy with the intention of influencing decisions made by the government by individuals or more usually by lobby groups; it includes all attempts to influence legislators and officials, whether by other legislators, constituents, or organized groups., A 'lobbyist' is a person who tries to influence legislation on behalf of a special interest or a member of a lobby. Governments often define and regulate organized group lobbying as part of laws to prevent political corruption and by establishing transparency about possible influences by public lobby registers. Lobby groups may concentrate their efforts on the legislatures, where laws are created, but may also use the judicial branch to advance their causes. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, for example, filed suits in state and federal courts in the 1950s to challenge segregation laws. Their efforts resulted in the Supreme Court declaring such laws unconstitutional. Lobbyists may use a legal device known as amicus curiae (literally: "friend of the court") briefs to try to influence court cases. Briefs are written documents filed with a court, typically by parties to a lawsuit. Amici curiae briefs are briefs filed by people or groups who are not parties to a suit. These briefs are entered into the court records, and give additional background on the matter being decided upon. Advocacy groups use these briefs both to share their expertise and to promote their positions. The lobbying industry is affected by the revolving door concept, a movement of personnel between roles as legislators and regulators and roles in the industries affected by legislation and regulation, as the main asset for a lobbyist is contacts with and influence on government officials. This climate is attractive for ex-government officials. It can also mean substantial monetary rewards for lobbying firms, and government projects and contracts worth in the hundreds of millions for those they represent. The international standards for the regulation of lobbying were introduced at four international organizations and supranational associations: 1) the European Union; 2) the Council of Europe; 3) the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development; 4) the Commonwealth of Independent States. In pre-modern political systems, royal courts provided incidental opportunities for gaining the ear of monarchs and their councillors. Nowadays, lobbying has taken a more drastic position as big corporations pressure politicians to help them gain more benefit. Lobbying has become a big part of the world economy as big companies corrupt laws and regulations. Kellogg School of Management found that political donations by corporations do not increase shareholder value. Over the past twenty years, lobbying in Australia has grown from a small industry of a few hundred employees to a multi-billion dollar per year industry. What was once the preserve of big multinational companies and at a more local level (property developers, for example Urban Taskforce Australia) has morphed into an industry that employs more than 10,000 people and represents every facet of human endeavour. A register of federal lobbyists is kept by the Australian Government and is accessible to the public via its website. Similar registers for State government lobbyists were introduced between 2007 and 2009 around Australia. Since April 2007 in Western Australia, only lobbyists listed on the state's register are allowed to contact a government representative for the purpose of lobbying. Similar rules have applied in Tasmania since 1 September 2009 and in South Australia and Victoria since 1 December 2009. The first step towards specialized regulation of lobbying in the European Union was a Written Question tabled by Alman Metten, in 1989. In 1991, Marc Galle, Chairman of the Committee on the Rules of Procedure, the Verification of Credentials and Immunities, was appointed to submit proposals for a Code of conduct and a register of lobbyists. Today lobbying in the European Union is an integral and important part of decision-making in the EU. From year to year lobbying regulation in the EU is constantly improving and the number of lobbyists increases. According to Austrian Member of the European Parliament ("MEP") Hans-Peter Martin, the value of lobby invitations and offers each individual MEP receives can reach up to €10,000 per week. In 2003 there were around 15,000 lobbyists (consultants, lawyers, associations, corporations, NGOs etc.) in Brussels seeking to influence the EU’s legislation. Some 2,600 special interest groups had a permanent office in Brussels. Their distribution was roughly as follows: European trade federations (32%), consultants (20%), companies (13%), NGOs (11%), national associations (10%), regional representations (6%), international organizations (5%) and think tanks (1%), (Lehmann, 2003, pp iii). In addition to this, lobby organisations sometimes hire former EU employees (a phenomenon known as the revolving door) who possess inside knowledge of the EU institutions and policy process A report by Transparency International EU published in January 2017 analysed the career paths of former EU officials and found that 30% of Members of the European Parliament who left politics went to work for organisations on the EU lobby register after their mandate and approximately one third of Commissioners serving under Barroso took jobs in the private sector after their mandate, including for Uber, ArcelorMittal, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. These potential conflicts of interest could be avoided if a stronger ethics framework were established at the EU level, including an independent ethics body and longer cooling-off periods for MEPs. In the wake of the Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal in Washington D.C. and the massive impact this had on the lobbying scene in the United States, the rules for lobbying in the EU—which until now consist of only a non-binding code of conduct-—may also be tightened. Eventually on 31 January 2019 the European Parliament adopted binding rules on lobby transparency. Amending its Rules of Procedure, the Parliament stipulated that MEPs involved in drafting and negotiating legislation must publish online their meetings with lobbyists. The amendment says that “rapporteurs, shadow rapporteurs or committee chairs shall, for each report, publish online all scheduled meetings with interest representatives falling under the scope of the Transparency Register”-database of the EU. There is currently no regulation at all for lobbying activities in France. There is no regulated access to the French institutions and no register specific to France, but there is one for the European Union where French lobbyists can register themselves. For example, the internal rule of the National Assembly (art. 23 and 79) forbids members of Parliament to be linked with a particular interest. Also, there is no rule at all for consultation of interest groups by the Parliament and the Government. Nevertheless, a recent parliamentary initiative (motion for a resolution) has been launched by several MPs so as to establish a register for representatives of interest groups and lobbyists who intend to lobby the MPs. A 2016 study found evidence of significant indirect lobbying of then-PM Silvio Berlusconi through business proxies. The authors document a significant pro- Mediaset (the mass media company founded and controlled by Berlusconi) bias in the allocation of advertising spending during Berlusconi's political tenure, in particular for companies operating in more regulated sectors. Lobbying in the United States describes paid activity in which special interests hire professional advocates to argue for specific legislation in decision-making bodies, such as the United States Congress. Some lobbyists are now using social media to reduce the cost of traditional campaigns, and to more precisely target public officials with political messages. A 2011 study of the 50 firms that spent the most on lobbying relative to their assets compared their financial performance against that of the S&P; 500, and concluded that spending on lobbying was a "spectacular investment" yielding "blistering" returns comparable to a high-flying hedge fund, even despite the financial downturn. A 2011 meta-analysis of previous research findings found a positive correlation between corporate political activity and firm performance. A 2009 study found that lobbying brought a return on investment of as much as 22,000% in some cases. Major American corporations spent $345 million lobbying for just three pro-immigration bills between 2006 and 2008. Foreign-funded lobbying efforts include those of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, and China lobbies. In 2010 alone, foreign governments spent approximately $460 million on lobbying members of Congress and government officials. Other countries where lobbying is regulated in parliamentary bills include: Canada: Canada maintains a Registry of Lobbyists., Israel (1994), India: In India, where there is no law regulating the process, lobbying had traditionally been a tool for industry bodies (like FICCI) and other pressure groups to engage with the government ahead of the national budget. One reason being that lobbying activities were repeatedly identified in the context of corruption cases. For example, in 2010, leaked audio transcripts of Nira Radia. Not only private companies but even the Indian government has been paying a fee every year since 2005 to a US firm to lobby for ex. to the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal. In India, there are no laws that defined the scope of lobbying, who could undertake it, or the extent of disclosure necessary. Companies are not mandated to disclose their activities and lobbyists are neither authorized nor encouraged to reveal the names of clients or public officials they have contacted. The distinction between Lobbying and bribery still remains unclear. In 2012, Walmart revealed it had spent $25 million since 2008 on lobbying to "enhance market access for investment in India." This disclosure came weeks after the Indian government made a controversial decision to permit FDI in the country's multi-brand retail sector. Ukraine: In 2009, a special working group of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine developed a draft law "On Lobbying". However, this bill was not introduced into the Parliament of Ukraine. Kazakhstan: Since the last century, since 1998, Kazakhstan has been trying to pass a law on lobbying. The National Chamber of Entrepreneurs of Kazakhstan "Atameken" is one of the first official lobbying structures in the country. But there are other examples. Activism, Advocacy, Advocacy group, Advocacy Evaluation, Bribery, Campaign finance, Client politics, Fossil fuels lobby, European Women's Lobby, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty Model, Issue versus express advocacy, Lobby register, Money loop, Outline of public affairs, Pharmaceutical lobby, Think tank Joos, Klemens: Convincing Political Stakeholders - Successful Lobbying Through Process Competence in the Complex Decision-Making System of the European Union, 526 pages, , Wiley VCH 2016, P. L. Petrillo, Form of government and lobbying in UE and UK, in (march, 2013), Joos, Klemens: Lobbying in the new Europe. Successful representation of interests after the Treaty of Lisbon, 244 pages, , Wiley VCH 2011, Nesterovych V. (2015) EU standards for the regulation of lobbying. Prawa Człowieka. nr 18: 97-108., Nesterovych, Volodymyr (2016). "International standards for the regulation of lobbying (EU, CE, OECD, CIS)". Krytyka Prawa. tom 8, nr 2: 79–101., Nesterovych, Volodymyr (2010). "Legalization, accreditation, control and supervisory activity concerning lobbyists and lobbying organizations: prospects for Ukraine". Power. Man. Law. International Scientific Journal. № 1: 96–105., Geiger, Andreas: EU Lobbying handbook, A guide to modern participation in Brussels, 244 pages, , Helios Media GmbH, 2006, GLOSSARY - Alphabetical list of terms associated with the Lobbying industry, The Bulletin, 16 March 2006, p. 14, Lobbying Europe: facts and fiction, The European Lawyer, December 2005/January 2006, p. 9, The lobbyists have landed, Financial Times, 3 October 2005, p. 8, Brussels braces for a U.S. lobbying invasion, Public Affairs News, November 2004, p. 34, Judgement Call, The European Lawyer, December 2004/January 2005, p. 26, Lifting the lid on lobbying, Pier Luigi Petrillo, Democracies under Pressures. Lobbies and Parliaments in a comparative public law, Giuffrè 2011 (www.giuffre.it), Pietro Semeraro, I delitti di millantato credito e traffico di influenza,ed. Giuffre, Milano,2000., Pietro Semeraro, Trading in Influence and Lobbying in the Spanish Criminal Code, PDF, Wiszowaty, Marcin: Legal Regulation of Lobbying in New Members States of the European Union, Arbeitspapiere und Materialien - Forschungsstelle Osteuropa an der Universitat Bremen, No. 74: Heiko Pleines (ed.): Participation of Civil Society in New Modes of Governance. The Case of the New Member States. Part 2: Questions of Accountability. February 2006 (PDF), Heiko Kretschmer/ Hans-Jörg Schmedes: Enhancing Transparency in EU Lobbying? How the European Commission's Lack of Courage and Determination Impedes Substantial Progress, Internationale Politik und Gesellschaft 1/ 2010, S. 112-122 Lobbyists.info - The largest, comprehensive database of 22,000 registered lobbyists. Contains searchable profiles of lobbyists and government relations professionals, their clients and issues., \- Fortune listed the top 25 lobbying groups in 1999., LobbyWatch - a project of the Center for Public Integrity with reports on lobbyists and lobbying efforts as well as a searchable database., OpenSecrets.org, NoLobby.com - Capitalism Magazine mini-site. Opposes lobbying restrictions on free speech grounds., The Citizen's Guide to the U.S. Government - an online tutorial containing information for individuals who wish to address issues with their elected officials., Free Speech National Right to Life page containing documents opposing excessive regulation of "lobbying" as infringement on "right to petition" guaranteed by the First Amendment., Public Affairs Links, First Street Research Group powered by https://web.archive.org/web/20120115155817/http://firststreet.cqpress.com/ - reports and analysis on the lobbying industry, US Senate Lobbying-Database Search The Lobby Ticker - website of independent Austrian MEP Hans-Peter Martin with original lobbyist invitations and voting recommendations he received, Commission for the Prevention of Corruption of the Republic of Slovenia, PubAffairs - the public affairs network, Public Affairs World, LobbyPlanet website, Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU), Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), Spinwatch, The New EU, European Affairs Jobs Community, Alliance for Lobbying Transparency - UK based campaign, OECD: Special Session on Lobbying: Enhancing Transparency and Accountability 7–8 June 2007 Paul John Manafort Jr. (; born April 1, 1949) is an American former lobbyist, political consultant, former attorney, and convicted felon who is serving a prison sentence for federal financial crimes. A long-time Republican Party campaign consultant, he chaired the Trump Presidential campaign team from June to August 2016. He was convicted of tax and bank fraud in 2018 and forfeited his license to practice law in January 2019. Manafort served as an adviser to the U.S. presidential campaigns of Republicans Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bob Dole. In 1980, he co-founded the Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firm Black, Manafort & Stone, along with principals Charles R. Black Jr., and Roger J. Stone, joined by Peter G. Kelly in 1984. Manafort often lobbied on behalf of foreign leaders such as former President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych, former dictator of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos, former dictator of Zaire Mobutu Sese Seko, and Angolan guerrilla leader Jonas Savimbi. Lobbying to serve the interests of foreign governments requires registration with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA); on June 27, 2017, he retroactively registered as a foreign agent. On October 27, 2017, Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates were indicted in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on multiple charges arising from his consulting work for the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine before Yanukovych's overthrow in 2014. The indictment came at the request of Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation. In June 2018, additional charges were filed against Manafort for obstruction of justice and witness tampering that are alleged to have occurred while he was under house arrest, and he was ordered to jail. Manafort was prosecuted in two federal courts. In August 2018, he stood trial in the Eastern District of Virginia and was convicted on eight charges of tax and bank fraud. Manafort was next prosecuted on ten other charges, but this effort ended in a mistrial with Manafort later admitting his guilt. In the DC District Court, Manafort plead guilty to two charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States and witness tampering, while agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors. On November 26, 2018, Robert Mueller reported that Manafort violated his plea deal by repeatedly lying to investigators. On February 13, 2019, DC District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson concurred, voiding the plea deal. On March 7, 2019, Judge T. S. Ellis sentenced Manafort to 47 months in prison. On March 13, 2019, Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced Manafort to an additional 43 months in prison. Minutes after his sentencing, New York state prosecutors charged Manafort with sixteen state felonies. On December 18, 2019, the state charges against him were dismissed. Paul John Manafort Jr. was born on April 1, 1949, in New Britain, Connecticut. Manafort's parents are Antoinette Mary Manafort (née Cifalu; 1921–2003) and Paul John Manafort Sr. (1923–2013). His grandfather immigrated to the United States from Italy in the early 20th century, settling in Connecticut. He founded the construction company New Britain House Wrecking Company in 1919 (later renamed Manafort Brothers Inc.). His father served in the U.S. Army combat engineers during World War II and was mayor of New Britain from 1965 to 1971. His father was indicted in a corruption scandal in 1981 but not convicted. In 1967, Manafort graduated from St. Thomas Aquinas High School, a private Roman Catholic secondary school, closed in 1999, in New Britain. He attended Georgetown University, where he received his B.S. in business administration in 1971 and his J.D. in 1974. Between 1977 and 1980, Manafort practiced law with the firm of Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease in Washington, D.C. He forfeited his Connecticut Bar license on January 11, 2019. Manafort was disbarred from the DC Bar on May 9, 2019. In 1976, Manafort was the delegate-hunt coordinator for eight states for the President Ford Committee; the overall Ford delegate operation was run by James A. Baker III. Between 1978 and 1980, Manafort was the southern coordinator for Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign, and the deputy political director at the Republican National Committee. After Reagan's election in November 1980, he was appointed Associate Director of the Presidential Personnel Office at the White House. In 1981, he was nominated to the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. Manafort was an adviser to the presidential campaigns of George H. W. Bush in 1988 and Bob Dole in 1996. In February 2016, Manafort approached Donald Trump through a mutual friend, Thomas J. Barrack Jr. He pointed out his experience advising presidential campaigns in the United States and around the world, described himself as an outsider not connected to the Washington establishment, and offered to work without salary. In March 2016, he joined Trump's presidential campaign to take the lead in getting commitments from convention delegates. On June 20, 2016, Trump fired campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and promoted Manafort to the position. Manafort gained control of the daily operations of the campaign as well as an expanded $20 million budget, hiring decisions, advertising, and media strategy. On June 9, 2016, Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., and Jared Kushner were participants in a meeting with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya and several others at Trump Tower. A British music agent, saying he was acting on behalf of Emin Agalarov and the Russian government, had told Trump Jr. that he could obtain damaging information on Hillary Clinton if he met with a lawyer connected to the Kremlin. At first, Trump Jr. said the meeting had been primarily about the Russian ban on international adoptions (in response to the Magnitsky Act) and mentioned nothing about Mrs. Clinton; he later said the offer of information about Clinton had been a pretext to conceal Veselnitskaya's real agenda. In August 2016, Manafort's connections to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and his pro-Russian Party of Regions drew national attention in the US, where it was reported that Manafort may have received $12.7 million in off-the-books funds from the Party of Regions. On August 17, 2016, Donald Trump received his first security briefing. The same day, August 17, Trump shook up his campaign organization in a way that appeared to minimize Manafort's role. It was reported that members of Trump's family, particularly Jared Kushner who had originally been a strong backer of Manafort, had become uneasy about his Russian connections and suspected that he had not been forthright about them. Manafort stated in an internal staff memorandum that he would "remain the campaign chairman and chief strategist, providing the big-picture, long-range campaign vision". However, two days later, Trump announced his acceptance of Manafort's resignation from the campaign after Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway took on senior leadership roles within that campaign. Upon Manafort's resignation as campaign chairman, Newt Gingrich stated, "nobody should underestimate how much Paul Manafort did to really help get this campaign to where it is right now." Gingrich later added that, for the Trump administration, "It makes perfect sense for them to distance themselves from somebody who apparently didn't tell them what he was doing." In January 2019, Manafort's lawyers submitted a filing to the court in response to the allegation that Manafort had lied to investigators. Through an error in redacting, the document accidentally revealed that while he was campaign chairman, Manafort met with Konstantin Kilimnik, who is believed to be linked to Russian intelligence. The filing says Manafort gave him polling data related to the 2016 campaign and discussed a Ukrainian peace plan with him. Most of the polling data was reportedly public, although some was private Trump campaign polling data. Manafort asked Kilimnik to pass the data to Ukrainians Serhiy Lyovochkin and Rinat Akhmetov. During a February 4, 2019, closed-door court hearing regarding false statements Manafort had made to investigators about his communications with Kilimnik, special counsel prosecutor Andrew Weissmann told judge Amy Berman Jackson that "This goes, I think, very much to the heart of what the special counsel's office is investigating," suggesting that Mueller's office continued to examine a possible agreement between Russia and the Trump campaign. In 1980, Manafort was a founding partner of Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firm Black, Manafort & Stone, along with principals Charles R. Black Jr. and Roger J. Stone. After Peter G. Kelly was recruited, the name of the firm was changed to Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly (BMSK) in 1984. Manafort left BMSK in 1996 to join Richard H. Davis and Matthew C. Freedman in forming Davis, Manafort, and Freedman. In 1985, Manafort's firm, BMSK, signed a $600,000 contract with Jonas Savimbi, the leader of the Angolan rebel group UNITA, to refurbish Savimbi's image in Washington and secure financial support on the basis of his anti-communism stance. BMSK arranged for Savimbi to attend events at the American Enterprise Institute (where Jeane Kirkpatrick gave him a laudatory introduction), The Heritage Foundation, and Freedom House; in the wake of the campaign, Congress approved hundreds of millions of dollars in covert American aid to Savimbi's group. Allegedly, Manafort's continuing lobbying efforts helped preserve the flow of money to Savimbi several years after the Soviet Union ceased its involvement in the Angolan conflict, forestalling peace talks. Between June 1984 and June 1986, Manafort was a FARA-registered lobbyist for Saudi Arabia. The Reagan Administration refused to grant Manafort a waiver from federal statutes prohibiting public officials from acting as foreign agents; Manafort resigned his directorship at OPIC in May 1986. An investigation by the Department of Justice found 18 lobbying-related activities that were not reported in FARA filings, including lobbying on behalf of The Bahamas and Saint Lucia. Manafort's firm, BMSK, accepted $950,000 yearly to lobby for then-president of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos. He was also involved in lobbying for Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaïre, securing a US$1 million annual contract in 1989, and attempted to recruit Siad Barre of Somalia as a client. His firm also lobbied on behalf of the governments of the Dominican Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya (earning between $660,000 and $750,000 each year between 1991 and 1993), and Nigeria ($1 million in 1991). These activities led Manafort's firm to be listed amongst the top five lobbying firms receiving money from human-rights abusing regimes in the Center for Public Integrity report "The Torturers' Lobby". The New York Times reported that Manafort accepted payment from the Kurdistan Region to facilitate Western recognition of the 2017 Kurdistan Region independence referendum. Manafort wrote the campaign strategy for Édouard Balladur in the 1995 French elections, and was paid indirectly. The money, at least $200,000, was transferred to him through his friend, Lebanese arms-dealer Abdul Rahman al- Assir, from middle-men fees paid for arranging the sale of three French s to Pakistan, in a scandal known as the Karachi affair. Manafort received $700,000 from the Kashmiri American Council between 1990 and 1994, supposedly to promote the plight of the Kashmiri people. However, an FBI investigation revealed the money was actually from Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) agency as part of a disinformation operation to divert attention from terrorism. A former Pakistani ISI official claimed Manafort was aware of the nature of the operation. While producing a documentary as part of the deal, Manafort interviewed several Indian officials while pretending to be a CNN reporter. In the late 1980s, Manafort was criticized for using his connections at HUD to ensure funding for a $43 million rehabilitation of dilapidated housing in Seabrook, New Jersey. Manafort's firm received a $326,000 fee for its work in getting HUD approval of the grant, largely through personal influence with Deborah Gore Dean, an executive assistant to former HUD Secretary Samuel Pierce. Manafort's involvement in Ukraine can be traced to 2003, when Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska hired Bob Dole, Manafort's prior campaign candidate, to lobby the State Department for a waiver of his visa ban, primarily so that he could solicit otherwise unavailable institutional purchasers for shares in his company, RusAL. Then in early 2004, Deripaska met with Manafort's partner, Rick Davis, also a prior campaign adviser to Bob Dole, to discuss hiring Manafort and Davis to return the former Georgian Minister of State Security, Igor Giorgadze, to prominence in Georgian politics. By December 2004, however, Deripaska shelved his plans in Georgia and dispatched Manafort to meet with Rinat Akhmetov in Ukraine to help Akhmetov and his holding firm, System Capital Management, weather the political crisis brought by the Orange Revolution. Akhmetov would eventually flee to Monaco after being accused of murder, but during the crisis Manafort shepherded Akhemtov around Washington, meeting with U.S. officials like Dick Cheney. Meanwhile, the Orange Revolution would push Deripaska to also hire Davis—Manafort, this time to work for Viktor Yanukovych and the Party of Regions. Manafort also worked as an adviser on the Ukrainian presidential campaign of Viktor Yanukovych (and his Party of Regions during the same time span) from December 2004 until the February 2010 Ukrainian presidential election, even as the U.S. government (and U.S. Senator John McCain) opposed Yanukovych because of his ties to Russia's leader Vladimir Putin. Manafort was hired to advise Yanukovych months after massive street demonstrations known as the Orange Revolution overturned Yanukovych's victory in the 2004 presidential race. Borys Kolesnikov, Yanukovych's campaign manager, said the party hired Manafort after identifying organizational and other problems in the 2004 elections, in which it was advised by Russian strategists. Manafort rebuffed U.S. Ambassador William Taylor when the latter complained he was undermining U.S. interests in Ukraine. According to a 2008 U.S. Justice Department annual report, Manafort's company received $63,750 from Yanukovych's Party of Regions over a six-month period ending on March 31, 2008, for consulting services. In 2010, under Manafort's tutelage, the opposition leader put the Orange Revolution on trial, campaigning against its leaders' management of a weak economy. Returns from the presidential election gave Yanukovych a narrow win over Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, a leader of the 2004 demonstrations. Yanukovych owed his comeback in Ukraine's presidential election to a drastic makeover of his political persona, and—people in his party say—that makeover was engineered in part by his American consultant, Manafort. In 2007 and 2008, Manafort was involved in investment projects with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska (the acquisition of a Ukrainian telecoms company) and Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash (redevelopment of the site of the former Drake Hotel in New York City). The Associated Press has reported that Manafort negotiated a $10 million annual contract with Deripaska to promote Russian interests in politics, business, and media coverage in Europe and the United States, starting in 2005. A witness at Manafort's 2018 trial for fraud and tax evasion testified that Deripaska loaned Manafort $10 million in 2010, which to her knowledge was never repaid. At Manafort's trial, federal prosecutors alleged that between 2010 and 2014 he was paid more than $60 million by Ukrainian sponsors, including Rinat Akhmetov, believed to be the richest man in Ukraine. In May 2011, Yanukovych stated that he would strive for Ukraine to join the European Union, In 2013, Yanukovych became the main target of the Euromaidan protests. After the February 2014 Ukrainian revolution (the conclusion of Euromaidan), Yanukovych fled to Russia. On March 17, 2014, the day after the Crimean status referendum, Yanukovych became one of the first eleven persons who were placed under executive sanctions on the Specially Designated Nationals List (SDN) by President Barack Obama, freezing his assets in the US and banning him from entering the United States. Manafort then returned to Ukraine in September 2014 to become an adviser to Yanukovych's former head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine Serhiy Lyovochkin. In this role, he was asked to assist in rebranding Yanukovych's Party of Regions. Instead, he argued to help stabilize Ukraine. Manafort was instrumental in creating a new political party called Opposition Bloc. According to Ukrainian political analyst Mikhail Pogrebinsky, "He thought to gather the largest number of people opposed to the current government, you needed to avoid anything concrete, and just become a symbol of being opposed". According to Manafort, he has not worked in Ukraine since the October 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election. However, according to Ukrainian border control entry data, Manafort traveled to Ukraine several times after that election, all the way through late 2015. According to The New York Times, his local office in Ukraine closed in May 2016. According to Politico, by then Opposition Bloc had already stopped payments for Manafort and this local office. In an April 2016 interview with ABC News, Manafort stated that the aim of his activities in Ukraine had been to lead the country "closer to Europe". Ukrainian government National Anti-Corruption Bureau studying secret documents claimed in August 2016 to have found handwritten records that show $12.7 million in cash payments designated for Manafort, although they had yet to determine if he had received the money. These undisclosed payments were from the pro-Russian political party Party of Regions, of the former president of Ukraine. This payment record spans from 2007 to 2012. Manafort's lawyer, Richard A. Hibey, said Manafort didn't receive "any such cash payments" as described by the anti-corruption officials. The Associated Press reported on August 17, 2016, that Manafort secretly routed at least $2.2 million in payments to two prominent Washington lobbying firms in 2012 on Party of Regions' behalf, and did so in a way that effectively obscured the foreign political party's efforts to influence U.S. policy. Associated Press noted that under federal law, U.S. lobbyists must declare publicly if they represent foreign leaders or their political parties and provide detailed reports about their actions to the Justice Department, which Manafort reportedly did not do. The lobbying firms unsuccessfully lobbied U.S. Congress to reject a resolution condemning the jailing of Yanukovych's main political rival, Yulia Tymoshenko. Financial records certified in December 2015 and filed by Manafort in Cyprus showed him to be approximately $17 million in debt to interests connected to interests favorable to Putin and Yanukovych in the months before joining the Trump presidential campaign in March. These included a $7.8 million debt to Oguster Management Limited, a company connected to Russian oligarch and close Putin associate Oleg Deripaska. This accords with a 2015 court complaint filed by Deripaska claiming that Manafort and his partners owed him $19 million in relation to a failed Ukrainian cable television business. In January 2018, Surf Horizon Limited, a Cyprus-based company tied to Deripaska, sued Manafort and his business partner Richard "Rick" Gates, accusing them of financial fraud by misappropriating more than $18.9 million that the company had invested in Ukrainian telecom companies, known collectively as the "Black Sea Cable". An additional $9.9 million debt was owed to a Cyprus company that tied through shell companies to , a Ukrainian Member of Parliament of the Party of Regions. Manafort spokesman Jason Maloni maintained in response that "Manafort is not indebted to Deripaska or the Party of Regions, nor was he at the time he began working for the Trump campaign." During the 2016 Presidential campaign, Manafort, via Russian-Ukrainian Kiev-based operative Konstantin Kilimnik, offered to provide briefings on political developments to Deripaska, though there is no evidence that the briefings took place. Reuters reported on June 27, 2018, that an FBI search warrant application in July 2017 revealed that a company controlled by Manafort and his wife had received a $10 million loan from Deripaska. According to leaked text messages between his daughters, Manafort was also one of the proponents of violent removal of the Euromaidan protesters, which resulted in police shooting dozens of people during 2014 Hrushevskoho Street riots. In one of the messages, his daughter writes that it was his "strategy that was to cause that, to send those people out and get them slaughtered." Manafort has rejected questions about whether Kilimnik, with whom he consulted regularly, might be in league with Russian intelligence. According to Yuri Shvets, Kilimnik previously worked for the GRU, and every bit of information about his work with Manafort went directly to Russian intelligence. Lobbying for foreign countries requires registration with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Manafort did not do so at the time of his lobbying. In April 2017, a Manafort spokesman said Manafort was planning to file the required paperwork; however, according to Associated Press reporters, as of June 2, 2017, Manafort had not yet registered. On June 27, he filed to be retroactively registered as a foreign agent. Among other things, he disclosed that he made more than $17 million between 2012 and 2014 working for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine. The sentencing memorandum submitted by the Office of Special Council on February 23, 2019 stated that the "filing was plainly deficient. Manafort entirely omitted [his] United States lobbying contracts... and a portion of the substantial compensation Manafort received from Ukraine." Early in 2017, Manafort supported Chinese efforts at providing development and investment worldwide and in Puerto Rico and Ecuador. Early in 2017, he discussed possible Chinese investment sources for Ecuador with Lenín Moreno who later obtained loans worth several billion US dollars from the China Development Bank. In May 2017, Manafort and Moreno discussed the possibility of Manafort brokering a deal for Ecuador to relinquish Julian Assange to American authorities in exchange for concessions such as debt relief from the United States. Manafort acted as the go between for the China Development Bank's investment fund to support bailout bonds for Puerto Rico's sovereign debt financing and other infrastructure items. Also, he advised a Shanghai construction billionaire, Yan Jiehe (严介和) who owns the and is China's seventh richest man with a fortune estimated at $14.2 billion in 2015, on obtaining international contracts. In mid-2017, Manafort left the United States in order to help organize the 2017 Kurdistan Region independence referendum that was to be held on September 25, 2017, something that surprised both investigators and the media. He was hired by the President of Kurdistan Region Masoud Barzani's son Masrour Barzani who heads the Kurdistan Region Security Council. To help Manafort's efforts in supporting Kurdish freedom and independence, his longtime associate Phillip M. Griffin traveled to Erbil prior to the vote. The referendum was not supported by United States Secretary of Defense James Mattis. Manafort returned to the United States just before both his indictment and the start of the 2017 Iraqi–Kurdish conflict in which the Peshmerga-led Kurds lost the Mosul Dam and their main revenue source at the Baba GurGur Kirkuk oilfields to Iraqi forces. Manafort's work in Ukraine coincided with the purchase of at least four prime pieces of real estate in the United States, worth a combined $11 million, between 2006 and early 2012. In 2006, Manafort purchased an apartment on the 43rd floor of Trump Tower for a reported $3.6 million. Manafort, however, purchased the unit indirectly, through an LLC named after him and his partner Rick Hannah Davis, "John Hannah, LLC." That LLC, according to court documents in Manafort's indictment, came into existence in April 2006, roughly one month after the Ukrainian parliamentary elections that saw Manafort help bring Yanukovych back to power on March 22, 2006. According to Afghan-Ukrainian journalist Mustafa Nayyem, the Ukrainian Oligarch sponsoring Yanukovych, Rinat Akhmetov, paid the $3 million purchase price for Manafort's Trump Tower unit for helping win the election. It was not until March 5, 2015, when Manafort's income from Ukraine dwindled, that Manafort would transfer the property out of John Hannah, LLC, and into his own personal name so that he could take out a $3 million loan against the property. Since 2012, Manafort has taken out seven home equity loans worth approximately $19.2 million on three separate New York-area properties he owns through holding companies registered to him and his then son-in-law Jeffrey Yohai, a real estate investor. In 2016, Yohai declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy for LLCs tied to four residential properties; Manafort holds a $2.7 million claim on one of the properties. , Manafort had about $12 million in home equity loans outstanding. For one home, loans of $6.6 million exceeded the value of that home; the loans are from the Federal Savings Bank of Chicago, Illinois, whose CEO, Stephen Calk, was a campaign supporter of Donald Trump and was a member of Trump's economic advisory council during the campaign. In July 2017, New York prosecutors subpoenaed information about the loans issued to Manafort during the 2016 presidential campaign. At the time, these loans represented about a quarter of the bank's equity capital. The Mueller investigation is reviewing a number of loans that Manafort has received since leaving the Trump campaign in August 2016, specifically $7 million from Oguster Management Limited, a British Virgin Islands-registered company connected to Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, to another Manafort-linked company, Cyprus-registered LOAV Advisers Ltd. This entire amount was unsecured, carried interest at 2%, and had no repayment date. Additionally, NBC News found documents that reveal loans of more than $27 million from the two Cyprus entities to a third company connected to Manafort, a limited-liability corporation registered in Delaware. This company, Jesand LLC, bears a strong resemblance to the names of Manafort's daughters, Jessica and Andrea. The FBI reportedly began a criminal investigation into Manafort in 2014, shortly after Yanukovych was deposed during Euromaidan. That investigation predated the 2016 election by several years and is ongoing. In addition, Manafort is also a person of interest in the FBI counterintelligence probe looking into the Russian government's interference in the 2016 presidential election. On January 19, 2017, the eve of Donald Trump's presidential inauguration, it was reported that Manafort was under active investigation by multiple federal agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Director of National Intelligence, and the financial crimes unit of the Treasury Department. Investigations were said to be based on intercepted Russian communications as well as financial transactions. It was later confirmed that Manafort was wiretapped by the FBI "before and after the election ... including a period when Manafort was known to talk to President Donald Trump." The surveillance of Manafort began in 2014, before Donald Trump announced his candidacy for President of United States. Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who was appointed on May 17, 2017, by the Justice Department to oversee the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and related matters, took over the existing criminal probe involving Manafort. On July 26, 2017, the day after Manafort's United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing and the morning of his planned hearing before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, FBI agents at Mueller's direction conducted a raid on Manafort's Alexandria, Virginia home, using a search warrant to seize documents and other materials, in regard to the Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Initial press reports indicated Mueller obtained a no-knock warrant for this raid, though Mueller's office has disputed these reports in court documents. United States v. Paul Manafort was analyzed by attorney George T. Conway III, who wrote that it strengthened the constitutionality of the Mueller investigation. In May 2017, in response to a request of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), Manafort submitted over "300 pages of documents... included drafts of speeches, calendars and notes from his time on the campaign" to the Committee "related to its investigation of Russian election meddling." On July 25, he met privately with the committee. A congressional hearing on Russia issues, including the Trump campaign-Russian meeting, was scheduled by the Senate Committee on the Judiciary for July 26, 2017. Manafort was scheduled to appear together with Donald Trump Jr., while Trump's son-in- law Jared Kushner was to testify in a separate closed session. After separate negotiations, both Manafort and Trump Jr. met with the committee on July 26 in closed session and agreed to turn over requested documents. They are expected to testify in public eventually. The Trump–Russia dossier, also known as the Steele dossier, is a private intelligence report comprising investigation memos written between June and December 2016 by Christopher Steele. Manafort is a major figure mentioned in the Trump–Russia dossier, where allegations are made about Manafort's relationships and actions toward the Trump campaign, Russia, Ukraine, and Viktor Yanukovych. The dossier claims: that "the Republican candidate's campaign manager, Paul MANAFORT" had "managed" the "well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between [the Trump campaign] and the Russian leadership," and that he used "foreign policy adviser, Carter PAGE, and others as intermediaries." (Dossier, p. 7), that former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych told Putin he had been making untraceable "kick-back payments" to Paul Manafort, who was Trump's campaign manager at the time. (Dossier, p. 20) On October 30, 2017, Manafort was arrested by the FBI after being indicted by a federal grand jury as part of Robert Mueller's investigation into the Trump campaign. The indictment against Manafort and Rick Gates charged them with engaging in a conspiracy against the United States, engaging in a conspiracy to launder money, failing to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts, acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign principal, making false and misleading statements in documents filed and submitted under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), and making false statements. Prosecutors claimed Manafort laundered more than $18 million, money he had received as compensation for lobbying and consulting services for pro-Russian, former Ukrainian prime minister Viktor Yanukovych. Manafort and Gates pleaded not guilty to the charges at their court appearance on October 30, 2017. The US government asked the court to set Manafort's bail at $10 million and Gates at $5 million. The court placed Manafort and Gates under house arrest after prosecutors described them as flight risks. If convicted on all charges, Manafort could face decades in prison. Following the hearing, Manafort's attorney Kevin M. Downing made a public statement to the press proclaiming his client's innocence while describing the federal charges stemming from the indictment as "ridiculous". Downing defended Manafort's decade-long lobbying effort for Viktor Yanukovych, describing their lucrative partnership as attempts to spread democracy and strengthen the relationship between the United States and Ukraine. Judge Stewart responded by threatening to impose a gag order, saying "I expect counsel to do their talking in this courtroom and in their pleadings and not on the courthouse steps." On November 30, 2017, Manafort's attorneys said that Manafort had reached a bail agreement with prosecutors that would free him from the house arrest he had been under since his indictment. He offered bail in the form of $11.65 million worth of real estate. While out on bond, Paul Manafort worked on an op-ed with a "Russian who has ties to the Russian intelligence service", prosecutors said in a court filing requesting that the judge in the case revoke Manafort's bond agreement. On January 3, 2018, Manafort filed a lawsuit challenging Mueller's broad authority and alleging the Justice Department violated the law in appointing Mueller. A spokesperson for the department replied that "The lawsuit is frivolous but the defendant is entitled to file whatever he wants". On February 2, 2018, the Department of Justice filed a motion seeking to dismiss the civil suit Manafort brought against Mueller. Judge Jackson dismissed the suit on April 27, 2018, citing precedent that a court should not use civil powers to interfere in an ongoing criminal case. She did not, however, make any judgment as to the merits of the arguments presented. On February 22, 2018, both Manafort and Gates were further charged with additional crimes involving a tax avoidance scheme and bank fraud in Virginia. The charges were filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, rather than in the District of Columbia, as the alleged tax fraud overt actions had occurred in Virginia and not in the District. The new indictment alleged that Manafort, with assistance from Gates, laundered over $30 million through offshore bank accounts between approximately 2006 and 2015. Manafort allegedly used funds in these offshore accounts to purchase real estate in the United States, in addition to personal goods and services. On February 23, 2018, Gates pleaded guilty in federal court to lying to investigators and engaging in a conspiracy to defraud the United States. Through a spokesman, Manafort expressed disappointment in Gates' decision to plead guilty and said he had no similar plans. "I continue to maintain my innocence," he said. On February 28, 2018, Manafort entered a not guilty plea in the District Court for the District of Columbia. Judge Jackson subsequently set a trial date of September 17, 2018, and reprimanded Manafort and his attorney for violating her gag order by issuing a statement the previous week after former co-defendant Gates pleaded guilty. Manafort commented, "I had hoped and expected my business colleague would have had the strength to continue the battle to prove our innocence." On March 8, 2018, Manafort also pleaded not guilty to bank fraud and tax charges in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. Judge T. S. Ellis III of the Eastern District of Virginia set his trial on those charges to begin on July 10, 2018. He later pushed the trial back to July 24, citing a medical procedure involving a member of Ellis's family. Ellis also expressed concern that the special counsel and Mueller were only interested in charging Manafort to squeeze him for information that would reflect on Mr. Trump or lead to Trump's impeachment. Ellis later retracted his comments against the Mueller prosecution. Friends of Manafort announced the establishment of a legal defense fund on May 30, 2018, to help pay his legal bills. On June 8, 2018, Manafort was indicted for obstruction of justice and witness tampering along with long time associate Konstantin Kilimnik. The charges involved allegations that Manafort had attempted to convince others to lie about an undisclosed lobbying effort on behalf of Ukraine's former pro-Russian government. Since this allegedly occurred while Manafort was under house arrest, Judge Jackson revoked Manafort's bail on June 15 and ordered him held in jail until his trial. Manafort was booked into the Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw, Virginia, at 8:22 PM on June 15, 2018, where he was housed in the VIP section and kept in solitary confinement for his own safety. On June 22, Manafort's efforts to have the money laundering charges against him dismissed were rejected by the court. Citing Alexandria's D.C. suburbia status, abundant and significantly negative press coverage, and the margin by which Hillary Clinton won the Alexandria Division in the 2016 presidential election, Manafort moved the court for a change of venue to Roanoke, Virginia on July 6, 2018, citing Constitution entitlement to a fair and unbiased trial. On July 10, Judge T. S. Ellis ordered Manafort to be transferred back to the Alexandria Detention Center, an order Manafort opposed. As of January 2019, Manafort is still in jail. On March 13, 2019, the same day on which he was sentenced in the Washington case, Manafort was indicted by the Manhattan District Attorney on 16 charges related to mortgage fraud. District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said the charges stemmed from an investigation launched in March 2017. Unlike his previous convictions, these were levied by the State of New York, and therefore a presidential pardon cannot override or affect the sentence in the event of conviction. NBC News reported in August 2017 that a state investigator was exploring jurisdiction to charge potential defendants in the Mueller probe with state crimes, and that such charges could provide an end run around any presidential pardons. On December 18, 2019, Justice Maxwell Wiley of the New York County Supreme Court dismissed the charges against Manafort. The numerous indictments against Manafort were divided into two trials. Manafort was tried in the Eastern District of Virginia on eighteen charges including tax evasion, bank fraud, and hiding foreign bank accounts - financial crimes uncovered during the special counsel's investigation into Russia's role in the 2016 election. The trial began on July 31, 2018 before U.S. District Judge T. S. Ellis III. On August 21, the jury found Manafort guilty on eight of the eighteen charges, while Ellis declared a mistrial on the other ten. He was convicted on five counts of tax fraud, one of the four counts of failing to disclose his foreign bank accounts, and two counts of bank fraud. The jury was hung on three of the four counts of failing to disclose, as well as five counts of bank fraud, four of them related to the Federal Savings Bank of Chicago run by Stephen Calk. Mueller's office advised the court that Manafort should receive a sentence of 20 to 24 years, a sentence consistent with federal guidelines, but on March 7, 2019, Ellis sentenced Manafort to just 47 months in prison, less nine months for time already served, adding that the recommended sentence was "excessive" and that Manafort had lived an "otherwise blameless life." However, Ellis noted that Manafort had not expressed "regret for engaging in wrongful conduct". Manafort's trial in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia was scheduled to begin in September 2018. He was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, money laundering, failing to register as a foreign lobbyist, making false statements to investigators, and witness tampering. On September 14, 2018, Manafort entered into a plea deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to two charges: conspiracy to defraud the United States and witness tampering. He also agreed to forfeit to the government more than $22 million in cash and property, and to co-operate fully with the Special Counsel. A tentative sentencing date for Manafort's guilty plea in the D.C. case has been set for March 2019. Mueller's office stated in a November 26, 2018, court filing that Manafort had repeatedly lied to prosecutors about a variety of matters, breaching the terms of his plea agreement. Manafort's attorneys disputed the assertion. On December 7, 2018, the special counsel's office filed a document with the court listing five areas in which they say Manafort lied to them, which they said negated the plea agreement. DC District Court judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled on February 13, 2019, that Manafort had violated his plea deal by repeatedly lying to prosecutors. In a February 7, 2019, hearing before U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Amy Berman Jackson, prosecutors speculated that Manafort had concealed facts about his activities to enhance the possibility of his receiving a pardon. They said that Manafort's work with Ukraine had continued after he had made his plea deal and that during the Trump campaign, he met with his campaign deputy Rick Gates, who also had pleaded guilty in the case, and with alleged Russian Federation intelligence agent, Konstantin Kilimnik, in an exclusive New York cigar bar. Gates said the three left the premises separately, each using different exits. On March 13, 2019, Jackson sentenced Manafort to 73 months in prison, with 30 months concurrent with the jail time he received in the Virginia case, for a resultant sentence of an additional 43 months in jail (30 additional months for conspiracy to defraud the United States and 13 additional months for witness tampering). Manafort also apologized for his actions. Manafort was briefly held at the United States Penitentiary Canaan in Waymart, Pennsylvania. He was held at Federal Correctional Institution, Loretto in Loretto, Pennsylvania (inmate #35207-016). In June 2019, he was moved to the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York in Manhattan. In August 2019, he was moved back and is currently being held at Federal Correctional Institution, Loretto in Loretto, Pennsylvania with an expected release date of December 25, 2024. In 2017, Massachusetts lawyer J. Whitfield Larrabee filed a misconduct complaint against Manafort in the Connecticut Statewide Grievance Committee, seeking his disbarment on the basis of "conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation." In 2018, after Manafort pleaded guilty to conspiracy, the Connecticut Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel brought a case against Manafort. In January 2019, ahead of a disbarment hearing, Manafort resigned from the Connecticut bar and waived his right to ever seek readmission. Manafort has been married to Kathleen Bond Manafort since August 12, 1978; she graduated from George Washington University with a B.B.A. in 1979, became an attorney after graduating from Georgetown University Law Center with a J.D. and passing her Virginia Bar exam in 1988, and became a member of the DC Bar in 1991. They have two adult daughters. Links between Trump associates and Russian officials, Carter Page, Conspiracy theories related to the Trump–Ukraine scandal, Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (January–June 2017), Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (July–December 2017), Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (January–June 2018), Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (July–December 2018), Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (2019–2020) Paul J Manafort at SourceWatch, United States of America—Indictment of Paul J. Manafort and Richard Gates, Paul Manafort has three U.S. passports. Why?–November 1, 2017. Washington Post. Lobbying in the United States describes paid activity in which special interests hire well-connected professional advocates, often lawyers, to argue for specific legislation in decision-making bodies such as the United States Congress. It is a highly controversial phenomenon, often seen in a negative light by journalists and the American public, with some critics describing it as a legal form of bribery or extortion. While lobbying is subject to extensive and often complex rules which, if not followed, can lead to penalties including jail, the activity of lobbying has been interpreted by court rulings as constitutionally protected free speech and a way to petition the government for the redress of grievances, two of the freedoms protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution. Since the 1970s, lobbying activity has grown immensely in the United States in terms of the numbers of lobbyists and the size of lobbying budgets, and has become the focus of much criticism of American governance. Since lobby rules require extensive disclosure, there is a large amount of information in the public sphere about which entities lobby, how, at whom, and for how much. The current pattern suggests much lobbying is done primarily by corporations, although a wide variety of coalitions representing diverse groups also occurs. Lobbying takes place at every level of government, including federal, state, county, municipal, and even local governments. In Washington, D.C., lobbying usually targets members of Congress, although there have been efforts to influence executive agency officials as well as Supreme Court appointments. Lobbying can have an important influence on the political system; for example, a study in 2014 suggested that special interest lobbying enhanced the power of elite groups and was a factor shifting the nation's political structure toward an oligarchy in which average citizens have "little or no independent influence". The number of lobbyists in Washington is estimated to be over twelve thousand, but most lobbying (in terms of expenditures), is handled by fewer than 300 firms with low turnover. A report in The Nation in 2014 suggested that while the number of registered lobbyists in 2013 (12,281) decreased compared to 2002, lobbying activity was increasing and "going underground" as lobbyists use "increasingly sophisticated strategies" to obscure their activity. Analyst James A. Thurber estimated that the actual number of working lobbyists was close to 100,000 and that the industry brings in $9 billion annually. Lobbying has been the subject of academic inquiry in various fields, including law, public policy, economics and even marketing strategy. Political scientist Thomas R. Dye once said that politics is about battling over scarce governmental resources: who gets them, where, when, why and how. Since government makes the rules in a complex economy such as the United States, it is logical that various organizations, businesses, individuals, nonprofits, trade groups, religions, charities and others—which are affected by these rules—will exert as much influence as they can to have rulings favorable to their cause. And the battling for influence has happened in every organized society since the beginning of civilization, whether it was Ancient Athens, Florence during the time of the Medici, Late Imperial China, or the present-day United States. Modern-day lobbyists in one sense are like the courtiers of the Ancien Régime. If voting is a general way for a public to control a government, lobbying is a more specific, targeted effort, focused on a narrower set of issues. The term lobby has etymological roots in the physical structure of the British Parliament, in which there was an intermediary covered room outside the main hall. People pushing an agenda would try to meet with members of Parliament in this room, and they came to be known, by metonymy, as lobbyists, although one account in 1890 suggested that the application of the word "lobby" is American and that the term is not used as much in Britain. The Willard Hotel, 2 blocks from the White House at 1401 Pennsylvania Avenue, claims the term originated there: "It was in the Willard lobby that Ulysses S. Grant popularized the term “lobbyist.” Often bothered by self-promoters as he sat in the lobby and enjoyed his cigar and brandy, he referred to these individuals as "lobbyists." The term lobbying in everyday parlance can describe a wide variety of activities, and in its general sense, suggests advocacy, advertising, or promoting a cause. In this sense, anybody who tries to influence any political position can be thought of as "lobbying", and sometimes the term is used in this loose sense. A person who writes a letter to a congressperson, or even questions a candidate at a political meeting, could be construed as being a lobbyist. However, the term "lobbying" generally means a paid activity with the purpose of attempting to "influence or sway" a public official – including bureaucrats and elected officials – towards a desired specific action often relating to specific legislation. If advocacy is disseminating information, including attempts to persuade public officials as well as the public and media to promote the cause of something and support it, then when this activity becomes focused on specific legislation, either in support or in opposition, then it crosses the line from advocacy and becomes lobbying. This is the usual sense of the term "lobbying." One account suggested that much of the activity of nonprofits was not lobbying per se, since it usually did not mean changes in legislation. A lobbyist, according to the legal sense of the word, is a professional, often a lawyer. Lobbyists are intermediaries between client organizations and lawmakers: they explain to legislators what their organizations want, and they explain to their clients what obstacles elected officials face. One definition of a lobbyist is someone "employed to persuade legislators to pass legislation that will help the lobbyist's employer." Many lobbyists work in lobbying firms or law firms, some of which retain clients outside lobbying. Others work for advocacy groups, trade associations, companies, and state and local governments. Lobbyists can be one type of government official, such as a governor of a state, who presses officials in Washington for specific legislation. A lobbyist may put together a diverse coalition of organizations and people, sometimes including lawmakers and corporations, and the whole effort may be considered to be a lobby; for example, in the abortion issue, there is a "pro-choice lobby" and a "pro-life lobby". An estimate from 2007 reported that more than 15,000 federal lobbyists were based in Washington, DC; another estimate from 2018 suggested that the count of registered lobbyists who actually lobbied that year was 11,656. While numbers like these suggest that lobbying is a widespread activity, most accounts suggest that the Washington lobbying industry is an exclusive one run by a few well-connected firms and players, with serious barriers to entry for firms wanting to get into the lobbying business, since it requires them to have been "roaming the halls of Congress for years and years." It is possible for foreign nations to influence the foreign policy of the United States through lobbying or by supporting lobbying organizations directly or indirectly. For example, in 2016, Taiwanese officials hired American senator-turned-lobbyist Bob Dole to set up a controversial phone call between president-elect Donald Trump and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen. There are reports that the National Rifle Association, a U.S.-based lobbying group advocating for gun rights, has been the target of a decade-long infiltration effort by Russian president Vladimir Putin, with allegations that Putin funneled cash through the NRA to aid the election of Donald Trump. There are also reports that Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates has waged an intense lobbying campaign to win over the Trump administration and Congress. Generally, lobbyists focus on trying to persuade decision-makers: Congress, executive branch agencies such as the Treasury Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Supreme Court, and state governments (including governors). Federal agencies have been targeted by lobbyists since they write industry-specific rules; accordingly, interest groups spend "massive sums of money" trying to persuade them to make so-called "carve-outs" or try to block specific provisions from being enacted. A large fraction of overall lobbying is focused on only a few sets of issues, according to one report. It is possible for one level of government to lobby another level; for example, the District of Columbia has been lobbying Congress and the President for greater power, including possible statehood or voting representation in Congress; one assessment in 2011 suggested that the district needed to rethink its lobbying strategy, since its past efforts have only had "mixed results". Many executive branch agencies have the power to write specific rules and are a target of lobbying. Federal agencies such as the State Department make rules such as giving aid money to countries such as Egypt, and in one example, an Egyptian- American businessman named Kais Menoufy organized a lobby to try to halt U.S. aid to Egypt. Since the Supreme Court has the power of judicial review and can render a congressional law unconstitutional, it has great power to influence the course of American life. For example, in the Roe v. Wade decision, it ruled on the legality of abortion. A variety of forces use lobbying tactics to pressure the court to overturn this decision. Lobbyists represent their clients' or organizations' interests in state capitols. An example is a former school superintendent who has been lobbying state legislatures in California, Michigan and Nevada to overhaul teacher evaluations, and trying to end the "Last In, First Out" teacher hiring processes; according to one report, Michelle Rhee is becoming a "political force." State governments can be lobbied by groups which represent other governments within the state, such as a city authority; for example, the cities of Tallahassee and St. Petersburg lobbied the Florida legislature using paid lobbyists to represent the city's interests. There is lobbying activity at the county and municipal levels, especially in larger cities and populous counties. For example, officials within the city government of Chicago called aldermen became lobbyists after serving in municipal government, following a one-year period required by city ethics rules to abstain from lobbying. While the bulk of lobbying happens by business and professional interests who hire paid professionals, some lobbyists represent non-profits pro-bono for issues in which they are personally interested. Pro bono publico clients offer activities to meet and socialize with local legislators at events like fundraisers and awards ceremonies. Lobbies which push for a single issue have grown in importance during the past twenty years, according to one source. Corporations generally would be considered as single issue lobbies. If a corporation wishes to change public policy, or to influence legislation which impacts its success as a business, it may use lobbying as a "primary avenue" for this purpose. One research study suggested that single issue lobbies often operate in different kinds of institutional venues, sometimes bringing the same message to different groups. Lobbies which represent groups such as labor unions, business organizations, trade associations and such are sometimes considered to be multiple issue lobbies, and to succeed they must be somewhat more flexible politically and be willing to accept compromise. Inside lobbying, or sometimes called direct lobbying, describes efforts by lobbyists to influence legislation or rule-making directly by contacting legislators and their assistants, sometimes called staffers or aides., Outside lobbying, or sometimes indirect lobbying, includes attempts by interest group leaders to mobilize citizens outside the policymaking community, perhaps by public relations methods or advertising, to prompt them to pressure public officials within the policymaking community. One example of an outside lobbying effort is a film entitled InJustice, made by a group promoting lawsuit reform. Some lobbyists are now are using social media to reduce the cost of traditional campaigns, and to more precisely target public officials with political messages. The Constitution was crafted in part to solve the problem of special interests, today usually represented by lobbies, by having these factions compete. James Madison identified a faction as "a number of citizens, whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community", and Madison argued in Federalist No. 10 that there was less risk of injury by a narrowly focused faction in a large republic if any negative influence was counteracted by other factions. In addition, the Constitution protected free speech, including the right to petition the government, and these rights have been used by lobbying interests throughout the nation's history. There has been lobbying at every level of government, particularly in state governments during the nineteenth century, but increasingly directed towards the federal government in the twentieth century. The last few decades have been marked by an exponential increase in lobbying activity and expenditures. The number of registered Washington lobbyists is substantial. In 2009, the Washington Post estimated that there were 13,700 registered lobbyists, describing the nation's Capitol as "teeming with lobbyists.". In 2011, The Guardian estimated that in addition to the approximately 13,000 registered lobbyists, thousands more unregistered lobbyists could exist in Washington. The ratio of lobbyists employed by the healthcare industry, compared with every elected politician, was six to one, according to one account. Nevertheless, the numbers of lobbyists actively engaged in lobbying is considerably less, and the ones occupied with lobbying full-time and making significant money is even less. Law firms: Several law firms, including Patton Boggs, Akin Gump and Holland & Knight, had sizable departments devoted to so-called "government relations". One account suggested that the lobbying arms of these law firms were not held as separate subsidiaries, but that the law practices involved in government lobbying were integrated into the overall framework of the law firm. A benefit to an integrated arrangement was that the law firm and the lobbying department could "share and refer clients back and forth". Holland & Knight earned $13.9 million from lobbying revenue in 2011. One law firm employs so-called "power brokers" including former Treasury department officials such as Marti Thomas, and former presidential advisers such as Daniel Meyer. There was a report that two law firms were treating their lobbying groups as separate business units, and giving the non-lawyer lobbyists an equity stake in the firm., Lobbying firms: These firms usually have some lawyers in them, and are often founded by former congressional staffers, legislators, or other politicians. Some lobbying groups have been bought by large advertising conglomerates. Corporations which lobby actively tend to be few in number, large, and often sell to the government. Most corporations do not hire lobbyists. One study found that the actual number of firms which do lobbying regularly is fewer than 300, and that the percent of firms engaged in lobbying was 10% from 1998 to 2006, and that they were "mainly large, rich firms getting in on the fun." These firms hired lobbyists year after year, and there was not much evidence of other large firms taking much interest in lobbying. Corporations considering lobbying run into substantial barriers to entry: corporations have to research the relevant laws about lobbying, hire lobbying firms, and cultivate influential people and make connections. When an issue regarding a change in immigration policy arose, large corporations currently lobbying switched focus somewhat to take account of the new regulatory world, but new corporations—even ones likely to be affected by any possible rulings on immigration—stayed out of the lobbying fray, according to the study. Still, of all the entities doing lobbying in Washington, the biggest overall spenders are, in fact, corporations. In the first decade of the 2000s, the most lucrative clients for Gerald Cassidy's lobbying firm were corporations, displacing fees from the appropriations business. Wall Street lobbyists and the financial industry spent upwards of $100 million in one year to "court regulators and lawmakers", particularly since they were "finalizing new regulations for lending, trading and debit card fees." One academic analysis in 1987 found that firms were more likely to spend on lobbying if they were both large and concerned about "adverse financial statement consequences" if they did not lobby. Big banks were "prolific spenders" on lobbying; JPMorgan Chase has an in-house team of lobbyists who spent $3.3 million in 2010; the American Bankers Association spent $4.6 million on lobbying; an organization representing 100 of the nation's largest financial firms called the Financial Services Roundtable spent heavily as well. A trade group representing Hedge Funds spent more than $1 million in one quarter trying to influence the government about financial regulations, including an effort to try to change a rule that might demand greater disclosure requirements for funds. Amazon.com spent $450,000 in one quarter lobbying about a possible online sales tax as well as rules about data protection and privacy. Corporations which sell substantially to the government tend to be active lobbiers. For example, aircraft manufacturer Boeing, which has sizeable defense contracts, pours "millions into lobbying": In the spring of 2017, there was a fierce lobbying effort by Internet service providers (ISPs) such as Comcast and AT&T;, and tech firms such as Google and Facebook, to undo regulations protecting consumer privacy. Rules passed by the Obama administration in 2016 required ISPs to get "explicit consent" from consumers before gathering browsing histories, locations of businesses visited and applications used, but trade groups wanted to be able to sell this information for profit without consent. Lobbyists connected with Republican senator Jeff Flake and Republican representative Marsha Blackburn to sponsor legislation to dismantle Internet privacy rules; Flake received $22,700 in donations and Blackburn received $20,500 in donations from these trade groups. On March 23, 2017, abolition of privacy restrictions passed on a narrow party-line vote, and the lobbying effort achieved its result. In 2017, credit reporting agency Equifax lobbied Congress extensively, spending $1.1 million in 2016 and $500,000 in 2017, seeking rules to limit damage from lawsuits and less regulatory oversight; in August 2017, Equifax's databases were breached and the confidential data of millions of Americans was stolen by hackers and identity thieves, potentially opening up the firm to numerous class action lawsuits. Major American corporations spent $345 million lobbying for just three pro-immigration bills between 2006 and 2008. Internet service providers in the United States have spent more than $1.2 billion on lobbying since 1998, and 2018 was the biggest year so far with a total spend of more than $80 million. One report suggested the United Food & Commercial Workers International Union spent $80,000 lobbying the federal government on issues relating to "the tax code, food safety, immigration reform and other issues." Other possible players in the lobbying arena are those who might influence legislation: House & Senate colleagues, public opinion in the district, the White House, party leaders, union leaders, and other influential persons and groups. Interest groups are often thought of as "nonparty organizations" which regularly try to change or influence government decision-making. Lobbying has much in common with highly people-intensive businesses such as management consulting and public relations, but with a political and legal sensibility. Like lawmakers, many lobbyists are lawyers, and the persons they are trying to influence have the duty of writing laws. That the disciplines of law and lobbying are intertwined could be seen in the case of a Texas lawyer who had been seeking compensation for his unfairly imprisoned client; since his exonerated-prisoner client had trouble paying the legal expenses, the lawyer lobbied the Texas state legislature to raise the state's payment for unfairly imprisoned prisoners from $50,000 per year to $80,000 per year; it succeeded, making it possible for his newly freed client to pay the lawyer's fees. Well-connected lobbyists work in Washington for years, know the issues, are highly skilled advocates, and have cultivated close connections with members of Congress, regulators, specialists, and others. They understand strategy and have excellent communication skills; many are well suited to be able to choose which clients they would like to represent. Lobbyists patiently cultivate networks of powerful people, over many years, trying to build trust and maintain confidence and friendships. When a client hires them to push a specific issue or agenda, they usually form coalitions to exert political pressure. Lobbying, as a result, depends on trying to be flexible to new opportunities, but at the same time, to act as an agent for a client. As one lobbyist put it: Access is important and often means a one-on-one meeting with a legislator. Getting access can sometimes be difficult, but there are various avenues: email, personal letters, phone calls, face-to-face meetings, meals, get-togethers, and even chasing after congresspersons in the Capitol building: When getting access is difficult, there are ways to wear down the walls surrounding a legislator. Jack Abramoff explained: Lobbyists often assist congresspersons with campaign finance by arranging fundraisers, assembling PACs, and seeking donations from other clients. Many lobbyists become campaign treasurers and fundraisers for congresspersons. This helps incumbent members cope with the substantial amounts of time required to raise money for reelection bids; one estimate was that congresspersons had to spend a third of their working hours on fundraising activity. PACs are fairly easy to set up; it requires a lawyer and about $300, roughly. An even steeper possible reward which can be used in exchange for favors is the lure of a high-paying job as a lobbyist; according to Jack Abramoff, one of the best ways to "get what he wanted" was to offer a high-ranking congressional aide a high-paying job after they decided to leave public office. When such a promise of future employment was accepted, according to Abramoff, "we owned them". This helped the lobbying firm exert influence on that particular congressperson by going through the staff member or aide. At the same time, it is hard for outside observers to argue that a particular decision, such as hiring a former staffer into a lobbying position, was purely as a reward for some past political decision, since staffers often have valuable connections and policy experience needed by lobbying firms. Research economist Mirko Draca suggested that hiring a staffer was an ideal way for a lobbying firm to try to sway their old bosses—a congressperson—in the future. Lobbyists, according to several sources, strive for communications which are clear, straightforward, and direct. In a one-on- one meeting with a lobbyist, it helps to understand precisely what goal is wanted. A lobbyist wants action on a bill; a legislator wants to be re- elected. The idea is to persuade a legislator that what the lobbyist wants is good public policy. Lobbyists often urge lawmakers to try to persuade other lawmakers to approve a bill. Still, persuasion is a subtle business, requiring a deft touch, and carelessness can boomerang. In one instance of a public relations reversal, a lobbying initiative by the Cassidy firm which targeted Senator Robert C. Byrd blew up when the Cassidy-Byrd connection was published in the Washington Post; this resulted in a furious Byrd reversing his previous pro-Cassidy position and throwing a "theatrical temper tantrum" regarding an $18 million facility. Byrd denounced "lobbyists who collect exorbitant fees to create projects and have them earmarked in appropriation bills... for the benefit of their clients." Since it often takes a long time to build the network of relationships within the lobbying industry, ethical interpersonal dealings are important. A maxim in the industry is for lobbyists to be truthful with people they are trying to persuade; one lobbyist described it this way: "what you've basically got is your word and reputation". An untruth, a lie is too risky to the successful development of a long-term relationship and the potential gain is not worth the risk. One report suggested that below- the-belt tactics generally do not work. One account suggest that groping for "personal dirt" on opponents was counterproductive since it would undermine respect for the lobbyist and their clients. And, by reverse logic, if an untruth is told by an opponent or opposing lobby, then it makes sense to publicize it. But the general code among lobbyists is that unsubstantiated claims are bad business. Even worse is planting an informant in an opponent's camp, since if this subterfuge is ever discovered, it will boomerang negatively in a hundred ways, and credibility will drop to zero. The importance of personal relationships in lobbying can be seen in the state of Illinois, in which father-son ties helped push a smart-grid energy bill, although there were accusations of favoritism. And there is anecdotal evidence that a business firm seeking to profitably influence legislation has to pay particular attention to which lobbyist it hires. Strategic considerations for lobbyists, trying to influence legislation, include "locating a power base" or a constituency logically predisposed to support a given policy. Timing, as well, is usually important, in the sense of knowing when to propose a certain action and having a big-picture view of the possible sequence of desired actions. Strategic lobbying tries to estimate the possible responses of different groups to a possible lobby approach; one study suggested that the "expectations of opposition from other interests" was a key factor helping to determine how a lobby should operate. Increasingly, lobbyists seek to put together coalitions and use outside lobbying by swaying public opinion. Bigger, more diverse and deep pocketed coalitions tend to be more effective in outside lobbying, and the "strength in numbers" principle often applies. Interest groups try to build "sustainable coalitions of similarly situated individual organizations in pursuit of like-minded goals". According to one study, it is often difficult for a lobbyist to influence a staff member in Congress directly, since staffers tend to be well-informed and subject to views from competing interests. As an indirect tactic, lobbyists can try to manipulate public opinion which, in turn, can sometimes exert pressure on congresspersons. Activities for these purposes include trying to use the mass media, cultivating contacts with reporters and editors, encouraging them to write editorials and cover stories to influence public opinion, which may have the secondary effect of influencing Congress. According to analyst Ken Kollman, it is easier to sway public opinion than a congressional staff member since it is possible to bombard the public with "half-truths, distortion, scare tactics, and misinformation." Kollman suggests there should be two goals: (1) communicate that there is public support behind an issue to policymakers and (2) increase public support for the issue among constituents. Kollman suggested outside lobbying was a "powerful tool" for interest group leaders. In a sense, using these criteria, one could consider James Madison as having engaged in outside lobbying, since after the Constitution was proposed, he wrote many of the 85 newspaper editorials arguing for people to support the Constitution, and these writings later became the Federalist Papers. As a result of this "lobbying" effort, the Constitution was ratified, although there were narrow margins of victory in four of the state legislatures. Lobbying today generally requires mounting a coordinated campaign, using targeted blitzes of telephone calls, letters, emails to congressional lawmakers, marches down the Washington Mall, bus caravans, and such, and these are often put together by lobbyists who coordinate a variety of interest group leaders to unite behind a hopefully simple easy-to-grasp and persuasive message. It is important for lobbyists to follow rules governing lobbying behavior. These can be difficult and complex, take time to learn, require full disclosure, and mistakes can land a lobbyist in serious legal trouble. Gifts for congresspersons and staffers can be problematic, since anything of sizeable value must be disclosed and generally such gifts are illegal. Failure to observe gift restrictions was one factor which caused lobbyist Jack Abramoff to eventually plead guilty to a "raft of federal corruption charges" and led to convictions for 20 lobbyists and public officials, including congressperson Bob Ney and Bush deputy interior secretary Stephen Griles. Generally gifts to congresspersons or their staffs or federal officials are not allowed, but with a few exceptions: books are permitted, provided that the inside cover is inscribed with the congressperson's name and the name of one's organization. Gifts under $5 are allowed. Another exception is awards, so it is permitted to give a congressperson a plaque thanking him or her for support on a given issue. Cash gifts payable by check can only be made to campaign committees, not to a candidate personally or to his or her staff; it is not permitted to give cash or stock. Wealthy lobbyists often encourage other lobbying clients to donate to a particular cause, in the hope that favors will be returned at a later date. Lobbyist Gerald Cassidy encouraged other clients to give for causes dear to a particular client engaged in a current lobbying effort. Some lobbyists give their own money: Cassidy reportedly donated a million dollars on one project, according to one report, which noted that Cassidy's firm received "many times that much in fees from their clients" paid in monthly retainers. And their clients, in turn, had received "hundreds of millions in earmarked appropriations" and benefits worth "hundreds of millions more". The dynamics of the lobbying world make it fairly easy for a semi- skilled operator to defraud a client. This is essentially what happened in the Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal. There was a concerned client—in this case, an Indian casino—worried about possible ill-effects of legislation on its gambling business; and there were lobbyists such as Jack Abramoff who knew how to exploit these fears. The lobbyists actively lobbied against their own casino-client as a way to ratchet up their fears of adverse legislation as well as stoke possible future contributions; the lobbyists committed other violations such as grossly overbilling their clients as well as violating rules about giving gifts to congresspersons. Numerous persons went to jail after the scandal. The following are factors which can make fraud a fairly easy-to-do activity: that lobbyists are paid only to try to influence decision-makers, and may or may not succeed, making it hard to tell if a lobbyist did actual work; that much of what happens regarding interpersonal relations is obscure despite rather strict disclosure and transparency requirements; that there are sizable monies involved—factors such as these almost guarantee that there will be future scandals involving fraudulent lobbying activity, according to one assessment. A fraud similar to Abramoff's was perpetrated in Maryland by lobbyist Gerard E. Evans, who was convicted of mail and wire fraud in 2000 in a case involving falsely creating a "fictitious legislative threat" against a client, and then billing the client to work against this supposed threat. Lobbyists routinely monitor how congressional officials vote, sometimes checking the past voting records of congresspersons. One report suggested that reforms requiring "publicly recorded committee votes" led to more information about how congresspersons voted, but instead of becoming a valuable resource for the news media or voters, the information helped lobbyists monitor congressional voting patterns. As a general rule, lawmakers must vote as a particular interest group wishes them to vote, or risk losing support. Strategy usually dictates targeting specific office holders. On the state level, one study suggested that much of the lobbying activity targeted the offices of governors as well as state-level executive bureaucrats; state lobbying was an "intensely personal game" with face-to-face contact being required for important decisions. Lobbying can be a counteractive response to the lobbying efforts of others. One study suggested this was particularly true for battles surrounding possible decisions by the Supreme Court which is considered as a "battleground for public policy" in which differing groups try to "etch their policy preferences into law". Sometimes there are lobbying efforts to slow or derail other legislative processes; for example, when the FDA began considering a cheaper generic version of the costly anti-clotting drug Lovenox, the French pharmaceutical firm Sanofi "sprang into action to try and slow the process." Lobbyists are often assembled in anticipation of a potential takeover bid, particularly when there are large high-profile companies, or a large foreign company involved, and substantial concern that the takeover may be blocked by regulatory authorities. An example may illustrate. The company Tyco had learned that there had been discussion about a possible new tax provision that might have cost it $4 billion overall. So the firm hired Jack Abramoff and paid him a retainer of $100,000 a month. He assembled dozens of lobbyists with connections to key congressional committees with the ultimate objective being to influence powerful Senator Charles Grassley. Abramoff began with a fundraising effort to round up "every check" possible. He sought funds from his other lobbying clients: Since government has grown increasingly complex, having to deal with new technologies, the task of writing rules has become more complex. "Government has grown so complex that it is a virtual certainty that more than one agency would be affected by any piece of legislation," according to one view. Lobbyists, therefore, spend considerable time learning the ins and outs of issues, and can use their expertise to educate lawmakers and help them cope with difficult issues. Lobbyists' knowledge has been considered to be an intellectual subsidy for lawmakers. Some lobbyists become specialists with expertise in a particular set of issues, although one study suggested that of two competing criteria for lobbyists—expertise or access—that access was far more important. Lobby groups and their members sometimes also write legislation and whip bills, and in these instances, it is helpful to have lawyers skilled in writing legislation to assist with these efforts. It is often necessary to research relevant laws and issues beforehand. In many instances lobbyists write the actual text of the proposed law, and hire lawyers to "get the language down pat"—an omission in wording or an unclear phrase may open up a loophole for opponents to wrangle over for years. And lobbyists can often advise a lawmaker on how to navigate the approval process. Lobbying firms can serve as mentors and guides. For example, after months of protesting by the Occupy Wall Street, one lobbying firm prepared a memo to its clients warning that Republicans may "turn on big banks, at least in public" which may have the effect of "altering the political ground for years to come." Here are parts of the memo which were broadcast on the MSNBC network. Since the 1970s, there has been explosive growth in the lobbying industry, particularly in Washington D.C.. By 2011, one estimate of overall lobbying spending nationally was $30+ billion dollars. An estimate of lobbying expenses in the federal arena was $3.5 billion in 2010, while it had been only $1.4 billion in 1998. And there is prodigious data since firms are required to disclose lobbying expenditures on a quarterly basis. The industry, however, is not immune to economic downturns. If Congress is gridlocked, such as during the summer and early fall of 2011, lobbying activity dipped considerably, according to The Washington Post. Lobbying firm Patton Boggs reported drops in revenue during that year, from $12 million in 2010 to $11 million in 2011. To cope with the downturn, some law firms compensated by increasing activity in litigation, regulatory work, and representing clients in congressional investigations. A sea-change in government, such as a shift in control of the legislature from one political party to the other, can affect the lobbying business profoundly. For example, the primarily Democratic-serving lobbying firm Cassidy & Associates learned that control of Congress would change hands from Democrats to Republicans in 1994, and the firm acquired Republican lobbyists before the congressional handover of power, and the move helped the lobbying firm stay on top of the new political realities. There are numerous examples of lobbying activity reported by the media. One report chronicled a somewhat unusual alliance of consumer advocates and industry groups to boost funding for the Food and Drug Administration; the general pattern of lobbying efforts had been to try to reduce the regulatory oversight of such an agency. In this case, however, lobbying groups wanted the federal watchdog agency to have tougher policing authority to avert expensive problems when oversight was lax; in this case, industry and consumer groups were in harmony, and lobbyists were able to persuade officials that higher FDA budgets were in the public interest. Religious consortiums, according to one report, have engaged in a $400 million lobbying effort on such issues as the relation between church and state, civil rights for religious minorities, bioethics issues including abortion and capital punishment and end-of-life issues, and family issues. While national-level lobbyists working in Washington have the highest salaries, many lobbyists operating at the state level can earn substantial salaries. The table shows the top lobbyists in one state—Maryland—in 2011. Top power-brokers such as Gerald Cassidy have made fortunes from lobbying: The general consensus view is that lobbying generally works overall in achieving sought-after results for clients, particularly since it has become so prevalent with substantial and growing budgets, although there are dissenting views. A study by the investment-research firm Strategas which was cited in The Economist and the Washington Post compared the 50 firms that spent the most on lobbying relative to their assets, and compared their financial performance against that of the S&P; 500 in the stock market; the study concluded that spending on lobbying was a "spectacular investment" yielding "blistering" returns comparable to a high-flying hedge fund, even despite the financial downturn of the past few years. A 2009 study by University of Kansas professor Raquel Meyer Alexander suggested that lobbying brought a substantial return on investment. A 2011 meta-analysis of previous research findings found a positive correlation between corporate political activity and firm performance. There are numerous reports that the National Rifle Association or NRA successfully influenced 45 senators to block a proposed rule to regulate assault weapons, despite strong public support for gun control. The NRA spends heavily to influence gun policy; it gives $3 million annually to the re-election campaigns of congresspersons directly, and gives additional money to PACs and others to influence legislation indirectly, according to the BBC in 2016. There is widespread agreement that a key ingredient in effective lobbying is money. This view is shared by players in the lobbying industry. Still, effectiveness can vary depending on the situational context. One view is that large multiple-issue lobbies tend to be effective in getting results for their clients if they are sophisticated, managed by a legislative director familiar with the art of compromise, and play "political hardball". But if such lobbies became too big, such as large industrial trade organizations, they became harder to control, often leading to lackluster results. A study in 2001 which compared lobbying activity in US- style congressional against European-style parliamentary systems, found that in congressional systems there was an advantage favoring the "agenda-setters", but that in both systems, "lobbying has a marked effect on policies". One report suggested that the 1,000 registered lobbyists in California were highly influential such that they were called the Third House. Studies of lobbying by academics in previous decades painted a picture of lobbying being an ineffectual activity, although many of these studies were done before lobbying became prevalent in American politics. A study in 1963 by Bauer, Pool, & Dexter suggested lobbyists were mostly "impotent" in exerting influence. Studies in the early 1990s suggested that lobbying exerted influence only "marginally", although it suggested that when lobbying activity did achieve political impacts, that the results of the political choices were sufficient to justify the expenditure on lobbying. A fairly recent study in 2009 is that Washington lobbies are "far less influential than political rhetoric suggests", and that most lobbying campaigns do not change any views and that there was a strong entrenchment of the status quo. But it depends on what is seen as "effective", since many lobbying battles result in a stalemate, since powerful interests battle, and in many cases, merely keeping the "status quo" could be seen as a victory of sorts. What happens often is that varying coalitions find themselves in "diametrical opposition to each other" and that stalemates result. There is anecdotal evidence from numerous newspaper accounts of different groups battling that lobbying activity usually achieves results. For example, the Obama administration pledged to stop for-profit colleges from "luring students with false promises", but with this threat, the lobbying industry sprang into action with a $16 million campaign, and their efforts succeeded in watering down the proposed restrictions. How did the lobbying campaign succeed? Actions taken included: And sometimes merely keeping the status quo could be seen as a victory. When gridlock led to the supposed supercommittee solution, numerous lobbyists from all parts of the political spectrum worked hard, and a stalemate resulted, but with each side defended their own special interests. And while money is an important variable, it is one among many variables, and there have been instances in which huge sums have been spent on lobbying only to have the result backfire. One report suggested that the communications firm AT&T; failed to achieve substantial results from its lobbying efforts in 2011, since government antitrust officials rejected its plan to acquire rival T-Mobile. Lobbying is a practical necessity for firms that "live and die" by government decisions, such as large government contractors such as Boeing. A study done in 2006 by Bloomberg News suggested that lobbying was a "sound money-making strategy" for the 20 largest federal contractors. The largest contractor, Lockheed Martin Corporation, received almost $40 billion in federal contracts in 2003-4, and spent $16 million on lobbying expenses and campaign donations. For each dollar of lobbying investment, the firm received $2,517 in revenues, according to the report. When the lobbying firm Cassidy & Associates began achieving results with earmarks for colleges and universities and medical centers, new lobbying firms rose to compete with them to win "earmarks of their own", a clear sign that the lobbying was exceedingly effective. Lobbying has been the subject of much debate and discussion. There is general consensus that lobbying has been a significant corrupting influence in American politics, although criticism is not universal, and there have been arguments put forward to suggest that the system is working properly. Generally the image of lobbyists and lobbying in the public sphere is not a positive one, although this is not a universal sentiment. Lobbyists have been described as a "hired gun" without principles or positions. Scandals involving lobbying have helped taint the image of the profession, such as ones involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and congressmen Randy "Duke" Cunningham, and Bob Ney and others, and which featured words such as "bribery", "lobbyist", "member of Congress" and "prison" tending to appear together in the same articles. Negative publicity can sully lobbying's image to a great extent: high-profile cases of lobbying fraud such as Abramoff's; dubious father-son exchange-of- favors ties; public officials such as Newt Gingrich being accused and then denying accusations of having done lobbying and earning $1.6 million from "strategic advice". There are a variety of reasons why lobbying has acquired a negative image in public consciousness. While there is much disclosure, much of it happens in hard-to-disclose personal meetings, and the resulting secrecy and confidentiality can serve to lower lobbying's status. Since the 1980s, congresspersons and staffers have been "going downtown"—becoming lobbyists—and the big draw is money. The "lucrative world of K Street" means that former congresspersons with even "modest seniority" can move into jobs paying $1 million or more annually, without including bonuses for bringing in new clients. The general concern of this revolving- door activity is that elected officials—persons who were supposed to represent the interests of citizens—have instead become entangled with the big-money interests of for-profit corporations and interest groups with narrow concerns, and that public officials have been taken over by private interests. In July 2005, Public Citizen published a report entitled "The Journey from Congress to K Street": the report analyzed hundreds of lobbyist registration documents filed in compliance with the Lobbying Disclosure Act and the Foreign Agents Registration Act among other sources. It found that since 1998, 43 percent of the 198 members of Congress who left government to join private life have registered to lobby. A similar report from the Center for Responsive Politics found 370 former members were in the "influence-peddling business", with 285 officially registered as federal lobbyists, and 85 others who were described as providing "strategic advice" or "public relations" to corporate clients. The Washington Post described these results as reflecting the "sea change that has occurred in lawmakers' attitudes toward lobbying in recent years." The report included a case study of one particularly successful lobbyist, Bob Livingston, who stepped down as Speaker-elect and resigned his seat in 1999. In the six years since his resignation, The Livingston Group grew into the 12th largest non-law lobbying firm, earning nearly $40 million by the end of 2004. During roughly the same time period, Livingston, his wife, and his two political action committees (PACs) contributed over $500,000 to the campaign funds of various candidates. Numerous reports chronicle the revolving door phenomenon. A 2011 estimate suggested that nearly 5,400 former congressional staffers had become federal lobbyists over a ten-year period, and 400 lawmakers made a similar jump. It is a "symbiotic relationship" in the sense that lobbying firms can exploit the "experience and connections gleaned from working inside the legislative process", and lawmakers find a "ready pool of experienced talent." There is movement in the other direction as well: one report found that 605 former lobbyists had taken jobs working for lawmakers over a ten-year period. A study by the London School of Economics found 1,113 lobbyists who had formerly worked in lawmakers' offices. The lobbying option is a way for staffers and lawmakers to "cash in on their experience", according to one view. Before the 1980s, staffers and aides worked many years for congresspersons, sometimes decades, and tended to stay in their jobs; now, with the lure of higher-paying lobbying jobs, many would quit their posts after a few years at most to "go downtown." And it is not just staffers, but lawmakers as well, including high-profile ones such as congressperson Richard Gephardt. He represented a "working-class" district in Missouri for many years but after leaving Congress, he became a lobbyist. In 2007, he began his own lobbying firm called "Gephardt Government Affairs Group" and in 2010 it was earning close to $7 million in revenues with clients including Goldman Sachs, Boeing, Visa Inc., Ameren Corporation, and Waste Management Inc.. Senators Robert Bennett and Byron Dorgan became lobbyists too. Mississippi governor Haley Barbour became a lobbyist. In 2010, former representative Billy Tauzin earned $11 million running the drug industry's lobbying organization, called Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). His bill to provide prescription drug access to Medicare recipients gave major concessions to the pharmaceutical industry: (1) Medicare was prevented from negotiating lower costs for prescription drugs (2) the reimportation of drugs from first world countries was not allowed (3) Medicare D was undermined by a policy of Medigap D. After the bill passed a few months later, Tauzin retired from Congress and took an executive position at PhRMA to earn an annual salary of $2 million. Many former representatives earned over $1 million in one year, including James Greenwood and Daniel Glickman. A similar concern voiced by critics of lobbying is that Washington politics has become dominated by elites, and that it is an "insider's game" excluding regular citizens and which favors entrenched firms. Individuals generally can not afford to lobby, and critics question whether corporations with "deeper pockets" should have greater power than regular persons. In this view, the system favors the rich, such that the "rich have gotten richer, the weak weaker", admits lobbyist Gerald Cassidy. There is concern that those having more money and better political connections can exert more influence than others. However, analyst Barry Hessenius made a case that the excessive for- profit lobbying could be counteracted if there were more efforts to increase nonprofit lobbying and boost their effectiveness. There is so much money that it has been described as a "flood" that has a "corrupting influence", so that the United States appears to be "awash" in interest groups. If coalitions of different forces battle in the political arena for favorable treatment and better rules and tax breaks, it can be seen as fair if both sides have equal resources and try to fight for their interests as best they can. Gerald Cassidy said: A related but slightly different criticism is that the problem with lobbying as it exists today is that it creates an "inequity of access to the decision-making process". As a result, important needs get left out of the political evaluation, such that there are no anti-hunger lobbies or lobbies seeking serious solutions to the problem of poverty. Nonprofit advocacy has been "conspicuously absent" from lobbying efforts, according to one view. Critics suggest that when a powerful coalition battles a less powerful one, or one which is poorly connected or underfunded, the result may be seen as unfair and potentially harmful for the entire society. The increasing number of former lawmakers becoming lobbyists has led Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) to propose paring back the many Capitol Hill privileges enjoyed by former senators and representatives. His plan would deprive lawmakers-turned- lobbyists of privileges such as unfettered access to otherwise "members only" areas such as the House and Senate floors and the House gym. A concern among many critics is that influence peddling hurts overall decision making, according to this criticism. Proposals with merit are dropped in favor of proposals backed by political expediency. An example cited in the media is the recent battling between food industry lobbyists and healthcare lobbyists regarding school lunches. A group supported by the United States Department of Agriculture proposed healthier lunches as a way to combat childhood obesity by limiting the number of potatoes served, limiting salty foods, and adding more fresh vegetables, but this group was countered by a strong food lobby backed by Coca-Cola, Del Monte, and makers of frozen pizza. The food lobbyists succeeded in blocking the proposed reforms, even writing rules suggesting that the tomato paste on a pizza qualified as a vegetable, but overall, according to critics, this case appeared to be an example where business interests won out over health concerns. Critics use examples such as these to suggest that lobbying distorts sound governance. A study by IMF economists found that the "heaviest lobbying came from lenders making riskier loans and expanding their mortgage business most rapidly during the housing boom," and that there were indications that heavy-lobbying lenders were more likely to receive bailout funds. The study found a correlation between lobbying by financial institutions and excessive risk-taking during 2000–2007, and the authors concluded that "politically active lenders played a role in accumulation of risks and thus contributed to the financial crisis". Another study suggested that governments tend to protect domestic industries, and have a habit of shunting monies to ailing sectors; the study suggested that "it is not that government policy picks losers, it is that losers pick government policy." One critic suggested that the financial industry has successfully blocked attempts at regulation in the aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse. Critics have contended that when lawmakers are drawn into battles to determine issues such as the composition over school lunches or how much an ATM fee should be, more serious issues such as deficit reduction or global warming or social security are neglected. It leads to legislative inertia. The concern is that the preoccupation with what are seen as superficial issues prevents attention to long-term problems. Critics suggested that the 2011 Congress spent more time discussing per-transaction debit-card fees while neglecting issues seen as more pressing. In this line of reasoning, critics contend that lobbying, in and of itself, is not the sole problem, but only one aspect of a larger problem with American governance. Critics point to an interplay of factors: citizens being uninvolved politically; congresspersons needing huge sums of money for expensive television advertising campaigns; increased complexity in terms of technologies; congresspersons spending three days of every week raising money; and so forth. Given these temptations, lobbying came along as a logical response to meet the needs of congresspersons seeking campaign funds and staffers seeking personal enrichment. In a sense, in competitive politics, the common good gets lost: A lobbyist can identify a client's needs. But it is hard for a single individual to say what is best for the whole group. The intent of the Constitution's Framers was to have built-in constitutional protections to protect the common good, but according to these critics, these protections do not seem to be working well: Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School and author of Republic, Lost, suggested that the moneyed persuasive power of special interests has insinuated itself between the people and the lawmakers. He quoted congressperson Jim Cooper who remarked that Congress had become a "Farm League for K Street" in the sense that congresspersons were focused on lucrative lobbying careers after Congress rather than on serving the public interest while in office. In a speech, Lessig suggested the structure of incentives was such that legislators were tempted to propose unnecessary regulations as a way to further lobbying industry activity. According to one view, major legislation such as proposed Wall Street reforms have spurred demand for "participating in the regulatory process." Lessig suggested the possibility that it was not corporations deciding to take up lobbying, but Congress choosing to debate less-than- important issues to bring well-heeled corporations into the political fray as lobbyists. As a result of his concerns, Lessig has called on state governments to summon a Second Constitutional Convention to propose substantive reform. Lessig believes that a constitutional amendment should be written to limit political contributions from non-citizens, including corporations, anonymous organizations, and foreign nationals. Scholars such as Richard Labunski, Sanford Levinson, Glenn Reynolds, Larry Sabato, as well as newspaper columnist William Safire, and activists such as John Booth of RestoringFreedom.org have called for constitutional changes that would curb the powerful role of money in politics. Law in the United States is generally made by Congress, but as the federal government has expanded during much of the twentieth century, there are a sizeable number of federal agencies, generally under the control of the president. These agencies write often industry-specific rules and regulations regarding such things as automobile safety and air quality. Unlike elected congresspersons who are constantly seeking campaign funds, these appointed officials are harder to influence, generally. However, there are indications that lobbyists seek to expand their influence from the halls of Congress deeper into the federal bureaucracy. President Obama pledged during the election campaign to rein in lobbying. As president in January 2009, he signed two executive orders and three presidential memoranda to help ensure his administration would be more open, transparent, and accountable. These documents attempted to bring increased accountability to federal spending and limit the influence of special interests, and included a lobbyist gift ban and a revolving door ban. In May 2009, the Recovery Act Lobbying Rules. The Executive Branch Reform Act, H.R. 985, was a bill which would have required over 8,000 Executive Branch officials to report into a public database nearly any "significant contact" from any "private party." The purpose was to identify lobbying activity. The bill was supported by proponents as an expansion of "government in the sunshine" including groups such as Public Citizen. But the proposals ran into serious opposition from various groups including the lobbying industry itself. Opponents argued that the proposed reporting rules would have infringed on the right to petition, making it difficult not just for lobbyists, but for regular citizens to communicate their views on controversial issues without having their names and viewpoints entered into a government database. Opposition groups suggested that although the proposed rules were promoted as a way to regulate "lobbyists," persons described as a "private party" could be practically anybody, and that anybody contacting a federal official might be deemed to be a "lobbyist". The U.S. Department of Justice raised constitutional and other objections to the bill. Opponents mobilized over 450 groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Realtors with letter writing campaigns against the proposed restrictions. Lobbyist Howard Marlowe argued in a "stern letter" that the restriction on gift-giving to federal employees would create "fear of retribution for political donations": In 2011, there were efforts to "shift regulatory power from the executive branch to Congress" by requiring that any "major rule" which may cost the economy more than $100 million must be decided by Congress with an up-or-down vote. But skeptics think that such a move proposed by Republican lawmakers could "usher in a lobbying bonanza from industry and other special-interest groups" to use campaign contributions to reshape the regulatory milieu. Critics suggest that Congress has the power to fix itself, but is reluctant to sacrifice money and power. One report suggested that those in control had an "unbroken record of finding ways to navigate around reform laws or turn regulatory standards to their own advantage." There are counterarguments that the system is working as it should, despite being rather messy. According to this line of argument, the Madisonian view of politics—in which factions were supposed to compete with other factions—is working exactly as it should. Competing factions, or in this case, competing interest groups, square off. Battling happens within the federal government, but instead of by settling arguments by elections, arguments are settled by powerful interest groups fighting each other, often financially. And it might appear to members of groups which lost in a lobbying battle that the reason for their loss was that the other side lobbied unfairly using more money. There are numerous instances in which opposed lobbies stalemate, and instances in which these stalemates have been seen as a positive result. And sometimes powerful financial interests lose the battle. Lobbying brings valuable information to policymakers, according to another argument in favor of lobbying. Since lobbyists often become highly knowledgeable about a specific issue by studying it in depth over years, they can bring considerable expertise to help legislators avoid errors as well as grasp the nuances of complex issues. This information can also help Congress oversee numerous federal agencies which often regulate complex industries and issue highly detailed and specific rulings. Accordingly, it is difficult for Congress to keep track of what these agencies do. It has been argued that lobbyists can help Congress monitor this activity by possibly raising "red flags" about proposed administrative rulings. Further, congresspersons can quickly gauge where they stand about a proposed administrative ruling simply by seeing which lobbying groups support the proposal, and which oppose it. Another argument in support of lobbying is that different interest groups and lobbyists, while trying to build coalitions and win support, often amend or soften or change their positions in this process, and that interest groups and lobbyists regulate each other, in a sense. But a more general sentiment supporting the lobbying arrangement is that every citizen can be construed as being "represented" by dozens of special interests: If powerful groups such as the oil industry succeed in winning a battle in government, consumers who drive gas-powered cars can benefit a bit, according to this view. Even readers of Wikipedia could be conceived as being a special interest and represented by various lobbies. For example, opponents of the Stop Online Piracy Act believed that the act might restrict sites such as Wikipedia; on January 18, 2012, as a form of protest and as a way to encourage readers and contributors of English Wikipedia to write their congresspersons, the online encyclopedia was "blacked out for a day as part of an effort to lobby the government. Another view in support of lobbying is that it serves a helpful purpose as helping guard against extremism. According to this view, lobbying adds "built-in delays" and permits and encourages opposing lobbies to battle. In the battling, possibly damaging decrees and incorrect decisions are stymied by seemingly unhelpful delays and waits. A slightly different view is that lobbying is no different from other professions: Generally, the United States requires systematic disclosure of lobbying, and it may be one of the few countries to have such extensive requirements. Disclosure in one sense allows lobbyists and public officials to justify their actions under the banner of openness and with full compliance of the law. The rules often specify how much a lobbyist can spend on specific activities, and how to report expenses; many of the laws and guidelines are specified in the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995. Transparency and disclosure requirements mean that there are volumes of statistics available for all kinds of analyses—by journalists, by the public, by rival lobbying efforts. Researchers can subdivide lobbying expenditures by numerous breakdowns, such as by contributions from energy companies. Sometimes defining clearly who is a "lobbyist" and what precisely are lobbying activities can be difficult. According to the Lobbying Disclosure Act, several authorized definitions include: Lobbying activities means "lobbying contacts and efforts in support of such contacts, including preparation and planning activities, research and other background work that is intended, at the time it is performed, for use in contacts, and coordination with the lobbying activities of others.", Lobbying contact means "any oral or written communication (including an electronic communication) to a covered executive branch official or a covered legislative branch official". Still, distinguishing lobbyists from a strategic adviser can be difficult, since the duties of each can often overlap and are hard to define precisely. There have been issues raised about what constitutes the difference between a lobbyist and a bundler; one report described bundlers as "supporters who contribute their own money to his campaign and solicit it from others", and there was a question whether such persons were really lobbyists involved with raising campaign monies for the election of Barack Obama, and whether Obama had broken his own pledge not to receive money from lobbyists. The legal ramifications of lobbying are further intertangled with aspects of campaign finance reform, since lobbyists often spend time seeking donations for the reelection efforts of congresspersons; sorting out these issues can pose ethical challenges. There are numerous regulations governing the practice of lobbying, often ones requiring transparency and disclosure. People paid to lobby must register with the secretary of the Senate and the clerk of the House of Representatives within 45 days of contacting a legislator for the first time, or 45 days after being employed. An exception is that lobbyists who earn less than $3,000 per client for each fiscal quarter, or whose total lobbying expenses are less than $11,500 each quarter, do not need to register. Part-time lobbyists are exempt from registering unless they spend more than 20% of their working hours doing lobbying activities in any quarter. If lobbyists have two or more contacts with a legislator as a lobbyist, then they must register. Requirements for registering also apply to companies that specialize in lobbying, or ones that have an in-house lobbyist, particularly if they spend more than $11,500 on lobbying. Generally, nonprofit organizations, other than churches, are exempt from registering if they hire an outside lobbying firm. Filing must be made each quarter, and a separate file is needed for each of the lobbyist's clients, and include information such as the name and title of the client, an estimate of lobbying expenses, and an estimate of income the lobbyist achieved after doing the lobbying. States, in addition, are moving in the direction of greater disclosure and transparency regarding lobbying activities. California has an online database called Cal-Access although there were reports that it has been underfunded. Money collected from registration fees are often used to pay for the disclosure services such as Cal-Access. There were complaints in Illinois that the disclosure requirements were often not rigorous enough and allowed lobbyists to work "without public notice" and with possible "conflicts of interest". Many local municipalities are requiring legislative agents register as lobbyists to represent the interests of clients to local city council members such as in the swing state of Ohio cities such as Columbus and Cincinnati. Laws requiring disclosure have been more prevalent in the twentieth century. In 1946, there was a so-called "sunshine law" requiring lobbyists to disclose what they were doing, on whose behalf, and how much they received in payment. The resulting Federal Regulation of Lobbying Act of 1946 governed lobbying rules up until 1995 when the Lobbying Disclosure Act replaced it. The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, later amended in 2002 as the McCain Feingold Act, had rules governing campaign contributions. Each branch of Congress has rules as well. Legislation generally requires reports containing an accounting of major expenditures as well as legislation that was influenced; the wording of some of the pertinent laws can be found in . Lobbying law is a constantly evolving field; the American Bar Association published a book of guidelines in 2009 with over 800 pages. The laws are often rather specific, and when not observed, can lead to serious trouble. Failing to file a quarterly report, or knowingly filing an incorrect report, or failing to correct an incorrect report, can lead to fines up to $200,000 and imprisonment up to five years. Penalties can apply to lobbyists who fail to list gifts made to a legislator. In other situations, the punishment can be light: for example, Congressional aide-turned-lobbyist Fraser Verrusio spent a few hours in jail after pleading guilty to taking a client to a World Series baseball game and failing to report it. Tax rules can apply to lobbying. In one situation, the charity Hawaii Family Forum risked losing its tax-exempt status after it had engaged in lobbying activity; federal tax law requires charities such as that one to limit their lobbying to 20% of their overall expenditures or else be eligible for being taxed like a for-profit corporation. Lobbyists sometimes support rules requiring greater transparency and disclosure: Scandals can spur impetus towards greater regulation as well. The Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal, which started in the 1990s and led to a guilty plea in 2006, inspired the Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2006 (). According to Time Magazine the Senate bill: 1. barred lobbyists themselves from buying gifts and meals for legislators, but left a loophole in which firms and organizations represented by those lobbyists could still dole out gifts and perks; 2. allowed privately funded trips if lawmakers got prior approval from a commissioned ethics committee; 3. required lobbyists to file frequent and detailed activity reports and have them posted publicly. The bill was approved in 2006 by a 90–8 vote. In 1995, the 104th Congress tried to reform Lobbying by passing the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 which defines and requires lobbyists who are compensated for their actions to register with congressional officials. The legislation was later amended by the Lobbying Disclosure Technical Amendments Act of 1998. There were subsequent modifications leading to the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007. The Lobbying Transparency and Accountability Act of 2006 () legislation modified Senate rules, although some senators and a coalition of good-government groups assailed the bill as being too weak. The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 was a comprehensive ethics and lobbying reform bill, (), which passed in 2007 in the House and Congress by a large majority. A parallel Senate version of the legislation, (), passed in 2007 by a nearly unanimous vote. After the House & Senate resolved their differences and passed an amended revision, President Bush signed the enrolled bill into law (). Some states have considered banning government employees permanently from lobbying on issues they had worked on. For example, there was a proposal along these lines to prevent county employees in Maryland from ever lobbying on issues they had worked on. The proposal insisted that county officials post financial disclosures as well as prohibit gifts from contractors. Jack Abramoff, emerging from prison, has spoken publicly about lobbying. In his view, regulations designed to rein in the excesses of lobbying have not been effective, and reforms and regulations have not cleaned up the system "at all". Abramoff said lobbyists could "find a way around just about any reform Congress enacted", and gave an example: A similar view suggested that lobbying reform efforts have been "fought tooth and nail to prevent its passage" since the people with the power to reform would curtail their own powers and income flows. Since commerce worldwide is becoming more integrated, with firms headquartered in one country increasingly doing business in many other countries, it is logical to expect that lobbying efforts will reflect the increasing globalization. Sometimes foreign-owned corporations will want to lobby the United States government, and in such instances, new rules can apply, since it can be particularly thorny resolving whether national security interests are at stake and how they might be affected. In 1938, the Foreign Agents Registration Act required an explicit listing of all political activities undertaken by a lobbyist on behalf of any foreign principal. There were serious concerns about lobbying firms representing foreign entities – and potentially values opposed to American principles – after Axis power agitprop was planted in American soils during World War II through the efforts of public-relations specialist Ivy Lee's proxy firm "German Dye Trust". As a result, in 1938, the Foreign Agents Registration Act or FARA was passed by Congress, and this law required foreign lobbyists to share information about their contracts with the Justice Department. FARA's mandate was to disclose to policymakers the sources of information that influenced public opinions, policies, and law. However, the goal was not to restrict the speech of the lobbyist or the content of the lobbying. Nonetheless, it was estimated that less than half of foreign lobbyists who should have registered under FARA actually did so. By the 1960s, perceived failures in FARA’s enforcement led to public outcry against lobbying excesses, while revelations of foreign bribery circulated regularly well into the early 1970s. This prompted legislation proposed to reduce the autonomy of foreign firms, most of which was not ratified for concerns over a lack of constitutionality. While the House of Representatives passed a rule to increase public scrutiny of foreign lobbying, one estimate was that about 75% of lobbyists were exempt from a registration requirement, including individuals representing foreign interests. A general trend is that the number of lobbyists representing foreign companies is rising. The case of Washington’s APCO Worldwide, a firm which represented the dictatorship of General Sani Abacha of Nigeria in 1995 whose regime had hanged nine pro-democracy activists, attracted negative publicity. While current law forbids foreign nations from contributing to federal, state, or local elections, loopholes allow American subsidiaries of foreign corporations to establish so-called separated segregated funds or SSFs to raise money. According to one view, the definition of which firms are defined as "foreign" was unclear, and the lack of clarity undermines the ability to regulate their activity. Foreign-funded lobbying efforts include those of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, Libya, and China lobbies. In 2010, foreign governments spent approximately $460 million on lobbying Congress and the U.S. Government. Between 2015–2017, the Saudi Arabia paid $18 million to 145 registered lobbyists to influence the U.S. government. While Congress has tried to quell criticisms against the leverage of domestic lobbying firms by updating domestic lobbying legislation – such as the revision of the Lobbyist Disclosure Act in 1997)—there was a report that its inaction in rectifying loopholes in foreign lobbying regulation has led to scandals. There was a report of an upsurge of lobbying by foreign-owned U.S. subsidiaries against Democratic efforts to limit campaign spending in early 2010. The proposed was to restrict lobbying by U.S. subsidiaries of foreign firms. In 2011, the Chinese firm Alibaba hired a lobbying firm in Washington when it began contemplating a purchase of the U.S. firm Yahoo!. There was a case in which a lobbying effort described as "extraordinary" was trying to change the designation of a fringe Iranian opposition group from being a terrorist organization to being a benign organization. Lobbyists seeking to downgrade the designation hired influential foreign affairs officials, including former CIA directors, a former FBI director, and others to advocate for the change of designation. But there have been others accused of illegally lobbying for foreign nations or who failed to register as a foreign agent who may face prison time as a result. United States Chamber of Commerce, History of lobbying in the United States, Political action committee, National Rifle Association, Second Constitutional Convention of the United States, AARP (formerly the American Association of Retired Persons), Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007, Israel lobby in the United States, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Diaspora politics in the United States, China Lobby, Turkish lobby in the United States, Libya lobby in the United States, Saudi Arabia lobby in the United States, Fossil fuels lobby, Florida Institute of CPAs, Albanian American Civic League, American Automobile Association, Center for Responsive Politics, Arab lobby in the United States, Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal, Jerry Lewis - Lowery lobbying firm controversy, Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, Money loop, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, United States v. Harriss, NARFE (National Active and Retired Federal Employees) 1. Federalist No. 10. of at Wikisource. 2. Federalist No. 10. of at Wikisource. 3. Federalist No. 10. of at Wikisource. Balogh, Brian "'Mirrors of Desires': Interest Groups, Elections, and the Targeted Style in Twentieth-Century America," in Meg Jacobs, William J. Novak, and Julian Zelizer, eds. The Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political Theory, (2003), 222–49, Baumgartner, Frank R., and Beth L. Leech. Basic Interests: The Importance of Groups in Politics and in Political Science (1998), 64–82, reviews the political science literature on interest groups, Blanes i Vidal, Jordi; Mirko Draca and Christian Fons-Rosen: Revolving Door Lobbyists, 5th Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies Paper, July 2010, Clemens, Elisabeth S. The People’s Lobby: Organizational Innovation and the Rise of Interest-Group Politics in the United States, 1890–1925 (1997), Hansen, John M. Gaining Access: Congress and the Farm Lobby, 1919–1981 (1991);, Kaiser, Robert G. "So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government" (2009)., Loomis, Christopher M. "The Politics of Uncertainty: Lobbyists and Propaganda in Early Twentieth-Century America," Journal of Policy History Volume 21, Number 2, 2009 in Project MUSE, Lux, S., Crook, T. R., and Woehr, D. 2011. Mixing business with politics: A meta-analysis of the antecedents and outcomes of corporate political activity. Journal of Management, 37(1): 223–247., Thompson, Margaret S. The "Spider Web": Congress and Lobbying in the Age of Grant (1985) on 1870s, Tichenor, Daniel J. and Richard A. Harris, "Organized Interests and American Political Development," Political Science Quarterly 117 (Winter 2002–3): 587–612 online, Zelizer, Julian E. Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security – From World War II to the War on Terrorism (2009) excerpt and text search, Fang, Lee. With These Hires, Congress Becomes Even More Like a Corporation (Feb. 2015), The Nation, Fang, Lee. Where Have All the Lobbyists Gone? (March 2014). "On paper, the influence-peddling business is drying up. But lobbying money is flooding into Washington, DC, like never before. What’s going on?" The Nation Lobbying Database from OpenSecrets.org, FollowtheMoney.org, Government Accountability Groups (from "500 Leading U.S. Progressive Organizations by Category"), Sourcewatch, Lobbyists.info database of lobbyists and government relations professionals, Open Secrets glossary, Lawrence Lessig TED talk on lobbying, Sunlight Foundation, US Senate Lobbying-Database Search, US House of Representatives-Lobby Contributions Search, Report on AIPAC lobbying, Lobbyists 4 Good, Moral lobbying techniques for persuading state legislators

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The ninth and final season of the American television comedy The Office premiered on NBC on September 20, 2012, and concluded on May 16, 2013, consisting of 25 episodes. The Office is an American adaptation of the British comedy series of the same name, and is presented in a mockumentary format, portraying the daily lives of office employees in the Scranton, Pennsylvania branch of the fictitious Dunder Mifflin Paper Company. The ninth season of The Office aired on Thursdays at 9:00 p.m. (Eastern) in the United States, as part of the Comedy Night Done Right television block. It stars Rainn Wilson, John Krasinski, Jenna Fischer, and Ed Helms, with supporting performances from Catherine Tate, Leslie David Baker, Brian Baumgartner, Creed Bratton, Clark Duke, Kate Flannery, Mindy Kaling, Ellie Kemper, Angela Kinsey, Jake Lacy, Paul Lieberstein, B. J. Novak, Oscar Nunez, Craig Robinson, and Phyllis Smith. This is the second season not to star Steve Carell as lead character Michael Scott, although he returned for a cameo appearance in the series finale. The ninth season largely focuses on the relationship between Jim (John Krasinski) and Pam Halpert (Jenna Fischer). After Jim decides to follow his dream and start a sports marketing company in Philadelphia, Pam begins to worry about moving, and the couple's relationship experiences stress. Meanwhile, Andy Bernard (Ed Helms) abandons the office for a three-month boating trip, and eventually quits his job to pursue his dream of becoming a star, although he soon becomes famous for a viral video. Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) is finally promoted to regional manager. The documentary airs, and a year later, the members of the office gather for Dwight and Angela's marriage as well as a final round of interviews. Following the decline in ratings from the previous year, the ninth season of The Office managed to stabilize around 4 million viewers per episode. The series finale, however, was watched by over 5.69 million viewers, making it the highest-rated episode that the show had aired in over a year. The season ranked as the ninety-fourth most watched television series during the 2012–13 television year and saw a decrease in ratings from the previous season. Critical reception was moderately positive; although some critics took issue with certain aspects, such as the reveal of the in-series documentary crew, many argued that it was an improvement over the previous season. Others lauded the way the show was able to successfully wrap-up its story arcs. "Finale" was nominated for three awards at the 65th Primetime Emmy Awards, and won for Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Comedy Series. The ninth season of the show was produced by Reveille Productions and Deedle- Dee Productions, both in association with Universal Television. The show is based on the British comedy series of the same name, which was created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant for the BBC. In addition, the two are executive producers on the show. On May 11, 2012, NBC renewed The Office for a ninth season. Series developer Greg Daniels returned as showrunner this season. Daniels stated that the season would feature more big season arcs, saying "I'll tell you that the last couple of years, I don't think we did any big arc-type things in the way that we used to in the beginning, I think the thing we're going to do is bring back a lot of arcs." Brent Forrester, who had been a consulting producer and writer since the third season was promoted to executive producer, alongside new series writer Dan Sterling. In a conference call on August 21, 2012, Daniels announced that this would be the final season of the series. Daniels said, "This year feels like the last chance to really go out together and make an artistic ending for the show that pays off a lot of the stuff that matters most to fans." Daniels also said all the questions would be answered, such as who was behind the documentary, and why they had been filming it for so long, as well as the reveal of the Scranton Strangler. A central point during the season was the romance between Erin Hannon (Ellie Kemper) and Pete Miller (Jake Lacy). According to Michael Ausiello of TVLine, the nature of their relationship was heavily debated by the writers and producers; he noted that "the triangle [between Andy, Erin, and Pete] has stirred up a number of debates in the writers room, which tells me even they don't know at this point which guy Erin will choose." Daniels consulted with Kemper and asked for her input, as he felt she had the best understanding of Erin's characterization. For the season, cast members John Krasinski, Jenna Fischer, Rainn Wilson, and Ed Helms were credited as producers. Krasinski also directed an episode. Guest directors for the season included noted actor Bryan Cranston, who directed the episode "Work Bus", and filmmaker Jon Favreau, who directed the episode "Moving On". Daniels directed the first episode, which he also wrote. This marked the first time that he had both written and directed an episode of The Office since the fourth season entry "Fun Run". Ken Kwapis directed the series finale; he also directed the show's pilot episode. While The Office was mainly filmed on a studio set at Valley Center Studios in Van Nuys, California, the city of Scranton, Pennsylvania, where the show is set, was also used for shots of the opening theme. Angela Kinsey and Rainn Wilson, during an interview, expressed the hope to film an episode of the season in Scranton. Although this never came to fruition, exterior shots of the real Scranton bar The Bog were featured in the tenth episode "Lice". Originally, the season was supposed to contain 24 episodes, which would have meant that the series aired exactly 200 episodes. However, the series' penultimate episode was elongated into 2 separate episodes, resulting in "Finale"—which was announced previously as an hour-long special—being the 24th and 25th episodes of the season. This meant that the last part of "Finale" is the series' 201st episode. On March 19, 2013, the official Office fansite OfficeTally launched a campaign on Change.org to "super-size or extend" the finale; this campaign was motivated by a statement made by Daniels, in which he mentioned he would "beg" the studio to air a longer episode. On May 2, 2013 the petition amassed 20,000 signatures. On May 7, NBC announced the series finale would be extended, and air in a 75-minute time slot. A one-hour retrospective of the series aired prior to the one-hour series finale on May 16. The Office employs an ensemble cast. Most of the main characters, and some supporting ones, are based on characters from the British version of The Office. While these characters normally have the same attitudes and perceptions as their British counterparts, the roles have been redesigned to better fit the American show. The show is known for its large cast size, many of whom are known particularly for their improvisational work. Rainn Wilson as Dwight Schrute, based upon Gareth Keenan, who is the office's top-performing sales representative., John Krasinski as Jim Halpert, a sales representative and prankster, who is based upon Tim Canterbury, and is married to Pam Halpert, the office administrator., Jenna Fischer as Pam Halpert, who is based on Dawn Tinsley, is shy, but is often a cohort with Jim in his pranks on Dwight., Ed Helms as Andy Bernard, the preppy manager and boastful Cornell alumnus whose love for a cappella music and awkward social skills generate mixed feelings from his employees. Catherine Tate as Nellie Bertram, the manager of special projects., Leslie David Baker as Stanley Hudson, a grumpy salesman., Brian Baumgartner as Kevin Malone, a dim-witted accountant, who is based on Keith Bishop., Creed Bratton as Creed Bratton, the office’s strange quality assurance officer., Clark Duke as Clark Green, one of the two new customer sales representatives hired to replace Ryan and Kelly, who wants to become a salesman., Kate Flannery as Meredith Palmer, the promiscuous supplier relations representative., Mindy Kaling as Kelly Kapoor, the pop-culture obsessed customer service representative, who leaves with her fiancé, Ravi, at the beginning of the season., Ellie Kemper as Erin Hannon, the receptionist and love interest of Andy., Angela Kinsey as Angela Martin, a judgemental accountant., Jake Lacy as Pete Miller, one of the two new customer sales representatives hired to replace Ryan and Kelly, who develops feelings for Erin., Paul Lieberstein as Toby Flenderson, the sad-eyed human resources representative., B. J. Novak as Ryan Howard, a former temporary worker, who leaves and follows Kelly to Ohio at the beginning of the season., Oscar Nunez as Oscar Martinez, an intelligent accountant, who is also gay., Craig Robinson as Darryl Philbin, the warehouse supervisor, who starts working with Jim at his new company., Phyllis Smith as Phyllis Vance, a motherly saleswoman. Melora Hardin as Jan Levinson, a former Dunder Mifflin employee, now working at the Scranton White Pages. Jack Coleman as Robert Lipton, Angela’s husband and a state senator., Ameenah Kaplan as Val Johnson, a warehouse worker and Darryl’s girlfriend., Bobby Ray Shafer as Bob Vance, the owner of Vance Refrigeration and Phyllis’ husband., Andy Buckley as David Wallace, the owner and CEO of Dunder Mifflin., Hugh Dane as Hank Tate, the building’s security guard., Chris Diamantopoulos as Brian, a boom mic operator., Michael Schur as Mose Schrute, Dwight’s cousin., Matt L. Jones as Ziek Schrute, Dwight’s cousin and Mose’s brother., Nora Kirkpatrick as Esther Breugger, Dwight’s girlfriend. David Denman as Roy Anderson, a former warehouse worker and Pam’s ex-fiancé., Randall Park as Steve, an Asian actor pretending to be Jim., Stephen Colbert as Broccoli Rob, a former member of Here Comes Treble, Andy’s a cappella group., Josh Groban as Walter Bernard Jr., Andy’s brother., Julius Erving as himself, Ed Lauter as Sam Stone Sr., the owner of a suit warehouse., Linda Purl as Helene Beesly, Pam’s mother., Bob Odenkirk as Mark Franks, a regional manager in Philadelphia., Zach Woods as Gabe Lewis, a former Sabre employee and Erin’s ex-boyfriend, who was fired after the Sabre’s liquidation., Collette Wolfe as Alice, Pete’s ex-girlfriend., Majandra Delfino as Fannie Schrute, Dwight’s sister., Thomas Middleditch as Jeb Schrute, Dwight’s brother., David Koechner as Todd Packer, a rude and offensive man and a former employee of Dunder Mifflin Sabre, who was fired by Robert California., Ryan Howard as himself, Roseanne Barr as Carla Fern, Andy’s agent., Clay Aiken as himself, Mark McGrath as himself, Aaron Rodgers as himself, Santigold as herself, Ed Begley Jr. as Martin Hannon, Erin’s biological father., Joan Cusack as Fran Hannon, Erin’s biological mother., Dakota Johnson as Dakota, an accountant hired to replace Kevin., Devon Abner as Devon White, a former Dunder Mifflin Employee who was fired by Michael., Nancy Carell as Carol Stills, a real estate agent., Steve Carell as Michael Scott, the former regional manager of the Scranton branch, who is now happily married to Holly Flax in Colorado. He returns to be Dwight’s best man. Krasinski and Helms were expected to appear in fewer episodes in order to film several upcoming movies. Helms was temporarily written out of the series with a storyline that saw his character travel to the Caribbean with his brother on a boat. As such, Helms made only a small appearance in "The Whale" and was absent from the following eight episodes. He returned in the episode "Couples Discount". According to TVLine, he returned to work right before the show's Christmas break. Krasinski ultimately continued to appear in every episode, but was frequently absent from the primary Scranton setting as part of a storyline that saw Jim begin a start-up business in Philadelphia. Additionally, Wilson was initially slated to appear in only 13 episodes before leaving for a planned Dwight-centric spin-off, but the spin-off was not picked up by NBC. Mindy Kaling and B. J. Novak have much lesser roles as Kelly Kapoor and Ryan Howard, respectively. Both Kaling and Novak appeared in the season opener "New Guys", and both returned for the series finale. Actress Catherine Tate, who joined the series as a series regular midway through season eight portraying Nellie Bertram, continued with the series. Clark Duke and Lacy joined the cast as customer service representatives hired to deal with the many neglected customer service complaints Kelly has amassed over the years; Lacy's character, Pete, is also a love interest for Erin. Kinsey and Wilson also noted that the cast and crew could neither "confirm nor deny" but were "hoping" for a return of Steve Carell as Michael Scott. In mid-December, Krasinski later revealed that he was optimistic about a return; in an interview with E! Online Krasinski said that the producers were supposedly "still trying to figure out [Carell's] schedule" and that the finale "just wouldn't be the same without him". However, NBC chairman Robert Greenblatt later admitted during an interview that while he is "hopeful", he does not think Carell will return; he noted that Carell was satisfied with his character's exit and did not want to tarnish it. On January 16, Daniels revealed that Carell would not appear in the finale in any capacity, a decision that Carell later reiterated. Three months later, however, the producers for The Office mounted "an 11th-hour effort last month" to get Carell to make a cameo in the show's final episode, according to TVLine. Carell's personal representative confirmed that Carell was on the set for the final episode, but that he did not film any scenes. However, an anonymous source "close to the show" said "don't rule anything out". TVLine later reported on May 6, that Carell would appear in a cameo, although NBC declined to comment and Carell's representatives continued to deny the reports. Carell, however, did end up returning for the finale; his character, Michael Scott, becomes Dwight's best man at his wedding. A month after the episode aired, Carell explained in an interview with TVLine that he "lied for months to the press, to almost everyone, really". He noted that he "felt terribly for the cast and for [executive producer] Greg Daniels, because they all lied, too." Krasinski, on the other hand, explained that "It was so thrilling. We all just flat-out lied … It was just one of those things that we all vowed and had to protect". In addition to Carell, the season also saw the return of several "veteran cast members". Former series regular David Denman was the first to do so, appearing as Roy Anderson in the second episode of the season "Roy's Wedding"; he was last seen as part of the Threat Level Midnight film in season seven. Josh Groban reprised his role as Andy's brother, Walter Jr, appearing in the episode "The Boat". Melora Hardin returned as Jan Levinson in the episode "The Whale" and had a small vocal cameo in the episode "Couples Discount". "Junior Salesman" saw the return of several minor characters, including Lance Krall as Sensei Ira (who first appeared in the second-season episode "The Fight"), Noel Petok as Troy Underbridge (who first appeared in the fourth-season episode "Night Out"), Beth Grant as Dwight's babysitter (who first appeared in the fourth-season episode "Dinner Party"), and James Urbaniak as Rolf (who first appeared in the fifth-season episode "Company Picnic"). Although cast member Zach Woods' series regular contract was not renewed for the season, he returned to the series as a guest star, in the episode "Moving On". David Koechner returned as Todd Packer in "The Farm". "Finale" also featured the return of several recurring characters, such as Nancy Carell as Carol Stills (who played the recurring role of Michael's real- estate agent and short-time girlfriend), Sendhil Ramamurthy as Ravi, Jackie Debatin as Elizabeth (who first appeared in the third season episode "Ben Franklin"), Devon Abner as Devon (who was a former Dunder Mifflin employee fired in "Halloween"), and Spencer Daniels as Jake Palmer (who first played Meredith's son in the season two episode "Take Your Daughter to Work Day"). Stephen Colbert guest starred in the Halloween episode as Broccoli Rob, a former member of Here Comes Treble, Andy's a cappella group. The episode "Lice" guest starred Julius Erving playing himself as an investor in Jim's sports marketing business. Former NBC co-chairman and The Office executive producer Ben Silverman had a minor recurring role as one of Jim's colleagues. He appeared in the episodes "Here Comes Treble", "Suit Warehouse", "Customer Loyalty", and "Moving On". The fourteenth episode, "Junior Salesmen", featured several guest stars. These included Eric Wareheim as Gabor, Matt L. Jones as Zeke, and Will McCormack as Wolf. In the episode "Promos", athlete Ryan Howard played a version of himself. Comedian Roseanne Barr had a two-episode arc as a talent agent named Carla Fern, and first appeared in the episode "Stairmageddon". Michael Imperioli guest starred in the episode "Livin' the Dream" as Sensei Billy, acting as a foil for Dwight. The episode "A.A.R.M." guest starred Aaron Rodgers, Clay Aiken, Mark McGrath, Santigold, and Jessica St. Clair, all playing themselves. The series finale guest starred: Rachael Harris as Angela's sister; Joan Cusack and Ed Begley Jr. as Erin's biological parents; Malcolm Barrett as Stanley's replacement; and Bill Hader and Seth Meyers as themselves. The season aired on Thursdays at 9:00 p.m., as part of the Comedy Night Done Right programming block. The season premiere, "New Guys" received a 2.1/6 percent share in the Nielsen ratings among viewers aged 18 to 49, meaning that 2.1 percent of viewers aged 18 to 49 watched the episode, and 6 percent of viewers watching television at the time watched the episode. The episode was viewed by 4.28 million viewers and became the lowest-rated season premiere for the series. In addition, it marked a 46 percent drop in viewership from the season eight premiere "The List". For the first sixteen episodes, the series was able to maintain roughly 4 million viewers. However, starting with the seventeenth episode "The Farm", ratings began to drop below this threshold. The series hit an all-time low with the twentieth episode, "Paper Airplane", which was viewed by only 3.25 million viewers, and received a 1.7 rating/5 percent share. The series finale was viewed by 5.69 million viewers and received a 3.0 rating among adults between the ages of 18 and 49. This made it the highest-rated episode of the season; it also marked an increase in the previous season finale, which garnered only 4.49 million viewers. "Finale" was the most watched episode of The Office since the eighth season episode "Pool Party", but ranked as the third-least watched finale of the series, following the eighth- and first-season finales. Although in its ninth season, The Office no longer was NBC's highest-rated scripted comedy series—it was surpassed by Go On—it often ranked as the highest-rated scripted NBC series on Thursday nights. Rainn Wilson argued that the show's lower ratings were a combination of the overall trend in lower television ratings in 2012, as well as the fact that "NBC didn't promote [the series] one bit". NBC increased their usual ad- price by 200 percent for the finale, asking for $400,000 per commercial. This was largely due to the anticipated increase in viewership that the finale would bring. The season ranked as the ninety-fourth most watched television series during the 2012–13 season, with an average of 5.061 million viewers. The season also tied with the CBS series Rules of Engagement and the Fox series American Dad! to be the forty-third most watched television series in the 18- to 49-year-old demographic. In this category, the show received a 2.6 rating. This meant that, on average, the season was viewed by 2.6 percent of all 18- to 49-year-olds. It was viewed by 3.32 million in this demographic. In terms of viewers, the ninth season ranked as the lowest-rated season of The Office, although it beat the first season's ranking, which was the 102nd most watched program for the 2004–05 year. The ninth season of The Office received moderately positive reviews from television critics. Based on seven critiques, review aggregation website Metacritic gave the ninth season of the show a 64 out of 100 rating, which denotes "generally favorable reviews". Entertainment website Holy Moly named the series one of the best shows during the 2012–13 season, writing that "this final season of The Office has been great" largely due to the fact that "every single relationship in the show rings true with the audience." Michael Tedder of Vulture commented that he was "willing to call it the fourth best season of the show overall, which is by no means faint praise." He explained that this was largely due to the fact that the "final season was a chance to see how everyone else would end up". Emily VanDerWerff of The A.V. Club wrote that "the tension between Jim and Pam in the final season ended up being highly controversial for a number of reasons ... but it also provided the most hopeful moments of the series' final stretch" (although she did note that it was clear that the writers had "blatantly" set up the drama). She concluded that the finale was able to successfully return the series "to what had always been its heart—to have true fulfillment". Roth Cornet of IGN awarded the season an 8.5 out of 10, denoting a "great" year. She felt that the character growth in the final few episodes was particularly well executed, and the last stretch of the season helped raise it after a rocky start; ultimately, she felt that the writers were able to craft the proper ending for the show. She was, however, critical of Andy's characterization, noting that he was merely used as a plot device when convenient. Many critics argued that the season was an improvement, in both writing and humor, over the previous season. Several specific episodes received praise. Andrea Reiher of Zap2it named "Dwight Christmas" the best comedy TV episode of 2012. She wrote that the episode "was not only funny but had a huge nostalgia factor", and continued the show's trend of strong Christmas episodes. Reiher also praised the episode's two subplots, writing that "drunk Darryl and Die Hard" helped produce "a classic episode of The Office that brought back the warm and fuzzy feelings of the early seasons of the show." The season's penultimate entry, "A.A.R.M.", received a glowing response from many critics. Alan Sepinwall of HitFix wrote that the episode was "surprisingly ... terrific in most areas." Roth Cornet of IGN noted that "The interplay between Jim, Dwight, and Pam has been the core of the series since Michael Scott's departure, and it was good to see the trio front and center once again as The Office comes to a close." The series finale, in particular, was praised by critics. Sepinwall called it "a tremendously satisfying conclusion to a show that could make us gasp with laughter, but that could also make us cry or smile". Cornet wrote that it "was a strong hour of television [and] the finale shone and delivered on all of its promise." Nick Campbell of TV.com wrote that the episode was "just right" for the series. Other episodes were not received as positively. "Lice", for instance, was called "terrible" by Campbell, as well as the "epitome of filler" by Brett Davinger of The California Literary Review. "The Farm" was largely derided due to its uneven nature, and the broad humor that it used. The reveal of the in-series documentary crew in "Customer Loyalty" received large amounts of critical attention. E! Online named the reveal one of the "Best TV Moments of the Week". Verne Gay of Newsday called the scene a "historic" moment for the show. Conversely, Myles McNutt of The A.V. Club wrote an article that argued that the mockumentary format made the camera "an audience surrogate", and that by revealing the documentary crew, "the audience no longer felt welcome". The subplot involving Brian (played by Chris Diamantopoulos), a boom mic operator for the in-series documentary, was met with mostly negative reviews. Michael Tedder of Vulture called it "the least interesting way this camera crew reveal could have gone". Dan Forcella of TV Fanatic criticized the reintroduction of the character in the episode "Promos", noting that his reappearance felt "forced". McNutt called it "an abandoned novelty". Daniels later revealed in an interview that the subplot was a red herring to keep viewers emotionally invested in Pam and Jim's story. He explained, "we never intended him to actually [interfere with Pam and Jim's marriage], but wanted people to worry about it so they would be engaged in the story." On December 12, 2012, the series was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series, but lost to Modern Family. Michael Scott's return was nominated and won the fan-voted "Best TV Moment" at the 3rd Critics' Choice Television Awards on June 10, 2013. Greg Daniels was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series at the 65th Primetime Emmy Awards for "Finale". "Finale" was also nominated for an Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Comedy or Drama Series Emmy and an Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Comedy Series Emmy; David Rogers and Claire Scanlon for "Finale" won the latter, marking the fifth win for The Office at the Emmys overall and the series' first win since 2009. Rogers and Scanlon also won an American Cinema Editors award for Best Edited Half-Hour Series for Television. In addition, the web documentary "The Office: The Farewells", which aired on NBC.com prior to the series' conclusion, was nominated for an Outstanding Special Class Program Creative Arts Emmy Award. In the following table, "U.S. viewers (million)" refers to the number of Americans who viewed the episode on the night of broadcast. Episodes are listed by the order in which they aired, and may not necessarily correspond to their production codes. Episode guides at NBC.com The first season of the American television comedy The Office premiered in the United States on NBC on March 24, 2005, concluded on April 26, 2005, and consists of six episodes. The Office is an American adaptation of the British TV series of the same name, and is presented in a mockumentary format, portraying the daily lives of office employees in the Scranton, Pennsylvania branch of the fictitious Dunder Mifflin Paper Company. The season stars Steve Carell, Rainn Wilson, John Krasinski, Jenna Fischer, and B. J. Novak. This season introduced the main characters, and established the general plot, which revolves around Michael Scott (Carell), regional manager of the Scranton branch office, trying to convince the filmmakers of the documentary that he presides over a happy, well-running office. Meanwhile, sales rep Jim Halpert (Krasinski) finds methods to undermine his cube-mate, Dwight Schrute (Wilson); receptionist Pam Beesly (Fischer) tries to deal with Michael's insensitivities and flubs; and temporary employee Ryan Howard (Novak) is acting mostly as an observer of the insanity around him. Season one of The Office aired on Tuesdays in the United States at 9:30 p.m. The season debuted to high numbers, and garnered moderately positive reviews from critics aside from a poorly received pilot episode. While some enjoyed the pilot, others opined that it was a mere copy of the original British version. Universal Studios Home Entertainment released season one in a single DVD on August 16, 2005. The DVD contained all six episodes, along with commentaries from creators, writers, actors, and directors on most of the episodes, as well as deleted scenes from all of the episodes. The first season of the show was produced by Reveille Productions and Deedle- Dee Productions, both in association with NBC Universal Television Studios. The show is based upon the British series created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, who are executive producers on the show, and it is produced by Greg Daniels, also an executive producer, along with consulting producers Larry Wilmore and Lester Lewis. The show's writers include Daniels, Gervais, Merchant, and Michael Schur, while Mindy Kaling, Paul Lieberstein, and B. J. Novak double as writers as well as actors in the show, and between them, wrote three episodes on the season. For this season, Schur was a co-producer, Kaling was a staff writer, Lieberstein was a consulting producer, and Novak was an executive story editor. The first episode, "Pilot", was written by Daniels, but the majority of the episode was adapted from "Episode One" of the British series, with many scenes being transferred almost verbatim. Season one featured episodes directed by five different directors. The Office features both a "team of directors" as well as several directors who are freelanced. Ken Kwapis, directed the first two episodes "Pilot" and "Diversity Day", and would go on to direct another eleven episodes in total, including the final episode of the series. Ken Whittingham, who directed "Health Care" would go on to direct another eight episodes in total. Daniels both produced and directed the episode "Basketball". The Office was almost entirely filmed in an actual office building in Los Angeles, California for its first season. Aside from Los Angeles, the city of Scranton, Pennsylvania, where the show is set, was also used for shots for the opening theme. Many characters portrayed by The Office cast are based on the British version of the show. While these characters normally have the same attitude and perceptions as their British counterparts, the roles have been redesigned to better fit the American show. The show is known for its generally large cast size, many of whom are known particularly for their improvisational work. Steve Carell as Michael Scott, regional manager of the Dunder Mifflin Scranton Branch. Loosely based on David Brent, Gervais' character in the British version, Scott is a dim-witted and lonely man, who attempts to win friends as the office comedian, usually making himself look bad in the process., Rainn Wilson as Dwight Schrute, who, based upon Gareth Keenan, is the assistant to the regional manager, although the character frequently intentionally omits the "to the" in his title., John Krasinski as Jim Halpert, a sales representative and prankster, who is based upon Tim Canterbury, and is in love with Pam Beesly, the receptionist., Jenna Fischer as Pam Beesly, who is based on Dawn Tinsley, is shy, but is often a cohort with Jim in his pranks on Dwight., B. J. Novak as Ryan Howard, who is a temporary worker. Melora Hardin as Jan Levinson, Michael's main love interest and vice president of regional sales., David Denman as Roy Anderson, a warehouse worker and Pam's fiance., Leslie David Baker as Stanley Hudson, a grumpy salesman., Brian Baumgartner as Kevin Malone, a dim-witted accountant., Creed Bratton as Creed Bratton, the office’s strange quality assurance officer., Kate Flannery as Meredith Palmer, the promiscuous supplier relations rep., Mindy Kaling as Kelly Kapoor, the pop-culture obsessed customer service representative., Angela Kinsey as Angela Martin, a judgemental accountant, who also serves as Dwight’s love interest., Paul Lieberstein as Toby Flenderson, the sad-eyed human resources representative., Oscar Nunez as Oscar Martinez, an intelligent accountant., Craig Robinson as Darryl Philbin, the warehouse supervisor., Phyllis Smith as Phyllis Lapin, a motherly saleswoman., Devon Abner as Devon White, a supplier relations representative. Toby Huss as the voice of Todd Packer, a rude and offensive traveling salesman, and Michael’s best friend., Larry Wilmore as Mr. Brown, a consultant who arrives to teach the office about tolerance and diversity., Patrice O’Neal as Lonny Collins, a warehouse worker., Amy Adams as Katy Moore, a handbag saleswoman. The first episode of The Office scored well in ratings, gaining over eleven million viewers, as well as ranking third in its timeslot on the night of its airing. But the episode aired on a Thursday evening, and between the change from the first episode and the second episode, The Office moved to its regular time slot on Tuesday evenings. The Office tumbled in the ratings, averaging under 6.0 million viewers, just over half that of the previous episode. The first-season finale "Hot Girl" received one of the lowest ratings in the show's history, earning just a 2.2 rating with a 10 share. After the lackluster reception of the episode, many critics erroneously predicted that "Hot Girl" would also serve as the de facto series finale. The Office averaged 5.4 million viewers for its entire season, ranking it #102 for the 2004–2005 U.S. television season. The series premiere, "Pilot", received largely mixed reviews from critics. After the first episodes, critics thought The Office would be another failed remake of a British comedy, much like how the American version of Coupling was in relation to the original British series. The Deseret Morning News believed The Office was a failed remake, and said "Maybe, after The Office dies a quick death on NBC, the network will decide that trying to Americanize British TV comedies isn't such a great idea." The New York Daily News said the show was "neither daring nor funny", adding that "NBC's version is so diluted there's little left but muddy water". The Los Angeles Times complained that Steve Carell, who portrays Scott and also appeared in the movie , was "too cartoon" and said: "Lost in translation is the sadness behind the characters." Despite these criticisms, the remainder of the season earned mostly positive reviews among critics. The season scored 62 out of 100 on Metacritic (a website that assigns a weighted average score for media), which translates to "generally favorable reviews." Time magazine wrote that "It's ironic that NBC's most original sitcom in years is a remake, but who cares? The Office is a daring, unflinching take on very American workplace tensions." Boston.com felt that the first season of The Office was good, and the differences between the characters of the American and the original series added to the popularity of the series. Rob Owen of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette felt that The Office succeeded in its first season, and that although NBC had failed in the past with television shows such as Coupling, it had found achievement with The Office. Entertainment Weekly awarded the season a "B+" and wrote that The Office "is clever and insular, capturing all the drudgery, awkwardness, and rivalry of cubicle living" and that the last five episodes help to illustrate that the series has "crossed the pond handily." In addition, "Diversity Day," the season's second episode, has been regarded as one of the best episodes of the entire show. TV Guide named it the nineteenth greatest episode of any television show in 2009. Rolling Stone magazine named the scene wherein Michael shows the office his diversity video the third greatest moment from The Office. In its first year, The Office was nominated for several awards, including three Writers Guild of America Award nods. These included nominations for Best Comedy Series and Best New Series. In addition, for his work on "Diversity Day," B. J. Novak was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Screenplay – Episodic Comedy. Episode guides at NBC.com "The Farm" is the seventeenth episode of the ninth season of the American comedy television series The Office and the 193rd overall. It originally aired on NBC on March 14, 2013. The episode guest stars Majandra Delfino, Matt Jones, Thomas Middleditch, Blake Garrett Rosenthal, David Koechner, Allan Havey, Nora Kirkpatrick, Mary Gillis, and Michael Schur. The series—presented as if it were a real documentary—depicts the everyday lives of office employees in the Scranton, Pennsylvania, branch of the fictional Dunder Mifflin Paper Company. The episode revolves around Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) attending the funeral of his Aunt Shirley at Schrute Farms, where his family reunites. Meanwhile, Todd Packer (David Koechner) returns to the office claiming to be a reformed man. "The Farm" was produced to serve as a backdoor pilot for a proposed spin-off series starring Wilson as Dwight, which NBC ultimately did not pick up. The episode received mostly negative reviews from television critics, with many criticizing Dwight's farm storyline and some critics calling it a "Frankenstein episode". The episode was viewed by 3.54 million viewers and received a 1.9/5 rating among adults between the ages of 18 and 49. The episode ranked fourth in its timeslot, and it was the highest- rated NBC series of the night. Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) informs the office that his Aunt Shirley has died. The only co-worker he invites to the funeral is Oscar Martinez (Oscar Nunez), who flees when Dwight begins shooting the corpse with a shotgun to ensure it is really dead. At the funeral, Dwight's family gathers: his cousins Mose (Michael Schur) and Zeik (Matt Jones), his brother Jeb (Thomas Middleditch), his sister Fannie (Majandra Delfino) and his nephew Cammy (Blake Garrett Rosenthal). The family learns that Aunt Shirley has willed the siblings her estate on the condition that they all come back home to run it. Despite Dwight's enthusiasm in inheriting it, Fannie and Jeb are unwilling to move back in due to the lack of sophistication farm life offers, but agree to stay for a couple of days. Dwight bonds with Cammy and later surveys the farm with his siblings. Meanwhile, Todd Packer (David Koechner) visits the office and announces that he wants to make amends for his past behavior. He makes rude remarks masked as apologies and hands out store-bought cupcakes. Pam Halpert (Jenna Fischer) argues that they should not eat the cupcakes, to spite Packer. She remains adamant on this point even after Packer leaves, but the remaining employees eat their cupcakes. Packer reveals to the documentary crew that he spiked the cupcakes with drugs. The next morning, Pam returns to the office and announces she is going to eat her cupcake, only to find everyone else reeling from the aftereffects of Packer's deed. Packer visits Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) and Darryl Philbin (Craig Robinson) at Athlead in Philadelphia, pulling the same trick on them. The episode was written and directed by executive producer and former showrunner Paul Lieberstein, marking his thirteenth writing credit, sixth directorial credit and fourth dual credit. "The Farm" was the fifth episode produced, but was the seventeenth aired, as noted by its production number. It was originally supposed to act as a backdoor pilot for a spin-off series, also called The Farm starring Wilson and focusing on Dwight. As such, Wilson was initially slated to appear in only 13 episodes of The Offices ninth season before leaving for the spin-off. Paul Lieberstein, the showrunner for The Office for seasons five through eight, stepped down at the start of season nine in order to focus more energy on the potential spin-off. However, upon review, the spin-off was not picked up by NBC. Executive producer Greg Daniels revealed that the episode would have additional material shot so that it fits better into the season, as the original version contained "certain aspects that were appropriate for a pilot of a new show". The episode guest stars Majandra Delfino, Blake Garrett Rosenthal, Thomas Middleditch and Matt Jones as members of Dwight's family, who were intended to form the main cast of The Farm with Wilson; Delfino plays Dwight's sister Fannie, Rosenthal plays Dwight's nephew Cammy, Middleditch portrays Dwight's brother Jeb, and Jones portrays Dwight's cousin Zeke. Tom Bower appears as Dwight's great uncle Heinrich in a deleted scene only, although he retains his credit in the broadcast episode. Jones had previously appeared in the ninth season entry, "Junior Salesman". "The Farm" originally aired on NBC on March 14, 2013, after a four-week hiatus. In its original American broadcast, the episode was viewed by an estimated 3.54 million viewers and received a 1.9 rating/5 percent share. This means that it was seen by 1.9 percent of all 18- to 49-year-olds, and 5 percent of all 18- to 49-year-olds watching television at the time of the broadcast. This marked a decrease in the ratings from the previous episode, "Moving On". The Office ranked fourth in its timeslot, being beaten by an episode of the CBS police procedural Person of Interest which received a 2.9/8 percent rating, an entry of the ABC series Grey's Anatomy which received a 2.6/7 percent rating, and an installment of the Fox series Glee which received a 2.0/6 percent rating. Despite this, the episode was the highest-rated NBC series for the night. 1.90 million viewers watched the episode via DVR playback, bringing the total viewership to 5.36 million viewers and a 3.0 18–49 rating. "The Farm" received mostly negative reviews from critics, many criticizing Dwight's farm storyline and some critics calling it a "Frankenstein episode". M. Giant of Television Without Pity awarded the episode a C. Alan Sepinwall of HitFix considered NBC's decision not to pick up the spin-off for more episodes the right decision, writing that the characters and scenes were "barely sketches" and featured too much "cartoonishness". Sepinwall also criticized the Todd Packer scenes, and only saw Dwight's interactions with his nephew, Cammy, in a positive light. TV.com columnist Nick Campbell called the farm storyline "unnatural" compared to the episode and the series, as a whole, and wrote that the tone to the ending "didn't match". Despite this, he complimented the storyline for "establishing tone, characters, and direction in literally half the time usually allotted". The A.V. Club reviewer Erik Adams complimented the episode for serving as a "breather" from the season's long arcs, and gave good background information into Dwight's personality. He went on to criticize the pilot's broad humor, writing that following the scene featuring Dwight shooting a shotgun into his aunt's casket, "it would be next to impossible for The Farm to heighten from that point". Adams graded the episode a B. Damon Houx of Screen Crush called the two storylines "two pieces of that didn't work all that well together", which all added to a "dull" episode. Houx complimented Koechner's performance, calling him a "great improviser" but wrote that the whole plot was lacking. He also considered the farm plotline to be pointless and aimless, especially due to it airing in the last few episodes of the series. "The Farm" at NBC.com

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The Formula One World Drivers' Championship (WDC) is awarded by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) to the most successful Formula One racing car driver over a season, as determined by a points system based on individual Grand Prix results. The Drivers' Championship was first awarded in , to Giuseppe Farina. The first driver to win multiple Championships was Alberto Ascari, in and . The current Drivers' Champion is Lewis Hamilton who won his sixth title in . A driver secures the World Championship each season when it is no longer mathematically possible for another driver to beat them no matter the outcome of the remaining races, although it is not officially awarded until the end of the season. The Drivers' Championship has been won in the final race of the season 29 times in the 69 seasons it has been awarded. The earliest in a season that the Drivers' Championship has been clinched was in , when Michael Schumacher secured the title with six races remaining. Overall, thirty-three different drivers have won the Championship, with German Michael Schumacher holding the record for most titles, at seven. He also holds the record for most consecutive Drivers' Championships, winning five from to . The United Kingdom has produced the most Champions with ten; Brazil, Germany and Finland are next with three each. Of the 33 drivers to win the World Championship, nineteen are still alive. The most recently deceased is Niki Lauda (1949–2019). Among teams, Scuderia Ferrari has produced the most winning drivers with 15. Bold indicates the team also won the Constructors' Championship (awarded since ). 1. The and championships were run to Formula Two regulations. 2. Fangio competed in the 1954 Argentine and Belgian Grands Prix with Maserati, then completed the season with Mercedes. 3. Rindt's championship was confirmed two rounds after he had been killed in an accident during qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix. 4. Michael Schumacher scored 78 points during the season, 3 points behind Villeneuve, but was disqualified from the championship for deliberately colliding with Villeneuve in the final race of the season, the European Grand Prix. This left Villeneuve with a 39-point margin over Heinz-Harald Frentzen with 42 points. Drivers in bold competed in the 2019 World Championship. Drivers in bold competed in the 2019 World Championship. Constructors in bold competed in the 2019 World Championship. 1. Fangio competed in the 1954 Argentine and Belgian Grands Prix with Maserati, then completed the season with Mercedes. This shared championship is counted for each of these constructors. Engine manufacturers in bold competed in the 2019 World Championship. Notes: 1. Built by Cosworth. 2. In 1998 and 1999 built by Ilmor. 3. Built by Porsche. Tyre manufacturers in bold competed in the 2019 World Championship. Numbers in parentheses indicate championships won as the sole tyre supplier. 1. Goodyear was the sole tyre supplier for the 1987, 1988 & 1992–1996 seasons 2. Pirelli was the sole tyre supplier for the 2011–2019 seasons 3. Bridgestone was the sole tyre supplier for the 1999, 2000 & 2007–2010 seasons 4. Fangio competed in the Argentine and Belgian Grands Prix on Pirelli with Maserati, then completed the season on Continental with Mercedes 5. Ascari competed in the 1952 Indianapolis 500 on Firestone tyres, then completed the season on Pirelli Drivers in bold competed in the 2019 World Championship. 1. Measured at the day of his death Ten drivers have achieved consecutive wins in the World Drivers' Championship. Of those, only Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton have won two sets of consecutive Formula One Drivers' Championships. Drivers in bold competed in the 2019 World Championship. List of Formula One driver records, List of Formula One World Constructors' Champions, List of Formula One World Championship points scoring systems, List of Formula One drivers, History of Formula One GrandPrix.com – Grand Prix Encyclopedia, Formula1.com – Hall of Fame, ChicaneF1 – Drivers' Championships, Formula 1 Champions The 2013 FIA Formula One World Championship was the 67th season of the FIA Formula One motor racing. It featured the 64th FIA Formula One World Championship which was open to Formula One cars, recognised by the sport's governing body, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), as the highest class of competition for open-wheel racing cars. Eleven teams and twenty-three drivers contested the nineteen Grands Prix that made up the calendar for the 2013 season, with the winning driver being crowned the World Drivers' Champion and the winning team the World Constructors' Champions. The season started in Australia on 17 March 2013 and ended in Brazil on 24 November 2013. The 2013 season was the final year the series used the 2.4-litre V8 engine configuration which was introduced in ; a 1.6-litre turbocharged V6 engine formula came into force for . Sebastian Vettel successfully defended his World Championship, winning his fourth consecutive title in the fourth to last race of 2013. In doing so he became the third driver in Formula One's sixty-four years to win four consecutive World Drivers' Championships. Vettel's 2013 season performance additionally saw him recognised by the Laureus World Sports Awards as the Sportsman of the Year, the second racing driver to be so recognised. He became the fourth driver to win at least four titles along with Alain Prost, Juan Manuel Fangio and Michael Schumacher. Vettel's team Red Bull Racing, with the assistance of his teammate Mark Webber, successfully defended their World Constructors' Championship at the same race as their lead driver secured his title. The following teams and drivers were contracted to drive in the 2013 season, following ratification of a new Concorde Agreement. At the 2012 Malaysian Grand Prix, Bernie Ecclestone announced that the "majority" of teams competing in the season had agreed to compete in 2013, though he gave no indication of which teams—if any—were offering resistance to the new Concorde Agreement. At the 2012 British Grand Prix, Ecclestone announced that every team had agreed "in principle" to the terms of the new Concorde Agreement, and the final draft of the Concorde Agreement was presented to the teams ahead of the 2012 Indian Grand Prix. On 30 November 2012, the FIA published a provisional entry list for the 2013 season. The final entry list was published on 3 March 2013. Teams competed with tyres supplied by Pirelli. In November 2012, Thesan Capital, the owners of HRT Formula 1 Team, announced that they were putting the team up for sale. The team needed to find a buyer by 30 November—the date by which entry fees for the 2013 were due to be paid—or else face closure and a departure from the sport. Thesan Capital failed to find a buyer in time, and HRT was omitted from the 2013 entry list. The team was later reported to be in liquidation, and despite bids to purchase and revive the team under a new name, their assets were ultimately sold to Teo Martín, the owner of a firm specialising in recycling automotive parts. Upon starting his second career in , Michael Schumacher signed a three-year agreement to race for Mercedes AMG. With that deal expiring at the end of the season, Schumacher was given the option of renewing his contract with the team for 2013. However, in the face of disappointing results over the past three seasons, Schumacher became indecisive about his future, prompting Mercedes to start searching for a new driver. Following a protracted period of negotiation, World Champion Lewis Hamilton announced that he would join Mercedes for the next three years. The move ended his fourteen-year association with McLaren, and Hamilton later described his decision to change teams as being motivated by the desire to find a new challenge for himself, and that the idea of taking a struggling team and building them up to become a successful one held more appeal to him than "cruising around with a great team". Schumacher ultimately announced that he would be retiring from the sport for the second time at the end of the 2012 season. With Hamilton leaving McLaren, the team sought out Sauber driver Sergio Pérez to replace him. Pérez was previously a member of the Ferrari Driver Academy, and was considered to be the leading candidate to join Ferrari should a vacant seat become available, but admitted that although he had talked with the team, he had never considered racing for them to be a realistic proposition, adding that McLaren was the best place for him to go. Nico Hülkenberg left Force India after just one season, despite having originally signed a multi-year deal to race for the team starting in 2012, to fill the vacant seat at Sauber. Hülkenberg was joined by Esteban Gutiérrez, who had previously served as Sauber's testing and reserve driver in and whilst campaigning in the GP2 Series. Hülkenberg's place at Force India was taken by Adrian Sutil, who returned to the team after a season out of the sport. With Hülkenberg and Gutiérrez joining Sauber, Kamui Kobayashi was left without a seat after three seasons with the Swiss team. In a bid to secure a seat, Kobayashi accepted donations from fans to raise as much money as possible. However, shortly after Lotus F1 announced that they would retain Romain Grosjean, Kobayashi announced that he had given up hope of securing a racing seat for the 2013 season. He later joined AF Corse for the 2013 FIA World Endurance Championship. However, he returned to the Formula 1 grid in with Caterham. Williams promoted test and reserve driver Valtteri Bottas to a full-time racing seat alongside Pastor Maldonado, replacing Bruno Senna. Bottas, the 2011 GP3 Series champion, made regular appearances for Williams during the season, in official practice sessions at fifteen Grands Prix. Faced with the loss of his seat, Bruno Senna initially sought a drive with Force India, but instead moved to the World Endurance Championship, joining Aston Martin Racing. Charles Pic moved from Marussia to Caterham, joining former GP2 Series teammate Giedo van der Garde. Pic and van der Garde had previously raced alongside one another as teammates in 2011, racing for Barwa Addax. Where Pic joined Marussia for the season, van der Garde became Caterham's test driver and contested the 2012 GP2 Series with their GP2 team before being promoted to Formula One. As a result of this, Caterham's 2012 drivers, Heikki Kovalainen and Vitaly Petrov lost their seats for 2013. Caterham team principal Cyril Abiteboul later admitted that the relationship between the team and Kovalainen had fallen apart towards the end of the 2012 season, leading to his dismissal from the team, whilst Petrov lost his seat due to a lack of sponsorship. Kovalainen later returned to the team to take part in free practice sessions on a temporary basis. Timo Glock was initially signed to compete for Marussia until the end of the 2014 season, but later announced that he would be leaving the team. Marussia team principal John Booth cited "tough economic conditions" as the reason for the team being forced to let Glock go, whilst Glock referenced the loss of tenth place in the 2012 World Constructors' Championship to Caterham at the 2012 Brazilian Grand Prix as the first sign that his position with the team was in danger. Glock moved to the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters, driving for BMW. With Glock gone, the team elected to take two rookie drivers: Max Chilton, who spent the 2012 season competing in the GP2 Series with the Marussia-backed Carlin team; and GP2 Series runner-up Luiz Razia. However, Razia was removed from Marussia's testing line-up for the second pre-season test in Barcelona, leading to speculation that his future with the team was in jeopardy. It was later reported that his sponsors had missed payments to the team, prompting the decision to suspend his testing programme. His contract to race was terminated twenty-three days after it had been announced, and Razia was replaced by 2009 Formula 3 Euro Series champion and 2012 Formula Renault 3.5 Series runner-up Jules Bianchi. With HRT withdrawing from the championship, Pedro de la Rosa and Narain Karthikeyan were left without full-time racing seats. De la Rosa later joined Ferrari to aid the team in developing their simulator and was confirmed as one of their test and reserve drivers before the first pre-season test in Jerez, while Karthikeyan began contesting Auto GP. With Michael Schumacher and Pedro de la Rosa no longer in the sport, the 2013 season was the first in which none of the field had competed in the 20th century. Kimi Räikkönen was forced to miss the final two races of the season in order to undergo surgery to relieve pain from a back injury he had been suffering from for a long time and which flared up during the Singapore Grand Prix. His place in the team was taken by fellow Finnish racer Heikki Kovalainen. The following nineteen races appeared on the 2013 race schedule. Bernie Ecclestone, Formula One's commercial rights holder through his Formula One Management and Formula One Administration companies, has previously said that he believes twenty races is the maximum that is viable. The number of races on the Formula One calendar is dictated by the Concorde Agreement, the arrangement between teams, the FIA and Formula One Management. At the time of Ecclestone's comments regarding the length of the series schedule, the then- current Concorde Agreement was set to expire at the end of the season. Twenty to twenty-five races would be possible if the teams agreed to it. At the 2012 Hungarian Grand Prix, Ecclestone announced that the 2013 calendar would consist of twenty races, and would be largely similar to the 2012 calendar. The provisional calendar was announced at the 2012 Singapore Grand Prix, which was approved by the FIA World Motorsports Council on 28 September 2012. The calendar was originally intended to host twenty races, with the inclusion of the Grand Prix of America, a new event to be hosted on the streets of New Jersey on 16 June, as part of a 1-week North American "double-header". Following its removal from the calendar, the schedule was reduced to nineteen races until the FIA World Motorsports Council announced that a twentieth round would be included at a circuit in Europe, pending the outcome of negotiations between Bernie Ecclestone and event organisers. In February 2013, Ecclestone announced that a replacement venue had not been found, leaving the calendar at nineteen Grands Prix. The European Grand Prix was discontinued starting in 2013., Starting in 2008, the German Grand Prix has alternated between the Nürburgring in Nürburg and the Hockenheimring in Hockenheim. The Nürburgring hosted the German Grand Prix in 2013. The 2013 season was scheduled to see the addition of the Grand Prix of America to the calendar. The race was to take place on a new, Hermann Tilke-designed street circuit in New Jersey in June of that year, back-to-back with the Canadian Grand Prix. However, shortly after the race was given a date on the provisional calendar, Bernie Ecclestone admitted that the contract with organisers in New Jersey had been nullified, and organisers later confirmed that the race had been removed from the 2013 calendar and rescheduled for . The collapse of the race was attributed to the failure to get all of the necessary permits to hold the race from multiple branches of state and federal government departments. At the June 2012 meeting of the World Motor Sport Council, the FIA announced plans to introduce cost-control measures for the 2013 season, which would be policed by the FIA pending the agreement of the teams. This follows a failed attempt by former FIA president Max Mosley to introduce a budget cap for the season, and the withdrawal of Ferrari, Scuderia Toro Rosso, Sauber and Red Bull from the Formula One Teams Association in December 2011 over the implementation of the Resource Restriction Agreement, a voluntary agreement between teams to limit costs in the sport., Following HRT's omission from the provisional entry list, the grid was reduced to twenty-two cars, prompting an adaptation of the qualifying procedures. With twenty-two cars on the grid, six cars—instead of seven—will be eliminated during the first period of qualifying, with six more eliminated at the end of the second period (as in –). The third qualifying period remains unchanged, with the ten fastest drivers all advancing to the final ten minutes of qualifying., The rules governing the use of the Drag Reduction System (DRS) have been altered. Where drivers were free to use the system at will during free practice and qualifying, from 2013, the use of DRS is restricted to the designated DRS zone in a bid to improve safety. In response to this, the FIA announced plans to include two DRS zones at every circuit on the 2013 calendar where it was feasible to do so., The FIA will remove the rules of "force majeure" to clarify scrutineering procedures. Under the rules of force majeure, cars must be able to return to the pits under their own power during qualifying or else risk exclusion from the results. However, if a team can adequately demonstrate that circumstances beyond their control forced them to stop a car on the circuit before it could return to the pits, then the rules of force majeure dictate that the team and driver in question are exempt from any exclusion. Under new regulations, force majeure will no longer be recognised as a valid reason for stopping a car. From 2013, race stewards will measure the amount of fuel remaining in a car that has stopped on the circuit and compare it to the minimum amount set forward in the rules, and calculate any penalty based on the difference between the two. These changes were first proposed in the aftermath of the 2012 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, when Red Bull Racing instructed Sebastian Vettel to stop on the circuit after qualifying. Although race stewards initially accepted the team's explanation that the order came because of an imminent technical fault that threatened lasting damage to Vettel's engine, it was later discovered that Vettel had insufficient fuel in his car at the time and had been ordered to pull over so as to preserve the mandatory one litre sample required for testing at the end of qualifying. As a result, Vettel was excluded from the results, and the changes to force majeure were put forward., The FIA introduced a curfew system in that prohibited team personnel from accessing the circuit in the six hours before the first session of the day, with teams given four "jokers"—exceptions to the rule that allowed them to stay within the circuit boundaries past the curfew hours without penalty so as to complete work on cars—to use throughout the season. The rule has been revised for 2013, with teams limited to two exceptions over the course of the year. The curfew hours have been also extended from six hours to eight., Teams were faced with an increased entry fee for the season. Whereas entry fees had previously been fixed at €309,000 (US$396,637) for all teams, from 2013, entry fees were based on the World Championship points a team scored during the previous season. Teams now paid a basic entry fee of $500,000 (€389,525), plus $5,000 (€3,895) per point scored. The reigning Constructors' Champion paid at a premium rate of $6,000 (€4,614) per point scored. With a final tally of 460 points, Red Bull Racing was presented with an entry fee of $3,260,000 (€2.5M). Changes to the rules in resulted in the development of a "platypus" nose, with teams designing cars with a visible change in height along the nose assembly of the car. The design attracted criticism, with Red Bull Racing driver Mark Webber labelling the cars "ugly" and Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali calling them "not that pretty". At the 2012 Australian Grand Prix, Charlie Whiting, the FIA technical delegate, announced that although the changes to the sporting regulations planned for the 2014 season would effectively remove the "platypus" effect, the sport's governing body is planning to phase the stepped nose out for 2013. The FIA later accepted a proposal that would allow teams to cover up the stepped nose with a "modesty plate", a panel designed to obscure the step without fundamentally altering the aerodynamic profile of the car or offering any aerodynamic gain itself., The FIA completely overhauled testing procedures for front wings in 2013, introducing a more-comprehensive and strenuous series of tests designed to root out the practice of exploiting flexible bodywork regulations. Front wings in particular are subjected to revised parameters, with a tolerance of just permitted when the wing is subjected to a load of ., The "double-DRS" system, first developed by Mercedes for the W03 in is banned in 2013. The device, which used a series of channels that ran through the car to create a stalling effect over the front wing when the rear wing Drag Reduction System was open, thereby cancelling out the downforce generated under normal conditions, would allow the car to achieve a higher top speed and better stability in fast corners. The system was the subject of several legal challenges early in the 2012 season, and rival team Lotus developed a similar system of their own before teams agreed to a ban in July 2012. However, while the regulations specifically banned the system developed by Mercedes, they make no provision for the variant developed by Lotus., The minimum weight of cars increased to so as to account for the weight difference between the 2012 and 2013 specification of tyres. The Sixth Concorde Agreement—the contract between the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), the Formula One teams and the Formula One Administration which dictates the terms by which the teams compete in races and take their share of the television revenues and prize money—which was first ratified by teams in —expired at the end of , necessitating the creation of the Seventh Concorde Agreement. As part of the renewed Agreement, the commercial rights to the sport were to be floated on the Singapore Stock Exchange; however, in June 2012 the planned flotation was delayed, with weak markets, uncertainty within Europe over the continent's economic future, and Facebook's disappointing IPO cited as reasons for the delay., The sport's decision-making process will be restructured. Prior to 2013, any decision to change the sporting or technical regulations required the agreement of at least 70% (or nine votes) of the teams in order for those changes to be accepted. From 2013 onwards, those changes will only need a 51% majority (six teams) in order to be approved. The Technical and Sporting Working Groups, the committees responsible for deciding upon the technical and sporting regulations, will also be disbanded in favour of a "Strategy Working Group" that will oversee both technical and sporting regulations and will be made up of representatives from each of the teams that scored points in the previous season's championship, the FIA, Formula One Management, one engine supplier and six event promoters. FIA president Jean Todt described the changes as necessary and designed to give each of the stakeholders in the sport a proportionate representation in deciding the future of Formula One. With the nineteen races of the season completed, the defending World Champion, Red Bull Racing's Sebastian Vettel, retained the Drivers' Championship. He did so by winning in India and opening an unassailable 115-point gap with only three races remaining. He broke the record for most consecutive wins in a single season with nine. He also tied the record for consecutive wins, which was set by Alberto Ascari in –, and for total wins in a single season with 13, set by Michael Schumacher in . His record tally of 13 wins included a controversial victory at the Malaysian Grand Prix that came when he defied team orders, overtaking teammate Mark Webber late in the race to secure victory. Vettel apologised afterwards to the team, although he later refused to apologise for winning. Vettel's other wins came in Bahrain, Canada, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Singapore, Korea, Japan, India, Abu Dhabi, the United States and Brazil. The four times world champion scored 397 points, also a record until 2018, when Lewis Hamilton scored 408 points. Webber finished his last Formula One season in third place with 199 points. It was the first time since that the Australian failed to win a race. Their combined results allowed Red Bull to clinch the 2013 Constructors' Championship in India by opening a gap of 157 points, with only 129 still up to grab. The team scored a total of 596 points. Ferrari's Fernando Alonso finished as the runner-up with 242 points. The Spaniard won two races, in China and Spain, and scored five second-places, in Australia, Canada, Belgium, Italy and Singapore, to keep him in a strong championship position throughout the season. However, a retirement in Malaysia and relatively poor results in Bahrain, Monaco, Korea and India saw him fall behind Vettel in the points. The gap closed briefly after the German's gearbox failure at the British Grand Prix, but the defending world champion scored eleven consecutive podium finishes after his sole retirement of the season, including ten wins, to clinch the title. Alonso's teammate Felipe Massa finished eighth in the standings, scoring 112 points with a single podium finish in Spain. Ferrari lost second place in the Constructors' Championship to Mercedes, finishing a mere 6 points behind. Lewis Hamilton, who scored a win in Hungary, four third places and five pole positions in 2013 with Mercedes AMG, finished fourth in the drivers' standings with 189 points. His Malaysian Grand Prix podium came with a share of controversy as team orders were employed to help him retain third place. After the race, Hamilton admitted that teammate Nico Rosberg was the one who actually deserved the podium. Italy was the first time that Hamilton failed to make a Q3 appearance since the 2010 Malaysian Grand Prix. As a result, the Briton's streak of consecutive Q3 appearances ended at 66. Hamilton also suffered his first retirement of the season in Japan due to damage caused by a puncture, which he got from a clash with Vettel. Rosberg, despite winning the Monaco and British Grands Prix, finished sixth, with retirements in Australia, China and Hungary, as well as a string of bad luck preventing him from having clean races, hurting his point tally. Mercedes finished as the runner-up to Red Bull in the Constructors' Championship with 360 points. Lotus driver Kimi Räikkönen finished fifth in the Drivers' Championship with 183 points. He missed the last two races of the season due to a back surgery. The Finn won the season- opening Australian Grand Prix and placed second at the Chinese, Bahrain, Spanish, German, Hungarian and Korean Grands Prix, but a retirement in Belgium combined with a non-points finish in Italy opened the gap to the championship leader. Belgium was the first time Räikkönen failed to finish a race since returning to the sport at the 2012 Australian Grand Prix. It also ended Räikkönen's record run of consecutive points finishes at 27, which started at the 2012 Bahrain Grand Prix. Teammate Romain Grosjean finished third in Bahrain, Germany, Korea, Japan and India, finishing seventh in the points standings. He also saw a return of controversies during the first half of the season after being handed a 10-place grid penalty for the Canadian Grand Prix, which he received for crashing into Daniel Ricciardo at Monaco. He was also handed a 20-second time penalty in Hungary for a collision with Jenson Button. However, the Frenchman found great form and confidence afterwards to score three consecutive podium finishes and equalled his best ever result in the United States with second place. Poor showings in Monaco, Canada, Great Britain, Belgium, Italy and Brazil saw Lotus fall to fourth in the Constructors' Championship with 315 points, 39 adrift of Ferrari for third place. Despite finishing the season with two wins in the final two races, McLaren openly admitted to a difficult 2013 campaign. Button finished ninth overall, 39 points behind Massa, whilst teammate Sergio Pérez ended up twelfth. The team ended the season in fifth place in the Constructors' Championship, with a best result of fourth achieved by Button in Brazil. It was the first time since that McLaren failed to win a race and the first time since that the team did not score a podium. Force India had a strong start to the season, with Paul di Resta finishing fourth in Bahrain and Adrian Sutil recording a fifth place in Monaco, though the team's performance fell significantly during the second half of the season, with only 3 points scored in seven races from Germany to Japan. However, the team put both cars in the points at its home race as well as in Abu Dhabi. di Resta has been very consistent during the first half of the season, claiming points in six consecutive races from China to Great Britain. The team finished in sixth place in the Constructors' Championship, 45 points behind McLaren. Sauber endured a very difficult first half of the season, scoring just seven points in the first 11 Grands Prix. However, Nico Hülkenberg showed impressive form in Italy, qualifying third and finishing fifth in the race, in Korea, where he started seventh and fought off Hamilton and Alonso for fourth, as well as in the United States, where he qualified fourth and finished sixth. The team also enjoyed a great team result in Japan, where the German finished sixth and his rookie teammate Esteban Gutiérrez seventh, the Mexican's first and only points of the season. Sauber scored 57 points and finished in seventh place in the Constructors' Championship. Gutiérrez endured a difficult introduction to Formula One, with a retirement due to driver error in China, a lowly eighteenth place in Bahrain and a string of grid penalties for causing avoidable collisions and blocking other drivers during qualifying. Despite this, he recorded the fastest lap of the race in Spain, secured his first career top ten qualifying appearance in Singapore, repeated the feat in Korea and drove a strong race for seventh in Japan. Scuderia Toro Rosso finished in eight place overall with career-best results for both Daniel Ricciardo, who finished seventh in China and Italy, and Jean-Éric Vergne, who finished sixth in Canada. Qualifying improved as well with the team making the top ten in qualifying on a regular basis, with a peak of fifth for Ricciardo at Silverstone. Williams endured one of their worst seasons, not scoring points until Pastor Maldonado finished tenth in Hungary. Teammate Valtteri Bottas qualified third in changeable conditions in Canada, but was unable to carry the speed into the race. However, the Finn scored his first career points in the United States after a strong weekend, finishing eight in the race. Williams finished ninth in the Constructors' Championship, 28 points adrift of Toro Rosso. Marussia F1 and Caterham F1 did not score points in 2013. The teams' best results were achieved by Jules Bianchi, who scored a thirteenth for Marussia, and by Charles Pic and Giedo van der Garde, who have both scored a fourteenth-place finish for Caterham. By virtue of Bianchi's thirteenth place in Malaysia, Marussia ended the season in tenth. Tyre supplier Pirelli faced criticism early in the season due to the wear of some tyres, with some claiming tyre management had become too important to race strategy. This prompted Pirelli to announce plans to introduce new designs after the Canadian Grand Prix. The testing Pirelli undertook on these proposed new designs led to an official complaint on the eve of the Monaco Grand Prix from Ferrari and Red Bull who claimed the way it was done, using the 2013 Mercedes car and drivers, would give them a competitive advantage in both Monaco and Canada. There were also disputes over the change in the failure mode that were the result of new manufacturing methods, as to whether these increased or decreased safety. As the teams arrived in Montreal for the Canadian Grand Prix it was announced that, after further enquiries were made to all teams, the FIA were referring the Mercedes tyre test to its International Tribunal as it may have breached the rules. The FIA cleared an earlier test by Ferrari as it used a 2011 car, which was not a breach of the rules. To reduce the number of delaminations, Pirelli introduced two new specifications of rear tyre in time for the Canadian race, which also reverted to the belt pack used in 2011 and 2012 tyres. In announcing the tyre, Pirelli said there would be no further tyre changes for the 2013 season due to the fact that to doing so would need the agreement of all teams, some of whom did not want their performance to be affected by such a mid-season change. Tyre issues continued to dominate headlines at the British Grand Prix when several drivers suffered explosive punctures during the race. Amid concerns that the issue would continue at the German Grand Prix one week later, Pirelli received permission to introduce an entirely new specification of tyre in time for the Hungarian Grand Prix, whilst introducing modifications to the existing tyres for the race in Germany as a stop-gap solution. The FIA also imposed restrictions of their own, banning the teams from swapping the left- and right-side tyres around, a practice that had been employed to extend the lifespan of the tyres. Points were awarded to the top ten classified finishers using the following structure: Notes: – Drivers did not finish the Grand Prix, but were classified as they completed more than 90% of the race distance. Notes: – Drivers did not finish the Grand Prix, but were classified as they completed more than 90% of the race distance. The official website of Formula One, The official website of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile Sebastian Vettel (; born 3 July 1987) is a German racing driver who races in Formula One for Scuderia Ferrari. He is a four-time Formula One World Champion, having won consecutive titles in – with Red Bull Racing, and is regarded by many as one of the greatest drivers in the history of the sport. Vettel moved to Ferrari for the season, and is contracted to stay with the team until the end of 2020. In addition to holding a number of 'youngest' records in Formula One, Vettel holds the record for the most consecutive race wins (9), as well as accumulating the third most race victories () and podium finishes (), and the fourth-most pole positions (). Vettel started his Formula One career as a test driver for BMW Sauber in and made his racing debut with the team at the 2007 United States Grand Prix, replacing the injured Robert Kubica. Already part of the Red Bull programme, Vettel joined Toro Rosso later in the season, and was kept as a driver for . In his first full season in Formula One, the 21-year-old became the youngest pole-sitter and race winner at the 2008 Italian Grand Prix, although the latter record was broken by Max Verstappen in 2016. Vettel was promoted to Red Bull for the season, during which he won four races en route to becoming the youngest-ever World Drivers' Championship runner-up. The following year, Vettel became the youngest driver ever to win the World Drivers' Championship, also helping Red Bull win their first World Constructors' Championship. He followed up his first championship with three more titles in succession, becoming the youngest double, triple and quadruple world champion in Formula One. The and titles were decided in the final round; topping a four-way title battle in Abu Dhabi in 2010, and beating Fernando Alonso by three points in 2012, while the and titles saw Vettel dominating the seasons to secure the titles early. Ending his long-term association with the team, Vettel activated a clause to end his contract with Red Bull at the end of the season. Soon after, it was announced that Vettel had signed a three-year contract with Ferrari for the season. In his first season with Ferrari, Vettel won three races and was the closest challenger to the Mercedes drivers. The next year however, he finished fourth in the championship in another winless season. Vettel and Ferrari enjoyed a resurgence in and , winning a number of races and topping the standings a number of times in close World Championship battles with Lewis Hamilton. However, both years saw his title hopes end in Mexico as he finished both seasons as runner-up. Vettel endured a more difficult season in 2019, highlighted by a controversial time penalty costing him a win in Canada, although he rebounded to win in Singapore. Vettel was born in Heppenheim, then West Germany, to Norbert and Heike Vettel. He has one younger brother, Fabian, and two older sisters: Melanie, a dental technician, and Stefanie, a physiotherapist for disabled children. Vettel suggested in an interview that he was terrible at school, but he passed his school leaving exams ("Abitur") at Heppenheimth's (academic secondary school) with a respectable grade. He has said that his childhood heroes were "The three Michaels" – Michael Schumacher, Michael Jordan, and Michael Jackson and mentioned that he wanted to be a singer like Michael Jackson, but realised that he could not as he did not have the voice. Vettel is also a fan of The Beatles, collecting several records, including Abbey Road and his favourite song being "Drive My Car". In an interview on Top Gear, Vettel stated that he was a fan of British comedy such as Little Britain and Monty Python's Life of Brian. Vettel lives in Thurgovia, Switzerland amongst other racing drivers and is a fan of German football team Eintracht Frankfurt. Vettel has described himself as competitive, private, and impatient. Vettel also appeared in advertisements for Head & Shoulders. Vettel provided the voice of character Sebastian Schnell in the version of the movie Cars 2 dubbed for German- speaking audiences. Vettel married childhood friend Hanna Prater in early 2019. Vettel has three children by his wife Hanna: Emilie, born in January 2014, Matilda, born in September 2015, and a son born 28 November, 2019. In 2015, Forbes estimated that Vettel's annual income was $44 million. On the Formula One circuit, Kimi Räikkönen, his Ferrari teammate for 2015 to 2018, is a close friend. Sebastian's younger brother, Fabian is also a racing driver. He competed in the 2017 Audi Sport TT Cup, finishing ninth, and currently competes in ADAC GT Masters driving for Mercedes. In 2019, he was ranked 86th in Forbes' World's Highest-Paid Celebrities list. Besides his native German and common Formula One language English, Vettel also speaks some Italian after racing several years for Toro Rosso and Ferrari. Vettel started amateur karting at the young age of 3½ and began racing in karts series in 1995, at the age of eight. Having shown early talent, he was accepted into the Red Bull Junior Team at age 11 in 1998, and kept on winning various titles, such as the Junior Monaco Kart Cup in 2001. In 2003, he was promoted to open-wheel cars and won the 2004 German Formula BMW Championship with 18 victories from 20 races. Having impressed in his first season of auto racing in 2003, Vettel was given a chance by Derrick Walker to test a Reynard Motorsport Champ Car in a two-day private test at the Homestead road course. In 2005 he drove for ASL Mucke Motorsport in the Formula 3 Euro Series. He was placed fifth in the final standings with 63 points, winning the year's top rookie honours. He tested the Williams FW27 Formula One automobile on 27 September as a reward for this Formula BMW success. He then went on to test for the BMW Sauber team. He drove for Racing Engineering in one race of the Spanish F3 in Albacete. 2006 became a busy year for the 18-year-old racing driver that included being promoted to test driver for BMW Sauber in Formula One. Despite a competitive season with several victories, it did not yield any championship. Vettel finished as runner-up in his second season in the F3 Euroseries, behind series leader and teammate Paul di Resta. He also made his debut in the Formula Renault 3.5 Series at Misano, where he was promoted to second, after the original winner Pastor Maldonado was disqualified. At the next round at Spa-Francorchamps, however, his finger was almost sliced off by flying débris in an accident, and he was expected to be out of racing for several weeks. Nevertheless, he managed to compete in the Ultimate Masters of F3 at Zandvoort the following weekend, finishing in sixth place. He also set the third-fastest lap time, surprising team boss Frédéric Vasseur. Vettel competed in the Formula Renault 3.5 Series in 2007, and took his first win at the Nürburgring. He was leading the championship when he was called up to Formula One permanently. His seat was taken by Michael Ammermüller. Vettel became BMW Sauber's third driver at the 2006 Turkish Grand Prix, when former incumbent Robert Kubica was called up to replace Jacques Villeneuve for the 2006 Hungarian Grand Prix. On his testing debut, Vettel set the fastest time in the second Friday Free Practice before the race. In doing so, Vettel became both the youngest Formula One driver to participate in a Grand Prix weekend at 19 years and 53 days, though this record was broken by Max Verstappen. He also received the unfortunate record of collecting his first fine less than ten seconds into his career for exceeding the pitlane speed limit on the way to the track for the first time. In his second testing session in the 2006 Italian Grand Prix, he set the fastest time in both Friday practice sessions, a race weekend in which all the BMW cars were quick, with his predecessor Robert Kubica finishing on the podium in the race. Vettel was confirmed as BMW's test driver for 2007. Following the serious crash of regular BMW driver Kubica at the , Vettel substituted for him at the . He started in seventh position on the grid, finishing in eighth position on Sunday to become the youngest driver to score a point in Formula One, a record previously held by Jenson Button. On 31 July 2007, BMW released Vettel to join Red Bull's Scuderia Toro Rosso team, replacing Scott Speed as one of its drivers from the onwards (as he was already under contract to Red Bull). He earned approximately US$165,000 for finishing the season with Toro Rosso. Before the race, it was also announced that Vettel would drive for Toro Rosso in , alongside Sébastien Bourdais. In the rain-affected at Fuji, Vettel worked his way up to third, behind Lewis Hamilton and Red Bull Racing's Mark Webber, and seemed to be on course for his and the team's maiden podium finish. However, Vettel crashed into Webber under safety car conditions, forcing both cars to retire. Webber said in an interview after the race, "It's kids isn't it. Kids with not enough experience – you do a good job and then they fuck it all up", and also criticised Lewis Hamilton's contribution toward the accident, describing his antics behind the safety car as "shit". Vettel was initially punished with a ten-place grid penalty for the following race, but this was lifted after a spectator video on YouTube showed the incident may have been caused by Hamilton's behaviour behind the safety car. Vettel finished a career-best fourth a week later at the , having started 17th on the grid while in mixed conditions. He collected five championship points, making it both his and Toro Rosso's best race result. Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz stated his belief Vettel would be one of Formula One's big stars in the future. "Vettel is one of the young guys with extraordinary potential [...] He is fast, he is intelligent, and he is very interested in the technical side." After four races of the 2008 season, Vettel was the only driver to have failed to finish a single race, having retired on the first lap in three of them. In each of these three instances, he was involved in accidents caused by other drivers, the other being an engine failure. However, at the fifth round at the , he finally saw the chequered flag, albeit finishing in 17th after qualifying 14th and suffering a puncture on the opening lap. In the next race at the , Vettel scored his first points of the season with a fifth-place finish, after qualifying 17th. He scored again at the fighting off Heikki Kovalainen in the last few laps for the final championship point, having started from pit lane. Vettel finished 12th in France, before retiring on lap one at the wet after being clipped by David Coulthard and aquaplaned into the gravel trap along with Coulthard. He earned another point at the , fending off Fernando Alonso and securing eighth after Jarno Trulli ran wide. Vettel retired in Hungary after his engine overheated during his first pit stop. He impressed many at the by setting the fastest times in the first practice session and second qualifying session, before qualifying sixth on the grid. Vettel finished the race in sixth, two seconds behind Jarno Trulli. Toro Rosso's technical director Giorgio Ascanelli explained that something changed at the European Grand Prix in Valencia: "Suddenly Vettel understood something about how to drive an F1 car quickly. It made a huge difference – not only to the speed he could unlock, but also to his ability to do so consistently." At the 2008 Italian Grand Prix, Vettel became the youngest driver in history to win a Formula One Grand Prix. Aged 21 years and 74 days, Vettel broke the record set by Fernando Alonso at the 2003 Hungarian Grand Prix by 317 days when he won in wet conditions at Monza. Vettel led for the majority of the Grand Prix and crossed the finish line 12.5 seconds ahead of McLaren's Heikki Kovalainen. It was the first podium of both Toro Rosso and Vettel. it is also Toro Rosso's only win. Earlier in the weekend, he had already become the youngest polesitter, after setting the fastest times in both Q2 and Q3 qualifying stages, and his win also gave him the record of youngest podium finisher. Toro Rosso team boss Gerhard Berger said, "As he proved today, he can win races, but he's going to win world championships. He's a cool guy". Hamilton praised the German, stating that this victory showed "how good he is". The nature of the victory and the story of the 21-year-old's fledgling career led the German media to dub him "baby Schumi", although Vettel was quick to downplay the expectation the result had brought, particularly the comparison with the seven-time World Champion: "To compare me with Michael Schumacher is just a bit ridiculous... It will be difficult in normal conditions for us to repeat this achievement". He then went on to finish fifth in Singapore. In Japan, he finished sixth after being promoted from seventh after teammate Bourdais was penalised for contact with Felipe Massa. In the , after running as high as second in the race on a 3-stop strategy, Vettel overtook Lewis Hamilton in the rain for fifth place on the penultimate lap to contribute to a thrilling climax to the season. He nearly deprived the McLaren driver of the championship before Timo Glock slowed dramatically on the last lap (he was struggling with dry tyres in the ever-increasing rain) enabling both Vettel and Hamilton to pass him, earning Hamilton the title, and Vettel fourth place. After the season had finished Vettel was named Rookie of the Year at the Autosport Awards. At the start of the 2009 season, Vettel replaced the retired David Coulthard at Red Bull Racing, and began strongly at the , qualifying third and running in second for the majority of the race. However, a clash with Robert Kubica over second place on the third to last lap of the race forced both to retire. Vettel attempted to finish the race on three wheels behind the safety car to salvage some points, but eventually pulled off to the side. He thought that he would be able to attempt this because the yellow flag resulting from his incident forbids overtaking; instead he was given a ten-place grid penalty for the next race, the , and his team was fined for instructing him to stay on track after the damage occurred. In Malaysia he qualified in third position, but was demoted down to 13th due to his ten-place grid drop. He spun out of the race while eighth, just before the race was stopped due to adverse weather conditions. However, in China he went on to take pole position, the first for the Red Bull Racing team. He went on to win the race ahead of teammate Mark Webber, again a first for his team, which scored its first victory and 1–2 finish in the same race. At the age of 21 years and 287 days, Vettel became the youngest Grand Prix driver in history to win for two different teams, having won the 2008 Italian Grand Prix for the Toro Rosso team. In the , Vettel qualified in third, and finished second behind Jenson Button in the race. In Spain, he qualified in second but finished the race in fourth, behind his teammate Webber who finished in third. Vettel won the after claiming pole position in qualifying. At the he qualified fourth and finished second, behind Webber, who won his first Grand Prix. At the , Vettel qualified second after an eventful qualifying, but had to retire from the race on lap 30 after his car sustained damage from contact with Kimi Räikkönen's car on the first lap. At the , he qualified fourth but had to retire from the race with an engine failure. It was the second engine failure for Vettel during the weekend, and the RB5's reliability issues began to show. He finished third at Spa- Francorchamps, and struggled for pace at Monza, finishing 8th at a race he previously won. He qualified 2nd at Singapore, but was given a drive-though penalty for speeding in the pit lane and damaged the diffuser on a kerb, struggling to 4th. He subsequently won the from pole position, leading every lap and only being denied of the fastest lap by 0.002 seconds by teammate Mark Webber, who did so on the final lap. He would have to wait until the 2011 Indian Grand Prix until he finally achieved a Grand Slam. At the , Vettel qualified 16th in a rain-hit session, behind title rivals Button (14th) and Rubens Barrichello (1st), while his teammate Webber qualified second with Adrian Sutil in third. Vettel needed to score at least second place in the race to keep his title hopes alive. He finished fourth with Button behind, giving Button the Championship and moving Vettel up into second place. He officially claimed second place by winning the inaugural Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, again ahead of Webber with Button completing the podium. He also scored his third fastest lap of the year, drawing him level with teammate Webber. However, as Vettel had more second fastest laps, he won the 2009 DHL Fastest Lap Award. On 21 August 2009 it was announced that Red Bull and Vettel had extended his contract until the end of the season with an option for . The option was later taken up on 14 March 2011, as Vettel extended his contract with the team until the end of 2014. Vettel continued with Red Bull for 2010, and took the first pole position of the season at the . Vettel went on to lead most of the race but a spark-plug failure meant that his lap times slowed down, and as a result the two Ferraris and the McLaren of Lewis Hamilton passed him. After a brief challenge from Rosberg he brought the car home in fourth. At the , Vettel was appointed as a director of the Grand Prix Drivers' Association. He took his second consecutive pole position in Australia, ahead of teammate Mark Webber, but spun off when leading the race, due to a loose wheel nut. In Malaysia, he took his first win of the 2010 season with Webber coming in second place, having passed both him and Nico Rosberg at turn one. Vettel qualified on pole at China alongside Webber. At the start of the wet race Fernando Alonso jump- started and Vettel was passed by Webber, dropping back to third. The increasing rain forced Vettel and Webber to pit at the same time for intermediate tyres that wore out after only a few laps and dropped them back into the midfield. Vettel slowly climbed back up to finish sixth, ahead of Webber. In Spain, Vettel was outqualified by teammate Webber and claimed second on the grid. Despite having a major brake problem during the last eight laps, Vettel managed third place after Hamilton crashed on the penultimate lap. In Monaco Vettel was again outqualified by Webber. In the race he passed Kubica at the start and stayed there for the remainder of the Grand Prix and made it a Red Bull 1–2. After the race, the two Red Bull drivers were equal on points in the Drivers' Championship, with Webber being a championship leader based on total wins. At the he qualified third and was running second behind Webber when he made a passing move on the Australian. The two collided, putting Vettel out of the race and dropping him to fifth in the Drivers' Championship, with neither driver accepting responsibility for causing the collision. He finished fourth at the , maintaining his position in the standings. He started the in pole position and led from start to finish to score his second win of the season. At Silverstone, both Vettel and Webber's cars were fitted with a new design of front wing. Vettel's front wing was damaged in the third practice session, and Webber's sole surviving example was removed and given to Vettel. Vettel qualified in pole position ahead of his teammate, but suffered a puncture caused by driving wide off the track on the first lap of the race and fell to the tail of the field. He fought back to finish seventh while Webber took the victory. At the he took pole by 0.002 seconds, and finished in third position in the race, behind the Ferraris of Alonso and Felipe Massa, after a poor start. Since Ferrari swapped positions between the drivers in an apparent team order Vettel could have been handed the win, but the FIA let the result stand, then legalised team orders again. He also finished third in Hungary after serving a drive-through penalty for exceeding ten lengths behind the previous car, teammate Webber, under neutralised safety car conditions. In Belgium, he had a tough race, hitting Button's car whilst attempting to pass, causing Button to retire. Vettel pitted and carried on, but then suffered a puncture whilst passing Liuzzi at the same place, completing a whole lap with a puncture. He eventually finished 15th, his lowest placing of the season (other than his retirements in Australia and Turkey). At Monza he finished fourth after an engine problem scare, and at the , Vettel qualified and finished second, sticking on Alonso's tail for most of the race, the entire weekend being very close between the two. He passed Button for fourth place in the championship. At the , he dominated all practice sessions bar one, as it was postponed after heavy rain. He qualified on pole ahead of teammate Webber and went on to win with a lights-to-flag victory. Aged 23 years and 98 days, Vettel became the youngest Grand Prix driver to win at the same track on two occasions, having also won the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka in 2009. At the first , Vettel took pole and led the first 45 laps of the race before retiring with engine failure, handing victory to Alonso. At the , Vettel qualified second but took the lead at the first corner from the Williams of Nico Hülkenberg and led for the entire race to victory. With Webber taking second place, and Alonso finishing third, Vettel went into the final race of the season with a 15-point deficit to Alonso, and a 7-point gap to Webber. With the 1–2 finish in Brazil, Vettel and Webber secured Red Bull Racing's first Formula One World Constructors' Championship. He won the from pole again, to take the Drivers' Championship lead for the first time in his career and became the youngest world champion in the sport's history. Following John Surtees in the season and James Hunt in , this was also only the third time in Formula One history when the World Champion had not been championship leader at any earlier point in the season. After the postponement of the , Vettel started his title defence in the with pole position and a victory of 22 seconds over title rival Lewis Hamilton, who was nursing home his broken McLaren. Vettel continued his title defence in the , where he pipped Hamilton for pole position by a tenth of a second, and went on to win the race from Jenson Button. Vettel completed his third pole position of the season at the , and appeared to be in dominating form for the majority of the race. However, poor tyre management haunted him in the last several laps, possibly being related to his inability to properly communicate with his team, as his radio was broken. He finished the race second, his championship lead cut to 21 points over Hamilton after three races. The started out poorly for Vettel, where he had very little practice time during the Friday free practice sessions, including a crash in the first session. Even with the limited practice, he claimed his fifth consecutive pole position and converted it into a win, extending his championship lead over Hamilton to 34 points. At the , his pole position streak ended as his KERS failed him during qualifying. His teammate Webber took pole, but Vettel went on to win the race by 0.6 seconds over Hamilton, with Hamilton chasing him down at the end on prime tyres, and Vettel having to deal with a frequently malfunctioning KERS. The following weekend, in the , he took pole with the second fastest qualifying time in Monaco's history. Vettel was leading the race with a 5-second gap over second-placed Button. Due to a radio malfunction, the Red Bull pit crew was not prepared for Vettel when he pitted. The net result was that the pit stop was slow, and that he was sent out on the wrong tyres, handing the lead to Button as well. Vettel switched to a one-stop strategy, and stuck with one set of soft tyres for 56 laps. He was caught by Alonso and Button as his tyres deteriorated, but neither were able to pass him on the narrow streets of the Monte-Carlo circuit. With a few laps remaining, the race was red-flagged after Vitaly Petrov required an ambulance after an accident. The suspended race allowed teams to change tyres and work on the cars, and when the race was restarted under the safety car, Vettel was able to retain the lead during the last few laps. In Canada, he took his sixth pole position in seven races ahead of Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa. Vettel kept his lead from the start of the race, and for the vast majority of the race he held on to it. The record six safety car periods due to the down-pouring rain and 2-hour race suspension profoundly hurt Vettel's chances of victory, however, as after every safety car restart, Vettel would lose the gap he had previously built up on the other drivers. With much fresher tyres, Button caught Vettel and began to pressure him in the last lap. Vettel slid on a damp part of the track at Turn 6, and Button used the opportunity to slip past him to take the victory. Vettel finished second, yet still extended his championship lead to 60 points ahead of Button. At the , the FIA began enforcing a controversial ban on engine mappings. It was believed by many in the press that this was an attempt by the FIA to thwart Vettel's domination of the season. The changes appeared to do little to hinder Vettel, as he took pole with the fastest qualifying lap in Valencia Street Circuit's history. He dominated the race with his first hat-trick of 2011 and won his sixth race out of eight races. It was the first time in Formula One history that a driver had finished second or better in each of the first 8 races of a season and won at least 6 of them. The second set of controversial mid-season changes were implemented at Silverstone, targeting the blown diffusers. Red Bull believed the changes cost them about half a second per lap. Webber just edged Vettel for pole position by 0.032 seconds in qualifying. On race day, Vettel made a better start, immediately took the lead and led the first half of the race. A delay at one of his pit stops allowed Alonso to pass him in the pit lane and dropped Vettel back to third, behind Hamilton. Despite a malfunctioning KERS unit, he was able to jump Hamilton in the stops and held off the faster Webber, who ignored a radio message from team principal Christian Horner to hold position, for second place, extending his lead in the championship. Vettel's run of fourteen successive front-row starts and eleven successive top two finishes ended at his home race, where he qualified third and finished fourth. McLaren's mechanical grip beat Red Bull in the wet in Hungary, and despite leading into the first corner from pole, he was quickly passed by both Hamilton and Button. Vettel eventually finished second in the race, held in mixed conditions. In Belgium, Vettel qualified on pole and won the race, his seventh victory of the season and seventeenth of his career. In victory, Vettel extended his lead in the championship to 92 points and, even with seven races left, his tally of 259 points surpassed his own record (from ) for the highest number of championship points accumulated in a season. At the at Monza, he took his tenth pole position of the year – joining Ayrton Senna as the only drivers to have taken ten pole positions in two separate seasons – and the 25th of his career, and eventually won the race after passing Alonso, who had overtaken Vettel at the start. Vettel led every lap from pole position in Singapore, despite a safety car period eliminating a 22-second lead that he had held. His ninth win of the season left only Jenson Button in championship contention, who was 124 points behind with five races remaining. Vettel arrived in Japan needing only a single championship point, tenth place, to secure his second championship. In qualifying, Vettel recorded his twelfth pole position of the season – his fifth in succession – edging Button by 0.009 seconds. In the race, Vettel held the lead until the second pit-stop phase, when Button used the undercut to get past. He remained second after a safety car restart, but because his tyres wore out not long after that, he slipped down to third behind Alonso. He tried to fight Alonso for the position, but after several unsuccessful passing attempts, his race engineer told him to hold position and defend his championship. This podium finish secured his second successive title with four races remaining, making him the youngest ever double world champion and also the youngest back-to-back champion, joining only eight other drivers who had won consecutive titles. In Korea, Vettel started second, but won the race – becoming the second driver to take at least ten wins in a season after Michael Schumacher – after overtaking Lewis Hamilton on the first lap, building a healthy gap for the rest of the race, and recording the fastest lap of the race on the final lap. He helped secure Red Bull's second successive Constructors' World Championship in the process. Vettel took his eleventh victory of the season in the inaugural Indian Grand Prix, leading every lap from pole position, as well as setting the race's fastest lap on the final lap, despite Red Bull having detuned his engine in an effort not to risk the race victory. At the , Vettel took his fourteenth pole position of 2011 to equal the record of poles in a season set by Nigel Mansell in . Vettel had a good start to maintain the lead by the first corner, but at the second corner, a right rear puncture saw him go sliding off the track. He returned to the pits, but suspension damage forced his first retirement since the 2010 Korean Grand Prix. Vettel then broke the record for the most poles in a season at the next round, the season finale in Brazil. He maintained his lead into the first corner but was slowed by gearbox trouble early in the race. He allowed teammate Webber to pass him as his problem worsened, but eventually finished second ahead of Button to complete a 1–2 sweep for the team upon Webber's only victory of the year. Vettel completed the year with 15 poles, 11 victories, and 17 podiums from 19 races; he also earned a record total of 392 points in the process. Vettel remained at Red Bull for the 2012 season, and was again partnered by Mark Webber. He scored a second-place finish at the opening race of the season in Australia. Vettel started fifth in Malaysia, promoted from sixth after Kimi Räikkönen suffered a five-place grid penalty. Vettel spent the majority of the rain-affected race in fourth place, but picked a puncture from a collision with the HRT of Narain Karthikeyan on lap 47. He dropped to twelfth after pitting to replace the tyre, and finished eleventh after Pastor Maldonado retired late in the race with an engine failure. This was Vettel's first finish outside the points since the 2010 Belgian Grand Prix; Karthikeyan was given a 20-second post-race penalty for his part in the collision, which dropped Karthikeyan from 21st to 22nd and last. After the race, Vettel and Red Bull boss Christian Horner criticised Karthikeyan's driving, with Vettel calling Karthikeyan an "idiot", and a "cucumber". Karthikeyan hit back at Vettel, calling him a "cry-baby". Later, Karthikeyan decided to call a truce with Vettel, stating his respect for Vettel's abilities and saying "I think we have to deal with it in a mature way and forget about it." Vettel qualified eleventh for the ; the first time he had qualified outside the top ten since the 2009 Brazilian Grand Prix, although he ran as high as 2nd with 7 laps remaining until tyre wear on a 2-stop strategy took its toll and he dropped to 5th by the flag. Vettel qualified in pole position for the first time in 2012 at the . Vettel was able to lead for most of the race, despite coming under pressure from Kimi Räikkönen, and crossed the line in first place to take his first victory of the season; the result also saw Vettel go top of the drivers' standings for the first time in 2012. At the Spanish GP, he maintained his championship lead, albeit only on countback, after a 6th-place finish having started 7th. Vettel received a drive-through penalty for failing to slow for yellow flags during the race as well as having to change his front wing as a result of debris from an incident involving Michael Schumacher and Bruno Senna. After an eventful race at Monaco, he placed fourth, gaining 5 places from his ninth-place grid position. Vettel claimed his 2nd pole position for the season in Canada, however he dropped to 3rd after the first pit stops and then trying to go the remaining distance of the same tyres, he fell back in the closing stages and had to make a late stop for new tyres. He eventually came 4th. At the following race in Valencia, he claimed his 33rd pole position, going 3rd equal with Jim Clark and Alain Prost in the all-time list. However a 20-second lead in the first 20 laps was reduced to nothing by a safety car appearance. On the first lap of the restart, his car ground to a halt, with an alternator failure being the cause. Vettel would have taken the lead in the standings- instead, he fell back to 4th behind Alonso (who won), Hamilton and Webber. At Silverstone, Vettel qualified 4th after a wet session which, at one point, had to be suspended for over 1 hour due to torrential rain. In the dry race he overcame a slow start, where he dropped to 5th, to finish 3rd behind Webber and Alonso. In Germany he started second, but before the third pit-stop, he was attacked by Hamilton, who wanted to unlap himself, lost some time, and was overtaken by Button after the pit-stop. On the penultimate lap he passed Button and finished second behind Alonso. After the race, however, the stewards found that Vettel was off the track when he overtook Button and so they awarded him a 20-second time penalty which dropped him back to fifth. At the following race in Hungary, Vettel finished 4th after starting 3rd. After the summer break, at the Belgian Grand Prix, he fought back from a poor qualifying, where he was knocked out in Q2 to start 10th, and a poor start in which he had to avoid the big accident ahead of him. Having ended the first lap in 12th, he managed to finish 2nd. At Round 13 in Italy, Vettel started 5th and was running 4th until he forced Fernando Alonso onto the grass, for which he received a drive-through penalty, dropping him to 9th. Then, having recovered to 6th with 5 laps to go, the alternator on his car failed for the second time in the weekend. Vettel was classified 22nd, with championship leader Alonso coming 3rd and Hamilton winning. The next race was the Singapore Grand Prix, where Vettel qualified 3rd. He overtook Pastor Maldonado at the start before the leader Lewis Hamilton retired with a car failure, Vettel then kept the lead until the 2-hour race limit was reached. It was his first win in 10 races, ending his worst run since his maiden win (which came in his 22nd race). At Suzuka for the Japanese Grand Prix, Vettel took his 2nd career Grand Slam (Pole, Fastest Lap and lead every lap) and coupled with Alonso retiring on the first lap, he cut the gap down to just 4 points. On 14 October he won his third consecutive race at the Korean Grand Prix. He overtook his teammate Mark Webber, who took the pole, to finish the race ahead of him, making it a Red Bull 1–2 finish. With this win, Vettel took the lead in the overall championship from Ferrari's Fernando Alonso. The Indian Grand Prix brought another victory, with Vettel topping all 3 practice sessions before taking pole position and leading every lap of the race to a comfortable win, ahead of teammate Mark Webber in 3rd – who lost his 2nd place when a KERS failure slowed him down. Abu Dhabi presented one of Vettel's most controversial qualifying sessions of the season when, after setting the third fastest time in Q3, he was told to stop the car. A fuel pump issue was later found to be the source of this problem and the ensuing penalty meant Vettel was to start the race from last, but as Red Bull then decided to make changes to the car, he was forced to start from the pit lane. However, in the race, Vettel managed to fight his way back to 3rd place to complete the podium. After a podium in the US Grand Prix Vettel was well set up to win the championship in Brazil. Vettel started the race with a 13-point cushion against title contender Fernando Alonso. After a close eventful race full of spins, which included Vettel's opening lap incident with Bruno Senna, crashes and changing weather conditions, Vettel finished 6th while Alonso finished 2nd, resulting in Vettel winning the championship by three points. This was Vettel's third consecutive championship, and at age 25 he became the youngest ever triple world champion, beating Ayrton Senna's previous record. Senna won his third F1 world championship title in 1991 at age 31. Vettel also became the third driver to acquire three-consecutive championships, after Juan Manuel Fangio and Michael Schumacher. Vettel started his fifth season with Red Bull Racing by qualifying on pole for the 2013 Australian Grand Prix, before going on to finish the race in third place, twenty-two seconds behind race winner Kimi Räikkönen. He took pole again for the in dominant display of wet weather driving, lapping over 2.5 seconds faster than teammate Webber. He went on to win the race, though not without controversy, after Vettel ignored team orders not to pass teammate Mark Webber. Webber emerged from the pits a fraction of a second ahead of Vettel as they went side-by-side into the first corner. Although Red Bull told both drivers that they were to finish with Webber to take the win, after two laps Vettel eventually overtook Webber for the lead with eleven laps remaining in the race. Webber was furious after the race, saying Vettel "will have protection as usual and that’s the way it goes". Team principal Christian Horner, although unhappy with Vettel's actions, pointed out that Webber had defied team orders on several previous occasions, as recently as two races ago. Horner acknowledged that the already fragile relationship between the two drivers had further broken down as a result of the incident. Vettel apologised for his actions, claiming that he had not deliberately ignored the order despite the team's insistence that he had been made perfectly aware of the instruction to maintain his position. Vettel later recanted his apology, claiming that he was not sorry for winning and that if the situation presented itself again, he would have passed Webber in spite of the order, adding that he felt Webber did not deserve to win the race. In the , Vettel qualified 9th, after not setting a time in Q3, before finishing 4th, setting fastest lap and crossing the line two-tenths behind 3rd placed Lewis Hamilton. Vettel won from second on the grid in Bahrain, passing Nico Rosberg in the opening laps. Vettel maintained the championship lead with 4th in Spain, and 2nd at the . He won in dominant fashion at Montreal, winning from pole position by 15 seconds and lapping everyone up to 5th, extending his lead to 36 points. His lead was cut at the as he was denied a likely win due to gearbox failure, but he bounced back to win his home race in Germany for the first time, despite pressure from Kimi Räikkönen and Romain Grosjean. In Hungary, Vettel had to settle for 3rd behind Hamilton and Räikkönen, but wins in Belgium (from 2nd on the grid), Italy, Singapore and Korea (all 3 from pole) put him 77 points clear with only 5 races to go. With grand slams at Singapore and Korea, he became only the third man after Alberto Ascari and Jim Clark to take consecutive grand slams. Vettel sealed his fourth world title at India on 27 October. By winning the season finale in Abu Dhabi, Vettel set the record for Most consecutive race wins in Formula 1, with 9. On several occasions during the season, spectators booed Vettel. Although the booing was widely condemned by fellow drivers, the media and others in the paddock, Vettel revealed that it had a negative impact on him. Prior to the 2011 Japanese Grand Prix, Red Bull's advisor Helmut Marko expressed his wish to extend Vettel's contract for another two years to 2016. However, on 11 June 2013, Vettel agreed to a one- year contract extension with Red Bull until the end of the 2015 season. For the 2014 season and beyond, drivers picked a unique car number to use for the remainder of their Formula One career, Vettel chose the number five. However, as reigning World Drivers' Champion he carried number one throughout 2014. After having Mark Webber (who retired from Formula One to race in the new World Endurance Championship) as a teammate for five years, Vettel's new teammate in 2014 was Australian Daniel Ricciardo, who was promoted from the Toro Rosso team. After struggling with reliability issues throughout winter testing, the season did not start much better for Vettel. At the , software issues meant Vettel qualified in twelfth position and forced him to retire from the race after just three laps. Reliability problems also forced Vettel to retire at the Monaco and Austrian Grands Prix. Vettel qualified on the front-row for the races in Malaysia, Great Britain, and Hungary, and finished on the podium in Malaysia, Canada, Singapore and Japan. On 4 October 2014, Red Bull Racing announced that Vettel would be leaving the team at the end of the 2014 season, one year before his contract was due to expire. After the , he had been outqualified by a teammate over a season for the first time in his Formula One career. In addition to suffering reliability problems, throughout 2014 Vettel struggled to get to grips with the Red Bull RB10, and Pirelli's 2014 tyres. Vettel signed off the 2014 season, by becoming the first defending champion to fail to win a race in the following season since Jacques Villeneuve in . Vettel mentioned he would like to drive for Ferrari at some point in his career and was rumoured to have a non-binding pre-contract, with options, to join them in 2014. His contract extension to the end of 2015 seemed to end any discussion that Vettel was about to make the Ferrari move. On the day Vettel and Red Bull announced parting ways, team principal Christian Horner announced that Vettel was going to sign with Ferrari. From there it took from early October to 20 November for Ferrari to announce a three-year contract with Vettel. At the same time, Ferrari announced that Vettel's long-time championship rival Fernando Alonso would be departing the team at the end of the season; meaning Vettel would partner Kimi Räikkönen at the team. Alonso's departure two years before his contract expiry opened the Ferrari door for Vettel. Vettel was denied an early release from his Red Bull contract to test the 2014 Ferrari car in Abu Dhabi post-race. In spite of this Vettel technically breached his contract being at the test with Ferrari – although not driving the car but Red Bull did not enforce any sanctions. Vettel instead made his first appearance at the Ferrari factory over the weekend of 29–30 November, completing nearly 100 laps around the test track of Fiorano in the 2012 car as well as performing simulator work and completing his first official interview as a Ferrari driver. According to Ferrari's official website, Vettel did however try the simulated 2014 car in the team's simulator program. Vettel made his Ferrari début by finishing third in the after overtaking Felipe Massa for the position during the pit stop window. The previous day he had narrowly outqualified teammate Kimi Räikkönen for fourth on the grid. Vettel followed that up with winning the , his first race win for over a year and the first win for Ferrari for almost two years. It was also his 40th Grand Prix win, putting him one win behind Ayrton Senna, the 3rd-placed driver on the all-time list. After the win, an emotional Vettel paid tribute to Michael Schumacher, saying that his hero's achievements with Ferrari made the first win all the more special. Vettel also stated his goal was to try to win the championship. Mercedes's executive director Toto Wolff admitted at the same time that Vettel was a title contender, saying that Ferrari's recovery over the winter was 'incredible'. Vettel ran both Mercedes cars close for the first half of the race in China, but eventually had to settle for third – his third successive podium – which was a result that both Vettel and the team admitted was always the most likely on that particular occasion. Vettel was involved in a minor tangle with Sergio Pérez during practice for the , damaging his front wing coming out of the pits. Vettel claimed the impact happened because of a brake issue that failed to slow the car down saying 'something broke on the front right' on the team radio. In spite of his claims, the incident was investigated by the race stewards. Both Vettel and Pérez were cleared of any wrongdoing later that evening, and so escaped any penalties. The rest of the weekend was mixed for Vettel, who qualified on the front row, but had several issues and off-track escapades during the race before being stuck behind Valtteri Bottas' Williams and having to settle for fifth. Given that he had qualified on the front row and that teammate Räikkönen was second, the result was somewhat underwhelming, and he dropped to third place in the championship as a result. Vettel commented that he lost his rhythm during the race and did not have enough confidence in the rear end of the car, but nevertheless remained positive about the performance potential of the car. Before his front wing damage, Vettel had twice overtaken Nico Rosberg for second place during pit stops, only to immediately be pegged back. Vettel was in second for a long spell during the but due to a change of pit stop strategy, Lewis Hamilton got past and pulled away, leaving Vettel in third at the end of the race. He finished second in Monaco, having run very close to eventual winner Rosberg for most parts of the race. Mercedes made a strategic error in bringing dominant leader Hamilton in for new tyres at the late safety car, placing him right behind Vettel. The duel that followed made Vettel fall back from Rosberg, but he managed to hold off Hamilton to finish an unlikely second. In Canada, Vettel got his lowest qualifying position of the season, qualifying in 18th, and then received a five place grid penalty for overtaking under red flags in practice 3 that morning. The race, however, was a success, as he finished 5th behind teammate Räikkönen. Following a 4th in Austria and 3rd at Silverstone that appeared to edge Vettel further away from a title challenge, he rebounded with a commanding win in the , after a superb start from 3rd on the grid, which saw him slice past both Mercedes cars and retain the lead throughout. The win was Vettel's first ever at the Hungaroring and equalled Ayrton Senna's total of 41 Formula One victories. It was dedicated to Jules Bianchi who died the week prior from injuries sustained in 2014. At the halfway point of the season, Vettel was 42 points behind championship leader Hamilton, and said the team aimed to make what was seen as 'impossible' possible during the second half of the season. He however accepted a lot of work was needed to be done to catch up. Vettel looked set for third in Belgium after a long stint on the supposedly conservative medium tyre when his right rear blew at high speed on the penultimate lap, likely ending any title chances given Hamilton won. After the race he went on a furious rant about control tyre manufacturer Pirelli and the 'unacceptable' and 'unsafe' tyres that could have caused him serious injury had the explosion occurred in the Eau Rouge corner just before where it actually occurred and since it was the second such blowout at high speed during the weekend (the first befell Nico Rosberg during practice). Vettel was also unhappy with Pirelli's suggestion that the failures were due to the drivers going wide picking up debris, saying he never did. Vettel came home second in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, the first race for him with Ferrari at the team's home soil. Amid a contract dispute regarding the venue's future Vettel once again went on the rampage and said that the race could not be lost and would 'rip the heart out of Formula One' if it did. He also stated that he regarded his first podium for Ferrari at Monza as 'the best second place of his life'. Vettel then took his first Ferrari pole at the Singapore Grand Prix. It was the team's first pole for three years, and first dry pole since at the same venue five years earlier. Vettel was 0.543 seconds ahead of Daniel Ricciardo in second. He went on to win the race from Ricciardo, thus surpassing Ayrton Senna's victory count for his 42nd career win, moving him into third on the all-time list. With championship leader Hamilton retiring, Vettel closed to within 49 points with seven races remaining. The title challenge once again diminished in the next race in Japan. Vettel did however score his tenth podium finish of the year, finishing third behind Hamilton and Rosberg at a track with significantly different attributes to Singapore. Vettel scored another second place and with fastest lap of race at Sochi moving him to second place in Drivers' Championship following Nico Rosberg's retirement in the early parts of the race. In the United States Vettel started from 13th due to an engine change penalty, but still charged his way to a podium, even challenging Rosberg for second on the final lap. The third last race of the season in Mexico was a major disappointment, with Vettel being punted softly in the rear tyre by Daniel Ricciardo on the first corner entry, suffering a puncture. Having had strong pace all weekend, Vettel's chances were all but gone and in a recovery attempt he first spun and then crashed out, losing second in the championship to Rosberg. The penultimate race in Brazil was a strong weekend for Vettel, who finished far ahead of teammate Räikkönen on track with both having clean races. He was not far off the Mercedes cars but had to settle for third. The final race in Abu Dhabi saw Vettel finish fourth following an error in qualifying that set him far down on the grid. His recovery pace was impressive, albeit remaining one pit stop behind Räikkönen in third due to lost time early on. He ended the season in third place, and with three wins and 13 podiums, he declared the season as a 'miracle.' This was in the light of how far behind the team had been the year before, yet being a race winner on merit during the course of the season. Vettel started his season by finishing third in the Australian Grand Prix, which saw the race being red-flagged after an accident involving Fernando Alonso and Esteban Gutiérrez. Vettel's participation in the Bahrain Grand Prix came to an end without even being started as his car broke down on formation lap. At the , Vettel collided with teammate Räikkönen on the first lap, but both were able to continue. Despite falling down the order as a result of the first-lap incident, Vettel recovered to finish the race second. He had initially blamed Daniil Kvyat for his first-lap collision with Räikkönen, arguing that he had to take action to avoid a collision with Kvyat after Kvyat overtook him in the first corners of the race for third place, even accusing him of being a "madman" and describing Kvyat's overtaking manoeuvre as "suicidal", but later going on to describe the events of the first lap as a "racing incident". At the Russian Grand Prix, Vettel retired on the first lap after two consecutive collisions with Red Bull driver Daniil Kvyat. Kvyat was handed a ten-second stop-go penalty and three penalty points on his licence. Vettel came third in the Spanish Grand Prix following Max Verstappen's maiden win in Formula One. He came fourth in the Monaco Grand Prix and second in the Canadian Grand Prix, following Lewis Hamilton's first two wins of the season. At the Mexican Grand Prix, Vettel attempted to overtake Verstappen, but after Verstappen ran off track and rejoined ahead of him, Vettel verbally attacked Verstappen and race director Charlie Whiting, for which he later apologised. Vettel then blocked Ricciardo by moving in the braking zone. Vettel was given a ten-second penalty and two points on his licence under a dangerous driving rule clarified only a week before the race. Vettel did not manage to win in 2016, but finished the season with seven podiums and 212 points, in fourth place. Vettel began his third season at Ferrari with victory in Australia, his first win in 18 months, finishing nearly ten seconds clear of Lewis Hamilton. Having started second, Vettel kept pace with pole-sitter Hamilton, who pitted after 17 laps, before re-joining behind Max Verstappen. With Hamilton being told by his engineer that it was "critical" to pass Verstappen, Vettel stayed out six laps longer. Vettel built up just enough of a gap to pit and re-join ahead of Verstappen, but more crucially, Hamilton. By the time Verstappen pitted a few laps later, Vettel had already pulled around five seconds clear of Hamilton and from there on, comfortably controlled the race and cruised to his 43rd career victory. The second round came in China. Like in Australia a fortnight earlier, Vettel qualified in second, alongside Hamilton, getting on the front row by just one thousandth of a second from Valtteri Bottas. The race started in damp, but drying conditions. Vettel quickly opted to put on the dry tyres during a Virtual Safety Car period. This dropped him to sixth, but with the five cars in front still on intermediates on a now drying circuit, Vettel was in position to take the lead. However, a crash for Antonio Giovinazzi on the pit straight brought out the Safety Car, meaning Vettel could not take advantage. Having been stuck behind Daniel Ricciardo and teammate Kimi Räikkönen for a number of laps, Vettel eventually pulled off two excellent overtakes, especially on the former, getting him back into the podium positions. Hamilton though was out of reach, leaving Vettel having to settle for second; the pair were now joint leaders of the championship. Vettel took his second victory of the year in Bahrain. Having started third, Vettel moved ahead of Hamilton at the start and kept with pole-sitter Bottas until the first round of pit stops. Just like in China, a Safety Car came out shortly after Vettel's first stop, but this time, worked in Vettel's favour, allowing him to take the lead. His second and final pit-stop for softs saw him in second, but with Hamilton in front needing to stop again & with a five-second penalty, Vettel would have track position. Despite Hamilton charging on newer tyres (having stopped 11 laps later) in his final stint, he could not get close enough to challenge, allowing Vettel to take his 44th career victory and his third in Bahrain. The fine early season form for Vettel and Ferrari continued in Russia as Vettel took his first pole position in 18 months (the 47th of his career) and with teammate Räikkönen alongside him, the Scuderia had their first front row lock out since the 2008 French Grand Prix. However, Bottas got a fast start to move ahead of both Vettel and Räikkönen. Bottas pitted for the one and only time on lap 27, Vettel staying out seven laps longer. Re-entering around five seconds back, Vettel chased down Bottas in a tense finale to a rather processional race, but could not stop the Finn from claiming his first victory. Despite missing out on his third win of the year, Vettel extended his lead at the top of the standings to 13 points, with nearest challenger Hamilton only finishing 4th. By maintaining his 100% podium success rate in 2017, Vettel became just the fifth man in history to claim 90 F1 podiums. Vettel's weekend in Spain looked as if it was going to be compromised, with an engine change required between final practice and qualifying. During the first part of qualifying, his engineer told him to park his Ferrari, but Vettel's response of "Are you sure?" and a change of setting allowed him to continue. Instead of starting at the back of the grid, Vettel would go on to qualify 2nd, missing out on a first pole in Barcelona by half a tenth from Hamilton. A thrilling duel between the multiple champions ensued, with Vettel taking the lead at the start. Midway through the race, a collision between Felipe Massa and Stoffel Vandoorne, leaving the latter in the gravel, brought out the Virtual Safety Car. Hamilton pitted for the faster softs, with Vettel pitting for the slower, but more durable mediums a lap later. Vettel re-emerged side by side with Hamilton heading into turn one, and just held onto the lead. However, Hamilton would pass Vettel a few laps later, and managed his soft tyres to the end, leaving Vettel having to settle for 2nd for the 2nd consecutive race. Hamilton's victory saw Vettel's lead at the top of the championship standings cut by the Brit to six points. After narrowly missing out on victories in Russia & Spain, Vettel returned to winning ways in Monaco, beating teammate Räikkönen & Red Bull's Ricciardo. Vettel was beaten to pole by Räikkönen by less than a tenth, but took the lead during the one and only pit stop window halfway through the race; Vettel staying out a five laps longer to "overcut" the Finn. With closest title rival Hamilton only finishing 7th, Vettel's lead at the top of the standings increased to 25 points, the equivalent of a race win. This was Ferrari's first victory on the streets of Monte Carlo since Michael Schumacher in 2001. Canada saw Vettel's record of finishing first or second in every race in 2017 come to an end. Having qualified second, Vettel slipped to fourth at the start and contact with Verstappen caused his front wing to be damaged. Pitting to fix the problem, Vettel re-entered in 18th and last. He also had damage to his floor, but the championship leader worked his way through the pack and after stopping again with 20 laps to go, Vettel was up to 7th. Brake issues for teammate Räikkönen and bold overtakes on both Force India drivers Esteban Ocon and Sergio Pérez allowed Vettel to recover and he eventually finished fourth, less than a second behind Ricciardo and claiming the final podium spot. Title rival Hamilton cruised to his sixth Montreal victory and with it reduced Vettel's championship advantage to 12 points. Vettel also finished 4th in Azerbaijan. After Bottas and Räikkönen collided at the start, Vettel moved up to 2nd. The race was full of incident, featuring three Safety Cars and a red flag. Just before the second Safety Car period was coming to an end, Vettel collided into the rear of race leader Hamilton, accusing his title rival of brake testing him. FIA telemetry data showed that Hamilton had not used his brakes. Moments later, Vettel pulled alongside and collided with Hamilton's Mercedes as they prepared for a restart, for which he received a ten-second stop-go penalty. However, with Hamilton being forced to pit for a loose headrest a couple of laps earlier, Vettel emerged in front and held off Hamilton to move 14 points clear in the standings. The FIA would investigate the Vettel-Hamilton incident further, but Vettel received no further punishment, although took full responsibility, issuing a public apology and committing to devote personal time over the next 12 months to educational activities across a variety of FIA championships and events. Austria saw Vettel return to the podium, his first in Spielberg. Similar to Russia, Vettel chased down Bottas in an exciting finish to a rather processional race, but the Finn held him off to take his second career victory and put himself into contention in the championship battle. With a five-place grid penalty for a gearbox change, Hamilton started 8th, but did recover to finish 4th. However, this allowed Vettel to extend his lead to 20 points. Vettel's championship lead was cut to just a single point as he finished 7th in Britain, whilst Hamilton won his 4th consecutive race at Silverstone (5th overall). Starting 3rd, Vettel lost a place to Verstappen at the start and remained behind the Red Bull until undercutting him during the pit-stop window. With Hamilton winning and teammate Räikkönen in 2nd, Vettel was on track for a podium, before Bottas, on much fresher supersoft tyres, breezed past. A late puncture for Räikkönen appeared to have put Vettel back on the podium again, but he too suffered the same fate on the penultimate lap and dropped four places, costing him nine points. In Hungary, Vettel took his 2nd pole position of the season; his 3rd in Budapest and the 48th of his career. A hydraulic issue appeared on the morning of the race, but the problem was fixed before the start. Starting the race from the front, Vettel maintained the lead at turn one from teammate Räikkönen. However, another issue, this time steering, would affect Vettel throughout the race, allowing Räikkönen and the two Mercedes of Bottas and Hamilton to put him under huge pressure. The world champions swapped their drivers, giving Hamilton the chance to challenge the Ferraris and would swap them back if the triple world champion could not get past. He did not and allowed Bottas back through at the final corner of the last lap. Despite the steering problem, Vettel held on for victory, his 2nd in Hungary & 46th overall, giving him a 14-point lead over Hamilton heading into the sport's month long summer break. It was announced in Belgium that Vettel had signed a new three-year deal with Ferrari, keeping him at the Scuderia until 2020. Räikkönen also extended his contract, but only for a year. On track, Vettel qualified 2nd & would convert that starting position in the race, finishing behind Hamilton, who halved the gap at the top of the standings with his 5th victory of the season. Vettel then arrived in Italy for Ferrari's home race. In a wet qualifying session, which contained a 2 and a half-hour delay, he could only qualify in 8th, but would start 6th due to penalties for the two Red Bulls. After maintaining position at the start, Vettel quickly passed teammate Räikkönen, Lance Stroll and Esteban Ocon to move into the podium positions. However, Mercedes would dominate, nearly a second a lap quicker on average throughout, leaving Vettel having to settle for third in front of the Tifosi and over half a minute behind. Hamilton's 4th victory at Monza meant for the first time in 2017, Vettel would not be leading the championship and was now trailing the Brit by three points after the final European race of the season. A third pole of the season and a 49th of Vettel's career came in Singapore. His former team Red Bull had dominated all weekend up to the final part of qualifying, with Verstappen looking on course to take Vettel's record of the youngest pole sitter in F1 history. Both of Vettel's flying laps in Q3 were good enough for pole; his 4th at the Marina Bay circuit. However, Vettel retired on the opening lap of the race (which began in damp conditions) after colliding with Räikkönen and Verstappen and having tried to continue, he soon hit the wall. It was the first time in Formula One history that both Ferraris retired from the first lap of a Grand Prix. To compound Vettel's misery, title rival Hamilton, who had started fifth, avoided the first lap chaos, took the lead and went on to take his 60th career victory. His 3rd win in Singapore meant Hamilton had a 28-point advantage over Vettel. Vettel's title hopes were dealt another blow in Malaysia, where Ferrari were the quickest car and Mercedes were struggling, after a turbo problem caused him to not set a time in qualifying. Having limped home at the end of final practice, Ferrari were forced to put Vettel's fourth and final internal combustion engine of the season in the car, but the turbo remained the problem. Starting last, Vettel fought his way back through the field and eventually finished 4th, although Hamilton's second-place finish extended his championship lead to 34 points. A bizarre crash with the Williams of Lance Stroll on the cool-down in-lap at the end of the race added more misery for Vettel; neither would be penalised. It was feared Vettel's gearbox would have been damaged, causing him to have a five-place grid penalty at the following race, but Ferrari confirmed it was still available to use. If Vettel were mathematically still in the championship, realistically, his now slim hopes of a fifth world title were ended in Japan. More reliability issues befell the Ferrari; a spark plug problem just minutes before the race, which saw Vettel's engine cover needing to be taken off. Ferrari believed the issue was fixed, with Vettel starting the race in second in what was a must-win race. However, the spark plug issue remained, and Vettel soon retired from the race. Hamilton's fourth victory in Japan & his fourth win from five after the summer break meant he had a 59-point lead with just 100 points remaining. Vettel secured his first podium since Monza in the USA, by finishing where he started in second place. He took the lead from Hamilton at the start, but was no match for his rival once the pole sitter reclaimed the lead and cruised to yet another victory. However, Vettel's podium stopped Hamilton from taking his 4th title in Austin. In Mexico, Vettel became the fourth driver in Formula One history to claim 50 pole positions, joining Hamilton, Michael Schumacher and Ayrton Senna. Verstappen took the lead from Vettel at the start, before he collided with Hamilton. Vettel needed a new front wing, whilst Hamilton suffered a puncture. Hamilton would finish in 9th, meaning Vettel had to win the race. Despite a good recovery, 4th was all Vettel could get, meaning Hamilton won his 4th title, joining Juan Manuel Fangio, Alain Prost, Schumacher and Vettel himself as quadruple world champions. For the first time in his career, Vettel had failed to win the Drivers' Championship having led it at some stage during a season. A 5th win of the year for Vettel came in the penultimate race in Brazil. With Hamilton having crashed out in Q1 and poised to start at the back of the grid, it was the perfect opportunity to take his first back-to-back pole positions since 2013. However, he was pipped to pole by Bottas in qualifying in the dying seconds. Vettel jumped the Finn at the start, and despite coming under pressure from him after his one and only pit- stop, he ultimately controlled the race to take the 47th victory of his career, while Hamilton recovered to 4th, only 5 seconds behind Vettel. Vettel wrapped up the runners-up spot in the championship at the final race in Abu Dhabi, taking his 13th podium of the season. Mercedes dominated the weekend, with Bottas taking pole and victory ahead of Hamilton, leaving Vettel having to settle for the final podium spot. This podium was Vettel's 99th, in his 198th race, leaving him with a 50% podium success rate during his career at the end of 2017. For the first time in Formula One history, two quadruple world champions, in the form of Vettel and Lewis Hamilton, would line-up at the start of a season. Like 2017, it was expected that the two would be the main title protagonists, and their battle was dubbed the "Fight For Five" by media and fans alike, with both looking to join Juan Manuel Fangio and Michael Schumacher as just the third man in the sport's history to reach five championships. For the second consecutive year, Vettel began his season with victory in Australia, the 48th of his career. A Virtual Safety Car allowed him to finish ahead of Hamilton and teammate Kimi Räikkönen. The result was his 100th podium (with only Schumacher, Hamilton and Prost having more), whilst he also became just the 3rd man in Formula One history (after Schumacher and Hamilton) to have led 3000 laps. In Bahrain, Vettel took his first pole of the season and the 51st of his career. He maintained the lead through the first round of pit-stops and held off Mercedes's Valtteri Bottas despite being on 39 lap old soft tyres, to take a record fourth victory in Bahrain. The following weekend in China, Vettel again took pole position. Having maintained the lead from the start, Vettel was undercut by Bottas during the first pit-stop before being hit by Red Bull's Max Verstappen, causing both to spin. Vettel limped home in 8th place, with his championship lead reduced to 9 points. For the first time since 2013, Vettel took three consecutive poles, as he took his 53rd career pole in Azerbaijan. This was the 23rd different Grand Prix at which he had taken a pole, equalling Hamilton's record. Vettel led from the start until his first stop, when he moved down to second position behind Bottas, who had not stopped yet. A Safety Car was deployed after the two Red Bulls collided, which allowed Bottas to finally pit and emerge ahead of Vettel, who then locked-up at turn one at the restart trying to retake the lead from the Finn, but ended up losing 2 places instead, plus another one to Pérez because of his flat- spotted tyres. Hamilton went on to win the race, while Vettel finished in fourth and subsequently lost the championship lead to the Brit. Vettel missed out on a podium for a third consecutive race in Spain, as he finished 4th, with Hamilton winning again to extend his championship lead to 17 points. A return to the podium came for Vettel in Monaco as he finished 2nd behind Daniel Ricciardo. With Hamilton 3rd, Vettel reduced the championship lead to 14 points. Vettel took his fourth pole of the season in Canada. He converted pole into his third victory of the season and the 50th of his career, becoming just the fourth man in F1 history to reach a half-century of wins (after Prost, Schumacher and Hamilton). It was also the 14th time in Vettel's career he led a race from start to finish, with only Senna (19) having more. He left Montreal with a one-point lead in the championship, after Hamilton had a difficult weekend at one of his best tracks and only finished 5th. F1 returned to France for the first time in a decade and was the first of an unprecedented three races in as many weekends. Vettel qualified in 3rd, behind the two Mercedes. Starting on the ultrasofts, Vettel got a good start and was challenging Bottas for 2nd. However, he locked up and collided with the Finn, suffering front wing damage. He received a five-second penalty and eventually recovered to finish 5th. Hamilton cruised to victory, to retake the championship lead, leaving Paul Ricard with an advantage of 14 points. For the second consecutive race, Vettel qualified in 3rd behind both Mercedes, this time in Austria. However, Vettel received a three-place grid penalty for impeding the Renault of Carlos Sainz in Q2, meaning he started 6th. With Hamilton starting 2nd, it appeared it would be damage limitation. However, both Mercedes retired from the race with mechanical problems, with Vettel recovering to finish 3rd. As a result, Vettel left Spielberg with a one-point lead in the drivers' championship. The final part of F1's first ever triple header came in Britain, where Hamilton and Mercedes had dominated in recent years, whereas Vettel and Ferrari had had difficulties. Vettel suffered neck problems after final practice, but did manage to take part in qualifying, where he was pipped to pole by Hamilton by less than half a tenth. Vettel took the lead at the start, while Hamilton was crashed by Räikkönen, dropping him to the back of the field. However, two Safety Cars saw Vettel lose the lead (having pitted for a second time), leaving him behind Bottas who had very old tyres. Vettel passed the Finn with five laps to go and went on to take his 51st victory, moving him into joint-3rd on the all-time list with Alain Prost. Hamilton finished 2nd despite his first lap collision. Vettel left Silverstone with an eight-point advantage in the drivers' championship. Vettel qualified on pole at his home race in Germany, and led for much of the race, but he then made a mistake, slid off the track and hit the wall on Lap 51 as rain started to fall, causing his first retirement of the season. Hamilton took victory despite having started from 14th on the grid, giving him a 17-point lead over Vettel. In Hungary, Ferrari appeared to be the team to beat, but Vettel only qualified 4th in a wet qualifying, with Hamilton on pole. Vettel eventually finished in 2nd despite a late collision with Bottas, but Hamilton's comfortable win gave him a 24-point lead going into the summer break. The sport made its return from the summer break in Belgium. For the second consecutive race weekend, rain hampered hopes for Vettel claiming pole, with Hamilton once again shining in the wet. However, Vettel passed Hamilton on the Kemmel Straight on the opening lap and controlled proceedings from there on, cutting Hamilton's title advantage to 17 points. His 3rd win at Spa moved Vettel into 3rd on his own for wins (52) and podiums (107), ahead of Prost, with only Schumacher and Hamilton now ahead of him. The following weekend was Ferrari's home race in Italy, with the long straights of Monza expected to give the Scuderia and Vettel the advantage over the Mercedes and Hamilton. For the first time in eight years, the Prancing Horse took pole in front of the Tifosi, but it was teammate Räikkönen who pipped the championship contenders to top spot, with the fastest lap in Formula One history at an average speed of . Vettel joined him on the front row, giving Ferrari their 60th front row lock out in F1 (the first time Ferrari had done this in Italy for 24 years). However, contact on the opening lap with Hamilton saw Vettel damage his front wing and drop to the back of the field. He recovered to cross the finishing line in 5th, but moved up to 4th with a penalty for Verstappen. Hamilton went on to win for the 5th time at Monza, meaning Vettel was now 30 points behind Hamilton. After Ferrari's disappointing home race, Vettel and his team headed to Singapore knowing victory was essential in closing the gap to Hamilton and Mercedes, who, despite having won three of the last four races at the Marina Bay circuit, had historically struggled for outright pace there. With the Scuderia heading into qualifying as favourites, Vettel appeared to be the man to beat as he chased a record 5th pole around the Singapore streets. However, he would only qualify 3rd, some six-tenths off the quickest time, with Hamilton compounding his misery by producing a stunning lap for pole and Verstappen sandwiched between the championship contenders. Despite passing Verstappen on the opening lap, the Dutchman would move back ahead of Vettel after their one and only pit-stop. Hamilton cruised to victory, with Vettel 3rd, leaving him 40 points behind the Brit with just six races to go. Russia also proved to be difficult for Vettel and Ferrari, qualifying half a second off pole, with Mercedes locking out the front row. Bottas led Hamilton and Vettel away from the front, and despite jumping Hamilton during the pit stop, the Brit would overtake Vettel a lap later. Vettel would finish where he started, whilst team orders at Mercedes saw Bottas let Hamilton through, who would go on to win in Sochi for the third time, extending his championship lead to 50 points, the equivalent of two race victories with five races to go. Vettel's championship hopes were dealt a further blow in Japan as he only qualified in 9th, with title rival Hamilton taking his 80th career pole. At the start of Q3, the two Ferraris were sent out on intermediates, on a track which was too dry, calling into question another poor strategy choice by the Scuderia. However, the rain would start to fall again and as Vettel had run wide at the Spoon curve on his one and only fast lap, he would not be able to improve; he would start 8th thanks to a penalty for Esteban Ocon. Vettel made a fast start, moving up to fourth after the opening lap. Verstappen in 3rd received a five-second penalty for colliding with Räikkönen, meaning Vettel was already in a net podium place. However, with his title hopes slipping away, he needed to take a risk to challenge Hamilton and the Mercedes. He would collide with the Dutchman, and fell to the back of the field as a result. He would only finish 6th, whilst Hamilton took his 50th win for Mercedes, meaning his championship challenge was all but over, 67 points behind with just 100 points remaining. In the USA, Vettel was given a three- place grid penalty for failing to slow down sufficiently during a red flag period in first practice. Having narrowly missed out on setting the fastest time in qualifying to Hamilton, it meant he would start in 5th. Vettel maintained his position at the start, with teammate Räikkönen taking the lead from Hamilton. However, for the second consecutive race, Vettel spun trying to overtake a Red Bull, this time Ricciardo, which saw him drop down the field. He would eventually finish 4th, but his slim title hopes were still just about alive, as Hamilton only finished 3rd, leaving him 70 points behind the Brit with 75 points available. Vettel claimed his first ever podium in Mexico, but with Verstappen winning, 2nd place was not enough to keep his championship hopes alive, with Hamilton's 4th-place finish giving the Brit his 5th world title. This result meant Vettel would finish as runner-up in the standings for the third time, after 2009 and 2017. Just like the previous season, Vettel lost the title with 2 races to go, however this time with no reliability issues at all. In Brazil, Vettel was pipped to pole by Hamilton, but was investigated after being adjudged to have failed to follow stewards' instructions at the weighbridge. At the start of Q2, following an exploratory lap, Vettel pitted to change tyres and get a time in before rain fell, but was called for his car to be weighed. He initially refused to stop his engine, and did not wait for the officials to push the car off the scales, instead driving off and causing his real wheels to spin and subsequently destroy the scales. After seeing the stewards, Vettel received a reprimand and a €25k fine, but not a grid penalty and kept his front row start. He finished the race down in 6th behind both Mercedes, both Red Bulls, and his teammate, struggling for pace throughout. At the final race of the season in Abu Dhabi, Vettel qualified third, but an overtake on Bottas, who was struggling for pace and made a lock-up, saw Vettel finishing the race in second, his 12th podium of the campaign. Hamilton took his 11th victory of the year to take Vettel's record of most points in a year; his tally of 408 overtaking Vettel's 397 in 2013. The "Fight For Five" ended with Vettel losing the title by 88 points against Hamilton, the biggest margin in his F1 career that he has lost the championship as a runner-up. After showing impressive pace throughout pre-season testing in Barcelona, Vettel and Ferrari headed to Australia with many pundits believing they were the car to beat. However, the opening weekend of the season would prove to be difficult, as Vettel qualified 3rd, but some seven tenths off Lewis Hamilton and pole position. He would finish the race 4th, after pitting earliest of the front runners and being overtaken by Max Verstappen on fresher tyres. In Bahrain, Ferrari returned to form as they locked out the front row, although Vettel qualified 2nd behind new teammate Charles Leclerc, after only having one lap in the third and final part of qualifying. Vettel took the lead at the start, only for Leclerc to retake the advantage of the race on lap 6. With Leclerc pulling away, Vettel came under pressure from Hamilton, who undercut him after the first round of pit stops. However, Vettel moved back into 2nd and maintained position after their second and final pit-stops. Yet Hamilton again moved past Vettel a couple of laps later at turn four, with Vettel's woes compounded as he spun and then suffered a front wing failure. He eventually finished 5th, as Hamilton inherited victory after a spark plug failure for Leclerc. Vettel claimed his first podium of the season in China, finishing 3rd, as the two Mercedes made it a third consecutive 1-2. Having qualified 3rd, Vettel was passed by Leclerc at the start, but moved back in front after team orders from Ferrari. After holding off Verstappen's Red Bull following the first round of pit stops, he brought the car home in the final podium position, just missing out on an extra point for fastest lap after the other Red Bull of Pierre Gasly pitted late on for fresh tyres and took it from him. A second consecutive 3rd-place finish came for Vettel in Azerbaijan, as the two Mercedes secured yet another 1-2 finish, leaving Vettel 35 and 34 points behind Bottas and Hamilton respectively. Ferrari suffered another difficult weekend in Spain, with Vettel only finishing 4th, as Mercedes gained another 1-2. In Monaco, Vettel suffered a crash in final practice & just managed to get out of Q1 (eliminating teammate Leclerc), before eventually qualifying in 4th. He would cross the line in 3rd in the race, but promoted to 2nd, his best result of the year, after Verstappen was handed a five-second penalty for an unsafe release during his pit stop. Vettel took pole position in Canada for the 2nd straight year, qualifying two tenths clear of nearest challenger Hamilton. This was his 5th pole in Montreal, the 56th of his career and his first pole in 17 races. Vettel maintained his pole position and led throughout the race. On Lap 48, a snap of oversteer caused Vettel to run wide onto the grass at turn 4. As he came back onto the track, Hamilton was alongside, trying to overtake, but Vettel emerged still just in front. However, he would receive a controversial five second penalty from the stewards, who believed he had returned to the track "in an unsafe manner and forced car 44 (Hamilton) off track". Vettel would finish first, but his penalty meant Hamilton won the race. His post-race team radio voiced his anger on the decision: "No, no, no. Not like that. You have to be an absolute BLIND MAN, TO THINK, that you go on the grass how are you supposed to control your car. This is a wrong world." As he returned to the pits, Vettel stopped his car outside the FIA garage, before initially appearing to refuse to go on the podium. After persuasion, he did, not before swapping the number one board from in front of Hamilton's car and the number two board from where Vettel should have parked his Ferrari. Ferrari's request to have Vettel's Canada penalty reviewed was rejected by the FIA. On track in France, Vettel could only finish 5th after qualifying 7th, although he did take his first fastest lap of the season. Vettel only qualified 10th in Austria (started 9th due to a gearbox penalty for Kevin Magnussen), after a reliability issue meant he couldn't set a time during the final part of qualifying. He made a strong recovery drive to 4th during the race, finishing less than a second behind Bottas who was in the final podium position. In Britain, Vettel only qualified 6th, but a long first stint plus a Safety Car allowed him to emerge from his one and only pit-stop in the third and final podium position. However, Verstappen soon passed him and in trying to move back in front of the Dutchman, Vettel collided into the back of the Red Bull. He received a ten- second penalty and crossed the line in 15th (finished 16th once his penalty was applied). This was the first time he failed to score points in a race he completed since the 2015 Belgian Grand Prix. At his home race in Germany, Vettel was unable to qualify after a turbo issue, meaning he would start in last place. A race of mixed conditions, with numerous crashes and Safety Cars, Vettel stayed out of trouble and worked his way through the field to finish in 2nd place behind Verstappen. In Hungary, Vettel qualified in 5th, but would finish in the final podium position, albeit a minute off the winner Hamilton. A long first stint allowed him to stop for soft tyres, which would eventually help him to overtake teammate Leclerc with a few laps to go. Formula One returned from its summer break in Belgium, but the weekend was marred by the tragic death of Formula 2 driver Anthoine Hubert. Vettel qualified 2nd and finished in 4th, taking his 38th career fastest lap. Vettel qualified in 4th for Ferrari's home race in Italy. However, on lap 6, he spun at the Ascari chicane. He re-entered in a dangerous manner, making contact with the Racing Point of Lance Stroll and received a 10-second stop/go penalty. He would finish 13th. In Singapore, Ferrari surprisingly shone on a circuit they were expected to struggle at, thanks in part to new upgrades. Vettel was on provisional pole, but couldn't improve on his final lap, which allowed teammate Leclerc to take a third consecutive pole and Hamilton to join him on the front row, leaving Vettel 3rd on the grid. Vettel pitted earliest of the front runners and with the slower pace that Leclerc and Hamilton had been showing at the front, this allowed to him to undercut and jump both of them to take the lead. Three Safety Cars would follow, but Vettel would hold on for his first victory in over a year. This was his 53rd career win and for the first time, Vettel had won five times at the same circuit. For the second consecutive weekend, Vettel qualified in 3rd, this time in Russia, behind Leclerc and Hamilton. He made a blistering start to the race, passing Hamilton and then Leclerc on the long run down to turn two. However, radio transmissions suggested that Ferrari wanted to swap their drivers, but with Vettel being the quicker driver, he remained in front. Leclerc pitted first and the swap took place as Vettel emerged from his pit stop behind the Monegasque. Vettel retired moments later with a MGU-K problem, his first retirement of the season. Vettel took his 5th pole position in Japan, the 57th of his career, in a qualifying session pushed back to Sunday morning due to Typhoon Hagibis. An abrupt start off the line caused Vettel to momentarily stop before getting away, but this allowed Bottas to take the lead; Vettel wouldn't be penalized for his jump start. Bottas would take victory, with Vettel fending off Hamilton for 2nd. This result ended Vettel's mathematical chances of winning the driver's championship. In Mexico, Vettel qualified 3rd, but moved up to 2nd after Verstappen, who had qualified on pole, was given a three place grid penalty after failing to slow under yellow flags following a crash from Bottas. He would finish where he started, sandwiched between the two Mercedes cars. Vettel became just the third driver in Formula One history to make 100 front row starts (after Hamilton and Schumacher), after qualifying second in the USA. He would lose five positions on the opening couple of laps, before suffering rear suspension failure on lap 8. For the third consecutive year, Vettel qualified second in Brazil, but was passed by Hamilton at the start. After running third for the majority of the race, a Safety Car allowed Alexander Albon and teammate Leclerc to overtake him. He tried to pass Leclerc almost immediately after being overtaken by him, but the two Ferraris collided, resulting in both suffering race ending damage, leaving Vettel not reaching the chequered flag for the third time in five races. The final race of the season in Abu Dhabi saw Vettel qualify 4th and finish the race in 5th. Vettel finished 5th in the driver's championship, with Leclerc becoming just the second teammate in his career to outscore him across a season. Vettel competed in the 2007 Race of Champions at Wembley Stadium, representing the German team alongside Michael Schumacher. Vettel and Schumacher won the Nations' Cup Title, after exciting finals. Vettel had to beat two RoC champions, Heikki Kovalainen and Marcus Grönholm, after Schumacher stalled his car. Vettel lost the individual competition however, in first heat, in his second battle against Kovalainen. Vettel also competed in the 2008 Race of Champions, alongside Michael Schumacher. Once again they won the Nations' Cup Title after a close final against Scandinavia. In the Drivers' Cup, Vettel beat Troy Bayliss in Round One, but lost to Sébastien Loeb in the quarter- finals. Again Vettel teamed up with Michael Schumacher for the 2009 Race of Champions, which they went on to win in a run-off against the Great Britain team of Jenson Button and Andy Priaulx. In the 2010 edition, on home ground in Düsseldorf, Vettel again teamed up with Schumacher to win the fourth consecutive Nations Cup. In the Drivers' Cup, Vettel was eliminated in the semi-finals by Filipe Albuquerque, who went on to win the event. In 2011, Vettel and Schumacher completed their fifth consecutive Nations Cup win, beating the Nordic team of Tom Kristensen and Juho Hänninen 2–0 in the final. In the semi-finals, Vettel had to beat both Andy Priaulx and Jenson Button, after Schumacher lost to Button. The year after, Vettel and Schumacher won their sixth Nations Cup title by defeating the French team of Romain Grosjean and Sébastien Ogier 2–0 in the final. Vettel returned to the ROC in 2015, teaming up with fellow F1 driver Nico Hülkenberg to represent Germany in the Nations' Cup. In 2015, Vettel won his very first Race of Champions beating Kristensen in the final. En route to the final of the Nations Cup, Vettel was able to gain some form of revenge over his former teammate Daniel Ricciardo, defeating him at the quarter final stage as Germany knocked out Australia. In 2017, Vettel was knocked out in the first heat for the Race of Champions, but went on to win the Nations Cup for Germany by himself with an unprecedented 7 consecutive victories, after his teammate Pascal Wehrlein was injured earlier in a crash. In the 2019 event in Mexico, Vettel teamed up with Mick Schumacher, where they reached the final of the Nations Cup, but finished runners-up to the Nordic team of Kristensen and Johan Kristoffersson. Vettel was eliminated in the group stages of the individual competition, meaning for the first time (in his 9th appearance), he finished the event without winning a title, although he managed to win the ROC Skills Challenge. Vettel's passion for different helmet designs started at a young age. From his early days in karting, he has worked with helmet designer Jens Munser. At age eight, Vettel wanted Sebastian the crab from The Little Mermaid on his helmet. Vettel's original helmet, in Formula One, like most Red Bull-backed drivers, was heavily influenced by the energy drink company logo. New to Vettel's helmet since the start of 2008 has been the incorporation of the red cross shape of the Kreis Bergstraße coat of arms on the front, just underneath the visor, in honour of the region of his birthplace, Heppenheim. After switching to Red Bull in 2009, Vettel started regularly using a variety of new helmet designs. Some designs were small changes to his original Red Bull design, while others are completely original designs, such as the one he used at the 2010 Japanese Grand Prix: Vettel had a special white-red helmet design, with black kanji and hiragana for "gives you wings". Several of his helmet designs also featured his team members. At the 2012 Italian Grand Prix, Vettel celebrated his 50th helmet design with a 'rusty' matte look and 50 tallies, indicating his 50 helmet designs in Formula One. By the end of the season, Vettel had used 76 different helmets throughout his career. "I have a quirk" he admits. Vettel started his campaign with a new design in honour of Felix Baumgartner, for his world record Red Bull Stratos space jump in October 2012. Helmet manufacturer Arai have stated Vettel 'retires' a helmet design after each win, although he does not need to win in order to sport a new design. After moving to the Ferrari team, prior to the start of the season Vettel said that he will no longer change helmet designs so often and after choosing a new design, having had a Red Bull design since he was 12, will try to stick to one design for the year, which was also enforced by a FIA rule banning 'significant' helmet changes in-season. His new helmet design is white with the German national flag running from front to back from the middle to the viewer's left hand side and his permanent Formula One start number 5 on the top. For the 2017 Italian Grand Prix he changed the German flag stripe on his helmet to an Italian flag stripe in celebration of Ferrari's home race. Following the death of Niki Lauda, Vettel wore a special helmet based on Lauda's final Ferrari helmet at the 2019 Monaco Grand Prix. Inspired by American bomber pilots in World War II, Vettel has made it a tradition to name his cars. Vettel invites his team members to dinner when they arrive for the first race of the season and shares what the new car will be named. He said: "It's important to have a close relationship with a car. Like a ship, a car should be named after a girl as it's sexy". The car he drove for his first full season in , the Toro Rosso STR3, was named Julie, followed by Kate and Kate's Dirty Sister (2009), Luscious Liz and Randy Mandy (2010), Kinky Kylie (2011), Abbey (2012) and Hungry Heidi (2013). Vettel's car for , the Red Bull RB10, was baptised Suzie. Vettel continued this tradition with Ferrari and christened his 2015 Ferrari SF15-T Eva. For the 2016 season Vettel and his mechanics decided to name his Ferrari SF16-H Margherita. For 2017, Vettel decided to christen his Ferrari SF70H Gina. For the 2018 season, Vettel decided to name his Ferrari SF71H Loria. For 2019, Vettel decided to name his Ferrari SF90 Lina. Vettel's unexpected win at the 2008 Italian Grand Prix led the media to dub him the "Baby Schumi", "New Schumacher". He was not just dubbed this for his nationality, but also because of his driving style, his concentration and the hands-on role he plays behind the scenes with his team of engineers. Vettel played down the comparison stating he wanted to be the "New Vettel". Nevertheless, the similarities are marked. Like Schumacher, Vettel grew up in a small town with an everyday background—Schumacher's father a bricklayer and Vettel's a carpenter. Both had their first taste of racing at the Kerpen karting track near Cologne, not far from the Nürburgring. Vettel began driving in his garden lapping the garden many times, not even stopping to eat or shower, before he could legally take to the roads, and said his passion for cars was nurtured by watching Schumacher compete. After winning his first championship in , and being hailed as the 'Next Schumacher', Vettel has stated he did not want to aim for Schumacher's record after learning how hard it was to get one championship under his belt, though he would like to win more. Each driver began to dominate the sport in the season after winning the championship. They both clinched their second successive titles before the seasons were finished (unlike their previous year), and in only their fourth full seasons. Both drivers became the youngest ever double world champions at the time, by doing this. In 2011, Pirelli's Paul Hembery was impressed when Vettel was the only driver to take the time to visit the factory and talk to the tyre manufacturer to gain a better insight and improve their racing. The "only other driver that asks us a lot of questions" is Michael Schumacher. Hembery "found that interesting. It is like seeing the master and the protégé at work." After Schumacher was severely injured in a skiing accident in late 2013, Vettel was on hand to collect a German Millennium-Bambi award for his life achievements, on his behalf, along with Schumacher's long-term manager Sabine Kehm a year later. Vettel also made an emotional speech commemorating Schumacher's achievements in the sport. The two of them had got to know each other well from racing together in Formula One and in the Race of Champions and are – along with Nico Rosberg – the only German Formula One title winners. In 2014, Vettel cited Schumacher as one of his inspirations in becoming a Ferrari driver from 2015 saying; "When I was a kid, Michael Schumacher in the red car was my greatest idol and now it's an incredible honour to finally get the chance to drive a Ferrari." In his second race with Ferrari, Vettel became a race winner for the team. This was at the age of 27, exactly the same age as Schumacher winning his first race with the team. Additionally, both Schumacher and Vettel finished 3rd in the Drivers' Championship in their debut seasons with Ferrari, scoring 3 wins each. Both Vettel and Schumacher also won their first ever World Championship in car number 5. Vettel was named Rookie of the Year at the annual Autosport Awards in 2008. In 2009, Vettel was awarded the Lorenzo Bandini Trophy, for achievements in the 2008 season. In the year 2010, he was voted German Sportspersonality of the Year (Sportler des Jahres). In the same year, he won the International Racing Driver category at the Autosport Awards for the first time, and has since won this award for three successive years (2010–2013). In January 2012, Vettel was honoured with the illustrious for being the "Double consecutive F1 World Champion at the age of twenty four – winner of eleven Grands Prix out of nineteen", and in the following month, he was further honoured with the highest sports award in Germany, the Silberne Lorbeerblatt – Silver Laurel Leaf – in recognition of his multiple world titles and his exemplary character. He was also voted F1 driver of the year in 2009, 2011 and 2013 by the F1 team principals for the annual secret poll, initiated by Autosport magazine, while being voted runner-up in 2010 and 2012. He additionally won the DHL Fastest Lap Award in 2009, 2012 and 2013. He became by Pap in consecutive years (2012 and 2013) and also by UEPS in 2010, whilst also being named the BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year in 2013. In 2014, he was named Sportsman of the year at the Laureus World Sports Award held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Red Bull Racing sponsor Infiniti released a Sebastian Vettel edition of the Infiniti FX SUV for 2012. It features increased engine power, revised bodywork and lower suspension than the standard model. Did not finish, but was classified as he had completed more than 90% of the race distance. Vettel holds the following Formula One records: Footnotes: List of Formula One Grand Prix wins by Sebastian Vettel Profile – from BBC F1, Ferrari profile

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The DeYoung Family Zoo is a zoo that opened to the public in 1990. It is open yearly from May until the end of October. It is located in Wallace, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan about north of Menominee. The zoo is owned by Bud DeYoung and Carrie Cramer. The facility has many exotic felines, and provides visitor interactions, as well as baby animals to pet and bottle feed. The zoo's most popular attractions are tigers, leopards, lions, a liger and a hippopotamus. There are also Russian grizzly bears, mountain lions, wolves, zorilla, marbled polecats, kinkajou, coyotes, Bennett wallabies, ring-tailed lemurs, white Bengal tigers, a wild mustang, coatis, camels, yak, white- fronted capuchin, binturong, chimpanzee, spotted hyenas, striped hyenas, boa constrictors, Burmese pythons, anaconda, many different kinds of lizards, mouflon sheep (Petunia), lanner falcon, crested porcupines, black bears, alligators (that the owners swim with and catch on the weekends in the summer), spider monkeys, bobcats, badgers, emus, red kangaroo, New Guinea singing dogs, olive baboons, black-backed jackals, lynx, Arctic foxes, ducks, geese, chickens, rabbits, palm civets, tortoises, pine martens, fennec fox, albino raccoon, and red fox. DeYoung and Cramer also participate in rehabilitation of local species of animals including white-tailed deer, raccoons, and anything else that needs help. In 2008, the zoo successfully bred two endangered Siberian tigers, which produced a litter of four. Attractions include a petting zoo full of domestic animals to meet and feed, with more than 400 animals from all over the world. Visitors can watch the zoo animal programs and animal feeding. The zoo offers hands on education and animal education programs. The park strives to educate the public on animal issues, conservation needs, and proper animal husbandry. My Life is a Zoo is a television show on National Geographic Wild cable station, filmed at the DeYoung Family Zoo. Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times wrote that DeYoung and Cramer "should be commended for their exotic- animal rescues and abundant enthusiasm but perhaps not for their hygiene," citing an occasion in the series in which Cramer is seen kissing a hyena on the lips. Life of Pi is a 2012 adventure drama film based on Yann Martel's 2001 novel of the same name. Directed by Ang Lee, the film's adapted screenplay was written by David Magee, and it stars Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan, Rafe Spall, Tabu, Adil Hussain, and Gérard Depardieu. The storyline revolves around an Indian man named "Pi" Patel, telling a novelist about his life story, and how at 16 he survives a shipwreck and is adrift in the Pacific Ocean on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. The film had its worldwide premiere as the opening film of the 51st New York Film Festival at both the Walter Reade Theater and Alice Tully Hall in New York City on September 28, 2012. Life of Pi emerged as a critical and commercial success, earning over US$609 million worldwide. It was nominated for three Golden Globe Awards which included the Best Picture – Drama and the Best Director and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score. At the 85th Academy Awards it had eleven nominations, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, and won four (the most for the show) including Best Director for Ang Lee. In Canada, a young writer meets Pi Patel. The writer has been told that Pi's life story would be a good subject for a book. Pi tells the writer the following story about his life: Pi's father names him Piscine Molitor Patel after the swimming pool in France. In secondary school in Pondicherry, he adopts the name "Pi" (the Greek letter, ) to avoid the sound-alike nickname "Pissing Patel". He is raised in a Hindu family, but at 12 years old, is introduced to Christianity and then Islam, and decides to follow all three religions as he "just wants to love God". His mother supports his desire to grow, but his rationalist father tries to secularize him. Pi's family owns a zoo, and Pi takes interest in the animals, especially a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. After Pi gets dangerously close to Richard Parker, his father forces him to witness the tiger killing a goat. When Pi is 16, his father announces that they must move to Canada, where he intends to settle and sell the animals. The family books passage with the animals on a Japanese freighter. During a storm, the ship founders while Pi is on deck. He tries to find his family, but a crewman throws him into a lifeboat. A freed zebra jumps onto the boat with him, breaking its leg. The ship sinks into the Mariana Trench drowning his family. Pi briefly sees what appears to be a survivor, but it turns out to be Richard Parker. After the storm, Pi awakens in the lifeboat with the zebra and is joined by a resourceful orangutan. A spotted hyena emerges from under a tarpaulin covering half of the lifeboat and snaps at Pi, forcing him to retreat to the end of the boat. The hyena kills the zebra and later the orangutan. Richard Parker emerges from under the tarpaulin, killing the hyena before retreating back to cover for several days. Pi fashions a small tethered raft from flotation vests to which he retreats for safety from Richard Parker. Despite his moral code against killing, he begins fishing, enabling him to sustain the tiger as well. When the tiger jumps into the sea to hunt for fish and then comes threateningly towards Pi, Pi considers letting him drown, but ultimately helps him back into the boat. One night, a humpback whale comes too close to the boat, destroying the raft and its supplies. Pi trains Richard Parker to accept him in the boat, and realizes that caring for the tiger is also helping keep himself alive. Weeks later they encounter a floating island of interconnected trees. It is a lush jungle of edible plants, freshwater pools and a large population of meerkats, enabling Pi and Richard Parker to eat and drink freely and regain strength. At night, the island transforms into a hostile environment. Richard Parker retreats to the lifeboat while Pi and the meerkats sleep in the trees; the water pools turn acidic, digesting the fish in them. Pi deduces that the island is carnivorous after finding a human tooth embedded in a flower. Pi and Richard Parker leave the island, eventually reaching the coast of Mexico. Pi is saddened that Richard Parker does not acknowledge him before disappearing into the jungle. He is rescued and brought to a hospital. Insurance agents for the Japanese freighter company interview him, but do not believe his story and ask what really happened. He tells a different story, in which the animals are replaced by human survivors: his mother for the orangutan, an amiable sailor for the zebra, and the ship's brutish cook for the hyena. In this story, the cook kills the sailor and feeds on his flesh. He also kills Pi's mother after which Pi kills him with a knife and uses his remains as food and fish bait. The insurance agents are dissatisfied with this story, but they leave without questioning Pi further. The writer recognizes the parallels between the two stories, noting that in the second version Pi is actually Richard Parker. Pi says that it doesn't matter which story is the truth because his family still died either way. He then asks which story the author prefers, and the author chooses the first, to which Pi replies, "and so it goes with God". Glancing at a copy of the official insurance report, the writer reads aloud that Pi survived his great adventure "in the company of an adult Bengal tiger." Suraj Sharma as Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel, age 16/17, Irrfan Khan as Pi, adult, Gautam Belur as Pi, age 5, Ayush Tandon as Pi, age 11/12, Rafe Spall as The Writer, Tabu as Gita Patel, Pi's mother, Adil Hussain as Santosh Patel, Pi's father, Ayan Khan as Ravi Patel, Pi's older brother, age 7, Mohamed Abbas Khaleeli as Ravi, age 13/14, Vibish Sivakumar as Ravi, age 18/19, Gérard Depardieu as the Cook, Wang Po-chieh as Sailor, Jag Huang as Sailor, Shravanthi Sainath as Anandi, Pi's teenage girlfriend, Andrea Di Stefano as the Priest, Elie Alouf as Francis, Padmini Priyadarshini as Anandi's dance teacher The project had numerous directors and writers attached, and the Los Angeles Times credited Fox 2000 Pictures executive Elizabeth Gabler with keeping the project active. In February 2003 Gabler acquired the project to adapt Life of Pi into a film. She hired screenwriter Dean Georgaris to write an adapted screenplay. The following October, Fox 2000 announced a partnership with M. Night Shyamalan to direct the film. Shyamalan was attracted to the novel particularly because its main character also comes from Pondicherry in India. The partners anticipated for Shyamalan to direct the film adaptation after completing The Village. He also replaced Georgaris as the screenwriter, writing a new screenplay for the film. Ultimately, Shyamalan chose to film Lady in the Water after The Village; he said later, "I was hesitant [to direct] because the book has kind of a twist ending. And I was concerned that as soon as you put my name on it, everybody would have a different experience." In March 2005, Fox 2000 entered talks with Alfonso Cuarón to direct. Cuarón decided to direct Children of Men instead, and in October 2005, Fox 2000 hired Jean-Pierre Jeunet to direct the film. Jeunet began writing the adapted screenplay with Guillaume Laurant, and filming was scheduled to begin in mid-2006, partially in India. Jeunet eventually left the project. In February 2009, Fox 2000 Pictures hired Ang Lee to direct the film. In May 2010, Lee and the producer Gil Netter proposed a reported budget of US$120 million, at which the studio balked, placing the project's development on hold for a short time. David Magee was hired to write the screenplay, as Lee began to spend several months looking for someone to cast as Pi. Lee stated that water was a major inspiration behind making the film in 3-D: "I thought this was a pretty impossible movie to make technically. It's so expensive for what it is. You sort of have to disguise a philosophical book as an adventure story. I thought of 3-D half a year before 'Avatar' was on the screen. I thought water, with its transparency and reflection, the way it comes out to you in 3-D, would create a new theatrical experience and maybe the audience or the studio would open up their minds a little bit to accept something different." Following the premiere of the film, Lee stated that his desire to take risks and chances helped with his direction, saying "In a strange way it did feel like we're the vessels, we have to surrender to movie god. We have to let things happen. I just had this feeling, I'll follow this kid to wherever this movie takes me. I saw the movie start to unravel in front of me." After 3,000 young men auditioned for the film's lead, in October 2010 Lee cast Suraj Sharma, a 17-year-old student and an acting newcomer. Upon receiving the role, Sharma underwent extensive training in ocean survival, as well as in yoga and meditation practices to prepare for the part. Two months after Sharma was cast, it was announced that Gérard Depardieu would play the role of the Cook, Irrfan Khan would play the adult Pi, Adil Hussain would play Pi's father, while Tabu was in talks to play the role of Pi's mother. Canadian actor Rajiv Surendra, who had played a small part in Mean Girls, was one of the auditioners for the role of Pi. In 2016, he published The Elephants in My Backyard, a memoir of his failed campaign to win the part. In an interview with Deccan Chronicle in 2017, American actor Naren Weiss revealed that he too unsuccessfully auditioned for the role of Pi. In April 2011, it was announced that Tobey Maguire would be joining the film in the role originally referred to as "a reporter." However, in September 2012, it was announced that Lee had cut Maguire from the film. He justified the cut by stating that he did it "to be consistent with the other casting choices made for the film, I decided to go with an entirely international cast." Like Shahrukh Khan, Lee described Maguire's presence also as "too jarringly recognizable." He reshot the scenes with Rafe Spall in the role of the book's actual author. Principal photography for the film began on January 18, 2011, in Puducherry at the Holy Rosary Church in Muthialpet. Filming continued in Puducherry until January 31 and moved to other parts of India, including the popular hill station of Munnar in Kerala, as well as Taiwan. The crew filmed in Taiwan for five and a half months in Taipei Zoo, an airport in Taichung, and Kenting National Park, located in Pingtung County where Lee was born. The ocean scenes of the film were shot at a giant wave tank built by the crew in an abandoned airport. The tank is known as the world's largest self-generating wave tank, with a capacity of 1.7 million gallons. With production scheduled to last two and a half months at the tank, cinematographer Claudio Miranda assisted in the tank's design in order to get the most out of it for lighting, explaining, "We knew we were going to be inside there shooting for 2.5 months, so it was worth it to be able to do anything we want. On all these kind of scenes, we had an idea of what the weather would be like. In that tank, I can create storm clouds, nightfall. We had curtains that I can block out [light], doors to open and let in real sunlight," Miranda says. "So lighting-wise, [the movie] had a big ebb and flow." After photography was completed in Taiwan, production moved back to India and concluded in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The lead visual effects company for Life of Pi was Rhythm & Hues Studios (R&H;). 3D effects for the film were created by a team of R&H; artists in Los Angeles, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kuala Lumpur, Vancouver and Kaohsiung. The R&H; VFX (Visual Effects) Supervisor Bill Westenhofer said that discussions of the project began with Ang Lee in August 2009. Westenhofer noted that Lee "knew we had done the lion in the first . He asked, 'Does a digital character look more or less real in 3D?' We looked at each other and thought that was a pretty good question." He also stated that during these meetings, Lee said, "'I look forward to making art with you.' This was really for me one of the most rewarding things I've worked on and the first chance to really combine art with VFX. Every shot was artistic exploration, to make the ocean a character and make it interesting we had to strive to make it as visually stunning as possible." Rhythm & Hues spent a year on research and development, " building upon its already vast knowledge of CG animation" to develop the tiger. The British Film Institute's Sight & Sound magazine suggested that, "Life of Pi can be seen as the film Rhythm & Hues has been building up to all these years, by taking things they learned from each production from Cats & Dogs to Yogi Bear, integrating their animals in different situations and environments, pushing them to do more, and understanding how all of this can succeed both visually and dramatically." Artist Abdul Rahman in the Malaysian branch underscored the global nature of the effects process, saying that "the special thing about Life of Pi is that it was the first time we did something called remote rendering, where we engaged our cloud infrastructure in Taiwan called CAVE (Cloud Animation and Visual Effects)." Additional visual effects studios that worked on the film include MPC, yU+co, Buf, Crazy Horse Effects, Look Effects, Christov Effects, Lola VFX, Reliance Mediaworks, and Stereo D. The film's musical score was composed by Mychael Danna, who previously wrote the music to Lee's films The Ice Storm and Ride with the Devil. A soundtrack album of the music was released by Sony Classical Records on 16 November 2012. The album features the track "Pi's Lullaby", which was co-written by Danna and Bombay Jayashri, who performs the song in Tamil. Due to the film's holiday release, Life of Pis financial success had been under review. Dorothy Pomerantz of Forbes said, "It looks like chances are very slim that the film will earn back its production and marketing costs let alone turn a profit." Pomerantz attributed this to the fact that film was not led by a big name star and faced other winter blockbusters. John Horn and Ben Fritz of The Los Angeles Times compared the film to Martin Scorsese's Hugo, a large-budget 3D film that opened during the 2011 Thanksgiving week. They said that Life of Pi could have ended up like Hugo by "failing to connect with moviegoers" and become a "financial failure." Similar speculation had been made by other news sources. Whether or not Hurricane Sandy would affect the film's publicity was also a question. Because the film includes a massive storm, it was speculated that the recent storm might result in lower box office revenue due to the unintentional overtones of Sandy's devastation. A Fox spokesperson made note that there were no plans to change the film's marketing approach. During the marketing campaign for Life of Pi, the film was promoted as "the next Avatar" in trailers and TV spots. James Cameron, the director of Avatar, later became the subject of two featurettes that focus on the film's 3D and computer-generated imagery. In addition, the original novel was re-released in a movie tie-in edition. This was later followed by the release of The Making of Life of Pi: A Film, a Journey, a book by Jean- Christophe Castelli that details how Life of Pi was brought to the big screen. Life of Pi had a wide release in the United States on November 21, 2012, in both traditional and 3D viewing formats. It was originally scheduled to be released on December 14, 2012, but when was announced for the same release date, Life of Pi was postponed a week. It was then shifted a month in advance. Life of Pi was released on DVD, Blu-ray, and Blu-ray 3D in North America, on March 12, 2013. The film's 2D Blu-ray release contains many special features, including a one-hour making-of special entitled A Filmmaker's Epic Journey, two featurettes focusing on the film's visual effects, as well as two behind- the-scene looks at storyboarding and pre-production artwork. In addition, the film's 3D Blu-ray release contains five deleted scenes and a featurette entitled VFX Progressions that takes a look at what was shot and how it evolved to be what was rendered on screen. The film was later was released on 4K Blu-ray and digital copy on March 8, 2016. , Life of Pi has grossed US$124,772,844 in North America, and US$484,029,542 in other countries, for a worldwide total of US$609,006,177. During its opening on the extended Thanksgiving weekend, the film debuted in 2,902 theaters throughout the United States and Canada and grossed US$30,573,101. On the Chinese mainland, from November 22 to December 24, the film topped the box office for three weeks, and grossed over US$91 million. , it had also topped the box office for three weeks in Australia, Chile, and four weeks in Mexico and Peru. The film became the biggest Hollywood hit of the year in India and is now the tenth highest grossing Hollywood release of all time in the country. Life of Pi has earned HK$45,058,653 (US$5.8 million) at the Hong Kong box office, making it the highest grossing Ang Lee film in Hong Kong. Life of Pi received positive reviews, with praise for the visual effects, Lee's direction, Magee's screenplay, Danna's musical score, and Squyres's editing. It has an 87% approval rating on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes based on 246 reviews with an average rating of 7.91/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "A 3D adaptation of a supposedly "unfilmable" book, Ang Lee's Life of Pi achieves the near impossible – it's an astonishing technical achievement that's also emotionally rewarding." On Metacritic, the film has an average score of 79 out of 100, based on 44 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave Life of Pi four out of four, referring to it as "a miraculous achievement of storytelling and a landmark of visual mastery" as well as "one of the best films of the year." He particularly praised the film's use of 3D that he described as "deepen[ing] the film's sense of places and events." Comparatively, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone highlighted the use of 3D in the film suggesting that "like Hugo, from Martin Scorsese, Life of Pi puts 3D in the hands of a worldclass film artist. (Ang) Lee uses 3D with the delicacy and lyricism of a poet. You don't just watch this movie, you live it." Parmita Borah of Eastern Fare says, "There is this one scene in particular where the entire ocean is covered with jelly fish which makes you feel like 'this is what heaven must look like'." The Los Angeles Times critic Betsy Sharkey referred to the film as a "masterpiece," stating that: There is always a poetic aesthetic that Lee brings to his best work – the brutal martial arts ballet of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or the homophobic hatred against the backcountry grandeur of Brokeback Mountain, which would win him an Oscar for directing in 2006. In Life of Pi, certainly given its technological achievements, the filmmaker has raised the bar. Not since James Cameron's breathtaking blue Avatar in 2009 has 3-D had such impact. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Cameron himself highlighted the film's use of 3D, noting that Life of Pi breaks the paradigm that 3-D has to be some big, action fantasy spectacle, superhero movie ... The movie is visually amazing, inventive, and it works on you in ways you're not really aware of. It takes you on a journey, and unless you've read the book – which I hadn't – you have no idea where that journey is going. It does what good 3-D is supposed to do, which is, it allows you to forget you're watching a 3-D movie. According to French journalist Marjolaine Gout, the film is "a philosophical tale where Noah's Ark metamorphoses into The Raft of the Medusa". She adds that it is "a visual masterpiece" in which "Ang Lee proves, once again, his talent as a universal storyteller". She also writes about the visual poetry of the movie reminding viewers of the works of classical painters and the symbolic of kolams. The film got 8 out of 10 stars, the readers gave 7 stars. The novel's author, Yann Martel, found the film to be a "delightful" adaptation, saying, I'm happy it works so well as a film. Even if the ending is not as ambiguous as the book's, the possibility that there might be another version of Pi's story comes at you unexpectedly and raises the same important questions about truth, perception and belief. A. O. Scott of The New York Times was critical of the film's narrative frame, arguing that "the movie invites you to believe in all kinds of marvelous things, but it also may cause you to doubt what you see with your own eyes – or even to wonder if, in the end, you have seen anything at all." Scott further criticized the film for repressing the darker themes of the tale. Nick Schager of The Village Voice also panned the film stating "A stacked-deck theological inquiry filtered through a Titanic-by-way- of–Slumdog Millionaire narrative, Life of Pi manages occasional spiritual wonder through its 3-D visuals but otherwise sinks like a stone." Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave the film 2 out of 5 stars, and states "despite some lovely images and those eyepopping effects, it is a shallow and self- important shaggy-dog story – or shaggy-tiger story ... It deserves every technical prize going." Richard Corliss of Time selected the film as the third-best movie of 2012, as well as calling it the next Avatar. The film has been described as containing a "subtle, artistic warning" about the dangers of increased anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions and ocean acidification, the acidic island Pi and Richard Parker encounter being compared to Castello Aragonese in the Tyrrhenian Sea near Naples and Richard Parker's final dismissive departure representing the "not too pleasant face of Gaia (see Gaia hypothesis)." Life of Pi was listed on many critics' top ten lists. 1st – Anne Thompson, Indiewire, 1st – Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times, 2nd – David Germain, Associated Press, 2nd – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, 3rd – Richard Corliss, Time, 3rd – Noel Murray, The A.V. Club, 4th – Richard Roeper, 4th – Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post, 4th – Mary Pols, Time, 6th – Oliver Lyttelton, Indiewire, 6th – Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald, 6th – David Edelstein, New York, 8th – Peter Travers, Rolling Stone, 9th – Sean Axmaker, MSN Movies, 10th – Mike Scott, The Times-Picayune, Top 10 (ranked alphabetically) – Phillip French, The Observer, Top 10 (ranked alphabetically) – Claudia Puig, USA Today, Top 10 (ranked alphabetically) – Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Top 10 (ranked alphabetically) – Stephen Whitty, The Star-Ledger Despite the Oscar for Best Visual Effects at the 2013 Academy Awards, Rhythm & Hues Studios (who provided most of the visual effects for the film) was forced to file for bankruptcy on February 11, 2013, citing unfair competition from subsidized and tax exempt foreign studios. This sparked a demonstration of nearly 500 VFX artists who protested outside the 2013 Academy Awards. Inside, during the Oscars, when R&H; visual effects supervisor Bill Westenhofer brought up R&H; during his acceptance speech for Life of Pi, the microphone was cut off. This started an uproar among many visual effects industry professionals, changing profile pictures on social media such as Facebook and Twitter to show the green key colour, in order to raise awareness for what is happening to the effects industry. In addition, director Ang Lee was criticized by the protest leader for his failure to thank the effect industry, "Ang thanked the crew, the actors, his agent, his lawyer and the entire population of Taiwan right down to the team that built the wave-pool on the soundstage where Pi was shot, but failed to mention hundreds of artists who made not only the main character of the tiger, but replaced that pool, making it look like a real ocean for 80% of his movie." He was also criticized for earlier complaining about the costs of visual effects. In February 2014, Christina Lee Storm and Scott Leberecht released the documentary Life After Pi to YouTube. The documentary details the role Rhythm & Hues played in Life of Pi as well as the consequent bankruptcy. Bill Westenhofer also discusses his experience at the Oscars as he accepted a Visual Effects award for Rhythm & Hues' work on Life of Pi. A trust named after Carnatic musician Irayimman Thampi has accused Bombay Jayashri's Oscar-nominated song "Pi's Lullaby" of not being an original composition. The trust has alleged that the first eight lines of the song is a word-by-word translation of composer Thampi's renowned lullaby in Malayalam Omanathinkal Kidavo. Jayashri has denied the allegation. A 2013 investigation by the Hollywood Reporter brought to light leaked emails suggesting that animals involved in the filming of Life of Pi had been mistreated during the filming despite the American Humane Association's "No Animals Were Harmed" certification on the film. In an April 7, 2011, ACA monitor, Gina Johnson, wrote that "last week we almost killed King". The email goes on to suggest that the incident, in which the tiger apparently nearly drowned while filming a scene, would be "downplayed" in the official report to the ACA. Additionally, the exposé alleges that Johnson was involved in a romantic relationship with one of the film's producers, possibly representing a conflict of interest. Life of Pi director Ang Lee has described the animal abuse allegations as "an accident" in interviews. Following the publication of the Hollywood Reporter investigation, Gina Johnson resigned from her position with the ACA. New animal welfare concerns were raised in 2015 when PETA released a video that appeared to show Life of Pi animal trainer Michael Hackenberger swearing at and whipping a young tiger 19 times. In April 2016, the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals filed animal cruelty charges against Hackenberger based on the video evidence. Life of Pi was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and won four (more than any other film from 2012): Best Director (Ang Lee), Best Cinematography (Claudio Miranda), Best Visual Effects (Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron, Erik-Jan de Boer and Donald R. Elliott) and Best Original Score (Mychael Danna). It was nominated for three Golden Globe Awards and won for Best Original Score. The film also won awards for cinematography, film editing, sound effects and original score at several other awards ceremonies. In addition to the Academy Award, Ang Lee won best director awards from the Kansas City, Las Vegas, and London Film Critics. The film was awarded the Best Picture award by the Las Vegas Film Critics Society and was named one of the top ten films of the year by the New York Film Critics and the Southeastern Film Critics. The zoo hypothesis speculates on the assumed behavior and existence of technically-advanced extraterrestrial life and the reasons they refrain from contacting Earth. It is one of many theoretical explanations for the Fermi paradox. The hypothesis is that alien life intentionally avoids communication with Earth, and one of its main interpretations is that it does so to allow for natural evolution and sociocultural development, avoiding interplanetary contamination, similarly to people observing animals at a zoo. The hypothesis seeks to explain the apparent absence of extraterrestrial life despite its generally accepted plausibility and hence the reasonable expectation of its existence. Aliens might, for example, choose to allow contact once the human species has passed certain technological, political, or ethical standards. They might withhold contact until humans force contact upon them, possibly by sending a spacecraft to planets they inhabit. Alternatively, a reluctance to initiate contact could reflect a sensible desire to minimize risk. An alien society with advanced remote-sensing technologies may conclude that direct contact with neighbors confers added risks to oneself without an added benefit. The zoo hypothesis assumes, first, that whenever the conditions are such that life can exist and evolve, it will, and secondly, there are many places where life can exist (i.e. that there are a large number of alien cultures in existence) . It also assumes that these aliens have great reverence for independent, natural evolution and development. In particular, assuming that intelligence is a physical process that acts to maximize the diversity of a system's accessible futures, a fundamental motivation for the zoo hypothesis would be that premature contact would "unintelligently" reduce the overall diversity of paths the universe itself could take. These ideas are perhaps most plausible if there is a relatively universal cultural or legal policy among a plurality of extraterrestrial civilizations necessitating isolation with respect to civilizations at Earth-like stages of development. In a universe without a hegemonic power, random single civilizations with independent principles would make contact. This makes a crowded Universe with clearly defined rules seem more plausible. If there is a plurality of alien cultures, however, this theory may break down under the uniformity of motive concept because it would take just a single extraterrestrial civilization to decide to act contrary to the imperative within our range of detection for it to be undone, and the probability of such a violation increases with the number of civilizations. This idea, however, becomes more plausible if all civilizations tend to evolve similar cultural standards and values with regard to contact much like convergent evolution on Earth has independently evolved eyes on numerous occasions, or all civilizations follow the lead of some particularly distinguished civilization, such as the first civilization among them. With this in mind, a modified zoo hypothesis becomes a more appealing answer to the Fermi paradox. The time between the emergence of the first civilization within the Milky Way and all subsequent civilizations could be enormous. Monte Carlo simulation shows the first few inter-arrival times between emergent civilizations would be similar in length to geologic epochs on Earth. Just what could a civilization do with a ten-million, one-hundred-million, or half- billion-year head start? Even if this first grand civilization is long gone, their initial legacy could live on in the form of a passed-down tradition, or perhaps an artificial life form dedicated to such a goal without the risk of death. Beyond this, it does not even have to be the first civilization, but simply the first to spread its doctrine and control over a large volume of the galaxy. If just one civilization gained this hegemony in the distant past, it could form an unbroken chain of taboo against rapacious colonization in favour of non-interference in those civilizations that follow. The uniformity of motive concept previously mentioned would become moot in such a situation. If the oldest civilization still present in the Milky Way has, for example, a 100-million-year time advantage over the next oldest civilization, then it is conceivable that they could be in the singular position of being able to control, monitor, influence or isolate the emergence of every civilization that follows within their sphere of influence. This is analogous to what happens on Earth within our own civilization on a daily basis, in that everyone born on this planet is born into a pre-existing system of familial associations, customs, traditions and laws that were already long established before our birth and which we have little or no control over. Some critics of the hypothesis say that only a single dissident group in an alien civilization would be enough to break the pact of no contact. To Stephen Webb, it seems unlikely, taking humans as reference, that such prohibition would be in effect for millions of years without a single breach thereof. Others say that the zoo hypothesis, along with its planetarium variation, is highly speculative and more aligned with theological theories. The zoo hypothesis is a common theme in science fiction. 1937: In Olaf Stapledon's 1937 novel Star Maker, great care is taken by the Symbiont race to keep its existence hidden from "pre-utopian" primitives, "lest they should lose their independence of mind". It is only when such worlds become utopian-level space travellers that the Symbionts make contact and bring the young utopia to an equal footing. 1951: Arthur C. Clarke's The Sentinel (first published in 1951) and its later novel adaptation (1968) feature a beacon which is activated when the human race discovers it on the moon. An alien race has apparently visited us in the distant past., 1953: In Childhood's End, a novel by Arthur C. Clarke published in 1953, the alien cultures had been observing and registering the Earth's evolution and human history for thousands (perhaps millions) of years. At the beginning of the book, when mankind is about to achieve spaceflight, the aliens reveal their existence and quickly end the arms race, colonialism, racial segregation and the Cold War. In Star Trek, the Federation (including humans) has a strict Prime Directive policy of nonintervention with less technologically advanced cultures which the Federation encounters. The threshold of inclusion is the independent technological development of faster-than-light propulsion. In the show's canon the Vulcan race limited their encounters to observation until Humans made their first warp flight, after which they initiated , indicating the practice predated the Human race's advance of this threshold. Additionally, in the episode "", a message from a first (or early) civilization is discovered, hidden in the DNA of sentient species spread across many worlds, something that could only have been fully discovered after a race had become sufficiently advanced. In Hard to Be a God by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, the (unnamed) medieval-esque planet where the novel takes action is protected by the advanced civilization of Earth, and the observers from Earth present on the planet are forbidden to intervene and make overt contact. One of the major themes of the novel is the ethical dilemma presented by such a stance to the observers. 1986: In Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card, the human xenobiologists and xenologers, biologists and anthropologists observing alien life, are forbidden from giving the native species, the Pequeninos, any technology or information. When one of the xenobiologists is killed in an alien ceremony, they are forbidden to mention it. This happens again until Ender Wiggin, the main character of Ender's Game, explains to the Pequeninos that humans cannot partake in the ceremony because it kills them. While this is not exactly an example of the zoo hypothesis, since humanity makes contact, it is very similar and the humans seek to keep the Pequeninos ignorant of technology., 1987: In Julian May's 1987 novel Intervention, the five alien races of the Galactic Milieu keep the Earth under surveillance, but do not intervene until humans demonstrate mental and ethical maturity through a paranormal prayer of peace., 1989: Iain M. Banks' The State of the Art depicts the Culture secretly visiting Earth and then deciding to leave it uncontacted, watching its development as a control group, to confirm whether their manipulations of other civilizations are ultimately for the best., 1989: Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes comic strip for November 8, 1989, alludes to the possibility of an ethical threshold for first contact (or at least for the prudence of first contact) in Calvin's remark "Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." 2000: In Robert J. Sawyer's SF novel Calculating God (2000), Hollus, a scientist from an advanced alien civilization, denies that her government is operating under the prime directive., 2002: In the Kingdom Hearts series of video games, the main characters interact with several worlds based upon Disney film franchises, separated into independent realms. In order to maintain the illusion that each world is independent of the larger Kingdom Hearts universe, Donald Duck will occasionally use his magic to warp his appearance, as well as the appearances of Goofy and the player character Sora. In addition, revealing any information about the outside world is forbidden within the Disney realms., 2003: In South Park's inaugural episode of season seven, "Cancelled", aliens refrain from contacting Earth because the planet is the subject and setting of a reality television show. Unlike most variations of the zoo hypothesis where contact is not initiated in order to allow organic socioeconomic, cultural, and technological development, the aliens in this episode refrain from contact for the sole purpose of entertainment. In essence, the aliens treat all of Earth like the titular character in The Truman Show in order to maintain the show's integrity., In the 2008 video game Spore, which simulates the evolution and life of species on a fictional galaxy, intelligent species in the "Space Stage" cannot contact those in previous stages, which did not unify their planets, nor develop spaceflight yet. However, they are allowed to abduct their citizens/members, to create crop circles in their terrain and to place in their planets a tool called "monolith", which accelerates their technological evolution.

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The 2018 Australian Grand Prix (formally known as the Formula 1 2018 Rolex Australian Grand Prix) was a Formula One motor race held on 25 March 2018 in Melbourne, Victoria. The race was contested at the Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit and was the first round of the 2018 FIA Formula One World Championship. The race marked the 83rd race in the combined history of the Australian Grand Prix – which dates back to the 100 Miles Road Race of 1928 – and the 23rd time the event was held at the Albert Park circuit. Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel was the defending race winner. Lewis Hamilton started the race from pole – his seventh pole position in Australia, a record for the event – while Vettel successfully defended his race win, the 48th of his career. The Australian Grand Prix was officially confirmed as the first of 21 races of the 2018 Formula One World Championship in an FIA World Motor Sport Council meeting in Paris in December 2017. It took place at the 15-turn Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit in Melbourne, Victoria on 25 March 2018. Tyre supplier Pirelli brought three types of tyre to the Grand Prix: three dry compounds (the purple-banded ultrasoft "option", the red-banded supersoft and the yellow-banded soft "prime" tyres). In the week before the Grand Prix, race officials confirmed the inclusion of a third drag reduction system (DRS) zone. The detection point for the third zone was positioned on the approach to the turn 11 and 12 chicane with the activation point on the exit to Turn 12. The existing DRS zones were unchanged from previous years, with one positioned on the main straight and the second on the straight between turns two and three. The race marked the competitive début of the "halo" cockpit protection device after 18 months of rigorous testing. The wishbone-shaped frame mounted above and around the driver's head was developed following a series of major accidents in open wheel racing, such as the death of Henry Surtees in a Formula Two race at Brands Hatch in 2009 and Felipe Massa sustaining a head injury from being struck in the helmet by a detached coil spring from Rubens Barrichello's car at the Hungaroring six days later. In response to concerns about the halo impairing drivers' visibility, the world governing body of motorsport, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), lowered the starting gantries at circuits to improve the starting lights visibility. Furthermore, drivers were permitted to execute practice standing starts after the conclusion of both Friday practice sessions to acquaint themselves with the lowered gantries. Out of the 10 teams and 20 drivers on the starting grid, two drivers made their debut. Charles Leclerc, the reigning Formula 2 champion and 2016 GP3 Series title winner, made his competitive début with Sauber. Leclerc, who had previously driven in Friday practice sessions in 2016 and 2017, was hired by the team to replace Pascal Wehrlein, who could not find a race seat and was instead enlisted as one of Mercedes's test and reserve drivers while racing full-time in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters series. Massa retired from Formula One at the conclusion of the 2017 championship, and was replaced at Williams by former Renault test driver and SMP Racing driver Sergey Sirotkin, who made his competitive début with the team. Elsewhere, Toro Rosso employed 2016 GP2 Series champion Pierre Gasly and two-time World Endurance co-champion Brendon Hartley as their full-time drivers for 2018 after the pair debuted with the squad in the latter stages of the 2017 championship. At the front of the field, Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel in the Mercedes and Ferrari cars respectively were the favourites to battle for the Drivers' Championship, with both drivers having the opportunity to equal Juan Manuel Fangio in number of championships with five. Hamilton said he had not mulled about the prospects of equalling Fangio during the winter hiatus but the potential of doing so excited him, "In my mind I want to break barriers, push the envelope and see how far I can take the ability I have and reach my full potential. I don’t know what that is, so that’s what I’m discovering. I hope that I haven’t reached my peak yet. I’m sure there is one, when your fitness level is harder to reach or your interest or drive starts to decline, but I’m definitely not there. I’m in a good range right now and aim to continue to extract the most that I can." However, Vettel stated he was unconcerned with it as he anticipated the events of the upcoming season and not those in the far future, "That’s a long way ahead, and we all know how many things need to come together to fight for the championship to the end of the season, and to win it. Times are also very different to when Fangio achieved his five titles, and every era has its different challenges. So it’s not in my mind now, let’s say." Per the regulations for the 2018 season, three practice sessions were held, two 90-minute sessions on Friday and another 60-minute session before qualifying on Saturday. The first practice session took place in sunny weather conditions. On the supersoft compound tyres, Hamilton set the fastest time in the opening practice session with a 1-minute and 24.026 seconds lap, followed by his teammate Valtteri Bottas who was 0.551 seconds slower in second place and Max Verstappen of Red Bull was third. The Ferrari duo of Kimi Räikkönen and Vettel were fourth and fifth with Daniel Ricciardo sixth in the second Red Bull car. Haas' Romain Grosjean, Fernando Alonso of McLaren (who remained in the garage for first practice's first hour with an exhaust problem), Carlos Sainz Jr. for Renault and Alonso's teammate Stoffel Vandoorne (who had driveability issues) rounded out the session's top ten drivers. Though the session passed without any major incidents, Vettel and Haas driver Kevin Magnussen both ran into the grass beside the track surface. In the second practice session, Verstappen was the early pace setter after ten minutes and held the top position until Bottas beat his time. Hamilton went to the top of the time sheets soon after until Räikkönen moved ahead of him 35 minutes into the session. Hamilton later switched onto the ultrasoft compound tyres and then recorded the fastest lap of the day with a time of 1 minute and 23.931 seconds, which was not bettered for the remainder of practice as drivers conducted qualifying simulations and then driving on track for a long period of time. Verstappen, Bottas, Räikkönen, Vettel, Grosjean, Ricciardo, Alonso, Magnussen and Vandoorne followed in positions two through ten. Early in the session, Esteban Ocon lost control of his Force India and ran into the turn three gravel trap but he rejoined without trouble. Räikkönen was slow in turn three as Bottas approached him. He steered to the middle and Bottas swerved to the outside under braking due to a miscommunication that sent him into the gravel trap. The session was stopped for five minutes when a timing cable wire detached and fell onto the start/finish straight and was picked up by track marshals quickly. After the second practice session, Ricciardo incurred a three-place grid penalty and two super licence penalty points from the stewards for not staying above the minimum time as established in the FIA's electronic control unit under red flag conditions. They also concluded that Räikkönen had not "unnecessarily impeded" Bottas and was not penalised. Thunderstorms on Saturday morning saturated the track and made it slippery to drive on. Wet-weather tyres were used for the majority of the session before it dried sufficiently enough to warrant the use of dry tyre compounds. Vettel set the fastest lap at 1 minute and 26.067 seconds with his teammate Räikkönen in second. Sauber's Marcus Ericsson was third, ahead of Verstappen, Sainz and Ricciardo. The Mercedes of Bottas and Hamilton along with the McLarens of Vandoorne and Alonso completed the top ten ahead of qualifying. During the session, in which Verstappen and Nico Hülkenberg of Renault slithered exiting turn ten, the steering wheel on Hamilton's car was replaced in the pit lane when it developed a technical fault, and owing to a lack of spare car parts, Force India chose not to set any timed laps during the one-hour period. Saturday afternoon's qualifying session was divided into three parts. The first part ran for 18 minutes, eliminating cars that finished 16th or below. The 107% rule was in effect during this part, requiring drivers to set a time within 107% of the fastest lap in order to qualify. The second part lasted 15 minutes, eliminating cars that finished 11th to 15th, before the third and final part that ran for 12 minutes and determined pole position to tenth. In the first part of qualifying (Q1), track conditions improved greatly as drivers settled into undertaking long distance runs to acquaint themselves with the evolving conditions. Hamilton led the session with a lap of 1 minute and 22.824 seconds that he recorded on his second attempt, ahead of the Ferrari duo of Räikkönen and Vettel. The Red Bulls of Verstappen and Ricciardo were fourth and fifth. The five drivers who were eliminated from qualifying in Q1 were Hartley, the Saubers of Ericsson and Leclerc, Sirotkin, and Gasly after he made a driving error and ran into the turn three gravel trap after he locked his tyres. To commence the second qualifying session (Q2), Red Bull elected to send their drivers out on the supersoft compound tyres rather than the ultrasoft compound tyres and this determined which type of tyre the team would start the race on. Räikkönen was the early pace setter after all competitors set their first timed laps but it was Hamilton who improved his effort and lowered his own pole position lap time from the previous year. But it was Vettel in the second Ferrari who was the first driver to set a lap time below the 1 minute and 21 seconds mark all weekend with a 1-minute and 21.944 seconds effort. Alonso and Vandoorne in the two McLarens were eliminated from contending for pole position when both Haas and Renault drivers bettered their personal best laps despite the latter teams drivers locking their tyres. Sergio Pérez for Force India, Williams' Lance Stroll (who went off the track at the third corner) and Ocon were the final three drivers not to progress into the final qualifying session (Q3). As he began his first timed lap in Q3, Bottas took too much kerb on the exit to the first turn, which was damp from the earlier rain, causing him to run wide, and he spun from having excessive wheelspin into the right-hand side barrier at turn two, and crashed heavily in an impact measured at 27G. His car spun and rested in the track's centre and debris was littered across it. The session was temporarily stopped for barrier repairs and debris clearup. When Q3 restarted, Hamilton paced the field but his first lap was slower than in Q2, possibly because of fluid laid by his teammate Bottas between turns one and two. He then improved his lap to a circuit-record 1 minute and 21.164 seconds to clinch pole position. It was his fifth consecutive pole position at the track, his seventh overall in Melbourne to move past Ayrton Senna in the number of pole positions in Australia, and the 73rd of his career. He was joined on the grid's front row by Räikkönen who recorded a lap 0.664 seconds slower and his teammate Vettel was third after an driving error at turn thirteen. Verstappen qualified in the fourth position. Following his crash that brought Q3 to a stop, Bottas was transported to the circuit's medical centre for a precautionary check-up and he was declared fit to race. However, he was handed a five-place grid penalty because Mercedes discovered his car's gearbox was damaged in the crash. The grid lined up after penalties as Hamilton, Räikkönen, Vettel, Verstappen, Magnussen, Grosjean, Hülkenberg, Ricciardo, Sainz, Alonso, Vandoorne, Pérez, Stroll, Ocon, Bottas, Hartley, Ericsson, Leclerc, Sirotkin and Gasly. After the start the top three stayed in the same order they started while Verstappen lost a place to Magnussen at the start. Sergey Sirotkin was the first retirement of the race when on lap 4 he retired due to a brake failure caused by overheating. On lap 9, Verstappen spun at turn one while chasing Magnussen and dropped down to eighth. Hamilton led Räikkönen, Vettel, Magnussen, Grosjean, Ricciardo, Hülkenberg, Verstappen, Sainz and Alonso. They stayed in that order until the first round of pit stops. On lap 18 Räikkönen pitted for softs. On lap 19 Hamilton pitted for softs to cover Räikkönen and emerged on track ahead of him. Verstappen pitted on lap 20. Magnussen pitted at the end of lap 21, but retired the next lap due to the cross-threaded wheel-nut being fitted loosely. On lap 24, Grosjean retired at turn 2 from seventh after pitting with the same problem as his teammate Magnussen resulting in a Virtual Safety Car (VSC) being called out. On lap 26 Vettel pitted under the VSC and emerged ahead of Hamilton and Räikkönen. Mercedes miscalculated the required gap between Vettel and Hamilton to prevent a jump under the safety car before Vettel's pit stop due to a software glitch. After the first round of pit stops Vettel led with Hamilton second and Räikkönen in third. Alonso pitted under the VSC to emerge ahead of Verstappen. On lap 27 the full-course Safety Car was called out. The safety car came in at the end of lap 31. This left the top ten Vettel, Hamilton, Räikkönen, Ricciardo, Alonso, Verstappen, Hülkenberg, Bottas, Vandoorne and Sainz. None of the top ten pitted again. Ricciardo hounded Räikkönen for the rest of the race, setting the fastest lap in the process. Alonso resisted the pressure from Verstappen while holding on to fifth place. Vettel took the chequered flag to win the Australian Grand Prix for the second consecutive year, followed by Hamilton and Räikkönen rounding the podium. Ricciardo, Alonso, Verstappen, Hülkenberg, Bottas, Vandoorne and Sainz in that order completed the top ten, with Renault scoring their first double-points-finish since the 2011 Turkish Grand Prix. Ricciardo's 4th-placed finish marked his joint best finish at Albert Park, but also the joint best finish for an Australian at the Australian Grand Prix, equalling his 2016 result, and Mark Webber's 4th place in 2012. The first track-action of the 2018 season was not only accompanied by the sound of the Formula one cars but also the sound of a brand-new opening title sequence. This was the first race where Brian Tyler's newly composed theme was used. Notes – Daniel Ricciardo received a three-place grid penalty for failing to adequately slow down for a red flag during free practice., – Valtteri Bottas received a five-place grid penalty for a gearbox change. Drivers' Championship standings Constructors' Championship standings Formula One (also known as Formula 1 or F1) is the highest class of single- seater auto racing sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) and owned by the Formula One Group. The FIA Formula One World Championship has been one of the premier forms of racing around the world since its inaugural season in 1950. The word "formula" in the name refers to the set of rules to which all participants' cars must conform. A Formula One season consists of a series of races, known as Grands Prix (), which take place worldwide on purpose-built circuits and on public roads. The results of each race are evaluated using a points system to determine two annual World Championships: one for drivers, the other for constructors. Drivers must hold valid Super Licences, the highest class of racing licence issued by the FIA. The races must run on tracks graded "1" (formerly "A"), the highest grade- rating issued by the FIA. Most events occur in rural locations on purpose- built tracks, but several events take place on city streets. Formula One cars are the fastest regulated road-course racing cars in the world, owing to very high cornering speeds achieved through the generation of large amounts of aerodynamic downforce. The cars underwent major changes in 2017, allowing wider front and rear wings, and wider tyres, resulting in peak cornering forces near 6.5 lateral g and top speeds of up to approximately . the hybrid engines are limited in performance to a maximum of 15,000 rpm, the cars are very dependent on electronics and aerodynamics, suspension and tyres. Traction control and other driving aids have been banned since 2008. While Europe is the sport's traditional base, the championship operates globally, with 11 of the 21 races in the 2019 season taking place outside Europe. With the annual cost of running a mid-tier team—designing, building, and maintaining cars, pay, transport—being US$120 million, its financial and political battles are widely reported. Its high profile and popularity have created a major merchandising environment, which has resulted in large investments from sponsors and budgets (in the hundreds of millions for the constructors). On 23 January 2017 Liberty Media confirmed the completion of the acquisition of Delta Topco, the company that controls Formula One, from private-equity firm CVC Capital Partners for $8 billion. The Formula One series originated with the European Championship of Grand Prix motor racing (q.v. for pre-1947 history) of the 1920s and 1930s. The formula is a set of rules that all participants' cars must meet. Formula One was a new formula agreed upon after World War II during 1946, with the first non- championship races being held that year. The first Formula 1 race was the Turin Grand Prix. A number of Grand Prix racing organisations had laid out rules for a world championship before the war, but due to the suspension of racing during the conflict, the World Drivers' Championship was not formalised until 1947. The first world championship race was held at Silverstone, United Kingdom in 1950. A championship for constructors followed in 1958. National championships existed in South Africa and the UK in the 1960s and 1970s. Non- championship Formula One events were held for many years, but due to the increasing cost of competition, the last of these occurred in 1983. On 26 November 2017, Formula One unveiled its new logo, following the 2017 season finale in Abu Dhabi during the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at Yas Marina Circuit. The new logo replaced F1's iconic 'flying one', which had been the sport's trademark since 1993. After a hiatus in European motor racing brought about by the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the first World Championship for Drivers was won by Italian Giuseppe Farina in his Alfa Romeo in , narrowly defeating his Argentine teammate Juan Manuel Fangio. However, Fangio won the title in , , , , and (His record of five World Championship titles stood for 45 years until German driver Michael Schumacher took his sixth title in 2003), his streak interrupted (after an injury) by two-time champion Alberto Ascari of Ferrari. Although the UK's Stirling Moss was able to compete regularly, he was never able to win the world championship, and is now widely considered to be the greatest driver never to have won the title. Fangio, however, is remembered for dominating Formula One's first decade and has long been considered the "Grand Master" of Formula One. This period featured teams managed by road car manufacturers Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, and Maserati; all of whom had competed before the war. The first seasons were run using pre-war cars like Alfa's 158. They were front-engined, with narrow tyres and 1.5-litre supercharged or 4.5-litre naturally aspirated engines. The and World Championships were run to Formula Two regulations, for smaller, less powerful cars, due to concerns over the paucity of Formula One cars available. When a new Formula One, for engines limited to 2.5 litres, was reinstated to the world championship for 1954, Mercedes-Benz introduced the advanced W196, which featured innovations such as desmodromic valves and fuel injection as well as enclosed streamlined bodywork. Mercedes drivers won the championship for two years, before the team withdrew from all motorsport in the wake of the 1955 Le Mans disaster. An era of British dominance was ushered in by Mike Hawthorn and Vanwall's championship wins in 1958, although Stirling Moss had been at the forefront of the sport without ever securing the world title. Between Hawthorn, Jim Clark, Jackie Stewart, John Surtees and Graham Hill, British drivers won nine Drivers' Championships and British teams won fourteen Constructors' Championship titles between 1958 and 1974. The iconic British Racing Green Lotus, with a revolutionary aluminium-sheet monocoque chassis instead of the traditional space-frame design, was the dominant car, and in 1968, the team broke new boundaries, when they were the first to carry advertising on their cars. The first major technological development, Bugatti's re-introduction of mid- engined cars (following Ferdinand Porsche's pioneering Auto Unions of the 1930s), occurred with the Type 251, which was unsuccessful. Australian Jack Brabham, world champion during , , and , soon proved the mid-engined design's superiority. By , all regular competitors had switched to mid-engined cars. The Ferguson P99, a four-wheel drive design, was the last front-engined F1 car to enter a world championship race. It was entered in the 1961 British Grand Prix, the only front-engined car to compete that year. During , Lotus introduced a car with an aluminium-sheet monocoque chassis instead of the traditional space-frame design. This proved to be the greatest technological breakthrough since the introduction of mid-engined cars. During , Lotus painted an Imperial Tobacco livery on their cars, thus introducing sponsorship to the sport. Aerodynamic downforce slowly gained importance in car design from the appearance of aerofoils during the late 1960s. During the late 1970s, Lotus introduced ground-effect aerodynamics (previously used on Jim Hall's Chaparral 2J during 1970) that provided enormous downforce and greatly increased cornering speeds. So great were the aerodynamic forces pressing the cars to the track (up to five times the car's weight), extremely stiff springs were needed to maintain a constant ride height, leaving the suspension virtually solid, depending entirely on the tyres for any small amount of cushioning of the car and driver from irregularities of the road surface. Beginning in the 1970s, Bernie Ecclestone rearranged the management of Formula One's commercial rights; he is widely credited with transforming the sport into the multibillion-dollar business it now is. When Ecclestone bought the Brabham team during 1971, he gained a seat on the Formula One Constructors' Association and during 1978 he became its president. Previously, the circuit owners controlled the income of the teams and negotiated with each individually; however Ecclestone persuaded the teams to "hunt as a pack" through FOCA. He offered Formula One to circuit owners as a package, which they could take or leave. In return for the package, almost all that was required was to surrender trackside advertising. The formation of the Fédération Internationale du Sport Automobile (FISA) during 1979 set off the FISA–FOCA controversy, during which FISA and its president Jean-Marie Balestre disputed repeatedly with FOCA over television revenues and technical regulations. The Guardian said of FOCA that Ecclestone and Max Mosley "used it to wage a guerrilla war with a very long-term aim in view". FOCA threatened to establish a rival series, boycotted a Grand Prix and FISA withdrew its sanction from races. The result was the 1981 Concorde Agreement, which guaranteed technical stability, as teams were to be given reasonable notice of new regulations. Although FISA asserted its right to the TV revenues, it handed the administration of those rights to FOCA. FISA imposed a ban on ground-effect aerodynamics during . By then, however, turbocharged engines, which Renault had pioneered in , were producing over and were essential to be competitive. By , a BMW turbocharged engine achieved a flash reading of 5.5 bar pressure, estimated to be over in qualifying for the . The next year, power in race trim reached around , with boost pressure limited to only 4.0 bar. These cars were the most powerful open-wheel circuit racing cars ever. To reduce engine power output and thus speeds, the FIA limited fuel tank capacity in , and boost pressures in , before banning turbocharged engines completely in . The development of electronic driver aids began during the 1980s. Lotus began to develop a system of active suspension, which first appeared during 1982 on the Lotus 91. By 1987, this system had been perfected and was driven to victory by Ayrton Senna in the Monaco Grand Prix that year. In the early 1990s other teams followed suit and semi-automatic gearboxes and traction control were a natural progression. The FIA, due to complaints that technology was determining the outcome of races more than driver skill, banned many such aids for . This resulted in cars that were previously dependent on electronic aids becoming very "twitchy" and difficult to drive (particularly the Williams FW16). Many observers felt the ban on driver aids was in name only as they "proved difficult to police effectively". The teams signed a second Concorde Agreement during 1992 and a third in 1997, which expired on the last day of 2007. On the track, the McLaren and Williams teams dominated the 1980s and 1990s, with Brabham also being competitive during the early part of the 1980s, winning two Drivers' Championships with Nelson Piquet. Powered by Porsche, Honda, and Mercedes-Benz, McLaren won sixteen championships (seven constructors' and nine drivers') in that period, while Williams used engines from Ford, Honda, and Renault to also win sixteen titles (nine constructors' and seven drivers'). The rivalry between racers Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost became F1's central focus during , and continued until Prost retired at the end of . Senna died at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix after crashing into a wall on the exit of the notorious curve Tamburello, having taken over Prost's lead drive at Williams that year. The FIA worked to improve the sport's safety standards since that weekend, during which Roland Ratzenberger also lost his life in an accident during Saturday qualifying. No driver had died of injuries sustained on the track at the wheel of a Formula One car for 20 years, until the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix where Jules Bianchi collided with a recovery vehicle after aquaplaning off the circuit. Since 1994, three track marshals have lost their lives, one at the 2000 Italian Grand Prix, the second at the 2001 Australian Grand Prix and the third at the 2013 Canadian Grand Prix. Since the deaths of Senna and Ratzenberger, the FIA has used safety as a reason to impose rule changes that otherwise, under the Concorde Agreement, would have had to be agreed upon by all the teams – most notably the changes introduced for . This so-called 'narrow track' era resulted in cars with smaller rear tyres, a narrower track overall, and the introduction of grooved tyres to reduce mechanical grip. There were to be four grooves on the front (three in the first year) and rear that ran through the entire circumference of the tyre. The objective was to reduce cornering speeds and to produce racing similar to rainy conditions by enforcing a smaller contact patch between tyre and track. This, according to the FIA, was to reduce cornering speeds in the interest of safety. Results were mixed as the lack of mechanical grip resulted in the more ingenious designers clawing back the deficit with aerodynamic grip – pushing more force onto the tyres through wings and aerodynamic devices, which in turn resulted in less overtaking as these devices tended to make the wake behind the car 'dirty' (turbulent), preventing other cars from following closely due to their dependence on 'clean' air to make the car stick to the track. The grooved tyres also had the unfortunate side effect of initially being of a harder compound to be able to hold the grooved tread blocks, which resulted in spectacular accidents in times of aerodynamic grip failure as the harder compound could not grip the track as well. Drivers from McLaren, Williams, Renault (formerly Benetton), and Ferrari, dubbed the "Big Four", won every World Championship from to . The teams won every Constructors' Championship from to as well as placing themselves as the top four teams in the Constructors' Championship in every season between 1989 and 1997, and winning every race but one (the 1996 Monaco Grand Prix) between 1988 and 1997. Due to the technological advances of the 1990s, the cost of competing in Formula One increased dramatically. This increased financial burdens, combined with the dominance of four teams (largely funded by big car manufacturers such as Mercedes-Benz), caused the poorer independent teams to struggle not only to remain competitive, but to stay in business, and forced several teams to withdraw. Since , twenty-eight teams have withdrawn from Formula One. This has prompted former Jordan owner Eddie Jordan to say that the days of competitive privateers are over. Michael Schumacher and Ferrari won five consecutive Drivers' Championships (2000–2004) and six consecutive Constructors' Championships (1999–2004). Schumacher set many new records, including those for Grand Prix wins (91), wins in a season (thirteen of eighteen), and most Drivers' Championships (seven). Schumacher's championship streak ended on 25 September 2005, when Renault driver Fernando Alonso became Formula One's youngest champion at that time (until Lewis Hamilton in and followed by Sebastian Vettel in 2010). During 2006, Renault and Alonso won both titles again. Schumacher retired at the end of 2006 after sixteen years in Formula One, but came out of retirement for the 2010 season, racing for the newly formed Mercedes works team, following the rebrand of Brawn GP. During this period, the championship rules were changed frequently by the FIA with the intention of improving the on- track action and cutting costs. Team orders, legal since the championship started during 1950, were banned during 2002, after several incidents, in which teams openly manipulated race results, generating negative publicity, most famously by Ferrari at the 2002 Austrian Grand Prix. Other changes included the qualifying format, the points scoring system, the technical regulations, and rules specifying how long engines and tyres must last. A "tyre war" between suppliers Michelin and Bridgestone saw lap times fall, although at the 2005 United States Grand Prix at Indianapolis, seven out of ten teams did not race when their Michelin tyres were deemed unsafe for use, leading to Bridgestone becoming the sole tyre supplier to Formula One for the 2007 season. During 2006, Max Mosley outlined a "green" future for Formula One, in which efficient use of energy would become an important factor. Since 1983, Formula One had been dominated by specialist race teams like Williams, McLaren, and Benetton, using engines supplied by large car manufacturers like Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Renault, and Ford. Starting in 2000, with Ford's creation of the largely unsuccessful Jaguar team, new manufacturer-owned teams entered Formula One for the first time since the departure of Alfa Romeo and Renault at the end of 1985. By 2006, the manufacturer teams—Renault, BMW, Toyota, Honda, and Ferrari—dominated the championship, taking five of the first six places in the Constructors' Championship. The sole exception was McLaren, which at the time was part-owned by Mercedes-Benz. Through the Grand Prix Manufacturers Association (GPMA), they negotiated a larger share of Formula One's commercial profit and a greater say in the running of the sport. In 2008 and 2009, Honda, BMW, and Toyota all withdrew from Formula One racing within the space of a year, blaming the economic recession. This resulted in the end of manufacturer dominance within the sport. The Honda F1 team went through a management buyout to become Brawn GP with the notable F1 designer Ross Brawn and Nick Fry running and owning the majority of the organisation. Brawn GP went through a painful size reduction, laying off hundreds of employees, but eventually won the year's world championships with Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello. BMW F1 was bought out by the original founder of the team, Peter Sauber. The Lotus F1 Team were another, formerly manufacturer-owned team that reverted to "privateer" ownership, together with the buy-out of the Renault team by Genii Capital investors. A link with their previous owners still survived however, with their car continuing to be powered by a Renault Power Unit until 2014. McLaren also announced that it was to reacquire the shares in its team from Mercedes-Benz (McLaren's partnership with Mercedes was reported to have started to sour with the McLaren Mercedes SLR road car project and tough F1 championships which included McLaren being found guilty of spying on Ferrari). Hence, during the 2010 season, Mercedes- Benz re-entered the sport as a manufacturer after its purchase of Brawn GP, and split with McLaren after 15 seasons with the team. This left Mercedes- Benz, McLaren, and Ferrari as the only car manufacturers in the sport, although both McLaren and Ferrari began as racing teams rather than manufacturers. To compensate for the loss of manufacturer teams, four new teams were accepted entry into the 2010 season ahead of a much anticipated 'cost-cap' (see below). Entrants included a reborn Team Lotus – which was led by a Malaysian consortium including Tony Fernandes, the boss of Air Asia; Hispania Racing – the first Spanish Formula One team; as well as Virgin Racing – Richard Branson's entry into the series following a successful partnership with Brawn the year before. They were also joined by the US F1 Team, which planned to run out of the United States as the only non-European based team in the sport. Financial issues befell the squad before they even made the grid. Despite the entry of these new teams, the proposed cost-cap was repealed and these teams – who did not have the budgets of the midfield and top-order teams – ran around at the back of the field until they inevitably collapsed; HRT in 2012, Caterham (formerly Lotus) in 2014 and Manor (formerly Virgin then Marussia), having survived falling into administration in 2014, went under at the end of 2016. A rule shake-up in , meant Mercedes emerged as the dominant force, with Lewis Hamilton winning the championship closely followed by his main rival and teammate, Nico Rosberg, with the team winning 16 out of the 19 races that season (all other victories coming from Daniel Ricciardo of Red Bull). 2014 also saw a financial crisis which resulted in the backmarker Marussia and Caterham teams being put into administration, alongside the uncertain futures of Force India and Sauber. Marussia returned under the Manor name in , a season in which Ferrari were the only challenger to Mercedes, with Vettel taking victory in the three Grands Prix Mercedes did not win. In the season, Haas joined the grid. The season began in dominant fashion for Nico Rosberg, winning the first 4 Grands Prix. His charge was halted by Max Verstappen, who took his maiden win in Spain in his debut race for Red Bull. After that, the reigning champion Lewis Hamilton decreased the point gap between him and Rosberg to only one point, before taking the championship lead heading into the summer break. Following the break, the 1–2 positioning remained constant until an engine failure for Hamilton in Malaysia left Rosberg in a commanding lead that he would not relinquish in the 5 remaining races. Having won the title by a mere 5 points, Rosberg retired from Formula One at season's end, becoming the first driver since Alain Prost in 1993 to retire after winning the Drivers Championship. The final team remaining from the 2010 new entries process, Manor Racing, withdrew from the sport following the 2016 season, having lost 10th in the Constructors' Championship to Sauber with one race remaining, leaving the grid at 20 cars as Liberty Media took control of the series in the off-season. Recent years have seen an increase in manufacturer presence in the sport. In 2016, Renault came back to the sport after buying back the Lotus F1 team. In 2018, Aston Martin and Alfa Romeo became Red Bull and Sauber's title sponsors, respectively, with the latter officially entering the 2019 season as Alfa Romeo Racing. The battle for control of Formula One was contested between the Fédération Internationale du Sport Automobile (FISA), at the time an autonomous subcommittee of the FIA, and FOCA (the Formula One Constructors' Association). The beginnings of the dispute are numerous, and many of the underlying reasons may be lost in history. The teams (excepting Ferrari and the other major manufacturers – Renault and Alfa Romeo in particular) were of the opinion that their rights and ability to compete against the larger and better funded teams were being negatively affected by a perceived bias on the part of the controlling organisation (FISA) toward the major manufacturers. In addition, the battle revolved around the commercial aspects of the sport (the FOCA teams were unhappy with the disbursement of proceeds from the races) and the technical regulations which, in FOCA's opinion, tended to be malleable according to the nature of the transgressor more than the nature of the transgression. The war culminated in a FOCA boycott of the 1982 San Marino Grand Prix months later. In theory, all FOCA teams were supposed to boycott the Grand Prix as a sign of solidarity and complaint at the handling of the regulations and financial compensation (and extreme opposition to the accession of Balestre to the position of FISA president: both Colin Chapman of Lotus and Frank Williams of Williams stated clearly that they would not continue in Formula One with Balestre as its governor). In practice, several of the FOCA teams backed out of the boycott, citing "sponsor obligations". Notable among these were the Tyrrell and Toleman teams. During the season of Formula One, the sport was gripped in a governance crisis. The FIA President Max Mosley proposed numerous cost cutting measures for the following season, including an optional budget cap for the teams; teams electing to take the budget cap would be granted greater technical freedom, adjustable front and rear wings and an engine not subject to a rev limiter. The Formula One Teams Association (FOTA) believed that allowing some teams to have such technical freedom would have created a 'two-tier' championship, and thus requested urgent talks with the FIA. However, talks broke down and FOTA teams announced, with the exception of Williams and Force India, that 'they had no choice' but to form a breakaway championship series. On 24 June, an agreement was reached between Formula One's governing body and the teams to prevent a breakaway series. It was agreed teams must cut spending to the level of the early 1990s within two years; exact figures were not specified, and Max Mosley agreed he would not stand for re-election to the FIA presidency in October. Following further disagreements, after Max Mosley suggested he would stand for re-election, FOTA made it clear that breakaway plans were still being pursued. On 8 July, FOTA issued a press release stating they had been informed they were not entered for the 2010 season, and an FIA press release said the FOTA representatives had walked out of the meeting. On 1 August, it was announced FIA and FOTA had signed a new Concorde Agreement, bringing an end to the crisis and securing the sport's future until 2012. The terms "Formula One race" and "World Championship race" are now effectively synonymous; since 1984, every Formula One race has counted towards an official FIA World Championship, and every World Championship race has been held to Formula One regulations. In the earlier history of Formula One, many races took place outside the World Championship, and local championships run to Formula One regulations also occurred. These events often took place on circuits that were not always suitable for the World Championship, and featured local cars and drivers as well as those competing in the championship. In the early years of Formula One, before the world championship was established, there were around twenty races held from late Spring to early Autumn in Europe, although not all of these were considered significant. Most competitive cars came from Italy, particularly Alfa Romeo. After the start of the world championship, these non-championship races continued. In the 1950s and 1960s, there were many Formula One races which did not count for the World Championship; in a total of twenty-two Formula One races were held, of which only six counted towards the World Championship. In 1952 and 1953, when the world championship was run to Formula Two regulations, non-championship events were the only Formula One races that took place. Some races, particularly in the UK, including the Race of Champions, Oulton Park International Gold Cup and the International Trophy, were attended by the majority of the world championship contenders. Other smaller events were regularly held in locations not part of the championship, such as the Syracuse and Danish Grands Prix, although these only attracted a small amount of the championship teams and relied on private entries and lower Formula cars to make up the grid. These became less common through the 1970s and 1983 saw the last non-championship Formula One race; the 1983 Race of Champions at Brands Hatch, won by reigning World Champion Keke Rosberg in a Williams-Cosworth in a close fight with American Danny Sullivan. South Africa's flourishing domestic Formula One championship ran from 1960 through to 1975. The frontrunning cars in the series were recently retired from the world championship although there was also a healthy selection of locally built or modified machines. Frontrunning drivers from the series usually contested their local World Championship Grand Prix, as well as occasional European events, although they had little success at that level. The DFV helped make the UK domestic Formula One championship possible between 1978 and 1980. As in South Africa a decade before, second hand cars from manufacturers like Lotus and Fittipaldi Automotive were the order of the day, although some, such as the March 781, were built specifically for the series. In 1980, the series saw South African Desiré Wilson become the only woman to win a Formula One race when she triumphed at Brands Hatch in a Wolf WR3. A Formula One Grand Prix event spans a weekend. It begins with two free practice sessions on Friday (except in Monaco, where Friday practices are moved to Thursday), and one free practice on Saturday. Additional drivers (commonly known as third drivers) are allowed to run on Fridays, but only two cars may be used per team, requiring a race driver to give up his seat. A qualifying session is held after the last free practice session. This session determines the starting order for the race on Sunday. The new rule for F1 tyres that was introduced in 2016 was that Pirelli could select three different tyres for each race, and each team could choose the tyre from those three depending on the strategies. This concept also continued in 2017 and in 2018 but with Pirelli's thicker and wider tyres that were tested extensively last year. Tyre selections are announced over a month before each event, with rules stating Pirelli must announce compounds nine weeks before a European round and 15 weeks before a long-haul event. Drivers ordinarily select 10 of the 13 sets available for a race weekend, though Pirelli's new tyres means the Italian company will force each driver to stick to the same allocations for the first five races as it learns about the new tyre. That means for the opening five races, drivers will have seven of the softest compound, four of the middle compound and two of the hardest compound available. Pirelli has backup compounds for introduction later in the season, if its initial batch proves to be too conservative in terms of performance or leads to greater levels of degradation than expected. For much of the sport's history, qualifying sessions differed little from practice sessions; drivers would have one or more sessions in which to set their fastest time, with the grid order determined by each driver's best single lap, with the fastest on pole position. Grids were generally limited to 26 cars – if the race had more entries, qualification would also decide which drivers would start the race. During the early 1990s, the number of entries was so high that the worst-performing teams had to enter a pre-qualifying session, with the fastest cars allowed through to the main qualifying session. The qualifying format began to change in the early 2000s, with the FIA experimenting with limiting the number of laps, determining the aggregate time over two sessions, and allowing each driver only one qualifying lap. The current qualifying system was adopted in the 2006 season. Known as "knock-out" qualifying, it is split into three periods, known as Q1, Q2, and Q3. In each period, drivers run qualifying laps to attempt to advance to the next period, with the slowest drivers being "knocked out" of qualification (but not necessarily the race) at the end of the period and their grid positions set within the rearmost five based on their best lap times. Drivers are allowed as many laps as they wish within each period. After each period, all times are reset, and only a driver's fastest lap in that period (barring infractions) counts. Any timed lap started before the end of that period may be completed, and will count toward that driver's placement. The number of cars eliminated in each period is dependent on the total number of cars entered into the championship. Currently, with 20 cars, Q1 runs for 18 minutes, and eliminates the slowest five drivers. During this period, any driver whose best lap takes longer than 107% of the fastest time in Q1 will not be allowed to start the race without permission from the stewards. Otherwise, all drivers proceed to the race albeit in the worst starting positions. This rule does not affect drivers in Q2 or Q3. In Q2, the 15 remaining drivers have 15 minutes to set one of the ten fastest times and proceed to the next period. Finally, Q3 lasts 12 minutes and sees the remaining ten drivers decide the first ten grid positions. At the beginning of the 2016 Formula 1 season, the FIA introduced a new qualifying format, whereby drivers were knocked out every 90 seconds after a certain amount of time had passed in each session. The aim was to mix up grid positions for the race, but due to unpopularity the FIA reverted to the above qualifying format for the Chinese GP, after running the format for only two races. Each car taking part in Q3 receives an 'extra' set of the softest available tyre. This set has to be handed in after qualifying, drivers knocked out in Q1 or Q2 can use this set for the race. The first ten drivers, i.e. the drivers through to Q3 must start the race on the tyre which set the fastest time in Q2, unless the weather requires the use of wet-weather tyres. In which case all of the rules about the tyres won't be followed. All of the drivers that did not participate in Q3 have free tyre choice for the start of the race. Any penalties that affect grid position are applied at the end of qualifying. Grid penalties can be applied for driving infractions in the previous or current Grand Prix, or for changing a gearbox or engine component. If a car fails scrutineering, the driver will be excluded from qualifying, but will be allowed to start the race from the back of the grid at the race steward's discretion. The race begins with a warm-up lap, after which the cars assemble on the starting grid in the order they qualified. This lap is often referred to as the formation lap, as the cars lap in formation with no overtaking (although a driver who makes a mistake may regain lost ground provided they have fallen to the back of the field). The warm-up lap allows drivers to check the condition of the track and their car, gives the tyres a chance to warm up to increase traction, and also gives the pit crews time to clear themselves and their equipment from the grid. Once all the cars have formed on the grid, after the medical car positions itself behind the pack, a light system above the track indicates the start of the race: five red lights are illuminated at intervals of one second; they are all then extinguished simultaneously after an unspecified time (typically less than 3 seconds) to signal the start of the race. The start procedure may be abandoned if a driver stalls on the grid, signalled by raising his arm. If this happens, the procedure restarts: a new formation lap begins with the offending car removed from the grid. The race may also be restarted in the event of a serious accident or dangerous conditions, with the original start voided. The race may be started from behind the Safety Car if officials feel a racing start would be excessively dangerous, such as extremely heavy rainfall. As of the season, there will always be a standing restart. If due to heavy rainfall a start behind the safety car is necessary, then after the track has dried sufficiently, drivers will form up for a standing start. There is no formation lap when races start behind the Safety Car. Under normal circumstances, the winner of the race is the first driver to cross the finish line having completed a set number of laps. Race officials may end the race early (putting out a red flag) due to unsafe conditions such as extreme rainfall, and it must finish within two hours, although races are only likely to last this long in the case of extreme weather or if the safety car is deployed during the race. In the 1950s, race distances varied from to . The maximum race length was reduced to in 1966 and in 1971. The race length was standardised to the current in 1989. However, street races like Monaco have shorter distances, to keep under the two-hour limit. Drivers may overtake one another for position over the course of the race. If a leader comes across a back marker (slower car) who has completed fewer laps, the back marker is shown a blue flag telling them that they are obliged to allow the leader to overtake them. The slower car is said to be "lapped" and, once the leader finishes the race, is classified as finishing the race "one lap down". A driver can be lapped numerous times, by any car in front of them. A driver who fails to finish a race, through mechanical problems, accident, or any other reason is said to have retired from the race and is "Not Classified" in the results. However, if the driver has completed more than 90% of the race distance, s/he will be classified. Throughout the race, drivers may make pit stops to change tyres and repair damage (from 1994 to 2009 inclusive, they could also refuel). Different teams and drivers employ different pit stop strategies in order to maximise their car's potential. Three dry tyre compounds, with different durability and adhesion characteristics, are available to drivers. Over the course of a race, drivers must use two of the three available compounds. The different compounds have different levels of performance, and choosing when to use which compound is a key tactical decision to make. Different tyres have different colours on their sidewalls; this allows spectators to understand the strategies. Under wet conditions, drivers may switch to one of two specialised wet weather tyres with additional grooves (one "intermediate", for mild wet conditions, such as after recent rain, one "full wet", for racing in or immediately after rain). A driver must make at least one stop to use two tyre compounds; up to three stops are typically made, although further stops may be necessary to fix damage or if weather conditions change. If rain tyres are used, drivers are no longer obliged to use both types of dry tyres. Race director Safety car The format of the race has changed little through Formula One's history. The main changes have revolved around what is allowed at pit stops. In the early days of Grand Prix racing, a driver would be allowed to continue a race in his teammate's car should his develop a problem—in the modern era, cars are so carefully fitted to drivers that this has become impossible. In recent years, the emphasis has been on changing refuelling and tyre change regulations. From the 2010 season, refuelling—which was reintroduced in 1994—has not been allowed, to encourage less tactical racing following safety concerns. The rule requiring both compounds of tyre to be used during the race was introduced in 2007, again to encourage racing on the track. The safety car is another relatively recent innovation that reduced the need to deploy the red flag, allowing races to be completed on time for a growing international live television audience. *A driver must finish within the top ten to receive a point for setting the fastest lap of the race. In the event that the driver who set the fastest lap finishes outside of the top ten then the point for fastest lap will not be awarded for that race. Various systems for awarding championship points have been used since 1950. The current system, in place since 2010, awards the top ten cars points in the Drivers' and Constructors' Championships, with the winner receiving 25 points. If both cars of a team finish in the points, they both receive Constructors' Championship points. All points won at each race are added up, and the driver and constructor with the most points at the end of the season are crowned World Champions. Regardless of whether a driver stays with the same team throughout the season, or switches teams, all points earned by him count for the Drivers' Championship. A driver must be classified to receive points. To be classified, a driver need not finish the race, but complete at least 90% of the winner's race distance. Therefore, it is possible for a driver to receive points even if they retired before the end of the race. In the event that less than 75% of the race laps are completed by the winner, only half of the points listed in the table are awarded to the drivers and constructors. This has happened on only five occasions in the history of the championship, and it had a notable influence on the final standing of the season. The last occurrence was at the 2009 Malaysian Grand Prix when the race was called off after 31 laps due to torrential rain. Since , Formula One teams have been required to build the chassis in which they compete, and consequently the terms "team" and "constructor" became more or less interchangeable. This requirement distinguishes the sport from series such as the IndyCar Series which allows teams to purchase chassis, and "spec series" such as GP2, which require all cars be kept to an identical specification. It also effectively prohibits privateers, which were common even in Formula One well into the 1970s. The sport's debut season, , saw eighteen teams compete, but due to high costs many dropped out quickly. In fact, such was the scarcity of competitive cars for much of the first decade of Formula One that Formula Two cars were admitted to fill the grids. Ferrari is the oldest Formula One team, the only still-active team which competed in 1950. Early manufacturer involvement came in the form of a "factory team" or "works team" (that is, one owned and staffed by a major car company), such as those of Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, or Renault. After having virtually disappeared by the early 1980s, factory teams made a comeback in the 1990s and 2000s and formed up to half the grid with Ferrari, Jaguar, BMW, Renault, Toyota, and Honda either setting up their own teams or buying out existing ones. Mercedes- Benz owned 40% of the McLaren team and manufactured the team's engines. Factory teams make up the top competitive teams; in 2008 wholly owned factory teams took four of the top five positions in the Constructors' Championship, and McLaren the other. Ferrari holds the record for having won the most Constructors' Championships (sixteen). However, by the end of the 2000s factory teams were once again on the decline with only Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz and Renault lodging entries to the championship. Companies such as Climax, Repco, Cosworth, Hart, Judd and Supertec, which had no direct team affiliation, often sold engines to teams that could not afford to manufacture them. In the early years, independently owned Formula One teams sometimes also built their engines, though this became less common with the increased involvement of major car manufacturers such as BMW, Ferrari, Honda, Mercedes- Benz, Renault, and Toyota, whose large budgets rendered privately built engines less competitive. Cosworth was the last independent engine supplier. Beginning in 2007, the manufacturers' deep pockets and engineering ability took over, eliminating the last of the independent engine manufacturers. It is estimated the major teams spend between €100 and €200 million ($125–$225 million) per year per manufacturer on engines alone. In the 2007 season, for the first time since the 1981 rule, two teams used chassis built by other teams. Super Aguri started the season using a modified Honda Racing RA106 chassis (used by Honda the previous year), while Scuderia Toro Rosso used the same chassis used by the parent Red Bull Racing team, which was formally designed by a separate subsidiary. The usage of these loopholes was ended for 2010 with the publication of new technical regulations, which require each constructor to own the intellectual property rights to their chassis, which prevents a team using a chassis owned by another Formula One constructor. The regulations continue to allow a team to subcontract the design and construction of the chassis to a third-party, an option used by the HRT team in 2010 and Haas currently. Although teams rarely disclose information about their budgets, it is estimated they range from US$66 million to US$400 million each. Entering a new team in the Formula One World Championship requires a £25 million (about US$32 million) up-front payment to the FIA, which is then repaid to the team over the course of the season. As a consequence, constructors desiring to enter Formula One often prefer to buy an existing team: BAR's purchase of Tyrrell and Midland's purchase of Jordan allowed both of these teams to sidestep the large deposit and secure the benefits the team already had, such as TV revenue. Every team in Formula One must run two cars in every session in a Grand Prix weekend, and every team may use up to four drivers in a season. A team may also run two additional drivers in Free Practice sessions, which are often used to test potential new drivers for a career as a Formula One driver or gain experienced drivers to evaluate the car. Most modern drivers are contracted for at least the duration of a season, with driver changes taking place in between seasons, in comparison to early years where drivers often competed at an ad hoc basis from race to race. Each competitor must be in the possession of a FIA Super Licence to compete in a Grand Prix, which is issued to drivers who have met the criteria of success in junior motorsport categories and having achieved of running in a Formula One car. Drivers may also be issued a Super Licence by the World Motor Sport Council if they fail to meet the criteria. Although most drivers earn their seat on ability, commercial considerations also come into play with teams having to satisfy sponsors and financial demands. Teams also contract test and reserve drivers, to stand in for regular drivers when necessary and develop the team's car; although with the reduction on testing the reserve drivers' role mainly takes places on a simulator, such as rFactor Pro, which is used by most of the F1 teams. Each driver chooses an unassigned number from 2 to 99 (excluding 17) upon entering Formula One, and keeps that number during his time in the series. The number one is reserved for the reigning Drivers' Champion, who retains his previous number and may choose to (but doesn't have to) use it instead of the number one. At the onset of the championship, numbers were allocated by race organisers on an ad-hoc basis from race to race, and competitors did not have a permanent number throughout the season. Permanent numbers were introduced in to take effect in , when teams were allocated numbers in ascending order based on the Constructors' Championship standings at the end of the 1973 season. The teams would hold those numbers from season to season with the exception of the team with the world Drivers' Champion, which would swap its numbers with the one and two of the previous champion's team. New entrants were allocated spare numbers, with the exception of the number 13 which had been unused since . As teams kept their numbers for long periods of time, car numbers became associated with a team, such as Ferrari's 27 and 28. A different system was used from to : at the start of each season, the current Drivers' Champion was designated number one, his teammate number two, and the rest of the teams assigned ascending numbers according to previous season's Constructors' Championship order. A total of 33 separate drivers have won the World Drivers' Championship, with Michael Schumacher holding the record for most championships with seven, as well as holding the race wins record. Lewis Hamilton has won the next most – six championships. Jochen Rindt is the only posthumous World Champion, after his points total was not surpassed despite his fatal accident at the 1970 Italian Grand Prix, with 4 races still remaining in the season. Drivers from the United Kingdom have been the most successful in the sport, with 18 championships among 10 drivers, and 278 wins among 19 drivers. Most F1 drivers start in kart racing competitions, and then come up through traditional European single seater series like Formula Ford and Formula Renault to Formula 3, and finally the GP2 Series. GP2 started in 2005, replacing Formula 3000, which itself had replaced Formula Two as the last major stepping-stone into F1. GP2 was rebranded as the FIA Formula 2 Championship in 2017. Most champions from this level graduate into F1, but 2006 GP2 champion Lewis Hamilton became the first F2, F3000 or GP2 champion to win the Formula One driver's title in 2008. Drivers are not required to have competed at this level before entering Formula One. British F3 has supplied many F1 drivers, with champions, including Nigel Mansell, Ayrton Senna and Mika Häkkinen having moved straight from that series to Formula One. More rarely a driver may be picked from an even lower level, as was the case with 2007 World Champion Kimi Räikkönen, who went straight from Formula Renault to F1, as well as Max Verstappen, who made his debut following a single season in European F3. American open-wheel car racing has also contributed to the Formula One grid with mixed results. CART champions Mario Andretti and Jacques Villeneuve became F1 World Champions, while Juan Pablo Montoya won seven races in F1. Other CART (also known as ChampCar) champions, like Michael Andretti and Alessandro Zanardi won no races in F1. Other drivers have taken different paths to F1; Damon Hill raced motorbikes, and Michael Schumacher raced in sports cars, albeit after climbing through the junior single-seater ranks. Former F1 driver Paul di Resta raced in DTM until he was signed with Force India in 2011. To race, however, the driver must hold an FIA Super Licence–ensuring that the driver has the requisite skills, and will not therefore be a danger to others. Some drivers have not had the licence when first signed to an F1 team: e.g., Räikkönen received the licence despite having only 23 car races to his credit. Most F1 drivers retire in their mid to late 30s. Some F1 drivers have left to race in the United States—Nigel Mansell and Emerson Fittipaldi duelled for the 1993 CART title, Rubens Barrichello moved to IndyCar in 2012, while Jacques Villeneuve, Juan Pablo Montoya, Nelson Piquet Jr. and Scott Speed moved to NASCAR. Some drivers have moved from F1 to racing in disciplines with fewer races during the season. The German touring car championship, the DTM, is a popular category involving ex-drivers such as two-time champion Mika Häkkinen and F1 race winners Jean Alesi, David Coulthard and Ralf Schumacher. In recent years, it has become common for former F1 drivers to take up factory seats driving LMP1 cars in the FIA World Endurance Championship, with notable drivers including Mark Webber, Allan McNish, Anthony Davidson, Alexander Wurz, Kazuki Nakajima, Sébastien Buemi and Fernando Alonso. A series for former Formula One drivers, called Grand Prix Masters, ran briefly in 2005 and 2006. Other drivers have moved to Formula E such as Nelson Piquet Jr., Sébastien Buemi, Bruno Senna, Jaime Alguersuari, Nick Heidfeld, Jarno Trulli, Jean-Éric Vergne, Felipe Massa, Stoffel Vandoorne, and more. Some drivers, such as Vitantonio Liuzzi, Narain Karthikeyan and Jos Verstappen went on to race in the A1 Grand Prix series. During its existence from 2008 to 2011, Superleague Formula attracted ex-Formula One drivers like Sébastien Bourdais, Antônio Pizzonia and Giorgio Pantano. Other former F1 drivers, like Jackie Stewart, Gerhard Berger, Alain Prost and Niki Lauda returned to F1 as team owners or managers while their former competitors have become colour commentators for TV coverage such as James Hunt (BBC), Martin Brundle (BBC, ITV and Sky), David Hobbs (NBC), Alan Jones (BBC, Nine Network and Ten Network), David Coulthard (BBC and Channel 4), Luciano Burti for Globo (Brazil), and Jean Alesi for Italian national network RAI. Others, such as Damon Hill and Jackie Stewart, take active roles in running motorsport in their own countries. Carlos Reutemann became a politician and served as governor of his native state in Argentina. The number of Grands Prix held in a season has varied over the years. The inaugural world championship season comprised only seven races, while the season contained twenty-one races. Although throughout the first decades of the world championship there were no more than eleven Grands Prix a season, a large number of non-championship Formula One events also took place. The number of Grands Prix increased to an average of sixteen/seventeen by the late 1970s; simultaneously non-championship events ended by 1983. More Grands Prix began to be held in the 2000s, and recent seasons have seen an average of 19 races. In the calendar peaked at twenty-one events, the highest number of world championship races in one season. Six of the original seven races took place in Europe; the only non-European race that counted towards the World Championship in 1950 was the Indianapolis 500, which was held to different regulations and later replaced by the United States Grand Prix. The F1 championship gradually expanded to other non-European countries. Argentina hosted the first South American Grand Prix in , and Morocco hosted the first African World Championship race in . Asia (Japan in ) and Oceania (Australia in ) followed, and the first race in the Middle East was held in . The nineteen races of the season were spread over every populated continent except for Africa, with ten Grands Prix held outside Europe. Some of the Grands Prix, such as the oldest recognised event the French Grand Prix, pre-date the formation of the World Championship and were incorporated into the championship as Formula One races in 1950. The British and Italian Grands Prix are the only events to have been held every Formula One season; other long- running races include the Belgian, German and French Grands Prix. The Monaco Grand Prix, first held in 1929 and run continuously since 1955, is widely considered to be one of the most important and prestigious automobile races in the world. Traditionally each nation has hosted a single Grand Prix, which carries the name of the country. If a single country hosts multiple Grands Prix in a year they receive different names. In European countries, the second event has often been titled the European Grand Prix, or named after a neighbouring state without a race. The United States has held six separate Grands Prix, including the Indianapolis 500, with the additional events named after the host city. Grands Prix are not always held at the same circuit each year, and may switch locations due to the suitability of the track or the financial status of the race organisers. The German Grand Prix formerly alternated between the Nürburgring and Hockenheimring circuits, and others such as the American and French races have switched venues throughout their history. All Grands Prix have traditionally been run during the day, until the inaugural hosted the first Formula One night race, which was followed in 2009 by the day–night Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and then the Bahrain Grand Prix which converted to a night race in 2014. Along with holding races at night, other Grands Prix in Asia have had their start times adjusted to benefit the European television audience. European Grand Prix at Valencia Street Circuit (2008; discontinued after 2012), Singapore Grand Prix at Marina Bay Street Circuit (2008), Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at Yas Marina Circuit (2009), Korean Grand Prix at Korean International Circuit (2010; discontinued after 2013), Indian Grand Prix at Buddh International Circuit (2011; discontinued after 2013), United States Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas (2012), Russian Grand Prix at Sochi Autodrom (2014), Mexican Grand Prix at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez (2015; will be renamed Mexico City Grand Prix in 2020), European Grand Prix at Baku City Circuit (2016; renamed the Azerbaijan Grand Prix from 2017), French Grand Prix at Circuit Paul Ricard (2018) Vietnamese Grand Prix at Hanoi Street Circuit (2020), Dutch Grand Prix at Circuit Zandvoort (2020), Miami Grand Prix† at Hard Rock Stadium (2021), Panamanian Grand Prix at Panama City Street Circuit (2022 or 2023) The 2018 FIA Formula One World Championship was the motor racing championship for Formula One cars and the 69th running of the Formula One World Championship. Formula One is recognised by the governing body of international motorsport, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), as the highest class of competition for open-wheel racing cars. Drivers and teams competed in twenty-one Grands Prix for the World Drivers' and World Constructors' championship titles. Lewis Hamilton won the World Drivers' Championship title, while his team, Mercedes, secured the World Constructors' Championship title. Hamilton clinched his fifth title at the 2018 Mexican Grand Prix, with the team securing its fifth consecutive title at the following race. Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel finished runner-up, 88 points behind Hamilton, with his teammate Kimi Räikkönen finishing third. In the Constructors' Championship, Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport finished 84 points ahead of Scuderia Ferrari, with Aston Martin Red Bull Racing third. In 2018, the championship saw the introduction of a new cockpit protection device, known as the "halo". The introduction of the halo was the first stage of a planned rollout that would see the device adopted in all FIA-sanctioned open wheel series by 2020. The following teams and drivers participated in the 2018 FIA Formula One World Championship. All teams competed with tyres supplied by Pirelli. McLaren terminated their engine partnership with Honda and instead signed a three-year deal for power units supplied by Renault. The team cited Honda's repeated failure to supply a reliable and competitive power unit as the reason for ending the partnership. Toro Rosso parted ways with Renault – allowing McLaren to finalise their agreement with Renault – and came to an agreement to use Honda power units. As part of the deal, Red Bull Racing loaned Toro Rosso driver Carlos Sainz Jr. to Renault's works team. Sauber renewed their partnership with Ferrari, upgrading to current-specification power units after using year-old power units in 2017 and also signed a sponsorship deal that saw Alfa Romeo become their title sponsor. Force India were placed into administration on 27 July 2018, during the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend. After speculation of a purchase, any sale of the team in a short time-span was complicated by legal proceedings against certain shareholders and the need for debt settlement. A consortium led by Lawrence Stroll purchased the racing assets and operations of Force India through a company named Racing Point UK Ltd. The original team, known as "Sahara Force India", was then excluded from the Constructors' Championship on the grounds of their inability to participate in remaining races. This allowed a new team known as "Racing Point Force India" to apply for a late entry and start their participation in the championship from the Belgian Grand Prix. The team was required to keep "Force India" as part of their constructor name as their chassis had been homologated under the Force India name and Formula One sporting regulations required the constructor name to include the chassis name. The new team began with zero points in the Constructors' Championship, though their drivers retained the points they had scored in the Drivers' Championship. The other teams later agreed to allow the Racing Point Force India team to retain prize money accrued by Sahara Force India in the preceding years. Toro Rosso signed 2016 GP2 Series champion Pierre Gasly and two-time World Endurance champion Brendon Hartley as their full-time drivers for 2018. Both Gasly and Hartley made their Formula One débuts with the team in the latter stages of the 2017 championship. Daniil Kvyat left the team and the Red Bull driver programme, securing a development role with Ferrari. Charles Leclerc, the reigning Formula 2 champion, made his competitive début with Sauber. Leclerc, who had previously driven in Friday practice sessions in 2016 and 2017, was hired by the team to replace Pascal Wehrlein. Wehrlein was ultimately unable to secure a race seat and was instead enlisted as one of Mercedes's test and reserve drivers while racing full-time in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters series. Williams driver Felipe Massa retired from Formula One at the end of the 2017 championship. Massa was replaced by former Renault test driver and SMP Racing driver Sergey Sirotkin, who made his competitive début with the team. The following twenty-one Grands Prix were run as part of the 2018 World Championship: The French Grand Prix returned to the calendar for the first time since . The race has returned to the Circuit Paul Ricard, which last hosted the French Grand Prix in before the event moved to the Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours. The race was scheduled to be run in June, with the Azerbaijan Grand Prix brought forward to April to accommodate the change and to avoid clashing with celebrations for the centenary of the Azerbaijan republic. The German Grand Prix also returned to the championship after a one-year absence, with the Hockenheimring hosting the race. The Malaysian Grand Prix, which was part of the championship from to , was discontinued. The Russian Grand Prix was moved from April to September, filling the vacancy left by the Malaysian Grand Prix. Following widespread criticism of the grid penalty system in 2017 that regularly saw multiple drivers start races outside their qualifying positions, the FIA introduced a revised set of regulations for 2018. In the event that a driver changes a power unit component, they are still subject to a five- or ten-place grid penalty depending on the component being changed; however, should they then replace a second component, they will be moved to the back of the starting grid. If multiple drivers are moved to the back of the grid, their starting positions are determined by the order that components were changed based on the most recent change made by each driver. The rules governing starting procedures were changed for 2018, granting race stewards the power to issue penalties for improper race starts even if a driver's start does not trigger the automated detection system. The changes were introduced following two incidents during : at the Chinese Grand Prix, Sebastian Vettel positioned his car too far across his grid slot to be registered by the detection system; while at the Austrian Grand Prix, Valtteri Bottas's start was called into question for his reaction time despite the detection system recognising it as legal. In the event that a race is suspended due to a red flag, it would be restarted with a standing start. Drivers would return to the starting grid in the positions they held at the time of the suspension and the race director would repeat the race start procedure. If circuit conditions are suitable for racing but the race director deems a standing start inappropriate, the race would resume with a rolling start where the safety car returns to pit lane and drivers proceed around the circuit in single file until they are shown the green flag. The FIA introduced tighter restrictions on racing licences issued to drivers taking part in free practice sessions. Candidate drivers are required to complete a minimum number of Formula 2 races or earn twenty-five superlicense points over a three-year period. The changes were introduced to address concerns about drivers who would not be able to meet the standards required to compete in Formula One having access to Formula One cars. The schedule of a Grand Prix weekend was changed, with the start time of most European races pushed back by one hour in an attempt to accommodate a larger television audience. All races were scheduled to start at ten minutes past the hour so as to allow broadcasters the opportunity for pre- race coverage, especially in cases when their broadcast of the race starts on the hour. Finally, the mid-season test, which was held in Bahrain in 2017, was moved to Barcelona. Power unit suppliers are required to provide all teams using their engines with an identical specification of power units. The change was introduced to ensure parity after Mercedes's works team was observed to have access to additional engine performance settings that were not available to their customer teams. The quantity of power unit components a driver may use during the season was reduced from four complete power units during the entire season in 2017 to a new system where each of the power unit components is considered separately. Therefore, in 2018, each driver is permitted to use up to three each of internal combustion engines (ICE), heat motor generator units (MGU-H), and turbochargers (TC); and two each of the kinetic motor generator units (MGU-K), energy stores (ES), and control electronics (CE). Restrictions against the practice of oil burning, where engine oils are burned as fuel to boost performance, were also introduced. The practice, which was first used in 2017 saw teams burning as much as 1.2 litres per one hundred kilometres. For the 2018 championship, this figure was revised down to a maximum of 0.6 litres per one hundred kilometres. The rules were further amended to restrict teams to using a single specification of oil, which must be declared before the race. These oils are subject to stricter definitions of what is considered "oil" in order to prevent teams from using exotic blends designed to boost performance. Teams are also required to inform the stewards of the mass of oil in each oil tank before the race. Further changes to the technical regulations require the temperature of air in the plenum chamber – adjacent to the turbocharger – to be more than 10 °C above the ambient air temperature. This rule was introduced in a bid to limit the performance gains possible via charge air cooling. Active control valves, which electronically regulate the flow of fluids between power unit components, were also banned. The FIA banned the use of "shark fins", a carbon fibre extension to the engine cowling aimed at directing airflow over the rear wing. The use of "T-wings", a horizontal secondary wing mounted forward of and above the rear wing, was also banned. Following a series of serious incidents in open-wheel racing – including the fatal accidents of Henry Surtees and Justin Wilson – in which drivers were struck in the head by tyres or debris, the FIA announced plans to introduce additional mandatory cockpit protection with 2018 given as the first year for its introduction. Several solutions were tested, with the final design subject to feedback from teams and drivers. Each design was created to deflect debris away from a driver's head without compromising their visibility or the ability of safety marshals to access the cockpit and extract a driver and their seat in the event of a serious accident or medical emergency, with a series of serious accidents – such as the fatal accidents of Jules Bianchi and Dan Wheldon – recreated to simulate the ability of devices to withstand a serious impact. The FIA ultimately settled on the "halo", a wishbone-shaped frame mounted above and around the driver's head and anchored to the monocoque forward of the cockpit. Seventeen accidents were examined as case studies, with the FIA concluding that the halo would have prevented injuries in fifteen of them. In the other two instances – most notably Jules Bianchi's fatal accident – the FIA concluded that although the halo would not have prevented driver injuries, it would not have contributed to or complicated the outcome of the accidents. Once introduced, the halo concept is scheduled to be applied to other FIA-sanctioned open-wheel racing categories including Formula 2, Formula 3 and Formula E, with 2020 earmarked as the deadline for all FIA- sanctioned open-wheel racing series to adopt the halo. Following criticisms over the aesthetic value of the device, the FIA revealed plans to allow teams some design freedom in the final version of the halo, with the teams permitted to attach a thin single-plane wing atop the halo to control airflow over the top of the car and into the airbox to assist with engine cooling. Where the test models of the halo had been attached to an existing monocoque structure, teams were required to incorporate the final build of the halo into the chassis design from its inception rather than attached once the design was completed. The minimum weight of the chassis was raised to , in order to accommodate the additional weight of the halo. The mandatory crash tests that each chassis must pass were adjusted to include a new static load test. In order to simulate a serious accident, a tyre was mounted to a hydraulic ram and fired at the crash structure; to pass the test, the chassis and the mounting points for the halo had to remain intact. In order to prevent teams from exploiting the halo for aerodynamic gain and potentially compromising its purpose, the FIA banned teams from developing their own devices and instead required them to purchase pre-fabricated models from approved suppliers. The technical regulations were updated mid-season to allow teams to mount rear view mirrors to the halo instead of affixing them to the bodywork. The changes were introduced in response to criticism that the halo obstructed the driver's view of the mirrors; however, halo-mounted designs were also criticised for allowing teams to exploit a loophole and introduce aerodynamic device, in the form of winglets above the mirrors, into an area where aerodynamic development was prohibited under the pretense of improving driver visibility, and the regulations were rewritten once more to ban the practice of mounting anything besides mirrors on the halo. The FIA made several changes to its trackside procedures to further accommodate the halo. The time limit on the extraction test – the test of a driver extracting himself from the survival cell of a crashed car – was extended to allow drivers more time to escape. The starting gantries at circuits were also lowered to improve the visibility of the starting lights. Tyre supplier Pirelli provided teams with two new tyre compounds in 2018. Each of the 2017 compounds was made softer, with a new "hypersoft" tyre becoming the softest of the nine and a new "superhard" tyre to be the hardest. The hypersoft compound was marked by a pink sidewall, while the superhard was orange. The hard compound, which previously used orange markings, was changed to ice blue. The hypersoft compound made its début at the Monaco Grand Prix. The rules dictating which tyres are available were relaxed to allow Pirelli to supply a wider range of compounds. Previously, Pirelli had to provide sequential compounds; for example, ultrasoft, supersoft and soft. In 2018, Pirelli was able to supply compounds with up to two steps of difference between them; for example, the ultrasoft, supersoft and hard tyres. Pirelli was required to manufacture an additional tyre compound that was not intended for competition. This tyre was to be supplied to teams for use in demonstration events to prevent teams from using demonstration events as informal – and illegal – testing. For the Spanish, French and British Grands Prix, Pirelli reduced the tread depth by 0.4mm across all compounds. This was to combat blistering due to new asphalt at these circuits for the 2018 season, which resulted in higher grip and reduced tyre wear. This was in response to the high level of blistering experienced by Mercedes at the re-surfaced Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in pre-season testing. The championship started in Melbourne with the Australian Grand Prix. The race concluded with a victory for Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel, who used a timely virtual safety car period – triggered by the stricken Haas of Romain Grosjean – to pass Mercedes's Lewis Hamilton, after which Vettel successfully defended his position until the finish. Kimi Räikkönen finished third in the other Ferrari ahead of Red Bull Racing's Daniel Ricciardo. McLaren ended the first race of their partnership with Renault with a fifth and ninth place for Alonso and Vandoorne respectively. Max Verstappen finished sixth after an early spin ahead of Nico Hülkenberg. Valtteri Bottas was eighth, having started fifteenth when he took a penalty for a gearbox change after a heavy crash in qualifying. Carlos Sainz Jr. completed the points-scoring positions in tenth. Charles Leclerc and Sergey Sirotkin both made their competitive débuts for Sauber and Williams respectively. Leclerc finished thirteenth while Sirotkin retired with a brake failure. Vettel then won from pole at the next round in Bahrain, holding off a late charge from Bottas to win by seven-tenths of a second. Hamilton finished third despite a 5 place grid penalty for a gearbox change and contact with Verstappen on the second lap. However, in China, Vettel's winning run was broken, with Ricciardo's 2 stop strategy helping the Australian to his sixth career victory, ahead of Bottas and Räikkönen. Ricciardo pitted for a new set of softs with 20 laps to go under safety car while the leaders stayed out on their used set of mediums, he then fought his way past both Ferraris and Mercedes to the lead. Hamilton took his first win of the year in Azerbaijan and with it, the lead in the Drivers' Championship. Räikkönen finished 2nd while Sergio Pérez claimed 3rd. With 10 laps to go, Bottas was leading (but still needing to make a pitstop) followed by Vettel and Hamilton. When the Red Bulls crashed they brought out the safety car. Bottas pitted under safety car and came out still leading but a puncture on the penultimate lap caused him to retire. Vettel, who was second behind him at the restart, locked up on cold tyres at turn 1 and went wide, dropping behind the remaining top three. In Spain, Hamilton had taken pole position. However, the first lap saw the safety car deployed when Haas's Romain Grosjean spun off at turn 3. He had spun back onto the track, but his spinning rear tyres caused a plume of smoke to bellow, which Pierre Gasly of Toro Rosso and Nico Hülkenberg of Renault got caught in and led to a 3-car retirement. In the end, Hamilton won comfortably in Spain, extending his lead to seventeen points. Bottas finished second while Verstappen finished third, his first podium of the season. Ricciardo took pole in Monaco and won the event despite developing an engine problem mid-race that left him severely down on power. Vettel finished second and Hamilton finished 3rd. Vettel closed his points deficit to Hamilton, while Ricciardo gained two spots in the Drivers' Championship to be third overall. In Canada, Vettel won from pole taking the world championship lead by one point from Hamilton. Bottas finished 2nd for the fourth time this season as Verstappen finished third, his qualifying position. The race result was counted back to the standings at the end of lap 68 (of 70) after the chequered flag was waved a lap early in error – although this did not impact the top 10 standings. The fastest lap of the race however, was affected. Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo had set two fastest laps on laps 69 and 70, but because the chequered flag mistakenly waved early and the results were taken from lap 68, the fastest lap went to Max Verstappen, who had set it back on lap 65. Hamilton took pole position and victory (his third of the season) in the returning French Grand Prix, taking the world championship lead back with 14 points, with Vettel finishing only 5th after a first corner crash with Bottas. Verstappen finished second, taking advantage of the Vettel–Bottas crash. Räikkönen finished third, passing Ricciardo in the closing laps of the race. In Austria, Bottas started the race on pole, followed by Hamilton and Räikkönen. However, in the race, both Mercedes suffered from technical problems and neither one was able to finish the race. Ricciardo also retired from the race. Verstappen won, followed by Räikkönen in 2nd and Vettel in 3rd. Haas took full advantage of the Mercedes and Ricciardo retirements and finished 4th (Grosjean) and 5th (Magnussen). Vettel re-took the lead of the championship by 1 point, following Hamilton's retirement. At his home race in Great Britain, Hamilton took pole on his final flying lap, with the two Ferraris of Vettel and Räikkönen both within a tenth of his time. However, he dropped down to 18th on the first lap after contact with Räikkönen sent him into a spin. Two safety car periods late in the race bunched the field up, one for a single car crash involving Ericsson and the other after contact between Grosjean and Sainz. Vettel passed Bottas for the lead with 5 laps to go to take his fourth win of the season and extend his championship lead. Hamilton recovered from his first lap crash to take second ahead of Räikkönen. In Germany, Vettel took his fifth pole of the season on home turf. He led the race until lap 52 when he made a mistake at turn 13 and crashed into the wall following a small rain shower, forcing him to retire. The incident triggered a safety car, which saw the leading cars of Bottas and Räikkönen pit for new tyres. Meanwhile, Hamilton took the lead of the race after starting 14th having made one less pit stop. After the safety car restart, Hamilton led Bottas home in a 1–2 for Mercedes on home soil with Räikkönen completing the podium for Ferrari. In Hungary, Hamilton started from pole after a soaking Q3 and won the race, with Vettel and Räikkönen completing the podium. The season resumed in Belgium, after the mid-season break. Hamilton started from pole but lost the lead to title rival Vettel on the first lap after a straight-line high-speed pass. Vettel eventually won the race with Hamilton second and Verstappen completing the podium with third. Also notable was a first-corner crash that saw a lock-up by Hülkenberg send Alonso over the top of Leclerc, while Räikkönen and Ricciardo had their own incident that eventually ended both drivers' races. The race was almost down to 18 cars due to the original Sahara Force India team having gone into administration earlier on, but a new Racing Point Force India team (whose owners includes Williams driver Lance Stroll's father Lawrence) was accepted to the grid in time for the race. Because technically it was a new entry into the championship of a new team, Force India had to start from scratch in the Constructors' Championship, but drivers Sergio Pérez and Esteban Ocon were allowed to keep the points they had earned in the Drivers' Championship. Racing Point Force India qualified 3rd and 4th on the grid during qualifying, and finished 5th and 6th in the race. In Italy, on Ferrari's home turf, Räikkönen took the fastest ever pole position in F1 history, ahead of teammate Vettel. There was a first lap incident between Hamilton and Vettel which left the latter struggling as he could only manage 4th. During a nail-biting race, Hamilton overtook Räikkönen on lap 45, thus winning his sixth race of the season, with Räikkönen finishing second and Bottas finishing third after a collision with Verstappen. Sergey Sirotkin scored his first and only point in the season by finishing 10th after the disqualification of Romain Grosjean – thus ensuring that every driver who entered the championship managed to score points, which happened for the first time in the series' history. In Singapore, a track where Mercedes traditionally struggled, Hamilton took pole position with the fastest lap which he described as "magical" and as one of the best laps he's ever done. Hamilton would go on to win the race with title rival Vettel finishing third behind Verstappen. The race also saw both Kevin Magnussen and Haas get their first fastest lap. In Russia, Bottas started from pole and was the virtual race leader for the first half of the race but obeyed team orders and allowed Hamilton to overtake him on lap 26. This allowed Hamilton to win the race followed by Bottas and Vettel. In Japan, Hamilton took the pole which he then converted into victory after leading every lap, he was followed by Bottas in second and Max Vertappen in third. This was Hamilton's 80th pole position and Bottas's 30th podium finish. At the United States Grand Prix Hamilton could win the world championship if he outscored Vettel by 8 points or more. It was Hamilton who took pole with Räikkönen starting second. Vettel actually qualified second but had to start fifth after being penalised for not slowing enough during a red flag period in first practice. The race was be won by Räikkönen, his first win in 114 grand prix which was a new record. Verstappen finish second and Hamilton third, as Vettel finished fourth. Hamilton only outscored Vettel by three points meaning he had failed to wrap up the title on his first attempt. In Mexico, Vettel needed to win the Grand Prix and Hamilton 8th or lower for the Championship to remain in contention. Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo secured his latest pole position, but would eventually retire from the Grand Prix with an engine failure, his eighth failure to finish during the season. His teammate, Max Verstappen won by 17.3 seconds while Vettel came in second place. Hamilton finished in 4th place, which was enough to secure his fifth Drivers' Championship. In Brazil, the penultimate race of the season, Ferrari needed to outscore Mercedes by at least 13 points to remain in contention for the Constructors' Championship. Hamilton started from pole but lost the lead to Max Verstappen on lap 40 as Mercedes had to turn his engine down to prevent failure. Verstappen then looked set to win the race, but was spun around on lap 44 by the Force India of Esteban Ocon who was attempting to unlap himself (an incident which led to a shoving match during driver weight checks after the race). Verstappen's spin allowed Hamilton to retake the lead and subsequently win the race. Räikkönen finished third for Ferrari while his teammate Vettel finished sixth after a sensor problem and a failed gamble on tyre strategy compromised his race. This, combined with Hamilton's win and Bottas's fifth-place finish, allowed Mercedes to clinch their fifth successive Constructors' Championship. In Abu Dhabi, the final race of the season, the safety car was brought out on the first lap when Renault's Nico Hülkenberg barrel-rolled into the barricade at turn 9 after accidentally colliding with Grosjean. In his final race for Ferrari, Raikkonen retired on lap 7 when his engine failed, triggering the virtual safety car. In the end, Hamilton won with Vettel finishing second, and the two Red Bulls third and fourth. After the race, Hamilton and Vettel flanked the retiring Fernando Alonso on the post-race lap, and all three drivers performed synchronized "donuts" on the finish straight. Points are awarded to the top ten classified drivers in every race, using the following system: In order for full points to be awarded, the race winner must complete at least 75% of the scheduled race distance. Half points are awarded if the race winner completes less than 75% of the race distance provided that at least two laps are completed. In the event of a tie at the conclusion of the championship, a count-back system is used as a tie-breaker, with a driver's/constructor's best result used to decide the standings. Notes: – Driver did not finish the Grand Prix, but was classified as he completed more than 90% of the race distance. Notes: – Driver did not finish the Grand Prix, but was classified as he completed more than 90% of the race distance.

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"Anything You Can Do" is a song composed by Irving Berlin for the 1946 Broadway musical Annie Get Your Gun. The song is a duet, with one male singer and one female singer attempting to outdo each other in increasingly complex tasks. In the musical, the song sets the scene for the climactic sharpshooting contest between Annie Oakley and Frank Butler. Its most memorable lines are, "Anything you can do I can do better; I can do anything better than you." The song was first performed in Annie Get Your Gun by Ethel Merman and Ray Middleton. During the song, they argue playfully about who can, for example, sing softer, sing higher, sing sweeter, and hold a note for longer, and boast of their abilities and accomplishments, such as opening safes and living on bread and cheese, although Annie always seems to counter Frank's argument. Neither can "bake a pie," though. Ethel Merman and Ray Middleton from original cast recording (1946)., Bing Crosby, Dick Haymes and The Andrews Sisters - recorded for Decca Records on March 19, 1947., Groucho Marx and his daughter Melinda Marx (a child at the time) in home movie footage used for select TV specials., Ethel Merman and Howard Keel (1950), Betty Hutton and Howard Keel in the 1950 film version of the musical, Mary Martin and John Raitt on the 1957 National Tour recording, Doris Day and Robert Goulet for the Columbia Records album Annie Get Your Gun (1963), Ethel Merman and Bruce Yarnell in the 1966 revival recording., Dusty Springfield and Freddie Paris on Bandstand (1967)., Robert Morse and an office computer in 1968 TV series That's Life, episode S1E11 "Bobby's Pink Slip", Barbara Walters and Howard Cosell on Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell in 1975 debating who interviews people better., Ethel Merman and Miss Piggy (1976) in The Muppet Show, episode 1.22, In 1963, Heidi Brühl and Robert Trehy performed a German version in the stage version of this musical at the Theater des Westens in Berlin., In 1977, Tina Arena and John Bowles recorded a version for their album Tiny Tina and Little John., In 1990, Kidsongs released , which contained a version of this song, where they play various arcade games at the Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement park., Fran Drescher and Madeline Zima (1994) in The Nanny, episode S1E22 "I Don't Remember Mama", Michael Jordan and Mia Hamm, Gatorade "Michael vs. Mia" commercial (1997), performed by Sophia Ramos, Bernadette Peters and Tom Wopat in the 1999 Broadway revival version of the musical, Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso in a 2007 Mercedes-Benz commercial with Mika Häkkinen performing the last line., Blaire Elbert and Madeline Powell Cactus Cuties, performed at Cactus Theatere in Texas in 2008., American rapper J. Cole used the "Anything you can do" line in his 2010 single "Who Dat"., Lindsay Pearce sang a mashup of "Anything Goes"/"Anything You Can Do" in the Glee 2011 third-season premiere, "The Purple Piano Project"., Dirty Rice sampled the opening lines of the song in the 116 Clique song "Envy", from the 2011 album Man Up by the 116 Clique., Julianne Hough and Derek Hough on their Move Live on Tour in 2014., Dame Shirley Bassey performed this song with the group Blake on the 2016 TV Special titled David Walliams Celebrates Dame Shirley Bassey., Barbra Streisand and Melissa McCarthy perform the duet as part of Streisand's 2016 album , with altered lyrics., and MMD on a popular video on the website YouTube., AP-5 and Chopper on the Star Wars Rebels 2017 episode "Double Agent Droid.", Darci Lynne and Terry Fator with their two puppets, Petunia and Winston on the finale of season 12 of America's Got Talent., Sophida and Jordan performed this song as a jazz dance on the ABC show Dancing With The Stars Teens for their mentor Gleb Savchenko Ethel Merman and Neilson Taylor (1973), Judy Garland and Howard Keel (Pre-Production of film Annie Get Your Gun), The Majors, Von Trapp Children (song is on their Live in Concert DVD) Peter Tosh: "I'm the Toughest", Neil Patrick Harris and Hugh Jackman: Live performance, 2011 Tony Awards "Top Hat, White Tie and Tails" is a popular song written by Irving Berlin for the 1935 film Top Hat, where it was introduced by Fred Astaire. The song title refers to the formal wear required on a party invitation: top hat, white tie, and a tailcoat. Ella Fitzgerald – Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Irving Berlin Songbook (1958), Cherry Poppin' Daddies – The Boop-A-Doo (2016) The popular Norwegian meteorologist Kristian Trægde sang the song (and step- danced to it) on the TV show Skjemtegauken, in 1968. In 1977 ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev sang the song on The Muppet Show, complete with tap dancing. In another episode, Gonzo tap danced to the song as well – except in a vat of oatmeal. In Episode 1 of the ninth season of M*A*S*H, "The Best of Enemies", the character Hawykeye is singing Tophat, White Tie, and Tails in the first scene. In a 1982 episode of Three's Company, Jack dances to the song while drunk at a party, and knocks things over as he does so. The song is performed in 1989's Secret Policeman's Third Ball by comedian/satirist Willie Rushton, accompanied by Richard Vranch on piano, with Rushton dressing according to the lyrics of the song, noting that the lyrics neglect to mention the donning of trousers. In the 1995 film Batman Forever, the character Edward Nigma sings a brief parody of "Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails" using the lyrics "I'm, sucking up your I.Q., vacuuming your cortex, feeding off your brain." The song makes an appearance in the 2000 film Billy Elliot. "Anything You Can Do" is the seventh episode of the ABC television series, Desperate Housewives. The episode was the seventh episode for the show's first season. The episode was written by John Pardee and Joey Murphy and was directed by Larry Shaw. It originally aired on Sunday, November 21, 2004. Lynette continues to use the twins' ADD medication to prepare a dinner party for Tom's colleagues. After Andrew gets in trouble at school, Bree and Rex add to the mix by announcing that they will divorce. Susan and Mike's first date is interrupted by Mike's friend Kendra who asks him how he is doing with his mission. Susan becomes very suspicious and is surprised when the relationship turns out to be platonic. Gabrielle tries to break up Danielle and John when she becomes very selfish. Gabrielle tries to get Danielle out of the way by sponsoring her for model school but Bree refuses. Gabrielle invites John over, while Juanita and Carlos are away, for break-up sex. When Rex begins to shower them with gifts, Bree decides to make Andrew and Danielle refuse their gifts or they will not be allowed back home. Danielle gives in but Andrew drives away in his car. After getting rejected by his father, Andrew returns home drunk and accidentally runs over Juanita Solis, who had just caught Gabrielle and John in bed, having visited the Alpine Garden Society. The episode title Anything You Can Do comes from the musical, Annie Get Your Gun. (See "Anything You Can Do (song)") Finnish: Kilpailijat (The Competitors), French: Chaque victoire a un prix (Every victory has a price), German: Gewinner und Verlierer (Winners and Losers), Hungarian: Bármi megeshet! (Anything can happen), Italian Competizione (Competition), Spanish Lo que puedas hacer (Whatever you can do)

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"Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town" is a Christmas song, written by J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie and was first sung on Eddie Cantor's radio show in November 1934. It became an instant hit with orders for 500,000 copies of sheet music and more than 30,000 records sold within 24 hours. The version for Bluebird Records by George Hall and His Orchestra (vocal by Sonny Schuyler) was very popular in 1934 and reached the various charts of the day. The song has been recorded by over 200 artists, including Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters, The Crystals, Mariah Carey, Neil Diamond, Bruce Springsteen, Frank Sinatra, Chris Isaak, The Temptations, Michael Bublé and The Jackson 5. Haven Gillespie's lyrics begin "You better watch out, better not cry / You better not pout, I'm telling you why / Santa Claus is coming to town". Cantor's original performance, broadcast at the height of the Great Depression, included verses not in the standard version of the song, encouraging listeners to be charitable and help the less fortunate at Christmas. The earliest known recorded version of the song was by banjoist Harry Reser and his band on October 24, 1934 (Decca 264A) featuring Tom Stacks on vocal, the version shown in the Variety charts of December 1934. The song was a sheet music hit, reaching number 1. The song was also recorded for Victor Records (catalog No. 25145A) on September 26, 1935 by Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra with vocals by Cliff Weston and Edythe Wright. The song is a traditional Christmas standard and has been covered by numerous recording artists. Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters reached the Billboard charts briefly in 1947 with it. In 1962, the Four Seasons version charted at number 23 on Billboard. In 1963, producer Phil Spector included a version of the song on his rock album A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector performed by The Crystals. In 1970, Rankin-Bass produced Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town, an hour-long animated TV film based on the song, with Fred Astaire narrating the origin of Santa Claus. The same year, The Jackson 5 included the song on their best- selling album Jackson 5 Christmas Album. In 1971, The Partridge Family included the song on A Partridge Family Christmas Card. A 1972 live recording by Joseph Spence has been described as "a performance for the ages" by music critic Peter Margasak. The Carpenters released the song as a single in 1974. A rock version by Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band was recorded live at C. W. Post College in Brookville, New York on December 12, 1975. This live version borrows the chorus refrain from the 1963 version by The Crystals. This version was eventually released first in 1982 as part of the Sesame Street compilation album In Harmony 2, and again in 1985 as a B-side to "My Hometown", a single from the Born in the U.S.A. album. Springsteen's rendition of the song has received radio airplay perennially at Christmastime for years; it appeared on Billboard magazine's Hot Singles Recurrents chart each year from 2002 to 2009 due to seasonal air play. Live performances of the song often saw the band encouraging the audience to sing some of the lyrics with—or in place of—the band's vocalists (usually the line "you'd better be good for goodness sake", and occasionally the key line "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town" as well). Sometimes, concert crowds would sing along with the entire song, and the band would do nothing to dissuade those audiences from doing so. This version remains a Springsteen concert favorite during the months of November and December, and the band is among the few that keep it in their roster of songs during the holidays. Other well-known versions of this song include Mariah Carey from the album Merry Christmas (1994) and the Pointer Sisters version off the album A Very Special Christmas, also borrowing from the Crystal's arrangement. Andy Williams performed the song on his album I Still Believe in Santa Claus, which was released on 1 October 1990. Luis Miguel recorded the song in Spanish as "Santa Claus Llegó a La Ciudad" for his Christmas album Navidades (2006). His version of the song peaked at number 26 on the Billboard Latin Pop Songs chart. The song has also been recorded in A capella versions. First by Straight No Chaser on their 2008 album Holiday Spirits, and later by Pentatonix on their 2014 album That's Christmas to Me. In October 2015, EMI Music Publishing lost the rights to J. Fred Coot's stake in the song. EMI had earned the rights to the song via Leo Feist's publishing company in the 1980s. In December 2016, DNCE covered it with many pop artists who were popular at the time. In September 2017, the family of Haven Gillespie sued Memory Lane Music Group for $700,000, asking for an 85% stake in "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town". Canadian singer Michael Bublé's version was released on October 24, 2011, as the second track on his Christmas album. His version has gained a lot of success, being the most-streamed cover of the song on Spotify, with over 104 million streams, as of January 23, 2019. (as sung by Burl Ives), (original lyrics) Jackson 5 Christmas Album is the first Christmas studio album (and fourth overall) by Motown family quintet the Jackson 5, released in October 1970. Included on the Christmas Album is the Jackson 5's hit single version of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town". The Jackson 5's versions of "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" and "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" remain frequent radio requests during the Christmas season. The album spent all four weeks at the number one position on Billboard magazine's special Christmas Albums chart that the magazine published in December 1970, making it the best-selling Christmas album of that year and also year 1972. This album was a top seller and would have charted high on the Billboard 200, but from 1963 to 1973, holiday albums were not allowed to chart. It has sold over 3.5 million copies worldwide. The album has also been praised by critics. In the US, the album was released on CD in 1986. In 2003, Universal Motown re-released the album as part of their 20th Century Masters - The Christmas Collection series. This version of the album was remastered and included the Michael Jackson solo song "Little Christmas Tree" as a bonus track (from A Motown Christmas). In 2009, the album was once again re-released as Ultimate Christmas Collection with Christmas greetings from each of the band members, remixes, and a medley of songs from the album. The release of Jackson 5 Christmas Album in October 1970 marked the end of a successful year for the band. Three albums were released by the group, with ABC in May and Third Album in September. The Jacksons recreated a similar feat the following year, with Maybe Tomorrow hitting record stores in April, the Goin' Back to Indiana soundtrack in September, and a greatest hits collection in December. In addition, Michael Jackson's solo debut single "Got to Be There", also hit the music stands in October, with the complete album of the same name coming out in January 1972. Jackson 5 Christmas Album has been hailed by many as one of the best holiday albums. AllMusic's Lindsay Planer rated Jackson 5 Christmas Album four and a half out of five stars. She stated that "they carefully crafted and significantly modernized familiar seasonal selections." She also praised all of the tracks. Joshua Alston of The A.V. Club also praised the album and said "the original songs are among its finest moments". He also said "Jackson 5 Christmas is tough to compete with because it isn't—as Christmas records so often are—an inessential brand extension or bait for discography completists. It's a potent distillation of the spirit of Christmas, an album joyful enough to make me feel like it's the most wonderful time of the year rather than merely telling me so." Rolling Stone also praised the album, calling it a "gem". Source: Technical Hal Davis – producer, James Anthony Carmichael, Gene Page – arrangements, Adam Abrams – production coordinator, Harry Weinger – supervisor, Vartan – art direction, Alana Coghlan, Katherine Marking – design Santa Claus Lane is a holiday album by American singer Hilary Duff. It was released in the United States on October 15, 2002 by Buena Vista Records. The holiday album contains covers of Christmas songs, including "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town", "Jingle Bell Rock" and "Last Christmas". The album also features guest appearances from Christina Milian, Lil' Romeo and Duff's sister Haylie. Santa Claus Lane peaked at number two on US Billboard Top Heatseekers and Top Kid Audio charts and peaked at number 154 on the US Billboard 200. It has been certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipping 500,000 copies to retailers. In Japan in peaked at number 134 on the Oricon albums chart in 2004. Santa Claus Lane received mixed reviews by music critics, who considered the album to not be a genuine Christmas album despite its promotion as such. The title song was featured in the 2002 film The Santa Clause 2. In 2001, Duff gained fame through her starring role in the Disney Channel series Lizzie McGuire. She became interested in pursuing a music career after attending a Radio Disney concert in 2001. "There were all these pop acts backstage at the concert," Duff explained. "They were all getting ready backstage and warming up, and I was like, 'I want to do this so bad.'" One day, Duff met Andre Recke, who would soon become her manager. She told him of her interest in becoming a singer and briefly performed for him. This prompted him to tell her, "I want to work with you." Recke said of his encounter with Duff, "When I met Hilary, I knew she had something special. Sometimes you just have that feeling, that, 'Wow, she's a star.'" Duff's music career began with two soundtrack appearances. In 2002, she appeared on the soundtrack to Lizzie McGuire, performing a cover of Brooke McClymont's "I Can't Wait", and the Walt Disney Records compilation DisneyMania, performing a cover of "The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room". Recke noted of Duff's DisneyMania appearance, "That was the first test to see how her fans would react to her as a singer and not just an actress". Duff stated that she felt Christmas came early for her when she recorded Santa Claus Lane. She continued, "I really loved singing these songs. It was a lot of hard work, but also big fun!" "I Heard Santa on the Radio" and "Tell Me a Story" are duets with Christina Milian and Lil' Romeo, respectively, and "Same Old Christmas" features Duff's sister Haylie. Santa Claus Lane features production from Matthew Gerrard, Chris Hamm, Alain Bertoni, Charlie Midnight and Chico Bennett; on the 2003 reissue, the bonus track "What Christmas Should Be" is produced by Charlton Pettus. This song was featured on the end credits of her movie Cheaper by the Dozen. In a 2013 interview with the website Idolator, Duff expressed her dislike for "Tell Me a Story", saying that she "honestly hate[s] that record — [and she has] blocked it out of [her] memory". Duff also remarked that she "[didn't] even remember" the song. Santa Claus Lane was released in the United States on October 15, 2002 by Walt Disney Records. It was reissued on October 14 of the following year with the bonus track "What Christmas Should Be", and released by Buena Vista Records. Two singles were released from the album simultaneously on December 2, 2002. "Santa Claus Lane" was sent to pop radio stations, while "Tell Me a Story" was sent to rhythmic and urban radio stations. A music video for "Santa Claus Lane", featuring Duff performing on Disney's Movie Surfers to promote the film The Santa Clause 2, received airplay on Disney Channel. Duff filmed a music video for "Tell Me a Story" with Lil' Romeo which also received heavy rotation on Disney Channel. Santa Claus Lane received mixed reviews by music critics. An AllMusic editor gave the album three out of five stars. Jaan Uhelszki, in an editorial review for Amazon.com, gave Santa Claus Lane a negative review. She wrote the album, consisting mostly of Christmas covers, "add[s] little to the holiday music canon". She also felt that it only "perks up" on songs that feature guest musicians. Kelefa Sanneh considered for The New York Times it to be a "concept album" and it was "loosely inspired by Saint Nicholas, the fourth-century bishop of Myra." Christopher Thelen gave a more positive review to the album. While writing for the Daily Vault, Thelen gave a B- grade and wrote it "does show there is a voice behind the pretty young face, even if this is a strange place to start one's recording career." Santa Claus Lane debuted at number 154 on the Billboard 200, and also reached the second position of both the Top Heatseekers and Top Kid Albums charts. On December 9, 2003, the album was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America for 500,000 shipments to retailers. The album reached the 134th position of the Japanese Albums Chart in 2004. As of July 27, 2014, the album had sold 477,000 copies in the United States. Notes signifies a co-producer Credits for Santa Claus Lane adapted from AllMusic. Deborah Araya – Stylist, Chico Bennett – Producer, Alain Bertoni – Producer, Savina Ciaramella – A&R;, J. Fred Coots – Composer, Matthew Gerrard – Producer, Haven Gillespie – Composer, Chris Hamm – Producer Martin Häusler – Design, Jay Landers – Executive producer, Gavin Lurssen – Mastering, Dani Markman – Artist coordination, Charlie Midnight – Producer, Andre Recke – Executive producer, Denny Weston, Jr. – Producer

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The stone or stone weight (abbreviation: st.) is an English and imperial unit of mass now equal to 14 pounds (6.35029318 kg). England and other Germanic- speaking countries of northern Europe formerly used various standardised "stones" for trade, with their values ranging from about 5 to 40 local pounds (roughly 3 to 15 kg) depending on the location and objects weighed. The United Kingdom's imperial system adopted the wool stone of 14 pounds in 1835. With the advent of metrication, Europe's various "stones" were superseded by or adapted to the kilogram from the mid-19th century on. The stone continues in customary use in Britain and Ireland for body weight, but was prohibited for commercial use in the United Kingdom by the Weights and Measures Act of 1985. The name "stone" derives from the use of stones for weights, a practice that dates back into antiquity. The Biblical law against the carrying of "diverse weights, a large and a small" is more literally translated as "you shall not carry a stone and a stone (), a large and a small". There was no standardised "stone" in the ancient Jewish world, but in Roman times stone weights were crafted to multiples of the Roman pound. Such weights varied in quality: the Yale Medical Library holds 10 and 50-pound examples of polished serpentine, while a 40-pound example at the Eschborn Museum is made of sandstone. The English stone under law varied by commodity and in practice varied according to local standards. The Assize of Weights and Measures, a statute of uncertain date from , describes stones of 5 merchants' pounds used for glass; stones of 8 lb. used for beeswax, sugar, pepper, alum, cumin, almonds, cinnamon, and nutmegs; stones of 12 lb. used for lead; and the of lb. used for wool. In 1350 Edward III issued a new statute defining the stone weight, to be used for wool and "other Merchandizes", at 14 pounds, reaffirmed by Henry VII in 1495. In England, merchants traditionally sold potatoes in half- stone increments of 7 pounds. Live animals were weighed in stones of 14 lb; but, once slaughtered, their carcasses were weighed in stones of 8 lb. Thus, if the animal's carcass accounted for of the animal's weight, the butcher could return the dressed carcasses to the animal's owner stone for stone, keeping the offal, blood and hide as his due for slaughtering and dressing the animal. Smithfield market continued to use the 8 lb stone for meat until shortly before the Second World War. The Oxford English Dictionary also lists: The Scottish stone was equal to 16 Scottish pounds (17 lb 8 oz avoirdupois or 7.936 kg). In 1661, the Royal Commission of Scotland recommended that the Troy stone be used as a standard of weight and that it be kept in the custody of the burgh of Lanark. The tron (or local) stone of Edinburgh, also standardised in 1661, was 16 tron pounds (22 lb 1 oz avoirdupois or 9.996 kg). In 1789 an encyclopedic enumeration of measurements was printed for the use of "his Majesty's Sheriffs and Stewards Depute, and Justices of Peace, ... and to the Magistrates of the Royal Boroughs of Scotland" and provided a county-by-county and commodity-by-commodity breakdown of values and conversions for the stone and other measures. The Scots stone ceased to be used for trade when the Act of 1824 established a uniform system of measure across the whole of the United Kingdom, which at that time included all of Ireland. Before the early 19th century, as in England, the stone varied both with locality and with commodity. For example, the Belfast stone for measuring flax equaled 16.75 avoirdupois pounds. The most usual value was 14 pounds. Among the oddities related to the use of the stone was the practice in County Clare of a stone of potatoes being 16 lb in the summer and 18 lb in the winter. The 1772 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica defined the stone:STONE also denotes a certain quantity or weight of some commodities. A stone of beef, in London, is the quantity of eight pounds; in Hertfordshire, twelve pounds; in Scotland sixteen pounds. The Weights and Measures Act of 1824, which applied to all of the United Kingdom, consolidated the weights and measures legislation of several centuries into a single document. It revoked the provision that bales of wool should be made up of 20 stones, each of 14 pounds, but made no provision for the continued use of the stone. Ten years later, a stone still varied from 5 pounds (glass) to 8 pounds (meat and fish) to 14 pounds (wool and "horseman's weight"). However, the Act of 1835 permitted using a stone of 14 pounds for trade but other values remained in use. James Britten, in 1880 for example, catalogued a number of different values of the stone in various British towns and cities, ranging from 4 lb to 26 lb. The value of the stone and associated units of measure that were legalised for purposes of trade were clarified by the Weights and Measures Act 1835 as follows: In 1965 the Federation of British Industry informed the British Government that its members favoured adopting the metric system. The Board of Trade, on behalf of the Government, agreed to support a ten-year metrication programme. There would be minimal legislation, as the programme was to be voluntary and costs were to be borne where they fell. Under the guidance of the Metrication Board, the agricultural product markets achieved a voluntary switchover by 1976. The stone was not included in the Directive 80/181/EEC as a unit of measure that could be used within the EEC for "economic, public health, public safety or administrative purposes", though its use as a "supplementary unit" was permitted. The scope of the directive was extended to include all aspects of the EU internal market from 1 January 2010. With the adoption of metric units by the agricultural sector, the stone was, in practice, no longer used for trade; and, in the Weights and Measures Act 1985, passed in compliance with EU directive 80/181/EEC, the stone was removed from the list of units permitted for trade in the United Kingdom. In 1983, in response to the same directive, similar legislation was passed in Ireland. The Act repealed earlier acts that defined the stone as a unit of measure for trade. (British law had previously been silent regarding other uses of the stone.) The stone remains widely used in the UK and Ireland for human body weight: in those countries people may commonly be said to weigh, e.g., "11 stone 4" (11 stones and 4 pounds), rather than "72 kilograms" as in many other countries, or "158 pounds", the conventional way of expressing the same weight in the US. The correct plural form of stone in this context is stone (as in, "11 stone" or "12 stone 6 pounds"); in other contexts, the correct plural is stones (as in, "Please enter your weight in stones and pounds"). In Australia and New Zealand, metrication has almost entirely displaced stones and pounds since the 1970s. In many sports in both Britain and Ireland, such as professional boxing, wrestling, and horse racing, the stone is used to express body weights. The use of the stone in the British Empire was varied. In Canada for example, it never had a legal status. Shortly after the United States declared independence, Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State, presented a report on weights and measures to the U.S. House of Representatives. Even though all the weights and measures in use in the United States at the time were derived from English weights and measures, his report made no mention of the stone being used. He did, however, propose a decimal system of weights in which his "[decimal] pound" would have been and the "[decimal] stone" would have been . Before the advent of metrication, units called "stone" (German: Stein; Dutch: steen; Polish: kamień) were used in many North-Western European countries. Its value, usually between 3 and 10 kg, varied from city to city and sometimes from commodity to commodity. The number of local "pounds" in a stone also varied from city to city. During the early 19th century, states such as the Netherlands (including Belgium) and the South Western German states, which had redefined their system of measures using the kilogramme des Archives as a reference for weight (mass), also redefined their stone to align it with the kilogram. This table shows a selection of stones from various North European Continental cities: Although the advent of the metric system spelt the demise of the stone as a unit of measure, the stone was used in some early discussions and implementations of the metric system. In his Philosophical essay written in 1668, John Wilkins proposed a system of measure whose unit of length, the standard, was approximately one metre and whose unit of mass was the mass of a cubic standard of rainwater (which would have been approximately 1,000 kg). He proposed that one tenth of this mass (100 kg) should be called a stone. In 1791, a few years before the French Revolutionary Government agreed on the metre as the basis of the metric system, Thomas Jefferson, in a report to Congress proposed that the United States should adopt a decimal currency system (which was adopted) and a decimal-based system of measure (which was not adopted). Jefferson's proposal for units of measure included a "decimal pound" equal to in the customary system and a "decimal stone" of 10 such decimal pounds or of the customary units. Neither Wilkins' nor Jefferson's proposals were adopted; but, in the Netherlands, where the metric system was adopted in 1817, the pond (pound) was set equal to a kilogram, and the steen (stone), which had previously been 8 Amsterdam pond (3.953 kg), was redefined as being 3 kg. In modern colloquial Dutch, a pond is used as an alternative for 500 grams or half a kilogram, while the ons is used for a weight of 100 grams, being 1/5 pond. English, imperial, and German units of measurement, Sack, a unit of wool equal to 28 stone UK: The Units of Measurement Regulations 1995 The avoirdupois system (; abbreviated avdp) is a measurement system of weights which uses pounds and ounces as units. It was first commonly used in the 13th century and was updated in 1959. In 1959, by international agreement, the definitions of the pound and ounce became standardized in countries which use the pound as a unit of mass. The International Avoirdupois Pound was then created. It is the everyday system of weights used in the United States. It is still used, in varying degrees, in everyday life in the United Kingdom, Canada, and some other former British colonies, despite their official adoption of the metric system. The avoirdupois weight system's general attributes were originally developed for the international wool trade in the Late Middle Ages, when trade was in recovery. It was historically based on a physical standardized pound or "prototype weight" that could be divided into 16 ounces. There were a number of competing measures of mass, and the fact that the avoirdupois pound had three even numbers as divisors (half and half and half again) may have been a cause of much of its popularity, so that the system won out over systems with 12 or 10 or 15 subdivisions. The use of this unofficial system gradually stabilized and evolved, with only slight changes in the reference standard or in the prototype's actual mass. Over time, the desire not to use too many different systems of measurement allowed the establishment of "value relationships", with other commodities metered and sold by weight measurements such as bulk goods (grains, ores, flax) and smelted metals; so the avoirdupois system gradually became an accepted standard through much of Europe. In England, Henry VII authorized its use as a standard, and Queen Elizabeth I acted three times to enforce a common standard, thus establishing what became the Imperial system of weights and measures. Late in the 19th century various governments acted to redefine their base standards on a scientific basis and establish ratio-metric equations to SI metric system standards. They did not always pick the same equivalencies, though the pound remained very similar; these independent legal actions led to small differences in certain quantities, such as the American and Imperial pounds. An alternative system of mass, the troy system, is generally used for precious materials. The modern definition of the avoirdupois pound (1 lb) is exactly kilograms. is from Anglo-Norman French (later avoir du pois), literally "goods of weight" (Old French , as verb meaning "to have" and as noun meaning "property, goods", comes from the Latin , "to have, to hold, to possess something"; = "from"/"of", cf. Latin; = "weight", from Latin ). This term originally referred to a class of merchandise: , "goods of weight", things that were sold in bulk and were weighed on large steelyards or balances. Only later did the term become identified with a particular system of units used to weigh such merchandise. Inconsistent orthography throughout history has left many variants of the term, such as and . (The Norman became the Parisian . In the 17th century de was replaced with du.) The rise in use of the measurement system corresponds to the regrowth of trade during the High Middle Ages after the early crusades, when Europe experienced a growth in towns, turned from the chaos of warlordism to long-distance trade, and began annual fairs, tournaments and commerce, by land and sea. There are two major hypotheses regarding the origins of the avoirdupois system. The older hypothesis is that it originated in France. A newer hypothesis is that it is based on the weight system of Florence. The avoirdupois weight system is thought to have come into use in England around 1300. It was originally used for weighing wool. In the early 14th century several other specialized weight systems were used, including the weight system of the Hanseatic League with a 16-ounce pound of grains and an 8-ounce mark. However, the main weight system, used for coinage and for everyday use, was based on the 12-ounce tower pound of grains. From the 14th century until the late 16th century, the systems basis, the avoirdupois pound, the prototype for today's international pound was also known as the wool pound or the avoirdupois wool pound. The earliest known version of the avoirdupois weight system had the following units: a pound of grains, a stone of 14 pounds, a woolsack of 26 stone, an ounce of pound, and finally, the ounce was divided into 16 "parts". The earliest known occurrence of the word "avoirdupois" (or some variant thereof) in England is from a document entitled Tractatus de Ponderibus et Mensuris ("Treatise on Weights and Measures"). This document is listed in early statute books under the heading 31 Edward I dated 2 February 1303. More recent statute books list it among statutes of uncertain date. Scholars nowadays believe that it was probably written between 1266 and 1303. Initially a royal memorandum, it eventually took on the force of law and was recognized as a statute by King Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I. It was repealed by the Weights and Measures Act 1824. In the Tractatus, the word "avoirdupois" refers not to a weight system, but to a class of goods, specifically heavy goods sold by weight, as opposed to goods sold by volume, count, or some other method. Since it is written in Anglo-Norman French, this document is not the first occurrence of the word in the English language. Three major developments occurred during the reign of Edward III (r. 1327-77). First, a statute known as 14 Edward III. st. 1. Cap. 12 (1340) "Bushels and Weights shall be made and sent into every County." The second major development is the statute 25 Edward III. st. 5. Cap. 9. (1350) "The Auncel Weight shall be put out, and Weighing shall be by equal Balance." The third development is a set of 14th-century bronze weights at the Westgate Museum in Winchester, England. The weights are in denominations of 7 pounds (corresponding to a unit known as the clip or wool-clip), 14 pounds (stone), 56 pounds (4 stone) and 91 pounds ( sack or woolsack). The 91-pound weight is thought to have been commissioned by Edward III in conjunction with the statute of 1350, while the other weights are thought to have been commissioned in conjunction with the statutes of 1340. The 56-pound weight was used as a reference standard as late as 1588. A statute of Henry VIII (24 Henry VIII. Cap. 3) made avoirdupois weights mandatory. In 1588 Queen Elizabeth increased the weight of the avoirdupois pound to grains and added the troy grain to the avoirdupois weight system. Prior to 1588, the "part" () was the smallest unit in the avoirdupois weight system. In the 18th century, the "part" was renamed "drachm". These are the units in their original Anglo-Norman French forms: In the United Kingdom, 14 avoirdupois pounds equals one stone. The quarter, hundredweight, and ton equal respectively, 28 lb, 112 lb, and 2,240 lb in order for masses to be easily converted between them and stones. The following are the units in the British or imperial version of the avoirdupois system: Note: The plural form of the unit stone is either stone or stones, but stone is most frequently used. The 13 British colonies in North America used the avoirdupois system, but continued to use the British system as it was, without the evolution that was occurring in Britain in the use of the stone unit. In 1824 there was landmark new weights and measures legislation in the United Kingdom that the United States did not adopt. In the United States, quarters, hundredweights, and tons remain defined as 25, 100, and respectively. The quarter is now virtually unused, as is the hundredweight outside of agriculture and commodities. If disambiguation is required, then they are referred to as the smaller "short" units in the United States, as opposed to the larger British "long" units. Grains are used worldwide for measuring gunpowder and smokeless powder charges. Historically, the dram has also been used worldwide for measuring gunpowder charges, particularly for shotguns and large black-powder rifles. Apothecaries' system, Units of measurement in France, Imperial units, Troy weight, United States customary units, Weighing scales A bronze Edward III standard weight of 14lb (1327-1377), A bronze Edward III standard weight of 91lb (1/4 sack) (1327-1377) The hundredweight (abbreviation: cwt), formerly also known as the centum weight or quintal, is an English, imperial, and American unit of weight or mass of various values. Its value differs between the American and imperial systems. The two values are distinguished in American English as the "short" and "long" hundredweight and in British English as the "cental" and the "imperial hundredweight". The short hundredweight or cental of is used in the United States., The long or imperial hundredweight of 8 stone or is defined in the imperial system. Under both conventions, there are 20 hundredweight in a ton, producing a "short ton" of 2,000 pounds and a "long ton" of 2,240 pounds. The hundredweight has had many values. In England in around 1300, different "hundreds" (centum in Medieval Latin) were defined. The Weights and Measures Act 1835 formally established the present imperial hundredweight of 112 lb. The United States and Canada came to use the term "hundredweight" to refer to a unit of 100 lb. This measure was specifically banned from British use—upon risk of being sued for fraud—by the Weights and Measures Act 1824 but, in 1879, the measure was legalized under the name "cental" in response to legislative pressure from British merchants importing wheat and tobacco from the United States. The short hundredweight is commonly used in the US in the sale of livestock and some cereal grains and oilseeds, paper, and concrete additives and on some commodities in futures exchanges. A few decades ago, commodities weighed in terms of long hundredweight included cattle, cattle fodder, fertilizers, coal, some industrial chemicals, other industrial materials, and so on. However, since increasing metrication in most English-speaking countries, it is now less used. Church bell ringers use the unit commonly, although church bell manufacturers are increasingly moving over to the metric system. Older blacksmiths' anvils are often stamped with a three-digit number indicating their total weight in hundredweight, quarter-hundredweight (28 lb, abbreviated qr), and pounds. Thus, an anvil stamped "1.1.8" will weigh 148 lb (112 lb + 28 lb + 8 lb). The Imperial hundredweight is used as a measure of vehicle weight in the Bailiwick of Guernsey, although it was redefined as exactly 50.8 kg in 1991. Avoirdupois system, The short and long hundred of 100 and 120, respectively, Hundred, the medieval unit of measure

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The Dukes of Hazzard is an American action-comedy television series that was aired on CBS from January 26, 1979, to February 8, 1985. The show aired for a total of 147 episodes spanning seven seasons. The series was inspired by the 1975 film Moonrunners, which was also created by Gy Waldron and had many identical or similar character names and concepts. The Dukes of Hazzard follows the adventures of "the Duke boys", cousins Bo Duke (John Schneider) and Luke Duke (Tom Wopat) (including Coy and Vance Duke for most of season 5), who live on a family farm in fictional Hazzard County, Georgia, (the exact location of Hazzard county was never specified, though Atlanta was mentioned several times as the nearest big city) with their attractive female cousin Daisy (Catherine Bach) and their wise old Uncle Jesse (Denver Pyle). The Duke boys race around in their customized 1969 Dodge Charger stock car, dubbed (The) General Lee, evading crooked and corrupt county commissioner Boss Hogg (Sorrell Booke) and his bumbling and corrupt Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane (James Best) along with his deputy(s), and always managing to get caught in the middle of the various escapades and incidents that often occur in the area. Bo and Luke had previously been sentenced to probation for illegal transportation of moonshine; their Uncle Jesse made a plea bargain with the U.S. Government to refrain from distilling moonshine in exchange for Bo and Luke's freedom. As a result, Bo and Luke are on five years' probation and not allowed to carry firearms—instead, they often use compound bows, sometimes with arrows tipped with dynamite—or to leave Hazzard County unless they get probation permission from their probation officer, Boss Hogg, although the exact details of their probation terms vary from episode to episode. Sometimes it is implied that they would be jailed for merely crossing the county line; on other occasions, it is shown that they may leave Hazzard, as long as they are back within a certain time limit. Several other technicalities of their probation also came into play at various times. Corrupt county commissioner Jefferson Davis (J. D.) "Boss" Hogg, who either runs, or has his fingers in, virtually everything in Hazzard County, is forever angry with the Dukes, especially Bo and Luke, for always foiling his crooked schemes. He is always looking for ways to get them out of the picture so that his plots have a chance of succeeding. Many episodes revolve around Hogg trying to engage in an illegal scheme, sometimes with aid of hired criminal help. Some of these are get-rich-quick schemes, though many others affect the financial security of the Duke farm, which Hogg has long wanted to acquire for various reasons. Other times, Hogg hires criminals from out of town to do his dirty work for him, and often tries to frame Bo and Luke for various crimes as part of these plots. Bo and Luke always seem to stumble over Hogg's latest scheme, sometimes by curiosity, and often by sheer luck, and put it out of business. Despite the Dukes often coming to his rescue (see below), Hogg forever seems to have an irrational dislike of the clan, particularly Bo and Luke, often accusing them of spying on him, robbing or planning to rob him, and other supposedly nefarious actions, as he believes that they are generally out to get him. The role of Boss Hogg was played by Sorrell Booke, who performed frequently on radio, stage, and film prior to his role in The Dukes of Hazzard. Boss Hogg is one of only two characters to appear in every episode of the TV series, the other being Uncle Jesse Duke. The other main characters of the show include local mechanic Cooter Davenport (Ben Jones), who in early episodes was portrayed as a wild, unshaven rebel, often breaking or treading on the edge of the law, before settling down to become the Duke family's best friend (he is often referred to as an "honorary Duke") and owns the local garage; and Enos Strate (Sonny Shroyer), an honest but naive young deputy who, despite his friendship with the Dukes (and his crush on Daisy), is reluctantly forced to take part in Hogg and Rosco's crooked schemes. In the third and fourth seasons, when Enos leaves for his own show, he is replaced by Deputy Cletus Hogg (Rick Hurst), Boss's cousin, who is slightly more wily than Enos but still a somewhat reluctant player in Hogg's plots. Owing to their fundamentally good natures, the Dukes often wind up helping Boss Hogg out of trouble, albeit grudgingly. More than once Hogg is targeted by former associates who are either seeking revenge or have double crossed him after a scheme has unraveled in one way or another. Sheriff Coltrane also finds himself targeted in some instances. On such occasions, Bo and Luke usually have to rescue their adversaries as an inevitable precursor to defeating the bad guys; in other instances, the Dukes join forces with Hogg and Coltrane to tackle bigger threats to Hazzard or one of their respective parties. These instances became more frequent as the show progressed, and later seasons saw a number of stories where the Dukes and Hogg (and Coltrane) temporarily work together. The series was developed from the 1975 film Moonrunners. Created by Gy Waldron in collaboration with ex-moonshiner Jerry Rushing, this movie shares many identical and very similar names and concepts with the subsequent TV series. Although itself essentially a comedy, this original movie was much cruder and edgier than the family-friendly TV series that would evolve from it. In 1977, Waldron was approached by Warner Bros. with the idea of developing Moonrunners into a television series. Waldron reworked various elements from Moonrunners, and from it was devised what would become The Dukes of Hazzard. Production began in October 1978 with the original intention of only nine episodes being produced as mid-season filler. The first five episodes were filmed in Covington and Conyers, Georgia and surrounding areas, including some location work in nearby Atlanta. After completing production on the fifth episode, "High Octane", the cast and crew broke for Christmas break, expecting to return in several weeks' time to complete the ordered run of episodes. In the meantime, executives at Warner Bros. were impressed by the rough preview cuts of the completed episodes and saw potential in developing the show into a full-running series; part of this plan was to move production from Georgia to the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, California, primarily to simplify production as well as develop a larger workshop to service the large number of automobiles needed for the series. Rushing appeared as shady used car dealer Ace Parker in the third episode produced, "Repo Men" (the fourth to be broadcast). Rushing believed this to be the start of a recurring role, in return for which he would supply creative ideas from his experiences: many of the Dukes (and thus Moonrunners) characters and situations were derived from Rushing's experiences as a youth, and much of the character of Bo Duke, he states to be based on him. However, "Repo Men" would turn out to be the character's only appearance in the entire show's run, leading to a legal dispute in the following years over the rights to characters and concepts between Rushing and Warner Bros., although he remained on good terms with cast and crew and in recent years has made appearances at several fan conventions. By the end of the first (half) season, the family-friendly tone of The Dukes of Hazzard was mostly in place. When the show returned for a second season in fall 1979 (its first full season), with a few further minor tweaks, the show quickly found its footing as a family-friendly comedy-adventure series. By the third season, starting in fall 1980, the template was well set in place for that which would be widely associated with the show. As well as its regular car chases, jumps and stunts, The Dukes of Hazzard relied on character familiarity, with each character effectively serving the same role within a typical episode, and with Deputy Cletus replacing Deputy Enos in Seasons 3 and 4, and Coy and Vance Duke temporarily replacing Bo and Luke (due to a salary dispute) for most of Season 5, being the only major cast changes through the show's run (Ben Jones and James Best both left temporarily during the second season due to different disputes with producers, but both returned within a few episodes). Of the characters, only Uncle Jesse and Boss Hogg appeared in all 145 episodes; Daisy appears in all but one, the third season's "To Catch a Duke". The General Lee also appears in all but one (the early first-season episode "Mary Kaye's Baby", the fourth to be produced and the third broadcast). It was largely filmed in Hidden Valley in Thousand Oaks, California, with scenes also shot at nearby Lake Sherwood and also at Paramount Ranch in nearby Agoura Hills. Luke Duke (Tom Wopat) is the dark-haired, older Duke boy. More mature and rational than his cousin Bo, he is typically the one who thinks of the plan that will get the two out of whatever trouble they have got into. Luke wears a checked blue shirt (a plain blue shirt in most, though not all, second-series episodes) and a denim jacket over it in first season and a few later second-season episodes. He is a veteran of the United States Marine Corps and a former boxer. Luke was the first Duke to perform the "hood slide" across the General Lee, which is seen in the opening credits of the show (a shot taken from the second episode, "Daisy's Song"). According to Wopat the slide was an accident, because his foot got caught on the side of the General Lee when he attempted to jump across the hood; he also caught his arm on the hood's radio antenna, resulting in such antennas being removed from later versions of the General Lee. However, the "hood slide" quickly proved popular and became a regular staple of the rest of the episodes. The only episode to directly reference the age difference between Luke and Bo is in the seventh season opener, the "flashback" episode "Happy Birthday, General Lee", where it is stated that Luke had already been in the Marines while Bo was in his last year at high school. Though Bo and Luke share the CB call sign "Lost Sheep", in the season one episode "Money to Burn", Luke refers to himself (singularly) as "Sittin' Duck"., Bo Duke (John Schneider) is the blonde-haired, younger Duke boy. He is more of the "shoot first, ask questions later" type than Luke, and is often the one to get the duo into the various scrapes in which they find themselves, although the character did mature slightly as the series progressed. Bo is also more likely to have his eye, or heart, distracted by a pretty girl. Bo has a crush on many women in some episodes, which proves to be the Achilles' heel that leads the Dukes into trouble in several episode plots. Bo usually wears a cream-yellow shirt; for the first two seasons he wears a blue T-shirt underneath (brown in the first episode). This was slowly phased out during the third season. An ex-stock car driver, Bo is the one who drives the General Lee most of the time, with Luke riding shotgun. He and Luke take turns of driving the General Lee in some episodes as they share the car with each other (very early episodes suggest that it belongs solely to him; Luke is said to have a car that Cooter had wrecked shortly prior to the start of the opening episode, "One Armed Bandits"). Bo is known for his rebel yell, "Yeeeee-haaa," which he usually yells when the General Lee is airborne during a jump. The Duke boys share the CB call sign or handle "Lost Sheep"., Daisy Duke (Catherine Bach) is Bo, Luke, Coy, and Vance's cousin. She is beautiful, honest, and kind, although she can sometimes be slightly over-trusting and naïve, which has led the Duke family into trouble on a number of occasions. She sometimes aspires to be a songwriter and singer, and at other times, a reporter. She races around Hazzard with her cousins, first in a yellow and black 1974 Plymouth Road Runner (later a 1971 Plymouth Satellite was used) and then, from mid-season 2 on, in her trademark white 1980 Jeep CJ-7, christened Dixie with a golden eagle emblem on the hood (and the name "Dixie" on the hood sides). Daisy works as a waitress at the Boar's Nest, the local bar and pub owned by Boss Hogg, as part of an agreement with Boss Hogg so that he would give Uncle Jesse and the boys a loan for a lower interest rate so the boys could purchase the entry fee for a race in which they wished to race the General Lee. The arrangement was supposed to be for an indefinite time, but there are several times throughout the series when Hogg fires her. However, he always ends up rehiring her at the end of each episode because of various circumstances. Although Hogg is a nemesis to Daisy and her family, she is best friends with Hogg's wife Lulu. Daisy often uses her sex appeal and her position at the restaurant to get insider information to help the Dukes in foiling Hogg's various schemes. She also has the distinction of having her trademark provocatively high-cut jean short shorts named after her: "daisy dukes". Her CB handle is "Bo Peep". Occasionally, the variant of "Country Cousin" is used., Jesse Duke (Denver Pyle), referred to by just about everyone in Hazzard other than Boss Hogg as "Uncle Jesse", is the patriarch of the Duke clan, and the father-figure to all of the Dukes who stay with him on the somewhat dilapidated "Duke farm". Jesse apparently has no children of his own, and happily provides for his nephews and niece in the unexplained absence of all of their parents (Gy Waldron, the creator of the show, states on the DVDs that their parents were killed in a car wreck, but it was never mentioned in the show). In the third broadcast episode, "Mary Kaye's Baby", Jesse says that he has delivered many babies, including Bo and Luke. Jesse Duke, in his youth, had been a ridgerunner in direct competition with Boss Hogg whom he always calls "J.D." However, while both Boss Hogg and Uncle Jesse would scowl at the mention of the other's name, the two enjoyed a lifelong "friendship" of sorts, with one helping the other when in desperate need. Jesse educated his nephews against Hogg, and often provides the cousins with inspirational sage advice. Uncle Jesse drives a white 1973 Ford F-100 pickup truck. In the barn, he also has his old moonshine-running car, called Sweet Tillie in its first appearance (in the first-season episode "High Octane"), but referred to as Black Tillie in subsequent appearances. In the second-season episode "Follow That Still" and the sixth-season episode "The Boars Nest Bears", the marriage to, and death of, his wife is mentioned; he also mentions marrying her in the first-season episode "Luke's Love Story". His CB handle is "Shepherd"., Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane (James Best) is the bumbling and corrupt sheriff of Hazzard County and right-hand man and brother-in-law of its corrupt county administrator, Jefferson Davis "J.D." Hogg ("Boss Hogg"), whom Rosco calls his "little fat buddy", "Little Chrome Dome", "Little Meadow-Muffin", and several other names. In the early episodes, it is mentioned that Rosco spent the first 20 years of his career as a mostly honest lawman, but after the county voted away his pension, Rosco joined Hogg in an effort to fund his retirement in his last couple of years as sheriff. Early episodes also portray him as a fairly hard-nosed, somewhat darker policeman character, who even shoots a criminal during the first season. As the series progressed and producers recognized how popular it had become with children, Best altered his portrayal into a more bumbling, comical character. By the end of the first season, his origin had been virtually forgotten (and his job as sheriff appeared to become open-ended). Rosco is also the younger brother of Lulu Coltrane Hogg (Boss Hogg's wife). Rosco frequently initiates car chases with Bo and Luke Duke, but the Duke boys usually elude Rosco by outwitting him, with Rosco typically wrecking his patrol car as a result from which he would nearly always escape unscathed (only two episodes—the fourth season's "Coltrane vs. Duke" and the sixth season's "Too Many Roscos"—toy with the concept of him being injured. The first episode has him faking injury so that the Duke boys would lose the General Lee while the latter has Best playing two characters. His normal character, Rosco, is presumed drowned while a criminal that looks like Rosco has a headache). These chases are often the result of Rosco setting up illegal speed traps such as false or changing speed limit signs and various other trickery, which would evolve into being increasingly more cartoonish and far-fetched as the seasons passed. While he enjoys "hot pursuit" he seemingly (Boss Hogg as well) never intends for anyone to get seriously hurt. His middle initial, "P", was added at the start of the second season, and only one episode (the third season's "Mrs. Rosco P. Coltrane", in which he is subjected to a scam marriage) reveals his middle name, "Purvis". Rosco also has a soft spot for his Basset Hound Flash, introduced at the start of the third season. His radio codename is "Red Dog". When Best briefly boycotted the show during the mid-second season, he was temporarily replaced by several "one-off" sheriffs, the longest standing being Sheriff Grady Bird, played by Dick Sargent, who appeared in two episodes ("Jude Emery" and "Officer Daisy Duke")., Boss Jefferson Davis "J.D." Hogg (Sorrell Booke) is the wealthiest man in Hazzard County and owns most of its property and businesses—whether directly or by holding the mortgages over the land. Usually dressed in an all-white suit, he is the fat, greedy, corrupt county commissioner with visions of grandeur and a voracious appetite for food, who constantly orders Rosco to "Get them Duke boys!" He is also Bo and Luke's probation officer; when Bo and Luke need to leave Hazzard they always get permission from him. Boss Hogg is also married to (and dominated by) Rosco's "fat sister" (Lulu Coltrane Hogg), a point that does not always sit well with either Boss Hogg or Rosco; Hogg sometimes claims that Rosco is indebted to him because of it, though his on-screen interactions with Lulu typically show him loving her deeply (and giving in to her stronger personality). In addition to his role as county commissioner, he is also the police commissioner, land commissioner, and bank president. Boss is also the chief of the Hazzard Fire Department and the owner of, or primary mortgage holder on, most of the places in the county, including the Boar's Nest, Rhubottem's Store, Cooter's garage and the Duke farm. It is implied in some episodes that he is the Justice of the Peace, but in others Hazzard relies on a circuit judge. In the episode "Coltrane vs. Duke", Hogg represents Rosco when he sues the Dukes, implying that he is a licensed attorney. His vehicle is a white 1970 Cadillac Coupe de Ville convertible, with bull horns mounted on the hood. In the first few seasons, he is almost always driven around by a chauffeur. His old moonshine-running car was called The Gray Ghost. Every morning, Boss Hogg would drink coffee and eat raw liver (Booke, a method actor, actually ate the raw liver). Boss Hogg is described in one analysis as "an ineffectual bad guy--hence amusing"., Cooter Davenport (Ben Jones) is the Hazzard County mechanic, nicknamed "Crazy Cooter" (a "cooter" is a large freshwater turtle, common in the southeastern U.S.). In the early episodes, he is a wild man, often breaking the law. By the end of the first season, he has settled down and become an easy-going good ol' boy. Although not mentioned in the first couple of episodes, by the mid-first season, he owns "Cooter's Garage" in Hazzard County Square, directly across from the Sheriff's Department. Cooter is an "honorary Duke", as he shares the same values and often assists the Dukes in escaping Rosco's clutches, or helps them to foil Boss Hogg's schemes. During the second season, Jones left the series for a few episodes due to a dispute over whether the character should be clean-shaven or have a full beard. In his absence, Cooter's place was filled by several of Cooter's supposed cousins who were never mentioned before or since. Jones returned when the dispute was solved—Cooter would be clean-shaven (although, for continuity reasons, with the episodes being broadcast in a different order to that which they were filmed, he was not clean-shaven until the third season onwards). Cooter drives a variety of trucks, including Fords, Chevys, and GMCs. His CB handle is "Crazy Cooter" and he often starts his CB transmissions with "Breaker one, Breaker one, I might be crazy but I ain't dumb, Craaaazy Cooter comin' atcha, come on.", Deputy Enos Strate (Sonny Shroyer) is a friend of the Dukes, but, while working for Rosco and Boss is often forced into pursuing the Dukes and/or arresting them on trumped-up charges. In the early episodes, Enos is shown to be a rather good driver (and respected as such by Bo and Luke), but by the end of the first season, he is shown to be as incompetent a driver as Rosco. When he returns from his stint in Los Angeles, he seems to be able to stand up to Boss and Rosco slightly more, and sometimes refuses to participate in their schemes. In the early episodes, Rosco frequently calls him "jackass", which soon evolved into the more family-friendly "dipstick" as the show became a hit with younger viewers (though Boss Hogg, who would also use the term "jackass" of Sheriff Rosco, would occasionally return to calling Enos this in later seasons). Enos has a crush on Daisy Duke that she often uses to the Dukes' advantage in unraveling Hogg and Rosco's schemes. Enos is very much in love with Daisy, and although Daisy seems to love him back, it is supposedly only as a close friend. In the penultimate episode, "Enos and Daisy's Wedding", the two plan on getting married, only to have Enos call it off at the last minute due to an attack of hives, brought on by the excitement of possibly being married to Daisy. Later, in the , Enos and Daisy become a pair again and plan to get married, but this time Daisy backs out at the last minute upon the unexpected sight of her ex-husband., Deputy Cletus Hogg (Rick Hurst), Boss Hogg's second cousin twice removed, is generally friendly and dim-witted. Like Enos, Cletus is often forced by Rosco and Hogg to chase the Dukes on trumped up charges. While Cletus is good-hearted, and sometimes resentful of having to treat the Dukes in such a way, he is somewhat more willing to go along with Hogg and Rosco than Enos. Cletus has a crush (though not as bad as Enos' crush) on Daisy and is even convinced she wants to marry him. Like Enos and Rosco, Cletus frequently ends up landing in a pond when pursuing the Duke boys in a car chase. Cletus makes his first appearance as the driver of a bank truck, part of Hogg's latest get-rich-quick scheme, in the first-season episode "Money To Burn", and becomes temporary deputy while Enos is away in the second-season episodes "The Meeting" and "Road Pirates". Leaving a job at the local junkyard, he becomes permanent deputy in the third season's "Enos Strate to the Top". After Enos' return, the pair both serve as deputies and share the same patrol car until 1997's . Each of the Hazzard County Sheriff's Department officers drives various mid- to late-1970s Chrysler mid-size B body patrol cars, most often a Dodge Monaco or Plymouth Fury., Coy Duke (Byron Cherry) is another blonde-haired cousin who moves to Uncle Jesse's farm along with his cousin Vance after Bo and Luke left Hazzard to join the NASCAR circuit in season 5. Like his cousin Bo, he often drives the General Lee, is a bit wilder than Vance and chases women; he and Vance are only in the first 19 episodes of season 5 and Coy and Vance are in only one episode with their cousins Bo and Luke when they return from the NASCAR circuit. Supposedly, with cousin Vance, Coy had previously lived on the Duke farm until 1976, before the series had started., Vance Duke (Christopher Mayer), an obvious replacement for Luke, filled the void of a dark-haired Duke on the show. Like Luke, Vance is more the thinker and the planner of the duo, along with being more mature than Coy. He is also a former Merchant Mariner., The Balladeer (voice of Waylon Jennings) sings and plays the Dukes of Hazzard theme song, "Good Ol' Boys", and also serves as the show's narrator. During each episode, he provides an omniscient viewpoint of the situations presented, and regularly interjects comical asides during crucial plot points (often, during a freeze frame of a cliffhanger scene right before a commercial break) and "down home" aphorisms (these freeze-frame cliffhangers were often abridged in showings in some countries, such as the commercial-free BBC in the United Kingdom). After numerous requests from fans to see the Balladeer on-screen, Jennings finally appeared in one episode, the seventh season's aptly titled "Welcome, Waylon Jennings", in which he was presented as an old friend of the Dukes., Flash (Sandy and others) is a slow-paced Basset Hound and Rosco's loyal companion, who hates Hogg but loves the Dukes. She first appeared in the first official third-season episode "Enos Strate to the Top" (the two-part third season opener "Carnival of Thrills" was held over from the previous season), although the dog was not formally "introduced" in that episode. Initially referred to as a boy, Flash is later regularly a girl (despite an occasional male reference afterwards). Flash was added at the start of the third season, after James Best suggested to the producers that Rosco have a dog. Rosco doted on Flash, often calling her "Velvet Ears". Flash was portrayed by several Basset Hounds during the series (distinguishable by different facial colors), the most regular being "Sandy". James Best bought a share of Sandy, who was rescued from an animal shelter and was trained by Alvin Mears of Alvin Animal Rentals. Sandy lived to age 14. A stuffed dog named Flush was used for dangerous stunt work in a few episodes. The pilot episode was to include a barber modeled after Floyd Lawson on The Andy Griffith Show as a regular character, but was eliminated when the final draft of the pilot's script was written and before the show was cast. When John Schneider auditioned for the role of Bo Duke, he came to the audition in a dilapidated pickup truck, sporting a week-long beard growth, wearing overalls and a white T-shirt with a pack of cigarettes rolled up in a sleeve collar, and carrying a can of beer, trying to look the part. At the audition, Schneider drank the beer and said he was from Snellville. The producers bought his "good ol' boy" act and Schneider was hired on the spot. Throughout its network television run, The Dukes of Hazzard had a consistent mix of up-and-comers and established stars make guest appearances. Robert Alda, Carlos Brown/Alan Autry, Anthony De Longis, James Avery, Norman Alden, Rayford Barnes, Pat Buttram, Dennis Burkley, Clancy Brown, Regis Cordic, Charles Cyphers, Roz Kelly, Conlan Carter, Ji-Tu Cumbuka, Ben Davidson, Elinor Donahue, Jason Evers, Jonathan Frakes, Janie Fricke, Michael Fairman, David Gale, David Graf, Joy Garrett, M. C. Gainey, Henry Gibson, Burton Gilliam, Linda Hart, Dennis Haskins, Ernie Hudson, Kevin Peter Hall, Waylon Jennings, Arte Johnson, Stepfanie Kramer, Lance LeGault, Loretta Lynn, Britt Leach, Jon Locke, Brion James, Arte Johnson, L. Q. Jones, Frank Marth, Robin Mattson, John Matuszak, Donald May, Gerald McRaney, Louise Minchin, Richard Moll, Chris Mulkey, Charles Napier, Tim O'Connor, Roy Orbison, Johnny Paycheck, Kim Richards, Hari Rhodes, Roger Robinson, Dick Sargent, Ronnie Schell, Avery Schreiber, Judson Scott, Reid Smith, William Smith, Don Stroud, Norman Tebbit, Les Tremayne, Mel Tillis, Mary Treen, Lurene Tuttle, Lewis Van Bergen, Joseph Whipp, Dottie West, Hal Williams, Steven Williams, Terry Wilson (his last role), Morgan Woodward, Tammy Wynette, Cale Yarborough NASCAR driver Terry Labonte makes a brief, uncredited appearance as a crewman in the episode "Undercover Dukes Part 1". The race cars supplied for both "Part 1" and "Part 2" of "Undercover Dukes" were supplied by Labonte's race owner, Billy Hagan. However, the emblems of the sponsors of the cars (at that time Labonte was sponsored by Budweiser) were covered to avoid paying royalties. During the show's second season, the show's writers began flirting with the idea of incorporating a "celebrity speed trap" into some of the episodes, as a means to feature top country stars of the day performing their hits. On its first couple of instances, the "speed trap" was featured early in the story, but for most of the cases, it was featured in the last few minutes of an episode, often used when the main story was running too short to fill episode time. The "celebrity speed trap" feature was essentially similar: Aware that a big-name country star was passing through the area, Boss Hogg would order Rosco to lower the speed limit on a particular road to an unreasonable level (using a reversible sign, with one speed limit on one side and another, far lower, on the back), so that the targeted singer would be in violation of the posted limit. The singer would be required to give a free performance at the Boar's Nest in exchange for having their citations forgiven; the performer would then perform one of their best-known hits or other popular country music standard, while the Dukes, Boss, Rosco, Enos, Cletus, Cooter, and other patrons whooped and hollered in enjoyment of the performance. More often than not, the performer would give a sarcastic parting shot to Boss and Rosco. Singers who were featured in the "speed trap" segments were: Hoyt Axton, Donna Fargo, Freddy Fender, Doug Kershaw (on the original soundtrack), The Oak Ridge Boys (twice), Roy Orbison, Buck Owens, Johnny Paycheck (lip-syncing an original recording), Mel Tillis, Dottie West, Tammy Wynette, Waylon Jennings (the show's narrator) Honorable mentions: Mickey Gilley, Loretta Lynn Gilley's and Lynn's appearances were not solely for the celebrity speed trap. After performing a concert in Hazzard, Gilley was nabbed while leaving and forced to do a second show to nullify his citation. Lynn was kidnapped by criminals wanting to break into the music business. Loretta Lynn was the very first country music guest star on the show in 1979 and had an entire episode dedicated to her titled "Find Loretta Lynn". Note: Janie Fricke was the only country music guest star who did not perform a song, celebrity speed trap or otherwise. She played an accomplice to a robber in an episode who hid money in the dashboard of the car that was to become the General Lee. The Dukes of Hazzard was consistently among the top-rated television series (at one point, ranking second only to Dallas, which immediately followed the show on CBS' Friday night schedule). With that success came huge profits in merchandising, with a wide array of Dukes of Hazzard toys and products being licensed and becoming big sellers. However, over the course of the show's fourth season, series stars Tom Wopat and John Schneider—who had already previously voiced their concern and discontent about increasingly inferior scripts being written for episodes—became increasingly concerned about a contract dispute over their salaries and merchandising royalties owed to them over the high sales of Dukes products. They felt that neither of them were being paid what was owed to them and this became very frustrating to the duo. As a result, in the spring of 1982, as filming was due to begin on the fifth season, Wopat and Schneider did not report to the set in protest over the matter. Catherine Bach also considered walking out due to similar concerns, but Wopat and Schneider convinced her to stay, insisting that if she left, then there might not be a show to come back to, and that settling the issue was up to them. Production was pushed back by a few weeks as fairly similar looking replacements were subsequently, hastily hired: Byron Cherry as Coy Duke and Christopher Mayer as Vance Duke. Bo and Luke were said to have gone to race on the NASCAR circuit; how they managed to do this, bearing in mind the terms of their probation, was never explained. Cherry and Mayer were originally contracted at just 10 episodes as stand-ins, still with hope that a settlement might be reached with Wopat and Schneider (in total, they made 19 episodes including one with Bo and Luke). Some scripts for Coy and Vance were originally written for Bo and Luke but with their names quite literally crossed out and Coy and Vance penned in. The new Dukes—previously-unmentioned nephews of Uncle Jesse, who were said to have left the farm in 1976 before the show had started—were unpopular with the great majority of viewers, and the ratings immediately sank. Much of the criticism was that Coy and Vance were nothing but direct clones of Bo and Luke, with Coy a direct "carbon copy" replacement for Bo and Vance for Luke, with little variation in character. This was something that even show creator Gy Waldron has said was wrong, and that he insisted, unsuccessfully, that audiences would not accept direct character clones and the two replacements should be taken in a different direction character wise, but was overridden by the producers. Waldron also commented that if Bach too had walked, the show would have most probably been cancelled. It was reported that prior to filming, Cherry and Mayer were given Bo and Luke episodes to watch, to study and learn to emulate them, although Cherry has said in interviews that he does not recall this ever happening. Hit hard by the significant drop in ratings, Warner Bros. renegotiated with Wopat and Schneider, and eventually a settlement was reached, and the original Duke boys returned to the series in early 1983, four episodes from the conclusion of the fifth season. Initially, part of the press release announcing Wopat and Schneider's return suggested that Cherry and Mayer would remain as part of the cast (though presumably in a reduced role), but it was quickly realized that "four Duke boys" would not work within the context of the series, and due to the huge unpopularity associated with their time on the show, they were quickly written out of the same episode in which Bo and Luke returned. Although Coy and Vance were never popular with the majority, a few viewers were disappointed by their departure episode, "Welcome Back, Bo 'N' Luke", which was for the most part a standard episode, with the return of Bo and Luke and the departure of Coy and Vance tacked onto the beginning (Bo and Luke return from their NASCAR tour just as Coy and Vance leave Hazzard to tend to a sick relative). Even a few viewers commented that they were disappointed by this, and that they would have liked to have seen both pairs of Duke boys team up to tackle a particularly dastardly plot by Boss Hogg before Coy and Vance's departure, but as it turned out, Coy and Vance had little dialogue and were gone by the first commercial break, never to be seen or even mentioned again. While the return of Bo and Luke was welcomed by ardent and casual viewers alike, and as a result ratings recovered slightly, the show never completely regained its former popularity. One of Wopat and Schneider's disputes even before they left was what they considered to be increasingly weak and formulaic scripts and episode plots. With Wopat and Schneider's return, the producers agreed to try a wider scope of storylines. However, although it continued for two more seasons, the show never fully returned to its former glory. Many cast members, such as Tom Wopat, decried the miniature car effects newly incorporated to depict increasingly absurd General Lee and patrol car stunts (which had previously been performed with real cars by stunt drivers). The miniature car effects were intended as a budget saving measure (to save the cost of repairing or replacing damaged vehicles) and to help compete visually with KITT from the NBC series Knight Rider. In February 1985, The Dukes of Hazzard ended its run after seven seasons. The General Lee was based on a 1969 Dodge Charger owned by Bo and Luke (the series used mostly 1969 Chargers in the beginning; later on, they also modified 1968 Chargers to look like 1969s by installing 1969-model taillamps, taillamp panels, and grilles). It was orange with a Confederate battle flag painted on the roof, the words "GENERAL LEE" over each door, and the number "01" on each door. In the original five Georgia-filmed episodes, a Confederate flag along with a checkered racing flag in a criss-cross pattern could be seen behind the rear window; this was removed when it was felt that this extra detail did not show up enough on screen to warrant the already very tight time constraints of preparing and repairing each example of the car. The name refers to the American Civil War Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The television show was based on the movie Moonrunners, in turn based on actual moonshine runners who used a 1958 Chrysler named Traveler, after General Lee's horse (with a slight spelling change). Traveler was originally intended to be the name of the Duke boys' stock car too, until producers agreed that General Lee had more punch to it. Since it was built as a race car, the doors were welded shut. Through the history of the show, an estimated 309 Chargers were used; 17 are still known to exist in various states of repair. A replica was owned by John Schneider, known as "Bo's General Lee". In 2008, Schneider sold "Bo's General Lee" at the Barrett-Jackson automobile auction for $230,000. An eBay auction which garnered a bid of $9,900,500 for the car was never finalized, with the purported bidder claiming his account had been hacked. The underside of the hood has the signatures of the cast from the 1997 TV movie. Schneider has also restored over 20 other General Lees to date. In 2008, a replica of the General Lee fetched a high bid of $450,000 at the Barrett- Jackson auto auction. In 2012, the General Lee 1, the first car used in filming the series, was purchased at auction by golfer Bubba Watson for $110,000. The car had been scrapped after being wrecked during the famous opening jump shoot, and was later discovered in a junkyard by the president of the North American General Lee fan club. In 2015, following a wave of sentiment against Confederate symbolism in the wake of shootings in Charleston, SC, (relating to photos where the attacker had posed with the Confederate flag), Bubba Watson announced that he would remove the Confederate Flag from the roof of the General Lee 1 and repaint it with the U.S. National Flag. The show also used 1968 Chargers (which shared the same sheet metal) by pop-riveting the "I" piece to the center of the 68's grille, as well as cutting out the tail lights, pop-riveting the 69' lenses in place, and removing the round side marker lights. These Chargers performed many record- breaking jumps throughout the show, almost all of them resulting in a completely destroyed car. No 1970 Chargers were used, as backdating them proved to be too time consuming. The Duke boys added a custom air horn to the General Lee that played the first 12 notes of the song "Dixie". The Dixie horn was not originally planned, until a Georgia local hot rod racer drove by and sounded his car's Dixie horn. The producers immediately rushed after him asking where he had bought the horn. Warner Bros. purchased several Chargers for stunts, as they generally destroyed at least one or two cars per episode. By the end of the show's sixth season, the Chargers were becoming harder to find and more expensive. In addition, the television series Knight Rider began to rival the General Lees stunts. As such, the producers used 1:8 scale miniatures, filmed by Jack Sessums' crew, or recycled stock jump footage—the latter being a practice that had been in place to an extent since the second season, and had increased as the seasons passed. Some of the 01 and Confederate flag motifs were initially hand painted, but as production sped up, these were replaced with vinyl decals for quick application (and removal), as needed. During the first five episodes of the show that were filmed in Georgia, the cars involved with filming were given to the crew at the H&H; body shop near the filming location. At this shop, the men worked day and night to prepare the wrecked cars for the next day while still running their body shop during the day. Time was of the essence, and the men that worked at this shop worked hard hours to get the cars prepared for the show. The third episode "Mary Kaye's Baby" is the only one in which the General Lee does not appear. Instead, the Dukes drove around in a blue 1975 Plymouth Fury borrowed from Cooter that Luke later destroyed by shooting an arrow at the car, whose trunk had been leaking due to the moonshine stowed in the back. The Duke boys' CB handle was (jointly) "Lost Sheep". Originally when the show was conceived, their handle was to be "General Lee" to match their vehicle, but this was only ever used on-screen on one occasion, in the second episode, "Daisy's Song", when Cooter calls Bo and Luke over the CB by this handle, although they were actually driving Daisy's Plymouth Road Runner (see below) at the time. As it became obvious that the "General Lee" handle would be out of place when the Duke boys were in another vehicle, the "Lost Sheep" handle was devised (with Uncle Jesse being "Shepherd" and Daisy being "Bo Peep"). The 1975 AMC Matador was one of many different Hazzard County police cars used on the series, mostly in the first season; they had light bars and working radios. A 1972 Dodge Polara and a 1974 Dodge Monaco were used during the pilot episode "One Armed Bandits", these were also seen in the show's title sequence. From the second season, the 1977 Dodge Monaco was mostly used. From mid-season four the similar looking 1978 Plymouth Fury was used instead. The Matadors and Furies were former Los Angeles Police Department vehicles, while the Monacos were former California Highway Patrol units. A 1974 Plymouth Road Runner (yellow with a black stripe) was Daisy Duke's car in the first five episodes of the first season. For the last episodes of the first season a similarly painted 1971 Plymouth Satellite Sebring with a matching "Road Runner" stripe was used. In the second season Bo and Luke send it off a cliff in "The Runaway". Another, identical Plymouth 1971 model car appeared in the background a few more episodes along with the Jeep CJ-7 until it was finally dropped altogether. Dixie was the name given to Daisy Duke's white 1980 Jeep CJ-7 "Golden Eagle" which had a golden eagle emblem on the hood and the name "Dixie" on the sides. Like other vehicles in the show, there was actually more than one Jeep used throughout the series. Sometimes it would have an automatic transmission, and other times it would be a manual. The design of the roll cage also varied across the seasons. When the Jeep was introduced at the end of the second season's "The Runaway", it was seen to have doors and a slightly different paint job, but, bar one appearance in the next produced episode, "Arrest Jesse Duke" (actually broadcast before "The Runaway", causing a continuity error), thereafter the doors were removed and the paint job was made all-white, with Dixie painted on the sides of the hood. These Jeeps were leased to the producers of the show by American Motors Corporation in exchange for a brief mention in the closing credits of the show. Uncle Jesse's truck was a white Ford pickup truck, most commonly a sixth- generation (1973–1977) F100 Styleside. However, in the earliest episodes it had a Flareside bed, and varied between F100 and F250 models throughout the show's run. Bo, Luke and Daisy also drove Jesse's truck on occasion. A white 1970 Cadillac de Ville convertible was used as Boss Hogg's car, notably with large bull horns as a hood ornament. In early seasons, Hogg was almost always driven by a chauffeur, who was normally nameless and had little or no dialogue, but identified on occasion as being called "Alex"; and played by several different uncredited actors, including stuntman Gary Baxley. This chauffeur would often be dressed in a red plaid shirt and deep brown or black Stetson hat, but on occasion would be an older man, sometimes dressed in more typical chauffeur attire. Hogg is first seen to drive for himself in the second season opener "Days of Shine and Roses", where he and Jesse challenge each other to one last moonshine race. From the fourth season onward, except for a couple of brief reappearances of the chauffeur (during the fourth season), Hogg drove himself around in his Cadillac (or occasionally driven by Rosco and, in the series' finale, by Uncle Jesse) and frequently challenged others by invoking his driving expertise from his days as a ridge-runner. Unlike other vehicles in the series, Boss Hogg's Cadillac is typically treated with kid gloves. The car is almost always seen with its convertible top down, with the top only being seen in two episodes, "Daisy's Song" (the chauffeur was called "Eddie" in this episode), the second to be produced and broadcast, and briefly in the second-season episode "Witness for the Persecution", when Cooter is returning it to the Court House after repairs. A green and blacked out 1971 Ford Custom 500 sedan named Black Tillie was once used by Uncle Jesse to make moonshine runs. The theme song "Good Ol' Boys" was written and performed by Waylon Jennings. He was also "The Balladeer" (as credited), and served as narrator of the show. However, the version released as a single is not the same version that was used in the show's opening credits; the single version has a repeat of the chorus and an instrumental to pad out the length, uses a different instrumental mix that emphasizes the bass, and replaces the last verse with an inside joke about how the TV show producers "keep on showing (Jennings's) hands and not (his) face on TV". In 1980, the song reached #1 on the American Country chart and peaked at #21 on the Billboard Hot 100. The series was originally broadcast in America by CBS on Friday nights, at 9:00 p.m. and later 8:00 p.m., preceding Dallas from January 26, 1979, to February 8, 1985., Until TNN (The Nashville Network) was purchased by Viacom, it aired reruns of The Dukes of Hazzard. Some months after the creation of "The National Network" (shortly before its change to "Spike TV"), the program was absent from much of television for quite some time. Viacom's country music-themed cable network CMT (the former sister network to TNN) aired the show from 2005 to 2007 at 8:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time every weekday. CMT began airing the series in late February 2005. It also aired Monday–Thursday on ABC Family., The series was broadcast by BBC1 in the United Kingdom, debuting on Saturday March 3, 1979 at 9:00 p.m. (just several months after it began in the U.S.) Popular with all ages (and as some of the more adult elements of very early episodes faded out of the series), it quickly moved from its post-watershed position to a more family-friendly Monday evening slot at 7:20 p.m. Soon a massive hit, it moved from Monday evenings to prime-time Saturday evening (times varied, but typically around 5:25 p.m.), where it stayed for a number of years. Later when ratings began to dip (partly caused by the change to Coy and Vance, and partly to do with competition from ITV, with new hit shows such as The A-Team), it moved back to Mondays, making the odd return for short runs on Saturdays. Late episodes also popped up occasionally on Sunday afternoons, and the remaining episodes of the final season were broadcast on weekday mornings during school holidays in the late 1980s., In 1992, U.K. satellite channel Sky1 bought a package of the program, owning the rights to the first 60 episodes produced (running up to "The Fugitive"), showing the series on Saturday afternoons at 4 p.m. They later showed the episodes they owned again, including a stint showing it in a weekday 3 p.m. slot, running for 50 minutes (including commercials) with the episodes heavily edited for time as a result, often leaving gaps in the plot. Despite requests from fans, they did not secure the rights to later episodes. The series was later run on the satellite channels Granada Plus and TNT. U.K. satellite channel Bravo began airing reruns in August 2005., U.K. reruns are currently shown on ITV4., In Brazil, the series was named Os Gatões (The Big Hunks), which limited its popularity among the male audience., The series was also shown in the Netherlands by Dutch broadcasting organization AVRO, with Dutch subtitles, rather than being dubbed., It was shown on Nine Network in Australia from September 1979 until the end of the series, and repeated throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. It was quietly rerun on pay TV channel TV1 in the 2000s, but is now shown on Nine Network's subchannel, Go!., The series was popular in Colombia, dubbed into Spanish. Some late-night reruns continue to the present day., In Italy, the series started to air in September 1981 on Canale 5, under the title Hazzard and quickly became popular with the viewers., CMT aired The Dukes Ride Again, a special marathon which featured episodes from the first two seasons, on the weekend of September 10, 2010 and have begun airing episodes weeknights at 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. Eastern Time starting September 13, 2010., The series aired weekdays on New Zealand's channel The BOX. Previously it aired on TVNZ for its original run, being repeated on Saturday afternoons in the early 1990s., CMT began to re-air The Dukes of Hazzard reruns in high definition, on January 5, 2014., TV Land began to air The Dukes of Hazzard reruns on June 10, 2015, but removed them just three weeks later as a response to the Charleston church shooting and the ensuing debate over the modern display of the Confederate flag. Soon before the series ended its original run on CBS, The Dukes of Hazzard went into off-network syndication. Although not as widely run as it was back in the 1980s and the years since, reruns of the program do continue to air in various parts of the United States. Notably, television stations that aired the show in syndication include KCOP Los Angeles, WGN-TV Chicago, KBHK San Francisco, WKBD Detroit, WTAF/WTXF Philadelphia, KTXL Sacramento, WVTV Milwaukee, KMSP Minneapolis–Saint Paul, among others. Nationwide, the show also aired on ABC Family (2000–01, 2004) and CMT (2005–07, 2010–12, 2014–15) and TV Land (2015); TV Land dropped the show in the wake of protests and controversy surrounding the display of the Confederate flag. The Nashville Network bought The Dukes of Hazzard from Warner Bros. in 1997 for well over $10 million; not only did it improve the network's ratings, the show was also popular among younger viewers, a demographic TNN had a notorious difficulty in drawing; The Dukes of Hazzard has run either on TNN or sister network CMT ever since. The show ran for seven seasons and a total of 145 episodes. Many of the episodes followed a similar structure "out-of-town crooks pull a robbery or commit a crime or scandal, Duke boys blamed, spend the rest of the hour clearing their names, the General Lee flies and the squad cars crash". A spin-off named Enos aired on CBS starring Sonny Shroyer and lasted 18 episodes before being cancelled., An animated version of the show called The Dukes aired in 1983 and produced by Hanna-Barbera. The first season fell under the Coy and Vance era of the live-action show and thus they were adapted into animated form. By the second season, Bo and Luke had returned, and they replaced Coy and Vance in the cartoon., Several video games based on the show were created:, The Dukes of Hazzard for ColecoVision (1984) and ZX Spectrum (1985); also planned for the Atari 2600, (1999), (2000), (2004), In 2005, the Humana Festival of New American Plays premiered a full-length comedy-drama entitled Hazzard County by Allison Moore. The story centers on a young widowed mother and a visit she receives from a big city television producer. Interspersed with recollections of Bo, Luke, and Daisy, the play takes a deep look at southern "good ol' boy" culture and its popularization through the lens of American mass media., In 2014, AutoTrader made a commercial where Bo and Luke shop for a new car while being chased. There were two made-for-TV reunion movies that aired on CBS, (1997) and (2000). Also made were The Dukes of Hazzard in 2005 and a direct-to-video prequel in 2007. These films were in the buddy comedy road film in tone than compared to how the original TV series itself was an action-comedy. Warner Home Video has released all seven seasons of The Dukes of Hazzard on DVD in Regions 1 and 2. The two TV movies that followed the series were released on DVD in Region 1 on June 10, 2008 and in Region 4 on June 4, 2014. In Region 4, Warner has released only the first six seasons on DVD and the two TV movies. The Complete Series and Two Unrated Feature Films Box Set was released on DVD in Region 1 on November 14, 2017. The TV series was also made available for streaming and download through a variety of services. In 2005, Tom Wopat and John Schneider were reunited during "Exposed", a fifth- season episode of the television series Smallville. Wopat guest-starred as Kansas State Senator Jack Jennings, an old friend of Clark Kent's adoptive father Jonathan Kent (portrayed by Schneider). In the episode, Jennings drives a 1968 Dodge Charger—the same body style as the General Lee. Lizard Lick Towing featured an episode with its repossession specialists Ronnie Shirley and Bobby Brantley repossessing a General Lee replica. In 2015, in the wake of renewed debate about the symbolism of the Confederate battle flag (which was prominently featured on the General Lees roof (and panel behind the rear window in the first five episodes)), reruns of the original series were pulled from circulation. Warner Bros., which owns the property, announced it would also no longer create merchandise bearing the flag, including miniatures of the General Lee, although this has led to people making their own custom General Lees and selling them. Artifacts from the show are on display in Luray, Virginia; Nashville, Tennessee; and Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Cooter's Place in Luray is overseen by Ben "Cooter" Jones from the series. The Gatlinburg location features a gift shop and a Dukes of Hazzard-themed indoor miniature golf course and go-cart track, with a small display of costumes, collectibles and artifacts from the show. Covington and Conyers, Georgia; where the original five episodes were produced, have been two major tourist attractions for Dukes of Hazzard fans. Dixie Outfitters in Branson, Missouri on Highway 76 has the General Lee and Rosco's police car signed by Daisy, Cooter, Cletus and Enos. Redneck Boy in the Promised Land: The Confessions of "Crazy Cooter", by Ben "Cooter" Jones, 2008. Crown., The Dukes of Hazzard – The Unofficial Companion, by David Hofstede, foreword by Catherine Bach. 1998. Renaissance Books. The Dukes of Hazzard official Facebook page, The Dukes of Hazzard at CMT.com, Who sang the theme song and also served as the narrator on The Dukes of Hazzard? John Richard Schneider (born April 8, 1960) is an American actor and country music singer. He is best known for his portrayal of Beauregard "Bo" Duke in the American television action/comedy series The Dukes of Hazzard, (opposite Tom Wopat, Catherine Bach and James Best), Jonathan Kent in the 2001–11 TV series Smallville (an adaptation of Superman), and James "Jim" Cryer on the television series The Haves and the Have Nots, created by Tyler Perry. Alongside his acting career, Schneider has been a singer since the early 1980s, releasing nine studio albums and a greatest hits package, as well as eighteen singles. This total includes "I've Been Around Enough to Know", "Country Girls", "What's a Memory Like You", and "You're the Last Thing I Needed Tonight", all of which reached the top of the Billboard country singles charts. Schneider was born on April 8, 1960, in Mount Kisco, New York, the youngest of three sons of Shirley Conklin and John "Jack" Schneider III, a pilot who had served in the U.S. Air Force. His family included an older brother Robert, an artist living in southern New York. His other brother died before his birth. John's life as an entertainer began at the age of eight, when he put on magic shows for his peers and their families. This once got him into trouble, when he had himself chained up and tossed into a swimming pool with the intention of re-creating Harry Houdini's legendary escape act. When he was 14, he and his mother moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where his love for performing continued. He went to North Springs High School in Sandy Springs, Georgia. At the age of 17, he won the role of Bo Duke, working alongside another newcomer Tom Wopat and veteran actor James Best. For his audition, he "borrowed a dilapidated pickup truck, put on a big ol' country accent and funky hat. I hadn't shaved and went in toting a beer. I don't know whether they believed it or not, but they liked it." Schneider learned to drive the iconic Dodge Charger in the show, but to the disappointment of many fans, he admitted he never jumped the car due to the dangerous nature of the stunt. At the height of the series' popularity, he also became a recording artist and a face of merchandise. In 1982, a tangle of legal suits with the producers over the distribution of merchandising royalties sent Schneider and co-star Tom Wopat leaving the show for most of a season. They returned to their roles in February 1983, only after their claims were satisfied. The show was canceled in 1985, after 7 seasons. Schneider directed the series finale, titled Opening Night at the Boar's Nest, airing originally on CBS, February 8, 1985. In 2001, he portrayed Jonathan Kent, the adoptive father of Clark Kent on Smallville, starring in 100 episodes before his character was killed off. Schneider directed some episodes of Smallville, including "Talisman". Some episodes contain references to Schneider's work in The Dukes of Hazzard, e.g. the season five episode "Exposed" is notable for reuniting Schneider with his former Dukes co-star Tom Wopat. Schneider guest starred for the latter half of season five appearing in the episodes "Void" and "Oracle". Schneider returned for the season 10 premiere of Smallville, reprising his role as Jonathan Kent in a recurring role. Schneider has appeared in many films and TV series, including five guest spots on Hee Haw and the miniseries 10.5. He had a recurring role on Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and made guest appearances on such shows as , Touched by an Angel, JAG and Walker, Texas Ranger. In 2009, Schneider made an appearance on in an episode titled "Kill Me If You Can". He appeared in the first season of The Secret Life of the American Teenager, in which his real-life son Chasen Schneider had a recurring role. During the summer of 2008 and early 2009, John portrayed "Marshall Bowman". He declined to continue through the second season and his character was killed off. In 2010, Schneider appeared in the series Leverage as a corrupt music executive in the season three episode "The Studio Job", and in several episodes of Desperate Housewives as a retired military man and father of Keith Watson (Brian Austin Green), the love interest of Bree Van de Kamp. In 2011, he starred in the film Doonby, as a drifter who comes into a small town and makes it better. However, a menacing force stalks him. "It's It's a Wonderful Life without the wonderful part," Schneider explains. "'Reach down into the throat of It's a Wonderful Life, pull it inside out and make a movie out of it." He returned to the role of Bo Duke, alongside Tom Wopat as Luke Duke, in a 2014 commercial for Autotrader.com. In addition to acting, John Schneider owns and operates the John Schneider Studios (JSS) where he writes and produces independent films in Holden, Louisiana. John Schneider Studios (JSS) has created an innovative infrastructure, designed to give independent filmmakers all the tools they need to create their stories and films in one location. During Schneider's Dukes of Hazzard days, he also entered into music. It was in the early 80's that Schneider would sign with Scotti Brothers Label and release his debut full-length, Now or Never, which peaked at #8 on the US Country Billboard charts. Also from the album came "It's Now or Never," a remake of the Elvis Presley hit, which peaked at #4 on the US Country Billboard charts in 1981 and remains the top charting Elvis cover of all time in any genre to date. Continuing to release albums year after year, Schneider released Quiet Man and If You Believe and in 1984, signed with MCA Nashville. Through MCA Nashville, Schneider released Too Good to Stop Now which included his first #1 hits, "I've Been Around Enough to Know" and "Country Girls," also peaking at #1 on the CAN Country music charts, cementing his way into the country music world. The following year, Schneider unleashed Tryin' To Outrun the Wind, followed by A Memory Like You which debuted at #1 on the US Country Billboard charts, a first for Schneider. Off the album A Memory Like You came "What's a Memory Like You (Doing In A Love Like This)" and "You're The Last Thing I Needed Tonight," singles which both peaked at #1 on the US Country Billboard charts and CAN Country. In the late 80's, Schneider continued releasing albums including his Greatest Hits record. Taking some time off to pursue acting opportunities, Schneider would return with Worth The Wait, John's Acoustic Christmas, The Promise and Home For Christmas, with The Dukes of Hazzard co-star Tom Wopat in 2014. In 2019, on January 29, LIVE, at a filming of the TV show "Good Rockin' Tonight," John Schneider was Inducted on the air into The Louisiana Music Hall Of Fame in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. "I hadn't done music since 1990. People responded to that music, and one thing led to another," shares Schneider. "It's funny. Even though I had a bunch of No. 1 songs, people say, 'Oh, I love that Dukes of Hazzard song you sang!' Well, I didn't sing it, Waylon Jennings sang it. I'm famous for music by a song I never sang. Crazy." More than a dozen artists are joining Schneider in recording songs for Odyssey, including Tanya Tucker, John Conlee, Steve Wariner, Collin Raye, Mark Wills, Jamie O'Neal, Heidi Newfield, Bobby Bare, Kelly Lang, Jim Brown, Danny Shirley, Doug Supernaw and Marty Raybon, among others. More information about Odyssey can be found by visiting Schneider's website. Schneider has also been involved with a number of stage performances: 42nd Street [Pittsburgh, PA (Regional)] Pittsburgh CLO Revival, 2006 Julian Marsh [Replacement] Chicago [Broadway] Broadway Revival, 1996 Billy Flynn [Replacement] Grand Hotel [Broadway] Original Broadway Production, 1989 Felix Von Gaigern [Replacement] Schneider took part In the "Word Of Promise" Audio Bible series, which featured the voices of many famous actors and actresses. He voiced the character of James in the Book of James. On September 12, 2018, Schneider was announced as one of the celebrities who would compete on season 27 of Dancing with the Stars. His professional partner was Emma Slater. They became the sixth couple to be eliminated from the competition on November 5, alongside DeMarcus Ware and his professional partner Lindsay Arnold. In 1982, Schneider co-founded the Children's Miracle Network with Marie Osmond and her brothers. In 1995, he founded FaithWorks Productions in order to produce family-oriented videos and recordings. In 1998, Schneider became a born-again Christian while living with Johnny and June Carter Cash for a short time, and speaking with Johnny about Christianity. Schneider has become involved in animal advocacy. He loves underwater sports and has been always defending underwater life. He read from Karen Dawn's book Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking The Way We Treat Animals at its New York book launch. In a Washington Post article he discussed the effects of the book and the people he met through the event on his life. He was moved to record a personal video, which is available on YouTube and on the book's website, in which he talks of his shock upon learning about the way animals are treated by human society, and mentions the award winning documentary Earthlings, which is about the human dependence on animals for a variety of resources. Schneider has been vegan since 2010. Schneider was married to former Miss America Tawny Elaine Godin from 1983 to 1986. He married his second wife, Elly Castle, on July 11, 1993. On December 12, 2014, TMZ.com reported that Castle had filed for divorce., which, as of September 5, 2018, is still pending. They have three children, Leah and Chasen (born 1991), both of whom are Castle's children from her first marriage, and their daughter Karis. Since April 2015 Schneider has been in a relationship with Alicia Allain, his producing partner and owner of Maven Entertainment. Alicia is also his personal and professional manager. Schneider was good friends with James Best, who played Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane in The Dukes of Hazzard, until his death on April 6, 2015, at age 88. On June 12, 2018, Schneider spoke to Fox News regarding his upcoming three day jail sentence for failing to pay alimony to his estranged wife Elvira Castle. He said he has had hard financial times and he has spent his money on repairing his studio in Louisiana which was destroyed in a March 2016 flood. He was arrested at 10:29 AM and released at 3:45 PM. The short imprisonment was due to the overcrowded prison. He contrasted the warm treatment of the prison guards to the "guilty until proven innocent" treatment he received in the court system. However, he still has to do 240 hours of community service and pay the debt to Elvira, or else he would face an imprisonment of five years. Lucas K. "Luke" Duke was born on November 6, 1951, Luke is a fictional character in the American television series The Dukes of Hazzard which ran from 1979 to 1985. Luke was played by Tom Wopat. Luke, and his younger cousin Bo Duke live in an unincorporated area of the fictional Hazzard County, in Georgia. Luke and Bo own a 1969 Dodge Charger, nicknamed The General Lee, which is painted orange, with the Confederate Flag on top, and 01 painted on the sides. Luke and Bo evade the corrupt politicians of Hazzard County, such as Boss Hogg and Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane along with his deputy(s). The Duke family, including cousin Daisy Duke and Uncle Jesse Duke, was well known for their role in the moonshine business among other interests. Bo and Luke had both been sentenced to probation for illegal transportation of moonshine. As a result, neither was permitted to use firearms, instead preferring to use bow and arrows. The terms of Bo and Luke's probation included staying within the boundaries of Hazzard County (unless given special permission by their Probation Officer, who happened to be Boss Hogg). Prior to the start of the show, Luke served in the U.S. Marine Corps. Luke's famous "hood slide" (as seen in the opening credits, originating from the second episode, "Daisy's Song") is the trick most commonly associated with the character. In a subsequent TV interview, Tom Wopat admitted that the move was actually a mistake; it originated when he was trying to vault over the car to get to the passenger side and his foot accidentally caught the edge of the hood, causing his leg to slide across it. The move eventually caught on and became the character's hallmark. Additionally, in this initial slide, Wopat caught his hand on the hood radio aerial, leading to the aerial being removed from all later examples of the car to avoid risk of injury. In the pilot episode of the series, Bo commented that Luke was probably the father of at least two of the children who live at the Hazzard County Orphanage. Luke later left Hazzard County, along with his cousin Bo, to join the NASCAR circuit. His cousin Vance replaced him during that time. According to the 1997 film , Luke eventually would leave Hazzard for good, and put his military training to good use by becoming a fire jumper for the U.S. Forest Service. During training in Montana, he met and fell in love with a woman named Anita Blackwell, who was a talented singer. He convinced her to leave to pursue her dreams, and she became a successful country music star. Luke met her again in , although by then she was married to another man. Luke Duke was later played by Johnny Knoxville in the subsequent cinematic version and Randy Wayne in the prequel television film, .

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This is a list of countries by the number of millionaires by net worth (USD) based on an annual assessment of wealth and assets compiled and published by the Swiss bank Credit Suisse. According to estimates, in the middle of 2019 there were 46.8 million people worldwide whose assets exceeded one million USD, of which nearly 40% lived in the United States. The total net worth of all millionaires stood at US$158,261 billion. Millionaire, List of countries by the number of billionaires, List of countries by share of income of the richest one percent A millionaire is an individual whose net worth or wealth is equal to or exceeds one million units of currency. It can also be a person who owns one million units of currency in a bank account or savings account. Depending on the currency, a certain level of prestige is associated with being a millionaire, which makes that amount of wealth a goal for some and almost unattainable for others. In countries that use the short scale number naming system, a billionaire is someone who has at least a thousand times a million dollars, euros or the currency of the given country. Many national currencies have, or have had at various times, a low unit value, in many cases due to past inflation. It is obviously much easier and less significant to be a millionaire in those currencies, thus a millionaire (in the local currency) in Hong Kong or Taiwan, for example, may be merely averagely wealthy, or perhaps less wealthy than average. A millionaire in Zimbabwe in 2007 could have been extremely poor. Because of this, the United States Dollar (USD) is the most widely used currency standard to compare the wealth of people all over the world. Hence a person must have a net worth of at least one million USD to be recognised as a millionaire anywhere in the world. At the end of 2018, there were estimated to be just over 14 million millionaires or high-net-worth individual (HNWIs) in the world. The United States had the highest number of HNWIs (4,900,000) of any country, while New York City had the most HNWIs (377,000) among cities. The word was apparently coined in French in 1719 to describe speculators in the Mississippi Bubble who earned millions of livres in weeks before the bubble burst. (The standard French spelling is now , though the earlist reference uses a single n.) The earliest attestation in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a letter of Lord Byron of 1816, which mentions it as a French term needed because of the "Lilliputian" value of francs. Earlier English writers also mention the French word, including Sir William Mildmay in 1764. The OED's first print citation is Benjamin Disraeli's 1826 novel Vivian Grey, The anglicisation millionary was used in 1786 by Thomas Jefferson while serving as Minister to France; he wrote: "The poorest labourer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest Millionary". While statistics regarding financial assets and net worth are presented by household, the term is also often used to describe only the individual who has amassed the assets as millionaire. That is, even though the term statistically refers only to households, common usage is often in reference only to an individual. There are multiple approaches to determining a person's status as a millionaire. One of the two most commonly used measurements is net worth, which counts the total value of all property owned by a household minus the household's debts. According to this definition, a household owning an $800k home, $50k of furnishings, two cars worth $60k, a $60k retirement savings account, $45k in mutual funds, and a $325k vacation home with a $250k mortgage, $40k in car loans, and $25k in credit card debt would be worth about $1,025,000; and every individual in this household would thus be a millionaire. However, according to the net financial assets measurement used for some specific applications (such as evaluating an investor's expected tolerance for risk for stockbroker ethics), equity in one's principal residence is excluded, as are lifestyle assets, such as the car and furniture. Therefore, the above example household would only have net financial assets of $115,000. Another term used is "net investable assets" or working capital. These practitioners may use the term "millionaire" to mean somebody who is free to invest a million units of currency through them as broker. For similar reasons, those who market goods, services and investments to HNWIs are careful to specify a net worth "not counting principal residence". At the end of 2011, there were around 5.1 million HNWIs in the United States, while at the same time there were 11 million millionaires in a total of 3.5 million millionaire households, including those 5.1 million HNWIs. In the real estate bubble up to 2007, average house prices in some U.S. regions exceeded $1 million, but many homeowners owed large amounts to banks holding mortgages on their homes. For this reason, there are many people in million-dollar homes whose net worth is far short of a million—in some cases the net worth is actually negative. While millionaires constitute only a small percentage of the population, they hold substantial control over economic resources, with the most powerful and prominent individuals usually ranking among them. The total amount of money held by millionaires can equal the amount of money held by a far higher number of poor people. The Gini coefficient, and other measures in economics, estimated for each country, are useful for determining how many of the poorest people have the equivalent total wealth of the few richest in the country. Forbes and Fortune magazines maintain lists of people based on their net worth and are generally considered authorities on the subject. Forbes listed 1,645 dollar billionaires in 2014, with an aggregate net worth of $6.4 trillion, an increase from $5.4 trillion the previous year. (see US-dollar billionaires in the world). Sixteen percent of millionaires inherited their fortunes. Forty- seven percent of millionaires are business owners. Twenty-three percent of the world's millionaires got that way through paid work, consisting mostly of skilled professionals or managers. Millionaires are, on average, 61 years old with $3.05 million in assets. Depending on how it is calculated, a million US dollars in 1900 is equivalent to $ (in ). $21.2 million using the GDP deflator,, $24.8 million using the consumer price index,, $61.4 million using the gold price, $114.1 million using the unskilled wage,, $162.8 million using the nominal GDP per capita,, $642 million using the relative share of GDP, Thus one would need to have almost thirty million dollars today to have the purchasing power of a US millionaire in 1900, or more than 100 million dollars to have the same impact on the US economy. Dated ways of describing someone worth n millions are "n-fold millionaire” and "millionaire n times over". Still commonly used is multimillionaire, which usually refers to individuals with net assets of 10 million or more of a currency. By this definition there are approximately 584,000 US$ multimillionaires worldwide in 2017. Roughly 1.5% of US$ millionaires can are "ultra-high-net-worth individuals" (ultra-HNWIs), defined those with a net worth or wealth of $30 million or more. There are approximately 226,000 US$ ultra-HNWIs in the world in 2017, according to Wealth-X. The rising prevalence of people possessing ever increasing quantities of wealth has given rise to additional terms to further differentiate millionaires. Individuals with net assets of 100 million or more of a currency have been termed hectomillionaires. The term centimillionaire has become synonymous with hectomillionaire in America, despite the centi- prefix meaning the one hundredth part, not hundredfold, in the metric system. Offshoots of the term include pent-hectomillionaire, referring to those who are halfway to becoming billionaires. In discussions on wealth inequality in the United States, hectomillionaires are said to be in the richest 0.01%, prompting calls for a redistribution of wealth. High Net Worth Individuals. According to wealth research group Wealth-X that released its latest UHNW Cities report, showing the residential footprint of the world's top ultra-high net worth (UHNW) individual cities. Excluding Monaco – which has very high UHNWI density – Geneva has the highest density of super wealthy people per capita in the world. The city is known as the most compact metropolitan area, and also enjoys a concentration of affluence. Singapore has the second highest concentration, followed by San Jose, the center of Silicon Valley, and the largest city in Northern California. While New York City leads in terms of overall UHNW footprint, London has a similar number of UHNW "second homers" despite a considerably smaller population. Paris features as the highest European city after London, Wealth-X said. Among suburbs and smaller towns, Beverly Hills has the highest overall number of UHNW residents, and Aspen has the highest concentration on a per capita basis, the report showed. Ultra-high net worth individuals are defined by Wealth-X as those whose total net worth is higher than $30 million (R400 million). Fig below illustrates Cities with The highest millionaire density worldwide (higher than $1 million) . Credit Suisse's "Global Wealth in 2019" measured the number of adult millionaires in the world. According to the report, the US has 18.6 million millionaires, highest in the world. The following is a list of the countries with the most millionaire households in U.S. dollars worldwide according to the Boston Consulting Group's 2017 study. Number of millionaires per city The following is a list of the cities with the most US$ millionaires. European cities with the highest concentration of millionaires There is a wide disparity in the estimates of the number of millionaires residing in the United States. A quarterly report prepared by the Economist Intelligence Unit on behalf of Barclays Wealth in 2007 estimated that there were 16.6 million millionaires in the USA. At the end of 2011, there were around 5.1 million HNWIs in the US, while at the same time, there were 11 million millionaires in a total of 3.5 million millionaire households, including those 5.1 million HNWIs. According to TNS Financial Services, as reported by CNN Money, 2 million households in the US alone had a net worth of at least $1 million excluding primary residences in 2005. According to TNS, in mid-2006 the number of millionaire US households was 9.3 million, with an increase of half a million since 2005. The study found that half of all millionaire households in the US were headed by retirees. In 2004 the United States saw a "33 percent increase over the 6.2 million households that met that criteria [sic] in 2003", fueled largely by the country's real estate boom. A report by Capgemini for Merrill Lynch on the other hand stated that in 2007 there were approximately 3,028,000 households in the United States who held at least US$1 million in financial assets, excluding collectibles, consumables, consumer durables and primary residences. According to TNS Financial Services, Los Angeles County, California had the highest number of millionaires, totalling over 262,800 households in mid-2006. Aggregate demand, Billionaire, Business oligarch, Distribution of wealth, High-net-worth individual, Upper middle class, Upper class, Six figure income, Wealth concentration, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (game show), The Millionaire Next Door (book), Moscow Millionaire Fair, Pierre Lorillard II (first American to be designated a "millionaire"), List of African millionaires, Lists of billionaires, Sunday Times Rich List The correlation between wealth and religion has been subject to academic research. Wealth is the status of being the beneficiary or proprietor of a large accumulation of capital and economic power. Religion is a cultural system that often involves belief in supernatural forces and may intend to provide a moral system or a meaning of life. The GDP of countries generally correlates negatively with their religiosity, i.e. the wealthier a population is the more secular it is. According to a study from 2015, Christians hold the largest amount of wealth (55% of the total world wealth), followed by Muslims (5.8%), Hindus (3.3%), and Jews (1.1%). According to the same study it was found that adherents under the classification Irreligion or other religions hold about 34.8% of the total global wealth. A study done by the nonpartisan wealth research firm New World Wealth found that 56.2% of the 13.1 million millionaires in the world were Christians, while 6.5% were Muslims, 3.9% were Hindu, and 1.7% were Jewish; 31.7% were identified as adherents of "other" religions or "not religious". A study in the United States (based on data from 1985–1998), conducted by the sociologist Lisa A. Keister and published in the Social Forces journal, found that adherents of Judaism and Episcopalianism accumulated the most wealth, believers in Catholicism and mainline Protestants were in the middle, while conservative Protestants accumulated the least; in general, people who attend religious services accumulated more wealth than those who do not (taking into account variations of education and other factors). Keister suggested that wealth accumulation is shaped by family processes. According to the study, the median net worth of people believing in Judaism is calculated at 150,890 USD, while the median net worth of conservative Protestants (including Baptists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-day Adventists, Christian Scientists) was 26,200 USD. The overall median in the dataset was 48,200 USD. Another study in the United States, from 2012, stated that 48% of Hindus had a household income of $100,000 or more, and 70% make at least $75,000, which is the highest among all religions in United States. According to a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, Jewish again ranked as the most financially successful religious group in the United States, with 44% of Jews living in households with incomes of at least $100,000, followed by Hindu (36%), Episcopalians (35%), and Presbyterians (32%). Amongst Jews, in 2016, Modern Orthodox Jews had a median household income of $158,000, while Open Orthodoxy Jews had a median household income of $185,000 (compared to the American median household income of $59,000 in 2016). According to the same study there is correlation between education and income, about 77% of American Hindus have an undergraduate degree, followed by Jews (59%), Episcopalians (56%), and Presbyterians (47%). A study published in the American Journal of Sociology by Lisa Keister, found that "wealth affects religion indirectly through educational attainment, fertility, and female labor force participation" but also found some evidence of direct effects of religion on wealth attainment. Keister notes that certain religious beliefs ("one should have many children", "women should not work") lower wealth accumulation, both on the micro- and macro-scale. Christian views on poverty and wealth, Economics of religion, Happiness and religion, Jewish views of poverty, wealth and charity, Protestant work ethic, Religion and peacebuilding, Religion and business, Religion and poverty, Religiosity and intelligence, Female labor force in the Muslim world

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This article describes the history of cricket in India to 1918. The entire history of cricket in India and the sub-continent as a whole is based on the existence and development of the British Raj via the East India Company. On 31 December 1600, Queen Elizabeth I granted a Royal Charter to the (EIC) East India Company, often colloquially referred to as "John Company". It was initially a joint-stock company that sought trading privileges in India and the East Indies, but the Royal Charter effectively gave it a 21-year monopoly on all trade in the region. In time, the East India Company transformed from a commercial trading venture to one which virtually ruled India as it acquired auxiliary governmental and military functions, until its dissolution in 1858 following the Indian Mutiny. The East India Company was the means by which cricket was introduced into India. In 1639, the Company effectively founded the city of Madras, and in 1661 acquired Portuguese territory on the west coast of India that included Bombay. In 1690, an Anglo- Mughal treaty allowed English merchants to establish a trading settlement on the Hooghly River, which became Calcutta. All of these places became leading centres of cricket as the popularity of the game grew among the native population. The first definite reference to cricket being played anywhere in the sub- continent is a report of English sailors of the East India Company written in 1737. It refers to cricket being played at Cambay, near Baroda in 1721. The Calcutta Cricket and Football Club was known to be in existence by 1792, but was possibly founded more than a decade earlier. In 1799, another club was formed at Seringapatam in south India after the successful British siege and the defeat of Tipu Sultan. In 1864, a Madras v. Calcutta match was arguably the start of first-class cricket in India. The British played the Indians to build relationships with the Indians and if the Indian elite had connections with the British, the British could have more control of India because of Cricket. The most important fixture in the 19th century was the Bombay Presidency Match which evolved, first, into the Bombay Triangular and then into the Bombay Quadrangular. The match was first played in 1877 and then intermittently for several seasons until finally being given first-class status in 1892-93. An English team led by George Vernon in 1889–90 was the first foreign team to tour India but none of the matches that it played are considered first-class. First-class cricket definitely began in the 1892–93 season with two Europeans v Parsees matches, at Bombay (match drawn) and Poona (Parsees won by 3 wickets). In the same season, Lord Hawke captained an English team that played four first-class matches including a game against "All India" on 26–28 January 1893. 1892-93 - Parsees, 1893-94 - Europeans, 1894-95 - Europeans shared with Parsees, 1895-96 - Europeans shared with Parsees, 1896-97 - Europeans, 1897-98 - Parsees, 1898-99 - Europeans, 1899-00 - Europeans shared with Parsees, 1900-01 - Parsees, 1901-02 - Europeans shared with Parsees, 1902-03 - Europeans shared with Parsees, 1903-04 - Parsees, 1904-05 - Parsees, 1905-06 - Hindus shared with Parsees, 1906-07 - Hindus 1907-08 - Parsees, 1908-09 - Europeans, 1909-10 - Europeans shared with Parsees, 1910-11 - Europeans shared with Hindus, 1911-12 - Parsees 1912-13 - Parsees, 1913-14 - Hindus shared with Muslims, 1914-15 - Hindus shared with Parsees, 1915-16 - Europeans, 1916-17 - Europeans shared with Parsees, 1917-18 - Hindus shared with Parsees The lists below give the leading first-class runscorers and wicket-takers in each domestic season. 1892-93 - Ledger Hill (Lord Hawke's XI) - 212 runs @ 35.33 (HS 132); the leading Indian batsman was Nasarvanji Bapasola with 155 @ 38.75 (HS 65), 1893-94 - 1892-93 - John Hornsby (Lord Hawke's XI) - 28 wickets @ 10.67 (BB 8–40); the leading Indian bowler was Dinshaw Writer with 19 @ 4.94 (BB 8–35), 1893-94 - The first Indian ventures into international cricket were by the Parsees cricket team which toured England twice in the 1880s. See: Parsee cricket team in England in 1886 and Parsee cricket team in England in 1888. An English cricket team led by G F Vernon toured Ceylon and India in the winter of 1889-90. The team played no first-class matches but it was a pioneering tour being the first visit by an English team to India and the second to Ceylon. In all, the team played 13 matches of which 10 were won, 1 was lost and 2 drawn. Rowland Bowen, Cricket: A History of its Growth and Development, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1970, Vasant Raiji, India's Hambledon Men, Tyeby Press, 1986, Mihir Bose, A History of Indian Cricket, Andre-Deutsch, 1990, Ramachandra Guha, A Corner of a Foreign Field – An Indian History of a British Sport, Picador, 2001 CricketArchive - Itinerary of Events in India The India men's national cricket team, also known as Team India, Men in Blue, and All-Blues , is governed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), and is a Full Member of the International Cricket Council (ICC) with Test, One-Day International (ODI) and Twenty20 International (T20I) status. Although cricket was introduced to India by European merchant sailors in the 18th century, and the first cricket club was established in Calcutta (currently known as Kolkata) in 1792, India's national cricket team did not play its first Test match until 25 June 1932 at Lord's, becoming the sixth team to be granted Test cricket status. In its first fifty years of international cricket, India was one of the weaker teams, winning only 35 of the first 196 Test matches it played. From 1932 India had to wait until 1952, almost 20 years for its first Test victory. The team, however, gained strength in the 1970s with the emergence of players such as batsmen Sunil Gavaskar and Gundappa Viswanath, all-rounder Kapil Dev and the Indian spin quartet of Erapalli Prasanna, Srinivas Venkataraghavan, Bhagwat Chandrasekhar and Bishen Singh Bedi. Traditionally much stronger at home than abroad, the Indian team has improved its overseas form, especially in limited-overs cricket, since the start of the 21st century, winning Test matches in Australia, England and South Africa. It has won the Cricket World Cup twice – in 1983 under the captaincy of Kapil Dev and in 2011 under the captaincy of Mahendra Singh Dhoni. After winning the 2011 World Cup, India became only the third team after West Indies and Australia to have won the World Cup more than once, and the first cricket team to win the World Cup at home. It also won the 2007 ICC World Twenty20 and 2013 ICC Champions Trophy, under the captaincy of MS Dhoni. It was also the joint champions of 2002 ICC Champions Trophy, along with Sri Lanka. , India is ranked first in Tests, second in ODIs and fifth in T20Is by the ICC. Virat Kohli is the current captain of the team across all formats, while the head coach is Ravi Shastri. The Indian cricket team has rivalries with other Test-playing nations, most notably with Pakistan, the political arch-rival of India. However, in recent times, rivalries with nations like Australia, South Africa and England have also gained prominence. The British brought cricket to India in the early 1700s, with the first cricket match played in 1721. In 1848, the Parsi community in Bombay formed the Oriental Cricket Club, the first cricket club to be established by Indians. After slow beginnings, the Europeans eventually invited the Parsis to play a match in 1877. By 1912, the Parsis, Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims of Bombay played a quadrangular tournament with the Europeans every year. In the early 1900s, some Indians went on to play for the England cricket team. Some of these, such as Ranjitsinhji and KS Duleepsinhji were greatly appreciated by the British and their names went on to be used for the Ranji Trophy and Duleep Trophy – two major first-class tournaments in India. In 1911, an Indian team went on their first official tour of the British Isles, but only played English county teams and not the England cricket team. India was invited to The Imperial Cricket Council in 1926, and made their debut as a Test playing nation in England in 1932, led by CK Nayudu, who was considered as the best Indian batsman at the time. The one-off Test match between the two sides was played at Lord's in London. The team was not strong in their batting at this point and went on to lose by 158 runs. India hosted its first Test series in the year 1933. England was the visiting team that played 2 Tests in Bombay (now Mumbai) and Calcutta (now Kolkata). The visitors won the series 2-0. The Indian team continued to improve throughout the 1930s and '40s but did not achieve an international victory during this period. In the early 1940s, India didn't play any Test cricket due to the Second World War. The team's first series as an independent country was in late 1947 against Sir Donald Bradman's Invincibles (a name given to the Australia national cricket team of that time). It was also the first Test series India played which was not against England. Australia won the five-match series 4–0, with Bradman tormenting the Indian bowling in his final Australian summer. India subsequently played their first Test series at home not against England against the West Indies in 1948. West Indies won the 5-Test series 1–0. India recorded their first Test victory, in their 24th match, against England at Madras in 1952. Later in the same year, they won their first Test series, which was against Pakistan. They continued their improvement throughout the early 1950s with a series win against New Zealand in 1956. However, they did not win again in the remainder of the decade and lost badly to strong Australian and English sides. On 24 August 1959, India lost by an innings in the Test to complete the only 5–0 whitewash ever inflicted by England. The next decade saw India's reputation develop as a team with a strong record at home. They won their first Test series against England at home in 1961–62 and also won a home series against New Zealand. They managed to draw home series against Pakistan and Australia and another series against England. In this same period, India also won its first series outside the subcontinent, against New Zealand in 1967–68. The key to India's bowling in the 1970s were the Indian spin quartet – Bishen Bedi, E.A.S. Prasanna, BS Chandrasekhar and Srinivas Venkataraghavan. This period also saw the emergence of two of India's best ever batsmen, Sunil Gavaskar and Gundappa Viswanath. Indian pitches have had the tendency to support spin and the spin quartet exploited this to create collapses in opposing batting line-ups. These players were responsible for the back-to-back series wins in 1971 in the West Indies and in England, under the captaincy of Ajit Wadekar. Gavaskar scored 774 runs in the West Indian series while Dilip Sardesai's 112 played a big part in their one Test win. The advent of One Day International (ODI) cricket in 1971 created a new dimension in the cricket world. However, India was not considered strong in ODIs at this point and batsmen such as the captain Gavaskar were known for their defensive approach to batting. India began as a weak team in ODIs and did not qualify for the second round in the first two editions of the Cricket World Cup. Gavaskar infamously blocked his way to 36 not out off 174 balls against England in the first World Cup in 1975, India scored just 132 for 3 and lost by 202 runs. In contrast, India fielded a strong team in Test matches and was particularly strong at home, where their combination of stylish batsmen and beguiling spinners were at their best. India set a then Test record in the third Test against the West Indies at Port-of-Spain in 1976, when they chased 403 to win, thanks to 112 from Viswanath. This West Indian defeat is considered to be a watershed in the history of their cricket because it led to captain Clive Lloyd dispensing with spin altogether and relying entirely on a four-man pace attack instead. In November 1976, the team established another record by scoring 524 for 9 declared against New Zealand at Kanpur without any individual batsman scoring a century. There were six fifties, the highest being 70 by Mohinder Amarnath. This innings was only the eighth instance in Test cricket where all eleven batsmen reached double figures. During the 1980s, India developed a more attack-minded batting line- up with stroke makers such as the wristy Mohammed Azharuddin, Dilip Vengsarkar and all-rounders Kapil Dev and Ravi Shastri. India won the Cricket World Cup in 1983, defeating the favourites and the two-time defending champions West Indies in the final at Lords, owing to a strong bowling performance. In spite of this, the team performed poorly in the Test arena, including 28 consecutive Test matches without a victory. In 1984, India won the Asia Cup and in 1985, won the World Championship of Cricket in Australia. Apart from this, India remained a weak team outside the Indian subcontinent. India's Test series victory in 1986 against England remained the last Test series win by India outside the subcontinent for the next 19 years. The 1980s saw Gavaskar and Kapil Dev (India's best all-rounder to date) at the pinnacle of their careers. Gavaskar made a Test record 34 centuries as he became the first man to reach the 10,000 run mark. Kapil Dev later became the highest wicket-taker in Test cricket with 434 wickets. The period was also marked by an unstable leadership, with Gavaskar and Kapil exchanging the captaincy several times. The addition of Sachin Tendulkar and Anil Kumble to the national side in 1989 and 1990 further improved the team. The following year, Javagal Srinath, India's fastest bowler since Amar Singh made his debut. Despite this, during the 1990s, India did not win any of its 33 Tests outside the subcontinent while it won 17 out of its 30 Tests at home. After being eliminated by neighbours Sri Lanka on home soil at the 1996 Cricket World Cup semifinal, the team underwent a year of change as Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid, later to become captains of the team, made their debut in the same Test at Lord's. Tendulkar replaced Azharuddin as captain in late 1996, but after a personal and team form slump, Tendulkar relinquished the captaincy and Azharuddin was reinstated at the beginning of 1998. With the captaincy burden removed, Tendulkar was the world's leading run-scorer in both Tests and ODIs, as India enjoyed a home Test series win over Australia, the best-ranked team in the world. After failing to reach the semifinals at the 1999 Cricket World Cup, Tendulkar was again made captain, and had another poor run, losing 3–0 on a tour of Australia and then 2–0 at home to South Africa. Tendulkar resigned, vowing never to captain the team again. Ganguly was appointed the new captain and the team was further damaged in 2000 when former captain Azharuddin and fellow batsman Ajay Jadeja were implicated in a match-fixing scandal and given life and five years bans respectively. This period was described by the BBC as "the Indian cricket's worst hour". However, the new core – Tendulkar, Dravid, Kumble and Ganguly – swore not to let this happen to them again, and lead Indian cricket out of the dark times. And the first three put aside personal ambitions to let Ganguly lead them into a new era. Since 2000, the Indian team underwent major improvements under the captaincy of Sourav Ganguly and guidance of John Wright, India's first ever foreign coach. India maintained their unbeaten home record against Australia in Test series after defeating them in 2001. The series was famous for the Kolkata Test match, in which India became only the third team in the history of Test cricket to win a Test match after following on. Australian captain Steve Waugh labelled India as the "Final Frontier" as a result of his side's inability to win a Test series in India. Victory in 2001 against the Australians marked the beginning of a dream run for India under their captain Ganguly, winning Test matches in Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, West Indies and England. The England series is also known for India's highest ODI run-chase of 325 runs at Lord's which came in the Natwest ODI Series final against England. In the same year, India were joint-winners of the ICC Champions Trophy with Sri Lanka and then went to the 2003 Cricket World Cup in South Africa where they reached the final, only to be beaten by Australia. The 2003–04 season also saw India play out a Test series in Australia where they drew 1–1 with the world champions, and then win a Test and ODI series in Pakistan. At the end of the 2004 season, India suffered from lack of form and fitness from its older players. A defeat in a following home Test series against Australia was followed by an ODI home series defeat against Pakistan followed by a Test series levelled 1–1. Greg Chappell took over from John Wright as the coach of the Indian cricket team following the series, and his methods proved to be controversial during the beginning of his tenure. The tension resulted in a fallout between Chappell and Ganguly, resulting in Rahul Dravid being made captain. This triggered a revival in the team's fortunes, following the emergence of players like Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Suresh Raina, and the coming of age of players like Irfan Pathan and Yuvraj Singh. A thumping home series victory over Sri Lanka in 2005 and a drawn series with South Africa put India at second place in the ICC ODI rankings. Dravid, Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag were selected to play for the ICC World XI in the 2005 "SuperTest" against Australia. A convincing ODI series win in Pakistan in early 2006, following a loss in the Test series, gave India the world record of 17 successive ODI victories while batting second. Towards the middle of 2006, however, a 4–1 series loss in the West Indies gave rise to a slump in India's ODI form, while they achieved a 1–0 victory in the Test series that followed, giving them their first Test series victory in the Caribbean since 1971. India's ODI form slumped further with a disappointing performance in the 2006 Champions Trophy and a drubbing in the ODI series in South Africa. This was followed yet again by an initial good performance in the Tests, giving India its first Test match win in South Africa, although they went on to lose the series 2–1. This Test series was marked by Ganguly's comeback to the Indian team. In December 2006, India played and won its first ever Twenty20 international in South Africa, becoming the most recent Test team to play Twenty20 cricket. The beginning of 2007 had seen a revival in the Indian team's ODI fortunes before the 2007 Cricket World Cup. Series victories against the West Indies and Sri Lanka, marked by the comeback of Ganguly, and strong form by Tendulkar, and the emergence of young players like Robin Uthappa saw many pundits to tip India as a real contender to win the 2007 Cricket World Cup. However, defeats to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka saw India fail to reach the second round. After winning the Test series against England in August 2007, Dravid stepped down as the captain of the team, following which Dhoni was made the captain of the Twenty20 and ODI team. In September 2007, India won the first-ever Twenty20 World Cup held in South Africa, beating Pakistan by 5 runs in the final. In 2007–08, they toured Australia where India lost the highly controversial home Test series 2–1 but managed to win the CB series the following month with a whitewash final of Australia. In April 2009, India secured their first Test series win in New Zealand in 41 years. After beating Sri Lanka 2–0 in December 2009, India became the No. 1 Test team in the world. They retained the ranking by drawing series against South Africa and Sri Lanka. In October 2010, India whitewashed Australia 2–0 in the home test series, giving them back-to-back series wins against them. Later that year, India managed to draw the Test series in South Africa at 1–1. On 2 April 2011, India won the 2011 Cricket World Cup by defeating Sri Lanka in the final, thus becoming the third team after West Indies and Australia to win the World Cup twice, the previous win being in 1983. Gautam Gambhir and the skipper Dhoni led the way with 97 and 91* respectively. India also became the first team to win the World Cup on home soil. India were whitewashed 4–0 in away Test series by England in August 2011 due to which England replaced India as the No. 1 Test team in the rankings. This series was followed by another 4–0 whitewash of India in January 2012 in Australia. The disastrous whitewashes saw the retirement of Dravid and VVS Laxman from Test cricket in 2012. Tendulkar retired in November 2013 after his 200th Test match. With Ganguly having retired in 2008, this period signalled the end of the fabled middle-order batting line-up India had for a decade. 2012 signalled a rough period for Indian cricket as they were beaten 2–1 by England at home in the Test series. This was the first Team India were beaten by England at home in the modern era. This was followed by a 2–1 loss in the ODI series against Pakistan, India's arch-rivals, at home. India was then knocked out in the second round of the 2012 ICC World Twenty20. India also failed to qualify for the 2012 Asia Cup final which closed out a disappointing 2012 for the Indian cricket team. 2013 saw a resurgence in Indian cricket. In early 2013, India returned the favour to Australia and whitewashed them 4–0 at home in a Test series. India then beat the Aussies 3–2 in the 7-match ODI series and won the one-off T20I. However, India lost heavily against New Zealand and South Africa away from home and led to heavy criticism of Indian cricketers for not being able to perform overseas. India defeated England in the 2013 ICC Champions Trophy final and Mahendra Singh Dhoni became the first captain in history to win the three major ICC trophies, namely- ICC Cricket World Cup, ICC World Twenty20 and ICC Champions Trophy. This was followed by a victory in the West Indies Triangular Series in 2013 consisting of India, West Indies and Sri Lanka. In 2014, India toured Bangladesh and England. Although they beat the former 2–0 in 3 One Day Internationals, Team India were beaten 3–1 in 5 Test matches by England. This series included a famous win for the Indian team in the first match of the series at Lord's. The Test series was followed by a 3–1 win for the Indians in a 5-match ODI series and a loss in a one-off T20, both against England. India failed to reach the final of the Asia Cup yet again in 2014. In the 2014 ICC World Twenty20 hosted in Bangladesh, India narrowly missed out on another ICC trophy by losing to Sri Lanka in the final. This tournament saw the rise of Virat Kohli as one of the best limited overs batsmen in world cricket, as he was adjudged the man of the series. India soon comprehensively beat Sri Lanka and West Indies in ODI series to cement their position at the top of the ODI rankings. India toured Australia towards the end of 2014 for a 4-match Test series, which is remembered for MS Dhoni's sudden retirement from Test cricket after the end of the second Test. Virat Kohli was appointed as the captain of Team India in Test matches but he was unable to turn the series around and India lost 2–0. Kohli's first series win as captain came away from home in a 3-match Test series vs Sri Lanka, which signalled the beginning of an unbeaten Test series run for India. 2015 saw the beginning of India's dominance at home in Test matches under new captain Virat Kohli when they comprehensively beat South Africa. This series was the beginning of an unbeaten streak of 19 Test matches for India which was brought to an end by Australia in early 2017. This series also saw the emergence of Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja as two of the best spinners and all-rounders. They spun webs around touring batsmen, much like the spinning quartet of the 1970s. This was followed by limited overs victories over Australia and Sri Lanka away from home. India was knocked out of the 2015 World Cup in the semi-final stage, to eventual winners Australia. India began 2016 by winning the 2016 Asia Cup, remaining unbeaten throughout the tournament, beating Pakistan along the way. India were favourites to win the 2016 ICC World Twenty20 which was being held at home, but they lost in the semi-final to eventual champions West Indies. Virat Kohli was again named the man of the series. In 2016, "The Grand Home Season" began for India, including series at home against New Zealand, England, Bangladesh and Australia. India whitewashed New Zealand to regain the number one ranking in Test cricket after almost 10 years. Before the series against England in November 2016, MS Dhoni resigned as captain of India in limited overs, thus handing the captaincy to Virat Kohli across all formats. India beat England across all three formats, with a notable 4–0 win in the Test series. This was followed by Test series wins against Bangladesh and Australia, which meant India reclaimed the Border Gavaskar Trophy. Ravichandran Ashwin became the fastest cricketer of all time to reach 250 wickets; he and Ravindra Jadeja occupied the top two spots in both the ICC Bowlers and All-Rounders rankings at the time. In the process, India became the third team (after South Africa and Australia) to have won their most recent Test series against all the other Test-playing nations. India holds an unbeaten streak of 8 consecutive Test series wins . India defeated Pakistan in their first game of the 2017 ICC Champions Trophy, winning by a convincing 124-run margin, but lost their second game of the group against Sri Lanka by 7 wickets despite posting a total of 321. In their final group game against South Africa, a must-win encounter, India won comfortably and sealed a spot in the semi-finals, against Bangladesh. India comfortably won the match by 9 wickets, and faced arch-rivals Pakistan in the final, the first time they had met at this stage of a tournament since 2007. In an anti-climax, considering India were the clear favourites, Pakistan defeated India comfortably by 180 runs in the final, outclassing them across all three departments. India beat the West Indies 3–1 in a 5-match ODI series in the Caribbean in July 2017, but lost to the same opposition in a one-off T20I. India then toured Sri Lanka, and comprehensively defeated them 3-0 in a three-match Test series, the first time India had whitewashed a team away from home in a Test series with at least three games. The next year saw mixed results in Tests for India: they lost away series in both South Africa and England, but won their away series against Australia, the first time they had won a series there. In home Tests, they defeated West Indies. They won the ODI leg of the South African tour, followed by the tri- series with Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. They lost 2–1 in the ODI series in England, followed by a win at home to West Indies and away to both Australia and New Zealand. At the start of 2019, Australia won a T20I series 2–0, representing Virat Kohli's first home defeat in a T20I series. India won its first T20 series of the year against Sri Lanka in 3 match T20 series(2-0) on 10 January. On 19 January, Indian cricket team won their series against Australia in a 3 match ODI series(2-1). The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is the governing body for the Indian cricket team and first-class cricket in India. The Board has been operating since 1929 and represents India at the International Cricket Council. It is amongst the richest sporting organisations in the world. It sold media rights for India's matches from 2006–2010 for US$612,000,000. It manages the Indian team's sponsorships, its future tours and team selection. The International Cricket Council determines India's upcoming matches through its future tours program. However, the BCCI, with its influential financial position in the cricketing world, has often challenged the ICC's program and called for more series between India, Australia and England which are more likely to earn more revenue as opposed to tours with Bangladesh or Zimbabwe. In the past, the BCCI has also come into conflict with the ICC regarding sponsorships and the legitimacy of the ICC Champions Trophy. Selection for the Indian cricket team occurs through the BCCI's zonal selection policy, where each of the five zones is represented with one selector and one of the members nominated by BCCI as the Chairman of the selection committee. This has sometimes led to controversy as to whether these selectors are biased towards their zones. The current chairman of the selection committee is M. S. K. Prasad. Devang Gandhi, Sarandeep Singh, Jatin Paranjpe, and Gagan Khoda are the other members of the selection committee from 21 September 2016. Cricket whites have been traditionally used by the team when playing first- class cricket. In addition to their whites, Indian fielders wear a dark blue cap or a white wide-brimmed sun hat, with the BCCI logo in the center. Helmets are also dark blue. Some players sport the Indian flag on their helmet. The branding is minimal for whites; the BCCI logo is placed on the left chest while the team sponsor's (currently OPPO) logo is present on the right chest. The kit manufacturer's (Nike) logo would be printed on the sleeve of the players' leading arms. Since colours have made their way into international cricket, the Indian cricket team has chosen blue as their primary colour. The blue colour of the uniform has earned them the nickname of 'Men in Blue' for the Indian cricket team. The secondary colour has changed over the years while yellow and orange have been dominant. With the inception of the World Series Cup in 1979, each team had to don a primary and secondary colour on their uniforms and the Indian team elected to wear light blue as their primary colour and yellow as their secondary colour. The team has worn different shades of blue since then. For the 1992 World Cup (Benson & Hedges World Cup), the team's colours were changed to navy-blue by ISC, the common kit manufacturer for the tournament. A light shade of blue with yellow as secondary colour and a strip with 10 different colours (representing different nations) was adapted on the uniform for the 1996 World Cup (Wills World Cup) while an even lighter shade of blue and a dominant yellow was used by ASICS, the common kit manufacturer for the 1999 World Cup. The ICC no longer appoints a common kit manufacturer for its tournaments. Different designs were adopted on the playing jerseys over the years and the most predominant one has been 'India' text written in yellow over a diagonal splash of the tricolour. Nike acquired the kit manufacturing rights for the team in 2005 and designed new jerseys for the 2007 World Cup with the lightest shade of blue used by the team till date and golden yellow as the secondary colour. A new tricolour accent was implemented on the right side of the jersey. The colour was changed to a darker feroza blue in 2009 with orange replacing yellow as the secondary colour. A New Jersey was unveiled by Nike with a bolder ultramarine blue shade and a new tricolour accent placed on both sides of the jersey in 2010. A reddish-orange shade was used as the secondary colour on this uniform. In 2014, new kits were released with a slightly darker shade of blue and a minimal accent design over the shoulders. Nike released new kits once again in 2015 with a similar shade of blue and no accents. In March 2019 before the World Cup, a new design was unveiled by Nike with a prominent two-tone blue colour. The front of the jersey sported a similar shade of blue as with the previous versions while the sides, arms and back were given a lighter shade of blue. A minimal orange accent was also incorporated on the sides. During the ICC World Cup 2019, for a match against England, as mandated by the ICC, an alternate jersey with orange acquiring the back and shoulders and navy blue at the front was introduced. This was the first time a different colour and not blue had become a dominant colour on the India jersey. The match against England was also a special match, called #OneDay4Children, organised by the ICC between the top 2 ranked ODI teams in 2019. Also, this happens to be the only occasion where the alternate jersey was used by India till date. Since international teams started using different kits for T20s and ODIs, Nike released the first T20 kit for the team in 2016 with a similar shade and a contemporary design. Multiple thin strips of orange and green were included on upper right and lower left sides of the jersey respectively. A new ODI jersey was unveiled by Nike in 2017 with a similar shade of blue for the body and a darker shade of blue for the sleeves. The tricolour accent made a return to the uniform as a single thin strip on either sides of upper chest. In addition to the blue uniforms, the caps worn by the players are similar to the design of uniforms. The wide-brimmed sun hats are usually white while the helmets used by the players are of darker blue. Similar to the first-class kits, BCCI logo is placed on the left chest while the logo of the kit manufacturer (Nike) sits on the right chest. The official team sponsor's logo (currently BYJU'S) is present on the central part of the jersey usually above 'INDIA' text as well as the sleeve of the players' leading arms. For T20 kits, in addition to these, the sponsor's logo is also present on the back, below the players' numbers. However, for ICC tournaments, the tournament logo is placed on the right chest and the sponsor's logo is allowed only on the sleeve of the players' leading arms. The kit manufacturer's logo in such cases will be printed on the sleeve of the players' non-leading arms. The name and jersey number of the players are printed on the back. The current sponsor of the team is BYJU's. OPPO's sponsorship was to run from 2017 until 2022, but was handed over to BYJU's on 5 September 2019. Previously, the Indian team was sponsored by Star India from 2014 to 2017, Sahara India Pariwar from 2002 to 2013 and ITC Limited (with Wills and ITC Hotels brands) from 1993 to 2002. The current kit sponsor for the Indian team until September 2020 is Nike, which in 2005 acquired the rights from BCCI. The deal with Nike has been extended twice for a period of five years each time; in 2011 and 2016 respectively. Paytm acquired the title sponsorship for all matches played by the team within India in 2015 and extended the same in 2019 until 2023. Star Sports Network is the official broadcaster until 2023 for all matches the team plays in India. There are numerous world-renowned cricket stadiums located in India. Most grounds are under the administration of various state cricket boards as opposed to being under the control of the BCCI. The Bombay Gymkhana was the first ground in India to host a full-scale cricket match featuring an Indian cricket team. This was between the Parsis and the Europeans in 1877. The first stadium to host a Test match in India was also the Gymkhana Ground in Bombay in 1933, the only Test it ever hosted. The second and third Tests in the 1933 series were hosted at Eden Gardens and Chepauk. The Feroz Shah Kotla Ground in Delhi was the first stadium to host a Test match after independence, a draw against the West Indies in 1948, the first of a 5-Test series. 21 stadiums in India have hosted at least one official Test match. In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of world-class cricket stadiums in India, with multiple Test venues in Indore, Chandigarh Mohali, Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Rajkot, Ranchi, Pune, Dharamshala and Nagpur. Eden Gardens in Kolkata has hosted the most Tests, and also has the second-largest seating capacity of any cricket stadium in the world, being capable of holding more than 66,000 spectators. Founded in 1864, it is one of the most historical stadiums in India, having hosted numerous historical and controversial matches. Other major stadiums in India include the Feroz Shah Kotla Ground, which was established in 1883 and hosted memorable matches including Anil Kumble's ten wickets in an innings haul against Pakistan. For the last two years, the ground has been undergoing renovation. The Bombay Gymkhana hosted the first ever Test match in India which is the only Test it has hosted to date. Wankhede Stadium, established in 1974, has a capacity to hold 33,000 spectators and is currently the most popular venue in the city. It has hosted 24 Test matches. It was the unofficial successor of the Brabourne Stadium, which is also located in Mumbai. Mumbai is often considered the cricketing capital of India because of its fans and the talent it produces (see Mumbai cricket team) and thus the stadium regularly hosts major Test matches. The M. A. Chidambaram Stadium in Chepauk is also considered to be an important historical Indian cricket ground, established in the early 1900s it was the site of India's first Test victory. Updated on 25 June 2018 Thirty-three men have captained the Indian cricket team in at least one Test match, although only six have led the team in more than 25 matches, and six have captained the team in ODIs but not Tests. India's first captain was CK Nayudu, who led the team in four matches against England: one in England in 1932 and a series of three matches at home in 1933–34. Lala Amarnath, India's fourth captain, led the team in its first Test match after Indian independence. He also captained the side to its first Test victory and first series win, both in a three-match series at home against Pakistan in 1952–53. From 1952 until 1961–62, India had a number of captains such as Vijay Hazare, Polly Umrigar and Nari Contractor. The Nawab of Pataudi, Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, was the team's captain for 36 Test matches from 1961–62 to 1969–70, returning for another four matches against West Indies in 1974–75. In the early years of his captaincy tenure, the team was whitewashed in the West Indies, England and Australia. However, in 1967–68, Pataudi led India on its maiden New Zealand tour, which ended in India winning the Test series 3–1. In 1970–71, Ajit Wadekar took over the captaincy from Pataudi. Under Wadekar's captaincy, India registered its first Test series win in the West Indies and England. India played its first ODI in 1974, also under his captaincy. India won its first ODI under the captaincy of Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan in the 1975 Cricket World Cup, against East Africa. Between 1975–76 and 1978–79, Bishen Singh Bedi captained the team in 22 Tests and 4 ODIs, winning 6 Tests and one ODI. Sunil Gavaskar took over as Test and ODI captain in 1978–79, leading India in 47 Test matches and 37 ODIs, winning 9 Tests and 14 ODIs. He was succeeded by Kapil Dev in the 1980s, who captained for 34 Test matches, including 4 victories. Kapil Dev led India to victory in 39 of his 74 ODIs in charge, including the 1983 Cricket World Cup. Kapil Dev also captained India's 2–0 Test series victory in England in 1986. Between 1987–88 and 1989–90, India had three captains in Dilip Vengsarkar, Ravi Shastri and Krishnamachari Srikkanth. Vengsarkar took over the captaincy from Kapil Dev after the 1987 Cricket World Cup. Although he started with two centuries in his first series as captain, his captaincy period was turbulent and he lost the job following a disastrous tour of the West Indies in early-1989 and a stand-off with the Indian cricket board (BCCI). India has had six regular Test captains since Mohammad Azharuddin took charge in 1989. Azharuddin led the team in 47 Test matches from 1989–90 to 1998–99, winning 14, and in 174 ODIs, winning 90. He was followed by Sachin Tendulkar, who captained the team in 25 Test matches and 73 ODIs in the late 1990s; Tendulkar was relatively unsuccessful as a captain, winning only 4 Test matches and 23 ODIs. He was replaced as ODI captain by Ajay Jadeja and then by Sourav Ganguly. Ganguly became the regular captain of the team in both Tests and ODIs in 2000. He remained captain until 2005–06 and became the then most successful Indian captain, winning 21 of his 49 Test matches in charge and 76 of his 146 ODIs. Under his captaincy, India became the joint-winners of the 2002 ICC Champions Trophy with Sri Lanka, and the runners-up of the 2003 Cricket World Cup. India lost only three Tests at home under Ganguly and managed to draw Test series in England and Australia. Rahul Dravid took over as Test captain in 2005. In 2006, he led India to its first Test series victory in the West Indies in more than 30 years. In September 2007, Mahendra Singh Dhoni was named as the new captain of the ODI and T20I teams, after Dravid stepped down from the post. Soon after taking up the captaincy, Dhoni led the team to the inaugural World Twenty20 title. Anil Kumble was appointed Test captain in November 2007, but retired from international cricket in November 2008 after captaining in 14 Tests. Dhoni succeeded him as the Test captain, making him the captain in all formats. Under the captaincy of Dhoni, the Indian team held the number one position in the Test rankings for 21 months (from November 2009 to August 2011), and set a national record for most back-to-back ODI wins (nine straight wins). Dhoni also led the team to victory in 2011 Cricket World Cup and 2013 ICC Champions Trophy. Thus, Dhoni became the first captain in history to win all three major ICC trophies, namely- ICC Cricket World Cup in 2011, ICC World Twenty20 in 2007 and ICC Champions Trophy in 2013. He is widely regarded as India's best ever captain. However, the team performed poorly in away Tests from 2011 to 2014 and Dhoni retired from Test cricket in December 2014, with Virat Kohli being named as the new Test captain. Dhoni resigned as captain of the ODI and T20 teams in January 2017 and Kohli succeeded him at the position. Under Kohli's captaincy, India was unbeaten in 19 Test matches, starting from a 3–0 series win over New Zealand and ending with a 2–1 series win over Australia. India has an unbeaten streak of winning 9 consecutive Test series as of Dec 2017, starting with a 2–1 series win over Sri Lanka. India also became only the third team after Australia and South Africa to have won their most recent Test series simultaneously against all the other Test playing nations. As per winning percentage in Test matches, Kohli is India's most successful test captain, having won more than 61% of Test matches (at least 2 games). This lists all the players who have played for India in the past 12 months and the forms in which they have played. Correct . In January 2020, BCCI published a new contract list which will be valid from October 2019 to September 2020. Key The BCCI awards central contracts to its players, its pay graded according to the importance of the player. Players' salaries are as follows: Grade A+ –, Grade A –, Grade B –, Grade C – Match fees Players also receive a match fee of per Test match, per ODI, and per T20I. Head coach: Ravi Shastri, Batting coach: Vikram Rathour, Bowling coach: Bharat Arun, Fielding coach: Ramakrishnan Sridhar, Manager: Girish Dongre, Strength & Conditioning coach: Nick Webb, Physiotherapist: Nitin Patel † Sachin Tendulkar, who began playing for India as a 16-year-old in 1989 and has since become the most prolific run-scorer in the history of both Test and ODI cricket, holds a large number of national batting records. He holds the record of most appearances in both Tests and ODIs, most runs in both Tests and ODIs and most centuries in Tests and ODIs. The highest score by an Indian is the 319 scored by Virender Sehwag in Chennai. It is the second triple century in Test cricket by an Indian, the first being a 309 also made by Sehwag although against Pakistan. The team's highest ever score was a 759/7 against England at MA Chidambaram Stadium, Chennai in 2016, while its lowest was 42 against England in 1974. In ODIs, the team's highest score is 418/5 against West Indies at Indore in 2011–12. India score 413–5 in a match against Bermuda in 2007 World Cup which is the highest score ever in Cricket World Cup history. In the same match, India set a world record of the highest winning margin in an ODI match of 257 runs. India has also had some very strong bowling figures, with spin bowler Anil Kumble being a member of the elite group of 3 bowlers who have taken 600 Test wickets. In 1999, Anil Kumble emulated Jim Laker to become the second bowler to take all ten wickets in a Test match innings when he took 10 wickets for 74 runs against Pakistan at the Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi. Many of the Indian cricket team's records are also world records, for example Sachin Tendulkar's century tally (in Tests and ODIs) and run tally (also in both Tests and ODIs). Mahendra Singh Dhoni's 183 not out against Sri Lanka in 2005 is the world record score by a wicketkeeper in ODIs. The Indian cricket team also holds the record sequence of 17 successful run-chases in ODIs, which ended in a dramatic match against the West Indies in May 2006, which India lost by just 1 run when Yuvraj Singh was bowled by Dwayne Bravo's full toss. Sachin Tendulkar was the first batsman to score 200 runs (he was unbeaten on 200 from 147 deliveries including 25x4 and 3x6) in a single ODI innings, on 24 February 2010 against South Africa in Gwalior. On 8 December 2011, this achievement was eclipsed by compatriot Virender Sehwag, who scored 219 runs from 149 deliveries (25x4 | 7x6) versus West Indies in Indore. On 13 November 2014 the record was broken by another Indian opening batsmen, Rohit Sharma, who scored 264 runs from 173 deliveries (33x4 | 9x6) against Sri Lanka in Kolkata. In 2013, MS Dhoni became the first captain in history to win all three major ICC trophies- ICC Cricket World Cup in 2011, ICC World Twenty20 in 2007 and ICC Champions Trophy in 2013. In 2014, Virat Kohli became the first cricketer to win back-to-back man of the series awards in the 2012 ICC World Twenty20 and 2014 ICC World Twenty20. In 2017, Ravichandran Ashwin became the fastest cricketer in history to reach 250 wickets. He and Ravindra Jadeja are considered to be the best bowlers in Test cricket and occupy the top two spots in the rankings for Test bowlers . Virat Kohli became the first captain in history to score double tons in three consecutive series, against New Zealand, England and Bangladesh in 2017. Test record versus other nations Most Test runs for India Most Test wickets for India ODI record versus other nations Most ODI runs for India Most ODI wickets for India T20I record versus other nations Most T20I runs for India Most T20I wickets for India Players in bold text are still active with India. Due to the massive Indian diaspora in nations like Australia, England and South Africa, a large Indian fan turnout is expected whenever India plays in each of these nations. There have been a number of official fan groups that have been formed over the years, including the Swami Army or Bharat Army, the Indian equivalent of the Barmy Army, that were very active in their support when India toured Australia in 2003/2004. They are known to attribute a number of popular Indian songs to the cricket team. Fan rivalry and cross-border tension has created a strong rivalry between the Indian and the Pakistani cricket teams. In tours between these two nations, cricket visas are often employed to accommodate for the tens of thousands of fans wishing to cross the border to watch cricket. This intense fan dedication is one of the major causes of the BCCI's financial success. However, there are downsides to having such a cricket-loving population. Many Indians hold cricket very close to their hearts and losses are not received well by the Indian population. In some cases, particularly after losses to Pakistan or after a long string of weak performances, there have been reports of player effigies being burnt in the streets and vandalism of player homes. In many cases, players have come under intense attention from the media for negative reasons, this has been considered as one of the reasons for Sourav Ganguly being left out of the Indian team. At times, when a match is surrounded by controversy, it has resulted in a debacle. For example, when India slid to defeat against Australia at Brabourne Stadium in 1969, fans began throwing stones and bottles onto the field as well as setting fire to the stands, before laying siege to the Australian dressing rooms. During the same tour, a stampede occurred at Eden Gardens when tickets were oversold and India fell to another loss; the Australian team bus was later stoned with bricks . A similar event occurred during the 1996 Cricket World Cup, where India were losing the semi-final to Sri Lanka at Eden Gardens. In this case, the fan behaviour was directed at the Indian team in disappointment at their lacklustre performance. An armed guard had to be placed at the home of captain Mohammad Azharuddin to ensure his safety. Indian fans have also been passionate in their following of Sachin Tendulkar, who has been commonly thought of as one of the best batsmen in the world. Glorified for the bulk of his career, a riot occurred in early 1999 in a Test against Pakistan at Eden Gardens after a collision with Pakistani paceman Shoaib Akhtar saw him run out, forcing police to eject spectators and the game to be played in an empty stadium. Although in 2006, a string of low scores resulted in Tendulkar being booed by the Mumbai crowd when he got out against England Often, fans engage in protests regarding players if they believe that regionalism has affected selection, or because of regional partisan support for local players. In 2005, when Sourav Ganguly was dropped from the team, Ganguly's home town Kolkata erupted in protests. India later played a match against South Africa in Kolkata, West Bengal. The Indian team was booed by the crowd who supported South Africa instead of India in response to Ganguly's dropping. Similar regional divisions in India regarding selection have also caused protests against the team, with political activists from the regional Kalinga Kamgar Sena party in Odisha disrupting the arrival of the team in Cuttack for an ODI over the lack of a local player in the team, with one activist manhandling coach Greg Chappell. Similar treatment was handed to Sunil Gavaskar in the 1987 World Cup Semi Finals by crowds at Wankhede Stadium when he got bowled by Philip DeFreitas. A successful string of results, victories against arch-rivals Pakistan or victory in major tournaments such as the World Cup are greeted with particular ecstasy from the Indian fans. The Indian women's cricket team has a much lower profile than the men's team. For all national women's cricket teams, the female players are paid much less their male counterparts, and the women's teams do not receive as much popular support or recognition as the men's team. The women's teams also have a less packed schedule compared to men's teams and play fewer matches. The Indian women's cricket team played its first Test match in 1976, when they drew with the West Indies in a six-match series. The Women's Cricket World Cup was held in India in 1978 and featured 4 teams. India lost both the matches they have played. Their next appearance in the Test and ODI circuit was against Australia in 1984, in which the Test series was tied but the ODI series was lost in a whitewash. The Indian women's cricket team has since picked up their form, reaching the finals in the World Cup, but then losing to Australia. The Women's Asia Cup of 2005–06 was won by India, who beat Sri Lanka in the final. They also beat the West Indies in the 2004–05 season, winning the 5 ODI series 5–0. They were knocked out in the group stage of the 2013 Women's Cricket World Cup held in India. India reached the final of the 2017 World Cup but lost to England by 9 runs, following which the team was praised by many including Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Jhulan Goswami is the world's leading ODI wicket-taker while Mithali Raj, the captain, is the leading run-scorer in ODI cricket. Cricket in India, Indian Premier League, India A cricket team Cricinfo's List of Indian Grounds, Cricinfo India The Indian cricket team are two times World Champions. In addition to winning the 1983 Cricket World Cup, they triumphed over Sri Lanka in the 2011 Cricket World Cup on home soil- "A remarkable achievement". They were also runners-up at the 2003 Cricket World Cup, and semifinalists four times(1987, 1996, 2015, 2019). They came last in the Super Six stage in the 1999 Cricket World Cup and have been knocked out 4 times in the Group stage (1975, 1979, 1992 and 2007). India's historical win-loss record at the cricket world cup is 53-29, with 1 match being tied and another one being abandoned due to rain. White: Group/round-robin stage The 1975 Cricket World Cup was the first Cricket World Cup. It was held in England in June 1975 and consisted of two weeks of one-day matches played 60-overs-a-side. The format consisted of a group stage, in which each team played the other three teams in its group of four. The top two teams from both groups would progress to the semifinals. India competed in Group B against England, New Zealand and East Africa, a team of cricketers from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Northern Rhodesia. The Indian team was led by off spinner Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan and included leading batsmen Sunil Gavaskar, Gundappa Vishwanath, and Farokh Engineer as well as Venkataraghavan's teammate from the Indian spin quartet, Bishen Singh Bedi. The team was relatively inexperienced at one-day cricket, having played their first ODI only a year earlier during their disastrous tour of England. India's first match, the first match of the Cup, was against England at Lord's in London. This match became notorious for Gavaskar's controversial knock. Chasing a mammoth 335 for victory, Gavaskar carried his bat for the entire 60 overs to score only 36 runs off 174 balls with just a solitary boundary. As a result, India could only score 132/3 in 60 overs, losing the match by 202 runs, which severely affected their chances of making the semifinals. The match was a national disgrace for India with Gavaskar, in particular, castigated from all sides for his disgraceful innings. Even today, it is not fully clear as to why he played so slowly in that match, although Gavaskar claimed that he was out of form at the time. India next played East Africa at Headingley in Leeds and as expected, won the match, thanks to disciplined bowling from medium pacer Madan Lal (3/15) which restricted East Africa to 120. In the chase, Gavaskar made amends for his atrocious innings against England with a fine half-century (65 not out from 86 balls, 9 fours). Supported by Engineer (54 not out from 93 balls, 7 fours), the duo hammered the amateurish East African bowling and steered India to a facile victory without losing a wicket. India's last match in the Group stage was a must-win encounter against New Zealand at Old Trafford in Manchester. Batting first, India scored 230, with Syed Abid Ali scoring a half-century (70 from 98 balls, 5 fours and 1 six) to make up for the top-order failure. However, the Indian bowlers were then completely hammered by Kiwi opener Glenn Turner, who scored his second century of the tournament (114 not out from 177 balls, 13 fours) as New Zealand chased down the target without much hassle. India crashed out of the tournament with this loss and finished 3rd in their group with 1 win and 2 losses. Not much positives could come out of India's campaign in the inaugural World Cup. From an Indian perspective, the tournament continues to be known for Gavaskar's notorious innings against England. Still, Gavaskar scored the highest number of runs for India in the tournament, with 113. Among the bowlers, Abid Ali, with his 6 wickets, was the best bowler for India. The Indian Squad that took part in the 1975 World Cup comprised Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan (captain), Bishen Singh Bedi (vice-captain), Anshuman Gaekwad, Brijesh Patel, Eknath Solkar, Farokh Engineer (wicketkeeper), Gundappa Vishwanath (reserve wicketkeeper), Karsan Ghavri, Madan Lal, Mohinder Amarnath, Sunil Gavaskar, Syed Abid Ali, India's record: 1−2 (Group B, 3rd place), West Indies's record: 5−0 (Champions) The second edition of the Cricket World Cup was held in 1979 once again in England and with the same tournament format as in 1975. Like in 1975, India were not having much experience in playing ODI cricket and were still neglecting the limited-overs format of the game, so they were not considered favourites to win the Cup. Still, India were expected to put up a decent show as the team for the World Cup had world-class batsmen in Sunil Gavaskar, Gundappa Vishwanath and Dilip Vengsarkar, two members of the Indian spin quartet in captain Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan and Bishen Singh Bedi and decent all rounders in Mohinder Amarnath and a rising talent in Kapil Dev, though regular wicketkeeper Syed Kirmani was surprisingly dropped. India were grouped along with the defending champions, the West Indies, who were now the best team in international cricket, New Zealand and non-Test playing nation Sri Lanka in Group B in the Group stage. India opened their campaign with a massive loss against the West Indies at Edgbaston in Birmingham. The West Indian fast bowling attack led by Michael Holding (4/33) and Andy Roberts (2/32) never allowed the Indian batsmen to settle down, and with only Vishwanath (75 from 134 balls, 7 fours) showing resistance, India were bowled all out for 190 in the 54th over. In reply, West Indian opener Gordon Greenidge scored an unbeaten century as the Caribbeans effortlessly chased down the target with the loss of just a single wicket. India were knocked out of the tournament in their next match against New Zealand at Headingley in Leeds, which was another one-sided match. A combined effort from the New Zealand bowling attack saw India crash to 182 all out, with the only significant contribution coming from Gavaskar (55 from 144 balls, 5 fours). Kiwi opener Bruce Edgar then scored an unbeaten 84 in the chase as New Zealand won without any hassle. India played for pride in their last match of the tournament against Sri Lanka at Old Trafford in Manchester and were expected to win against the minnows. But they lost this match too. Chasing 239 to win, none of the Indian batsmen could manage even a half-century against the Sri Lankan bowling attack comprising Tony Opatha (3/31), Stanley de Silva (2/36) and Somachandra de Silva (3/29). India were bowled all-out for just 191, finishing their World Cup campaign winless and last in their group. It was a nightmarish campaign for India, with no wins and none of the players contributing. The fact that India as a team were not able to score even 200 runs in a single match, that only Vishwanath crossed three-figures in terms of the total number of individual runs scored (106) with only him and Gavaskar scoring a half-century each, and that only Amarnath, with 4 wickets, and Kapil, with 2 wickets, took wickets in all the 3 matches, showed how horrible and pathetic the Indian performance was in the World Cup. This dismal performance generated an uproar in India. The tournament marked the end of the road for the now struggling Indian spin quartet, with its two members in the World Cup side, Bedi and Venkataraghavan, bowling really poorly and not even taking a single wicket. Following the World Cup and the subsequent series against England, Bedi retired from international cricket, while Venkataraghavan was sacked as captain and also dropped from the team. None of the 4 members of the spin quartet ever played in a World Cup again. The Indian Squad that took part in the 1979 World Cup comprised Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan (captain), Sunil Gavaskar (vice-captain), Anshuman Gaekwad, Bharath Reddy (reserve wicketkeeper), Bishen Singh Bedi, Brijesh Patel, Dilip Vengsarkar, Gundappa Vishwanath, Kapil Dev, Karsan Ghavri, Mohinder Amarnath, Surinder Khanna (wicketkeeper), Yashpal Sharma, India's record: 0−3 (Group B, 4th place), West Indies's record: 4−0 and 1 washout (Champions) Going by India's past record in one-day internationals and in the World Cup, they were not expected to even progress beyond the Group stage of the 1983 Cricket World Cup which was yet again held in England, despite having the likes of Sunil Gavaskar, Krishnamachari Srikkanth, Dilip Vengsarkar, Yashpal Sharma and Sandeep Patil in batting and a decent set of all-rounders in captain Kapil Dev, who was now one of the best all-rounders in world cricket, Mohinder Amarnath, Madan Lal, Ravi Shastri and Roger Binny. This time, the tournament format was slightly different from the previous editions. Teams were still divided among 2 groups of 4, but now each team in a group played each other twice. India were placed in Group B in the Group stage, which was considered to be the tougher of the 2 groups as it included 2 stronger opponents in the defending champions, the West Indies, whose dominance in world cricket at the time was at its peak, and Australia. World Cup debutants Zimbabwe were also in the group. The fact that the West Indies and Australia were in India's group only worsened India's prospects of putting a decent showing this time around. India's first match in the tournament was against the West Indies at Old Trafford in Manchester. The West Indians were expected to steamroll India, but India caused a massive upset, winning the game by 34 runs in a match spread over 2 days. Middle-order batsman Sharma withstood the West Indian pace attack to score a fine half-century (89 from 120 balls, 9 fours) as India scored 262/8. Then, a disciplined performance from the Indian bowlers led by all-rounders Binny (3/48) and Shastri (3/26) ensured that the West Indian batsmen could not settle down after their starts, as a result of which the West Indies were bowled all out for 228. India followed this victory with another win against Zimbabwe at Leicester. In a one-sided match, India, bowling first, restricted Zimbabwe to 155 with Madan Lal taking 3/27, following which a half-century by Patil (50 from 54 balls, 7 fours, 1 six) ensured that India chased down the paltry total easily. However, despite the good start, 2 consecutive defeats against Australia at Trent Bridge in Nottingham and the West Indies at The Oval in London followed, and with other results going Australia's and the West Indies' way, India were once again staring at another early exit from the World Cup. Trevor Chappell scored 110 to ensure that Australia scored a mammoth 320/9, with India dishing out a listless bowling performance. Only Kapil bowled well, taking a 5-wicket haul (5/43). Australian medium-pacer Ken MacLeay took 6/39 as India were bowled all out for just 150, losing by 162 runs, with none of the Indian batsmen contributing. Against the West Indies, India, chasing 283 to win, never really got going despite Amarnath's patient knock (80 from 139 balls). A combined effort from the West Indian pace attack saw India crash to 216 all out, losing by 66 runs. To add to India's woes, Vengsarkar was ruled out for the rest of the tournament after a Malcolm Marshall bouncer injured his jaw. To reach the semifinals now, India had to beat Zimbabwe and Australia by huge margins, a daunting prospect. Should India lose even one of the matches, they would be knocked out of the tournament. India began their match against Zimbabwe at Tunbridge Wells on 18 June 1983 disastrously. The Zimbabwean bowling attack, led by Peter Rawson (3/47) and Kevin Curran (3/65), destroyed the Indian top order, reducing them to 17/5. A massive upset by the Zimbabweans and another early exit for India was now very much on the cards, until Kapil arrived. Kapil completely changed the course of the match with a breathtaking innings (175 not out from 138 balls, 16 fours, 6 sixes). With the support of the tailenders, he ransacked the Zimbabwean bowling as he played his most famous innings, which was also the highest individual score in ODI cricket at the time and the first ever ODI century scored by an Indian batsman. As a result of his astounding knock, India finished the innings at 266/8. Then, a good performance with the ball from Madan Lal (3/42) saw Zimbabwe being bowled all out for 235, despite Curran's 73, to set up a famous win. Unfortunately, this match was not telecasted live due to a strike by the BBC staff on that day. But India's woes weren't over yet; they needed to beat Australia comprehensively to have any hope of reaching the semifinals. India's must-win match against the Aussies took place at Chelmsford, two days after the famous victory against Zimbabwe. Despite Rodney Hogg (3/40) and Jeff Thomson (3/51) taking 3 wickets each, a combined effort from the Indian batsmen saw India reach 247 all out. Australia, chasing 248 to win, were rocked by the innocuous but penetrative medium-pace of Madan Lal (4/20) and Binny (4/29) and crashed to 129 all out, losing the match by a whopping 118 runs. With another win under their belt, India finished second in their group and qualified for the semifinals for the first time ever in the Cricket World Cup. India's semifinal match was against hosts England at Manchester. Despite England being the favourites, India produced yet another upset. England won the toss and batted first. Despite an opening stand of 69, the English batsmen mistimed many balls and used the bat's edge frequently, as the restrictive Indian bowling led England to 213 all out. English opener Graeme Fowler top scored with 33. Kapil Dev was the pick of the Indian bowlers (3/35), with Amarnath (2/27) and Binny (2/43) also being among the wickets. In reply, Sharma (61 from 115 balls, 3 fours, 2 sixes) and Sandeep Patil (51 not out from 32 balls, 8 fours) made half-centuries, with Amarnath (46 from 92 balls, 4 fours, 1 six) too contributing, as India reached their target comfortably, winning by 6 wickets in a classic victory over the hosts. Amarnath picked up the Man of the Match award for his all-round performance. This win brought India to the World Cup final for the very first time, which was to be played against the West Indies on 25 June 1983 at Lord's in London. A third consecutive tournament victory for the West Indies was widely predicted by most pundits and fans. In the final, India lost the toss and were made to bat first on a seaming wicket against the mighty West Indian pace attack. Only Srikkanth (38 from 57 balls, 7 fours and 1 six) and Amarnath (26 from 80 balls, 3 fours) put up any significant resistance as the West Indian fast bowling attack comprising Marshall (2/24), Andy Roberts (3/32), Joel Garner (1/24) and Michael Holding (2/26) ripped through the Indian batting, ably supported by part-timer Larry Gomes (2/49). Only surprising resistance by the tail allowed India to reach 183 all out in the 55th over. It seemed to be all over for India, as the West Indies had a power-packed batting line-up comprising openers Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes, followed by Vivian Richards and captain Clive Lloyd which was capable of destroying any bowling attack and were widely expected to make mincemeat out of the "mediocre" Indian bowling attack. Despite the early loss of Greenidge, Haynes and Richards steadied the innings and the West Indies was soon cruising to another World Cup win at 57/2. At this stage, Kapil ran a great distance (18-20 yards) to take the wicket of Richards off Madan Lal's bowling. This proved to be the turning point of the match, as the Indian bowling then exploited the weather and pitch conditions perfectly to blow away the rest of the West Indian batting. Amarnath (3/12) and Madan Lal (3/31) took three wickets each, as the West Indies crashed to 140 all out in the 53rd over, setting up a famous tournament victory for India which was one of the biggest upsets not only in cricket, but in sport in general. India's win ended the title defence of the West Indies, who never reached the final of the Cricket World Cup again. Amarnath was awarded a second consecutive Man of the Match award for another all-round effort. Apart from the win, there were statistically many other achievements for India in the 1983 World Cup. Binny and Madan Lal, with 18 and 17 wickets respectively, were the tournament's top two bowlers. While Kapil, with 303 runs, was India's best batsman and one of the top 10 batsmen in terms of total individual runs, he also took the most catches in the tournament, with 7, and was India's only centurion. Kapil's 175 not out against Zimbabwe was the first ODI century scored by an Indian batsman and remained the highest individual score in ODI cricket until Vivian Richards broke that record the following year. It also remained the highest individual score by an Indian batsman in ODI cricket until Sourav Ganguly broke that record in 1999. Wicketkeeper Syed Kirmani, with 14 dismissals, finished just below West Indian wicketkeeper Jeff Dujon in the most dismissals taken by a wicketkeeper in the tournament. India's 1983 World Cup victory was a major turning point for Indian as well as world cricket. The win boosted the popularity of cricket in India, which was until then restricted to the urban areas. It also increased the popularity of one-day cricket in India as well as in general. India began to take ODI cricket seriously after the World Cup win and soon emerged as one of the best teams in ODI cricket. Indian corporates too started to take an interest in cricket and began to sponsor many international tournaments, marking the start of the rise of India as the leading financial power in cricket. The Indian Squad that won the 1983 World Cup comprised Kapil Dev (captain), Sunil Gavaskar, Balwinder Singh Sandhu, Dilip Vengsarkar, Kirti Azad, Krishnamachari Srikkanth, Madan Lal, Mohinder Amarnath(vice captain), Ravi Shastri, Roger Binny, Sandeep Patil, Sunil Valson, Syed Kirmani (wicketkeeper), Yashpal Sharma (reserve wicketkeeper), India's record: 6−2 (Champions) The World Cup moved out of England for the first time in 1987, with India and Pakistan co-hosting this edition of the World Cup. India were billed pre- tournament favourites and were widely expected to defend their title successfully in familiar conditions. India's team for the World Cup did not have some important members of the World Cup-winning squad of 1983, notably Mohinder Amarnath, Syed Kirmani, Madan Lal, Yashpal Sharma and Sandeep Patil, but all-rounder Kapil Dev once again led the side, which included world-class batsmen in veteran Sunil Gavaskar, who was to retire from all forms of cricket after the tournament, Krishnamachari Srikkanth, Dilip Vengsarkar, Ravi Shastri, Mohammed Azharuddin and Kapil. The bowling too was decent enough, with Kapil leading the attack, supported by Shastri, Maninder Singh, Manoj Prabhakar, Chetan Sharma and Roger Binny. The 1983 World Cup format was again used for the tournament, but the matches were reduced to 50-overs-a-side, keeping in mind the shorter days in the Indian subcontinent. In the Group stage, India were placed alongside Australia, New Zealand and then-associates Zimbabwe in Group A, which was considered to be the easier of the 2 groups. India played the very first match of the tournament against Australia at Madras, which was arguably the most eventful match of the tournament. Australia won the match by just 1 run, after piling up 270/6 in their first innings, helped by opener Geoff Marsh's 110. India began their innings brightly and were cruising to an easy victory at 207/2, thanks to half- centuries from Srikkanth (70 from 83 balls, 7 fours) and debutant Navjot Singh Sidhu (73 from 79 balls, 4 fours and 5 sixes), until Sidhu fell. This was followed by a spectacular middle-order collapse that made India lose their last 8 wickets for just 62 runs. India were all out for 269 with one ball remaining in the match, which was a heartbreaking loss for the defending champions. Their next match against New Zealand at Bangalore was also dramatic, with Sidhu (75 from 71 balls, 4 fours and 4 sixes) once again rescuing India after India had fallen to 21/3, and along with Kapil (72 not out from 58 balls, 4 fours and 1 six), destroyed the New Zealand bowling attack to take India to 252/7. India eventually pulled off a 16-run victory thanks to some economical bowling from Shastri (2/45) and part-timer Azharuddin (1/11), India thus registering its first win in the tournament. India dominated the rest of the Group stage with 2 one-sided victories against Zimbabwe at Bombay and Ahmedabad, followed by wins against Australia and New Zealand at New Delhi and Nagpur respectively. India dished out a clinical performance against the Aussies, with 4 Indian batsmen: Gavaskar (61 from 72 balls, 7 fours), Sidhu (51 from 70 balls, 2 fours), Vengsarkar (63 from 60 balls, 3 fours and 2 sixes) and Azharuddin (54 not out from 45 balls, 5 fours and 1 six): scoring half-centuries as India posted an imposing 289/6. Maninder (3/34) and Azharuddin (3/19) then contributed with the ball as Australia crashed to 233 all out in the 49th over. India's last match in the Group stage against New Zealand was noted as the match in which Gavaskar scored his first and only ODI century (103 not out from 88 balls, 10 fours and 3 sixes). Supported by Srikkanth (75 from 58 balls, 9 fours and 3 sixes), Gavaskar toyed with the New Zealand bowling attack with an attacking innings uncharacteristic of his typical dour and rock-like approach as India chased down New Zealand's modest score of 221/9 with the loss of only Srikkanth's wicket and 18 overs to spare. Gavaskar and Srikkanth added 136 runs for the 2nd wicket. Also notable in this match was Chetan Sharma's hat-trick, the first ever both by an Indian bowler and in the World Cup. His hat-trick involved the wickets of Ken Rutherford, wicketkeeper Ian Smith and tailender Ewen Chatfield. Sharma finished with figures of 3/51. With 5 wins and 1 loss from 6 matches, India topped their group and qualified for the semifinals, where they were to play England at Bombay. The semifinal, which took place on 5 November 1987, saw India winning the toss and choosing to field first. England dominated the match from the start, with opener Graham Gooch scoring an impressive 115 and ably supported by captain Mike Gatting, who contributed with 56, the duo sharing a partnership of 117 for the 3rd wicket. England posted a strong score of 254/6, with only Maninder (3/54) and Kapil (2/38) bowling well for India. India faltered in the chase, with only Azharuddin (64 from 74 balls, 7 fours) making any significant contribution for India. The Indian batsmen completely faltered against off-spinner Eddie Hemmings (4/52) and fast bowler Neil Foster (3/47) as India were bowled all out for 219 in the 46th over. It was a heartbreaking loss for India, ending their title defence. This was Gavaskar's last ever cricket match. Though India were unable to defend their title successfully, there were a lot of positives for India. Firstly, Gavaskar, in his final tournament, scored 300 runs, the highest for India, and was one of the top ten batsmen in terms of runs scored and the only centurion for India. Secondly, the partnership of 136 between Gavaskar and Srikkanth against New Zealand at Nagpur was the highest partnership for any wicket in the tournament. Thirdly, left-arm spinner Maninder Singh was the best bowler for India with 14 wickets and was the best spinner of the tournament, coming at 4th place among the tournament's highest wicket takers, with only fast bowlers Craig McDermott, Imran Khan and Patrick Patterson above him. Finally, wicketkeeper Kiran More, with 11 dismissals, effected the most dismissals in the tournament, while Kapil, with 6 catches, took the most catches. The Indian Squad that made the semifinals of the 1987 World Cup comprised Kapil Dev (captain), Dilip Vengsarkar (vice-captain), Chandrakant Pandit (reserve wicketkeeper), Chetan Sharma, Kiran More (wicketkeeper), Krishnamachari Srikkanth, Laxman Sivaramakrishnan, Maninder Singh, Manoj Prabhakar, Mohammed Azharuddin, Navjot Singh Sidhu, Ravi Shastri, Roger Binny, Sunil Gavaskar, India's record: 5−2 (Semifinalists), Australia's record: 7−1 (Champions) India were not expected to perform well in the 1992 World Cup co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand, despite playing a Test series (and also the World Series Cup involving both Australia and the West Indies) in Australia just prior to the World Cup. The Indian team for the World Cup had a good batting line up consisting of captain Mohammed Azharuddin, destructive opener Krishnamachari Srikkanth, all rounders Kapil Dev and Ravi Shastri, Sanjay Manjrekar and a rising talent in Sachin Tendulkar. The bowling wasn't too strong though. Kapil led the bowling line up, which also included Shastri, Manoj Prabhakar and Venkatapathy Raju. A new format was introduced for the 1992 World Cup, with the group format being scrapped in favour of a round- robin format, where each team would play all the other 8 teams in the tournament once, with the top 4 teams at the end of the Round-Robin stage progressing to the semifinals. It was also the first Cricket World Cup played with coloured jerseys and which had day-night matches. India's first match in the tournament was against England at Perth. Chasing 237, India never really got going despite a 63-run opening stand shared by Shastri (57 from 112 balls, 2 fours) and Srikkanth (39 from 50 balls, 7 fours) and a good knock from Tendulkar (35 from 44 balls, 5 fours). India crashed to 227 all out, losing by nine runs, with Dermot Reeve (3/38) taking the most wickets for England. Three of India's batsmen: Shastri, Pravin Amre and Kiran More: were run out. India's next match against Sri Lanka at Mackay was abandoned due to rain after just 2 balls and a run scored by Srikkanth, giving India its first points in the tournament. India then played co-hosts and defending champions Australia at Brisbane. The match was a thriller. Australia scored 237/9 in its 50 overs, with Dean Jones scoring 90. Kapil and Prabhakar were the pick of the bowlers with identical figures of 3/41. Due to rain, India's target was revised to 235 and the overs reduced to 47. Azharuddin led India's reply with a near-century (93 from 102 balls, 10 fours), but the rest of India's batsmen were unable to cross 50 and with Prabhakar (1 from 1 ball) and Raju (0 from 1 ball) run out in successive balls, India crashed to 234 all out in the second-last ball of the innings, ensuring that Australia scraped to victory by 1 run. India's next match was against arch-rivals Pakistan at Sydney. It was the first time ever in the history of the Cricket World Cup that India and Pakistan played each other and therefore, the match was highly anticipated. India won the toss and batted first, posting a modest 216/7 in a match reduced to 49 overs due to rain, with the top contributors being Tendulkar (54 not out from 62 balls, 3 fours) and rookie opener Ajay Jadeja (46 from 77 balls, 2 fours). Pakistan's leg-spinner Mushtaq Ahmed was the pick of Pakistan's bowlers, taking 3/59, while fast bowler Aaqib Javed was economical, taking 2/28 in his 8 overs. In Pakistan's reply, only opener Aamer Sohail, who scored 62, could cross 50 runs with Kapil (2/30), Prabhakar (2/22) and rookie Javagal Srinath (2/37) taking 2 wickets each, as Pakistan crashed to 173 all out in the 49th over, losing by 43 runs, earning India its first win in the tournament, a famous victory which would begin an all-win record over the arch-rivals in subsequent Cricket World Cups (both 50-over and 20-over). The match also had its share of drama which is a regular feature in Indo-Pak cricket matches, with Javed Miandad imitating Indian wicketkeeper Kiran More's appealing behind the stumps. Tendulkar won his first Man of the Match award in a World Cup for his allround performance (54* and 1/37, picking up the prized wicket of Aamer Sohail). However, India's time was running out and they had to play really well from then on to have any chance of reaching the semifinals. India then moved on to New Zealand for the second half of the tournament. Their first match in New Zealand was against minnows Zimbabwe at Hamilton. India won the rain-curtailed match as expected, with Tendulkar (81 from 77 balls, 8 fours and 1 six) playing an aggressive knock as India posted 203/7. Zimbabwe, chasing 159 in 19 overs after a rain delay, could only score 104/1 in the 19 overs, Tendulkar taking the lone wicket. Tendulkar received his second Man of the Match award in the Cricket World Cup for his contribution in the match. But now India needed to win their last three matches comprehensively and also depend on other results to reach the semifinals. India next played the West Indies at Wellington. The West Indies were slowly declining at the time with the retirements of several key players, yet were still a dangerous opponent. India lost the match. Only Azharuddin (61 from 84 balls, 4 fours) showed any sort of resistance against the pace attack of Curtly Ambrose (2/24) and Anderson Cummins (4/33) as India were bowled all out for 197. The West Indies comfortably reached their target of 195 (with the score and number of overs being reduced by rain again) with 6 overs to spare. India crashed out of the tournament with this loss, with their last two matches against co-hosts New Zealand at Dunedin and World Cup debutants South Africa back in Australia at Adelaide reduced to dead rubbers. India lost both the one-sided matches. Only Tendulkar (84 from 107 balls, 6 fours) and Azharuddin (55 from 98 balls, 3 fours and 1 six) made any significant contribution in India's score of 230/6, which New Zealand easily chased down. Against South Africa, in a match reduced to 30 overs due to rain, the only person who contributed for India was Azharuddin (79 from 77 balls, 6 fours). India scored 180/6, which South Africa chased down without much effort. With only 2 wins and 1 abandoned match, India finished 7th in the Round-Robin stage, just above Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe. It was the first time since 1979 that India could not qualify for the semifinals of the World Cup. Ironically, Pakistan, one of the only 2 teams which India defeated, would go on to win the World Cup. There were not much positives India could take from the tournament. No Indian batsman was able to score a century and no Indian bowler could take more than 3 wickets in an innings. India's highest scorer in the tournament was Azharuddin, who scored 332 runs. Tendulkar followed with a total score of 283 runs. Among the bowlers, Prabhakar was the best for India, taking 12 wickets. The tournament marked the end of Srikkanth's international career, as he was dropped after the World Cup and retired from all forms of cricket the following year. The Indian Squad that took part in the 1992 World Cup comprised Mohammed Azharuddin (captain), Ravi Shastri (vice-captain), Ajay Jadeja, Javagal Srinath, Kapil Dev, Kiran More (wicketkeeper), Krishnamachari Srikkanth, Manoj Prabhakar, Pravin Amre, Sachin Tendulkar, Sanjay Manjrekar (reserve wicketkeeper), Subroto Banerjee, Venkatapathy Raju, Vinod Kambli, India's record: 2−5 and 1 abandoned match (Round-Robin, 7th place), Pakistan's record: 6−3 and 1 abandoned match (Champions) India were the co-hosts of the 1996 Cricket World Cup along with Pakistan and Sri Lanka and were expected to perform well at home. Their batting was their strongest point, with Sachin Tendulkar, captain Mohammed Azharuddin, Ajay Jadeja, Navjot Singh Sidhu, Vinod Kambli and Sanjay Manjrekar together forming the strongest batting line-up in the tournament. While the bowling was a bit suspect, the team had a decent set of bowlers who were good at home conditions in Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath, Manoj Prabhakar and Venkatapathy Raju. The group format was reintroduced for the tournament, with teams divided into 2 groups of 6 teams each, with the top 4 teams from each group entering the quarterfinals, where a team from one group in the Group stage would play a single match against a team which qualified from the other group. In the Group stage, India were placed in Group A with co-hosts Sri Lanka, Australia, the West Indies, Zimbabwe and World Cup debutants Kenya. India started their World cup campaign well by defeating Kenya at Cuttack, first restricting them to 199/6 with Kumble taking 3/28 and then chasing it down easily to win by 7 wickets due to Tendulkar's century (127 not out from 138 balls, 15 fours, 1 six). India's next match against the West Indies at Gwalior went much the same way: after bowling the West Indies side out for 173 with Kumble capturing 3/35 and Prabhakar 3/39, Tendulkar (70 runs, 91 balls, 8 fours) led the way to another victory. India then faced tournament favourites Australia at Bombay, and the tourists batted first after winning the toss. Mark Waugh's 126 and Australian captain Mark Taylor's 59 set the foundation with a 103 run opening stand. Australia suffered five run-outs, four in the last ten overs whilst chasing quick runs, with medium-pacer Venkatesh Prasad and Raju taking two wickets each. India's chase started poorly, with Jadeja and Vinod Kambli dismissed by Damien Fleming with only seven runs scored. Tendulkar (90 from 84 balls, 14 fours, 1 six) counter-attacked ferociously, and India were well ahead of the required run rate at 143/3 when Tendulkar charged a wide from Mark Waugh and was stumped for 90. From there onward, the run chase began to falter, with only Manjrekar managing a half century (62 from 91 balls, 7 fours), resulting in a 16-run loss, dismissed for 242 in the 48th over. India next faced Sri Lanka at New Delhi. Tendulkar hit another run-a-ball century (137 from 137 balls, 8 fours, 5 sixes) and Azharuddin made 72 from 80 balls in a 175 run partnership as India compiled 271/3. However, the opening pair of Romesh Kaluwitharana and Sanath Jayasuriya launched Sri Lanka to 42 after just three overs. Jayasuriya managed to score 79 from 77 balls, leaving the score at 4/141. With the run-rate under control, Sri Lankan captain Arjuna Ranatunga (46 not out from 63 balls) and Hashan Tillakaratne (70 not out from 98 balls) made a 131 run partnership to steer them to a six wicket win with eight balls remaining. Kumble led the bowling with 2/39 whilst Prabhakar was punished for 47 runs in four overs. India ended the group stage with a win against Zimbabwe at Kanpur, who won the toss and sent the Indians in to bat. After slumping to 32/3, opener Sidhu (80 from 116 balls, 5 fours) and Kambli (106 from 110 balls, 11 fours) put on 142 runs before Jadeja finished off the innings with 44 not out from 27 balls, with India scoring 247/5. The Zimbabweans lost wickets at regular intervals and fell 40 runs short, with Raju taking 3/30 and Kumble, Srinath and Jadeja two each. With this win, India finished third in their group and qualified for the quarterfinals, setting up a match against arch-rivals and defending champions Pakistan at Bangalore. The match was widely anticipated and had a huge leadup. Pakistani captain Wasim Akram withdrew due to injury. India elected to bat after winning the toss, with Sidhu (93 from 115 balls, 11 fours) and Tendulkar (31 off 59 balls, 3 fours) reaching 90 before Tendulkar was dismissed by Pakistan fast bowler Ata-ur- Rehman. Although wickets fell regularly, with all Pakistani bowlers barring part-timer Salim Malik among the wickets, the Indians continued to score quickly, with Jadeja making a rapid 45 from 25 balls in the final overs, including 40 from Waqar Younis' last two overs. India scored 287/8 in their 50 overs. Prasad and Kumble then took three wickets each to restrict Pakistan to 248/9, despite their strong start due to a quick 55 from Pakistan's stand-in- captain and opener Aamer Sohail, to complete a memorable victory and qualify for the semifinals, making it 2 wins in 2 World Cup matches against the arch- rivals. This resulted in widespread disappointment in Pakistan, leading to a government inquiry, crowd demonstrations outside players' homes and the suicide of one distraught fan. In the semifinals at the Eden Gardens in Calcutta on 13 March 1996, India played Sri Lanka in a match which became notorious for the extremely poor crowd behaviour. India won the toss and chose to field first. Both the openers Kaluwitharana and Jayasuriya were dismissed in Srinath's first over, uppercutting wide balls down to third man. Srinath then removed veteran Asanka Gurusinha to leave the score at 35/3. However half centuries from Aravinda de Silva and Roshan Mahanama helped Sri Lanka reach a formidable total of 251/8. India made a solid start, with Sachin Tendulkar (65 from 88 balls, 9 fours) scoring a half-century and taking India to 1/98. However, the pitch began to crumble and take more spin, and when Tendulkar was stumped, the remaining Indian batsmen were unable to cope with the four pronged spin-attack of Jayasuriya, Muttiah Muralitharan and part timers de Silva and Kumar Dharmasena, who altogether took 6 wickets as India lost 7 wickets for 22 runs to slump to 120/8 in the 35th over, with still 132 runs to win. At this point, sections of the crowd began setting fire to the stands and throwing missiles onto the field. Play was stopped as the crowd's anger began to develop into a dangerous riot. The umpires and match referee Clive Lloyd decided to award the game to Sri Lanka because India had no chance of winning from their current position in the match even if the match were to resume, knocking them out of the World Cup. India's campaign was highlighted by the consistency of Tendulkar, who managed 50 plus scores in all but two matches. With 523 runs at an average of 87.16, Tendulkar was the leading run scorer in the tournament, with two of his six dismissals due to run outs rather than batting errors. His 137 against Sri Lanka was the 4th highest score in the tournament and his partnership of 175 with Azharuddin the 4th highest partnership in the tournament. No other Indian batsmen aggregated 250 runs. India were also bolstered by the performances of leg-spinner Kumble, who was the leading wicket taker in the tournament with 15 wickets at 18.73 apiece and also made the most catches (eight). Raju, Prasad and Srinath were tied in 10th spot with eight wickets each. Veteran all-rounder Manoj Prabhakar retired from international cricket in the middle of the tournament after being dropped for poor performance. The Indian Squad that made the semifinals of the 1996 World Cup comprised Mohammed Azharuddin (captain), Sachin Tendulkar (vice-captain), Aashish Kapoor, Ajay Jadeja, Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath, Manoj Prabhakar, Navjot Singh Sidhu, Nayan Mongia (wicketkeeper), Salil Ankola, Sanjay Manjrekar (reserve wicketkeeper), Venkatapathy Raju, Venkatesh Prasad, Vinod Kambli, India's record: 4−3 (Semifinalists), Sri Lanka's record: 8−0 with 2 matches won by walkovers (Champions) The 1999 Cricket World Cup in England was one in which India were not expected to perform too well. Despite having the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, Ajay Jadeja and captain Mohammed Azharuddin in batting and Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath and Venkatesh Prasad in bowling, they weren't having too much of a good run, losing to arch-rivals Pakistan in the finals of 2 consecutive triangular tournaments at home and at Sharjah. The format used for the tournament was slightly different from the 1996 format. Teams were divided into 2 groups of 6 teams each, with the top 3 teams in each group progressing to the Super Six stage, where a team belonging to one group in the Group stage would play once against all 3 teams belonging to the other group. India were placed in Group A in the Group stage along with hosts England, defending champions Sri Lanka, South Africa, Zimbabwe and minnows Kenya. India began their campaign with a close loss to South Africa at Hove in the final overs of the match. Although South Africa won by 4 wickets, the match was not without drama as South Africa had to score had approximately a run a ball in the last 10 overs. The match featured a good performance from Ganguly (97 from 142 balls, 11 fours, 1 six) and Dravid (54 from 75 balls, 5 fours). None of the bowlers backed up the batting performance however, with Srinath the leading wicket-taker despite being very expensive, taking 2 wickets and conceding 69 runs. South Africa scored runs more quickly than India did, with Jacques Kallis (96 from 128 balls) leading the way. India next played Zimbabwe at Leicester, without the services of Tendulkar, as the star batsman had returned to India due to his father's death. The match was a thriller, with India losing in the end by 3 runs. The tailenders embarrassed supporters as India, chasing 252, went from 246/7 to 249 all out with 3 overs left, with Zimbabwean fast bowler Henry Olonga taking 3/22. India made up for their early losses with a very convincing win over Kenya at Bristol by 94 runs four days later. India scored a massive 329/2 through centuries from Tendulkar (140 not out from 101 balls, 16 fours, 3 sixes), who had rejoined the team, and Dravid (104 not out from 109 balls, 10 fours). The pair scored 237 in 29 overs at a run rate of 8.17 before medium pacer Debashish Mohanty wiped up the Kenyan batsmen with a 4-wicket haul (4/56). Tendulkar, declared Man of the Match, later dedicated his ton to his late father. India followed this victory with a record win against Sri Lanka at Taunton by 157 runs. Ganguly (183 from 158 balls, 17 fours, 7 sixes) and Dravid (145 from 129 balls, 17 fours, 1 six) picked up two centuries at over a run a ball to get India to a mammoth total of 373/6, sharing a partnership of 318 runs in 44.9 overs. Sri Lanka were then rattled due to Robin Singh's 5/31, crashing to 216 all out. India then went on to seal a place in the Super Six stage with a win against hosts England at Edgbaston in Birmingham by 63 runs; in a match extended by a day due to rain, once again Ganguly (40 from 59 balls, 6 fours) and Dravid (53 from 82 balls, 6 fours) starred with the bat to score 232/8, while a strong team effort with the ball, led by Ganguly's 3/27, got England all out for just 169. Despite India finishing second in Group A, they began the Super Six stage with no points due to the controversial Byzantine points system which gave a team 2 points at the start of the Super Six stage for beating a team in the Group stage which had also qualified for the Super Six stage (India did not win against fellow qualifiers South Africa and Zimbabwe). India's first match in the Super Six stage was against Australia at The Oval in London, which they lost badly by 77 runs, with only Jadeja (100 not out from 138 balls, 7 fours, 2 sixes) and Robin Singh (75 from 94 balls, 5 fours, 3 sixes) putting up any resistance. Mark Waugh's 83 and Glenn McGrath's 3/34 took the match away from India. Due to this loss, India, in order to reach the semifinals, now not only had to beat Pakistan and New Zealand, they also had to depend on other results. India beat Pakistan in their next match at Old Trafford in Manchester by 47 runs, maintaining their all-win record over their arch-rivals in the World Cup. Dravid (61 from 89 balls, 4 fours) and Azharuddin (59 from 77 balls, 3 fours, 1 six), led the way as India posted a total of 227/6 in their 50 overs. Prasad then ripped through the Pakistani batting line-up, taking 5/27 as Pakistan were bowled all out for 180. The match was even more significant than usual as the two nations were at war with each other (see 1999 Kargil Conflict). Unfortunately, despite the win against Pakistan, India were soon eliminated from the tournament due to other results and their handicap in terms of points in the Super Six stage. India's last match in the Super Six stage against New Zealand at Trent Bridge in Nottingham was also the team's last match in the tournament. The match, reduced to a dead rubber since New Zealand had already qualified for the semifinals, was a thriller, with India losing in the end by 5 wickets as New Zealand achieved the target of 252 with just 8 balls to spare, despite a strong performance from Jadeja (76 from 103 balls, 6 fours, 2 six). Despite having a mediocre tournament, there were many plus-points for India. The tournament marked the start of the domination of the Big 3 of Indian batting viz. Tendulkar, Dravid and Ganguly, all of whom showed remarkable consistency. Dravid, who until the start of the World Cup was criticised for not being good enough for one-day cricket, was involved in two mammoth partnerships and was the leading run-scorer of the entire tournament with 461 runs at an average of 65.85. The top 3 highest scores of the tournament were from Indians, which were Ganguly's 183, Dravid's 145 and Tendulkar's 140 not out. However, following the World Cup, Azharuddin, who had an indifferent tournament, was sacked as captain and was dropped from the team too. The Indian Squad that took part in the 1999 World Cup comprised Mohammed Azharuddin (captain), Ajay Jadeja (vice-captain), Ajit Agarkar, Amay Khurasiya, Anil Kumble, Debashish Mohanty, Javagal Srinath, Nayan Mongia (wicketkeeper), Nikhil Chopra, Rahul Dravid (reserve wicketkeeper), Robin Singh, Sachin Tendulkar, Sadagoppan Ramesh, Sourav Ganguly, Venkatesh Prasad, India's record: 4−4 (Super Six, 6th place), Australia's record: 7−2 and 1 tie (Champions) Like in the previous World Cup, India began their 2003 Cricket World Cup campaign in South Africa and Zimbabwe on a string of poor performances, having just come off a disastrous tour of New Zealand. The 1999 World Cup format was retained for the tournament. The Indian team was somewhat stronger than the team representing them in the 1999 World Cup, but still contained the batting trio of Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly and the pace-spin duo of Javagal Srinath and Anil Kumble, now accompanied by rising talents Yuvraj Singh, Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh, Mohammed Kaif and Virender Sehwag. In the Group stage, India were placed in Group A, accompanied by co-hosts Zimbabwe, defending champions Australia, arch-rivals Pakistan, England and minnows Holland and Namibia, who were playing their first World Cup. India had a horrid beginning to the tournament. Their first match was against minnows Holland at Paarl, who tumbled the Indian batsmen out for just 204 (all out, 48.5 overs, 206 minutes), with only Tendulkar (52 from 72 balls, 7 fours) putting up resistance, although veterans Srinath and Kumble reverted the damage with 4 wickets each and India ended up winning by 68 runs, the unconvincing victory setting the stage for immense criticism. India's next match was against Australia at Centurion. The Indian team, batting first, was steadily making progress at 41/1 when disaster struck. Sehwag's wicket triggered a middle order collapse that left India struggling at 50/5 having lost 4 wickets for 9 runs. Tendulkar and Harbhajan offered some resistance but the damage was done as India were out for 125 (all out, 41.4 overs, 176 minutes). Australia scored the target in 22.2 overs, only losing one wicket. The Indian team's mediocre performance in the first two matches triggered uproar in India. Player effigies were said to be burnt on streets and the Board of Control for Cricket in India was under immense pressure to reshuffle the team at the end of the World Cup. This reaction at home may have triggered the Indian team's performance for the remainder of the World Cup. India then travelled to Zimbabwe to play their third match against the co-hosts at Harare, lacking confidence. Tendulkar (81 from 91 balls, 10 fours) took India to 255 (7 wickets, 50 overs) and 3 wickets from Ganguly set the stage for a strong 83 run win by the Indians. This was followed by a 181 run thrashing handed out to minnows Namibia, back in South Africa at Pietermaritzburg. Tendulkar (152 from 151 balls, 18 fours) and Ganguly (112 from 119 balls, 6 fours, 4 sixes) both scored centuries, contributing to a second-wicket partnership of 244 runs in 39.5 overs to take India to 311 (2 wickets, 50 overs, 207 minutes). Namibia were then all out for 130 (all out, 42.3 overs, 163 minutes) thanks to 4 wickets from part-timer Yuvraj. The Man of the match was Tendulkar in both matches. India finished off their engagements in Group A with an 82 run victory over England at Durban and a 6 wicket victory over Pakistan at Centurion. Paceman Ashish Nehra achieved 6/23 against England to help India defend 250 as England were all out for 168. The Indian batting was bolstered by half-centuries from Dravid (62 from 72 balls, 3 fours and 1 six) and Tendulkar (50 from 52 balls, 8 fours and 1 six), and an attacking cameo from Yuvraj (42 from 38 balls, 4 fours and 1 six). The match against Pakistan, the most anticipated match of the tournament, lived up to its billing and was a thriller. It was (and still is) noted for being a match in which Tendulkar played one of his best-ever ODI innings. Chasing 274, Tendulkar (98 from 75 balls, 12 fours, 1 six) pulled off a near century, only to get out after suffering from cramps, to guide India to an unlikely victory, maintaining India's unbeaten record over Pakistan in World Cups. Tendulkar was once again awarded the Man of the Match. With 5 victories and 1 loss from 6 matches, India finished second in Group A and qualified for the Super Six stage. India were untroubled in the Super Six stage and continued their streak of strong performances with three wins out of three matches, earning them a berth in the semifinals. The wins were comfortable, beating Kenya at Cape Town by 6 wickets through a century from Ganguly (107 from 120 balls, 11 fours, 2 sixes);beating Sri Lanka at Johannesburg by 183 runs thanks to Tendulkar (97 from 120 balls, 7 fours and 1 six), Sehwag (66 from 76 balls, 5 fours, 3 sixes) and veteran Srinath's 4/35; and winning against New Zealand at Centurion by 7 wickets, due to Zaheer's 4/42 which bundled out the Black Caps for 146, followed by patient knocks from Kaif (68 not out off 129 balls, 8 fours) and Dravid (53 not out off 89 balls, 7 fours) in the chase. In the semifinals, India played the surprise package of the tournament, Kenya, at Durban. The match was not dramatic. Tendulkar (83 from 101 balls, 5 fours, 1 six) and Ganguly (111 from 114 balls, 5 fours, 5 sixes) took India to 270/4 in their 50 overs, from where a combined bowling effort from India's bowlers got Kenya all out for 179. This brought India into the finals for the first time since 1983, where they faced a strong Australia, who had dominated the tournament from the start with an all-win record. The final, played on 23 March 2003 at the Wanderers Stadium in Johannesburg, saw Ganguly electing to field first after winning the toss, in the hope that his pacers would exploit a damp pitch. However, the plan backfired completely on India as the Australians dominated from the very start, with the openers Adam Gilchrist and Matthew Hayden sharing a partnership of 105 runs for the 1st wicket, which was achieved in only 14 overs. Australian captain Ricky Ponting and Damien Martyn then scored 140 not out and 88 not out respectively, taking Australia to an Australian record of 359/2, a record that would not be beaten until 2006. Chasing a mammoth 360 to win, India never stood a chance after Tendulkar (4 from 5 balls, 1 four) lost his wicket early. Sehwag (82 from 81 balls, 10 fours, 3 sixes) and Dravid (47 from 57 balls, 2 fours) then steadied the innings, sharing a partnership of 88 runs which brought India to a decent 147/3 in the 24th over. With India scoring at 5.96 runs an over, it seemed that they would end up creating a miracle by winning the match, but the remaining Indian batsmen struggled against the Aussie pace attack of Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee and fell to cheap shots while trying to accelerate the scoring rate. India lost their last 7 wickets for only 87 runs and crashed to 234 all out in the 40th over, losing the match by 125 runs. Though they finished the tournament as the runner up, there were a huge amount of bright sides for India. Firstly, Tendulkar was awarded the Man of the Tournament award for being the leading run scorer with 673 runs. Ganguly ended up as the second leading run scorer in the tournament, but 208 runs behind Tendulkar. Tendulkar's 152 against Namibia was the second highest score of the tournament and he achieved an average of 61.18. Secondly, there were upsides in the bowling department as well with Zaheer 4th on the wicket takers list. Finally, India as a team had achieved a streak of 9 wins and 2 losses from 11 matches, with both losses coming against the tournament winners Australia. However, the 2003 World Cup would be the last cricket tournament for Srinath, who retired eight months later due to injury-related issues. The Indian Squad that finished as the runner up of the 2003 World Cup comprised Sourav Ganguly (captain), Rahul Dravid (vice-captain and wicketkeeper), Ajit Agarkar, Anil Kumble, Ashish Nehra, Dinesh Mongia, Harbhajan Singh, Javagal Srinath, Mohammad Kaif, Parthiv Patel (reserve wicketkeeper), Sachin Tendulkar, Sanjay Bangar, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Zaheer Khan, India's record: 9−2 (Runner up), Australia's record: 11−0 (Champions) India, this time, had gone to the West Indies with 2 convincing home series wins against the West Indies and Sri Lanka. For the 2007 tournament, India had what was considered a decent World Cup squad, as they had three batsmen who had scored more than 10,000 ODI runs (Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid), world class spin bowlers (Harbhajan Singh and Anil Kumble), destructive batsmen (Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Robin Uthappa and Mahendra Singh Dhoni), and a decent pace bowling attack led by Zaheer Khan. The format of this tournament was completely different from the 1999 format. Teams were divided into groups of 4, with the top two teams from each group moving on to the Super Eight stage, where each team would play each other in a round-robin format. In the Group stage, India were placed in Group B, pitted against Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and World Cup debutants Bermuda. All of India's Group matches were played at the Queen's Park Oval in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. India's World Cup campaign started disastrously, as they unexpectedly lost to minnows Bangladesh in their opening match, leaving them with two must- win matches in their group. All the Indian batsmen, barring Ganguly (63 from 129 balls, 4 fours) and Yuvraj (47 from 58 balls, 3 fours and 1 six), faltered against the pace of Mashrafe Mortaza (4/38) and the left arm spin of Abdur Razzak (3/38) and Mohammad Rafique (3/35) as India were bowled all out for 191. None of the Indian bowlers could make an impact as Bangladesh chased down the target with ease. India next scored 413/5 against Bermuda, the highest team total in a World Cup game. Sehwag played a brilliant knock (114 from 87 balls, 17 fours and 3 sixes), exposing the amateur Bermudan bowling. Ganguly (89 from 114 balls, 6 fours and 2 sixes), Yuvraj (83 from 46 balls, 3 fours and 7 sixes) and Tendulkar (57 not out from 29 balls, 2 fours and 4 sixes) too contributed, with Ganguly and Sehwag sharing a 202-run partnership for the 2nd wicket, followed by Tendulkar and Yuvraj sharing a 122-run partnership for the 5th wicket. Agarkar and Kumble then contributed with identical bowling figures of 3/38 as Bermuda were bowled all out for 156 in the 44th over, India winning the lopsided game by 257 runs. But they still needed to beat Sri Lanka in their last group match in order to enter the Super Eight stage. The match against Sri Lanka on 23 March 2007 turned out to be a one-sided contest. Chasing 255, the Indian batting crumbled against the Sri Lankan bowling attack with off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan and pace bowler Chaminda Vaas taking 2/39 and 3/41 respectively, crashing to 185 all out in the 44th over. Only Dravid (60 from 82 balls, 6 fours) and Sehwag (48 from 46 balls, 5 fours and 1 six) made any significant contribution for India. With one victory and two losses, India's hopes of entering the Super Eight stage were now grim and depended on a Bermuda victory over Bangladesh by a heavy margin in the last Group B match. But with Bangladesh beating Bermuda, India crashed out of the World Cup in the first round, the first time since 1992. There were no positives India could take from the tournament, barring the heavy win against Bermuda. Apart from Sehwag, Ganguly and Yuvraj, who scored 164, 162 and 136 runs respectively, no other Indian batsman could accumulate even 100 runs. Sehwag, with his 114 against Bermuda, was India's only centurion in the tournament. The bowling was even more pathetic, with Zaheer being India's best bowler with 5 wickets. After the debacle, Kumble retired from ODI cricket, while coach Greg Chappell resigned after reports that none of the senior players, including Tendulkar, were happy with him and his coaching methods. However, Dravid retained the captaincy. There were several attacks on players homes and protests by infuriated fans, especially in Bangalore and Mumbai. The Indian Squad that took part in the 2007 World Cup comprised Rahul Dravid (captain), Sachin Tendulkar (vice-captain), Ajit Agarkar, Anil Kumble, Dinesh Karthik (reserve wicketkeeper), Harbhajan Singh, Irfan Pathan, Mahendra Singh Dhoni (wicketkeeper), Munaf Patel, Robin Uthappa, Shanthakumaran Sreesanth, Sourav Ganguly, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Zaheer Khan, India's record: 1−2 (Group B, 3rd place), Australia's record: 11−0 (Champions) As one of the host nations for the 2011 World Cup, India were expected to perform well in familiar conditions, and were considered pre-tournament favourites by the media and press. Like in 2007, India came into the World Cup on a string of strong performances, with back-to-back series wins against Australia and New Zealand at home, followed by a moderately successful tour of South Africa. The Indian team were generally considered to be the strongest batting side in the tournament, comprising the openers Virender Sehwag and veteran Sachin Tendulkar, playing in his 6th consecutive World Cup, followed by Gautam Gambhir and Virat Kohli, with Yuvraj Singh, skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Yusuf Pathan and Suresh Raina completing the star-studded batting line- up. While the bowling attack was considered more suspect, three veterans in pacers Zaheer Khan and Ashish Nehra and offspinner Harbhajan Singh were joined by Munaf Patel, Piyush Chawla, Ravichandran Ashwin, and Shantakumaran Sreesanth. The 1996 World Cup format was used for the tournament, following widespread criticism, particularly from the BCCI, over the 2007 format. India were placed in Group B in the Group stage alongside co-hosts Bangladesh, South Africa, England, the West Indies and associates Holland and Ireland. India's 2011 World Cup campaign started with an 87-run win against Bangladesh at Dhaka. With centuries from Sehwag (175 from 140 balls, 14 fours, 5 sixes) and Kohli (100 not out from 83 balls, 8 fours, 2 sixes) India scored 4/370. Fast bowler Munaf (4-48) took 4 wickets during the Bangladesh reply, including that of opener Tamim Iqbal (70 from 86 balls, 3 fours, 1 six) as Bangladesh scored 9/283 in 50 overs to fall short. India next played England at Bangalore, which was a thriller. On a batting-friendly track at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, India chose to bat first. Tendulkar (120 from 115 balls, 10 fours, 5 sixes) lashed his way through the English attack, ably supported by Gambhir (51 from 61 balls, 5 fours) and Yuvraj (58 from 50 balls, 9 fours). After the 45th over, India were 305/3 and were looking to pass 350 during the batting Powerplay. Instead, English bowler Tim Bresnan (5-48) engineered a collapse with four quick wickets in 16 deliveries, as India slumped to a still- formidable total of 338 all out. England started their run chase by blasting 77 runs off the first 10 overs. Skipper Andrew Strauss (158 from 145 balls, 18 fours, 1 six) decimated the Indian bowling attack with unparalleled ferocity, and was supported by Ian Bell (69 from 71 balls, 4 fours, 1 six). At 2/280 in the 43rd over, England was cruising to an extraordinary victory. However, Zaheer responded by taking the wickets of Strauss, Bell, and Paul Collingwood in 11 deliveries, as England were reduced to 289/6. Tailenders Bresnan, Graeme Swann, and Ajmal Shahzad each hit massive sixes in the final few overs to regain some momentum, and Swann scored 13 runs off the final over to salvage a tie with India (338/8 in 50 overs). It was only the fourth tied match in World Cup history. In their third group match, India defeated minnows Ireland, again at Bangalore, by 5 wickets. After winning the toss and choosing to field, India's bowling attack proved superior to the Irish batting lineup. Yuvraj (5-31) was the best bowler for India, taking five successive wickets – including the top scorer for Ireland, William Porterfield (75 from 104 balls, 6 fours, 1 six). Ireland was eventually bowled for 207 all out. During their reply, India slumped to 100/4, as the batting lineup struggled to cope with the tight and accurate Irish bowling. Once again however, Yuvraj (50 not out from 75 balls, 3 fours) helped the Indian side with an unbeaten half-century, and guided India to a five-wicket victory. India followed this victory with a win over Holland at New Delhi. After choosing to bat first, Holland was restricted to 189 all out, with Zaheer (3-20) and Yuvraj (2-43) doing most of the damage. Despite Sehwag's blistering start, India's run-chase started out poorly, as they slumped to 4/99. And, once again, it was Yuvraj (51 not out from 73 balls, 7 fours) who guided India to victory in a crucial 5th-wicket stand with Dhoni (19 not out off 56 balls, 2 fours). India next played South Africa at Nagpur in what was one of the most anticipated matches of the tournament. India started well, riding on the power hitting of Sehwag (73 from 66 balls, 12 fours), as well as brilliant knocks from Tendulkar (111 from 101 balls, 8 fours, 3 sixes) and Gambhir (69 from 75 balls, 7 fours). However, India, from a very strong position of 267/2 in the 40th over, lost their last 8 wickets for just 29 runs in a massive collapse, slumping to 296 all out, with South African fast bowler Dale Steyn ripping through the Indian batting line up, generating figures of 5-50 in his 9.4 overs. Hashim Amla (61 from 72 balls, 5 fours) and Jacques Kallis (69 from 88 balls, 4 fours) top-scored in reply, as South Africa chased down the total with only 3 wickets and 2 deliveries to spare. AB de Villiers (52 from 39 balls, 6 fours, 1 six) scored a quick half-century to keep South Africa ahead of the required run rate. It was India's first and only loss in their World Cup campaign. India's final group match was against the West Indies at Chennai. India chose to bat first. Yuvraj (113 from 123 balls, 10 fours, 2 sixes) and Kohli (59 from 76 balls, 5 fours) batted well but received little support from the rest of the lineup, as India were all out for 268. With Devon Smith (81 from 97 balls, 7 fours, 1 six) leading the way, the West Indies reached 154/2 in the 30th over before losing their last 8 wickets for 34 runs due to Zaheer's 3-26, allowing India to coast to an 80-run victory. With this victory, India reached the quarterfinals and finished second in Group B. In the quarterfinals, India faced defending champions Australia at Ahmedabad. Australia won the toss and chose to bat first. Captain Ricky Ponting (104 from 118 balls, 7 fours, 1 six) and wicketkeeper Brad Haddin (53 from 62 balls, 6 fours, 1 six) scored fluently, but Ashwin, Zaheer and Yuvraj took wickets at regular intervals to restrict Australia to 260/6 in 50 overs. Tendulkar (53 from 68 balls, 7 fours) Gambhir (50 from 64 balls, 2 fours) and Yuvraj (57 not out from 65 balls, 8 fours) all scored half-centuries in reply, as India chased down the target with 5 wickets and 14 deliveries to spare. With this win, Australia's title defence ended and India entered the semifinals. India played arch-rival Pakistan in the semifinals at Mohali. India won the toss and chose to bat first. Despite Sehwag's customary fast start (38 from 25 balls, 9 fours), the Indian batsmen had trouble coping with the Pakistani bowling attack. Pakistani fast bowler Wahab Riaz (5-46) took a 5-wicket haul for Pakistan and Tendulkar (85 from 115 balls, 11 fours) top-scored for India despite being dropped four times in the field. With India slumping at 187/5 in the 37th over, Suresh Raina (36 not out from 39 balls, 3 fours) shored up the tail as India reached 260/9 in 50 overs. All five Indian bowlers (Zaheer, Munaf, Nehra, Harbhajan and Yuvraj) took two wickets in the Pakistani reply, as Pakistan fell behind the run rate and were bowled all out for 231 with 1 delivery remaining. Misbah-ul-Haq (56 from 76 balls, 5 fours, 1 six) top scored for Pakistan, but his slow start allowed the required run-rate to balloon beyond Pakistan's reach. The win ensured that India maintained their all-win record over their arch-rivals in the World Cup and set up a final with Sri Lanka at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai on 2 April 2011. On a batting-friendly pitch, Sri Lanka won the toss and chose to bat first. Zaheer (2-60), using the new ball, bowled three maiden overs and took the wicket of Upul Tharanga to leave Sri Lanka at 31/1 after 10 overs – their lowest 10-over score in the tournament. However, Mahela Jayawardene (103 not out from 88 balls, 13 fours) rebuilt the Sri Lankan innings with a superb century, helped by captain Kumar Sangakkara (48 from 67 balls, 5 fours). Nuwan Kulasekara (32 from 30 balls, 1 four, 1 six) and Thisara Perera (22 from 9 balls, 3 fours, 1 six) plundered 91 runs from the last 10 overs, lifting Sri Lanka to a formidable total of 274/6 after 50 overs. India's run chase began badly, as Sehwag and Sachin were bowled cheaply by Lasith Malinga (2-42) to leave India at 31/2 at the 7th over. However, Gambhir (97 from 122 balls, 9 fours) rebuilt the Indian innings with an 83-run partnership for the third wicket with Kohli (35 from 49 balls, 4 fours). After Kohli was caught and bowled to leave India at 114/3, Gambhir and Dhoni (91 not out from 79 balls, 8 fours, 2 sixes) scored 109 runs for the fourth wicket, in a vicious attack on the tiring Sri Lankan bowlers. After Gambhir was bowled by Perera, Yuvraj and Dhoni ensured that India would successfully chase Sri Lanka's score, with Dhoni blasting a massive six off the final delivery. India won the match by six wickets. With the win, India secured their second World Cup, the first since 1983. It was also the first time that the World Cup was won by the host nation in their own backyard (Sri Lanka, though co-hosts of the 1996 World Cup, played the final at Lahore in Pakistan). Dhoni was named Man of the Match for his blistering innings of 91. Apart from the win, there were other achievements for India in the tournament. Tendulkar scored 482 runs, and was the second-highest run scorer in the tournament after Sri Lankan opener Tillakaratne Dilshan, who scored 500 runs. Zaheer took 21 wickets, and was the leading wicket-taker in the World Cup along with Pakistan's Shahid Afridi. Yuvraj, who scored 362 runs and took 15 wickets, was named Man of the Tournament for his all-round performance. Yuvraj's performance in particular was very significant as he played the tournament battling germ cell cancer.. The Indian Squad that won the 2011 World Cup comprised Mahendra Singh Dhoni (captain and wicketkeeper), Virender Sehwag (vice-captain), Ashish Nehra, Gautam Gambhir, Harbhajan Singh, Munaf Patel, Piyush Chawla, Ravichandran Ashwin, Sachin Tendulkar, Shanthakumaran Sreesanth, Suresh Raina, Virat Kohli, Yusuf Pathan, Yuvraj Singh, Zaheer Khan, India's record: 7-1 and 1 tie (Champions) As the defending champions, India went into the 2015 World Cup co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand with high expectations and were billed pre- tournament favourites. Unlike in 2007 and 2011, this time India went into the World Cup on the back of poor results, with a mediocre Australian tour preceding the event. Despite this, it was expected that India would still do well in the World Cup due to their familiarity with the Australian conditions, having already spent more than 2 months there. The Indian team for the 2015 World Cup comprised only 4 members from the 2011 World Cup-winning squad, which included captain and wicketkeeper Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Virat Kohli, who was now the vice-captain of the side and one of the best batsmen in ODI cricket, Suresh Raina and Ravichandran Ashwin. For the first time since the 1992 World Cup, the Indian World Cup squad was without Sachin Tendulkar, who had retired from all forms of cricket in 2013, while the other stars of the 2011 World Cup such as Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Gautam Gambhir, Harbhajan Singh and Zaheer Khan were dropped due to poor form. Despite the absence of these key performers, the Indian World Cup squad was still a strong side, with a power-packed batting lineup comprising Kohli, Dhoni, Raina, destructive openers Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan and the stylish middle- order bat Ajinkya Rahane, and a strong bowling attack comprising pacers Mohammed Shami, Umesh Yadav, Mohit Sharma and Bhuvneshwar Kumar, supplemented by the spinners Ashwin and all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja. The 1996 World Cup format, which was also used in 2011, was used for the last time in the World Cup, as the 2019 World Cup would see the return of the round-robin format last used in 1992. In the Group Stage, India were placed in Group B with arch- rivals Pakistan, South Africa, the West Indies, minnows Zimbabwe and associates Ireland and the UAE. India's 2015 World Cup campaign began with a highly anticipated match against Pakistan at Adelaide. Batting first, India lost Rohit (15 from 20 balls, 2 fours) early, but a century from Kohli (107 from 126 balls, 8 fours) along with half-centuries from Raina (74 from 56 balls, 5 fours and 3 sixes) and Dhawan (73 from 76 balls, 7 fours and 1 six) looked to steer India to a big total. However, excellent death bowling by the Pakistani bowlers, with fast bowler Sohail Khan (5-55) taking a 5-wicket haul, restricted India to exactly 300/7, with India losing 5 wickets for just 27 runs. Pakistan's reply, however, had little effect. Barring captain Misbah-ul- Haq, who scored 76, the Pakistani batting crumbled against the Indian pace attack, with Shami taking 4/35, and crashed to 224 all out. India won the match by 76 runs, their biggest win against Pakistan in the World Cup by margin of runs, and as a result, once again maintained their all-win record over their arch-rivals in the World Cup. India next played South Africa at Melbourne, which was another highly anticipated match, in front of a packed crowd comprising mostly Indian supporters. Once again India batted first. Though India lost Rohit early for a duck, they recovered from the early setback thanks to a brilliant century from Dhawan (137 from 146 balls, 16 fours and 2 sixes) and a classy half-century from Rahane (79 from 60 balls, 7 fours and 3 sixes). However, the lower middle-order then crumbled due to good death bowling from the South African pace attack, with India losing 5 wickets for just 31 runs to finish their innings at 307/7. In the chase, despite losing the openers Hashim Amla and Quinton de Kock early, South Africa were going steady at 108/3, with Faf du Plessis scoring a half-century. But the Indian bowlers led by Ashwin (3/41) then struck back as the Proteas lost their last 7 wickets for 69 runs to be bowled all out for 177, India winning by 130 runs. It was the first time that India defeated South Africa in the World Cup, having lost to them in 3 previous Cup encounters in 1992, 1999 and 2011 and was the heaviest defeat for South Africa in the Cricket World Cup. India ended their Australian leg of the Group stage with back-to-back victories against the UAE and the West Indies at Perth. Ashwin once again starred with the ball in the match against the UAE with his 4/25 as the minnows crashed to 102 all out, which was the lowest score ever registered by a team against India in the World Cup, following which an attacking half-century from Rohit (57 not out from 55 balls, 10 fours and 1 six) ensured that India won the match by 9 wickets, a facile victory which was achieved even before the floodlights could be turned on at the WACA Ground. The match against the West Indies was a low- scoring thriller. Bowling first on a typical fast and bouncy Perth wicket, India restricted the West Indies to 182 all out, with Shami taking 3/35. In reply, the Indian top-order were unable to successfully negotiate the West Indian fast bowling attack of Kemar Roach, Jerome Taylor and Andre Russell and were soon struggling at 107/5, before Dhoni (45 not out from 56 balls, 3 fours and 1 six) took India to victory by 4 wickets. The win against the Caribbeans ensured India's passage into the quarterfinals. India travelled to New Zealand to play their remaining Group matches. Their first match in New Zealand in this World Cup was against Ireland at Hamilton. Batting first on a perfect batting track, the Irish captain William Porterfield and middle-order batsman Niall O'Brien gave a massive scare to India as they scored half-centuries to propel Ireland to a formidable 206/3 in the 39th over, with the probability of them achieving a 300+ score high. However, Shami (3/41) and Ashwin (2/38) then triggered a collapse, with the Irish losing their last 7 wickets for just 53 runs to collapse to 259 all out. In reply, India were untroubled by the Irish bowling, with a blistering century from Dhawan (100 from 85 balls, 11 fours and 5 sixes), his second in the tournament, along with a half-century from Rohit (64 from 66 balls, 3 fours and 3 sixes) reducing the match to a no- contest as India scaled down the required target with 13 overs and 8 wickets to spare. India topped Group B with 1 match remaining due to the win. India's last match in the Group stage was against Zimbabwe at Auckland, a dead rubber since India had already topped Group B and Zimbabwe were no longer in contention for the quarterfinals with just a single win in this World Cup until this match. However, the match proved to be a thriller. Bowling first, the Indian pace attack struck early to leave Zimbabwe tottering at 33/3. But Zimbabwean skipper Brendan Taylor, who was playing his last match for Zimbabwe, scored a belligerent 138, toying with the spinners. With the support of Sean Williams, who scored 50, and then Craig Ervine, Taylor brought Zimbabwe to a solid position of 235/5 in the 42nd over after which he departed. A 300+ score was imminent at the time, but good death bowling from the Indian fast bowlers comprising Yadav (3/43) as well as Shami and Mohit, who both took identical figures of 3/48, saw Zimbabwe lose their last 5 wickets for 52 runs to be bowled all out for 287. India's reply began shakily, with a 2-wicket maiden over from Tinashe Panyangara accounting for both openers Rohit (16 from 21 balls, 2 fours) and Dhawan (4 from 20 balls, 1 four) early in the innings. Due to good bowling and fielding from the Zimbabweans, the defending champions were soon struggling at 92/4 in the 23rd over and an upset win by Zimbabwe seemed likely. But Raina (110 not out from 104 balls, 9 fours and 4 sixes) scored a breathtaking century under pressure. Though he began his innings scratchily, struggling against the short ball, he soon developed confidence and hammered the Zimbabwean bowling with the support of Dhoni (85 not out from 76 balls, 8 fours and 2 sixes), who secured yet another victory in the World Cup for India in his trademark style by hitting a sixer with just 6 runs to win in the 49th over. India finished the Group stage with an all-win record. India returned to Australia to play the knockout matches. In the quarterfinals, India played Bangladesh at Melbourne, which they won comfortably by 109 runs. India, batting first, scored 302/6, thanks to an attacking century from Rohit (137 from 126 balls, 14 fours and 3 sixes), who dominated the Bangladeshi bowling with support from Raina (65 from 57 balls, 7 fours and 1 six). The duo shared a partnership of 122 runs for the 4th wicket. Then the Indian pacers, led by Yadav (4/31) and Shami (2/37), never allowed the Bangladeshi batsmen to settle down as they were bowled all out for 193. The match became controversial due to an erroneous umpiring decision involving Rohit. During the 40th over, Rohit, who was batting on 90, pulled a full toss bowled by Bangladeshi bowler Rubel Hossain and was caught at square-leg. However, the umpire Aleem Dar thought that the ball was above waist height and declared it a no-ball, meaning that Rohit was not out. Replays showed that the ball was waist height, and therefore a legal delivery. This decision led to an uproar in Bangladesh, with irate Bangladeshi fans burning effigies of Dar in protest. Even the ICC President Mustafa Kamal, who hails from Bangladesh, and the Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina opposed the controversial decision. Nevertheless, this incident did not remove the shine from India's clinical victory, which brought them to the semifinals, where they played co- hosts Australia at Sydney. India lost the toss and were made to bowl first on a perfect batting pitch. Australia recovered from the early loss of opener David Warner due to a brilliant century from vice-captain Steve Smith. Supported by a half-century from opener Aaron Finch, the duo put on 182 runs for the 2nd wicket. However, after that the Australian innings wobbled due to good bowling from Yadav (4/72), who achieved a second consecutive 4-wicket haul and provided the important breakthroughs, but due to a late blitz by fast bowler Mitchell Johnson, who scored 27 not out from just 14 balls, the Australians finished their innings at 328/7. A score of 329, though a huge one, was considered gettable taking into account the strength of the Indian batting lineup. The Indians started the chase well with an opening stand of 76 between Rohit (34 from 48 balls, 1 four and 2 sixes) and Dhawan (45 from 41 balls, 6 fours and 1 six). But following the dismissal of Dhawan, the rest of the Indian batsmen succumbed to a combined effort from the Australian pace attack. A slow 70 run stand between Rahane (44 from 68 balls, 2 fours) and Dhoni (65 from 65 balls, 3 fours and 2 sixes) for the 5th wicket only delayed the inevitable as India crashed to 233 all out in the 47th over, losing the match by 95 runs and ending their title defence. It was the second time since 1987 that India failed to defend their World Cup title. Although India could not successfully defend their World Cup title, several positives emerged from the tournament from an Indian point of view. For the first time ever in a Cricket World Cup, India finished the Group stage unbeaten, with their only loss in the tournament coming against the eventual champions Australia in the semifinal. They achieved 11 consecutive World Cup match victories starting from 2011 during the tournament, which is just below the Cup record of 25 wins in a row, held by Australia. Barring the semifinal, the Indian team bowled out the opposition in every match, a remarkable feat for a bowling attack traditionally considered to be weaker than the batting. With 412 runs from 8 matches including 2 centuries, opener Dhawan was the fifth highest run scorer of the tournament, while the fast bowlers Yadav and Shami bagged the third and fourth spots respectively among the tournament's leading bowlers with 18 and 17 wickets respectively. Skipper and wicketkeeper Dhoni effected 15 dismissals in the Cup, coming second among the leading wicketkeepers in the tournament. The Indian Squad that made the semifinals of the 2015 World Cup comprised Mahendra Singh Dhoni (captain and wicketkeeper), Virat Kohli (vice-captain), Ajinkya Rahane, Ambati Rayudu (reserve wicketkeeper), Axar Patel, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohammed Shami, Mohit Sharma, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, Stuart Binny, Suresh Raina, Umesh Yadav, India's record: 7-1 (Semifinalists), Australia's record: 7-1 and 1 no result (Champions) India were considered one of the favourites to win the 2019 Cricket World Cup hosted in England and Wales. Their record prior to the tournament had been excellent, with highly successful tours of Australia and New Zealand, which was followed by a narrow 2-3 loss in an ODI series at home against Australia. The team for this World Cup was considered to be a strong one, with a powerful batting line comprising captain Virat Kohli, openers Rohit Sharma and K. L. Rahul and veteran wicketkeeper-batsman Mahendra Singh Dhoni, a fast bowling line-up comprising Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami and Bhuvneshwar Kumar hailed by experts as the best fast-bowling unit India has ever produced, two brilliant wrist spinners including Yuzvendra Chahal and chinaman bowler Kuldeep Yadav and quality all-rounders in Hardik Pandya, Kedar Jadhav and Ravindra Jadeja. The round-robin format last used in the 1992 World Cup was used for this tournament, with India playing all the other nine participating teams once. India began their campaign with a win against South Africa at Southampton. Batting first, the South Africans struggled against the pace of Bumrah (10-1-35-2), who accounted for both openers Hashim Amla and Quinton de Kock, as well as Chahal's leg spin (10-0-51-4) and were 80/4 at one stage, however an eighth-wicket partnership of 76 runs between Chris Morris and Kagiso Rabada ensured that the Proteas finished their innings with a score of 227/9. India chased down the target with ease for the loss of just 4 wickets due to Rohit's century (122 off 144 balls, 13 fours, 2 sixes), ably supported by Rahul (26 off 42 balls, 2 fours) and Dhoni (34 off 46 balls, 2 fours). India next played Australia at The Oval, London, which also turned out to be another one-sided game in favour of India. India, batting first after winning the toss, scored 352/5, with Dhawan cracking a brilliant century (117 off 109 balls, 16 fours) with support from Rohit (57 off 70 balls, 3 fours, 1 six) and Kohli (82 off 77 balls, 4 fours, 1 six), all of whom made a mockery of the Australian bowling attack. There were also late cameos from Pandya (48 off 27 balls, 4 fours, 3 sixes) and Dhoni (27 off 14 balls, 3 fours, 1 six). In response, Australia put up a strong fight, with good contributions from David Warner, Steve Smith and wicketkeeper Alex Carey, who scored 56, 69 and 55 respectively, but India's total was beyond their reach as they folded for 316 all out, India thus winning by 36 runs. Unfortunately for India, Dhawan fractured his thumb during his century knock, ruling him out for the rest of the tournament. He was replaced by wicketkeeper-batsman Rishabh Pant. India's third match against New Zealand at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, was abandoned without a ball being bowled due to rain. The much-awaited India vs Pakistan clash took place at Old Trafford, Manchester on 16 June. However, this match turned out to be another no-contest in favour of India. India were made to bat first in a match which was affected by rain. Once Pakistan missed the chance to get Rohit run out in the seventh over, the game was over for Pakistan as Rohit went on to make a brilliant century (140 off 113 balls, 14 fours, 3 sixes), ably supported by Rahul (57 off 78 balls, 3 fours, 2 sixes) and Kohli (77 off 65 balls, 7 fours), however a good death-bowling performance from Mohammad Amir, who took 3/47, restricted India to 336/5 when at one stage, they were cruising towards a post-350 score. Pakistan's reply, however, had little effect. Barring a 104-run second-wicket stand between Babar Azam and Fakhar Zaman, the rest of the Pakistan batting crumbled against India's bowling attack, with a combined bowling effort from Pandya (8-0-44-2), who took the wickets of veterans Mohammad Hafeez and Shoaib Malik in consecutive deliveries, Vijay Shankar (5.2-0-2-22) and Kuldeep (9-1-2-32) leaving Pakistan at 166/6 in the 35th over before the rain began to fall. After the rain, Pakistan's target was reduced to 302 which had to be scored within an impossible 5 overs by the Duckworth–Lewis–Stern method, thus handing India yet another win against their arch-rivals and maintaining their all-win record against them in the World Cup. Pakistan managed to finish their innings at 212/6. India won the match by 89 runs (D/L). Unfortunately for India, Bhuvneshwar sustained a hamstring niggle during the match while bowling, ruling him out until the match against Bangladesh. India then played the teams who had qualified for the World Cup through the qualifying tournament, Afghanistan and the West Indies, at Southampton and Old Trafford respectively. The match against Afghanistan was a thriller which India managed to win by 11 runs. On a slow pitch, barring Kohli (67 off 63 balls, 5 fours) and Jadhav (52 off 68 balls, 3 fours and 1 six), the rest of the Indian batsmen struggled to make runs against the Afghan bowling attack, with Afghan's spin attack of Rashid Khan, Mujeeb Ur Rahman and Mohammad Nabi, as well as the medium-pace of captain Gulbadin Naib, never allowing the Indian batsmen to settle down. India limped its way to 224/8 in their 50 overs, which was their lowest total batting first and completing their 50 overs since 2010. In the chase, Afghanistan played sedately, with Naib, Rahmat Shah and Nabi making significant contributions, with Nabi going on to score 52 off 55 balls. However a strong bowling performance from India, with contributions from Bumrah (10-1-2-39), Shami (9.5-1-40-4) and Chahal (10-0-36-2) and especially Bumrah and Shami's death-over bowling, kept a check on the Afghan run rate. In the final over, the Afghans needed 16 runs to win the match. Once Shami got Nabi out in the third ball of the final over, the match was over for Afghanistan as he got the wickets of tailenders Aftab Alam and Mujeeb in consecutive deliveries to achieve a hat-trick, which was only the second by an Indian bowler in a World Cup since Chetan Sharma in 1987. Afghanistan was all out for 213 in 49.5 overs. This was also India's 50th win in world cups -third team to achieve the feat after Australia and New zealand The match against the Caribbeans on the other hand, witnessed a clinical performance from India, with the team winning by a huge margin of 125 runs. Though India, who batted first, lost Rohit (18 off 23 balls, 1 four and 1 six) early, a good knock from Kohli (72 off 82 balls, 8 fours), supplemented from Dhoni (56 off 61 balls, 3 fours, 2 sixes), which averted a potential middle-order collapse, and also a cameo from Pandya (46 off 38 balls, 5 fours), brought India to a respectable 268/7 in 50 overs. This was followed by yet another strong performance with the ball, with Shami (6.2-0-4-16) taking 4 wickets again, as the Windies were bowled out for just 143 in the 35th over. India's first loss in the 2019 World Cup came against hosts England in the first of 2 back-to-back matches at Edgbaston, Birmingham, the other match being against Bangladesh. India, who were put to bowl first, bowled poorly for the first time in the tournament, including Shami (10-1-5-72), who was expensive despite taking a 5-wicket haul, as the English batsman, including openers Jason Roy and Jonny Bairstow, who cracked an attacking century, as well as all-rounder Ben Stokes, who scored 79 off just 54 balls, made merry of the Indian bowling attack. England posted 337/7 in their 50 overs. Chasing 338 to win, India lost Rahul early for a duck and from there, they were never able to recover, batting slowly due to a deteriorating pitch. In their first 10 overs, India was only able to score 27 runs for the loss of 1 wicket. Despite Rohit's third century of the tournament (102 off 109 balls, 15 fours) along with Kohli's fifth-consecutive half- century (66 off 76 balls, 7 fours), England's total proved to be beyond India's reach and they ended their innings at 306/5, losing by 31 runs. Dhoni (42 off 31 balls, 4 fours, 1 six) in particular was criticised by former players and fans for his inability to accelerate the scoring rate in the end overs. In contrast, the match against Bangladesh which took place two days later was for the most part, a one-sided affair in favour of India, though Bangladesh put up a strong fight. India started in the strongest possible manner, with Rohit (104 off 92 balls, 7 fours, 5 sixes) scoring his fourth century in the tournament. Along with Rahul (77 off 92 balls, 6 fours, 1 six), the duo put up a partnership of 180 runs for the first wicket, which was the highest partnership by India for the first wicket in the World Cup at the time, beating the previous record of 172 by Rohit and Dhawan against Ireland in 2015. A score of 400 plus seemed likely at one stage, but once Rohit departed, there was a middle-order collapse due to pacer Mustafizur Rahman's 5/59 off his 10 overs. However cameos from Pant (48 off 41 balls, 6 fours and 1 six) and Dhoni (35 off 33 balls, 4 fours) brought India to 314/9 in their 50 overs. In response, Bangladesh fought back, with all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan scoring 66, but a spirited bowling performance from India, courtesy Bumrah (10-1-55-4) and Pandya (10-1-60-3), who also took Shakib's wicket, brought Bangladesh down to 179/6 in the 34th over. Despite a valiant rearguard action from the Bangladesh lower middle-order, with a 66-run partnership for the seventh wicket between Mohammad Saifuddin, who scored a fighting half-century, and Sabbir Rahman, Bangladesh folded for 286, India winning by 28 runs. With this win, India qualified for the semifinals of the 2019 Cricket World Cup. India ended the round robin stage with an easy 7-wicket win over Sri Lanka at Headingley, Leeds. Batting first, Sri Lanka were 55/4 in the 12th over with Bumrah (10-2-37-3) doing the initial damage, but a century from Angelo Mathews, who was part of a 124-run stand for the fifth wicket with Lahiru Thirimanne, brought Sri Lanka to a respectable 264/7 in 50 overs. India easily chased down the target, with both openers Rohit (103 from 94 balls, 14 fours, 2 sixes) and Rahul (111 from 118 balls, 11 fours, 1 six) putting up a 189-run opening wicket partnership, breaking their own record for India's highest 1st wicket partnership in a Cricket World Cup which was achieved in just their previous match against Bangladesh. Rohit's century was his 5th in the tournament, making him the first ever batsman to hit five centuries in a single Cricket World Cup. With this win, and also South Africa's win over Australia in a match held on the same day, India topped the round robin stage with 7 wins, 1 loss and 1 no-result. In the semifinals, India played with New Zealand at Old Trafford. The match, spread over two days due to rain, was a thriller. On a slow and seaming wicket in overcast conditions, New Zealand, who were batting first, struggled to accelerate for most of their innings, and only half-centuries from Ross Taylor and Kiwi captain Kane Williamson ensured that the Black Caps reached a score of 239/8 in their 50 overs. For India, Bhuvneshwar (10-1-3-43) was the standout performer among the bowlers. India started their chase very badly, with the top three (Rohit, Rahul and Kohli) going for just 1 run each, courtesy brilliant opening spells from the Kiwi new-ball bowlers Matt Henry and Trent Boult, leaving them in deep trouble at 5/3 in the fourth over. However, a rearguard action from Dhoni (50 from 72 balls, 1 four, 1 six) and Jadeja (77 from 59 balls, 4 fours, 4 sixes), who both shared a partnership of 116 runs for the seventh wicket, which was the highest for India in a Cricket World Cup, brought India from 92/6 to 208/7, giving the Men in Blue a slim chance of winning the match. But once Jadeja and Dhoni got out in successive overs, the match was all over for India as they crashed to 221 all out. The Black Caps won the match by 18 runs, and as a result, India crashed out of the 2019 Cricket World Cup, the second consecutive Cricket World Cup in which they went out in the semifinal stage. The Indian Squad that made the semifinals of the 2019 World Cup comprised Virat Kohli (captain), Rohit Sharma (vice-captain), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Dinesh Karthik (reserve wicketkeeper), Hardik Pandya, Jasprit Bumrah, K. L. Rahul, Kedar Jadhav, Kuldeep Yadav, Mahendra Singh Dhoni (wicketkeeper), Mayank Agarwal (replacement for Vijay Shankar), Mohammed Shami, Ravindra Jadeja, Rishabh Pant (reserve wicketkeeper, replacement for Shikhar Dhawan), Shikhar Dhawan, Vijay Shankar, Yuzvendra Chahal, India's record: 7-2 and 1 washout (Semifinalists), England's record: 7-3 and 1 tie(Champions)

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Samantha Gene Brady DiMera is a fictional character from the American NBC daytime soap opera, Days of Our Lives, portrayed by Alison Sweeney since 1993. The character was born on-screen during the episode of October 16, 1984, along with her twin brother Eric Brady. Initially played by a series of child actresses, Sweeney took over the role of Sami when the character was rapidly- aged from a pre-teen to a teenager, in January 1993, under the pen of head writers Sheri Anderson and James E. Reilly. Sami is known for her outlandish trouble-making ways in pursuit of what she wants, her turbulent relationships with men, and fiercely fighting for her children. She has been described as vindictive and the girl "you love to hate", but like as she is "so over the top." Sami has been part of two daytime supercouples: with Lucas Horton (Bryan Dattilo), and EJ DiMera (James Scott); and is the mother of iconic LGBT character, Will Horton. Sweeney won a Special Fan Award for "America's Favorite Villain" at the 2002 Daytime Emmy Awards; and in 2015 she was nominated for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for her portrayal of Sami. Seven child actresses portrayed Sami. Baby Ronit Arnoff initially represented Sami; and babies Lauren Ann Bundy (October 22, 1984 to April 10, 1985) and Jessica Davis (December 6, 1985 to May 20, 1986) followed. Sami was rapidly- aged about two years when Tiffany Nicole Palma (August 7 to September 9, 1986) stepped in to play Sami. Then Ashleigh Sterling became the first child actress to play Sami over an extended period (December 24, 1986 to June 5, 1990), followed by Christina Wagoner (August 10, 1990 to June 22, 1992). Finally the current actress Alison Sweeney took over the role of Sami as a teenager on January 22, 1993, and played her into adulthood. Sweeney has been portraying Sami for over twenty-one years. When Sweeney took maternity leave in 2005, Sami stayed on the show; Days achieved this by having Sami go under-cover, disguising herself as man played by actor Dan Wells. Sweeney and Sami departed the show in 2014, but Sweeney has returned three times since for short-term appearances, most recently from August 23 to November 8, 2018. Sami was not Sweeney's first role on the show; she had previously portrayed Adrienne Johnson as a child in 1987. Sweeney has talked about starting on the show as Sami: "I remember my first day at work. I was so excited to be a part of a show that I'd been a fan of [...] My first two weeks on the show I was sneaking around Salem, so there weren't a lot of lines to memorize. My first scene was with Wayne Northrop (then-Roman Brady), who pulled a gun on me and said something like 'Freeze or I'll shoot!'" Sweeney has cited Northrop, Deidre Hall (Marlena), and Drake Hogestyn (John) as influences on her career playing the role, stating: "I learned so many lessons from them". When her 20th anniversary as Sami was approaching, fans speculated that she might depart from the series, but Sweeney inked a new deal with the show. She said, "I am super-excited to stay, and I am so honored that they asked me to stay. The job continues to surprise and challenge me. I have already shot my 20th anniversary episode, which airs on January 6 [2013], so I had this huge milestone and it's been such an amazing journey. I love my job, I love the people I work with and I love Sami." In January 2014, Sweeney announced she was quitting the series after 21 years. She revealed on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, "I've been on Days of Our Lives for 21 years. I'm celebrating my 21st year and I decided that it's going to be my last year with the show," Sweeney announced. "I've been on Days of Our Lives since I was 16-years-old, and I have never had more than a two-week vacation in that whole time. It's awesome. I love Sami, I love Salem, I love my job, I love daytime, I love the fans—I love everything about it." Her departing episode aired October 30, 2014. In 2015, Sweeney returned to Days of Our Lives to be part of the soap's 50th anniversary celebration (appearing from October 12 to November 17); and in 2017, she again returned as Sami as a key-player in the story of Sami's apparently-dead son Will Horton, being found alive (airing from October 13 to December 14). Then in March 2018 it was announced that Sweeney would again be returning as Sami. Sweeney teased the new story, saying it is: "super exciting, definitely a roller-coaster ride and really fun." Sami featured from August 23 to November 8, 2018. Sweeney returned in June 2019 for the passing of Caroline Brady (Peggy McCay), airing from June 18 to 24, 2019. In December 2019, Sweeney announced she would again reprise the role, with scenes expected to begin airing in August 2020. Since Sweeney has stepped into the role, Sami has been showcased as the series' primary troublemaker and "the girl you loved to hate" through her lying and scheming. In recent years, Sweeney has established herself as a leading heroine, with the show centering on the popular and controversial relationships between Sami and her love interests Austin Reed (Patrick Muldoon & Austin Peck), Franco Kelly (Victor Alfieri), Brandon Walker (Matt Cedeno), Lucas Roberts (Bryan Dattilo), EJ DiMera (James Scott), and Rafe Hernandez (Galen Gering). Originally characterized as the iron-willed daughter of Dr. Marlena Evans, Sami was transformed by writer James E. Reilly in the summer of 1994, converting the character from a stubborn moody teenager to a "conniving bitch", having her kidnap her baby sister, Belle and break up supercouple Carrie Brady and Austin Reed, including blackmail Nicole Walker and Lexie Carver on numerous incidents. However, as ratings declined in the mid-2000s, Sami's storylines proved to be "worn out" and in 2006, new Days head writers Hogan Sheffer and Meg Kelly converted the character to a heroine by pairing her with EJ DiMera and later Rafe Hernandez. Recently, in 2013 head writers Christopher Whitesell and Gary Tomlin turned Sami back into a scheming vixen. With her son Will being tormented by Nick Fallon and her fiancé, EJ DiMera sleeping with Abigail Deveraux, Sami returned to her evil ways and culminated in her committing crimes such as planning a vengeful revenge towards Abby and EJ for their affair and convincing Adrienne that her husband, Justin the father in law of her son, Will, was having an affair. The character has been described as "vindictive"; a writer from the American newspaper Asbury Park Press wrote that: "she's so bad, she's good". According to Austin American- Statesman in 1996, Sweeney had talked about "longing to play a conniving troublemaker" and she got her wish and more. Sweeney stated: "It's kind of funny that I said that I had no idea that (the writers) would take me literally". Sweeney has said to have given a new word to "manipulative" during her portrayal of Sami. In 2005, Sami manipulatively created a male alter ego, Stan. During this period of time, from February to August, Dan Wells took over the role. Sami is known for her rivalry with Nicole Walker (Arianne Zucker) and Sweeney has said that Sami has never had "female friends". Sami is known for her relationships, and many "failed trips to the altar". Janet Di Lauro of About.com said "No matter, Sami's always been a character who's fun to watch and root for as she's searched for her soul mate, time and time again." As a teenager, she developed a crush on Austin Reed (Austin Peck), but was "devastated" when he began dating her sister Carrie Brady (Christie Clark). She worked with Austin's brother Lucas to break up the couple. She ended up having a one night stand with Lucas in early 1995. Di Lauro said Sami's most "diabolical plot" was drugging Austin to have sex with her, which was "the start of an elaborate scheme" where she ended up pregnant and named Austin as the father, although Lucas was the actual father. The truth was eventually revealed and Austin, after nearly marrying Sami without loving her, reunited with Carrie. A bitter custody battle ensued between Lucas and Sami, who had a "love/hate" relationship over the years. Of the pairing, Sweeney said "their past is such a deep relationship and ultimately a friendship and a trust that they have with each other." They ended up marrying, but it was "permanently ended" when EJ DiMera (James Scott) entered the picture. EJ, the son of longtime crime boss Stefano DiMera (Joseph Mascolo), developed an obsession with Sami, and ended up controversially "raping" her. Sami became pregnant and gave birth to twins; her daughter's father is Lucas, and son's paternity belonged to EJ. EJ had asked Sami for sex to save Lucas' life, while he was trapped and nearly died. This led to a sham wedding between EJ and Sami, in exchange for the DiMeras ending the fifty-year family feud between the Brady family. Although she initially hated him, the couple ended up in a "night of passion" resulting in another pregnancy. Of whether EJ or Lucas was Sami's "true love," Sweeney said "I personally think Sami and Lucas truly love each other, but obviously a lot has gone on between them that has pushed them apart. Right now, they are writing Sami more focusing on EJ." She also said that she enjoyed working with Scott, and called him "enchanting." Of working with Dattilo, Sweeney said "I am definitely a long-standing Lumi fan and I miss working with Bryan every day. He is so fun! I was in a scene the other day and looking around, like he and I have such a history together, for some inside joke and he wasn’t on the set. It’s just strange when I don’t get to work with him all the time." TV Guides Nelson Branco named Lucas and Sami one of soap's greatest supercouples, and said "For years all this couple could think of was breaking up Austin and Carrie, until one magical day, partners-in-crime and cohorts Sami and Lucas realized they were in love with each other! Now as Days’ reigning super couple, they face the evil wrath of EJ and his family, The DiMeras. Will Sami marry EJ, the man who raped her to end this family feud forever — and will Lucas be able to forgive her?" Despite this, the couple divorced and despite minor reunions since, haven't been a couple. James Scott said "They’re not really re-visiting it. They have never done it. I think it’s about time, frankly. There is a good opportunity for story there. Alison Sweeney (Sami) and I work very well together. It’s sort of a fairy tale. They don’t play it so much now, but the Bradys and the DiMeras have a history." Scott also noted that EJ and Sami "love each other" but not necessarily in a romantic way. On-Air On-Soaps said "legions of fans are waiting for their beloved EJami duo to finally start a full-blown romance ... something that has been teased, and teased, and teased for years." He romances with Lucas and EJ have been popular with viewers, who call the pairings 'Lumi' and 'Ejami.' Upon Lucas' return to Days of our Lives in 2012, a poll ran by Soap Opera Digest revealed that majority of fans wanted Lucas and Sami back together. While in the Witness Protection Program while pregnant with her second child with EJ, Sami fell in love with her body guard Rafe. When asked who out of Lucas, EJ or Rafe should be with Sami, Sweeney said "You can't ask that," because "that is one topic I am now scared to talk about because you say one thing and the fans get all kinds of crazy on you." She said that it's so interesting to see how Sami has "grown and changed" and feels that the "relationship with Rafe is definitely a different one from the way she’s been in the past." Fans refer to Sami and Rafe as 'Safe'. Sweeney said that it's been fun getting "to know Galen" and said "We have fun working together, and it’s nice. It’s a new, different storyline for Sami." Sami is mother to Will Horton, Johnny DiMera, Allie Horton, Sydney DiMera, and Grace Brady (who Sami believed was her biological daughter). Janet Di Lauro of About.com said, "While Sami wouldn’t exactly be called lucky at love, let’s face it, most of her couplings have been wildly dysfunctional, her romances have produced four beautiful children: Will, Allie, Johnny and Sydney." Sami is known for fiercely fighting for her children. Sweeney told an interviewer: "For almost my entire run on Days, Sami’s overarching story was all about Will. She would lie for him, kill for him [figuratively speaking]. Her fights over that kid were huge! She was always Mama Bear ..." By 2009, Will was 16 years old; Sweeney said, "It’s sort of overwhelming to me sometimes to realize my character has a sixteen-year-old," considering she started working on Days of our Lives at 16, but she enjoys the dynamics between Will and Sami. In 2012, Sami and Lucas' son Will came out as gay. While Lucas was accepting, Sami was initially "responsible for the other point of view," according to Dattilo. Sweeney said that viewers can expect Sami to "have a traditional Sami reaction," because it's "such a vulnerable moment." Sweeney explained that Sami thinks it's because of her, and "she has to sort through all of those feelings and talk to lots of people in Salem about it." She added, "Sami loves her son so much, but she just always seems to say the wrong thing. She always puts her foot in her mouth." Samantha Gene Brady is born on October 16, 1984 (changed to October 16, 1977 when the character was rapidly-aged) with her twin brother Eric Brady to Marlena Evans and Roman Brady. Sami is named after her deceased aunt, Samantha Evans and Marlena's best friend, Eugene Bradford. A feud between the Brady family and the powerful DiMera family puts the infants in danger. Roman sends them to live in Colorado after their mother's disappearance. In 1993, Sami reappears in Salem as a teenager. She develops a crush on her sister's boyfriend, Austin Reed (Patrick Muldoon). She is traumatized after seeing her mother having sex with John Black (Drake Hogestyn) which leads to an affair that results in the birth of Sami's sister, Belle. At the time, Marlena was "married" to Roman. Sami's mental health spirals downward, and she becomes a bulimic in an attempt to lose weight. Sami later tells Marlena that she witnessed her having sex with John. Knowing that she is John's child, Sami, who volunteers at the Salem Hospital, switches Belle's blood test. She then kidnaps Belle and places her on the black market. John rescues Belle on Christmas Eve. On Belle's christening, Stefano DiMera (Joseph Mascolo) shows Roman Sami's diary which reveals the affair and Belle's paternity. Roman leaves Marlena, devastating Sami. Sami befriends Lucas Roberts (Bryan Dattilo) and dates his friend Alan Harris (Paul Kersey), whom her family strongly opposes. Sami's best friend Jamie overhears Alan talk about being in love with Carrie, but keeps this from Sami. Frustrated by his unrequited love for Carrie, Alan rapes Sami. Sami confides in Lucas, but without corroborating proof, the press vilifies Sami as a liar once the news gets out. Alan tries to rape her again, and she stops him by shooting him in the groin. Distraught, Lucas manages to comfort Sami; and they have sex. She still, however, has a crush on Austin and drugs him into bed so he would believe she was Carrie. After her divorce from Roman, Marlena becomes vulnerable and is possessed by the devil. While possessed, Marlena tells Sami to seduce Austin. She tries, but Austin rejects her. Sami leaves town in February 1995. Sami returns in July of that year and crashes Austin's wedding to Carrie claiming that she is carrying his child. After a rough teen pregnancy, Sami gives birth to William Robert Reed on November 16, 1995. Sami hides the fact that Will is actually Lucas' son, and passes him off as Austin's. Austin and Sami are engaged and plan to wed. However, he leaves her at the altar after Carrie uncovers the truth about Will's paternity. Sami renames her son William Reed Roberts and leaves town. She returns and befriends Franco Kelly (Victor Alfieri). They become engaged; Franco is using her to get a greencard and stay in the country. He is murdered on their wedding day. Sami sees the body and faints near it. Lucas's mother Kate Roberts (Lauren Koslow) frames Sami for the murder so that she will go to jail and Lucas can have full custody of Will. Sami is convicted and sentenced to death for the murder. In the middle of her execution via injection, Lucas confesses to the murder in an attempt to save her life. Unbeknownst to Lucas, Roberto signed a false confession on his death bed which leads to a stay of execution from the governor. Sami is freed and falls in love with Brandon Walker (Matt Cedeno), who helps her regain full custody of Will. Brandon and Sami are married briefly. However, her lies and schemes end the marriage. Sami has an accident at the DiMera mansion and falls through the window. Lucas helps her recover and they fall in love. The become engaged, much to Kate's chagrin. Kate drugs Sami and places her in Brandon's bed the night before her marriage to Lucas in a bid to end the engagement. Lucas leaves Sami. Sami's sorely compromised psychological state deteriorates to such a degree that Sami begins to work for Tony DiMera (Thaao Penghlis), becomes a transvestite under an assumed name, "Stan", and sells illicit drugs to a pain-wracked John Black, all out of a base-born, suppositious need for revenge. Attempting to redeem herself, Sami convinces Lucas that Kate had set her up; that she was never unfaithful. The two reunite and agree to marry once again. Lucas believes that Sami has changed for the better, but Kate reveals Sami's misdeeds as "Stan," and Lucas calls off the wedding. Austin Reed returns to Salem and befriends Sami. Carrie Brady also returns after ending her relationship with Mike Horton. Lucas and Austin, now business rivals, attempt to buy out Carrie's company. Lucas backs out, finding out that Carrie runs the entire company, and that once again, Sami manipulated him. Austin and Carrie fall back in love and plan their future together when Carrie learns that Austin's company has taken over Highstyle. Carrie dates Lucas on the rebound. Austin does the same with Sami, and both couples become engaged. Sami's relationship to Austin is tested however, when E.J. Wells (James Scott), an English race car driver, moves into the apartment next to theirs. When Sami and Austin's wedding ends in disaster, EJ and Sami kiss for the first time. Carrie ends her relationship with Lucas and remarries Austin. They leave to start a life together in Switzerland. Sami turns to E.J., and the two begin dating. Sami then discovers that not only is c sleeping with Kate but that he is also Stefano's son. Sami and Lucas rekindle their love in spite of Kate, and the two decide to take a road trip. Their car breaks down in a snow storm, and they seek shelter in an abandoned cabin where they make love. Weighed down by snow, the crumbling ceiling caves in. Lucas is trapped, Sami runs to get help, meets up with E.J. in a snow drift, and asks him to help her. Revealing himself as a true DiMera, E.J. agrees to help Sami only if she has sex with him. In subsequent weeks, E.J. continues to taunt Sami with reminders of the deal they made that night. Sami tells Lucas about her pregnancy and they get married; the night of their wedding, he learns about E.J. raping her. Her pregnancy was full of speculation about who the father of her unborn twins were. She later gives birth to: John "Johnny" Roman Roberts (later legally changed to John Roman DiMera) and Alice "Allie" Caroline Horton. It was revealed after a paternity test that E.J. was Johnny's father and Allie was Lucas' daughter. Sami makes the painful decision to end her marriage to Lucas and marry E.J. to end the Brady-DiMera feud. At her wedding to E.J., Lucas, Marlena and Kate attempt to shoot E.J. Lucas is arrested and sent to prison, and Will leaves for Switzerland. It is later revealed that Will was the actual shooter and Lucas went to prison to protect his son. E.J. tries to take custody of Johnny. But immigration wants to deport E.J., and Sami helps him by moving into the DiMera mansion with Johnny to show to immigration that they are a happily married couple. They have sex, and Lucas, released on house arrest, sees them at it. Although Sami ends her marriage to E.J., Lucas doesn't forgive her. E.J. moves on to Nicole Walker (Arianne Zucker), and Sami finds out she is pregnant again. She doesn't tell E.J., and after witnessing a murder, she goes into witness protection. She befriends her guard, Rafe Hernandez (Galen Gering), and gives birth to a daughter. Nicole miscarries E.J.'s child but pretends to still be pregnant and secretly illegally adopts a baby girl to pass off to E.J. as their own. Nicole then finds out that Sami's baby daughter is actually E.J.'s and she secretly switches the two baby girls, so that E.J. will be raising a child that is biologically his. Nicole's switch works and she begins raising Sami's child, Sydney DiMera, as her own. Sami is in love with Rafe, and together they raise the baby, named Grace, believing Sami gave birth to her. Grace contracts meningitis and dies, and Sami confesses to E.J. that Grace was "his", and E.J. is furious. Eventually, the baby switch is revealed and Sami is reunited with Sydney. But for revenge against Sami, E.J. kidnaps Sydney and makes everyone think she is dead. But he falls back in love with Sami and returns Sydney to her, pretending to be the hero. E.J. and Sami reconnect, and after her relationship with Rafe ends, she becomes engaged to E.J. However, at the wedding, Rafe presents evidence to Sami that E.J. was behind Sydney's kidnapping. She leaves E.J. for Rafe, and discovers that he had a plan to kidnap both his children and take them away forever. To stop him, she shoots him in the head. Rafe proposes to her while E.J. narrowly escapes death. He later wins full custody of the children and Sami marries Rafe. Johnny is diagnosed with eye cancer and she regains joint custody. After allowing Johnny and Sydney back into their mother's life, Stefano and E.J. switch Rafe with an impostor whose face they surgically alter so he can pose as Rafe's double. The DiMeras' schemes are eventually revealed, and after some months, the real Rafe is reunited with Sami. During a family get-together for John Black, Johnny goes missing and Sami rushes to the DiMera mansion insisting that E.J. has him. They see in a news report that Johnny has "died" and in their grief, have sex, and Will sees them at it! However, the news report turns out to be false and Johnny is found alive and well. Will is angry with his mom for being unfaithful to Rafe, and when Rafe finds out about it Sami's marriage to Rafe ends. Lucas returns to town and Sami and Lucas reconnect. They are taken aback when Will reveals to them that he is gay. Sami initially runs out on Will, but she soon comes round to support him. Stefano is apparently murdered, and E.J. is held responsible, and Sami decides to help prove his innocence, much to Lucas's dismay. Sami's reunion with Lucas ends. Stefano is revealed to be alive, and E.J. is cleared for murder. Sami starts to feel torn between E.J. and Rafe. Rafe and Sami agree to give their relationship a second chance. Sami plans Gabi Hernandez (Camila Banus) and Nick Fallon's (Blake Berris) wedding, wanting to tell E.J. her decision after the wedding. However, during the wedding, it is revealed that Nick isn't the father of Gabi's unborn baby – Will is. Sami is furious with Gabi, and Rafe defends his sister, insulting Will in the process. Sami is furious and breaks up with Rafe. Sami eventually tells E.J. about Rafe and her plan to leave him. E.J. forgives her, and they reunite. Nick demands Will sign away his paternal rights to the baby. When Sami, Lucas, and E.J. try to stop him, Nick reveals that he knows Will was responsible for shooting E.J. in 2007. Will signs away his rights to avoid being prosecuted, and Sami is devastated. She and E.J. team up to stop Nick's blackmail of Will. When Stefano returns, Sami and E.J. decide to get his help to destroy evidence the police has against Will. Sami and E.J. stay together through the situation, and become engaged in April 2013. Soon after, Rafe is attacked, and ends up in a coma. Initially, the police suspect E.J., as does Sami, but she eventually realizes his innocence. The real attacker, Jensen, is revealed to be targeting Nick. He kidnaps Nick and Gabi, and ends up shooting Will when he tries to rescue Nick. Sami comes to the hospital and finds out Gabi's baby was born; she meets her granddaughter, Arianna Grace, for the first time. Sami visits Rafe while in the hospital, and while there, sees a man come in with a knife about to kill Rafe. Sami shoots him to protect Rafe. E.J. tries to calm her down, while Roman and the police search for the missing knife. Sami and E.J. realize the man she shot was a police officer who was working for Stefano; the officer dies after surgery, and the knife is never recovered. Sami is arrested for murder by Roman. Once exonerated, Sami and E.J. marry, only for E.J. to be arrested for tax fraud; Sami confronts both E.J. and Abigail Deveraux (Kate Mansi) for the affair the pair had behind her back, and uses her power to take DiMera Enterprises away from the DiMera family with Kate. Sami begins to forgive and re-trust EJ and they re-unite, but E.J. is shot in the Salem park, and Sami finds him just before he dies. It is October 2014, and Sami, overcome with grief, accepts a movie deal with Hollywood executives to build a story about her life, with Will penning the screenplay, and she and the children relocate to Los Angeles. When Will is fired from the movie, he goes back to Salem where, in October 2015, he is apparently murdered by Abigail's new fiancé, Ben Weston. Sami comes back to Salem to mourn Will. Whilst in Salem she discovers that Ben's father Clyde was the one who had gotten EJ shot, and she also finds a letter from EJ which leads her to believe EJ might be alive. The letter contains instructions which lead Sami to a safe deposit box containing the passwords to Stefano's bank account, but she is kidnapped by Stefano's son Andre DiMera who wants the passwords from her. Sami escapes and she steals Stefano's fortune. She takes the kids around Europe as she pursues clues that EJ may still be alive. In October 2017 she learns that Ben Weston has escaped from custody, and is claiming that Will is alive, and Sami once again returns to Salem to find out the truth. Sweeney's portrayal of "Salem’s resident bad girl" has earned her various fan awards during her run, including a Special Fan Award for "America's Favorite Villain" at the 2002 Daytime Emmy Award ceremony; she has won multiple Soap Opera Digest Awards: "Best Youth Actress in a Soap Opera" (1994), "Best Performance in a Daytime Drama — Young Actress" (1997), and three wins for "Outstanding Villainess" (1996, 1998 and 1999). In 2015, Sweeney earned a nomination for the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series (in the 42nd Daytime Emmy Awards) for her portrayal of Sami. Brady family, Lucas and Sami, EJ and Sami, Supercouple, List of soap opera villains Sami Brady profile at SheKnows Soaps, Sami Brady profile at soapcentral.com Austin Reed is a fictional character from the soap opera Days of Our Lives. The role was played by actor Patrick Muldoon from 1992 to 1995, and again from 2011 to 2012. The character was played for a longer duration by actor Austin Peck, from 1995 to 2002, from 2005 to 2006, and again in 2017. According to his storyline on the series, Austin Reed's birth name is unknown. His father, Curtis, took the children (Austin and his sister Billie) and changed their names to prevent their mother Kate Roberts from finding them. All that is known is that his original surname was Brown. Muldoon's return in 2011 was short-lived. In April 2012, it was announced that Muldoon, along with Clark and several other actors, had been let go from the series. Muldoon tweeted: "#DAYS been great 2 us. It will always be home. We all feel sick". On September 15, 2016, it was announced that Peck would reprise his portrayal as Austin, alongside Christie Clark's Carrie. The couple returned on January 11, 2017 as Carrie (a lawyer) came to assist her mother Anna. After accomplishing this, Peck and Clark departed on February 16, 2017. It was announced in July 2019 that the where plans of revisiting the character of Austin returning to Salem in early 2020, along side Alison Sweeney, who portrays Sami Brady, Austin's on and off romantic interest. Rumors began circulating that both Peck and Muldoon turned down the opportunity to return. Extra investigated a story in which Patrick Muldoon's agent issued an official statement to NBC and Corday Productions that Muldoon has no plans to return to the series. In September 2019, Digital Spy reported that Peck, Sweeney, and Christie Clark, who portrays Austin's longtime on-screen love interest, Carrie was in talks with Sony, Corday Productions, NBC, Days executive producer Ken Corday, and head writer Ron Carlivanti about returning to the series in the near future. Ron Carlivanti and Ken Corday conducted an interview with Extra and Digital Spy individually revealing his plans their plans to revisit an Austin/Carrie/Sami love story triangle story on the canvas in the near future, revealing Austin's importance on the canvas and part of the show's rich history. An October 2019 article with Digital Spy revealed contract talks with Peck had failed but Austin would recast. In November 2019, it was officially announced that former Y&R; cast member, Scott Elrod would be joining the series as the new Austin Reed, reporting that Elrod has signed a six-month contract with the series. Fan and journalism responses blew up the internet and print. Ron Carlivanti commented on the recast in an interview with soapcentral.com, stating "Austin returns to Salem with a BANG! in the new year, around valentine's day! Austin's return is going to effect everyone in town. Austin won't have anyone stand in his way for what he wants including Sami, Carrie, and Kate. Austin is known for his charm and wanting to be a top of success. He's back in town and has plans for everything and everybody!". It was further announced that Alison Sweeney and Christie Clark will return to the series in 2020 with a handful of stints to aid with Austin's story. In July 1992 an aspiring boxer named Austin Reed came to Salem, and his troubled sister Billie Reed followed weeks later. He was instantly smitten with Carrie Brady. Carrie gave Billie a place to stay, which led to the two of them spending a lot of time together. Carrie and Austin were doing great until Sami came to town in January 1993 and Austin didn't throw a fight, which drew the ire of a lot of bad people. Due to this, acid was thrown on Carrie's face, scarring her. Carrie went through reconstructive surgery, while Austin dealt with the murder of his father, Curtis. Billie was the prime suspect. At the trial, both Billie and Austin learned that Kate Roberts was their biological mother – making Lucas Roberts their half-brother. Meanwhile, Carrie's half- sister Sami Brady was obsessed with Austin and plotting any way she could to get him. After Alan and Sami's relationship came to an end, and Carrie and Austin broke up, Sami went so far as to drug and rape Austin, making him believe she was Carrie in January 1995. The following morning, Austin was horrified to awaken and find Sami in his bed. Austin rejected Sami and she fled Salem. Carrie and Austin attempted to find Sami, traveling to Los Angeles, where they reunited. Carrie and Austin managed to survive all the drama and returned to Salem. Austin soon proposed and Carrie and Austin planned their wedding. Sami ruined their happiness by announcing that she was pregnant with Austin's child, who was later named Will, in July 1995. Austin decided the right thing would be to stay with Sami and try to make a go of it, even though his heart would always be with Carrie. In June 1996, Kate and Jamie Caldwell (Sami's BFF) exposed that Sami drugged Austin and he and Carrie reunited. In August 1996, Will was abducted by a neighbor of Sami's and whisked off to France. Sami was able to get Austin to marry her in order to bring Will home in September 1996. The marriage was annulled shortly afterwards. In December 1996, Sami was in a dangerous car accident on News Year's Eve. Austin blamed himself as he had told Sami he hated her shortly beforehand. The accident rendered Sami with no memory of the previous 3 years. As Austin took care of Sami, he decided it would be best for her and Will if they would remarry. Over the course of time, Sami regained her memory as well as learned—due to seeing medical records—that Wil wasn't Austin's son, and a told only Lucas. The wedding was set to take place in September 1997. However, the wedding ceremony was interrupted by Carrie, who exposed the truths that Lucas was Will's actual father and that Sami had been faking amnesia. Austin, heartbroken, left Sami at the altar and married Carrie that same day. Sami left Salem for a while, but unfortunately Carrie and Austin's married bliss didn't last long. Sami returned months later, fought for custody of Will, and fell in love and became engaged to Franco Kelly. In September 1998, Franco was murdered by Lucas Roberts, and wanting revenge on Sami, Kate covered up the murder and made it look like Sami committed the murder. Austin fled town with Sami to help her, but Sami was caught, tried and set to be executed for the murder. At the last moment, the truth came out. Because Austin had spent so much time with Sami in a misguided attempt to help her, Carrie felt their relationship was falling apart. Mike Horton stepped in to fill the void as he was attracted to Carrie, and eventually Carrie and Austin broke up. Carrie moved to Israel with Mike on November 19, 1999. Austin then rekindles his romance with Sami later that same year, and despite a brief fling with Greta and Nicole, Austin and Sami remain on and off before becoming engaged in the spring of 2002. However, Sami blackmails Victor into transferring Austin's job to Hawaii to escape Lucas and when Austin finds out, he leaves Sami at the altar and leaves Salem. In 2005, Austin returned to Salem for his half-brother Lucas and Sami's next attempt at tying the knot. The wedding didn't happen and Austin was there for Sami when no one else was. With no place to stay in Salem, Austin moved in with Sami. They formed a company along with Nicole called Austin Reed and Company, or ARC. The company took over High Style, a company that was run by Carrie. Austin did not know Carrie was back in the United States and did not know High Style was her company. Lucas found out the company Austin was taking over was indeed Carrie's but did not tell Austin. Lucas knew that once Carrie and Austin saw each other, they would get back together. Lucas had fallen for Carrie and wanted her to himself for several years, and knew Carrie would not get back with Austin if Austin took over her company, so he allowed it to happen. Carrie was furious with Austin for taking over her company, and Lucas stepped in to comfort her; they began a relationship. Sami and Lucas deviously worked together to help Lucas further his relationship with Carrie. Sami's motive was to make sure Carrie was not available romantically for Austin, as Sami wanted Austin for herself. Eventually Carrie and Lucas married, and Austin and Sami were a couple and were planning yet another wedding. To ensure that Carrie would no longer want to be with Austin, Sami was also able to blackmail Dr. Lexie Carver after finding out about Lexie's affair with young detective Tek Kramer. Lexie thought up of a bogus story to tell Carrie, which was that Austin and Carrie shared rare genetic markers and if they ever had children, the child would suffer extreme birth defects that could result in death. Carrie then moved on romantically with Lucas, and even became engaged. She soon believed she was pregnant due to an inaccurate pregnancy test, causing her and Lucas to rush their wedding date. When Carrie found out there was no baby, and had a "hysterical pregnancy", she was distraught and cheated on Lucas with Austin (who was still engaged to Sami) on the roof of their apartment building. Carrie was extremely relieved when Austin did not marry Sami. Prior to the ceremony she had expressed to Marlena that she was still in love with Austin, and admitted to loving Lucas but not being in love with him. After secretly meeting with Austin to make love and comfort one another, Lucas and Sami came to the roof and caught them. After a bitter tirade on Sami and Lucas' part, Carrie was kicked out of their apartment. Soon after, Carrie handed Lucas annulment papers and Lucas was more than willing to sign them in order to immediately get Carrie out of his life. However, minutes later, the Gloved Hand slid a note under Sami's apartment door and Lucas, Carrie and Austin discovered the truth behind Sami's blackmailing of Lexie. After Sami finally admitted the truth about her misdeeds, a furious Carrie attacked her. The two sisters fought and Carrie swore she would make public what Sami had done to Lexie. Later, Carrie ran into Lexie and revealed to her that she knew the truth behind Sami's blackmail. Although Lexie tried to plea her case, Carrie didn't care and promised to get even with Lexie by reporting her to the hospital board and the AMA. After showing up with Dr. Finch to keep her promise, Lexie was immediately fired and Carrie felt that her stay in Salem was nearly complete. During dinner, Austin suggested that they move to Switzerland, where he can work at the Mythic Communications division there and Carrie can reclaim Highstyle. Carrie agreed on one condition—that they get married first. The two immediately went to the Justice of the Peace with their signed marriage licenses and got married (but not before being briefly interrupted by a drunk Sami and Carrie disowning her). After saying their goodbyes to John, Kate, Marlena and Roman, Austin and Carrie took a plane and left Salem. In June 2010, Carrie also briefly returned to town and told Sami that she and Austin were happy and trying to start a family. On September 26, 2011, Austin and Carrie returned to Salem. It was revealed that Austin had become a Forensic Accountant after Mythic Communications had been forced to close down. In October 2015, Austin couldn't attend his nephew Will's funeral. Reed/Roberts Family Austin at soapcentral.com Elvis "EJ" Aaron DiMera and Samantha "Sami" Jean Brady DiMera (also known by the portmanteau EJami for EJ and Sami) are fictional characters and a Supercouple from the American soap opera Days of Our Lives. Since 1993, the role of Sami Brady has been portrayed by actress Alison Sweeney. James Scott has portrayed the role of EJ DiMera since the character was introduced as an adult on the show on May 30, 2006. The pairing is noted for a controversial storyline in which EJ is considered to have raped Sami. They are also noted for being a popular pairing. EJ Wells, a famous European race car driver and entrepreneur, arrives in Salem and moves into the apartment across the hall from Sami Brady on 30 May 2006. The attraction between the handsome, charming Brit and Salem's resident bad girl is instantaneous and they quickly become good friends, despite her romantic relationship with Austin Reed at the time. Over that summer, EJ and Sami share a number of flirtatious exchanges and romantic moments. Ultimately, Sami leaves Austin at the altar to satisfy the person blackmailing her. She's also forced to give up custody of her son, Will, to her ex-fiancé, Lucas Horton. EJ promises her that he will always be there for her, and they kiss. Shortly thereafter, Sami's secret is revealed when Lucas finds a blackmail note that was intended for Sami. Sami become estranged from her family. At the same time, EJ is revealed (to the audience) to be Patrick Lockhart's boss and the mastermind behind the so-called "gloved hand" crimes that have rocked Salem over the previous few months. The authorities are onto EJ. When EJ discovers that someone has searched his apartment, he realizes that Sami was involved. He goes to Sami's apartment and kisses her. Sami pulls away, and EJ's suspicions are confirmed. Lucas walks in before the situation can escalate further and warns EJ to stay away from Sami. EJ calls Sami a "tease" and tells her that he's seen her "true colors." A few days later, Sami meets EJ in the hall, and he apologizes for his behavior. Sami forgives him. Sami later realizes that EJ is not who he says he is and that he is connected to her family's long-time enemy, Stefano DiMera. Sami learns that EJ is Stefano's son and that the police believe that he is behind the "black glove" crimes, which have been perpetrated upon members of her family, the Bradys. She agrees to help the police set up a trap for EJ. She meets with EJ and makes plans to meet at an old boathouse outside of town on Boxing Day. EJ plays along with her, but when she leaves, it is clear that he is suspicious of her story and her motives." EJ goes to the boathouse on Boxing Day and shoots John Black, as per his father's orders, and flees. In the meantime, Sami drives out of town with Lucas on a ski trip. After their car breaks down on a deserted mountain road, they seek shelter in a cabin. However, the roof caves in, and Lucas is trapped beneath a beam. Sami goes to the road and flags down an approaching car for help. The driver turns out be EJ, who agrees to help Lucas if Sami helps him get through the roadblock. Sami assists EJ, but he then declines to help Lucas and states that the only thing that would persuade him to delay his escape is if Sami has sex with him, explaining that one of his missions in Salem is to "plant the DiMera seed" in a Brady of his choosing. Sami agrees to EJ's bargain. EJ reciprocates by shifting the beam off Lucas before leaving. EJ later returns to Salem to clear his name and resume his former life. Sami visits him at the police station to assure him that she's kept their secret. EJ is cleared of all charges due to insufficient evidence and released. He hires Sami's then-boyfriend, Lucas, to work for his company. Sami realizes that she is pregnant and that she doesn't know who has fathered her baby - EJ or Lucas. EJ eventually figures out that Sami is pregnant and demands an amniocentesis to determine the paternity of the baby. Sami presents EJ with fake test results, which name Lucas as the father. EJ is disappointed, but he still feels that they have a connection. Familiar with Sami's history of tampering with paternity tests, he breaks into the hospital lab and finds out that the test was not performed. EJ apologizes on several occasions and refers to what he did as vile and inhuman. He uses the word "rape" in one of his apologies. He does everything he can to earn back Sami's trust and saves her life on several occasions. Meanwhile, Sami, Lucas, and EJ find out that she's carrying twins. Later, EJ and Sami scheme together, and it seems as though EJ is being redeemed. Sami is shown to trust him a little bit more than she did before, although she does not forgive him for what he did. The origin of the DiMera vendetta against the Brady family, said to have begun with a forbidden affair between Santo DiMera and Colleen Brady, who look exactly like EJ and Sami, begins to reveal itself. Once the terms for ending the DiMera vendetta are revealed, and that EJ and Sami must marry, EJ reminds Sami of what is at stake if they don't marry. When Sami decides not to go through with the terms, EJ points out that her family is in danger. Sami calls EJ to come to the pub and, again, discuss their possible marriage and her annulment from Lucas. While EJ is with Sami at the pub, Sami's stepfather, John, is killed in a hit- and-run. Sami assumes that John was killed because of her decision not to marry EJ. Sami agrees to divorce Lucas and marry EJ. On October 23, 2007, Sami gives birth to her twins at her mother, Marlena Evans' house and agrees to have a new DNA test done on the twins. While the test is being performed, Sami leaves for Santo Domingo to divorce Lucas and leaves the twins with Steve Johnson and Kayla Brady. EJ learns, before Sami, that he is the father of the boy, John Roman. After Sami and Lucas return from Santo Domingo, EJ stops by Sami and Lucas' apartment and explains that he has made arrangements to marry Sami the following night. Sami protests but eventually agrees. On November 8, 2007, Sami and EJ are married. As Father Kelly pronounces them "husband and wife", three gunshots are heard. EJ is struck in the back by one of the bullets and cannot feel his legs. Sami holds vigil at the hospital with Stefano. Later, Stefano tells EJ that he is paralyzed and they don't know if it is permanent. EJ is devastated. Sami arrives at the hospital in time to witness EJ crying in Stefano's arms. Lucas reveals that he shot EJ. On December 21, Sami leaves EJ and tells him she wants a divorce, though EJ still wants to make things right. Lucas confesses and is sent to prison for shooting EJ, who makes a full recovery. On January 11, EJ turns on his father when he tells Sami, Marlena, Bo, and Hope that John is not dead but is being held by Stefano.EJ and Sami go into witness protection to hide from Stefano. They plan to get a divorce when EJ discovers that he might be deported back to England. Sami and EJ decide to move in together to prove to the immigrations officer that they are a loving family so that EJ will be able to stay in the country. Though it comes to light that this was an elaborate ruse orchestrated by EJ to maintain the status quo with Sami and the children, EJ is extremely moved to overhear Sami tell the imposter immigration officer that he would be lucky if he found someone who "loves him half as much as EJ loves me." During this time, EJ, law degree in hand and with a renewed interest in turning over a new leaf, joins Mickey Horton's firm. He takes on his first case, despite John and Sami's objections, representing Sami's longtime rival, Nicole Walker. On May 15, 2008, EJ and Sami hash out their feelings over what happened the night Johnny was conceived. Sami declared that it is time that the slate between them is wiped clean. EJ asks Sami if she can really put the night of Johnny's conception behind them, and Sami says yes. After their conversation is interrupted by a tipsy Nicole barging into the mansion and demanding to see EJ, Sami pulls EJ into a kiss. This leads to the couple making love on May 18. Due to a misunderstanding, Lucas is released from prison early and, despite having told Sami that she should move on, is livid when he discovers her in bed with EJ. Sami and EJ's marriage is annulled, but not before EJ begs Sami to be honest and admit that she has feelings for him. She tearfully admits that she does. EJ tries to move on with Nicole, but it is clear from the start that his feelings for Sami. Nicole ends up pregnant, and Sami finds out she is also pregnant with EJ's child but decides to keep the information to herself, jealous of EJ and Nicole's relationship. Sami continues to keep her pregnancy a secret, despite Lucas insisting that Sami tell “the man she loves” that she's going to have his baby. Sami attempts to tell EJ about her pregnancy on October 17. While standing on the DiMera mansion's doorstep, Sami spies EJ and Nicole together through the window. Moments later, she witnesses Salem's mayor being assassinated. Following the assassination, EJ rescues Sami from a sniper, after which she agrees to go into the Witness Protection program. Sami is devastated that she has to leave her children behind and is heartbroken that she isn’t allowed to bring pictures of the kids with her. EJ, however, slips pictures of Johnny and Allie into her luggage. Sami and EJ, despite being separated, still show signs of longing for each other. After having a miscarriage, Nicole, having discovered that Sami is carrying EJ's child, fakes the third trimester of her pregnancy by wearing a rubber baby belly to hold onto EJ. She makes a deal with Mia, a pregnant teenage girl, to take the infant once it's born and raise it as her own. Nicole decides to switch Mia's baby with Sami's. The baby switch is a success, with Sami bringing home baby Grace Rafaela, and Nicole bringing EJ and Sami's daughter back to the mansion, naming her Sydney Anne DiMera. Sami is now involved with Rafe Hernandez, the FBI agent assigned to protect her. Grace is rushed to the hospital, and on June 9, she dies from complications of meningitis. Sami, devastated by the death of the baby she believed was her biological daughter, lashes out at EJ, coming clean about hiding the pregnancy from him. Eventually, tensions ease between the two with the help of a guilt- stricken Nicole. Sami shows remorse for her actions, and EJ reveals to Lexie that he still has feelings for Sami. EJ asks Sami to visit Grace's grave with him. Sami shares her pregnancy story and apologizes to EJ about not telling him about Grace, asking for forgiveness. After they comfort each other at Grace's graveside, EJ leaves Sami, giving her a kiss on the cheek. EJ and Sami find themselves on the same side when the details of the baby switch are revealed, and they discover that Nicole has had their biological daughter this entire time. When Nicole is granted bail after being arrested, she kidnaps Sydney and goes on the run. However, she's intercepted by Anna DiMera, EJ's sister-in-law, who kidnaps Sydney from her. It's later revealed that Anna was hired by EJ to kidnap Sydney. However, he brings her back, looking like the hero to Sami. Sami and EJ grow closer over the summer of 2010. EJ proposes to Sami on July 30, and she accepts his proposal. Throughout the summer, EJ goes to great lengths to keep the secret behind Sydney's kidnapping hidden from Sami. Nicole records a conversation between EJ and Stefano during which he confesses to staging the kidnapping, and she blackmails him with it. Rafe gets his hands on the CD containing EJ's confession. Rafe shows up at the mansion in time to stop Sami and EJ's wedding, and a heartbroken Sami leaves EJ at the altar, packing up the children and moving out of the mansion. When Sami finds out he was planning to take the children away, she goes to his house to confront him and finds him passed out and drunk. She pulls a gun out of his hand and shoots him in the head with it. EJ recovers, shocking everyone by breathing on his own after he is taken off life support. On October 14, EJ admits to Stefano that he still loves Sami, and that he believes that if she shot him, he got what he deserved. Eventually, though, EJ sets out to prove that Sami was the shooter, as it becomes clear to him that it's the only way that he will ever be able to see his children again. Rafe's sister, Arianna, gets a recording of Sami confessing to the shooting, but before she can bring it to EJ, she is killed by a hit-and-run driver. The recording ends up with her fiancé, Brady Black, and found by Nicole, who blackmails Rafe and Sami with it so she can spend more time with Sydney. However, she later brings it to EJ, asking for time with Sydney in return. EJ brings the recording to Sami and blackmails her into giving up Johnny and Sydney on the day she marries Rafe. However, when Johnny is diagnosed with eye cancer and has to have an eye removed, EJ lets Sami be there and decides to let her be a part of the children's lives again. After Johnny's surgery, EJ notices that he is very attached to Rafe. He asks for Stefano's help in getting rid of that. When Rafe ends up unconscious after a car accident, he and Stefano switch him out with a surgically altered imposter to ruin Sami's marriage and get Rafe out of his children's lives. Sami attributes the changes in Rafe's behavior to the car accident. Meanwhile, EJ marries Nicole again but realizes that he's also fallen in love with her sister, Taylor. EJ and Taylor sneak around behind Nicole's back after Taylor moves into the DiMera mansion with EJ and Nicole. Nicole and Taylor's mother, Fay, also moves in, and finds out about the imposter Rafe. Unfortunately, soon after, Fay is killed by the imposter to keep a secret. EJ begins to doubt his plan to hire the imposter. Sami eventually figures out the truth, and brings the real Rafe back, while locking up the imposter. Rafe initially has no memory of Sami, but is able to regain it. EJ has decided to leave Nicole for Taylor, but Nicole blackmails him with the fact that she knows what EJ and Stefano did to Rafe. EJ proposes to Taylor, but before things go any further, Stefano and EJ are both exposed & arrested for the imprisonment of Rafe, as well the murder of Fay Walker. Taylor finds out about EJ's involvement in her mother's death, breaks up with him, and mends her relationship with Nicole. After Johnny finds out that his dad and grandfather were arrested, he shuns EJ. When the imposter is killed, both Stefano & EJ are released, but EJ feels dejected over losing his children's love. Realizing the extent of the damage he has caused, EJ tries to make amends by giving up his parental rights, and giving full custody to Sami. EJ decides to stay married to Nicole and fixes his relationship with his children and Sami. He decides to run for mayor against his brother-in-law, Abe Carver. However, he frames John Black for embezzlement, and when Sami tries to help her stepfather, she gets caught in a shootout aimed at John. Afterwards, Johnny disappears, and EJ and Sami try to find him. A report is broadcast, saying Johnny's body was found. In their grief and anger, EJ and Sami sleep together. However, the news report wasn't correct, and Johnny is found alive by Rafe. EJ and Sami decide to keep their one-night stand a secret. However, Will saw them together and holds it over their heads for months. When he tries to blackmail EJ, he turns the tables on Will and reveals that he knows that Will, not Lucas, shot him at his wedding to Sami in 2007. Will ends up working for EJ, to Sami's disapproval. Meanwhile, Rafe finds out about Sami and EJ sleeping together, and also reveals this to Nicole. Both couples file for divorce, as a result. EJ tries to fix his relationship with Nicole, while Sami begins confiding in Lucas. Meanwhile, Rafe and Nicole grow close, to Sami and EJ's dismay. When Nicole finds out she's pregnant, she decides not to tell EJ about the baby. However, EJ finds out, and Rafe claims he's the father to protect Nicole. Sami starts a relationship with Lucas when she finds out about the baby. She and Lucas also deal with the fact that Will is gay, and EJ also supports her and Will. However, that summer, Stefano is killed, and EJ becomes the primary suspect. Will ends up trying to prove his innocence, and Sami later joins in when she realizes EJ was framed. She and EJ go on the run as fugitives, and share a kiss while in hiding. EJ is later exonerated when it's revealed that Stefano is alive, and Ian McAllister framed EJ. Sami and EJ grow close, but Sami also begins making amends with Rafe. As the year draws to an end, Sami realizes she needs to make a decision between Rafe and EJ, and she decides she wants to be with Rafe. Sami keeps putting off telling EJ her decision, especially after EJ tells Sami he's fallen in love with her again. Meanwhile, Rafe's pregnant younger sister, Gabi, marries her boyfriend, Nick Fallon. Rafe and Sami are planning to have their wedding soon after. However, at the ceremony, it's revealed that Nick is not the father of Gabi's baby. Sami finds out that Will is actually the father, and thinks Gabi purposely tried to keep Will out of his child's life. Rafe defends his sister, while Sami defends Will, and the two break up. EJ finds out about this, and is waiting at Sami's home when she comes back, giving her a shoulder to lean on. Eventually, Sami comes clean to EJ about wanting to leave him for Rafe but explains that she wants him back and is willing to wait for him. EJ wants to still be with her, and they reunite in early February. Sami wants to make sure Will is part of his daughter's life and argues with Rafe and Gabi about this. Nick is furious with Sami. He demands Will sign away his rights to the baby or risk getting sent to jail along with his family. Will agrees, and Sami is heartbroken, as well as EJ, who has grown close to Will. The two decide to find a way to make the evidence disappear. Sami, desperate, decides to ask Stefano for help to make the evidence disappear. To this end, she and EJ move into the DiMera mansion with their children. EJ proposes to Sami, and in April, they get engaged. Soon after, Stefano agrees to get rid of the police evidence against Will, and Sami and EJ believe they are in the clear when they get rid of Nick's recording of Will's confession. However, Sami realizes that Stefano is double-crossing them, and she & EJ try to stop him. Meanwhile, Gabi gives birth to Arianna Grace after Will rescues her and Nick from a vicious attack. However, Will is shot while trying to rescue Nick but eventually recovers. Sami witnesses a man trying to kill a comatose Rafe at the hospital and shoots him to protect Rafe. The man is revealed to be a Salem PD officer, but EJ and Sami know the officer was Stefano's mole. The officer dies, and the weapon he was holding goes missing from the hospital room. With no evidence to back her claim, Sami is charged with the murder of an officer, and EJ tries to prove her innocence. Sami and EJ get married, but Sami only married him for revenge as she finds out about his affair with Abigail Deveraux. She has known for weeks and has set EJ up to send him to prison for 10 years, denying bail for tax evasion. Sami is now co-CEO of DiMera Enterprises, teaming up with Kate Roberts, to take out Stefano and EJ, while she makes Abigail's life miserable in revenge for her affair with EJ. After weeks of Sami plotting against EJ, EJ begins to make progress with reconciling with her. One of the major steps he takes is turning in additional evidence against his father Stefano to Rafe, which would protect Sami and the children by preventing Stefano from returning to Salem. Sami confesses to EJ that she still loves him and they reconcile. Shortly thereafter, EJ tells Sami he is the luckiest man alive. EJ meets with new arrival and rival drug lord Clyde Weston at a private business meeting in the woods. EJ and Clyde have an argument and EJ punches Clyde. EJ's bodyguard Miguel shoots EJ. Sami hears a gunshot while walking around in the woods looking for EJ. After Clyde and Miguel cover up what had happened, Sami stumbles upon EJ lying on the ground shot. When Rafe and the paramedics arrive, EJ is pronounced dead. Sami refuses to believe EJ is dead and follows his body to the hospital. At the hospital, Sami visits EJ in the morgue and remembers her life with EJ. She cries uncontrollably when she lays her head on EJ's chest and doesn't hear a heartbeat, finally realizing that EJ is dead. The last scene to show EJ showed his sister Kristen, under orders from Stefano, sneak into the morgue and inject an unknown substance into EJ's body. The purpose of this remains unknown other than Stefano telling Kristen "time is of the essence". In October 2015, Marlena gave Sami a letter that was sent to her in the event of EJ's death. Sami became overwhelmed with hope that EJ was alive. She went to Switzerland, and discovered a flash drive that could bring Stefano down. She stole all of Stefano's liquid assets and went on the run with her three surviving children; also hoping to find EJ alive. EJ and Sami's relationship has been recognized as a top couple to view by Sympatico/MSN/TV Guide. The pairing won Best Couple in Soap Opera Digest's Hot Off The Net poll, published the week of September 17, 2007, and their portrayers won the Best Actor and Best Actress honors in the same poll the week of September 10, 2007. In a September 10, 2007 Soap Opera Weekly interview with Bryan Dattilo, portrayer of Days of our Lives' Lucas Roberts, the popularity and appeal of the EJ and Sami storyline was discussed. The interviewer stated that Soap Opera Weekly receives more fan mail from EJ and Sami fans than from Lucas and Sami fans. When asked if he would be okay if Sami and EJ became a supercouple, Dattilo responded, "Yeah. I think Sami and EJ have the ability to be a supercouple like Luke and Laura." EJ and Sami's popularity has proved formidable to rival couple Lucas and Sami. There is debate among viewers over whether or not what EJ did to Sami in the December 29, 2006 episode (see above) could be considered rape. In a May 3, 2007 interview, actor James Scott, portrayer of EJ, was interviewed by Sympatico/MSN/TV Guide about the subject: I don’t think they handled the rape very well, and I’ll tell you why. EJ raped Sami, and then afterwards, he’s hanging out in her house — alone with her. It’s irresponsible on so many levels. However, had it been handled well, I think it would have been an interesting story choice. Now the story focus has shifted to her pregnancy and the classic soap story of paternity. Having said that, I chose to believe that EJ is in love with Samantha — he just can’t communicate it. In an article about the Santo DiMera/Colleen Brady storyline in the July 17, 2007 edition of Soap Opera Digest, Days of our Lives former Co-Executive Producer Stephen Wyman referred to the December 29, 2006 incident between EJ and Sami as rape. "Naturally, we don’t expect anyone to forget about the rape, nor do we expect anyone to take EJ’s rape of Sami lightly. However, we know life goes on. People can change," he said. "At some point, the issue of the rape is going to have to be dealt with in the fundamental way, but meanwhile, there is the audience that wants to see EJ and Sami together. [But] they aren’t forgetting about the rape, either." The article is about the Santo/Colleen storyline, in which the actors, Alison Sweeney and James Scott, portray two characters from the past falling in love. Soap Opera Digest noted, "this story provides an opportunity for the actors to work together romantically in a less controversial tale." In June 2007, Soap Opera Weekly printed an opinion column that addressed concerns that rape is being portrayed as romantic on soap operas. The author opined that soap operas such as General Hospital, Guiding Light and Days of our Lives (citing EJ and Sami) are portraying rape as romantic because these soap operas are seen to be pairing or considering to pair a female character with a character who raped her or with a character some viewers believe raped her. "Sorry folks. If daytime's most famous couple [Luke and Laura from General Hospital] cannot escape the horror of the campus disco after 28 years, how could GL's and Days' non-couples hope to gloss over sexual assaults that aired just recently? Do the soaps think audiences can forgive and forget so quickly?" stated the author. She added that the "chemistry is a great thing," but that she did not believe it was enough to overcome the controversial scenes, even though a "unique formula" gave Luke and Laura a "free pass" to allow them to become one of the most popular supercouples on daytime television. Supercouple, List of supercouples, List of soap opera villains NBC: Days of our Lives, Forbidden Love: Ejami Fan Forum, The Ultimate EJ and Sami Episode Guide, EJ Dimera and Sami Brady Fans (Days of Our Lives) Facebook Page, Grey Empires, Rogue Ejami

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Dr. Douglas "Doug" Ross is a fictional character from the television series ER, portrayed by George Clooney. George Clooney's removal from the main cast opening credits was in the 16th episode of season 5. Doug Ross was raised by his mother, Sarah, after his father, Ray, abandoned their family. In Season 1, Ross revealed to a patient that he had a son, and he tells nurse Wendy Goldman that he doesn't know his son's name as he's never seen him. Not much else is known about Doug's past. Despite his jumbled personal life, Ross is a dedicated ER pediatrician. He has always been committed to medicine and children and to helping no matter the rules or the consequences. During Season 2, Doug rescued a boy trapped in a flooding storm drain during a rainstorm. His heroic efforts were filmed on local television, making him a media star. This event helped him earn back his job at County, because his supervisor in pediatrics originally wasn't going to renew his fellowship due to his disrespect for authority. During Season 2, Ray tries to reconcile with Doug, who has difficulty reconnecting with the man who abandoned him and his mother. Ray owns a ritzy hotel in Chicago, and Doug lets his guard down a little but is disappointed when his father offers to take him to a Chicago Bulls game and then stands him up. Ross later reveals that he and his mother were abused by his father. Doug later has an affair with Ray's girlfriend, a woman from whom Ray stole money, but ends the relationship when it becomes clear that she has a lot of problems. Ross is a womanizer who dates and leaves many women throughout the course of the show. His womanizing days abruptly end after a one-night stand with an epileptic woman who hides her condition and dies in the ER. Ross learns her name only after she dies, after which he stops dating for a while until he gets back together with Carol Hathaway, the head nurse of the ER at County. Warner Bros. Television, the studio which produces ER for NBC, kept secret from NBC Dr. Ross' cameo in "Such Sweet Sorrow", which promoted the episode as Carol Hathaway's goodbye, with no mention of Ross' appearance. The original version of "Such Sweet Sorrow" that Warner Bros. sent to NBC ended after the scene where we see Hathaway on the plane to Seattle. At the eleventh hour, Warner Bros. messengered an "edited" version of the episode to NBC headquarters in New York for broadcast. NBC was miffed that it was kept in the dark as it could have generated valuable ad revenue if it had aired promos that the episode marked the return of George Clooney. Clooney cited the fans of the show for his reason for making the cameo (he wanted Hathaway's and Ross's characters to get back together, which many fans hoped for). Clooney reportedly only asked to be paid scale for the cameo. In the season 15 episode "Old Times," Ross is working as an attending physician at the University of Washington Medical Center. He is helping a grieving grandmother (Susan Sarandon) whose grandson was gravely injured in a bicycle accident. He talks to Sam and Neela after finding out that they are from County, asking them whether any of his old colleagues still work there. Doug and Carol are responsible for getting the kidney for Carter and a heart for another County patient, but they never discover who receives the organs. In the pilot episode, which takes place on St. Patrick's Day 1994, Ross is brought into the ER not long before his shift, to be "treated" for drunkenness by his longtime friend, Dr. Mark Greene. Throughout the next few seasons, Ross is shown to be compassionate, though not always using the best judgment. His love of children is best seen during darker situations, such as when a child is in danger. When Peter Benton talks about how surgeons deal with emotionally charged cases and ER doctors have it easy, Ross leaves him stunned into silence when describing cases that include a young girl who beat her mother to death, a kid who is going to lose his leg to cancer and another kid who is dying from a life of homelessness. His lack of judgment leads him to assault abusive parents in the ER, but his counseling in that case just consists of the shrink telling him not to do that again. He is a passionate doctor who puts the welfare of his patients, especially children, above his medical career. In one episode, Dr. Ross saves a young boy who is drowning and is flown in to County General using a news helicopter. This garners him much attention, earns him an award, and saves his job. Ross doesn't handle authority well, even when Mark is his boss. He is a pediatrician, but in several episodes performs medical procedures on adults, usually when the other doctors are busy. In another episode, he tries to do an ultra-rapid detox on a drug-addicted baby without the mother's consent. Hathaway assists, but when Greene and Weaver discover that the procedure being done in violation of hospital policy and the law, Doug is punished. He is left on probation for 30 days and is supervised by Dr. Kerry Weaver and Dr. Greene, who have to co-sign his charts. Doug's attitude toward patient treatment often has consequences for his coworkers and supervisors, who have received reprimands from their superiors for Doug's actions. He vies to be an attending physician for emergency pediatrics. He eventually gets the job, even though doctors Greene and Weaver oppose his promotion because the position isn't necessary and the funds are needed elsewhere. Greene is ultimately happy for Ross, but Weaver is aghast and campaigns against his new position. He resigns in the aftermath of a scandal in which he shows a mother how to bypass the lockouts on a Dilaudid PCA, enabling her to give a lethal dose of medication to her terminally ill son. Ross had earlier stolen Dilaudid from a pain- medication study and given it to the mother, only to be discovered by Weaver and Greene, who reprimand him but kept the incident private. The incident prompts the closure of Hathaway's free clinic in the hospital, since it supplied the PCA to this mother, and Ross faces suspension from work and possible criminal charges. A friend of Ross stands up for him and the charges against him are dropped, but Ross resigns from the hospital and moves to Seattle. When Ross leaves, he and Hathaway are on poor terms until she discovers that she's pregnant with his twin girls. Her clinic is later re-opened, but she has to report to her former assistant there. Ross was written out of the series because Clooney wished to focus on his expanding film career. He also said that there wasn't any strong story in place for his character after Season 5. He appeared at the end of the penultimate episode of season 6, when Carol leaves Cook County to reunite with Ross in Seattle. He was reportedly asked to return briefly in season 8, to make an appearance in Anthony Edwards's last episode during Greene's funeral, but Clooney declined because he did not want his cameo appearance to overshadow the departure of a beloved character on the show. Clooney returned to ER for its 15th and final season in 2009 in a story arc beginning with Episode 328, titled "Old Times", with Julianna Margulies also returning as Hathaway. The two are now married and work to help convince a grieving mother to donate her son's organs; one recipient is their old friend John Carter though neither are aware of this. George Clooney did not receive a casting call for the television series. He received a draft of the script from a friend; he read it and became interested in the part. He said: "I like the flaws in this guy. I can play him." Neal Baer who worked on ER was inspired by his personal experiences to write storylines for the character of Doug Ross. He did his residency while he was on ER and became a pediatrician, which helped to "draw on really complicated ethical dilemmas." The character was described as "a complicated children's doctor who could be self-centered quick-tempered and giving, hitting the bottle to avoid dealing with consequences of his actions." In 2004, Ross was listed in Bravo's 100 Greatest TV Characters. Entertainment Weekly placed Ross in its list of the "30 Great TV Doctors and Nurses". The character was included in Fox News' list of "The Best TV Doctors For Surgeon General" and in Philadelphia Magazine 10 Best Doctors on Television. Ross was also listed in Wetpaint's "10 Hottest Male Doctors on TV" and in BuzzFeed's "16 Hottest Doctors On Television". His relationship with Carol Hathaway was included in AOL TV's list of the "Best TV Couples of All Time" and in the same list by TV Guide. For his work on the series, Clooney received two Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor In A Drama Series in 1995 and 1996. He was also nominated for three Golden Globe Awards for Best Actor – Television Series Drama in 1995, 1996, and 1997 (losing to co-star Anthony Edwards). Bio at TNT.com, Official ER website at NBC.com The American medical drama ER features an extensive cast of fictional characters. ER aired on NBC from September 19, 1994, to April 2, 2009, and focuses on the lives of the doctors and nurses of the fictional emergency room located at Chicago's County General Hospital. The series lasted for fifteen seasons, and none of the main characters, who received starring billing at some point of the series, is featured in all fifteen seasons. The following is a list of characters whose portrayer received "Starring" billing at some point of the series. They are sorted by introduction to the main cast. Michael Emory Gallant was a regular character from 2001 to 2004 (seasons 8–10). Gallant first appears at County General Hospital in late 2001 as a medical student in his third year. Coming from a family with a military background, he had previously been on active duty as a member of the US Army Reserve, who is paying for his scholarship. During his time as a student there, he was assigned to Dr. Carter. He initially clashes with Dr. Pratt, a brash new intern who disparages Gallant's abilities. It comes to a breaking point early on when Pratt cracks a patient's chest without supervision and ropes in Gallant to help. However, over time, the two eventually become firm friends. Shortly after arriving (season 8), Gallant accompanies Dr. Weaver to the scene of an ambulance that had been transporting a pregnant woman to hospital and been trapped under fallen power lines. While there, the power lines explode and Gallant saves a fireman from electrocution. He then helps Weaver deliver the pregnant woman's baby. The event gives Weaver a lot of respect for Gallant and his ability to keep his head under pressure. In the following year (season 9), Gallant becomes close to fellow medical student Erin Harkins, though their relationship remains platonic. Later on in the year, Pratt and Gallant are arrested on suspicion of being the two gunmen at the 'Doc Magoos' shooting. Although they are innocent, and subsequently released, the incident shakes Gallant and his faith in the fairness and equality of the police. By the end of his time at County as a medical student, Gallant decides to apply as an Emergency Medicine intern and matches to County. Despite being a full-fledged doctor, he doesn't have any easier time. Only a few months in to his internship, a helicopter crashes in the ambulance bay and Gallant is in the thick of the action. Later that year, Gallant's sister comes to visit and during her stay, she spends the night with Pratt, which strains Gallant and Pratt's friendship, although they manage to remain friends. At the beginning of Season 10, new medical student Neela Rasgotra has started her rotation at County. During this time, Gallant is keen in helping her settle in. Around April, Neela accidentally gives a patient the wrong medication. However, Gallant, who is supervising at the time, takes the blame When he is told he will be investigated, he reveals he has been called up for service, forcing the administrators to drop the investigation. He then soon reveals that he had feelings for her. However, before they can start a relationship, Gallant reveals to Neela that he has been called up to go to Iraq. They argue, but part on good terms. Although Gallant had now left County as a regular character, he appeared in a few episodes during the following two seasons. In season 11, one episode kept jumping between County and Iraq. Gallant is now working in a military hospital (holding the rank of Captain). At one point, while out working in the field he is wounded by an Iraqi gunman. Gallant manages to shoot and kill his assailant before he can fire again. The incident haunts him, however. As well as treating injured US soldiers, Gallant's unit also treats injured Iraqi civilians. One day, a young girl arrives with severe burns, and Gallant insists that she has to be saved. With his commanding officer's blessing, Gallant organizes for the girl to be treated at County (with Neela's help). He returns to the US with the girl and while on 72 hours leave, he renews his relationship with Neela. He returns to Iraq soon after. The following season, Gallant returns home to finish his training as a doctor. Overjoyed in seeing each other again, Gallant and Neela make an impulsive decision to get married. They buy a house together and look ready to start a whole new life together. However, Gallant has a few emotional scars from the war; he revealed to Neela that he is going to counseling sessions for veterans, before revealing that he wants to finish his training in Iraq, by volunteering for a second tour of duty. Neela is shocked and angry with Gallant, but realizes that there is nothing she can do or say to stop him from going. For the third time, the two lovers part. Gallant makes his final appearance in the penultimate episode of Season 12 "The Gallant Hero and the Tragic Victor." He is on a convoy of trucks, when the unit is ambushed by Iraqi insurgents. Gallant goes to the aid of a fallen officer and the convoy manages to escape. Gallant is unable to save the officer, however. Just as he has settled back down, a roadside bomb hits the truck and Gallant and the men on the truck were killed instantly. Two officers visit the ER later on and inform Neela of his death. The whole ER is shocked, especially Pratt, who takes his death hard. Gallant's belongings are given to Neela and it is revealed that he recorded himself on tape as a message to her just in case he died. On the tape, Michael apologizes to Neela for leaving her for Iraq. During the 15th and final season of ER, at the end of the episode "The Book of Abby", long-serving nurse Haleh Adams shows the departing Abby Lockhart a closet wall where all the past doctors and employees have put their locker name tags. Among them, the tag "Gallant" can be seen. Ray Barnett is introduced in the eleventh-season premiere as a resident under the supervision of Dr. John Carter. He is a rebel and sometimes gets into trouble with his superiors, to the point that Chief of Staff Kerry Weaver gives him an ultimatum when he asks license to go on tour with his rock band. Weaver gets him to choose between his medical career and music. In the end, even at the suggestion of his bandmates, Barnett chooses medicine. Barnett becomes Neela Rasgotra's roommate and starts to develop feelings for her, but he has a girlfriend named Katey, and Neela is married to Michael Gallant. Neela is also attracted to Barnett, but they never get into a formal relationship, even after Gallant's death. Their relationship becomes even more complicated with the arrival of Tony Gates. During Abby Lockhart and Luka Kovač's wedding, Barnett and Gates start a fight, which leads Barnett to leave the place, only to be hit by a truck immediately afterwards. As a result of this, Barnett loses both legs and moves back to Baton Rouge to live with his mother. The character returns one last time near the end of the series, having received two prostheses. He explains that he works in rehabilitation, helping disabled and amputee patients. It is also revealed that he still has feelings for Neela. Neela decides to leave Chicago and move with Ray, to work in the same hospital. Ray Barnett is portrayed by Shane West. Dr. Archibald "Archie" Morris is a fictional character portrayed by Scott Grimes on the television show ER. The character of Dr. Morris debuts in late 2003, in the drama's 10th season, and is initially notable for providing comic relief. Morris is initially an inept second-year resident who avoids work whenever possible. Luckily, he is frequently bailed out by another resident named Nick Cooper. In the episode "Freefall", Morris is caught smoking confiscated marijuana by Dr. Robert Romano, but avoids punishment when Romano is killed by a falling helicopter in the ambulance bay. Unaware of the doctor's demise, Morris, stoned, waits at the admit desk to be disciplined, doing nothing to assist the other doctors as they deal with the fiery crash. Morris's lack of commitment and slacking have already been well-established when his neglect costs a patient's life. The patient waits for hours to be seen by a doctor before she has a stroke and dies. Morris abruptly quits, storming out of the ER, only to return the next day claiming his father would deny him financial support if he didn't see this "thing" through. Morris is made Chief Resident in season 11, allowing his character to further antagonize other characters (Grimes became a series regular at this time). He achieves this coveted position because of a lack of competition (the more capable Greg Pratt turns down the post), an eleventh hour push of publications, and an elaborate presentation for the interview. As Chief Resident, Morris's inflated ego often leads to clashes with colleagues, though he often acts as if he were beloved by his residents and medical students. Although Luka Kovac never has any disagreements with him, Ray Barnett, Neela Rasgotra and especially Abby Lockhart tend to mock and insult him for his pompous attitude, although in later years they regard him with grudging affection. Greg Pratt is initially also contemptuous of Morris, but by season 12 they are good friends. Kerry Weaver, on the other hand, although never openly rude to Morris, never views him as having much potential and does not support him as much as other ER doctors; she only gave him support as Chief Resident because he was, in her words, "a paperwork hound". Morris's leadership style swings wildly from delegation to micro-management. At the end of season 11, when Dr. Carter leaves the hospital, he tells Morris to "set the tone" just as Mark Greene had told him at the end of season 8. Morris is drunk at the time and doesn't recall the phrase when Carter asks him years later. In season 12, it is revealed that Morris donated sperm many times earlier in his life. Four red- headed children, one of whom is African American, show up at the hospital and declare that Morris is their father. Although shocked by this, his comical attempts to be a "good dad" become a recurring theme for the character in subsequent episodes; the kids do love him, however. Later in the season, we learn that Morris has been hired by a pharmacy laboratory. In the season finale, "21 Guns," he is preparing to leave the hospital when a shooting occurs in the ER. Morris's quick and competent response to this crisis marks something of a professional turning point for him. During season 13, Morris is hired as one of the ER's attending physicians (the slot left open by Dr. Clemente's departure). Morris begins a serious effort to win respect. Though other doctors still do not always take him seriously, he shows a moment of both care and skill when he correctly interpreted a young man's alternating demands to be admitted and discharged as symptoms of dissociative identity disorder. However, other doctors laugh at Morris's diagnosis and refused to authorize critical care, and he privately admits to Sam Taggart that he knows "most of the other ER staff think I'm a joke." Sam speaks kindly to him and then uses her communications skills to convince the patient to consent to life-saving treatment. This is where Morris slowly starts to become a much better doctor. When new medical interns come to the ER, Morris's attention is caught by Hope Bobeck. Morris asks her out for dinner but she instead invites him to her Bible study group, as she is a born-again Christian (often praying while taking care of patients). Morris pretends to be as devout as she is, and Hope and Morris grow close to each other. In the Christmas episode City of Mercy, he gets through a difficult shift as the only ER attending, and at the end of the day Hope tells him how much she has learned watching him. She then asks him out for drinks, with the implication of intimacy to follow. Morris declines, much to his own surprise, recognising that she is lonely and he would be jeopardising a longer term relationship by taking advantage of that. Morris and Hope later get involved with each other while helping to plan Luka and Abby's wedding. The two take advantage of a honeymoon suite that Luka and Abby are not able to use and begin pursuing a relationship. Morris was saddened when Hope leaves for a long volunteer stint in Venezuela, and they subsequently break up. In season 14, Morris discovers that his father has died, and laments to Abby that he and his dad never mended their long-broken relationship. He also fails his medical boards while Dr. Pratt passes them. Morris lies about his failure and asks Pratt to cover for him until he can take and pass his boards. Morris also undergoes brief therapy sessions after a hostage situation he was involved in, where the armed man was gunned down right after he gave himself up. Another hard hit comes when his friend Dr. Gregory Pratt is critically injured in an ambulance explosion and the ER staff are unable to save him. Morris takes Dr. Pratt's death harder than anyone else in the ER. In the following weeks, he clashes numerous times with the new chief Catherine Banfield whom Morris resents upon her arrival, seeing that she holds the position his deceased friend had earned. In the following weeks, Morris gets in trouble with Dr. Banfield for teaching new med student Chaz Pratt risky medical procedures that not even first year residents are qualified to perform. Morris admits that whenever he sees Chaz, he sees his brother Greg, and only wants to do the best for him. As season 15 progresses, Morris is shown to have matured a great deal following Pratt's death, becoming the senior figure for the doctors in the ER, much like Mark Greene and John Carter before him. In many instances, his co-workers come to him for both personal and professional advice, although he retains his slightly comical personality. Specifically, Dr. Cate Banfield shares with him the fact that her young son died in the County ER, and Dr. Brenner admits to Morris that he was sexually abused as a child. Additionally, upon returning to the ER, John Carter notes that Morris took his advice on setting the tone. In the episode Separation Anxiety, Morris becomes attracted to a female patient whom he later learns is an undercover narcotics cop (Claudia Diaz, played by Justina Machado). In the episode "I Feel Good", Morris tells Claudia that he plans to one day propose to her, which she says she would accept. Simon Brenner is introduced as a new ER attending physician, first seen in bed with two women before arriving for his first shift. His character is superficially very charming, especially with the ladies. While Brenner is a talented physician, he is unwilling to share his knowledge and teach the new medical students. Even when consistently reminded that Brenner works in a teaching hospital, he still refuses to teach procedures to those who need or want the practice. He sleeps with one med student and later insults both her romantic and professional skills. When Pratt informs Dr. Anspaugh of Brenner's attitude, it is revealed that Brenner is Anspaugh's nephew. At the end of season 14, Simon and Neela get into a heated argument in which she told him he was only at County because of his family ties to Anspaugh, attacked his attitude and told him no one else wanted him around. This leads to them sleeping together. They do so again in Season 15 and continue to spar like an old married couple. Simon is later shown with a girlfriend who is doing a thesis on Middle Eastern politics at the University of Chicago. Towards the end of Season 15 Neela tells him they have no romantic future together, although the pair eventually end their relationship amicably. In the episode "Age of Innocence", it is revealed that Brenner was molested as a child by his mother's boyfriend. Morris wants him to get help to deal with the trauma, but Brenner tells him he is dealing with "in my own way". Later in "Shifting Equilibrium", Brenner is shown to be visiting a therapist and coming to terms with having been abused. The series finale, "And in the End...", also shows Brenner mentoring and giving support to new medical student Julia Wise (Alexis Bledel) after the death of a patient. Simon Brenner is portrayed by David Lyons. Donald Anspaugh is a surgeon working at County General as well as the chief of staff and a member of the hospital board. The character was appointed County General's new chief of staff after South Side closed and merged with County. In his early appearances, Anspaugh was portrayed as a by-the-book doctor. In season four it is revealed that his son Scott (portrayed by Trevor Morgan) has B-cell lymphoma. The cancer had previously gone into remission but has come back. Scott wants to give up and it is only through a personal connection with Jeanie Boulet in the ER that his spirits are raised. Noticing how well Boulet and his son relate, Anspaugh asks Jeanie to be his son's part-time private care giver. She agrees and a deep friendship develops between Scott and Jeanie. Scott eventually dies. In 1999 Anspaugh resigned as chief of staff because of his son's death and was replaced by Robert Romano. He remained both a surgeon and a leading board member but his exact position wasn't specified for several seasons. He, along with Peter Benton, succeeds in saving John Carter's life after he and medical student Lucy Knight were stabbed by a patient. Anspaugh was present during Carter's intervention meeting when Carter's drug addiction after his stabbing was discovered at the end of season 6. At the end of season 8, he was among those who paid their respects at Mark Greene's funeral and assisted in the smallpox evacuation, trying to save Dr. Romano from losing his arm. Toward the end of Season 9, Anspaugh fired Romano over his insubordinate attitude and gave Kerry the job. In season 11's episode 19, Anspaugh's job again seems to morph; he describes himself to Abby Lockhart as "the chief of surgery." He also participated in Susan Lewis' tenure-review panel. Anspaugh later resurfaced in Season 12 to deal with the lawsuit issue caused by Clemente. In the second episode of season 13, Kerry herself told him that it was her fault that Clemente kept working at County as long as he did, despite concerns from the staff and mishaps before. Dr. Anspaugh was originally going to fire Luka Kovac until Weaver spoke up. Afterwards, he immediately decided to relieve Dr. Weaver of her position of chief of staff, which he took over himself until a full-time successor was found. In Season 14, Greg Pratt appealed to Dr. Anspaugh to have him replace Kevin Moretti as Chief of Emergency Medicine, a proposal that the doctor still didn't accept despite Pratt's persistent efforts, citing Pratt's lack of leadership initiative and youth. He opted to promote Skye Wexler instead. Dr. Anspaugh is seen throughout season 14, interviewing Dr. Pratt for the Chief's job, promoting Dr. Wexler and informing the ER of Dr. Moretti's departure and later meeting with Abby Lockhart and the rest of the board after her rehab stint. He then met with her again when she interviewed for an Attending position. Dr. Anspaugh was portrayed by John Aylward. Victor Clemente first appears in the 250th episode of ER, "Wake Up", as a new attending physician from Newark who is seeking the Chief of Emergency Medicine position vacated by Susan Lewis and attempting to introduce modern equipment and diagnostics to the ER. He enters the series in an unusual way, by posing as a patient. This causes confusion and some irritation from doctors Abby Lockhart, Archie Morris, Gregory Pratt and especially Luka Kovač. Clemente and Luka clash over just about every case that comes through the ER, and Luka is so annoyed by Clemente that he decides to seek the ER Chief job for himself. Luka's main complaint with Clemente is that, regardless of whether Clemente is right or not, he will take the initiative on procedures whether he has the approval/opinion of other Attendings. Even if everyone working on a patient is against Clemente, he always seems to get away with it because Kerry Weaver (who hired him) likes his credentials. In the end, Kovač does become Chief, after which Clemente claims to have earlier decided not to seek the position, citing time constraints; Luka nonetheless takes steps to rein in Clemente's independent streak. The audience soon learns that Victor is not the consummate professional he was originally portrayed as. Clemente's former girlfriend Jodie (portrayed by Callie Thorne), whose relationship with Victor in Newark caused unspecified problems that Kerry Weaver said were not his fault, tracks him down to Chicago and initiates a new relationship between them. This causes Clemente to become careless and even miss work to stay with her. Eventually, Jodie's controlling husband Bobby (a violent police officer who apparently beats her) appears in his apartment. He shoots both Clemente and Jodie after Jodie asks for a divorce. Clemente has relatively minor injuries while Jodie ends up in a coma, but he becomes the prime suspect of shooting her and himself due to the cocaine found in his apartment and the fact that records in New Jersey show that Jodie's husband supposedly worked on the day of the shooting. Clemente is subjected to drug tests and is kept under close watch by Luka Kovač and other staff; Luka wants him gone but neither he nor Kerry take any steps to fire Victor from his job. Jodie does survive and gets Clemente out of trouble by telling the cops what really occurred, but more problems occur when Bobby continues to harass Clemente by phone, stalk him by car, leave threats and make other comments to him. The comments indicate that he had tried to frame Clemente for an unspecified crime in Newark. In the episode "The Gallant Hero and the Tragic Victor", Clemente finally succumbs to the troubles plaguing him. Clemente's behavior includes relieving himself in public, property damage, and threats of violence. He is hospitalized at County and medically classified as being in an altered psychiatric state. A psychiatric consultant rules his peculiar behavior is caused by posttraumatic stress disorder or sleep deprivation, presumably from his vigilance in avoiding his stalker. In the Season 12 finale "Twenty-One Guns," Luka Kovač states that Clemente has finally been fired from his position at County, and Kerry faces stern questions from Dr. Anspaugh when a former patient files a lawsuit against Clemente and he is listed on a medical watchdog website as a bad doctor, leading to her initially throwing Luka under the bus (to his visible disbelief). When the board plans to fire Luka over his Kerry- insinuated negligence in Clemente's hiring and terrible history at County, Kerry admits she was responsible for those problems, and is demoted from her chief of staff position as a result of that, which also contributed into her departure from the ER altogether in Season 13. Dr. Clemente was portrayed by John Leguizamo. Janet Coburn is the head of the OB department at County General Hospital, serving in that position throughout the entire run of the series (although her character appears in only 26 episodes of the show's 15 seasons). Coburn is frequently portrayed in some kind of conflict with the ER staff, most notably in her first appearance in season 1 when Mark Greene mis-diagnosed Jodi O'Brien who later died as a result. Her other appearances often revolve around the various pregnancies of different characters in the show, including Carol Hathaway, Elizabeth Corday-Greene, Chloe Lewis, and Abby Lockhart. Coburn later in the series revealed she once had a drinking problem and has since become Abby's Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor; she acts as both a no-nonsense mentor and a friend to Abby through the series. Coburn convinced Abby to get back into a program after she started drinking again, and also convinced her to fly to Croatia to make amends with Luka after revealing she was unfaithful. Dr. Coburn later appeared in season 15 to assist Dr. Rasgotra with a pregnant patient, and advise Dr. Banfield on IVF treatment. Janet Coburn was portrayed by Amy Aquino. Maggie Doyle was an intern during season 3 and a resident during seasons 4 and 5. Maggie's older sister (by three years) is identified as a former classmate of Carol Hathaway in a Catholic school. In the ER, she became friends with John Carter, who became attracted to her, but it is later revealed that she is a lesbian. During season 5, she accuses Dr. Romano of sexual harassment. She asked Elizabeth Corday to back her up, but Corday refused when Romano blackmailed her using some personal information. Kerry Weaver started an investigation and forced Romano to retract an inaccurate, critical review of Maggie's job performance, but this did not prevent Maggie from leaving the ER. Her absence from the show was not explained, but in the season 7 episode "Rampage" when Weaver & Romano were arguing over Dr. Legaspi's termination, Weaver suggested that Maggie Doyle was forced out due to Romano's dislike (which he never directly admitted to) of gay people. Doyle could have left her job in the ER after the mess of the sexual harassment lawsuit she had on Romano was never going to be pursued. 9 years later in the season 15 episode "The Book of Abby", long-serving nurse Haleh Adams shows the departing Abby Lockhart a closet wall where all the past doctors and employees have put their locker name tags. Amongst them, the tag "Doyle" can be seen, the only former doctor on the wall to have not been a main character. Dr. Doyle was portrayed by Jorja Fox. In real life, Fox left ER because she kept getting larger roles on successful drama shows, starting with The West Wing and peaking with her work as Sara Sidle on the hit show CBS drama . Lucien Dubenko is the current Chief of Surgery. He was first introduced shortly before Elizabeth Corday departed, as an arrogant but obviously talented surgeon, bragging about, and then showing his ability to run the bowel with a laparoscope. Dr. Corday bitterly protests his hiring to Kerry Weaver but presents no real reason for her hostility and leaves Kerry confused and annoyed about why Corday "is taking this so personally". Corday's anger causes her to conduct an illegal organ transplant between two HIV+ men, which leads to her being reprimanded and being forced to take a demotion. Corday eventually quits the hospital altogether, though Dubenko praises her actions in doing the transplant. Dubenko is portrayed as a very dedicated and talented surgeon, with a keen interest in medical science, lecturing the interns on physiology. Dubenko becomes friends with residents Abby Lockhart and Neela Rasgotra, and later seems to fall for both of them, most notably Neela after she becomes a surgical intern. He did his trauma fellowship at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD. Due to his connections, he helps Tony Gates get a 13-year-old ICU patient into a clinical trial there. He has an older sister named Victoria who lives in an assisted-care facility in Evanston, IL because she was in a car crash on prom night caused by her drunken teenage boyfriend that left her with brain damage at age 17. He was 15 at the time. He mentions an ex-wife. After he discovers he has prostate cancer in Season 12, he asks Abby to have sex with him to make sure he is fully functioning after surgery, but reacts with equanimity when she declines the offer. During Luka and Abby's wedding, he asks Luka to take care of Abby. He was involved in a "friends with benefits" relationship with new ER Chief Dr. Skye Wexler, which later ended after he lashed out at her for excluding him from her life and accused her of being a slut. He later resigned in protest over the death of patient Sheryl Hawkins, when he had to leave the OR and leave Dr. Rasgotra (Junior Resident) to finish the operation, because he was the only surgical attending available in the hospital, this outburst enraged Dr. Anspaugh during the M&M.; Efforts by Neela and Simon Brenner led to his return in Season 15, and he later justly criticized Neela for her dismissive attitude towards teaching surgical residents by giving her the choice of doing her job well or getting the hell out of County (she took the former path, and her leaving later that year was for unrelated personal reasons). Although arrogant and awkward in social situations (partly because he talks too much about research topics, usually in medical jargon), Dubenko is a dedicated and effective teacher and shows compassion towards his patients when he can. Dr. Dubenko is portrayed by Leland Orser. Angela Hicks arrived in the Season One episode "Blizzard", and had to start working immediately because of a blizzard which led to many patients visiting the ER. She worked at County General between 1994 and 1997 and gave both Peter Benton and John Carter advice in many aspects. Dr. Hicks' absence was never explained, although she was virtually sidelined after John Carter left her team to transfer to Emergency Medicine and Peter Benton left to join Romano's team instead. Though she stopped appearing her locker could still be seen in the background for a few more years. Dr. Hicks was portrayed by CCH Pounder. Jack Kayson is the chief of Cardiology and member of the hospital board. He usually appears in board discussions, and is sometimes called down to the ER for cardiology consults. He has at times, been shown doing procedures in the cardio cath lab. He is easily angered when residents in the ER question his medical decisions. In the first season, Kayson had a disagreement with Susan Lewis about the treatment a patient should receive who had a myocardial infarction. Susan tries to give the patient the correct treatment but he overrules her, the patient dies, and Kayson later hauls Susan in front of a hospital review board—only to see the board largely side with her and chastise him for his behavior. Later Kayson is admitted with the classic signs of an acute myocardial infarction and Susan gives him the treatment he wants and eventually saves his life. After this, Kayson asks Susan to be his Valentine's date, but Susan declines. He later clashed with med student Michael Gallant over the death of a hypochondriac and tried but failed to stop Dr. Greg Pratt from helping treat desk clerk Frank after he suffered a massive heart attack. Dr. Kayson later returns twice in season 11, in which he is on the Hospital Board that investigates Dr. Elizabeth Corday. Then later returns to treat patient Jules "Ruby" Rubadoux with Dr. Anspaugh. Dr. Kayson is not seen again until season 14 in which he misdiagnoses a patient and argues with Dr. Gates. Dr. Kayson is portrayed by Sam Anderson. Abby Keaton was a pediatric surgeon from Southside Hospital reassigned to County when Southside closed. She supervises a pediatric surgical rotation with Dr. Benton. Eventually, she begins a clandestine relationship with Dr. Carter, but their relationship ends when Keaton leaves for a volunteer mission to teach Pakistani surgeons. Dr. Keaton is portrayed by Glenne Headly. Gabriel Lawrence is Kerry Weaver's mentor. She hired him as the new Senior Attending Physician in the ER at County General. During his brief appearance, Dr. Lawrence shares his experiences with the members of the ER staff. It quickly becomes apparent that Lawrence is in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. Mark Greene's well-founded suspicions are mistaken for jealousy, and Lucy Knight's notice of this is also dismissed by John Carter. At first Lawrence does not want to admit to what is happening, but the signs of his mental deterioration soon become readily apparent. These include sudden bursts of irritability, being unable to find the right word, leaving his reading glasses in the lounge freezer, and looking for his car on the wrong floor of the parking garage. After Greene stages a scene with a fake ER patient to point out these problems, Lawrence realizes he has no choice but to retire. He makes amends with his son in California, and goes to live with him. As he waits for his son to pick him up, he gets the chance to make one more diagnosis and save one last life—a patient with a rare case of strychnine poisoning that had baffled other ER physicians. Lawrence was portrayed by Alan Alda. At one point he mentions that he worked for the U.S. Army, a nod to Alda's role as Hawkeye Pierce in M*A*S*H. Alda received an Emmy nomination for his portrayal but lost it to James Whitmore (for his role on The Practice). Alda said that his great experience working with John Wells in the role of Lawrence led him to accept the role of Arnold Vinick on Seasons 6 and 7 of The West Wing. Amanda Lee joined the staff of County General Hospital as the new Chief of Emergency Medicine, replacing Dr. Kerry Weaver, who had been interim chief in the wake of Dr. David Morgenstern's retirement following his heart attack. While she appeared normal on the outside, it became clear that Lee had serious emotional instabilities. In particular, she obsessed over Dr. Mark Greene, writing erotic stories featuring him, stealing his gloves and lab coat, and decorating her Christmas tree with twin heart-shaped ornaments bearing their faces. It also seemed that she confabulated quite extensively; several times, she mentioned a major incident in her life in response to someone confiding a similar incident to her. Dr. Greene became suspicious after he could not verify Lee's claim – one of her confabulations – that she had published an article in a Cornell University publication while still a third-year student. A copy obtained online attributed the article to "A.W. Lee" and pictured an Asian male in his 40s; Lee claimed he was a classmate that she was often confused with and that the following month's publication had corrected the error. When Greene attempted to check out the original journals from the hospital library to review additional articles written by Dr. A.W. Lee, he found that they had been checked out. In fact, Lee herself checked them out and removed the three articles with a razor. After intercepting a message from Cornell University for Mark – he had been trying to verify whether or not Lee actually had graduated from there – Lee snapped. She locked Mark in the CT scanner room when he was calming a patient suffering from agoraphobia after her CT scans. Lee accused Mark of being uncaring and hateful, then removed her lab coat and fled. By the time the CT technician returned from lunch, Lee was long gone. Upon contacting the authorities, the hospital learned that "Dr." Lee had never graduated but had obtained a residency using the credentials of the same A. W. Lee whose journal articles she claimed to have written. It was also mentioned that she has had other names and professions such as lawyer and architect by pulling the same scams she did in order to be a doctor. She was portrayed by actress Mare Winningham. Kim Legaspi first appears in season 7 and is introduced as a psychiatrist. Kim later gets involved in a friendship with Kerry Weaver that turns into more than a friendship after Kerry realizes she is a lesbian. Their relationship does not last long because Kerry is in the closet and uncomfortable at being in public with Kim. When Kim is falsely accused of sexual misconduct on a case, Dr. Romano leads a witch hunt and Kerry does not support Kim, leading Kim to break off their relationship. Kerry later tries to reconnect with Kim but Kim had moved on to a new partner. In the season 7 finale "Rampage", Dr. Romano fires Kim when she doesn't immediately answer a bogus page from him, and later cites more bogus reasons for terminating her to an aghast Kerry Weaver. Though Kerry comes out to Romano and says she'll fight him over his treatment of Kim, it's revealed in the Season 8 premiere that Kim quit at County and took a new position in San Francisco. Dr. Legaspi was portrayed by Elizabeth Mitchell. Kevin Moretti was Chief of Emergency Medicine, sarcastically dubbed 'Mussolini' by Abby Lockhart for his Italian surname and stern manner of running the ER in order to maximize efficiency. Following the departure of Dr. Kerry Weaver and the resignation of Dr. Luka Kovač, Dr. Kevin Moretti is moved from the intensive-care unit to take charge of the ER. His early appearances provoke much conflict with the ER Staff, particularly Abby and Pratt who find his "style" to be harsh and abrasive. Despite this, he proves to be intelligent and quite adept at attending/diagnosing patients, and (at least initially) his system seems to work. During a blackout-ridden Chicago night, he and Abby have an alcohol-fueled one night stand. After having a difficult visit from his troubled son, he finds out the son is having serious problems at college and takes personal leave to go help him. He intended his absence to be temporary, but it later proved to be permanent and Dr. Skye Wexler was appointed acting chief in his stead. Dr. Moretti later returns in the Season 14 Finale and apologizes separately to Abby and Luka for his role in their marital crisis. Abby is nonplussed by his explanation and doesn't talk very long to him, while Luka listens to Moretti's apology and then punches him in the jaw. Moretti remarks, "I guess I had that coming." as Luka walks away. Dr. Moretti was portrayed by Stanley Tucci. David Morgenstern was the chief of surgery and head of the ER until 1998 when he resigns shortly after he has a heart attack. His background was a combination of Scottish and Russian-Jewish. Morgenstern first arrived at County in 1968 as a volunteer in his pre-med days. He was mentored by Dr. Oliver Kosten, a young ER physician whose visions of better patient care eventually translated into an expanded and more functional ER. David Morgenstern is responsible for a sage piece of advice that has been handed down throughout the series. In the pilot episode, when Julianna Margulies's character, nurse Carol Hathaway, is brought to the hospital with a drug overdose, Morgenstern tells Dr. Greene (Anthony Edwards) that he needs to "set the tone" to get the unit through the difficulty of treating one of its own. Dr. Morgenstern worked at County General Hospital until 1998 after he made a mistake during a surgery and tried to make Dr. Peter Benton the scapegoat. After Benton was suspended, Morgenstern admitted the truth to the hospital and told it to Benton in County's parking lot and resigned because the incident showed "I'm not a very great man, and that's what I need to work on." Morgenstern returned to the ER in 2009 when his mentor, Dr. Kosten, wanders from his nursing home and returns to the ER he was instrumental in building. Morgenstern reveals to the current ER staff the dramatic impact his mentor had on himself as well as on the entire hospital. The character was portrayed by William H. Macy. Skye Wexler was a locum hired by Dr. Kevin Moretti to help alleviate the staff situation. Initially, Skye was only in Chicago for a few months earning some extra money to fund a surfing trip. But following Moretti's sudden departure, communication in the ER broke down and Skye spoke up that a new chief was needed right away. Much to her surprise, not to mention Pratt's, Anspaugh appointed Skye as the temporary head of the ER. Skye told Anspaugh that she did not want that job as she was not planning on staying in Chicago but Anspaugh pointed out that she was the most qualified member of staff and gave her an ultimatum: all or nothing. Following Skye's promotion, Pratt considered handing in his notice feeling undervalued but later changed his mind. Skye later got involved in a "friends with benefits" relationship with Dr. Lucien Dubenko. The relationship with Lucien ended due to his jealousy when Skye begins a friendship with ladies man Dr. Simon Brenner and also when she kept dismissing his efforts to become more involved in her non-sexual social life. Dr. Wexler is portrayed by Kari Matchett. Haleh Adams, portrayed by Yvette Freeman, is a nurse in the ER of County General Hospital. She is one of only six characters to appear in every season. Her appearances were less frequent in the 1997–1998 and 1998–1999 seasons, as Freeman was appearing in the sitcom Working. In the 2002 season she returned with a new appearance after losing 120 pounds, but subsequently gained some of the weight back. Haleh is a confident and skilled nurse who at times displays a motherly disposition to the staff. When Ray Barnett protests angrily at Haleh being allowed to evaluate him to Susan Lewis, Lewis sharply tells him, "Haleh has been here longer than anyone- she knows what she's talking about." Not one to be taken for granted or put upon, Haleh stands up for herself; often making her point with a sharp sardonic wit. She has been Nurse manager two times over her 35 years at County; in 1997 when Carol Hathaway was home following her suspension from the ER and between 2000 and 2002, doing a terrible job in her first time there but a competent one the second time around. She has sung at both Christmas and Halloween parties in the ER and has a truly fantastic voice. Haleh has been fired for short periods twice: during one episode in season 9 ("Finders Keepers"), she was fired for a few hours by chief of the Emergency Room Robert Romano, but returned when Romano learned that nurses had lots of syndicates to protect them. In season 12, the new chief nurse Eve Peyton, Samantha Taggart fired her but she was later rehired when an airplane exploded over the city shortly after takeoff and County was seriously short on nurses. Sam called her in while Eve was away. Eve told Sam that it was a good move. Dawn Archer appeared as an ER nurse beginning in season 13. Not much is known about her other than she is originally from New Orleans and was displaced in Hurricane Katrina. During her time on the job, she has developed friendships with fellow nurses Chuny Marquez and Haleh Adams, and to a lesser degree, Sam Taggart. Wendy Goldman was one of the regular nurses from the first three seasons of ER. Her character had a sweet and innocent demeanour, and frequently featured in comical subplots. Her first episode was in the pilot, "24 Hours", in 1994. Her absence from the show was explained by Kerry Weaver in season 4 when she says that two nurses left and Yosh Takata was hired to replace them. Goldman's name was never mentioned again after she stopped appearing. Wendy was portrayed by Vanessa Marquez. Lily Jarvik is one of only six characters to appear in every season of the show, having made her first appearance in episode 1.08 "9½ Hours". Since then she has proved to be a valuable resource in the County General Emergency Department. She is generally seen in the trauma rooms and keeping the floor running during major incidents. Not much is really known about Lily as she was never been given much of a storyline to truly develop her character. Lily Jarvik is portrayed by Lily Mariye. Ethel "Chuny" Márquez is one of six characters who has been in all seasons of ER. She has often assisted in translating for Spanish-speaking patients. Chuny has had a relationship with Mark Greene in season 3 and with Luka Kovač in season 9. After her relationship with Luka became problematic, she complained to Kerry Weaver who almost fired Luka. Later, when Chuny comments on how good Carter looks in a black suit, he reminds her about the "sexual harassment" complaints against Luka. She proved to be good friends with many of the nursing staff and attempted to set Samantha up with their self-defense trainer (who Sam had accidentally assaulted in the previous episode) It is revealed in season 14 that Chuny's real name is Ethel. Laura Cerón has appeared in more episodes than any other recurring guest star, and is the only recurring guest star to have appeared in more than 200 episodes. Only main cast members Noah Wyle and Laura Innes appeared in more episodes. Chuck Martin was a flight nurse and (later) ex-husband of Dr. Susan Lewis. They met during a trip to Las Vegas, in which they got drunk and later married. After they return to Chicago, they have the marriage annulled, but this did not stop Chuck and Susan from further dating. Chuck was injured in the helicopter crash on the roof of the hospital and had emergency surgery to remove his spleen. In this same crash, Dr. Romano was killed as the helicopter fell off the roof and landed on Dr. Romano on the ground. Susan later had a baby boy named Cosmo, whom Chuck looked after when Susan was promoted to Chief of Emergency Medicine after Dr. Romano's death. When Susan accepted a tenured position at the beginning of season 12, Chuck and his family move to Iowa. In Sherry Stringfield's return appearance in the series finale, however, Susan mentioned that she was dating again, suggesting that she and Chuck were no longer together. Chuck was portrayed by Donal Logue. Malik McGrath, along with nurses Haleh, Chuny and Lily, and paramedics Dwight Zadro and Doris Pickman, has appeared in every season since the pilot. He has given the ER some comic relief and appears to be good friends with desk clerks Frank Martin and Jerry Markovic, to whom Malik once played a joke on, during his birthday surprise party. It's also revealed that he gets very little pay despite his experience and for this does not protest his hours getting cut. He is an LPN- licensed practical nurse (also known as LVN- licensed vocational nurse in California and Texas) instead of an RN- registered nurse like most of the other ER nurses. In the episode where all the nurses strike Malik continues to work and states that he doesn't have to worry because it doesn't get much cheaper than an LPN, so he was safe. He was good friends with Abby Lockhart, having worked with her during her years as an ER nurse. Malik was portrayed by Deezer D. Conni Oligario was a nurse in the ER since the first season in 1994 until 2003 when she was fired during the reign of terror by ER chief Robert Romano in season 10. Conni and fellow nurses Lydia and Yosh protest their treatment and ask chief nurse Abby Lockhart to talk to Romano about it. When Abby is unable to address Romano, the three nurses are replaced and each given a 90-days suspension. Conni was never seen again in the ER after the suspension, although in Season 12's episode "Blame It On The Rain", Haleh mentions she's covering for Conni. Conni Oligario was portrayed by Conni Marie Brazelton. Eve Peyton, Ph.D., served briefly as chief nurse in the ER and worked closely with Dr. Victor Clemente. Her abrasive and unpleasant personality became especially clear when she forced Samantha Taggart to fire Haleh. Eventually, Eve herself was fired on Christmas Eve for punching a drunk patient who mocked some blind children and pouring urine on him. She has the skills of a doctor in medicine but does not hold a license to practice as one. An example of this is when she shows to have more knowledge of drugs, procedures, and emergency medical care than most residents and students. She has also been better at performing emergency procedures than most residents and medical students. She also enforces most physicians and senior nurses to teach inexperienced hospital doctors, students, and nurses, and is a staunch defender of nurses' rights. But she also had a hostile attitude towards most if not all of her working ER nurse staff; nearly all the doctors apart from Weaver instantly disliked her, and many of the nurses eventually began to turn against her. Sam Taggart was the only one who became friends with Eve, yet Eve made sure to label Sam "Judas" after her dismissal, leading Sam to simply watch Eve leave the ER forever in silent sadness. Eve was portrayed by Kristen Johnston. Shirley is a female surgery nurse usually seen either in the theatre or just outside, informing the surgeons about matters that are needed (for instance Romano or Corday receiving phone calls). She is also often seen at the surgical level front desk, informing people of whatever information she has received from the hospital's doctors. Being a surgery nurse she is rarely seen down in the ER or Trauma rooms, but more in the OR, so she is usually seen working with doctors such as Elizabeth Corday or Peter Benton rather than doctors such as John Carter or Kerry Weaver and other staff nurses such as Chuny or Haleh. Yosh "Yoshi" Takata, portrayed by Gedde Watanabe, was the second male nurse introduced in ER, after Malik McGrath. Takata's character is Japanese, gay, and a convert to Judaism. He was hired in the episode the same day that Jeanie Boulet was to be fired by Kerry Weaver due to budgeting. Takata's hiring, however, cast doubt in Boulet's mind about whether budget issues had really caused her layoff. Along with fellow nurses Conni and Lydia, Yoshi is laid off in the tenth-season episode by character Dr. Romano during hospital staffing cuts and did not return to the show. Lydia Wright-Grabarsky was the second character to be introduced in the pilot episode of the ER. She is seen waking up Mark Greene. She was a very experienced nurse and had developed some remarkable skills, including the ability to very accurately diagnose a patient's blood alcohol level simply from smelling their breath. She gets married to police officer Alfred Grabarsky in season 3. They get married in the Emergency departments waiting area. Lydia appears for the next-to-last time in 2003 when Dr Romano decides to cut senior nurses for cheaper labor. Lydia, along with Conni and Yosh were fired after protesting their reduced schedules. Lydia returned in the 2009 series finale. She is again working at County and wakes Archie Morris as she did Mark Greene in the pilot episode. She explains that she has been working nights so she can babysit her grandchildren. Lydia was portrayed by Ellen Crawford. Miranda Fronczak, better known to the staff as "Randi", is hired as a Desk Clerk in Episode 028 "Do One, Teach One, Kill One". The character is portrayed by Kristin Minter. A good looking assertive woman, Randi is not afraid to get her hands dirty or deal with hostile patients. In Episode 031 "Days Like This", she knocks out a violent patient with Dr. Weaver's crutch after he has knocked down both Weaver and Jeanie Boulet. In that same episode it is revealed that she is on probation when Randi casually refers to her parole officer. This comment leads to a great deal of speculation among the staff about what she went to prison for, including a betting pool. It is ultimately revealed by Randi that she went to jail for "malicious mischief, assault, battery, carrying a concealed weapon, and aggravated mayhem." Randi is a bit of a rebel and is often seen wearing unprofessional attire more suitable to a club than an ER. Some of her clothes are designed and made by herself, and she attempts to market them under the label "Randi wear". When Weaver confronts her about her wardrobe, Randi replies that she is dressing more conservatively than normal; a revelation which leaves Weaver uncharacteristically speechless. She continues to get away with wearing whatever she wants throughout her many years of service in the ER. Later in season 5, Randi actually helps Weaver put together an outfit for her interview for the position of Chief of Emergency Medicine. During season 6 Randi punches an extremely obnoxious man who sets off the fire alarm (causing chaos in the ER) in order to get attention as he has a migraine. She is last seen in the Season 10 episode "Shifts Happen" dancing to hip hop music at the front desk with Dr. Pratt at 3:00 AM. Her departure from the ER staff was never mentioned or explained. Cynthia Hooper, portrayed by Mariska Hargitay, first appears in Episode 071 "Something New" as an applicant for the job of ER desk clerk. Her interview with Mark Greene and Carol Hathaway does not go well as she appears very emotional and somewhat unreliable and inexperienced given her work history. She has also forgotten her references. Cynthia waits until Mark has finished work and asks if she can talk about the job. In talking with her, Mark discovers that she is new to Chicago and feels sympathy for a lost soul in a new city. He invites her to get some coffee and, having made a personal connection with her, gives Cynthia the job without discussing it with Carol. Mark's decision to hire Cynthia is met with some hostility and her inexperience leads to some initial problems at the ER. Friction develops between Cynthia and some members of the ER staff, particularly Carol who did not want her to be hired in the first place and lashes out at Cynthia whenever she does anything wrong (which is fairly frequent). Meanwhile, Mark and Cynthia continue to develop a friendship and eventually end up in a relationship together. Their relationship, however, is somewhat dysfunctional as Mark is just having some fun after his recent emotional traumas and Cynthia is truly in love with Mark. When Mark's mother becomes seriously ill, Mark goes to California to be with his parents. Uninvited, Cynthia decides to surprise Mark by going out to California to support him and his family. She is surprised to find Mark annoyed by her arrival, which causes awkwardness between them. Mark ultimately admits to Cynthia that he is not in love with her, and upset, Cynthia returns to Chicago. On returning to Chicago, Mark finds that Cynthia has quit her job without leaving a forwarding address. Unhappy with how things ended, Mark uses his doctor status to find Cynthia's new address. He goes to her new apartment to apologize and return some of her possessions. He is surprised to see she has regained custody of her young son, and when he tries to make amends and resume their relationship, she is kind but firm in stating "You don't love me. I deserve better" and getting him to leave, politely but permanently. Jerry Anthony Markovic was desk clerk of the emergency room and later promoted to supervising emergency services coordinator (a position that carries no additional responsibilities and/or benefits, but requires him to wear a tie.) The character was portrayed by Abraham Benrubi. Jerry was comic relief on the series. The character was mostly seen playing jokes on other staff members, organizing parties and celebrations, trying to make money on the side via various get-rich-quick schemes and making humorous remarks. During the fourth season, Jerry accidentally blew up an ambulance with a grenade launcher; this led to a suspension from day turns by Kerry Weaver, thus Jerry was forced to attend at nights, but he would get his job back on days later that season. Jerry was last seen at the end of season 5. To date, there has been no official explanation for the character's absence during that period, not even from Benrubi himself. Because of his great height and girth, Jerry is also used as a bouncer if patients or customers become aggressive, although he claims he avoids violence and generally has a gentle nature. It was not until season 8 that Jerry was called back to work after members of the staff became sick. When asked about where he's been for the past three years, he replied that he had been in "retirement." During that time, he developed some rivalry with fellow desk clerk Frank Martin, to the point that they were involved in a fight in which they crashed on Dr. Chen. Jerry and Frank received a warning from Dr. Weaver, and since then Jerry and Frank seemed to be getting along better, and later became friends, as shown when Frank suffered a heart attack, a fact that really concerned Jerry. Equally, Frank was deeply affected when Jerry was shot in the 12th-season finale. Jerry's mother is introduced in the first episode of season 13 when her son was treated by some members of the staff after he was shot by Samantha Taggart's ex-boyfriend Steve Curtis, who went on a rampage in the emergency room in season 12's finale. During the assault, Jerry was shot while protecting a boy. Jerry's mother reveals to Archie Morris that she applied to Harvard four times for him, but he was never able to make it into college, and complains about Jerry's paycheck. Jerry ultimately survives the surgery, but was never seen again in the ER. In an episode during the 14th season, Frank remarks that Jerry officially quit and is now "slinging beers in Alaska," a reference to Benrubi's character Ben Tomasson in the ABC television series Men in Trees. The character of Jerry's mother was played by Seinfeld's Estelle Harris in "Bloodline," but she also appeared in a long shot in "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," berating him for using her trashcans to trap a kangaroo on the loose. The episode was also one of the last episodes to show Jerry smoking a cigar. In the Season 15 episode "The High Holiday", Jerry returns to Chicago as he got tired of Alaska, and was first amicably welcomed back by Frank and Morris. Although he has not had any luck getting a job, he is presumably re-hired at County General because Dr. Banfield needs someone to cover for Frank, who is under the influence of marijuana-laced brownies. He is seen in the "Dream Runner" episode and it is assumed that he has his old desk clerk job back. Jerry is also a Universal Life Church Minister, and officiated Neela and Michael Gallant's wedding in the episode "I Do." His politics seemed too progressive, often clashing with Frank's law and order conservatism. Jerry is single and there was no mention of him being married or having a girlfriend, although at the beginning of "The Gallant Hero and the Tragic Victor," he turns down Dr Clemente's (John Leguizamo) offer of a beer because he's meeting a "lady friend." However, in S15E16 'The Beginning of the End', Jerry, free of inhibition under the influence of a mushroom-derived toxin (from a love potion made by a mushroom expert, Teddy, who is a patient), makes a pass at a returning Dr John Carter – telling "Dr. Carter, call me." In the episode, "Blame It on the Rain," it is revealed that Jerry is deathly afraid of thunderstorms—mainly because he has been hit by lightning on several previous occasions, a fact that everyone in the ER knows but Kerry Weaver, who sent him out in a storm to get a gift for her son Henry's birthday. He returns several hours later, dazed and holding a scorched paper bag. Frank asks him, "You got hit by lightning again, didn't you?" to which he only nods. At first Kerry does not believe him, but Jerry finally manages to get out the words, "Here's your change," then hands her a bunch of coins that have been fused together. Needless to say, she's thoroughly convinced. In a 12th-season episode, it is revealed that Jerry is also fluent in American Sign Language, when he is asked to interpret for a boy who was trying to bring a drugged girl to the ER and wound up being assaulted due to a misinterpretation by the police. Up until the third season, Jerry was a cigar smoker (as was Benrubi himself, although it is not known if he still smokes), but after the episode "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the character was not seen smoking again. Jerry's age has never been given on the show, although it is presumed that he is the same age as Benrubi himself (in his late 30s), although when he returned after three seasons, Jerry's hair and goatee are gray, so it is possible he could be older. Francis "Frank" Martin first appeared as a police officer who was shot in his foot in the first episode of the show. He was Dr. Carter's first patient and then as a desk clerk in the Season 6 episode "Such Sweet Sorrow," temporarily replacing Jerry Markovic. Troy Evans, the actor who portrays Frank, had previously made a guest star appearance in the pilot episode "24 Hours" as a character named "Officer Martin." When Frank arrives to start as desk clerk, he mentions to Weaver that he had previously worked as a Chicago policeman for 26 years. During his commentary on the ER season 1 DVD set, Michael Crichton confirmed that Frank and Officer Martin were the same character. Frank exhibited a more traditionalist, conservative, law and order type of philosophy that often put him at odds with some of his more liberal co- workers, especially in matters of sex outside marriage; when giving the expecting Abby Lockhart a gift basket, he remarked, 'That's for you and the little bastard". He ran background checks on patients in order to help the police round up criminals (which earned him the anger of Kerry Weaver), opposed giving medical care to illegal immigrants, and attempted to beat up a homeless man with a stick. He was almost as overtly racist and bigoted as Dr. Romano; his statements about women, minorities, gays, lesbians, and the indigent were often politically incorrect and deeply insensitive. However, unlike Romano, Frank was a generation out of step and eventually his attitude began to mellow; in later seasons, very few of his inappropriate comments had real malice attached to them. When asked for information by the staff (and sometimes patients, if their requests seem unreasonable) Frank typically gave a very sarcastic response, then (only sometimes) refers them to what they need. Despite his attitude, most of the doctors and nurses regarded him with a mixture of affection and exasperation- especially Neela Rasgotra and Luka Kovac, both of whom are non-American nationality and thus put up with Frank's insults often. Frank also tends to show a bit more patience and concern around children, and when a ten-year-old girl who had been kidnapped and raped for months died from gunshot wounds in the ER (Season 12) even Frank was too appalled to say anything witty. When Jerry came back to work, he and Frank fought over politics, eventually coming to blows and injuring Dr. Chen by accident. She prevented Weaver from suspending them by claiming that she tripped and hurt herself, then ordered Jerry and Frank to agree to learn to work together. The relationship between the two men became quite cordial, eventually developing into a genuine friendship; when Jerry was shot and nearly died in the Season 12 finale/start of Season 13, Frank was constantly at Jerry's side. In the Season 10 episode "Forgive and Forget," Frank suffered a heart attack while at work. Ironically, his life was saved primarily by two minority staffers: English-Indian medical student Neela Rasgotra, who found him collapsed on the floor; and African American Dr. Greg Pratt, who successfully performed a life-saving procedure on Frank, using a syringe to remove blood that had accumulated around his heart. This episode also revealed that Frank was not only a former police officer, but also a Vietnam War veteran with high regard for his fellow soldiers, a loving husband, and a devoted father to a developmentally disabled daughter. All this offered a more complex illustration of his life and contradicted his workplace reputation as an elderly grouch. It was also more or less confirmed that Frank was indeed the same Officer Martin who shot himself in the foot in the show's debut. Following the heart attack, Frank remained predictably cantankerous, though in some ways the character seemed to become a nicer man—particularly to Neela and Pratt. When Greg Pratt died in the Season 15 premiere "Life After Death," Frank was deeply shaken and upset. Upon Neela's departure from County in the Season 15 episode "Shifting Equilibrium," Frank threw her an elaborate farewell party that focused on Neela's Indian heritage. Despite his personality, he does show a deep liking to other doctors, such as Archie Morris and John Carter. He spoke in defense of Morris to Banfield, explaining Pratt's death affected him harder than most. He welcomed Carter back when he returned with a pregnant Kem, and wished him good luck in him getting his kidney transplant. Timmy was one of the many special County General ER staff members that was in the show's 2-hour pilot episode. Halfway into the show's first season he disappeared without any explanation. Years later in season 13 he was brought back into the show and resumed his position as a desk clerk on the staff of County General's ER. It was explained in his return to the show in season 13 as to why he left County he said it was because he had felt trapped at in Chicago and needed to do something new, so he left to travel the world. Later in the season he went on a cruise with Charge Nurse Samantha Taggart's grandmother Gracie and even though the cruise was only supposed to last 1 week they ended up gone for 2 months which he explained was because they went to Singapore and they also later got stuck at the Cambodian border. He disappears without any explanation after the season ends. Dr. Mark Greene is a fictional medical doctor from the television series ER, portrayed by the actor Anthony Edwards. For most of his time on the series, Greene's role was that of a mediator and occasional authority figure, and he was considered the main character of the series for the first eight seasons. Greene was also the only original character to die, and his death at the end of Season 8 marked one of the biggest turning points in the series. Mark Greene, an only child, was raised by his mother, Ruth, and father, David. David Greene served in the United States Navy, and thus the family moved frequently and lived all over the country, including: Jacksonville, Florida, Norfolk, Virginia, Corpus Christi, Texas, Washington D.C., Kings Bay, Georgia, and Hawaii, where they spent three years, David's longest assignment. Mark had a very strained relationship with his father, and was decidedly closer to his mother. He would often act out in an attempt to upset his father, and aimed his goals in the opposite of what his father wanted. Mark thought his father's Navy career mattered more to him than his family, only to later learn that David was on track to be an Admiral and turned down the chance in order to come home and help Mark with a bully. The most memorable time of his childhood was when his family was in Hawaii, a time he would later recreate with daughter Rachel during the last few weeks of his life. While still in high school, Greene met and soon after developed a romantic relationship with Jennifer (Jen). Presumably their relationship lasted the duration of their time in college, and at some point around the time Greene was at medical school, he married Jennifer. His daughter, Rachel was born shortly afterwards. While in medical school, he met future colleague Peter Benton. He then completed his internship and residency in the Emergency Department of County General Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, from there he was awarded the position of Chief Resident of the Emergency Department. While there, Greene developed close friendships with Dr. Doug Ross, a pediatrician, Dr. Susan Lewis, an ER resident, and nurse manager, Carol Hathaway. Although Greene enjoys working the ER, the many nights on call, and the long hours, in addition to Jen's decision to complete law school, have strained their marriage. In the pilot episode, which takes place on St. Patrick's Day 1994, Dr. Greene is awakened in the first scene to help his long-time friend Doug, the ER resident who often comes in to sober up on his nights off. Also, his close friendship with Susan is shown as they confide in each other about their personal lives while on break. During the same episode, Jen gets Mark to visit a private practice near the hospital to explore the possibility of leaving his job at the ER and get more family-friendly hours. Greene decides the "clean" medicine isn't his cup of tea. Back at the ER, Greene removes a hangnail from an older woman, who wanted him to remove it despite the fact she'd be charged $180. Later during the night, Greene has to urge everyone to get back to work when Carol is rushed into the ER after a shocking suicide attempt. During the first season, Dr. Greene's marriage becomes increasingly shaky. When offered an attending physician's position by David Morgenstern, Greene readily accepts, much to Jen's chagrin. As a newly admitted member of the bar, Jen has been clerking for a judge in Milwaukee, and becomes increasingly tired of commuting and living separately to accommodate Greene's job. She begins an affair with a coworker, and the marriage soon ends, with Rachel and Jen leaving Chicago first for Milwaukee and later for St. Louis. In "Love's Labor Lost", Greene makes miscalculations in treating a pregnant woman that lead to her death in childbirth, and the after-effects of this case linger long into Season 2. In "A Miracle Happens Here", a Christmas episode, Greene explains that he is the son of an agnostic Jew and a lapsed Catholic. He lights a Hanukkah candle for a Holocaust survivor. Greene understands some Yiddish. Greene's career becomes more difficult as he needs to make decisions that periodically alienate his friends, such as selecting Dr. Kerry Weaver for Chief Resident over another applicant, which angers Susan Lewis because the other applicant is a good friend of hers and because she bristles under Kerry's demanding, sometimes harsh leadership style. Greene's friendship with Dr. Ross becomes strained as his administrative tasks often put him at odds with Doug's wild ways and he is disgusted by Doug's personal problems to the point where he briefly overrules and belittles Doug's abilities as a physician before reconciling with his friend. His love life takes a more drastic downward spin when his feelings for Dr. Lewis increase, but she leaves the hospital for a job in Phoenix, Arizona. He suffers emotionally again after he is attacked in the ER men's room in the episode "Random Acts". The attack is initially believed to be retaliatory act to avenge the death of a patient who may have been "mistreated" by Dr. Greene because of the patient's race. Later, though, it is strongly implied that his assailant was a psychotic individual who was randomly attacking doctors. Greene buys a gun and uses it to scare a crowd of punks on a train but tosses the gun in the river soon afterwards. He struggles through a large part of Season 4 but comes to terms with his attack in Season 5 when he helps Nigerian-born janitor Mobilage Ekabo reveal his memories of torture by talking about the attack with him, allowing him to obtain political asylum and avoid deportation. With the passing of Doug's father comes the re-entrance of Mark's parents. He and Doug travel to California to settle Doug's father's affairs (Doug's father and new wife were both killed in a car wreck) and take a side trip to visit Mark's parents, who live in another part of California. His relationship with his father David is still strained, and his mother suffers from a string of medical conditions associated with aging. Mark also finds out that his mother viewed his birth as a mistake, as she didn't know his father well and got married quickly when she got pregnant. Mark's distrust of the Navy puts him at odds with David when he and Mark fight over whether Ruth should be treated in a base hospital or a civilian hospital. Ruth eventually dies and Mark goes to her funeral, leaving him on edge when he clashes with Kerry Weaver over Robert Romano's successful drive for the chief of staff position. Greene's personal life after his marriage is tumultuous. He takes after Doug, having several flings and an affair with Nurse Chuny Marquez, and setting up three dates in one day. He has a brief relationship with a needy desk clerk, Cynthia Hooper (played by Mariska Hargitay in season 4). Hooper leaves him after she finds out Greene doesn't really love her. Greene eventually meets a British surgeon, Elizabeth Corday. Corday is in Chicago on an exchange program, under the guidance of Dr. Romano. Romano's advances on Corday fail, as does her relationship with Peter Benton. Eventually, Greene and Elizabeth begin dating in Season 5, finally forming a stable and happy relationship. During Season 6, Greene discovers that his father is suffering from advanced lung cancer. After David loses his wife and develops end stage lung cancer, he realizes that he can no longer live alone, and he moves to Chicago and stays with Mark; after an awkward first meeting, he warms up to Elizabeth very quickly. After an emotional bonding that heals their difficult relationship from Mark's youth, David dies. Mark and Elizabeth begin a more serious relationship and move in together. Greene later buys a house, and he and Elizabeth get married and have a daughter, Ella. Their happiness is threatened, though, when the abusive father of a patient goes on a killing rampage after losing his son to social workers. In a bid to get his son back, he kills and injures a number of people and attempts to go after Elizabeth and Ella. After being shot by an armed bystander, he is brought to the ER. During his treatment, Greene takes him aboard an elevator to go to an operating room. The patient goes into arrest when alone in the elevator with Greene, who withholds defibrillation and allows him to go into vfib and die. He later falsifies records to show that he did attempt to save the patient. Elizabeth suspects what Mark did but lets the matter drop. Later, Rachel appears in Chicago unannounced, citing arguments with her mother, and moves in with Mark and a very reluctant Elizabeth. She sneaks out of the house at night and uses drugs, which clouds her relationship with Elizabeth. While suturing a patient's wound, Greene loses control of his faculties and is temporarily unable to speak. After a CT scan and a biopsy, he is diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer, glioblastoma multiforme, that is thought to be inoperable. Embarrassed, Greene briefly tries to hide his condition, but his cover is blown when he has a seizure while arguing with Carter. With little time, Greene seeks a second opinion from an eminent New York City neurosurgeon, Dr. Burke. Greene is told that the tumor is near a critical section of his brain but hasn't "invaded" it yet and they can perform an operation on New Year's Eve 2000. Greene's surgery is performed by Burke and things appear to be positive, although it takes him a while to return to his old self. A year or so later, however, Greene finds out his tumor has returned, and Dr. Burke both confirms this and says he cannot operate again because the tumor regrowth is now in part of his brain where an operation would render Greene completely vegetative. While chemo treatment will only allow Greene to live for another 5–6 months, Burke points out: "You should have been dead a year ago, Mark. You got married, saw your daughter be born - I'd say that was time well spent." At this point, Rachel has run away from Jenn in St. Louis and is staying with Mark and Elizabeth. Though she vehemently denies it, her recreational drug use becomes apparent when her baby sister Ella gets hold of some ecstasy in her backpack and nearly dies after ingesting it in the episode "Damage is Done". When Rachel shows up, Mark can barely control his anger at her, berating her for repeatedly lying to him and for putting Ella in danger. However, he sees her remorse and fear for Ella are genuine; knowing Elizabeth is angry enough for both of them, he hugs Rachel when she starts to cry. When Mark refuses to throw Rachel out of the house, Elizabeth says she won't return home with Ella as long as Rachel is there and leaves home with Ella and moves into a hotel. Unwilling to tell Elizabeth about his condition, Mark stays with Susan during the course of his chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Elizabeth later finds out the truth and wants to come home, but Mark tells her she shouldn't pretend to be his wife just because he's sick; however, she returns anyway and begins helping Mark as his terminal illness advances. Eventually, however, he resigns himself to his fate and decides to halt the debilitating chemo, deciding he would rather have three good final months than twice that suffering from his treatments. On his last day in the ER, he meets with the same older woman that viewers saw on the first episode of ER. She again has a hangnail, and complains about how painful it is. Greene tells her that he has an inoperable tumor, asks another doctor to treat her, and tells the patient not to return to the ER again. He leaves the ER, stops his chemotherapy treatments, tells John Carter that he will now "set the tone" and takes Rachel on a last-minute trip to Hawaii to rebuild his relationship with her and relive happier times. After several moves around the island and some conflict with a surly Rachel, Mark suffers from increased symptoms, prompting Rachel to call Elizabeth, who comes to Hawaii with Ella. One night, Rachel comes to her father's room while he sleeps. Mark awakens and smiles at Rachel, telling her with slurred speech that he was just dreaming of her and how she used to love balloons. He tells her that he was trying to think of a piece of advice that every father should tell his daughter, and tells her to be generous with her time, her love, and her life. Rachel tells her father that she remembers a lullaby that Mark used to sing her when she was a baby and slips a pair of headphones on his head and plays Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's rendition of "Over The Rainbow" for him as he smiles and falls back asleep. While the song plays, he is seen walking through an empty ER. The next morning, Elizabeth discovers that he has died. In the episode "The Letter," Carter discovers two faxes that had arrived earlier, both sent by Elizabeth. He reads the first one to the staff. It is a letter that Greene had written about his sentiments about the Chicago County ER where he had worked for many years, and the staff he had worked with throughout the years. They begin happily discussing his letter until someone notices that Carter is holding the second fax, visibly upset. He informs them that the second is a brief letter written by Elizabeth, notifying them that Mark had died that morning around 6 A.M., "… at sunrise, his favorite time of the day." She explains that she sent the first letter to show the staff at the ER what he thought of them. As the staff responds sadly to this news, Frank asks if he should post the second fax on the staff bulletin board, and Carter tells him to post both of them. The letter and the news of his passing sends many of the ER's staff that day into emotional turmoil, with Kerry Weaver going from second-guessing Abby's posting of the letter (she quickly changes her mind and says it should stay up) to crying and stating her regrets to Sandy Lopez that she's lost a friend. This portion of the episode closely models the scene at the end of the film Mister Roberts, when Jack Lemmon's character, Ensign Pulver, reads two similar letters connected with the title character's death. It was also revealed in the episode by Susan Lewis that he died at the age of 38, making his birth year end 1963 or 1964. At the close of the episode, as the staff rush out to the ambulance bay to handle incoming casualties, the wind blowing through the open door tears one page of Greene's letter off the bulletin board. Greene's body is returned to Chicago, where he is buried. Many of his friends and colleagues come to the funeral: John Carter, Peter Benton, Kerry Weaver, Abby Lockhart, Luka Kovač, Susan Lewis, Jing-Mei Chen, Robert Romano, Jerry Markovic, Lydia Wright, Frank Martin, Donald Anspaugh, William "Wild Willy" Swift (played by Michael Ironside in 1994), Haleh Adams, Michael Gallant, Cleo Finch, Jen, Rachel, Ella, and Elizabeth. After the funeral, Rachel asks Elizabeth if she can visit to see Ella; Elizabeth responds "Of course, she's your sister." Rachel then suddenly asks the driver to pull over: she walks to a bunch of balloons attached to a fence, takes a purple one and slowly lets go of it, watching it rise toward the sky. Rachel goes back to living with her mother in St. Louis, but later returns to Chicago when the time comes to select a college, as well as asking a bemused Elizabeth to help her acquire effective birth control pills. In the April 2009 ER series finale, she returns to County General to interview for a spot as a med student, showing that she has become a responsible young woman and followed in Mark's footsteps. Dr. Mark Greene was written out of the series because actor Anthony Edwards had decided that he wanted to move on to other opportunities. Greene was shown in an old Christmas photo in Season 10's "Freefall," alongside Abby and Drs. Lewis, Carter, and Kovac. He also appears in photos included in the slideshow shown at Dr. Carter's farewell party in the Season 11 episode "The Show Must Go On". Greene was also heard in a voice-over telling Carter that he needed to "set the tone" in the ER (which, incidentally, was what Dr. Morgenstern told Dr. Greene in the pilot episode). In the Season 12 episode "Body and Soul," he is mentioned during a flashback to 2002, when Dr. Pratt tells his patient, Nate Lennox (James Woods), that the reason the ER has few staff working is because they are at Greene's funeral. In Season 14's "Blackout," Nurse Chuny Marquez says that she can't believe the ER is going to be led by Pratt and Morris and says how she remembers when Mark Greene and Doug Ross used to run the place. Nurse Sam Taggart then says, "Who?", since she started working in the ER long after they had left. In 2008, ER producers announced that Edwards would reprise his role for the series' final season, with Dr. Greene appearing in flashbacks in the episode "Heal Thyself" shedding light on Dr. Catherine Banfield's (played by Angela Bassett) past. On November 13, 2008, over 6 years after his exit from the show, Anthony Edwards returned as Dr. Mark Greene. The flashback episode took place in 2002, just months before Greene's death and revealed an encounter he had with Catherine Banfield, 6 years before she began working in that same emergency room. He was treating Banfield's son Darryl who had a debilitating disease which turned out to be leukemia. The story appeared to take place at the point in Season 8 when Mark and Elizabeth were reconciling after she learned his tumor had recurred. Greene takes on the mysterious case to save the 5 year old. He has a run-in with Kerry Weaver and Robert Romano about putting this case ahead of his chemo treatment which took a toll on him throughout that day. Darryl dies in the ER but it was Greene's heroic actions that triggered Catherine in the present day to help save a young girl from drowning, and may have also inspired her to work full-time at County. During their encounter, Cate kept pressing Greene, who told her to stop being a doctor and to start being a mother. Cate gave the same advice to the young girl's mother. In the season 15 episode The Book of Abby, long-serving nurse Haleh Adams shows the departing Abby Lockhart a closet wall where all the past doctors and employees have put their locker name tags. Among them, the tag "Greene" can be seen.

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A code talker was a person employed by the military during wartime to utilize a little-known language as a means of secret communication. The term is now usually associated with United States service members during the world wars who used their knowledge of Native American languages as a basis to transmit coded messages. In particular, there were approximately 400 to 500 Native Americans in the United States Marine Corps whose primary job was to transmit secret tactical messages. Code talkers transmitted messages over military telephone or radio communications nets using formally or informally developed codes built upon their native languages. The code talkers improved the speed of encryption and decryption of communications in front line operations during World War II. There were two code types used during World War II. Type one codes were formally developed based on the languages of the Comanche, Hopi, Meskwaki, and Navajo peoples. They used words from their languages for each letter of the English alphabet. Messages could be encoded and decoded by using a simple substitution cipher where the ciphertext was the native language word. Type two code was informal and directly translated from English into the native language. If there was no word in the native language to describe a military word, code talkers used descriptive words. For example, the Navajo did not have a word for submarine so they translated it to iron fish. The name code talkers is strongly associated with bilingual Navajo speakers specially recruited during World War II by the US Marine Corps to serve in their standard communications units of the Pacific theater. Code talking, however, was pioneered by the Cherokee and Choctaw peoples during World War I. Other Native American code talkers were deployed by the United States Army during World War II, including Lakota, Meskwaki, Mohawk, Comanche, Tlingit, Hopi, Cree and Crow soldiers; they served in the Pacific, North African, and European theaters. Native speakers of the Assiniboine language served as code talkers during World War II to encrypt communications. One of these code talkers was Gilbert Horn Sr., who grew up in the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation of Montana and became a tribal judge and politician. In November 1952, Euzko Deya magazine reported that in May 1942, upon meeting about 60 US Marines of Basque ancestry in a San Francisco camp, Captain Frank D. Carranza thought to use the Basque language for codes. His superiors were wary as there were known settlements of Basque people in the Pacific region. There were 35 Basque Jesuits in Hiroshima, led by Pedro Arrupe. There was a colony of Basque jai alai players in China and the Philippines, and there were Basque supporters of Falange in Asia. The American Basque code talkers were kept away from these theaters; they were initially used in tests and in transmitting logistic information for Hawaii and Australia. According to Euzko Deya, on August 1, 1942, Lieutenants Nemesio Aguirre, Fernández Bakaicoa, and Juanana received a Basque-coded message from San Diego for Admiral Chester Nimitz. The message warned Nimitz of Operation Apple to remove the Japanese from the Solomon Islands. They also translated the start date, August 7, for the attack on Guadalcanal. As the war extended over the Pacific, there was a shortage of Basque speakers and the US military came to prefer the parallel program based on the use of Navajo speakers. In 2017, Pedro Oiarzabal and Guillermo Tabernilla published a paper refuting Euzko Deya's article. According to Oiarzabal and Tabernilla, they could not find Carranza, Aguirre, Fernández Bakaicoa, or Juanana in the National Archives and Records Administration or US Army archives. They did find a small number of US Marines with Basque surnames, but none of them worked in transmissions. They suggest that Carranza's story was an Office of Strategic Services operation to raise sympathy for US intelligence among Basque nationalists. The first known use of code talkers in the US military was during World War I. Cherokee soldiers of the US 30th Infantry Division fluent in the Cherokee language were assigned to transmit messages while under fire during the Second Battle of the Somme. According to the Division Signal Officer, this took place in September 1918 when their unit was under British command. During World War I, company commander Captain Lawrence of the US Army overheard Solomon Louis and Mitchell Bobb having a conversation in the Choctaw language. Upon further investigation, he found that eight Choctaw men served in the battalion. The Choctaw men in the Army's 36th Infantry Division trained to use their language in code and helped the American Expeditionary Forces in several battles of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. On October 26, 1918, the code talkers were pressed into service and the "tide of battle turned within 24 hours ... and within 72 hours the Allies were on full attack." German authorities knew about the use of code talkers during World War I and sent a team of thirty anthropologists to the United States to learn Native American languages before the outbreak of World War II. However, the task proved too difficult because of the array of native languages and dialects. Nonetheless, after the US Army learned of the Nazi effort, it opted not to implement a large-scale code talker program in the European theater. A total of 14 code talkers using the Comanche language took part in the Invasion of Normandy and served in the 4th Infantry Division in Europe. Comanche soldiers of the 4th Signal Company compiled a vocabulary of over 100 code terms using words or phrases in their own language. Using a substitution method similar to the Navajo, the code talkers used descriptive Comanche language words for things that did not have translations. For example, the Comanche language word for tank was turtle, bomber was pregnant airplane, machine gun was sewing machine, and Adolf Hitler was crazy white man. Two Comanche code talkers were assigned to each regiment while the rest were assigned to 4th Infantry Division headquarters. Shortly after landing on Utah Beach on June 6, 1944, the Comanche began transmitting messages. Some were wounded but none killed. In 1989, the French government awarded the Comanche code talkers the Chevalier of the National Order of Merit. On November 30, 1999, the United States Department of Defense presented Charles Chibitty with the Knowlton Award, which recognizes individuals for outstanding intelligence work. In World War II, the Canadian Armed Forces employed First Nations soldiers who spoke the Cree language as code talkers. Owing to oaths of secrecy and official classification through 1963, the role of Cree code talkers were less known than their US counterparts and went unacknowledged by the Canadian government. A 2016 documentary, Cree Code Talkers, tells the story of one such Métis individual, Charles "Checker" Tomkins. Tomkins, who died in 2003, was interviewed shortly before his death by the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. While he identified some other Cree code talkers, "Tomkins may have been the last of his comrades to know anything of this secret operation." A group of 27 Meskwaki enlisted in the US Army together in January 1941; they were 16 percent of Iowa's Meskwaki population. During World War II, the US Army trained eight Meskwaki men to use their native Fox language as code talkers. They were assigned to North Africa. The eight were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2013; unfortunately all were deceased. The award was accepted by members of the Meskwaki community. Mohawk language code talkers were employed during World War II by the United States Army in the Pacific theater. Levi Oakes, a Mohawk code talker born in Canada, was deployed to protect messages being sent by Allied Forces using Kanien'kéha, a Mohawk sub-set language. Oakes died in May 2019 leaving no surviving Mohawk code talkers. The Muscogee language was used as type two code (informal) during World War II by enlisted Seminole and Creek people. Tony Palmer, Leslie Richard, Edmund Harjo, and Thomas MacIntosh from the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma and Muscogee (Creek) Nation were recognized under the Code Talkers Recognition Act of 2008. The last surviving of these code talkers, Edmond Harjo of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, died on March 31, 2014, at the age of 96. His biography was recounted at the Congressional Gold Medal ceremony honoring Harjo and other code talkers at the US Capitol on November 20, 2013. Philip Johnston, a civil engineer for the city of Los Angeles, proposed the use of the Navajo language to the United States Marine Corps at the beginning of World War II. Johnston, a World War I veteran, was raised on the Navajo reservation as the son of a missionary to the Navajo and was one of the small number of non-Navajo who spoke the language fluently. Many Navajo enlisted shortly after Pearl Harbor and eagerly contributed to the war effort. "What happened to the Navajo were social conflicts", Navajo code talker Albert Smith said. "But this conflict involved Mother Earth being dominated by foreign countries. It was our responsibility to defend her." Because Navajo has a complex grammar, it is not mutually intelligible enough with even its closest relatives within the Na-Dene family to provide meaningful information. At the time, it was still an unwritten language, and Johnston believed Navajo could satisfy the military requirement for an undecipherable code. Its complex syntax and phonology, not to mention its numerous dialects, made it unintelligible to anyone without extensive exposure and training. One estimate indicates that at the outbreak of World War II, fewer than 30 non-Navajo could understand the language. Early in 1942, Johnston met with Major General Clayton B. Vogel, the commanding general of Amphibious Corps, Pacific Fleet, and his staff. Johnston staged tests under simulated combat conditions which demonstrated that Navajo men could encode, transmit, and decode a three-line English message in 20 seconds, versus the 30 minutes required by machines at that time. The idea was accepted and Vogel recommended that the Marines recruit 200 Navajo. The first 29 Navajo recruits attended boot camp in May 1942. This first group created the Navajo code at Camp Pendleton. The Navajo code was formally developed and modeled on the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet that uses agreed-upon English words to represent letters. Since it was determined that phonetically spelling out all military terms letter by letter into words while in combat would be too time-consuming, some terms, concepts, tactics, and instruments of modern warfare were given uniquely formal descriptive nomenclatures in Navajo. For example, the word for shark referred to a destroyer, while silver oak leaf indicated the rank of lieutenant colonel. A codebook was developed to teach the many relevant words and concepts to new initiates. The text was for classroom purposes only and was never to be taken into the field. The code talkers memorized all these variations and practiced their rapid use under stressful conditions during training. Uninitiated Navajo speakers would have no idea what the code talkers' messages meant; they would hear only truncated and disjointed strings of individual, unrelated nouns and verbs. The Navajo code talkers were commended for the skill, speed, and accuracy they demonstrated throughout the war. At the Battle of Iwo Jima, Major Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division signal officer, had six Navajo code talkers working around the clock during the first two days of the battle. These six sent and received over 800 messages, all without error. Connor later stated, "Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima." To ensure a consistent use of code terminologies throughout the Pacific theater, representative code talkers of each of the US Marine divisions met in Hawaii to discuss shortcomings in the code, incorporate new terms into the system, and update their codebooks. These representatives, in turn, trained other code talkers who could not attend the meeting. As the war progressed, additional code words were added and incorporated program-wide. In other instances, informal shortcut code words were devised for a particular campaign and not disseminated beyond the area of operation. Examples of code words include the Navajo word for buzzard, , which was used for bomber, while the code word used for submarine, , meant iron fish in Navajo. The last of the original 29 Navajo code talkers who developed the code, Chester Nez, died on June 4, 2014. Four of the last nine Navajo code talkers used in the military died in 2019: Alfred K. Newman, died on January 13, 2019, at the age of 94. On May 10, 2019, Fleming Begaye Sr., died at the age of 97. New Mexico State Senator John Pinto, elected in 1977, died in office on May 24, 2019. William Tully Brown died in June 2019 aged 96. The deployment of the Navajo code talkers continued through the Korean War and after, until it was ended early in the Vietnam War. The Navajo code is the only spoken military code never to have been deciphered. In the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, Egypt employed Nubian-speaking Nubian people as code talkers. During World War Two, American soldiers used their native Tlingit as a code against Japanese forces. Their actions remained unknown, even after the declassification of code talkers and the publication of the Navajo code talkers. The memory of five deceased Tlingit code talkers were honored by the Alaska legislature in March 2019. A system employing the Welsh language was used by British forces during World War II, but not to any great extent. In 1942, the Royal Air Force developed a plan to use Welsh for secret communications during World War II, but the plan was never implemented. Welsh was used more recently in the Yugoslav Wars for non-vital messages. China used Wenzhounese-speaking people as code talkers during the 1979 Sino- Vietnamese War. The Navajo code talkers received no recognition until the declassification of the operation in 1968. In 1982, the code talkers were given a Certificate of Recognition by US President Ronald Reagan, who also named August 14, 1982, as Navajo Code Talkers Day. On December 21, 2000, President Bill Clinton signed Public Law 106-554, 114 Statute 2763, which awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the original 29 World War II Navajo code talkers and Silver Medals to each person who qualified as a Navajo code talker (approximately 300). In July 2001, President George W. Bush presented the medals to four surviving original code talkers (the fifth living original code talker was unable to attend) at a ceremony held in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, DC. Gold medals were presented to the families of the deceased 24 original code talkers. Journalist Patty Talahongva directed and produced a documentary, The Power of Words: Native Languages as Weapons of War, for the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in 2006, bringing to light the story of Hopi code talkers. In 2011, Arizona established April 23, as an annual recognition day for the Hopi code talkers. The Texas Medal of Valor was awarded posthumously to 18 Choctaw code talkers for their World War II service on September 17, 2007, by the Adjutant General of the State of Texas. The Code Talkers Recognition Act of 2008 (Public Law 110-420) was signed into law by President George W. Bush on November 15, 2008. The act recognized every Native American code talker who served in the United States military during WWI or WWII (with the exception of the already-awarded Navajo) with a Congressional Gold Medal. The act was designed to be distinct for each tribe, with silver duplicates awarded to the individual code talkers or their next-of-kin. As of 2013, 33 tribes have been identified and been honored at a ceremony at Emancipation Hall at the US Capitol Visitor Center. One surviving code talker was present, Edmond Harjo. On November 27, 2017, three Navajo code talkers, along with the president of the Navajo Nation, Russell Begaye, appeared with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office in an official White House ceremony. They were there to "pay tribute to the contributions of the young Native Americans recruited by the United States military to create top-secret coded messages used to communicate during [World War II] battles." The executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, Jacqueline Pata, noted that Native Americans have "a very high level of participation in the military and veterans' service." A statement by a Navajo Nation Council Delegate and comments by Pata and Begaye, among others, objected to Trump's remarks during the event, including his use "once again ... [of] the word Pocahontas in a negative way towards a political adversary." The National Congress of American Indians objected to Trump's use of the name Pocahontas, a historical Native American figure, as a derogatory term. Native Americans and World War II, United States Army Indian Scouts, Windtalkers, 2002 American war film on Navajo radio operators in WW II Aaseng, Nathan. Navajo Code Talkers: America's Secret Weapon in World War II. New York: Walker & Company, 1992., Durrett, Deanne. Unsung Heroes of World War II: The Story of the Navajo Code Talkers. Library of American Indian History, Facts on File, Inc., 1998., Gawne, Jonathan. Spearheading D-Day. Paris: Histoire et Collections, 1999., Holm, Tom. Code Talkers and Warriors- Native Americans and World War II. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2007., Kahn, David. The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing. 1967., McClain, Salley. Navajo Weapon: The Navajo Code Talkers. Tucson, Arizona: Rio Nuevo Publishers, 2001., Meadows, William C. The Comanche Code Talkers of World War II. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002., Singh, Simon, . 2000. Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture – Code Talkers, Official website of the Navajo Code talkers Chester Nez (January 23, 1921 – June 4, 2014) was an American veteran of World War II. He was the last original Navajo code talker who served in the United States Marine Corps during the war. Nez was born in Chi Chil Tah, New Mexico, to the Navajo (Black Sheep Clan) of the (Sleeping Rock People). He was raised during a time when there were difficult relations between the U.S. government and the Navajo Nation. His mother died when he was only three years old. Nez recalled children often being taken from reservations, sent to boarding schools, and told to not speak the Navajo language. At eight years old, Nez was sent to a school run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. His English given name, Chester, after US president Chester A. Arthur, was assigned then. It was from one of the government-run boarding schools, in Tuba City, Arizona, that Nez was recruited into the Marine Corps. Nez kept his decision to enlist from his family. He and 28 other Navajos formed Recruit Training Platoon 382 at Marine Corps Base San Diego in May 1942. The 29 who graduated from boot camp, including Nez, were then assigned to the Camp Elliot, California, where they were tasked with creating a code for secure voice tactical (battlefield) communications. At the time, tactical radios were not equipped, as they are today, with encryption/decryption technology, allowing the enemy to listen to radio traffic, often with disastrous results. The Navajo language was chosen because its complex syntax and phonology made it exceedingly difficult to learn as a second language, and it had no written form. Nez stated the developers used everyday words, in order to easily memorize and retain them. In 1942, he was among the code talkers to be shipped out to Guadalcanal, where they worked in teams of two: one to send and receive, the other to operate the radio and listen for errors. Nez also fought in Bougainville, Guam, Angaur and Peleliu. He was honorably discharged as a private first class in 1945 and returned to serve stateside in the Korean War from which he was discharged as a corporal. From 1946 to 1952, Nez attended the University of Kansas to study commercial arts, but by 1952 discontinued his studies after having exhausted funding from his G.I. Bill; he was awarded an honorary bachelor's degree by the Kansas University College of Liberal Arts and Science on Veterans Day, 2012. Following his military service, he worked as a painter for 25 years at a V.A. hospital in Albuquerque. In 2011, he wrote the memoir Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir by One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII with Judith Avila. On July 26, 2001, Nez was one of the five living code talkers who received the Congressional Gold Medal from President George W. Bush: Nez died on June 4, 2014, from kidney failure in Albuquerque, aged 93. Marine Corps Heroes: Pvt. Chester Nez, Navajo Code Talkers: The Uncrackable Language, featuring Chester Nez Windtalkers is a 2002 American war film directed and produced by John Woo, starring Nicolas Cage, Adam Beach, Peter Stormare, Noah Emmerich, Mark Ruffalo, and Christian Slater. The film was released in the United States on June 14, 2002. During World War II, US Marine corporal Joseph F. "Joe" Enders returns to active duty with the aid of his pharmacist, Rita, having previously survived a gruesome battle on the Solomon Islands against the Imperial Japanese Army that killed his entire squad and left him almost deaf in his left ear. Enders' new assignment is to protect Navajo code talker Pvt. Ben Yahzee, and carries a promotion for Enders to Sergeant in a JASCO. Sgt. Pete "Ox" Henderson also receives a parallel assignment protecting Navajo code talker Pvt. Charlie Whitehorse. Yahzee and Whitehorse, childhood friends from the Navajo tribe, are trained to send and receive coded messages that direct artillery fire. Enders and Henderson are instructed to kill their code talkers if capture is imminent so that the code cannot fall into enemy hands. As Enders and Henderson meet Yahzee and Whitehorse, it becomes apparent that the two experienced Marines are less than happy to be babysitting their Navajo codetalkers, and the Navajos must also endure racial harassment by some of the white Marines, notably Private Chick. During their missions, however, Henderson and Whitehorse discover a mutual love of music. Enders and Yahzee also discover that they have much in common, notably their Catholic upbringings. The invasion of Saipan in the Mariana Islands becomes Yahzee's and Whitehorse's first combat experience. After the beachhead is secured, the Marines come under friendly fire from U.S. artillery. Yahzee's radio is destroyed and the convoy is unable to call off the bombardment. Yahzee suggests that he disguise himself as a Japanese soldier and slip behind enemy lines to commandeer a radio, with Enders as his prisoner. Yahzee is forced to kill for the first time before he can redirect U.S. artillery fire onto the Japanese position. For their bravery, Enders is awarded a Silver Star by the commanding officer, with Yahzee's role almost ignored until Enders points him out but still credits Enders. That night, the Marines camp in the nearby village of Tanapag. While Yahzee is temporarily assigned back to the command post to translate a code, Enders becomes increasingly torn because he cannot imagine killing Yahzee, despite his orders. He demands to be relieved from his unit but his request is denied. The next morning, Japanese soldiers ambush the village. Henderson is killed and Whitehorse is about to be captured. Enders sees Whitehorse being beaten and dragged away by the Japanese. Realizing the Japanese will torture him for the code, Enders throws a grenade at Whitehorse, killing him and his captors. Yahzee returns to Tanapag and, seeing Whitehorse's body, screams at Enders to explain what happened as the village was thought to be secured. Enders mutters that he killed Whitehorse, but does not reveal that Whitehorse was willing to die to protect the code. Outraged, Yahzee aims his weapon at Enders but cannot bring himself to kill him. Enders confesses that he hated having to kill Whitehorse and that, like Henderson, his mission was to protect the code above all else. The Marines are mobilized on another mission and are once again ambushed, this time near a deadly minefield on Mount Tapochau, during which many Marines are killed. Enders, Yahzee, Chick, and Cpl. Pappas (the last of the Marines) take cover on a ridge and see Japanese artillery fire from the top of the ridge attacking a Marine convoy below their position. Still enraged over the death of Whitehorse, Yahzee charges the Japanese line, and in doing so, fumbles the radio needed to call in the coordinates for a bombardment. Yahzee and Enders are both shot as they retrieve the radio and call in an airstrike on the Japanese artillery. However, surrounded and knowing the Japanese will capture and torture him for the code as they almost did with Whitehorse, Yahzee entreats Enders to kill him. Enders, determined that no one else will die that day, manages to carry Yahzee to safety. Friendly planes arrive and the Japanese position is successfully destroyed. Yahzee rejoices in their success though Enders, mortally wounded, dies. Returning to the U.S., Yahzee, his wife, and his son George Washington Yahzee, sit atop Point Mesa in Monument Valley, Arizona, and, wearing the sacred necklaces and other Navajo ceremonial dress, performs the Navajo ritual of paying respects to Enders. An epilogue states that the Navajo code was crucial to America's success against Japan across the Pacific theater and that, during the war, like all other Native American codes, the Navajo code was never broken. Nicolas Cage as Sergeant Joe Enders, Adam Beach as Private Ben Yahzee, Peter Stormare as Gunnery Sergeant Richard Hjelmsted, Platoon Sergeant, Noah Emmerich as Private First Class Charles "Chick" Clusters, a BAR gunner, Mark Ruffalo as Corporal Milo Pappas, a rifleman, Christian Slater as Sergeant Peter "Ox" Henderson, Roger Willie as Private Charlie Whitehorse, Brian Van Holt as Private Andrew Harrigan, the flamethrower man, Martin Henderson as Private Thomas Nellie, a rifleman, Frances O'Connor as Pharmacist's Mate 2nd Class Rita, Jason Isaacs as Major Mellitz Filming locations on Hawaii included Kualoa Ranch, the location where Lost and Jurassic Park were shot. To portray the Marines in the film the producers recruited extras that were volunteers from Schofield Barracks Army Base, Hickam Air Force Base, Pearl Harbor Naval Station, and Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station. Some of the actual Marines from 4th Force Recon Company were used in the film portraying their actual job. Some violence was trimmed in order to avoid an NC-17 rating. This violence trim was restored for the Director's cut released on DVD running 134 minutes. The film's release date was moved from November 9, 2001, to June 14, 2002. For the F6F Hellcat fighters that appear in the beach-landing scenes on Saipan, the producers used computer-generated versions. The film was a box office bomb, grossing only under $41 million at the US box- office and a total of $77.6 million worldwide, against a production budget of $115 million. On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 32% based on reviews from 168 critics. On Metacritic the film has a score of 51% based on reviews from 25 critics, indicating "Mixed or average reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B+ on scale of A to F. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 2 out of 4 stars, remarking that "the filmmakers have buried it beneath battlefield cliches, while centering the story on a white character played by Nicolas Cage". Robert Koehler of Variety magazine called it "A powerful premise turned into a stubbornly flat, derivative war movie." The film was criticized for featuring the Navajo characters only in supporting roles; they were not the primary focus of the film. The film was ranked number four on Careeraftermilitary.com's "10 Most Inaccurate Military Movies Ever Made," which also included The Patriot, The Hurt Locker, U-571, The Green Berets, Pearl Harbor, Battle of the Bulge, Red Tails, Enemy at the Gates and Flyboys on its list of falsified war movie productions. Code talker, List of box office bombs, Native Americans and World War II A documentary exploring issues relating to Department of Defense involvement in film production., Movie stills at Virtual-History.com, (includes a dictionary of the code)

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The Michigan State Spartans men's basketball team represents Michigan State University (MSU) and compete in the Big Ten Conference of NCAA Division I College basketball. Their home games are played at the Breslin Student Events Center. Tom Izzo has been the head coach since 1995. The Spartans have won two NCAA championships and 15 Big Ten Conference Championships. Their two National Championships came in the 1979 NCAA Tournament and the 2000 NCAA Tournament. The 1979 National Championship Game was the most watched college basketball game in history, with 35.11 million television viewers. The 1979 National Championship team was coached by Jud Heathcote and included tournament MVP Magic Johnson, Greg Kelser and Jay Vincent. The Spartans defeated the previously unbeaten Indiana State Sycamores, led by future Hall of Famer Larry Bird. The 2000 National Championship team defeated the Florida Gators men's basketball team in the final. The team was coached by Tom Izzo and led by players Morris Peterson, Charlie Bell, Jason Richardson and tournament MVP Mateen Cleaves. The Spartans have participated in 33 NCAA tournaments and in 22 consecutive NCAA tournaments (1998–2019), the fourth-longest streak ever and third-longest active streak in college basketball, behind Kansas (29) and Duke (23). Michigan State has the sixth most all-time Final Four appearances with ten (1957, 1979, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2005, 2009, 2010, 2015, and 2019). The program is also ninth all-time in NCAA tournament winning percentage (.677, through 2018). The first established coach for Michigan Agricultural College (MSU's name at the time), Charles Bemies was also the first athletic director in school history, while also coaching the football, baseball, and track teams. His two- year stint as basketball head coach ended in 1901. MAC's second basketball coach was George Denman. Denman is the only basketball coach to go undefeated during his tenure, posting an 11–0 mark during his two seasons. His team still holds the record for largest margin of victory with a 102–3 defeat of Alma College in 1902. MAC's first full-time athletic director and one of the Spartans’ most successful coaches, Chester Brewer led the football, basketball, and baseball squads to winning records. He holds the highest winning percentage of any Spartan basketball coach with at least four seasons at .736 (70–25). His team also defeated Michigan in the schools’ first meeting in 1909. George Gauthier was the first alumnus to lead a Michigan State basketball squad. He compiled a career record of 41–38 over four seasons. Gauthier left after 29 games in 1919– 20, posting a 15–14 record. Lyman Frimodig coached the final seven games of the season, going 6–1. He would also serve as head coach for the next two seasons. He remained active in the athletic department after his stint as basketball coach, serving Michigan State for 41 years as assistant athletic director and business manager Benjamin Van Alstyne coached MSU for 22 years from 1926–1949. He is third in career victories with 231. Van Alstyne coached MSU's first All-American, Roger Grove, in 1930. Some of his greatest victories included a 27–26 victory over Michigan in 1930 at the dedication of Demonstration Hall, and a 66–50 upset over Kentucky in 1945 that was named “CocaCola Upset of the Week.” His 47–45 loss to Kentucky in 1948 set the record for the largest crowd in Jenison Field House history. In one season under Alton Kircher, the Spartans finished 4–18. Following the conclusion of the 1950 season, the Spartans would join the Big Ten Conference. Pete Newell was hired from San Francisco following a successful four years with the Dons where he went 70–37 and won the 1949 NIT. His 1951–52 squad was the first ranked Spartan team and also registered a win over No. 14 Notre Dame, the first win over a ranked opponent in school history. One of his biggest wins was a 1952 defeat of No. 2-ranked Kansas State. After four seasons, California hired Newell as its head coach and MSU had to search for another coach. Newell is often considered to be one of the most influential figures in the history of basketball. Forrest "Forddy" Anderson was hired away from Bradley following a trip to the 1954 Final Four with the Braves. His Bradley team had also made it to the 1950 championship game. Two years after taking over the Spartans, in 1957, he led MSU to its first Big Ten Championship. After opening the season with a 4–7 record, the Spartans won 10 in a row and 12-of-13 to capture their first league title and advance to the school's first NCAA Tournament. A bye in the first round of the Tournament preceded wins over Notre Dame and Kentucky to earn a trip to the Final Four. A loss to North Carolina in the Final Four left MSU in the National Third Place Game where they lost to San Francisco. Two years later, led by All-American Johnny Green, the Spartans cruised to a Big Ten Championship, winning the league by four games. A win over Marquette in the 1959 NCAA Tournament put MSU in the Mideast regional finals against Kentucky. The Spartans lost and fell one game short of another trip to the Final Four. Following his initial successes in East Lansing, his Spartan teams only finished with a winning record one time after 1959. He was fired following the 1964–65 season. John Benington, who had been an assistant to Anderson at Bradley before joining his staff at MSU, took over as head coach, and led MSU to a second- place Big Ten finish in his first season at the helm. The next season, he led the Spartans to a shared Big Ten title, but Indiana received the NCAA Tournament bid (at that time, only one Big Ten team received an NCAA bid). After four seasons leading the Spartans, he died of a heart attack after jogging at Jenison Fieldhouse in the summer of 1969 at the age of 47. Gus Ganakas, who served as an MSU basketball radio announcer until 2017, was an assistant under Benington and hired to take over following coach Benington's death. In 1966–67, MSU won its last four games to claim a share of the Big Ten Championship. Indiana, however, earned the NCAA Tournament bid ending MSU's year in the regular season. His most successful seasons were in 1973–74 with a fourth-place Big Ten finish and 1974–75 with a 17–9 overall record, the second-highest victory total at the time. His coaching career came to an end in 1976, but he continued to be a part of the Michigan State Athletics Department, serving as an assistant A.D. and then as an aide to coach Tom Izzo. Jud Heathcote was hired to take over as coach in 1976 from Montana by athletic director Joseph Kearney in May 1976, after coaching the Grizzlies for five years. Heathcote had led the Grizzlies to two Big Sky championships and the 1975 NCAA Tournament, the Grizzlies first ever trip to the Tournament. He finished his tenure at Montana with an 80–53 record. As a virtual unknown, Heathcote came to East Lansing looking to return MSU to greatness. In his second year, he landed one of the game's all-time greats, Earvin "Magic" Johnson, from nearby Lansing Everett High School, as a recruit. The 1977–78 Spartans won the Big Ten title, their first since 1967, qualified for the NCAA tournament for only the third time in school history, and advanced to the Elite Eight. They were led by Johnson and Greg Kelser. In 1979, the duo led the Spartans to a second consecutive Big Ten title and the NCAA National Championship. The NCAA championship marked the school's first in basketball. Following the championship, Johnson left school to join the NBA and Kelser graduated. The result was a ninth place finish in the Big Ten the next year and struggles thereafter. MSU returned to postseason play in 1983, finishing with a 17–13 record and receiving an invitation to the National Invitation Tournament. Following the expansion of the NCAA Tournament to 64 teams in 1985, Heathcote returned the Spartans, led by the future MSU all-time scoring leader, Scott Skiles, to the Tournament with a fifth-place finish in the Big Ten. MSU again reached the NCAA Tournament the following year after finishing third in the Big Ten with a 23–8 record. Led by Skiles and Darryl Johnson, they advanced to the Sweet Sixteen before losing. Heathcote returned MSU to postseason play in 1989, led by Steve Smith, losing the third place game of the NIT. Smith returned the Spartans to the NCAA Tournament in 1990 as a No. 1 seed. The Spartans narrowly avoided losing to No. 16-seeded Murray State, needing overtime to advance to the Second Round. They again narrowly advanced to the Sweet Sixteen before losing to Georgia Tech in overtime. The Spartans again made an appearance in the 1991 NCAA Tournament. The Spartans finished in third place in Big Ten play and received an at-large bid as a No. 5 seed to the Tournament where they beat Green Bay on a buzzer beater by Steve Smith. In the Second Round, they lost to No. 10 Utah in double overtime. The Spartans returned to the NCAA Tournament in 1992, marking three straight years in the NCAA Tournament, an MSU record at that time. Another third-place finish in Big Ten play resulted in an at-large bid as a No. 5 seed to the NCAA Tournament. There they beat Missouri State before losing to Cincinnati in the Second Round in a rematch of an earlier Spartan win. A trip to the NIT in 1993 broke the streak, but Heathcote again led MSU to the NCAA Tournament in 1994. A fourth- place finish the Big Ten led to an at-large bid to the Tournament as a No. 7 seed. Led by Shawn Respert, they beat Seton Hall in the First Round before losing to second-seeded Duke in the Second Round. In his final year at MSU in 1995, Heathcote returned the Spartans to the NCAA Tournament for the fifth time in six years. A second-place finish in Big Ten play resulted in an at- large bid to the Tournament as a No. 3 seed where they were surprised by No. 14th-seeded Weber State in the First Round. The game marked the final game of All-American Shawn Respert's career at MSU. Heathcote stepped down in 1995 after 19 seasons at Michigan State. He finished with nine NCAA appearances, three Big Ten championships and three NIT appearances. He hand-picked his successor, Tom Izzo. “I had to orchestrate the hiring of Tom through (trustees) Bob Weiss and Joel Ferguson and the president (Peter McPherson) because most people wanted to open it up and see who would apply. And then some wanted a black coach,” Heathcote said in 2014. "But I felt Tom deserved the job because he'd been there 12 years, and he'd gotten better in the job every single year. Tom was a tireless worker and had a passion for the game. So that combination, in my mind, I knew he was going to be a good coach." In 2001, the National Association of Basketball Coaches awarded him with the Golden Anniversary Award for 50 years of service to college basketball. Also, in 2001, he was inducted into the MSU Athletics Hall of Fame. In 2009, Heathcote was inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame. In his first year as head coach after 11 years as an assistant coach, Michigan State struggled after losing All-American Shawn Respert. The Spartans finished the season at .500 (16–16, 9–9) and in a tie for seventh place in the Big Ten. MSU received an invitation to the NIT where they defeated Washington before losing to Fresno State in the second round. The season marked the last time MSU would not finish with a winning record. In 1997, the Spartans welcomed new recruits Mateen Cleaves and Morris Peterson to East Lansing. Along with sophomore Antonio Smith, the three made up three-fourths of Izzo's "Flintstones" who would win the National Championship in 2000 (without Smith). In what would be a rarity for MSU in Izzo's tenure, the Spartans played no ranked teams in the non-conference season. The Spartans finished in a tie for sixth place in the conference with a record of 16–11 overall and 9–9 in conference. They received an invitation to the NIT for the second consecutive year. MSU beat George Washington in the first round and lost in the second round to Florida State. As of 2019, this is the last year MSU failed to make the NCAA Tournament. In 1998, MSU welcomed freshman recruit Charlie Bell, the fourth of Izzo's "Flintstones" and started slow. They lost to No. 7 Temple, and suffered surprising losses to UIC and Detroit in non-conference. However, MSU would win nine of their first 10 conference games before losing to eventual conference co-champion Illinois. In January, MSU entered the AP and Coaches rankings for the first time since the end of the 1994–95 season. The Spartans finished in a tie for the conference championship, their first since 1990, with a record of 13–3 in conference play. The Spartans earned the No. 1 seed in the inaugural Big Ten Tournament, but lost their first game in the quarterfinals to Minnesota. Izzo's team received an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament as a No. 4 seed in the East Region, their first trip to the Tournament since 1995. MSU advanced to their first Sweet Sixteen since 1990 by beating Eastern Michigan and No. 8 Princeton. The Spartans were eliminated from the Tournament by No. 1 North Carolina in the Sweet Sixteen. As the 1998–99 season began, Izzo began his willingness to play anyone anywhere mantra as the Spartans played three top seven teams in their first seven games. However, MSU lost all three. MSU would recover and, after losing their first Big Ten game to No. 24 Wisconsin, the Spartans won the remaining 15 games in conference and won the Big Ten conference regular season by six games with a record of 15–1, their second consecutive Big Ten title. The Spartans won the Big Ten Tournament and earned the conference's automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. As the No. 1 seed in the Midwest region and ranked No. 2 in the country, MSU defeated Mount St. Mary's, and Mississippi to advance to their second straight Sweet Sixteen. A win over Oklahoma and Kentucky led MSU to the Final Four for the first time since 1979. However, MSU fell short in their bid for an NCAA championship, losing to Duke in the Final Four. In 1999–2000. Seniors Mateen Cleaves and Morris Peterson led the way for the Spartans as they began the season ranked No. 3 in the country. However, Cleaves sustained a stress fracture in his right foot prior to the season which forced him to miss the non-conference schedule and MSU fell to 9–4 and ranked No. 11 in the country. After Cleaves' return, MSU finished the Big Ten regular season with a 13–3 conference record and 23–7 overall while being ranked No. 2 in the country and earned a share of the Big Ten title, their third consecutive Big Ten championship. The Spartans went on to win the third annual Big Ten Tournament as the No. 2 seed, defeating No. 25 Illinois for the championship for the second consecutive year. The Spartans were awarded the No. 1 seed, their second consecutive No. 1 seed, in the Midwest Region of the NCAA Tournament. From there, the Spartans cruised to their third consecutive Sweet Sixteen with wins over Valparaiso, and Utah. MSU continued their National Championship push by reaching their second consecutive Final Four with wins over Syracuse and Iowa State. MSU won every game by double digits despite playing the best possible seed in each round. In their Final Four matchup, Michigan State faced off against fellow Big Ten foe, Wisconsin, beating them in a hard-fought game, 53–41. In the National Championship game, the Spartans triumphed over the Florida Gators 89–76, despite losing Cleaves to an ankle injury 3:42 into the second half. The win marked MSU's second National Championship in basketball and Izzo's first and only championship to date. Losing both Cleaves and Peterson to graduation following the season, MSU still began the 2000–01 season ranked No. 3 in the country. Led by sophomore Jason Richardson, freshmen Zach Randolph, and seniors Charlie Bell and Andre Hutson, the Spartans finished the non-conference schedule undefeated and ranked No.1 in the country. MSU again earned a share the Big Ten title, their fourth consecutive, with a 13–3 conference record. They suffered a surprise defeat by Penn State in the Big Ten Tournament in their attempt to win the tournament for the third consecutive year. They received their third consecutive No. 1 seed, in the South Region of the NCAA Tournament. Seeking a repeat National Championship, MSU easily dispatched Alabama State and Fresno State to reach the Sweet Sixteen for the fourth consecutive year. A win over Gonzaga and Temple led to the school's third straight trip to the Final Four. However, they were unable to repeat as National Champions, losing to Arizona in the National Semifinal. Following the season, Randolph and Richardson each left school early and declared for the NBA Draft. As a result of Randolph and Richardson's early departure, MSU struggled with Izzo's tough non-conference schedule. The Spartans lost four games, all to teams ranked in the top 25 and started the Big ten season with three straight losses. The loss to Wisconsin snapped MSU's 53-game home winning streak. Michigan State finished the conference schedule at 10–6 and in fourth place with an overall record of 19–10. MSU lost in the quarterfinals of the Big Ten Tournament to No. 23 Indiana marking the first time since 1997 that Michigan State did not win either the Big Ten regular season or tournament title. The Spartans received an at-large bid as a No. 10 seed in the NCAA Tournament and were eliminated in the First Round by NC State. Following the disappointment of an early NCAA Tournament exit, the first time Izzo's squads had not won at least one game in the NCAA Tournament, the 2002–03 team played another tough non-conference schedule. This time the Spartans faced three ranked teams, only losing one. However, they suffered four losses and finished the non-conference schedule at 8–4 and ranked No. 25 in the country. MSU began the Big Ten regular season losing four of their first six games and fell out of the rankings. The Spartans finished in a tie for third place in the Big Ten at 10–6 in conference and 18–11 overall. Michigan State beat Purdue in the Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals, but fell to Ohio State in the semifinals. The Spartans received a bid to the NCAA Tournament for the sixth consecutive year. MSU received a No. 7 seed in the South Region. A win over Colorado in the First Round was followed by a rout of No. 10 Florida to reach the Sweet Sixteen for the fifth time in six years. The Spartans defeated No. 17 Maryland to advance to the Elite Eight for the fourth time in five years. However, MSU fell to No. 5 Texas in the Regional Final. In 2004, Izzo looked to continue his dominant NCAA run. However, Izzo's penchant for touch scheduling hurt his team as they faced a murderer's row of a schedule which included three straight losses to No. 6 Duke, in overtime, to No. 14 Oklahoma at the Palace of Auburn Hills, and to No. 8 Kentucky at Ford Field in the Basketbowl. The Spartans followed this losing streak by losing two of their final four non- conference games including at No. 17 Syracuse and dropped out of the rankings. They finished the non-conference slate at 5–6. After a loss to open Big Ten play to No. 21 Wisconsin, the Spartans recovered to win seven of their next eight and six of their last seven Big Ten games. They finished in a tie for second place in the Big Ten at 12–4 and 17–10 overall. A win over Northwestern in the Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals was followed by a third loss of the season to No. 17 Wisconsin. The Spartans received a No. 7 seed in the NCAA Tournament, reaching the tournament for the seventh consecutive year. But, for the second time in three years, the Spartans were knocked out in the First Round, this time by Nevada. In 2005, the Spartans again looked to rebound from a disappointing early NCAA Tournament exit. They started the season 3–2, but cruised through the Big Ten, only losing three games, including a loss to No. 1 Illinois and finished second in conference to Illinois. MSU finished the regular season with a 13–3 conference record and 22–5 overall while being ranked No. 13 in the country. The Spartans lost in the quarterfinals in the Big Ten Tournament to Iowa. Michigan State received an at-large bid as a No. 5 seed in the Austin Regional of the NCAA Tournament, their eighth straight appearance in the Tournament under Tom Izzo. Wins over Old Dominion and Vermont led the Spartans to the Sweet Sixteen for the sixth time in eight years. In the Sweet Sixteen, the Spartans beat No. 3-ranked and No. 1-seeded Duke, which MSU had not defeated since 1958. The win marked Izzo's first win over Duke's Mike Krzyzewski (as of 2017). A double overtime victory over Kentucky sent the Spartans to their fourth Final Four in seven seasons. MSU would again fall in the Final Four, this time to No. 2-ranked and No. 1-seeded North Carolina. The 2005–06 Spartans opened the season with a loss to Hawaii before losing to No. 8 Gonzaga led by Adam Morrison in triple overtime in the Maui Classic. Despite this, MSU ended the non-conference schedule at 12–2 and ranked No. 7 in the country. Early Big Ten losses followed by late season losses in conference left the Spartans 8–8 in the Big Ten. In the Big Ten Tournament, MSU defeated Purdue and No. 9 Illinois before being defeated by No. 20 Iowa in the semifinals. The Spartans received an at-large bid as a No. 5 seed in the NCAA Tournament, their ninth consecutive trip to the Tournament. In the Tournament, they lost to eventual Final Four Cinderella, George Mason, in the First Round. Following the season, Shannon Brown declared for the NBA Draft, leaving the Spartans one year prior to graduation, just the fourth player under Izzo to declare early. The 2006–07 Spartans began the season 13–2, but were not ranked in the polls. A roller coaster Big Ten season resulted in MSU finishing 8–8 with a win against No. 1 Wisconsin which likely assured the Spartans a trip to the NCAA Tournament. MSU lost to Wisconsin after beating Northwestern in the Big Ten Tournament. The Spartans received an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament for the 10th consecutive year and beat Marquette, coached by former Izzo assistant Tom Crean, in the First Round of the Tournament. A loss to No. 3 North Carolina in the Second Round ended the season. In 2008, MSU finished the non-conference schedule 12–1 and ranked No. 6 in the country with wins over No. 24 NC State, No. 20 BYU, and No. 4 Texas. A hot start to the Big Ten schedule, winning six of seven, was followed by four losses in their next seven which left them in fourth place in the Big Ten with a record of 12–6. As the No. 4 seed tn the Big Ten Tournament, they beat Ohio State before losing to No. 8 Wisconsin. The Spartans received an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament to mark their 11th consecutive trip to the Tournament under Tom Izzo. As a No. 5 seed, the Spartans beat Temple, and Pittsburgh to move on to the Sweet Sixteen for the seventh time in 11 years. A rout by a Derrick Rose-led Memphis ended the season. By the beginning of the 2008–09 season, Izzo's teams, though having great success in the NCAA Tournament, had not won the Big Ten regular season title since 2001. A solid non-conference start left them at 9–2 and were ranked No. 10 in the country. MSU routed the Big Ten, winning their first five conference games, their best start in conference since 1978. MSU finished the conference season well, winning the Big Ten championship by four games with a 15–3 record, 25–5 overall, and ranked No. 7 in the country. Following the conclusion of the regular season, Kalin Lucas was named Big Ten Player of the Year and Tom Izzo was voted Big Ten Coach of the Year. As the No. 1 seed in the Big Ten Tournament, the Spartans defeated Minnesota. However, Michigan State's hopes for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament likely vanished as they were defeated by Ohio State, 82–70. Michigan State received an at-large bid as the No. 2 seed in the Midwest Region of the NCAA Tournament, their 12th straight appearance in the Tournament. With wins over Robert Morris and USC, the Spartans were able to advance to the Sweet Sixteen, the school's eighth trip to the Sweet Sixteen in the previous 12 years. MSU advanced to the Elite Eight with a win over No. 14-ranked and No. 3-seeded Kansas. In the Elite Eight, the Spartans defeated Louisville to advance to Final Four in nearby Detroit, only 90 miles from MSU's campus. The Spartans defeated UConn in the national semifinals to earn their third-ever trip to the National Championship game. With Izzo 1–0 in championship games and the Spartans 2–0 all-time, North Carolina scored more points than any team had ever scored in the first half of an NCAA championship game, scoring 55 and blowing out the Spartans 89–72, marking the Spartans first ever loss in the National Championship game. In 2010, the Spartans finished the non-conference schedule at 10–3. The Spartans began the Big Ten season on fire, winning their first nine games and went on to earn a share of the Big Ten championship with a 14–4 and ranked 11th in the country. As the No. 3 seed in the Big Ten Tournament, they were defeated in overtime by No. 6 seed Minnesota in the quarterfinals. The Spartans received an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament, their 13th straight appearance, earning a No. 5 seed in the Midwest Region. A win over New Mexico State and Maryland led MSU to the Sweet Sixteen for the ninth time in 13 years. However, Kalin Lucas suffered a serious knee injury and would miss the remainder of the Tournament. MSU did not seem to miss him and would go on to beat Northern Iowa and Tennessee to advance to their second consecutive Final Four and sixth in the prior 12 years. In the National semifinal, they were defeated by Butler by two points. The 2010–11 Spartans finished the non-conference portion of their season 8–4 and ranked No. 20 in the country. However, the Spartans were inconsistent in conference play, suffering nine losses and finishing 9–9 in conference and in danger of missing the NCAA Tournament. After beating Iowa and blowing out No. 9 Purdue in the Big Ten Tournament, the Spartans fell to Penn State in the semifinals. The blowout win over Purdue likely ensured the Spartans inclusion in the NCAA Tournament. Michigan State received a No. 10 seed in the Southeast Region of the NCAA Tournament, their 14th straight appearance, but the lowest seeding the Spartans had received in the NCAA Tournament since 2002. MSU fell behind early to UCLA in the Second Round (formerly known as the First Round) and made a furious rally, but fell short, losing by two points. The loss marked only the fourth time MSU failed to win a game in their 14 trips to the NCAA Tournament under Tom Izzo. The 2011–12 Spartans, led by senior Draymond Green, started the season 0–2. However, MSU won the next 15 games in a row to jump into the top ten in the polls. A loss in the regular season finale at home to No. 10 Ohio State meant the Spartans would share the Big Ten regular season championship with Ohio State and Michigan, all of which finished the Big Ten season with a 13–5 conference record. In that loss to Ohio State, key freshman reserve, Branden Dawson, tore his ACL, ending his season. As the No. 1 seed in the Big Ten Tournament, The Spartans beat Iowa, No. 14 Wisconsin, and No. 7 Ohio State to win the Tournament championship, their first Tournament championship since 2000. Draymond Green earned Big Ten Player of the Year honors, the fifth time a player had done so under Tom Izzo. Izzo was also named Big Ten Coach of the Year. MSU received a No. 1 seed in the West Region of the NCAA Tournament, where they beat LIU–Brooklyn in the First Round behind Green's triple-double. The Spartans overcame Saint Louis in the Second Round to advance to the Sweet Sixteen. This marked the 10th time in 15 seasons that the Spartans advanced to at least the Sweet Sixteen. The Spartans, missing Dawson and struggling offensively, became the first No. 1 seed to lose in the Tournament, falling to No. 17 and No. 4-seeded Louisville. MSU began the 2012–13 season 11–2 and ranked No. 18 in the country. The Spartans remained ranked the entire year while finishing tied for second in the Big Ten with Ohio State, with a 13–5 conference record and ranked No. 10 in the country. As the No. 3 seed in the Big Ten Tournament, they beat Iowa in the quarterfinals, but fell to eventual tournament champion, Ohio State, in the semifinals. The Spartans received a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament, their 16th straight appearance in the tournament. MSU defeated Valparaiso and Memphis to advance to their fifth Sweet Sixteen in six years and their 11th trip in 16 years. However, the Spartans were defeated by Duke, who was led by Seth Curry, in the Sweet Sixteen. Michigan State began the 2013–14 season looking to continue Tom Izzo's Final Four streak: every player who had played four years for Izzo had made at least one Final Four. After beating No. 1 Kentucky in the Champions Classic, the Spartans moved to the No. 1 spot in the country. The Spartans held the No. 1 spot for three weeks before losing to North Carolina in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge. The Spartans cruised through the remaining non- conference schedule, finishing 11–1, to begin the Big Ten season ranked No. 5 in the country. The Spartans won their first seven conference games, but due to injuries to Keith Appling, Adriean Payne, and Brendan Dawson, MSU lost five of their last eight conference games to finish in a second-place tie with Wisconsin at 12–6. The Spartans, finally healthy and at full strength, beat Northwestern, No. 12 Wisconsin, and No. 8 Michigan to capture the Big Ten Tournament championship. This marked Michigan State's fourth tournament championship. Michigan State earned a No. 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament's East Region. With wins against Delaware and Harvard, they advanced to the Sweet Sixteen for the third straight year and the 12th time in 17 years. They defeated No. 1-seeded Virginia in the Sweet Sixteen to advance to the Elite Eight for the first time since 2010. There they fell to No. 7 seed and eventual National Champion, Connecticut. With the loss, the Tom Izzo's Final Four streak ended. Shortly after the season, Gary Harris declared for the NBA Draft. In 2015, MSU started the season well, but with a shocking loss to Texas Southern at home in overtime, finished the non-conference season at 9–4 MSU rallied late in the Big Ten season, winning six of their last eight conference games. MSU finished the season in a tie for third place in conference and got hot in the Big Ten Tournament beating Ohio State and No. 8 Maryland, before losing to No. 6 Wisconsin for the tournament title. The Spartans received an at-large bid in the NCAA Tournament as a No. 7 seed in the East Region. The bid was MSU's 18th straight trip to the NCAA Tournament. MSU beat Georgia in the Second Round and surprised No. 2-seeded and No. 6-ranked Virginia in the Third Round. With the win, the Spartans advanced to their fourth straight Sweet Sixteen and seventh Sweet Sixteen in eight years. Wins over Oklahoma and Louisville in overtime gave MSU a trip to their seventh Final Four under Tom Izzo. In the Final Four, the Spartans fell to the eventual National Champions for the second straight season, losing a rematch of their Champions Classic game to Duke in the National semifinal. With senior Denzel Valentine leading the 2015–16 Spartans, MSU went undefeated in the non-conference with the school's best start in history and moved to No. 1 in the polls. However, Valentine suffered a knee injury in late December and would miss four games as MSU lost its first game of the season in Big Ten play and fell from the top spot in the polls. Upon Valentine's return, MSU continued to struggle, losing four of their first seven conference games and marking their worst conference start since 2003. The Spartans recovered well, losing only one more conference game and finished 13–5 in conference, good enough for second place in the Big Ten. MSU's 26 regular season wins tied the most for a Michigan State team in the regular season. Following the regular season, USA Today named Valentine National Player of the Year. The Big Ten also announced that Valentine was the Big Ten's Player of the Year. As the No. 2 seed in the Big Ten Tournament, MSU defeated Ohio State for a third time on the season before dispatching Maryland and Purdue to win the Tournament championship. With the win, MSU set the record for most Big Ten Tournament championships with five (Ohio State has also won five, but one has been vacated due to NCAA violations). MSU, ranked No. 2 in the country, learned that it would not receive a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, instead receiving a No. 2 seed in the Midwest bracket. This marked the 19th consecutive year the Spartans made the NCAA Tournament. Despite receiving the No. 2 seed, MSU was considered by some the favorite to with the NCAA Championship. However, MSU was shocked by No. 15-seeded Middle Tennessee in the first round in what some argued was the biggest upset in NCAA Tournament history at the time. The 2016–17 Spartans were decimated by departures from the prior year as seniors Denzel Valentine, Bryn Forbes, and Matt Costello all graduated and moved to the NBA. Freshman Deyonta Davis also declared his eligibility for the NBA after the year and sophomores Javon Bess and Marvin Clark transferred out of the program. In all, five of the Spartans' top six scorers from 2015–16 did not return. In response, MSU welcomed their most-heralded recruiting class ever as four top-50 ranked players entered the program: Miles Bridges, Joshua Langford, Cassius Winston, and Nick Ward. A young team would look to graduate transfer Ben Carter and seniors Gavin Schilling and Eron Harris to fill the holes left by departing players. However, Carter and Schilling suffered season-ending knee injuries before the season began and Harris would suffer one late in the season. As a result, MSU struggled up front as Ward at 6' 8" was the tallest on the team. Former walk- on Kenny Goins became the backup big man at 6' 6". Following losses in their first two games to top-10 teams, MSU suffered two other losses to top-20 teams. Bridges missed seven games with a knee injury near the end of the non- conference slate and the Spartans, who started the season ranked as high as 10 in some polls, entered Big Ten play with an 8–5 record. Izzo would lament his early-season schedule which involved trips to Hawaii, New York, and the Bahamas when his young team wouldn't get needed practice time. Wins to start conference play over Minnesota (twice) and Northwestern, which would prove to be two of their better wins on the season, and Bridges's return had MSU at 4–1 in conference play. However, inconsistency haunted the Spartans as their failure to win road games left the Spartans at 8–5 in conference play with a visit to conference leaders, Purdue. MSU was handled easily by the Boilermakers and Harris suffered his knee injury which appeared to spell the end of MSU's 19-year NCAA Tournament streak. However, Bridges, who averaged over 16 points and eight rebounds on the season, and Ward who averaged over 13 points and six rebounds, led the Spartans, they knocked off ranked Wisconsin to seal a trip to the NCAA Tournament. A 10–8 conference record left the Spartans in a tie for fifth place. A win over Penn State in the Big Ten Tournament preceded a loss to Minnesota, but was enough for the Spartans to get an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament for the 20th consecutive year. As a No. 9 seed, a win over Miami in the first round led to a loss to No. 1-seeded Kansas and an end to the season. Bridges finished the season with perhaps the second-best freshman season in MSU history (behind Magic Johnson): 16.9 points, 8.3 rebounds, 2.1 assists, and 1.5 blocks per game. Surprisingly, Bridges opted to not enter the NBA Draft and returned to Michigan State for his sophomore year in 2017–18. With newcomer Jaren Jackson Jr., a consensus top-25 player, joining the team, the Spartans were picked by several publications as the No. 1 team in the country. They began the season ranked No. 2 behind Duke. After a loss to Duke in the second game of the season, the Spartans won the Victory Bracket of the PK–80 Tournament holding No. 9-ranked North Carolina to a school-record low for shooting percentage as they shot 24.6% from the field, including 5.6% from three-point land. The Spartans won 14 straight games, and ascended to No. 1 in the country. A road loss to surprise Big Ten contender Ohio State followed by a home loss to rival Michigan dropped MSU in the rankings and shook the team's confidence. However, the team rebounded well, finishing the season by winning their last 12 regular season games, including a win over Big Ten co-leader Purdue as Bridges took the ball and hit a three-pointer to win the game. On February 17, 2018 while playing at Northwestern, the Spartans overcame a 27-point deficit to beat the Wildcats, at that time, the fifth largest comeback all-time in Division I history. The Spartans finished with a school-record 16 Big Ten wins and their first outright regular season Big Ten title since 2009. The team also finished 28–3, a record for regular season wins. The Spartans fell again to their rival Michigan in the semifinals of the Big Ten Tournament and received only a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament due to their low strength of schedule. The NCAA trip marked the school's 21st consecutive trip to the Tournament, but following a win in the First Round over Bucknell, the Spartans fell to 11th- seeded Syracuse marking the third consecutive year and first time under Izzo that the Spartans had failed to reach the Sweet Sixteen in a three-year period. The Spartans led the nation in field goal defense, rebounding margin, and blocks. Freshman Jaren Jackson Jr. set the single-season MSU record for blocks and was named the Big Ten Freshman of the Year. Bridges was named first-team All-Big Ten and second team All-American. For much of the season, the on-court play was shrouded by reports that surfaced that Tom Izzo's program had covered up sexual assault allegations ten years prior. Izzo refused to comment on the reports due to an ongoing investigation by several agencies including Michigan Attorney General's office and the United States Education Department., but repeatedly said he had no intention of leaving Michigan State and they he cooperated with all investigations including the previous allegation of sexual assault in 2010. In August 2018 the NCAA cleared Izzo in his handling of the sexual assault allegations. The school was implicated tangentially to the FBI-college basketball scandal as reports surfaced that Bridges had been paid to attend Michigan State, among other allegations. MSU conducted an investigation and presented their findings that the allegations were false to the NCAA, who cleared Bridges, ruling him eligible to play. Following Bridges and Jackson's departures to the NBA, the 2018–19 team began the season ranked No. 10 in the country. The season was dominated by injuries to the Spartans. Starting guard Joshua Langford only played 13 games before missing the rest of the season with a foot injury. Key starter Matt McQuaid missed three games with injury and key reserve Kyle Ahrens missed nine games with back and ankle injuries. With five games remaining in the Big Ten regular season, big man Nick Ward suffered a hairline fracture in his shooting hand and missed the rest of the regular season. He returned in time for the postseason, but was not the same as he struggled to return to the lineup. Despite this, the Spartans earned a share of the Big Ten regular season championship with Purdue and defeated arch-rival Michigan twice in the regular season. Led by Big Ten Player of the Year Cassius Winston, the Spartans also won the Big Ten Tournament for the sixth time, again defeating Michigan in the championship game to go 3–0 against their rival. As the No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament, the teams 22nd straight appearance in the Tournament, the Spartans defeated Bradley and Minnesota to advance to their first Sweet Sixteen in four years. In the Sweet Sixteen, the Spartans blew out No. 3 seed LSU to face top-seeded Duke in the Elite Eight. Despite having multiple first round NBA Draft picks, the Spartans knocked off the Blue Devils to earn a trip to the school's 10th Final Four and eighth under Izzo. The win over Duke improved Izzo's record to 2–11 against Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski. In the Final Four, the Spartans were upset by Texas Tech, ending the school's bid for a third national championship. Winston led the Spartans, averaging 18.8 points and 7.5 assists per game. Three Michigan State coaches have been inducted into the Hall of Fame. They are Pete Newell (National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame, Class of 2006), Jud Heathcote (National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame, Class of 2009), and Tom Izzo (Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, Class of 2016). Since 1976, the Spartans have had only two head basketball coaches, Heathcote and Izzo. Heathcote (1976–1995) coached the Spartans for 19 seasons before retiring following the 1994–95 season. His hand-picked successor, Izzo, an assistant with MSU since 1983, completed his 24th year as head coach of the Spartans in 2019. On November 28, 2009, Izzo passed Heathcote's mark of 340 career wins by beating UMass 106–68. Izzo now leads all MSU basketball coaches in wins with 606 through 2019. Izzo is second all time in Big Ten wins (288 through 2019), trailing only Bob Knight. Of all MSU coaches who have headed the Spartans basketball squad in at least a dozen games, Izzo is second in winning percentage and no MSU coach tops him since 1910. Former coach George E. Denman won all 11 games he coached between 1901 and 1903 and Chester L. Brewer won 70 of 95 games from 1903 to 1910. Jud Heathcote won three Big Ten titles in his 19 years at MSU. His teams appeared in nine NCAA Tournaments, four Sweet Sixteens, one Elite Eight, one Final Four and won one National Championship. After his early success with Magic Johnson and company, Heathcote finished his career strong, appearing in five NCAA Tournaments in his final six years. However, he never advanced past the Sweet Sixteen after winning the championship in 1979. His teams also appeared in three NITs reaching the NIT Final Four in 1989. Heathcote was named Big Ten Coach of the Year in 1978 and 1986. Heathcote was inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame, Class of 2009. Tom Izzo worked as an assistant under Heathcote for 12 years prior to being named his successor. Other assistants who worked under Heathcote went on to head coaching positions: Don Monson (Idaho and Oregon), Bill Berry (San Jose State), Mike Deane (Siena, Marquette, Lamar, and Wagner), Jim Boylan (Chicago Bulls and Milwaukee Bucks), Jim Boylen (Utah), Stan Joplin (Toledo), and Brian Gregory (Dayton, Georgia Tech, and South Florida). Record by season under Heathcote: See Michigan State Spartans men's basketball seasons Since 1995, the team has been coached by Tom Izzo, who has an overall record of 606–232 as the head coach at Michigan State. Izzo coached the Spartans to their second national championship in 2000 with an 89–76 victory over Florida. Izzo has turned Michigan State into a perennial basketball powerhouse. Izzo is a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Izzo has guided the Spartans to eight NCAA Final Fours since 1999, an accomplishment unmatched by any other college basketball program during that span. Izzo has never had a losing season at MSU and has also appeared in a postseason tournament every year he has headed the MSU basketball program: two years in the NIT and 22 straight appearances in the NCAA Tournament. His teams have won nine Big Ten regular-season championships, six Big Ten tournament championships and have reached the Sweet Sixteen 20 times, the Elite Eight 14 times, the Final Four eight times, and played in two NCAA Championship games, in which they won the 2000 NCAA National Championship Tournament. Izzo has received numerous awards including the 1998 Associated Press National Coach of the Year, the 1998 Basketball News National Coach of the Year, the 1998 United States Basketball Writers Association Henry Iba Coach of the Year Award (1998), three-time Big Ten Conference Coach of the Year (1998, 2009, 2012), the 1998 Basketball Times Mideast Coach of the Year, the 1999 Basketball News Coach of the Year Award, two-time National Association of Basketball Coaches Coach of the Year Award (2001, 2012) and the 2005 Clair Bee Award. Izzo also helped his assistants secure head coaching jobs across the basketball world. Three current Division I head coaches served as assistants under Izzo: Brian Gregory coached for Dayton and Georgia Tech and is the current head coach at South Florida, Mark Montgomery is the current head coach at Northern Illinois, and Tom Crean was head coach at Indiana for nine years and Marquette for nine years and is the current head coach at Georgia. Current Izzo assistant coach Mike Garland spent three seasons as head coach at Cleveland State following an initial seven-year stint at MSU. Former assistant Stan Heath was head coach at Kent State, Arkansas, and South Florida. Doug Wojcik was the head coach at Tulsa and College of Charleston. On March 15, 2019 Tom Izzo won his 600th game. Under Tom Izzo: The Spartans have appeared in 33 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournaments, with a current streak of 22 straight years, with two NCAA basketball national championships. They have appeared in ten Final Fours and sport a 69–32 all- time NCAA tournament record. The Spartans have appeared in the NCAA Tournament 33 times. Their combined record is 69–32. The NCAA began seeding the tournament with the 1979 edition. The Spartans have received a No. 1 seed in five Tournaments. Their average seed in the NCAA Tournament is a 4.8. They have been a No. 5 seed the most times (six). The lowest seed the Spartans have received in the Tournament is a 10 (three times). Prior to seeding in NCAA Tournaments, MSU appeared in the 1957, 1959, and 1978 NCAA Tournaments. Since 1979, the Spartans have failed to qualify for the tournament 11 times. They have a current streak of 22 straight appearances in the tournament (as of 2019). * The Spartans have appeared in 33 NCAA Tournaments, reaching the Sweet Sixteen 20 times, the Elite Eight 14 times, the Final Four ten times, and the National Championship game three times. They have reached the Final Four three times as a No. 1 seed, three times as a No. 2 seed, twice as a No. 5 seed, and once as a No. 7 seed. They won the National Championship as a No. 2 seed in 1979 and as a No. 1 seed in 2000. The Spartans have appeared in the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) five times. Their combined record is 6–6. Michigan State has won 15 Big Ten regular-season championships, the sixth-most in Big Ten history. Michigan State has won six Big Ten Tournament championships since its inception in 1998, the most championships in the Big Ten. The Spartans have appeared in seven championship games, only losing the 2015 championship to Wisconsin. Michigan State has appeared in the quarterfinals of every Big Ten Tournament. Michigan State only has losing records against two Big Ten teams. Denzel Valentine – AP, USA Today, Sports Illustrated, Basketball Times, NABC, NBC Sports (2016), Draymond Green – NABC (2012), Shawn Respert – Sporting News, NABC (1995), Scott Skiles – Basketball Times (1986) Earvin Johnson (1979), Mateen Cleaves (2000) Jay Vincent (1981), Scott Skiles (1986), Shawn Respert (1995), Mateen Cleaves (1998, 1999), Morris Peterson (2000), Kalin Lucas (2009), Draymond Green (2012), Denzel Valentine (2016), Cassius Winston (2019) Jud Heathcote (1978, 1986), Tom Izzo (1998, 2009, 2012) Gary Harris (2013), Miles Bridges (2017), Jaren Jackson Jr. (2018) Ken Redfield (1990), Eric Snow (1995), Travis Walton (2009), Jaren Jackson Jr. (2018) Spartans formerly or currently in the NBA include: Maurice Ager, Mathew Aitch, Robert Anderegg, Alan Anderson, Keith Appling, Chet Aubuchon, Charlie Bell, Robert Brannum, Miles Bridges, Shannon Brown, Edward Burton, Mateen Cleaves, Matt Costello Deyonta Davis, Paul Davis, Branden Dawson, Jamie Feick, Al Ferrari, Bryn Forbes, Terry Furlow, Draymond Green, Johnny Green, Gary Harris, Jaren Jackson Jr., Darryl Johnson Earvin Johnson, Ken Johnson, Greg Kelser, Kalin Lucas, Matthew Mazza, Anthony Miller, Adreian Payne, Mike Peplowski, Morris Peterson, Zach Randolph, Shawn Respert Jason Richardson, Ralph Simpson, Scott Skiles, Steve Smith, Eric Snow, Matt Steigenga, Denzel Valentine, Jay Vincent, Sam Vincent, Horace Walker, Kevin Willis 60 total NBA draft picks., 21 first round picks., 1 overall No. 1 pick – Magic Johnson., 8 top ten picks. Tom Izzo's teams have worn many different styles of uniform during his 21 years at Michigan State. Nike, Inc. started making jerseys for the team at the start of the 2000–01 season. The current home jersey, introduced as part of a rebranding effort by the athletic department in April 2010, is white with green uniform numbers and a green custom font "SPARTANS" across the chest. The road jersey is green with white uniform numbers and a white custom font "SPARTANS" across the chest. The Spartans do not currently wear an official alternate uniform but the team has worn a silver alternate, a 1979 throwback, and a MAC (Michigan Agricultural College) uniform in the past. The team also wore specially-made camouflage jerseys for the 2011 Carrier Classic, played on a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier against North Carolina. Beginning in the 2014–15 season, the Spartans frequently wore their 1979 throwback jerseys as their home uniform. On January 23, 2016, MSU wore specially designed "Mean Green" uniforms. During the 2016–17 season, the Spartans frequently wore the MAC throwback uniforms at home. The Spartans used the College Gymnasium prior to moving to Demonstration Hall for 10 years. The Spartans used this building, still in use on campus today, as their home from 1930 to the opening of Jenison Fieldhouse in 1940. The arena opened in 1940 and was named for alumnus Frederick Cowles Jenison, whose estate, along with PWAP funds, funded the building. The building was the home of the Spartans from 1940 to 1989 when the Breslin Center opened. The venue is most famous for its 1979 NCAA champion basketball team, which included Earvin "Magic" Johnson, and was coached by Jud Heathcote. Jenison also hosted the 1963 NCAA Tournament's Mideast Regionals. A plaque outside the arena commemorates one of the 1963 regional semifinals; the "Game of Change," in which a segregated Mississippi State team played and lost to the eventual national champion, an integrated Loyola team. The losing Maroons (now known as the Bulldogs) had defied a court order prohibiting them from leaving the state to play an integrated team. The game is now seen as a watershed moment in the intersection of civil rights and sports during the Civil Rights Movement. The building is still in use on campus today. The Spartans play home games at the Jack Breslin Student Events Center on campus. The arena is commonly referred to as "Breslin" and "the Bres", and was opened in 1989. It is named for Jacweir "Jack" Breslin, an MSU alumnus, former athlete and administrator, who first began pushing for the arena in 1969. Its capacity is 14,797 seats, and the stadium superseded Jenison Fieldhouse. The arena is currently undergoing a $50 million renovation to improve the visitor experience and to create a Michigan State University Basketball Hall of History. The arena's current basketball court is the same floor where the Spartans won the 2000 NCAA Tournament, which was at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis. The school purchased the floor from the NCAA and Final Four floor installer Horner Flooring after the title game. A plaque was installed on the baseline near the Michigan State tunnel to commemorate the floor's role in the school's history. The Breslin Center is home to the Izzone, a large student section named after Coach Izzo, the basketball team's head coach since 1995. The student section had been named Spartan Spirits and Jud's Jungle prior to Izzo's prominence at the school. The Izzone routinely gets mentioned in discussions of the nation's top student fan sections, and in 2006 was ranked as the 4th-best in the country. The section helped cheer the Spartans to a 53-game home win streak between 1998 and 2002 and also a 28-game winning streak from 2007 and 2009. The arena is undergoing a $50 million renovation to improve the visitor experience and to create a Michigan State University Basketball Hall of History which is scheduled to be completed by June 2018. Visual history of MSU Basketball by MSUAA, http://www.finalfouru.com/ The Michigan Wolverines Men's Basketball team is the intercollegiate men's basketball program representing the University of Michigan. The school competes in the Big Ten Conference in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The Wolverines play home basketball games at the Crisler Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Michigan has won one NCAA Championship as well as two National Invitation Tournaments (NIT), fourteen Big Ten Conference titles and two Big Ten Tournament titles. In addition, it has "won" an NIT title and "won" a Big Ten Tournament that were vacated due to NCAA sanctions. The team is coached by Juwan Howard. Michigan has had 31 All- Americans, selected 44 times. Eight of these have been consensus All- Americans, which are Cazzie Russell (two times), Rickey Green, Gary Grant, Chris Webber, Trey Burke, as well as Harry Kipke, Richard Doyle and Bennie Oosterbaan (two-times) who were retroactively selected by the Helms Foundation. Twelve All-Americans have been at least two-time honorees. Russell was the only three-time All-American. Michigan basketball players have been successful in professional basketball. Fifty-eight have been drafted into the National Basketball Association (NBA); twenty-six of those were first round draft picks, including both Cazzie Russell and Chris Webber who were drafted first overall. The 1990 NBA draft in which Rumeal Robinson was selected 10th, Loy Vaught was selected 13th, and Terry Mills was selected 16th made Michigan the third of only ten schools that have ever had three or more players selected in the first round of the same draft. Five players have gone on to become NBA champions for a total of nine times and eight players have become NBA All-Stars a total of 18 times. Rudy Tomjanovich coached both the 1994 and 1995 NBA Finals Champions. Glen Rice is one of only nine basketball players to have won a state high school championship, NCAA title and NBA championship. During the 1990s Michigan endured an NCAA violations scandal, described as involving one of the largest amounts of illicit money in NCAA history, when Ed Martin loaned four players a reported total of $616,000. Due to NCAA sanctions, records from the 1992 Final Four, the 1992–93 season, and 1995–99 seasons have been vacated. Throughout this article asterisks denote awards, records and honors that have been vacated. All-time Wins – 1,515, All-time Winning Percentage – .592, NCAA National Championships – 1, NCAA Final Fours – 6 (2 more vacated), NCAA Elite Eight – 13, NCAA Sweet Sixteen – 15, NCAA Tournament Appearances – 25, NCAA Tournament Wins – 54, #1 Seeds in NCAA Tournament – 2, Conference Regular Season Championships – 14, Conference Tournament Championships – 2, 30 Win Seasons – 4 (1 more vacated), 20 Win Seasons – 26, Weeks Ranked #1 In AP Poll – 22 As a result of public and alumni demand for a basketball team, Michigan fielded a team of members of the then-current student body and achieved a 1–4 record for the 1908–09 season. However, after three years of demanding a basketball program, the student body did not attend the games and the program was terminated due to low attendance. Basketball returned in 1917 in what was considered the inaugural season of varsity basketball. The team was coached by Elmer Mitchell who instituted the intramural sports program at Michigan. The team finished 6–12 overall (0–10, Big Ten). The following year Mitchell led the team to a 16–8 (5–5) record. E. J. Mather coached the team to three Big Ten titles in his nine seasons as coach. After inheriting Mitchell's team, which he led to a 10–13 overall (3–9, Big Ten) record during the 1919–20 season, he led the team to an 18–4 overall (8–4, Big Ten) record during the 1920–21 season. This 1921 team won its first eight and last eight games to tie the Wisconsin Badgers and Purdue Boilermakers for the Big Ten title. The team won back-to-back championships in 1925–26 and 1926–27. The 1926 squad, which was captained by Richard Doyle who became the team's first All-American, tied with Purdue, the Iowa Hawkeyes and Indiana Hoosiers for the conference championship. The 1927 team had a new All- American, Bennie Oosterbaan, and won the school's first back-to-back championships and first outright championship with a 14–3 overall (10–2, Big Ten) record. Mather died after a lengthy battle with cancer in August 1928. George F. Veenker compiled the highest overall and highest Big Ten winning percentages of any coach in school history during his three years as coach. He earned 1st(tied), 3rd and 2nd(tied) finishes during his three seasons, which included the 1928–29 conference championship. During Veenker's first season his team compiled a 13–3 overall (10–2, Big Ten) record to win the conference, and Veenker continues to be the only coach in school history to win a conference championship in his first season. The championship team, which finished tied with Wisconsin, was captained by the school's third All-American Ernie McCoy. Veenker resigned to become the Iowa State Cyclones football head coach. Franklin Cappon had a long history of association with Michigan athletics starting with his service as a four-time letterman in football and basketball from 1919 to 1923. In 1928, he became assistant football and basketball coach and in 1929 he served as Fielding H. Yost's assistant Athletic Director. Although the highlight of Cappon's tenure as coach was a 16–4 (9–3) third place 1936–37 Big Ten finish, he coached John Townsend who in his 1937–38 senior season became last All-American for at least 10 years. The team finished third in two other seasons with less impressive records of 10–8 overall (8–4, Big Ten) in 1932–33 and 15–5 overall (7–5, Big Ten) 1935–36, and Cappon's overall record was 78–57 overall (44–40, Big Ten). A notable captain during the Cappon era was 1933–34 captain Ted Petoskey, a two-time football All-American end and eventual Major League Baseball player. In 1938 Michigan coaching duties were assumed by one of its greatest athletes. Bennie Oosterbaan had been an All-American in both football and basketball and held various coaching positions at Michigan in both of those sports as well as baseball. In basketball, he implemented a fast-paced attack as coach, and his teams' best overall record was 13–7 in 1939–40. That season he tied with his final season for his best Big Ten record at 6–6. He resigned after eight seasons to concentrate on his football coaching duties. Under Ozzie Cowles, during the 1947–48 season, Michigan ended the longest (19 years) consecutive year period without a conference championship in school history. They also became the first contestants in the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament during Cowles second of two seasons. The 1947–48 team posted a 16–6 overall (10–2, Big Ten) record. This team also posted the first undefeated home performance in school history with a 9–0 overall (6–0, Big Ten) record. Ernie McCoy became the second former All-American Wolverine player to coach the team. Like Oosterbaan before him, he became a football and baseball coach at Michigan. He also served as assistant Athletic Director under Fritz Crisler. During his four seasons as basketball coach, Michigan's best finish was during the 1948–49 season when they finished 15–6 overall (7–5, Big Ten) and earned a third place Big Ten Conference finish. He coached Michigan's first All-Big Ten basketball players that season in Pete Elliot and captain Bob Harrison who were both selected to the first team. Harrison returned the following season as the first repeat first-team All-Big Ten basketball player and Elliot was a second-team honoree. McCoy served as a football scout at the same time. Bill Perigo took over the Michigan coaching job after having served three seasons as Western Michigan basketball coach. Despite previous success as a conference basketball champion coach at Western and subsequent success as a Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) champion basketball coach, his Michigan teams endured several mediocre seasons. His best Big Ten records came in 1956–57 and 1958–59 when his teams compiled 8–6 conference records. The latter team was tied for second in the conference and was 15–7 overall (8–6, Big Ten). It also had Perigo's only first-team All-Big Ten athlete in M. C. Burton. Team captain and two-time football consensus All-American Ron Kramer was third-team All-Big Ten in 1957 after being second-team All-Big Ten in both 1955 and 1956. Dave Strack, a former team 1945–46 captain, had become the freshman basketball team coach in 1948 and later had become a variety assistant to Perigo. He led the team to three consecutive Big Ten Championships from 1963–66 and a third- place finish in the 1964 NCAA tournament. During 1964–65 the team compiled a 24–4 overall (13–1, Big Ten) record while completing an undefeated 11–0 overall (7–0, Big Ten) home season and was the national runner-up, falling to John Wooden's UCLA in the 1965 championship game. Strack earned United Press International (UPI) National Coach of the Year honors. The team ended the season listed number one in both the UPI and Associated Press (AP) national rankings. He recruited All-Americans Russell and Buntin to anchor his mid-1960s teams. Tomjanovich also became a Wolverine at the end of Strack's career and became second team All-Big Ten in 1968 subsequent later stardom. The 1964 team, which went 23–5 overall (11–3, Big Ten), tied with Ohio State with sophomore Russell and junior Buntin. In 1965, Buntin became the first Wolverine to be drafted by the NBA. In 1966, Russell led the team to its third straight conference championship and NCAA selection on his way to National Player of the Year honors. In Johnny Orr's twelve seasons, he twice (1973–74 and 1976–77) earned Big Ten Coach of the Year honors with Big Ten championships. His teams earned four consecutive NCAA selections from 1974–77. The 25–7 overall (14–4, Big Ten) 1976 team lost to an undefeated Indiana team in the NCAA championship game, and Orr earned National Association of Basketball Coaches Coach of the Year honors that season. The 26–4 overall (16–2, Big Ten) 1977 team finished first in both the AP and UPI national rankings, and Orr won Basketball Weekly National Coach of the Year honors. During Orr's tenure, six players earned a total of seven All-American recognitions, which is the most of any Michigan coach. Steve Grote became Michigan's only three-time first-team Academic All- American from 1975–77 and with a second team All Big Ten as well as three honorable mentions was the first four-time All-Big Ten honoree. Bill Frieder, who had been an assistant coach for seven years, took over from Orr in 1980. He coached the school's first post-season basketball champions during the 1983–84 season and the following two teams were back-to-back conference champions. The 1983–84 team compiled a 24–9 overall (11–7, Big Ten) record on their way to a NIT championship victory over Notre Dame. The 1984–85 team went 26–4 overall (16–2, Big Ten), which earned Frieder Big Ten and AP National Coach of the Year honors. The 1985–86 team, which finished 28–5 overall (14–4, Big Ten), started the season with sixteen victories to make a total of thirty-three consecutive regular season victories. Frieder earned five of Michigan's six consecutive NCAA births from 1985–90, currently the longest streak in program history. Roy Tarpley led the 1985 team as Big Ten MVP. After the 1988–89 season, Frieder accepted the head coach's job at Arizona State, but wanted to remain at Michigan for the NCAA Tournament. However, when Frieder told athletic director Bo Schembechler of his intentions, Schembechler ordered him to leave immediately, telling him, "I don't want someone from Arizona State coaching the Michigan team. A Michigan man is going to coach Michigan." Frieder's top assistant, Steve Fisher, was named interim coach immediately before the 1989 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament, and led the team to six straight victories and the championship. Following the victory, Michigan dropped the "interim" tag from Fisher's title. Two years later, Fisher signed the famous recruiting class known as the Fab Five (Chris Webber, Juwan Howard, Jalen Rose, Jimmy King and Ray Jackson). He would take these players to the NCAA championship game as Freshmen and Sophomores. Fisher also won the 1997 NIT tournament with a team that compiled a 25–9 overall (11–5) record. Many of Fisher's and the basketball team's accomplishments were tarnished by significant NCAA sanctions. He left the job due to the University of Michigan basketball scandal. Brian Ellerbe assumed the title of interim coach less than five months after becoming an assistant coach. He was named full-time coach following the 25–9 (11–5) 1997–98 season in which he led the team to victories over Iowa, Minnesota and Purdue to capture the Big Ten Conference Men's Basketball Tournament championship. His subsequent teams never finished better than seventh in the conference. Tommy Amaker inherited a team that imposed sanctions on itself after his first year at the helm of the program. Nonetheless, he coached the team to the postseason three times including both an NIT championship in 2004 and a runner-up finish in 2006. During the 2005–06, when the team compiled a 22–11 overall (8–8, Big Ten) record, he led them to their first national ranking in eight years when they reached the #20 position. Despite his successes, the team never won a Big Ten Championship and never made the NCAA tournament, which led to his firing after six seasons. John Beilein's 10–22 overall (5–13 Big Ten) inaugural season featured the most losses in Michigan's history. However, in Beilein's second season, the team posted impressive non-conference victories over top-five ranked opponents UCLA and Duke. Beilein led Michigan to the 2009 NCAA Tournament, its first appearance since 1998 and the first that was not vacated since 1995. After upsetting Clemson in the first round, the Wolverines were eliminated by Oklahoma in Round 2 by a final score of 73–63. Following a disappointing 15–17 season in 2009–10, the Wolverines bounced back to return to the NCAA Tournament in 2011, advancing to the round of 32 before losing to top-seeded Duke, 73–71. The 2010–11 Wolverines, who swept rival Michigan State for the first time since 1997, finished the season 21–14. In the 2011–12 season, Michigan split the season series with both Ohio State and Michigan State and went on to be co-Big Ten champs along with the Buckeyes and Spartans. It was the program's first Big Ten title since 1986. The Wolverines finished the season 24–10 and 13–5 in conference play, losing in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament. The 2012–13 Michigan team earned a #1 ranking in the AP Poll on January 28, 2013, marking the first time since November 30, 1992, that Michigan held that position. The team also made program history for the best season start, at 21–2. On March 31, The Wolverines defeated Florida by a score of 79–59 to make their first Final Four appearance since the 1992–93 season. The Wolverines then defeated Syracuse by a score of 61–56 in the Final Four. In the 2013 National Championship game, the Wolverines lost against Louisville by the score of 82–76. On February 20, 2018, NCAA confirmed and upheld penalties against Louisville for "arranging striptease dances and sex acts for prospects, student-athletes and others." Louisville had to vacate its 2013 National Championship but NCAA does not retroactively award vacated championships to default winners. The 2013–14 team had another strong season, winning Michigan's first outright Big Ten championship since 1986 and advancing to the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament, where it lost to Kentucky, 75–72. With the departure of several key players to NBA draft and graduation, the 2014–15 team ended the season with a 16–16 record and a quarterfinals appearance at the Big Ten Tournament but did not make the NCAA Tournament. Despite several injuries before and during the season, the 2015–16 team compiled a 23–13 record and made it to the semifinals of the Big Ten Tournament. The team also qualified as a First Four for the NCAA Tournament but eventually lost at the Round of 64. During the 2016–17 season, Beilein became the winningest coach in school history, passing Johnny Orr with his 210th win, 75–55 over Illinois on March 9 in the opening round of the 2017 Big Ten Tournament. Michigan went on to win the tournament, its first since the vacated 1998 title, winning four games in four days as the #8 seed and capping it off with a 71–56 championship victory over Wisconsin. It was the first time that a #8 seed had won the Big Ten Tournament. During the 2017–18 season, Beilein's Wolverines again won four games in four days to win back-to-back Big Ten Tournament championships for the first time in school history. The team went on to win the West regional title and advance to the Final Four following its win over Florida State, 58–54. The win improved the team's record to 32–7, marking a new school record for victories. Following a Final Four victory over a rising Loyola-Chicago team, Michigan moved on to face Villanova in the NCAA tournament championship game. They fell short by a score of 79–62. The 2018–19 team started the season on the best run in program history, winning their first 17 games before losing to Wisconsin on the road. The team finished the regular season third in the Big Ten and earned a #2 seed in the NCAA tournament, despite losing 3 starters from the previous season's team. The 2018-19 Michigan Wolverines men's basketball team made it to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament before losing to #3 seed Texas Tech. This made it three consecutive seasons for Beilein's teams advancing to the Sweet 16 in the NCAA tournament. On May 13, 2019, in a surprising move, Beilein signed a five-year contract to become the head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers. Beilein led Michigan to a 278–150 record with nine NCAA Tournament appearances, including two finishes as national runner-ups. Beilein has advocated for a system similar to college football, where a committed player has to stay in school for at least three years. It was speculated that the rise of "one-and-done" and early NBA Draft entries, which resulted in a trend of more time spent on recruiting and higher turnover of players, has contributed to Beilein decision to leave coaching college basketball. Beilein's departure from Michigan is widely regarded as a loss to college basketball. On May 22, 2019, former Fab Five member Juwan Howard was named the head coach of the Wolverines, agreeing on a five-year contract. Despite losing three leading scorers from the 2018 team to NBA draft, Howard led the unranked Wolverines to a strong 7–0 start including back-to-back wins over then #6 ranked UNC (73–64) and #8 ranked Gonzaga (82–64) to capture the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament title on November 29, 2019. Following the strong performance, Michigan jumped from unranked to #4 in the AP Top 25 on December 2, 2019, becoming only the second team after the 1989–90 Kansas Jayhawks to achieve the feat in the history of the poll that dates back 70 years to 1949. In their first Big Ten opener under Howard on December 6, 2019, the Wolverines defeated Iowa 103–91 and scored the most points in a Big Ten game since 1998 (112 against Indiana). As of July 17, 2019: § – Conference co-champions *Vacated due to NCAA sanctions Duke–Michigan basketball rivalry, Michigan–Michigan State basketball rivalry, Michigan–Ohio State basketball rivalry Totals through January 17, 2020 The Fab Five, the 1991 recruiting class of five freshman starters, were Chris Webber, Juwan Howard, Jalen Rose, Jimmy King, and Ray Jackson. They were notable for having gone to the championship game of the 1992 and 1993 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament as freshmen and sophomores, for having started the trend of wearing baggy gym shorts, which was later popularized by Michael Jordan, and for wearing black athletic socks. Due to the Ed Martin scandal, the records from their 1992 Final Four appearance and the entire following season have been forfeited. Although Webber was the only member of the Fab Five officially implicated with the scandal, the reputation of the whole group has been tarnished. Webber (1993), Howard (1994) and Rose (1992, 1994) were college basketball All-Americans. and both King (1995 3rd team and 1993 & 1994 honorable mention) and Jackson (1995 2nd team & 1994 honorable mention) achieved All-Big Ten honors. All but Jackson played in the NBA. They were the subject of Mitch Albom's book entitled Fab Five: Basketball, Trash Talk, the American Dream, which at one point was under development by Fox Television as a made-for-television movie. In March 2011 ESPN broadcast a documentary, Fab Five, that was the network's highest-rated in its history. During the University of Michigan basketball scandal the Big Ten Conference, National Collegiate Athletic Association, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Internal Revenue Service, and United States Department of Justice investigated the relationship between the University of Michigan, its men's basketball teams and basketball team booster Ed Martin. The program was punished for NCAA rules violations, principally involving payments booster Martin made to several players to launder money from an illegal gambling operation. It is one of the largest incidents involving payments to college athletes in American collegiate history. It was described as one of the three or four worst violations of NCAA bylaws in history up to that time by the NCAA infractions committee chairman and the largest athlete payment scandal ever by ESPN. The case began when the investigation of an automobile rollover accident during Mateen Cleaves' 1996 Michigan Wolverines recruiting trip revealed a curious relationship between Martin and the team. Several Michigan basketball players were implicated over the next few years and by 1999 several were called before a federal grand jury. Four eventual professional basketball players (Chris Webber, Maurice Taylor, Robert Traylor and Louis Bullock) were discovered to have borrowed a total of $616,000 from Martin. During the investigation, Webber claimed not to have had any financial relationship with Martin. Eventually he confessed to having accepted some of the money he was charged with having borrowed. For his perjury during a federal grand jury investigation, he was both fined in the legal system and briefly suspended by National Basketball Association after performing public service. In 2002, the University punished itself when it became apparent that its players were guilty by declaring itself ineligible for post season play immediately, returning post season play monetary rewards, vacating five seasons of games, removing commemorative banners, and placing itself on a two-year probation. The following year, the NCAA accepted these punishments, doubled both the probation period and the post-season ineligibility, penalized the school one scholarship for four seasons, and ordered disassociation from the four guilty players until 2012. The disassociation formally ended on May 8, 2013. The additional year of post-season ineligibility was overturned on appeal. The punishment cost the 17–13 2002–03 team its post-season eligibility, cost past teams the 1997 National Invitation Tournament and the 1998 Big Ten Tournament championships as well as 1992 and 1993 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament Final Four recognition. It cost Traylor his MVP awards in the 1997 NIT and 1998 Big Ten Tournament, as well as Bullock's standing as the school's third all-time leading scorer and all-time leader in 3-point field goals. Steve Fisher lost his job as Michigan head coach as a result of the scandal. Below are lists of important players and coaches in the history of Michigan Wolverines men's basketball. It includes lists of major awards and retired numbers. The honors include: Helms Foundation Player of the Year, UPI Player of the Year, Sporting News Player of the Year, Naismith Trophy, Wooden Award, Associated Press Player of the Year, NABC Player of the Year, Oscar Robertson Trophy, NCAA Tournament MOP, National Invitation Tournament MVP, Big Ten Tournament MVP, Chicago Tribune Silver Basketball, Big Ten Player of the Year, All-America, Wayman Tisdale Award, Bob Cousy Award, UPI Coach of the Year, Henry Iba Award, NABC Coach of the Year, AP Coach of the Year. National Player of the Year 1966 – Cazzie Russell (AP, USBWA, UPI, Helms, The Sporting News), 2013 – Trey Burke (AP, USBWA, NABC, Naismith, Wooden) Wayman Tisdale Award 1992 – Chris Webber Bob Cousy Award 2013 – Trey Burke NCAA Tournament MOP 1989 – Glen Rice National Invitation Tournament MVP 1984 – Tim McCormick, 1997 – Robert Traylor, , 2004 – Daniel Horton Big Ten Tournament MVP 1998 – Robert Traylor, , 2017 – Derrick Walton, 2018 – Moritz Wagner Chicago Tribune Silver Basketball 1965 – Cazzie Russell, 1966 – Cazzie Russell, 1974 – Campy Russell, 1985 – Roy Tarpley, 1988 – Gary Grant, 1989 – Glen Rice Big Ten Player of the Year 1985 – Roy Tarpley, 1988 – Gary Grant, 1989 – Glen Rice, 2013 – Trey Burke, 2014 – Nik Stauskas Big Ten Freshman of the Year 1985 – Gary Grant, 1992 – Chris Webber, 1995 – Maurice Taylor, 2000 – LaVell Blanchard, 2003 – Daniel Horton, 2012 – Trey Burke, 2018 – Iggy Brazdeikis Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year 1987 – Gary Grant, 1988 – Gary Grant All-Americans 1924 – Harry Kipke (c 1924), 1926 – Richard Doyle (c 1926), 1927–28 – Bennie Oosterbaan (c 1927, 1928), 1929 – Ernie McCoy, 1929 – Joseph Truskowski, 1937–38 – John Townsend, 1948 – Pete Elliott, 1957 – Ron Kramer, 1964–65 – Bill Buntin, 1964–66 – Cazzie Russell (c 1965, 1966), 1970– Rudy Tomjanovich, 1971–72 – Henry Wilmore, 1974 – Campy Russell, 1975 – C.J. Kupec, 1976–77 – Rickey Green (c 1977), 1977 – Phil Hubbard, 1981 – Mike McGee, 1981 – Eric Turner, 1985–86 – Roy Tarpley, 1987–88 – Gary Grant (c 1988), 1988–89 – Glen Rice, 1990 – Terry Mills, 1990 – Rumeal Robinson, 1990 – Loy Vaught, 1992 – Jalen Rose, 1992–93 – Chris Webber (c 1993), 1994 – Juwan Howard, 1994 – Jalen Rose, 1998 – Louis Bullock, 1998 – Robert Traylor, 2012–13 – Trey Burke (c 2013), 2014 – Nik Stauskas National Coach of the Year 1965 – Dave Strack (UPI), 1976 – Johnny Orr (NABC, USBWA), 1977 – Johnny Orr (Basketball Weekly), 1985 – Bill Frieder (AP, Basketball Weekly), 1992 – Steve Fisher (Basketball Times) Big Ten Coach of the Year 1974 – Johnny Orr, 1977 – Johnny Orr, 1985 – Bill Frieder, 2014 – John Beilein The University of Michigan has an all-time 61–28* (54–24) record overall and 1–6* (1–4) championship game record in the NCAA Tournaments in 29* (25) appearances. Glen Rice holds the NCAA single-tournament scoring record with 184 points in 1989. The 1992 Final Four and all 1993, 1996, & 1998 games have been forfeited due to NCAA sanctions. The NCAA began seeding the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament with the 1979 edition. The 64-team field started in 1985, which guaranteed that a championship team had to win six games. In 10* (9) National Invitation Tournament appearances, Michigan is 25*–7 (20–7) overall all-time and 3*–1 (2–1) in the championship game. 16*–0 (14–0) at Crisler Arena and 8*–2 (6–2) at Madison Square Garden. The 1997 tournament was forfeited due to NCAA sanctions. National records: Most different players to make a Three-point field goal in game: 9 vs. Eastern Michigan, December 13, 2008 (tied Dartmouth, 1993), Combined team rebounds: 152, Michigan (57) vs. Indiana (95) March 11, 1961 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship Tournament records Single-game rebounds (Since 1973): 26—Phil Hubbard, Michigan vs. Detroit, RSF, Mar 17, 1977, Single-year points 184—Glen Rice, Michigan, 1989 (6 games), Single-year field goals made 75—Glen Rice, Michigan, 1989 (6 games), Single-year three-point field goals made 27—Glen Rice, Michigan, 1989 (6 games), Career three-point field goals percentage (Minimum 30 made) 56.5% (35–62)—Glen Rice, Michigan, 1986–89 (13 games), Single-game points, Both Teams 264—Loyola Marymount (149) vs. Michigan (115), 2nd R, Mar 18, 1990, Fewest single-game three-point field goals made, team (in a final four): 0, *Michigan vs. Kentucky, NSF, March 4, 1993 (ot), Fewest single-game three-point field goals attempted, team (final four): 4, *Michigan vs. Kentucky, NSF, March 4, 1993 (ot), Single-game assists (in a championship game): 11, Rumeal Robinson, Michigan vs. Seton Hall, March 4, 1989 (ot), Fewest single-game three-point field goals made, team (championship game): 1, *Michigan vs. Duke, CH, June 4, 1992, Fewest single-game free throws made (in a win), team: 0, Michigan vs. Tennessee, Mar 18, 2011, Lowest single-game three-point field goal percentage, team (championship game): 9.1% (1–11), *Michigan vs. Duke, CH, June 4, 1992, Biggest margin of victory in 8 vs. 9 match-up: 30, Michigan vs. Tennessee, Mar 18, 2011, Single-year two-game assists (final four): 23, Rumeal Robinson, Michigan, 1989 Selected former NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship Tournament records Single-game free throws made (final four): 15, Bill Buntin, Michigan vs. Kansas State, N3d, Mar 21, 1964 (broken Mar 20, 1965), Fewest single-game three-point field goals made, team (final four): 1, *Michigan vs. Duke, CH, June 4, 1992 (broken March 4, 1993), Lowest single-game three-point field goal percentage, team (final four): 9.1% (1–11), *Michigan vs. Duke, CH, June 4, 1992 (broken January 4, 2006), Most single-game players disqualified, team (championship game): 3, Michigan vs. UCLA, Mar 20, 1965 (broken Mar 31, 1997), Single-year two-game assists, team (final four): 42, Michigan, 1989 (broken 1990) National statistical champions: Team field goal percentage: 54.6% (1198 of 2196), 1988; 56.6% (1325 of 2341), 1989 Selected notable statistics: 30-win seasons: 2019 (30), 2018 (33), 2013 (31), 1993, (31), 1989 (30), 1989 team continues to rank second in single-season team field goal percentage: 56.6% (1325 of 2341). Current Big Ten records: Career field goals attempted: Mike McGee (2077, 1978–81), Career three-point field goals made: Louis Bullock (339*, 1996–99), Single-game three-point field goals percentage (100% most made): Glen Rice (7 of 7, vs. Wisconsin February 25, 1989), Single-season points, team: (3393, 1988–89), Single-game field goals made, team: (55, vs. Iowa October 3, 1990), Single-season field goals made, team: (1325, 1988–89), Single-season field goals attempted, team: (2341, 1988–89), Single-season field goal percentage, team: (.566, 1,325 of 2,341, 1988–89), Single-season field goal percentage, team (conference games only): (.561, 606 of 1,080, 1988–89), Single-game three-point field goals attempted, team: (42, vs. Florida Gulf Coast December 22, 2008), Single-game three-point field goals attempted, team (conference games only): (40, at Indiana 1/7/09), Single-season three-point field goals attempted, team: (912, 2008–09), Single-season three-point field goals attempted, team (conference games only): (471, 2008–09), Single-season rebounds, team: (1521, 1964–65), Single-game assists, team: (37, vs. Western Michigan July 12, 1987 and vs. Eastern Michigan December 12, 1987), Single-game assists, team (conference games only): (36, vs. Iowa March 2, 1988), Single-season assists, team: (745, 1988–89), Single-game blocked shots, team: (18, vs. Florida Southern July 12, 1985), Single-season free throw percentage (conference games only): Daniel Horton (.978 (89 of 91), 2006), Single-season personal fouls, team: (456, 1953), Single-season overtime games: (6, 1981) Selected former Big Ten records: Career points: Mike McGee (2439, 1977–81, broken in 1989), Glen Rice (2442, 1985–89, broken in 1993), Career points (conference games only): McGee (1503, 1977–81, broken in 1995), Single-game field goals made: John Tidwell (20, vs. Minnesota April 3, 1961, broken February 16, 1963), Single-season field goals made: Cazzie Russell (308, 1965–66, broken 1981), McGee (309, 1980–81, broken in 1986), Career field goals made: Russell (839, 1964–66, broken 1970), McGee (1010, 1978–81, broken in 1993), Single-game three-point field goals made: Garde Thompson (9, vs. Navy December 3, 1987, broken February 23, 2003), Single-game points, team: 128 (vs. Purdue February 19, 1966, broken December 30, 2006), Single-game field goals made, team: (52, vs. Purdue February 19, 1966, broken December 19, 1972), Single-season field goals made, team: (1198, 1987–88, broken 1989), Single-season assists, team: (694, 1987–88, broken 1989), Single-season blocked shots, team: (193, 1992–93*, surpassed 2000), Single-season field goals made per game (conference games only): Russell (13.0 (182 in 14), 1966, broken 1969), Single-season rebounds (total and per game) (conference games only): M. C. Burton (249 in 14 games, 1959, broken 1960), Single-season points per game, team (conference games only): 92.9 (1965 (1,300 in 14), broken 1966), Single-season points per game, team (conference games only): 95.4 (1966 (1,336 in 14), broken 1969), Single-season three-point field goals attempted, team (conference games only): (434, 2007–08), Single-game three-point field goal percentage, team (conference games only):.875 (7 of 8, vs. Iowa March 2, 1988, broken April 2, 1988) Big Ten statistical champions (individual): Scoring (Conference games only until 1990): 1928 Bennie Oosterbaan 129; 1959 M.C. Burton 22.6; 1966 Cazzie Russell 33.2; 1974 Campy Russell 24.0; 1988 Glen Rice 22.9; 1989 Rice 24.8, Field goal Percentage (Conference games only until 1990): 1966 Cazzie Russell .542; 1967 Dave McClellan .588; 1971 Ken Brady .617; 1975 John Robinson .603; 1979 Marty Bodnar .603; 1989 Loy Vaught .677; 2001 Chris Young .640 (all games); 2006 Courtney Sims .633 (all games), Three-point field goals: 1989 Glen Rice 55 (conference games); 1991 Demetrius Calip 48 (conference games); 1998 Louis Bullock 51, (conference games); 1999 Robbie Reid 49 (conference games); 1997 Louis Bullock 101, (all games); 1998 Louis Bullock 93, (all games), Three-point field goal percentage: 1998 Louis Bullock .481, (conference games); 1999 Robbie Reid .458 (conference games); 2003 LaVell Blanchard .433 (conference games), Free throw percentage: 1975 C.J. Kupec .880 (conference games); 1997 Louis Bullock .893, (conference games); 2006 Daniel Horton .978 (conference games); 2007 Dion Harris .873 (conference games); 1998 Louis Bullock .911, (all games); 1999 Louis Bullock .864, (all games); 2006 Daniel Horton .901 (all games), Rebounds: 1959 M.C. Burton 17.8 (conference games); 1963 Bill Buntin 15.4 (conference games); 1969 Rudy Tomjanovich 12.8 (conference games); 1970 Rudy Tomjanovich 16.2 (conference games); 1985 Roy Tarpley 9.9 (conference games); 1990 Loy Vaught 10.7 (conference games); 1992 Chris Webber-FR 9.8, (conference games); 1993 Chris Webber 9.7, (conference games); 1990 Loy Vaught 11.2; 1992 Chris Webber-FR 10.0*; 1993 Chris Webber 10.1, , Assists: 1988 Gary Grant 6.5 (conference games); 1990 Rumeal Robinson 6.1 (all games); 2013 Trey Burke 6.7 (all games), Steals: 1987 Gary Grant 2.67 (conference games); 1988 Gary Grant 2.72 (conference games), Blocked shots: 1986 Roy Tarpley 2.50 (conference games); 1989 Terry Mills 1.22 (conference games); 2008 Ekpe Udoh 2.67 (conference games); 2004 Courtney Sims 2.00 (all games); 2008 Ekpe Udoh 2.88 (all games) Big Ten statistical champions (team, conference games only): Scoring offense: 1946 55.1, 1965 92.9, 1966 95.4, 1971 88.4, 1972 81.8, 1976 85.8, 1977 83.2, 1987 86.7, 1989 87.8, 1997, 73.3,, Scoring defense: 1948 46.3, 1952 56.2, 1964 75.5, Scoring margin: 1948 7.6, 1964 10.3, 1965 12.2, 1966 9.9, 1977 9.4, 1985 8.8, 1986 10.6, 1989 10.3, Field goal percentage offense: 1966 48.9, 1972 45.3, 1976 52.1, 1989 56.1, 2013 46.9, 2017 48.3, Field goal percentage defense: 1995 39.4, Three-point field goals: 1987 89, 1989 103, 1991 118, 1998, 121, 2009 151, Three-point field goal percentage: 1998 40.1, 2003 37.5, Free throw percentage: 1958 73.4, 1975 75.8, 2017 77.9, Rebounds: 1963 49.0, 1965 49.5, 1972 51.6, 1983 34.4, 1986 35.1, 1992 38.2, 1993, 40.9, Rebounding margin: 1986 5.8, 1992 5.8, 1993, 7.6, 2004 3.4, Steals: 1986 8.61, Blocked shots: 1986 3.94, 1993, 5.0, 2004 4.31, 2008 4.28, Turnover margin: 2017 3.4 Michigan teams have spent a total of 22 weeks ranked number 1 with the last time occurring in 2013. Entering the 2013–14 season this ranked 13th and third in the Big Ten behind Indiana (54) and Ohio State (37). Two Michigan teams (December 14, 1964 87–85 over Wichita State at Detroit and December 13, 1997 81–73 over Duke at home) have defeated the number one ranked team. The following table summarizes Michigan history in the AP Poll: List of NCAA Division I Men's Final Four appearances by coach, NCAA Division I Men's Final Four appearances by school, NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament bids by school, NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament bids by school and conference, NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament all-time team records Official website The Michigan State Spartans are the athletic teams that represent Michigan State University. The school's athletic program includes 25 varsity sports teams. Their mascot is a Spartan warrior named Sparty, and the school colors are green and white. The university participates in the NCAA's Division I and the Football Bowl Subdivision for football. The Spartans participate as members of the Big Ten Conference in all varsity sports. Michigan State offers 12 varsity sports for men and 13 for women. The university's previous athletic director was Mark Hollis, who served in the position from January 1, 2008 to January 26, 2018, when he resigned, along with others at the University, due to fallout from the USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal involving former MSU Medical School faculty member Dr. Larry Nassar. Bill Beekman assumed the position on an interim basis, until July 17, 2018 when he was named to the permanent post. MSU's football team has won or shared six national championships in 1951, 1952, 1955, 1957, 1965 and 1966, and has won the Rose Bowl in 1954, 1956, 1988 and 2014. Its men's basketball team won the NCAA National Championship in 1979 and 2000. The MSU men's ice hockey team won national titles in 1966, 1986 and 2007. In 1925, the institution changed its name to Michigan State College of Agriculture and Applied Science, and, as an agricultural school, its teams were referred to as the Aggies. Looking to move beyond its agricultural roots, Michigan State held a contest to find a new nickname. They had decided to call the teams the "Michigan Staters". George S. Alderton, a local sports writer for the Lansing State Journal decided the name was too cumbersome and went through the entries to find a better and more heroic name. He decided on the "Spartans", but sadly forgot to write down who submitted the suggestion. With a heroic name, the "Spartans" quickly caught on as the teams' new nickname. They later changed the lyrics of the Fight Song to reflect the name change of the College and its sports teams. As the college grew, it looked to join a major collegiate conference. When the University of Chicago eliminated varsity football and withdrew from the Western Conference (now the Big Ten) in 1946, Michigan State president John A. Hannah lobbied to take its place. Despite opposition from the University of Michigan, the Big Ten admitted M.S.C. on May 20, 1949. After joining the conference, head football coach Clarence L. "Biggie" Munn led the Spartan football team to the Rose Bowl in the 1953–54 season, beating UCLA 28–20. Successor coach Hugh "Duffy" Daugherty carried the football team to a second Rose Bowl where it again defeated UCLA, 17–14. Michigan State has 23 NCAA Division I-A varsity teams: 11 varsity sports for men and 12 for women. They participate in the Big Ten Conference except fencing, where until 1997, from the University founding, MSU featured fencing as a varsity sport. During that time, MSU was coached by the first American recognized as a master of fencing, Charles Schmitter, for 45 years, from 1939 to 1984. Upon his retirement, his student, Fred Freiheit, coached from 1984 until fencing was demoted from varsity status in 1997. The Michigan State University Fencing Club is a competing member of the Midwest Fencing Conference, which consists of sixteen (16) schools with varsity or club programs. Michigan State's men's basketball team has won the National Championship two times: in 1979 and 2000. In 1979, Earvin "Magic" Johnson, along with Greg Kelser, Jay Vincent and Mike Brkovich, carried the MSU team to a 75–64 win against the Larry Bird-led Indiana State Sycamores. In 2000, three players from Flint, Michigan, Morris Peterson, Charlie Bell and Mateen Cleaves, carried the team to its second national title. Dubbed the "Flintstones", they were the key to the Spartans' win against Florida 89–76. In addition to the two Championships, the 2008–09 team reached the NCAA Championship game, but lost to North Carolina 89–72. Since 1995, Michigan State has been coached by Tom Izzo, who has a 606–231 record through April 5, 2019. Izzo's coaching helped the team make six of twelve NCAA Final Fours from 1999 to 2010, winning the title in 2000 and leading ESPN to define MSU as the best team in that decade. Michigan State basketball has been selected for 22 consecutive NCAA tournament bids under Izzo. The Spartans have won one NCAA Championship, nine Big Ten Regular Season Championships, and six Big Ten Tournament Championships (the most of any team in the Big Ten) under Izzo. The team has made two NCAA Championship games and advanced to eight Final Fours, 10 Elite Eights, and 14 Sweet Sixteens under Izzo. Overall, Michigan State has won two NCAA Championships, 15 Big Ten Regular Season Championships, and six Big Ten Tournament Championships. The Spartans have appeared in three NCAA Championship games, 10 Final Fours, 14 Elite Eights, 20 Sweet Sixteens, and made 30 NCAA Tournament appearances. Spartans formerly or currently in the NBA include Adreian Payne, Deyonta Davis, Bryn Forbes, Denzel Valentine, Maurice Ager, Alan Anderson, Charlie Bell, Shannon Brown, Mateen Cleaves, Paul Davis, Terry Furlow, Jamie Feick, Draymond Green, Johnny Green, Gary Harris, Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Greg Kelser, Mike Peplowski, Morris Peterson, Zach Randolph, Shawn Respert, Jason Richardson, Scott Skiles, Steve Smith, Eric Snow, Sam Vincent, Jay Vincent, and Kevin Willis. MSU also has a fairly successful women's basketball team, with its greatest accomplishment being a national runner-up finish to Baylor in 2005. MSU's women's basketball started in 1972–73 under coach Mikki Baile. The women's team has had five coaches in its history. The Spartans current coach is Suzy Merchant. The Spartans have made one National Championship game, one Final Four, one Elite Eight, three Sweet Sixteens, and appeared in 15 NCAA/AIAW Tournaments. Football has a long tradition at Michigan State. Starting as a club sport in 1884, football gained varsity status in 1896. During that time, the Spartans had a roster of impressive players, including Lynn Chandnois, Dorne Dibble, Meredith Assaly, and Don McAulliffe. In 1951, the Spartans finished the season undefeated, and performed the same feat the following year in addition to the nation's longest winning streak of 24 games. The team was named the "undisputed national champions by every official poll". After waiting for several years, the team was finally admitted into the Big Ten Conference as a regular member in 1953. They promptly went on to capture the league championship (losing only one game during the season) and beating UCLA in their first Rose Bowl game. After the 1953 season Biggie Munn, the legendary Spartan coach, turned the team over to his protégé and future legend Duffy Daugherty. Daughtery went on to win the 1956 Rose Bowl. George Perles was the head coach when the Spartans defeated USC in the 1988 Rose Bowl. The current coach is Mark Dantonio, who was hired on November 27, 2006. Dantonio has a 63–29 record in his coaching tenure as of the end of the 2013 season. Under Dantonio, MSU has won three Conference Championships, 2010, 2013, and 2015. The Spartans have won three Big Ten Divisional championships and two Big Ten Championship games during that period. In 2015, MSU was selected for the College Football Playoff as the No. 3 seed, but lost to Alabama in the Cotton Bowl. He also led the Spartans to a victory in the 2014 Rose Bowl, the 100th edition of the "Grandaddy of them all." All told, Michigan State has won six national championships and nine Big Ten championships. Today, the football team competes in Spartan Stadium, a renovated 75,005-person football stadium in the center of campus. MSU's traditional archrival is Michigan, against whom they compete for the Paul Bunyan Trophy; MSU has a 23–34–1 record in the annual trophy game. The Spartans have won the trophy seven of the past eight years, as of 2015 season. Michigan State's rivalry game against Notre Dame, with whom they compete for the Megaphone Trophy was played every year until 2013. MSU's record in the trophy series against the Fighting Irish is 26–34–1. Notable MSU alumni who have played in the National Football League include Morten Andersen, Plaxico Burress, Andre Rison, Derrick Mason, Muhsin Muhammad, T. J. Duckett, Flozell Adams, Julian Peterson, Herb Haygood, Charles Rogers, Jim Miller, Earl Morrall, Wayne Fontes, Bubba Smith, Tony Banks, Percy Snow, Rob Fredrickson, Jeff Smoker, Tony Mandarich, Lorenzo White, Hank Bullough, Drew Stanton, Devin Thomas, Tupe Peko, Domata Peko, Chris Morris, Greg Montgomery, Paul Edinger, Javon Ringer, Chris L. Rucker, Chris Baker, Sedrick Irvin, Eric Smith, Greg Jones, Brian Hoyer, Garrett Celek, Jack Conklin, Shilique Calhoun, Bennie Fowler, Will Gholston, Keith Mumphery, Max Bullough, Donavon Clark, Joel Heath, Jeremy Langford, Darqueze Dennard, Dion Sims, Tony Lippett, Lawrence Thomas, Kellen Davis, Trae Waynes, Jerel Worthy, Connor Cook, Aaron Burbridge, Kirk Cousins and Le'Veon Bell. Historically, the Michigan State Cross Country men's team has been one of the school's most successful programs. Between World War I and World War II, Michigan State College competed in the Central Collegiate Conference, winning titles in 1926–1929, 1932, 1933 and 1935. Michigan State also experienced success in the IC4A, at New York's Van Cortlandt Park, winning 15 team titles (1933–1937, 1949, 1953, 1956–1960, 1962, 1963 and 1968). Since entering the Big Ten in 1950, Michigan State has won 14 men's titles (1951–1953, 1955–1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1970 and 1971). Michigan State hosted the inaugural NCAA cross country championships in 1938 and every year thereafter through 1964 (except a one-year vacation in 1943 due to war). The Spartans won eight NCAA championships from 1930 to 1959, including 1939, 1948, 1949, 1952, and 1955–1959 (minus 1957). Walt Drenth is the current director of both the men's and women's cross country and track and field programs. After joining MSU in 2004, Drenth led the men's cross country team to a NCAA Championship bid during the 2004 season. The women's cross country team also advanced to the NCAA Championship Meet after winning the Great Lakes Regional race. Michigan State has two varsity hockey teams: a men's ice hockey team and a women's field hockey team. Helen Knull is the head coach of the women's field hockey team. The men's ice hockey team plays at the Munn Ice Arena. The head coach was Rick Comley, who had a 116–73–19 record at MSU. The current head coach is Tom Anastos. In the 2013–2014 campaign, the Big Ten Conference debuted Division I ice hockey, (Michigan State formerly competed in the Central Collegiate Hockey Association with Big Ten sister schools University of Michigan (U-M) and the Ohio State University). On October 6, 2001, the team was involved in what was then the most-attended hockey game in history: The Cold War. The Spartans set up a hockey rink in the middle of their football stadium, Spartan Stadium and played U-M before a crowd of 74,554. The game ended in a 3–3 tie. A decade later, the same two teams were again involved in the most-attended ice hockey game in history. This time, Michigan hosted the rivalry game at its Michigan Stadium. The Big Chill at the Big House set the current record with an officially certified crowd of 104,173. The MSU ice hockey program has seven CCHA regular season championships and 11 CCHA Tournament titles. MSU has also won 11 Great Lakes Invitational titles. The Spartans have been in the NCAA tournament 23 times, with nine Frozen Four appearances and three national titles (1966, 1986 and 2007). On April 7, 2007, the Michigan State Spartans won their third Collegiate Championship by beating the Boston College Eagles 3–1. Former Michigan State players in the National Hockey League include Rod Brind'Amour, Anson Carter, Duncan Keith, Donald McSween, Adam Hall, John-Michael Liles, Torey Krug, Shawn Horcoff, Justin Abdelkader, Jim Slater, brothers Kelly Miller and Kip Miller, as well as their cousins, brothers Ryan Miller and Drew Miller. Two players for MSU have won the Hobey Baker Award: Kip Miller in 1990 and Ryan Miller in 2001. Few other players also excelling in other leagues including forward Brock Radunske and defenseman Brad Fast. The MSU women's fastpitch softball team won the 1976 Women's College World Series to take the AIAW national title, the only team east of the Mississippi River to win the WCWS until Michigan did it in 2005. The team has appeared in six Women's College World Series, in 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977 and 1981. Its coach, Jacquie Joseph, has headed the program since 1994. Since taking over the program, Joseph has helped bring MSU to a record of 668–677–1 and four NCAA Regional appearances. Wrestling was one of the earliest sports formed at the Michigan Agricultural College. While the sport was dropped in 1906, it was reformed by the college 16 years later in 1922. The school's wrestling team has won the NCAA Division I championship once, in 1967. Its current coach head coach is Roger Chandler. Prior to Chandler becoming head coach, their head coach for 25 years was Tom Minkel who produced 33 All-Americans, 11 Big Ten Champions and one NCAA Champion. The Spartan wrestling team competes on campus at the Jenison Field House which has a capacity of 5,017 people. Former Spartan Wrestlers Bobby Nash, Gray Maynard, and Rashad Evans are current UFC fighters. Maynard is a former 2 time UFC Lightweight Title challenger and Evans is a former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion. Starting in the mid-2000s. the Spartan wrestling team started to decline. From 2004–2016, the team had one season better than .500 and finished in the bottom half of the Big Ten, including last on four occasions. During the 2015 championship tournament, the team finished dead last with negative team points (−0.5) thanks to only one qualifier and an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. Minkel announced that he would retire after the 2015–16 season. Michigan State University Spartan Wrestling team accomplishments: 8 Big Ten Titles (1961, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972), 57 individual Big Ten Conference Champions, finished in the top-five at the NCAA Championships 9 times, 24 individual NCAA Champions dating back to 1936, 100+ All-Americans dating back to 1931 MSU has a number of other team sports. As in many other NCAA institutions, Michigan State has a baseball team for men and a softball team for women. Jake Boss Jr. is head coach of the MSU baseball team. Former Michigan State players in Major League Baseball include Kirk Gibson, Steve Garvey, Robin Roberts and Mark Mulder. Since 2007, the baseball team plays a popular annual exhibition game against the nearby minor-league Lansing Lugnuts. The Spartans also have a men's soccer team, which won two back-to-back championships in 1967 and 1968. They shared the 1968 title with the University of Maryland, College Park. The men's coach is Damon Rensing, who is in his 6th year as head coach at Michigan State. The men's soccer team battles Michigan annually in the Big Bear Trophy game, a series in which the Spartans lead 10–3–1 against their in-state rival. Coaching the women's team is Tom Saxton. There is also a volleyball team; Cathy George has been the head coach of the women's volleyball team since 2005. During her first year at Michigan State, she led her team to a 12–18 record, including a 5–15, ninth-place finish in the conference standings. There are a number of contact sports at MSU, including boxing and wrestling. MSU's boxing team won national titles in 1951 and 1955, although it is no longer an NCAA varsity sport. Water sports at MSU include rowing and swimming. MSU's women's rowing coach is Matt Weise, who is in his tenth year as the Spartan crew coach. In his third year as MSU head coach, Weise coached the Spartans to a program-best sixth-place team finish at the NCAA Championship. Matt Gianiodis is the head coach of both men and women's swimming and diving. In his four years as head coach, Spartan swimmers and divers have broken 14 varsity records. Other sports at MSU include golf, gymnastics and tennis. Golf has had a long tradition at MSU. Hall of Fame Coach Bruce Fossum helped carry MSU to its first Big Ten title in 1969. The Big Ten title would elude the Spartans until 2005, when arguably, the best team ever assembled, took home the rings in stellar fashion. Not only did the Spartans win the Big Ten Championship in 2005, but they captured two other titles along the way and rose all the way to #5 in the U.S. Casey Lubahn coaches the men's golf team. A former assistant coach at Stanford University, this is his fourth year as a head coach. Stacy Slobodnik-Stoll coaches the women's team. In the last ten seasons, she has brought the Spartans to nine straight NCAA regional appearances. Spartan women golfers won individual collegiate national championships on two occasions: Joyce Kazmierski in 1966 and Bonnie Lauer in 1973. The men's gymnastics team at MSU won one national title, which they shared with the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1958. In 2001, the MSU Board of Trustees disbanded the team in order to comply with Title IX regulations. The women's team retained its varsity status. In 2008, the team ranked 17th in the nation in the final season standings, the highest placement in program history. Gene Orlando is the coach of the men's tennis team. In his 26 years as MSU head coach, Orlando has taken the Spartan men to four NCAA Championships and had a team in 2016 reach the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament Doubles. Coaching the women's team is Kim Bruno, who is in her 4th season at the helm. The Michigan State University Rugby Football Club was founded in 1964. Michigan State rugby has been steadily improving in college rugby in recent years. During the 2010–11 season, the Spartans played in Division 2, finishing with a 10–3 record and qualifying for the playoffs. The Spartans' success led to them moving up to Division 1–AA for the 2011–12 season. For the 2012–13 season, the Spartans once again moved to a higher level of competition—the Big Ten Universities D1–A conference, against traditional Big Ten rivals such as the University of Michigan and Ohio State University. The success of Spartan Rugby is greatly attributed to former head coach Dave Poquette, who had been coaching at Michigan State since 1992 and retired in 2013. The Michigan State University Water Polo Club was founded and officially recognized November 17, 1967. At the time of its inception, the team played in the Midwest Collegiate Water Polo Association, along with Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio State, Loyola, Drake, and Western Michigan. Now competing in the Big Ten division of the Collegiate Water Polo Association, Michigan State is joined by Michigan, Iowa, Indiana, Northwestern, Wisconsin, Purdue, and Illinois, with Ohio State moving to the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. After winning back-to-back Big Ten championships in 1993 and 1994, the Spartans would go the next half a decade without a Big Ten Championship. With another conference championship, the Spartans would go on to win their first national collegiate club championship in 2000. Michigan State would continue to enjoy much success in the 2000s, winning the Big Ten Championship in 2002 and from 2005–2010. This included an impressive four year stretch which included the Spartan's second and third national championships in 2006 and 2008, and runner-up finishes for the national title in 2005 and 2007, as well as a third-place finish in 2010. In 2014, the Spartans would stage a comeback in the final two minutes of regulation to upset Michigan in the Big Ten title game for their eleventh Big Ten Championship, and their seventh in ten years. In 1992, thirty former Spartan athletes, coaches, and administrators were inducted into the MSU Athletics Hall of Fame as its charter class. On October 1, 1999, the University opened its new Athletics Hall of Fame, in the Clara Bell Smith Student-Athlete Academic Center. Michigan State has won 20 NCAA national team titles. Men's (19), Basketball (2): 1979, 2000, Boxing (2): 1951, 1955, Cross Country (8): 1939, 1948, 1949, 1952, 1955, 1956, 1958, 1959, Gymnastics (1): 1958, Ice Hockey (3): 1966, 1986, 2007, Soccer (2): 1967, 1968, Wrestling (1): 1967, Women's (1), Cross Country (1): 2014, See also:, List of NCAA schools with the most NCAA Division I championships, Big Ten Conference NCAA national team championships Below are 10 national team titles that were not bestowed by the NCAA. Men's (9), Football (6): 1951, 1952, 1955, 1957, 1965, 1966, Rifle (3): 1914, 1916, 1917, Women's (1), Softball (1): 1976, See also:, List of Big Ten Conference National Championships, Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, List of NCAA schools with the most Division I national championships, List of college athletics championship game outcomes, Intercollegiate sports team champions List of college athletic programs in Michigan

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The National Football League Draft, also called the NFL Draft or the Player Selection Meeting, is an annual event which serves as the league's most common source of player recruitment. Each team is given a position in the drafting order in reverse order relative to its record in the previous year, which means that the last place team is positioned first. From this position, the team can either select a player or trade their position to another team for other draft positions, a player or players, or any combination thereof. The round is complete when each team has either selected a player or traded its position in the draft. The first draft was held in 1936, and has been held every year since. Certain aspects of the draft, including team positioning and the number of rounds in the draft, have been revised since its creation in 1936, but the fundamental method has remained the same. Currently the draft consists of seven rounds. The original rationale in creating the draft was to increase the competitive parity between the teams as the worst team would, ideally, be able to choose the best player available. In the early years of the draft, players were chosen based on hearsay, print media, or other rudimentary evidence of ability. In the 1940s, some franchises began employing full-time scouts. The ensuing success of these teams eventually forced the other franchises to also hire scouts. Colloquially, the name of the draft each year takes on the form of the NFL season in which players picked could begin playing. For example, the 2010 NFL draft was for the 2010 NFL season. However, the NFL-defined name of the process has changed since its inception. The location of the draft has continually changed over the years to accommodate more fans, as the event has gained popularity. The draft's popularity now garners prime-time television coverage. In the league's early years, from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s, the draft was held in various cities with NFL franchises until the league settled on New York City starting in 1965, where it remained for fifty years until 2015, where it began being held in a new location yearly. In the early 1930s, Stan Kostka had a huge college career as a University of Minnesota running back, leading the Minnesota Gophers to an undefeated season in 1934. Every NFL team wanted to sign him. Since there was no draft back then, savvy Stan did the smart thing - he held out for the highest offer. While a free agent, Stan kept busy, even running for Mayor of Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota. Although his political career did not take off, Stan's nine-month NFL holdout succeeded and he became the league's highest-paid player, signing a $5,000 contract with the NFL's team in Brooklyn, New York on August 25, 1935. As a response to the bidding war for Stan Kostka, the NFL instituted the draft in 1936. In late 1934, Art Rooney, owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, gave the right of usage of two players to the New York Giants because Rooney's team had no chance to participate in the post-season. After the owner of the Boston Redskins, George Preston Marshall, protested the transaction, the president of the NFL, Joe F. Carr, disallowed the Giants the ability to employ the players. At a league meeting in December 1934, the NFL introduced a waiver rule to prevent such transactions. Any player released by a team during the season would be able to be claimed by other teams. The selection order to claim the player would be in inverse order to the teams' standings at the time. Throughout this time, Bert Bell, co-owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, felt his team's lack of competitiveness on the field made it difficult for the Eagles to sell tickets and to be profitable. Compounding the Eagles' problems were players signed with teams that offered the most money, or if the money being equal, players chose to sign with the most prestigious teams at the time, who had established a winning tradition. As a result, the NFL was dominated by the Chicago Bears, Green Bay Packers, Giants, and Redskins. Bell's inability to sign a desired prospect, Stan Kostka, in 1935, eventually led Bell to believe the only way for the NFL to have enduring success was for all teams to have an equal opportunity to sign eligible players. At a league meeting on May 18, 1935, Bell proposed a draft be instituted to enhance the possibility of competitive parity on the field in order to ensure the financial viability of all franchises. His proposal was adopted unanimously that day, although the first draft would not occur until the next off-season. The rules for the selection of the players in the first draft were, first, that a list of college seniors would be assembled by each franchise and submitted into a pool. From this pool, each franchise would select, in inverse order to their team's record in the previous year, a player. With this selection, the franchise had the unilateral right to negotiate a contract with that player, or the ability to trade that player to another team for a player, or players. If, for any reason, the franchise was unsuccessful in negotiating a contract with the player and was unable to trade the player, the president of the NFL could attempt to arbitrate a settlement between the player and the franchise. If the president was unable to settle the dispute, then the player would be placed in the reserve list of the franchise and would be unavailable to play for any team in the NFL that year. In the 1935 NFL season, the Eagles finished in last place at 2–9, thus securing themselves the first pick in the draft. The first NFL draft began at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Philadelphia on February 8, 1936. Ninety names were written on a blackboard in the meeting room from which the teams would choose. As no team had a scouting department, the list was created from either print media sources, visits to local colleges by team executives, or by recommendations to team executives. The draft would last for nine rounds, and it had no media coverage. The first player ever selected in the draft was Jay Berwanger. Bell, prior to the draft, was not successfully able to negotiate a contract with Berwanger so Bell traded him to the Bears. George Halas, owner of the Bears, was also unsuccessful in signing Berwanger. Berwanger's decision to not play in the NFL was not unusual, as only twenty-four of the eighty-one players selected chose to play in the NFL that year. The draft was recessed on the first day and it was continued and finished on the next day. This draft saw the emergence of Wellington Mara as a savant, as he had been subscribing to magazines and local and out-of-town papers to build up dossiers of college players across the country, which resulted in the Giants' drafting of Tuffy Leemans. As a result of the institution of the draft, Tim Mara, owner of the Giants, reduced Ken Strong's salary offer to $3,200 from $6,000 a year for 1936 because Mara felt the draft would alter the salary structure of the NFL. Generally, the franchises' exclusivity in negotiating with draft picks produced the immediate effect of, depending on sources, stopping the escalating salaries of new players, or reducing their salaries. Consequently, contemporary critics charged it was anti-labor. Art Rooney, owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, chose Byron "Whizzer" White in the first round of the 1938 draft despite White's known public declaration that he would not play professional football and would instead begin work on his Rhodes scholarship. White did, however, agree to play for the 1938 season after Rooney publicly gave him a guaranteed contract of $15,000, double what any other player had ever made in the NFL. The size of the dollar amount brought condemnation from other owners because it altered the pay expectations of college draftees. For the 1939 draft Wellington, for the first time, was put in charge of drafting players for the Giants. He submitted the list of players into the pool that the Giants—or other franchises—could choose players from. However, in the first round he selected a player, Walt Nielsen, not on the list of players that the Giants or any other franchise had submitted. With a grin Wellington stated, "'I didn't think I said I put every name on that list.'" In 1939, Kenny Washington was, to no small extent, viewed as one of the greatest college football players of all time. After information was made available to at least one owner of a franchise that Washington was African- American, he was not drafted by any team for the 1940 NFL Draft. The draft would be eventually codified into the NFL Constitution, although no information is available on when that originally occurred. "Bullet Bill" Dudley was the first overall pick in the 1942 draft and he would eventually become the first player picked first overall in the draft to enter the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Eddie Kotal became the first player scout in 1946 when he was hired by Dan Reeves of the Los Angeles Rams. The NFL's competition with the AAFC in 1947 resulted in a temporary institution of a bonus pick. Competitive parity did not, however, quickly arrive in the NFL as perennial losers, such as the Eagles and Chicago Cardinals, standings' did not improve until 1947. In the thirteenth round, George Taliaferro became the first African-American selected when he was chosen in the 1949 NFL draft. He however, chose to sign with an AAFC team. Wally Triplett was chosen in the nineteenth and he would be the first African-American to be selected in the draft and make an NFL team. After the draft and prior to the start of the season, Paul "Tank" Younger was signed by the Los Angeles Rams as a free agent and became the first NFL player from an historically black college. Eddie Robinson, Younger's coach at Grambling, promptly and unequivocally, impressed upon him that the future of the recruitment and drafting of his colleagues at other black colleges lay in the balance based on his success with the Rams. The 1960 NFL Draft marked a turning point in the draft's history because of the pending arrival of the American Football League (AFL), as it became a "high-stakes, competitive affair." In 1976, former NFL wide receiver Paul Salata first coined the moniker "Mr. Irrelevant" to refer to the last overall player selected in the draft. In 1980, Chet Simmons, president of the year-old ESPN, asked Pete Rozelle if the fledgling network could broadcast coverage of the draft live on ESPN. Although Rozelle did not believe it would be entertaining television, he agreed. In 1988, the NFL moved the draft from weekdays to the weekend and ESPN's ratings of the coverage improved dramatically. In 2006, ESPN received competition when the NFL Network, which had launched in October 2003, began to produce its own draft coverage. ESPN pays the NFL a rights fee for the non- exclusive rights to draft coverage, a fee that is included in its overall contract to televise games (ESPN Sunday Night NFL from 1987 to 2005, and Monday Night Football from 2006 to the present). In 2010, the NFL moved to a three-day draft with the first day encompassing the first round beginning at 8:00 pm EDT Thursday, the second day encompassing the second and third rounds beginning at 7:00 pm EDT Friday, and third day concluding the process with the final four rounds beginning at 11:00 am EDT Saturday. In the 2018 NFL Draft, the first two evenings aired on broadcast television, with Fox and NFL Network carrying a simulcast featuring personnel from both the NFL Network and Fox Sports. ESPN continued to produce its own coverage of the draft, with ESPN2 simulcasting days 1 and 2, while ABC simulcasting day 3. NFL Network‘s main set featured the crew of host Rich Eisen, Daniel Jeremiah, Draft Expert Mike Mayock, and Stanford head coach David Shaw, with Steve Mariucci, Steve Smith Sr., and Fox NFL lead analyst Troy Aikman joining from an outside set for day 1. Other analysts included: Fox College Football lead analyst Joel Klatt, Fox NFL analyst Charles Davis, and Deion Sanders. The Fox/NFL Network simulcast would only last one year, as ABC picked up the broadcast television rights for all 3 days of the draft in 2019. ABC’s coverage would have the College GameDay crew on days 1 and 2, with Good Morning America anchor Robin Roberts, joined by 2018 NFL MVP and Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, and Grammy Award winner Taylor Swift, co- hosting with GameDay host Rece Davis on day 1. Also, on day 1, Swift announced her new single ME!, featuring Panic! at the Disco’s Brendon Urie, being released at midnight ET, with the music video debuting on YouTube at the same time. Day 3 featured the ESPN crew of Trey Wingo, NFL insiders Louis Riddick, and draft experts Todd McShay and Mel Kiper Jr., hosting ABC’s coverage, which was a simulcast of ESPN’s coverage. Players who have been out of high school for at least three years are eligible for the NFL draft. The rules do not state that a player must attend college, but virtually all of the players selected in the NFL draft have played college football, usually in the United States but occasionally from Canadian universities as well. A few players are occasionally selected from other football leagues like the Arena Football League (AFL), the Canadian Football League (CFL), and the German Football League (GFL). A small handful of players have also been drafted from colleges who played other sports than football. Rules state only that a player must be three years removed from high school graduation, regardless of what the prospective draftee did during that time. A year as a redshirt player in college counts toward eligibility even though the player was not allowed to participate in games during that year, therefore players who have completed their redshirt sophomore year can enter the NFL draft. The selection order is based on each team's win-loss record in the previous season and whether the team reached the playoffs. Teams that did not reach the playoffs the previous season are ranked in reverse order of their records (thus the team with the fewest wins is awarded the first selection). Ties between teams with identical records are determined by the following tiebreakers (in order): 1. Strength of schedule, which is the combined win-loss record for all 16 of the team's opponents in the previous season (ties count as a half win and half loss). The team with the lower strength of schedule (i.e. their opponents compiled fewer wins) is granted the earlier pick in round one. 2. If any teams are in the same division, the other playoff tiebreakers will be applied in the specified order. 3. If any teams are in the same conference, the other playoff tiebreakers will be applied in the specified order. 4. If two teams remain from opposing conferences, a series of tiebreakers starting with head-to-head result, win percentage of common games, and strength of victory are applied. Starting with the 2020 NFL Draft, interconference ties were only broken by a coin flip. Teams that reached the playoffs the previous season are then slotted in the order in which they were eliminated as indicated in the table below. Within each tier, the slotting is determined as above (i.e. worst record picks first and the same tiebreakers apply). Once the order for the first round is determined as described above, the selection order remains the same for subsequent rounds with the exception of teams with identical records within their tier. These tied teams "cycle" picks in each subsequent round. For example, in the 2014 draft, the Jacksonville Jaguars, Cleveland Browns, Oakland Raiders, Atlanta Falcons, and Tampa Bay Buccaneers all finished 4–12, and selected in that order in the first round (based on the tiebreakers described above). In the second round, Jacksonville cycled to the back of the line with the order becoming Cleveland, Oakland, Atlanta, Tampa Bay, and Jacksonville. That cycling continued in each round. An exception to this ordering strategy occurs when "expansion teams" are added to the league. Any expansion team is automatically granted the first selection; if there are two or more expansion teams added, a coin toss (for two expansion teams) or a drawing of lots (for three expansion teams or more) determines which team is awarded the first selection in the regular draft. The winner of the coin toss (or of the drawing of lots in the event there are three or more expansion teams) is awarded the first selection in the expansion draft. The 2010 NFL draft was the first draft to take place over three days. Its first round was on Thursday, April 22 at 7:30 p.m. ET, with the second and third rounds on Friday, April 23 at 6 p.m. ET, followed by the remaining rounds on Saturday, April 24 at 10 a.m. ET. The first overall pick generally gets the richest contract, but other contracts rely on a number of variables. While they generally are based on the previous year's second overall pick, third overall, etc., each player's position also is taken into account. Each team has its representatives attend the draft. During the draft, one team is always "on the clock." Teams have 10 minutes to make their choice in the first round, 7 minutes in the second round, 5 minutes in the third through sixth rounds, and 4 minutes in the seventh round. (Until 2007, the limits were 15 minutes in the first round, 10 minutes in the second, and 5 minutes for all subsequent rounds. The time for seventh-round selections was shortened from 5 minutes to 4 minutes in 2015.) If a team does not make a decision within its allotted time, the team still can submit its selection at any time after its time is up, but the next team can pick before it, thus possibly 'stealing' a player the team with the earlier pick may have been considering. This occurred in the 2003 draft, when the Minnesota Vikings, with the 7th overall pick, were late with their selection. The Jacksonville Jaguars drafted quarterback Byron Leftwich and the Carolina Panthers drafted offensive tackle Jordan Gross before the Vikings were able to submit their selection of defensive tackle Kevin Williams. This also happened in 2011; as the Baltimore Ravens were negotiating a trade with the Chicago Bears, their time expired and allowed the Kansas City Chiefs to pick ahead of Baltimore, who was unable to finalize the trade with Chicago. Teams may negotiate with one another both before and during the draft (including when they are not "on the clock") for the right to pick an additional player in a given round. For example, a team may include draft picks in future drafts in order to acquire a player during a trading period. Teams may also make negotiations during the draft relinquishing the right to pick in a given round for the right to have an additional pick in a later round. Thus teams may have multiple picks or no picks in a given round. In addition to the 32 selections in each of the seven rounds, a total of 32 compensatory picks are awarded to teams based on the players they lost and gained in free agency. The league defines a class of unrestricted free agents as "compensatory free agents ("CFA"). Teams that have lost more compensatory free agents than they signed in the previous year receive between one and four picks somewhere in the third through seventh rounds. Teams that gain and lose equal numbers of players but lose higher-valued players can also be awarded a single seventh-round pick. Compensatory picks are awarded each year at the NFL annual meeting which is held at the end of March; typically, about three or four weeks before the draft. Compensatory picks can be traded; this began with the 2017 NFL Draft. The placement of picks is determined by a proprietary formula based on the player's average annual salary, playing time, and postseason honors with his new team, with salary being the primary factor. So, for example, a team that lost a linebacker who signed for $2.5 million per year in free agency might get a sixth-round compensatory pick, while a team that lost a wide receiver who signed for $5 million per year might receive a fourth-round pick. However, the NFL has never revealed the exact formula used to determine allotment of compensatory picks, though observers from outside the NFL have been able to reverse engineer it to some degree of certainty. All compensatory picks are awarded at the ends of Rounds 3 through 7. If less than 32 such picks are awarded, the remaining picks are awarded after the final Round 7 compensatory picks in the order in which teams would pick in a hypothetical eighth round of the draft; these picks are known as "supplemental compensatory selections". More than 32 compensatory picks have been awarded only on one occasion: the 2016 NFL Draft, where 33 picks were awarded; the additional pick was awarded (under an agreement between the NFL Management Council and the NFLPA) to the Buffalo Bills for losing Da'Norris Searcy to free agency and signing Charles Clay as a transition tagged player from the Miami Dolphins, who had not qualified as a CFA. In 2019, the NFL released the compensatory picks on February 22 (nineteen days after the Super Bowl). The NFL allows each team a certain amount of money from its salary cap to sign its drafted rookies for their first season. That amount is based on an undisclosed formula that assigns a certain value to each pick in the draft; thus, having more picks, or earlier picks, will increase the allotment. In 2008 the highest allotment was about $8.22 million for the Kansas City Chiefs, who had 12 picks, including two first-rounders, while the lowest was the $1.79 million for the Cleveland Browns who had only five picks, and none in the first three rounds. The exact mechanism for the rookie salary cap is set out in the NFL's collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA). (Those numbers represent the cap hits that each rookie's salary may contribute, not the total amount of money paid out.) The drafted players are paid salaries commensurate with the position in which they were drafted. High first-round picks get paid the most, and low-round picks get paid the least. There is a de facto pay scale for drafted rookies. After the draft, non-drafted rookies may sign a contract with any team in the league. These rookie free-agents are not usually paid as well as drafted players, nearly all of them signing for the predetermined rookie minimum and a small signing bonus. Two other facets of the rookie salary cap affect the makeup of rosters. First, the base salaries of rookie free agents do not count towards the rookie salary cap, though certain bonuses do. Second, if a rookie is traded, his cap allotment remains with the team that originally drafted him, which make trades involving rookie players relatively rare. (This rule does not apply, however, to rookies that are waived by the teams that drafted them.) Teams can also agree to a contract with a draft-eligible player before the draft itself starts. They can only do this if they have the first overall pick, as by agreeing to terms with a player the team has already "selected" which player they will draft. A recent example of this would be quarterback Matthew Stafford and the Detroit Lions in the 2009 NFL Draft. The Lions, with the first overall selection in the draft, agreed to a 6-year, $78 million deal with $41.7 million guaranteed with Stafford a day before the draft officially started. By agreeing to the deal, Stafford had already been chosen as the first overall pick in the draft. The commissioner has the ability to forfeit picks the team is allotted in a draft for rules violations. A total of 21 selections have been forfeited since 1980 for 16 rules violations by 11 teams, while three other selections have been moved down from their original position. The New England Patriots have been the most penalized team, losing four draft picks for three violations. The Denver Broncos, Oakland Raiders, and San Francisco 49ers have each committed two violations. In addition, teams selecting a player in the Supplimental Draft will forfeit the corresponding selection in the following year's NFL Draft. Teams vary greatly in their selection methodologies. Owners, general managers, coaches, and others may or may not participate. For the 1983 draft, for example, the Pittsburgh Steelers' head coach Chuck Noll had what team executive Art Rooney, Jr. later described as "the final say" over picks, even over his father, team owner Art Rooney. New England Patriots head coach Ron Meyer, by contrast, later stated that the team, led by owner Billy Sullivan, excluded the coaching staff from any personnel-related decisions, even prohibiting him from reading scouting reports. Had he had the decision-making authority, Meyer said, he would not have chosen Tony Eason in the first round of the 1983 draft. College football players who are considering entering the NFL draft but who still have eligibility to play football can request an expert opinion from the NFL-created Draft Advisory Board. The Board, composed of scouting experts and team executives, makes a prediction as to the likely round in which a player would be drafted. This information, which has proven to be fairly accurate, can help college players determine whether to enter the draft or to continue playing and improving at the college level. There are also many famous reporting scouts, such as Mel Kiper Jr. The NFL Scouting Combine is a six-day assessment of skills occurring every year in late February or early March in Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana. College football players perform physical and mental tests in front of NFL coaches, general managers, and scouts. With increasing interest in the NFL draft, the scouting combine has grown in scope and significance, allowing personnel directors to evaluate upcoming prospects in a standardized setting. Its origins have evolved from the National, BLESTO, and Quadra Scouting services in 1977 to the media frenzy it has become today. Athletes attend by invitation only. Implications of one's performance during the Combine can affect perception, draft status, salary, and ultimately his career. The draft has popularized the term "Workout Warrior" (sometimes known as a "Workout Wonder"), describing an athlete who, based on superior measurables such as size, speed, and strength, has increased his "draft stock" despite having a possibly average or subpar college career. Each university has a Pro Day, during which the NCAA allows NFL scouts to visit the school and watch players participate in NFL Combine events together. (Some smaller universities join with nearby schools.) Essentially job fairs for prospective NFL players, Pro Days are held under the belief that players feel more comfortable at their own campus than they do at the Combine, which in turn leads to better performances. College teams which produce a large quantity of NFL prospects generally generate huge interest from scouts and coaches at their Pro Days. Each NFL team is allowed to transport a maximum of 30 draft-eligible players for the purposes of physical examinations, interviews, and written tests. If a player attends a school or grew up in the same "metropolitan area" as the team that is inviting the player, that visit is not counted towards the 30-player limit. Tickets to the NFL draft are free and made available to fans on a first-come first-served basis. The tickets are distributed at the box office the morning of the draft, one ticket per person. From the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s, the draft was held in various Northeastern, Midwestern, Mid-Atlantic, and Western cities with NFL franchises. Starting in 1965, the NFL held the draft in New York City until moving the event to Chicago in both 2015 and 2016. Since then, the draft has moved to Philadelphia (2017), Dallas (2018), and Nashville (2019), with increasing attendance numbers every year. The draft will be hosted by Paradise, Nevada (a suburb of Las Vegas) in 2020, Cleveland in 2021, and Kansas City in 2023. The draft is bid on each year by NFL cities and is held in the city of the winning bid in a process that began in 2015. The 2006 draft was held at New York City's Radio City Music Hall, the first time this venue had hosted the gala, and it was held there until 2015, when the draft was held in Chicago's Auditorium Theater. The move marked the first time that the Draft had been in Chicago since 1964. The Theater at Madison Square Garden had hosted the event for a ten-year period, but the NFL moved it to the Javits Convention Center in 2005 following a dispute with the Cablevision-owned arena, who were opposing the West Side Stadium, which would have served as home of the New York Jets and the centerpiece of the New York City bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics, because the new stadium would have competed with the Garden for concerts and other events. Future venues are as follows: Paradise, 2020, Cleveland, 2021, Kansas City, 2023 Chicago: 1938, 1942–1943, 1951, 1962–1964, 2015–2016 (9) Auditorium Theatre and Grant Park: 2015, 2016 (2), Blackstone Hotel: 1951, 1962, 1963, 1964 (4), Palmer House Hotel: 1942, 1943 (2), Sherman House Hotel: 1938 (1) Cleveland: 2021 (1) Dallas: 2018 (1) AT&T; Stadium: 2018 (1) Kansas City: 2023 (1) Los Angeles: 1956 (1) Ambassador Hotel: 1956, (1) Milwaukee: 1940 (1) Schroeder Hotel: 1940 (1) Nashville: 2019 (1) Lower Broadway: 2019 New York City: 1937, 1939, 1945–1947, 1952, 1955, 1965–2014 (57) Americana Hotel: 1973, 1974 (2), Belmont Plaza Hotel: 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971 (4), Essex House: 1972 (1), Gotham Hotel: 1967 (1), Hilton at Rockefeller Center: 1975 (1), Commodore Hotel: 1945, 1946, 1947 (3), Hotel Lincoln: 1937 (1), Hotel Statler: 1952 (1), Javits Convention Center: 2005 (1), New York Marriott Marquis 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 (9), New York Sheraton Hotel/Omni Park Central Hotel: 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985 (6), New Yorker Hotel: 1939 (1), Radio City Music Hall: 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 (9), Roosevelt Hotel 1976, 1977, 1978 (3), Summit Hotel: 1965, 1966 (2), Theater at Madison Square Garden: 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999. 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 (10), Waldorf-Astoria Hotel: 1979 (1), Warwick Hotel: 1955 (1) Paradise: 2020 (1) Philadelphia: 1936, 1944, 1949–1961, 2017 (15) Bellevue-Stratford Hotel: 1949*, 1950, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956*, 1957, (8), Eakins Oval: 2017 (1), Racquet Club of Philadelphia: 1950, (1), Ritz-Carlton Hotel: 1936 (1), Warwick Hotel: 1944, 1957*, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961 (6) Pittsburgh: 1948–1949 (2) Fort Pitt Hotel: 1948 (1), Schenley Hotel: 1949, (1) Washington, D.C.: 1941 (1) Willard Hotel: 1941 (1) *: Year with more than one Draft venue Source: NFL Draft Locations Dallas: 1961–1963 (3) Dallas Statler Hilton (1961–1963) Minneapolis: 1960 (1) Nicollet Hotel (1960) New York: 1964–1966 (3) Waldorf Astoria (1964–1966*) No location (by telephone): 1965* (1) *: Year with more than one draft venue Source: NFL Draft Locations Since 1977, the NFL has also held a supplemental draft to accommodate players who did not enter the regular draft. Players generally enter the supplementary draft because they missed the filing deadline for the NFL draft or because issues developed which affected their eligibility (such as academic or disciplinary matters). The supplemental draft is scheduled to occur at some point after the regular draft and before the start of the next season. In 1984 the NFL held an additional draft for players who were under contract with either USFL or CFL teams. Draft order is determined by a weighted system that is divided into three groupings. First come the teams that had six or fewer wins last season, followed by non-playoff teams that had more than six wins, followed by the 12 playoff teams. In the supplemental draft, a team is not required to use any picks. Instead, if a team wants a player in the supplemental draft, they submit a "bid" to the Commissioner with the round they would pick that player. If no other team places a bid on that player at an earlier spot, the team is awarded the player and has to give up an equivalent pick in the following year's draft. (For example, FS Paul Oliver was taken by the San Diego Chargers in the fourth round of the supplemental draft in 2007; thus, in the 2008 NFL draft, the Chargers forfeited a fourth- round pick.) The 1985 supplemental draft was particularly controversial. Quarterback Bernie Kosar who had led the University of Miami to its first National Championship in 1984 was earning his academic degree as a junior. Rather than finish his eligibility at Miami he wanted to turn pro. At this time college players had to wait for their class unless they themselves graduated early. Football agent AJ Faigin devised a plan to get Kosar to his preferred team, the Cleveland Browns. Faigin was representing former University of Miami QB Jim Kelly, then in the USFL, but whose NFL rights were held by the Buffalo Bills. The USFL was in its last days and Kelly would soon be available to the Bills. Faigin's first step was to ask Bill Polian, the GM of Buffalo, if he would be willing to trade the number one supplemental pick (worth next to nothing at that time) to Cleveland. Polian agreed and Faigin told the Cleveland Browns a trade was available. He next notified Kosar's father he should not formally submit his son's application for the standard NFL draft that was weeks away and declare only afterward; which would put him into the supplemental draft. The result of Kosar's withdrawal resulted in rare, open warfare among NFL teams played out in the newspapers with threats of lawsuits between them, notably the Minnesota Vikings and New York Giants, who had expressed interest in choosing him in that season's regular draft. But as no rules were broken the Giants and eventually Minnesota had to back down. Following that season, the NFL instituted the current semi-random supplemental draft order. The strategy devised by A.J. Faigin, to not declare for the NFL until after the regular draft, was subsequently used by other top players for various reasons. In some cases, it was because they did not want to play for the team that would have drafted them in the regular draft. For example, Brian Bosworth did not declare because he did not want to play for the Indianapolis Colts or the Buffalo Bills, the teams who drafted second and third that year. The Colts had offered him a 4-year, $2.2 million deal before the draft. The Seattle Seahawks won the right to draft first in the supplemental draft, and later signed him to a 10-year, $11 million contract. At the time that was the largest rookie contract in NFL history. As of the 1990 season, only players who had graduated or exhausted their college eligibility were made available for the supplemental draft. Since 1993, only players who had planned to attend college but for various reasons could not, have been included in the supplemental draft. Draftnik, Drafts in sports, List of NFL drafts, List of professional American football drafts, List of NFL draft broadcasters, List of final selections of NFL drafts, List of NFL Draft first overall picks Organized Professional Team Sports: Part 3. (password protected except at participating U.S. library) by United States House Committee on the Judiciary III, Subcommittee on Antitrust (1957)., Baldwin, Douglas Owen (2000). Football—The NFL in Sports in North America: A Documentary History, Volume 8, Sports in the Depression, 1930–1940. Gulf Breeze, Florida: Academic International Press. pp. 191–207., Coenen, Craig R. (2005). From Sandlots to the Super Bowl: The National Football League, 1920–1967. Knoxville, Tennessee: University of Tennessee Press., Davis, Jeff (2005). Papa Bear, The Life and Legacy of George Halas. New York: McGraw-Hill, DeVito, Carlo (2006). Wellington: the Maras, the Giants, and the City of New York. Chicago: Triumph Books., Didinger, Ray; with Lyons, Robert S. (2005). The Eagles Encyclopedia. Philadelphia: Temple University Press., Levy, Alan H. (2003). Tackling Jim Crow, Racial Segregation in Professional Football. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Co., Inc., Lyons, Robert S. (2010). On Any Given Sunday, A Life of Bert Bell. Philadelphia:Temple University Press., MacCambridge, Michael (2004, 2005), America's Game. New York:Anchor Books, Maule, Tex (1964). The Game; The Official Picture History of the National Football League. New York: Random House, Pervin, Lawrence A. (2009). Football's New York Giants. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, Inc., Ruck, Rob; with Paterson, Maggie Jones and Weber, Michael P. (2010) Rooney:a Sporting Life. Lincoln:University of Nebraska Press., Peterson, Robert W. (1997). Pigskin New York:Oxford University Press., Williams, Pete (2006). The Draft: a year inside the NFL's search for talent. New York:St. Martin's Press., Willis, Chris (2010). The Man Who Built the National Football League: Joe F. Carr. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, Inc., Brown, Paul; with Clary, Jack (1979). PB, the Paul Brown Story. New York: Atheneum., Carroll, John M. (1999). Red Grange and the Rise of Modern Football. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press., Gottehrer, Barry (1963), The Giants of New York. New York:G.P. Putnam's Sons, Hession, Joseph (1987). The Rams: Five Decades of Football. San Francisco: Foghorn Press., Knight, Jonathan (2006). "Bernie Comes Home" in Sundays in the Pound: The Heroics and Heartbreak of the 1985–89 Cleveland Browns. Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press pp. 15–25., Maule, Tex (1964). The Game; The Official Picture History of the National Football League. New York: Random House, Staudohar, Paul D. (1986). The Sports Industry and Collective Bargaining. Ithaca, New York: ILR Press., Yost, Mark (2006). Tailgating, Sacks and Salary Caps. Chicago: Kaplan Publishing. N.F.L. Draft Travels Far for a Two-Night Stay, What Does Fitzpatrick's Wonderlic Mean?, The Year Greasy Neale was Fired, 1936–37 NFL Draft by Jim Campbell, Draft Productivity: A Study by Gary Keller, The Scout Is A Lonely Hunter by George Plimpton, Is the supplemental draft important?, Oh, for another '58 Packer draft, Yazoo Smith v. NFL The American Football League (AFL) was a major professional American football league that operated for ten seasons from 1960 until 1969, when it merged with the older National Football League (NFL), and became the American Football Conference. The upstart AFL operated in direct competition with the more established NFL throughout its existence. It was more successful than earlier rivals to the NFL with the same name, the 1926, 1936 and 1940 leagues, and the later All-America Football Conference (which existed between 1944 and 1950 but only played between 1946 and 1949). This fourth version of the AFL was the most successful, created by a number of owners who had been refused NFL expansion franchises or had minor shares of NFL franchises. The AFL's original lineup consisted of an Eastern division of the New York Titans, Boston Patriots, Buffalo Bills, and the Houston Oilers, and a Western division of the Los Angeles Chargers, Denver Broncos, Oakland Raiders, and Dallas Texans. The league first gained attention by signing 75% of the NFL's first-round draft choices in 1960, including Houston's successful signing of college star and Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon. While the first years of the AFL saw uneven competition and low attendance, the league was buttressed by a generous television contract with the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) (followed by a contract with the competing National Broadcasting Company (NBC) for games starting with the 1965 season) that broadcast the more offense-oriented football league nationwide. Continuing to attract top talent from colleges and the NFL by the mid-1960s, as well as successful franchise shifts of the Chargers from L.A. south to San Diego and the Texans north to Kansas City (becoming the Kansas City Chiefs), the AFL established a dedicated following. The transformation of the struggling Titans into the New York Jets under new ownership further solidified the league's reputation among the major media. As fierce competition made player salaries skyrocket in both leagues, especially after a series of "raids", the leagues agreed to a merger in 1966. Among the conditions were a common draft and a championship game played between the two league champions first played in early 1967, which would eventually become known as the Super Bowl. The AFL and NFL operated as separate leagues until 1970, with separate regular season and playoff schedules except for the championship game. NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle also became chief executive of the AFL from July 26, 1966, through the completion of the merger. During this time the AFL expanded, adding the Miami Dolphins and Cincinnati Bengals. After losses by the Kansas City Chiefs and Oakland Raiders in the first two AFL-NFL World Championship Game to the Green Bay Packers (1966–67), the New York Jets and Chiefs won Super Bowls III and IV (1968–69) respectively, cementing the league's claim to being an equal to the NFL. In 1970, the AFL was absorbed into the NFL and the league reorganized with the ten AFL franchises along with three existing NFL teams: the Baltimore Colts, the Cleveland Browns, and the Pittsburgh Steelers, becoming part of the newly- formed American Football Conference. During the 1950s, the National Football League had grown to rival Major League Baseball as one of the most popular professional sports leagues in the United States. One franchise that did not share in this newfound success of the league was the Chicago Cardinals – owned by the Bidwill family – who had become overshadowed by the more popular Chicago Bears. The Bidwills hoped to move their franchise, preferably to St. Louis, but could not come to terms with the league, which demanded money before it would approve the move. Needing cash, the Bidwills began entertaining offers from would-be investors, and one of the men who approached the Bidwills was Lamar Hunt, son and heir of millionaire oilman H. L. Hunt. Hunt offered to buy the Cardinals and move them to Dallas, where he had grown up. However, these negotiations came to nothing, since the Bidwills insisted on retaining a controlling interest in the franchise and were unwilling to move their team to a city where a previous NFL franchise had failed in 1952. While Hunt negotiated with the Bidwills, similar offers were made by Bud Adams, Bob Howsam, and Max Winter. When Hunt, Adams, and Howsam were unable to secure a controlling interest in the Cardinals, they approached NFL commissioner Bert Bell and proposed the addition of expansion teams. Bell, wary of expanding the 12-team league and risking its newfound success, rejected the offer. On his return flight to Dallas, Hunt conceived the idea of an entirely new league and decided to contact the others who had shown interest in purchasing the Cardinals. In addition to Adams, Howsam, and Winter, Hunt reached out to Bill Boyer, Winter's business partner, to gauge their interest in starting a new league. Hunt's first meeting with Adams was held in March 1959. Hunt, who felt a regional rivalry would be critical for the success of the new league, convinced Adams to join and found his team in Houston. Hunt next secured an agreement from Howsam to bring a team to Denver. After Winter and Boyer agreed to start a team in Minneapolis-Saint Paul, the new league had its first four teams. Hunt then approached Willard Rhodes, who hoped to bring pro football to Seattle. However, not wanting to undermine its own brand, the University of Washington was unwilling to let the fledgling league use Husky Stadium, and Rhodes' effort came to nothing (Seattle would later get a pro football team of its own). Hunt also sought franchises in Los Angeles, Buffalo and New York City. During the summer of 1959, he sought the blessings of the NFL for his nascent league, as he did not seek a potentially costly rivalry. Within weeks of the July 1959 announcement of the league's formation, Hunt received commitments from Barron Hilton and Harry Wismer to bring teams to Los Angeles and New York, respectively. His initial efforts for Buffalo, however, were rebuffed, when Hunt's first choice of owner, Pat McGroder, declined to take part; McGroder had hoped that the threat of the AFL would be enough to prompt the NFL to expand to Buffalo. On August 14, 1959, the first league meeting was held in Chicago, and charter memberships were given to Dallas, New York, Houston, Denver, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis-Saint Paul. On August 22 the league officially was named the American Football League at a meeting in Dallas. The NFL's initial reaction was not as openly hostile as it had been with the earlier All-America Football Conference (Bell had even given his public approval), yet individual NFL owners soon began a campaign to undermine the new league. AFL owners were approached with promises of new NFL franchises or ownership stakes in existing ones. Only the party from Minneapolis-Saint Paul accepted, and with the addition of Ole Haugsrud and Bernie Ridder the Minnesota group joined the NFL in 1961 as the Minnesota Vikings. The older league also announced on August 29 that it had conveniently reversed its position against expansion, and planned to bring new NFL teams to Houston and Dallas, to start play in 1961. (The NFL did not expand to Houston at that time, the promised Dallas team – the Dallas Cowboys – actually started play in 1960, and the Vikings began play in 1961.) Finally, the NFL quickly came to terms with the Bidwills and allowed them to relocate the struggling Cardinals to St. Louis, eliminating that city as a potential AFL market. Ralph Wilson, who owned a minority interest in the NFL's Detroit Lions at the time, initially announced he was placing a team in Miami, but like the Seattle situation, was also rebuffed by local ownership (like Seattle, Miami would later get a pro football team of its own as well); given five other choices, Wilson negotiated with McGroder and brought the team that would become the Bills to Buffalo. Buffalo was officially awarded its franchise on October 28. During a league meeting on November 22, a 10-man ownership group from Boston (led by Billy Sullivan) was awarded the AFL's eighth team. On November 30, 1959, Joe Foss, a World War II Marine fighter ace and former governor of South Dakota, was named the AFL's first commissioner. Foss commissioned a friend of Harry Wismer's to develop the AFL's eagle-on-football logo. Hunt was elected President of the AFL on January 26, 1960. The AFL's first draft took place the same day Boston was awarded its franchise, and lasted 33 rounds. The league held a second draft on December 2, which lasted for 20 rounds. Because the Raiders joined after the AFL draft, they inherited Minnesota's selections. A special allocation draft was held in January 1960, to allow the Raiders to stock their team, as some of the other AFL teams had already signed some of Minneapolis' original draft choices. In November 1959, Minneapolis-Saint Paul owner Max Winter announced his intent to leave the AFL to accept a franchise offer from the NFL. In 1961, his team began play in the NFL as the Minnesota Vikings. Los Angeles Chargers owner Barron Hilton demanded that a replacement for Minnesota be placed in California, to reduce his team's operating costs and to create a rivalry. After a brief search, Oakland was chosen and an ownership group led by F. Wayne Valley and local real estate developer Chet Soda was formed. After initially being called the Oakland "Señores", the Oakland Raiders officially joined the AFL on January 30, 1960. The AFL's first major success came when the Houston Oilers signed Billy Cannon, the All-American and 1959 Heisman Trophy winner from LSU. Cannon signed a $100,000 contract to play for the Oilers, despite having already signed a $50,000 contract with the NFL's Los Angeles Rams. The Oilers filed suit and claimed that Rams general manager Pete Rozelle had unduly manipulated Cannon. The court upheld the Houston contract, and with Cannon the Oilers appeared in the AFL's first three championship games (winning two). On June 9, 1960, the league signed a five-year television contract with ABC, which brought in revenues of approximately US$2,125,000 per year for the entire league. On June 17, the AFL filed an antitrust lawsuit against the NFL, which was dismissed in 1962 after a two-month trial. The AFL began regular-season play (a night game on Friday, September 9, 1960) with eight teams in the league – the Boston Patriots, Buffalo Bills, Dallas Texans, Denver Broncos, Houston Oilers, Los Angeles Chargers, New York Titans, and Oakland Raiders. Raiders' co-owner Wayne Valley dubbed the AFL ownership "The Foolish Club", a term Lamar Hunt subsequently used on team photographs he sent as Christmas gifts. The Oilers became the first-ever league champions by defeating the Chargers, 24–16, in the AFL Championship on January 1, 1961. Attendance for the 1960 season was respectable for a new league, but not nearly that of the NFL. In 1960, the NFL averaged attendance of more than 40,000 fans per game and more popular NFL teams in 1960 regularly saw attendance figures in excess of 50,000 per game, while CFL attendances averaged approximately 20,000 per game. By comparison, AFL attendance averaged about 16,500 per game and generally hovered between 10,000-20,000 per game. Professional football was still primarily a gate-driven business in 1960, so low attendance meant financial losses. The Raiders, with a league-worst average attendance of just 9,612, lost $500,000 in their first year and only survived after receiving a $400,000 loan from Bills owner Ralph Wilson. In an early sign of stability, however, the AFL did not lose any teams after its first year of operation. In fact, the only major change was the Chargers' move from Los Angeles to nearby San Diego (they would return to Los Angeles in 2017). On August 8, 1961, the AFL challenged the Canadian Football League to an exhibition game that would feature the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and the Buffalo Bills, which was attended by 24,376 spectators. Playing at Civic Stadium in Hamilton, Ontario, the Tiger-Cats defeated the Bills 38–21 playing a mix of AFL and CFL rules. While the Oilers found instant success in the AFL, other teams did not fare as well. The Oakland Raiders and New York Titans struggled on and off the field during their first few seasons in the league. Oakland's eight-man ownership group was reduced to just three in 1961, after heavy financial losses in their first season. Attendance for home games was poor, partly due to the team playing in the San Francisco Bay Area—which already had an established NFL team (the San Francisco 49ers)—but the product on the field was also to blame. After winning six games in their debut season, the Raiders won a total of three times in the 1961 and 1962 seasons. Oakland took part in a 1961 supplemental draft meant to boost the weaker teams in the league, but it did little good. They participated in another such draft in 1962. The Titans fared a little better on the field but had their own financial troubles. Attendance was so low for home games that team owner Harry Wismer had fans move to seats closer to the field to give the illusion of a fuller stadium on television. Eventually Wismer could no longer afford to meet his payroll, and on November 8, 1962, the AFL took over operations of the team. The Titans were sold to a five-person ownership group headed by Sonny Werblin on March 28, 1963, and in April the new owners changed the team's name to the New York Jets. The Raiders and Titans both finished last in their respective divisions in the 1962 season. The Texans and Oilers, winners of their divisions, faced each other for the 1962 AFL Championship on December 23. The Texans dethroned the two- time champion Oilers, 20–17, in a double-overtime contest that was, at the time, professional football's longest-ever game. In 1963, the Texans became the second AFL team to move to a new city. Lamar Hunt felt that despite winning the league championship in 1962, the Texans could not sufficiently profit in the same market as the Dallas Cowboys, which entered the NFL as an expansion franchise in 1960. After meetings with New Orleans, Atlanta, and Miami, Hunt announced on May 22 that the Texans' new home would be Kansas City, Missouri. Kansas City mayor Harold Roe Bartle (nicknamed "Chief") was instrumental in his city's success in attracting the team. Partly to honor Bartle, the franchise officially became the Kansas City Chiefs on May 26. The San Diego Chargers, under head coach Sid Gillman, won a decisive 51–10 victory over the Boston Patriots for the 1963 AFL Championship. Confident that his team was capable of beating the NFL-champion Chicago Bears (he had the Chargers' rings inscribed with the phrase "World Champions"), Gillman approached NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle and proposed a final championship game between the two teams. Rozelle declined the offer; however, the game would be instituted three seasons later. A series of events throughout the next few years demonstrated the AFL's ability to achieve a greater level of equality with the NFL. On January 29, 1964, the AFL signed a lucrative $36 million television contract with NBC (beginning in the 1965 season), which gave the league money it needed to compete with the NFL for players. Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney was quoted as saying to NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle that "They don't have to call us 'Mister' anymore". A single-game attendance record was set on November 8, 1964, when 61,929 fans packed Shea Stadium to watch the New York Jets and Buffalo Bills. The bidding war for players between the AFL and NFL escalated in 1965. The Chiefs drafted University of Kansas star Gale Sayers in the first round of the 1965 AFL draft (held November 28, 1964), while the Chicago Bears did the same in the NFL draft. Sayers eventually signed with the Bears. A similar situation occurred when the New York Jets and the NFL's St. Louis Cardinals both drafted University of Alabama quarterback Joe Namath. In what was viewed as a key victory for the AFL, Namath signed a $427,000 contract with the Jets on January 2, 1965 (the deal included a new car). It was the highest amount of money ever paid to a collegiate football player, and is cited as the strongest contributing factor to the eventual merger between the two leagues. After the 1963 season, the Newark Bears of the Atlantic Coast Football League expressed interest in joining the AFL; concerns over having to split the New York metro area with the still-uncertain Jets were a factor in the Bears' bid being rejected. In 1965, Milwaukee officials tried to lure an expansion team to play at Milwaukee County Stadium where the Green Bay Packers had played parts of their home schedule after an unsuccessful attempt to lure the Packers there full-time, but Packers head coach Vince Lombardi invoked the team's exclusive lease, and additionally, signed an extension to keep some home games in Milwaukee until 1976. In early 1965, the AFL awarded its first expansion team to Rankin Smith of Atlanta. The NFL quickly counteroffered Smith a franchise, which Smith accepted; the Atlanta Falcons began play as an NFL franchise. In March 1965, Joe Robbie had met with Commissioner Foss to inquire about an expansion franchise for Miami. On May 6, after Atlanta's exit, Robbie secured an agreement with Miami mayor Robert King High to bring a team to Miami. League expansion was approved at a meeting held on June 7, and on August 16 the AFL's ninth franchise was officially awarded to Robbie and television star Danny Thomas. The Miami Dolphins joined the league for a fee of $7.5 million and started play in the AFL's Eastern Division in 1966. The AFL also planned to add two more teams by 1967. In 1966, the rivalry between the AFL and NFL reached an all-time peak. On April 7, Joe Foss resigned as AFL commissioner. His successor was Oakland Raiders head coach and general manager Al Davis, who had been instrumental in turning around the fortunes of that franchise. No longer content with trying to outbid the NFL for college talent, the AFL under Davis started to recruit players already on NFL squads. Davis's strategy focused on quarterbacks in particular, and in two months he persuaded seven NFL quarterbacks to sign with the AFL. Although Davis's intention was to help the AFL win the bidding war, some AFL and NFL owners saw the escalation as detrimental to both leagues. Alarmed with the rate of spending in the league, Hilton Hotels forced Barron Hilton to relinquish his stake in the Chargers as a condition of maintaining his leadership role with the hotel chain. The same month Davis was named commissioner, several NFL owners, headed by Dallas Cowboys general manager Tex Schramm, secretly approached Lamar Hunt and other AFL owners and started negotiations with the AFL to merge. A series of secret meetings commenced in Dallas to discuss the concerns of both leagues over rapidly increasing player salaries, as well as the practice of player poaching. Hunt and Schramm completed the basic groundwork for a merger of the two leagues by the end of May, and on June 8, 1966, the merger was officially announced. Under the terms of the agreement, the two leagues would hold a common player draft. The agreement also called for a title game to be played between the champions of the respective leagues. The two leagues would be fully merged by 1970, NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle would remain as commissioner of the merged league, which would be named the NFL. Additional expansion teams would eventually be awarded by 1970 or soon thereafter to bring it to a 28-team league. The AFL also agreed to pay indemnities of $18 million to the NFL over 20 years. In protest, Davis resigned as AFL commissioner on July 25 rather than remain until the completion of the merger, and Milt Woodard was named president of the AFL, with the "commissioner" title vacated because of Rozelle's expanded role. On January 15, 1967, the first-ever championship game between the two separate professional football leagues, the AFL-NFL Championship Game (retroactively referred to as Super Bowl I), was played in Los Angeles. After a close first half, the NFL champion Green Bay Packers overwhelmed the AFL champion Kansas City Chiefs, 35–10. The loss reinforced for many the notion that the AFL was an inferior league. Packers head coach Vince Lombardi stated after the game, "I do not think they are as good as the top teams in the National Football League." The second AFL-NFL Championship (Super Bowl II) yielded a similar result. The Oakland Raiders—who had easily beaten the Houston Oilers to win their first AFL championship—were overmatched by the Packers, 33–14. The more experienced Packers capitalized on a number of Raiders miscues and never trailed. Green Bay defensive tackle Henry Jordan offered a compliment to Oakland and the AFL, when he said, "... the AFL is becoming much more sophisticated on offense. I think the league has always had good personnel, but the blocks were subtler and better conceived in this game." The AFL added its tenth and final team on May 24, 1967, when it awarded the league's second expansion franchise to an ownership group from Cincinnati, Ohio, headed by NFL legend Paul Brown. Although Brown had intended to join the NFL, he agreed to join the AFL when he learned that his team would be included in the NFL once the merger was completed. The Cincinnati Bengals began play in the 1968 season, finishing last in the Western Division. While many AFL players and observers believed their league was the equal of the NFL, their first two Super Bowl performances did nothing to prove it. However, on November 17, 1968, when NBC cut away from a game between the Jets and Raiders to air the children's movie Heidi, the ensuing uproar helped disprove the notion that fans still considered the AFL an inferior product. The perception of AFL inferiority forever changed on January 12, 1969, when the AFL Champion New York Jets shocked the heavily favored NFL Champion Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III. The Colts, who entered the contest favored by as many as 18 points, had completed the 1968 NFL season with a 13–1 record, and won the NFL title with a convincing 34–0 win over the Cleveland Browns. Led by their stalwart defense—which allowed a record-low 144 points—the 1968 Colts were considered one of the best-ever NFL teams. By contrast, the Jets had allowed 280 points, the highest total for any division winner in the two leagues. They had also only narrowly beaten the favored Oakland Raiders 27–23 in the AFL championship game. Jets quarterback Joe Namath recalled that in the days leading up to the game, he grew increasingly angry when told New York had no chance to beat Baltimore. Three days before the game, a frustrated Namath responded to a heckler at the Touchdown Club in Miami by declaring, "We're going to win Sunday, I'll guarantee you." Namath and the Jets made good on his guarantee as they held the Colts scoreless until late in the fourth quarter. The Jets won, 16–7, in what is considered one of the greatest upsets in American sports history. With the win, the AFL finally achieved parity with the NFL and legitimized the merger of the two leagues. That notion was reinforced one year later in Super Bowl IV, when the AFL champion Kansas City Chiefs upset the NFL champion Minnesota Vikings, 23–7, in the last championship game to be played between the two leagues. The Vikings, favored by 12½ points, were held to just 67 rushing yards. The last game in AFL history was the AFL All-Star Game, held in Houston's Astrodome on January 17, 1970. The Western All-Stars, led by Chargers quarterback John Hadl, defeated the Eastern All-Stars, 26–3. Buffalo rookie back O.J. Simpson carried the ball for the last play in AFL history. Hadl was named the game's Most Valuable Player. Prior to the start of the 1970 NFL season, the merged league was organized into two conferences of three divisions each. All ten AFL teams made up the bulk of the new American Football Conference. To avoid having an inequitable number of teams in each conference, the leagues voted to move three NFL teams to the AFC. Motivated by the prospect of an intrastate rivalry with the Bengals as well as by personal animosity toward Paul Brown, Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell quickly offered to include his team in the AFC. He helped persuade the Pittsburgh Steelers (the Browns' archrivals) and Baltimore Colts (who shared the Baltimore-Washington market with the Washington Redskins) to follow suit, and each team received US$3 million to make the switch. The remaining 13 NFL teams became part of the National Football Conference. Pro Football Hall of Fame receiver Charlie Joiner, who started his career with the Houston Oilers (1969), was the last AFL player active in professional football, retiring after the 1986 season, when he played for the San Diego Chargers. The American Football League stands as the only professional football league to successfully compete against the NFL. When the two leagues merged in 1970, all ten AFL franchises and their statistics became part of the new NFL. Every other professional league that had competed against the NFL before the AFL–NFL merger had folded completely: the three previous leagues named "American Football League" and the All-America Football Conference. From an earlier AFL (1936–1937), only the Cleveland Rams (now the Los Angeles Rams) joined the NFL and are currently operating, as are the Cleveland Browns and the San Francisco 49ers from the AAFC. A third AAFC team, the Baltimore Colts (not related to the 1953–1983 Baltimore Colts or to the current Indianapolis Colts franchise), played only one year in the NFL, disbanding at the end of the 1950 season. The league resulting from the merger was a 26-team juggernaut (since expanded to 32) with television rights covering all of the Big Three television networks and teams in close proximity to almost all of the top 40 metropolitan areas, a fact that has precluded any other competing league from gaining traction since the merger; failed attempts to mimic the AFL's success included the World Football League (1974–75), United States Football League (1983–85), the original XFL (2001), the United Football League (2009–2012) and the AAF (2019). The AFL was also the most successful of numerous upstart leagues of the 1960s and 1970s that attempted to challenge a major professional league's dominance. All nine teams that were in the AFL at the time the merger was agreed upon were accepted into the league intact (as was the tenth team added between the time of the merger's agreement and finalization), and none of the AFL's teams have ever folded. For comparison, the World Hockey Association (1972–79) managed to have four of its six remaining teams merged into the National Hockey League, which actually caused the older league to contract a franchise, but WHA teams were forced to disperse the majority of their rosters and restart as expansion teams. The merged WHA teams were also not financially sound (in large part from the hefty expansion fees the NHL imposed on them), and three of the four were forced to relocate within 20 years. Like the WHA, The American Basketball Association (1967–76) also managed to have only four of its teams merged into the National Basketball Association, and the rest of the league was forced to fold. Both the WHA and ABA lost several teams to financial insolvency over the course of their existences. The Continental League, a proposed third league for Major League Baseball that was to begin play in 1961, never played a single game, largely because MLB responded to the proposal by expanding to four of that league's proposed cities. Historically, the only other professional sports league in the United States to exhibit a comparable level of franchise stability from its inception was the American League of Major League Baseball, which made its debut in the early 20th century. The NFL adopted some of the innovations introduced by the AFL immediately and a few others in the years following the merger. One was including the names on player jerseys. The older league also adopted the practice of using the stadium scoreboard clocks to keep track of the official game time, instead of just having a stopwatch used by the referee. The AFL played a 14-game schedule for its entire existence, starting in 1960. The NFL, which had played a 12-game schedule since 1947, changed to a 14-game schedule in 1961, a year after the American Football League instituted it. The AFL also introduced the two-point conversion to professional football thirty-four years before the NFL instituted it in 1994 (college football had adopted the two-point conversion in the late 1950s). All of these innovations pioneered by the AFL, including its more exciting style of play and colorful uniforms, have essentially made today's professional football more like the AFL than like the old-line NFL. The AFL's challenge to the NFL also laid the groundwork for the Super Bowl, which has become the standard for championship contests in the United States of America. The NFL also adapted how the AFL used the growing power of televised football games, which were bolstered with the help of major network contracts (first with ABC and later with NBC). With that first contract with ABC, the AFL adopted the first-ever cooperative television plan for professional football, in which the proceeds were divided equally among member clubs. It featured many outstanding games, such as the classic 1962 double-overtime American Football League championship game between the Dallas Texans and the defending champion Houston Oilers. At the time it was the longest professional football championship game ever played. The AFL also appealed to fans by offering a flashier style of play (just like the ABA in basketball), compared to the more conservative game of the NFL. Long passes ("bombs") were commonplace in AFL offenses, led by such talented quarterbacks as John Hadl, Daryle Lamonica and Len Dawson. Despite having a national television contract, the AFL often found itself trying to gain a foothold, only to come up against roadblocks. For example, CBS-TV, which broadcast NFL games, ignored and did not report scores from the innovative AFL, on orders from the NFL. It was only after the merger agreement was announced that CBS began to give out AFL scores. The AFL took advantage of the burgeoning popularity of football by locating teams in major cities that lacked NFL franchises. Hunt's vision not only brought a new professional football league to California and New York, but introduced the sport to Colorado, restored it to Texas and later to fast- growing Florida, as well as bringing it to New England for the first time in 12 years. Buffalo, having lost its original NFL franchise in 1929 and turned down by the NFL at least twice (1940 and 1950) for a replacement, returned to the NFL with the merger. The return of football to Kansas City was the first time that city had seen professional football since the NFL's Kansas City Blues of the 1920s; the arrival of the Chiefs, and the contemporary arrival of the St. Louis Football Cardinals, brought professional football back to Missouri for the first time since the temporary St. Louis Gunners of 1934. In the case of the Dallas Cowboys, the NFL had long sought to return to the Dallas area after the Dallas Texans folded in 1952, but was originally met with strong opposition by Washington Redskins owner George Preston Marshall, who had enjoyed a monopoly as the only NFL team to represent the American South. Marshall later changed his position after future-Cowboys owner Clint Murchison bought the rights to Washington's fight song "Hail to the Redskins" and threatened to prevent Marshall from playing it at games. By then, the NFL wanted to quickly award the new Dallas franchise to Murchison so the team could immediately begin play and complete with the AFL's Texans. As a result, the Cowboys played its inaugural season in 1960 without the benefit of the NFL draft. As part of the merger agreement, additional expansion teams would be awarded by 1970 or soon thereafter to bring the league to 28 franchises; this requirement was fulfilled when the Seattle Seahawks and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers began play in 1976. In addition, had it not been for the existence of the Oilers from 1960 to 1996, the Houston Texans also would likely not exist today; the 2002 expansion team restored professional football in Houston after the original charter AFL member Oilers relocated to become the Tennessee Titans. Kevin Sherrington of The Dallas Morning News has argued that the presence of AFL and the subsequent merger radically altered the fortunes of the Pittsburgh Steelers, saving the team "from stinking". Before the merger, the Steelers had long been one of the NFL's worst teams. Constantly lacking the money to build a quality team, the Steelers had only posted eight winning seasons, and just one playoff appearance, since their first year of existence in 1933 until the end of the 1969 season. They also finished with a 1-13 record in 1969, tied with the Chicago Bears for the worst record in the NFL. The $3 million indemnity that the Steelers received for joining the AFC with the rest of the former AFL teams after the merger helped them rebuild into a contender, drafting eventual-Pro Football Hall of Famers like Terry Bradshaw and Joe Greene, and ultimately winning four Super Bowls in the 1970s. Since the 1970 merger, the Steelers have the NFL's highest winning percentage, the most total victories, the most trips to either conference championship game, are tied for the second most trips to the Super Bowl (tied with the Dallas Cowboys and Denver Broncos, trailing only the New England Patriots), and have won six Super Bowl championships, tied with the Patriots for the most in NFL history. Perhaps the greatest social legacy of the AFL was the domino effect of its policy of being more liberal than the entrenched NFL in offering opportunity for black players. While the NFL was still emerging from thirty years of segregation influenced by Washington Redskins' owner George Preston Marshall, the AFL actively recruited from small and predominantly black colleges. The AFL's color-blindness led not only to the explosion of black talent on the field, but to the eventual entry of blacks into scouting, coordinating, and ultimately head coaching positions, long after the league ceased to exist. The AFL's free agents came from several sources. Some were players who could not find success playing in the NFL, while another source was the Canadian Football League. In the late 1950s, many players released by the NFL, or un- drafted and unsigned out of college by the NFL, went North to try their luck with the CFL, and later returned to the states to play in the AFL. In the league's first years, players such as Oilers' George Blanda, Chargers/Bills' Jack Kemp, Texans' Len Dawson, the NY Titans' Don Maynard, Raiders/Patriots/Jets' Babe Parilli, Pats' Bob Dee proved to be AFL standouts. Other players such as the Broncos' Frank Tripucka, the Pats' Gino Cappelletti, the Bills' Cookie Gilchrist and the Chargers' Tobin Rote, Sam DeLuca and Dave Kocourek also made their mark to give the fledgling league badly needed credibility. Rounding out this mix of potential talent were the true "free agents", the walk-ons and the "wanna-be's", who tried out in droves for the chance to play professional American football. After the AFL–NFL merger agreement in 1966, and after the AFL's Jets defeated an extremely strong Baltimore Colts team, a popular misconception fostered by the NFL and spread by media reports was that the AFL defeated the NFL because of the Common Draft instituted in 1967. This apparently was meant to assert that the AFL could not achieve parity as long as it had to compete with the NFL in the draft. But the 1968 Jets had less than a handful of "common draftees". Their stars were honed in the AFL, many of them since the Titans days. Players who chose the AFL to develop their talent included Lance Alworth and Ron Mix of the Chargers, who had also been drafted by the NFL's San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Colts respectively. Both eventually were elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame after earning recognition during their careers as being among the best at their positions. Among specific teams, the 1964 Buffalo Bills stood out by holding their opponents to a pro football record 913 yards rushing on 300 attempts, while also recording fifty quarterback sacks in a 14-game schedule. In 2009, a five-part series, , on the Showtime Network, refuted many of the long-held misconceptions about the AFL. In it, Abner Haynes tells of how his father forbade him to accept being drafted by the NFL, after drunken scouts from that league had visited the Haynes home; the NFL Cowboys' Tex Schramm is quoted as saying that if his team had ever agreed to play the AFL's Dallas Texans, they would very likely have lost; George Blanda makes a case for more AFL players being inducted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame by pointing out that Hall of Famer Willie Brown was cut by the Houston Oilers because he couldn't cover Oilers flanker Charlie Hennigan in practice. Later, when Brown was with the Broncos, Hennigan needed nine catches in one game against the Broncos to break Lionel Taylor's Professional Football record of 100 catches in one season. Hennigan caught the nine passes and broke the record, even though he was covered by Brown. The AFL also spawned coaches whose style and techniques have profoundly affected the play of professional football to this day. In addition to AFL greats like Hank Stram, Lou Saban, Sid Gillman and Al Davis were eventual hall of fame coaches such as Bill Walsh, a protégé of Davis with the AFL Oakland Raiders for one season; and Chuck Noll, who worked for Gillman and the AFL LA/San Diego Chargers from 1960 through 1965. Others include Buddy Ryan (AFL's New York Jets), Chuck Knox (Jets), Walt Michaels (Jets), and John Madden (AFL's Oakland Raiders). Additionally, many prominent coaches began their pro football careers as players in the AFL, including Sam Wyche (Cincinnati Bengals), Marty Schottenheimer (Buffalo Bills), Wayne Fontes (Jets), and two- time Super Bowl winner Tom Flores (Oakland Raiders). Flores also has a Super Bowl ring as a player (1969 Kansas City Chiefs). As the influence of the AFL continues through the present, the 50th anniversary of its launch was celebrated during 2009. The season-long celebration began in August with the 2009 Pro Football Hall of Fame Game in Canton, Ohio, between two AFC teams (as opposed to the AFC-vs-NFC format the game first adopted in 1971). The opponents were two of the original AFL franchises, the Buffalo Bills and Tennessee Titans (the former Houston Oilers). Bills' owner Ralph C. Wilson Jr. (a 2009 Hall of Fame inductee) and Titans' owner Bud Adams were the only surviving members of the Foolish Club at the time (both are now deceased; Wilson's estate sold the team in 2014), the eight original owners of AFL franchises. (As of the season, the Titans and Chiefs are still owned by descendants of the original eight owners.) The Hall of Fame Game was the first of several "Legacy Weekends", during which each of the "original eight" AFL teams sported uniforms from their AFL era. Each of the 8 teams took part in at least two such "legacy" games. On-field officials also wore red-and-white-striped AFL uniforms during these games. In the fall of 2009, the Showtime pay-cable network premiered , a 5-part documentary series produced by NFL Films that features vintage game film and interviews as well as more recent interviews with those associated with the AFL. The NFL sanctioned a variety of "Legacy" gear to celebrate the AFL anniversary, such as "throwback" jerseys, T-shirts, signs, pennants and banners, including items with the logos and colors of the Dallas Texans, Houston Oilers, and New York Titans, the three of the Original Eight AFL teams which have changed names or venues. A December 5, 2009, story by Ken Belson in The New York Times quotes league officials as stating that AFL "Legacy" gear made up twenty to thirty percent of the league's annual $3 billion merchandise income. Fan favorites were the Denver Broncos' vertically striped socks, which could not be re- stocked quickly enough. Today, two of the NFL's eight divisions are composed entirely of former AFL teams, the AFC West (Broncos, Chargers, Chiefs, and Raiders) and the AFC East (Bills, Dolphins, Jets, and Patriots). Additionally, the Bengals now play in the AFC North and the Tennessee Titans (formerly the Oilers) play in the AFC South. As of the 2017 NFL season, the Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum are the last remaining active NFL stadiums that had been used by the AFL, with the remaining stadiums either being used for other uses (the former San Diego Stadium, Fenway Park, Nickerson Field, Alumni Stadium, Nippert Stadium, the Cotton Bowl, Balboa Stadium and Kezar Stadium), still standing but currently vacant (Houston Astrodome), or demolished. By the 2020 NFL season, both stadiums will be retired as the Raiders will move into a newly-built stadium in Las Vegas while the Los Angeles Chargers will move into the all-new SoFi Stadium. From 1960 to 1968, the AFL determined its champion via a single-elimination playoff game between the winners of its two divisions. The home teams alternated each year by division, so in 1968 the Jets hosted the Raiders, even though Oakland had a better record (this was changed in 1969). In 1963, the Buffalo Bills and Boston Patriots finished tied with identical records of 7–6–1 in the AFL East Division. There was no tie-breaker protocol in place, so a one-game playoff was held in War Memorial Stadium in December. The visiting Patriots defeated the host Bills 26–8. The Patriots traveled to San Diego as the Chargers completed a three-game season sweep over the weary Patriots with a 51–10 victory. A similar situation occurred in the 1968 season, when the Oakland Raiders and the Kansas City Chiefs finished the regular season tied with identical records of 12–2 in the AFL West Division. The Raiders beat the Chiefs 41–6 in a division playoff to qualify for the AFL Championship Game. In 1969, the final year of the independent AFL, Professional Football's first "wild card" playoffs were conducted. A four-team playoff was held, with the second-place teams in each division playing the winner of the other division. The Chiefs upset the Raiders in Oakland 17–7 in the league's Championship, the final AFL game played. The Kansas City Chiefs were the first Super Bowl champion to win two road playoff games and the first wildcard team to win the Super Bowl, although the term "wildcard" was coined by the media, and not used officially until several years later. The AFL did not play an All-Star game after its first season in 1960, but did stage All-Star games for the 1961 through 1969 seasons. All-Star teams from the Eastern and Western divisions played each other after every season except 1965. That season, the league champion Buffalo Bills played all-stars from the other teams. After the 1964 season, the AFL All-Star game had been scheduled for early 1965 in New Orleans' Tulane Stadium. After numerous black players were refused service by a number of area hotels and businesses, black and white players alike called for a boycott. Led by Bills players such as Cookie Gilchrist, the players successfully lobbied to have the game moved to Houston's Jeppesen Stadium. As chosen by 1969 AFL Hall of Fame Selection ccommittee members: The following is a sample of some records set during the existence of the league. The NFL considers AFL statistics and records equivalent to its own. Yards passing, game – 464, George Blanda (Oilers, October 29, 1961), Yards passing, season – 4,007, Joe Namath (Jets, 1967), Yards passing, career – 21,130, Jack Kemp (Chargers, Bills), Yards rushing, game – 243, Cookie Gilchrist (Bills, December 8, 1963), Yards rushing, season – 1,458, Jim Nance (Patriots, 1966), Yards rushing, career – 5,101, Clem Daniels (Texans, Raiders), Receptions, season – 101, Charlie Hennigan (Oilers, 1964), Receptions, career – 567, Lionel Taylor (Broncos), Points scored, season – 155, Gino Cappelletti (Patriots, 1964), Points scored, career – 1,100, Gino Cappelletti (Patriots) List of American Football League players, American Football League Most Valuable Players, American Football League Rookies of the Year, American Football League Draft, American Football League Officials Joe Foss, commissioner (November 30, 1959 – April 7, 1966), Al Davis, commissioner (April 8, 1966 – July 25, 1966), Milt Woodard, president (July 25, 1966 – March 12, 1970) American Football League Draft, American Football League win-loss records, American Football League seasons, American Football League playoffs, American Football League Most Valuable Players, American Football League Rookies of the Year, American Football League Officials, AFL–NFL merger, List of leagues of American football, American Basketball Association, World Hockey Association History: The AFL – Pro Football Hall of Fame (link). RemembertheAFL.com Website, afl-football.50webs.com, American Football League week-by-week box scores, 1960–1969, The Summer of the Little Super Bowls, PFRA article about the 1926 seasons of both the NFL and AFL, PFRA article about the 1930s and 40s AFL, Pro Football Hall of Fame American Football League Legacy Game, Official Titans website story on the AFL's 50th Anniversary Celebration, Schedule of American Football League Legacy Games, ESPN.com article on AFL Legacy Games, New York Times article on AFL "Legacy" gear The history of the National Football League on television documents the long history of the National Football League on television. The NFL, along with boxing and professional wrestling (before the latter publicly became known as a "fake" sport), was a pioneer of sports broadcasting during a time when baseball and college football were more popular than professional football. Due to the NFL understanding television at an earlier time, they were able to surpass Major League Baseball in the 1960s as the most popular sport in the United States. Today, NFL broadcasting contracts are among the most valuable in the world. NBC was the first major television network to cover an NFL game, when on October 22, 1939, it broadcast a game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Brooklyn Dodgers; the network was still only in its infancy, with only two affiliates, the modern day WRGB (now a CBS affiliate) in Schenectady and W2XBS in New York City. Portions of that game still survive via films, but the film is not footage from the telecast (recordings of television broadcasts did not begin until 1948). The use of a sideline camera, the sole camera used in the 1939 broadcast, would become the standard for all future NFL broadcasts until 2017; the angle is particularly suited for estimating yardage, compared to more mobile camera angles that began to appear in the 21st century. Regular broadcasts of games began after World War II and the first NFL championship to be televised was the 1948 match between the Eagles and Cardinals. In 1950, the Los Angeles Rams and the Washington Redskins became the first NFL teams to have all of their games—home and away—televised. In the same year, other teams made deals to have selected games telecast. The DuMont Network then paid a rights fee of US$75,000 to broadcast the 1951 NFL Championship Game across the entire nation. From 1953 to 1955, DuMont also televised Saturday night NFL games. It was the first time that NFL fixtures were broadcast live, coast-to- coast, in prime time, for the entire season. The broadcasts ended after the 1955 season, when the DuMont Network folded. DuMont was a less than ideal partner for NFL broadcasts: with only eighteen affiliates in 1954, it was dwarfed by the amount of coverage the "Big Four" (later the East Division of the Canadian Football League) had with its contract on NBC, which had 120 affiliates at the time. By 1955, NBC became the televised home of the NFL Championship Game, paying $100,000 to the league. The 1958 NFL Championship Game played at Yankee Stadium between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants went into sudden death overtime. This game, since dubbed the "Greatest Game Ever Played," was watched widely throughout the country and is credited with increasing the popularity of professional football in the late 1950s and early 1960s. CBS began to televise selected NFL regular season games in 1956. By 1959, big-market teams such as the Bears and Giants had all their games televised, but small-market ones like the Packers and 49ers still did not. Upon becoming NFL commissioner, Pete Rozelle worked to ensure that every team got all its games on TV. When the rival American Football League (AFL) began in 1960, it signed a 5-year television contract with ABC. This became the first ever cooperative television plan for professional football, through which the proceeds of the contract were divided equally among member clubs. ABC and the AFL also introduced moving, on-field cameras (as opposed to the fixed midfield cameras of CBS and the NFL), and were the first to have players "miked" during broadcast games. As the AFL also had players' names stitched on their jerseys, it was easier for both TV viewers and people at the games to tell who was who. As of the 1961 season, CBS held the rights to all but one of the NFL's teams; the Cleveland Browns had a separate contract with Sports Network Incorporated (SNI) to carry their games over a regional network. However, the Browns and SNI were forced to break their deal when the NFL and CBS devised their own revenue sharing plan after CBS agreed to telecast all regular season games for an annual fee of $4.65 million. A special antitrust exemption, the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, was passed in Congress to accommodate the collective contract, which restricted what days the league could televise their games. CBS' fee later increased to $14.1 million per year in 1964, and $18.8 million per year in 1966. With NBC paying the AFL $36 million in 1965 to televise its games, and the intensified battle over college prospects, both leagues negotiated a merger agreement on June 8, 1966. Although they would not officially merge into one combined league until 1970, one of the conditions of the agreement was that the winners of each league's championship game would meet in a contest to determine the "world champion of football." The first ever AFL-NFL World Championship Game was played on January 15, 1967 between the NFL champion Packers and the AFL champion Chiefs. As CBS held the rights to nationally televise NFL games and NBC had the rights to broadcast AFL matches, it was decided that both would cover that first game. The next three AFL-NFL World Championship Games, the initial Super Bowls, were then divided by the two networks: CBS broadcast Super Bowls II and IV while NBC covered III. When the AFL and the NFL officially merged in 1970, the combined league divided its teams into the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). It was then decided that CBS would televise all NFC teams (including playoff games) while NBC would be responsible for all AFC teams. For interconference games, CBS would broadcast them if the visiting team was from the NFC, and NBC if the visitors were from the AFC. The two networks had a rotation policy for the Super Bowl. ABC also agreed to televise one regular season game per week on Monday night. ABC aired its first edition of Monday Night Football on September 21, 1970. MNF pushed the limits of football coverage with its halftime highlights segment, occasional banter from Howard Cosell and Don Meredith, and celebrity guests such as John Lennon, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bill Clinton. During its 36-year run on ABC, Monday Night Football consistently ranked among the most popular prime time broadcasts each week during the season. As the league's broadcasters, ABC, CBS, and NBC had their own talent. Announcers such as Cosell, Frank Gifford, and Al Michaels (from ABC); Pat Summerall and John Madden (from CBS); and Curt Gowdy, Dick Enberg, Marv Albert, Jim Simpson, Kyle Rote and Jim Lampley (from NBC), all had their own unique analysis of the game. Individual networks had distinctive innovations in their coverage. For example, CBS' The NFL Today was the first pre-game show to have a female co-host (Phyllis George). On December 20, 1980 NBC made history by broadcasting a game between the New York Jets and Miami Dolphins with no announcers. NBC has also tried one-announcer football when Dick Enberg called the New York Jets' visit to Cleveland Browns on December 12, 1981 without his regular colleague Merlin Olsen in accompaniment. NBC instead pre-recorded interviews with players and coaches from both teams which filled in the parts where Olsen would have spoken. On December 27, 1987, NBC introduced the first female play-by-play football announcer in Gayle Sierens, who partnered with Dave Rowe in a game between the Seattle Seahawks and Kansas City Chiefs; contractual issues with her main employer prevented Sierens from calling any further games for the network, and it would be another 29 seasons before the next female announcer, Beth Mowins, began calling games for both ESPN and CBS in 2017. In 1978, the NFL increased its revenue from both ticket sales and TV by expanding the regular season from 14 games to 16. Furthermore, the playoff format was expanded from 8 teams to 10 teams, enabling the league to give another post-season game each to CBS and NBC. This was partially due to the league's 1976 expansion to 28 teams. Meanwhile, the Super Bowl became a yearly ratings blockbuster, allowing the broadcasting network to generate millions of dollars in advertising revenue. Four of the ten highest rating television broadcasts of all-time (in the U.S.) are Super Bowls. When the league signed a new 5-year TV contract with the three networks in 1982, it allowed ABC to enter into the Super Bowl rotation; Super Bowl XIX was ABC's debut. Since then, the network that televises each Super Bowl is determined by the contracts that the league negotiates with all of its broadcasters. Each network broadcaster generally gets one Super Bowl before any received a second. This process repeats before any network airs a third event, although the TV contracts usually expire by that time. Cable TV became commonplace during the 1980s, and the NFL was eager to exploit that opportunity in 1987. In 1986, the United States Football League, at the time pursuing an antitrust lawsuit against the NFL, signed an agreement with ESPN to carry games on Sunday nights. When the lawsuit failed and the 1986 season was canceled, the NFL swooped in and took the time slot, creating ESPN Sunday Night Football in 1987. ESPN thus became the first cable network to broadcast regular season NFL games. Chris Berman helped redefine the pre- and post-game shows when he launched NFL Countdown and NFL Prime Time, and they have since become the top-rated pre- and post-game shows on television. The cable network's contract to show ESPN Sunday Night Football was one of the turning points in their growth, transforming them from a small cable network to a marketing empire. When ESPN first started televising NFL games in 1987, it only broadcast Sunday night games during the second half of the season. Meanwhile, ABC, CBS, and NBC maintained their rights to Monday Night Football, the NFC, and the AFC, respectively. By 1990, Turner's TNT network started to broadcast Sunday night games for the first half of the season. The combined 1990 contracts with ABC, CBS, ESPN, NBC, and TNT totaled $3.6 billion ($900 million per year), the largest in TV history. One major factor in the increased rights fee was that the league changed the regular season so that all teams would play their 16-game schedule over a 17-week period. ABC was also given the rights to televise the two Saturday games on the opening weekend of the postseason. This was made possible after the league expanded its playoff format to include more teams. TBS had also broadcast the infamous 1982 "strike" games. The NFLPA called for a players' strike three weeks into that season which reduced it to nine games. In October, two "all-star" exhibition games were held with generic NFC and AFC teams in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. and aired on TBS. Ratings and attendance at both games was minimal. In 1994, the league signed an exclusivity agreement with the direct broadcast satellite (DBS) service DirecTV to launch NFL Sunday Ticket, a satellite television subscription service that offers every regular season NFL game. When contracts were signed in December 1993, CBS (which had been home to NFC games for 38 years) lost their rights to the fledgling Fox Network, and it just so happened that CBS also lost its MLB coverage (which it never recovered) after that same year. Fox offered a then-record $1.58 billion to the NFL over four years, significantly more than the $290 million per year offered by CBS. Fox was only seven years old and had no sports division, but it began building its own coverage by hiring many former CBS personalities such as Summerall and Madden. Fox's NFL rights ownership made the network a major player in American television by attracting many new viewers (and affiliates) and a platform to advertise its other shows. In the meantime, CBS lost several affiliates (mainly owned by New World Communications in NFC markets) to Fox, and ratings for its other offerings languished. CBS lost a number of affiliates, primarily in Atlanta, Detroit, and Milwaukee, where it was dropped to lower-powered UHF affiliates unable to be received in some areas. Due to satellite television, the NFL Sunday Ticket in local markets, and rules of the time, satellite subscribers were required to use antennas to pick up local affiliates. CBS was devastated by the loss of over-the-air availability of these stations in the outer reaches of some markets. Since 1994, the situations in Milwaukee and Atlanta have improved due to committed station ownerships and acquisition of high-profile syndicated programming, along with the digital transition equalizing the field into being received via UHF-only, while CBS's Detroit station continues to struggle for relevancy and exists mainly as an automated pass-through for CBS programming, along with shows from the network's syndication arm, CBS Television Distribution. ABC, NBC, TNT and ESPN renewed their contracts in the meanwhile. TNT was able to get a stipulation that the Atlanta Falcons, based in Turner's home of Atlanta, be featured on TNT once a year, regardless of the previous season's record. Meanwhile, NBC's rebound in the overall ratings in both the 1980s and 1990s after years at the bottom of the ratings were partly attributed to its continuing coverage of the NFL. With television contract re-negotiations in early 1998 ushering in the era of multibillion-dollar broadcasting agreements, an era of pro football broadcasting was about to end. CBS, stung by Fox's surprise bid four years earlier, aggressively sought to reacquire some broadcasting rights. CBS agreed to pay $4 billion over eight years ($500 million per season) to air AFC games. NBC, meanwhile, had indicated a desire to bid for Monday Night Football rights in 1998, but gave up when the financial stakes increased sharply. Thus, after six decades, NBC, the network that had shaped television broadcasts of football, lost its rights, thus marking the beginning of a slow decline for its sports division, culminating in the unproductive 2004–05 primetime season, when NBC carried no major sporting championships during prime time (NBC had already lost Major League Baseball broadcasting rights in 2000 and National Basketball Association rights in 2002; they had acquired National Hockey League rights in 2004, but that league's entire 2004–05 season was canceled due to a lockout, and furthermore, it was the least popular of the major leagues at the time). NBC's attempts to replace the NFL with other professional football, including the XFL in 2001 and the Arena Football League coverage from 2003 to 2006, proved to be very unsuccessful. Like CBS before it, NBC would later decide that not having NFL rights did too much damage to its overall ratings to justify foregoing the high rights fees required. The other networks also signed eight- year deals in 1998. Fox extended its NFC deal by agreeing to a $4.4 billion contract ($550 million per season). ABC retained its longtime rights to Monday Night Football by also paying $4.4 billion over eight years. ESPN agreed to a $4.8 billion ($600 million a season) deal to become the sole cable broadcaster of NFL games, marking an end to the league's association with TNT. As with previous TV contracts, the coverage of the Super Bowl was divided between the broadcast networks. In 2002, the NFL began scheduling a Thursday night special opening "Kickoff" game, taking place on the Thursday after Labor Day leading into the opening Sunday slate of NFL games. The event includes a pre-game concert and other televised festivities. The first series of these events were held in New York and Washington, D.C., respectively, to celebrate both cities' resilience in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. The 2002 San Francisco 49ers and the New York Giants game was held on September 5 and televised on ESPN. The 2003 edition featured the Washington Redskins hosting the New York Jets on September 4, 2003, and the game was televised by ABC. Since 2006, NBC has televised the Kickoff game (see below). Starting in 2004, the NFL began awarding the opening game to the defending Super Bowl champions as the official start of their title defense. The unfurling of the team's Super Bowl championship banner in their stadium has become a centerpiece of the opening ceremonies. In 2012, the kickoff game between the New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys aired on Wednesday, September 5, to avoid conflict with the final night of the Democratic National Convention in which incumbent president Barack Obama delivered his acceptance speech for the party nomination. On two occasions since 2004, the defending Super Bowl champion has not hosted the Kickoff Game: In 2013, due to a scheduling and parking contract with baseball's Baltimore Orioles, the Baltimore Ravens played the Kickoff Game on the road against the Denver Broncos., In 2019, the New England Patriots will host the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday Night Football, with the Kickoff Game instead seeing the Chicago Bears host the Green Bay Packers. Recently, the NFL's TV broadcasters have suffered annual financial losses because advertising revenue is unable to keep up with the rising costs of broadcast rights. Nevertheless, the current broadcast contract, which began in 2006, resulted in a sizable increase in total rights fees. Both Fox and CBS renewed their Sunday afternoon broadcast packages through 2011, in both cases with modest increases. Furthermore, the league and DirecTV signed a five-year extension to their exclusivity deal on NFL Sunday Ticket. Despite relatively high, if declining, TV ratings, ABC decided to end its relationship with the NFL after losing significant money on Monday Night Football. In addition to the fees, part of this decision may have been the result of a resurgent ABC prime time entertainment schedule during the 2004–05 season, particularly on Sunday evening with Desperate Housewives; thus ABC would be unable to satisfy the league's reported preference for a Sunday night game on broadcast television as opposed to Monday. Because of that, Monday Night Football moved from ABC to ESPN, which are both owned by The Walt Disney Company. The cable network paid $1.1 billion per year from 2006 to 2014 for the rights. Unlike the broadcast networks, however, ESPN can generate revenue from subscription sales, in addition to traditional commercial breaks (ESPN's subscriber fees are the highest of any American cable network, more than four times that of second-place TNT). The cable network's coverage begins at 1:00 p.m. ET with SportsCenter Special Edition: Monday Night Kickoff. The 2009 edition saw the game itself start at 8:30 p.m., with Mike Tirico, Ron Jaworski, and Jon Gruden in the broadcast booths. Meanwhile, NBC, after losing the AFC package to CBS in 1997, was able to reclaim some broadcast rights with a deal worth an average of $650 million per year to air the Sunday night package from 2006 to 2014 (not much more than what ESPN used to pay for the same rights). This new deal included the Super Bowl in 2009 and 2012. NBC's coverage also includes two preseason games (including the annual Hall of Fame Game), the first two Wild Card playoff games of each post-season, and the annual Thursday opening Kickoff Game, similar to ABC's broadcast rights package. The major difference was that the NFL allowed NBC flexibility in selecting games in the latter part of the season. ABC did not have the right to be flexible with their Monday Night Football schedule and picked matchups based on a team's record in the previous season (as NBC does), which often led to teams with losing records playing each other on Monday night later in the season. The moves were intended to break NBC out of its ratings slump; however, at one point in the last decade, this did not happen, and although NBC Sunday Night Football had been (and continues to be) the network's top rated program and in the top 30 for viewing audience, it had not lifted the rest of the schedule. For a time, NBC had been firmly in fourth place and was losing large sums of money, so much so that the network had to cut an hour of prime time programming from its weeknight schedule in favor of The Jay Leno Show, a somewhat lower budget talk show which lasted five months. The network has since slowly come back to second place in the network ratings. Coverage of NBC Sunday Night Football starts at 8:15 p.m. ET with Al Michaels serving as the play-by-play announcer, Cris Collinsworth as color commentator, and Michele Tafoya as the sole sideline reporter. Each telecast begins with a pre-game show airing at 7 p.m. ET entitled Football Night in America, hosted by Bob Costas. In addition, for the first three years of the contract, the network that carried the Super Bowl also broadcast the Pro Bowl on the Saturday night following the championship game. In 2007, CBS broadcast both games, followed by Fox in 2008, and NBC in 2009. In 2010, the Pro Bowl was played the weekend before the Super Bowl, broadcast by ESPN. The 2010 deal was meant as a one-time situation to protect the Winter Olympics in Vancouver that started the next week (as well as the NBA All-Star Game and the Daytona 500), but the NFL played the 2011 and 2012 games in Honolulu the week before the Super Bowl. The NFL Network was created by the league in 2003 and given a separate package of broadcast games. The eight-game package consisted of prime time games which in 2006 and 2007 began airing from Thanksgiving to the end of the regular season. Five games aired on Thursday nights and three on Saturday nights, the latter beginning Week 15 of the season. Starting in the 2008 season the ratio and dates of the games changed: now there are seven Thursday night games beginning in the first week of November and continuing to Week 16. There is only one Saturday night game, airing during Week 15 or 16 (usually 16, but when Saturday is Christmas Eve, it airs in week 15). The NFL could theoretically decide to sell this package to another network should NFL Network broadcasts not generate enough revenue. NFL Network will also carry several preseason games. The introduction of the NFL Network games also marked the end to late-season Saturday afternoon regular season games on the networks that aired Sunday afternoon games: CBS, Fox and NBC. ESPN renewed its contract with the NFL in 2011 which extends to ESPN the NFL broadcast rights through the 2021-22 season. ESPN increased the purchase price for the eighteen-game package, which will include in 2015 the Pro Bowl. Cable television operators condemned the contract, noting that ESPN has the highest retransmission consent fees of any national cable television channel, nearly five times higher than the nearest competitor (TNT), and raises fees on an annual basis. Nevertheless, the other networks had intended to follow suit by renewing their contracts through 2021-22, increasing their price to over $1 billion per year. The remaining networks announced they had indeed renewed with the NFL on December 14, 2011. Both the new ESPN and broadcast deals take effect in 2014-15 and will continue through Super Bowl LVI in 2022. As for the rest of the changes, they consist of the following: NFL Network will televise 13 (later increased to 16, then 18) Thursday Night Football games from Week 2 through Week 15 not including the Week 12 Thanksgiving night game on NBC. All teams will play one nationally televised Thursday game during the season and 26 teams (all except the Dallas Cowboys and the Detroit Lions who always play on Thanksgiving, whoever their opponents are in a given year, and the two teams that play in NBC's Thanksgiving game) will appear on the NFL Network's Thursday Night Football. (This stipulation is no longer strictly enforced; in 2017, two of the teams that played on Thanksgiving faced off in the next week's Thursday Night game.) The Kickoff Game does not count towards each team's allotment of one Thursday game per year., Saturday night was briefly returned to the other networks as a "flex night" to accommodate holidays and other scheduling conflicts; ESPN used a Saturday game (Falcons at Lions) on December 22, 2012, to avoid playing a game on Christmas Eve as it was forced to do in 2007. It was during that Falcons-Lions game that Detroit's Calvin Johnson set an NFL record for most receiving yards in a season (he finished the season with 1,964 receiving yards). NFL Network later reclaimed Saturday nights as their own in 2017; by 2018, the league was again forced to schedule a game on Christmas Eve night because of this., Flexible scheduling will begin earlier in the season and will allow games to be shifted between Fox and CBS as well as to NBC. This will also help the mandate all 32 teams will appear on CBS and Fox at least once each year if possible., Beginning in 2014-15, NBC will only televise one Wild Card Weekend game, choosing instead to add a divisional round game. The additional wild card game was picked up by ESPN, which, beginning in 2015–16, will return that game to ABC, returning that network to NFL coverage for the first time in a decade; ESPN will still air the game itself as well. This change also eliminated two issues with the Wild Card game directly relating to syndication of cable games., A team that did not appear on Monday Night Football during the season could be playing in the Wild Card game. Since the NFL only sells syndicated packages to teams that play a Monday night game during the season, the logistics selling a sealed bid package of a single playoff game to local television stations on Monday morning for a Saturday game would be improbable. While in 2014, both Carolina and Arizona played on Monday during the season, the stations with the Monday night package were able to air the game in the local markets., The logistics of the local rights holder having to clear up to four hours of air time (some of which may have already been sold for infomercials) for the game, and sell all of the local advertising breaks, within a five-day notice also played into the move to an ABC deal., NBC's Spanish-language channels (originally reported as being over-the-air network Telemundo, but later changed to cable-only mun2) began a Spanish language simulcast of Sunday Night Football. (Prior to this, Telemundo had aired Spanish commentary on the second audio program of the main NBC channel, but not on Telemundo itself.), NBC Sports Network was originally to begin airing a competing Sunday morning pregame show going against ESPN Sunday NFL Countdown in 2014-15. (This never materialized, due to the channel's rapid shift in direction toward English soccer by the time of the fall 2014 season and heavy competition from other unofficial NFL preview shows on ESPN, Fox Sports 1 and CBS Sports Network.), ESPN will regain exclusive rights to the Pro Bowl, should the game be continued (the league has considered discontinuing the contest), beginning in 2014-15. Beginning in the 2017-18 season, this game will also be simulcast on ABC. In addition to that, all of the networks were afforded the rights to stream games on the Internet via the TV Everywhere initiative, but not to mobile devices (as Verizon Wireless, through its NFL Mobile app, maintained exclusive rights to all devices or smaller through the 2017 season); the streaming rights are effective immediately, as NBC and Verizon both carried Super Bowl XLVI online for the first time ever. NBC is paying an average annual rights fee of $950 million for its broadcast rights; CBS $1 billion, and Fox $1.1 billion; the actual amount is slightly lower at the beginning of the contract and higher at the end to compensate for inflation. On February 5, 2014, the league announced it had sold off eight weeks of the NFL Network's Thursday Night Football package to CBS, who outbid competitors ABC, Fox, NBC, and Turner Sports. NFL Network will simulcast CBS' Thursday night games from weeks 2 through 8, will continue to carry the Thursday night games from Week 9 onward, and will also carry two Saturday night games (Week 16 doubleheader) for the first time since 2011, with one of those games being simulcast on CBS. All of these games (except for the one NFL Network-only Saturday night game) will be announced by CBS' lead commentating team of Jim Nantz (play-by-play) and Phil Simms (color analyst). The deal with CBS was initially only for the 2014 season, with the league having the option to extend it for an additional season. CBS is paying an additional $275 million for the package. Local CBS affiliates automatically get the local simulcast rights to any game carried only on NFL Network. The league exercised the option to extend its agreement with CBS through the 2015 season. For 2016 and 2017, the league split a ten- game package of Thursday night games between NBC and CBS, with each paying an estimated $225 million per season for five games; CBS's games will be in the early part of the season as before, while NBC's will cover later in the season. Under the terms of NFL Network's retransmission agreements with cable providers, the NFL has included a stipulation requiring seven games in the Thursday Night Football package to be carried solely on NFL Network; for the 2018 season, potential bidders were free to place a bid on a package ranging from anywhere between four and eleven games. Fox, the winning bidder, bought all eleven games that were up for bids. As the eighteen total games involve more time slots than can be accommodated with the fourteen Thursday night time slots (excluding the kickoff, Thanksgiving, and the last week of the season when no Thursday game is played), four of the games are played on days other than Thursdays (usually this involves at least one game in London in a Sunday morning time slot and the remainder on Saturdays, all NFL Network exclusives), or if Christmas lands on a Monday, either a Christmas Eve or Christmas Day game. Verizon has held rights to carry video simulcasts of NFL games to devices or less since such simulcasts have been viable. The company initially made these telecasts available only to its own wireless service subscribers, even going so far as to block the networks from providing their own feeds to those devices. Beginning in 2018, at the league's behest, it broadened the availability to all devices of that size and offered them through a newly acquired subsidiary, Yahoo! Sports. (Yahoo! has twice carried exclusive NFL games, both based in London, which were available to larger devices as well.) At the same time, Verizon dropped its prohibition on the networks offering the feeds to small devices. Verizon's NFL feeds are limited to Sunday and Monday nights, plus the locally telecast game in the phone's location (determined by the phone's GPS locator); Verizon offers Thursday night games but will only stream those games over a mobile data connection, whereas other games streamed through Verizon can use wi-fi. The Thursday Night Football contract, uniquely among the league's television packages, has a separate digital contract allowing games to be carried freely to all Internet devices since 2016. Twitter carried the 2016 season before being outbid in 2017 by Amazon, who has held the rights since. For the 2017 season it required an Amazon Prime subscription to access the streams; it began offering the streams freely through its gaming-centric streaming service Twitch in 2018.

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The Saturn Vue is a compact SUV that was sold and built by Saturn, and it was Saturn's best-selling model. It was the first vehicle to use the GM Theta platform when it was introduced in 2001 for the 2002 model year. The Vue was later facelifted for the 2006 model year. A second generation model was launched in 2007 for the 2008 model year as a rebadged Opel Antara. The Vue production in North America ended as GM wound down the Saturn brand during its 2009 reorganization. The Vue was introduced for the 2002 model year and was designed by Saturn. It was manufactured at the Spring Hill GM plant. Its unibody platform is shared with the Chevrolet Equinox, Pontiac Torrent and the European Opel Antara. The first generation ran from model year 2002-2007. Four-cylinder Vues use the Ecotec I4. The L81 V6 from the L-Series and five-speed Aisin AF33 automatic transmission were initially offered, but starting in 2004, all six-cylinder Vues were equipped with Honda's J35A3 engine and a Honda transmission. The four-cylinder Vue was available with the VTi continuously variable transmission (CVT) until GM canceled it for 2005 due to dependability issues. The Vue received a facelift for the 2006 model year. Upgrades included a redesigned interior with higher-quality materials, a new bumper and grille, and some minor cosmetic pieces to the exterior. OnStar is now standard as well as cruise control and automatic headlights. However, GM badges were not added to the side of the vehicle until GM took over production from Saturn for the second generation Vue. In 2004: The Vue Red Line was released, V6 models received Honda's J35S1 engine and Honda transmission. This 3.5 liter engine and 5 speed transmission boosted performance over the prior V-6. It was an important selling point at the time. This V-6 engine was used in the Saturn Vue 2004 to 2007 model years. In 2005: 5- and 4-speed automatic transmissions return for 2005, and the CVT is dropped., All Vues get a redesigned interior critique with new air vents, new steering wheel, and a new radio faceplate which contributes noise, vibration, and harshness. In 2006: Facelift with new interior, cosmetic changes to the exterior. Saturn introduced a special high-performance line of vehicles in 2004 under the name, "Red Line". The Vue Red Line includes the same Honda J35A3 V6 as the regular model, but with sportier suspension tuning, lowered 1 inch, and unique power steering calibration for performance, 18 in alloy wheels, ground-effect front and rear bumpers, unique rocker panel trim, chrome exhaust tip, special black leather and suede seats (optional for 2005, standard for 2006 and 2007), footwell lighting (included with leather and suede seats package, not available with optional full-leather (heated front) seats), and a special gauge cluster complete the visual updates. It also includes some special interior features as well, such as a higher quality audio system. The high-performance Vue Red Line was joined for 2007 by an environmentally oriented Green Line model. The Vue is a mild hybrid, or "assist hybrid", using what GM calls a "belt alternator starter" BAS Hybrid system. A large electric motor is connected to the crankshaft via a special accessory drive belt, with a modified automatic transmission fitted. It automatically stops the engine when the vehicle comes to a halt and instantly restarts it when the vehicle must move again. Not to be confused as just a "start-stop" system, the electric motor also assists somewhat during initial launch, during torque smoothing and when under heavy acceleration. A 36-volt nickel metal hydride (NiMH) battery pack, located under the load floor, powers the motor/generator unit and also stores regenerative braking energy. The regenerative charging and electric motor assist functions are shown to the driver via an analog gauge on the dash board, and real-time fuel-economy feedback is accomplished via an "eco" light that glows when the instantaneous fuel economy is beating the window sticker fuel economy values. The fuel savings are 20 percent up from the base vehicle's / city/highway EPA sticker to /, the highest highway fuel economy of any 2007 model SUV sold in the US market. In Canada, according to Saturn, the Vue gets an estimated city and highway. The Green Line has a 2.4-liter Ecotec DOHC-phaser engine which replaces the standard 2.2-liter inline-four engine, resulting in the improvement of acceleration time by 1.0 second. Pricing for the hybrid is about US$2,000 more than a similarly equipped Vue, and debuted in production form on January 8, 2006 at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. The Green Line went on sale in the third quarter of 2006. In Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) crash tests the Vue receives a Good overall rating in the frontal offset crash test. In 2008 models came equipped with standard front and rear head side curtain airbags and front seat-mounted torso airbags. These models were given an acceptable overall rating in side impacts. Models without side airbags were given an overall poor rating. Saturn introduced the second generation Vue in 2007 for the 2008 model year, manufactured in Mexico as a rebranded version of the German-designed Opel Antara. Saturn offered four trim levels: base "XE", classier, up-level "XR", top of the line sporty "Red Line" and a "Green Line" hybrid trim. Available engines include a 2.4L inline 4 cylinder, as well as 3.5L and a 3.6L V6 options. A hybrid powertrain version of the 2.4-liter model was also available. GM badges were now added to the front doors. The Mexican- manufactured Vue was also retailed in Mexico and South America as the Chevrolet Captiva Sport, with only badges changed and a new grille insert fitted. Following the demise of the Saturn brand in 2009 for the 2010 model year, the Vue was discontinued. However, GM continued to produce the Chevrolet Captiva Sport, for the Mexican and South American markets. The Chevrolet Captiva Sport was introduced for the US commercial and fleet markets in late 2011 for the 2012 model year. BAS is an acronym for belted alternator starter. It is a category of automotive parallel hybrid technology that uses an electric motor to contribute power to the internal combustion engine's crankshaft via a serpentine belt. By mounting this motor generator unit in the conventional location traditionally used for the standard automotive alternator, it permits a low-cost method of adding mild hybrid capabilities such as start-stop, power assist, and mild levels of regenerative braking. BAS differ from other mild hybrid systems as they are not run off the vehicle's crankshaft. General Motors introduced a mild hybrid system called belt alternator starter (or BAS) in the 2007 Saturn Vue Green Line. The BAS system is also used in the 2008-2009 Chevrolet Malibu Hybrid. It operates similarly to other mild hybrids with a start-stop system, in that it shuts down the engine as the vehicle comes to a stop and instantly restarts it when the brake pedal is released. The BAS system is capable of providing modest levels of power assist during launch/acceleration and similarly modest levels of "blended" regenerative braking during deceleration. Although unable to operate in pure all-electric EV mode, the BAS system provides improvements to both city and highway fuel efficiency over similar non-hybrid versions. In more powerful eAssist versions, a BAS system can add power to prevent excessive gear changes under variable load. According to the EPA the 2009 Saturn Vue BAS hybrid garners an improvement of 32% city (19>25mpg) and 24% highway (26>32mpg) making the combined economy improvement 27% (22>28mpg) over the base 4cyl FWD version. The system is reasonably simple and inexpensive, making BAS equipped vehicles some of the least expensive hybrids available. A 36 volt electrical system (operating at 42-45 Volts) is used to operate a permanent magnet motor/generator unit mounted to the engine in a similar fashion to a conventional alternator. Then through a high-tension drive belt, the BAS system is capable of starting or assisting the 2.4L Ecotec engine. A conventional 12V starter motor is retained and used whenever the engine is cold as during initial start-up. The air conditioning compressor continues to be operated through a belt-driven pulley, but for fuel economy improvement it can be disabled in auto-stop mode if the "ECO" A/C mode has been selected by the operator. Vehicles with the BAS system use a conventional 4T45-E automatic transmission which has been modified to include a more efficient final-drive ratio and includes an electrically driven pump to provide pressure in auto- stop mode. One perceived benefit of the BAS technology is that it fits in the same space as a conventional engine. No significant modifications were required to the vehicle chassis to accommodate the BAS system, with the 36V battery pack housed in the trunk or spare tire well. This allows the vehicles to be produced on the same assembly line as the non-hybrid versions, producing substantial cost savings and allowing the company to adjust production more easily. Cobasys which supplies the BAS system's battery pack had to conduct a recall in 2008 apparently due to internal leakage of the battery modules. Citing supplier issues and slow sales GM has relegated the 2010 model year BAS hybrids (i.e. Malibu hybrid) to "fleet only" status. At the LA Auto Show, on November 15, 2010, General Motors announced that it would be releasing an all-new version of the BAS system available in the 2012 Buick LaCrosse. While still a Belted Alternator Starter system, the system is named eAssist and includes a larger more powerful Hitachi-supplied 115 Volt Lithium Ion battery and a motor-generator that delivers of torque. The additional power provided by the more powerful battery and motor provides the ability to contribute more power, and more often able to electrically start and assist the 2.4L engine. The eAssist system also includes a specially modified GM 6T40 6-speed automatic FWD transaxle. A third generation of the eAssist system was introduced in the 2016 Chevrolet Silverado/GMC Sierra and can improve fuel efficiency by about 13%. This adds about to the total weight of the truck but provides an additional and . The eAssist system includes a modified GM 8L90 automatic transmission. It uses the same battery cells from the Chevrolet Malibu Hybrid and also the software is a modified version of the Chevrolet Volt's. BSG: Belt-Driven Starter Generator, BISG or B-ISG: Belt-Driven Integrated Starter Generator or Belt Mounted Integrated Starter Generator, BSA: Belt-Driven Starter Alternator or Belted Starter Alternator, eAssist: Electric Assist 2007-2009 Saturn Aura Green Line, 2007-2009 Saturn Vue Green Line, 2008-2010 Chevrolet Malibu Hybrid, 2012-2014 Buick LaCrosse w/ eAssist, 2012-2014 Buick Regal w/ eAssist, 2013-14 Chevrolet Malibu w/ eAssist, 2014 Chevrolet Impala w/ eAssist, 2016 Chevrolet Silverado/GMC Sierra w/ eAssist, 2017 Audi A8, 2017 Audi A7 Parallel Hybrid Truck, Mild Hybrid, Two-Mode Hybrid The Pontiac Torrent is a midsize crossover produced by General Motors for the 2006 to 2009 model years. A replacement for the Aztek, it was a mildly restyled version of the first-generation Chevrolet Equinox. The Torrent shared its basic body structure and mechanicals with the Equinox. However, the Torrent has a different front and rear end to distinguish it visually from the Equinox. The suspension was also modified to be firmer and sportier, and the electronic power steering was recalibrated to deliver a firmer, less artificial feel. The Torrent shared the Equinox's 3.4 L V6 with the 5-Speed Aisin AF33 automatic transmission. Like other Pontiac models in the lineup, trim levels of the Torrent were entry-level Base, mid-level GT, and performance-oriented GXP. The GXP featured a more powerful 3.6L DOHC SFI V6 engine and a six-speed automatic transmission, along with a unique body kit and other exterior styling cues. The Pontiac Torrent was featured as one of the prizes in the reality television series Survivor in 2005 as well as Criss Angel Mindfreak in the same year. The GXP trim came with a new 6 speed automatic transmission (with Manual Tap Up/Down shifting capability) paired to a 3.6 L DOHC SFI V6 with engine, (with a reported 0-60 mph time of 6.9 seconds). Other features include: 18 inch 5-spoke chrome wheels, twin hood scoops, and a unique front and rear body kit. The GXP edition Torrent is long overall, wide, and tall. The GXP Torrent sits lower to the ground and has of ground clearance. The lower stance is accented by the 18 inch wheels and the absent roof rack, giving the Torrent a smoother design flow compared to the standard Torrent. The GXP model also features a performance-tuned suspension, hydraulic power-assisted steering (as opposed to the electric power-assisted standard Torrent), improved interior trim (featuring piano black and chrome trim on the console and dash gauges), dual chrome-tipped exhaust, and GXP specific gauges and console trim. A navigation system is an option along with heated sport leather seats, DVD entertainment system, and Sunroof. The GXP became available for sale in the fall of 2007 as a 2008 model. General Motors has repeatedly advertised the Torrent GXP on TV commercials claiming that the Torrent GXP had more of a horsepower advantage than the BMW X3 in an effort for GM to make Pontiac a low-cost rival to BMW. For the 2008 model year, the Torrent got the Podium Edition trim for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games. The Torrent Podium Edition was only sold in Canada. The Pontiac Torrent was discontinued after the 2009 model year. The last Torrent rolled off the assembly line on September 2, 2009 as a result of General Motors discontinuing the Pontiac division in 2010. Originally a new Buick SUV built on the GM Theta platform was going to be introduced in 2010 to serve as a replacement for the Torrent, but General Motors decided to replace the Torrent with a new GMC SUV built on the GM Theta platform called the GMC Terrain, which went on sale in 2009 for the 2010 model year. Official American website, Official Canadian website, Torrent and other GM crossovers fan site

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Wardell Stephen "Steph" Curry II ( ; born March 14, 1988) is an American professional basketball player for the Golden State Warriors of the National Basketball Association (NBA). A six-time NBA All-Star, Curry has been named the NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) twice and won three NBA championships with the Warriors. Many players and analysts have called him the greatest shooter in NBA history. He is credited with revolutionizing the game of basketball by inspiring teams to regularly utilize the three-point shot. The son of former NBA player Dell Curry and older brother of current NBA player Seth, Curry played college basketball for the Davidson Wildcats. There, he was twice named Southern Conference Player of the Year and set the all-time scoring record for both Davidson and the Southern Conference. During his sophomore year, Curry also set the single-season NCAA record for three-pointers made, and was then selected by the Warriors with the seventh overall pick in the 2009 NBA Draft. In 2014–15, Curry won his first MVP award and led the Warriors to their first championship since 1975. The following season, he became the first player in NBA history to be elected MVP by a unanimous vote and to lead the league in scoring while shooting above 50–40–90. That same year, the Warriors broke the record for the most wins in an NBA season en route to reaching the 2016 NBA Finals, which they lost to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Curry helped the Warriors return to the NBA Finals in 2017, 2018 and 2019, winning back-to-back titles in 2017 and 2018. During the 2012–13 season, Curry set the NBA record for three-pointers made in a regular season, with 272. He surpassed that record in 2015 with 286, and again in 2016 with 402. Curry is currently third in all- time made three-pointers in NBA history, and alongside teammate Klay Thompson, the pair have earned the nickname of the Splash Brothers; in 2013–14, they set the record for combined three-pointers in a NBA season with 484, a record they broke the following season (525), and again in the 2015–16 season (678). Wardell Stephen Curry II is the son of Sonya and Dell Curry. He was born in Akron, Ohio while his father was a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers. He grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, where his father spent most of his NBA career with the Charlotte Hornets. Dell often took Curry and his younger brother Seth to his games, where they would shoot with the Hornets during warm-ups. The family briefly relocated to Toronto, where Dell finished out his career as a member of the Raptors. During this time, Curry played for the Queensway Christian College boys' basketball team, leading them to an undefeated season. He was also a member of Toronto 5–0, a club team that plays across Ontario, pitting him against fellow future NBA players Cory Joseph and Kelly Olynyk. Curry led the team to a 33–4 record, en route to winning the provincial championship. Following Dell's retirement, the family moved back to Charlotte and Curry enrolled at Charlotte Christian School, where he was named all- conference, all-state, and led his team to three conference titles and three state playoff appearances. Because of his father's storied career at Virginia Tech, Curry wanted to play college basketball for the Hokies, but was only offered a walk-on spot due in part to his slender 160-pound frame. He ultimately chose to attend Davidson College, who had aggressively recruited him from the tenth grade. Before Curry even played in his first game for the Wildcats, head coach Bob McKillop praised him at a Davidson alumni event, "Wait 'til you see Steph Curry. He is something special." In his first collegiate game, against Eastern Michigan, Curry finished with 15 points but committed 13 turnovers. In the next game, against Michigan, he scored 32 points, dished out 4 assists, and grabbed 9 rebounds. Curry finished the season leading the Southern Conference in scoring with 21.5 points per game. He was second in the nation among freshmen in scoring, behind only Kevin Durant of Texas. Curry's scoring ability helped the Wildcats to a 29–5 overall record and a Southern Conference regular season title. On March 2, 2007, in the Southern Conference tournament semi-finals against Furman, Curry made his 113th three-pointer of the year, breaking Keydren Clark's NCAA freshman season record for 3-point field goals. Curry eclipsed the school freshman scoring record with his 502nd point against Chattanooga on February 6, 2007. On March 15, 2007, Davidson marched into the NCAA tournament as a 13 seed set to play Maryland; despite Curry's game-high 30 points, Davidson lost 82–70. At the end of his freshman season, Curry was named Southern Conference Freshman of the Year, SoCon Tournament MVP, and selected to the SoCon All-tournament team, All-freshman team, and first team All-SoCon. He was also honorable mention in Sports Illustrated's All-Mid- Major. After the season ended, he was selected for the USA team to appear at the 2007 FIBA U19 World Championships in which he averaged 9.4 points, 3.8 rebounds, and 2.2 assists in 19.4 minutes, helping Team USA to a silver medal finish. In his sophomore season in 2007–08, Curry had grown to his adult height of 6 ft 3 in (1.91 m) and again led the Southern Conference in scoring, averaging 25.5 points per game while adding 4.7 rebounds per game and 2.8 assists per game. He led the Wildcats to a 26–6 regular season record, and a 20–0 conference record. As a result of Curry's exceptional play, Davidson earned its third straight NCAA Tournament bid. On March 21, 2008, Davidson matched up with seventh-seeded Gonzaga. Gonzaga led by 11 points early in the second half but Curry went on to score 30 points in the half to push Davidson to their first NCAA Tournament win since 1969, 82–76. Curry ended the game with 40 points while also going 8-for-10 from 3-point range. On March 23, Davidson played second seeded Georgetown in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Georgetown, ranked eighth nationally, entered the game as a heavy favorite after an appearance in the Final Four in 2007. Curry managed just five points in the first half of the game as Davidson trailed by as many as 17 points, but his 25 second-half points led Davidson to a 74–70 comeback victory. On March 28, 2008, Curry led Davidson to another win, against third-seeded Wisconsin. Curry scored 33 points as Davidson won 73–56 to advance to the Elite 8. Curry joined Clyde Lovellette, Jerry Chambers, and Glenn Robinson as the only college players to score over 30 points in their first four career NCAA tournament games. Curry also tied Darrin Fitzgerald of Butler for the single- season record for most three-pointers with 158. On March 30, 2008, he set the record, against the top-seeded Kansas Jayhawks, with his 159th three-pointer of the season. Curry scored 25 points in the game but Davidson lost 57–59, and the Jayhawks went on to win the championship. Curry finished the season averaging 25.9 points, 2.9 assists, and 2.1 steals per game. He was named to the Associated Press' All-America Second Team on March 31, 2008. He also was named the Most Outstanding Player of the Midwest Region of the 2008 NCAA Tournament, becoming the first player from a team not making the Final Four to do so since Juwan Howard of Michigan in 1994. Curry was nominated for an ESPY in the Breakthrough Player of the Year category. After Davidson's loss against Kansas in the NCAA Regional Finals, Curry announced that he would return for his junior year. He stated that he wanted to develop as a point guard, his likely position in the NBA. On November 18, 2008, Curry scored a career-high 44 points in Davidson's 82–78 loss to Oklahoma. He extended a career-long streak by scoring at least 25 points for the seventh straight game. On November 21, Curry registered a career-high 13 assists, to go along with 30 points, in Davidson's 97–70 win over Winthrop. On November 25, against Loyola, Curry was held scoreless as Loyola constantly double-teamed him. It was Curry's only scoreless collegiate game and just his second without double-digit points. He finished 0-for-3 from the field as Davidson won the game 78–48. In Davidson's next game (11 days later), Curry matched his career high of 44 in a 72–67 win over North Carolina State. Curry surpassed the 2000-point mark for his career on January 3, 2009, as he scored 21 points against Samford. On February 14, 2009, Curry rolled his ankle in the second half of a win over Furman. The injury caused Curry to miss the February 18 game against The Citadel, the first and only game he missed in his college career. On February 28, 2009, Curry became Davidson's all-time leading scorer with 34 points in a 99–56 win against Georgia Southern. That gave Curry 2,488 points for his career, surpassing previous school leader John Gerdy. Davidson won the 2008–09 Southern Conference regular season championship for the south division, finishing 18–2 in the conference. In the 2009 Southern Conference Tournament, Davidson played Appalachian State in the quarterfinals and won 84–68. Curry scored 43 points, which is the third most points in Southern Conference tournament history. In the semifinals, against the College of Charleston, Curry had 20 points but Davidson lost 52–59. Despite lobbying from Davidson head coach Bob McKillop and Charleston coach Bobby Cremins, the Wildcats failed to get an NCAA tournament bid. Instead, they received the sixth seed in the 2009 NIT. Davidson played the third seed, South Carolina, on the road in the first round. Curry scored 32 points as the Wildcats beat the Gamecocks 70–63. Davidson then fell 68–80 to the Saint Mary's Gaels in the second round. Curry registered 26 points, 9 rebounds, and 5 assists in what was his final game for the Wildcats. In his final season at Davidson, Curry averaged 28.6 points, 5.6 assists, and 2.5 steals. He was the NCAA scoring leader and was named a consensus first team All-American. Curry opted out of his senior year at Davidson, but he stated that he still planned to earn his degree. On June 25, 2009, Curry was selected with the seventh overall pick in the 2009 NBA draft by the Golden State Warriors. He appeared in 80 games (77 starts) during the 2009–10 season, averaging 17.5 points, 4.5 rebounds, 5.9 assists and 1.90 steals in 36.2 minutes. His second half of the season vaulted him into the rookie of the year race. He was named Western Conference Rookie of the Month for January, March and April, finishing as the only Western Conference rookie to win the award three times. He finished runner-up for the NBA Rookie of the Year Award behind Tyreke Evans and was a unanimous NBA All- Rookie First Team selection, becoming the first Warriors player since Jason Richardson in 2001–02 to earn All-Rookie First Team honors. He scored 30-plus points eight times, setting the most 30-point games by any rookie in 2009–10 and the most since LeBron James had 13 and Carmelo Anthony had 10 in 2003–04. Curry had five 30-point/10-assist games, which tied Michael Jordan for the second-most 30-point/10-assist games by a rookie (Oscar Robertson is first with 25). He became just the sixth rookie in NBA history to post a 35-point, 10-assist, 10-rebound game when he registered his first career triple-double with 36 points, 13 assists and 10 rebounds against the Los Angeles Clippers on February 10. In the Warriors' season finale against the Portland Trail Blazers on April 14, Curry recorded a then career-high 42 points, nine rebounds and eight assists, becoming the first rookie since Robertson in February 1961 to register at least those numbers in each category in the same game. Curry finished his rookie season with 166 three-pointers, which were the most ever by a rookie in NBA history. In 2010–11, Curry appeared in 74 games (all starts), averaging 18.6 points, 3.9 rebounds, 5.8 assists and 1.47 steals in 33.6 minutes per contest. His free throw percentage of .934 (212–227 FT) established a new Warriors single-season record, surpassing the previous mark of .924 set by Rick Barry in 1977–78. He also became the first Warriors player to lead the NBA in free throw percentage since Mark Price in 1996–97. Curry registered 20-or-more points 35 times, including seven 30-plus performances. He posted a season-high 39 points and a then career-high 14 field goals (on 20 FGA) against the Oklahoma City Thunder on December 5. In February 2011, during All-Star Weekend, Curry won the Skills Challenge and registered 13 points, eight assists and six rebounds in 28 minutes as a member of the Sophomore squad in the Rookie Challenge. In May 2011, he was named the recipient of the NBA Sportsmanship Award, and underwent surgery on his right ankle. In the lockout-shortened 2011–12 season, Curry appeared in 26 games (23 starts), averaging 14.7 points, 3.4 rebounds, 5.3 assists and 1.50 steals in 28.2 minutes per contest. He missed 40 games due to right ankle and foot injuries, including the last 28 games with a sprained right ankle and subsequent surgery on the ankle, which was performed on April 25. Prior to the start of the 2012–13 season, Curry signed a four-year, $44 million contract extension with the Warriors. At the time, many basketball writers considered the move risky for Golden State because of Curry's injury history. Over the course of the year, Curry and backcourt teammate Klay Thompson gained a reputation for their perimeter scoring, earning them the nickname the "Splash Brothers". In 2012–13, Curry appeared in 78 games (all starts), averaging career highs of 22.9 points (seventh in NBA) and 6.9 assists to go with 4.0 rebounds and 1.62 steals in 38.2 minutes. He established a new NBA single-season three-point record with 272 three-pointers, eclipsing the previous mark set by Ray Allen (269 in 2005–06), doing so on 53 less attempts than Allen did with Seattle. Curry earned Western Conference Player of the Month honors for the month of April, averaging 25.4 points, 8.1 assists, 3.9 rebounds and 2.13 steals in eight games in the final month of the season to become the third Warrior to ever win the award, joining Chris Mullin (November 1990 and January 1989) and Bernard King (January 1981). He tallied two of the NBA's top six scoring games with 54 points on February 27 at New York and 47 on April 12 at Los Angeles, becoming the first Warrior to score 45-plus at New York and L.A. in the same season since Rick Barry in 1966 (joining Barry, Guy Rodgers and Wilt Chamberlain as the only four Warriors to do so). Curry's 54 points against the Knicks included a career-best and franchise-record 11 three-pointers, becoming the first player in NBA history to score 50-plus points while hitting 10-plus three-pointers in a game. It was the most scored by a Warrior since Purvis Short tallied 59 points in 1984. He appeared in the playoffs for the first time in 2013, with the Warriors earning the sixth seed in the Western Conference. In 12 playoff games (all starts), he averaged 23.4 points, 8.1 assists and 3.8 rebounds. He set a new franchise record with 42 playoff three- pointers, eclipsing the Warriors' career playoff mark of 29 previously held by Jason Richardson, giving him a total of 314 three-pointers for the season to become the first player in NBA history to hit at least 300 threes in a single season. In 2013–14, Curry appeared in 78 games (all starts), averaging career highs of 24.0 points (seventh in the NBA) and 8.5 assists (fifth) to go with 4.3 rebounds and 1.63 steals, becoming the first player in Warriors history to average 24 points and eight assists in a single season (ninth player in NBA history). He led the league in three-pointers made for a second consecutive season with 261 (fourth-most ever in a single season), the first player since Ray Allen in 2001–02 and 2002–03 to lead the league in threes in back-to-back seasons. He was named Western Conference Player of the Month for April and earned All-NBA Second Team honors, becoming first Warriors player named to the First or Second Team since 1993–94. On December 7 against the Memphis Grizzlies, Curry eclipsed Jason Richardson (700) as the franchise's leader in career three-pointers. In February, he made his first All-Star appearance, becoming the Warriors' first All-Star starter since Latrell Sprewell in 1995. He scored a season-high 47 points on April 13 against the Portland Trail Blazers for his third 40-point game of the year. He finished the regular season tied for second in the NBA in triple-doubles with four, the most by a Warrior in a single season since Wilt Chamberlain had five in 1963–64. Seeded sixth for the second consecutive postseason, the Warriors were defeated in seven games by the Los Angeles Clippers. Prior to the start of the 2014–15 season, the Warriors hired former NBA player and general manager Steve Kerr as their new head coach. Kerr implemented significant changes to Golden State's schemes, including playing at a faster pace and giving Curry more freedom to shoot, helping the team evolve into a title contender. On February 4, Curry scored a season-high 51 points in a win over the Dallas Mavericks. He was the leading vote-getter for the All-Star Game and won the Three-Point Contest on All-Star Saturday night. On April 9, he broke his own league record for three-pointers made in a season during a game against the Portland Trail Blazers. The Warriors finished the year with 67 wins and Curry was voted the NBA Most Valuable Player after posting averages of 23.8 points, 7.7 assists and 2 steals per game. Over the course of the season, he sat out 17 fourth quarters due to Golden State's wide margins of victory. In Game 5 of the Conference Semifinals against the Memphis Grizzlies, Curry became the first player in league history to register six three-pointers and six steals in a game. In Game 6, he made a playoff career- high eight three-pointers en route to a series-clinching victory. In Game 3 of the Conference Finals against the Houston Rockets, he broke the NBA record for most three-pointers made in a single postseason. The Warriors went on to defeat the Rockets to earn a Finals matchup with the Cleveland Cavaliers, where Curry struggled to start the series, converting on only 22 percent of his field goals in Game 2. In Game 5, he scored 37 points, and in Game 6, Golden State closed out the series to win their first championship in 40 years. For the Finals, Curry averaged 26 points and 6.3 assists per game. To start the 2015–16 season, Curry became the first player since Michael Jordan in 1989–90 to score 118 points in his team's first three games, including a season-high 53 points against the New Orleans Pelicans in the third game. The Warriors made NBA history on November 24 when they became the first team ever to start 16–0 with a win over the Los Angeles Lakers, before improving to 24–0 on December 11 with a double-overtime win over the Boston Celtics. Their streak was broken the following day against the Milwaukee Bucks. On December 28, Curry recorded his sixth career triple-double with 23 points, a career-high 14 rebounds and 10 assists in a 122–103 win over the Sacramento Kings. During the game against the Kings, Curry was guarded by his brother Seth for the first time in their NBA careers. On January 22, he recorded his second triple-double of the season with 39 points, 12 assists and 10 rebounds in a 122–110 win over the Indiana Pacers. He made eight three- pointers in the game to reach 200 for the season, becoming the first player in NBA history to make 200 three-pointers in four straight seasons. On February 3, he made 11 three-pointers (including seven in the first quarter) and scored 51 points (including a career-high 36 points in the first half) to lead the Warriors past the Washington Wizards 134–121. His 51 points tied Gilbert Arenas and Michael Jordan for the Verizon Center record. During the 2016 NBA All-Star Weekend, Curry competed in his third straight All-Star game for the West, and competed in the Three-Point Shootout, where he lost in the final round to teammate Klay Thompson. At 48–4, the Warriors entered the All-Star break with the best record through 52 games in NBA history, one win better than the 1995–96 Chicago Bulls and 1966–67 Philadelphia 76ers. On February 25, Curry made 10 three-pointers and scored 51 points to lead the Warriors past the Orlando Magic 130–114. Curry topped 50 points for the third time in 2015–16, the first player to do it that many times since LeBron James and Dwyane Wade did so in 2008–09. Curry also surpassed Kyle Korver's mark of 127 straight games with a three-pointer. In the following game two days later, the Warriors defeated the Oklahoma City Thunder in overtime thanks to a Curry three-pointer with 0.6 seconds remaining. Curry finished with 46 points as his winning shot was his 12th three-pointer, tying the NBA single-game record (with Kobe Bryant and Donyell Marshall). He also broke his own NBA record for threes in a season, leaving the new mark at 288. On March 7, in a win over the Magic, Curry scored 41 points and became the first player in NBA history to make 300 regular-season three-pointers. On April 1, Curry missed a three- pointer to tie the game against the Celtics with 5.3 seconds left, as the Warriors suffered their first home defeat since January 27, 2015, snapping an NBA-record 54-game winning streak in the regular season at Oracle Arena. On April 7, Curry scored 27 points to help the Warriors become the second team in NBA history to win 70 games in a season with a 112–101 win over the San Antonio Spurs. In the Warriors' regular-season finale on April 13 against the Memphis Grizzlies, Curry achieved another shooting milestone, becoming the first player to make 400 three-pointers in a season by knocking down 10 from long range on his way to 46 points and 402 total three-pointers. With a 125–104 win over the Grizzlies, the Warriors became the first 73-win team in NBA history, surpassing the 1995–96 Chicago Bulls' 72–10 record to finish the 2015–16 season with just nine losses. With the conclusion of the regular season, Curry became the seventh player in NBA history to join the 50–40–90 club, representing the shooting percentages from the field (.504), beyond the arc (.454), and the free-throw line (.908). The league's leading scorer at 30.1 points per game, Curry was named the league's first ever unanimous MVP, becoming the 11th player in NBA history to win the award in consecutive seasons and the first guard to do so since Steve Nash in 2004–05 and 2005–06. In the 2016 playoffs, the Warriors defeated the Houston Rockets in the first round despite Curry only playing in the first half of games one and four due to injury. A right MCL injury kept him out of the first three games of the second round. In game four of the second-round series against the Portland Trail Blazers, Curry came off the bench to score 40 points in a 132–125 overtime win. Seventeen of those points came in the extra period, an NBA record for points scored by an individual in overtime. Curry led the Warriors to a 4–1 victory over the Trail Blazers, as they moved on to the Western Conference Finals to face the Oklahoma City Thunder. After going down 3–1, he helped the Warriors rally to win the series 4–3 and advance to their second straight NBA Finals. In the Finals, Curry's play relative to his regular season performance remained inconsistent, as it had been since he returned from injury against Portland. Still, he broke Danny Green's record of 27 three-pointers made in a Finals. However, the Warriors, despite being up 3–1 in the series, were defeated by the Cleveland Cavaliers in seven games and became the first team in NBA Finals history to lose a series after leading 3–1. In the game seven loss, Curry scored 17 points on 6-of-19 shooting. On October 28, 2016, Curry hit four three-pointers against the New Orleans Pelicans to reach 1,600 for his career, becoming the 19th player to do so, as well as the fastest to reach the mark. On November 4, Curry's NBA-record streak of 157 straight games with at least one made three-pointer was snapped during the Warriors' 117–97 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers after he went 0-of-10 from three-point range. He had hit a three-pointer in every regular- season game since November 11, 2014. Three days later, he hit 13 three- pointers against New Orleans, setting an NBA record for most three-pointers made in a regular-season game. Curry shot 16-of-26 overall against the Pelicans for his first 40-point game of the season, finishing with 46 in a 116–106 win. On December 11, Curry hit two three-pointers against the Minnesota Timberwolves to pass Steve Nash for 17th on the NBA's career three- pointers list. With 14 points against the Dallas Mavericks on December 30, Curry (11,903) passed Purvis Short (11,894) for seventh place on the Warriors' all-time scoring list. In a loss to the Memphis Grizzlies on January 6, 2017, Curry had his second 40-point game of the season and reached the 12,000-point threshold, becoming the seventh player in Warriors history to score 12,000 career points. On January 19, Curry was named a starter on the Western Conference All-Star team for the 2017 NBA All-Star Game. On February 2, he hit his 200th three-pointer of the season in the Warriors' 133–120 win over the Los Angeles Clippers, making him the first player in NBA history to have 200 or more three-pointers in five consecutive seasons. On March 5, he scored 31 points and moved into the top 10 on the NBA's career three-point list in a 112–105 win over the New York Knicks. Curry hit five three-pointers, passing Chauncey Billups for 10th place. Curry helped the Warriors sweep through the first two rounds of the playoffs. In Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals against the San Antonio Spurs, Curry scored 40 points and hit a tying 3-pointer with 1:48 remaining to help the Warriors rally from a 25-point deficit to win 113–111; the Warriors overcame their largest halftime deficit ever in the postseason at 20 points. In a 120–108 Game 3 win, Curry scored 21 points and became the franchise leader in postseason points, passing Rick Barry. They went up 3–0 in the series, becoming the third team in NBA history to win their first 11 playoff games. His 36 points in Game 4 led to a 129–115 victory that saw the Warriors advance to the NBA Finals for a third straight year while becoming the first team in league history to start the playoffs 12–0. In Game 2 of the 2017 NBA Finals against the Cleveland Cavaliers, Curry recorded his first career postseason triple-double with 32 points, 11 assists and 10 rebounds to help the Warriors go up 2–0 in the series with a 132–113 win. Curry helped the Warriors clinch the series and the championship in Game 5 with 34 points, 10 assists and six rebounds, as Golden State claimed its second title in three years. On July 1, 2017, Curry agreed to a five-year, $201 million extension with the Warriors, becoming the first NBA player to sign a supermax contract worth over $200 million. He officially signed the contract on July 25. On December 1, he scored 23 points and passed Jason Kidd for eighth place on the career three-pointers made list in a 133–112 win over the Orlando Magic. On December 4, in a 125–115 win over the New Orleans Pelicans, Curry hit five three-pointers to become the fastest NBA player to achieve the milestone of 2,000 career three-pointers, achieving that mark in just 597 games, 227 less than the previous fastest player to achieve that mark, Ray Allen. In that same game, Curry injured his right ankle and subsequently missed 11 games, returning to action on December 30 and scoring 38 points with a season-high 10 3-pointers in a 141–128 win over the Memphis Grizzlies. Curry shot 13 for 17 and 10 of 13 from deep in 26 minutes for his ninth 30-point game of the season. It also marked Curry's ninth career game with 10 or more 3s, the most by any player in NBA history. On January 6, in a 121–105 win over the Los Angeles Clippers, Curry scored 45 points in three quarters. On January 25, he scored 25 points in a 126–113 win over the Minnesota Timberwolves. Curry became the fifth player in Warriors history to score 14,000 points, ending the game with 14,023 and joining Wilt Chamberlain (17,783), Rick Barry (16,447), Paul Arizin (16,266) and Chris Mullin (16,235) on the franchise list. On January 27, he scored 49 points—with 13 of those over the final 1:42—and hit eight 3-pointers, lifting the Warriors past the Boston Celtics 109–105. On February 22, he had a 44-point effort with eight 3-pointers in a 134–127 win over the Los Angeles Clippers. It was his third 40-point game of the season. On March 2, in a 114–109 win over the Atlanta Hawks, Curry made his 200th 3-point field goal of the season, becoming the first player in NBA history with at least 200 3-pointers in six seasons, having reached the mark in every season since 2012–13. Four days later, in a 114–101 win over the Nets, Curry became the seventh player in Warriors history to make 5,000 career field goals, joining Chamberlain, Barry, Mullin, Arizin, Jeff Mullins and Nate Thurmond. On March 23, against the Hawks, Curry suffered a Grade 2 medial collateral ligament (MCL) sprain to his left knee. He subsequently missed nearly six weeks, returning to action in Game 2 of the Warriors' second-round playoff series against the Pelicans. He came off the bench to score 28 points in a 121–116 win. In Game 3 of the Western Conference Finals, Curry scored 35 points with five 3-pointers in a 126–85 win over the Houston Rockets. The 41-point victory was the largest in franchise history during the postseason. In Game 6, Curry scored 29 points with five 3-pointers, as the Warriors rallied from an early 17-point deficit to stave off elimination with a 115–86 victory over the Rockets. In Game 7, Curry recorded 27 points, 10 assists and nine rebounds, as the Warriors earned a fourth straight trip to the NBA Finals by beating the Rockets 101–92. In Game 2 of the NBA Finals, Curry hit a Finals-record nine 3-pointers and scored 33 points in a 122–103 win over the Cavaliers. In Game 4, Curry led all scorers with 37 points in a 108–85 win that helped the Warriors clinch their second straight championship with a series sweep over the Cavaliers. Many felt that he should have won Finals MVP. In response, Curry stated, "At the end of the day, I'm not going to let a [Finals] MVP trophy define my career. Three titles ... Wherever that puts us in the conversation in the history of the NBA ... I'm a three-time champ." Rohan Nadkarni of Sports Illustrated argued that "the Golden State dynasty started with Stephen Curry. He, for numerous reasons stretching from his incredible talent to his previous ankle injuries, put the Warriors in place to win their third championship in four seasons." On October 21, 2018, Curry had 30 points and six 3-pointers in a 100–98 loss to the Denver Nuggets, thus moving past Paul Pierce for sixth place on the NBA's career three-point list. Three days later, he scored 51 points with 11 3-pointers in only three quarters in a 144–122 win over the Washington Wizards. He scored 31 in the first half and finished with his sixth career 50-point game and made 10 or more 3s for the 10th time. Curry's third 3-pointer of the night moved him past Jamal Crawford (2,153) for fifth place on the NBA's career list. On October 28, he made seven 3-pointers and finished with 35 points in a 120–114 win over the Brooklyn Nets. Over the first seven games of the season, he made at least five 3-pointers in all seven games, breaking George McCloud's record of six games in a row during the 1995–96 season. The Warriors started the season with a 10–1 record. On November 8 against the Milwaukee Bucks, Curry left the game during the third quarter with a groin injury and the Warriors were unable to recover in a 134–111 loss. Without Curry, the Warriors dropped to 12–7 on November 21 after enduring their first four-game losing streak since March 2013. The Warriors ended November with a 15–8 record, with Curry's strained left groin sidelining him for 11 straight games. Despite Curry's 27 points in his return to the line-up on December 1, the Warriors were defeated 111–102 by the Detroit Pistons. On December 17, he scored 20 points in a 110–93 win over the Memphis Grizzlies, becoming just the fifth player in Warriors history to score 15,000 points during the regular season, joining Wilt Chamberlain (17,783), Rick Barry (16,447), Paul Arizin (16,266) and Chris Mullin (16,235). On December 23, he scored 42 points and made a layup with 0.5 seconds left to lift the Warriors to a 129–127 win over the Los Angeles Clippers. On January 5, he had 10 3-pointers and scored 20 of his 42 points in the fourth quarter of the Warriors' 127–123 win over the Sacramento Kings. On January 11, in a 146–109 win over the Chicago Bulls, Curry made five 3-pointers to surpass Jason Terry (2,282) and move into third place all-time in NBA history behind Ray Allen (2,973) and Reggie Miller (2,560). Two days later, he scored 48 points and hit a season high-tying 11 3-pointers in a 119–114 win over the Dallas Mavericks. On January 16, he scored 41 points with nine 3-pointers to become the first player in NBA history to make eight or more 3s in three straight games, as the Warriors defeated the New Orleans Pelicans 147–140. On January 31, he scored 41 points with 10 3-pointers in a 113–104 loss to the Philadelphia 76ers. On February 21, he scored 36 points with 10 3-pointers in a 125–123 win over the Kings. On March 16 against the Oklahoma City Thunder, Curry reached 16,000 career points. On March 29, he made 11 3-pointers and scored 37 points in a 131–130 overtime loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves. On April 2, in a 116–102 win over the Nuggets, Curry made five or more 3-pointers in a career-best nine straight games and moved past Mullin for fourth place on the Warriors all-time points list. On April 5, he scored 40 points in a 120–114 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers, thus moving past Arizin for third place on the Warriors all-time points list. The Warriors entered the playoffs as the first seed in the Western Conference with a 57–25 record. In Game 1 of the Warriors' first- round playoff series against the Clippers, Curry scored 38 points and made eight 3-pointers to give him the most in postseason history, passing Ray Allen (385). He also had a postseason career-high 15 rebounds and seven assists in a 121–104 win. In Game 6 of the second round, Curry bounced back from the first scoreless first half of his playoff career to score 33 points in the last two quarters to help the Warriors eliminate the Houston Rockets with a 118–113 win and advance to the Western Conference Finals. In Game 1 of the Conference Finals, Curry matched his postseason career high with nine 3-pointers to finish with 36 points in a 116–94 win over the Portland Trail Blazers. He averaged a series career-high 36.5 points to help the Warriors sweep the Trail Blazers. It was the highest average by a player in a four-game sweep in NBA history. Curry became the sixth player in NBA history to score 35 or more in the first four games of a series. In Game 4, he had 37 points, 12 rebounds and 11 assists in a 119–117 overtime win, as he and Draymond Green became the first teammates in league history to have a triple-double in the same playoff game. In Game 3 of the 2019 Finals, Curry scored a playoff career-high 47 points to go with eight rebounds and seven assists in a 123–109 loss to Toronto Raptors. In Game 5, he helped the Warriors stave off elimination with 31 points in a 106–105 win, thus cutting the Raptors' series lead to 3–2. In Game 6, Curry scored 21 points, but shot just 6 for 17 and went 3 of 11 on 3-pointers, including missing a contested 3-pointer in the waning moments, as the Warriors lost the game and the series with a 114–110 defeat. Curry was expected to take on a greater offensive load in 2019–20 with Thompson out injured and Kevin Durant having left the Warriors as a free agent. On October 30, 2019, against the Phoenix Suns in the fourth game of the season, Curry drove to the basket and collided with the Suns' Aron Baynes, who was trying to take a charge. Baynes fell on Curry's left hand, which required surgery to repair his broken second metacarpal. He is expected to be out at least three months. Curry's first experience with the United States national team came at the 2007 FIBA Under-19 World Championship, where he helped Team USA capture the silver medal. In 2010, he was selected to the senior squad, playing limited minutes at the 2010 FIBA World Championship (known later as FIBA Basketball World Cup) as the United States won the gold medal in an undefeated tournament. In 2014, he took on a larger role with the team, helping them to another undefeated tournament at the 2014 World Cup and scoring 10 points in the final game. On June 6, 2016, Curry withdrew from consideration for the 2016 Olympics in Brazil, citing ankle and knee ailments as the major reason behind the decision. Listed at 6 feet 3 inches tall (1.91 m) and weighing 190 pounds (86 kg), Curry plays almost exclusively at the point guard position and has career averages of 23.5 points, 6.6 assists, 4.5 rebounds, and 1.7 steals per game. He is a high-percentage free throw shooter, with a career free throw percentage of 90.5% through the end of the 2018–19 season, the highest in NBA history. Curry is the Warriors' all-time free-throw leader, and has led the NBA in free throw percentage four times. Although capable of stealing the ball, having led the league in steals for the 2015–16 season, he is not considered to be an elite defender, and his teammates frequently take the more difficult defensive assignments. He has been selected to five All-NBA Teams and voted league MVP twice. As a leader within the Warriors organization, he played a significant role in the recruitment of former MVP Kevin Durant to the Warriors. Curry's shooting ability ranges from scoring in great volume from underneath the rim all the way to near half-court. Using an unorthodox jump shot, he is able to get the ball out of his hands in under half a second by releasing it on the way up, adding extra arc to his shot and making it difficult to block. The shooting proficiency earned him the nickname "Baby-Faced Assassin" during his pre-NBA years and "Chef Curry" while in the NBA. He is additionally known for his ball handling and playmaking abilities, and for putting extra pressure on defenses with his long range, leading the NBA in field goals made from beyond 28 feet in 2016. As of January 2019, Curry ranks third in NBA history in career three-point field goal percentage and holds four of the top five seasons in terms of total three-pointers made. He is also the fastest player in league history to make 2,000 career three-pointers, doing so in 227 fewer games than the previous record-holder, Ray Allen. A clutch scorer, he often shoots at his best in high-pressure moments, and takes game-winning shots. NBA analysts state that Curry's efficient scoring ability creates a "gravity" effect, forcing opposing defenders to double-team him even when he does not have the ball, which creates mismatches that his teammates are able to exploit. With Curry, the Warriors average 10.8 isolations per game; without Curry, they average 15.3 isolations per game. His absence slows the Warriors offense down and leads to less passing and ball movement. With Curry, the Warriors average 1.05 points every shot that comes after an off-ball screen; without Curry, it drops to 0.95 points per game. His absence makes it much easier for defenders to switch on screens. Of Curry's success with or without other elite teammates, Tom Haberstroh of NBC Sports stated, "You can pluck All-Star after All-Star off the court like flower petals, and the Steph-led Warriors will still dominate like a champion. He's that transcendent of a player. [...] The Warriors go from plus-16.9 to plus-14.8 to plus-13.9 to plus-14.3 as you keep removing an All-Star from Curry. But as these numbers show, Curry is impervious. He's teammate-agnostic. For those that think Curry would struggle in another organization or in another system, it's clear: He is the system." Curry is considered by many to be the greatest shooter in NBA history. He is credited with revolutionizing the game of basketball by inspiring basketball teams, from high school to the NBA, to regularly utilize the three-point shot. Analysts have referred to him as "the Michael Jordan of the three-point era," stating that he did for the three-point shot what Jordan did for the dunk. The Guardian's Robert O'Connell cites Curry's February 27, 2013 game against the New York Knicks, in which he made 11 of 13 shots from behind the arc en route for a 54-point performance, as the start of the three-point era. The era has been referred to as "The Steph Effect" and "the NBA's Three-Point Revolution." Before Curry, shooting behind the three-point line was more of a novelty, an occasional way of scoring. Catch and shoot players existed, but Curry's success inspired the league to abandon physical play around the basket and to embrace a pace and space and three-point shooting style. The increase in three-point shooting is partly due to NBA teams incorporating it in their attempts to defeat the Warriors or copy the Warriors' style of play, and to young people wanting to imitate Curry's shooting range. Although this has led to players becoming good at or improving their three-point shot, it has also set unrealistic standards because Curry's range is unique. Curry regularly takes shots from between 30 and 35 feet. He shoots 54 percent from this range, while the NBA makes 35 percent of its threes overall and under 22 percent from between 30 and 35 feet. He can make the shots with elite ball handling, off the dribble, and often with an extremely quick release, from anywhere on the court and with one or more defenders on him. Curry said that he is sure coaches tell their high school players that shooting the way he does takes work and time. Jesse Dougherty of The Washington Post stated that "coaches have to explain that while Curry's skill set is something to aspire to, his game is built on fundamentals" and that "while the Warriors have become the NBA's gold standard and make all those social-media-bound plays, the root of their success is ball movement." Kirk Goldsberry of ESPN opined that "one of the keys to [Curry's] greatness is his range" and that "Curry isn't just the best 3-point shooter ever, he's the best deep 3-point shooter ever." Sally Jenkins of The Washington Post stated that he "moves around behind the three- point line in an ever-widening arc, sinking long distance shots so cleanly that the net seems to snap like fresh laundry in a breeze" and that a highlight is the "sheer preposterousness of his shots, and the rate at which he is sinking the most far-fetched of them." She said that "in one stretch he hit a mind-expanding 67 percent between 28 and 50 feet." Warriors Coach Steve Kerr stated that Curry's hand-eye coordination "is as great as anyone I've ever seen." Jeff Austin of Octagton concluded that Curry "had to develop tremendous strength in his wrists to shoot and maintain that form from 40 and 50 feet." Goldsberry stated that "no player in the history of the NBA has combined range, volume and efficiency from downtown as well as Curry" and that "Curry's jumper is so lethal that he has become the most efficient volume scorer on the planet." His range and efficiency drove the developers of the NBA 2K video game series, in which Curry is featured, to worry that his abilities could not be replicated on screen. Although Curry is commonly cited as the NBA's greatest shooter, where he ranks as one of the greatest NBA players has been more subject to debate. Former NBA player Steve Nash, who is also among the NBA's all-time efficient shooters, said Curry is "already an all-time great" and that people question his greatness "because he doesn't dominate the game physically. He dances. He pays a tax for that. He pays a tax for his great teammates." Scottie Pippen, who won six NBA titles with the Chicago Bulls, said that Curry's "willingness to sacrifice for [Kevin Durant] is one of the great stories in history" because Curry welcomed Durant, who is also a top player, to the Warriors without ego. "If you have a mind for the game, you know that it takes sacrifice to be great. All the greats have to sacrifice something. Otherwise you can't win," he said, crediting Curry with being "one of the greatest guards the game has ever seen." CBS Sports ranked Curry #19 in their list of "50 greatest NBA players of all time". Sports Illustrated ranked him #3, behind Durant and LeBron James, on their "Top 100 NBA Players of 2019" list. Sports Illustrated stated that "Curry and the Warriors are a great match of player and system" and that "the entire ecosystem is predicated on the idea that a player doesn't need to dominate the ball to dominate a game. Curry took that noble idea and elevated it beyond any reasonable expectation." On July 30, 2011, Curry married longtime girlfriend and Toronto native Ayesha Alexander in Charlotte. Together, they have three children, daughters Riley (b. 2012) and Ryan (b. 2015) and son Canon (b. 2018). In July 2019, Curry paid $31 million for a home in Atherton, California. Curry's younger brother, Seth, is also a professional basketball player, and his younger sister, Sydel, played volleyball at Elon University. Curry has been outspoken about his Christian faith. He spoke about his faith during his MVP speech by saying, "People should know who I represent and why I am who I am, and that's because of my Lord and Savior." He also said the reason that he pounds his chest and points up is that he has a "heart for God" and as a reminder that he plays for God. On some of his "Curry One" basketball shoes, there is a lace loop scripted "4:13". It is a reference to the Bible verse Philippians 4:13, which reads "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Curry has a tattoo of First Corinthians 13:8 in Hebrew on his wrist ("Love never fails..."). Curry is also an investor in Active Faith, a Christian sports apparel brand. Curry suffers from keratoconus and wears contact lenses to correct his vision. During the 1992 All-Star Weekend, Curry's father entrusted him to Biserka Petrović, mother of future Hall of Fame player Dražen Petrović, while Dell competed in the Three-Point Contest. Following the 2015 NBA Finals, Curry gave Biserka one of his Finals-worn jerseys, which will reportedly be added to the collection of the Dražen Petrović Memorial Center, a museum to the late player in the Croatian capital of Zagreb. Curry is an avid golfer; he played golf in high school, and frequently plays golf with teammate Andre Iguodala. A 5-handicap golfer, Curry participates in celebrity golf tournaments and has played golf alongside Barack Obama. In August 2017, Curry competed in the Ellie Mae Classic on an unrestricted sponsor exemption. Although he missed the first cut, he scored 4-over-74 for both days he participated, surpassing most expectations for an amateur competing in the pro event. In August 2019, Curry and Howard University, a historically black institution in Washington, D.C., jointly announced that the school would add NCAA Division I teams in men's and women's golf starting in the 2020–21 school year, with Curry guaranteeing full funding of both teams for six years. Curry is also a fan of British soccer club Chelsea FC. Curry is one of the most successful players in the NBA, and he has also become an international celebrity, on par with four-time MVP LeBron James. Like James, he has been considered the face of the NBA. His flashy play and penchant for coming up big in the clutch have made him a fan favorite, and his smaller physique is said to have made his success seem more attainable for younger fans of the NBA. Curry's jersey was the top seller in the NBA for the 2015–16 and 2016–17 NBA seasons. While discussion has concerned his image as representative of the NBA today, Curry has said that he is not playing to be the face of the NBA "or to take LeBron's throne or whatever. You know, I'm trying to chase rings, and that's all I'm about. So that's where the conversation stops for me." ESPN has ranked Curry among the most famous international athletes, while Forbes has ranked him among the world's highest- paid celebrities for his endorsements. ESPN's Kirk Goldsberry reasoned that one reason for Curry's popularity is that while most people are not tall enough to dunk, everyone can attempt a shot, which is something Curry inspires. Owen Davis of Sky Sports echoed this sentiment, stating, "After all, not everyone is blessed with supreme height and athleticism, but everyone can learn to pass, dribble and shoot. Curry is proof that if you work hard enough, you can still find ways to dominate, no matter your size." Monte Poole of NBC Sports found Curry to be "the most human of superstars," with a childlike aura to him when he plays with success. His fanbase ranges from very young children to the elderly, and casual or committed fans enjoy his style of play. Poole stated that "the joy factor exponentially increases" when Curry is on the court and that "the sight of this relatively ordinary specimen sending much bigger players into silent surrender is an intoxicant for the Warriors and their fans." Curry is widely known for his partnership with Under Armour, where he is considered to be the "face of their footwear line." Originally signed to Nike, Curry joined with Under Armour in the 2013 offseason. As Curry became MVP and one of the most popular athletes in the world, sales of his shoes have become a major factor for the brand, with stock prices rising and falling based on the success of the Curry shoe line. In September 2017, it was announced that Curry had signed an exclusive autograph contract with Steiner Sports Memorabilia. The full product line will include hand-signed official basketballs and jerseys, autographed photographs of epic moments, flashy framed signs and wall-art, game-used memorabilia, and limited-edition pieces. In October 2018, Curry announced his involvement with the relaunch of Palm, a mobile companion device that pairs with a primary smartphone. Curry is an investor and the leading brand ambassador for Palm, which is a small startup based in San Francisco which licenses the Palm name from TCL Corporation. He is also involved with designing and testing accessories and even helped to name the device. In 2012, Curry started donating three insecticide-treated mosquito nets for every three-pointer he made to the United Nations Foundation's Nothing But Nets campaign to combat malaria. He was first introduced to the malaria cause by Davidson teammate Bryant Barr when they were both in school. Curry visited the White House in 2015 and delivered a five-minute speech to dignitaries as part of President Barack Obama's launch of his President's Malaria Initiative strategy for 2015–2020. In 2015, Curry wore sneakers that had Deah Shaddy Barakat's name on them (one of the victims of the 2015 Chapel Hill shooting). According to his sister Suzanne, Deah Barakat was known for his "love for basketball and anything Steph Curry." Deah's number for his intramural basketball team at North Carolina State University was Curry's No. 30, and he posed for a photo that was similar to one that Curry did for GQ. Curry said that Barakat's family "did a great job of reaching out to me and making me aware of the details of his life and personality [...] It was really kind of a cool deal to be able to use the platform yesterday to honor Deah and his family [...] I'm going to send them the shoes I wore yesterday. And hopefully, they know that I've been thinking about them." Also in 2015, after winning the MVP award following his impressive season, Curry donated his prize vehicle—a 2016 Kia Sorento—to the East Oakland Youth Development Center, a local non- profit organization located in the backyard of Oracle Arena. In December 2018, while on a podcast, Curry questioned whether the Apollo Moon landing actually happened, which received substantial media attention and criticism. NASA offered Curry a tour of the Johnson Space Center and to discuss the matter with him. Curry later said that he was joking about the Moon landing not having happened. He had Under Armour create some shoes inspired by the comment and subsequent discussion. After wearing them to a game, he signed and auctioned them off. The shoes sold for $58,100 on eBay after 113 bids, and the money was donated for STEM education initiatives. In April 2018, Sony Pictures Entertainment announced a wide-ranging, multiyear multimedia deal with Curry's newly-formed production company Unanimous Media (named for Curry becoming the first NBA player in history to be elected Most Valuable Player by a unanimous vote), located on the Sony Pictures studio lot in Culver City. The film and TV deal included electronics, gaming and virtual reality and will focus on faith and family-friendly content. In October 2018, Curry signed on as executive producer of the film Breakthrough, scheduled for release in April 2019. Curry was also executive producer of the film Emanuel, scheduled for US theatrical release in select theaters on June 17, 2019. The film focuses on the responses of family members of victims of the 2015 Charleston church shooting - "In the face of adversity, in the face of tragedy, how can I get through it?" Curry said. Beginning in 2019, Curry is both an executive producer and resident golf pro on the American sports reality competition television series Holey Moley. 3× NBA champion: , ,, 2× NBA Most Valuable Player: ,, 6× NBA All-Star: , , , , ,, 6× All-NBA selection:, 3× First team: , ,, 2× Second team: ,, Third team:, All-Rookie First Team:, NBA scoring leader:, 5× NBA three-point field goals leader: , , , ,, 4× NBA free-throw percentage leader: , , ,, NBA steals leader:, NBA Three-Point Contest champion:, NBA Skills Challenge champion:, NBA Sportsmanship Award:, NBA Community Assist Award:, NBA regular season record for made three-pointers (402), NBA record for most three-pointers made in a single playoffs (98 – tied with Klay Thompson), NBA Finals record for most three-pointers made in a game (9), NBA record for most consecutive regular season games with a made three-pointer (157), NBA record for most consecutive playoff games with a made three-pointer (90), NBA record for most points scored in an overtime period (17), Warriors franchise leader in three-point field goals made 2× SoCon Player of the Year (2008–2009), Consensus first-team All-American (2009), Consensus second-team All-American (2008), 2× First-team All-SoCon (2008–2009), 2× SoCon Conference Tournament Most Outstanding Player (2007–2008), 3× SoCon first-team All-Tournament (2007–2009), SoCon Freshman of the Year (2007), SoCon All-Freshmen Team (2007) NCAA Division I scoring leader (2009), Single-season NCAA 3-point field goals (162, 2007–08), Single-season NCAA freshman 3-point field goals (122, 2006–07) All-time leading scorer in Davidson College history (2,635), All-time Davidson College leader in 3-point field-goals made (414), All-time Davidson College leader in 30-point games (30), All-time Davidson College leader in 40-point games (6), Single-season Davidson College points (974, 2008–09), Single-season Davidson College steals (86, 2008–09), Single-season Davidson College freshman points (730, 2006–07) Jefferson Award for Outstanding Public Service in Professional Sports (2011), ESPY Award for Best Male Athlete and Best NBA Player (2015), BET Award for Sportsman of the Year (2015), AP Male Athlete of the Year (2015), Hickok Belt (2015), 2016 ESPY Award Nominee for Best Record-Breaking Performance, BET Award for Sportsman of the Year (2019), Teen Choice Award for Choice Male Athlete (2019) List of NBA season leaders in three-point field goals, List of National Basketball Association career 3-point scoring leaders, List of National Basketball Association career playoff 3-point scoring leaders, List of National Basketball Association annual free throw percentage leaders, List of NCAA Division I men's basketball season scoring leaders, NBA regular season records, List of second-generation National Basketball Association players, List of NBA players who have spent their entire career with one franchise Davidson Wildcats bio Ayesha Disa Curry (née Alexander; born March 23, 1989) is a Canadian-American actress, celebrity cook, cookbook author, and television personality. After guest roles in several television shows and movies, she began hosting her own show, Ayesha's Homemade ( Ayesha's Home Kitchen), on Food Network. Despite not having any professional chef training, her culinary career started in 2014, when she prepared her first meal as a YouTube demonstration on her channel Little Lights of Mine. Curry is the author of several videos on her channel Little Lights of Mine and has written one cookbook, The Seasoned Life, published in 2016. At age 12, Curry acted as the love interest in the music video for "Too Young for Love" by Suga Prince (now known as Sevn Thomas). After graduating from Weddington High School, Curry moved to Los Angeles to become an actress, appearing in mostly in bit parts. She was in a film short Underground Street Flippers (2009), The TV movie Dan's Detour of Life (2008), was Girl #1 in the direct to DVD movie Love for Sale (2008). After her marriage she started a food blog, and then a YouTube channel. This lead to a short lived Food Network show Ayesha's Homemade that was canceled after 13 episodes. Her company Little Lights of Mine sells its own brand of extra virgin olive oil, and 10% of all proceeds are donated to the charity No Kid Hungry. In addition to her written recipes, Curry often posts instructional cooking videos on her YouTube channel. In 2016, Curry collaborated with chef Michael Mina in The Mina Test Kitchen of International Smoke, a Bay Area pop-up restaurant, and released her cookbook "The Seasoned Life." She also began starring in Ayesha's Homemade, which follows her professional and personal life with cameos from her husband and two daughters. The first season ran for six episodes. A second season of six episodes, named Ayesha's Home Kitchen premiered on Food Network in April 30, 2017. On September 20, 2017, Curry was named as a spokesperson for CoverGirl, becoming the first spokesperson for the brand who is not an actress or singer. She was announced on September 21, 2017 as one of the new hosts of The Great American Baking Show, an American adaptation of The Great British Bake Off, on ABC. She also revealed to Deidre Behar, from Entertainment Tonight, that she was approached to join the next season of Dancing With The Stars. Only two episodes of the third season of Baking Show, however, aired on television due to sexual harassment allegations against one of the show's judges outside the series. While the show was renewed for a fourth season, Curry did not return as a host and was succeeded by former Spice Girls member Emma Bunton. The Mina/Curry International Smoke restaurant is to open another location in 2019 at One Paseo in Carmel Valley, San Diego. Curry is the daughter of John and Carol Alexander (née Chin) and has four siblings: Maria, Janiece, Jaz and Chad. Her mother is of Afro-Jamaican and Chinese-Jamaican descent while her father is of mixed African-American and Polish descent. She was born and raised in Toronto until the age of 14, when she moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. She first gained an interest in cooking at a young age. With her mother operating a salon in the basement of their home, Curry would watch as her babysitter cooked Trinidadian curry and roti and brought it down to customers. On July 30, 2011, she married NBA player Stephen Curry. The two met in a church youth group in Charlotte when they were 15 and 14 years old. It wasn't until years later when Ayesha was pursuing her acting career in Hollywood and Stephen was visiting for an awards show, that the two started dating. Ayesha soon moved back to Charlotte close to where Stephen was playing college basketball at Davidson College. Together, they have three children. As of 2016, they reside in Walnut Creek, California. Curry is a Christian; of her faith, she said: "It's the foundation for everything that I do, really. … With my relationship with my husband, it's what it's founded on." She added that "[W]hen Steph decided to play basketball, I had the same conversation with him that he had with me. 'Whatever you do, do it well, but do it for God.' I think that's what has kept us grounded. When I started my blog called 'Little Lights of Mine,' my whole goal was to do the things I wanted to do, but all while being a light for Him." Ayesha Curry Cooks Up Dishes with Jennifer Aniston and Ellen The 2009 NBA draft was held on June 25, 2009, at the WaMu Theatre at Madison Square Garden in New York City. In this draft, the National Basketball Association (NBA) teams took turns selecting amateur U.S. college basketball players and other eligible players, including international players. The Los Angeles Clippers, who won the draft lottery on May 19, 2009, used their first overall draft pick to draft Blake Griffin from University of Oklahoma. However, he missed the entire 2009–10 season due to surgery on his broken left kneecap, which he injured during the pre-season. Tanzanian-born Hasheem Thabeet from University of Connecticut was drafted second by the Memphis Grizzlies. Thabeet became the first player born in Tanzania to be drafted by an NBA team. James Harden was drafted 3rd by the Oklahoma City Thunder. This made him the first player to be drafted by the franchise as the Oklahoma City Thunder; the franchise moved from Seattle to OKC in 2008. The Sacramento Kings drafted Tyreke Evans 4th; he was named 2009–10 NBA Rookie of the Year, after he became the fourth NBA player in history to average at least 20 points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists in his rookie season, joining the elite club of Oscar Robertson (1960), Michael Jordan (1984) and LeBron James (2003). Spanish teenager Ricky Rubio was drafted 5th by the Minnesota Timberwolves. Rubio became the fifth-highest-drafted international player who never played U.S. college basketball to be drafted in the NBA, tied with Nikoloz Tskitishvili (5th in 2002), and behind Yao Ming (1st in 2002), Andrea Bargnani (1st in 2006), Darko Miličić (2nd in 2003) and Pau Gasol (3rd in 2001). Twenty-third pick Omri Casspi became the first Israeli player to be drafted in the first round, and later he became the first Israeli to play in the NBA. The 2009 draft marked the first time three sons of former NBA players were selected in the top 15 picks of the draft. Stephen Curry, son of Dell Curry, was drafted 7th by the Golden State Warriors. Gerald Henderson Jr., son of Gerald Henderson, was drafted 12th by the Charlotte Bobcats. Austin Daye, son of Darren Daye, was drafted 15th by the Detroit Pistons. The draft also marked the first time a former high school player who skipped college to play professional basketball in Europe was selected in an NBA draft. Brandon Jennings, who skipped college to play professional basketball with Italian team Lottomatica Roma, was drafted 10th overall by the Milwaukee Bucks in the draft. Of the 60 players drafted, four were freshmen, nine were sophomores, 12 were juniors, 22 were seniors, and 13 were international players without U.S. college basketball experience. The University of North Carolina's Tar Heels had the most players selected in the draft; three players were selected in the first round and one was selected in the second round. This marked the second time ever that four Tar Heels players were selected in the first two rounds of an NBA draft. The Minnesota Timberwolves had the league-high four first-round draft picks and the first time in team history that the team held two top-10 draft picks. The Timberwolves also had two second-round draft picks and became the team with the most draft picks in the 2009 draft with a total of six. The Houston Rockets and the Orlando Magic were the only NBA teams who did not have a draft pick this year, although Houston acquired three drafted players' rights after the draft. These players were not selected in the 2009 NBA draft but have played at least one game in the NBA. The basic requirements for draft eligibility are: All drafted players must be born on or before December 31, 1990., Any player who is not an "international player", as defined in the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between the NBA and its players union, must be at least one year removed from the graduation of his high school class. The CBA defines "international players" as players who permanently resided outside the U.S. for three years prior to the draft, did not complete high school in the U.S., and have never enrolled at a U.S. college or university. The basic requirement for automatic eligibility for a U.S. player is the completion of his college eligibility. Players who meet the CBA definition of "international players" are automatically eligible if their 22nd birthday falls during or before the calendar year of the draft (i.e., born on or before December 31, 1987). U.S. players who were at least one year removed from their high school graduation and have played professional basketball with a team outside the NBA were also automatically eligible. Former high school player Brandon Jennings meets these criteria, having graduated high school in 2008, skipped college basketball and then played professional basketball in Italy. A player who is not automatically eligible must declare his eligibility for the draft by notifying the NBA offices in writing no later than 60 days before the draft. For the 2009 draft, this date fell on April 26. An early entry candidate is allowed to withdraw his eligibility for the draft by notifying the NBA offices in writing no later than 10 days before the draft. This year, a total of 74 collegiate players and 29 international players declared as early entry candidates. At the withdrawal deadline, 55 early-entry candidates withdrew from the draft, leaving 39 collegiate players and 10 international players as the early-entry candidates for the draft. A player who has hired an agent will forfeit his remaining college eligibility, regardless of whether he is drafted. Also, while the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between the league and its players' union allows a player to withdraw from the draft twice, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) mandates that a player who has declared twice loses his college eligibility. This second provision affected Chase Budinger, Wayne Ellington, and Ty Lawson, all of whom declared for and withdrew from the 2008 draft. The lottery selection to determine the order of the top fourteen picks in the 2009 draft occurred on May 19, 2009. The Los Angeles Clippers won the first pick, while the Memphis Grizzlies and Oklahoma City Thunder moved up to second and third picks respectively. The Sacramento Kings and Washington Wizards, who had the two best chances to land a top-three pick, fell down to the fourth and fifth spots, the lowest possible picks they could be awarded through the lottery. The remaining first-round picks and all the second-round picks were assigned to teams in reverse order of their win-loss records in the previous season. As is commonplace in the event of identical win-loss records, the NBA performed a random drawing to break the ties on April 17, 2009. Below were the chances for each team to get specific picks in the 2009 draft lottery, rounded to three decimal places: Prior to the day of the draft, the following trades were made and resulted in exchanges of draft picks between the teams. On June 24, 2009, Minnesota acquired the 5th pick, Etan Thomas, Darius Songaila and Oleksiy Pecherov from Washington in exchange for Randy Foye and Mike Miller. Minnesota used the 5th pick to draft Ricky Rubio., On July 31, 2007, Minnesota re-acquired their 2009 first-round draft pick along with Al Jefferson, Gerald Green, Ryan Gomes, Sebastian Telfair, Theo Ratliff, a 2009 first-round draft pick and cash considerations from Boston in exchange for Kevin Garnett. Previously, Boston acquired a 2009 first-round draft pick, Wally Szczerbiak, Michael Olowokandi and Dwayne Jones on January 26, 2006 from Minnesota in exchange for Ricky Davis, Marcus Banks, Mark Blount, Justin Reed and two second-round draft picks. Minnesota used the 28th pick to draft Wayne Ellington., On October 24, 2007, Minnesota acquired a 2009 first-round draft pick, Antoine Walker, Wayne Simien, Michael Doleac and cash considerations from Miami in exchange for Ricky Davis and Mark Blount. Minnesota used the 18th pick to draft Ty Lawson., On June 24, 2009, Portland acquired the 22nd pick from Dallas in exchange for the 24th pick, 56th pick and a 2010 second-round draft pick. Portland used the 22nd pick to draft Víctor Claver and Dallas used the 24th and 56th pick to draft Byron Mullens and Ahmad Nivins, respectively., On August 14, 2008, Sacramento acquired a 2009 first-round draft pick, Bobby Jackson, Donté Greene and cash considerations from Houston in exchange for Ron Artest, Sean Singletary and Patrick Ewing Jr.. Sacramento used the 23rd pick to draft Omri Casspi., On February 20, 2008, Oklahoma City (as Seattle) acquired a 2009 first-round draft pick, Francisco Elson and Brent Barry from San Antonio in exchange for Kurt Thomas. Oklahoma City used the 25th pick to draft Rodrigue Beaubois., On February 19, 2009, Chicago acquired Denver's 2009 first-round draft pick from Oklahoma City in exchange for Thabo Sefolosha. Previously, Oklahoma City acquired a 2009 first-round draft pick, Chucky Atkins and cash considerations on January 7, 2009 from Denver in exchange for a 2009 second-round draft pick and Johan Petro. Chicago used the 26th pick to draft Taj Gibson., On February 19, 2009, Memphis acquired a 2009 first-round draft pick, Mike Wilks, Adonal Foyle and cash considerations from Orlando in a three-team trade with Orlando and Houston. Memphis used the 27th pick to draft DeMarre Carroll., On June 26, 2008, Portland acquired a 2009 second-round draft pick from the L.A. Clippers in exchange for the draft rights to Mike Taylor. Portland used the 33rd pick to draft Dante Cunningham., On January 7, 2009, Denver acquired a 2009 second-round draft pick and Johan Petro from Oklahoma City in exchange for a 2009 first-round draft pick, Chucky Atkins and cash considerations. Denver used the 34th pick to draft Sergio Llull., On October 31, 2005, Detroit acquired a 2009 second-round draft pick from Minnesota in exchange for Ronald Dupree. Detroit used the 35th pick to draft DaJuan Summers., On December 24, 2008, Memphis re-acquired their 2009 second-round draft pick along with Steve Francis and cash considerations from Houston in exchange for a 2011 second-round draft pick. Previously, Houston acquired a 2009 second-round draft pick and the draft rights to Donté Greene from Memphis in a three-team trade with Memphis and Portland on June 26, 2008., On June 26, 2008, San Antonio acquired Golden State's 2009 second-round draft pick, the draft rights to Malik Hairston and cash considerations from Phoenix in exchange for the draft rights to Goran Dragić. Previously, Phoenix acquired 2007 and 2009 second-round draft picks on January 3, 2005 from Golden State in exchange for Žarko Čabarkapa. San Antonio used the 37th pick to draft DeJuan Blair., On June 26, 2008, Portland acquired a 2009 second-round draft pick from Denver in a three-team trade with Denver and Chicago. Portland also acquired New York's 2009 second-round draft pick and Chicago's 2010 second-round draft pick from Chicago. Previously, Chicago acquired a 2006 first-round draft pick, 2007 and 2009 second-round draft picks, an option to exchange 2007 first-round draft picks, Tim Thomas, Michael Sweetney and Jermaine Jackson on October 4, 2005 from New York in exchange for Eddy Curry and Antonio Davis. Portland used the 38th and 55th pick to draft Jon Brockman and Patrick Mills, respectively., On June 15, 2007, Detroit acquired 2009 and 2011 second-round draft picks from Toronto in exchange for Carlos Delfino. Detroit used the 39th pick to draft Jonas Jerebko., On August 11, 2008, Charlotte acquired New Jersey's 2009 second-round draft pick from Oklahoma City in exchange for the draft rights to Kyle Weaver. Previously, Oklahoma City (as Seattle) acquired a 2009 second-round draft pick on July 7, 2006 from New Jersey in exchange for Mikki Moore. Charlotte used the 40th pick to draft Derrick Brown., On December 6, 2004, the L.A. Lakers acquired 2005 and 2009 second-round draft picks from Charlotte in exchange for Kareem Rush. The L.A. Lakers used the 42nd pick to draft Patrick Beverley., On June 28, 2007, Miami acquired a 2009 second-round draft pick from Indiana in exchange for the draft rights to Stanko Barać. Miami used the 43rd pick to draft Marcus Thornton., On June 26, 2008, Minnesota acquired Philadelphia's and Miami's 2009 second-round draft picks and cash considerations from Miami in exchange for the draft rights to Mario Chalmers. Previously, Miami acquired a 2009 second-round draft pick, the draft rights to Daequan Cook and cash considerations on June 28, 2007 from Philadelphia in exchange for the draft rights to Jason Smith. Minnesota used the 45th and 47th pick to draft Nick Calathes and Henk Norel, respectively., On February 21, 2008, Cleveland acquired Ben Wallace, Joe Smith and a 2009 second-round draft pick from Chicago in a three-team trade with Chicago and Oklahoma City (as Seattle). Cleveland used the 46th pick to draft Danny Green., On June 21, 2006, San Antonio acquired New Orleans's 2009 second-round draft pick, Matt Bonner and Eric Williams from Toronto in exchange for Rasho Nesterović. Previously, Toronto acquired Miami's 2006 second-round draft pick and New Orleans's 2009 second-round draft pick on January 31, 2006 from New Orleans in exchange for Aaron Williams. San Antonio used the 51st pick to draft Jack McClinton., On October 10, 2008, Indiana acquired 2009 and 2010 second-round draft picks, Eddie Jones and cash considerations from Dallas in exchange for Shawne Williams. Indiana used the 52nd pick to draft A. J. Price., On July 12, 2007, San Antonio acquired a 2009 second-round draft pick, Vassilis Spanoulis and cash considerations from Houston in exchange for Jackie Butler and the draft rights to Luis Scola. San Antonio used the 53rd pick to draft Nando de Colo., On February 13, 2007, Charlotte acquired a 2009 second-round draft pick, Eric Williams and cash considerations from San Antonio in exchange for Melvin Ely. Charlotte used the 54th pick to draft Robert Vaden., On July 20, 2007, Phoenix acquired Orlando's 2009 second-round draft pick from Oklahoma City (as Seattle) in exchange for 2008 and 2010 first-round draft picks and Kurt Thomas. Previously, Oklahoma City (as Seattle) acquired a 2009 second-round draft pick on July 11, 2007 from Orlando in exchange for Rashard Lewis. Phoenix used the 57th pick to draft Emir Preldžič., On June 26, 2008, Miami acquired a 2009 second-round draft pick from Cleveland in exchange for the draft rights to Darnell Jackson. Miami used the 60th pick to draft Robert Dozier. The following trades involving drafted players were made on the day of the draft. Denver acquired the draft rights to 18th pick Ty Lawson from Minnesota in exchange for a future conditional first-round draft pick., Oklahoma City acquired the draft rights to 24th pick Byron Mullens from Dallas in exchange for the draft rights to 25th pick Rodrigue Beaubois and a 2010 second-round draft pick., New York acquired the draft rights to 29th pick Toney Douglas from the L.A. Lakers in exchange for a 2011 second-round draft pick and cash considerations., Portland acquired the draft rights to 31st pick Jeff Pendergraph from Sacramento in exchange for Sergio Rodríguez, the draft rights to 38th pick Jon Brockman and cash considerations., Houston acquired the draft rights to 32nd pick Jermaine Taylor from Washington in exchange for cash considerations., Houston acquired the draft rights to 34th pick Sergio Llull from Denver in exchange for cash considerations., Miami acquired the draft rights to 42nd pick Patrick Beverley from the L.A. Lakers in exchange for a 2011 second-round draft pick and cash considerations., New Orleans acquired the draft rights to 43rd pick Marcus Thornton from Miami in exchange for 2010 and 2012 second-round draft picks., Houston acquired the draft rights to 44th pick Chase Budinger from Detroit in exchange for a future second-round draft pick and cash considerations., Dallas acquired the draft rights to 45th pick Nick Calathes from Minnesota in exchange for a 2010 second-round draft pick and cash considerations., Oklahoma City acquired the draft rights to 54th pick Robert Vaden from Charlotte in exchange for cash considerations., Cleveland acquired the draft rights to 57th pick Emir Preldžič from Phoenix in exchange for cash considerations. General Specific 2009 NBA Draft – ESPN, 2009 NBA Draft Grades & Analysis, 2009 NBA Draft History, 2009 NBA Draft Basketball Reference Records

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Jennifer Jean Warnes (born March 3, 1947) is an American singer, songwriter, arranger and record producer. She has performed as a vocalist on a number of movie soundtracks. She was also a close friend and collaborator of Canadian singer-songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen. Warnes was born in Seattle, Washington, and raised in Anaheim, California. Her desire and ability to sing came early; at age seven she was offered her first recording contract, which her father turned down. She sang in church and local pageants until age 17 when Warnes was offered an opera scholarship to Immaculate Heart College. Warnes chose to sing folk music as it became popularized by Joan Baez in the mid-1960s. In 1968, after a few years with musical theatre and clubs, she signed with Parrot Records (a London Records subsidiary) and recorded her first album. That year, she joined the cast of the television show The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Early in her career, industry advisors suggested Warnes change her name to "Warren", but then realized that there was already an actress named Jennifer Warren, so she performed briefly as simply, "Jennifer", though she was credited as Jennifer Warren when she provided duet vocals for singer-guitarist Mason Williams on his 1968 album, The Mason Williams Ear Show. Soon, however, she returned to her birth name. In November 1968, Warnes (as "Jennifer Warren") portrayed the female lead in the Los Angeles, California production of the stage musical Hair. She had a related UK single release as "Jennifer" on London HLU 10278 in June 1969 with "Let The Sunshine In" and "Easy to Be Hard", licensed from the US Parrot label. In 1971, Warnes met Canadian songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen, and the two remained friends. She toured Europe with Cohen's band in 1972 and 1979 — first as a back-up singer and then as a vocal arranger and guest singer on Cohen's albums Live Songs (1973), Recent Songs (1979), Various Positions (1985), I'm Your Man (1988), The Future (1992), (2001), and Old Ideas (2012). Warnes later (1987) recorded a critically acclaimed audiophile album of Cohen songs, Famous Blue Raincoat. In 1972, Warnes released her third album, Jennifer, which was produced by John Cale. It was unavailable after the LP was deleted, until it was finally reissued in Japan in 2013 (Reprise WPCR-14865). In 1976, Warnes released the album Jennifer Warnes (Arista 4062), which contained her breakthrough single, "Right Time of the Night", which hit number 1 on Billboard's Easy Listening (Adult Contemporary) chart in April 1977 and number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in May 1977. Warnes recorded the song "It Goes Like It Goes" for the 1979 motion picture Norma Rae. The song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Her 1979 single "I Know A Heartache When I See One", was a Top 10 Country hit and reached the Top 20 on both the Pop and Adult Contemporary charts. Warnes recorded the Randy Newman composition "One More Hour" for the 1981 motion picture Ragtime. This became her second song performance nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Warnes teamed up with Joe Cocker to record "Up Where We Belong" for the 1982 motion picture An Officer and a Gentleman. Written by Buffy Sainte-Marie, Will Jennings and Jack Nitzsche, the song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, as well as a Golden Globe Award. The song also won Warnes and Cocker the Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, which was released as a single and hit No. 1 (for three weeks running) on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It was certified platinum for over two million sales in the United States. That same year, she recorded James Taylor's "Millworker" for the American Playhouse PBS production of Working. In 1985, she recorded a duet version with B. J. Thomas of the song "As Long As We Got Each Other," the theme for the TV show Growing Pains. It was used as the opening theme for the second and third seasons. For the fourth season, the song was once again re-recorded with Thomas and Dusty Springfield. However, the Warnes version made its return for the fifth season and the seventh (final) season of the show. In 1985, she recorded vocals for Leonard Cohen's record Various Positions, getting equal vocals credits with Cohen in the inside booklet. After releasing a praised tribute LP of Leonard Cohen's songs in 1987, Famous Blue Raincoat, to which Cohen contributed two new compositions, "First We Take Manhattan", which featured Stevie Ray Vaughan on guitar, and "Ain't No Cure for Love", she contributed vocals to Cohen's 1988 hit LP I'm Your Man, most notably to "Take This Waltz" and "Tower of Song". Warnes teamed with Bill Medley to record "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" for the 1987 motion picture Dirty Dancing. This marked the third song performed by Warnes to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song and second for the Golden Globe Award in the same category. The song also won Warnes and Medley the Grammy Award for Duo or Group with Vocal. It reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and spent four consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Adult Contemporary chart. On September 30, 1987, at the Coconut Grove in Los Angeles, she contributed vocals for Roy Orbison's star-studded television special Roy Orbison and Friends, A Black and White Night. Warnes released her seventh studio album The Hunter in June 1992. The LP featured the AC #13 single "Rock You Gently", and also featured the track "Way Down Deep" co-written by Warnes and Leonard Cohen. She recorded the track "Cold Enough To Snow" for the 1993 film Life With Mikey. In August 2007, the Shout Factory Records label re-released the 20th anniversary edition of Famous Blue Raincoat, with a 24-page booklet and four additional songs. The Hunter was re-released in 2009, and The Well was re-released in September 2010. All remasters were issued on high quality vinyl and 24K gold discs. Famous Blue Raincoat was released with four bonus tracks. The Hunter was released without bonus material. The re-released The Well, however, contains a total of 14 tracks. These include two previously unreleased recordings from the original session: "La Luna Brilla", "A Fool for the Look (in Your Eyes)", and one extra bonus selection, "Show Me the Light" (a second duet with Bill Medley, which was originally featured on the 1998 movie soundtrack Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer-The Movie). In 2018, Warnes released her first album since 2001, Another Time, Another Place. The first cut from the new album, "Just Breathe" was released on March 1, 2018. Written by Eddie Vedder, the song was originally recorded by Pearl Jam. The album includes 10 tracks, among them a new version of "So Sad" by Mickey Newbury, "I Am The Big Easy" by Ray Bonneville, "Once I Was Loved" by John Legend, "Why Worry" by Mark Knopfler, and "The Boys And Me" by Warnes herself and Michael Smotherman. Best of Jennifer Warnes – Arista, 1982 – US #47, Just Jennifer – Deram (Germany), 1992, Best: First We Take Manhattan – unauthorized (Germany), 2000, Platinum and Gold Collection – with errors in actual tracks, not Warnes singing, 2004 (recalled), – Raven (Australia), 2004 Official site "The Time (Dirty Bit)" is a song by American musical group The Black Eyed Peas from their sixth studio album, The Beginning. The song peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US, becoming the group's sixth consecutive top ten hit (following the five singles from their previous album, The E.N.D), and ninth overall. It topped the charts in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, while also charting inside the top ten of the charts in most European countries. As of February 2019, the song's accompanying music video has received over 430 million views on YouTube, becoming the group's most viewed video. Worldwide, it was the eighth best selling digital single of 2011 with sales of 7.3 million copies. After will.i.am tweeted: "Who wants me to drop the new Black Eyed Peas single from The Beginning earlier than we should???" he posted the song on dipdive.com. Group member Fergie noted the song's coincidental relation to Dirty Dancing actress Jennifer Grey's appearance on Dancing with the Stars: "... that song reminds me of [Grey] and Dirty Dancing and that whole time". The chorus of "The Time (Dirty Bit)" interpolates "(I've Had) The Time of My Life", originally performed by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes in the 1987 film Dirty Dancing. In the chorus, the line "Yes I swear it's the truth" was changed to "And I swear this is true". Billboard described the song as continuing the group's "evolution from hip-pop to dance heavyweights as will.i.am and Fergie sing and rap over a beat tailored to global dancefloors." Simon Vozick-Levinson of Entertainment Weekly praised the song's catchiness, but felt it failed to meet the standards of previous singles "Boom Boom Pow" and "I Gotta Feeling". Franke Previte, who won an Academy Award for co-writing "(I've Had) The Time of My Life", complimented The Black Eyed Peas' sample usage, saying, "It just reconfirms to me that the song is cross-generational. The song has now crossed over to the next generation in a huge way." Willa Paskin of New York, however, criticized the choice of sample and was disappointed with the chorus, feeling it was "shoehorned into the rest of the song". Todd Martens of the Los Angeles Times called "The Time (Dirty Bit)" "the most assertive party song of the year". Digital Spy's Nick Levine gave a review of three stars out of five, disliking the many elements that constituted the song. The Independents Simon Price also criticized the sampling on the track, calling it a low quality attempt to satisfy listeners. After receiving Twitter messages about the song similarity to his own work, Canadian record producer Deadmau5 compared the song to the remix of "You and I" by Medina, a song he produced. The record producer spoke of the similarities through his official Facebook account. "I so know that hi-hat... and the pattern it was in... so I went to my masters folder, cracked open my instrumental mix of 'You and I' remix thing I did for Medina... and there it was again, staring me in the face". The producer stated he welcomed the usage of sampling in electronic music, "This isn't calling the Black Eyed Peas out at all. This is just another interesting factoid I keep finding about sampling and electronic music". "The Time (The Dirty Bit)" debuted on the Canadian Hot 100 at number 87 the week of November 5, 2010. The song also debuted at number 40 on the Billboard Pop Songs chart the next week and has currently peaked at number 19. Two weeks later, the song climbed to number one in Canada, the third time the group has achieved this, selling 31,000 downloads that week. The song also peaked at number 1 for two weeks in a row in New Zealand, becoming their 6th number 1 and 12th top 10 single in the country. While the song debuted at number ten in Australia, it reached number one in its second week. On the singles chart for Ireland and the Netherlands the song has peaked at number two. In the United Kingdom, "The Time (Dirty Bit)" climbed five places on the UK Singles Chart from its previous highest peak of number six to number one on December 12, 2010 ― for the week ending date December 18, 2010 ― beating "Whip My Hair" by Willow Smith to the summit of the chart. The song became the group's fifth chart-topping song in Britain, following 2003's "Where Is The Love?" and 2009's Boom Boom Pow, I Gotta Feeling and Meet Me Halfway. It also debuted at number one on the UK Dance Chart. In Germany, the song debuted at No. 7 on the German Singles Chart and reached No. 2 in its 3rd week on the German Singles Chart, where it stayed for 3 consecutive weeks. In its 6th week on that chart, it finally reached No. 1, breaking the 12-week run of Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's "Over The Rainbow". In February 2011, the single was certificated Platinum in Germany for 300,000 copies sold, making it their third single to do so (following "Shut Up" and "I Gotta Feeling"). After 4 weeks at the top, the song went down to No. 4, making it the biggest fall from the pole position since Mehrzad Marashi did so with his single "Don't Believe" in May 2010. As of January 2011, the single sold 3 million copies in the US, making it the group's fourth to do so. The music video for "The Time (Dirty Bit)" was released on November 23, 2010 and was directed by Rich Lee, who earlier directed the video for "Imma Be Rocking That Body", Pasha Shapiro And Ernst Weber. It opens with a zoom-in to a city street where, as will.i.am sings the beginning, his head voxelizes and transforms into a television screen where Fergie is projected during her solo. The video then cuts to sweaty dancers at an underground nightclub, who, along with the Peas, also variously become voxelized throughout the song. The avatars seen on the cover of the new album The Beginning appear as posters, and the BlackBerry PlayBook also appears as pre-release product placement, seen animating them in an augumented reality application and making special effects. The animated versions of the band members are in this order: will.i.am, Fergie, apl.de.ap and Taboo. As of February 2019 the video has received over 430 million views on YouTube and is the group's most viewed video. The Black Eyed Peas performed "The Time (Dirty Bit)" at the American Music Awards of 2010 on November 21. Each member wore a futuristic outfit and started off enclosed in a glow-in-the-dark yellow box chamber similar to an elevator, accompanied by dancers with boxes as heads. Martens gave it grade of C+, calling it the "oddest set of the night". During the performance, Fergie experienced some trouble when the door to her box remained stuck for a moment. On December 5, the group performed the single live during the semi-final results of season 7 of the British TV singing competition The X Factor. They also performed "The Time (Dirty Bit)" at Super Bowl XLV, and then again at the "i.am.FIRST" performance at the FIRST Robotics Competition World Championship on April 29, 2011. For the first time in over 9 years, The Black Eyed Peas performed this song once again during the latter part of the closing ceremony of the 2019 Southeast Asian Games, except The Voice PH alumna Jessica Reynoso was in place of Fergie. Digital download 1. "The Time (Dirty Bit)" – 5:08 CD single 1. "The Time (Dirty Bit)" (Radio Edit) – 4:15 2. "The Time (Dirty Bit)" (Main Version) – 5:08 The Time (Dirty Bit): Re-Pixelated – Digital Remix E.P. 1. "The Time (Dirty Bit)" (Afrojack Remix) – 7:53 2. "The Time (Dirty Bit)" (Zedd Remix) – 6:00 3. "The Time (Dirty Bit)" (Dave Audé Club Mix) – 7:16 4. "The Time (Dirty Bit)" (Felguk Remix) – 5:18 5. "The Time (Dirty Bit)" (Wideboys Full Club Remix) – 5:23 Digital single 1. "The Time (Dirty Bit)" (Video Edit) – 4:52 2. "The Time (Dirty Bit)" (Edson Pride Vocal Mix) – 8:15 Vocals – will.i.am, apl.de.ap, Fergie, Taboo List of number-one pop hits of 2010 (Brazil), List of number-one singles in Australia in 2010, List of number-one hits of 2010 (Austria), List of Hot 100 number-one singles of 2010 (Canada), List of number-one hits of 2010 (France), List of number-one hits of 2011 (Germany), List of number-one hits of 2010 (Italy), List of number-one singles from the 2010s (UK), List of number-one dance hits of 2010 (UK), List of number-one dance hits of 2011 (UK), Ultratop 50 number-one hits of 2010 "Up Where We Belong" is a song written by Jack Nitzsche, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Will Jennings that was recorded by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes for the 1982 film An Officer and a Gentleman. Warnes was recommended to sing a song from the film because of her previous soundtrack successes, and she had the idea for the song to be a duet that she would perform with Cocker. Jennings selected various sections of the score by Nitzsche and Sainte-Marie in creating the structure of the song and added lyrics about the struggles of life and love and the obstacles in the way that we attempt to dodge. It was released in July of that year to coincide with the release of the film. The song reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US and topped the charts in several other countries. It also sold more than one million copies in the US and was recognized by the Recording Industry Association of America as one of the Songs of the Century. Cocker and Warnes were awarded the Grammy for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals, and Nitzsche, Sainte- Marie, and Jennings won both the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. In 1984, the gospel duo BeBe & CeCe Winans recorded a religious variation of the song that received airplay on Christian radio stations, and their remake in 1996 earned them a GMA Dove Award. Various versions of the song have also been used to parody the final scene of the film on television shows such as Family Guy, The Simpsons, and South Park. The fact that the song is a ballad was seen as a misstep in Cocker's career, which had been built on performing rock and soul. On February 24, 1982, Joe Cocker performed "I'm So Glad I'm Standing Here Today" with the jazz group the Crusaders at the Grammy Awards. Their collaboration on the song for a Crusaders album had earned a nomination that year in the category of Best Inspirational Performance. Singer-songwriter Jennifer Warnes saw the show from home. She had been a fan of Cocker's since her teens and at one time had a poster of him on her wall showing him performing at Woodstock, and her love for the singer was still evident on this night many years later. "I was so moved, I was hollering out loud with joy, jumping up and down ... After a difficult battle with drugs and alcohol, Joe was in total command once again. I knew at that moment that I would sing with Joe." Meanwhile, plans were being made for An Officer and a Gentleman to be distributed by Paramount Pictures, and studio executive Frank Mancuso was insistent upon having some kind of music to use to promote the film. The director of the film, Taylor Hackford, was also interested in producing an original title song to help market it, but there was no remaining budget for such a recording. He proceeded with the idea anyway, working with Joel Sill, who was head of music at Paramount at the time, without anyone else at the studio knowing that they were doing so. The director contacted his friend Gary George to consult with regarding the selection of a recording artist for the song. George, the former head of publicity at Warner Bros. Records, had recently become a manager and suggested Warnes, who was a client of his. One of the six songs that Warnes had placed in the top half of the Billboard Hot 100 at that point was the number six hit "Right Time of the Night" from 1977. Her soundtrack credits included the Oscar-nominated "One More Hour" from Ragtime and the Oscar-winning "It Goes Like It Goes" from Norma Rae, which, like the Hackford film, also had a lead female character who worked in a factory. Hackford initially rejected the idea of Warnes singing a song for An Officer and a Gentleman "because he felt she had too sweet a sound," but Warnes met with Sill and discussed the possibility of doing so: "I suggested to Joel that I sing on that film in a duet with Joe Cocker." Sill thought this was an interesting idea but needed to convince Hackford of that. He said, "I discussed with Taylor, since the film centered really around Richard [Gere] and Debra [Winger] primarily, that maybe we should have a duet" and that with Cocker and Warnes they would be "matching the characters to some degree. The dynamic between the two was the soft and the rough, that, to some degree, Debra Winger's character was very, very soft in the picture, even though she was in a rough environment. And Richard Gere's character, to some degree, was really a rough character until he was softened up by her." Hackford thought the idea had potential and now had another friend in the music industry to ask for a favor. Chris Blackwell was the owner of Island Records, and Cocker was now recording for Island. "I called Chris and said I want to do this, and he just, on the phone, said, 'OK, I'll make this happen. What would initially convince Cocker to work on the project, however, was a small portion of the lyrics. He described it as "the 'Up' part, which is what made me realize it had hit potential. It was so unusual – that 'Love, lift us up ... The last scene of the film brought the story to a happy ending, and Hackford wanted to have a song playing during the closing credits that would act as a reflection of the relationship portrayed and incorporate the theme music composed by Jack Nitzsche and Buffy Saint-Marie. Nitzsche wanted to have Sainte-Marie write the lyrics, but her background in folk music caused Sill and Hackford to look elsewhere. Sill invited a lyricist who he'd worked with before, Will Jennings, to the studio to view a rough cut of the film, and that gave Jennings inspiration for the structure and lyrics of what became "Up Where We Belong". "And all through the film I was hearing these bits and pieces of music, and at the end of it I had it in my head, you know, how there was a song. I heard a chorus here and a verse here and a bridge there, and so when I finished, Joel was there, and I said, 'Joel, just give me all the music from it,' all of Nitzsche's music, ' 'cause I got an idea. When Jennings presented Hackford with his demo, the director felt it was the perfect fit. According to Musicnotes.com by Alfred Music Publishing, "Up Where We Belong" is written in common time. It is in the key of D major and sung in a vocal range from A to G. The lyrics "tell of the struggles of life and love and the obstacles in the way that we attempt to dodge." Sill described Stewart Levine as the "record producer who we felt would give us the right interpretation of the song, add some soulfulness to it and also make it a hit record at the same time," but Levine was hesitant about traveling from his home upstate New York to California for the job. He felt it would be worthwhile, however, because Jennings was involved. When Jennings played the demo over the phone for him, Levine responded that it was "great", and Warnes was certain "Up Where We Belong" would be a hit. Cocker, on the other hand, described the demo as "dreadful", despite his appreciation of some of the lyrics and the fact that Jennings was the lyricist on "I'm So Glad I'm Standing Here Today" and his more recent single, "Talking Back to the Night". Cocker wanted to make the recording by himself, so Levine had Warnes record her vocals separately. Cocker had taken a break from touring to fly to Los Angeles for the session, but when it came time to record he, as Hackford described it, "was terrified. He didn't even want to go into the studio. Stewart Levine had to go and talk him out of the hotel to get him there." Cocker admitted, "I'd sat with the words in the afternoon but still hadn't remembered them, so we had to draw 'em up on big blocks of wood and stuff." A recording was made where the two voices were spliced together, but Warnes explained how persuasive their producer was in getting Cocker to agree to record the song alongside her: "Stewart Levine was gently insistent on the duet. Stewart understood that the contrast in our voices, the aural chemistry, would work. So Joe and I sang the song together. One or two takes, that was all." Cocker came around to seeing a hit song once it was complete, saying, "I knew it was a number one. Other people were saying, 'Well ... perhaps', but I could just feel it." Hackford said that "the final version was absolute magic—or at least Joel and I thought so." They now had to present this song that they weren't budgeted to make to the executives at Paramount. "When we played it for Michael Eisner and Don Simpson, they hated the record and said it would never be a hit." Simpson even bet Sill $100 that it wouldn't be. Hackford and Sill "called another prominent record executive, who said, 'Forget it. Jennifer Warnes has never had a hit song and Joe Cocker's a has- been. Eisner and Simpson made Hackford "meet with various recording artist friends of theirs who tried to write songs, but their title songs didn't fit the movie." Hackford said, "Finally, one of the famous artists who was involved looked at the movie and said, to his credit, 'Hey, I can write something, but it's not going to work as well as the song you've got. Because they were running out of time before the film's release, Eisner and Simpson finally gave in, and "Up Where We Belong" made the final cut of the film and was released as a single on July 22, 1982. Some radio stations refused to play "Up Where We Belong", even going so far as to send their copies back to Island Records. Cocker said, "I remember going into their offices in New York. I walked in and I said, 'How's the single doing?' And this guy Mike Abrahams, who worked there, he said, 'This is how well it's doing'—and the office was piled with returns." The single may have been recorded to promote the film, but Warnes pointed out that, in a sense, the success of the film was what sold the record. "Up Where We Belong" debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 in the issue dated August 21 of that year and spent 3 weeks at number one during its 23 weeks there. That same issue also marked its first appearance on the magazine's list of the 50 most popular Adult Contemporary songs in the US, where it stayed for 25 weeks, six of which were at its peak position at number three. It also reached number seven on the UK Singles Chart in 1983 and received Silver certification from the British Phonographic Industry on February 1 of that year for reaching sales of 250,000 copies. The Recording Industry Association of America awarded the song both Gold and Platinum certification for achieving sales of 500,000 and one million copies, respectively, on January 17, 1989. Billboard reviewed the single at the time of its release in their July 31 issue. "This unlikely vocal pairing could prove less of a long shot than it sounds, given the recent gains made by other soundtrack associations. Add radio's ongoing affection for strong duets and a restrained performance by Cocker that matches him more sympathetically with Warnes's gentler style, and this track should find friends at A/C and mainstream pop stations." Matthew Greenwald of AllMusic wrote, "A gospel- inspired piece of pop song craftsmanship, the song moves with an underlying grace and subtle beauty. Faith, virtue, and, yes, the power of love is at the lyrical core here, and [the songwriters] convey this with a literate and timeless style. Truly a modern-day pop standard." On January 29, 1983, Jennings, Nitzsche and Sainte-Marie won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. Cocker and Warnes won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals on February 23 of that year. Two months later, on April 11, the songwriters won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. They also won the BAFTA film award for Best Original Song in 1984. On the Songs of the Century list compiled by the Recording Industry Association of America in 2001 the song was listed at number 323. In 2004 it finished at number 75 on AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema, and in 2016 one of the duo's live renditions of the song was listed at number 18 on Rolling Stone's list of the 20 Greatest Best Song Oscar Performances. Warnes and Cocker kept to an agreement that they would never lip-sync their performances of the song. One of their earliest live appearances was on the November 20, 1982, episode of Solid Gold. Saturday Night Live followed on February 5, 1983, and their performance at the 25th Annual Grammy Awards came later that month, on February 23. Backstage at the Grammys Warnes said about working with Cocker, "I was told it was the weirdest pairing ever," and regarding their April 11 appearance at the 55th Academy Awards, she admitted, "Neither of us were comfortable in the Oscar world. Joe performing in a white tuxedo, me in pink taffeta—how absurd." In 2013 Cocker was honored in Berlin with a Goldene Kamera award, and Warnes joined him to sing the song at the ceremony. The day after Cocker's death in 2014 Warnes wrote, "I realized yesterday that we will never sing our song again. That thought makes me feel sick. We met last year in Berlin to sing together. I didn't know that would be our last time." Her visceral reaction to his death parallels the powerful chemistry they had in their many performances of the song, which she had summed up years earlier: "I always thought the pairing had a strong ring of truth to it. It was so unlikely, because Joe has this well-known, very raw, masculine energy. I was less well known and had this very vulnerable, quintessential female energy and we were very polarized, as men and women often are these days. But we met in the middle." The success of "Up Where We Belong" was not without its drawbacks for Cocker. He admitted that Island Records owner Chris Blackwell also hated the song and wasn't interested in releasing it. They had put out Cocker's first project for the label, Sheffield Steel, in June 1982, just a month before the song needed to be on store shelves if it was to coincide with the opening of the film. Cocker said, "The song was recorded within a matter of hours. Sheffield Steel – I spent a year on that. And the single eclipsed it overnight." But even ignoring its success, Blackwell was bothered by the fact that the duet wasn't R&B;, which is what he was aiming for on Sheffield Steel. Stewart Levine produced Cocker's next LP, which was intended for Island, but, the singer revealed, as with the duet, Blackwell hated it, so Cocker left Island for Capitol. The new label also had reservations about the number of slow ballads included on the new project. Another producer was brought in to give the album a different tone, and the result was the 1984 release Civilized Man. Peaking at number 133 on the Billboard 200, it was his lowest charting studio album in the US at that point. Capitol had been responsible for rejuvenating the careers of Tina Turner and Heart in the mid-80s, so a push was on to do so for their new client with his next project, the 1986 album Cocker. Capitol's vice president of a&r;, Don Grierson, explained, "After Civilized Man came out, Joe, Michael Lang [Cocker's manager], and I spent a lot of time zeroing in on just what the heck Joe Cocker was really all about. And it's my firm belief that Joe is a rocker." His feeling was that "Up Where We Belong" turned out to be a double-edged sword. "It helped Joe in one sense, but it was very, very detrimental to him in another. It gave him a hit record and brought his name back to the mass market again. However, because it was such a pop, middle-of- the-road record, it took away Joe's roots in the eyes of the public and certainly in the industry." Credits adapted from album liner notes for The Best of Joe Cocker. Joe Cocker – lead vocals, Jennifer Warnes – lead vocals, Stewart Levine – producer, Abraham Laboriel – bass, Leon "Ndugu" Chancler – drums, Louis Shelton – guitar, Bobby Lyle – keyboards, Robbie Buchanan – keyboards, Paulinho da Costa – percussion Televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker suggested that BeBe & CeCe Winans, two of the singers from The PTL Club, record "Up Where We Belong" after she heard the original duet in a record store, and Larnelle Harris helped BeBe make the lyrics more appealing to a Christian audience. Their 1984 cover of the song from their album Lord Lift Us Up reached number 27 on the Christian Radio Hits chart issued by SoundScan. The duo rerecorded their gospel version in 1996 for their Greatest Hits album, and their new version won the 1998 GMA Dove Award for Contemporary Gospel Song of the Year. The part of the score of An Officer and a Gentleman that Jennings used in writing the chorus for "Up Where We Belong" can be heard in the final scene of the film in which Gere picks Winger up in his arms and carries her out of the factory past clapping co-workers. The last shot of the film freezes on their exit as the score comes to a big orchestral finish, and the credits start to roll as Cocker and Warnes begin singing the song at the chorus. Although the song itself is heard separately from the final scene, it has often taken the place of the score in send-ups of the grand finale over the years. Films and television shows that have used some variation of "Up Where We Belong" in doing so include Bridget Jones's Baby, The Cleveland Show, Everybody Hates Chris, Family Guy, Friends, The Goldbergs, The Office, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Scrubs, The Simpsons, and South Park. List of number-one singles of 1982 (Canada), List of Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles of 1982, List of number-one singles in Australia during the 1980s

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Petra (; , "Stone"), originally known to its inhabitants as Raqmu, is a historical and archaeological city in southern Jordan. Petra lies around Jabal Al-Madbah in a basin surrounded by mountains which form the eastern flank of the Arabah valley that runs from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba. The area around Petra has been inhabited as early as 7,000 BC, and the Nabataeans might have settled in what would become the capital city of their kingdom, as early as the 4th century BC. However, archaeological work has only discovered evidence of Nabataean presence dating back to the second century BC, by which time Petra had become their capital. The Nabataeans were nomadic Arabs who invested in Petra's proximity to the trade routes by establishing it as a major regional trading hub. The trading business gained the Nabataeans considerable revenue and Petra became the focus of their wealth. The Nabataeans were accustomed to living in the barren deserts, unlike their enemies, and were able to repel attacks by taking advantage of the area's mountainous terrain. They were particularly skillful in harvesting rainwater, agriculture and stone carving. Petra flourished in the 1st century AD, when its famous Khazneh structure – believed to be the mausoleum of Nabataean king Aretas IV – was constructed, and its population peaked at an estimated 20,000 inhabitants. Although the Nabataean kingdom became a client state of the Roman Empire in the first century BC, it was only in 106 AD that it lost its independence. Petra fell to the Romans, who annexed Nabataea and renamed it as Arabia Petraea. Petra's importance declined as sea trade routes emerged, and after an earthquake in 363 destroyed many structures. In the Byzantine era several Christian churches were built, but the city continued to decline, and by the early Islamic era it was abandoned except for a handful of nomads. It remained unknown to the world until it was rediscovered in 1812 by Johann Ludwig Burckhardt. Access to the city is through a gorge called the Siq, which leads directly to the Khazneh. Famous for its rock-cut architecture and water conduit system, Petra is also called the 'Rose City' because of the colour of the stone from which it is carved. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985. UNESCO has described Petra as "one of the most precious cultural properties of man's cultural heritage". In 2007, Al-Khazneh was voted one of the New7Wonders of the World. Petra is a symbol of Jordan, as well as Jordan's most-visited tourist attraction. Tourist numbers peaked at 918,000 in 2010, but there followed a temporary slump during the political instability generated by the Arab Spring, which affected countries surrounding Jordan. Visitor numbers subsequently increased and reached a record-breaking 1.1 million tourists in 2019, marking the first time that the figure rose above the 1 million mark. Pliny the Elder and other writers identify Petra as the capital of the Nabataean Kingdom and the centre of their caravan trade. Enclosed by towering rocks and watered by a perennial stream, Petra not only possessed the advantages of a fortress, but controlled the main commercial routes which passed through it to Gaza in the west, to Bosra and Damascus in the north, to Aqaba and Leuce Come on the Red Sea, and across the desert to the Persian Gulf. Excavations have demonstrated that it was the ability of the Nabataeans to control the water supply that led to the rise of the desert city, creating an artificial oasis. The area is visited by flash floods, but archaeological evidence shows that the Nabataeans controlled these floods by the use of dams, cisterns and water conduits. These innovations stored water for prolonged periods of drought and enabled the city to prosper from its sale. In ancient times, Petra might have been approached from the south on a track leading across the plain of Petra, around Jabal Haroun ("Aaron's Mountain"), the location of the Tomb of Aaron, said to be the burial place of Aaron, brother of Moses. Another approach was possibly from the high plateau to the north. Today, most modern visitors approach the site from the east. The impressive eastern entrance leads steeply down through a dark, narrow gorge, in places only wide, called the Siq ("shaft"), a natural geological feature formed from a deep split in the sandstone rocks and serving as a waterway flowing into Wadi Musa. At the end of the narrow gorge, the Siq, stands Petra's most elaborate ruin, popularly known as Al Khazneh ("the Treasury"), hewn into the sandstone cliff. While remaining in remarkably preserved condition, the face of the structure is marked by hundreds of bullet holes made by the local Bedouin tribes that hoped to dislodge riches that were once rumoured to be hidden within it. A little further from the Treasury, at the foot of the mountain called en-Nejr, is a massive theatre, positioned so as to bring the greatest number of tombs within view. At the point where the valley opens out into the plain, the site of the city is revealed with striking effect. The theatre has been cut into the hillside and into several of the tombs during its construction. Rectangular gaps in the seating are still visible. Almost enclosing it on three sides are rose-coloured mountain walls, divided into groups by deep fissures and lined with knobs cut from the rock in the form of towers. In 2016, archaeologists using satellite imagery and drones have discovered a very large, previously unknown monumental structure whose beginnings were tentatively dated to about 150 BCE, the time when the Nabataeans initiated their public building programme. It is located outside the main area of the city, at the foot of Jabal an-Nmayr and about half a mile (800 metres) south of the city centre, but is facing east, not towards the city, and has no visible relationship to it. The structure consists of a huge, 184-by-161-foot (c. 56-by-49-metre) platform, with a truly monumental staircase all along its eastern side. The large platform enclosed a slightly smaller one, topped with a comparatively small building (28-by-28-foot or 8.5-by-8.5-metre), which was facing east toward the staircase. The structure, second in size only to the Monastery complex, probably had a ceremonial function of which not even a speculative explanation has yet been offered by the researchers. In Petra, there is a semi-arid climate. Most rain falls in the winter. The Köppen-Geiger climate classification is BSk. The average annual temperature in Petra is . About of precipitation falls annually. Though the city was founded relatively late, a sanctuary has existed there since very ancient times. By 7000 BCE, some of the earliest recorded farmers had settled in Beidha, a Pre-Pottery Neolithic settlement just north of Petra. Petra is listed in Egyptian campaign accounts and the Amarna letters as Pel, Sela or Seir. The Edomite site excavated at the top of the Umm el-Biyara mountain at Petra was established not earlier than the seventh century BCE (Iron II). The Nabataeans were one among several nomadic Bedouin tribes that roamed the Arabian Desert and moved with their herds to wherever they could find pasture and water. Although the Nabataeans were initially embedded in Aramaic culture, theories about them having Aramean roots are rejected by modern scholars. Instead, archaeological, religious and linguistic evidence confirm that they are a northern Arabian tribe. Historian Josephus (ca. 37–100) writes that the region as inhabited by the Midianites during the time of Moses, and that they were ruled by five kings, one of whom was Rekem. Josephus mentions that the city, called Petra by the Greeks, "ranks highest in the land of the Arabs" and was still called Rekeme by all the Arabs of his time, after its royal founder (Antiquities iv. 7, 1; 4, 7). The name Rekem was inscribed in the rock wall of the Wadi Musa opposite the entrance to the Siq. However, Jordan built a bridge over the wadi and this inscription was buried beneath tons of concrete. An old theory held that Petra might be identified with a place called sela in the Hebrew Bible. Encyclopædia Britannica of 1911 states that the Semitic name of the city, if not Sela, would remain unknown. It nevertheless cautioned that sela simply means "rock" in Hebrew, and thence might not be identified with a city where it occurs in the biblical text. The passage in Diodorus Siculus (xix. 94–97) which describes the expeditions which Antigonus sent against the Nabataeans in 312 BCE, was understood by some researchers-and not so by others-to throw some light upon the history of Petra, but the "petra" (Greek for rock) referred to as a natural fortress and place of refuge cannot be a proper name, and the description implies that there was no town in existence there at the time. In AD 106, when Cornelius Palma was governor of Syria, the part of Arabia under the rule of Petra was absorbed into the Roman Empire as part of Arabia Petraea, and Petra became its capital. The native dynasty came to an end but the city continued to flourish under Roman rule. It was around this time that the Petra Roman Road was built. A century later, in the time of Alexander Severus, when the city was at the height of its splendor, the issue of coinage comes to an end. There is no more building of sumptuous tombs, owing apparently to some sudden catastrophe, such as an invasion by the neo-Persian power under the Sassanid Empire. Meanwhile, as Palmyra (fl. 130–270) grew in importance and attracted the Arabian trade away from Petra, the latter declined. It appears, however, to have lingered on as a religious centre. Another Roman road was constructed at the site. Epiphanius of Salamis (c.315–403) writes that in his time a feast was held there on December 25 in honour of the virgin Khaabou (Chaabou) and her offspring Dushara. Dushara and al-Uzza were two of the main deities of the city, which otherwise included many idols from other Nabatean deities such as Allat and Manat. Between 111 and 114, Trajan built the Via Traiana Nova, running from the Syrian border to the Red Sea through Petra. This road followed the old routes of Nabataean caravans. In the shadow of the Pax Romana, this route revived trade between Arabia, Syria, and Mediterranean harbors. In 125 AD, one of Emperor Hadrian's administrators left marks in Petra, pointed out by documents found at the Dead Sea. In 130 AD, Hadrian visited the former Nabataean capital, giving it the name of Hadriane Petra Metropolis, imprinted on his coins. His visit, however, did not lead to any boom in architectural development and new buildings as it did in Jerash. The province's governor, Sextius Florentinus, erected a monumental mausoleum for his son near the end of the al-Hubta (King's Wall) tombs, which had been generally reserved during the Nabataean period for the royal family. The interest that Roman emperors showed for the city in the 3rd century suggests that Petra and its environs remained highly esteemed for a long time. An inscription to Liber Pater, a god revered by Emperor Septimius Severus, was found in the temenos of the temple known as Qasr al-Bint, and Nabataean tombs contained silver coins with the Emperor's portrait, as well as pottery from his reign. Emperor Elagabalus declared Petra to be a "Roman colony" when he reorganised the Roman Empire towards the end of the 3rd century. The area from Petra to Wadi Mujib, the Negev, and the Sinai Peninsula were annexed into the province of Palaestina Salutaris. Petra may be seen on the mosaic map of Madaba from the reign of Emperor Justinian. Petra declined rapidly under Roman rule, in large part from the revision of sea-based trade routes. In 363 an earthquake destroyed many buildings, and crippled the vital water management system. The old city of Petra was the capital of the Byzantine province of Palaestina III and many churches were excavated in and around Petra from the Byzantine period. In one of them, 140 papyri were discovered, which contained mainly contracts, dated from 537 to 593, establishing that the city was still flourishing in the sixth century. In the 12th century, the Crusaders built fortresses, but were forced to abandon Petra after a while. As a result, the location of Petra was lost for the Western world until the 19th century. The ruins of Petra were an object of curiosity during the Middle Ages and were visited by Baibars, one of the first Mamluk sultans of Egypt, towards the end of the 13th century. The first European to describe them was Swiss traveller Johann Ludwig Burckhardt during his travels in 1812. At that time, the Greek Church of Jerusalem operated a diocese in Al Karak named Battra (باطره in Arabic, and Πέτρας in Greek) and it was the opinion among the clergy of Jerusalem that Kerak was the ancient city of Petra. The Scottish painter David Roberts visited Petra in 1839 and returned to England with sketches and stories of the encounter with local tribes, published in The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt, and Nubia. The archaeologist Philip Hammond from the University of Utah, USA, has visited Petra for nearly 40 years. He explains that the local folklore says it was created by the wand of Moses, when he struck the rock to bring forth water for the Israelites. Hammond believes the carved channels deep within the walls and ground were made from ceramic pipes that once fed water for the city, from rock-cut systems on the canyon rim. Because the structures weakened with age, many of the tombs became vulnerable to thieves, and many treasures were stolen. In 1929, a four-person team, consisting of British archaeologists Agnes Conway and George Horsfield, Palestinian physician and folklore expert Dr Tawfiq Canaan and Dr Ditlef Nielsen, a Danish scholar, excavated and surveyed Petra. Numerous scrolls in Greek and dating to the Byzantine period were discovered in an excavated church near the Winged Lion Temple in Petra in December 1993. The Bidoul/Bidul or Petra Bedouin were forcibly resettled from their cave dwellings in Petra to Umm Sayhoun/Um Seihun by the Jordanian government in 1985, prior to the UNESCO designation process. Here, they were provided with block-built housing with some infrastructure including in particular a sewage and drainage system. Among the six communities in the Petra Region, Umm Sayhoun is one of the smaller communities. The village of Wadi Musa is the largest in the area, inhabited largely by the Layathnah Bedouin, and is now the closest settlement to the visitor centre, the main entrance via the Siq and the archaeological site generally. Umm Sayhoun gives access to the 'back route' into the site, the Wadi Turkmaniyeh pedestrian route. On December 6, 1985, Petra was designated a World Heritage Site. In a popular poll in 2007, it was also named one of the New7Wonders of the World. The PAP (Petra Archaeological Park) became an autonomous legal entity over the management of this site in August 2007. The Bidouls belong to one of the Bedouin tribes whose cultural heritage and traditional skills were proclaimed by UNESCO on the Intangible Cultural Heritage List in 2005 and inscribed in 2008. In 2011, following an 11-month project planning phase, the Petra Development and Tourism Region Authority in Association with DesignWorkshop and JCP s.r.l published a Strategic Master Plan that guides planned development of the Petra Region. This is intended to guide planned development of the Petra Region in an efficient, balanced and sustainable way over the next 20 years for the benefit of the local population and of Jordan in general. As part of this, a Strategic Plan was developed for Umm Sayhoun and surrounding areas. The process of developing the Strategic Plan considered the area's needs from five points of view: a socio-economic perspective, the perspective of Petra Archaeological Park, the perspective of Petra's tourism product, a land use perspective, an environmental perspective The site suffers from a host of threats, including collapse of ancient structures, erosion from flooding and improper rainwater drainage, weathering from salt upwelling, improper restoration of ancient structures and unsustainable tourism. The last has increased substantially, especially since the site received widespread media coverage in 2007 during the New Seven Wonders of the World Internet and cellphone campaign. In an attempt to reduce the impact of these threats, the Petra National Trust (PNT) was established in 1989. It has worked with numerous local and international organisations on projects that promote the protection, conservation, and preservation of the Petra site. Moreover, UNESCO and ICOMOS recently collaborated to publish their first book on human and natural threats to the sensitive World Heritage sites. They chose Petra as its first and the most important example of threatened landscapes. A book released in 2012, Tourism and Archaeological Heritage Management at Petra: Driver to Development or Destruction?, was the first in a series of important books to address the very nature of these deteriorating buildings, cities, sites, and regions. The next books in the series of deteriorating UNESCO World Heritage Sites will include Machu Picchu, Angkor Wat, and Pompeii. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) released a video in 2018 highlighting abuse against working animals in Petra. PETA claimed that animals are forced to carry tourists or pull carriages every day. The video showed handlers beating and whipping working animals, with beatings intensifying when animals faltered. PETA also revealed some wounded animals, including camels with fly-infested, open wounds. The Jordanian authority running the site responded by opening up a veterinarian clinic, and by spreading awareness among animal handlers. The Nabataeans worshipped Arab gods and goddesses during the pre-Islamic era as well as a few of their deified kings. One, Obodas I, was deified after his death. Dushara was the primary male god accompanied by his three female deities: Al-‘Uzzá, Allat and Manāt. Many statues carved in the rock depict these gods and goddesses. New evidence indicates that broader Edomite, and Nabataean theology had strong links to Earth-Sun relationships, often manifested in the orientation of prominent Petra structures to equinox and solstice sunrises and sunsets. A stele dedicated to Qos-Allah 'Qos is Allah' or 'Qos the god', by Qosmilk (melech – king) is found at Petra (Glueck 516). Qos is identifiable with Kaush (Qaush) the God of the older Edomites. The stele is horned and the seal from the Edomite Tawilan near Petra identified with Kaush displays a star and crescent (Browning 28), both consistent with a moon deity. It is conceivable that the latter could have resulted from trade with Harran (Bartlett 194). There is continuing debate about the nature of Qos (qaus – bow) who has been identified both with a hunting bow (hunting god) and a rainbow (weather god) although the crescent above the stele is also a bow. Nabatean inscriptions in Sinai and other places display widespread references to names including Allah, El and Allat (god and goddess), with regional references to al-Uzza, Baal and Manutu (Manat) (Negev 11). Allat is also found in Sinai in South Arabian language. Allah occurs particularly as Garm-'allahi – god decided (Greek Garamelos) and Aush-allahi – 'gods covenant' (Greek Ausallos). We find both Shalm-lahi 'Allah is peace' and Shalm-allat, 'the peace of the goddess'. We also find Amat-allahi 'she-servant of god' and Halaf-llahi 'the successor of Allah'. Recently, Petra has been put forward as the original 'Mecca' by some in the revisionist school of Islamic studies, owing to claims of large numbers of independent pieces of evidence, namely that the early original mosques faced Petra, not Jerusalem or Mecca, as the direction of Muslim prayer, the qibla. However, others have challenged the notion of comparing modern readings of Qiblah directions to early mosques’ Qiblahs as they claim early Muslims could not accurately calculate the direction of the Qiblah to Mecca and so the apparent pinpointing of Petra by some early mosques may well be coincidental. The Monastery, Petra's largest monument, dates from the 1st century BC. It was dedicated to Obodas I and is believed to be the symposium of Obodas the god. This information is inscribed on the ruins of the Monastery (the name is the translation of the Arabic "Ad Deir"). Christianity found its way to Petra in the 4th century AD, nearly 500 years after the establishment of Petra as a trade centre. Athanasius mentions a bishop of Petra (Anhioch. 10) named Asterius. At least one of the tombs (the "tomb with the urn"?) was used as a church. An inscription in red paint records its consecration "in the time of the most holy bishop Jason" (447). After the Islamic conquest of 629–632, Christianity in Petra, as of most of Arabia, gave way to Islam. During the First Crusade Petra was occupied by Baldwin I of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and formed the second fief of the barony of Al Karak (in the lordship of Oultrejordain) with the title Château de la Valée de Moyse or Sela. It remained in the hands of the Franks until 1189. It is still a titular see of the Catholic Church. Two Crusader-period castles are known in and around Petra. The first is al-Wu'ayra and is situated just north of Wadi Musa. It can be viewed from the road to "Little Petra". It is the castle of Valle Moise which was seized by a band of Turks with the help of local Muslims and only recovered by the Crusaders after they began to destroy the olive trees of Wadi Musa. The potential loss of livelihood led the locals to negotiate surrender. The second is on the summit of el-Habis in the heart of Petra and can be accessed from the West side of the Qasr al-Bint. According to Arab tradition, Petra is the spot where Musa (Moses) struck a rock with his staff and water came forth, and where Moses' brother, Harun (Aaron), is buried, at Mount Hor, known today as Jabal Haroun or Mount Aaron. The Wadi Musa or "Wadi of Moses" is the Arab name for the narrow valley at the head of which Petra is sited. A mountaintop shrine of Moses' sister Miriam was still shown to pilgrims at the time of Jerome in the 4th century, but its location has not been identified since. Petra appeared in the novels Left Behind Series; Appointment with Death; The Eagle in the Sand; The Red Sea Sharks, the nineteenth book in The Adventures of Tintin series; and in Kingsbury's The Moon Goddess and the Son. It played a prominent role in the Marcus Didius Falco mystery novel Last Act in Palmyra. In Blue Balliett's novel, Chasing Vermeer, the character Petra Andalee is named after the site., In 1979 Marguerite van Geldermalsen from New Zealand married Mohammed Abdullah, a Bedouin in Petra. They lived in a cave in Petra until the death of her husband. She authored the book Married to a Bedouin. Van Geldermalsen is the only western woman who has ever lived in a Petra cave., An Englishwoman, Joan Ward, wrote Living With Arabs: Nine Years with the Petra Bedouin documenting her experiences while living in Umm Sayhoun with the Petra Bedouin, covering the period 2004-2013. Playwright John Yarbrough's tragicomedy, Petra, debuted at the Manhattan Repertory Theatre in 2014 and was followed by award-winning performances at the Hudson Guild in New York in 2015. It was selected for the Best American Short Plays 2014-2015 anthology. The site appeared in films such as: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Arabian Nights, Passion in the Desert, , Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, The Mummy Returns, , Samsara and Kajraare. Petra appeared in episode 20 of Misaeng., Petra appeared in an episode of Time Scanners, made for National Geographic, where six ancient structures were laser scanned, with the results built into 3D models. Examining the model of Petra revealed insights into how the structure was built., Petra was the focus of an American PBS Nova special, "Petra: Lost City of Stone", which premiered in the US and Europe in February 2015. Six months after a deadly hike by two Israelis in 1958, Haim Hefer wrote the lyrics for a ballad called Ha-Sela ha-Adom (“The Red Rock”), In 1977, the Lebanese Rahbani brothers wrote the musical Petra as a response to the Lebanese Civil War., The Sisters of Mercy filmed their music video for "Dominion/Mother Russia" in and around Al-Khazneh ("The Treasury") in February 1988., In 1994 Petra appeared in the video to the Urban Species single "Spiritual Love". Petra is featured in Sid Meier's Civilization V and Sid Meier's Civilization VI as a buildable Wonder in a player's cities and as an illustration for Civilization V's loading screens. In Civilization V, the in-game encyclopedia, the Civilopedia, erroneously states that Petra was constructed in 1000 BC. This error was corrected in the Civilopedia for Civilization VI., Petra is featured as a location in the online multiplayer game Overwatch., The stage Shamar in the game Sonic Unleashed is heavily inspired by Petra. List of colossal sculpture in situ, List of modern names for biblical place names, List of World Heritage Sites in Jordan, Mada'in Saleh, Negev incense route, UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists, Ad Deir, "the Monastery", Al-Khazneh, "the Treasury", Beidha (archaeological site), nearby site, best known for Neolithic and Early Muslim period findings, Byzantine Church (Petra), Great Temple (Petra), in the city centre, Jebel al-Madhbah, the "Altar Mountain" towering over the city centre, Little Petra, nearby site, best known for Nabataean findings, Palace Tomb, monumental tomb in the city centre, Petra papyri, found in the Byzantine Church, Petra Pool and Garden Complex, in the city centre, Qasr al-Bint, temple in the city centre, Siq, narrow canyon and one of the city's access routes, Temple of the Winged Lions, in the city centre, Tomb of the Roman Soldier, funerary complex in a side valley Notes Bibliography Brown University. "The Petra Great Temple; History" Accessed April 19, 2013., Glueck, Nelson (1959). Rivers in the Desert: A History of the Negev. New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy/London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, McKenzie, Judith (1990). The Architecture of Petra. (Oxford University Press), Mouton, Michael and Schmid, Stephen G. (2013) "Men on the Rocks: The Formation of Nabataean Petra", Paradise, T. R. (2011). "Architecture and Deterioration in Petra: Issues, trends and warnings" in Archaeological Heritage at Petra: Drive to Development or Destruction?" (Doug Comer, editor), ICOMOS-ICAHM Publications through Springer-Verlag NYC: 87–119., Paradise, T. R. (2005). "Weathering of sandstone architecture in Petra, Jordan: influences and rates" in GSA Special Paper 390: Stone Decay in the Architectural Environment: 39–49., Paradise, T. R. and Angel, C. C. (2015). Nabataean Architecture and the Sun: A landmark discovery using GIS in Petra, Jordan. ArcUser Journal, Winter 2015: 16-19pp., UNESCO World Heritage Centre. "Petra" Accessed April 19, 2013. Petra Jordan, Petra Archaeological Park, Video overview of Petra, Petra In The Early 1800s, 3D-tour on Petra (Russian) University of Arkansas Petra Project, Accessed 27 March 2017, Smart e Guide, interactive map of Petra, Open Context, "Petra Great Temple Excavations (Archaeological Data)", Open Context Publication of Archaeological Data from the 1993–2006 Brown University Excavations at the Great Temple of Petra, Jordan, Petra iconicarchive, photo gallery Petra History and Photo Gallery, Accessed 27 March 2017 History with Maps, Parker, S., R. Talbert, T. Elliott, S. Gillies, S. Gillies, J. Becker. "Places: 697725 (Petra)". Pleiades. [Accessed: March 7, 2012 4:18 pm], Pictures on Petra, Almost 800 pictures with captions, some panoramas, Jordanian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, Why was Petra abandoned by its inhabitants? | Check123 Video Encyclopedia Johann Ludwig (also known as John Lewis, Jean Louis) Burckhardt (24 November 1784 – 15 October 1817) was a Swiss traveller, geographer and orientalist. He wrote his letters in French and signed Louis. He is best known for rediscovering the ruins of the ancient Nabataean city of Petra in Jordan. Burckhardt was born on 24 November 1784 in Lausanne, Switzerland to a wealthy Basel family of silk merchants, the Burckhardt family. His father was named Rudolf, son of Gedeon Burckhardt, an affluent silk ribbon manufacturer; his mother, Sara Rohner, was Rudolf's second wife following a brief marriage to the daughter of the mayor of Basel which ended in divorce. After studying at the universities of Leipzig and Göttingen, he travelled to England in the summer of 1806 with goal of obtaining employment in the civil service. Unsuccessful, he took employment with the African Association with the objective of resolving some of the problems of the course of the Niger River. The expedition called for an overland journey from Cairo to Timbuktu. To prepare for the journey, he attended Cambridge University and studied Arabic, science and medicine. At this time he also began to adopt Arabian costume. In 1809 he left England and travelled to Aleppo, Syria to perfect his Arabic and Muslim customs. En route to Syria, he stopped in Malta and learned of Ulrich Jasper Seetzen who had left Cairo in search of the lost city of Petra and had subsequently been murdered. Once in Syria, he adopted the moniker Sheikh Ibrahim Ibn Abdallah to hide his true European identity. While in Syria, he investigated local languages and archaeological sites and became the first discoverer of Hittite or Luwian hieroglyphs. He suffered setbacks during his time in Syria having been robbed of his belongings more than once by people he had paid to guarantee his protection. After more than 2 years living and studying as a Muslim in Aleppo, he felt he could travel safely and not be questioned on his identity. To test his disguise, he made 3 journeys in the area of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Transjordan travelling as a poor Arab, sleeping on the ground and eating with camel drivers. With these trips being successful, he prepared to continue his journey to Cairo. He left Aleppo in early 1812 and headed south through Damascus, Ajloun and Amman. In Kerak, he trusted his security to the local governor, Sheikh Youssef. The governor, under the guise of concern for his guest, liberated him of his most valuable belongings and then sent him south with an unscrupulous guide. The guide soon after took the remainder of his belongings and abandoned him in the desert. Burckhardt found a nearby Bedouin encampment and obtained a new guide and continued his journey south. On the road to Cairo along the more dangerous inland route to Aqaba, Burckhardt encountered rumours of ancient ruins in a narrow valley near the supposed biblical tomb of Aaron, the brother of Moses. This region was the former Roman province of Arabia Petraea leading him to believe these were the ruins he had heard about in Malta. Telling his guide that he wished to sacrifice a goat to Aaron, he was led through the narrow valley where on 22 August 1812, he became the first modern European to lay eyes on the ancient Nabataean city of Petra: He could not remain long at the ruins or take detailed notes due to his fears of being unmasked as a treasure-seeking infidel. Seeing no evidence of the name of the ruins, he could only speculate that they were in fact the ruins of Petra which he had been informed about on his journey to Syria. He continued his travels and after crossing the southern deserts of Transjordan and the Sinai peninsula, he arrived at Cairo on 4 September 1812. After spending four months in Cairo with no westbound caravans across the Sahara available, Burckhardt decided to journey up the Nile River to Upper Egypt and Nubia. He justified this to his employer with the argument that the information he would collect on African cultures would help him in his planned journey to west Africa. In January 1813 he departed Cairo travelling up the Nile river over land via donkey. He planned to reach Dongola in what is now modern-day Sudan. He was eventually blocked by hostile people less than 160 km from his goal near the third cataract of the Nile river. Journeying north, he came across the sand-choked ruins of the Great Temple of Ramesses II at Abu Simbel in March 1813. After considerable effort, he was unable to excavate the entrance to the temple. He later told his friend Giovanni Belzoni about the ruins and it was he who later returned in 1817 to excavate the temple. Burckhardt continued north to Esme. He later made an additional trip to Nubia travelling as far as Shendi near the Pyramids of Meroë. From here he journeyed to the Red Sea and resolved to make the pilgrimage to Mecca as this would enhance his credentials as a Muslim on his journey to Timbuktu. After crossing the Red Sea, he entered Jeddah on 18 July 1814 and became sick with dysentery for the first time in his travels. Here he proved his credentials as a Muslim and was permitted to travel to Mecca. He spent several months in Mecca performing the various rituals associated with the Hajj which was unheard of for a European. He wrote of his detailed observations of the city and the deportment and culture of the local inhabitants. His journals were a valuable source of information for the African explorer Richard Burton who also later travelled to Mecca a few decades later. He later made a side trip to Medina where he again became sick with dysentery and spent three months recovering. Departing Arabia, he arrived in a state of great exhaustion in the Sinai peninsula and travelled overland to Cairo, arriving on 24 June 1815. Burckhardt spent the remaining two years of his life editing his journals and living modestly in Cairo while waiting and preparing for the caravan that would take him west across the Sahara to Timbuktu and the Niger river. He made a trip to Alexandria and another to Mount Sinai where he visited St Catherine's Monastery before returning to Cairo. He was again stricken with dysentery and died in Cairo on 15 October 1817, never having made his intended journey to the Niger. He was buried as a Muslim, and the tombstone over his grave bears the name that he assumed on his travels in Arabia. He had from time to time carefully transmitted to England his journals and notes, and a copious series of letters, so very few details of his journeys have been lost. He bequeathed his collection of 800 volumes of oriental manuscripts to the library of Cambridge University. His works were posthumously published by the African Association in the following order: Travels in Nubia (to which is prefixed a biographical memoir) (1819), Travels in Syria and the Holy Land (1822), Travels in Arabia (1829), Arabic Proverbs, or the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1830), Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabys (1831). Paul Lunde, "The Lure of Mecca," Saudi Aramco World, November/December 1974, pp. 14–21., "The Blue Nile", Alan Moorehead, Harper and Row, 1962., Eduard His: Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (Scheik Ibrahim), in: Basler Gelehrte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Benno Schwabe & Co., Basel 1941, S. 25 – 31. Travels in Arabia from 1892, featuring Johann Ludwig Burckhardt The Qasr al-Bint is a religious temple in the Nabataean city of Petra. It faces the Wadi Musa and is located to the northwest of the Great Temple and to the southwest of the Temple of the Winged Lions. One of the best preserved of the ancient structures surviving in Petra today, it stands near the monumental gate and was a key focal point on the colonnaded street, as well as a focus of religious worship. The full modern Arabic name of the ruin is Qasr al-Bint Fir’aun, or “the palace of Pharaoh’s daughter.” This name derives from a local folktale according to which the virtuous daughter of a wicked Pharaoh determined to decide between her suitors by setting them the task of providing a water supply for her palace. Two suitors completed the task simultaneously by directing water to the palace from different springs in the hills surrounding it. The princess accepted the more modest of the two suitors who ascribed his success to God. The deity to whom the Qasr al Bint was dedicated has been a source of scholarly debate. The temple faces north towards a sacrificial altar that was dedicated to Dushara, the main Nabataean deity, and due to this spatial connection it has been suggested by some scholars that it was also Dushara who was worshiped at the Qasr al-bint . A Greek inscription in the chamber to the east of the cella suggests that Zeus Hypsistos may also have received devotions at the Qasr . Others have suggested that the presence in the cella of a baetyl stone fragment, which originally would have been placed on a base faced with gold, indicates that it was actually Al-Uzza, equated with the Greek goddess Aphrodite, that was worshiped here. Healey, who is considered one of the main authorities on Nabataean religion, believes that the Qasr may be the Temple to Aphrodite that is referred to in the Babatha correspondence, a cache of documents that were hidden in a cave at the time of the Bar Kokhba Revolt. The Qasr al-Bint sits upon a podium made of a rubble core retained by courses of ashlar masonry. The temple itself is also constructed of ashlar blocks. Access to the temple is provided by a monumental marble staircase of 27 steps, which is divided by a landing. The plan is square and consists of a pronaos (or vestibule), a naos (or chamber), and a tripartite adyton which contains the cella, the most sacred part of the temple. The vestibule was originally framed by four columns with Corinthian capitals. None of these columns remain standing, and only fragments of the capitals have been found. There are additional chambers on either side of the cella. These two chambers originally had upper rooms that could be accessed by staircases concealed in the building's thick walls . Both the interior and exterior walls were originally covered in decorative plaster work, some of which is still extant . Wooden- string courses line the lengths of the walls, and wooden wedges can still be found between some of the stones. The wood used in the structure has been identified as Lebanese Cedar. The chronology of the Qasr al-Bint has been debated for decades. It appears that the current structure was built on the remains of an earlier poorly understood monument . Pottery fragments recovered from the base of the structure have been dated to 50-30/20 BCE. Dates have been suggested for the current building ranging from the first century BCE to the end of the first century CE. Radiocarbon dating of the remaining wood from the site, which was done in 2014, indicates that the structure’s has a terminus post quem (earliest possible date for construction) in the beginning of the first century CE. This date is supported by the similarities between the architectural decoration of the Khazneh, which has been firmly dated, and that of the Qasr al-Bint. Stylistically, buildings of this date have intricate moldings and capitals with fine floral motifs, both of which have been found at the Qasr al-Bint A second phase of construction dating from 106 CE to the late third century CE is also attested based on the presence of inscriptions, coins, and pottery.. At some point, probably during the Palmyrene revolt of 268-272 CE, the Qasr al-Bint was vandalized and burned. It was later occupied and looted for building materials during the Medieval period. During the Medieval period, a ramp was constructed in front of the temple using architectural fragments and column drums from the structure itself. It is believed that the ramp was placed there in order to allow for the removal of some of the stones, which were then reused in other structures The Qasr al-Bint is one of the few ancient built-structures that remain standing in Petra. This is in spite of the fact that ashlar masonry, which was used in its construction, is vulnerable to damage by ground vibration during earthquakes. The symmetrical plan of Qasr el-Bint may have helped to reduce the moments of torsion that occurred during seismic activity at the site, however. The use of wooden string courses may also have enhanced the energy dissipation capacity of the structure. Some scholars believe that it is due to the inclusion of these wooden-string courses that the building is still standing at its full height.

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Human height or stature is the distance from the bottom of the feet to the top of the head in a human body, standing erect. It is measured using a stadiometer, usually in centimetres when using the metric system, or feet and inches when using the imperial system. In the early phase of anthropometric research history, questions about height techniques for measuring nutritional status often concerned genetic differences. A particular genetic profile in men called Y haplotype I-M170 is correlated with height. Ecological data shows that as the frequency of this genetic profile increases in the population, the average male height in a country also increases. Height is also important, because it is closely correlated with other health components, such as life expectancy. Studies show that there is a correlation between small stature and a longer life expectancy. Individuals of small stature are also more likely to have lower blood pressure and are less likely to acquire cancer. The University of Hawaii has found that the “longevity gene” FOXO3 that reduces the effects of aging is more commonly found in individuals of a small body size. Short stature decreases the risk of venous insufficiency. When populations share genetic background and environmental factors, average height is frequently characteristic within the group. Exceptional height variation (around 20% deviation from average) within such a population is sometimes due to gigantism or dwarfism, which are medical conditions caused by specific genes or endocrine abnormalities. The development of human height can serve as an indicator of two key welfare components, namely nutritional quality and health. In regions of poverty or warfare, environmental factors like chronic malnutrition during childhood or adolescence may result in delayed growth and/or marked reductions in adult stature even without the presence of any of these medical conditions. Some research indicates that a greater height correlates with greater success in dating and earning in men, although other research indicates that this does not apply to non-white men. Height is a sexually dimorphic trait in humans. A study of 20th century British natality trends indicated that while tall men tended to reproduce more than short men, women of below average height had more children than taller women. The study of height is known as auxology. Growth has long been recognized as a measure of the health of individuals, hence part of the reasoning for the use of growth charts. For individuals, as indicators of health problems, growth trends are tracked for significant deviations and growth is also monitored for significant deficiency from genetic expectations. Genetics is a major factor in determining the height of individuals, though it is far less influential in regard to differences among populations. Average height is relevant to the measurement of the health and wellness (standard of living and quality of life) of populations. Attributed as a significant reason for the trend of increasing height in parts of Europe are the egalitarian populations where proper medical care and adequate nutrition are relatively equally distributed. Average (male) height in a nation is correlated with protein quality. Nations that consume more protein in the form of meat, dairy, eggs, and fish tend to be taller, while those that attain more protein from cereals tend to be shorter. Therefore, populations with high cattle per capita and high consumption of dairy live longer and are taller. Historically, this can be seen in the cases of the United States, Argentina, New Zealand and Australia in the beginning of the 19th century. Moreover, when the production and consumption of milk and beef is taken to consideration, it can be seen why the Germanic people who lived outside of the “imperium Romanum” were taller than those who lived at the heart of the Empire. Changes in diet (nutrition) and a general rise in quality of health care and standard of living are the cited factors in the Asian populations. Malnutrition including chronic undernutrition and acute malnutrition is known to have caused stunted growth in various populations. This has been seen in North Korea, parts of Africa, certain historical Europe, and other populations. Developing countries such as Guatemala have rates of stunting in children under 5 living as high as 82.2% in Totonicapán, and 49.8% nationwide. Height measurements are by nature subject to statistical sampling errors even for a single individual. In a clinical situation, height measurements are seldom taken more often than once per office visit, which may mean sampling taking place a week to several months apart. The smooth 50th percentile male and female growth curves illustrated above are aggregate values from thousands of individuals sampled at ages from birth to age 20. In reality, a single individual's growth curve shows large upward and downward spikes, partly due to actual differences in growth velocity, and partly due to small measurement errors. For example, a typical measurement error of plus or minus 0.5 cm may completely nullify 0.5 cm of actual growth resulting in either a "negative" 0.5 cm growth (due to overestimation in the previous visit combined with underestimation in the latter), up to a 1.5 cm growth (the first visit underestimating and the second visit overestimating) in the same elapsed time period between measurements. Note there is a discontinuity in the growth curves at age 2, which reflects the difference in recumbent length (with the child on his or her back), used in measuring infants and toddlers and standing height typically measured from age 2 onwards. Height, like other phenotypic traits, is determined by a combination of genetics and environmental factors. A child's height based on parental heights is subject to regression toward the mean, therefore extremely tall or short parents will likely have correspondingly taller or shorter offspring, but their offspring will also likely be closer to average height than the parents themselves. Genetic potential and a number of hormones, minus illness, is a basic determinant for height. Other factors include the genetic response to external factors such as diet, exercise, environment, and life circumstances. Humans grow fastest (other than in the womb) as infants and toddlers, rapidly declining from a maximum at birth to roughly age 2, tapering to a slowly declining rate, and then during the pubertal growth spurt, a rapid rise to a second maximum (at around 11–12 years for female, and 13–14 years for male), followed by a steady decline to zero. On average, female growth speed trails off to zero at about 15 or 16 years, whereas the male curve continues for approximately 3 more years, going to zero at about 18–19. These are also critical periods where stressors such as malnutrition (or even severe child neglect) have the greatest effect. Moreover, the health of a mother throughout her life, especially during her critical period and pregnancy, has a role. A healthier child and adult develops a body that is better able to provide optimal prenatal conditions. The pregnant mother's health is important for herself but also for the fetus as gestation is itself a critical period for an embryo/fetus, though some problems affecting height during this period are resolved by catch-up growth assuming childhood conditions are good. Thus, there is a cumulative generation effect such that nutrition and health over generations influences the height of descendants to varying degrees. The age of the mother also has some influence on her child's height. Studies in modern times have observed a gradual increase in height with maternal age, though these early studies suggest that trend is due to various socio-economic situations that select certain demographics as being more likely to have a first birth early in the mother's life. These same studies show that children born to a young mother are more likely to have below-average educational and behavioural development, again suggesting an ultimate cause of resources and family status rather than a purely biological explanation. It has been observed that first-born males are shorter than later-born males. However, more recently the reverse observation was made. The study authors suggest that the cause may be socio-economic in nature. The precise relationship between genetics and environment is complex and uncertain. Differences in human height is 60–80% heritable, according to several twin studies and has been considered polygenic since the Mendelian- biometrician debate a hundred years ago. A genome-wide association (GWA) study of more than 180,000 individuals has identified hundreds of genetic variants in at least 180 loci associated with adult human height. The number of individuals has since been expanded to 253,288 individuals and the number of genetic variants identified is 697 in 423 genetic loci. In a separate study of body proportion using sitting-height ratio, it reports that these 697 variants can be partitioned into 3 specific classes, (1) variants that primarily determine leg length, (2) variants that primarily determine spine and head length, or (3) variants that affect overall body size. This gives insights into the biological mechanisms underlying how these 697 genetic variants affect overall height. These loci do not only determine height, but other features or characteristics. As an example, 4 of the 7 loci identified for intracranial volume had previously been discovered for human height. The effect of environment on height is illustrated by studies performed by anthropologist Barry Bogin and coworkers of Guatemala Mayan children living in the United States. In the early 1970s, when Bogin first visited Guatemala, he observed that Mayan Indian men averaged in height and the women averaged . Bogin took another series of measurements after the Guatemalan Civil War, during which up to a million Guatemalans fled to the United States. He discovered that Maya refugees, who ranged from six to twelve years old, were significantly taller than their Guatemalan counterparts. By 2000, the American Maya were taller than the Guatemalan Maya of the same age, largely due to better nutrition and health care. Bogin also noted that American Maya children had relatively longer legs, averaging longer than the Guatemalan Maya (a significantly lower sitting height ratio). The Nilotic peoples of Sudan such as the Shilluk and Dinka have been described as some of the tallest in the world. Dinka Ruweng males investigated by Roberts in 1953–54 were on average tall, and Shilluk males averaged . The Nilotic people are characterized as having long legs, narrow bodies and short trunks, an adaptation to hot weather. However, male Dinka and Shilluk refugees measured in 1995 in Southwestern Ethiopia were on average only 176.4 cm and 172.6 cm tall, respectively. As the study points out, Nilotic people "may attain greater height if privileged with favourable environmental conditions during early childhood and adolescence, allowing full expression of the genetic material." Before fleeing, these refugees were subject to privation as a consequence of the succession of civil wars in their country from 1955 to the present. The tallest living married couple are ex-basketball players Yao Ming and Ye Li (both of China) who measure 228.6 cm (7 ft 6 in) and 190.5 cm (6 ft 3 in) respectively, giving a combined height of 419.1 cm (13 ft 9 in). They married in Shanghai, China, on 6 August 2007. In Tibet, the khampas are known for their great height. Khampa males are on average 180 cm tall (5 ft 11 in). The people of the Dinaric Alps, mainly South Slavs (Montenegro and East Herzegovina), are on record as being the tallest in the world, with a male average height of 185.6 cm (6 ft 1.1 in) and female average height of 170.9 cm (5 ft 7.3 in). Growth in stature, determined by its various factors, results from the lengthening of bones via cellular divisions chiefly regulated by somatotropin (human growth hormone (hGH)) secreted by the anterior pituitary gland. Somatotropin also stimulates the release of another growth inducing hormone Insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) mainly by the liver. Both hormones operate on most tissues of the body, have many other functions, and continue to be secreted throughout life; with peak levels coinciding with peak growth velocity, and gradually subsiding with age after adolescence. The bulk of secretion occurs in bursts (especially for adolescents) with the largest during sleep. The majority of linear growth occurs as growth of cartilage at the epiphysis (ends) of the long bones which gradually ossify to form hard bone. The legs compose approximately half of adult human height, and leg length is a somewhat sexually dimorphic trait, with men having proportionately longer legs. Some of this growth occurs after the growth spurt of the long bones has ceased or slowed. The majority of growth during growth spurts is of the long bones. Additionally, the variation in height between populations and across time is largely due to changes in leg length. The remainder of height consists of the cranium. Height is sexually dimorphic and statistically it is more or less normally distributed, but with heavy tails. It has been shown that a log-normal distribution fits the data equally well, besides guaranteeing a non-negative lower confidence limit, which could otherwise attain a non-physical negative height value for arbitrarily large confidence levels. Most intra-population variance of height is genetic. Short stature and tall stature are usually not a health concern. If the degree of deviation from normal is significant, hereditary short stature is known as familial short stature and tall stature is known as familial tall stature. Confirmation that exceptional height is normal for a respective person can be ascertained from comparing stature of family members and analyzing growth trends for abrupt changes, among others. There are, however, various diseases and disorders that cause growth abnormalities. Most notably, extreme height may be pathological, such as gigantism resulting from childhood hyperpituitarism, and dwarfism which has various causes. Rarely, no cause can be found for extreme height; very short persons may be termed as having idiopathic short stature. The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2003 approved hGH treatment for those 2.25 standard deviations below the population mean (approximately the lowest 1.2% of the population). An even rarer occurrence, or at least less used term and recognized "problem", is idiopathic tall stature. If not enough growth hormone is produced and/or secreted by the pituitary gland, then a patient with growth hormone deficiency can undergo treatment. This treatment involves the injection of pure growth hormone into thick tissue to promote growth. Studies show that there is a correlation between small stature and a longer life expectancy. Individuals of small stature are also more likely to have lower blood pressure and are less likely to acquire cancer. The University of Hawaii has found that the “longevity gene” FOXO3 that reduces the effects of aging is more commonly found in individuals of a small body size. Short stature decreases the risk of venous insufficiency. Certain studies have shown that height is a factor in overall health while some suggest tallness is associated with better cardiovascular health and shortness with longevity. Cancer risk has also been found to grow with height. Moreover, scientists have also observed a protective effect of height on risk for Alzheimer disease, although this fact could be a result of the genetic overlap between height and intracraneal volume and there are also genetic variants influencing height that could affect biological mechanisms involved in Alzheimer etiology, such as IGF1. Nonetheless, modern westernized interpretations of the relationship between height and health fail to account for the observed height variations worldwide. Cavalli-Sforza and Cavalli-Sforza note that variations in height worldwide can be partly attributed to evolutionary pressures resulting from differing environments. These evolutionary pressures result in height related health implications. While tallness is an adaptive benefit in colder climates such as found in Europe, shortness helps dissipate body heat in warmer climatic regions. Consequently, the relationships between health and height cannot be easily generalized since tallness and shortness can both provide health benefits in different environmental settings. At the extreme end, being excessively tall can cause various medical problems, including cardiovascular problems, because of the increased load on the heart to supply the body with blood, and problems resulting from the increased time it takes the brain to communicate with the extremities. For example, Robert Wadlow, the tallest man known to verifiable history, developed trouble walking as his height increased throughout his life. In many of the pictures of the later portion of his life, Wadlow can be seen gripping something for support. Late in his life, although he died at age 22, he had to wear braces on his legs and walk with a cane; and he died after developing an infection in his legs because he was unable to feel the irritation and cutting caused by his leg braces. Sources are in disagreement about the overall relationship between height and longevity. Samaras and Elrick, in the Western Journal of Medicine, demonstrate an inverse correlation between height and longevity in several mammals including humans. Women whose height is under may have a small pelvis, resulting in such complications during childbirth as shoulder dystocia. A study done in Sweden in 2005 has shown that there is a strong inverse correlation between height and suicide among Swedish men. A large body of human and animal evidence indicates that shorter, smaller bodies age slower, and have fewer chronic diseases and greater longevity. For example, a study found eight areas of support for the "smaller lives longer" thesis. These areas of evidence include studies involving longevity, life expectancy, centenarians, male vs. female longevity differences, mortality advantages of shorter people, survival findings, smaller body size due to calorie restriction, and within species body size differences. They all support the conclusion that smaller individuals live longer in healthy environments and with good nutrition. However, the difference in longevity is modest. Several human studies have found a loss of 0.5 year/centimetre of increased height (1.2 yr/inch). But these findings do not mean that all tall people die young. Many live to advanced ages and some become centenarians. There is a large body of research in psychology, economics, and human biology that has assessed the relationship between several seemingly innocuous physical features (e.g., body height) and occupational success. The correlation between height and success was explored decades ago. Shorter people are considered to have an advantage in certain sports (e.g., gymnastics, race car driving, etc.), whereas in many other sports taller people have a major advantage. In most occupational fields, body height is not relevant to how well people are able to perform; nonetheless several studies found that success was positively correlated with body height, although there may be other factors such as gender or socioeonomic status that are correlated with height which may account for the difference in success. A demonstration of the height-success association can be found in the realm of politics. In the United States presidential elections, the taller candidate won 22 out of 25 times in the 20th century. Nevertheless, Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, was and several prominent world leaders of the 20th century, such as Vladimir Lenin, Benito Mussolini, Nicolae Ceaușescu and Joseph Stalin were of below average height. These examples, however, were all before modern forms of multi-media, i.e., television, which may further height discrimination in modern society. Further, growing evidence suggests that height may be a proxy for confidence, which is likewise strongly correlated with occupational success. In the 150 years since the mid-nineteenth century, the average human height in industrialised countries has increased by up to . However, these increases appear to have largely levelled off. Before the mid-nineteenth century, there were cycles in height, with periods of increase and decrease; however, examinations of skeletons show no significant differences in height from the Stone Age through the early-1800s. In general, there were no big differences in regional height levels throughout the nineteenth century. The only exceptions of this rather uniform height distribution were people in the Anglo-Saxon settlement regions who were taller than the average and people from Southeast Asia with below-average heights. However, at the end of the nineteenth century and in the middle of the first globalisation period, heights between rich and poor countries began to diverge. These differences did not disappear in the deglobalisation period of the two World wars. Baten and Blum (2014) find that in the nineteenth century, important determinants of height were the local availability of cattle, meat and milk as well as the local disease environment. In the late-twentieth century, however, technologies and trade became more important, decreasing the impact of local availability of agricultural products. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, people of European descent in North America were far taller than those in Europe and were the tallest in the world. The original indigenous population of Plains Native Americans was also among the tallest populations of the world at the time. Some studies also suggest that there existed the correlation between the height and the real wage, moreover, correlation was higher among the less developed countries. Interestingly, the difference in height between children from different social classes was already observed, when child was around two years old. In the late-nineteenth century, the Netherlands was a land renowned for its short population, but today Dutch people are among the world's tallest with young men averaging tall. According to a study by economist John Komlos and Francesco Cinnirella, in the first half of the eighteenth century, the average height of an English male was 165 cm (5 ft 5 in), and the average height of an Irish male was 168 cm (5 ft 6 in). The estimated mean height of English, German, and Scottish soldiers was 163.6 cm – 165.9 cm (5 ft 4.4 in – 5 ft 5.3 in) for the period as a whole, while that of Irish was 167.9 cm (5 ft 6.1 in). The average height of male slaves and convicts in North America was 171 cm (5 ft 7 in). American-born colonial soldiers of the late-1770s were on average more than 7.6 cm (3 inches) taller than their English counterparts who served in the Royal Marines at the same time. The average height of Americans and Europeans decreased during periods of rapid industrialisation, possibly due to rapid population growth and broad decreases in economic status. This has become known as the early-industrial growth puzzle or in the U.S. context the Antebellum Puzzle. In England during the early-nineteenth century, the difference between average height of English upper-class youth (students of Sandhurst Military Academy) and English working-class youth (Marine Society boys) reached 22 cm (8.7 in), the highest that has been observed. Data derived from burials show that before 1850, the mean stature of males and females in Leiden, The Netherlands was respectively 166.7 cm (5 ft 5.6 in) and 156.7 cm (5 ft 1.7 in). The average height of 19-year-old Dutch orphans in 1865 was 160 cm (5 ft 3 in). According to a study by J.W. Drukker and Vincent Tassenaar, the average height of a Dutch person decreased from 1830-57, even while Dutch real GNP per capita was growing at an average rate of more than 0.5% per year. The worst decline were in urban areas that in 1847, the urban height penalty was 2.5 cm (1 in). Urban mortality was also much higher than rural regions. In 1829, the average urban and rural Dutchman was 164 cm (5 ft 4.6 in). By 1856, the average rural Dutchman was 162 cm (5 ft 3.8 in) and urban Dutchman was 158.5 cm (5 ft 2.4 in). A 2004 report citing a 2003 UNICEF study on the effects of malnutrition in North Korea, due to "successive famines," found young adult males to be significantly shorter. In contrast South Koreans "feasting on an increasingly Western-influenced diet," without famine, were growing taller. The height difference is minimal for Koreans over forty years old, who grew up at a time when economic conditions in the North were roughly comparable to those in the South, while height disparities are most acute for Koreans who grew up in the mid-1990s – a demographic in which South Koreans are about taller than their North Korean counterparts – as this was a period during which the North was affected by a harsh famine where hundreds of thousands, if not millions, died of hunger. A study by South Korean anthropologists of North Korean children who had defected to China found that eighteen-year-old males were 5 inches (13 cm) shorter than South Koreans their age due to malnutrition. The tallest living man is Sultan Kösen of Turkey, at . The tallest man in modern history was Robert Pershing Wadlow (1918–1940), from Illinois, United States, who was at the time of his death. The tallest woman in medical history was Zeng Jinlian of Hunan, China, who stood when she died at the age of seventeen. The shortest adult human on record was Chandra Bahadur Dangi of Nepal at . Adult height between populations often differs significantly. For example, the average height of women from the Czech Republic is greater than that of men from Malawi. This may be caused by genetic differences, childhood lifestyle differences (nutrition, sleep patterns, physical labor), or both. Depending on sex, genetic and environmental factors, shrinkage of stature may begin in middle age in some individuals but tends to be universal in the extremely aged. This decrease in height is due to such factors as decreased height of inter-vertebral discs because of desiccation, atrophy of soft tissues and postural changes secondary to degenerative disease. Working on data of Indonesia, the study by Baten, Stegl and van der Eng suggests a positive relationship of economic development and average height. In Indonesia, human height has decreased coincidentally with natural or political shocks. As with any statistical data, the accuracy of such data may be questionable for various reasons: Some studies may allow subjects to self-report values. Generally speaking, self-reported height tends to be taller than its measured height, although the overestimation of height depends on the reporting subject's height, age, gender and region., Test subjects may have been invited instead of chosen at random, resulting in sampling bias., Some countries may have significant height gaps between different regions. For instance, one survey shows there is gap between the tallest state and the shortest state in Germany. Under such circumstances, the mean height may not represent the total population unless sample subjects are appropriately taken from all regions with using weighted average of the different regional groups., Different social groups can show different mean height. According to a study in France, executives and professionals are taller, and university students are taller than the national average. As this case shows, data taken from a particular social group may not represent a total population in some countries., A relatively small sample of the population may have been measured, which makes it uncertain whether this sample accurately represents the entire population., The height of persons can vary over the course of a day, due to factors such as a height increase from exercise done directly before measurement (normally inversely correlated), or a height increase since lying down for a significant period of time (normally inversely correlated). For example, one study revealed a mean decrease of in the heights of 100 children from getting out of bed in the morning to between 4 and 5 p.m. that same day. Such factors may not have been controlled in some of the studies., Men from Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Netherlands, Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro have the tallest average height. Data suggests that Herzegovinians have the genetic potential to be more than two inches taller than the Dutch. In the Netherlands, about 35% of men have the genetic profile Y haplogroup I-M170, but in Herzegovina, the frequency is over 70%. Extrapolating the genetic trend line suggests that the average Herzegovinian man could possibly be as tall as 190 cm (nearly 6′ 3″). Many Herzegovinians do not achieve this potential due to poverty (citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina were 1.9 cm taller if both of their parents went to university, which is considered as a wealth indicator) and to nutritional choices: religious prohibition on pork may be largely to blame for the shorter average stature of Muslim Herzegovinians. Anthropometry, the measurement of the human individual, Body weight, History of anthropometry, Human physical appearance, Human variability, Pygmy peoples, Economics and Human Biology (for heights in U.S. and Japan), (for heights in Germany), Netherlands Central Bureau for Statistics, 1996 (for average heights), A collection of data on human height, referred to here as "karube" but originally collected from other sources, is archived here. A copy is available here (an English translation of this Japanese page would make it easier to evaluate the quality of the data...) CDC National Center for Health Statistics: Growth Charts of American Percentiles, fao.org, Body Weights and Heights by Countries (given in percentiles), The Height Gap, Article discussing differences in height around the world, Tallest in the World: Native Americans of the Great Plains in the Nineteenth Century, European Heights in the Early eighteenth Century, Spatial Convergence in Height in East-Central Europe, 1890–1910, The Biological Standard of Living in Europe During the Last Two Millennia, HEALTH AND NUTRITION IN THE PREINDUSTRIAL ERA: INSIGHTS FROM A MILLENNIUM OF AVERAGE HEIGHTS IN NORTHERN EUROPE, Our World In Data – Human Height – Visualizations of how human height around the world has changed historically (by Max Roser). Charts for all countries, world maps, and links to more data sources., What Has Happened to the Quality of Life in the Advanced Industrialized Nations?, A century of trends in adult human height, NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC), DOI: 10.7554/eLife.13410, 25 July 2016 A record of the heights of the presidents of the United States and presidential candidates is useful for evaluating what role, if any, height plays in presidential elections. Some observers have noted that the taller of the two major-party candidates tends to prevail, and argue this is due to the public's preference for taller candidates. The tallest U.S. president was Abraham Lincoln at , while the shortest was James Madison at . Donald Trump, the current president, is according to his official 2018 physical examination summary, though his 1964 Selective Service registration card states he is "approximately" . Mike Pence, the current vice president, is . Folk wisdom about U.S. presidential politics holds that the taller of the two major-party candidates always wins or almost always wins since the advent of the televised presidential debate. There is more data if the relationship of electoral success to height difference starts from the year 1900, rather than from the beginning of televised debates. In the twenty-eight presidential elections between 1900 and 2011, eighteen of the winning candidates have been taller than their opponents, while eight have been shorter, and two have been of the same height. On average the winner was taller than the loser. The claims about taller candidates winning almost all modern presidential elections is still pervasive, however. Examples of such views include: In Ray Bradbury's 1953 dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451, when Mildred and her friends talk about the success of one presidential candidate over the other in a recent election, they talk only about the attractiveness of the winning candidate over the loser. One of their points is "You just don't go running a little short man like that against a tall man.", A 1988 article in the Los Angeles Times fashion section about a haberdasher devoted to clothing shorter men included a variation of the tale: "Stern says he just learned that Dukakis is 5 feet, 8 inches. 'Did you know,' he adds, noticeably disappointed, 'that since 1900 the taller of the two candidates always wins?'", A 1997 book called How to Make Anyone Fall in Love with You discusses the issue in a section about the importance of height: "What about height? One assumes the taller the better, because our culture venerates height. In fact, practically every president elected in the United States since 1900 was the taller of the two candidates.", A chapter titled "Epistemology at the Core of Postmodernism" in the 2002 book Telling the Truth: Evangelizing Postmodernisms makes this observation: "I remember the subversive effect the observation had on me that in every U.S. presidential race, the taller of the two candidates had been elected. It opened up space for a counterdiscourse to the presumed rationality of the electoral process.", A 1975 book called First Impressions: The Psychology of Encountering Others notes: "Elevator Shoes, Anyone? One factor which has a far-reaching influence on how people are perceived, at least in American society, is height. From 1900 to 1968 the man elected U.S. president was always the taller of the two candidates. (Richard Nixon was slightly shorter than George McGovern.)", A 1978 book titled The Psychology of Person Identification states: "They also say that every President of the USA elected since the turn of the [20th] century has been the taller of the two candidates (Jimmy Carter being an exception).", A 1999 book, Survival of the Prettiest by Nancy Etcoff, repeated a version of the legend in a section on the power of heights: "... Since 1776 only [two Presidents,] James Madison and Benjamin Harrison[,] have been below-average height. The easiest way to predict the winner in a United States election is to bet on the taller man: in this century you would have had an unbroken string of hits until 1972 when Richard Nixon beat George McGovern." A comparison of the heights of the winning presidential candidate with the losing candidate from each election since 1789 is provided below to evaluate such views. Notes: * Lost the electoral vote, but received more popular votes ** Lost the House of Representatives vote, but received the most popular votes and a plurality of electoral votes; however, not the majority needed to win. † Ran unopposed The tallest president elected to office was Abraham Lincoln (). Portrait artist Francis Bicknell Carpenter supplies the information for Lincoln: Mr. Lincoln's height was six feet three and three-quarter inches "in his stocking- feet." He stood up one day, at the right of my large canvas, while I marked his exact height upon it. A disputed theory holds that Lincoln's height is the result of the genetic condition multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2b (MEN2B); see medical and mental health of Abraham Lincoln. Only slightly shorter than Lincoln was Lyndon B. Johnson (), the tallest President who originally entered office without being elected directly, and President Donald Trump (). The shortest President elected to office was James Madison (); the shortest President to originally enter the office by means other than election is tied between Millard Fillmore and Harry S. Truman (both were ). The tallest unsuccessful presidential candidate (who is also the tallest of all presidential candidates) is Winfield Scott, who stood at and lost the 1852 election to Franklin Pierce, who stood at . The second tallest unsuccessful candidate is John Kerry, at . The shortest unsuccessful presidential candidate is Stephen A. Douglas, at . The next shortest is Hillary Clinton, who lost the 2016 election and is . The largest height difference between two presidential candidates (out of the candidates whose heights are known) was in the 1860 election, when Abraham Lincoln stood taller than opponent Stephen A. Douglas. The second-largest difference was in the 1812 election, with De Witt Clinton standing taller than incumbent James Madison. The 2016 election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton has the third largest difference at , and was notable for being the first time two candidates from major parties were of different genders. Stats: Does the taller man always win?, The Straight Dope: Does the taller candidate always win the election?, Presidential Timber Tends To Be Tall Below are average adult human heights by country or geographical region. The original studies and sources should be consulted for details on methodology and the exact populations measured, surveyed, or considered. As with any statistical data, the accuracy of such data may be questionable for various reasons: Some studies may allow subjects to self-report values. Generally speaking, self-reported height tends to be taller than its measured height, although the overestimation of height depends on the reporting subject's height, age, gender and region., Test subjects may have been invited instead of chosen at random, resulting in sampling bias., Some countries may have significant height gaps between different regions. For instance, one survey shows there is gap between the tallest state and the shortest state in Germany. Under such circumstances, the mean height may not represent the total population unless sample subjects are appropriately taken from all regions with using weighted average of the different regional groups., Different social groups can show different mean height. According to a study in France, executives and professionals are taller, and university students are taller than the national average. As this case shows, data taken from a particular social group may not represent a total population in some countries., A relatively small sample of the population may have been measured, which makes it uncertain whether this sample accurately represents the entire population., The height of persons can vary over the course of a day, due to factors such as a height decrease from exercise done directly before measurement (i.e. inversely correlated), or a height increase since lying down for a significant period of time (i.e. positively correlated). For example, one study revealed a mean decrease of in the heights of 100 children from getting out of bed in the morning to between 4 and 5 p.m. that same day. Such factors may not have been controlled in some of the studies. Note: Letters in grey indicate non-measured height. A century of trends in adult human height by NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC)

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Epithelium () is one of the four basic types of animal tissue, along with connective tissue, muscle tissue and nervous tissue. Epithelial tissues line the outer surfaces of organs and blood vessels throughout the body, as well as the inner surfaces of cavities in many internal organs. An example is the epidermis, the outermost layer of the skin. There are three principal shapes of epithelial cell: squamous, columnar, and cuboidal. These can be arranged in a single layer of cells as simple epithelium, either squamous, columnar, or cuboidal, or in layers of two or more cells deep as stratified (layered), either squamous, columnar or cuboidal. In some tissues, a layer of columnar cells may appear to be stratified due to the placement of the nuclei. This sort of tissue is called pseudostratified. All glands are made up of epithelial cells. Functions of epithelial cells include secretion, selective absorption, protection, transcellular transport, and sensing. Epithelial layers contain no blood vessels, so they must receive nourishment via diffusion of substances from the underlying connective tissue, through the basement membrane. Cell junctions are well employed in epithelial tissues. In general, epithelial tissues are classified by the number of their layers and by the shape and function of the cells. The three principal shapes associated with epithelial cells are—squamous, cuboidal and columnar. Squamous epithelium has cells that are wider than their height (flat and scale-like). This is found as the lining of the mouth, oesophagus, and including blood vessels and in the alveoli of the lungs., Cuboidal epithelium has cells whose height and width are approximately the same (cube shaped)., Columnar epithelium has cells taller than they are wide (column-shaped). By layer, epithelium is classed as either simple epithelium, only one cell thick (unilayered) or stratified epithelium having two or more cells in thickness or multi-layered – as stratified squamous epithelium, stratified cuboidal epithelium, and stratified columnar epithelium, and both types of layering can be made up of any of the cell shapes. However, when taller simple columnar epithelial cells are viewed in cross section showing several nuclei appearing at different heights, they can be confused with stratified epithelia. This kind of epithelium is therefore described as pseudostratified columnar epithelium. Transitional epithelium has cells that can change from squamous to cuboidal, depending on the amount of tension on the epithelium. Simple epithelium is a single layer of cells with every cell in direct contact with the basement membrane that separates it from the underlying connective tissue. In general, it is found where absorption and filtration occur. The thinness of the epithelial barrier facilitates these processes. In general, simple epithelial tissues are classified by the shape of their cells. The four major classes of simple epithelium are: (1) simple squamous; (2) simple cuboidal; (3) simple columnar; (4) pseudostratified. Stratified epithelium differs from simple epithelium in that it is multilayered. It is therefore found where body linings have to withstand mechanical or chemical insult such that layers can be abraded and lost without exposing subepithelial layers. Cells flatten as the layers become more apical, though in their most basal layers the cells can be squamous, cuboidal or columnar. Stratified epithelia (of columnar, cuboidal or squamous type) can have the following specializations: The basic cell types are squamous, cuboidal, and columnar classed by their shape. Epithelial tissue is scutoid shaped, tightly packed and form a continuous sheet. It has almost no intercellular spaces. All epithelia is usually separated from underlying tissues by an extracellular fibrous basement membrane. The lining of the mouth, lung alveoli and kidney tubules are all made of epithelial tissue. The lining of the blood and lymphatic vessels are of a specialised form of epithelium called endothelium. Epithelium lines both the outside (skin) and the inside cavities and lumina of bodies. The outermost layer of human skin is composed of dead stratified squamous, keratinized epithelial cells. Tissues that line the inside of the mouth, the esophagus, the vagina, and part of the rectum are composed of nonkeratinized stratified squamous epithelium. Other surfaces that separate body cavities from the outside environment are lined by simple squamous, columnar, or pseudostratified epithelial cells. Other epithelial cells line the insides of the lungs, the gastrointestinal tract, the reproductive and urinary tracts, and make up the exocrine and endocrine glands. The outer surface of the cornea is covered with fast-growing, easily regenerated epithelial cells. A specialised form of epithelium, endothelium, forms the inner lining of blood vessels and the heart, and is known as vascular endothelium, and lining lymphatic vessels as lymphatic endothelium. Another type, mesothelium, forms the walls of the pericardium, pleurae, and peritoneum. In arthropods, the integument, or external "skin", consists of a single layer of epithelial ectoderm from which arises the cuticle, an outer covering of chitin, the rigidity of which varies as per its chemical composition. Epithelial tissue rests on a basement membrane, which acts as a scaffolding on which epithelium can grow and regenerate after injuries. Epithelial tissue has a nerve supply, but no blood supply and must be nourished by substances diffusing from the blood vessels in the underlying tissue. The basement membrane acts as a selectively permeable membrane that determines which substances will be able to enter the epithelium. Cell junctions are especially abundant in epithelial tissues. They consist of protein complexes and provide contact between neighbouring cells, between a cell and the extracellular matrix, or they build up the paracellular barrier of epithelia and control the paracellular transport. Cell junctions are the contact points between plasma membrane and tissue cells. There are mainly 5 different types of cell junctions: tight junctions, adherens junctions, desmosomes, hemidesmosomes, and gap junctions. Tight junctions are a pair of trans-membrane protein fused on outer plasma membrane. Adherens junctions are a plaque (protein layer on the inside plasma membrane) which attaches both cells' microfilaments. Desmosomes attach to the microfilaments of cytoskeleton made up of keratin protein. Hemidesmosomes resemble desmosomes on a section. They are made up of the integrin (a transmembrane protein) instead of cadherin. They attach the epithelial cell to the basement membrane. Gap junctions connect the cytoplasm of two cells and are made up of proteins called connexins (six of which come together to make a connexion). Epithelial tissues are derived from all of the embryological germ layers: from ectoderm (e.g., the epidermis);, from endoderm (e.g., the lining of the gastrointestinal tract);, from mesoderm (e.g., the inner linings of body cavities). However, it is important to note that pathologists do not consider endothelium and mesothelium (both derived from mesoderm) to be true epithelium. This is because such tissues present very different pathology. For that reason, pathologists label cancers in endothelium and mesothelium sarcomas, whereas true epithelial cancers are called carcinomas. Additionally, the filaments that support these mesoderm-derived tissues are very distinct. Outside of the field of pathology, it is generally accepted that the epithelium arises from all three germ layers. Epithelial tissues have as their primary functions: 1. to protect the tissues that lie beneath from radiation, desiccation, toxins, invasion by pathogens, and physical trauma 2. the regulation and exchange of chemicals between the underlying tissues and a body cavity 3. the secretion of hormones into the circulatory system, as well as the secretion of sweat, mucus, enzymes, and other products that are delivered by ducts 4. to provide sensation 5. Absorb water and digested food in the lining of digestive canal. Glandular tissue is the type of epithelium that forms the glands from the infolding of epithelium and subsequent growth in the underlying connective tissue. There are two major classifications of glands: endocrine glands and exocrine glands: Endocrine glands secrete their product into the extracellular space where it is rapidly taken up by the circulatory system., Exocrine glands secrete their products into a duct that then delivers the product to the lumen of an organ or onto the free surface of the epithelium. "Some epithelial cells are ciliated, especially in respiratory epithelium, and they commonly exist as a sheet of polarised cells forming a tube or tubule with cilia projecting into the lumen." Primary cilia on epithelial cells provide chemosensation, thermoception, and mechanosensation of the extracellular environment by playing "a sensory role mediating specific signalling cues, including soluble factors in the external cell environment, a secretory role in which a soluble protein is released to have an effect downstream of the fluid flow, and mediation of fluid flow if the cilia are motile." The slide shows at (1) an epithelial cell infected by Chlamydia pneumoniae; their inclusion bodies shown at (3); an uninfected cell shown at (2) and (4) showing the difference between an infected cell nucleus and an uninfected cell nucleus. Epithelium grown in culture can be identified by examining its morphological characteristics. Epithelial cells tend to cluster together, and have a "characteristic tight pavement-like appearance". But this is not always the case, such as when the cells are derived from a tumor. In these cases, it is often necessary to use certain biochemical markers to make a positive identification. The intermediate filament proteins in the cytokeratin group are almost exclusively found in epithelial cells, and so are often used for this purpose. Cancers originating from the epithelium are classified as carcinomas. In contrast, sarcomas develop in connective tissue. When epithelial cells or tissues are damaged from cystic fibrosis, sweat glands are also damaged, causing a frosty coating of the skin. The word epithelium uses the Greek roots ἐπί (epi), "on" or "upon", and θηλή (thēlē), "nipple". Epithelium is so called because the name was originally used to describe the translucent covering of small "nipples" of tissue on the lip. The word has both mass and count senses; the plural form is epithelia. Dark cell, Epithelial-mesenchymal transition, Epithelial polarity, Glycocalyx, Inner and Outer enamel epithelium, Iris pigment epithelium, Neuroepithelial cell, Retinal pigment epithelium, Skin cancer, Sulcular epithelium Epithelium Photomicrographs, Simple squamous epithelium of the glomerulus (kidney), Diagrams of simple squamous epithelium, Stratified squamous epithelium of the vagina, Stratified squamous epithelium of the skin (thin skin), Stratified squamous epithelium of the skin (thick skin), Stratified squamous epithelium of the esophagus, Microanatomy Web Atlas Situated along the perimeter of the adrenal gland, the adrenal cortex mediates the stress response through the production of mineralocorticoids and glucocorticoids, such as aldosterone and cortisol, respectively. It is also a secondary site of androgen synthesis. The adrenal cortex comprises three main zones, or layers that are regulated by distinct hormones as noted below. This anatomic zonation can be appreciated at the microscopic level, where each zone can be recognized and distinguished from one another based on structural and anatomic characteristics. Zona glomerulosa Zona fasciculata Zona reticularis The precursor of steroids synthesized in the adrenal cortex is cholesterol that is stored in vesicles. Cholesterol can be synthesized de novo in the adrenal cortex. Yet, the major source of cholesterol appears to be cholesterol that is taken up with circulating lipoproteins. The steps up to this point occur in many steroid-producing tissues. Subsequent steps to generate aldosterone and cortisol, however, primarily occur in the adrenal cortex: Progesterone → (hydroxylation at C21) → 11-Deoxycorticosterone → (two further hydroxylations at C11 and C18) → Aldosterone, Progesterone → (hydroxylation at C17) → 17-alpha-hydroxyprogesterone → (hydroxylation at C21) → 11-Deoxycortisol → (hydroxylation at C11) → Cortisol The adrenal cortex produces a number of different corticosteroid hormones. The primary mineralocorticoid, aldosterone, is produced in the adrenocortical zona glomerulosa by the action of the enzyme aldosterone synthase (also known as CYP11B2). Aldosterone is largely responsible for the long-term regulation of blood pressure. Aldosterone effects on the distal convoluted tubule and collecting duct of the kidney where it causes increased reabsorption of sodium and increased excretion of both potassium (by principal cells) and hydrogen ions (by intercalated cells of the collecting duct). Sodium retention is also a response of the distal colon, and sweat glands to aldosterone receptor stimulation. Although sustained production of aldosterone requires persistent calcium entry through low-voltage activated Ca channels, isolated zona glomerulosa cells are considered nonexcitable, with recorded membrane voltages that are too hyperpolarized to permit Ca channels entry. Glucocorticoids are produced in the zona fasciculata. The primary glucocorticoid released by the adrenal gland is cortisol in humans and corticosterone in many other animals. Its secretion is regulated by the hormone ACTH from the anterior pituitary. They are produced in the zona reticularis. The most important androgens include: Testosterone: a hormone with a wide variety of effects, ranging from enhancing muscle mass and stimulation of cell growth to the development of the secondary sex characteristics., Dihydrotestosterone (DHT): a metabolite of testosterone, and a more potent androgen than testosterone in that it binds more strongly to androgen receptors., Androstenedione (Andro): an androgenic steroid produced by the testes, adrenal cortex, and ovaries. While androstenediones are converted metabolically to testosterone and other androgens, they are also the parent structure of estrone., Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA): It is the primary precursor of natural estrogens. DHEA is also called dehydroisoandrosterone or dehydroandrosterone. The reticularis also produces DHEA-sulfate due to the actions of a sulfotransferase, SULT2A1. Adrenal insufficiency (e.g. due to Addison's disease), Cushing's syndrome, Cushing's disease, Conn's syndrome, Adrenocortical carcinoma Adrenarche, Adrenopause – "Posterior Abdominal Wall: Blood Supply to the Suprarenal Glands" The integumentary system comprises the skin and its appendages acting to protect the body from various kinds of damage, such as loss of water or damages from outside. The integumentary system includes hair, scales, feathers, hooves, and nails. It has a variety of additional functions; it may serve to waterproof, and protect the deeper tissues, excrete wastes, and regulate body temperature, and is the attachment site for sensory receptors to detect pain, sensation, pressure, and temperature. In most land vertebrates with significant exposure to sunlight, the integumentary system also provides for vitamin D synthesis. The skin is the largest organ of the body. In humans, it accounts for about 12 to 15 percent of total body weight and covers 1.5-2m of surface area. The human skin (integument) is composed of at least two major layers of tissue: the epidermis and dermis. (The hypodermis or subcutaneous layer is not part of the skin.) The epidermis is the outermost layer, providing the initial barrier to the external environment. It is separated from the dermis by the basement membrane. The epidermis contains melanocytes and gives color to the skin. The deepest layer of epidermis also contains nerve endings. Beneath this, the dermis comprises two sections, the papillary and reticular layers, and contains connective tissues, vessels, glands, follicles, hair roots, sensory nerve endings, and muscular tissue. The deepest layer, the hypodermis, is primarily made up of adipose tissue. Substantial collagen bundles anchor the dermis to the hypodermis in a way that permits most areas of the skin to move freely over the deeper tissue layers. The epidermis is the top layer of skin made up of epithelial cells. It does not contain blood vessels. Its main functions are protection, absorption of nutrients, and homeostasis. In structure, it consists of a keratinized stratified squamous epithelium; four types of cells: keratinocytes, melanocytes, Merkel cells, and Langerhans cells. The major cell of the epidermis is the keratinocyte, which produces keratin, a fibrous protein that aids in skin protection. An overwhelming amount of keratin can cause disease by giving rise to eruptions from the skin that will protrude outwards and lead to infection. Keratin is also a waterproofing protein. Millions of dead keratinocytes rub off daily. The majority of the skin on the body is keratinized. The only skin on the body that is non-keratinized is the lining of mucous membranes, such as the inside of the mouth. Non-keratinized cells allow water to "stay" atop the structure. The protein keratin stiffens epidermal tissue to form fingernails. Nails grow from a thin area called the nail matrix at an average of 1 mm per week. The lunula is the crescent-shape area at the base of the nail, lighter in color as it mixes with the matrix cells. Also, the stratum corneum is the top part of the epidermis. The dermis is the middle layer of skin, composed of dense irregular connective tissue and areolar connective tissue such as a collagen with elastin arranged in a diffusely bundled and woven pattern. The dermis has two layers. One is the papillary layer which is the superficial layer and consists of the areolar connective tissue. The other is the reticular layer which is the deep layer of the dermis and consists of the dense irregular connective tissue. These layers serve to give elasticity to the integument, allowing stretching and conferring flexibility, while also resisting distortions, wrinkling, and sagging. The dermal layer provides a site for the endings of blood vessels and nerves. Many chromatophores are also stored in this layer, as are the bases of integumental structures such as hair, feathers, and glands. The hypodermis, otherwise known as the subcutaneous layer, is a layer beneath the skin. It invaginates into the dermis and is attached to the latter, immediately above it, by collagen and elastin fibers. It is essentially composed of a type of cell known as adipocytes specialized in accumulating and storing fats. These cells are grouped together in lobules separated by connective tissue. The hypodermis acts as an energy reserve. The fats contained in the adipocytes can be put back into circulation, via the venous route, during intense effort or when there is a lack of energy-providing substances, and are then transformed into energy. The hypodermis participates, passively at least, in thermoregulation since fat is a heat insulator. The integumentary system has multiple roles in homeostasis. All body systems work in an interconnected manner to maintain the internal conditions essential to the function of the body. The skin has an important job of protecting the body and acts as the body’s first line of defense against infection, temperature change, and other challenges to homeostasis. Functions include: Protect the body’s internal living tissues and organs, Protect against invasion by infectious organisms, Protect the body from dehydration, Protect the body against abrupt changes in temperature, maintain homeostasis, Help excrete waste materials through perspiration, Act as a receptor for touch, pressure, pain, heat, and cold (see Somatosensory system), Protect the body against sunburns by secreting melanin, Generate vitamin D through exposure to ultraviolet light, Store water, fat, glucose, vitamin D, Maintenance of the body form, Formation of new cells from stratum germanium to repair minor injuries, Protect from UV rays., Regulates body temperature It distinguishes, separates, and protects the organism from its surroundings. Small-bodied invertebrates of aquatic or continually moist habitats respire using the outer layer (integument). This gas exchange system, where gases simply diffuse into and out of the interstitial fluid, is called integumentary exchange. Possible diseases and injuries to the human integumentary system include: Rash, Yeast, Athlete's foot, Infection, Sunburn, Skin cancer, Albinism, Acne, Herpes, Herpes labialis, commonly called cold sores, Impetigo, Rubella, Cancer, Psoriasis, Rabies, Rosacea, Atopic dermatitis, Eczema

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SoFi Stadium is a stadium and entertainment complex under construction in Inglewood, California, United States. It is located at the former site of the Hollywood Park Racetrack, approximately from LAX, immediately southeast of The Forum. Planned to open in July 2020, the stadium will serve as the home to the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers of the National Football League (NFL). It is also scheduled to host Super Bowl LVI in February 2022 and the College Football Playoff National Championship in January 2023. During the 2028 Summer Olympics, the stadium is expected to host the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as soccer. Archery will be held on the grounds outside the stadium. SoFi Stadium will be the third stadium, and second to be in current use, since the 1970 AFL–NFL merger to be shared by two NFL teams (MetLife Stadium, in East Rutherford, New Jersey, is home to the New York Giants and New York Jets, as was its predecessor, Giants Stadium). It will be the fourth facility in the Los Angeles area to host multiple teams from the same league as Staples Center is home to both of the city's National Basketball Association (NBA) teams, the Los Angeles Clippers and Los Angeles Lakers, Dignity Health Sports Park for a time hosted both the LA Galaxy and now- defunct Chivas USA of Major League Soccer, and Dodger Stadium hosted the Los Angeles Dodgers and Los Angeles Angels from 1962 to 1965. The stadium is a component of Hollywood Park, a master planned neighborhood in development on the site of the former racetrack. Hollywood Park Casino re-opened in a new building on the property in October 2016, becoming the development's first establishment to open. The stadium was designed by HKS; it will feature a fixed, translucent ETFE roof—designed to cover both the stadium proper and an adjacent pedestrian plaza. The stadium bowl will have open sides. Another component of the stadium's design is "the Oculus"—an ovular, double-sided video board that will be suspended from the roof over the field. The stadium will seat up to 70,240 spectators for most events, with the ability to expand it with 30,000 additional seats for larger events. The stadium site was previously home to Hollywood Park, later sold and referred to as Betfair Hollywood Park, which was a thoroughbred race course from 1938 until it was shut down for racing and training in December 2013. The casino remained open, containing a poker card room. Most of the complex was demolished in 2014 to make way for new construction with the rest demolished in late 2016 after the new Hollywood Park Casino was opened. The current stadium project was not the first stadium proposed for the site. The site was almost home to a NFL stadium two decades earlier. In May 1995 after the departure of the Rams for St. Louis, the National Football League team owners approved, by a 27-1 vote with two abstentions, a resolution supporting a plan to build a $200 million, privately funded stadium on property owned by Hollywood Park for the Los Angeles Raiders. Al Davis, who was then the Raiders owner, balked and refused the deal over a stipulation that he would have had to accept a second team at the stadium. On January 31, 2014, the Los Angeles Times reported that Stan Kroenke, owner of the St. Louis Rams, purchased a parcel of land just north of the Hollywood Park site in an area that had been studied by the National Football League in the past and at one point attempted to purchase. This set off immediate speculation as to what Kroenke's intentions were for the site: it was originally planned to be a Walmart Supercenter; however, in 2014, most of the speculation centered on the site as a possible stadium site or training facility for the Rams. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell represented that Kroenke informed the league of the purchase. As an NFL owner, any purchase of land in which a potential stadium could be built must be disclosed to the league. Speculation about the Rams' returning to their home of nearly fifty years had already been discussed when Kroenke was one of the finalists in bidding for ownership in the Los Angeles Dodgers, but speculation increased when the news broke that the Rams owner had a possible stadium site in hand. Nearly a year went by without a word from Kroenke about his intentions for the land, as he failed to ever address the St. Louis media, or the Hollywood Park Land Company, about what the site may be used for. There was, however, speculation about the future of the Rams franchise until it was reported that the National Football League would not be allowing any franchise relocation for the 2015 season. On January 5, 2015, Stockbridge Capital Group, the owners of the Hollywood Park Land Company, announced that it had partnered with Kroenke Sports & Entertainment to add the northern parcel to the rest of the development project and build a multi-purpose 70,240-seat stadium designed for the NFL. On February 24, 2015, the Inglewood City Council approved the stadium plan and the initiative with construction on the stadium planned to begin in December 2015. The project would include the stadium and a performance arts venue attached to the stadium with up to 6,000 seats, while reconfiguring the previously approved Hollywood Park entertainment venue that includes plans for up to of retail, of office space, 2,500 new residential and condo units, a luxury hotel with over 300 rooms and of public parks, playgrounds, open space, a lake and pedestrian, bicycle and mass-transit access for future services. On February 24, 2015, the Inglewood City Council approved plans with a 5–0 unanimous vote to combine the plot of land with the larger Hollywood Park development and rezone the area to include sports and entertainment capabilities. This essentially cleared the way for developers to begin construction on the venue as planned in December 2015. It was also reported, in early February 2015, that "earth was being moved" and the site was being graded to be prepared for the construction that would begin later in the year. The NFL approved the Inglewood proposal and the Rams' relocation back to Los Angeles, 30–2, on January 12, 2016. On July 14, 2016, it was announced that Turner Construction and AECOM Hunt would oversee construction of the stadium and that the HKS, Inc. architect firm will design the stadium. On October 19, 2016, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) determined that a tall LB 44 rotary drill rig would not pose a hazard to air navigation, so it approved the first of several pieces of heavy equipment to be used during construction. The stadium design had been under review by the FAA for more than a year because of concerns about how the structure would interact with radar at nearby Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). On December 16, 2016, it was reported in Sports Business Journal that the FAA had declined to issue permits for cranes needed to build the structure. "We’re not going to evaluate any crane applications until our concerns with the overall project are resolved," said FAA spokesman Ian Gregor. The FAA had previously recommended building the stadium at another site due to the risks posed to LAX—echoing concerns raised by former United States Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge. The Rams held the groundbreaking construction ceremony at the stadium site on November 17, 2016. The ceremony featured NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and Rams' owner Stan Kroenke. On December 23, 2016, the FAA approved the large construction cranes to build the stadium. On May 18, 2017, developers announced that record rainfall in the area had postponed the stadium's completion and opening from 2019 to until the 2020 NFL season. On August 8, 2017, the LA Stadium Premiere Center opened in Playa Vista, featuring interactive multimedia displays and models showcasing the design and features of the new stadium (with a particular focus on prospective buyers of premium suites and seats at the facility). In March 2018, the NFL announced that it would re-locate its NFL Media unit (which manages the NFL's in-house media units, including NFL Network, digital properties, and NFL Films among other units) from Culver City to a new facility neighboring the stadium on the Hollywood Park site, which will include a studio capable of hosting audiences, as well as an outdoor studio. The new facility is expected to be completed in 2021. On June 26, 2018, the new stadium was ceremonially topped out. As of August 2019, one year before the planned opening, Rams C.O.O. Kevin Demoff stated that the stadium was 75% complete. In September 2019, it was announced that the stadium would host a two-night stop on Taylor Swift's Lover Fest tour on July 25 and 26, 2020, as its inaugural event. In January 2020, Demoff stated that construction was now 85% complete, with roof construction, seat installation, and construction of the Oculus in progress. On September 15, 2019, it was announced that personal finance company SoFi had acquired the naming rights to the new stadium under a 20-year deal valued at over $30 million per-year, under which the stadium will be known as SoFi Stadium. The company will become an official partner of both the Rams and the Chargers, as well as a partner of the performance venue and surrounding entertainment district. The covered open space formerly known as Champions Plaza between the playing field and the performance venue within the stadium was officially named American Airlines Plaza. The airline was named the first founding partner on August 6, 2019. The stadium is being built privately, but the developer is seeking significant tax breaks from Inglewood. The cost of the stadium project was originally estimated to be approximately $2.66 billion upon the commencement of construction. However, internal league documents produced by the NFL in March 2018 indicated a need to raise the debt ceiling for the stadium and facility to a total of $4.963 billion, making it one of the most expensive sports venues ever built. Team owners voted and approved this new debt ceiling at a meeting that same month. The Los Angeles Rams were first to commit to moving to the stadium, as NFL approval for their relocation was obtained on January 12, 2016. The approval also gave the San Diego Chargers the first option to relocate to Los Angeles and share the stadium with the Rams, conditioned on a negotiated lease agreement between the two teams. The option would have expired on January 15, 2017, at which time the Oakland Raiders would have acquired the same option. On January 29, 2016, the Rams and Chargers came to an agreement in principle to share the stadium. The Chargers would contribute a $200 million stadium loan from the NFL and personal seat license fees to the construction costs and would pay $1 per year in rent to the Rams. The same day, Chargers chairman-CEO Dean Spanos announced the team would remain in San Diego for the 2016 NFL season, while continuing to work with local government on a new stadium. Measure C (the Chargers stadium proposal) did not receive the requisite number of votes required for passage. On January 12, 2017, the Chargers exercised their option and announced plans to relocate to Los Angeles for the 2017 season, making the Chargers the second tenant at the stadium and returning them to the market where they played their inaugural season in 1960. When the Rams and Chargers move into the stadium, projected for August 2020, it will mark the return of major professional sports to Inglewood for the first time since the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Kings left The Forum for Staples Center in Downtown Los Angeles in May 1999. The stadium will host Super Bowl LVI in February 2022. For the first time since Super Bowl XXVII, the Super Bowl will come to greater Los Angeles. It was initially to host Super Bowl LV in 2021, but construction delays mentioned above have pushed back the Super Bowl hosting duties by one year (NFL owners voted to move Super Bowl LV to Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida). The Mountain West and Pac-12 conferences announced plans to play a new bowl game at SoFi Stadium, tentatively known as the Los Angeles Bowl, beginning in the 2020 season. On November 1, 2017, it was announced that the stadium will host the 2023 College Football Playoff National Championship. A local bid for Los Angeles in the 2026 FIFA World Cup was organized by private businesses led by AEG with assistance from the Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment District Commission (SoFi Stadium), LAFC, the LA Galaxy, and Rose Bowl Stadium. The Los Angeles City Council approved the bid after private businesses showed support and offered to pay hosting costs. The SoFi Stadium was not selected as a bidding venue in the winning Canada–Mexico–United States bid because the organizing committee left unbuilt venues out of its final evaluations. The United Bid committee stated they would re-evaluate the stadium selection process and re-visit SoFi Stadium as their main option stadium in the Los Angeles Metro area in June 2020. The American bid to host the World Cup was awarded by FIFA on June 13, 2018. SoFi Stadium at Hollywood Park is expected to host all or part of the opening and closing ceremonies during the 2028 Summer Olympics (with organizers having proposed a split format that would also incorporate the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum). The stadium will also host Archery and soccer matches. SoFi Stadium has been prospected as a site for a future edition of WWE's flagship professional wrestling event WrestleMania, with the Los Angeles Times having reported it as being a "front-runner". Los Angeles has not hosted the event since 2005 at Staples Center (since WrestleMania 23 in 2007, WWE has consistently preferred to host WrestleMania at football stadiums rather than indoor arenas). On September 17, 2019, it was announced that Taylor Swift will perform two concerts on July 25 and 26, 2020, titled Lover Fest West, as the grand opening event to open the stadium. She will be the first female artist to open an NFL stadium. On September 24, 2019, it was announced that singer Kenny Chesney will have his Chillaxification Tour in August 1, 2020. The development around the stadium will include the new Hollywood Park entertainment complex and master-planned neighborhood with over for office space and condominiums, a 12-screen Cinepolis movie theater, ballrooms, outdoor spaces for community programming, retail, a fitness center, a lake with a waterfall fountain, a luxury hotel, a brewery, high-scale restaurants and an open-air shopping and entertainment complex. There will also be team stores for the Chargers and Rams. The first new establishment to open service on the site was the new Hollywood Park Casino, which opened on October 21, 2016. The stadium will also include a music and theatre venue that will be attached to the stadium. The auditorium venue will have a capacity of 6,000 seats. The stadium will be accessible through Metro Rail via Crenshaw/LAX Line which is set to open in 2020. The SoFi Stadium project plan competed directly with a rival proposal. On February 19, 2015, the Oakland Raiders and the San Diego Chargers announced plans for a privately financed $1.85 billion stadium that the two teams would have built in Carson if they were to move to the Los Angeles market. Both teams stated that they would continue to attempt to get stadiums built in their respective cities. On April 21, 2015, Carson City Council bypassed the option to put the stadium to a public vote and approved the plan, 3–0. The NFL approved the Rams' relocation on January 12, 2016, with 30 of the 32 owners voting their approval to relocate, effectively ending the Carson proposal. History of the Los Angeles Rams, History of the Los Angeles Chargers, History of the National Football League in Los Angeles, Inglewood Basketball and Entertainment Center, Allegiant Stadium, another new NFL stadium set to open in 2020 as the home of the Las Vegas Raiders and NCAA's UNLV Rebels football in Las Vegas, Nevada. Hollywood Park development website, Webcam of SoFi Stadium, Construction page for stadium from Turner/Hunt, Stadium presentation from HKS SDCCU Stadium is a multi-purpose stadium in San Diego, California, United States. The stadium opened in 1967 as San Diego Stadium and was known as Jack Murphy Stadium from 1981 to 1997. From 1997 to 2017, the stadium's naming rights were owned by San Diego-based telecommunications equipment company Qualcomm, and the stadium was known as Qualcomm Stadium. The naming rights expired on June 14, 2017 and was purchased by San Diego County Credit Union renaming the facility as SDCCU Stadium on September 19, 2017. It is the home of the San Diego State Aztecs football team from San Diego State University. One college football bowl game, the Holiday Bowl, is held in the stadium every December. It was briefly also the home of the San Diego Fleet of the Alliance of American Football in early 2019. The stadium was the longtime home of two professional franchises: the San Diego Chargers of the National Football League (NFL) and the San Diego Padres of Major League Baseball (MLB). The Chargers played at the stadium from 1967 through the 2016 season, after which they moved to Los Angeles to become the Los Angeles Chargers. The Padres played home games at the stadium from their founding in 1969 through the 2003 season, when they moved to Petco Park in downtown San Diego. The stadium was also home to a second college bowl game, the Poinsettia Bowl, from 2005 until its discontinuation following the 2016 edition. The stadium has hosted three Super Bowls: Super Bowl XXII in 1988, Super Bowl XXXII in 1998, and Super Bowl XXXVII in 2003. It has also hosted the 1978 and 1992 Major League Baseball All-Star Games, as well as games of the 1996 and 1998 National League Division Series, the 1984 and 1998 National League Championship Series, and the 1984 and 1998 World Series. It is the only stadium ever to host both the Super Bowl and the World Series in the same year (1998), and it is one of three stadiums to host the World Series, the MLB All-Star Game, and the Super Bowl, along with the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis and Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles. The stadium is located immediately northwest of the interchange of Interstates 8 and 15. The neighborhood surrounding the stadium is known as Mission Valley, in reference to the Mission San Diego de Alcalá, which is located to the east, and its placement in the valley of the San Diego River. The stadium is served by the Stadium station of the San Diego Trolley, accessible via the Green Line running toward Downtown San Diego to the west, and Santee to the east. In the early 1960s, local sportswriter Jack Murphy, the brother of New York Mets broadcaster Bob Murphy, began to build up support for a multi-purpose stadium for San Diego. In November 1965, a $27 million bond was passed allowing construction to begin on a stadium, which was designed in the Brutalist style. Construction on the stadium began one month later. When completed, the facility was named San Diego Stadium. The Chargers (then a member of the American Football League) played the first game ever at the stadium on August 20, 1967. San Diego Stadium had a capacity of around 50,000; the three-tier grandstand was in the shape of a horseshoe, with the east end low (consisting of only one tier, partially topped by a large scoreboard). The Chargers were the main tenant of the stadium until 1968, when the AAA Pacific Coast League San Diego Padres baseball team played its last season in the stadium, following their move from the minor league sized Westgate Park. Due to expansion of Major League Baseball, this team was replaced by the current San Diego Padres major-league team beginning in the 1969 season. (The Padres moved out of SDCCU Stadium following the 2003 season.) The original scoreboard, a black-and-white scoreboard created by All American Scoreboards, was replaced in 1978 by one manufactured by American Sign and Indicator, which was the first full-color outdoor scoreboard ever built. This was replaced in 1987 by a White Way Sign scoreboard, in which the video screen is surrounded almost entirely by three messageboards. The original video board was replaced in 1996 by a Sony JumboTron, with a second JumboTron installed behind the opposite end zone (third base in the stadium's baseball configuration). After Jack Murphy's death in September 1980, San Diego Stadium was renamed San Diego–Jack Murphy Stadium by a 6–2 vote of the San Diego City Council on January 6, 1981. In 1983, over 9,000 bleachers were added to the lower deck on the open end of the stadium raising the capacity to 59,022. The most substantial addition was completed in 1997, when the stadium was fully enclosed, with the exception of where the scoreboard is located. Nearly 11,000 seats were added in readiness for Super Bowl XXXII in 1998, bringing the capacity to 70,561. Also in 1997, the facility was renamed Qualcomm Stadium after Qualcomm Corporation paid $18 million for the naming rights. The naming rights belonged to Qualcomm until 2017, after which the rights were purchased by San Diego County Credit Union. In order to continue to honor Murphy, the city named the stadium site Jack Murphy Field. However, as part of the naming agreement Jack Murphy Field was not allowed to be used alongside Qualcomm Stadium. Some San Diegans, however, still refer to the stadium as "Jack Murphy" or simply "The Murph". Before his death in 2004, Bob Murphy still referred to it as Jack Murphy Stadium during New York Mets broadcasts, even after it was renamed. The stadium was temporarily renamed "Snapdragon Stadium" for 10 days in December 2011 as a marketing tie in for Qualcomm's Snapdragon brand. The legality of the temporary name change was challenged at the time, since it was agreed to unilaterally by San Diego's mayor, without approval from the City Council and against the advice of the City Attorney. The stadium was the first of the square-circle "octorad" style, which was thought to be an improvement over the other cookie cutter stadiums of the time for hosting both football and baseball (the second and last of this style was the since- imploded Veterans Stadium). Despite the theoretical improvements of this style, most of the seats were still very far away from the action on the field, especially during baseball games. It is the last "cookie-cutter" stadium that remains active, The second last being Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium. In order to accommodate the dimensions of both football and baseball fields, the stadium was constructed with half of the lower (Field Level) level seating built of permanent concrete (in the southern quadrant of the stadium), and the other half of portable modular construction using aluminum or steel framing. When the stadium was configured for baseball, the portable sections would be placed in the western quadrant of the stadium along the third base-left field side. Open bullpens were located along both foul lines just beyond the ends of the Field-level seats. In the Padres' final five seasons at the stadium from 1999 to 2003, the home plate area took on the shape of home plate itself (as opposed to the standard circle); this feature is seen in Detroit's Comerica Park today. In the football configuration, the portable seating sections are placed in the northern quadrant of the stadium (covering what is used as left field in the baseball configuration) to allow for the football field to be laid out east–west (along the first base/right field foul line, with the western end zone placed in the area occupied by the portable seating sections in the baseball configuration, and the eastern end zone along the right-center field wall). Doorways are cut in the walls of the stadium in order to allow access to these seats from the tunnel below the Plaza level in both configurations (in baseball configuration, the football doors could be seen above the left field inner wall; in football configuration, the baseball doors are visible above the west end zone, opposite the scoreboard). These doors are rolling metal overhead doors, with the field side painted to match the surrounding walls facing the field. From their inception in 1969 until the end of 2003, when they moved into Petco Park in the downtown area, the National League's San Diego Padres called the stadium home. The baseball field dimensions had varied slightly over the years. In 1969, the distance from home plate to the left and right field wall was , the distance to the left- and right-center field power alleys was , and the distance from home plate to the center field was . A wall, whose top was the rim of the Plaza level, surrounded the outfield, making home runs difficult to hit. Later, an eight-foot fence was erected, cutting the distances to 327, 368 and , respectively. In 1996 a note of asymmetry was introduced when a high scoreboard displaying out-of-town scores was erected along the right-field wall near the foul pole and deemed to be in play, and so the distances to right field and right-center field were and , respectively, while the remaining dimensions remained the same. Orel Hershiser broke Don Drysdale's scoreless inning streak at Jack Murphy Stadium on September 28, 1988 as the Los Angeles Dodgers played the San Diego Padres. Rickey Henderson collected his 3000th major league base hit here on October 7, 2001 as a Padre, in what was also the last major league game for Tony Gwynn, the eight-time National League batting champion and Hall of Famer who played his entire career with San Diego. It was also before a Padres game here where comedian Roseanne Barr gave her infamous rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" in 1990. The stadium was the site of the 1980 AFC Championship Game, which the "Bolts" lost to their AFC West and in-state rival, the Oakland Raiders, 34–27. The Chargers also hosted Wild Card and Divisional Playoff games in 1980, 1992, 1994, 1995, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009, going 5-5 in all playoff games held at the stadium. The Chargers were unbeaten at SDCCU Stadium against the Detroit Lions (5–0) and Jacksonville Jaguars (4–0), but winless against the Atlanta Falcons (0–6), Carolina Panthers (0–3), and Green Bay Packers (0–6). The Chargers moved from SDCCU Stadium to the Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, a suburb of Los Angeles, following the 2016 NFL season. Since its inception, the stadium, which is approximately five miles from campus, has been the home of San Diego State University Aztecs football. Before the building of the stadium, they had played their games at Balboa Stadium and their small, on-campus stadium, the Aztec Bowl (which is now the site of Viejas Arena, the home of the university's basketball teams). Traditionally, the team, clad in all-black uniforms and red helmets, has played its home games at night, a tradition started during the days of former head coach Don Coryell before the stadium was even opened. There have been attempts in the past to change from "The Look", but all have been associated with subsequent poor play by the Aztecs and a return to the traditional look. The San Diego Fleet of the Alliance of American Football (AAF) played at the stadium in early 2019. They hosted their first game at the stadium on Sunday, February 17, and their final home game on Sunday, March 17. Following the 1978 college football season, the stadium began hosting the Holiday Bowl, an annual bowl game held before New Year's Day. It originally hosted the Western Athletic Conference champion (at the time, the hometown Aztecs had just joined this conference) against a nationally ranked opponent. The game has traditionally been a high-scoring affair, and until the 2006 edition no team had ever been held to ten points or less. From 1995 through 2004, every losing team scored at least 20 points. The 1984 game is well known for being the culmination of BYU's championship season, the last Division I-A (now FBS) national championship not won by a member of a Power Five conference or a major independent program. On December 22, 2005, a second bowl game came to San Diego when the inaugural Poinsettia Bowl was played at the stadium, with Navy beating Colorado State. The Poinsettia Bowl was organized by the same organizing committee as the Holiday Bowl. It was officially discontinued after the 2016 game, as the organizing committee announced (in January 2017) that it had decided to host only one game, beginning with the 2017 season. On October 27, 2018, the Navy Midshipmen hosted the Notre Dame Fighting Irish at the stadium for a regular season game. CIF San Diego Section Finals for high school football are held at SDCCU Stadium. These usually take place on a Friday in early December, and four games are played (with eight teams representing four separate divisions, which are determined by the enrollment sizes of the individual schools). SDCCU Stadium has been a venue for many international soccer matches. The stadium has hosted FIFA tournaments, including the CONCACAF Gold Cup, and the U.S. Cup (an international invitational), as well as many international friendly matches involving the Mexico National Team. The most recent international friendly at SDCCU set an all-time attendance record for the sport in the region. The match between Mexico and Argentina which was held on June 4, 2008 drew 68,498 spectators. In addition, SDCCU Stadium was part of the 18-stadium United States 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cup bid, but the United States did not win either bid for the World Cup. The stadium has also hosted several international friendlies featuring clubs such as Real Madrid, Chivas, Portsmouth F.C. and Club América. The San Diego Sockers of the North American Soccer League played at the stadium from 1978 to 1983. The stadium was the venue of Soccer Bowl '82 of the North American Soccer League and Major League Soccer's 1999 All-Star Game. On January 29, 2017, the USMNT played a friendly (exhibition) match against Serbia, the first ever meeting between the two teams. The match finished as a 0–0 draw. The stadium hosted two group stage matches of the 2017 CONCACAF Gold Cup. On July 25, 2018, the stadium hosted a 2018 International Champions Cup match between A.S. Roma and Tottenham Hotspur. Tottenham Hotspur won 4–1. In October 1967, just weeks after the stadium opened, it hosted a SCCA event organized by San Diego Region. The event was not held in the stadium itself, but on a temporary course mapped out through the stadium's parking lot. In July 1968, the Region organized a SCCA National for the car park, now called the San Diego Stadium International Raceway, but the combination of a very small crowd and complaints about the noise ensured that the experiment was not repeated. SDCCU Stadium has also hosted rugby matches. In October 1980, the USA played New Zealand in a rugby match televised on ESPN. With 14,000 fans in attendance, this game at the time was the largest crowd ever to watch an international rugby game in the US. Old Mission Beach Athletic Club RFC play rugby union at the adjacent mini-stadium, so-called Little Q. SDCCU Stadium was home to a round of the AMA Supercross Championship each year, usually in early February, from 1980 to 2014. The stadium also hosted a round of Monster Jam, also ran and operated by Feld Entertainment. In 2015, both events were moved to Petco Park. ESPN held their inaugural Moto X World Championships at SDCCU Stadium in April 2008, and has previously used the stadium parking lot and surrounding streets as a venue in the X Games Street Luge competition. On May 4 and 18, 2013, the stadium was used as a race course by the Stadium Super Trucks. Concerts on the Green is a sports field converted into a music and entertainment venue, located on the southwest corner of the stadium parking lot. The field was originally used as a practice venue for the San Diego Chargers. After the team moved to Chargers Park about a mile north of the stadium, the area was used primarily for rugby. AEG leased the area and retrofit it into an open-air amphitheater for concerts and other entertainment shows. The venue had the capability to hold 12,500, making it the second biggest entertainment venue in the Greater San Diego area; only Cricket Wireless Amphitheatre seats more. Many concerts have also been held inside the stadium over the years, by famous artists of many different genres. In 1983 rock radio station KGB 101.5 FM hosted the KGB Skyshow 8 with Uriah Heep, Eddie Money, Mötley Crüe and Def Leppard finishing the show. American Idol (season 7) held auditions there in July 2007; a total of 30 people who auditioned there made it to the next round. In a January 30, 2009 episode of Monk, SDCCU Stadium was known as Summit Stadium in the episode Mr. Monk Makes the Playoffs with the fictitious San Francisco Condors as the home team. Many parts of the 1979 film The Kid from Left Field, were filmed in and around the stadium. The Little Q is a sports field, used primarily for rugby located adjacent to SDCCU Stadium; the Little Q is home to San Diego's Super League rugby team OMBAC and the College Premier Division San Diego State University Aztec rugby team. Big SoCal Euro is a gathering of European car enthusiasts. It attracts over 3,000 car lovers every year. Not only is Big SoCal Euro one of the largest all European car gatherings, it is one of the oldest events of its kind, established in 2002. It has been held at SDCCU Stadium since 2007. The event was founded by Lon Mok of SoCalEuro.com Billy Graham hosted a crusade at the stadium in early May 2003. During the Cedar Fire in October 2003 and the October 2007 California wildfires, the stadium served as an evacuation site for those living in affected areas. (This was similar to the use of the Houston Astrodome and the New Orleans Superdome during Hurricane Katrina.) The Cedar Fire forced the Chargers to move a contest with the Miami Dolphins to Arizona State University's Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the San Diego County Council of the Boy Scouts of America used the stadium's concourse areas (between the rear of the grandstands and the freestanding wall which contains the entrance gates) as well as portions of the parking lots as the site of its annual Scout Fair. The San Diego County Council has since merged with the council representing Imperial County to form the Desert Pacific Council. With the departure of the Padres following the 2003 season and even beforehand, there has been much talk of replacing the increasingly obsolete (by NFL standards) stadium with a more modern, football-only one. Also, the NFL has demanded a new stadium if San Diego is to host another Super Bowl. There have been many problems with this project, the most obvious one being the city's inability to fund such a stadium. In 2010 the Chargers and city attempted to bring business partners in on a proposed $800 million stadium project, which would have been located in downtown San Diego's East Village and included upgrades to the area and infrastructure, but all efforts failed. The Chargers had a clause in their contract, to the effect that if they paid off all debts to the city and county for the upgrades to the current stadium by 2007, then the team could pull out of its lease in 2008; however, the clause was not activated. On February 19, 2015, the Chargers and the Oakland Raiders announced that they would build a privately financed $1.7 billion stadium in Carson if they were to move to the Los Angeles market. Both teams stated that they would continue to attempt to get stadiums built in their respective cities. On April 22, 2015, the Carson City Council bypassed the option to put the stadium to public vote and approved the plan 3-0. The council voted without having clarified several issues, including who would finance the stadium, how the required three-way land swap would be performed, and how it would raise enough revenue if only one team moved in as tenant. On January 4, 2016, the Rams, Raiders, and the Chargers all filed for relocation to Los Angeles and days later on January 12, 2016, NFL owners voted to approve the Rams relocation from St. Louis to the Greater Los Angeles Area and the Inglewood Stadium 30-2, with the Chargers given a one-year option to join (the Raiders also had this option had the Chargers option to join the Rams not been exercised before January 15, 2017). On January 29, 2016, Dean Spanos announced that the Chargers would stay in San Diego for the 2016 NFL season. On February 23, 2016, the Chargers announced that their new stadium efforts would be focused on East Village in Downtown San Diego. One month later on March 30, 2016, details of the initiative and the stadium proposal were unveiled to the media. On April 21, 2016, renderings of the downtown stadium were unveiled and on April 23, 2016, signature gathering for the Chargers downtown stadium began and on June 10, 2016, the Chargers initiative gathered 110,786 signatures were enough to put the proposal on ballot. On July 12, 2016, City Clerk Liz Malland announced the Chargers stadium initiative had enough valid signatures to be put to a vote on November and on July 18, 2016, the San Diego City Council voted 8-0 to put the Chargers stadium plan and the Citizens on the November ballot. However, despite vigorous campaigning and millions of dollars spent, voters rejected the ballot plan 57%-43%, placing serious doubt about the team's future at the stadium. A month later at the NFL owners meetings December 14, 2016, the lease agreement between the Chargers and the Rams as well as the team's debt waiver fee were approved, taking the first steps to move to the Greater Los Angeles Area in 2017. Four days later, CBS Sports reported citing several NFL owners (and ownership sources) that Dean Spanos had been resigned to the fact that he and the Chargers are moving to L.A. next year. At the same time, Scott Kaplan of San Diego-area sports radio station the Mighty 1090 was told by Spanos that he was leaning towards his team moving and he would have been committed to San Diego had the vote been 50%. On January 12, 2017, the Chargers announced they were moving to Los Angeles and the Dignity Health Sports Park starting with the 2017 season. As the Chargers prepared to depart, a group of La Jolla investors said they hoped to purchase a Major League Soccer expansion franchise. They offered to purchase the SDCCU Stadium site from the City of San Diego if their application for a soccer franchise was approved, and to construct a smaller, soccer-specific stadium outside the footprint of the current stadium. This stadium was initially intended to be shared with the San Diego State University football program, allowing SDCCU Stadium to be demolished upon its completion. The proposal included residential and commercial development and space set aside for a public park. In January 2017 the group announced its detailed proposal, known as SoccerCity, with the stadium site to be leased from the city and developed with private funding. The proposed partnership with SDSU fell apart over disagreement about design and land control issues. The SoccerCity group launched a successful signature drive to gain voter approval, and their proposal was placed on the November 2018 ballot as Measure E. San Diego State was still interested in the stadium property, which is near the SDSU campus and where SDSU football games are played. In October 2017 a group of local SDSU supporters announced a redevelopment proposal for the stadium site called SDSU West. Under it the majority of the stadium property would be bought from the city and used for an unspecified mix of purposes including a stadium, academic facilities, student and faculty housing, retail uses, and hotels. After a successful signature drive it was also placed on the November 2018 ballot as Measure G. In the November election, voters rejected the SoccerCity proposal with a "No" vote of nearly 70%. The SDSU West proposal was narrowly approved with 54% voting "Yes". SDSU then began negotiations with the city about a purchase of the property. In February the university named Clark Construction as the contractor to build a new multi-use $250 million stadium on the site. The new stadium is expected to be ready by the 2022 football season. It is said to have a seating capacity 35,000 and support events including SDSU football, non-football NCAA championship games, professional soccer, and special events such as concerts. List of NCAA Division I FBS football stadiums Official website, Qualcomm Stadium – Home of Aztec Football, VisitingFan.com: Reviews of Qualcomm Stadium, Qualcomm Stadium Seating Chart There were several proposals to build a new stadium for the San Diego Chargers of the National Football League (NFL), replacing SDCCU Stadium as the franchise's home venue. The team and city both attempted to bring business partners in on a proposed $800 million project, which was supposed to be located in the parking lot of the current stadium and include upgrades to the area and infrastructure, but all efforts failed. In August 2016, it was announced that the Citizens’ Initiative for the Chargers' stadium was officially named Ballot Measure C. In the wake of a decisive defeat at the ballot for stadium public funding 57%-43% during the 2016 United States elections, the Chargers announced in January 2017 their intention to relocate to Los Angeles, joining the Rams, who had also relocated from St. Louis the previous year. Both teams will share SoFi Stadium after its construction finishes in 2020, marking the first time since 1960 that the two teams will play again together in the same city and stadium. During the 2003 NFL season and even beforehand, there was much talk of the Chargers replacing the increasingly obsolete (by NFL standards) SDCCU Stadium with a more modern, Super Bowl-caliber football stadium, mainly due to obsolete features of the stadium as well as severe maintenance issues with the facility. The San Diego Stadium Coalition, a grassroots community organization formed in January 2009 with the singular objective of facilitating the development of a new stadium in San Diego County. Citing the economic benefits of constructing a new stadium and a desire to keep the San Diego Chargers in the region, they worked with taxpayers groups, developers, politicians and the Chargers to move the stadium effort forward. By leveraging social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter along with traditional media outlets and interactive public forums, they amassed a sizeable following in a brief amount of time. Their website served as the hub for their effort. The cost of stadium construction would have been financed by the Chargers, who would have paid for construction with the profits of an adjoining development. The team would require a large tract of land either for free or at nominal cost to make the project economically feasible. Based on the site that is selected, the adjoining development would be a combination of commercial, residential and retail uses. Based on the site chosen, the Chargers would have largely relied on mass transit to take fans to and from the stadium on game days since it is unlikely that any of the proposed sites would have provided enough land for a stadium, real estate development and surface-level parking lots. A proposed golf course site in Oceanside, for example, is approximately 71 acres (see below), less than half the size of the Qualcomm site () that was initially proposed by the Chargers. Plus the necessary widening of I-5 will not begin until at least 2020 according to Caltrans. The proposed National City site was west of Interstate 5 and south of Bay Marina Drive, located east of the 24th Street Marine Terminal. The Port of San Diego studied the dimensions of the site and come to the conclusion that a stadium could be built on the site without disturbing the Port's mission to promote maritime jobs and commerce. Any potential development proposal would have required the Port's approval. Planning discussions were discussed among the Port, National City and waterfront businesses to reconfigure the layout of the site to make it more efficient with or without a stadium. National City officials believed the benefit of a new stadium would spur new developments around it, generating tax dollars while also boosting the city's profile. On May 12, 2007, National City dropped its new stadium proposal, citing problems with land ownership. There were three notable proposals for Downtown San Diego. The first and most notable was the plan by Doug Manchester to replace the 10th Avenue Marine Terminal with a stadium complex. An alternative to the 10th Avenue site was to place the stadium on the waterfront behind the San Diego Convention Center. Finally the East Village was recently proposed by the Chargers due to less legal concerns from local Environmental Activists. This proposal was by far the most ambitious. Local philanthropist and real estate developer Doug Manchester proposed building the new stadium on the site of the 10th Avenue Marine Terminal. This was opposed by Port Commissioners at the Port of San Diego and the idea never publicly passed the preliminary design phase. One proposed plan, known as the Phase 4 Expansion, would have put the stadium on the waterfront behind the San Diego Convention Center. This would have allowed for the Phase 3 expansion of the Convention Center to continue. The facility could have to be used during major events, such as Comic Con, the San Diego Auto Show or other major events. The new stadium would have also allowed for San Diego to host the Super Bowl again and it would have given the city the option of applying to host the 2028 or 2032 Summer Olympics. The Chargers' current Convadium design would fit in this proposed location if the East Village site is not selected. The Chargers had talks with the City of San Diego regarding a site south of Petco Park in the East Village Area of Downtown San Diego. Although this site had been seen as the most viable option, few if any steps had taken place. Coupled with the NFL labor situation, lack of funds through the NFL G3 Program and California Gov. Jerry Brown's proposals for the review of redevelopment funds in the state the Downtown Proposal was left in limbo. Former mayor Jerry Sanders explored numerous options to build the stadium in the East Village. Making the project a part of the convention center's expansion had been one option. On February 23, 2016, the Chargers announced that they were focusing efforts on Downtown San Diego for a multi-use stadium/convention center in addition to a citizen's initiative that would include a stadium. After many failed attempts by the Chargers and the city of San Diego to come to an agreement on the new stadium, mainly due to the city's inability to fund a stadium, the Chargers organization considered other places in San Diego County, notably Chula Vista, Oceanside, and Escondido. The Oceanside City Council agreed to have talks with the Chargers about building a stadium in Oceanside. The Center City Golf Course, also known as "Goat Hill", was under consideration as a possible stadium location. The golf course site is northeast of the Interstate 5/Oceanside Boulevard interchange. The city owns an adjoining to the north of the golf course, which would have provided a development footprint of more than . The site also offered easy access to two major freeways as well as two passenger rail lines. Oceanside also had an advantage considering that 8,800 of the team's season ticket holders already came from North County, 8,500 were from Orange and Riverside counties, and 4,500 come from outside the state. A stadium built at this site was seen as having the ability to attract more fans from Orange County, Riverside County, and Los Angeles. There were problems with the site if the Chargers chose to build the stadium there. The golf course is zoned parkland, and voters would have had to approve a zoning change for a stadium to be built. Also some believe that the stadium, if it was built, has the possibility of causing traffic and environmental issues to the area, especially during game days. The Chargers acknowledged that the golf course site may not have been large enough to sustain a development profitable enough to offset the cost of stadium construction. In that case, they would have sought to obtain additional real estate in Oceanside or elsewhere in San Diego County to further develop. Chula Vista officials discussed multiple sites where the Chargers can build a stadium. Two privately owned sites on the city's east side and two near the waterfront. One proposed Chula Vista site was located near State Route 125, southwest of the Chula Vista Olympic Training Center. The site had the land that a stadium would require, as well as transportation options for reaching such a venue. However, there were concerns about the site's distance from main transit lines., One proposed site rested on Chula Vista's bayfront which was used to be occupied by the South Bay Power Plant., Another proposed site rested in a vacant B.F. Goodrich site adjacent to the property that's already been designated for the Chula Vista Bayfront, a $750 million convention center and hotel complex. The project is set to break ground next year., Another proposed Chula Vista option fell on private property, owned by residential homebuilder, HomeFed Corp, which owns 3,000 acres (12 km²) in the Otay Ranch area, had conducted talks with the Chargers., A new proposed site became questionably available after expected developments on Chula Vista's bayside were disbanded by Gaylord Entertainment. The mayor of Chula Vista suggested that a stadium deal could have involved the team being re-branded as the "Chula Vista Chargers". The team's spokesman did not completely reject the notion, but indicated that such a condition would only have been considered if the stadium was entirely publicly financed. On April 21, 2016, the Chargers unveiled renderings of a stadium/convention center adjacent to Petco Park. On April 23, 2016, the San Diego Chargers launched their initiative effort with a rally in Downtown with an estimated 4,000 people attending; among the people who attended this event for Chargers chairman Dean Spanos, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, quarterback Philip Rivers, former running back LaDainian Tomlinson, and coach Mike McCoy. On June 10, 2016, the Chargers announced that they had collected 110,786 signatures, enough to put the stadium proposal on the ballot in November; these signatures however needed verification. On July 9, 2016, San Diego City Clerk Liz Maland announced that the downtown stadium initiative has secured enough valid signatures to be on the November 2016 ballot. On July 18, 2016, the San Diego City Council voted to allow both the Chargers stadium plan and the Citizens Plan on the November ballot. In August 2016, it was announced that the Citizens’ Initiative sponsored by the Chargers was officially named Ballot Measure C. The ballot measure went on to a decisive defeat at the polls 57%-43%. The initiative set the stadium in the Tailgate Park space, across the street from Petco Park in downtown San Diego. Measure D, also known as the Briggs Initiative, was an alternative measure to Measure C and was written by Cory Briggs, a public-interest attorney. Ballot Measure D would have permit the Chargers to build a stadium in either downtown or Mission Valley. It would have required another vote if it used public funds. The measure would have raised San Diego's tax on hotel stays from 12.5% to 15.5% (14% for small hotels). Ballot Measure D was not sponsored by the Chargers. It was opposed by the San Diego County Taxpayers Association and the San Diego Tourism Authority. It was favored by the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, as well as San Diego Representative Scott Peters, the Building Trades Council, and a fan group known as the San Diego Stadium Coalition. On July 28, 2016, the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce endorsed the Chargers’ downtown stadium ballot measure. Chairman of the Chargers Dean Spanos hired several private consultants, including Robin Hunden, an economic development expert, to analyze the plan. Their preliminary results showed that a new stadium would have supplied an estimated additional 200,000 visitors yearly for conventions. The analysis stated their surveys showed that raising the hotel tax from its current 12.5% up to 16.5% would not have caused harm to the tourism economy, countering claims laid by the opposition that the additional tax would have caused fewer tourists to come to San Diego. Voice of San Diego reported on March 11, 2015, that a new Chargers' stadium would likely not make San Diego money, citing that the city still owed millions in tax dollars for the renovations to Chargers' Qualcomm Stadium repairs from 1997, and is currently paying about $12 million yearly for Qualcomm. The article stated that San Diego taxpayers subsidize Qualcomm stadium with over $10 million a year because the Chargers and other stadium events didn't generate enough revenue to cover costs. Qualcomm stadium also cost taxpayers almost $2 million each year for police and fire services at Chargers games, as well as repairs to the stadium, costs which were not compensated for by the Chargers. On May 31, 2016, the American Institute of Architects San Diego wrote an article in opposition to a downtown stadium for the Chargers, because of "significant, unanswered questions about potential cost overruns and environmental impacts that may cost San Diego taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars." The “No Downtown Stadium – Jobs and Streets First” coalition was formed in June 2016. They announced they were opposed to the Citizens' Initiative and published several opinion pieces in local newspapers. The coalition defined their central idea as, "We should not raise taxes to build a stadium and subsidize a billion-dollar corporation, especially when we have so many needs in San Diego, including street repairs. Additionally, this tax measure puts our economy and tourism jobs at risk, and it threatens an important revenue source the City relies on to pay for street repairs, 911 dispatchers, libraries and other neighborhood services. All this to help a billionaire build a new workspace for millionaires." The No Downtown Stadium group said the project would have created less property tax revenue and new jobs than alternative developments such as offices or housing, and would ultimately have cost the city money. On July 28, 2016, Ted Molter, the Tourism Authority chairman, expressed in a statement that Comic-Con officials were opposed to the stadium proposal because the site was located on a different site than the convention center. He also said that the new hotel tax would have made San Diego have one of the highest hotel tax rates in the nation. On July 29, 2016, the “East Village South Focus Plan” was released by a group of volunteer architects and planners as an alternative to the stadium in the Tailgate Park space. Estimated to generate $55.2 million in annual taxes and create 5,590 permanent jobs, The released plan includes 4.5 million square feet of development, including housing, offices, restaurants, parks, plazas and a convention annex or arena. The cost of the plan is estimated at $1.8 billion, which is about the same as was the estimated cost for the stadium. On August 8, 2016, Chris Cate, a San Diego Council member, said in a segment for NBC 7 San Diego that if the Chargers built the stadium at Tailgate Park that the city would have had to build new Padres parking. The chairman of the group which owns the San Diego Padres, Ron Fowler, noted that a new stadium at Tailgate Park would have forced San Diego to spend millions of tax dollars on new parking for the Padres. It had been estimated that the additional parking for the Padres would have cost $75 million on top of the Chargers' proposal. Fowler also stated that Ballot Measure C would break a city sign ordinance because it would allow large digital billboards to be erected outside the stadium, lighting up East Village with light from the billboards until 2 a.m. each day. Some local residents are concerned it would be across the street from the San Diego Central Library. Some critics believed building the stadium would have put San Diego in risk of losing Comic Con because the proposed site would have been more than half a mile away from the convention center. Comic Con officials claimed the large separation made the stadium unusable to Comic Con, and believed there needed to be a contiguous expansion of the convention center. John Rogers, Comic-Con board president, wrote a message in the convention's souvenir book that they were opposed to any expansion that wasn't contiguous with the current convention center. On August 15, 2016, the Public Resources Advisory Group published an independent report which estimated the stadium plan would have required a public contribution of $2.3 billion over 30 years, which was more than twice as much as the estimate of $1.1 billion by the Chargers. A Chicago-based consulting firm, HVS Convention, Sports & Entertainment Facilities Consulting, released a study saying that despite claims by the Chargers, the stadium would only generate about $2.3 million extra in additional hotel tax revenue each year, but estimated the annual public costs would be $67 million for the operation and constructions of the project. They also stated that attempts in other cities to combine a convention center with a football stadium have largely failed, citing Indianapolis, St. Louis and Atlanta. On August 21, 2016, the San Diego County Taxpayers Association announced its opposition to Ballot Measure C. The association claimed the project could cost the city at least $400 million and probably more, and the city would likely have to pay the difference using the general fund. Cory Briggs, the attorney who authored the Citizens’ Plan, stated that Ballot Measure C did not create a new special tax on San Diegans, and therefore required only a simple majority of votes for the measure to be approved. San Diego City Attorney Jan Goldsmith publicly announced on August 5, 2016, that since it allocated taxes towards a specific project, instead of a general fund, that Ballot Measure C was a new special tax on San Diego, and would need a 2/3 majority of votes to pass. In August 2016, the Chargers purchased Facebook ads targeted towards Chris Cate, a Republican City Council member, for his opposition to Ballot Measure C. The ad gave Cate's office phone number accompanied by the text, “Why does Chris Cate want the Chargers to leave San Diego? Please call and ask him.” In a statement, Cate said his office received approximately 200 calls in response to the ad. He claimed that many of the calls were polite, "some that were belligerent" and "one threat that was referred to the police." Cate said he's a Chargers fan, but "I just think this is a bad deal for the city and San Diegans.” After a failed bid with the Oakland Raiders to build a Stadium in Carson, California in January 2016 the Chargers received the first option to relocate to Los Angeles and share the winning bid (SoFi Stadium) with the Los Angeles Rams, conditioned on a negotiated lease agreement between the two teams. The option If not taken by the Chargers would have expired on January 15, 2017, at which time the Oakland Raiders would have acquired the same option. On January 29, 2016, the Rams and Chargers came to an agreement in principle to share the stadium. The Chargers would contribute a $200 million stadium loan from the NFL and personal seat license fees to the construction costs and would pay $1 per year in rent to the Rams. After the failure of the ballot options and getting an extension of the Los Angeles option until January 17, on January 12, 2017, Dean Spanos, chairman and owner of the Chargers, stated in an open letter that the team would relocate to Los Angeles. Simultaneously, the team's social media dropped 'San Diego' and was updated to 'Los Angeles Chargers'. A new marketing logo using the iconic 'LA' symbol used by the Los Angeles Dodgers was also debuted. The team moved to Dignity Health Sports Park (known as StubHub Center until 2018) and will play there for the 2017, 2018 and 2019 NFL seasons until the new Los Angeles stadium is complete. After the Chargers relocated it was reported that the NFL was prepared to go to lengths to keep the Chargers in San Diego. One of the options included Rams owner Stan Kroenke sending money (possibly over a series of years) to help the Chargers build a stadium in San Diego in an attempt to keep Los Angeles a one-team town all to himself; however, Spanos used his Los Angeles option before the league could act and the money offered may not have been enough to build a new San Diego stadium anyway.

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Medicare () is an unofficial designation used to refer to the publicly funded, single-payer health care system of Canada. Canada does not have a unified national health care system; instead, the system consists of 13 provincial and territorial health insurance plans that provide universal health care coverage to Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and certain temporary residents. These systems are individually administered on a provincial or territorial basis, within guidelines set by the federal government. The formal terminology for the insurance system is provided by the Canada Health Act and the health insurance legislation of the individual provinces and territories. The name is a contraction of medical and care, and was used in the United States for health care programs since at least 1953. Under the terms of the Canada Health Act, all "insured persons" are entitled to receive "insured services" without copayment. Such services are defined as medically necessary services if provided in hospital, or by 'practitioners' (usually physicians). Approximately 70 percent of expenditures for health care in Canada come from public sources, with the rest paid privately (both through private insurance, and through out-of-pocket payments). The extent of public financing varies considerably across services. For example, approximately 99 percent of physician services, and 90 percent of hospital care, are paid by publicly funded sources, whereas almost all dental care is paid for privately. Most physicians are self-employed private entities which enjoy coverage under each province's respective healthcare plans. Services of non-physicians working within hospitals are covered; conversely, provinces can, but are not forced to, cover services by non-physicians if provided outside hospitals. Changing the site of treatment may thus change coverage. For example, pharmaceuticals, nursing care, and physical therapy must be covered for inpatients, but there is considerable variation from province to province in the extent to which they are covered for patients discharged to the community (e.g., after day surgery). The need to modernize coverage was pointed out in 2002 by both the Romanow Commission and by the Kirby committee of the Canadian Senate (see External links below). Similarly, the extent to which non-physician providers of primary care are funded varies; Quebec offers primary health care teams through its CLSC system. The first implementation of public hospital care in Canada came at the provincial level in Saskatchewan in 1947 and in Alberta in 1950, under provincial governments led by the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and the Social Credit party respectively. The first implementation of nationalized public health care – at the federal level – came about with the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act (HIDS), which was passed by the Liberal majority government of Louis St. Laurent in 1957, and was adopted by all provinces by 1961. Lester B. Pearson's government subsequently expanded this policy to universal health care with the Medical Care Act of 1966. The fight for a publicly funded system was originally led by Premier Tommy Douglas and implemented by Woodrow Stanley Lloyd, who became premier of the province when Douglas resigned to become the leader of the new federal New Democratic Party. Although Saskatchewan is often credited with the birth of public health care funding in Canada, the federal legislation itself was actually drafted (and first proposed to parliament) by Allan MacEachen, a Liberal MP from Cape Breton. In 1984, the Canada Health Act was passed, amalgamating the 1966 Medical Care Act and the 1957 Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act. The Canada Health Act affirmed and clarified five founding principles: (a) public administration on a non-profit basis by a public authority; (b) comprehensiveness – provincial health plans must insure all services that are medically necessary; (c) universality – a guarantee that all residents in Canada must have access to public healthcare and insured services on uniform terms and conditions; (d) portability – residents must be covered while temporarily absent from their province of residence or from Canada; and (e) accessibility – insured persons must have reasonable and uniform access to insured health services, free of financial or other barriers. These five conditions prevent provinces from radical innovation, but many small differences do exist between the provinces. Although in theory all Canadians should qualify for coverage, each province or territory operates its own health insurance program, and provinces and territories have enacted qualification rules which effectively exclude many Canadians from coverage. For example, to qualify for enrollment in Ontario, one must, among other requirements, "be physically present in Ontario for 153 days in any 12-month period; and be physically present in Ontario for at least 153 days of the first 183 days immediately after establishing residency in the province." According to Canada's constitution, the provinces have responsibility for health care, education and welfare. However, the federal Canada Health Act sets standards for all the provinces. The Canada Health Act requires coverage for all medically necessary care provided in hospitals or by physicians; this explicitly includes diagnostic, treatment and preventive services. Coverage is universal for qualifying Canadian residents, regardless of income level. Funding for the health care is transferred from the general revenues of the Canadian federal government to the 10 provinces and 3 territories through the Canada Health Transfer. Some provinces also charge annual health care premiums. These are, in effect, taxes (since they are not tied to service use, nor to provincial health expenditures). The system is accordingly classified by the OECD as a tax-supported system, as opposed to the social insurance approaches used in many European countries. Boards in each province regulate the cost, which is then reimbursed by the federal government. Patients do not pay out of pocket costs to visit their doctor, at present. Canada uses a mix of public and private organizations to deliver health care in what is termed a publicly funded, privately delivered system. Hospitals and acute care facilities, including long term complex care, are typically directly funded. Health care organizations bill the provincial health authorities, with few exceptions. Hospitals are largely non-profit organizations, historically often linked to religious or charitable organizations. In some provinces, individual hospital boards have been eliminated and combined into quasi-private regional health authorities, subject to varying degrees of provincial control. Private services are provided by diagnostic laboratories, occupational and physical therapy centres, and other allied professionals. Non-medically necessary services, such as optional plastic surgery, are also often delivered by for-profit investor-owned corporations. In some cases patients pay directly and are reimbursed by the health care system, and in other cases a hospital or physician may order services and seek reimbursement from the provincial government. With rare exceptions, medical doctors are small for-profit independent businesses. Historically, they have practised in small solo or group practices and billed the government Canadian Health Care system on a fee for service basis. Unlike the practice in fully socialized countries, hospital-based physicians are not all hospital employees, and some directly bill the provincial insurance plans on a fee-for-service basis. Since 2000, physicians have been allowed to incorporate for tax reasons (dates of authorization vary province to province). Efforts to achieve primary health care reform have increasingly encouraged physicians to work in multidisciplinary teams, and be paid through blended funding models, including elements of capitation and other 'alternative funding formulas'. Similarly, some hospitals (particularly teaching hospitals and rural/remote hospitals) have also experimented with alternatives to fee-for-service. In summary, the system is known as a "public system" due to its public financing, but is not a nationalized system such as the UK's NHS: most health care services are provided privately. An additional complexity is that, because health care is deemed to be under provincial jurisdiction, there is not a "Canadian health care system". Most providers are private, and may or may not coordinate their care. Publicly funded insurance is organized at the level of the province/territory; each manages its own insurance system, including issuing its own healthcare identification cards (a list of the provincial medical care insurance programs is given at the end of this entry). Once care moves beyond the services required by the Canada Health Act—for which universal comprehensive coverage applies—there is inconsistency from province to province in the extent of publicly funded coverage, particularly for such items as outpatient drug coverage and rehabilitation, as well as vision care, mental health, and long-term care, with a substantial portion of such services being paid for privately, either through private insurance, or out-of-pocket. Eligibility for these additional programs may be based on various combinations of such factors as age (e.g., children, seniors), income, enrollment in a home care program, or diagnosis (e.g., HIV/AIDS, cancer, cystic fibrosis). Unlike a number of other countries with universal health insurance systems, Canada lacks a universal pharmaceutical subsidy scheme, with co-payment, cost ceilings, and special subsidy groups varying by private insurer and by province. Each province may provide its own prescription drug benefit plan, although the Canada Health Act requires only coverage for pharmaceuticals delivered to hospital inpatients. Provincial prescription drug benefit plans differ across provinces. Some provinces cover only those in particular age groups (usually, seniors) and/or those on social assistance. Others are more universal. Quebec achieves universal coverage through a combination of private and public plans. Co-payments also vary. Provinces maintain their own provincial formularies, although the Common Drug Review provides evidence- based formulary listing recommendations to the provincial ministries. Note that there is ongoing controversy in Canada, as in other countries, about inclusion of expensive drugs and discrepancies in their availability, as well as in what if any provisions are made for allowing medications not yet approved to be administered under "exceptional drug" provisions. Drug costs are contentious. Their prices are controlled by the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB). The PMPRB's pricing formula ensures that Canada pays prices based on the average of those charged to selected countries; they are neither the highest, nor the lowest. Dental care is not required to be covered by the government insurance plans. In Quebec, children under the age of 10 receive almost full coverage, and many oral surgeries are covered for everyone. Canadians rely on their employers or individual private insurance, pay cash themselves for dental treatments, or receive no care. In some jurisdictions, public health units have been involved in providing targeted programs to address the need of the young, the elderly or those who are on welfare. The Canadian Association of Public Health Dentistry tracks programs, and has been advocating for extending coverage to those currently unable to receive dental care. The range of services for vision care coverage also varies widely among the provinces. Generally, "medically required" vision care is covered if provided by physicians (cataract surgery, diabetic vision care, some laser eye surgeries required as a result of disease, but not if the purpose is to replace the need for eyeglasses). Similarly, the standard vision test may or may not be covered. Some provinces allow a limited number of tests (e.g., no more than once within a two-year period). Others, including Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia, do not, although different provisions may apply to particular sub-groups (e.g., diabetics, children). Naturopathic services are covered in some cases, but homeopathic services are generally not covered. Chiropractic is partially covered in some provinces. Cosmetic procedures are not typically covered. Psychiatric services (provided by physicians) are covered, fee-for-service psychology services outside of hospitals or community based mental health clinics are usually not. Physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, nursing, and chiropractic services are often not covered unless within hospitals. Some provinces, including Ontario include some rehabilitation services for those in the home care program, those recently discharged from hospitals (e.g., after a hip replacement), or those in particular age categories. Again, considerable variation exists, and provinces can (and do) alter their coverage decisions. The fact that health insurance plans are administered by the provinces and territories in a country where large numbers of residents of certain provinces work in other provinces may lead to inequitable inter-provincial outcomes with respect to revenues and expenditures. For example, many residents of the Atlantic provinces work in the oil and gas industry in the western province of Alberta. For most of the year these workers may be contributing significant tax revenue to Alberta (e.g. through fuel, tobacco and alcohol taxes) while their health insurance costs are borne by their home province in Atlantic Canada. Another considerable inter-provincial imbalance is a person who is insured by Quebec and obtains healthcare in another province or territory. Quebec does not have any physician payment agreements with any other provinces or territories of Canada. As a result, someone that sees a physician outside Quebec, even in another part of Canada, must either pay the cost themselves and submit a request to the Régie de l'Assurance Maladie du Québec (RAMQ Medicare) for reimbursement (even then, expenses are often denied), or take out a third party insurance plan. The same situation also applies to a resident of any other part of Canada visiting Quebec, only they submit any claims to their respective provincial healthplan. All provinces and territories of Canada, however, do have reciprocal hospital agreements, so hospital admissions, for example, are covered throughout Canada. Polling data in the last few years have consistently cited Canadian Health Care as among the most important political issues in the minds of Canadian voters. Along with peacekeeping, Canadian Health Care was found, based on a CBC poll, to be among the foremost defining characteristics of Canada. It has increasingly become a source of controversy in Canadian politics. As a recent report from the Health Council of Canada has noted "Herein lies one of the puzzles of Canadian health care: Canadians increasingly view the health care system as unsustainable and under threat, even as their own experiences with the system are mostly positive." As analysts have noted, the root of the concern may be traced to successful cost control efforts in the mid 1990s, where public health expenditure per capita, in inflation-adjusted dollars, actually fell. These efforts arose from efforts by the federal government to deal with its deficit through various austerity measures, which led to cuts in their transfers to the provinces, and in turn to squeezing hospital budgets and physician reimbursements. The number of physicians being trained was reduced. The result was seen in increased wait times, particularly for elective procedures. More recently, government has been reinvesting in health care, but public confidence has been slow to recover. A number of studies have compared Canada with other countries, and concluded that each system has its own strengths and weaknesses. The World Health Organization, ranked Canada in 2000 as 30th worldwide in performance. However, the basis for these rankings has been highly contentious. As Deber noted, "The measure of "overall healthsystem performance" derives from adjusting "goal attainment" for educational attainment. Although goal attainment is in theory based on five measures (level and distribution of health, level and distribution of "responsiveness" and "fairness of financial contribution"), the actual values assigned to most countries, including Canada, were never directly measured. The scores do not incorporate any information about the actual workings of the system, other than as reflected in life expectancy. The primary reason for Canada's relatively low standing rests on the relatively high educational level of its population, particularly as compared to France, rather than on any features of its health system." Other countries had similar complaints, and the WHO has not repeated this ranking. In 2003, the prime minister and the provincial premiers agreed upon priority areas for reinvestment. The 2003 First Ministers’ Accord on Health Care Renewal reaffirmed their commitment to the principles of the Canada Health Act. They indicated the following principles: "Drawing from this foundation, First Ministers view this Accord as a covenant which will help to ensure that: all Canadians have timely access to health services on the basis of need, not ability to pay, regardless of where they live or move in Canada;, the health care services available to Canadians are of high quality, effective, patient-centred and safe; and, our health care system is sustainable and affordable and will be here for Canadians and their children in the future." The accord set the following priority areas: primary health care, home care, catastrophic drug coverage, access to diagnostic/medical equipment and information technology and an electronic health record. The extent of progress in meeting reform goals has varied across these areas. Evaluating the accuracy of claims about the system is hampered by several factors. The highly decentralized nature of health care delivery means that good data is not always available. It is often difficult to distinguish compelling but atypical anecdotes from systemic problems. Considerable effort is being made to develop and implement comparable indicators to allow better assessment of progress. However, the Health Council of Canada—with a mandate to monitor and report on health reform—complained in 2007 that progress has stalled. The debate about health care has also become heavily ideological. The Fraser Institute, a right leaning think tank supporting "competitive market solutions for public policy problems" is a frequent critic of publicly funded Canadian Health Care. It publishes yearly reports about wait times which are then used to argue that the system is both failing and unsustainable. Others criticize their methodology, which is based on physician perceptions rather than actual waits. Other complaints come from the political left, who object to 'privatization' (by which they usually mean a heavier involvement of for- profit providers). (See, for example, the Canadian Health Coalition web page.) There are frequent debates in the media and on line between advocates and opponents of Canadian healthcare. Common complaints relate to access, usually to accessing family physicians (with wait times beyond 365 days in Montreal), to elective surgery (especially hip and knee replacement and cataract surgery) and diagnostic imaging. These have been the primary targets of health care reinvestment, and it appears that considerable progress has been made for certain services, although the implications for procedures not on the target list are unclear. Canadian physicians have been heavily involved, particularly in developing appropriateness criteria to ensure timely access for necessary care. It is estimated to have cost Canada's economy $14.8 billion in 2007 to have patients waiting longer than needed for medical procedures. Barua and Esmail completed a study in October 2013, Waiting Your Turn, Wait Times for Health Care in Canada. The authors surveyed both private and publicly funded outpatient health care offices and found the amount of wait time between general practitioner and specialists. The second segment was determining wait times between consultation and time of procedure. They studied each province and found where the longest and shortest wait times were. Barua and Esmail found that the wait times for health services have increased 95 percent from 1993-2013. Esmail and Barua also compared the wait times in 2012 to the wait times in 2013. A few provinces wait times decreased but mostly provinces wait times increased slightly. The number of procedures overall that people in 2013 waited for was 928,120. This is a 6.6 percent increase from 2012. A related issue is the volume, and distribution, of health human resources. There are ongoing issues about the distribution of physicians, with the pendulum swinging from arguing that there were too many, to arguing that there were too few. As Ben Chan found, the major factor driving the drop in physician numbers was changes in training programs. Combined with such factors as changes in the hours worked by each physician, and a decrease in the proportion of doctors choosing to go into family practice, there were shortages in some areas, particularly for general practitioners (GP) / family doctors. One response has been to encourage 'primary care reform', including greater use of multidisciplinary health care teams. There are also ongoing issues regarding nurses. (See Nursing Health Services Research Unit, which links to some reports. CIHI also gives data about nursing.) Delisting is the term used in Canada when a province decides that a medical procedure will no longer be covered by the health care system in that province. While health care coverage is country wide, and is required to be portable and to have equal access, there are a few differences between what provinces will cover. In some cases, this has resulted in lost grants to the provinces; in other cases it has not. An example of a delisted service is circumcision in Ontario. It is still possible to have a boy circumcised in Ontario by a doctor but the parents must pay the cost. The issue of delisting services is becoming increasingly a political battleground in Canadian health care. In an effort to save health care money some provinces are delisting some services; however, some delisted services are ones that could be considered "medically necessary". For example, except for seniors, children, and diabetics eye exams to check vision are no longer covered in Ontario. Some politicians and think tanks have proposed removing barriers to the existence of a parallel private healthcare system. Others note that such systems act to erode cost control and impede equity. Though polling suggests support for such reforms has been increasing, it has yet to be adopted as official policy by any of the main federal political parties. Under federal law, private clinics are not legally allowed to charge patients directly for services covered by the Canada Health Act, if they qualify for the public insurance. Regardless of this legal issue, many do offer such services. There are disputes as to whether surgical procedures can be performed. Two related issues have obstructed the growth of such clinics. One is regulatory — hospital-based quality assurance often failed to encompass them. This gap has been filled in most provinces, but sometimes only after celebrated incidents in which patients died in unregulated clinics, including one physician who performed cosmetic surgery in an Ontario hotel room. The second is economic — there may be no way for physicians to recoup the additional costs of running a surgical facility from their fees. Here, provinces can choose to offer 'facility fees' to these clinics, but doing so has often been contentious, particularly if hospitals felt that these costs would be better devoted to allowing them to increase their operating room time. Note that uninsured persons can pay for care (including medical tourism), and that insured persons can still pay for uninsured services. These are both niche markets. Opponents of Canadian health care often raise issues such as long wait times, a 'brain- drain' drawing qualified professionals away from Canada to other jurisdictions where working in the health care field is more profitable, and impairment of the Canadian health care system due to budget cuts. Fox News ran a story in 2007 reporting that during a period of above average numbers of births, at least 40 Canadian mothers of premature babies had to travel to the U.S. for treatment due to insufficient capacity for premature babies in British Columbia neonatal units. Nonetheless, Canada's health care system covered the health care costs of those mothers affected. In 2003, the Government in Canada spent US$2,998 per capita on healthcare as compared to US$5,711 per capita in the United States, while almost every Canadian citizen is fully covered. In the United States, 11.9 percent of adults lack public or private health coverage, despite higher proportional spending along with large private investment. The lack of competition has given healthcare unions a monopoly on essential services, thus ensuring a very strong bargaining position. Nova Scotia is currently debating healthcare legislation aimed at removing the threat of striking healthcare workers and replacing it with binding arbitration. One proposed solution for improving the Canadian healthcare system is to increase funding. Proponents of this approach point to the rise of neo- conservative economic policies in Canada and the associated reduction in welfare state expenditure (particularly in the provinces) from the 1980s onwards as the cause of degradation in the system. While some say evidence clearly indicate an overall percentage increase on healthcare spending, the net spending has been drastically decreasing on top of inflation. Other critics of healthcare state that increased funding will not solve systemic problems in the healthcare system including a rising cost of medical technology, infrastructure, and wages. These critics say that Canada's proximity to the United States causes a "brain drain" or migration of Canadian-trained doctors and nurses (as well as other professionals) to the United States, where private hospitals can pay much higher wages and income tax rates are lower (partially because health care is not covered through taxation). Some of these critics argue that increased privatization of healthcare would improve Canada's health infrastructure. Others argue vehemently against it. For example, large resources are required to train and educate doctors. Since the number of available doctors is therefore limited, doctors working for a private system would not be working under the public system creating little to no net increase in available services. Critics of greater privatization state that funding for healthcare should be kept public (most services are provided by the private sector including doctors, who, in most cases, are private ), in part because it separates Canadians from Americans by mandating equality and fairness in health care. That is in contrast to other countries, whose doctors are on a salary per capita. In that sense, Canadian healthcare is publicly funded, and services are provided by a mixture of public and private entities, which most Canadians support. Changing the system to eliminate the balance between public and private service providers to a completely-public system is one such alternative. Since the early 1990s, Ontario has implemented several systematic reforms to reduce health care costs. Similar reforms have been implemented in other provinces. Currently in Ontario, people with an annual taxable income above $20,000 must pay an annual health care premium ranging from $60–$900. Funding for health care in Ontario also comes in part from a dedicated Employer Health Tax (EHT) that ranges from 0.98 percent to 1.95 percent of employer payroll. Eligible employers are exempted from EHT on the first $400,000 of payroll. British Columbia and Quebec charge similar premiums. Ontario has increased the number of 24-hour drop-in medical clinic networks to reduce costs associated with treating off-hours emergencies in hospital emergency rooms. Many family doctor practices have created their own clinics, offering 24-hour service for their patients if needed. Each doctor in the practice takes a turn at being "on call" on a rotating basis. Patients who have family doctors belonging to these practices are able to have a doctor come to their home in extreme situations. There is no additional charge for these services as they are billed to the Province, the same as an office visit. Hospitals in some major Canadian cities, such as London, Ontario, have restructured their emergency services to share emergency treatment among several hospitals. One hospital may provide full emergency room care, while another sees patients who have broken limbs, minor injuries and yet another sees patients suffering cold, flu, etc. In 2007, the first nurse practitioner- led office to relieve waiting times caused by a shortage of primary practitioners was opened in Sudbury, Ontario. Ontario has also attempted to move the system away from bill for service or visit and toward preventive and community-based approaches to healthcare. The Ontario government in the early 1990s helped develop many community health care centres, often in low-income areas, which provide both medical and social support which combines health care with programs such as collective kitchens, Internet access, anti-poverty groups and groups to help people quit smoking. While funding has decreased for these centres, and they have had to cut back, they have had a lower cost than the traditional fee-for-service approach. Many of these centres are filled to capacity in terms of general doctors, and there are often fairly long waiting lists and the centres also utilize nurse practitioners, who reduce the workload on the doctors and increase efficiency. Ontario and Quebec have recently licensed midwives, providing another option for childbirth which can reduce costs for uncomplicated births. Midwives remain close to hospital facilities in case the need for emergency care emerges. These births often cost much less than the traditional hospital delivery. Hospitals have also reformed their approach to birthing by adding private birthing areas, often with a hot tub (which is good for relieving pain without medication). Currently, privately owned and operated hospitals that allow patients to pay out-of-pocket for services cannot obtain public funding in Canada, as they contravene the "equal accessibility" tenets of the Canada Health Act. Some politicians and medical professionals have proposed allowing public funding for these hospitals. Workers' Compensation Boards, the Canadian Forces, the RCMP, federally incarcerated prisoners, and medical care for which an insurance company has liability (e.g., motor vehicle accidents) all pay for health care outside of the public systems in all provinces. In Quebec, a recent legal change has allowed this reform to occur. In June 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada overturned a Quebec law preventing people from buying private health insurance to pay for medical services available through the publicly funded system and this ruling does not apply outside the province. See: Chaoulli v. Quebec (Attorney General). In November 2005, the Quebec government announced that it would allow residents to purchase private medical insurance to comply with this ruling. Private insurance from companies such as Blue Cross, Green Shield and Manulife have been available for many years to cover services not covered by the Canadian health care system, such as dental care and some eye care. Private insurance is provided by many employers as a benefit. The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) released a report in July 2007 endorsing private healthcare as a means to improve an ailing healthcare system. Dr. Brian Day, who acted as President of the CMA in 2007/2008, is the owner of the largest private healthcare hospital in Canada and a proponent of mixed public and private healthcare in Canada. It is generally accepted that physicians arriving in Canada from other countries must meet Canadian Health Practitioner standards. So there is concern that doctors from other countries are not trained or educated to meet Canadian standards. Consequently, doctors who want to practise in Canada must meet the same educational and medical qualifications as Canadian-trained practitioners. Others suggest that the Canadian Medical Association, the Ontario Medical Association, and the regulatory bodies (the provincial Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons) have created too much red tape to allow qualified doctors to practise in Canada. Canada's health system is ranked 30th in the world, suggesting the logic of the doctor shortage defies the statistics. In fact according to a report by Keith Leslie of the Canadian Press in the Chronicle Journal, Nov 21, 2005, over 10,000 trained doctors are working in the United States, a country ranked 37th in the world. It would suggest money or the perception of better working conditions, or both, are resulting in an exodus of Canadian doctors (and nurses) to the USA. It is important to recognize that many consider the doctor shortage in Canada to be a very severe problem affecting all sectors of health care. It may relate in part to the details of how doctors are paid; a detail often misunderstood. In Canada, almost all doctors receive a fee per-visit, not per-service. It has been suggested that this type of "fee-for-visit" payment system can encourage complexity, volume visits, repeat visits, referrals, and testing. One consequence of the shortage in Canada is that a great many patients are left without family doctors, and trained specialists, making early intervention very difficult. As the article in the Toronto Star specially isolates, it is not so much a problem of a doctor shortage but of a shortage of 'licensed doctors'. Michael Urbanski states that Canada already has a hidden reserve of foreign-trained MDs eager to begin medical practice. "However, what's crucial to understanding the issue of doctor shortage in Ontario is that while the Liberal government is planning to go "poaching" for other countries' doctors, there are an estimated 4,000 internationally trained doctors right here in Ontario working at low-wage jobs." A CBC report [6](August 21, 2006) on the health care system reports the following: Dr. Albert Schumacher, former president of the Canadian Medical Association estimates that 75 percent of health-care services are delivered privately, but funded publicly. "Frontline practitioners whether they're GPs or specialists by and large are not salaried. They're small hardware stores. Same thing with labs and radiology clinics …The situation we are seeing now are more services around not being funded publicly but people having to pay for them, or their insurance companies. We have sort of a passive privatization. In a report by Keith Leslie of the Canadian Press in the Chronicle Journal, Nov 21, 2005, commenting on an Ontario Medical Association Report, prepared by the human resources committee states "The year 2005 finds the province in the midst of a deepening physician resources crisis". The report continues to report, "the government should make it easier for doctors from other provinces to work in Ontario and ... ". Here we have signs of inter-provincial competition affecting the doctor shortage in one province over another. Essentially, privatized healthcare is not a choice of interest for lower income Canadians, it is most likely to be unaffordable and unfair to those who suffer on a social standard. Though the Canada Health Act provides national guidelines for healthcare, the provinces have exclusive jurisdiction over health under the constitution and are free to ignore these guidelines, although if they ignore the guidelines, the federal government may deny federal funding for healthcare. All provinces currently abide by the Canada Health Act in order to receive this funding; however the Alberta legislature has considered proposals to ignore the Act to allow them to implement reforms not allowed under the Act. The federal government has no direct role in the delivery of medicine in the provinces and territories so each province and territory has its own independent public health insurance program. Under the Canada Health Act, each province and territory must provide services to members of plans in other provinces and territories. Father of medicare, Ontario Health Insurance Plan, Medicare (Australia), Medicare (United States), National Health Service (UK), Canada Health Act, Canada Health Transfer, Canada Health and Social Transfer, Indian Health Transfer Policy (Canada), Health care in Canada, Canada's Health Care providers, 2007, First Nations Health Authority, Canadian Institute for Health Information, Canadian and American health care systems compared, Royal Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada, Saskatchewan doctors' strike of 1962, Health Evidence Network of Canada Canada Health Act, Canadian Health Coalition (Canadian lobby group supporting public medicare), Medicare: A People's Issue, Maple Leaf Web: The Charter & Public Health Care in Canada, CBC Digital Archives – The Birth of Medicare, Building on Values: The Future of Health Care in Canada (The Romanow Report, PDF) archived at Collections Canada, Health Canada page linking to key Federal reports and commissions and their background material, including Romanow Report and Kirby Commission, Pharmaceutical Pricing and Reimbursement Policies in Canada. OECD Health Working Papers 24, 2006, Marchildon's backgrounder on Canadian healthcare for WHO 2005, Benjamin Isitt and Melissa Moroz, "The Hospital Employees' Union Strike and the Privatization of Medicare in British Columbia, Canada," International Labor and Working-Class History, 71 (Spring 2007): 91-111 Single-payer healthcare is a type of universal healthcare financed by taxes that covers the costs of essential healthcare for all residents, with costs covered by a single public system (hence 'single-payer'). Single-payer systems may contract for healthcare services from private organizations (as is the case in Canada) or may own and employ healthcare resources and personnel (as is the case in the United Kingdom). "Single-payer" describes the mechanism by which healthcare is paid for by a single public authority, not a private authority, nor a mix of both. Single-payer healthcare systems pay for all covered healthcare-related services by a single government or government-related source. It is a strategy employed by governments to achieve several goals, including universal healthcare, decreased economic burden of health care, and improved health outcomes for the population. Universal health care worldwide was established as a goal of the World Health Organization in 2010 and adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015 for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. A single-payer health system establishes one health risk pool consisting of the entire population of a geographic or political region. It also establishes one set of rules for services offered, reimbursement rates, drug prices, and minimum standards for required services. In wealthy nations, that kind of publicly managed insurance is typically extended to all citizens and legal residents. Examples include the United Kingdom's National Health Service, Australia's Medicare, Canada's Medicare, and Taiwan's National Health Insurance. Single-payer was coined in the 1990s to characterize the difference between the Canadian health care system from ones like the United Kingdom. The Canadian healthcare system is one where the government provides the funds for health insurance, but the health care is provided through private agencies. The system in the United Kingdom is one where the government provides the funds and delivery of health care. The standard usage of the term "single- payer healthcare" refers to health insurance, as opposed to healthcare delivery, operating as a public service and offered to citizens and legal residents towards providing nearly universal or universal healthcare. The fund can be managed by the government directly or as a publicly owned and regulated agency. Single-payer contrasts with other funding mechanisms like 'multi- payer' (multiple public and/or private sources), 'two-tiered' (defined either as a public source with the option to use qualifying private coverage as a substitute, or as a public source for catastrophic care backed by private insurance for common medical care), and 'insurance mandate' (citizens are required to buy private insurance which meets a national standard and which is generally subsidized). Some systems combine elements of these four funding mechanisms. In contrast to the standard usage of the term, some writers describe all publicly administered systems as "single-payer plans," and others have described any system of healthcare which intends to cover the entire population, such as voucher plans, as "single-payer plans," although these usages generally don't meet strict definitions of the term. Several nations worldwide have single-payer health insurance programs. These programs generally provide some form of universal healthcare, which is implemented in a variety of ways. In some cases doctors are employed and hospitals are run by the government, such as in the UK or Spain. Alternatively, the government may purchase healthcare services from outside organizations, such as the approach taken in Canada. Healthcare in Canada is delivered through a publicly funded healthcare system, which is mostly free at the point of use and has most services provided by private entities. The system was established by the provisions of the Canada Health Act of 1984. The government assures the quality of care through federal standards. The government does not participate in day-to-day care or collect any information about an individual's health, which remains confidential between a person and their physician. Canada's provincially based Medicare systems are cost-effective partly because of their administrative simplicity. In each province, every doctor handles the insurance claim against the provincial insurer. There is no need for the person who accesses healthcare to be involved in billing and reclaim. Private insurance represents a minimal part of the overall system. In general, costs are paid through funding from income taxes. A health card is issued by the Provincial Ministry of Health to each individual who enrolls for the program and everyone receives the same level of care. There is no need for a variety of plans because virtually all essential basic care is covered, including maternity and infertility problems. Depending on the province, dental and vision care may not be covered but are often insured by employers through private companies. In some provinces, private supplemental plans are available for those who desire private rooms if they are hospitalized. Cosmetic surgery and some forms of elective surgery are not considered essential care and are generally not covered. These can be paid out-of-pocket or through private insurers. Health coverage is not affected by loss or change of jobs, as long as premiums are up to date (BC), and there are no lifetime limits or exclusions for pre-existing conditions. Pharmaceutical medications are covered by public funds or through employment-based private insurance. Drug prices are negotiated with suppliers by the federal government to control costs. Family physicians (often known as general practitioners or GPs in Canada) are chosen by individuals. If a patient wishes to see a specialist or is counseled to see a specialist, a referral can be made by a GP. Canadians do wait for some treatments and diagnostic services. Survey data shows that the median wait time to see a special physician is a little over four weeks with 89.5% waiting less than three months. The median wait time for diagnostic services such as MRI and CAT scans is two weeks, with 86.4% waiting less than three months. The median wait time for surgery is four weeks, with 82.2% waiting less than three months. While physician income initially boomed after the implementation of a single-payer program, a reduction in physician salaries followed, which many feared would be a long-term result of government-run healthcare. However, by the beginning of the 21st century, medical professionals were again among Canada's top earners. Healthcare in Taiwan is administrated by the Department of Health of the Executive Yuan. As with other developed economies, Taiwanese people are well- nourished but face such health problems as chronic obesity and heart disease. In 2002, Taiwan had nearly 1.6 physicians and 5.9 hospital beds per 1,000 population, and there were a total of 36 hospitals and 2,601 clinics in the island. Health expenditures constituted 5.8 percent of the GDP in 2001, 64.9% of which coming from public funds. Despite the initial shock on Taiwan's economy from increased costs of expanded healthcare coverage, the single-payer system has provided protection from greater financial risks and has made healthcare more financially accessible for the population, resulting in a steady 70% public satisfaction rating. The current healthcare system in Taiwan, known as National Health Insurance (NHI), was instituted in 1995. NHI is a single-payer compulsory social insurance plan which centralizes the disbursement of health care funds. The system promises equal access to health care for all citizens, and the population coverage had reached 99% by the end of 2004. NHI is mainly financed through premiums, which are based on the payroll tax, and is supplemented with out-of-pocket payments and direct government funding. In the initial stage, fee-for-service predominated for both public and private providers. Most health providers operate in the private sector and form a competitive market on the health delivery side. However, many healthcare providers took advantage of the system by offering unnecessary services to a larger number of patients and then billing the government. In the face of increasing loss and the need for cost containment, NHI changed the payment system from fee-for-service to a global budget, a kind of prospective payment system, in 2002. Taiwan's success with a single-payer health insurance program is owed, in part, to the country's human resources and the government's organizational skills, allowing for the effective and efficient management of the government-run health insurance program. South Korea used to have a multipayer social health insurance universal healthcare system, similar to systems used in countries like Japan and Germany, with healthcare societies providing coverage for whole populace. Prior to 1977, the country had voluntary private health insurance, but reforms initiated in 1977 resulted in universal coverage by 1989. A major healthcare financing reform in 2000 merged all medical societies into the National Health Insurance Service. This new service became a single-payer healthcare system in 2004. The Nordic countries are sometimes considered to have single-payer health care services, as opposed to single-payer national health care insurance like Taiwan or Canada. This is a form of the 'Beveridge Model' of health care systems that features public health providers in addition to public health insurance. The term 'Scandinavian model' or 'Nordic model' of health care systems has a few common features: largely public providers, limited private health coverage, and regionally-run, devolved systems with limited involvement from the central government. Due to this third characteristic, they can also be argued to be single-payer only on a regional level, or to be multi-payer systems, as opposed to the nationally run health coverage found in Taiwan and South Korea. As in Scandinavia, healthcare in the United Kingdom is a devolved matter, meaning England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales each has its own system of private and publicly funded healthcare, generally referred to as the National Health Service (NHS). With largely public or government owned providers, this also fits into the 'Beveridge Model' of health care systems, sometimes considered to be single-payer, although unlike Scandinavia, there is a more significant role for both private coverage and providers. Each country's having different policies and priorities has resulted in a variety of differences existing between the systems. That said, each country provides public healthcare to all UK permanent residents that is free at the point of use, being paid for from general taxation. In addition, each also has a private sector which is considerably smaller than its public equivalent, with provision of private healthcare acquired by means of private health insurance, funded as part of an employer funded healthcare scheme or paid directly by the customer, though provision can be restricted for those with conditions such as AIDS/HIV. The individual systems are: England: National Health Service, Northern Ireland: Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland (HSCNI), Scotland: NHS Scotland, Wales: NHS Wales In England, funding from general taxation is channeled through NHS England, which is responsible for commissioning mainly specialist services and primary care, and Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), which manage 60% of the budget and are responsible for commissioning health services for their local populations. These commissioning bodies do not provide services themselves directly, but procure these from NHS Trusts and Foundation Trusts, as well as private, voluntary, and social enterprise sector providers. Healthcare in Australia is provided by both private and government institutions. Medicare is the publicly funded universal health care venture in Australia. It was instituted in 1984 and coexists with a private health system. Medicare is funded partly by a 2% income tax levy (with exceptions for low-income earners), but mostly out of general revenue. An additional levy of 1% is imposed on high-income earners without private health insurance. As well as Medicare, there is a separate Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme that considerably subsidises a range of prescription medications. The Minister for Health administers national health policy, elements of which (such as the operation of hospitals) are overseen by individual states. Building upon less structured foundations, in 1963 the existence of a single- payer healthcare system in Spain was established by the Spanish government. The system was sustained by contributions from workers, and covered them and their dependants. The universality of the system was established later in 1986. At the same time, management of public healthcare was delegated to the different autonomous communities in the country. While previously this was not the case, in 1997 it was established that public authorities can delegate management of publicly funded healthcare to private companies. Additionally, in parallel to the single-payer healthcare system there are private insurers, which provide coverage for some private doctors and hospitals. Employers will sometimes offer private health insurance as a benefit, with 14.8% of the Spanish population being covered under private health insurance in 2013. In 2000, the Spanish healthcare system was rated by the World Health Organization as the 7th best in the world. Medicare in the United States is a single-payer healthcare system, but is restricted to persons over the age of 65, people under 65 who have specific disabilities, and anyone with End-Stage Renal Disease. A number of proposals have been made for a universal single-payer healthcare system in the United States, among them the United States National Health Care Act (popularly known as H.R. 676 or "Medicare for All") originally introduced in the House in February 2003 and repeatedly since. On July 18, 2018, it was announced that over 60 House Democrats would be forming a Medicare for All Caucus. Advocates argue that preventive healthcare expenditures can save several hundreds of billions of dollars per year because publicly funded universal healthcare would benefit employers and consumers, that employers would benefit from a bigger pool of potential customers and that employers would likely pay less, would be spared administrative costs, and inequities between employers would be reduced. Prohibitively high cost is the primary reason Americans give for problems accessing health care. At over 27 million, the number of people without health insurance coverage in the United States is one of the primary concerns raised by advocates of health care reform. Lack of health insurance is associated with increased mortality – about sixty thousand preventable deaths per year, depending on the study. A study done at Harvard Medical School with Cambridge Health Alliance showed that nearly 45,000 annual deaths are associated with a lack of patient health insurance. The study also found that uninsured, working Americans have a risk of death about 40% higher compared to privately insured working Americans. Advocates also argue that single-payer could benefit from a more fluid economy with increasing economic growth, aggregate demand, corporate profit, and quality of life. Others have estimated a long-term savings amounting to 40% of all national health expenditures due to the extended preventive health care, although estimates from the Congressional Budget Office and The New England Journal of Medicine have found that preventive care is more expensive due to increased utilization. Any national system would be paid for in part through taxes replacing insurance premiums, but advocates also believe savings would be realized through preventive care and the elimination of insurance company overhead and hospital billing costs. A 2008 analysis of a single-payer bill by Physicians for a National Health Program estimated the immediate savings at $350 billion per year. The Commonwealth Fund believes that, if the United States adopted a universal health care system, the mortality rate would improve and the country would save approximately $570 billion a year. Opponents argue that access to health care diminishes under single-payer systems, and that the overall quality of care suffers. Opponents also claim that single-payer systems cause shortages of general physicians and specialists and reduce access to medical technology. Government is increasingly involved in U.S. health care spending, paying about 45% of the $2.2 trillion the nation spent on individuals' medical care in 2004. However, studies have shown that the publicly administered share of health spending in the U.S. may be closer to 60% as of 2002. According to Princeton University health economist Uwe Reinhardt, U.S. Medicare, Medicaid, and State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) represent "forms of 'social insurance' coupled with a largely private health-care delivery system" rather than forms of "socialized medicine." In contrast, he describes the Veterans Administration healthcare system as a pure form of socialized medicine because it is "owned, operated and financed by government." In a peer-reviewed paper published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers of the RAND Corporation reported that the quality of care received by Veterans Administration patients scored significantly higher overall than did comparable metrics for patients currently using United States Medicare. The United States National Health Care Act is a perennial piece of legislation introduced many times in the United States House of Representatives by then Representative John Conyers (D-MI). The act would establish a universal single-payer health care system in the United States, the rough equivalent of Canada's Medicare, the United Kingdom's National Health Service, and Taiwan's Bureau of National Health Insurance, among other examples. The bill was first introduced in 2003 and has been reintroduced in each Congress since. During the 2009 health care debates over the bill that became the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, H.R. 676 was expected to be debated and voted upon by the House in September 2009, but was never debated. In the wake of Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign, in which a push for universal healthcare featured prominently, single-payer proposals gained traction. Conyers reintroduced his bill in the House of Representatives in January 2017. Four months later, the bill was supported by 112 co-sponsors, surpassing for the first time the 25% mark of co-sponsorship. In September of the same year, Sanders himself, together with 16 co-sponsors, introduced a Medicare-for-all bill in the Senate (S. 1804). An analysis of a Mercatus Center study of the 2017 proposal by economist Jeffrey Sachs found that "it rightfully and straightforwardly concludes that M4A would provide more health care coverage at lower cost than the status quo, projecting a net reduction in national health expenditures of roughly $2 trillion over a 10-year period (2022-2031), while also enabling increased health care coverage." The Congressional Budget Office and related government agencies scored the cost of a single-payer health care system several times since 1991. The General Accounting Office published a report in 1991 noting that "[I]f the US were to shift to a system of universal coverage and a single payer, as in Canada, the savings in administrative costs [10 percent of health spending] would be more than enough to offset the expense of universal coverage." The CBO scored the cost in 1991, noting that "the population that is currently uninsured could be covered without dramatically increasing national spending on health" and that "all US residents might be covered by health insurance for roughly the current level of spending or even somewhat less, because of savings in administrative costs and lower payment rates for services used by the privately insured." A CBO report in 1993 stated that "[t]he net cost of achieving universal insurance coverage under this single payer system would be negative" in part because "consumer payments for health would fall by $1,118 per capita, but taxes would have to increase by $1,261 per capita" in order to pay for the plan. A July 1993 scoring also resulted in positive outcomes, with the CBO stating that, "[a]s the program was phased in, the administrative savings from switching to a single-payer system would offset much of the increased demand for health care services. Later, the cap on the growth of the national health budget would hold the rate of growth of spending below the baseline." The CBO also scored Sen. Paul Wellstone's American Health and Security Act of 1993 in December 1993, finding that "by year five (and in subsequent years) the new system would cost less than baseline." A 2014 study published in the journal BMC Medical Services Research by James Kahn, et al., found that the actual administrative burden of health care in the United States was 27% of all national health expenditures. The study examined both direct costs charged by insurers for profit, administration and marketing but also the indirect burden placed on health care providers like hospitals, nursing homes and doctors for costs they incurred in working with private health insurers including contract negotiations, financial and clinical record-keeping (variable and idiosyncratic for each payer). Kahn, et al. estimate that the added cost for the private insurer health system in the US was about $471 billion in 2012 compared to a single-payer system like Canada's. This represents just over 20% of the total national healthcare expenditure in 2012. Kahn asserts that this excess administrative cost will increase under the Affordable Care Act with its reliance on the provision of health coverage through a multi-payer system. Several single-payer state referendums and bills from state legislatures have been proposed, but with the exception of Vermont, all have failed. In December 2014, Vermont canceled its plan for single-payer health care. California attempted passage of a single-payer bill as early as 1994, and the first successful passages of legislation through the California State Legislature, SB 840 or "The California Universal Healthcare Act" (authored by Sheila Kuehl), occurred in 2006 and again in 2008. Both times, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill. State Senator Mark Leno has reintroduced the bill in each legislative session since. On February 17, 2017, SB 562, which is also known as "The Healthy California Act" was introduced to the California State Senate. This bill is a $400 billion plan that was sponsored by the California Nurses Association to implement single-payer healthcare in California. Under this bill, which was co-authored by State Senators Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) and Toni Atkins (D-San Diego), Californians would have health coverage without having to pay any premiums, co-pays, or deductibles. Under this proposed bill, all California residents will be covered in the Healthy California Act SB 562 regardless of their immigration status. This bill will also include transient students that attend California institutions whom, purchased their healthcare program through the school. Services that will be covered by this bill will need to determine as medically necessary by the patient's chosen health care provider. These services will range from preventable services to emergency services, in addition to prescription drugs services. SB 562 passed in the State Senate on June 1, 2017 with a vote of 23-14. When the bill was sent to the State Assembly, it did not get approved and was put on hold due to flaws in its design such as not specifying sources of funding for the bill or how care would be delivered to patients. Although the bill is currently put on hold, there are hopes it will be revived in 2018 with the necessary changes so it can be reviewed again by both the State Senate and State Assembly. According to SB-562, a Healthy California Trust Fund would be established to provide funding for the bill. Currently, states receive funding from the federal government for certain healthcare services such as Medicaid and Medicare. In addition to taxes, these funds would be pooled into the new trust fund and provide the sources of funding needed to implement The Healthy California Act. However, California must first obtain a waiver from the federal government which would allow California to pool all the money received from these federal programs into one central fund. The Colorado State Health Care System Initiative, Amendment 69, was a citizen- initiated constitutional amendment proposal in November 2016 to vote on a single-payer healthcare system funded by a 10% payroll tax split 2:1 between employers and employees. This would have replaced the private health insurance premiums currently paid by employees and companies. The ballot was rejected by 79% of voters. In 2009, the Hawaii state legislature passed a single-payer healthcare bill that was vetoed by Republican Governor Linda Lingle. While the veto was overridden by the legislature, the bill was not implemented. In 2007, the Health Care for All Illinois Act was introduced and the Illinois House of Representatives' Health Availability Access Committee passed the single-payer bill favorably out of committee by an 8–4 vote. The legislation was eventually referred back to the House rules committee and not taken up again during that session. Massachusetts had passed a universal healthcare program in 1986, but budget constraints and partisan control of the legislature resulted in its repeal before the legislation could be enacted. Question 4, a nonbinding referendum, was on the ballot in 14 state districts in November 2010, asking voters, "[S]hall the representative from this district be instructed to support legislation that would establish healthcare as a human right regardless of age, state of health or employment status, by creating a single payer health insurance system like Medicare that is comprehensive, cost effective, and publicly provided to all residents of Massachusetts?" The ballot question passed in all 14 districts that offered the question. The Minnesota Health Act, which would establish a statewide single-payer health plan, has been presented to the Minnesota legislature regularly since 2009. The bill was passed out of both the Senate Health Housing and Family Security Committee and the Senate Commerce and Consumer Protection Committee in 2009, but the House version was ultimately tabled. In 2010, the bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on a voice vote as well as the House Health Care & Human Services Policy and Oversight Committee. In 2011, the bill was introduced as a two-year bill in both the Senate and House, but did not progress. It has been introduced again in the 2013 session in both chambers. In September 2011, Governor Brian Schweitzer announced his intention to seek a waiver from the federal government allowing Montana to set up a single-payer healthcare system. Governor Schweitzer was unable to implement single-payer health care in Montana, but did make moves to open government-run clinics, and in his final budget as governor, increased coverage for lower-income Montana residents. New York State has been attempting passage of the New York Health Act, which would establish a statewide single-payer health plan, since 1992. The New York Health Act passed the Assembly four times: once in 1992 and again in 2015, 2016, and 2017, but has not yet advanced through the Senate after referrals to the Health Committee. On all occasions, the legislation passed the Assembly by an almost two-to-one ratio of support. The state of Oregon attempted to pass single-payer healthcare via Oregon Ballot Measure 23 in 2002, and the measure was rejected by a significant majority. The Family Business and Healthcare Security Act has been introduced in the Pennsylvania legislature numerous times, but has never been able to pass. In December 2014, Vermont canceled its plan for single-payer healthcare. Vermont passed legislation in 2011 creating Green Mountain Care. When Governor Peter Shumlin signed the bill into law, Vermont became the first state to functionally have a single-payer health care system. While the bill is considered a single-payer bill, private insurers can continue to operate in the state indefinitely, meaning it does not fit the strict definition of single-payer. Representative Mark Larson, the initial sponsor of the bill, has described Green Mountain Care's provisions "as close as we can get [to single- payer] at the state level." Vermont abandoned the plan in 2014, citing costs and tax increases as too high to implement. Advocates for single-payer point to support in polls, although the polling is mixed depending on how the question is asked. Polls from Harvard University in 1988, the Los Angeles Times in 1990, and the Wall Street Journal in 1991 all showed strong support for a health care system comparable to the system in Canada. A 2001 article in the public health journal Health Affairs studied fifty years of American public opinion of various health care plans and concluded that, while there appears to be general support of a "national health care plan," poll respondents "remain satisfied with their current medical arrangements, do not trust the federal government to do what is right, and do not favor a single-payer type of national health plan." Between 2001 and 2013, however, polling support declined. A 2007 Yahoo/AP poll showed 54% of respondents considered themselves supporters of "single-payer health care," and 49% of respondents in a 2009 poll for Time Magazine showed support for "a national single-payer plan similar to Medicare for all." Polls by Rasmussen Reports in 2011 and 2012 showed 49% opposed to single-payer healthcare. In April 2019, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll showed 56% of Americans favor "a national health plan, sometimes called Medicare-for-all", with support remaining steady over the previous two years. Physicians for a National Health Program, National Nurses United, the American Medical Student Association, Healthcare-NOW!, and the California Nurses Association are among advocacy groups that have called for the introduction of a single-payer healthcare program in the United States. A 2007 study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that 59% of physicians "supported legislation to establish national health insurance" while 9% were neutral on the topic, and 32% opposed it. All-payer rate setting, Health care reform debate in the United States, International comparisons of health care systems – tabular comparisons of the US, Canada, and other countries not shown above., National health insurance, Public health insurance option ("the public option") Several individuals have been described as the father of medicare in Canada. Medicare is the country's publicly funded health system. Tommy Douglas championed public health insurance as Premier of Saskatchewan from 1944 to 1961 and federal leader of the New Democratic Party from 1961 to 1971., Woodrow Lloyd was the Premier of Saskatchewan when universal medicare was introduced in Saskatchewan., Lester B. Pearson was the Liberal Prime Minister of Canada from 1963 to 1968. His government saw medicare introduced on a national basis, after his party wrote and introduced the legislation for hospital and out-of-hospital treatment, and received the support of Douglas' NDP., Emmett Matthew Hall was a jurist and chair of the 1964 Royal Commission on health care in Canada which recommended the nationwide adoption of Saskatchewan's system of public insurance for both hospitalization and out-of-hospital medical services. In 1996, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien stated that "Canadians will be forever grateful for the pivotal role that [Hall] played in bringing universal medicare to Canada. Throughout his long life, he remained medicare's most eloquent defender"., Paul Martin Sr., Minister of National Health and Welfare from 1946 to 1957, played a central early role in the adoption of hospital insurance and is also remembered as a father of Medicare. This list includes individuals from three major distinct and competing Canadian political traditions: Douglas and Lloyd from the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, later the New Democratic Party; Hall, a Progressive Conservative; and Martin and Pearson, Liberals.

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The Breakfast Club is a 1985 American teen comedy-drama film written, produced, and directed by John Hughes. It stars Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy as teenagers from different high school cliques who spend a Saturday in detention with their authoritarian assistant principal (Paul Gleason). The film premiered in Los Angeles on February 7, 1985. Universal Pictures released it in cinemas in the United States on February 15, 1985. It received critical acclaim and earned $51.5 million on a $1 million budget. Critics consider it to be one of Hughes's most memorable and recognizable works. The media referred to the film's five main actors as members of a group called the "Brat Pack". In 2016, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The film was digitally remastered and was re- screened throughout 430 theaters in celebration of its 30th anniversary in 2015. On a Saturday, March 24, 1984, five students at the fictional Shermer High School report at 7:00 am for all-day detention. Each comes from a different clique: stuck-up Claire Standish, geek Brian Johnson, wrestler Andrew Clark, rebellious John Bender, and outcast Allison Reynolds. They gather in the school library, where assistant principal Richard Vernon instructs them not to talk, move from the seats, or sleep until they are released at 4:00 p.m. He assigns them a thousand-word essay, in which each must describe "who you think you are". He leaves, returning only occasionally to check on them. John, who has an antagonistic relationship with Vernon, ignores the rules and riles up the other students, teasing and harassing Brian, Andrew, and Claire. Vernon gives John eight weekends' worth of additional detention and eventually locks him in a storage closet, but he escapes and returns to the library. The students pass the hours by talking, arguing, and, at one point, smoking marijuana, (except Allison who doesn't smoke with the others). Gradually, they open up and reveal their secrets: Claire has lots of experiences of peer pressure, John comes from an abusive household, Allison is a compulsive liar, Andrew can't think for himself, and Brian contemplated suicide over a bad grade. They discover they all have poor relationships with their parents: Claire's parents use her to get back at each other during arguments, John's parents physically and verbally abuse him, Allison's parents ignore her, Andrew's father pushes him to the limit, especially in wrestling, and Brian's parents pressure him to earn high grades. The students realize that, despite their differences, they face similar problems. Claire gives Allison a makeover, which sparks romantic interest from Andrew. Claire decides to break her "pristine" innocent appearance by kissing John and giving him a hickey. Although they suspect their new relationships will end along with their detention, they believe their mutual experiences will change the way they look at their peers. As the detention nears its end, the group requests that Brian complete the essay for everyone, and John returns to the storage closet to fool Vernon into thinking he has not left. Brian leaves the essay in the library for Vernon to read after they leave. As the students part ways, Allison and Andrew kiss, as do Claire and John. Allison rips Andrew's state champion patch from his jacket to keep, and Claire gives John one of her diamond earrings, which he puts on. Vernon reads the essay, in which Brian states that Vernon has already judged who they are using stereotypes, and that they think that he (Vernon) is crazy if he thinks that they are going to tell him who they are; so Brian correspondingly states in the letter that "each one of us is a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal. Does that answer your question?" He signs off the letter with "Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club." Judd Nelson as John Bender, Molly Ringwald as Claire Standish, Emilio Estevez as Andrew Clark, Anthony Michael Hall as Brian Johnson, Ally Sheedy as Allison Reynolds, Paul Gleason as Assistant Principal Vernon, John Kapelos as Carl Reed, Ron Dean as Mr. Clark Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall both starred in Hughes's 1984 film Sixteen Candles. Towards the end of filming, Hughes asked them both to be in The Breakfast Club. Hall became the first to be cast, agreeing to the role of Brian Johnson; his real life mother and sister playing the same roles in the film. Ringwald was originally approached to play the character of Allison Reynolds, but she was "really upset" because she wanted to play Claire Standish (then named "Cathy" in the first draft of the script), which saw the auditions of Robin Wright, Jodie Foster, and Laura Dern. She eventually convinced Hughes and the studio to give her the part. The role of Allison ultimately went to Ally Sheedy. Emilio Estevez originally auditioned for the role of John Bender. However, when Hughes was unable to find someone to play Andrew Clark, Estevez was recast. Nicolas Cage was considered for the role of John Bender, which was the last role to be cast, though the role was narrowed down to John Cusack and Judd Nelson. Hughes originally cast Cusack, but decided to replace him with Nelson before shooting began, because Cusack did not look threatening enough for the role. At one point, Hughes was disappointed in Nelson because he stayed in character and harassed Ringwald off-camera, with the other actors having to convince Hughes not to fire him. Rick Moranis was originally cast as the janitor but left due to creative differences and was replaced by John Kapelos. In 1999, Hughes said that his request to direct the film met with resistance and skepticism because he lacked filmmaking experience. Hughes ultimately convinced the film's investors that due to the modest $1 million budget and its single location shoot, he could greatly minimize their risk. Hughes originally thought that The Breakfast Club would be his directorial debut. Hughes opted for an insular, largely one-room set and wrote about high school students, who would be played by younger actors. Principal photography began on March 28, 1984, and ended in May. Filming took place at Maine North High School in Des Plaines, Illinois, which had closed in 1981. The same setting was used for interior scenes of Hughes's 1986 film Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which featured exterior shots from nearby Glenbrook North High School. The library at Maine North High School, considered too small for the film, prompted the crew to build the set in the school's gymnasium. The actors rehearsed for three weeks and then shot the film in sequence. On the Ferris Bueller's Day Off DVD commentary (featured on the 2004 DVD version), Hughes revealed that he shot the two films concurrently to save time and money, and some outtakes of both films feature elements of the film crews working on the other film. The first print was 150 minutes in length. During a cast reunion in honor of the film's 25th anniversary, Ally Sheedy revealed that a Director's Cut existed but Hughes's widow did not disclose any details concerning its whereabouts. In 2015 the first draft of the film's script was discovered in a Maine South High School cabinet as district employees were moving offices to a new building. The film's poster, featuring the five characters huddled together, was photographed by Annie Leibovitz toward the end of shooting. The shot of five actors gazing at the camera influenced the way teen films were marketed from that point on. The poster refers to the five "types" of the story using slightly different terms than those used in the film, and in a different sequence, stating "They were five total strangers with nothing in common, meeting for the first time. A brain, a beauty, a jock, a rebel and a recluse". The main theme of the film is the constant struggle of the American teenager to be understood, by adults and by themselves. It explores the pressure put on teenagers to fit into their own realms of high school social constructs, as well as the lofty expectations of their parents, teachers, and other authority figures. On the surface, the students have little in common with each other. However, as the day rolls on, they eventually bond over a common disdain for the aforementioned issues of peer pressure and parental expectations. Stereotyping is another theme. Once the obvious stereotypes are broken down, the characters "empathize with each other's struggles, dismiss some of the inaccuracies of their first impressions, and discover that they are more similar than different". The main adult character, Mr. Vernon, is not portrayed in a positive light. He consistently talks down to the students and forcefully flaunts his authority throughout the film. Bender is the only one who stands up to Vernon. The film premiered in Los Angeles on February 7, 1985. Universal Pictures released the film in cinemas on February 15, 1985 in the United States. In 2003, the film was released on DVD as part of the "High School Reunion Collection". In 2008, a "Flashback Edition" DVD was released with several special features, including an audio commentary with Anthony Michael Hall and Judd Nelson. A 25th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray was released in 2010, and the same disc was re-released with a DVD and digital copy in 2012 as part of Universal's 100th Anniversary series. On March 10, 2015, the 30th Anniversary Edition was released. This release was digitally remastered and restored from the original 35mm film negatives for better picture quality on DVD, Digital HD and Blu-ray. On October 16, 2017, The Criterion Collection announced that the film was to be released in a special edition in January 2018. Roger Ebert awarded three stars out of four and called the performances "wonderful," adding that the film was "more or less predictable" but "doesn't need earthshaking revelations; it's about kids who grow willing to talk to one another, and it has a surprisingly good ear for the way they speak." Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote, "This confessional formula has worked in films as different as 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' 'The Big Chill' and 'My Dinner with Andre,' and it works here too. It works especially well in 'The Breakfast Club' because we keep waiting for the film to break out of its claustrophobic set and give us a typical teenage movie sex-or-violence scene. That doesn't happen, much to our delight." Kathleen Carroll from the New York Daily News stated, "Hughes has a wonderful knack for communicating the feelings of teenagers, as well as an obvious rapport with his exceptional cast–who deserve top grades". Other reviews were less positive. Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote, "There are some good young actors in 'The Breakfast Club,' though a couple of them have been given unplayable roles," namely Ally Sheedy and Judd Nelson, adding, "The five young stars would have mixed well even without the fraudulent encounter-group candor towards which 'The Breakfast Club' forces them. Mr. Hughes, having thought up the characters and simply flung them together, should have left well enough alone." James Harwood of Variety panned the film as a movie that "will probably pass as deeply profound among today's teenage audience, meaning the youngsters in the film spend most of their time talking to each other instead of dancing, dropping their drawers and throwing food. This, on the other hand, should not suggest they have anything intelligent to say." Pauline Kael wrote in The New Yorker, "When the kids are just killing time and being funny—when they're not being challenged by the rebel's probing—the dialogue has an easy, buggy rhythm ... But the scenes involving the snotty, callous dean ring false right from the start, and though Paul Gleason seems miscast, maybe anybody playing this villain would seem miscast." Michael Wilmington of the Los Angeles Times praised Estevez for "a practically perfect performance" but wrote that "'The Breakfast Club' tries to have it two ways: It borrows the O'Neill-Williams-Albee structure, but it's also a teen-age sex comedy, wherein the kids revolt and make asses of their teachers. It's not really a teen-age 'No Exit,' but an attempt to fuse something like 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' with something like 'Animal House.' The movie is too crafty for its own good; its mixed ambitions often self-destruct." Paul Attanasio of The Washington Post stated, "As the kids yammer at each other, 'The Breakfast Club' becomes as static and uninvolving as most filmed plays; there's none of the ingenious virtuosity that, for example, Robert Altman used in shooting David Rabe's 'Streamers.'" Among retrospective reviews, James Berardinelli wrote in 1998: "Few will argue that The Breakfast Club is a great film, but it has a candor that is unexpected and refreshing in a sea of too-often generic teen-themed films. The material is a little talky (albeit not in a way that will cause anyone to confuse it with something by Eric Rohmer), but it's hard not to be drawn into the world of these characters." Writing in 2015, P. J. O'Rourke called The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off "Hughes's masterwork[s]". He described the former film as an example of Hughes's politics, in that the students do not organize a protest but, "like good conservatives do, as individuals and place the highest value, like this conservative does, on goofing off. Otherwise known as individual liberty". As of December 2019, review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an 89% approval rating based on 62 reviews, with an average rating of 7.7/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "The Breakfast Club is a warm, insightful, and very funny look into the inner lives of teenagers". Review aggregator Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 62% based on 11 reviews from mainstream critics, considered to be "generally favorable reviews". In February 1985, the film debuted at #3 at the box office (behind blockbuster film Beverly Hills Cop and Witness starring Harrison Ford). Grossing $45,875,171 domestically and $51,525,171 worldwide, the film is a box office success, given its $1 million budget. Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Paul Gleason and Ally Sheedy all won a Silver Bucket of Excellence Award at the 2005 MTV Movie Awards in 2005. The Breakfast Club is known as the "quintessential 1980s film" and is considered as one of the best films of the decade. In 2008, Empire magazine ranked it #369 on their The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time list. It then rose 331 places to rank at #38 on their 2014 list. Similarly, The New York Times placed the film on its Best 1000 Movies Ever list and Entertainment Weekly ranked the film number 1 on its list of the 50 Best High School Movies. In the 2001 parody film Not Another Teen Movie, Gleason reprised his role as Assistant Principal Vernon in a short scene that parodies The Breakfast Club. In 2005, the film received the Silver Bucket of Excellence Award in honor of its 20th anniversary at the MTV Movie Awards. For the event, MTV attempted to reunite the original cast. Sheedy, Ringwald, and Hall appeared together on stage, with Kapelos in the audience; Gleason gave the award to his former castmates. Estevez could not attend because of other commitments, and Nelson appeared earlier in the show but left before the on-stage reunion, prompting Hall to joke that the two were "in Africa with Dave Chappelle". Yellowcard performed Simple Minds' anthem for the film, "Don't You (Forget About Me)," at the awards. At the 82nd Academy Awards (March 7, 2010), Sheedy, Hall, Ringwald, and Nelson all appeared in a tribute to John Hughes—who had died a few months prior—along with other actors who had worked with him, including Jon Cryer from Pretty in Pink, Matthew Broderick from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and Macaulay Culkin from Home Alone. In 2018, The New Yorker published an article written by Ringwald in which she critiqued Hughes's films "in the Age of #MeToo". The Breakfast Club soundtrack album was released on February 19, 1985 by A&M; Records. The album peaked at No. 17 on the US Billboard 200 album chart. The song "Don't You (Forget About Me)" performed by Scottish rock band Simple Minds was released on February 20, 1985 in the United States and on April 8, 1985 in the United Kingdom as a single and reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. In a June 25, 1985 review for The Village Voice, music critic Robert Christgau gave the album a "D−" and said that it has "utterly negligible" songs, and he commended Simple Minds for trying to distance themselves from their song, "Don't You (Forget About Me)", best known for being played during the film's opening and closing credits. In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine gave the soundtrack three out of five stars and wrote that, apart from Simple Minds' "undisputed masterpiece," the album is largely "disposable" and marred by "'80s artifacts" and "forgettable instrumentals". The Breakfast Club: Smells Like Teen Realness an essay by David Kamp at the Criterion Collection Don McNeill's Breakfast Club was a long-run morning variety show on NBC Blue Network/ABC radio (and briefly on television) originating in Chicago, Illinois. Hosted by Don McNeill, the radio program ran from June 23, 1933, through December 27, 1968. McNeil's 35½-year run as host remains the longest tenure for an emcee of a network entertainment program, surpassing Johnny Carson (29½ years) on The Tonight Show and Bob Barker (34⅔ years) on The Price Is Right, albeit split between radio and television, whereas the latter two were television only. In Chicago during the early 1930s, McNeill was assigned to take over an unsponsored early morning variety show, The Pepper Pot, with an 8 a.m. timeslot on the NBC Blue Network. McNeill re-organized the hour as The Breakfast Club, dividing it into four segments which McNeill labeled "the Four Calls to Breakfast." McNeill's revamped show premiered in 1933, combining music with informal talk and jokes often based on topical events, initially scripted by McNeill but later ad-libbed. In addition to recurring comedy performers, various vocal groups and soloists, listeners heard sentimental verse, conversations with members of the studio audience and a silent moment of prayer. The series eventually gained a sponsor in the Chicago-based meat packer Swift and Company, beginning February 8, 1941. McNeill is credited as the first performer to make morning talk and variety a viable radio format. The program featured Fran Allison (later of Kukla, Fran and Ollie fame) as "Aunt Fanny", plus Captain Stubby and the Buccaneers and various comedy bits. Every quarter-hour came the "Call to Breakfast"—a march around the breakfast table. A featured vocalist on the show, under her professional name of Annette King, was Charlotte Thompson Reid, who later became an Illinois congresswoman for five terms (1962–71). Eileen Parker became a vocalist with the program in 1953. The Breakfast Club initially was broadcast from the NBC studios in the Merchandise Mart. In 1948, after 4,500 broadcasts from the Merchandise Mart, the program moved to the new ABC Civic Studio. It was also heard from other Chicago venues: the Terrace Casino (at the Morrison Hotel), the College Inn Porterhouse (at the Sherman House) and "the Tiptop Room of the Warwick Allerton Hotel on Chicago's Magnificent Mile," as well as tour broadcasts from other locations in the U.S. It remained a fixture on the ABC radio network (formerly the NBC Blue Network; it became known as ABC in 1945), maintaining its popularity for years and counting among its fans Supreme Court Associate Justice William O. Douglas. After ABC Radio was split into four networks in 1968, The Breakfast Club was moved to the new American Entertainment network, and was known for its last months on the air as The Don McNeill Show. Beginning on September 5, 1950, the show aired as TV Club (aka Don McNeill's TV Club) on ABC in the 1950-51 prime time season in a 60-minute version, Wednesdays at 9pm ET. From September to December 1951, the show returned to ABC in a 30-minute version, Wednesdays from 9pm to 9:30pm ET. Beginning on February 22, 1954, and ending on February 25, 1955, Don McNeill's Breakfast Club was simulcast in its regular morning slot on ABC Radio and ABC Television. However, it failed to make a successful transition to television in either version. On May 12, 1948, the program was shown on the DuMont television station WABD in New York, "simulcast" with the ABC radio show, as an experiment. At least two kinescope recordings survive of these telecasts, including a February 17, 1954 "test kinescope," produced a week before the regular ABC simulcasts began. John Doolittle's book about this program, Don McNeill and His Breakfast Club (University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), was reviewed by Susan M. Colowick in Library Journal: The Breakfast Club on December 8, 1941 (interrupted by war bulletins), Rich Samuels' tribute to The Breakfast Club (February 2004) 1950-51 United States network television schedule, 1951-52 United States network television schedule Breakfast Club timeline, Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. Oxford University Press, 1998. David Weinstein, The Forgotten Network: DuMont and the Birth of American Television (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004), Alex McNeil, Total Television, Fourth edition (New York: Penguin Books, 1980), Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows, Third edition (New York: Ballantine Books, 1964) Marquette University: Donald T. McNeill Collection, 1928-69, 1948 kinescope of DuMont TV and ABC Radio simulcast (May 12, 1948) at the Internet Archive The Breakfast Club is an American syndicated radio show based in New York City hosted by DJ Envy, Angela Yee and Charlamagne tha God. It currently airs in over 90 radio markets around the country and is also televised by REVOLT every morning. Common topics of discussion on the show are celebrity gossip (especially in the hip hop industry), progressive politics, and sexual and dating issues. In December 2010, The Breakfast Club was established on New York's Power 105.1 (WWPR-FM) as a morning show serving the local market. In April 2013, Premiere Networks (a subsidiary of then Clear Channel Communications, now iHeartMedia) launched a weekend version of the show, Weekends with the Breakfast Club, which is a Top 20 Countdown. Four months later, The Breakfast Club was rolled out into syndication. In March 2014, The Breakfast Club began simulcast on the Revolt television network. In January 2020, The Breakfast Club was nominated for an NAACP Image Award in the category of Outstanding News/Information (Series or Special). Front Page News, Get It Off Your Chest, The Rumor Report, Ask Yee (Wednesday and Thursdays), Donkey of the Day, Freaky Friday (Friday), Positive note of the day, Call in and Weigh in, Interview, Goon Toons (Friday), People's Choice Mix, Shoot Your Shot (Tuesday), Slander the Breakfast Club The Freezer, After the Club, New Song of the day, The Decision (Mondays), Hoe Appreciation Day 2 Currently there are 41 affiliated stations airing The Breakfast Club radio show. KATZ-FM St. Louis, Missouri, KBBT San Antonio, Texas, KWBT Waco, Texas, KOHT Tucson, Arizona, KKMY Beaumont, Texas, KQBT Houston, Texas, KVEG Las Vegas, Nevada, KKRZ Portland, Oregon, WCZQ Champaign, Illinois, WDHT Dayton, Ohio, WEBN Cincinnati, Ohio, WFBC-FM Greenville, South Carolina, WFXE Columbus, Georgia, WGOV-FM Valdosta, Georgia, WHRK Memphis, Tennessee, WHXT Columbia, South Carolina, WJBT Jacksonville, Florida, WJLB Detroit, Michigan, WOWI Norfolk, Virginia, WJZD-FM Gulfport, Mississippi, WKKV-FM Milwaukee, Wisconsin, WMIB Miami, Florida, WQBT Savannah, Georgia, WQHH Lansing, Michigan, WQUE-FM New Orleans, Louisiana, WRDG Atlanta, Georgia, WRSV Raleigh, North Carolina, (simulcast on WDUR), WRVZ Charleston, West Virginia, WTFX-FM Louisville, Kentucky, WUSL Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, W283AN Orlando, Florida, WWPR-FM New York City, New York (flagship station), WZCB Columbus, Ohio, WZHT Montgomery, Alabama, WZRL Indianapolis, Indiana, W257BQ Charleston, South Carolina, W280DO Lexington, Kentucky, W281AB Birmingham, Alabama WIBB Macon, Georgia REVOLT TV WJIZ Albany, Georgia

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Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith is a 2005 American epic space- opera film written and directed by George Lucas. It stars Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Ian McDiarmid, Samuel L. Jackson, Christopher Lee, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker and Frank Oz. It is the final installment in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, the third chapter in the Skywalker saga and the sixth Star Wars film to be released overall. The film begins three years after the onset of the Clone Wars. The Jedi Knights are spread across the galaxy, leading a massive war against the Separatists. The Jedi Council dispatches Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi to eliminate the notorious General Grievous, the leader of the Separatist Army. Meanwhile, Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker who begins having premonitions of his secret wife Padmé Amidala dying in childbirth and wants to prevent it, is tasked by the Council to spy on Palpatine, the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic and, secretly, a Sith lord known as Darth Sidious, whom he grows close to. Their deepening friendship threatens the Jedi Order, the Republic and Anakin's best interest. Lucas began writing the script before production of (2002) ended. Production of Revenge of the Sith started in September 2003, and filming took place in Australia with additional locations in Thailand, Switzerland, China, Italy and the United Kingdom. Revenge of the Sith premiered on May 15, 2005, at the Cannes Film Festival, then released worldwide on May 19, 2005. The film received generally positive reviews from critics; praise was directed towards its action sequences, mature themes, musical score, visual effects, makeup and the performances of McGregor, McDiarmid, Oz, and Jimmy Smits; criticism largely focused on its dialogue and the performance of Christensen. Revenge of the Sith broke several box office records during its opening week and went on to earn over $850 million worldwide, making it the second highest-grossing film in the Star Wars franchise at the time. It was the highest-grossing film in the U.S. and the second-highest-grossing film worldwide in 2005.The film also holds the record for the highest opening day gross on a Thursday, making $50 million. Three years after the beginning of the Clone Wars, Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi and Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker lead a mission to rescue the kidnapped Supreme Chancellor Palpatine from the cyborg Separatist commander, General Grievous, during a space battle over Coruscant. After infiltrating Grievous's flagship, the Jedi battle Count Dooku, whom Anakin decapitates at Palpatine's demand. Grievous escapes the battle-torn ship in which the Jedi crash-land on Coruscant. There, Anakin reunites with his wife, Padmé Amidala, who reveals that she is pregnant. While initially excited, Anakin begins to have nightmares of Padmé dying in childbirth and thus becomes desperate to save her at any cost. Palpatine appoints Anakin to the Jedi Council as his representative and informant. The Council allows Anakin as a member, but decides not to appoint him the position of Jedi Master, and tells him to spy on Palpatine, diminishing Anakin's confidence in the Council. Palpatine tempts Anakin with his knowledge of the dark side of the Force, including the power to avert death. Meanwhile, Obi-Wan travels to Utapau, where he kills Grievous, and Yoda travels to the Wookiee homeworld of Kashyyyk to defend it from a Separatist invasion. Palpatine reveals to Anakin that he is the Sith Lord Darth Sidious and that he knows how to rescue Padmé. Anakin reports Palpatine's treachery to Mace Windu, who confronts the Sith Lord with three other Jedi masters. Palpatine quickly murders the three masters but is overwhelmed by Windu, who uses his lightsaber to reflect Palpatine’s Force lightning, disfiguring the Chancellor. Fearing that he would lose Padmé if Palpatine dies, Anakin intervenes on the latter's behalf and betrays Windu by severing his hand, allowing Palpatine to throw him out the window to his death. Though horrified, Anakin pledges himself to the Sith as Palpatine dubs him his new apprentice Darth Vader. Sidious then issues Order 66, which commands the clone troopers to kill their commanding Jedi officers, thus sending the Jedi Order into near extinction. Meanwhile, the newly christened Sith Lord Vader brings with him a battalion of clone troopers to help kill the remaining Jedi in the temple including children in training, before traveling to the volcanic planet of Mustafar to slaughter the Separatist leaders. Palpatine soon declares himself Emperor before the Galactic Senate, transforming the Republic into the Galactic Empire, and declaring the Jedi as traitors. Having survived the chaos, Obi-Wan and Yoda return to Coruscant and learn of Anakin's turn to the dark side and betrayal. Yoda orders a distraught Obi-Wan to confront Vader while Yoda faces Palpatine. Obi-Wan informs Padmé of Anakin's betrayal of the Jedi, his turn to the dark side as Vader and newfound loyalty to the Sith, leaving her distraught. She goes to Mustafar to persuade Vader to return and raise their children. Obi-Wan has secretly stowed away on the ship without Padme's knowledge. Anakin misinterprets this as the two conspiring together to kill him and angrily chokes Padmé into unconsciousness. Obi-Wan engages Vader in a lightsaber duel. He pleads Vader to stand down, before severing Vader’s legs and left arm, leaving him to die at the bank of a lava river as he leaves Mustafar with the fallen Jedi’s lightsaber. Vader’s robes catch fire, immolating him alive and mutilating his body. On Coruscant, Yoda battles the Emperor until their duel reaches a stalemate. Yoda then flees with Bail Organa. Palpatine senses that his apprentice is in danger and travels to Mustafar. Obi-Wan regroups with Yoda on Polis Massa, where Padmé gives birth to twins, whom she names Luke and Leia before dying, still believing Vader has good in him. On Mustafar, Palpatine finds Vader and brings him to Coruscant, where his mutilated body is treated and covered in a black life-support suit. Meanwhile, Obi-Wan and Yoda plan to conceal the twins from the Sith and go into exile. As Padme's funeral takes place on her homeworld of Naboo, Palpatine and Vader oversee construction of the Death Star. Bail and his wife adopt Leia and take her to Alderaan, while Obi-Wan delivers Luke to his step-uncle and aunt, Owen and Beru Lars before exiling on Tatooine to watch over the son. Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi, a Jedi master, general of the Galactic Republic and Anakin's mentor., Natalie Portman as Padmé Amidala, a senator of Naboo who is secretly Anakin's wife., Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker, a Jedi knight, hero of the Clone Wars and former Padawan of Obi-Wan who turns to the dark side of the Force and becomes the Sith lord Darth Vader in pursuit of greater power and out of fear of his wife Padmé dying in childbirth., Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine / Darth Sidious, the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic who is secretly a Sith lord, and later the founder and leader of the Galactic Empire. He takes advantage of Anakin's distrust of the Jedi and fear of Padmé dying to turn him towards the dark side, becoming Vader's master., Samuel L. Jackson as Mace Windu, a Jedi master and senior member of the Jedi Council., Jimmy Smits as Senator Bail Organa, a senator of Alderaan and friend of Obi-Wan, Yoda and Padmé., Christopher Lee as Count Dooku / Darth Tyranus, Darth Sidious' Sith apprentice and leader of the Separatists., Anthony Daniels as C-3PO, Anakin and Padmé's personal protocol droid that was created by Anakin as a child., Kenny Baker as R2-D2, Anakin's astromech droid., Frank Oz as the voice of Yoda, a Jedi Grandmaster and the leader of the Jedi Council. Peter Mayhew, Oliver Ford Davies, Ahmed Best, and Silas Carson reprise their roles as Chewbacca, Sio Bibble, Jar Jar Binks, and Nute Gunray and Ki-Adi- Mundi respectively from the previous films. Joel Edgerton and Bonnie Piesse also make cameo appearances, reprising their roles as Owen and Beru Lars respectively from Attack of the Clones. Sound engineer Matthew Wood provides the voice of General Grievous, the fearsome cyborg commander of the Separatists' droid army; Temuera Morrison portrays Commander Cody and the rest of the clone troopers; Bruce Spence portrays Tion Medon, local administrator of Utapau; Jeremy Bulloch (who played Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi) appears as Captain Colton, the pilot of the Rebel Blockade Runner Tantive IV; Genevieve O'Reilly portrays Mon Mothma, though her scene was ultimately cut. Rohan Nichol portrays Captain Raymus Antilles. Wayne Pygram appears as Grand Moff Tarkin, and stunt coordinator Nick Gillard appears as a Jedi named Cin Drallig (his name spelled backward, without the k). Editor Roger Barton's son Aidan Barton portrays Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa as infants. James Earl Jones makes an uncredited cameo appearance, reprising his role from previous films as the voice of Darth Vader. Director and Star Wars creator George Lucas has a cameo as Baron Papanoida, a blue- faced alien in attendance at the Coruscant opera house. Lucas' son Jett portrays Zett Jukassa, a young Jedi-in-training. One of Lucas' daughters, Amanda, appears as Terr Taneel, seen in the security hologram, while his other daughter Katie plays a blue-skinned Pantoran named Chi Eekway, visible when Palpatine arrives at the Senate after being saved by the Jedi and talking to Baron Papanoida at the opera house. Christian Simpson appeared as a stunt double for Hayden Christensen when Anakin, Obi-Wan and Palpatine arrive via shuttle to the Senate docks after crash landing on Coruscant. Lucas stated that he conceived the Star Wars saga's story in the form of a plot outline in 1973. However, he later clarified that, at the time of the saga's conception, he had not fully realized the details—only major plot points. The film's climactic duel has its basis in the Return of the Jedi novelization, in which Obi-Wan recounts his battle with Anakin that ended with the latter falling "into a molten pit". Lucas began working on the screenplay for Episode III before the previous film, Attack of the Clones, was released, proposing to concept artists that the film would open with a montage of seven battles on seven planets. In The Secret History of Star Wars, Michael Kaminski surmises that Lucas found flaws with Anakin's fall to the dark side and radically reorganized the plot. For example, instead of opening the film with a montage of Clone War battles, Lucas decided to focus on Anakin, ending the first act with him killing Count Dooku, an action that signals his turn to the dark side. A significant number of fans speculated online about the episode title for the film with rumored titles including Rise of the Empire, The Creeping Fear (which was also named as the film's title on the official website on April Fool's 2004), and Birth of the Empire. Eventually, Revenge of the Sith also became a title guessed by fans that George Lucas would indirectly confirm. The title is a reference to Revenge of the Jedi, the original title of Return of the Jedi; Lucas changed the title scant weeks before the premiere of Return of the Jedi, declaring that Jedi do not seek revenge. Since Lucas refocused the film on Anakin, he had to sacrifice certain extraneous plot points relating to Attack of the Clones. Lucas had previously promised fans that he would explain the mystery behind the erasure of the planet Kamino from the Jedi Archives. However, Lucas abandoned this plot thread in order to devote more time to Anakin's story, leaving the matter unresolved on film. Lucas had originally planned to include even more ties to the original trilogy, and wrote early drafts of the script in which a 10-year- old Han Solo appeared on Kashyyyk, but the role was not cast or shot. He also wrote a scene in which Palpatine reveals to Anakin that he created him from midichlorians, and is thus his "father", a clear parallel to Vader's revelation to Luke in The Empire Strikes Back, but Lucas ejected this scene as well. Another planned scene by Lucas that was written during the early development of the film was a conversation between Master Yoda and the ghostly Qui Gon-Jinn, with Liam Neeson reprising his role as Jinn (he also hinted his possible appearance in the film). However, the scene was never filmed and Neeson was never recorded, although the scene was present in the film's novelization. Neeson finally reprised the role in an episode of in 2011. After principal photography was complete in 2003, Lucas made even more changes in Anakin's character, rewriting the entire "turn" sequence. Lucas accomplished this "rewrite" through editing the principal footage and filming new scenes during pickups in London in 2004. In the previous versions, Anakin had myriad reasons for turning to the dark side, one of which was his sincere belief that the Jedi were plotting to take over the Republic. Although this is still intact in the finished film, by revising and refilming many scenes, Lucas emphasized Anakin's desire to save Padmé from death. Thus, in the version that made it to theaters, Anakin falls to the dark side primarily to save Padmé. After the screenplay's earliest draft was submitted, the art department began designing the various ways that each element could appear on screen. For the Kashyyyk environment, the art department turned to the Star Wars Holiday Special for inspiration. Over a period of months, Lucas would approve hundreds of designs that would eventually appear in the film. He would later rewrite entire scenes and action sequences to correspond to certain designs he had chosen. The designs were then shipped to the pre-visualization department to create moving CGI versions known as animatics. Ben Burtt would edit these scenes with Lucas in order to pre-visualize what the film would look like before the scenes were filmed. The pre-visualization footage featured a basic raw CGI environment with equally unprocessed character models performing a scene, typically for action sequences. Steven Spielberg was brought in as a "guest director" to make suggestions to the art designers for the Mustafar duel, and oversee the pre-visualization of an unused version of the Utapau chase scene. Later, the pre-visualization and art department designs were sent to the production department to begin "bringing the film out of the concept phase" by building sets, props and costumes. To determine the required sets, Lucas analyzed each scene with the staff to see which moments the actors would come in most contact with the set, warranting it to be constructed. Although the first scene filmed was the final scene to appear in the film (shot during the filming of Attack of the Clones in 2000), principal photography on the film occurred from June 30, 2003 to September 17, 2003, with additional photography occurring at Shepperton Studios and Elstree Studios in London from August 2004 to January 31, 2005. The initial filming took place on sound stages at Fox Studios Australia in Sydney, although practical environments were shot as background footage later to be composited into the film. These included the limestone mountains depicting Kashyyyk, which were filmed in Phuket, Thailand. The production company was also fortunate enough to be shooting at the same time that Mount Etna erupted in Italy. Camera crews were sent to the location to shoot several angles of the volcano that were later spliced into the background of the animatics and the final film version of the planet Mustafar. While shooting key dramatic scenes, Lucas would often use an "A camera" and "B camera", or the "V technique", a process that involves shooting with two or more cameras at the same time in order to gain several angles of the same performance. Using the HD technology developed for the film, the filmmakers were able to send footage to the editors the same day it was shot, a process that would require a full 24 hours had it been shot on film. Footage featuring the planet Mustafar was given to editor Roger Barton, who was on location in Sydney cutting the climactic duel. All other footage was forwarded to lead editor Ben Burtt at Skywalker Ranch in California. Hayden Christensen says Lucas asked him "to bulk up and physically show the maturity that had taken place between the two films." The actor says he worked out with a trainer in Sydney for three months and ate "six meals a day and on every protein, weight gain supplement that man has created" to go from 160 lbs to 185 lbs. Christensen and Ewan McGregor began rehearsing their climactic lightsaber duel long before Lucas would shoot it. They trained extensively with stunt coordinator Nick Gillard to memorize and perform their duel together. As in the previous prequel film, McGregor and Christensen performed their own lightsaber fighting scenes without the use of stunt doubles. The speed at which Vader and Obi-Wan engage in their duel is mostly the speed at which it was filmed, although there are instances where single frames were removed to increase the velocity of particular strikes. An example of this occurs as Obi-Wan strikes down on Vader after applying an armlock in the duel's first half. Revenge of the Sith eventually became the first Star Wars film in which Anakin Skywalker and the suited Darth Vader were played by the same actor in the same film. As Christensen recounted, it was originally intended to simply have a "tall guy" in the Darth Vader costume, but after "begging and pleading" Christensen persuaded Lucas to have the Vader costume used in the film created specifically to fit him. The new costume featured shoe lifts and a muscle suit. It also required Christensen (who is tall) to look through the helmet's mouthpiece. In 2004, Gary Oldman was originally approached to provide the voice of General Grievous; however, complications arose during contract negotiations after Oldman learned the film was to be made outside of the Screen Actors Guild, of which he is a member. He backed out of the role rather than violate the union's rules. Matthew Wood, who voiced Grievous, disputed this story at Celebration III, held in Indianapolis. According to him, Oldman is a friend of producer Rick McCallum, and thus recorded an audition as a favor to him, but was not chosen. Wood, who was also the supervising sound editor, was in charge of the auditions and submitted his audition anonymously in the midst of 30 others, under the initials "A.S." for Alan Smithee. Days later, he received a phone call asking for the full name to the initials "A.S." At one point, John DiMaggio was consider to voice Grievous after he had previously voiced him in (2003–2005), but was later dropped. The post-production department began work during filming and continued until weeks before the film was released in 2005. Special effects were created using almost all formats, including model work, CGI and practical effects. The same department later composited all such work into the filmed scenes—both processes taking nearly two years to complete. Revenge of the Sith has 2,151 shots that use special effects, a world record. The DVD featurette Within a Minute illustrated the film required 910 artists and 70,441 man-hours to create 49 seconds of footage for the Mustafar duel alone. Members of Hyperspace, the Official Star Wars Fan Club, received a special look into the production. Benefits included not only special articles, but they also received access to a webcam that transmitted a new image every 20 seconds during the time it was operating in Fox Studios Australia. Many times the stars, and Lucas himself, were spotted on the webcam. During the process of shaping the film for its theatrical release, Lucas and his editors dropped many scenes, and even an entire subplot, from the completed film. Lucas excised all the scenes of a group of Senators, including Padmé, Bail Organa, and Mon Mothma (Genevieve O'Reilly), organizing an alliance to prevent the Chancellor from receiving any more emergency powers. Though this is essentially the Rebel Alliance's birth, the scenes were discarded to achieve more focus on Anakin's story. The scene where Yoda arrives on Dagobah to begin his self-imposed exile was also removed, but is featured as an extended scene in the DVD release, although McCallum stated he hopes Lucas may add it to the release if Lucas releases a six-episode DVD box set. Many scenes concerning the deaths of many Jedi members during the execution of Order 66 were cut. The deaths of Barriss Offee and Luminara Unduli were either cut from the film or not filmed in the first place. Bai Ling filmed minor scenes for the film playing a senator, but her role was cut during editing. She claimed this was because she posed for the June 2005 issue of Playboy, whose appearance on newsstands coincided with the film's May release. Lucas denied this, stating that the cut had been made more than a year earlier, and that he had cut his own daughter's scenes as well. The music was composed and conducted by John Williams (who has composed and conducted the score for every episode in the Star Wars saga), and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and London Voices. The film's soundtrack was released by Sony Pictures Classical Records on May 3, 2005, more than two weeks before the film's release. A music video titled A Hero Falls was created for the film's theme, "Battle of the Heroes", featuring footage from the film and was also available on the DVD. The soundtrack also came with a collectors' DVD, , at no additional cost. The DVD, hosted by McDiarmid, features 16 music videos set to remastered selections of music from all six film scores, set chronologically through the saga. This album was chosen as one of Amazon.com's Top 100 Editors' Picks of 2005 (#83). An expanded edition of the score was released on a 2-Disc CD by LS Scores Media in 2011. Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith charity premieres took place in Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington D.C., Boston, Denver, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Miami on Thursday, May 12, 2005; and on May 13, 2005, there were two additional charity premiere screenings in George Lucas's hometown of Modesto, California. The official premiere was at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival (out of competition) on May 16. Its theatrical release in most other countries took place on May 19 to coincide with the 1999 release of The Phantom Menace (the 1977 release of A New Hope and the 1983 release of Return of the Jedi were also released on the same day and month, six years apart). The global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas claimed one week before the premiere that it may have cost the U.S. economy approximately US$627 million in lost productivity because of employees who took a day off or reported in sick. Grauman's Chinese Theatre, a traditional venue for the Star Wars films, did not show it. However, a line of people stood there for more than a month hoping to convince someone to change this. Most of them took advantage of an offer to see the film at a nearby cinema, ArcLight Cinemas (formerly the "Cinerama Dome"). On May 16, the Empire Cinema in London's Leicester Square hosted a day-long Star Wars marathon showing of all six films; an army of Imperial stormtroopers "guarded" the area, and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra gave a free concert of Star Wars music. A copy of the film leaked onto peer-to-peer file sharing networks just hours after opening in theaters. The film was a time-stamped workprint, suggesting it may have come from within the industry rather than from someone who videotaped an advance screening. Eight people were later charged with copyright infringement and distributing material illegally. Documents filed by the Los Angeles District Attorney allege that a copy of the film was taken from an unnamed Californian post-production office by an employee, who later pleaded guilty to his charges. The illegal copy was passed among seven people until reaching an eighth party, who also pleaded guilty to uploading to an unnamed P2P network. Shortly after the above-mentioned print was leaked, it was released in Shanghai as a bootleg DVD with Chinese subtitles. The unknown producer of this DVD also chose to include English subtitles, which were in fact translated back into English from the Chinese translation, rather than using the original English script. This resulted in the subtitles being heavily mis-translated, often causing unintentional humor. For example, in the opening crawl the title is mis-translated as Star War: The Third Gathers – The Backstroke of the West. Darth Vader's cry of "Noooooooo!" (不要) is rendered as "Do not want". This translation error would later be popularized as an internet meme. In 2016, YouTube user GratefulDeadpool uploaded a fan edit of Revenge of the Sith in which the cast's voices were dubbed by other actors to match the bootleg subtitles. Revenge of the Sith is the first Star Wars film to receive a PG-13 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), officially for "thematic elements sci-fi violence and some intense images", namely for the scene in which Darth Vader is set aflame by lava and molten rock. Lucas had stated months before the MPAA's decision that he felt the film should receive a PG-13 rating, because of Anakin's final moments and the film's content being the darkest and most intense of all six films. Some critics, including Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper, later responded that children would be able to handle the film as long as they had parental guidance, hence a "PG rating". All previously released films in the series were rated PG. The PG-13 rating had not existed when the films in the original trilogy were released; however, the original trilogy's films were later re-submitted to the MPAA due to changes in the re-released versions and once again received PG ratings. When Revenge of the Sith was released in Canada, it was given a PG rating in most provinces, excluding Quebec, where it was rated G. In the United Kingdom, it received a 12A rating by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). In Australia, the film was rated M for mature audiences by the Australian Classification Board (ACB). The film was released on DVD and VHS on October 31, 2005 in the UK and Ireland, on November 1, 2005 in the United States and Canada on DVD and on November 3, 2005 in Australia. It was also released in most major territories on or near the same day. The DVD was a two-disc set, with picture and sound mastered from the original digital source material. The DVD included a number of documentaries including a new full-length documentary as well as two featurettes, one which explores the prophecy of Anakin Skywalker as the Chosen One, the other looking at the film's stunts and a of web-documentaries from the official web site. Like the other DVD releases, included is an audio commentary track featuring Lucas, producer Rick McCallum, animation director Rob Coleman, and ILM visual effects supervisors John Knoll and Roger Guyett. were included with introductions from Lucas and McCallum. An Xbox game demo for along with a trailer for the PC game was featured on the second disc. Also, a special two-pack exclusive, which was sold only at Wal-Mart stores, included another bonus DVD, The Story of Star Wars. This release is notable because, due to marketing issues, it was the first Star Wars film never to be released on VHS in the United States. However, the film was released on VHS in Australia, the U.K. and other countries in the world. The DVD was re-released in a prequel trilogy box set on November 4, 2008. The Star Wars films were released by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment on Blu-ray on December 16, 2010 in three different editions. On April 7, 2015, Walt Disney Studios, 20th Century Fox, and Lucasfilm jointly announced the digital releases of the six released Star Wars films. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment released Revenge of the Sith through the iTunes Store, Amazon Video, Vudu, Google Play, and Disney Movies Anywhere on April 10, 2015. Revenge of the Sith was released in 4K HDR and Dolby Atmos on The Walt Disney Company's streaming service, Disney+, on November 12, 2019. An Ultra HD Blu-ray release in a nine-film "Skywalker Saga" set is planned for March 2020. On September 28, 2010, it was announced that all six films in the series were to be stereo-converted to 3D. The films would be re-released in chronological order beginning with The Phantom Menace on February 10, 2012. Revenge of the Sith was originally scheduled to be re-released in 3D on October 11, 2013. However, on January 28, 2013, Lucasfilm announced that it was postponing the 3D release of episodes II and III in order to "focus 100 percent of our efforts on " and that further information about 3D release plans would be issued at a later date. The premiere of the 3D version was shown on April 17, 2015, at Star Wars Celebration Anaheim. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 80% based on 299 reviews, with an average rating of 7.28/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "With Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, George Lucas brings his second Star Wars trilogy to a suitably thrilling and often poignant – if still a bit uneven – conclusion." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 68 out of 100, based on 40 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average "A–" grade on an A+ to F scale. Most critics have considered the film to be the best of the prequel trilogy. A. O. Scott of The New York Times concluded that it was "the best of the four episodes Mr. Lucas has directed", and equal to The Empire Strikes Back as "the richest and most challenging movie in the cycle". In a 2007 summary of the on Rotten Tomatoes, Revenge of the Sith was placed 51 out of 100, making it the only Star Wars prequel film to earn a rank on that list. Jonathan Rosenbaum, a critic who disliked A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, gave the film a positive review, saying that it had a "relatively thoughtful story". Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three- and-a-half out of four stars, writing "If [Lucas] got bogged down in solemnity and theory in Episode II: Attack of the Clones, the Force is in a jollier mood this time, and Revenge of the Sith is a great entertainment", but he noted that "the dialogue throughout the movie is once again its weakest point". In 2012, Glittering Images art critic Camille Paglia praised the film, comparing some of its scenes to works by modern painters and calling it "the greatest work of art in recent memory". Paglia explained that the film's finale Though many critics and fans viewed Revenge of the Sith as the strongest of the three prequels, some viewers thought it was more or less on par with the previous two episodes. Much of the criticism was directed towards the dialogue, particularly the film's romantic scenes, and for Christensen's performance which won him his second Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actor. Critics have claimed this demonstrated Lucas's weakness as a writer of dialogue, a subject with which Lucas openly agreed when receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. Some American conservatives criticized the film, claiming it had a liberal bias and was a commentary on the George W. Bush administration and Iraq War. Some websites went so far as to propose a boycott of the film. Lucas defended the film, stating that the film's storyline was written during the Vietnam War and was influenced by that conflict rather than the war in Iraq. Lucas did say, however, that "The parallels between Vietnam and what we're doing in Iraq now are unbelievable". The film was released in 115 countries. Its worldwide gross eventually reached $849 million—making it the second most financially successful film of 2005, behind Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The film earned an estimated $16.91 million from 2,900 midnight screenings in North America upon its release. In total, it earned a record $50 million on its opening day. It was surpassed the following year by , which earned $55.5 million on its opening day. With only the May 19 earnings, the film broke four box office records: midnight screenings gross (previously held by , $8 million), opening day gross (Spider-Man 2, with $40.4 million), single day gross (Shrek 2 with $44.8 million) and Thursday gross (The Matrix Reloaded with $37.5 million). Its single day and opening day gross records were later surpassed by on July 7, 2006, when that movie grossed $55.5 million on its opening day, and its midnight screening gross was broken by The Dark Knight on July 18, 2008 with $18.5 million. It still retains its record for Thursday gross, however. According to box office analysis sites, the film set American records for highest gross in a given number of days for each of its first 12 days of release except for the seventh and eighth, where the record is narrowly held by Spider-Man 2. On its fifth day, it became the highest-grossing film of 2005, surpassing Hitch ($177.6 million). The film earned $158.5 million in its first four-day period, surpassing the previous four-day record held by The Matrix Reloaded ($134.3 million), and joining Spider-Man, The Matrix Reloaded and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as one the only films to make $100 million in three days. In eight days, it reached the $200 million mark (a record tied with Spider-Man 2) and by its 17th day, the film had passed $300 million (surpassing the record of 18 days of Shrek 2). It was eventually the third-fastest film (after Shrek 2 and Spider-Man) to reach $350 million. The film ended its run in American theaters on October 20, 2005, finishing with a total gross of $380,270,577. It ranks 29th in all-time domestic grosses and is the highest-grossing U.S. of 2005, out-grossing second-place by nearly $90 million. The film sold an estimated 59,324,600 tickets in the US. International grosses that exceeded $460 million include those Australia ($27.2 million), France and Algeria ($56.9 million), Germany ($47.3 million), Italy ($11.3 million), Japan ($82.7 million), Mexico ($15.3 million), South Korea ($10.3 million), Spain ($23.8 million), and the United Kingdom and Ireland ($72.8 million). Following the release of Revenge of the Sith—the completion of the original and prequel Star Wars series—on June 9, 2005, George Lucas was presented with the 33rd American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement Award. The institute honored his "astonishing contributions to the art and technology of filmmaking, as well as the impact of the epic Star Wars series". Despite being the prequel trilogy's best reviewed and received film, it received fewer award nominations than the previous films. It became the only Star Wars film not to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects; however, it was nominated for Best Makeup (Dave Elsey and Nikki Gooley), losing to . It also won "Favorite Motion Picture" and "Favorite Dramatic Motion Picture" awards at the People's Choice Awards, "Hollywood Movie of the Year" award at the Hollywood Film Festival, Empire Awards (Sci-Fi/Fantasy Film), and the Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie – Action. It also was nominated for Best Score Soundtrack Album at the 48th Grammy Awards in 2006. As did every film of the original trilogy, the film won the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film. Williams also won Best Music. The film was nominated for ten Saturn Awards overall, including Best Director and Best Writing for Lucas, Best Actor for Christensen, Best Actress for Natalie Portman and Best Supporting Actor for Ian McDiarmid. Of the three Star Wars prequels, the film received the fewest Golden Raspberry Awards nominations: only one, for Christensen as Worst Supporting Actor, which he won. (The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones received seven nominations each, with one and two wins, respectively.) It is the only Star Wars prequel not to receive a Razzie nomination for "Worst Picture". Christensen further won the "Best Villain" award at the MTV Movie Awards. The film also received the fewest amount of nominations (and no wins) at the 2005 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards: Worst Screenplay for a Film Grossing More Than $100M and Worst On-Screen Couple (Christensen and Portman). In contrast, The Phantom Menace received seven total nominations with four wins and Attack of the Clones received three total nominations with one win. Throughout Revenge of the Sith, Lucas refers to a wide range of films and other sources, drawing on political, military, and mythological motifs to enhance his story's impact. Perhaps the most media coverage was given to a particular exchange between Anakin and Obi-Wan, which led to the aforementioned controversy: "If you're not with me, then you're my enemy", Anakin declares. Despite Lucas' insistence to the contrary, The Seattle Times concluded, "Without naming Bush or the Patriot Act, it's all unmistakable no matter what your own politics may be." McDiarmid, Lucas, and others have also called Anakin's journey to the dark side Faustian in the sense of making a "pact with the devil" for short-term gain, with the fiery volcano planet Mustafar representing hell. Midway through the film, Lucas intercuts between Anakin and Padmé by themselves, thinking about one another in the Jedi Temple and their apartment, respectively, during sunset. The sequence is without dialogue and complemented by a moody, synthesized soundtrack. Lucas' coverage of the exterior cityscapes, skylines and interior isolation in the so-called "Ruminations" sequence is similar to the cinematography and mise-en-scène of Rosemary's Baby, a film in which a husband makes a literal pact with the devil. The film's novelization was written by Matthew Stover. It includes much more dialogue than the film, including: a conversation between Count Dooku and Darth Sidious, where the reader learns Palpatine lied to Dooku about what the Empire would truly be; a conversation between Mace Windu and Obi-Wan Kenobi where Obi-Wan expresses self-doubt about whether he is the right Jedi to battle General Grievous; and a conversation between Anakin and Palpatine in which Palpatine promises to give Anakin anything he wants—whether it be a new speeder or the star system Corellia. The novel includes many minor details. For example, during the Battle of Coruscant, Anakin's callsign is Red 5, a reference to Luke's callsign in the climactic battle of A New Hope, and one of the Republic capital ships is commanded by Lieutenant Commander Lorth Needa, who becomes Captain Needa in The Empire Strikes Back. There are also references to the comic book series, such as the Battle of Jabiim (Volume 3). In addition to this, the siege of the Jedi Temple is much more violent and far more graphically explained than the cinematic version. Some unseen or unheard- of elements of the story were fleshed out in the course of the novel. Such examples include more discussions between Anakin and Palpatine, in which Palpatine explicitly says that Darth Plagueis was his master; in the film, it is merely hinted at. Additionally, it is revealed that the primary reason for Anakin's outrage over not becoming a Jedi Master is that only Masters have access to the holocrons in the Temple Archives, which is where Anakin had hoped to find information about how to prevent Padmé's death. Not only is Saesee Tiin revealed to be a telepath, but his horn, lost in the Clone Wars, is revealed to have grown back. The book explains that Palpatine purposely manipulated the Council into sending Obi-Wan to fight General Grievous, because he knew he needed to get Obi-Wan off Coruscant before he could turn Anakin to the dark side. The novel also reveals Mace Windu's rationale for not bringing Anakin along to the fight with Palpatine: he can sense Anakin's fear and distress, and does not believe the young Jedi is in any mental state to fight a Sith Lord. These are a few examples of many descriptions of characters' feelings and inner narrative. There are even some humorous lines added in, including extra dialogue in the battle between Grievous and Obi Wan – Grievous says, "I was trained by Count Dooku," and Obi-Wan replies, "What a coincidence; I trained the man who killed him." A video game based on the film was released on May 5, 2005, two weeks before the film. The game followed the film's storyline for the most part, integrating scenes from the film. However, many sections of the game featured scenes cut from the film, or entirely new scenes for the game. The style of the game was mostly lightsaber combat and fighting as Obi-Wan or Anakin. It also has a form of multiplayer mode, which includes both "VS" and "Cooperative" mode. In the first mode, two players fight with characters of their choice against each other in a lightsaber duel to the death. In the latter mode, two players team up to combat increasingly difficult waves of enemies. Owing to film's function as a prequel, it leads directly into the original film and its subsequent trilogy. Though the Prequel Trilogy came to its conclusion, a Sequel Trilogy continued the Skywalker saga, beginning with in 2015. List of films featuring extraterrestrials, List of films featuring space stations, List of Star Wars films, List of Star Wars television series at, at Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith is an action video game based on the . It was released on May 4, 2005, for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS. Additionally, a version was made available for mobile phones on April 2, 2005. As part of the PlayStation 2 classics program, the PlayStation 2 version was re-released in Europe on the PlayStation Network on February 11, 2015, and in North America on April 28, 2015. In single player mode, the player alternates between playing as Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, reliving various scenes from the film through the game's missions. There are 17 levels, interlaced with over 12 minutes of footage from the movie as cutscenes. The game's combat system is heavily concentrated on lightsaber combat. Each of the playable characters (with the exception of the MagnaGuard) is equipped with at least one lightsaber. There are three basic attacks: fast attacks which do the least amount of damage, strong attacks which do more damage but are slower to execute, and slow but incredibly strong critical attacks. These attacks can be mixed to create combination attacks. Attacks can also be charged up for greater strength. One feature of the game is called a Saber Lock - a sequence in which the player's character clashes sabers with an opponent and must overpower them to avoid losing health. The game features an experience system, whereby the player's character can upgrade attacks and gain new ones as they progress through the game. Each ability, with the exception of the Force Dash, can be upgraded to more powerful levels. In addition to offensive techniques, defensive techniques are also available. The player's character automatically deflects a percentage of blaster bolts, but other shots and attacks must be manually deflected. Aside from saber combat and force powers, each character has a number of physical attacks that can be incorporated into combos. Nearly all characters have a kick which can instantly floor opponents. A number of characters also have the ability to punch their opponents. The game environment is interactive, allowing, and in some cases requiring, the player to execute actions such as moving and destroying objects with the lightsaber or force powers. The handheld versions of the game are played as a 2.5D side-scrolling beat 'em up game, where players can freely choose to play as either Obi-Wan or Anakin, traversing across roughly a dozen levels to battle a variety of enemies and occasionally dodge deadly hazards, such as a laser trap or a missile launcher. Both characters have nearly identical attack moves, and can gain access to special unlockable moves that can be unleashed when a "fury" or "focus" gauge is filled up during battle. A few levels involve boss battles against characters with melee weapons, who usually can only be damaged after the player carefully recognizes and blocks an attack, and some other levels end with a miniboss fight against a vehicle or elite enemy. The Nintendo DS version also exclusively adds extra 3D space battle levels that require the player to shoot down a series of targets or enemies. As with the PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions, players are given a chance to upgrade their character's attacks and abilities, unlock new abilities and improve their stats after completing a level. Players purchase upgrades with "customization points", which are found during a level, collected from destroying small portions of the scenery or earned by finishing the level at a quicker pace or with good combat efficiency. Players must deflect all blaster bolts manually by pressing a button, while well-timed presses can allow the player to deflect them straight back. The PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions of the game feature a multiplayer duel mode, in which two players face off against each other in a lightsaber battle. Players can choose Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, Count Dooku, General Grievous, Mace Windu, Cin Drallig or Jedi padawan Serra Keto. Darth Vader and "Ben Kenobi", circa Episode IV, can also be unlocked. Each battle can be won with the best of one, three or five rounds, depending on the options chosen. In addition, all characters have equal health and energy, with all status upgrades acquired by Anakin and Obi-Wan in the single player mode eliminated. However, all of the upgraded techniques and Force Powers are available and each of the other characters has special abilities and maneuvers. In addition to the original costumes found throughout the single-player campaign, each character has a different costume that is used when both players choose the same character. Some of these costumes depict Sith versions of certain Jedi characters. The Game Boy Advance version of the game allows two players to link up and participate in exclusive co-op missions as Anakin and Obi-Wan, or have the two of them fight off endless waves of enemies and see who can survive the longest. The Nintendo DS version exclusively features 3D multiplayer space battles that take advantage of the DS' graphical capabilities and allow players to pilot and battle with iconic vehicles from both the prequel and original eras of Star Wars, such as the Millennium Falcon. Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi arrive on board the Invisible Hand, the Separatist flagship of General Grievous, who has kidnapped Supreme Chancellor Palpatine above Coruscant. After battling droids in the main hangar bay and while ascending the elevators, the duo arrive at the general's quarters, where Palpatine is being held. However, the two are then confronted by Grevious' master Count Dooku and in the ensuing duel, Obi-Wan is knocked out and Anakin, in violation of Jedi teachings, brutally kills Dooku by running him through with his lightsaber. The pair then escape with Palpatine but are recaptured and brought before Grievous on the ship's bridge. They escape as the badly damaged ship capsizes in orbit and fight off Grievous' bodyguards while the general escapes. Anakin manages to save everyone by crashing the ship on Coruscant. Obi-Wan journeys to Utapau in search of Grievous and confronts him after he dispatches the Separatist council to the planet of Mustafar for safety. Obi-Wan then duels Grievous as Republic Army clones invade and battle the droids. Grievous reaches the launch platform where his ship is situated, but Obi-Wan impales and kills him. Meanwhile, on Coruscant, Anakin discovers Jedi Master Mace Windu preparing to execute Palpatine, who is revealed to be the Sith lord Darth Sidious, in his office. Anakin, who believes Palpatine can help him, intervenes and duels Windu, who attempts to fight off Anakin before returning to finish off the chancellor. Anakin stabs him and throws him out a window to his death; Palpatine then takes Anakin under his wing, dubs him "Darth Vader", and orders him to wipe out all of the Jedi in the Jedi Temple. Darth Vader and an army of clone troopers make their way to the Temple, where he kills librarian Jocasta Nu, initiating the massacre. While the clones mop up the survivors, Vader confronts Serra Keto and crushes her with a pillar. He is then confronted by her master, Cin Drallig, whom he also duels. The two wind up outside of the temple, where Vader impales Drallig through the chest. Across the galaxy, the clones, following orders from Palpatine, turn on their Jedi allies and murder them. Obi-Wan manages to escape from Utapau after being relentlessly hunted by both the droids and his own soldiers. Palpatine orders Vader to go to Mustafar and wipe out the Separatist leaders to eliminate all potential threats to his rule. After brutally cutting down their Neimoidian guards, Vader forces his way into the council chambers, killing Poggle the Lesser, Wat Tambor, and two others as Viceroy Nute Gunray flees for his life. Vader cuts down Gunray's lieutenant Rune Haako, and then catches Gunray trying to escape on his ship, which he destroys and tosses into the planet's lava. Meanwhile, on Coruscant, Obi-Wan & Master Yoda raid the ruins of the Jedi Temple, clearing it of clone soldiers and deactivating a beacon left by them as a trap for other Jedi. Desperate to know who was responsible, Obi-Wan discovers security recordings of Anakin becoming a Sith lord. The recording also reveal Vader's location, so Obi-Wan heads to Mustafar to confront him. The two former friends engage in a ferocious lightsaber duel across the Mustafar facility, which is slowly being destroyed by lava. The two end up on a platform floating down a lava river; Obi-Wan jumps off and demands that his fallen apprentice surrender. An enraged Vader leaps over him, allowing Obi-Wan to slice off his legs and left arm. Vader slides towards the lava and catches on fire; Obi-Wan picks up his fallen lightsaber and leaves him for dead. Palpatine arrives and finds Vader badly injured, but still alive; he has him surgically reconstructed and builds him a special suit. The two oversee the construction of the Death Star as the Republic falls and the Empire is born. In a break from the film's plot, the PS2 and Xbox versions also feature an alternate ending. In the final level, during the battle between Vader and Obi- Wan, the player is given the opportunity to play as Vader, and must defeat Obi-Wan. In this ending, Vader's ill-fated jump is successful and he kills Obi-Wan before kicking his body into the lava. After slaying his former master, Vader returns to Emperor Palpatine and obtains a new, red Sith lightsaber. As the Emperor congratulates him, Vader murders him and takes his place, having been throughly corrupted by his new power. This ending is not present in the GBA and DS versions, and the player is instead given the canonical narrative of Vader losing his duel against Obi-Wan and revived by Palpatine in a mechanical suit. With the successful completion of certain missions in the single player campaign, bonus scenarios can be unlocked. Each scenario features a different playable character: the MagnaGuard, General Grievous, Yoda, Anakin, or Darth Vader. In addition, there are four cooperative missions in which two players (or one player and a computer-controlled character) work together to defeat enemies. The first three team up Anakin and Obi-Wan for a number of offensive encounters with the Separatists' droid army, while the fourth has Jedi Master Cin Drallig and his favorite student, Serra Keto, teaming up to defeat the clone squadron bent on destroying the Jedi Temple in accordance with Order 66. The game was aided in development by Nick Gillard, the stunt coordinator and lightsaber fight trainer for , , and Revenge of the Sith. In addition, lightsaber expert Cin Drallig, a character portrayed by Gillard, appears in the game as a boss and as a playable character, albeit with a different voice actor. Hayden Christensen returned to help the developers with the character of Anakin despite not officially reprising the role. The game utilized many of the cast members of the 2003 animated series . Additionally, stock footage of the actors from the films appeared in many of the game's cinematics. Alethea McGrath reprised her role as Jocasta Nu from Attack of the Clones, and was the only actor from the films to do so. All other voice actors have either before or since provided voice work in the Star Wars universe. James Arnold Taylor, who voices Obi-Wan Kenobi in the series, provides the voice of Obi-Wan. Mat Lucas provides the voice of Anakin Skywalker, having also doubled for Christensen in the video game and as well as in the 2003 Clone Wars series. Voice actor Corey Burton, primary talent for the animated version of Count Dooku, voices various minor characters as well as Dooku himself. General Grievous is voiced by Matthew Wood, who also provided his voice in the game's and the 2008 Clone Wars series. Terrence C. Carson voices Mace Windu and Nick Jameson voices Chancellor Palpatine/Darth Sidious and Ben Kenobi. Scott Lawrence, best known for his role as United States Naval JAG lawyer Cmdr. Sturgis Turner on the CBS series JAG provides the voice for Darth Vader. Yoda and Cin Drallig are both voiced by Tom Kane, who also provides additional voices. Finally, Serra Keto is voiced by Kari Wahlgren. The game received average to positive reviews upon release. GameRankings and Metacritic gave it a score of 71.85% and 73 out of 100 for the DS version; 71.41% and 73 out of 100 for the Game Boy Advance version; 65.85% and 61 out of 100 for the Xbox version; and 64.53% and 60 out of 100 for the PlayStation 2 version. Ivan Sullic of IGN rated the PS2 and Xbox versions 4.5 out of ten. He criticised the camera, the combo-system, the graphics, level design, AI and, most specifically, the implementation of the combat-based gameplay. GameSpy gave the game a better review, awarding the same versions 4 out of 5. GameSpot also rated the same versions of the game 6.3 out of 10. Maxim gave the PS2 and Xbox versions a score of eight out of ten and stated that "Like the movie itself, the game's surprisingly good and full of decent action as you use Jedi skills in a barrage of lightsaber battles to win one for good or evil." However, Detroit Free Press gave the latter version a score of two stars out of four and said that "Flawed gameplay that borders on monotonous is this game's menace. While the lightsaber fighting scheme is actually fairly deep, especially when you mix in grapple attacks, force tricks and counterattacks on top of counterattacks, I rarely used most of these goodies." The Sydney Morning Herald also gave the former version a score of two-and-a- half stars out of five and stated that "the offensive moves cannot stop the game from feeling repetitive. Shield door "puzzles" are recycled, while brief turret-blasting interludes are dull." The PlayStation 2 version of Revenge of the Sith received a "Platinum" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), indicating sales of at least 300,000 copies in the United Kingdom. The Star Wars franchise has spawned multiple live-action and animated films. The franchise started with a film trilogy set in medias res—beginning in the middle of the story—which was later expanded to a trilogy of trilogies. The original trilogy was released between 1977 and 1983, the prequel trilogy between 1999 and 2005, and a sequel trilogy between 2015 and 2019. The original eponymous film, later subtitled Episode IV – A New Hope, was followed by the sequels Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983), forming what is collectively referred to as the original trilogy. Years later, a prequel trilogy was released, consisting of (1999), (2002), and (2005). A sequel trilogy began with (2015), continued with (2017), and concluded with (2019). In between the sequel films, two anthology films were released, Rogue One (2016) and (2018), both set between the prequel and original trilogies. The combined box office revenue of the films equates to over billion, and it is currently the second-highest-grossing film franchise. All the major theatrical live-action films were nominated for Academy Awards. The original film was nominated for most of the major categories, including best picture, director, original script, and supporting actor, while all sequels have been nominated for technical categories. The first spin-off film produced was the Star Wars Holiday Special (1978). In 1984 and 1985, two live-action films featuring the Ewoks were televised in the United States and released theatrically in Europe. Several Star Wars television series have also been released. The Star Wars film series, which developed into a trilogy of trilogies and which has been rebranded as the "Skywalker saga", was released beginning with the original trilogy (Episodes IV, V and VI, 1977–1983), followed by the Lucas-directed prequel trilogy (Episodes I, II and III, 1999–2005) and Abrams/Johnson-directed sequel trilogy (Episodes VII, VIII and IX, 2015–2019). The three trilogies each focus on the Force-sensitive Skywalker family. The prequels focus on Anakin Skywalker and his training as a Jedi and eventual fall to the dark side as Darth Vader. The original trilogy follows his children, Luke and Leia, as they join the Rebel Alliance and battle Vader and the Galactic Empire. The sequel trilogy features Kylo Ren (Ben Solo), a main antagonist and eventual Supreme Leader of the First Order, and son of Leia, nephew of Luke, and grandson of Anakin. Each episodic film begins with an opening crawl, accompanied by the main Star Wars theme by John Williams, who composes the scores for each film. The first six films have had retroactive changes made after their initial theatrical releases, most notably the original trilogy. Immediately after directing American Graffiti (1973), Lucas wrote a two-page synopsis for the space opera he had been planning, which 20th Century Fox invested in. Lucas expanded his treatment into an overview called The Star Wars, and by 1974, he had written the screenplay's first draft. Lucas negotiated to retain the sequel rights, and cast American Graffiti actor Harrison Ford as Han Solo. Star Wars was released on May 25, 1977, followed by The Empire Strikes Back on May 21, 1980, and Return of the Jedi on May 25, 1983. The plot of the original trilogy centers on the Galactic Civil War of the Rebel Alliance trying to free the galaxy from the clutches of the evil Sith Lord Darth Vader and the Galactic Empire, as well as on Luke Skywalker's quest to become a Jedi. The original eponymous Star Wars film opens with a Rebel spaceship being intercepted by the Empire above the desert planet of Tatooine. Aboard, the deadly Imperial agent Darth Vader and his stormtroopers capture Princess Leia Organa, a secret member of the rebellion. Before her capture, Leia makes sure the droid R2-D2 will escape with stolen Imperial blueprints and a holographic message for the Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi, who has been living in exile on Tatooine. Along with , R2-D2 falls under the ownership of Luke Skywalker, a farmboy who has been raised by his aunt and uncle. Luke helps the droids locate Obi-Wan, now a solitary old hermit known as Ben Kenobi. He reveals himself as a friend of Luke's absent father, Anakin Skywalker, who was Obi- Wan's Jedi apprentice until being murdered by Vader. He tells Luke he must also become a Jedi. After discovering his family's homestead has been destroyed by the Empire, they hire the smuggler Han Solo, his Wookiee Chewbacca and their space freighter, the Millennium Falcon. They discover that Leia's homeworld of Alderaan has been destroyed, and are soon captured by the planet-destroying Death Star. While Obi-Wan disables its tractor beam, Luke and Han rescue the captive Princess Leia. Finally, they deliver the Death Star plans to the Rebel Alliance with the hope of exploiting a weakness. The first rough draft, titled The Star Wars, introduced "the Force" and the young hero Luke Skywalker. Anakin appeared as Luke's father, a wise Jedi knight. The third draft replaced (a deceased) Anakin with Ben Kenobi. Some months later, Lucas had negotiated a contract that gave him rights to two sequels. By 1976, a fourth draft had been prepared for principal photography. The film was titled The Adventures of Luke Starkiller, as taken from the Journal of the Whills, Saga I: The Star Wars. During production, Lucas changed Luke's name to Skywalker and shortened the title to The Star Wars, and finally just Star Wars. At that point, Lucas was not expecting the film to warrant full-scale sequels. The fourth draft of the script underwent subtle changes to become a self-contained story ending with the destruction of the Empire in the Death Star. The intention was that if the film was successful, Lucas could adapt a sequel novel of Alan Dean Foster into low-budget film sequels. By that point, Lucas had developed a tentative backstory to aid in developing the saga. Star Wars exceeded all expectations. The success of the film and its merchandise sales led Lucas to make Star Wars the basis of an elaborate film serial, and use the profits to finance his filmmaking center, Skywalker Ranch. After the release of the first sequel, the original film was subtitled Episode IV: A New Hope for a rerelease in 1981. Set three years after the destruction of the Death Star, The Empire Strikes Back begins with the Empire forcing the Rebel Alliance to evacuate its secret base on Hoth. Instructed by Obi-Wan's spirit, Luke travels to the swamp world of Dagobah to find the exiled Jedi Master Yoda. Luke's Jedi training is interrupted by Vader, who lures him into a trap by capturing Han and Leia at Cloud City, governed by Han's old friend Lando. During a fierce duel, Vader reveals a shocking truth about Luke's father. Owing to financial concerns, Alan Dean Foster's sequel novel, Splinter of the Mind's Eye (1978), restricted the story to Luke, Leia, and Darth Vader. But after the success of the original film, Lucas knew a sequel would be granted a reasonable budget, and hired Leigh Brackett to write it from scratch. She finished a draft by early 1978, but died of cancer before Lucas was able to discuss changes he wanted made to it. His disappointment with the first draft may have made him consider new directions. Lucas penned the next draft, the first screenplay to feature episodic numbering for a Star Wars story. Lucas found this draft enjoyable to write, as opposed to the yearlong struggle writing the first film, and quickly wrote two more in April 1978. The plot twist of Vader being Luke's father had drastic effects on the series. After writing these drafts, Lucas fleshed out the backstory between Anakin, Obi-Wan, and the Emperor. With this new backstory in place, Lucas decided that the series would be a trilogy of trilogies, designating the first sequel Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back in the next draft. Lawrence Kasdan, who had just completed writing Raiders of the Lost Ark, was hired to write the next drafts, and given additional input from director Irvin Kershner. Kasdan, Kershner, and producer Gary Kurtz saw the film as a more serious and adult story, and developed the sequel from the light adventure roots of the first film. Set about a year after Vader's revelation, Return of the Jedi sees Luke joining Leia and Lando in a rescue attempt to save Han from the gangster Jabba the Hutt. Afterward, Luke returns to Dagobah to complete his Jedi training, only to find Yoda on his deathbed. In his last words, Yoda confirms the truth that Vader is Anakin, Luke's father, and that Luke must confront him again in order to complete his training. As the rebels lead an attack on the second Death Star, Luke engages Vader in another lightsaber duel as Emperor Palpatine watches; both Sith Lords intend to turn Luke to the dark side and take him as their apprentice. Kurtz wanted a bittersweet and nuanced ending they had outlined that saw Han dead, the Rebel forces in pieces, Leia struggling as a queen, and Luke walking off alone (like in a Spaghetti Western)—while Lucas wanted a happier ending, partly to encourage toy sales. This led to tension between the two, resulting in Kurtz leaving the production. Loose plans for a prequel trilogy were developed during the outlining of the original trilogy. Technical advances in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including the ability to create computer-generated imagery, inspired him to consider that it might be possible to revisit his saga. The prequel trilogy consists of , released on May 19, 1999; , released on May 16, 2002; and , released on May 19, 2005. The plot focuses on the fall of the Galactic Republic and near extinction of the Jedi as well as the tragedy of Anakin Skywalker's turn to the dark side and transformation into Darth Vader. Set 32 years before the original film, The Phantom Menace begins with two Jedi who, acting as negotiators of the Republic, discover that the corrupt Trade Federation has formed a blockade around the planet Naboo. Sith Lord Darth Sidious has secretly caused the blockade to give his alter ego, Senator Palpatine, a pretense to overthrow and replace the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic. Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn and his apprentice, 25 year-old Obi-Wan Kenobi, encounter a native of Naboo who helps them find the Queen of Naboo. With Queen Padmé Amidala, they escape the blockade, but not without their starship being damaged. Landing on Tatooine for repairs, they meet a nine- year-old slave named Anakin Skywalker. Qui-Gon helps liberate the boy by betting with his master in a podrace, believing him to be the "Chosen One" prophesied by the Jedi to bring balance to the Force. Sidious dispatches his Sith apprentice, Darth Maul, to attack the queen's Jedi protectors. Arriving on Coruscant so the queen can plead Naboo's crisis before the Republic Senate, Anakin is brought before the Jedi Council, where Yoda senses that he possesses too much fear to be trained. The Jedi are ordered to accompany the queen back to Naboo, where she pleads to the natives for their help in the battle against the droid army. The prequels were originally planned to fill in history tangential to the original trilogy, but Lucas realized that they could form the first half of one long story focusing on Anakin. This would shape the film series into a self-contained saga. In 1994, Lucas began writing the screenplay for the first prequel, initially titled Episode I: The Beginning. Following the film's release, Lucas announced that he would be directing the next two. Ten years after the Battle of Naboo, Attack of the Clones opens with an assassination attempt upon former Queen Padmé Amidala, who is serving as the Senator of Naboo. 35 year-old Obi-Wan and his apprentice, a 19 year-old Anakin, are assigned to protect her; Obi-Wan tracks the killer, while Anakin and Padmé retreat to Naboo. They soon fall in love with each other, albeit secretly due to the Jedi Order's rule against attachment. Meanwhile, Chancellor Palpatine secretly schemes to draw the entire galaxy into the "Clone War" between the Republic army led by the Jedi, and the Confederacy of Independent Systems led by Count Dooku (the former master of Obi-Wan's deceased master Qui-Gon, and Palpatine's new Sith apprentice). The first draft of Episode II was completed just weeks before principal photography, and Lucas hired Jonathan Hales, a writer from The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, to polish it. Lucas used the basic backstory developed for earlier Star Wars films in the concept of an army of clone shock troopers from a remote planet which attacked the Republic and were resisted by the Jedi. Revenge of the Sith begins three years into the Clone Wars, with Anakin and Obi-Wan leading a rescue mission to save Chancellor Palpatine from Count Dooku and the droid commander General Grievous. Anakin begins to have prophetic visions of his secret wife Padmé dying in childbirth. Palpatine, who had been secretly engineering the Clone Wars to destroy the Jedi Order, convinces Anakin, who grows resentful towards the Jedi due to their seeming mistrust of him that the dark side of the Force holds the power to save Padmé's life. Desperate, Anakin betrays the Jedi and submits to Palpatine and is renamed his new apprentice Darth Vader. Palpatine orders the clone army to fire on their Jedi generals, and declares the former Republic an Empire. Vader participates in the extermination of the Jedi, culminating in a lightsaber duel with Obi- Wan on the volcanic planet Mustafar. Work on Episode III began before Episode II was released, with one scene shot during the earlier film's production. The climactic duel has its basis in the Return of the Jedi novelization, in which Obi-Wan recounts his battle with Anakin that ended with the latter falling "into a molten pit". A rough draft screenplay includes a scene of Palpatine revealing to Anakin that he had willed his conception through the Force. Prior to releasing the original film, Lucas planned "three trilogies of nine films", but after beginning work on the prequels, insisted that Star Wars was meant to be a six-part series and that there would be no sequel trilogy. Following the acquisition of Lucasfilm by Disney in late 2012, a new trilogy was announced, which began with Episode VII in 2015. The sequel trilogy focuses on the journey of the orphaned scavenger Rey following in the footsteps of the Jedi with the guidance of Luke Skywalker. Along with ex- Stormtrooper Finn, she helps the Resistance led by Leia fight the First Order commanded by Supreme Leader Snoke and his pupil Kylo Ren (Han Solo and Leia's son). was released on December 18, 2015, on December 15, 2017, and was released on December 20, 2019. The Force Awakens is set thirty years after the destruction of the second Death Star and the deaths of Vader and the Emperor, by which time Luke Skywalker has gone missing. The remnants of the Empire have become the First Order lead by Supreme Leader Snoke who seek to destroy Luke and the New Republic. They are opposed by the Resistance, led by princess-turned-general Leia Organa. On the planet of Jakku, Resistance pilot Poe Dameron obtains a map to Luke's location, but is captured by stormtroopers under the command of First Order enforcer Kylo Ren (revealed to be the son of Leia and Han Solo and former Jedi-trained by his uncle Luke), who fell to the dark side after being seduced by Snoke. Poe's droid BB-8 escapes with the map, and encounters a scavenger girl, Rey. Kylo tortures Poe and learns of BB-8. A defecting stormtrooper, FN-2187, frees Poe, who dubs him "Finn", and both escape in a TIE fighter. Poe is seemingly killed in a crash-landing upon Jakku. Finn finds Rey and BB-8, as the First Order pursues them; they escape together in the impounded Millennium Falcon. The Falcon is recaptured by Han Solo and Chewbacca, working as smugglers again. They agree to help deliver the map inside BB-8 to the Resistance. In early 2013, Walt Disney Studios and Lucasfilm officially announced J. J. Abrams as Star Wars Episode VIIs director and producer, along with Bryan Burk and Bad Robot Productions. The screenplay for Episode VII was originally set to be written by Michael Arndt, but in October 2013 it was announced that writing duties would be taken over by Lawrence Kasdan and J. J. Abrams. After a battle scene which overlaps with the end of the previous film, The Last Jedi follows Rey's attempt to convince Luke Skywalker to teach her the ways of the Force. She also seeks answers about her past and the conflict between Luke and his nephew Kylo Ren. Unbeknownst to Luke, Rey starts using the Force to communicate with Ren. Meanwhile, Leia leads Poe, Finn, Rose Tico, BB-8, and the rest of the Resistance as they are pursued by the First Order, led by Snoke with Kylo as his second in command. After hearing Ren's perspective, Rey disagrees with Luke and leaves him in an attempt to redeem Kylo and achieve peace. In doing this, Rey unwittingly helps Kylo kill Snoke. However, Ren's intentions are to replace Snoke as Supreme Leader, believing that destroying the Jedi and the Resistance is the only way to achieve peace. Rey must choose between Kylo's offer to rule the galaxy with him, or helping the outnumbered Resistance survive on Crait. In late 2012, it was reported that Lawrence Kasdan and Simon Kinberg would write and produce Episodes VIII and IX. Kasdan and Kinberg were later confirmed as consultants on those films. In addition, John Williams, who wrote the music for the previous six episodes, was hired to compose the music for Episodes VII, VIII and IX. On March 12, 2015, Lucasfilm announced that Looper director Rian Johnson would direct Episode VIII with Ram Bergman as producer for Ram Bergman Productions. When asked about Episode VIII in mid-2014, Johnson said "I'm just happy. I don't have the terror I kind of expected I would... I'm sure I will at some point." Principal photography began in February 2016 and wrapped in July 2016. Carrie Fisher had finished filming her scenes, but died on December 27, 2016, approximately a year before the film's release. The Rise of Skywalker is the final film of the Skywalker saga, featuring a climactic clash between the Resistance and the First Order, and the Jedi and the Sith. The film is set a year following The Last Jedi and depicts the return of the presumed-dead Palpatine, who has been secretly controlling the First Order from the Sith planet Exegol. Palpatine tasks Kylo Ren with finding Rey, who is revealed to be the former's granddaughter. Palpatine unveils an armada of Star Destroyers, which he calls the Final Order, to reclaim the galaxy. Rey and the Resistance learn of Palpatine's return and embark on a quest to find him. They eventually locate Exegol; Rey confronts Palpatine while the Resistance attack Palpatine's fleet. Production on Episode IX was scheduled to begin in 2017. After Carrie Fisher's death, it was announced that her role would be created from unreleased footage from the previous two films. By September 2017, original director Colin Trevorrow had left the project following creative differences. J. J. Abrams returned to direct, and the film alongside Chris Terrio. Principal photography began on August 1, 2018. Most of the cast of The Last Jedi return, including Star Wars veterans Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Anthony Daniels. They are joined by Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calrissian, and Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine, who returned to the franchise onscreen for the first time since Return of the Jedi and Revenge of the Sith respectively. As Lucas was outlining his trilogy of trilogies, he also imagined making "a couple of odd movies ... [that] don't have anything to do with the Star Wars saga." The first theatrical films set outside the main episodic series were the Ewok spin-off films (1984) and (1985), which were screened internationally after being produced for television. After the conclusion of his then six- episode saga in 2005, Lucas returned to spin-offs in the form of television series. An animated film, (2008), was released as a pilot to a . An anthology series set between the main episodes entered development in parallel to the production of the sequel trilogy, described by Disney CFO Jay Rasulo as origin stories. The first entry, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), tells the story of the rebels who steal the Death Star plans directly before Episode IV. (2018) focuses on Han's backstory, also featuring Chewbacca and Lando Calrissian. Preceding the airing of in late 2008, the theatrical feature was compiled from episodes "almost [as] an afterthought." It reveals that Anakin trained an apprentice between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith; the series explains Padawan Ahsoka Tano's absence from the latter film. The character was originally criticized by fans, but by the end of the series the character had become a fan favorite. The film and series exist in the same level of canon as the episodic and anthology films. Before selling Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012, and parallel to his development of a sequel trilogy, George Lucas and original trilogy Lawrence Kasdan started development on a standalone film about a young Han Solo. In February 2013, Disney CEO Bob Iger made public the development of a Kasdan film and Entertainment Weekly reported that it would focus on Han Solo. Disney CFO Jay Rasulo has described the standalone films as origin stories. Kathleen Kennedy confirmed that there was "no attempt being made to carry characters (from the standalone films) in and out of the saga episodes." The standalone films are subtitled "A Star Wars Story". Rogue One is set directly before Episode IV: A New Hope and focuses on the eponymous group of rebels who obtain the plans to the Death Star. Its laser was developed by scientist Galen Erso (played by Mads Mikkelsen) after the Empire forcibly abducted him, separating him from his daughter Jyn. Galen secretly sends a defecting Imperial pilot, Bodhi Rook, to deliver a message warning of the weapon's existence and revealing its weakness to his rebel friend Saw Gerrera. Under the false promise of her father's liberation, Jyn agrees to help Rebel Alliance intelligence officer Cassian Andor and his droid K-2SO retrieve the message from Saw, now the paranoid leader of an extremist cell of rebels. The idea for the movie came from John Knoll, the chief creative officer of Industrial Light & Magic. In May 2014, Lucasfilm announced Gareth Edwards as the director of an anthology film, with Gary Whitta writing the first draft for a release on December 16, 2016. The film's title was revealed to be Rogue One, with Chris Weitz rewriting the script, and Felicity Jones in the starring role. Ben Mendelsohn and Diego Luna also play new characters, with James Earl Jones returning to voice Darth Vader. Edwards stated, "It comes down to a group of individuals who don't have magical powers that have to somehow bring hope to the galaxy." The film was the first to feature characters introduced in animated Star Wars TV series, namely ' Saw Gerrera, portrayed by Forest Whitaker in the film. The movie received generally positive reviews, with its performances, action sequences, soundtrack, visual effects and darker tone being praised. The film grossed over million worldwide within a week of its release. , the second anthology film, focuses on Han Solo about 10 years before A New Hope. After an escape attempt from his Imperial-occupied home planet of Corellia goes wrong, a young Han vows to return to rescue his girlfriend Qi'ra. Han "Solo" joins the Imperial Academy; however, he is expelled for his reckless behavior. Han and his newfound Wookiee friend Chewbacca resort to a criminal life, mentored by veteran smuggler Beckett. After angering gangster Dryden Vos, Han and his company's lives depend on pulling a heist for him. Without a ship to travel, they hire Lando Calrissian, the captain and owner of the Millennium Falcon. Before selling Lucasfilm to Disney, George Lucas had hired Star Wars original trilogy veteran Lawrence Kasdan to write a film about a young Han Solo. The film stars Alden Ehrenreich as a young Han Solo, Joonas Suotamo as Chewbacca (after serving as a double for the character in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi), Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian, Emilia Clarke as Qi'ra, and Woody Harrelson as Beckett. Lucasfilm originally hired Phil Lord and Christopher Miller to direct, but they were fired during principal photography, and replaced by Ron Howard. A twist ending acknowledges one of the major story arcs of The Clone Wars and Rebels animated series, while leaving the story open ended for sequels. Rian Johnson, the writer/director of The Last Jedi, is confirmed to write and direct the first film of a new trilogy he is currently outlining and will start working on after completing his 2019 film Knives Out and possibly another film. The trilogy will differ from the Skywalker-focused films in favor of focusing on new characters and possibly a different era than the main film franchise. On September 25, 2019, it was announced that Marvel Cinematic Universe producer Kevin Feige was developing a Star Wars film with Kathleen Kennedy. The first spin-off film (also the first sequel to be released) was a holiday TV special aired in 1978. Two live-action TV films created in the mid-1980s feature the Ewoks; these both had limited international theatrical runs. Produced for CBS in 1978, the Star Wars Holiday Special was a two-hour television special, in the format of a variety show. Stars of the original film and archive footage from the original Star Wars film appeared alongside celebrity guest stars in plot-related skits, musical numbers, and an animated segment, all loosely tied together by the premise of Chewbacca's family waiting for his arrival for the "Life Day" celebration on his home planet, Kashyyyk. George Lucas loathed the special and forbade it to be re-aired or released on home video, with the sole exception of the 11-minute animated sequence that featured the first appearance of bounty hunter Boba Fett, which was eventually included as a bonus feature in some of the films' Blu-ray releases. The Ewoks from Return of the Jedi were featured in two spin-off television films, The Ewok Adventure and . Both aired on ABC on the Thanksgiving weekends of 1984 and 1985, respectively. Warwick Davis reprised his debut role as the main Ewok, Wicket, in both. They are set between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Both films were released on VHS, Laser Disc, and on a double-feature DVD. Although based on story ideas from Lucas, they do not bear Star Wars in their titles, and were considered to exist in a lower level of canon than the episodic films. Following Disney's acquisition of the franchise, they were excluded from the canon. The Battle for Endor would be the last live-action Star Wars television project produced by Lucasfilm until 2019's The Mandalorian. In a story by Lucas and a screenplay by Bob Carrau, the Towani family spaceship shipwrecks on the forest moon of Endor. While trying to repair their ship, the castaway family is split, when a giant creature known as the Gorax kidnaps the parents. Taking pity on the kids, a group of native Ewoks led by Wicket decides to help little Cindel Towani and her older brother Mace, rescue their parents. Among other stylistic choices making the film unique from the Star Wars episodes is the inclusion of a narrator. The sequel focuses on the Ewoks protecting their village from marauders led by the evil Lord Terak, who killed all the members of the Towani family except for Cindel, in search of a power battery. Star Wars: Droids – The Adventures of R2-D2 and C-3PO is a 1985 animated television series spun off from the original Star Wars trilogy. It focuses on the exploits of droids R2-D2 and C-3PO between the events of Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. The series was produced by Nelvana on behalf of Lucasfilm and broadcast on ABC with its sister series Ewoks (as part of The Ewoks and Droids Adventure Hour). The series ran for one season of 13 half-hour episodes; an hour-long special broadcast in 1986 serves as the finale. The opening theme, "Trouble Again", was performed by Stewart Copeland of the Police. During their adventures, the droids find themselves in the service of successive new masters, and encounter minor characters from the original trilogy such as Boba Fett and IG-88. Droids follows the adventures of R2-D2 and C-3PO as they face off against gangsters, criminals, pirates, bounty hunters, the Galactic Empire and other threats. During their adventures, the droids find themselves in the service of successive new masters and in difficult situations as a result. The series was retroactively placed four years after Revenge of the Sith and fifteen years before the events of A New Hope. Films of the Star Wars series were mostly filmed with an aspect ratio of 2.39:1 in mind. The original and sequel trilogies were filmed with anamorphic lenses. Episodes IV, V, VII, and VIII were filmed in Panavision, while Episode VI was filmed in Joe Dunton Camera (JDC) scope. Episode I was filmed with Hawk anamorphic lenses on Arriflex cameras, and Episodes II and III were filmed with Sony CineAlta high-definition digital cameras. Episode VII and VIII had select footage filmed with 65mm IMAX film cameras, with one scene in Episode VII presented in an aspect ratio of either 1.43:1 or 1.90:1 in most IMAX theaters. Rogue One and Solo were filmed with ARRI Alexa 65 cameras with the former using the Ultra Panavision 70 format. Lucas hired Ben Burtt to oversee the sound effects on the original 1977 film. Burtt's accomplishment was such that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented him with a Special Achievement Award because it had no award at the time for the work he had done. Lucasfilm developed the THX sound reproduction standard for Return of the Jedi. John Williams composed the scores for all nine films. Lucas's design for Star Wars involved a grand musical sound, with leitmotifs for different characters and important concepts. Williams's Star Wars title theme has become one of the most famous and well-known musical compositions in modern music history. Lucas hired 'the Dean of Special Effects' John Stears, who created R2-D2, Luke Skywalker's Landspeeder, the Jedi Knights' lightsabers, and the Death Star. The technical lightsaber choreography for the original trilogy was developed by leading filmmaking sword-master Bob Anderson. Anderson trained actor Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) and performed all the sword stunts as Darth Vader during the lightsaber duels in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, wearing Vader's costume. Anderson's role in the original Star Wars trilogy was highlighted in the film Reclaiming the Blade, where he shares his experiences as the fight choreographer developing the lightsaber techniques for the movies. The Star Wars films are the second-highest-grossing film franchise of all time worldwide, behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe, having grossed over $10 billion at the global box office. The eleven live-action films together have been nominated for 37 Academy Awards, of which they have won seven. The films were also awarded a total of three Special Achievement Awards. The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi received Special Achievement Awards for their visual effects, and Star Wars received a Special Achievement Award for its alien, creature and robot voices. The franchise has received a total of fourteen Grammy Award nominations, winning six. Notes In 1989, the Library of Congress selected the original Star Wars film for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry, as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." The Empire Strikes Back was selected in 2010. 35mm reels of the 1997 Special Editions were the versions initially presented for preservation because of the difficulty of transferring from the original prints, but it was later revealed that the Library possessed a copyright deposit print of the original theatrical releases. By 2015, Star Wars had been transferred to a 2K scan which can be viewed by appointment. Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure was one of four films to be juried- awarded Emmys for Outstanding Special Visual Effects at the 37th Primetime Emmy Awards. The film was additionally nominated for Outstanding Children's Program but lost in this category to an episode of American Playhouse. At the 38th Primetime Emmy Awards, Ewoks: The Battle for Endor and the CBS documentary Dinosaur! were both juried-awarded Emmys for Outstanding Special Visual Effects. The film additionally received two nominations for Outstanding Children's Program and Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Miniseries or a Special. In early 2013, Bob Iger announced the development of a spin-off film written by Simon Kinberg, reported by Entertainment Weekly to focus on bounty hunter Boba Fett during the original trilogy. In mid-2014, Josh Trank was officially announced as the director of an undisclosed spin-off film, but had left the project a year later due to creative differences, causing a teaser for the film to be scrapped from Star Wars Celebration. In May 2018, it was reported that James Mangold had signed on to write and direct a Fett film, with Kinberg attached as producer and . By October, the Fett film was reportedly no longer in production, with the studio instead focusing on the upcoming The Mandalorian series, which utilizes a similar character design. In August 2017, it was rumored that films focused on Jabba the Hutt, and Jedi Masters Obi-Wan and Yoda were being considered or were in development. Stephen Daldry was reportedly in early negotiations to and direct the Obi-Wan movie. At D23 Expo in August 2019, it was announced that a streaming series about the character would be produced instead. Felicity Jones, who played Jyn Erso in Rogue One, has the option of another Star Wars film in her contract; notwithstanding her character's fate in Rogue One, it has been speculated that she could return in other anthology films. In 2018, critics noted that Solo was intentionally left open for sequels. Alden Ehrenreich and Emilia Clarke confirmed that their contracts to play Han Solo and Q'ira extended for additional films, if required. Kathleen Kennedy expressed being open to making a spin-off about the younger Lando Calrissian as seen in Solo, but confirmed that none was currently in development. An unannounced film centered around the Mos Eisley Spaceport was reportedly put on hold or cancelled in mid-2018, leading to rumors of the cancellation or postponement of the anthology series. Lucasfilm swiftly denied the rumors as "inaccurate", confirming that multiple unannounced films were in development. Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss were to write and produce a trilogy of Star Wars films scheduled to be released in December 2022, 2024, and 2026, which were first announced to be in development in February 2018. However, citing their commitment to a Netflix deal, the duo stepped away from the project in October 2019. Kennedy stated her openness to their returning when their schedules allow. Additionally, though unconfirmed by Lucasfilm, BuzzFeed reported in May 2019 that Laeta Kalogridis was writing the script for the first film in a potential trilogy. List of Star Wars cast members, List of Star Wars characters Hardware Wars, Spaceballs, Thumb Wars Footnotes Citations

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This is a list of host cities of the Olympic Games, both summer and winter, since the modern Olympics began in 1896. Since then, summer games have usually but not always celebrated a four-year period known as an Olympiad. There have been 28 Summer Olympic Games held in 23 cities, and 23 Winter Olympic Games held in 20 cities. In addition, three summer and two winter editions of the Games were scheduled to take place but later cancelled due to war: Berlin (summer) in 1916; Tokyo/Helsinki (summer) and Sapporo/Garmisch-Partenkirchen (winter) in 1940; and London (summer) and Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy (winter) in 1944. The 1906 Summer Olympics were officially sanctioned and held in Athens. However, in 1949, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), decided to unrecognize the 1906 Games. The Youth Olympic Games are held every four years in staggered summer and winter events consistent with the current Olympic Games format, though in reverse order with Winter Games held in leap years instead of Summer Games. The first summer version was held in Singapore from 14 to 26 August 2010 while the first winter version was held in Innsbruck, Austria from 13 to 22 January 2012. Five cities have been chosen by the IOC to host upcoming Olympic Games: Tokyo for the 2020 Summer Olympics, Beijing for the 2022 Winter Olympics, Paris for the 2024 Summer Olympics, Milan-Cortina d'Ampezzo for the 2026 Winter Olympics, and Los Angeles for the 2028 Summer Olympics. Additional two cities have been chosen by the IOC to host upcoming Youth Olympic Games: Lausanne for the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics, Dakar for the 2022 Summer Youth Olympics and Gangwon Province for the 2024 Winter Youth Olympics. In 2022, Beijing will become the first-ever city that has held both the summer and the winter Olympic Games. Eleven cities will have hosted the Olympic Games more than once: Athens (1896 and 2004 Summer Olympics), Paris (1900, 1924 and 2024 Summer Olympics), London (1908, 1948 and 2012 Summer Olympics), St. Moritz (1928 and 1948 Winter Olympics), Lake Placid (1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics), Los Angeles (1932, 1984 and 2028 Summer Olympics), Cortina d'Ampezzo (1956 and 2026 Winter Olympics), Innsbruck (1964 and 1976 Winter Olympics and 2012 Winter Youth Olympics), Tokyo (1964 and 2020 Summer Olympics), Lillehammer (1994 Winter Olympics and 2016 Winter Youth Olympics), Gangwon Province (Pyeongchang) (2018 Winter Olympics and 2024 Winter Youth Olympics) and Beijing (2008 Summer Olympics and 2022 Winter Olympics). Stockholm hosted the 1912 Summer Olympics and the equestrian portion of the 1956 Summer Olympics. London became the first city to have hosted three Games with the 2012 Summer Olympics. Paris will become the second city to do this with the 2024 Summer Olympics, followed by Los Angeles as the third in 2028. The United States has hosted a total of eight Olympic Games, more than any other country, followed by France with five editions. Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Austria, Canada, Italy, Japan and Germany have each hosted three Games. The Games have primarily been hosted in the continents of Europe (32 editions) and North America (12 editions); seven Games have been hosted in Asia and two have been hosted in Oceania. In 2010, Singapore became Southeast Asia's first Olympic host city for the inaugural Summer Youth Olympics, while Rio de Janeiro became South America's first Olympic host city with the 2016 Summer Olympics, followed by Buenos Aires with the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics. The 2022 Summer Youth Olympics in Dakar will become the first-ever Games to be held on the African continent. Other major geographic regions which have never hosted the Olympics include the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, Central America and the Caribbean. Host cities are selected by the IOC membership, usually seven years in advance. The selection process lasts approximately two years. In the first stage, any city in the world may submit an application to become a host city. After 10 months, the Executive Board of the IOC decides which applicant cities will become official candidates as based on the recommendation of a working group that reviews the applications. In a second stage, the candidate cities are investigated thoroughly by an Evaluation Commission, which then submits a final short list of cities to be considered for selection. The host city is then chosen by vote of the IOC session, a general meeting of IOC members. 1. The 1906 Intercalated Games are no longer officially recognized by the IOC as an official Olympic Games. Originally awarded to Chicago, but moved to St. Louis to coincide with the World's Fair., The 1906 Games were sanctioned and treated as an Olympic Games when held, and they were recognized as an Olympic Games by the IOC until 1949, The 1908 Games were originally given to Rome, but were moved to London when Mount Vesuvius erupted., The sailing events in 1920 were held in Ostend, Belgium and in Amsterdam, Netherlands., The 1940 winter games were originally awarded to Sapporo, Japan, but the launch of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 caused them to be relocated to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Nazi Germany, before being cancelled in 1939 because of the expansion of World War II., The 1940 summer games were originally awarded to Tokyo, Japan, but the launch of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 caused them to be relocated Helsinki, Finland, before being cancelled in 1939 because of the expansion of World War II., Equestrian events were held in Stockholm, Sweden. Stockholm had to bid for the equestrian competition separately; it received its own Olympic flame and had its own formal invitations and opening and closing ceremonies, just like the regular Summer Olympics., Russia (like the former Soviet Union) spans the continents of Europe and Asia. However, the Russian Olympic Committee is part of the European Olympic Committees and has its official seat in Moscow (this was also the case for the former Soviet Olympic Committee). Also, Moscow is on the European side of the most commonly recognized boundary between Europe and Asia. (Sochi is in Asia per the usual geographic boundary, being just south of the Greater Caucasus' western end; but political approximations of the continental boundary place it in Europe.), Equestrian events were held in China's Hong Kong SAR. Although Hong Kong's separate NOC conducted the equestrian competition, it was an integral part of the Beijing Games (unlike the 1956 Stockholm equestrian competition it was not conducted under a separate Hong Kong bid, separate flame, etc.)., The 1976 Winter Games were originally awarded to Denver, Colorado, United States in 1969, but in 1972, after a referendum, Denver voluntarily gave up its right, citing environmental concerns for the Colorado area. The IOC eventually decided to relocate those games to Innsbruck, Austria. The Chicago bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics and Paralympics was an unsuccessful bid, first recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on September 14, 2007. The IOC shortlisted four of the seven applicant cities—Madrid, Spain; Tokyo, Japan; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Chicago, United States; over Baku, Azerbaijan; Doha, Qatar; and Prague, Czech Republic—on June 4, 2008, during a meeting in Athens, Greece. This was followed by an intensive bidding process which finished with the election of Rio de Janeiro at the 121st IOC Session in Copenhagen, Denmark, on October 2, 2009. In Chicago's bid, the games would have been held from July 22 to August 7, with the Paralympics held between August 12 and 28. The bid plan emphasized use of Chicago Park District parks to host the games, but other existing facilities such as Soldier Field and McCormick Place would have hosted events. The bid included a plan for North Side, Downtown Loop and South Side celebration locations that would have had high-definition LED screens for unticketed visitors. The bid noted that there was a very high concentration of event locations and training facilities close to each other and that the majority of event sites were clustered together. Thus, the vast majority of athletes would have been close to their competitions. Chicago earned a general score of 7.0 during the Applicant phase, after a detailed study of the Applicant Files received by the IOC Working Group on January 14, 2008. Between April 4 and 7, 2009, the IOC Evaluation Commission, led by Nawal El Moutawakel, arrived in Chicago to assess the conditions of the city. The Commission attended technical presentations, participated in question-and- answer sessions about the Candidature File, and made inspections in all the existing venues across the city. Though considered a favorite entering the voting process, and despite personal appeals from such high-profile Chicagoans as U.S. President Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, and Oprah Winfrey, the bid faced considerable organized grassroots opposition, including from the coalitions No Games Chicago and the Unlympics Organizing Committee. Opponents cited the history of cost overruns pervasive to Olympic bids in a time of considerable public debt and the sentiment that funds for the Olympics should instead fund public schools and public clinics. Surveys of Chicagoans in the run-up to the bid saw support for the bid fall below 50%, and Chicago was eliminated on the first ballot in IOC voting on October 2, 2009, with 18 votes in a three-round exhaustive ballot of the IOC. The United States Olympic Committee (USOC) selected Chicago over Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and San Francisco as its candidate city to host the 2016 Summer Olympics and 2016 Summer Paralympics on April 14, 2007. This is the city's third failure, after two failed attempts for the 1952 and the 1956 Summer Olympics (and fourth overall attempt, as Chicago won the 1904 Olympics, but they were moved to St Louis as the World's Fair was there and threatened to host a competing competition if the Olympics were not moved). Numerous Olympic Games in North America, including the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, hurt Chicago's bid. It would have been the ninth Olympics hosted in the United States, after the 1904, 1932, 1984 and 1996 Summer Olympics; and the 1932, 1960, 1980 and 2002 Winter Olympics. Initially, five American cities vied for the 2016 Olympics: Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. The USOC's chairman at the time, Peter Ueberroth, visited all potential host cities during April and May 2006. He visited Chicago on May 10. On July 26, 2006, the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) narrowed its list of American applicant cities to three: Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. San Francisco withdrew its application on November 13, 2006 after the San Francisco 49ers pulled out of a deal for the construction of a new stadium that would be the centerpiece of the games. The final stage of the USOC internal selection occurred on April 14, 2007, at Washington, D.C.'s Embassy Row Hotel, where the two remaining bid cities, Chicago and Los Angeles, made a last 40-minute presentation to the USOC board members. At about 21:00 UTC, Chicago was announced as the winner of the United States bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics by Ueberroth. Chicago has had prior experience with Olympic bids. In 1901, the city was unanimously chosen by the IOC to stage the 1904 Summer Olympics, but the Games were moved to St. Louis to coincide with the 1904 World's Fair. Chicago also bid for the 1952 and 1956 Summer Olympics, without success. Mayor of Chicago Richard M. Daley visited Beijing – host city of the 2008 Summer Olympics – on May 15, 2006, where he collected information on hosting. The bidding process for the 2016 Summer Olympics was officially launched on May 16, 2007. In June 2007, Olympic bid committee Chairman and CEO, Patrick G. Ryan announced that David P. Bolger was appointed chief operating officer and Rick Ludwig as chief financial officer. The Chicago 2016 Olympic bid committee announced the details of the Olympic bid application on January 15, 2008. 22 of the 27 Olympic venues will be in four clusters within 15 km of the Olympic Village. Five new venues and eleven temporary venues would have been built for the games at a cost of $49.3 million; these construction costs, and the costs of the games were to be borne by the private sector, with the government financing the infrastructure. The bid committee filed a 600-page candidacy file with the IOC in Lausanne, Switzerland on February 12, 2009. The file responded to 227 questions given to each candidate city. On February 13, the candidacy file with the final version of Chicago's 2016 Olympic plan was publicly released. Chicago's bid was supported by major preliminary corporate commitments, philanthropic efforts by wealthy Chicagoans, promised planning participation by a wide range of community and government leaders, and the enthusiasm of the citizenry. Local support for the bid on the South Side, particularly in the Washington Park and Woodlawn community areas, was divided. Ben Joravsky, a Chicago Reader columnist, was one of the strongest critics of the Chicago 2016 bid. However, 2007 opinion polls indicated 76 percent public support. In 2009, as the final selection approached, opponents of the bid became vocal even though organizers seemed to be pleased with the bid's progress and presentation. Peter Ueberroth stated, "Chicago is going in the right direction, and we are impressed by that." Long-time Chicago resident and then current President of the United States Barack Obama was a supporter of Chicago's bid since its inception and noted his support during his Presidential election victory speech in Grant Park. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama traveled to Denmark to support Chicago's bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics. Michael Jordan was an unofficial spokesman for Chicago's bid. Chicago media mogul Oprah Winfrey and Olympic champion Michael Phelps had been widely promoting the bid since the 2008 Summer Olympics. The bid plan emphasized use of Chicago Park District parks (Washington Park, Burnham Park, Lincoln Park, Douglas Park and Grant Park). In addition, existing facilities such as Soldier Field and McCormick Place would have hosted events. In addition to the event sites, the bid included North side, downtown Loop and South Side celebration locations in Lincoln and Grant Parks as well as the Midway Plaisance respectively that would have had JumboTrons for unticketed visitors. The bid noted the high concentration of event locations; the majority of event sites would have been clustered together. Ueberroth and members of the national committee met with Daley on May 10, 2006, for the initial assessment. Daley appointed business executive Patrick G. Ryan of Aon Corporation, part-owner of the Chicago Bears, to lead the city's bid process, especially in areas of corporate participation in fundraising. Mayor Daley said on May 10, 2006 that the Olympics "cannot become a financial burden to the taxpayers of Chicago and Illinois." "The goal is to have the Olympics be totally privately funded and we have unparalleled support from the business community," a mayoral spokeswoman said in July 2006. Daley insisted that no tax money would be used to pay for the city to host the 2016 Summer Olympics and said funding from the private sector and federal dollars for security and infrastructure would cover the costs. "Tax money isn't paying for it," Daley said on February 7, 2009. "The federal government pays for security, which is the highest cost of the Olympics ... The other thing they pay for is infrastructure ... There's no city tax money whatsoever ... We are very strong in that position ... in the regard to having that be sponsored by the private sector and others." In previous years, Daley opposed possible bids for the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics owing to former international committee financial-guarantee requirements. The 2016 financial guarantee requirements were not initially formalized. Early cost estimates hovered at $5 billion, with $1.1 billion for the lakeside Olympic Village and an additional estimated $366 million for a temporary 80,000 seat Olympic Stadium to be built in Washington Park. Nonetheless, the proposed budget was small in comparison to the Beijing Olympics, which are estimated to have cost $40 billion. Further, the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics, initially budgeted to cost $2.4 billion, in fact cost $9 billion. On April 11, 2007, former Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich proposed $150 million in state funding to help secure the bid to the USOC for Chicago. Then current Governor Pat Quinn stated that he would be willing to support any funding necessary to secure the Olympics for Chicago. By April 14, over $35 million in cash and $13 million in goods had been pledged, including donations in excess of $100,000 from at least 225 individuals and corporations. Chicago had strong allies to pursue federal funds for security and transportation: U.S. Senator Dick Durbin was the second in command among Democratic Senators as the Whip, and former Senator Barack Obama had become the President of the United States. The city announced a $500 million insurance policy against cost overruns and revenue shortfalls. Despite the current lack of an Olympic stadium, Chicago has dozens of existing sport venues: Soldier Field, United Center, U.S. Cellular Field, Wrigley Field, Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Sears Centre in Hoffman Estates, and Toyota Park in Bridgeview. Venues at Loyola University Chicago, Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago State University, Northern Illinois University, and the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, among others, were also available and had been mentioned in early news reports as possibilities. Northerly Island and the lakefront along Lake Michigan would have hosted all beach and water events. The McCormick Place convention center, the second largest in the world, was the planned venue for indoor events like judo and weightlifting, as well as hosting all press offices, while Archery and the medals podium were slated for Grant Park. Preliminary soccer matches would have been played in several venues, of which a few were slated to have been temporarily renamed in line with the IOC prohibition against corporate naming rights sponsorships to be used for venue names. These venues included MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey (which would have been temporarily renamed "New York Field" for the Olympics); the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California; Lincoln Financial Field ("Philadelphia Field") in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis, Missouri ("St. Louis Dome"); FedExField in Landover, Maryland ("Landover Field"); and TCF Bank Stadium ("Minneapolis Stadium"), a new stadium which opened in September 2009 on the campus of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Swimming events were originally planned to be held in the West Side's Douglas Park, but in a December 2008 plan revision the swimming events would have moved to Washington Park and a velodrome for track and BMX cycling events would have moved from Northerly Island to Douglas Park. The Cycling hub would have been in Madison, Wisconsin. While some venues might have changed at short notice, the Chicago 2016 Bid Book indicated that the following venues would have been permanently constructed: an Aquatic Center, the Olympic Stadium (to a limited long-term degree), a Canoe/Flatwater/Rowing area at Monroe Harbor, a Canoe/Kayak-Slalom Course, a velodrome in Douglas Park, and Field Hockey Fields in Jackson Park. The Monroe Harbor would have been enlarged with a $60-million breakwater to accommodate an approximately course for rowing events. This would have enabled rowing competitions to take place on a course running from Northerly Island to about Randolph Street. This course would have featured a picturesque Chicago Loop skyline backdrop for television viewing, which by 2016 might have included the Chicago Spire, if it was completed. In order to accommodate the Olympics, all non-Olympic watercraft would have been required to vacate Monroe Harbor for a year. Canoeing events would have been held in the former location of Meigs Field on Northerly Island near the Adler Planetarium. Historically, this site staged some venues for the 1933 World's Fair. The Olympic Stadium would have been built in Washington Park, a site listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the Washington Park community area of the same name on the city's south side. Chicago initially proposed building a temporary 80,000-seat track stadium adjacent to Soldier Field and having the two stadiums host dual Opening and Closing Ceremonies. However, the final proposal called for a $366 million temporary stadium to be built in Washington Park. The stadium would have been replaced by a 10,000 seat multi-use venue after the games. The smaller post-Olympic stadium would have been more in line with public interest in restoring the historic park after the games. The new stadium would have featured a high-tech reflective sheathing material to accommodate huge TV picture projections on its outside walls. The temporary stadium would not have had concessions inside the stadium, unlike permanent local venues, although concessions were planned outside the stadium. The stadium would have featured a basic oval shape, but it would also have adhered to Olympic design rules which dictate that there must be an overhanging lip at one end to cover dignitaries and the media. IOC president Jacques Rogge praised Chicago's design in November 2007 as a possible "blueprint for the future", reflecting the desire of the IOC to make the games both more affordable and to have a smaller ecological footprint on the host city. The Olympic Village for housing athletes during the games would have been a $1.1-billion series of newly constructed lakefront buildings that would have been converted to rental and condominium units after the games. The village was to be located immediately south of McCormick Place, which was expected to host 11 event venues, on a current truck parking lot between South Lake Shore Drive and the Illinois Central Railroad tracks in the Near South Side and Douglas community areas. At the time, the parking lot was being used to stage events at McCormick Place. The village was slated to have pedways over Lake Shore Drive. This location was meant to enable 88% of the Olympic athletes to be within 15 minutes of their competition venue. Initially, the Olympic Village was to be located entirely on the McCormick Place truck yards, but in November 2006, The Michael Reese Hospital site became listed for sale. Planners determined that the Hospital site would likely have been superior in terms of lower cost and more successful urban planning implementation. In November 2007, Mayor Daley announced a plan to acquire the site, and the following June the hospital decided that it would cease operations. In July 2008 the city announced its official bid for the property: The city planned to borrow $85 million to buy the Michael Reese Hospital campus, near 31st and King Drive, from its current owner, Medline Industries. Medline would only get $65 million, because the company agreed to make a $20 million "charitable contribution" back to the city. The city would use that $20 million to pay up to five years of interest on its $85 million debt, demolish the hospital, and clean up the site. Then sometime in the next couple years it planned to sell the site for at least $85 million to a developer or developers, who in turn were expected to build a complex big enough to house about 15,000 Olympians. After the games the developer would sell or rent out the units. In September 2008, the city realized it had underestimated demolition and environmental cleanup costs, which put the transaction at risk. Additionally in September the Associated Press reported a recalcitrant property owner may force the hospital site to be abandoned. These problems needed resolution by the bid committee by February 2009, the date which bid books were due. That month, the city requested a renegotiation of terms and within a week Michael Reese hospital filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. In December 2008, new terms for the deal became public. Although original financing plans included no taxpayer funding, the late deal was only possible with $500 million of taxpayer participation via a guarantee by the city to cover possible revenue shortfall and $45 million for Chicago Police Department costs. In addition, in early 2008, records were uncovered that show the campus of Michael Reese Hospital to have been designed, in large part, by one of the twentieth century's most well-respected modernist architects, Walter Gropius. Thus, the plan for the Olympic Village battled the growing belief that preserving the old hospital campus would be better from an urban planning and historic preservation standpoint, and also rose questions about financing the village. In addition, the planned demolition of 28 buildings put the sustainability record the city was attempting to create in question. Chicago benefited from a strong sports culture. On August 1, 2006, it was named Best Sports City in the US by Sporting News. Chicagoans are famous for their rabid support of their home teams: the Chicago Bears, Chicago Bulls, Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Chicago Blackhawks, Chicago Wolves, and more recently, Chicago Sky (WNBA), Chicago Fire, the Chicago Red Stars (the new women's soccer team), and the Chicago Machine. Other events such as the Chicago Marathon, one of the five World Marathon Majors, would also play a part in Chicago's Olympic-planning process. Chicago has hosted major and historic world gatherings in the past, including the famous 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition and the 1959 Pan American Games, as well as matches for the 1994 FIFA World Cup soccer tournament. Chicago has also hosted the most United States presidential nominating conventions. Chicago was scheduled to host the 1904 Summer Olympics, but the games were instead relocated to St. Louis to coincide with its Louisiana Purchase Exposition, more commonly known as the Saint Louis World's Fair. Chicago was also the first host of the Special Olympics in 1968. More recently, Chicago hosted the Gay Games VII in July 2006, and the 2007 AIBA Boxing Championships in October 2007. The championships were a qualifying event for the 2008 Summer Olympics and a chance for Chicago to showcase its staging skills to IOC members. AIBA head Dr. Ching-kuo Wu enthused the tournament was the "best ever", especially considering the short six-month lead time Chicago had to organize the games. On May 16, 2007, Chicago was informed that its logo, a representation of a torch with the flames reminiscent of Chicago's skyline, violated IOC rules against using Olympic torch imagery. Bidding rules prohibit logos containing the Olympic symbol, motto, flag or other imagery including a flame, torch or medal. Chicago agreed to revise the logo. The current redesigned logo was released on September 19, 2007. Using the same color palette, a unique six- pointed Chicago star represents a compass pointing in all directions reaching out to the world. Each point represents an Olympic value: Hope, Respect, Harmony, Friendship, Excellence and Celebration. The warm colors initially represented in the flame (or top) of the image refer to the sun, the cool colors represent the green parklands and blue waters of Lake Michigan. Initially beneath the logo were the words "Applicant City". Both logos were designed by Chicago-based design firm VSA Partners. Chicago not only changed its logo, but relaunched its campaign. It changed its motto from "Stir the soul" to "Let friendship shine". Chicago used social media more than any other city bidding, and was keen to make 2016 a 'New Media Olympics'. It established a number of groups on Facebook, and on September 29, 2009 the bid's official page surpassed 100,000 members; it also used Flickr and Twitter. Chicago City Council alderman Edward M. Burke proposed that a fifth star be added to the Flag of Chicago if the city won its bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics. The bid relied on Chicago's strength in medical services and doping control, security, accommodations, transportation, technology and media operations. The city's transportation infrastructure includes the Chicago Transit Authority, which operates a vast network of buses and elevated/subway 'L' trains, and the Metra and South Shore Line commuter rail services that connects more than 230 suburban destinations to Chicago. These transportation options would have allowed public transit access to the Games for city residents and people throughout northeastern Illinois into northern Indiana and southern Wisconsin. Chicago's main airport, O'Hare International Airport is the second-busiest airport in the world. The Chicago region is served by two other major commercial airports, Midway and Milwaukee's General Mitchell International Airport, along with several smaller airports. The city is served by all major worldwide airlines, and O'Hare is an international hub for both American and United Airlines, while Midway is a hub for domestic carrier Southwest Airlines. There is also a considerable network of rail lines and interstate highways in the region. Chicago has over 30,000 hotel rooms in the immediate downtown area alone, and it has the largest skilled-labor workforce in the US catering to conventions and other large-scale media events. Chicago is in the Central Time Zone (UTC −5 during the summer months), which is very is well- suited to North American television coverage. The NBC television network with its sister cable broadcasters is by far the largest media vendor and contract purchaser of the Olympic Games. Trademark controversies arose for "Chicago2016.com" and "Tokyo2016.com", when both were registered in 2004 by entrepreneur Stephen Frayne Jr., an MBA student at the Kellogg School of Management; he also claimed around 40 other domain names whose city/year format mimicked the way Olympic Games are marketed. Frayne's stated intent for the site was a "comprehensive, balanced discussion" of the benefits and pitfalls of holding the Olympics in Chicago; the Chicago 2016 committee contended that his real intent was to profit from cybersquatting. The Chicago Olympic bid organization, which had been using Chicago2016.org as its official web site, sought control of Chicago2016.com through a complaint filed with an international arbitration organization. Attempts by the USOC to have the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) release the names failed. Frayne sued in the U.S. District Court in Chicago, seeking an injunction against the arbitration proceedings. On September 25, 2008, the WIPO arbitration panel granted Frayne's motion to suspend and terminate proceedings setting up a battle in the federal court in the Northern District of Illinois. The Olympic bid candidature documentation published by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) states that each bid must "...provide documentation indicating that appropriate measures have been taken to register domain names that are of value to your candidature such as '[City] 2016' followed by extensions .com .net .org as well as the country code concerned." A number of Chicago grassroots citizens groups organized to oppose the Chicago 2016 Olympic bid. The Unlympics Organizing Committee organized a series of Chicago events over four Saturdays in the winter of 2009. Arguably the leading organizing group against the bid was No Games Chicago. To coincide with an IOC visit to Chicago in April 2009, No Games Chicago organized a rally in Federal Plaza where hundreds voiced their opposition to the bid. No Games Chicago participants dogged bid officials during a series of dubious "town halls" held in each of Chicago's fifty wards just two months before the IOC vote. No Games Chicago also assembled a book of evidence which was delivered to IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, and reinforced in Copenhagen for the IOC decision. Chicago made the Candidate city shortlist in June 2008 as one of four finalists to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. Its technical ranking by the IOC was 7.0; generally beyond the 6.0 minimum threshold, but trailing behind Tokyo and Madrid's bids. (Technical qualities are only part of the final selection process.) The final selection from Madrid, Spain; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil was made on October 2, 2009, in Copenhagen, Denmark. In 2007, USOC head Peter Ueberroth contended that Chicago was in "third or fourth place", with a need to focus more on the international relations rather than just having a stronger technical bid. In September 2009, the IOC gave a written evaluation of the venues, budgets, transportation plans and public support. Chicago's bid was not federally underwritten, unlike other bid cities, which concerned the IOC, given declining tax revenue during a major recession in the US economy. Nevertheless, with Chicago's strong hosting of the AIBA Boxing Championships which exposed the city to many IOC members, the city was cited as a current favorite, and one member claimed the Games were "theirs to lose." Chicago also successfully hosted the 2006 Gay Games, another multinational sporting event. Both events were planned with short lead times. In April 2009, the Chicago 2016 bid committee was the first of the four finalists to host the 13-member IOC Evaluation Commission. They presented twenty films to the committee. Among the video spokespersons were Hillary Clinton (raised in suburban Chicago) and Michael Jordan. In addition to meeting with bid organizers, the IOC commission met with bid opposition groups when they visited. After the IOC commission left Chicago, the Chicago City Council approved an Olympic Community Agreement ordinance that was drafted by Alderman Toni Preckwinkle. The agreement committed 30 percent of Olympic Village units to affordable housing conversion and guarantees women and minorities a portion of Olympic-related contracts. Former Illinois Senate President Emil Jones derided the agreement as an inadequate deal. Some Chicago residents opposed to the Chicago bid, particularly because of the financial implications of the undertaking to Chicago residents, launched a website called "chicagoansforrio.com" to persuade the IOC to give the Olympics to Rio instead. In a public poll, Chicago residents were almost evenly divided on the bid, with 47% supporting and 45% not supporting. On October 2, 2009, Chicago was knocked out in the first round of voting, and the Olympics went to Rio de Janeiro, despite some high-profile backers, such as US President Barack Obama and Chicago-based television hostess Oprah Winfrey, going to Copenhagen to support the bid. Since balloting is secret and IOC members rarely share their voting tendencies, there has been much speculation as to why Chicago lost the Olympic bid so early in the process. Michelle Higgins on The New York Times blog argued that an overly restrictive passport and visa policy was one such reason. CBS 2 Chicago's website suggested that anti-Americanism may have contributed. Bid CEO Patrick Ryan was quoted in the Chicago Sun-Times as saying "bloc voting" and assumptions by others in the IOC that Chicago had enough votes to make it to the second round of voting led to its early demise. The same article hinted at fractious relations, noted by The Seattle Times, between the IOC and USOC over the corporate background of the USOC executives and the "inordinate" share of revenue that they receive. Chicago was eliminated in the first round of voting by just four votes, so it's arguable that the organizing efforts of grassroots opponents to the Chicago 2016 bid, and the impact they made on public opinion, played a key factor. Tom Tresser, an organizer with No Games Chicago, said in an interview: "We know for a fact that we [No Games Chicago] made a difference. It's not speculation. We do have it on very good authority that the IOC knew who we were and they respected us and they listened to us." Following Chicago's loss, the USOC declined to bid for the 2020 Summer Olympics, which was ultimately awarded to Tokyo. The USOC later entered the race for the 2024 Summer Olympics with Boston but withdrew their bid. The USOC quickly selected Los Angeles to be the American candidate for the 2024 Olympics. After the IOC decided to award the hosts of both the 2024 and 2028 Olympics in 2017, Los Angeles declared their candidature for 2028, securing the 2024 Olympics for Paris with Los Angeles securing the 2028 edition. Chicago 2016: Candidate City (Official bid book – Volume 1), Chicago 2016: Candidate City (Official bid book – Volume 2), Chicago 2016: Candidate City (Official bid book – Volume 3), No Games Chicago Book of Evidence for the International Olympic Committee ChicagoGames.com — Chicago Games, Chicago2016.com - Archived site on archive.org, General fact sheet, No Games Chicago - Chicago citizens against the 2016 Olympic bid, The Unlympics Organizing Committee, Archive of the Chicago Reader's coverage London hosted the Olympic Games in 1908, 1948 and 2012. The 2012 Summer Olympics made London the first city to have hosted the modern Games of three Olympiads. London is the only city in the United Kingdom to have ever hosted the Olympics; the United States is the only country to have hosted Summer Olympics on more occasions than the UK. Also, London is the only city to have bid more than once and still hold a 100% record. British participation in Olympic events, both as a competitor and as a host, is the responsibility of the British Olympic Association. The 1908 Summer Olympics (the Games of the IV Olympiad) were the fifth modern Olympic Games and the third to be hosted outside of Athens, Greece. The International Olympic Committee considers them the fourth Olympic Games, discounting the intercalated 1906 Summer Olympics. The 1908 Olympic Games were scheduled to take place in Rome, but the eruption of Mount Vesuvius on 7 April 1906 required the Italian government to redirect funds away from the Olympics. The events took place between 27 April 1908 and 31 October 1908, with 22 nations participating in 110 events. The British team easily topped the unofficial medal count, finishing with three times as many medals as the second-place United States. The 1944 Summer Olympics (the Games of the XIII Olympiad) were scheduled to be held in London. Awarded in 1939, they were, however, cancelled due to World War II. These Games would have celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Modern Olympiad. The 1948 Summer Olympics (the Games of the XIV Olympiad) were the first to be held after World War II, with the 1944 Summer Olympics having been cancelled due to the war. Showing a collective unity after the war, 59 nations competed in 136 different events between 29 July 1948 and 14 August 1948. Germany and Japan were not invited to the games due to security reasons. Unlike the previous time the UK hosted the Olympics, the British athletes did not have a high medal count, finishing 12th in the unofficial medal count with only 21 medals. The 2012 Summer Olympics (the Games of the XXX Olympiad) took place between 27 July 2012 and 12 August 2012. The London 2012 Olympic bid was announced as the winner of the bidding process on 6 July 2005, following unsuccessful bid attempts for previous Olympics by Manchester and Birmingham. Team GB finished 3rd with 29 Gold medals, and 65 total medals, representing their best medal haul since London first hosted the Olympics in 1908. The 2012 Summer Paralympics were the fourteenth Paralympics and took place between 29 August 2012 and 9 September 2012 at the Summer Olympics venues in London. London 2012 Olympic Games official website, London 2012 Olympic Games Information Portal, Commentary on 2012 Olympic Park

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In rugby union, a Grand Slam (Irish: Caithréim Mhór. Welsh: Y Gamp Lawn. French: Grand Chelem) occurs when one team in the Six Nations Championship (or its Five Nations predecessor) manages to beat all the others during one year's competition. This has been achieved 39 times in total, for the first time by Wales in 1908, and most recently by Wales in 2019. The team to have won the most Grand Slams is England with 13. It can also apply to The Rugby Championship and Rugby Europe Championship as well. In another context, a Grand Slam tour refers to a touring side – South Africa, Australia or New Zealand – which plays fixtures against all four home nations (England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales) during their tour. If the tourists then win all of those matches, they are said to have achieved a Grand Slam. This has been done nine times, first by South Africa in 1912–13, and most recently by New Zealand in 2010. In the annual Six Nations Championship (among England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France and Italy), and its predecessor the Five Nations Championship (before Italy joined in 2000), a Grand Slam occurs when one team beats all of the others during one year's competition. The Grand Slam winners are awarded the Six Nations trophy (as tournament winners), but there is no special grand slam trophy - the Grand Slam is an informal honour recognizing a Championship- winning team which has won all their games. Although the term grand slam had long been in use in the game of contract bridge, the first time that the expression is known to have been applied to rugby union was in 1957, in a preview of a match between England and Scotland: The Grand Slam honour is applied retroactively to teams which won all of their matches in Five Nations tournaments before the term came into use. It is also applied to the 1908 and 1909 seasons, when matches with France took place during, but outside of, the then Home Nations Championships. However the Grand Slam honour is not applied to seasons in which only the four home nations were involved (1883–1907 and 1932–1939) – in that case a team that won all its matches is said to have achieved the Triple Crown. This honour is still competed for between the four home nations within the Six Nations Championship, and any Grand Slam-winning home nation will necessarily also win the Triple Crown. A Grand Slam was therefore available in the years 1908–1931 and 1947–1999 (Five Nations) and 2000–2016 (Six Nations), a total of 94 seasons to date. Grand Slams were in fact achieved on 39 of these occasions - 13 by England, 12 by Wales, 9 by France, 3 by Scotland and 3 by Ireland. (Italy, involved in the tournament since 2000, have yet to win a Grand Slam.) Consecutive Grand Slams have been won by Wales in 1908–1909, by England in 1913–1914, 1923–1924 and 1991–1992, and by France in 1997–1998. No team has yet achieved three consecutive Grand Slams. Prior to 2000, each team played four matches, two at home and two away from home. Following the inclusion of Italy in 2000, each team plays five matches, two at home and three away in one year, and the opposite in the following season. When Wales won the Grand Slam in 2005, it was the first time that the feat had been achieved by a team that had played more matches away than at home. This was repeated by Ireland in 2009, by England in 2016, and by Wales in 2019. Since 2017, the Six Nations Championship has used bonus points. A team that wins the Grand Slam will get three bonus points. This eliminates the possibility of a Grand Slam winner losing the championship on bonus points. In 1908 and 1909 matches with France were played, although they were not part of the Championship. A Grand Slam tour is one in which a touring national team from , , or plays Test matches against all four home nations (, , and ). If the tourists win all four of these games, they are said to have achieved a Grand Slam. Some Grand Slam tours also include a Test match against ; South Africa achieved a "Five Nations Grand Slam" in 1912–13 and 1951–52. Grand Slams by touring teams have been achieved nine times: four times each by South Africa and New Zealand, and once by Australia. Australia is the only country to have lost against all four home nations during a Grand Slam tour, on their 1957–58 tour. Australia also lost to France on that tour. After 1984, Southern Hemisphere sides started to tour the British Isles more frequently, but to play fewer Tests on each tour, and thus there were no Grand Slam tours between 1984 and 1998. However, since 1998 Grand Slam tours have again become quite common, as the number of Tests on each tour has increased. The All Blacks' tours of 2005 and 2008 were originally planned to include only three Test matches; the late inclusion of matches against Wales and England respectively turned these into Grand Slam tours. Six Nations Championship, Triple Crown, Six Nations Wooden Spoon, Calcutta Cup The Official Six Nations Site, 2008 Six Nations Information and Tournament Guide, BBC News article on past Grand Slam tours, Pathe News coverage of 1924 England Grand Slam, Six Nations Information and Ticket Guide The Ireland national rugby union team is the representative national team in the sport of rugby union for the island of Ireland. The team competes annually in the Six Nations Championship and every four years in the Rugby World Cup. Ireland is also one of the four unions that make up the British and Irish Lions – players eligible to play for Ireland are also eligible for the Lions. The Ireland national team dates to 1875, when it played its first international match against England. Ireland reached number 1 in the World Rugby Rankings for the first time in 2019. Eleven former Ireland players have earned their induction into the World Rugby Hall of Fame. Dublin University was the first organised rugby football club in Ireland, having been founded in 1854. The club was organised by students who had learnt the game while at public schools in Great Britain. During the third quarter of the nineteenth century, and following the adoption of a set of official rules in 1868, rugby football began to spread quickly throughout Ireland, resulting in the formation of several other clubs that are still in existence, including NIFC (1868); Wanderers (1869); Queen's University (1869); Lansdowne (1873); Dungannon (1873); Co. Carlow (1873); UCC (1874); and Ballinasloe (1875) which amalgamated with Athlone to form Buccaneers. In 1874, the Irish Football Union (reconstituted as the Irish Rugby Football Union after unification with the North of Ireland Union) was formed. Ireland lost their first test match against England 0–7 at the Oval on 15 February 1875. Both teams fielded 20 players in this match, as was customary in the early years of rugby union; it was not until 1877 that the number of players was reduced from 20 to 15. Ireland's first home game was also against England in the same year held at Leinster Cricket Club's Observatory Lane ground in Rathmines as Lansdowne Road was deemed unsuitable. The first match at Lansdowne Road was held on 11 March 1878, with England beating Ireland by two goals and a try to nil. It was not until 1881 that Ireland first won a test, beating Scotland at Ormeau in Belfast. Ireland turned up two men short for their game in Cardiff in 1884 and had to borrow two Welsh players. The first victory Ireland had at Lansdowne Road took place on 5 February 1887. It was also their first win over England, by two goals to nil. On the third of March 1888, Ireland recorded their first win over Wales with a goal, a try and a drop goal to nil. In 1894, Ireland followed the Welsh model of using seven backs instead of six for the first time. After victory over England at Blackheath, Ireland won back-to-back matches for the first time when recording their first win over Scotland on 24 February 1894. Ireland went on to beat Wales in Belfast and win the Triple Crown for the first time. In the 1890s, Rugby was primarily a game for the Protestant middle class; the only Catholic in Edmund Forrest's 1894 team was Tom Crean. Of the eighteen players used in the three games, thirteen were from three Dublin clubs – Wanderers, Dublin University and Bective Rangers – and the remaining five were from Ulster. They went on to win the Home international championship twice more before the century was out (1896 and 1899), so that by 1901 all four of the Home Unions had tasted success at a game that was growing in popularity with players and spectators. Such was the level of interest in the visit of the first All Blacks team to Dublin in November 1905 that the IRFU made the match the first all-ticket rugby international in history. Ireland played only seven forwards, copying the then New Zealand method of playing a "rover". The game ended New Zealand 15 Ireland 0. On 20 March 1909, Ireland played France for the first time, beating them 19–8. This was Ireland's biggest victory in international rugby at that time, their highest points tally and a record five tries. 30 November 1912 was the first time the Springboks met Ireland at Lansdowne Road, the 1906 tour game having been played at Ravenhill. Ireland with seven new caps were overwhelmed by a record margin of 38–0, still a record loss to South Africa who scored 10 tries. In 1926, Ireland went into their final Five Nations match unbeaten and with the Grand Slam at stake lost to Wales in Swansea. Ireland again came close to a grand slam in 1927 when their sole loss was an 8–6 defeat by England. In 1948, Ireland clinched their first Grand Slam in the Five Nations. Ireland were champions and Triple Crown winners again in 1949. In 1951, Ireland were once more crowned Five Nations champions. 1952 saw only Ireland's second overseas tour, the first for over half a century – as they headed to Argentina for a nine-match trip which included two test matches, their Test record being won one, drawn one. On 27 February 1954, Ireland played Scotland at Ravenhill in Belfast. The 11 Republic-based players protested "God Save the Queen", and an abbreviated anthem known as "the Salute" was instead played. Ireland beat Scotland 6–0, and did not play in Northern Ireland again until 2007. In 1958, Ireland beat Australia 9–6 in Dublin, the first time a major touring team had been defeated. Ireland managed just three victories in the Five Nations Championship during the early 1960s: against England in 1961, Wales in 1963 and England again in 1964. 1965 saw an improvement as Ireland beat England and Scotland. On 10 April 1965 at Lansdowne Road Ireland recorded their first ever win over South Africa. Ireland beat Australia again in Dublin in 1967. Ireland became the first of the home nations to win in the Southern Hemisphere when they beat Australia in Sydney in May 1967. On 26 October 1968, Ireland made it four successive wins over the Wallabies. In 1969, Ireland claimed a 17–9 victory over France in the Five Nations, a first victory over Les Bleus in 11 years. In the autumn of 1969, the Irish Rugby Football Union appointed a coach for the national team for the first time, the role went to Ronnie Dawson. The 1972 Five Nations Championship was not completed when Scotland and Wales refused to play in Ireland following threatening letters to players, purportedly from the IRA. The championship remained unresolved with Wales and Ireland unbeaten. In 1973, despite similar threats, England fulfilled their fixture and were given a five-minute standing ovation. Ireland won 18–9. Ireland came close to a first win over the All Blacks on 20 January 1973, but tied 10–10. In 1974, Ireland won their first Five Nations Championship since 1951. Willie John McBride was coach until 1984. In 1982, Ireland, led by fly- half Ollie Campbell, won the Five Nations and their first Triple Crown in 33 years. Three years later in 1985, Ireland won the Five Nations and the Triple Crown again. It would be Ireland's last silverware until 2004. Ireland scored 10 tries against Romania in a 60–0 win on 1 November 1986, the biggest win by a Tier One country in international rugby at the time, equalling the French record set in 1967. At the inaugural 1987 Rugby World Cup, victories over Tonga and Canada saw Ireland through to the quarter-finals, where they were beaten 33–15 by joint hosts Australia. Ireland failed to win the Five Nations in the whole of the 1990s, never finishing outside the bottom two. In 1991, they lost their test series against Namibia. At the second Rugby World Cup in 1991, after wins over Japan and Zimbabwe, Ireland lost 15–24 at Murrayfield. Ireland played the Wallabies at Lansdowne Road in the quarter-finals and appeared to be on the verge of a shock victory over Australia, when Michael Lynagh scored the winning try to clinch a 19–18 win for Australia. At the 1994 Five Nations Championship, Ireland beat England at Twickenham. At the 1995 World Cup, Ireland came through their group to make their third consecutive quarter-final appearance. Unfortunately, France proved too strong, with Ireland going down 12–36 in the quarter-finals. The start of the professional era was disappointing for Ireland, who finished bottom of the Five Nations Championship three years in succession (1996, 1997 and 1998) and lost to Italy three times, at home (29–37) and abroad (12–22 and 22–37). Warren Gatland took over as coach in 1998, but was unable to produce immediate success. The 1999 World Cup was staged primarily in Wales, though Ireland played all their pool games in Dublin. In a play-off, Ireland were beaten 28–24 by Argentina, marking the first time that Ireland failed to reach the quarter-finals. From this nadir, however, Irish rugby improved. The Irish Rugby Football Union converted the four representative provincial sides into de facto club sides, and the formation in 2001 of the Celtic League (now called the Pro14) provided Irish provincial sides with regular competitive rugby. The advent of the new Six Nations format coincided with this Irish resurgence. In 2001, Ireland finished second. Eddie O'Sullivan took over as coach in November 2001 after Warren Gatland was sacked. The 2003 Six Nations Championship saw Ireland lose to England in the Grand Slam decider at Lansdowne Road, ending a home unbeaten run that stretched to 10 tests since September 2002. In the 2004 Six Nations, Ireland finished second overall and won the Triple Crown. In the 2005 Six Nations, Ireland finished in third place. In the 2006 Six Nations, Ireland won the Triple Crown for the second time in three years. In the last autumn international at Lansdowne Road, Ireland beat Australia 21–6. With the rebuilding of Lansdowne Road, a new venue was required. Croke Park, home of the Gaelic Athletic Association, hosted some games from 2007 to 2010. Ireland's 2008 Six Nations campaign included three losses. Eddie O'Sullivan resigned as Ireland coach and Declan Kidney was appointed. Ireland won the 2009 Six Nations Championship and Grand Slam, their first Six Nations win since 1985 and their first Grand Slam since 1948. After a draw against Australia and victories against Fiji and South Africa, Ireland ended 2009 unbeaten. In Ireland's final game of the 2010 Six Nations, and the last-ever game at Croke Park, Ireland lost to Scotland 20–23 and failed to win the Triple Crown. Ireland began their 2010 Autumn Tests with a 21–23 loss to South Africa, the first international at the new Aviva Stadium. In the 2011 Six Nations Championship, Ireland lost 22–25 to France in the first Six Nations match to be played at the Aviva Stadium. During a 13–19 loss against Wales, Ireland's Ronan O'Gara became the first Irishman, and only the fifth player, to score 1,000 points. In Ireland's 24–8 win against England, Brian O'Driscoll scored his 25th try to set a new Six Nations record for tries scored. In their 2012 Six Nations Championship campaign Ireland finished third overall. Ireland's 2012 summer tour of New Zealand included a 22–19 loss, followed by a 60–0 thrashing, Ireland's heaviest ever defeat. The 2013 Six Nations Championship saw Ireland finish with one win, three losses, and one draw, including their first home loss to England in 10 years; and their first ever loss to Italy in the Six Nations. The IRFU declined to extend Declan Kidney's contract, and Joe Schmidt was announced as the new Ireland coach. In their 2013 end-of-year rugby union tests, Ireland lost 22–24 to New Zealand, having led throughout the match. Ireland opened their 2014 Six Nations Championship with wins over Scotland and Wales. Ireland lost 10–13 to England. Ireland won their next match against Italy 46–7. Ireland beat France 22–20 in the final round to claim the Six Nations title. In November they defeated South Africa 29–15 and Australia 26–23 at Dublin. Ireland retained the 2015 Six Nations Championship, and became Six Nations Champions for the second year running on points difference. Following wins against Wales and Scotland during warm-up matches for the 2015 Rugby World Cup, Ireland briefly reached its highest-ever position of second in the World Rugby rankings. Ireland won its pool at the 2015 Rugby World Cup with a 24–9 victory over France, but lost in the quarter-finals to Argentina 20–43. Entering the 2016 Six Nations competition with a squad depleted by injury, Ireland won only two matches in the tournament (58–15 against Italy in Round 4, and 35–25 against Scotland in Round 5), and only achieved a 16–16 draw against Wales. The team went on to win the first of their three-match tour of South Africa 26–20, before losing the second and third tests 26–32 and 13–19. In autumn of the same year, Ireland defeated the New Zealand All Blacks for the first time in 111 years on 5 November 2016 in Chicago by 40–29. This was New Zealand's only loss all year, and ended their record-breaking win streak of 18 test matches. Despite New Zealand winning the return fixture in Dublin the following week 21–9, Ireland moved up to fourth in the world rankings. Ireland placed second in the 2017 Six Nations, behind defending champions England, who the Irish defeated in the final of round of the competition by 13–9, ending England's record- equalling run of 18 victories since 2015. However, they lost to Scotland 22–27 in Round 1 and Wales 9–22 in Round 4 during the same tournament. With many first-choice players selected to tour with the British and Irish Lions, Ireland took a development squad into their summer games that year, which included a 55–19 win over the USA, and a 2–2 test series victory against Japan. In November 2017, Ireland moved to third in the world rankings following their biggest-ever win over South Africa, 38–3, and victories over Fiji and Argentina. After winning the 2018 Six Nations Championship with a Grand Slam, Ireland returned to second in the world rankings. A 2–1 series win over Australia in summer that year was followed by a second victory in two years against the world number one All Blacks, by 16–9 which cemented Ireland's number two ranking. The 2019 Six Nations witnessed a shocking collapse in form for the defending champions. The year started with a one- sided defeat to England, by 20–32. The final scoreline flattered the Irish performance, which was comprehensively poor relative to the standard of previous years. Some redemption followed with patchy wins against Scotland, Italy and France, but the competition concluded with a completely abject display against Grand Slam winners Wales which ended in a 7–25 loss. The Welsh had led the Irish by 25–0 going into overtime, but a last-gasp try to replacement half-back Jordan Larmour salvaged some points from an otherwise disastrous showing. Ireland's traditional strip consists of a green jersey, white shorts, and green socks. Their emblem consists of a shamrock and rugby ball; a shamrock has been incorporated into the emblem since the side first played in 1874. Between 1996 and the summer of 2002, Ireland's main shirt sponsor was Irish Permanent who became Permanent TSB after a merger, who continued to sponsor the shirt until the autumn of 2006. O2 were Ireland's main shirt sponsor from then until 2014. Three Ireland were the team sponsors up until the summer of 2016 where Vodafone then became the main sponsor. Before 1992, Umbro supplied kit to Ireland. Nike were the suppliers between 1992 and the summer of 2000. Canterbury of New Zealand took over after the summer of 2000 and was the supplier until June 2009. In November 2009, Puma took on the supply of Ireland's playing and training kit. In January 2014, the IRFU signed a deal with Canterbury for the supply of Ireland's playing and training kit from November 2014 until 2020. * Between 1996 and summer 2000, it was known as Irish Permanent before reverting to Permanent TSB before the sponsorship ended in summer 2006. The Irish rugby union team is one of many teams that draws its players from across the island of Ireland. In the past this has led to issues surrounding certain flag and anthem usage. When Irish internationals were played alternately in Belfast and Dublin, the British national anthem "God Save the Queen" was played before matches in Belfast and the national anthem of Ireland "Amhrán na bhFiann" was played for matches in Dublin. "God Save the Queen" is no longer played. No anthem was played at away games. In the 1987 Rugby World Cup, "The Rose of Tralee" was used as the away anthem. Since April 1995, a specifically composed anthem named "Ireland's Call" has been used exclusively by the Irish team at away games. This has prompted some players and supporter complaints that "Amhrán na bhFiann" should also be played. At games played in Dublin, "Ireland's Call" is always used alongside "Amhrán na bhFiann". This use of "Amhrán na bhFiann" has caused similar complaints from players and supporters within a segment of the unionist community in Northern Ireland. With Ireland's test match against Italy in the run up to the 2007 Rugby World Cup scheduled to be held in Belfast (first time since 1953 for the rugby union team), there were calls for "God Save the Queen" to be used alongside "Ireland's Call" but this was turned down by the IRFU with the explanation given that both "Ireland's Call" and "Amhrán na bhFiann" are only played together in Dublin, and that outside the Irish Republic the anthem of "Ireland's Call" is exclusively used. At the 2011 Rugby World Cup, 2015 Rugby World Cup and 2019 Rugby World Cup the Ireland team entered the field of play at the beginning of their matches with the Irish tricolour and the Flag of Ulster, to which the six Irish counties in Northern Ireland belong. The traditional home of Irish rugby is Lansdowne Road in Dublin, where most of Ireland's home matches were held. The stadium was rebuilt between 2007 and 2010. Naming rights were sold to an insurance company, and the venue is now referred to as the Aviva Stadium. The original stadium, owned by the Irish Rugby Football Union, was built in 1872, and so the venue continues to hold the distinction as the oldest still in use for international rugby. In 1878 the ground hosted its first rugby Test, with Ireland playing host to the English (the first representative rugby match had taken place prior to the Test, a game between Ulster and Leinster). Lansdowne Road had a capacity of just over 49,000 before it was demolished in summer 2007. The redeveloped stadium seats 51,700 and was opened in May 2010. The final Irish Test prior to work commencing on the remodelled stadium was against the Pacific Islanders in late 2006. With Lansdowne Road unavailable for use, Ireland was without a suitable home ground for the subsequent Six Nations. The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) owned Croke Park (an 82,500 capacity stadium), was made available for Ireland's two home games against France and England in 2007. It was the first time ever that rugby had been played at the venue. Croke Park remained in use for Ireland's Six Nations matches and other major Tests until the completion of the redevelopment at Lansdowne Road. The first Ireland match at the rebuilt stadium was against reigning World Cup champions South Africa on 6 November 2010. South Africa won the match 23–22. Because of the historic significance of this match, South Africa announced that they would wear their change strip to allow Ireland to wear their home green; normally, the home team change their colours in the event of a clash. Although Ireland has never totally hosted the Rugby World Cup, select games from both the 1991 and 1999 World Cups were played throughout venues in Ireland. Pool B in 1991 was mainly played in Ireland and Scotland, with two games at Lansdowne Road (involving Ireland) and one (Zimbabwe v Japan) played at Ravenhill, Belfast. A quarter- final and a semi-final were also hosted by Dublin. A similar system was used in 1999, though in addition to Lansdowne and Ravenhill, Thomond Park was also a venue. Lansdowne Road was also the host of a quarter-final in 1999. Ireland were set to host matches at Lansdowne Road for the 2007 World Cup, but due to scheduling conflicts with the reconstruction of the stadium, they decided they were not in a position to host any. Below is table of the representative rugby matches played by an Ireland national XV at test level up until 28 October 2019. The Six Nations Championship, held every year in February and March, is Ireland's only annual tournament. It is contested against England, France, Italy, Scotland and Wales. Ireland was a member of the inaugural Home Nations in 1883, with France and Italy joining later to form the Five and Six Nations respectively. Ireland won their first championship in 1894, also winning the Triple Crown. Ireland's first Grand Slam occurred in the 1948 season and their second in the 2009 season. In total Ireland have been outright champions on fourteen occasions following their title in the 2018 Six Nations Championship and have nine shared wins. Ireland won their third ever Grand Slam in the 2018 Six Nations Championship with a 24–15 win over England at Twickenham on March 17 (St Patrick's Day). Ireland have competed at every Rugby World Cup tournament. The furthest they have progressed is the quarter-finals, which they have made seven times out of nine. They have finished top of their pool twice, in 2011, after beating pool favourite Australia, and in 2015 leaving France in 2nd place. In the first tournament, held in Australia and New Zealand in 1987, Ireland finished second in their pool after a loss to Wales, before Ireland were knocked out by Australia in the quarter-final in Sydney. In 1991 Ireland again lost one match in pool play, this time to Scotland. Ireland again met Australia in the quarter-finals, losing by one point. In 1995 Ireland were runner-up in their pool to the All Blacks. Ireland were defeated by France in their quarter-final in Durban. In 1999 Ireland finished second in their pool behind Australia, and went into the quarter-final play-offs (a system exclusive to the 1999 tournament). There they lost to Argentina, and thus, not being a quarter- finalists, Ireland were not given automatic entry into the 2003 tournament. In qualifying matches, Ireland defeated Russia and Georgia to advance to the 2003 tournament. Ireland finished second to Australia in their pool, and were knocked out by France in the quarter-finals. In the 2007 World Cup Ireland played in the so-called "Group of death" with hosts France, Argentina, Namibia and Georgia. Ireland defeated Namibia in their opening game 32–17. Their progress was then put into doubt when they beat Georgia 14–10, not obtaining a bonus point. Ireland lost to France 3–25. Entering their last group match against Argentina, needing four tries to secure a bonus point without allowing Argentina anything, Ireland were defeated 15–30 and crashed out at the pool stage for the first time. Ireland were in Pool C for the 2011 Rugby World Cup with Australia, Russia, USA and Italy. Their first pool game, against the United States, ended in a 22–10 victory for Ireland. Ireland's second pool game was against Australia. Despite being underdogs, Ireland recorded their first victory over Australia at a World Cup with a 15–6 win. Ireland comfortably beat Russia 62–12 in their third pool game. Ireland secured first place in the pool with a 36–6 win over Italy, the first time that Ireland were group winners in their World Cup history. Ireland lost their quarter-final to Wales 10–22. Ireland topped Pool D of the 2015 Rugby World Cup with four victories, two with bonus points. They kicked off their campaign with a 50–7 win over Canada. Another bonus point victory followed in front of a world record Rugby World Cup crowd of 89,267 at the home of England football, Wembley Stadium, when Ireland saw off Romania 44–10. Ireland then faced Italy, coming out on top 16–9, the only try coming from Keith Earls who surpassed Brian O'Driscoll as Ireland's leading Rugby World Cup try scorer with eight. The final pool game saw Ireland face France. The winner would set up a quarter-final against Argentina and avoid the All Blacks. Ireland overcame the loss to injury of key players Jonathan Sexton, Peter O'Mahony and Paul O'Connell to run out 24–9 winners. The victory set up another game for Ireland in the Millennium Stadium against Pool C runners up Argentina on 18 October 2015. Ireland battled and came back from a 17-point deficit to come within three points of their opponents, but a series of mistakes spelt the end for Ireland's RWC of 2015. Ireland qualified automatically for the Rugby World Cup 2019 in Japan. They played in pool A along with the hosts, Japan, Scotland, Russia and Samoa. They finished pool play with three wins and one loss to finish second in the pool behind Japan. They played New Zealand in the quarter-finals where they lost 14–46. On 15 January 2020, Ireland named their 35-man squad for the 2020 Six Nations Championship. Caps updated: 15 January 2020 Twelve former Ireland players have been inducted into the World Rugby Hall of Fame. The Hall was created in 2006 as the IRB Hall of Fame when the sport's governing body of World Rugby was known as the International Rugby Board. The separate International Rugby Hall of Fame, which had inducted five Ireland players, was merged into the IRB Hall in 2014, shortly before the IRB adopted its current name of World Rugby. All International Hall members who had not been separately inducted to the IRB Hall automatically became members of the renamed World Rugby Hall. Jack Kyle was inducted in 2008, followed by Willie John McBride, Syd Millar and Tony O'Reilly in 2009; Mike Gibson in 2011; Ronnie Dawson in 2013; Keith Wood in 2014; Tom Kiernan, Fergus Slattery Basil Maclear in 2015; Brian O'Driscoll in 2016; and Ronan O'Gara in 2018. Ronnie Dawson, Mike Gibson, Willie John McBride, Tony O'Reilly, Jack Kyle, Syd Millar, Keith Wood, Tom Kiernan, Fergus Slattery, Basil Maclear, Brian O'Driscoll, Ronan O'Gara Five players have represented Ireland in 100 tests or more: Brian O'Driscoll with 133 caps, Ronan O'Gara with 128, Rory Best with 120, Paul O'Connell with 108 and John Hayes with 105. Including Lions caps, O'Driscoll has 141 caps (2nd highest in rugby), O'Gara has 130, Best has 124, O'Connell has 115 and Hayes 107. O'Gara also holds the Ireland record for test points with 1,083, placing him fourth all-time in international rugby. He also holds the record for highest points scorer in the Six Nations with 557. O'Driscoll has scored 46 tries for Ireland – an Irish record. The following Ireland players have represented the British and Irish Lions. Tom Crean: 1896, Robert Johnston: 1896, Ian Davidson: 1903, Alexander Roulston Foster: 1910, Robert Alexander: 1938, Samuel Walker: 1938, Paddy Mayne: 1938, George J. Morgan: 1938, Jack Kyle: 1950, Jim McCarthy: 1950, Tom Clifford: 1950, Michael Lane: 1950, Jimmy Nelson: 1950, Karl Mullen: 1950, Robin Roe: 1955, Cecil Pedlow: 1955, Robin Thompson: 1955, Tony O'Reilly: 1955, 1959, Niall Brophy: 1959, 1962, Ronnie Dawson: 1959, 1968, Dave Hewitt: 1959, 1962, Bill Mulcahy: 1959, 1962, Andy Mulligan: 1959, Noel Murphy: 1959, 1966, Raymond Hunter: 1962, Willie John McBride: 1962, '66, '68, '71, '74, Tom Kiernan: 1962, 1968, Syd Millar: 1962, 1968, Ray McLoughlin: 1966, Barry Bresnihan: 1966, 1968, Mike Gibson: 1966, 1968, 1971, 1974, 1977, Ken Kennedy: 1966, 1974, Jerry Walsh: 1966, Roger Young: 1966, 1968, Mick Doyle: 1968, Mike Hipwell: 1971, Sean Lynch: 1971, Fergus Slattery: 1971, 1974, Tom Grace:1974, Ken Goodall:1968, John Moloney: 1974, Moss Keane: 1974, 1977, Willie Duggan: 1977, Philip Orr: 1977, 1980, Rodney O'Donnell: 1980, Colin Patterson: 1980, John Robbie: 1980, Colm Tucker: 1980, Tony Ward: 1980, Ollie Campbell: 1980, 1983, John O'Driscoll: 1980, 1983, Ciaran Fitzgerald: 1983, David Irwin: 1983, Mike Kiernan: 1983, Hugo MacNeill: 1983, Gerry McLoughlin: 1983, Trevor Ringland: 1983, Donal Lenihan: 1983, 1989, Paul Dean: 1989, Brendan Mullin: 1989, Steve Smith: 1989, Phillip Matthews: 1989, Vince Cunningham: 1993, Mick Galwey: 1993, Richard Wallace: 1993, Nick Popplewell: 1993, Eric Miller: 1997, Paul Wallace: 1997, Jeremy Davidson: 1997, 2001, Keith Wood: 1997, 2001, Rob Henderson: 2001, Tyrone Howe: 2001, David Wallace: 2001, 2009, Malcolm O'Kelly: 2001, 2005, Brian O'Driscoll: 2001, 2005, 2009, 2013, Ronan O'Gara: 2001, 2005, 2009, Shane Byrne: 2005, Gordon D'Arcy: 2005, 2009, Simon Easterby: 2005, John Hayes: 2005, 2009, Denis Hickie: 2005, Shane Horgan: 2005, Geordan Murphy: 2005, Donncha O'Callaghan: 2005, 2009, Paul O'Connell: 2005, 2009, 2013, Stephen Ferris: 2009, Jamie Heaslip: 2009, 2013, Keith Earls: 2009, Tommy Bowe: 2009, 2013, Luke Fitzgerald: 2009, Rob Kearney: 2009, 2013, Cian Healy: 2013, Tom Court: 2013, Simon Zebo: 2013, Conor Murray: 2013, 2017, Seán O'Brien: 2013, 2017, Jonathan Sexton: 2013, 2017, Rory Best: 2013, 2017, Robbie Henshaw: 2017, Peter O'Mahony: 2017, CJ Stander: 2017, Iain Henderson: 2017, Jack McGrath: 2017, Tadhg Furlong: 2017, Jared Payne: 2017 The IRFU first appointed a coach in 1968. The current head coach is Andy Farrell who has been in the position since 2019. Ireland's end-of-year tests were broadcast by the BBC until 2013 when Sky Sports secured the rights. From November 2018, Channel 4 has the TV rights in the UK and RTÉ has the rights in Ireland. TV3 Ireland and BBC/ITV retain the Six Nations rights, while ITV and TV3 with Eir Sports have the rights to the Rugby World Cup. Ireland Wolfhounds, Emerging Ireland, Ireland national under-20 rugby union team, Ireland national under-18 rugby union team, Ireland national rugby sevens team, Millennium Trophy Official website, Irish rugby union news from Planet Rugby, Irish Rugby.co.uk Irish rugby union news, History of Rugby in other countries The Wales national rugby union team () represents Wales in international rugby union. Its governing body, the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU), was established in 1881, the same year that Wales played their first international against England. The team plays its home matches at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff (currently known for sponsorship reasons as the Principality Stadium), which replaced Cardiff Arms Park as the national stadium of Wales in 1999. Wales has competed annually in the Six Nations Championship (previously the Home Nations Championship and Five Nations Championship) since it was established in 1883. They have won the tournament (and its predecessors) outright 27 times, most recently in 2019, which was also a Grand Slam. Wales has also participated in every Rugby World Cup since the competition was established in 1987; they finished third in the inaugural tournament, a record they have not since matched. Wales was the host nation for the 1999 Rugby World Cup, although matches were also played in England, Scotland, Ireland and France. The Wales team experienced their first 'golden age' between 1900 and 1911; they first played New Zealand in 1905, winning 3–0 in a famous match at Cardiff Arms Park, and between March 1907 and January 1910, they won 11 consecutive matches, a record that stood for over a century. Welsh rugby struggled between the two World Wars, but experienced a second 'golden age' between 1969 and 1980, when they won eight Five Nations Championships. Since 2005, Wales have won five Six Nations titles, including four Grand Slams, and finished fourth at both the 2011 Rugby World Cup and 2019 Rugby World Cup; they also won 14 consecutive matches between March 2018 and March 2019, and reached number 1 in the World Rugby Rankings for the first time in August 2019. Eight former Welsh players have been inducted into the World Rugby Hall of Fame; 10 were inducted into the International Rugby Hall of Fame prior to its 2014 merger into the World Rugby Hall. Rugby union took root in Wales in 1850, when Reverend Rowland Williams became Vice-Principal at St David's College, Lampeter, and introduced the sport there. Wales played their first international match on 19 February 1881; organised by Newport's Richard Mullock and captained by James Bevan, they played against England, losing by seven goals, one drop goal and six tries to nil (82–0 in modern scoring values). On 12 March 1881, the Welsh Rugby Union was formed at The Castle Hotel, Neath. Two years later, the Home Nations Championship – now the Six Nations Championship – was first played, but Wales did not register a win. However, rugby in Wales developed and, by the 1890s, the Welsh had introduced the "four three-quarters" formation – with seven backs and eight forwards instead of six backs and nine forwards – which revolutionised the sport and was eventually adopted almost universally at international and club level. With the "four three-quarters" formation, Wales won the Home Nations Championship for the first time in 1893, winning the Triple Crown in the process. Wales next won the Championship in 1900, heralding the first "golden age" of Welsh rugby, which was to last until 1911. They won two more Triple Crowns in 1902 and 1905, and were runners-up in 1901, 1903 and 1904. When Wales faced New Zealand at Cardiff Arms Park in late 1905, they had not lost at home since 1899. This New Zealand team – referred to as The Original All Blacks – was the first of the southern hemisphere national teams to visit the British Isles, and were undefeated on their tour up to that point, having already beaten England, Ireland and Scotland. Before the match, New Zealand team performed a haka (a Māori posture dance); the 47,000-strong crowd responded with the Welsh national anthem – Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau ("Land of My Fathers") – the first time a national anthem had been sung before a sporting fixture. Wales wing Teddy Morgan scored a try to give Wales a 3–0 lead, before New Zealand's Bob Deans claimed to have scored a try, only to be dragged behind the goal-line before the referee arrived. The referee awarded a scrum to Wales and the score remained unchanged; Wales won 3–0. The loss was New Zealand's only defeat on their 35-match tour. In 1906, Wales again won the Home Nations Championship, and later that year played South Africa for the first time. Wales were favourites to win the match, but South Africa dominated in the forwards and eventually won 11–0. Two years later, on 12 December 1908, Wales played the touring Australians, who they defeated 9–6. In 1909, Wales won the Home Nations Championship and then, in 1910 – with the inclusion of France – the first Five Nations. In 1911, Wales took the first Five Nations Grand Slam, winning all their matches in the tournament. It would be nearly 40 years before they achieved a Grand Slam again. England's defeat of Wales at Cardiff in 1913 was Wales' first home loss to one of the Home Nations since 1899, and their first home loss to England since 1895. The Great War came in 1914 and rugby was suspended for the duration. The post-First World War years marked a decline in Welsh rugby. An industrial recession struck the principality, and hurt South Wales in particular. Welsh international results in the 1920s mirrored the performance of the economy: of their 42 matches, they won only 17, with three drawn. Half a million people emigrated from Wales to find work elsewhere during the depression; this included many Welsh rugby union internationals, who moved to the professional code of rugby league. Between 1923 and 1928, Wales managed only seven victories – five of them against France. However, even France managed to defeat Wales that decade, achieving their first victory in 1928. Welsh selection policy reflected the upheavals of the mid-1920s. In 1924, 35 different players were selected for Wales' four matches, with a different captain for each, and only Edward Watkins in the backs and Charlie Pugh in the forwards playing in all four matches. A resurgence of both economy and rugby union followed in the 1930s and, in 1931, Wales won their first championship for nine years. That year, for the first time since the First World War, Wales retained the same side for two consecutive matches when they faced England and Scotland. Then, in 1933, captained by Watcyn Thomas, Wales defeated England at Twickenham. In 1935, Wales beat the touring New Zealand side 13–12, with Haydn Tanner making his first appearance. Although the Five Nations Championship was suspended during the Second World War, Wales did play a Red Cross charity match against England at Cardiff in 1940, losing 18–9. Following the Second World War, Wales played a New Zealand Army team (the Kiwis) in 1946, losing 11–3. The Five Nations (suspended during the war) resumed in 1947, when Wales shared the title with England. Although Wales suffered their first home defeat to France in 1948, they won their first Five Nations Grand Slam since 1911 in 1950. The next year, they lost 6–3 to the touring South Africans, despite dominating in the line-outs. They achieved another Grand Slam in 1952, followed by a 13–8 win over New Zealand in 1953. In 1954, St Helen's in Swansea (a Welsh international venue since 1882) hosted its last international and Cardiff Arms Park officially became the home of the Welsh team. In 1956, Wales again won the Five Nations, but they did not regain the title until 1964 and did not win it outright until 1965. Wales conducted their first overseas tour in 1964, playing several games and one test in South Africa. They lost the test against South Africa in Durban 24–3, their biggest defeat in 40 years. At the WRU annual general meeting that year, the outgoing WRU President D. Ewart Davies declared that "it was evident from the experience of the South African Tour that a much more positive attitude to the game was required in Wales ... Players must be prepared to learn, and indeed re-learn, to the absolute point of mastery, the basic principles of Rugby Union football". This started the coaching revolution. The WRU Coaching Committee – set up in the late 1950s – was given the task of improving the quality of coaching and, in January 1967, Ray Williams was appointed Coaching Organiser. The first national coach, David Nash, was appointed in 1967 to coach Wales for the season, but resigned when the WRU refused to allow him to accompany Wales on their 1968 tour of Argentina. Eventually, the WRU reversed their decision, appointing Clive Rowlands to tour as coach. Of the six matches, Wales won three, drew two and lost one. Wales enjoyed a second "golden age" in the 1970s, with world-class players such as Gareth Edwards, J. P. R. Williams, Gerald Davies, Barry John, and Mervyn Davies in their side. Wales dominated Northern Hemisphere rugby between 1969 and 1979, and managed an incredible winning record, losing only seven times during that period. Wales toured New Zealand for the first time in 1969, but were defeated in both matches. In the second test, which they lost 33–12, New Zealand fullback Fergie McCormick scored 24 points; a record at the time. In 1970, Wales shared the Five Nations with France, and recorded a 6–6 draw against South Africa in Cardiff. The following year, Wales recorded their first Five Nations Grand Slam since 1952. Using only 16 players in four games, the 1971 side achieved their most notable win of the tournament in their victory over Scotland; after a last-minute try by Gerald Davies that reduced Scotland's lead to 18–17, flanker John Taylor kicked a conversion from the sideline described as "the greatest conversion since St Paul" to give Wales a 19–18 win. Wales contributed more players than any other team to the British Lions side that toured New Zealand that year. Those Lions became the only ones to win a series over New Zealand. In the 1972 Five Nations Championship, Wales and Scotland refused to travel to Ireland at the height of the Troubles after receiving threats, purportedly from the Irish Republican Army. The Championship remained unresolved with Wales and Ireland unbeaten. Although the Five Nations was a five-way tie in 1973, the Welsh did defeat Australia 24–0 in Cardiff. Wales next won the Five Nations outright in 1975, and in 1976, Wales won their second Grand Slam of the decade. Just like the first in 1971, they used only 16 players over their four matches. They repeated the feat in 1978 and, in the process, became the first team to win three consecutive Triple Crowns. Following their final Five Nations match of 1978, both Phil Bennett and Gareth Edwards retired from rugby. Wales hosted New Zealand at Cardiff Arms Park in November 1978, losing 13–12 after a late penalty goal by the replacement New Zealand fullback, Brian McKechnie. The penalty was controversial because New Zealand lock Andy Haden had dived out of a line-out in an attempt to earn a penalty. Haden later admitted that he and Frank Oliver had pre-agreed this tactic should they find themselves in difficulties. Referee Roger Quittenton was criticised by the press for failing to notice the dive, but he later stated that the penalty had been given against Welsh lock Geoff Wheel for jumping off the shoulder of Oliver. Quittenton later said, "Haden's perception is that his dive secured the penalty. That is a load of rubbish". Wales then went on to win the 1979 Five Nations with a Triple Crown. In 1980, the WRU's centenary year, Wales lost 23–3 to New Zealand in Cardiff, with the All Blacks scoring four tries to nil. Wales won two matches in the Five Nations Championships of both 1980 and 1981, and in 1983 were nearly upset by Japan, winning 29–24 at Cardiff. In 1984, Australia defeated Wales 28–9 at Cardiff Arms Park. Wales achieved only one win in 1987's Five Nations before contesting the inaugural Rugby World Cup. Wales defeated Ireland in their crucial pool fixture, before defeating England in the quarter-finals. They then faced hosts New Zealand, who won 49–6, but beat Australia in the third place play-off game to claim third. The next year Wales won the Triple Crown for the first time since 1979, but heavy defeats on tour to New Zealand later that year saw the end of a number of Welsh players' careers, as several converted to rugby league. Welsh rugby reached a nadir when Wales suffered their first Five Nations Championship whitewash; they had upset England in 1989 to avoid losing all their Championship matches that season, but in 1990, Wales were defeated in all four Five Nations' matches for the first time, before almost doing the same the following year. The 1991 World Cup saw further frustration, when Wales were upset by Samoa in their opening match. A second group-stage loss, by 38–3 to Australia, eliminated Wales from the tournament. After winning two Five Nations games in 1992, and one in 1993, Wales won the Championship in 1994 on points difference. But without defeating one of Australia, New Zealand or South Africa during the inter-World Cup period, and again losing all four of their matches at the 1995 Five Nations Championship, Wales was not considered a major contender for the 1995 Rugby World Cup. At the 1995 World Cup, after comprehensively beating Japan, Wales lost to New Zealand; this meant that they needed to defeat Ireland to qualify for the quarter-finals. Wales lost 24–23 and so failed to progress beyond the pool stage for the second time, and later that year Kevin Bowring replaced Alec Evans to become Wales' first full-time coach. Record defeats of 51–0 to France and 96–13 to South Africa, prompted the WRU to appoint New Zealander Graham Henry as coach in 1998. Henry had early success as coach, leading Wales to a 10-match winning streak; this included Wales' first victory over South Africa, a 29–19 win in the first match played at the Millennium Stadium. Henry was consequently nicknamed "the Great Redeemer" by the Welsh media and fans, a reference to the opening line of Cwm Rhondda, a popular song among Welsh rugby fans. Hosting the 1999 World Cup, Wales qualified for the quarter-finals for the first time since 1987, but lost 24–9 to eventual champions Australia. A lack of success in the Five and Six Nations (Italy joined the tournament in 2000), and especially a number of heavy losses to Ireland, led to Henry's resignation in February 2002; his assistant Steve Hansen took over. During Hansen's tenure, the WRU implemented a significant change in the structure of the game domestically. Regional teams were introduced as a tier above the traditional club-based structures in 2003, and the five (later four) regional sides became the top level of domestic professional rugby in the country. At the 2003 World Cup, Wales scored four tries in their 53–37 pool stage loss to New Zealand, before losing in the quarter-finals to the eventual tournament winners, England, despite outscoring them by three tries to one. Coached by Mike Ruddock, Wales won their first Grand Slam since 1978 and their first Six Nations Grand Slam in 2005. A late long-range penalty from Gavin Henson gave them victory over England in Cardiff for the first time in 12 years, and after victories over Italy, France and Scotland, they faced Ireland in front of a capacity crowd at the Millennium Stadium where Wales' 32–20 victory gave them their first Championship since 1994. Later that year, they suffered a record home loss, 41–3 to New Zealand. Ruddock resigned as head coach midway through the 2006 Six Nations, where Wales finished fifth, and Gareth Jenkins was eventually appointed as his replacement. Jenkins led Wales through the 2007 World Cup, where they failed to advance beyond the pool stage after losing their final game 38–34 to Fiji, thanks to a Graham Dewes try. Jenkins subsequently lost his job, and Warren Gatland, a New Zealander, was appointed as his successor. Wales faced England at Twickenham for Gatland's inaugural match as coach and their first match of the 2008 Six Nations. They had not defeated England there since 1988, and went on to win 26–19. They eventually won all their matches in the Championship, conceding only two tries in the process, to claim another Grand Slam. Later that year, Wales defeated Australia 21–18 in Cardiff, but then started a six-year, 23-game winless streak against the southern hemisphere nations of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. At the 2011 World Cup, Wales reached the semi-finals for the first time since 1987, but lost 9–8 to France after captain Sam Warburton was sent off. The two teams met again in March 2012, with Wales needing a win to claim their third Six Nations Grand Slam in eight years, which they did with a 16–9 victory. This was followed immediately by an eight-match losing streak that was eventually broken during the 2013 Six Nations, where Wales retained the Championship for the first time since 1979. Wales reached the quarter- finals of the 2015 World Cup at the expense of hosts England, before losing 23–19 to South Africa. Wales also achieved a fourth Grand Slam in 14 years and their first in seven years in the 2019 Six Nations. Wales reached the top spot in the men's World Rugby Rankings in August 2019, holding the position for two weeks. Wales play in red jerseys, white shorts and red socks. For the 2015–16 season, the jersey design incorporated gold for the first time. The jerseys are embroidered with the Prince of Wales's feathers, chosen in the 19th century by the WRU over another Welsh symbol, the leek, to demonstrate the nation's loyalty to Britain. In 1991, to enable the device to be trademarked, the original generic motif was replaced with a more stylised version. The original motto beneath the feathers was Ich dien (German for "I serve") but was replaced with "WRU" in the new version. Wales' alternate strip is green jerseys, white shorts and green socks, although there have been various different coloured strips in the past. Former change strips worn by Wales have used black, navy, white, yellow and grey as their predominant colours. Wales previously wore black jerseys as part of celebrations for the WRU's 125th anniversary in 2005. The jersey was worn against Fiji and then Australia that year; the Australia match was the first time Wales had not played in their red jersey against one of their traditional rivals. Since the 2008 end-of-year matches, the strip is made by Under Armour. They replaced Reebok who supplied the Wales strip between late 1996 and the 2008 mid-year matches. The shirt sponsors have included Brains Brewery, Admiral Insurance and Isuzu. Rugby union and Wales' national team hold an important place in Welsh culture and society. Sport historian John Bale has stated that "rugby is characteristically Welsh", and David Andrew said that "To the popular consciousness, rugby is as Welsh as coal mining, male voice choirs, How Green Was My Valley, Dylan Thomas, and Tom Jones". Welsh rugby's first 'golden age' (1900–1911) coincided with the country's zenith during the 20th century, and rugby was important in building Wales' modern identity. There is a long tradition of Welsh supporters singing before and during matches. The choral tradition developed in Wales during the 19th century alongside the rise of nonconformity, and has extended to singing at rugby matches. Commonly sung songs include the hymn Cwm Rhondda, Tom Jones' Delilah, and Max Boyce's Hymns and Arias. Wales' first home international was played in 1882 at St Helen's Ground in Swansea. In the 1880s and 1890s, home Welsh internationals were played at Cardiff, Swansea, Newport and Llanelli. Swansea continued to be used as an international venue until 1954, when Cardiff Arms Park became Wales' primary home venue. Cardiff Arms Park first had a stand erected in 1881, and continued to expand its seating that decade. Crowds continued to grow and in 1902 in Wales' match against Scotland a world record 40,000 spectators paid to see the match. In 1911, the owners of the Arms Park, the Marquess of Bute's family, confirmed Wales' tenure and during the 1920s and 1930s, Wales gradually gained increasing control. A new stand was built at the park in the 1933–34 season, which increased the grounds' capacity to 56,000. By 1958, the WRU had concluded that a new national ground was needed due to flooding that often affected Arms Park. After debate and disputes between the WRU and various other parties, including Cardiff RFC, it was decided in the 1960s that a new national stadium would be built with a new ground for the Cardiff club backing onto it. The National Stadium, as it was known, was officially opened in 1970. Since 1999, Wales have played all their home matches at the 74,500-capacity Millennium Stadium, Cardiff, which is also Wales' national stadium. The Millennium Stadium was first conceived in 1994, when a group redevelopment committee was set up. It was decided to replace the National Stadium at Cardiff Arms Park after a review found it was out of date; new legislation also required stadia to be all-seated. Construction of the new stadium began in September 1997, and was completed by June 1999, in time for the Rugby World Cup. The construction, which cost the WRU £126 million, was funded by private investment, £46 million of public funds from the National Lottery, the sale of debentures to supporters (offering guaranteed tickets in exchange for an interest-free loan), and loans. While the new ground was being built, Wales used the old Wembley Stadium for their home matches – a deal reciprocated during construction of the new Wembley, when FA Cup finals were held at the Millennium Stadium. Wales compete annually in the Six Nations Championship, which is played against five other European nations: England, France, Ireland, Italy, and Scotland. The Six Nations started as the Home Nations Championship in 1883, as a contest between the four component nations of the United Kingdom. Wales first won it in 1893, when they achieved a Triple Crown. Wales have won the tournament outright 27 times, and shared 12 other victories. Their longest wait between championships was 11 years (1994–2005). Wales first won a Grand Slam in 1908 – although France did not officially join the Five Nations until 1910 – and their first Six Nations Grand Slam in 2005. Their most recent Grand Slam and Triple Crown were won in 2019 with victory over Ireland on the final day of the Six Nations tournament. Wales have contested every Rugby World Cup since the inaugural tournament in 1987. The 1987 tournament was Wales' most successful; they won all three pool matches and their quarter-final, before losing to the All Blacks in the semi- finals. They then faced Australia in the third place play-off match, which they won 22–21. In the next two tournaments in 1991 and 1995, Wales failed to progress beyond the pool stage, winning just one match in each tournament. They also became the first co host nation to not make it out of the pool stage in 1991. Both the 1999 and 2003 tournaments were more successful, with Wales qualifying for the quarter-finals both times. Wales hosted the event in 1999 and topped their pool only to lose to eventual winners Australia in the quarter-finals. In 2003, they finished second in their pool behind the All Blacks, and faced England in the quarter-finals. They lost to England, the eventual champions, 28–17. Wales conceded 17 penalties, and their lack of discipline proved costly. In the 2007 World Cup, Wales again failed to progress from the pool stage. After a loss to Australia, and two wins against Japan and Canada, they faced Fiji for a place in the quarter-finals. The game started poorly for Wales who were behind 25–3 at half-time. They fought back to lead by three points with six minutes remaining, but Fiji then scored a try to win 38–34 and eliminated Wales from the tournament. At the 2011 World Cup, Wales reached the semi-finals for the first time since 1987. Playing the semi- finals against France, Wales lost 9–8, in a game overshadowed by the 18th- minute sending off of Wales' captain Sam Warburton for a dangerous tackle against Vincent Clerc. At the 2015 World Cup Wales were in the same pool as Australia, England, Fiji and Uruguay. They finished second in the pool behind Australia and ahead of hosts England. South Africa defeated Wales in the quarter-finals. In the 2019 World Cup Wales were in pool D with Australia, Fiji, Georgia and Uruguay. They won all their group matches to finish top of the pool. After defeating France in the quarter-finals, they lost to the eventual tournament winners South Africa in the semi-finals. When the World Rugby Rankings were introduced in October 2003, Wales were ranked 8th. They rose to 7th in June 2004, before falling back to 8th in November that year. Following a Grand Slam win in the 2005 Six Nations, they rose to a ranking position of 5th. They fell to 9th by June 2006, and, after rising back to 8th by September, fell to 10th after the 2007 World Cup. A second Six Nations' Grand Slam in 2008 propelled them to 6th in the rankings, but following losses to South Africa in the mid-year and end-of-year internationals Wales slipped to 7th. Wales climbed to 4th after a win over Scotland in their first match of the 2009 Six Nations. They slumped to 9th in 2010 but rose back to 4th after their fourth place in the 2011 World Cup. Since then – notwithstanding a nine-game slump in 2012–13 where they fell to 9th – Wales have ranked consistently in the top six teams. They reached 2nd during the 2015 Rugby World Cup, before hitting top spot for the first time on 19 August 2019, after winning 15 of their last 16 games. Wales have won 384 (or 52.53%) of their 731 Test matches. Their biggest Test defeat was a 96–13 loss to South Africa in 1998, and their largest victory was a 98–0 defeat of Japan in 2004. Their record for most tries in a match is 16, scored against Portugal in 1994 – they also scored 102 points in this match, more than in any other Test. Wales' record for consecutive Test wins is 14, and for consecutive losses is 10. Below is table of the representative rugby matches played by a Wales national XV at test level up until 2 November 2019. On 15 January 2020, Wales announced a 38-man squad for the Six Nations. Head coach: Wayne Pivac Caps and clubs updated 15 January 2020 Eighteen Welsh internationals have been inducted into the World Rugby Hall of Fame. One Welsh player, Shane Williams in 2008, has been awarded World Rugby Player of the Year (formerly known as the International Rugby Board Player of the Year). Neil Jenkins was the first rugby player to surpass 1000 Test points. He holds several Welsh records, including the most points scored for Wales with 1049, the most successful penalty kicks for Wales with 248, and the Welsh record for most points in a single Test match with 30. The record for drop-goals for Wales is held by Jonathan Davies with 13. Shane Williams is Wales' record try- scorer with 58 tries. Williams is also Wales' record try-scorer in Six Nations Championships with 22 and the Rugby World Cups with 10. Colin Charvis' 22 tries is the all-time Welsh record for a forward, and was the world record for tries by a forward until 2011. Alun Wyn Jones is the nation's most capped player with 134 Welsh caps. Four other players have earned 100 caps or more: Gethin Jenkins, Stephen Jones, Gareth Thomas and Martyn Williams. The record for most matches as captain is held by Sam Warburton with 49. The record for the most consecutive appearances is held by Gareth Edwards who played all 53 of his matches for Wales consecutively between 1967 and 1978. Edwards is also Wales' youngest ever captain at the age of 20. The youngest player ever capped for Wales is Tom Prydie, who made his debut in Wales' 2010 Six Nations finale against Italy at age , beating the record set by Norman Biggs in 1888. Prydie is also Wales' youngest try-scorer, scored against South Africa in June 2010, overtaking the record that Tom Pearson set on his debut in 1891. Winger George North, aged 18 years 214 days, overtook Pearson's record as the youngest Wales player to score a try on debut in November 2010. The following Welsh players have been inducted into the Welsh Sports Hall of Fame: 1990 – Ken Jones, 1991 – Cliff Jones, Cliff Morgan, 1992 – Gerald Davies, 1994 – J. P. R. Williams, 1997 – Bleddyn Williams, 1998 – Gareth Edwards, Lewis Jones, 1999 – Carwyn James, Barry John, 2000 – David Watkins, 2001 – Mervyn Davies, 2002 – Gwyn Nicholls, 2003 – Jonathan Davies, Willie Davies, John Dawes, 2005 – John Gwilliam, 2007 – Arthur Gould, Phil Bennett, 2008 – Billy Trew, 2009 – J. J. Williams, 2012 – Bryn Meredith, 2013 – Clive Rowlands, 2015 – Wilf Wooller, 2017 – Graham Price Following the unsuccessful tour to South Africa in 1964, the WRU set up a working party on coaching. The party recommended that Welsh clubs accept the principle of coaching. David Nash was appointed as the national team's first coach in 1967, but for the 1968 tour of Argentina, the WRU initially planned not to have a coach tour with the team. Following pressure from the Welsh clubs at the WRU's annual general meeting, the decision was reversed and Clive Rowlands was appointed as coach for the tour. The appointing of a coach for the team coincided with Wales' success in the Five Nations during the 1970s. Wales national rugby sevens team, Welsh Rugby Players Association The Welsh Rugby Union

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The 2017 PGA Championship was the 99th PGA Championship, held August 10–13 at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, North Carolina. This was the first major at Quail Hollow, which is a regular stop on the PGA Tour. Early in the week of the tournament, it was announced that the championship will be held in May beginning in 2019. Justin Thomas, the son of a PGA professional, won his first career major title, two strokes ahead of runners-up Francesco Molinari, Louis Oosthuizen, and Patrick Reed. In the United States, the Championship was televised by CBS, with weekday and early weekend coverage on TNT. It was televised live in the United Kingdom by the BBC who secured the rights over Sky Sports who had previously screened the event since 1992. The course hosts the Wells Fargo Championship on the PGA Tour (2003–present), though not in 2017; in 2016, it played as a par-72 at . It was also the home of the tour's Kemper Open (1969–1979) and the senior tour's PaineWebber World Seniors Invitational in the 1980s. Under the direction of Tom Fazio, Quail Hollow underwent an aggressive 90-day renovation in 2016 that modified four holes and added Bermuda grass. It commenced during the final round of the Wells Fargo Championship on Sunday, May 8. Thousands of trees were removed, as the former first two holes were combined into a new first hole, and the old fifth hole was divided between the new fourth and fifth holes. The following qualification criteria were used to select the field. Each player is listed according to the first category by which he qualified with additional categories in which he qualified shown in parentheses. 1\. All former PGA Champions Rich Beem, Keegan Bradley (8), John Daly, Jason Day (6,8), Jason Dufner (8,10), Pádraig Harrington (6), Davis Love III, Rory McIlroy (4,8,9,10), Shaun Micheel, Phil Mickelson (4,8,9), Vijay Singh, Jimmy Walker (6,8,9), Yang Yong- eun Martin Kaymer (3,6,9) did not play due to a shoulder injury., David Toms did not play., The following former champions did not enter: Paul Azinger, Mark Brooks, Jack Burke, Jr., Steve Elkington, Dow Finsterwald, Raymond Floyd, Doug Ford, Al Geiberger, Wayne Grady, David Graham, Hubert Green, Don January, John Mahaffey, Larry Nelson, Bobby Nichols, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Nick Price, Jeff Sluman, Dave Stockton, Hal Sutton, Lee Trevino, Bob Tway, Lanny Wadkins, Tiger Woods 2\. Last five Masters Champions Sergio García (8,9), Adam Scott (8), Jordan Spieth (3,4,6,8,9,10), Bubba Watson, Danny Willett (9) 3\. Last five U.S. Open Champions Dustin Johnson (8,9,10), Brooks Koepka (6,8,9,10), Justin Rose (8,9,11) 4\. Last five Open Champions Zach Johnson (9), Henrik Stenson (6,8,9) 5\. Current Senior PGA Champion Bernhard Langer did not play. 6\. Top 15 and ties from the 2016 PGA Championship Paul Casey (8), Branden Grace (8), Emiliano Grillo (8), Tyrrell Hatton, Hideki Matsuyama (8,10), William McGirt (8), Patrick Reed (8,9,10), Webb Simpson (8), Robert Streb, Daniel Summerhays 7\. 20 low scorers in the 2017 PGA Professional Championship Alex Beach, Rich Berberian, Jr., Jamie Broce, Paul Claxton, Stuart Deane, Matt Dobyns, Greg Gregory, Jaysen Hansen, Scott Hebert, Dave McNabb, Chris Moody, David Muttitt, Rod Perry, Kenny Pigman, Adam Rainaud, Mike Small, Brian Smock, Omar Uresti, Ryan Vermeer, J. J. Wood 8\. Top 70 leaders in official money standings from the 2016 RBC Canadian Open to the 2017 RBC Canadian Open Daniel Berger (10), Wesley Bryan (10), Rafael Cabrera-Bello (9), Bud Cauley, Kevin Chappell (10), Tony Finau, Tommy Fleetwood, Rickie Fowler (9,10), Lucas Glover, Bill Haas, Adam Hadwin (10), James Hahn, Brian Harman (10), Russell Henley (10), Charley Hoffman, J. B. Holmes (9), Billy Horschel (10), Charles Howell III, Mackenzie Hughes (10), Kang Sung-hoon, Kim Si-woo (10), Kevin Kisner (10), Russell Knox (10), Kelly Kraft, Matt Kuchar (9), Martin Laird, Danny Lee, Marc Leishman (10), Luke List, Jamie Lovemark, Francesco Molinari, Ryan Moore (9,10), Kevin Na, Sean O'Hair, Louis Oosthuizen, Pat Perez (10), Thomas Pieters (9), Ian Poulter, Jon Rahm (10), Patrick Rodgers, Xander Schauffele (10), Charl Schwartzel, Cameron Smith (10), Kyle Stanley (10), Brendan Steele (10), Hudson Swafford (10), Justin Thomas (10), Jhonattan Vegas (10), Gary Woodland Brandt Snedeker (8,9) did not play due to a rib injury. 9\. Members of the United States and Europe 2016 Ryder Cup teams (provided they are ranked in the top 100 in the Official World Golf Ranking on July 30) Matthew Fitzpatrick, Andy Sullivan, Lee Westwood, Chris Wood 10\. Winners of tournaments co-sponsored or approved by the PGA Tour since the 2016 PGA Championship Jonas Blixt, Bryson DeChambeau, Cody Gribble, Grayson Murray, Rod Pampling, D. A. Points, Chris Stroud 11\. Winner of the 2016 Olympic Golf Tournament 12\. Special invitations An Byeong-hun, Thomas Bjørn, Patrick Cantlay, Nicolas Colsaerts, Graham DeLaet, Luke Donald, Ernie Els, Ross Fisher, Ryan Fox, Dylan Frittelli, Jim Furyk, Scott Hend, Jim Herman, Yuta Ikeda, Thongchai Jaidee, Andrew Johnston, Kim Kyung-tae, Søren Kjeldsen, Satoshi Kodaira, Anirban Lahiri, Pablo Larrazábal, Alexander Lévy, Li Haotong, David Lingmerth, Shane Lowry, Joost Luiten, Graeme McDowell, Alex Norén, Thorbjørn Olesen, Jordan Smith, Song Young-han, Richard Sterne, Brandon Stone, Steve Stricker, Hideto Tanihara, Peter Uihlein, Wang Jeung-hun, Bernd Wiesberger, Fabrizio Zanotti 13\. Players below 70th place in official money standings, to fill the field Jason Kokrak Alternates (category 13) Scott Brown (77th in standings; replaced David Toms), Chez Reavie (79, took spot reserved for WGC-Bridgestone Invitational winner), Scott Piercy (80, did not play), Chris Kirk (81, replaced Brandt Snedeker) Thursday, August 10, 2017 Kevin Kisner and Thorbjørn Olesen were the co- leaders at 67 (−4), with five players one shot behind. Friday, August 11, 2017 Saturday, August 12, 2017 Following a weather delay of nearly two hours in the late afternoon, play was suspended at 8:11 pm EDT due to darkness, with 25 players remaining on the course. On the leaderboard, only Chris Stroud was affected, two-under for his round with five holes remaining. Play resumed at 7:30 am on Saturday. Saturday, August 12, 2017 With the second round completed on Saturday morning, the third round began at 9:50 am EDT in groups of three at ten-minute intervals, with the final group at 2:00 pm. Sunday, August 13, 2017 Entering the final round with a one-stroke lead, Kevin Kisner failed to record a birdie on the front-nine and bogeyed the par-5 7th after hitting his approach into the water. Hideki Matsuyama birdied both 6 and 7 to tie Kisner. Justin Thomas began the round two back and tied for the lead with a birdie putt at the 9th. Chris Stroud also birdied the ninth to tie, while Francesco Molinari's run of four birdies in five holes on his back-nine meant that five players were atop the leaderboard at seven-under. At the par-5 tenth, Thomas' putt for birdie paused on the lip of the cup for several seconds before falling in. He then chipped in at 13 for another birdie. At the par-3 17th, he hit his approach to and converted the birdie opportunity to get to nine-under. Matsuyama birdied the tenth to take solo possession of the lead, but made five bogeys to finish and fell to five-under. Kisner made his first birdie of the day at 10, but followed with two more bogeys. He managed to birdie both 14 and 15 before three-putting for bogey at the 16th. After a par at 17, Kisner needed to hole his approach from the fairway on the last to force a playoff, but found the water and made double bogey. In the penultimate pairing and leading by three on the final tee, Thomas drove into a fairway bunker and then played conservatively. His third shot from the rough was to the right side of the green; he sank his short putt for bogey for 68 (−3) and 276 (−8). Patrick Reed had three birdies on the back to get to within a shot of the lead, but bogeyed the 18th after finding a fairway bunker off the tee and tied for second, two strokes behind Thomas. Molinari's chances were diminished when he also drove into a bunker at 16 and failed to get up-and- down. Louis Oosthuizen holed out from 34 yards on the par-5 15th for an eagle and birdied 18 to tie Reed and Molinari for second. With the finish Oosthuizen became the seventh golfer to finish runner-up in all four major championships. Stroud played the back-nine in six-over to fall to a tie for ninth. Cumulative tournament scores, relative to par Coverage on the PGA Tour's official site, Coverage on the European Tour's official site The Senior PGA Championship is the oldest of the five major championships in men's senior golf. It is administered by the Professional Golfers' Association of America and is recognized as a major championship by both PGA Tour Champions and the European Senior Tour. It was formerly an unofficial money event on the European Senior Tour, but since 2007 has been an official money event. Winners gain entry into the next PGA Championship. The winners prior to 1980, the first season of the senior tour, are not considered major champions of this event by the PGA Tour Champions. The lower age limit is 50, which is the standard limit for men's senior professional golf tournaments. Like its PGA Tour counterpart, the Senior PGA Championship allows club professionals to enter. The tournament committee invites former winners of the PGA Professional National Championship and the top 35 club professionals who qualify through a tournament. The inaugural event was played in 1937 at Augusta National Golf Club, with 54-year-old Jock Hutchison winning the 54-hole event on Thursday, December 2. The second edition at Augusta was reduced to 36 holes due to rain, but had an 18-hole playoff on December 9 to decide the winner, Fred McLeod. The next edition was moved to Florida in January, No tournaments were held in 1943 and 1944 due to World War II. The event returned in 1945 at the PGA National Golf Course, where it stayed until 1962. The event moved to different courses in Florida through 2000. Due to scheduling moves, two tournaments were played in 1979 and 1984 and none in 1983, and 1985. It moved from winter to mid-April in 1990 and when it rotated to various sites in 2001, it became a late spring event, played in late May or early June. It was a 36-hole event until 1954; after four years at 54 holes, it became a 72-hole event in 1958. In the past, the event has had long spells of playing on a single host course, but currently it is played on a different course each year. Here is who may be eligible to compete in the Senior PGA Championship (provided they meet the age requirement): Any past winner of the Senior PGA Championship, Any past winner of a regular major championship, Any past member of the United States Ryder Cup team, The top 15 finishers in the previous year's Senior PGA Championship, The top 50 on the PGA Tour Champions money list (previous year and current year), Any winner of a PGA Tour Champions event since the last Senior PGA Championship, The top 35 finishers from the Callaway Golf Senior PGA Professional National Championship, Any winner of the previous five U.S. Senior Opens, The winner of the last Senior Open Championship, The top eight players from the previous year's European Senior Tour Order of Merit, The top four players from the previous year's Japanese Seniors Tour Order of Merit, A one-time exemption for those who have just turned 50 and have won a PGA Tour, Japan Golf Tour, or European Tour event in the last 5 years, The top 30 on the career money list, both PGA Tour Champions and combined PGA Tour Champions and PGA Tour, A one-time exemption for former PGA Professional National Champions turning 50, Invitations for those not meeting criteria above also are made The tournament has gone by several different names: The following men have won the Senior PGA Championship more than once, through 2019: 6 wins: Sam Snead (1964, 1965, 1967, 1970, 1972, 1973), 4 wins: Hale Irwin (1996, 1997, 1998, 2004), 3 wins: Eddie Williams (1942, 1945, 1946), Al Watrous (1950, 1951, 1957), Gary Player (1986, 1988, 1990), 2 wins: Jock Hutchison (1937, 1947), Gene Sarazen (1954, 1958), Paul Runyan (1961, 1962), Julius Boros (1971, 1977), Don January (1979, 1982), Arnold Palmer (1980, 1984), Lee Trevino (1992, 1994), Jay Haas (2006, 2008), Tom Watson (2001, 2011), Colin Montgomerie (2014, 2015) The following men have won both the PGA Championship and the Senior PGA Championship, the majors run by the PGA of America: 2020, 2022, 2024 – The Golf Club at Harbor Shores, Benton Harbor, Michigan, 2021 – Southern Hills Country Club, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 2025, 2033 – Congressional Country Club, Bethesda, Maryland Golf in the United States The 2016 PGA Championship was the 98th PGA Championship which took place from July 28–31 at Baltusrol Golf Club on the Lower Course in Springfield Township, New Jersey, west of New York City. This was the ninth major and second PGA Championship at Baltusrol, which last hosted in 2005. Jimmy Walker won his first major championship title with a score of 14 under par, one shot ahead of 2015 champion Jason Day. This edition of the PGA Championship was moved up two weeks from its early-August spot to accommodate the 2016 Olympic tournament in Rio de Janeiro. The John Deere Classic was moved back two weeks from its mid- July spot before the Open Championship and is taking its place on the schedule for those not qualified for the Olympics. Lower Course Lengths of the course for previous major championships: , par 70 - 2005 PGA Championship, , par 70 - 1993 U.S. Open, , par 70 - 1980 U.S. Open, , par 70 - 1967 U.S. Open , par 70 - 1954 U.S. Open, , par 72 - 1936 U.S. Open (Upper Course), , par 74 - 1915 U.S. Open (Old Course), , par \- 1903 U.S. Open (Old Course) The following qualification criteria were used to select the field. Each player is listed according to the first category by which he qualified with additional categories in which he qualified shown in parentheses. 1\. All former PGA Champions Rich Beem, Keegan Bradley (9), John Daly, Jason Day (6,8,10), Jason Dufner (8,10), Pádraig Harrington, Martin Kaymer (2,6,9), Rory McIlroy (4,8,9), Shaun Micheel, Phil Mickelson (4,8,9), Vijay Singh, David Toms, Yang Yong-eun Davis Love III (10) and Tiger Woods did not play due to injury., The following former champions did not enter: Paul Azinger, Mark Brooks, Jack Burke, Jr., Steve Elkington, Dow Finsterwald, Raymond Floyd, Doug Ford, Al Geiberger, Wayne Grady, David Graham, Hubert Green, Don January, John Mahaffey, Larry Nelson, Bobby Nichols, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Nick Price, Jeff Sluman, Dave Stockton, Hal Sutton, Lee Trevino, Bob Tway, Lanny Wadkins 2\. Winners of last five U.S. Opens Dustin Johnson (6,8,10), Justin Rose (6,8,9), Webb Simpson (8,9), Jordan Spieth (3,6,8,9,10) 3\. Winners of last five Masters Tournaments Adam Scott (8,10), Bubba Watson (8,9,10), Danny Willett (8) 4\. Winners of last five British Opens Ernie Els, Zach Johnson (8,9), Henrik Stenson (8,9) 5\. Current Senior PGA Champion Rocco Mediate 6\. 15 low scorers and ties in the 2015 PGA Championship George Coetzee, Tony Finau (8,10), Branden Grace (8,10), Russell Henley, Brooks Koepka (8), Matt Kuchar (8,9), Anirban Lahiri, David Lingmerth (8), Brandt Snedeker (8,10), Brendan Steele (8), Robert Streb (8) 7\. 20 low scorers in the 2016 PGA Professional Championship Rich Berberian, Jr., Michael Block, Mark Brown, Matt Dobyns, Brian Gaffney, Ryan Helminen, Johan Kok, Rob Labritz, Brad Lardon, Mitch Lowe, David Muttitt, Brad Ott, Rod Perry, Ben Polland, Rick Schuller, Tommy Sharp, Josh Speight, Joe Summerhays, Omar Uresti, Wyatt Worthington II Although Karen Paolozzi placed in the top 20, she was not eligible for entry to the PGA Championship under the Whaley Rule. A playoff ensued for the final spot. 8\. Top 70 leaders in official money standings from the 2015 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational to the 2016 Open Championship and Barbasol Championship Aaron Baddeley (10), Daniel Berger (10), Jason Bohn, Paul Casey, Roberto Castro, Kevin Chappell, Jon Curran, Harris English, Rickie Fowler (9,10), Jim Furyk (9), Sergio García (9,10), Fabián Gómez (10), Emiliano Grillo (10), Bill Haas, James Hahn (10), Jim Herman (10), Charley Hoffman (10), J. B. Holmes, Billy Hurley III (10), Smylie Kaufman (10), Kim Si-woo, Chris Kirk, Kevin Kisner (10), Patton Kizzire, Colt Knost, Russell Knox (10), Danny Lee, Jamie Lovemark, Shane Lowry, Hideki Matsuyama (10), Graeme McDowell (9,10), William McGirt (10), Bryce Molder, Ryan Moore, Kevin Na, Louis Oosthuizen, Ryan Palmer, Scott Piercy, Patrick Reed (9), Kyle Reifers, Charl Schwartzel (10), Kevin Streelman, Brian Stuard (10), Daniel Summerhays, Vaughn Taylor (10), Justin Thomas (10), Jimmy Walker (9), Gary Woodland Charles Howell III did not play due to injury. 9\. Members of the United States and European 2014 Ryder Cup teams (provided they are ranked in the top 100 in the Official World Golf Ranking on July 1, 2016) Jamie Donaldson, Victor Dubuisson, Lee Westwood Hunter Mahan (162), Thomas Bjørn (294), and Stephen Gallacher (290) did not qualify., Ian Poulter did not play due to a foot injury. 10\. Winners of tournaments co-sponsored or approved by the PGA Tour since the 2015 PGA Championship Greg Chalmers, Peter Malnati, Jhonattan Vegas 11\. Vacancies are filled by the first available player from the list of alternates (those below 70th place in official money standings). Zac Blair, Billy Horschel, Freddie Jacobson, Jason Kokrak, Steve Stricker, Cameron Tringale, Harold Varner III 12\. The PGA of America reserves the right to invite additional players not included in the categories listed above An Byeong-hun, Kiradech Aphibarnrat, Grégory Bourdy, Kristoffer Broberg, Rafael Cabrera-Bello, K. J. Choi, Darren Clarke, Nicolas Colsaerts, Luke Donald, Bradley Dredge, Ross Fisher, Matthew Fitzpatrick, Marcus Fraser, Tyrrell Hatton, Scott Hend, Yuta Ikeda, Thongchai Jaidee, Andrew Johnston, Matt Jones, Rikard Karlberg, Kim Kyung-tae, Søren Kjeldsen, Lee Soo-min, Marc Leishman, Joost Luiten, Troy Merritt, Francesco Molinari, James Morrison, Alexander Norén, Thorbjørn Olesen, Thomas Pieters, John Senden, Song Young- han, Brandon Stone, Andy Sullivan, Hideto Tanihara, Wang Jeung-hun, Bernd Wiesberger, Chris Wood Alternates (from category 11) Jonas Blixt (82) – replaced Charles Howell III Thursday, July 28, 2016 Jimmy Walker led after the first round with a five- under-par 65, one clear of Ross Fisher, Martin Kaymer and Emiliano Grillo. Two-time PGA winner Rory McIlroy was nine shots off the lead after a four- over-par 74 and 2016 U.S. Open champion Dustin Johnson was further behind at seven-over-par 77. Friday, July 29, 2016 Robert Streb shot a major record-tying 63 to move into a tie for first place with first round leader Jimmy Walker at 131 (−9). Jason Day, the defending champion, was tied for third place, two strokes behind at 133 (−7) while the 2016 Open Championship winner, Henrik Stenson, was in fifth place at 134 (−6). Danny Willett, the 2016 Masters Tournament champion, was well back at 141, while Dustin Johnson, the 2016 U.S. Open winner, missed the cut with a 149 (+9). The cut was at 142 (+2) and 86 players made the cut. Saturday, July 30, 2016 Play was suspended at 2:14 pm EDT due to dangerous weather conditions. Only 37 players finished their third rounds, with the leaders yet to tee off. Kevin Kisner was the overnight leader at the clubhouse at 5 under par. * Sunday, July 31, 2016 Play was resumed at 7am EDT on Sunday. Jimmy Walker went into the final round with a single shot lead over Jason Day, and two shots ahead of Brooks Koepka and Henrik Stenson. Sunday, July 31, 2016 The third round pairings were kept for the final round, and the final pair of Jimmy Walker and Robert Streb teed off shortly after their scheduled time of 3:16 pm EDT. Walker made no bogeys (or worse) during the final round, with all pars on the front nine, then made two consecutive birdies, the first by holing out from the greenside bunker on the 10th hole. His third and final birdie came at 17 for a three-shot lead over defending champion Jason Day, who quickly responded with an eagle on the 72nd hole, narrowing the margin to one shot. Walker won wire-to-wire by making a par putt on the final hole to win by a stroke. With Walker's win, it was the first time since 2011 that all four major golf championships were won by first-time winners. Due to course conditions, the fourth round was played with preferred lies, allowing players to "lift, clean and place" their balls on the fairways. This is believed to be the first time the rule was invoked in a major championship. Final round Cumulative tournament scores, relative to par Coverage on the European Tour's official site

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Jar Jar Binks is a fictional character from the Star Wars saga created by George Lucas. A major character in , he also has a smaller role in , and a one-line cameo in , as well as a role in the television series . The first fully-computer generated character in a live-action film, he has been portrayed by Ahmed Best in most of his appearances. Jar Jar's primary role in Episode I was to provide comic relief for the audience. He was met with overwhelming dislike from both critics and audiences, and is recognized as one of the most hated characters in Star Wars and the history of film in general, with some critics even considering him a racial caricature. However, part of this reception changed in 2015 after a popular fan theory, supported by Best, suggested Jar Jar had been actually written as a manipulative villain in The Phantom Menace before being discarded in the next films. George Lucas was inspired to develop Jar Jar based on the Disney character Goofy. Singer Michael Jackson wanted to play the role, but wished to portray the character using prosthetics while Lucas wanted him to be all CGI. Ahmed Best, who would end up playing the character, later hypothesized that Lucas might have felt uncomfortable with the thought of the singer's casting overshadowing the actual movie; Best was chosen based on his work in the production of Stomp, as Lucas wanted someone athletic for the role. During his audition he performed several martial arts moves and flips, which according to Best was a contrast to how Lucas pictured the character, more in line with comedic silent actors such as Buster Keaton. After Lucas walked out of the audition, Best felt he had failed it. Terryl Whitlatch created the final designs for the "cowardly and insecure" character. Jar Jar Binks first appears in as a bumbling, foolish Gungan from the planet Naboo. He is nearly killed by a Federation transport, only to be saved at the last minute by Jedi Knight Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson). Qui-Gon and his padawan, Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), persuade Jar Jar's tribe to release him to their custody as a guide. He later goes with the Jedi and Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman) to the planet Tatooine, where he meets and befriends Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd). Jar Jar later appears in the film's climactic battle scene, where he leads his fellow Gungans, as a general in the Gungan army, in defeating the Trade Federation. After the battle, he appears at the funeral of Qui-Gon Jinn and in the ending parade with his fellow Gungans. Jar Jar's role in is much smaller, but his actions are significant. Ten years after helping to save his planet, he is a delegate to the Galactic Senate and as such, plays a role in bringing his old friends, Obi-Wan and Anakin (Hayden Christensen) back to Coruscant, where he greets them with enthusiasm. Later, on the behalf of the Naboo, he gives a speech to the assembled Senate in favor of granting Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) vast emergency powers. These are granted, giving Palpatine the power he needs to subsequently overthrow the senate and bring the galaxy into the dictatorial control of the Sith's Galactic Empire. Jar Jar appears in only a few scenes in , and has no dialogue (besides a brief "'scuse me" at one point). He was originally given some dialogue in the beginning, but this was cut. Another cut scene would have shown Palpatine mocking Jar Jar for putting him in power before crowning himself emperor. He is most prominently featured in Padmé Amidala's funeral procession at the end of the film, marching sadly behind her coffin alongside Boss Nass. Jar Jar Binks is a supporting character in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, once again voiced by Best, although BJ Hughes voiced the character in three season one episodes. In this series, he is a Senate representative who sometimes accompanies the main characters—Anakin, Ahsoka, Obi-Wan, and Padmé—on their adventures. He and master Mace Windu are the two main characters of the two-part episode "The Disappeared" in which they had to search for missing elders and rescue a queen, who was Jar Jar's past love interest. Season 1 episode 8 "Bombad Jedi", Season 1 episode 11 "Dooku Captured", Season 1 episode 12 "The Gungan General", Season 1 episode 17 "Blue Shadow Virus", Season 1 episode 18 "Mystery of a Thousand Moons", Season 2 episode 4 "Senate Spy", Season 3 episode 3 "Supply Lines", Season 4 episode 2 "Gungan Attack", Season 4 episode 3 "Prisoners", Season 4 episode 4 "Shadow Warrior", Season 4 episode 15 "Deception", Season 6 episode 8 "The Disappeared, Part I", Season 6 episode 9 "The Disappeared, Part II" Chuck Wendig's 2017 novel , set after the events of Return of the Jedi, finds Binks as a street performer who entertains refugee children but is loathed by adults who blame him for his part in the rise of the Empire. Chris Taylor of Mashable wrote that the situation reflects real life in that adults disliked Jar Jar in the prequel films, but children were entertained by him. In an interview, director J.J. Abrams suggested that Jar Jar's death might be referenced in , but this did not happen. With the 2012 acquisition of Lucasfilm by The Walt Disney Company, most of the licensed Star Wars novels and comics produced since the originating 1977 film Star Wars were rebranded as Star Wars Legends and declared non-canon to the franchise in April 2014. In the game , Jar Jar is shown to have been frozen in carbonite by Darth Vader and kept in the Sith's lair. Binks is a Lego mini-figure in the Lego Star Wars video games, and appears as an Angry Bird with a hook move called "Jar Jar Wings" in Angry Birds Star Wars II. Ahmed Best was signed on to portray Binks in the show Star Wars Detours. Even before the release of The Phantom Menace, Jar Jar Binks became the subject of a great deal of media and popular attention. After the film's release, Binks became symbolic of what many reviewers such as Brent Staples (The New York Times), David Edelstein (Slate), and Eric Harrison (Los Angeles Times) considered to be creative flaws of the film. The character was widely rejected and often ridiculed by people who felt that Jar Jar was included in the film solely to appeal to children. Bruce Handy of Vanity Fair wrote that "Jar Jar has come to symbolize what many fans see as the faults of the prequel trilogy: characters no one much cares about; a sense of humor geared toward the youngest conceivable audience members; an over-reliance on computer graphics; and story lines devoted to the kinds of convoluted political machinations which wouldn’t have been out of place in adaptations of I, Claudius or The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, but which fit less snugly in films with characters like Jar Jar Binks." One fan, Mike J. Nichols, created and distributed, free of charge, a modified version of the film, entitled The Phantom Edit, which cut out several scenes featuring what Nichols dubbed 'Jar Jar antics.' The character was also lampooned on an episode of the television show South Park entitled "Jakovasaurs", in The Fairly OddParents (Episode: "Abra-Catastrophe!"), The Simpsons (Episode: "Co-Dependent's Day"), as well as the parody of Robot Chicken, in which Best reprised the role in voice-over form. Along with film critics, many have also accused the film's creators of excessive commercialization directed at young children (a criticism first leveled with the introduction of the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi). Star Wars creator George Lucas stated that he feels there is a section of the fanbase who get upset with aspects of Star Wars because "the movies are for children but they don't want to admit that... There is a small group of fans that do not like comic sidekicks. They want the films to be tough like The Terminator, and they get very upset and opinionated about anything that has anything to do with being childlike." In July 2018, Best said that the widespread criticism of his character had led to him considering suicide. In April 2019, during the annual Star Wars Celebration event ahead of the 20th anniversary panel for The Phantom Menace, George Lucas named Jar Jar as his favorite Star Wars character. Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal described the character as a "Rastafarian Stepin Fetchit on platform hoofs, crossed annoyingly with Butterfly McQueen." Patricia J. Williams suggested that many aspects of Jar Jar's character are highly reminiscent of the archetypes portrayed in blackface minstrelsy, while others have suggested the character is a "laid- back clown character" representing a black Caribbean stereotype. George Lucas has denied any racist implications. Ahmed Best also rejected the allegations, saying that "Jar Jar has nothing to do with the Caribbean". In late October 2015, a Reddit user by the name of "Lumpawarroo" published a detailed theory speculating that Binks was originally written as a major antagonist of the series, a manipulative, prominent collaborator of Palpatine, before being written off from his major villain's role due to the character's negative reception. This theory was related to an earlier interview with Jar Jar's actor Ahmed Best in /r/IAmA, where he claimed that Jar Jar had been displaced from the story's main focus due to the backlash, implying at the same time that the hate received by the character was not entirely unintentional. The post quickly became viral and received significant media coverage internationally by independent bloggers and major news outlets like The Guardian, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, which included analysis of his actions in and gave him the nickname of "Darth Jar Jar". Journalist Andrew Street from The Guardian called it a "classic twist", comparing it to Yoda's role in The Empire Strikes Back, while Matt Hickey from Forbes went to the extent of contacting George Lucas about the question, but received no answer. In response to the speculations, actor Ahmed Best tweeted, "I will say this, it feels really good when the hidden meaning behind the work is seen. No matter how long it takes," apparently confirming the theory. Some months later, he expanded upon his tweet in a YouTube interview, stating, "there is a lot about it that is true, there are some things about it that are not true... Could Jar Jar have evolved into that? I think the answer is yes. Because of the backlash, and rightfully so, Lucasfilm backed off of Jar Jar a lot, but a lot of the influence that I put into the character mirrored a lot of what was already in the Star Wars universe." Best concluded only George Lucas could unveil the actual role of Binks, yet he also revealed that a deleted scene from Attack of the Clones would have still shown Palpatine darkly confiding his plans about the Empire to Jar Jar. J. J. Abrams, who directed two installments of the franchise's sequel trilogy after its buyout by Disney, personally approved the theory about the villainous Jar Jar. He described Lumpawarroo's argumentation as an "unbelievably lengthy analysis, in a very seriously thought-out way, as to why it's obviously true." Jar Jar Binks quotes from IMDb, Collection of negative Jar Jar comments from major media sources. Star Wars: Aftermath: Empire's End is a Star Wars novel by Chuck Wendig, published on February 21, 2017 by Del Rey Books. Set after the events of the 1983 film Return of the Jedi, Empire's End is the third of a trilogy that explores the time period between that film and 2015's . The Aftermath series features the characters Wedge Antilles, an X-wing fighter pilot from the original Star Wars film trilogy, and Imperial Admiral Rae Sloane, introduced as a captain in John Jackson Miller's 2014 novel . Wendig also introduces several new characters, including ex-Rebel Alliance pilot Norra Wexley, her teenage son Temmin "Snap" Wexley, Temmin's rebuilt B1 battle droid Mister Bones, the Zabrak bounty hunter Jas Emari, and the Imperial turncoat Sinjir Rath Velus, one of the first gay characters in Star Wars canon. Empire's End follows (2015) and (2016) in the trilogy. Using information gleaned from the bounty hunter Mercurial Swift, the team of former Rebel Alliance pilot Norra Wexley, her teenage son Temmin, the Zabrak bounty hunter Jas Emari, and the former Imperial officer Sinjir Rath Velus track Grand Admiral Rae Sloane to the desolate planet Jakku. They arrive to find the remaining Imperial fleet of Star Destroyers in orbit; Norra and Jas head to the surface seeking Sloane, while Temmin and Sinjir escape to Chandrila to alert Leia Organa and the New Republic. Norra and Jas are captured by Imperial stormtroopers; Norra is enslaved, and Jas—who has a bounty on her head—is handed over to the crime lord Niima the Hutt. Temmin's reprogrammed B1 battle droid Mister Bones rescues Norra, and they reunite with an escaped Jas. Sloane and Norra's estranged husband Brentin seek revenge against Gallius Rax, but are captured by him instead. Meanwhile, the indecisive New Republic Senate fails to approve a military offensive against the Imperial forces at Jakku. Sinjir recruits former SpecForces operative Jom Barell for a covert mission with Temmin, Han Solo, and Sinjir's sometimes lover Conder Kyl to identify the leverage which the Black Sun and Red Key criminal syndicates used to influence the vote. Their efforts provide Chancellor Mon Mothma with the votes she needs, and the motion passes. Led by Admiral Ackbar, the New Republic forces attack with Temmin flying an X-wing under Wedge Antilles' command, and Jom rejoining SpecForces. Sloane and Brentin learn of Rax's insidious program which trains abducted children to be vicious killers. Norra finally intercepts Sloane, but postpones her revenge to join her nemesis in finding out what Rax is protecting in his desert base. The battle turns for the New Republic when the Imperial dreadnought Ravager is destroyed. Mister Bones saves Temmin's life, but the droid is destroyed. Sloane confronts Rax, who has commenced what Palpatine called his "Contingency": the Jakku Observatory will destroy the planet and the entirety of both the Imperial and New Republic forces, plunging the galaxy into chaos. Rax will flee on a predetermined course to the Unknown Regions with a select few Destroyers, where he will create a new empire. Sloane kills Rax and stops Jakku's destruction, but assumes Rax's role as shepherd of Palpatine's plans. Sinjir becomes an advisor to Mothma, who escapes an assassination attempt, and Brentin and Jom are killed on Jakku. Leia gives birth to Ben Solo, her son with Han, as the Empire formally surrenders. Wedge establishes a flight academy on Hosnian Prime, where he and Norra will be instructors, and Temmin—now officially known as "Snap"—will attend. was introduced in March 2015 as part of the "" publishing initiative, a series of novels and comic books intended to connect The Force Awakens with previous film installments. Among the first releases, Aftermath was subsequently described as being set between the films Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. In July 2015, Del Rey confirmed that Aftermath would be the first novel in a planned trilogy. Aftermath was published on September 4, 2015, and the titles for the other installments— (2016) and Empire's End (2017)—were announced at the New York Comic Con in October 2015. Life Debt was released on July 12, 2016, and Empire's End was released on February 21, 2017. The Aftermath series features the characters Wedge Antilles, an X-wing fighter pilot from the original Star Wars film trilogy, and Imperial Admiral Rae Sloane, introduced as a captain in John Jackson Miller's 2014 novel . Wendig introduces several new characters in Aftermath, including the Zabrak bounty hunter Jas Emari, ex-Rebel pilot Norra Wexley, Norra's teenage son Temmin "Snap" Wexley, Temmin's rebuilt B1 battle droid Mister Bones, and the Imperial turncoat Sinjir Rath Velus. Introduced in the first installment Aftermath, SpecForces officer Jom Barell becomes a main character as a member of the team in Life Debt. Acknowledging lesbian Moff Delian Mors from Paul S. Kemp's 2015 novel as the first openly gay character in the Star Wars canon, Anthony Breznican of Entertainment Weekly called Aftermath Sinjir "the first major gay hero" in the franchise. Empire's End features a reappearance of Lando Calrissian, who reclaims control of Bespin's Cloud City from the Imperials who occupy it. Chewbacca is reunited with his young son Lumpawaroo, who had been enslaved on their native planet Kashyyyk. Prequel trilogy character Jar Jar Binks appears in the novel, having become a street performer who entertains refugee children but is loathed by adults who blame him for his part in the rise of the Empire. Chris Taylor of Mashable wrote that the situation reflects real life in that adults disliked Jar Jar in the films, but children were entertained by him. Ben Solo, the son of Leia and Han who becomes Kylo Ren, is born on the planet Chandrila, the day a peace treaty is signed between the Empire and the New Galactic Republic. Rae Sloane coins the term "First Order" as she establishes the reborn empire that will eventually take that name. General Armitage Hux, a character introduced in the 2015 film , appears as a child; his father is the creator of the training program that will ultimately produce First Order stormtroopers. Armitage's first name and origin as the illegitimate son of Imperial officer Brendol Hux was previously revealed in Life Debt. The Chiss Grand Admiral Thrawn is mentioned as the source of the information about the Unknown Regions which Palpatine uses in his Contingency plan, and the novel is the first appearance of Niima the Hutt, a crime lord based on the desert planet Jakku who controls her people by controlling their resources. The (2015) and (2015) note that the Niima Outpost is named after her. Temmin would go on to appear in the 2015 film The Force Awakens as an X-wing fighter pilot Snap Wexley, portrayed by Greg Grunberg. Sean Keane of the New York Daily News called Empire's End a "thrilling conclusion" to the trilogy. Ahmed Best (born August 19, 1973) is an American actor. He gained recognition in 1999 for providing motion capture and voice of the character of Jar Jar Binks in the Star Wars franchise. He also created, wrote, directed, and produced his own TV show, which he titled This Can't Be My Life. Best likewise collaborated with director George Lucas in three films and seven episodes of the cartoon show, . He won the Annie Award for Voice Acting in an Animated Television Production for lampooning Jar Jar Binks in . Ahmed Best was born on August 19, 1973, in New York City. He lived the majority of his formative years in the Soundview section of the Bronx. He moved to Maplewood, New Jersey, in 1984. He attended Columbia High School and graduated from there in 1991. He then studied percussion at the Manhattan School of Music. He is the younger brother of Dunia Best Sinnreich, lead singer and co-founder of Brave New Girl, Dubistry and Agent 99 and formerly with The Slackers. In 1994, Best joined the acid jazz group The Jazzhole. He contributed to the success of the group for two years. He co-wrote and co-produced three albums for the group including The Jazzhole, And the Feeling Goes Around, and The Beat is the Bomb. In 1995, he co-wrote and co-produced Escape by Bill Evans. In 1995, he joined the Obie Award winning cast of Stomp. He toured with the cast of Stomp throughout the US and Europe. In 1997, after casting director Robin Gurland had observed his flexible, athletic movements in Stomp, Ahmed was cast as Jar Jar Binks in the Star Wars prequel trilogy (1999–2005). He reprised the role on the Star Wars themed episode of Robot Chicken (as well as ), and on an episode of Stephen Colbert's The Colbert Report. Best said he put a lot of himself into the character, so when Jar Jar drew hostility from moviegoers, it sometimes extended toward the actor or he otherwise interpreted it personally. His Jar Jar Binks character was so disliked that Best considered suicide. Best later appeared with fellow Star Wars alumni Dee Bradley Baker, James Arnold Taylor, and Daran Norris on the TV show Big Time Rush.

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New Adventures of Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder, also known as simply Batman and Robin, is a 15-chapter serial released in 1949 by Columbia Pictures. It is a sequel to the 1943 serial Batman, although with different actors. Robert Lowery played Batman, while Johnny Duncan played Robin. Supporting players included Jane Adams as Vicki Vale and veteran character actor Lyle Talbot as Commissioner Gordon. The serials were re-released as Video On Demand titles by Rifftrax, the alumni project of former Mystery Science Theater 3000 members Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett. As of September 2014, they have released the entire serial series. Turner Classic Movies has broadcast the film serial from June to November 2015 in a weekly half-hour slot on Saturday mornings. The Dynamic Duo face off against the Wizard, a hooded villain with an electrical device which controls cars and a desire to set challenges for the Dynamic Duo, whose identity remains a mystery throughout until the end. Robert Lowery as Batman/Bruce Wayne, Johnny Duncan as Robin/Dick Grayson, Jane Adams as Vicki Vale, Lyle Talbot as Commissioner Jim Gordon, Ralph Graves as Winslow Harrison, Don C. Harvey as Nolan, a henchman, William Fawcett as Professor Hammil, Leonard Penn as Carter, Hammil's valet/The Wizard, Rick Vallin as Barry Brown, a radio announcer, Michael Whalen as Dunne, a private investigator, Lee Roberts as Neal, a henchman, Greg McClure as Evans, a henchman, House Peters, Jr. as Earl, a henchman, Jim Diehl as Jason, a henchman, Rusty Wescoatt as Ives, a henchman, Eric Wilton as Alfred Pennyworth, George Offerman Jr. as Jimmie Vale, Vicki's brother and henchman "As usual on a Katzman production," note Harmon and Glut, "the low budget showed everywhere in money-saving shortcuts, and inadequacies." The Batman costume had a poorly fitting cowl and the Robin costume added pink tights to cover the "hairy legs" of both the actor and the stuntman. The Batmobile is again excluded, but instead of a limousine as in the first serial, the duo drive around in a 1949 Mercury. Several mistakes and failures of logic occur in the serial. One example is that the film shows the Bat-Signal working in broad daylight. Another occurs when, despite the fact that the heroes' utility belts had been replaced by normal belts with no pockets or pouches for this serial, in order to escape from a vault, Batman pulls the nozzle and hose of an oxy-acetylene torch from his belt to cut through a steel door (the tanks for the torch are not shown); to compound this mistake, it is a full-sized oxy-acetylene torch that would have been impossible to carry unseen on his person. Harmon and Glut suggest that this was probably scripted to be a miniaturised 3-inch torch, as used in the comics, but the film-makers improvised in following the directions for a "blowtorch." Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released the serial on DVD in 2005, timed to coincide with the theatrical release of Batman Begins. Unlike its predecessor, Batman and Robin: The Complete 1949 Movie Serial Collection has been given a restoration. In February 4, 2014, Mill Creek Entertainment released Gotham City Serials, a two-disc DVD set that includes both the 1943 Batman serial and the 1949 Batman and Robin Serial. Rifftrax released a Video On Demand of the first installment of the short on July 16, 2013, featuring a running mocking commentary from Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fame. The final episode, "Batman Victorious," was released with commentary on September 19, 2014. Turner Classic Movies began airing episodes of Batman & Robin in June 2015, following one week after the conclusion of airing the previous 1943 serial. Broadcast paused in August in favor of alternate programming, but resumed in September. 1. Batman Takes Over (Broadcast June 27, 2015 on TCM) 2. Tunnel of Terror (Broadcast July 11, 2015 on TCM) 3. Robin's Wild Ride (Broadcast July 18, 2015 on TCM) 4. Batman Trapped! (Broadcast July 25, 2015 on TCM) 5. Robin Rescues Batman! (Broadcast September 5, 2015 on TCM) 6. Target - Robin! (Broadcast September 12, 2015 on TCM) 7. The Fatal Blast (Broadcast September 19, 2015 on TCM) 8. Robin Meets the Wizard! (Broadcast September 26, 2015 on TCM) 9. The Wizard Strikes Back! (Broadcast October 3, 2015 on TCM) 10. Batman's Last Chance! (Broadcast October 10, 2015 on TCM) 11. Robin's Ruse (Broadcast October 17, 2015 on TCM) 12. Robin Rides the Wind (Broadcast October 24, 2015 on TCM) 13. The Wizard's Challenge (Broadcast November 7, 2015 on TCM) 14. Batman vs. Wizard (Broadcast November 14, 2015 on TCM) 15. Batman Victorious (Broadcast November 21, 2015 on TCM) List of film serials, List of film serials by studio, List of films based on English-language comics Batman 1949 Serial at Legions of Gotham Robin is the name of several fictional superheroes appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character was originally created by Bob Kane, Bill Finger, and Jerry Robinson, to serve as a junior counterpart to the superhero Batman. The character's first incarnation, Dick Grayson, debuted in Detective Comics #38 (April 1940). Conceived as a way to attract young readership, Robin garnered overwhelmingly positive critical reception, doubling the sales of the Batman titles. The early adventures of Robin included Star Spangled Comics #65–130 (1947–1952), which was the character's first solo feature. Robin made regular appearances in Batman related comic books and other DC Comics publications from 1940 through the early 1980s until the character set aside the Robin identity and became the independent superhero Nightwing. The team of Batman and Robin has commonly been referred to as the Caped Crusaders or Dynamic Duo. The character's second incarnation Jason Todd first appeared in Batman #357 (1983). This Robin made regular appearances in Batman related comic books until 1988, when the character was murdered by the Joker in the storyline "" (1989). Jason would later find himself alive after a reality changing incident, eventually becoming the Red Hood. The premiere Robin limited series was published in 1991 which featured the character's third incarnation Tim Drake training to earn the role of Batman's vigilante partner. Following two successful sequels, the monthly Robin ongoing series began in 1993 and ended in early 2009, which also helped his transition from sidekick to a superhero in his own right. In 2004 storylines, established DC Comics character Stephanie Brown became the fourth Robin for a short duration before the role reverted to Tim Drake. Damian Wayne succeeds Drake as Robin in the 2009 story arc "". Following the 2011 continuity reboot "the New 52", Tim Drake was revised as having assumed the title Red Robin, and Jason Todd, operating as the Red Hood, was slowly repairing his relationship with Batman. Dick Grayson resumed his role as Nightwing and Stephanie Brown was introduced anew under her previous moniker Spoiler in the pages of Batman Eternal (2014). The 2016 DC Rebirth continuity relaunch starts off with Damian Wayne as Robin, Tim Drake as Red Robin, Jason Todd as Red Hood, and Dick Grayson as Nightwing. Robins have also been featured throughout stories set in parallel worlds, owing to DC Comics' longstanding "Multiverse" concept. For example, in the original Earth-Two, Dick Grayson never adopted the name Nightwing, and continues operating as Robin into adulthood. In the New 52's "Earth-2" continuity, Robin is Helena Wayne, daughter of Batman and Catwoman, who was stranded on the Earth of the main continuity and takes the name Huntress. About a year after Batman's debut, Batman creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger introduced Robin the Boy Wonder in Detective Comics #38 (1940). The name "Robin the Boy Wonder" and the medieval look of the original costume were inspired by The Adventures of Robin Hood. Jerry Robinson noted he "came up with Robin Hood because The Adventures of Robin Hood were boyhood favorites of mine. I had been given a Robin Hood book illustrated by N. C. Wyeth ... and that's what I quickly sketched out when I suggested the name Robin Hood, which they seemed to like, and then showed them the costume. And if you look at it, it's Wyeth's costume, from my memory, because I didn't have the book to look at." Other accounts of Robin's origin state that the name comes from the American robin bird, not from Robin Hood, Frank Miller's All Star Batman and Robin being a notable exception. Sometimes both sources are credited, as in Len Wein's The Untold Legend of the Batman. Although Robin is best known as Batman's sidekick, the Robins have also been members of the superhero group the Teen Titans—with the original Robin, Dick Grayson, as a founding member and the group's leader and with Tim Drake as the team leader . In Batman stories, the character of Robin was intended to be Batman's Watson: Bill Finger, writer for many early Batman adventures, wrote: "Robin was an outgrowth of a conversation I had with Bob. As I said, Batman was a combination of Douglas Fairbanks and Sherlock Holmes. Holmes had his Watson. The thing that bothered me was that Batman didn't have anyone to talk to, and it got a little tiresome always having him thinking. I found that as I went along Batman needed a Watson to talk to. That's how Robin came to be. Bob called me over and said he was going to put a boy in the strip to identify with Batman. I thought it was a great idea." The following fictional characters have assumed the Robin role at various times in the main continuity: In the comics, Dick Grayson was an 8-year-old acrobat and the youngest of a family act called the "Flying Graysons". A gangster named Boss Zucco, loosely based on actor Edward G. Robinson's Little Caesar character, had been extorting money from the circus and killed Grayson's parents, John and Mary, by sabotaging their trapeze equipment as a warning against defiance. Batman investigated the crime and, as his alter ego billionaire Bruce Wayne, had Dick put under his custody as a legal ward. Together they investigated Zucco and collected the evidence needed to bring him to justice. From his debut appearance in 1940 through 1969, Robin was known as the Boy Wonder. Batman creates a costume for Dick, consisting of a red tunic, yellow cape, green gloves, green boots, green spandex briefs, and a utility belt. As he grew older, graduated from high school, and enrolled in Hudson University, Robin continued his career as the Teen Wonder, from 1970 into the early 1980s. The character was rediscovered by a new generation of fans during the 1980s because of the success of The New Teen Titans, in which he left Batman's shadow entirely to assume the identity of Nightwing. He aids Batman throughout the later storyline regarding the several conflicts with Jason Todd until he makes his final return as the "Red Hood". Grayson temporarily took over as Batman (while Wayne was traveling through time), using the aid of Damian Wayne, making his newish appearance as "Robin", to defeat and imprison Todd. With Bruce Wayne's return, Grayson went back to being Nightwing. DC was initially hesitant to turn Grayson into Nightwing and to replace him with a new Robin. To minimize the change, they made the new Robin, Jason Peter Todd, who first appeared in Batman #357 (1983), similar to a young Grayson. Like Dick Grayson, Jason Todd was the son of circus acrobats murdered by a criminal (this time the Batman adversary Killer Croc), and then adopted by Bruce Wayne. In this incarnation, he was originally red-haired and unfailingly cheerful, and wore his circus costume to fight crime until Dick Grayson presented him with a Robin suit of his own. At that point, he dyed his hair black. After the mini-series Crisis on Infinite Earths, much of the DC Comics continuity was redone. Dick Grayson's origin, years with Batman, and growth into Nightwing remained mostly unchanged; but Todd's character was completely revised. He was now a black-haired street orphan who first encountered Batman when he attempted to steal tires from the Batmobile. Batman saw to it that he was placed in a school for troubled youths. Weeks later, after Dick Grayson became Nightwing and Todd proved his crime-fighting worth by helping Batman catch a gang of robbers, Batman offered Todd the position as Robin. Believing that readers never truly bonded with Todd, DC Comics made the controversial decision in 1988 to poll readers using a 1-900 number as to whether or not Todd should be killed. The event received more attention in the mainstream media than any other comic book event before it. Readers voted "yes" by a small margin (5,343 to 5,271) and Todd was subsequently murdered by the Joker in the storyline, , in which the psychopath beat the youngster severely with a crowbar, and left him to die in a warehouse rigged with a bomb. Jason Todd later returned as the new Red Hood (the original alias of the Joker) when he was brought back to life due to reality being altered. After the continuity changes following the New 52 DC Comics relaunch, Jason becomes a leader of the Outlaws, a superhero team that includes Starfire and Arsenal who had spent years with Grayson in the Titans. DC Comics was left uncertain about readers' decision to have Jason Todd killed, wondering if readers preferred Batman as a lone vigilante, disliked Todd specifically, or just wanted to see if DC would actually kill off the character. In addition, the 1989 Batman film did not feature Robin, giving DC a reason to keep him out of the comic book series for marketing purposes. Regardless, Batman editor Denny O'Neil introduced a new Robin. The third Robin, Timothy Drake, first appeared in a flashback in Batman #436 (1989). In the comics, Tim Drake was a young boy who had followed the adventures of Batman and Robin ever since witnessing the murder of the Flying Graysons. This served to connect Drake to Grayson, establishing a link that DC hoped would help readers accept this new Robin. Drake surmised their secret identities with his amateur but instinctive detective skills and followed their careers closely. Tim stated on numerous occasions that he wishes to become "The World's Greatest Detective", a title currently belonging to the Dark Knight. Batman himself stated that one day Drake will surpass him as a detective. Despite his combat skills not being the match of Grayson's (although there are some similarities, in that they are far superior to Todd's when he was Robin), his detective skills more than make up for this. In addition, Batman supplied him with a new armored costume. Tim Drake's first Robin costume had a red torso, yellow stitching and belt, black boots, and green short sleeves, gloves, pants, and domino mask. He wore a cape that was black on the outside and yellow on the inside. This costume had an armored tunic and gorget, an emergency "R" shuriken on his chest in addition to the traditional batarangs and a collapsible bo staff as his primary weapon, which Tim Drake continues to use as the superhero Red Robin. The character was introduced as a happy medium between the first two Robins in that, from the readers' point of view, he is neither overly well behaved like Dick Grayson nor overly impudent like Jason Todd. Tim Drake is the first Robin to have his own comic book series, where he fought crime on his own. Tim Drake, as Robin, co-founded the superhero team Young Justice in the absence of the Teen Titans of Dick Grayson's generation, but would then later re-form the Teen Titans after Young Justice disbanded following a massive sidekick crossover during which Donna Troy was killed. Tim served as leader of this version of the Titans until 2009, at which point he quit due to the events of Batman R.I.P. Following Infinite Crisis and 52, Tim Drake modified his costume to favor a mostly red and black color scheme in tribute to his best friend, Superboy (Kon-El), who died fighting Earth-Prime Superboy. This Robin costume had a red torso, long sleeves, and pants. It also included black gloves and boots, yellow stitching and belt, and a black and yellow cape. Tim Drake continued the motif of a red and black costume when he assumed the role of Red Robin before and during the events of the New 52. Tim Drake assumes the identity of Red Robin after Batman's disappearance following the events of Final Crisis and "" and Damian Wayne becoming Grayson's Robin. Following 2011's continuity changes resulting from the New 52 DC Comics relaunch, history was altered such that Tim Drake never took up the Robin mantle after Jason Todd's death, feeling that it would be inappropriate. Instead, he served as Batman's sidekick under the name of Red Robin. Stephanie Brown, Tim Drake's girlfriend and the costumed adventurer previously known as the Spoiler, volunteered for the role of Robin upon Tim's resignation. Batman fired the Girl Wonder for not obeying his orders to the letter on two separate occasions. Stephanie then stole one of Batman's incomplete plans to control Gotham crime and executed it. Trying to prove her worthiness, Brown inadvertently set off a gang war on the streets of Gotham. While trying to help end the war, Brown was captured and tortured by the lunatic crime boss Black Mask. She managed to escape but apparently died shortly afterwards due to the severity of her injuries. Tim Drake keeps a memorial for her in his cave hideout underneath Titans Tower in San Francisco. She appeared alive and stalking Tim, after his return from traveling around the globe with his mentor. It turned out that Dr. Leslie Thompkins had faked Stephanie's death in an effort to protect her. For years she operated on and off as the Spoiler, but was then recruited as Barbara Gordon's replacement as Batgirl. She had her own series as well as making appearances throughout various Batman and Batman spin-off series. Her time as Spoiler, Robin, and Batgirl was retconned to have never occurred after the Flashpoint event, with her being reintroduced having just become Spoiler in Batman Eternal. Damian Wayne was the child of Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghul, thus the grandson of the immortal Ra's al Ghul. Batman was unaware of his son's existence for years until Talia left Damian in his care. Damian was violent and lacking in discipline and morality, and was trained by the League of Assassins. Learning to kill at a young age, Damian's murderous behavior created a troubled relationship with his father, who vowed never to take a life. Originally conceived to become a host for his maternal grandfather's soul as well as a pawn against the Dark Knight, Batman saved his child from this fate which forced Ra's to inhabit his own son's body, and thus, Damian was affectionate to his father. After Batman's apparent death during Final Crisis, Talia left her son under Dick Grayson and Alfred Pennyworth's care and Damian was deeply affected by his father's absence. In the first issue of "Battle for the Cowl", Damian was driving the Batmobile and was attacked by Poison Ivy and Killer Croc. Damian was rescued by Nightwing who then tries to escape but was shot down by Black Mask's men. Nightwing tried to fight the thugs, but the thugs were shot by Jason Todd. After a fight between Nightwing and Todd, Todd eventually shot Damian in the chest. In the final issue of the series, Alfred made Damian into Robin. Damian's first task as Robin was to rescue Tim. After "Battle for the Cowl", Grayson adopted the mantle of Batman, and instead of having Tim (who he viewed as an equal, rather than a protégé) remain as Robin, he gave the role to Damian, who he felt needed the training that his father would have given him. Following and Flashpoint events, Bruce Wayne returned to his role as Batman while Dick resumed as Nightwing. As of the "New 52", Damian continued to work with his father, but temporarily gave up being Robin (as his mother put a price on his head), and went under the identity of Red Bird. Damian met his end at the hands of Heretic, an aged-clone of Damian working for Leviathan, bravely giving up his life. Despite his status as deceased, Damian starred in his own mini-series, Damian: Son of Batman, written and drawn by Andy Kubert, set in a future where Damian is on the path to become Batman after his father fell victim to a trap set by the Joker. Batman eventually started a difficult quest to resurrect him, returning Damian to life with Darkseid's Chaos Shard. A Batman story from the 1950s featured the young Bruce Wayne assuming the identity of Robin, complete with the original costume, in order to learn the basics of detective work from a famous detective named Harvey Harris. The purpose of the secret identity was to prevent Harris from learning Wayne's true motivation for approaching him, which could have led to the detective attempting to discourage the boy from pursuing his obsession. Though this story remained canonical through the most of the 1980s (it was revisited in the Untold Legend of the Batman miniseries in 1980), it was revised post- Crisis to edit out any reference to Bruce Wayne having ever called himself "Robin" or worn any costume before he finally donned his Batman costume as an adult. John Byrne later worked this aspect into his non-canonical story . Post-Crisis, there was one instance in continuity when Bruce Wayne adopted the Robin persona. In Batboy & Robin, a tie-in special to the DC Comics storyline Sins of Youth, Bruce and Tim Drake, the third Robin, had their ages magically switched. In an effort to keep up the illusion of Batman, Bruce had Tim adopt the Batman identity while he is forced to be Robin. On Earth-Two, home of the Golden Age version of DC's superheroes, Dick Grayson continued to be Robin even as an adult, having no successors, and even after Batman's death. His allies as a boy included the All-Star Squadron along with Batwoman and Flamebird. By the 1960s, Grayson had become an adult, and was a lawyer and the ambassador to South Africa. He adopted a more Batman-like costume, but still fought crime as Robin. This adult version of Dick Grayson debuted in Justice League of America #55, where he also became a member of the Justice Society of America. Although in semi-retirement for a time, he was called back to active duty when he rejoined the Justice Society during the period when he, Power Girl and Star-Spangled Kid, assisted them as The Super Squad. He appeared to have died during the 1985 miniseries Crisis on Infinite Earths, in which the DC Multiverse was reduced to one Universe, and this version of Grayson, as well as the Earth-Two Batman, were deemed never to have existed. The Earth-2 concept was revived and reimagined twice subsequently, following the comic books 52 (2006–7) and Flashpoint (2011). In the DC One Million storyline, members of the Justice League of America encounter a variety of heroes from the future, including an 853rd-century Batman who patrols the prison planet Pluto. This version of Batman is accompanied by a robotic Robin who contains a transcribed copy of his own personality from before his parents were murdered by Plutonian criminals. This Robin (who calls himself "the Toy Wonder") is a member of the Justice Legion T in addition to serving as a deliberate counterbalance to Batman's dark personality. Elseworlds versions of DC characters are ones that exist in alternate timelines or realities that take place in entirely self-contained continuities. In Elseworlds Robin has been a German immigrant during WWII named Richart Graustark, Bruce Wayne Jr (the son of Julia Madison and Bruce Wayne), a genetically enhanced ape named Rodney, a samurai named Tengu, a pirate's cabin boy, a girl traveling via space ship to a far off colonial planet, Bruce Wayne's nephew Thomas Wayne III, MI-6 agent Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce Wayne's sister during the Reign of Terror in France, and a Native American named Red Bird. In Frank Miller's non-canonical The Dark Knight Returns, the role of Robin is filled by Carrie Kelley, a thirteen-year-old girl. She becomes Robin, and is accepted by the Batman after she saves his life. Unlike the previous Robins, Carrie is not an orphan, but she appears to have rather neglectful parents who are never actually depicted (one of them mutters "Didn't we have a kid?" while their daughter is watching the fierce battle between Batman and the Mutants). It is hinted through their dialogue that they were once activists and possibly hippies during the 1960s, but have since become apathetic stoners. She was the first female Robin and the first Robin with living parents. In the sequel, , 2001, Carrie dons the identity of Catgirl but still works as Batman's second- in-command. She was also featured in an episode of entitled "Legends of the Dark Knight". She then appeared in episode entitled "Batman Dies At Dawn!" along with Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown, and Damian Wayne. Kelley joined the New 52 DC universe in Batman and Robin #19, in a story titled Batman and Red Robin. Crime Syndicate version of Robin on Earth-3, associate of Owlman. Talon refers to Owlman as his father, whether he is the biological son of Thomas Wayne II or an alternate version of Jason Todd or Tim Drake is unknown. Talon first appeared in Teen Titans (vol. 3) #32 (March 2006). In the final issue of 52, a new Multiverse is revealed, originally consisting of 52 identical realities. Among the parallel realities shown is one designated "Earth-2". As a result of Mister Mind "eating" aspects of this reality, it takes on visual aspects similar to the pre-Crisis Earth-2, including Robin among other Justice Society of America characters. Based on comments by Grant Morrison, this alternate universe is not the pre-Crisis Earth-2. However, in the Justice Society of America Annual #1, published in the summer of 2008, Silver Scarab explains that the events of the Crisis are remembered by the people of this Earth-2, and from their perspective, Earth-2 seemed to be the only Earth to have survived the Crisis, raising theories as to whether or not Earth-2 was really destroyed, or was perhaps replaced by a new Earth-2. Indeed, in Justice Society of America #20, published in December 2008, Starman explains that during the re-expansion of the DC Multiverse, Earth-2 was reborn "along with everyone on it", including Robin. Following Flashpoint (2011) and The New 52 reboot, this Earth is replaced by another reimagining of Earth 2, one where Batman's daughter Helena Wayne served as Robin until an incident five years prior to the relaunch sent her to DC's primary continuity, Earth-0, where she works as Huntress. The 2014 series Earth 2: World's End establishes that Dick Grayson never served as Robin on this Earth, and was instead a reporter who married Barbara Gordon and had a son. During Darkseid's invasion of Earth 2, Barbara is killed, and Dick is trained in how to fight by Ted Grant and goes on a mission to find his missing son. The first Robin miniseries was printed in 1992 following Tim Drake's debut as Robin. The series centered around Tim's continued training and set up villains linked to the character. It was followed up by another series Robin II: Joker's Wild which pitted Tim against his predecessor's murderer the Joker. With Batman out of town, it was up to Tim and Alfred to end the Joker's latest crime spree. A final miniseries, Robin III: Cry of Huntress wrapped up the trilogy, teaming Tim with the Huntress. In 1993, the success of the three miniseries led to the ongoing Robin series which ran 183 issues until 2009. The title was replaced by a Batman and Robin series following the Battle for the Cowl mini-series, as well as an ongoing Red Robin monthly which continues the story of Tim Drake. The ongoing Robin series has taken part in a number of crossovers with other comics, especially Batman and related series. These include: Robin #7:, Robin #8:, Robin #9:, Robin #11–13:, Robin #14:, Robin #27–28:, Robin #32–33:, Robin #52–53:, Robin #67–73: Batman: No Man's Land, Robin #86: Batman: Officer Down, Robin #95: Joker: The Last Laugh, Robin #98–99:, Robin #129–131:, Robin #168–169: The Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul, Robin #175–176: Batman R.I.P. In addition, two Robin related series launched in June 2015: We Are Robin, featuring writer Lee Bermejo and artists Rob Haynes and Khary Randolph, and detailing multiple teenagers in Gotham who take up the mantle of Robin; and Robin, Son of Batman, written and drawn by Patrick Gleason, showing the individual adventures of Damian Wayne. According to Entertainment Weekly in 2008, Robin is one of the "greatest sidekicks". Robin (Dick Grayson) was portrayed by Douglas Croft and Johnny Duncan, respectively, in the 1943 and 1949 fifteen chapter Batman serials. Burt Ward played him in the 1966–1968 Batman television series and the related 1966 film. In the live-action movies Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, he was played by Chris O'Donnell. Michael Cera voiced the character in The Lego Batman Movie. The Dick Grayson version of Robin also appears in , voiced by Loren Lester. Grayson is replaced by Tim Drake, played by Mathew Valencia, in the subsequent series The New Batman Adventures. An older version of Robin (Dick Grayson) is portrayed by Brenton Thwaites in the live-action series Titans. The animated series Teen Titans features Robin (voiced by Scott Menville) as the leader of a team of young heroes; it is hinted in several episodes that this Robin is Dick Grayson. In the season two episode "Fractured", a version of Bat-Mite is introduced who claims to be Robin's "DNA buddy" (genetic twin). Bat-Mite gives his name as Nosyarg Kcid ("Dick Grayson" spelled backwards). In another episode, Raven reads Robin's mind and sees a man and a woman falling from a trapeze (an event known only to have happened to Grayson and not to any other Robin). In another episode, Starfire travels to the future and discovers that Robin has taken the identity of Nightwing. Menville reprises his role as Robin in Teen Titans Go!. Robin is also seen in the 1987 Zeller's commercial, which features the infamous catchphrase, "Well said, Robin!". Robin is voiced by Jesse McCartney in Young Justice. Robin is portrayed by Nick Lang in Holy Musical B@man!. His portrayal is based mainly on Burt Ward's Dick Grayson. Homosexuality in the Batman franchise, List of exclamations by Robin Robin on IMDb, Extensive biography on Dick Grayson, Extensive biography on Jason Todd, Extensive biography on Tim Drake Batman and Robin is an American comic book ongoing series, created by Grant Morrison and featuring Batman and Robin. The debut of the series followed the events of "Batman R.I.P.", Final Crisis, and "" in which the original Batman, Bruce Wayne, apparently died at the hands of DC Comics villain Darkseid and features the winner of the "Battle for the Cowl" as the new Batman. The conclusion of Battle for the Cowl shows Dick Grayson ascending to the role of Batman, while Damian Wayne becomes the new Robin. Morrison returned to writing the characters after being the ongoing writer on Batman from issues #655–658 and #663–683. While writing for this title, Morrison simultaneously wrote the miniseries and finished his run on the title with issue #16, before moving onto the next phase of his narrative in Batman Incorporated. Paul Cornell and Scott McDaniel created a three-issue arc before the new ongoing creative team, the former Green Lantern Corps duo of writer Peter Tomasi and artist Patrick Gleason, began their run with February 2011's issue #20. In an interview with IGN before the release of the first issue, Morrison detailed that the tone of the series would be a "reverse" of the normal dynamic between Batman and Robin, with, "a more light-hearted and spontaneous Batman and a scowling, bad ass Robin." Morrison also divulged that this is a continuation of his previous work on the Batman character, although this is a different title than what he wrote previously. "This is the next book in what will be a 5-volume series beginning [with] Batman and Son, but it can be read on its own too. Batman and Robin welcomes new readers!" Morrison also said that even though the series deals with familiar identities, the series features all new villains and situations, but also revealed that some villains were glimpsed in Batman #666. When asked if the series would deal with the new Batman being unable to fill Bruce Wayne's proverbial shoes, Morrison answered, "When I started out I had that in mind, and I thought we'd finally prove that nobody else could be Batman. But I do believe certain aspects of RIP were about how nobody but this guy could be Batman. I think with this, it's fun to start by seeing what happens when someone else tries. Sometimes it goes wrong, and sometimes it goes really well. Some of the things these guys do are things that Bruce Wayne would never have thought to do." In regards to using Frank Quitely as the opening artist, Morrison described the difference between this particular collaboration with previous ones, specifically on JLA Earth-2 and All-Star Superman. For instance, Morrison asked Quitely to choreograph the flow of the action in his own way, rather than through Morrison's normally heavily detailed scripts. In regards to the style, Morrison said, "I've asked [Quitely] to re-introduce the much-maligned sound effects to superhero comics, but in a way that integrates them more closely with the art." He also described Batman and Robin as, "a shorter, pacier collaboration so we've tried to keep it looser and more open than All-Star Superman. Morrison confirmed that following Quitely's run on the first three issues, Philip Tan would be the artist for the next three issues, an arc entitled "Revenge of the Red Hood", with Cameron Stewart as the artist for "Blackest Knight", the third arc, followed by Andy Clarke drawing the fourth arc titled "Batman vs. Robin" and Quitely coming back to the book sometime after. Frazer Irving took over for the fifth arc "Batman and Robin Must Die!" starting in issue #13. In an interview with USA Today, Morrison outlined the future of the titles, saying "I'm doing at least another year of stories with Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne in the Batman and Robin book before that book starts to dovetail with and we rush headlong and screaming into the next big, earth-shattering, game-changing twist in the life of Batman." It was announced Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason would take over the title after Grant Morrison, while Morrison will go onto a different title. Dick Grayson will continue his role as Batman concurrently with Bruce Wayne, and remain the star of Batman and Robin. With this title being Morrison's primary work in the Batman world for nearly two years, the writer has stated that this is a direct continuation of his Batman work: "With the collections out, we’ve got "Batman and Son",' we’ve got The Black Glove, we’ve got "Batman R.I.P.", and then we’ve got this one, Batman and Robin, and then, hopefully, there will be a final volume, a fifth volume." In regards to the fate of Bruce Wayne, Morrison stated that he would be dealing with that in the future. "Bruce is still out there. Final Crisis revealed Bruce is still out there and he’s got to make his way back in some way." Morrison also made the case for fans that disapprove of having a Batman that is not Bruce Wayne. "We’re not really entertaining the notion that Bruce won’t be back at some time. This isn’t like Captain America with the Winter Soldier story and Cap’s really gone. This is an ongoing story, another chapter in the life of Batman, so I think even people who are fans of Bruce and who think no one else can be Batman will be entertained by this. And be intrigued to see who it is." Morrison eventually brought Wayne back in a miniseries in which the title , and as promised, dovetailed the conclusion of that series with his final issue of the Batman and Robin title, seeing Bruce Wayne create Batman Incorporated. The main story of the comic series was made up of a series of three-issue story arcs. The first one, "Batman: Reborn", was penciled by Frank Quitely. The second arc, "Revenge of the Red Hood", was penciled by Philip Tan. The third arc, "Blackest Knight", is penciled by Cameron Stewart on issues #7-9 of Batman and Robin (2010).The fourth arc, "Batman vs. Robin", is penciled by Andy Clarke and contains issues #10-12. The fifth arc, penciled by Frazer Irving, is titled, "Batman and Robin Must Die!", it is the start of Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne and the end of the arc started by Batman: Reborn. After Paul Cornell's run on issues 17-19, the next arc, was written by Peter Tomasi and pencilled by Patrick Gleason, and was entitled "Dark Knight, White Knight". The new Batman and Robin take down a villain named Mr. Toad and deliver him to the police. Batman and Robin then set out to the police department after meeting up with Alfred to answer the Bat-Signal. Professor Pyg, a psychotic mutilation enthusiast in the guise of a pig, then tortures one of Toad's men, fixing him with a Dollotron mask. Pyg then expresses interest to doing the same to the man's daughter. Dick and Damian then fight the Circus of Strange; Dick fails Damian, who leaves to beat Pyg alone afterward. Damian then sees the man's daughter, promising to save her and her father, before being knocked out. Eventually Dick and Damian stop the gang, while the girl is saved by the Red Hood in a new uniform. Dick correctly infers that the new Red Hood is Jason Todd. The girl that the Red Hood saved, fixed with an imperfectly placed Dollotron mask, has now assumed the vigilante guise of Scarlet and acts as Red Hood's sidekick. Red Hood and Scarlet tear through the streets of Gotham, killing criminals. Various crime lords of Gotham, fearing the recent escalation in crime fighting by Jason and Scarlet, approach a new villain named the Flamingo to help defeat them. The Flamingo arrives, and shoots Jason twice. The Flamingo begins to overpower Jason, even when Batman and Robin assist, paralyzing Robin in the process. Scarlet manages to cut the Flamingo's face open, allowing Jason to kill him. Batman arrives to see that Damian is paralyzed from the waist down, but will recover due to his mother's influence and ability to replace Damian's damaged organs with harvested ones and Commissioner Gordon arrives and arrests Jason, who asks why Talia had not put Bruce in the Lazarus Pit. Scarlet's Dollotron mask falls off, and she repents her actions, fleeing Gotham for greener pastures. Oberon Sexton receives a call from a man who tells him that their group is everywhere while Dick enters a mysterious tunnel in the heart of the Batcave. Saying the password "zur...en...arrh," it is revealed that Dick, after the conclusion of the Blackest Night storyline, moved the body of Bruce Wayne into the more secure location. Dick thinks about what Jason said to him about the Lazarus Pit. Following the "Blackest Night" storyline, Dick takes Jason's suggestion into consideration and decides to check if Bruce's corpse is real. Dick enlists the aid of England's Squire and Knight to help him locate the last existing Lazarus Pit. After saving the Pearly Prince from destroying London, Dick believes that the Pearly King can give him information on the location of the Lazarus Pit. Pearly refuses to, however Knight has already found the pit. After arriving in the Pit they fight King Coal's men, who were already taken down by Knight. They encounter Batwoman, who is alerted that Dick is the new Batman, and she tells them that King Coal's men planned to sacrifice her to a new God of crime that is supposed to rise on that night. Dick remarks that there is no god of evil in the Pit, only the "real" Batman. The body is reanimated and rises from the Pit, but is unable to speak and begins attacking all that he sees. Dick sees that this being's rage is murderous, which conclusively proves that the body could not be Bruce Wayne's. It is revealed by flashback that the body of "Batman" is that of a perfect clone of Bruce Wayne that was created by Darkseid during the Final Crisis. Most of the clones were euthanized due to them being driven insane from the genetically inherited trauma of Bruce Wayne, but Darkseid claimed that one dead perfect clone of Batman could be useful to him. The dead clone is, in fact, the body recovered by Superman in the climax of Final Crisis after Darkseid sent the real Bruce Wayne, alive and well, into the distant past with his Omega Sanction. Outside, King Coal sets off explosions that cause the cave to implode around everyone. "Batman" escapes and flies to Gotham City, while Dick and a severely injured Batwoman are separated from Knight and Squire. Injured and paralyzed, Batwoman realizes that Dick is the new Batman and tells him that she is dying, but has a plan. Knight and Squire finally get to them, but Dick claims that Batwoman has died. Meanwhile, in Gotham, Alfred visits the vault in which "Bruce's" body was kept, finding that it was taken by Dick. Extremely worried, he meets a wheelchair-bound Damian, returning from his spinal reconstruction. Alfred informs Damian that Dick has taken the body. Damian looks into Dick's files and finds the plan for resurrecting his "father" by use of a Lazarus Pit. At that moment, the door opens and "Batman" throws Alfred into the room, and confronts Damian. Being unsure of who he was seeing, Damian simply asks, "Father...?" Dick explains that, due to the serious trauma that Batwoman has suffered, they decided they should let her die, then resurrect her in the Lazarus Pit. Batwoman overdoses on the morphine in Dick's medkit and, after being placed in the pit, is revived healthy. The cloned Batman is fended off by Alfred and an injured Damian, who is convinced it is not, in fact, his father. Damian lures the clone onto a patch of gasoline and ignites it, but the clone continues his attack. Dick takes a plane suborbital, and is able to make it to Gotham in 25 minutes—just in time to catch Damian, who has been cast off the top of Wayne Towers by the cloned Batman. The cloned Batman is decaying, and Batwoman and Dick defeat it. Back in the Batcave, Dick apologizes for taking the mission on his own, stating that he did not want to get anyone's hopes up. He then states that Tim Drake was right, Bruce Wayne must still be alive. There are strange troubles in Thomas Wayne's funds that Damian deals with. With the newfound knowledge that the corpse that Superman had recovered during the "Final Crisis" storyline, and which was later used in the "Blackest Night" storyline is not the corpse of Bruce Wayne, and that Bruce may truly be alive, Dick Grayson obtains knowledge from the Justice League of America that the "Omega Effect" Darkseid used on Batman may have sent him back through time, and Tim Drake is convinced that Bruce is using clues in the past to help his proteges and Alfred recover him. Talia is upset that Damian wants to stay with Dick and Alfred. Oberon Sexton is chased by hitmen and narrowly manages to escape. Alfred discovers a new lair in the Batcave, while dismantling booby traps set up by the Black Glove, and discovers portraits of Bruce's patrilineage. A "bat" theme is recurring in many of these portraits, causing Damian Wayne to suspect that if his father is truly in the past, one of the ancestors in the portrait may be Bruce himself. The story continues in . Later, not knowing what he is doing, Damian attempts to slice Dick's head off. He then runs into a cemetery, only to be grabbed by Oberon Sexton, who is still being chased by hitmen. Damian is revealed to be controlled by Talia al Ghul, using a device attached to his spine after the Flamingo's attack. Oberon Sexton single-handedly defeats all the assassins. Upon his interrogation of one of the assassins, Damian notes that Oberon Sexton's British accent is fake. After grouping that fact with his incredible battle skills, detective abilities, and stealth, asks if he is Bruce Wayne, the real Batman. Damian's question is ignored, and he is taken over by Deathstroke, who is using Talia's device to attack Dick. Although he is in under the control of Slade Wilson, Damian manages to warn Dick Grayson that Deathstroke controls him. Dick incapacitates Damian and uses an electrical charge to shock Slade out of Damian's body. Dick and Damian make a trip to Talia's secret fortress. Talia threatens to disown Damian if he does not leave being Robin and come back to her. To back up her threat, she shows Damian a clone that she has made of him. The clone is an exact duplicate - except for the fact that the clone is 10 years younger than Damian. Damian, though hurt, refuses to go along with his mother and leaves with Dick, who was confronting Slade while Damian was with his mother. Back in the cave, Dick, Damian, and Alfred find a bat-totem that seems to confirm that Bruce is stuck in the past. With this information, Dick goes to confront Oberon Sexton, who is under police protection. Sexton then reveals himself to really be the Joker. The next story arc, "Batman and Robin Must Die!" begins with Simon Hurt holding Batman and Robin hostage. As Dick Grayson is beaten down and unmasked by Hurt's men, Dr. Hurt taunts him, asking whether Batman believes that a Grayson is superior to a Wayne. As Dick claims that Hurt has already been beaten, Hurt then shoots Dick in the back of the head while Robin watches. A flashback of the events leading to this begins when Robin arrives at Oberon's apartment, where Dick has apprehended the Joker. As they begin questioning him, the Joker reveals that, since the death of "his Batman", he is no longer the "clown prince" that he once was and took on the identity of Oberon to gain the new Batman's trust. The Joker warns Batman that everyone will die unless Dick Grayson's Batman is as good as the last one. Batman brings Gordon to the Batcave, where Batman theorizes that Pyg's virus might have been carried throughout a common cold as a Trojan virus. As Gordon shows signs of being infected, they receive an alert that the Joker has asked to see Robin alone. Batman and Gordon then rush to return to GCPD headquarters. Meanwhile, Robin (using a crowbar) is attempting to torture information out of the Joker. As Dick and Gordon race to stop Damian from killing the Joker, they are shot down mid-air by the Black Glove and Dick is knocked unconscious, leaving Gordon surrounded by an army of Dollotrons. At the same time, Professor Pyg is freed from Arkham by El Penitente's men. The Joker then manages to escape GCPD headquarters by scratching Damian with Joker venom. Meanwhile, Batman and Commissioner Gordon are separated by the swarm of Dollotrons, who deliver Gordon to Professor Pyg and Doctor Hurt. Dick barely escapes when the new Batmobile self-destructs and wakes up in the Bat-Bunker. Dick attempts to contact Damian, but his com-link is answered by the Joker, who reveals his endgame: Batman and Robin, working for the Joker. Throughout the city, Pyg's infection has turned Gotham into a city of drug addicts, who are shown throwing the city into chaos. Gordon is then showcased by Hurt to a group of crime lords, with Hurt declaring Gotham 'the new Capital of Crime'. Batman and Joker attack the event by incapacitating Pyg's Dollotrons and poisoning the audience with Joker venom, respectively. Dick, however, is taken prisoner by Dr. Hurt after an addicted Gordon knocks him out. The Joker (wearing his Oberon Sexton get-up and mask) is then seen preparing another attack on the Black Glove, implying that he intends to use a trussed-up Robin. After sending Batman out after Dr. Hurt, Joker prepares to send Robin. Robin obeys in order to save Batman, whom the Joker claims is in 'the Devil's chopping block'. Meanwhile, Dr. Hurt (disguised as Thomas Wayne) returns and takes over Wayne Manor, addressing that he will save the city. Robin, meanwhile, manages to attack Professor Pyg, and frees a now-cured Gordon from the virus. Damian then advises the Commissioner (who guesses that enough rage can counter the virus) to take back the city, refusing Gordon's help. Robin, however, proves no match for Hurt's 99 Fiends gang, and is overpowered and delivered to Hurt, along with Batman. The story then shifts to the present, with Hurt revealing that the shot to Batman's head is not fatal, but in 12 hours would result in a hematoma that would leave Dick incapacitated for life. In exchange for saving Dick, Hurt makes Robin promise to give up his soul, and assist him in resurrecting Barbatos through the box that Bruce Wayne encounters in Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne. However, before Robin can pledge his soul to Hurt, someone whistles the tune that opens the box, revealing a note with the word "Gotcha". Batman and Robin (who were actually stalling all the time) take down Hurt together. The Dynamic Duo then points Hurt out to someone behind the villain. The shadowed figure is revealed to be none other than Bruce Wayne himself, who simply says, "It's all over." Serving as the conclusion of "Batman and Robin Must Die!", the issue begins with a flashback to the 18th century depicting Simon Hurt's encounter with Darkseid's hyper-adapter during his cult's attempt to summon the demon Barbatos in a seance. In the present, Hurt sics his 99 Fiends gang on the Dynamic Duo and the recently returned Bruce Wayne. The trio defeats Hurt's thugs in a matter of minutes, and subsequently splits up, with Bruce pursuing Hurt into the Batcave and Dick and Damian leaving to Gotham Square in order to defuse Professor Pyg's bomb. As Bruce sprints down to the Batcave, Hurt reveals that he has Alfred hostage underwater before trapping Bruce in the decommissioned interrogation room. Meanwhile, Dick and Damian confront Pyg and turn his Dollotrons against him. As Dick collapses from his head wound, Damian climbs atop Pyg's float and defuses the bomb with seconds to spare. Back at the Batcave, Bruce escapes the interrogation chamber with ease and attacks Hurt. Batman reveals that Hurt is neither his father nor Satan, but a delusional maniac driven insane (but granted extended longevity) by an encounter with an extraterrestrial weapon, who was treated by the real Dr. Thomas Wayne in the years before Bruce's birth. Hurt makes his escape by forcing Bruce to choose between capturing him or saving Alfred from drowning. As Bruce dives into the Batcave's waters to retrieve his butler from a flooded cockpit, Hurt flees the manor, only to be poisoned and buried alive by the Joker outside. The Joker is shortly thereafter beaten into submission by Bruce. The next day, Dick is recovering from his bullet wound while the Gotham quarantine is lifted. That night, Bruce announces to the world that he has been secretly financing Batman for years, and is taking the Bat-Family's fight against crime to the next level; Batman Incorporated. Batman and Robin investigate the disappearance the corpse of Una Nemo, one of Bruce Wayne's former girlfriends, who was shot in the head during Wayne's disappearance. After following a trail of clues involving the woman's empty grave, the return of Nemo's fake corpse, and an exploding fingernail serving as a trap, the Dynamic Duo head out to a church, where they find a seemingly brainwashed crowd playing out a fake wedding with a kidnapped technician. Fighting off the crowd, Batman and Robin rescue the technician, only to be trapped in the balcony above the church. Moments later, the technician flings himself down the crowd, removing the disguise to reveal Una Nemo, now calling herself the Absence. Batman and Robin are shot down from their hiding place by the Absence, who orders her people to restrain the two. She then proceeds to relate her origin story, beginning with her break-up with Bruce Wayne, which hurts her terribly. During a cruise with her friend, Terri, a group of thugs hold up the ship. After seeing Terri shot dead, Una attempts to cut one of the thugs with her wine glass, only to be shot in the head and fall in the water. Waking near the beach, she manages to return home and discovers she has Dandy Walker syndrome, which has allowed her to survive despite the gaping hole in her head. Disguising herself to attend her own funeral, she finds that none of the mourners cared for her very much, despite her status as a successful and kind businesswoman. The breaking point comes when she sees that Bruce Wayne failed to attend, and Una removes her bandages, her obsession with absence forged. After telling her story to Batman and Robin, The Absence leaves, setting off an explosion in the church, saying "Until [Bruce] notices I'm gone...I'll keep reminding him." Batman and Robin manage to escape the conflagration, and regroup in the Bat-Bunker, where Damian muses on his father's habit of pretending to like women as a disguise. After discussing the matter, Alfred decides to call Bruce, who talks with Dick about the matter. Bruce says that he is sorry, and warns Batman about what they both think the Absence will do next. Meanwhile, Vicki Vale is attempting to write an article in her new apartment when she is confronted by the Absence, wielding a scissor and a bag of body parts belonging to Bruce's old girlfriends. Although the Absence manages to capture Batman and Robin, trapping them into a device that is set to drill holes in the middle of their heads, the drill bits prove to be fake. They escape the trap, but the Absence escapes. Batman and Robin deal with the White Knight, a luminous villain whose modus operandi is to force family members of Arkham inmates to commit suicide in order to cut off their bloodlines, thus ending what he believes to be the insanity running through their veins. The White Knight possesses a tree containing totems of famous Arkham inmates (such as Victor Zsasz, the Mad Hatter, and the Man-Bat), with the names of their relations written on each totem. Dick, Damian and Alfred discuss Damian's choice to be Robin. After a showdown with in an illuminated Arkham Asylum, the White Knight's mechanical wings explode, fusing them to his body. It is revealed that Batman and Robin's new rogue is named Lewis Bayard, the son of a murdered Arkham guard. At his own Arkham cell, the White Knight begins a new Tree of Blood from a bonsai tree, hanging Batman and Robin's emblems from the limbs as the light goes out. After a conversation with Bruce Wayne, it is revealed that Jason Todd, the Red Hood, has requested for a transfer from Arkham Asylum. Bruce warns Batman and Robin to keep a close eye on Red Hood; meanwhile, Jason proceeds to cause havoc on the minimal prison he is incarcerated in. After a spree which ends with many people poisoned in the cafeteria, the warden of the prison returns Red Hood to Arkham. Before Batman and Robin can arrive at the scene, the convoy transporting Jason is ambushed, and he is sprung free by a group of mercenaries with features like that of animals. Introducing themselves as the Menagerie (a group of mercenaries whom Batman and the Red Hood identify as working in South America), the team was assigned to deliver Red Hood to a mysterious woman acting as their financier. Red Hood attempts to fight the Menagerie off but remains on the verge of defeat until Batman and Robin arrive. A sarcastic Jason sighs, "Thank God. It's Batman and Robin." Batman and Robin take out the mercenaries and attempt to recapture Todd, who, during the fight, uses one of the Menagerie as a hostage against both parties. At that moment, the mysterious person who orchestrated Todd's escape tells the Red Hood that she holds his previous sidekick, Scarlet, in a similar predicament. Todd is then forced to work with Batman and Robin in an attempt to free Scarlet. He sets up a meeting with the woman, pretending to have gone off Batman and Robin's radar. The two crash the meeting, thanks to the Batmobile's stealth mode and a tracer swallowed by Todd, after which Batman, Robin and the Red Hood fight off their opponents together. The Red Hood once again flees during the battle with Scarlet by his side, hijacking a helicopter and preventing Batman and Robin from taking chase by setting off a series of charges throughout Gotham, with the promise to set off more. Batman and Robin reluctantly take off to defuse the bombs, while Jason Todd and Scarlet head towards an unknown destination. In the last issue of Batman and Robin before the 2011 New 52 relaunch of all of DC Comics' monthly titles, the main story is intercut with sepia-like pages of the main villain's origin. In it, Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne team up with Batman Incorporated representative Nightrunner to stop a breakout in Le Jardin Noir (The Black Garden), which acts as the Parisian equivalent of Arkham Asylum. The three attempt to quell a riot at the Louvre, which was incited by four Black Garden inmates, led by the mysterious Son of Man (garbed after the famous Magritte painting). The Son of Man appears to be obsessed with surrealist themes, which the Black Garden inmates apply to the famous museum. The Id (an empathic manipulator), Sister Crystal (who possesses a hand that can turn anything into glass), Skin Talker (a man who makes hypnotic suggestions through the skin), and Ray Man (an illusion caster) initially cause trouble for all three. They eventually appear to splice Batman in half, turn Robin into glass, and Nightrunner into a cloth-like boneless structure. After a moment, Batman shakes off what is revealed as an illusion and rallies his allies, enabling them to take down the inmates. The three realize that the entire fight was being watched by the Son of Man. Bursting into the Son of Man's headquarters, Batman, Robin and Nightrunner watch as the Son of Man presents his story through a giant screen. Moments after his birth and his mother's subsequent death, the Son of Man's father decided to turn his son into a work of art. It is revealed that the father mutilates his infant son's face, taking his inspiration from Victor Hugo's The Man Who Laughs. The Son of Man (whose face is not shown throughout the course of the issue) reveals himself to be a red-haired lookalike of the Joker, after which he attempts to blow up the heroes using a remote-control device. Batman manages to stop him by using a riot foam dispenser he used against Sister Crystal. After his arrest, another surprise is revealed: the Son of Man, obsessed with the surreal, has managed to keep his father alive eternally by taking apart his body, encasing each part (including the organs) in a glass case. His father, now dismembered and arranged to form an art sculpture, is forced to watch the same sepia-colored home videos of his infant child in a continuous loop. The Son of Man's real name (Norman S. Rotrig) is a reference to the original writer of the series (as an anagram of his name). Following the timeline-altering Flashpoint storyline, DC Comics cancelled all of their ongoing superhero titles and relaunched 52 new series, all starting with #1 issues in an initiative called The New 52. Among the relaunched series was Batman and Robin. The relaunched DC Universe features several notable differences from its previous incarnation, making all of the established heroes roughly five years younger than their previous versions before the relaunch. While much of Batman's history from the previous DC Universe remains intact, Bruce Wayne is again the only hero serving as Batman and as such, he has replaced Dick Grayson in this title. Volume 2 features the exploits of Bruce and Damian, father and son, as Batman and Robin. The team of writer Peter Tomasi and artist Patrick Gleason return to the title upon the relaunch, telling a story of a man from Bruce's past arriving in Gotham as both a vigilante and enemy of Batman, as well as trying to seduce Damian away from a form of crimefighting that defies his lethal and unpredictable skill and nature. The series takes place between Justice League International and . Damian Wayne discovers it harder to work with Bruce and reveals that he prefers to work with Dick. When Bruce subjugates Damian to lessons that he had his previous "sons" undertake, he ends up telling Damian that he does not trust him. Morgan Ducard then strains the relationship between Damian and Bruce and manages to sway Damian over to his side. Morgan then takes Damian to his base with a prisoner and Damian reveals their alliance to be a ruse and gives away their location to Bruce. When Bruce arrives, a brutal battle ensues which ends with Damian killing Morgan and passing out. Following the death of Damian Wayne in Batman Incorporated #8, the series continued, being known as Batman and... Each issue is meant to symbolize Bruce Wayne/Batman going through one of the five stages of grief. Batman and Red Robin #19 introduced Carrie Kelley, the Robin from the graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns to continuity as a former acting teacher of Damian's who is distrustful of his disappearance and Bruce Wayne's unconvincing explanations. Batman and Red Hood #20 sees Batman sabotage his repaired relationship with former Robin Jason Todd as he grows increasingly fixated on resurrecting Damian. Batman and Batgirl #21 saw Batman continue to alienate Batgirl despite her desire to repair their relationship, even offering to take up the mantle of Robin. Batman and Catwoman #22 saw a turning point in Batman's attitude as he assisted Catwoman in saving a young hostage from a group of terrorists. The issue ends with a silent appearance by Two-Face, hinting at the franchise's next story arc. Batman and Nightwing #23 concluded the '5 Stages of Grief' story arc with 'Acceptance'. Batman, with the help of Nightwing and a computerized simulation, is able to prove that he could have saved Damian, thus allowing him to finally move on from Damian's death. However, we discover that Alfred has been harboring feelings of tremendous guilt as he allowed Damian to leave the house against Bruce's orders the night that he died. Bruce consoles a heartbroken Alfred as he shuts down the simulation. In September 2013, for "Villains Month", Batman and Robin centers on Two-Face, the Court of Owls, Ra's al Ghul and Killer Croc, in four point-one issues. Issue #23.1 shows Two-Face as he dispenses justice with the flip of the coin now that there is no Batman to stop him. In issue #23.2, some of the history of the Court of Owls is seen, as well as teasing a future storyline in Talon. In issue #37, published in December 2014, Batman revives Damian using a Chaos Shard. Damian returns to the role of Robin after this, though he finds himself endowed with Kryptonian-like superpowers due to the nature of his revival. These powers disappeared soon after, and Batman and Robin temporarily parted ways. Batman: Night of the Owls (Batman and Robin (vol. 2) #9), The Joker: Death of the Family (Batman and Robin (vol. 2) #15-16) Morrison & Quitely on "Batman & Robin". Comic Book Resources. March 10, 2009, Frank Quitely on Batman and Robin, Newsarama. March 10, 2009

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Austin Reed is a fictional character from the soap opera Days of Our Lives. The role was played by actor Patrick Muldoon from 1992 to 1995, and again from 2011 to 2012. The character was played for a longer duration by actor Austin Peck, from 1995 to 2002, from 2005 to 2006, and again in 2017. According to his storyline on the series, Austin Reed's birth name is unknown. His father, Curtis, took the children (Austin and his sister Billie) and changed their names to prevent their mother Kate Roberts from finding them. All that is known is that his original surname was Brown. Muldoon's return in 2011 was short-lived. In April 2012, it was announced that Muldoon, along with Clark and several other actors, had been let go from the series. Muldoon tweeted: "#DAYS been great 2 us. It will always be home. We all feel sick". On September 15, 2016, it was announced that Peck would reprise his portrayal as Austin, alongside Christie Clark's Carrie. The couple returned on January 11, 2017 as Carrie (a lawyer) came to assist her mother Anna. After accomplishing this, Peck and Clark departed on February 16, 2017. It was announced in July 2019 that the where plans of revisiting the character of Austin returning to Salem in early 2020, along side Alison Sweeney, who portrays Sami Brady, Austin's on and off romantic interest. Rumors began circulating that both Peck and Muldoon turned down the opportunity to return. Extra investigated a story in which Patrick Muldoon's agent issued an official statement to NBC and Corday Productions that Muldoon has no plans to return to the series. In September 2019, Digital Spy reported that Peck, Sweeney, and Christie Clark, who portrays Austin's longtime on-screen love interest, Carrie was in talks with Sony, Corday Productions, NBC, Days executive producer Ken Corday, and head writer Ron Carlivanti about returning to the series in the near future. Ron Carlivanti and Ken Corday conducted an interview with Extra and Digital Spy individually revealing his plans their plans to revisit an Austin/Carrie/Sami love story triangle story on the canvas in the near future, revealing Austin's importance on the canvas and part of the show's rich history. An October 2019 article with Digital Spy revealed contract talks with Peck had failed but Austin would recast. In November 2019, it was officially announced that former Y&R; cast member, Scott Elrod would be joining the series as the new Austin Reed, reporting that Elrod has signed a six-month contract with the series. Fan and journalism responses blew up the internet and print. Ron Carlivanti commented on the recast in an interview with soapcentral.com, stating "Austin returns to Salem with a BANG! in the new year, around valentine's day! Austin's return is going to effect everyone in town. Austin won't have anyone stand in his way for what he wants including Sami, Carrie, and Kate. Austin is known for his charm and wanting to be a top of success. He's back in town and has plans for everything and everybody!". It was further announced that Alison Sweeney and Christie Clark will return to the series in 2020 with a handful of stints to aid with Austin's story. In July 1992 an aspiring boxer named Austin Reed came to Salem, and his troubled sister Billie Reed followed weeks later. He was instantly smitten with Carrie Brady. Carrie gave Billie a place to stay, which led to the two of them spending a lot of time together. Carrie and Austin were doing great until Sami came to town in January 1993 and Austin didn't throw a fight, which drew the ire of a lot of bad people. Due to this, acid was thrown on Carrie's face, scarring her. Carrie went through reconstructive surgery, while Austin dealt with the murder of his father, Curtis. Billie was the prime suspect. At the trial, both Billie and Austin learned that Kate Roberts was their biological mother – making Lucas Roberts their half-brother. Meanwhile, Carrie's half- sister Sami Brady was obsessed with Austin and plotting any way she could to get him. After Alan and Sami's relationship came to an end, and Carrie and Austin broke up, Sami went so far as to drug and rape Austin, making him believe she was Carrie in January 1995. The following morning, Austin was horrified to awaken and find Sami in his bed. Austin rejected Sami and she fled Salem. Carrie and Austin attempted to find Sami, traveling to Los Angeles, where they reunited. Carrie and Austin managed to survive all the drama and returned to Salem. Austin soon proposed and Carrie and Austin planned their wedding. Sami ruined their happiness by announcing that she was pregnant with Austin's child, who was later named Will, in July 1995. Austin decided the right thing would be to stay with Sami and try to make a go of it, even though his heart would always be with Carrie. In June 1996, Kate and Jamie Caldwell (Sami's BFF) exposed that Sami drugged Austin and he and Carrie reunited. In August 1996, Will was abducted by a neighbor of Sami's and whisked off to France. Sami was able to get Austin to marry her in order to bring Will home in September 1996. The marriage was annulled shortly afterwards. In December 1996, Sami was in a dangerous car accident on News Year's Eve. Austin blamed himself as he had told Sami he hated her shortly beforehand. The accident rendered Sami with no memory of the previous 3 years. As Austin took care of Sami, he decided it would be best for her and Will if they would remarry. Over the course of time, Sami regained her memory as well as learned—due to seeing medical records—that Wil wasn't Austin's son, and a told only Lucas. The wedding was set to take place in September 1997. However, the wedding ceremony was interrupted by Carrie, who exposed the truths that Lucas was Will's actual father and that Sami had been faking amnesia. Austin, heartbroken, left Sami at the altar and married Carrie that same day. Sami left Salem for a while, but unfortunately Carrie and Austin's married bliss didn't last long. Sami returned months later, fought for custody of Will, and fell in love and became engaged to Franco Kelly. In September 1998, Franco was murdered by Lucas Roberts, and wanting revenge on Sami, Kate covered up the murder and made it look like Sami committed the murder. Austin fled town with Sami to help her, but Sami was caught, tried and set to be executed for the murder. At the last moment, the truth came out. Because Austin had spent so much time with Sami in a misguided attempt to help her, Carrie felt their relationship was falling apart. Mike Horton stepped in to fill the void as he was attracted to Carrie, and eventually Carrie and Austin broke up. Carrie moved to Israel with Mike on November 19, 1999. Austin then rekindles his romance with Sami later that same year, and despite a brief fling with Greta and Nicole, Austin and Sami remain on and off before becoming engaged in the spring of 2002. However, Sami blackmails Victor into transferring Austin's job to Hawaii to escape Lucas and when Austin finds out, he leaves Sami at the altar and leaves Salem. In 2005, Austin returned to Salem for his half-brother Lucas and Sami's next attempt at tying the knot. The wedding didn't happen and Austin was there for Sami when no one else was. With no place to stay in Salem, Austin moved in with Sami. They formed a company along with Nicole called Austin Reed and Company, or ARC. The company took over High Style, a company that was run by Carrie. Austin did not know Carrie was back in the United States and did not know High Style was her company. Lucas found out the company Austin was taking over was indeed Carrie's but did not tell Austin. Lucas knew that once Carrie and Austin saw each other, they would get back together. Lucas had fallen for Carrie and wanted her to himself for several years, and knew Carrie would not get back with Austin if Austin took over her company, so he allowed it to happen. Carrie was furious with Austin for taking over her company, and Lucas stepped in to comfort her; they began a relationship. Sami and Lucas deviously worked together to help Lucas further his relationship with Carrie. Sami's motive was to make sure Carrie was not available romantically for Austin, as Sami wanted Austin for herself. Eventually Carrie and Lucas married, and Austin and Sami were a couple and were planning yet another wedding. To ensure that Carrie would no longer want to be with Austin, Sami was also able to blackmail Dr. Lexie Carver after finding out about Lexie's affair with young detective Tek Kramer. Lexie thought up of a bogus story to tell Carrie, which was that Austin and Carrie shared rare genetic markers and if they ever had children, the child would suffer extreme birth defects that could result in death. Carrie then moved on romantically with Lucas, and even became engaged. She soon believed she was pregnant due to an inaccurate pregnancy test, causing her and Lucas to rush their wedding date. When Carrie found out there was no baby, and had a "hysterical pregnancy", she was distraught and cheated on Lucas with Austin (who was still engaged to Sami) on the roof of their apartment building. Carrie was extremely relieved when Austin did not marry Sami. Prior to the ceremony she had expressed to Marlena that she was still in love with Austin, and admitted to loving Lucas but not being in love with him. After secretly meeting with Austin to make love and comfort one another, Lucas and Sami came to the roof and caught them. After a bitter tirade on Sami and Lucas' part, Carrie was kicked out of their apartment. Soon after, Carrie handed Lucas annulment papers and Lucas was more than willing to sign them in order to immediately get Carrie out of his life. However, minutes later, the Gloved Hand slid a note under Sami's apartment door and Lucas, Carrie and Austin discovered the truth behind Sami's blackmailing of Lexie. After Sami finally admitted the truth about her misdeeds, a furious Carrie attacked her. The two sisters fought and Carrie swore she would make public what Sami had done to Lexie. Later, Carrie ran into Lexie and revealed to her that she knew the truth behind Sami's blackmail. Although Lexie tried to plea her case, Carrie didn't care and promised to get even with Lexie by reporting her to the hospital board and the AMA. After showing up with Dr. Finch to keep her promise, Lexie was immediately fired and Carrie felt that her stay in Salem was nearly complete. During dinner, Austin suggested that they move to Switzerland, where he can work at the Mythic Communications division there and Carrie can reclaim Highstyle. Carrie agreed on one condition—that they get married first. The two immediately went to the Justice of the Peace with their signed marriage licenses and got married (but not before being briefly interrupted by a drunk Sami and Carrie disowning her). After saying their goodbyes to John, Kate, Marlena and Roman, Austin and Carrie took a plane and left Salem. In June 2010, Carrie also briefly returned to town and told Sami that she and Austin were happy and trying to start a family. On September 26, 2011, Austin and Carrie returned to Salem. It was revealed that Austin had become a Forensic Accountant after Mythic Communications had been forced to close down. In October 2015, Austin couldn't attend his nephew Will's funeral. Reed/Roberts Family Austin at soapcentral.com Kate Roberts is a fictional character on the NBC soap opera Days of Our Lives. The matriarch of the series' Roberts family, the role was originated by Deborah Adair in 1993, and is currently played by (and most associated with) Lauren Koslow, who has held the role since 1996. Kate is the mother of Austin Reed, Billie Reed, Lucas Horton, Philip Kiriakis, and the twins Cassie and Rex Brady. Kate is the ex-wife of Curtis Reed, Victor Kiriakis, Roman Brady, Stefano DiMera, and is the widow of André DiMera. She is known for getting what she wants via scheming. In 2000, Koslow received a Soap Opera Digest Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress, for her portrayal of Kate. The character was created by Days of Our Lives head writer Sheri Anderson, and first portrayed by actress Deborah Adair in 1993. Adair played Kate through to April 1995, when she retired from acting. The character was reintroduced in 1996 under the pen of head writer James E. Reilly, and played by Lauren Koslow, who had previously starred on The Bold and the Beautiful. Anderson, who wrote for Adair, said in an interview in 2011 that Reilly put a bit of a different spin on the character of Kate to Anderson's initial conception. Kate's primary role within the narrative is that of a femme-fatale and villainess. She is portrayed as a stoic, aggressive and family-oriented woman who is generally loving and supportive, but often interferes in her friends and relatives lives through any means she thinks necessary. When Kate arrives in Salem (the town where the soap opera is set) in 1993 she is single, with one adult son, Lucas Roberts. As the story develops it is revealed that Kate has lived in Salem before, where she was married with two children; but when Kate got pregnant with Lucas by another man (Dr Bill Horton), her husband kicked her out, and vanished with their two children, faking their deaths. In the storyline, Kate discovers her elder children (Austin Reed and Billie Reed) are alive and living in Salem and she is reunited with them. Some sources confuse Kate Roberts with 1970s Days of Our Lives character Dr Kate Winograd (played by Elaine Princi), who was Head of Anesthesiology at Salem University Hospital, and who had a friendship and attraction with her colleague Bill Horton in Days of Our Lives episodes broadcast from 1977 to 1979. However, the broadcast story of Dr Kate Winograd and the backstory of Kate Roberts are incompatibly different, and other sources, including Sony Pictures Television's official website, keep the two Kates as separate characters. Moreover, Days headwriter Sheri Anderson stated in 2011 that she "actually originally created the character of Kate" with her friend Deborah Adair initially playing her (in 1993); and actress Lauren Koslow showed no knowledge of Dr Kate Winograd in a 2015 interview with Afterbuzz TV. In February 1993, businesswoman Kate Roberts (Deborah Adair) arrives in Salem to work at Titan Publishing Company for Victor Kiriakis (John Aniston). Although a new character to Days of Our Lives, it is revealed that Kate has lived in Salem before. She is friends with psychiatrist Dr Marlena Evans (Deidre Hall), and is actually a former patient of hers. Kate kept a journal back when she was Marlena's patient, and Kate breaks in to the house she used to live in Salem trying to find it. At Titan, Kate is given a manuscript of a novel to consider for publication. When she reads it, she realizes it is her life story, plagariazed from her journal, and she blocks its publication. Kate's son Lucas Roberts (Bryan Dattilo) joins her in Salem, on a spring break from West Point Military Academy. When Kate meets Dr Tom and Alice Horton (Macdonald Carey and Frances Reid), Alice realizes Kate used to be a tenant in a house owned by her son Bill Horton (now occupied by his daughter Jennifer, and her husband Jack Deveraux, who found her journal, and wrote the novel); and Tom recognizes her as a former patient, a battered woman. Tom remembers that he delivered her a baby boy (this was Lucas). Kate wants the secrets about her past to remain hidden, but Lucas wants to know the identity of his father. Kate has told him that his father was "Alan Roberts" and given him a photo, but Lucas discovers that the photo is of a random stranger, and "Alan Roberts" does not exist. In response to Lucas's anger, Kate tells him she does not know his father's name. Kate informs a stunned Lucas that before he was born, she was married to an abusive man, with whom she had two children, and she turned to Lucas's father for comfort. She cries when she tells him the children, his half-brother and half-sister, later died in a motor accident. Meanwhile, Kate and Victor have become close, and she and Vivian Alamain (Louise Sorel), who loves Victor, have become rivals in their pursuit of his love. It looks like Kate is the winner, when Victor asks Kate to marry him – he wants to have a child with her – and Kate accepts, and they marry. A man named Curtis Reed (Nick Benedict) arrives in Salem, and starts blackmailing Kate about her past. Lucas learns that this is Kate's former husband, who was violent to her. Then suddenly, in November 1993, Curtis is found shot dead, apparently murdered. Found next to his body in a drugged state is Billie Reed (Lisa Rinna), whom Curtis drugged and abused before his death. Kate, Lucas, Billie, and her brother Austin Reed (Patrick Muldoon) all come under suspicion for Curtis's murder, but Billie becomes the prime suspect. There is a trial where they all have to testify. Meanwhile, Vivian Alamain has rescued Bill Horton's wife, Laura Horton (Jaime Lyn Bauer) from the sanitarium where she was being kept comatose by corrupt staff (in order to extort money for her care from the Horton family). Vivian and Laura crash the trial, and Laura tells the whole court that Kate was married to Curtis (a fact she knows from them both being former tenants of Bill and hers). Then Billie admits on the stand that she is Curtis's daughter, and was sexually abused by Curtis during her childhood. Billie and Austin realize that Kate is their mother, and vice versa. Initially Billie blames Kate for the abuse she suffered; but when Curtis had found out Kate was pregnant with another man's child, he beat her and left her abanded by the side of a road, and vanished with Austin and Billie. Billie is found to be innocent when it is discovered that Curtis was accidentally shot during a scuffle with Stefano DiMera (Joseph Mascolo). Vivian, who wants to break up Kate and Victor, urges Laura to go public with the fact that Kate had a sexual affair with Laura's husband Bill Horton. Bill was the other man – the father of Lucas. Laura crashes a party Victor is holding for Kate and tells all. Lucas is outraged that Kate has kept his father from him. Victor also learns from a tabloid reporter that his marriage to Kate is invalid, as Curtis was still alive when they married. Kate wants to get married to Victor legally, and Victor promises to marry her, but only if she gives him an heir; and when Kate learns she will have difficulty in conceiving another child, they decide to use in vitro fertilization. Some embryos begin to form, but Vivian swaps the embryos and has Victor and Kate's embryos implanted in her. Vivian gives birth to a healthy baby boy, Philip Kiriakis on February 21, 1995. While pregnant with Philip, Vivian drives a wedge between Kate and Victor's relationship, and tricks Victor into marrying her. Vivian poisons the pilot of a plane transporting Kate, and when the plane crashes on April 24, 1995, Kate is believed killed. After surviving the crash, Kate (now Lauren Koslow) returns to Salem on January 25, 1996, determined to win custody of her son Philip. Learning Vivian and Victor are together, Kate seeks revenge. Kate vows to take Victor's Titan Corporation and his son Philip (still an infant at the time) away from them. Victor suffers a stroke, and Vivian is arrested for her schemes. Kate is now in charge of Victor's empire. Billie also returns, closely followed by Franco Kelly (Victor Alfieri). Kate hires Franco to break up Bo and Hope, so Billie can be happy with Bo. Kate is also now a grandmother: Sami Brady (Alison Sweeney) gave birth to a son whilst Kate was away. His name is Will, and Sami claims he is Austin's, but he is actually Lucas's child. Sami misleads everyone in her bid to get Austin to marry her, and when the truth of Will's paternity comes out, Sami fights Lucas for custody. Thus begins an epic battle between Kate and Sami. Sami finds out that Kate was once a prostitute and blackmails Kate. Sami falls in love with Franco and they prepare to marry. Kate wants to stop it, because she fears Lucas will lose Will. Kate tries to blackmail Franco about his mob past, but Franco attacks Kate with a poker on the eve of the wedding. Lucas saves Kate by shooting Franco, who dies instantly, and Kate frames Sami for the killing. At the trial for Franco's death, Sami is convicted and is sentenced to death. As she is about to be executed, Lucas confesses in a bid to save her. However, Kate has just persuaded a dying man to sign a false confession and Sami is saved, and she and Lucas both go free. Meanwhile, Kate is still battling with Vivian for control over Titan. Kate begins a relationship with Vivian's nephew, Nicholas Alamain, but he leaves town. She then attempts to sly her way back into Victor's good graces. She blows her chances, however, when she is caught in flagrante delicto with mob boss Vincent Moroni (Carl Weintraub). She conspires with him to kill Victor at the coronation of Greta Von Amberg. The plan accidentally kills Vincent's only child, Angela Moroni (Ayda Field), and causes Vincent to commit suicide. Victor, realizing Kate's plan, flees for his life and fakes his death. He reveals himself to her the night she sets the Kiriakis mansion on fire and attempts to kill him with a poker. Victor escapes, but Lucas is severely burned. Victor kicks Kate out of the house, but does not tell Philip about his mother's murder attempts on him. Philip's plea causes Victor to provide Kate with a small allowance. Kate gets a job at Basic Black, and begins dating Roman Brady (Josh Taylor). Kate and Roman find out that they are the biological parents of twins Rex Brady (Eric Winter) and Cassie Brady (Alexis Thorpe). Roman asks Kate to marry him, and she agrees. They have a beautiful wedding, but the reception is shattered when Kate finds Roman's apparently-dead body. She mourns him deeply, but it doesn't stop her from destroying his daughter Sami's relationship with her son Lucas. Kate encourages Philip to spend more time with Belle Black (Martha Madison). Cassie, too, is apparently murdered. Her body is found with multiple stab wounds in a Thanksgiving pinata. Kate is found holding the bloody knife and is arrested but, in reality, Cassie's and Roman's apparent deaths, as well as several other Salem residents, are staged in a plot by André DiMera (Thaao Penghlis). Kate begins a relationship with John Black (Drake Hogestyn), after helping him deal with a drug addiction. However, as soon as the John and Kate make plans to marry, both their spouses return to Salem alive. Roman ends things with Kate for good. Lucas and Sami are to marry, but Kate stops the wedding in the nick of time, thanks to her discovery and revelation that Sami has been disguising herself as a man called Stan, and selling John the illicit drugs he became addicted to. Kate invites John Black to live with her after Marlena kicks him out of her home. Kate comforts Philip when Belle Black's daughter Claire Brady, whom Philip believes is his, turns out Shawn-Douglas Brady's. Philip leaves town. She is terrified when he goes missing, but comes back after receiving extensive amounts of surgery. He is granted temporary custody of Claire, but is devastated when Shawn and Belle kidnap her. Kate, in her ongoing efforts to keep Lucas from marrying Sami, enlists the help of EJ DiMera (James Scott), who is using the alias EJ Wells, to seduce Sami away from Lucas. Her efforts fail when EJ is revealed to be the son of Stefano DiMera. Lucas and Sami are deeply in love, and are set to marry again, and this time Kate fails to stop it, despite her best effforts. Sami and Lucas start their life together despite Kate's interference. In retaliation for their scheming, Lucas turns Kate and EJ in to the FTC for their questionable financial records. Kate turns to Stefano DiMera after learning she is broke. Stefano provides her with enough money to start her own business called Kate's Hearth and Home, a Martha Stewart-like brand of housewares. She hires Stefano's son Tony DiMera (Thaao Penghis) to do the advertising. Kate no longer worries about Lucas and Sami, because Stefano has blackmailed Sami into a marriage with EJ, and Sami has fallen for him. Kate turns her attention back to Philip, who is in trouble with John Black, and to her granddaughter Chelsea Brady (Rachel Melvin), who is recovering from surgery. Chelsea's surgery is successful, and soon starts dating her surgeon Daniel Jonas (Shawn Cristian). In November 2008, Kate is diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer, and receives bone marrow from Chloe Lane. Lucas begins a relationship with Chloe Lane. Kate learns that Chloe cheated on Lucas with Daniel Jonas, and is set on revenge. She poisons her, and Chloe is put in a coma. Kate becomes the only suspect, and to avoid jail time she marries Stefano DiMera who destroys the evidence against her. Later Phillip has a one-night stand with Chloe, resulting in grandson Parker being born, one month premature. When the truth comes out, Kate does everything in her power to make sure Chloe doesn't see her son, including driving her to suicide (which failed, thanks to Phillip saving her) and calling Phillip (as Chloe), using a recording of Chloe's voice that she edited to make Chloe sound like an unfit mother. When Phillip subsequently moves to Chicago with Parker, Kate blames Chloe (even though it was Kate's own doing) and later hires a thug named Quinn who forces Chloe to become a prostitute, much like Kate was forced to be in her own youth. On August 31, 2011, Kate announces to Victor plans to resurrect Countess Wilhelmina Cosmetics with brand expansion and new product ideas, under Titan's rule, with Billie's blessing. However, Victor seems apprehensive about the deal, believing Stefano turned down her deal. She later brings back her daughter, Billie, to help run the company by her side. She also interacts with new arrival, Ian McAllister (Ian Buchanan), with whom she once had a romantic relationship in Paris. The two fall into bed in April 2012, which she later regrets. Upon Stefano's return from Alamania, he holds a romantic dinner for Kate with all of her favorite foods, then reveals that he knows about her affair with Ian McAllister. Kate tries to explain but Stefano ends their marriage and takes control of Countess Wilhelmina Cosmetics and Kate's Hearth and Home, making Kate's longtime enemy, Sami Brady, CEO. Ian then offers Kate a job as co-CEO of MadWorld, to work alongside Madison James as competition against Sami. Kate and Ian continue their relationship as Kate begins to get along with Madison. Stefano is apparently murdered, and with so many enemies, there are many suspects, including Kate. However, during a town-wide disaster, when Salem is rocked with a series of explosions, Ian reveals that he is behind the death of Stefano and framing of EJ, and that he only loved Madison, and is merely using Kate to take the DiMera fortune. Kate ends their relationship, and he is sent to jail; but it is revealed that only an imposter of Stefano died, and that Stefano was really alive and held captive by Ian. Stefano fails to make amends with his son, EJ, and heads to Europe for business. Kate tracks down Stefano, insisting he give her another chance, but they finalize the divorce, and Kate realizes that she and Stefano are finished. Kate takes Chad DiMera (Casey Deidrick) under her wing, kind of as a proxy mother, after his own mother dies. Kate supports her grandson Will (Chandler Massey), when he comes out as gay. Kate also makes amends with Daniel Jonas, and updates him on Parker. Kate is challenged in 2013 when Chloe Lane and her mother, Nancy Wesley (Patrika Darbo), return to Salem, and it turns out that Parker is Daniel Jonas's son after all. Kate eventually starts a secret relationship with Rafe Hernandez (Galen Gering) after they have a drunken one-night stand. She worries that Stefano may threaten Rafe because of this. Kate later breaks things off with Rafe. Kate becomes a great-grandmother when Will has a daughter, Arianna Horton (Harper and Sydnee Udell), with his ex-girlfriend Gabi Hernandez (Camilla Banus). Kate offers to have Gabi and Arianna live with her, but Gabi chooses to live with Will and his partner Sonny, thanking Kate for the offer. Kate begins a series of ill-fated short- lived romantic relationships with some extremely dubious and villainous men: the drug lord Clyde Weston (jailed); her ex-husband Victor Kiriakis's no-good half-brother Deimos Kiriakis (murdered); Rafe and Gabi's assassin father Eduardo Hernandez (jailed); and then the serial-killer André DiMera, whom she marries. She runs DiMera Enterprises with Chad (now Billy Flynn) and André, until André betrays them, selling them out to her old rival Vivian Alamain and her ill-begotten son with Stefano DiMera: Stefan O. DiMera (Tyler Christopher). And then André is killed by Chad's wife Abigail when she learns he has betrayed them all. Kate finds out that Vivian is framing Sonny Kiriakis (Freddie Smith), the current CEO of Titan Industries for sexual harassment. When Kate confronts her, Vivian, cornered, pulls a gun on her, and they scuffle for possession. Vivian is killed, and Kate claims the gun went off accidentally, but Salem PD are not so sure, but they do not have enough evidence to charge her. Stefan is certain that Kate murdered his mother Vivian, and sets out to destroy her. Meanwhile, Kate, being sacked from DiMera, takes over Vivian's scheme to frame Sonny Kiriakis, in the hope she can take over Titan when Sonny is inevitably fired. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to anyone, Vivian has been revived, and is being held in a secret lab. Kate at Sony Pictures, Kate at SheKnows Soaps, Kate at soapcentral.com Patrick Muldoon (born September 27, 1968) is an American actor, film producer, and musician. Muldoon was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Deanna, a homemaker, and William Patrick Muldoon II, a personal injury lawyer. He is of Irish descent on his father's side and of Croatian descent on his mother's side. He attended Loyola High School, a Jesuit school. Muldoon graduated in 1991 from the University of Southern California, where he was a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity and played tight end on the USC Trojans football team. Muldoon was the first actor to play the role of Austin Reed on Days of Our Lives, a role which he played from 1992 to 1995 and September 2011 to July 2012. He had a role in the popular teen television series Saved by the Bell in 1991. Next he played the popular villain Richard Hart, on the prime time soap opera Melrose Place, from 1995 to 1996. He was the only actor ever to have an exclusive development deal with Spelling Entertainment. He starred in Black Cat Run which also marked the debut of director DJ Caruso (Disturbia, I am Number Four) with Frank Darabont. He also played Edmund in the Patsy Rodenburg production of King Lear. He played Zander Barkalow in the Paul Verhoeven directed Starship Troopers. He has starred in many popular television movies and has been a regular in many films for the Lifetime & Hallmark Channels. In the past decade he has also become a prolific film producer. In 2015, he produced and starred in Badge of Honor starring Martin Sheen and Mena Suvari. In 2019, he produced and starred in Arkansas starring Vince Vaughn, John Malkovich, and Liam Hemsworth. Directed by Clark Duke. In 2019, he produced and starred in The Comeback Trail, starring Robert Deniro, Tommy Lee Jones, and Morgan Freeman. Directed by George Gallo. The official Sleeping Masses website

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American Intelligence in the American Revolutionary War was essentially monitored and sanctioned by the Continental Congress to provide military intelligence to the Continental Army to aid them in fighting the British during the American Revolutionary War. Congress created a Secret Committee for domestic intelligence, a Committee of Secret Correspondence for foreign intelligence, and a committee on spies, for tracking spies within the Patriot movement. The Second Continental Congress created a Secret Committee on September 18, 1775. The Committee was not, however, a true intelligence agency, since the Committee of Secret Correspondence with which it often worked was mainly concerned with obtaining military supplies in secret and distributing them, and selling gunpowder to privateers chartered by the Congress. The Committee also took over and administered on a uniform basis the secret contracts for arms and gunpowder previously negotiated by certain members of the Congress without the formal sanction of that body. The Committee kept its transactions secret and destroyed many of its records to ensure the confidentiality of its work. The Secret Committee employed agents overseas, often in cooperation with the Committee of Secret Correspondence. It gathered intelligence about secret Loyalist ammunition stores and arranged to seize them. The Committee also sent missions to seize British supplies in the southern colonies. It arranged the purchase of military stores through intermediaries to conceal the fact that Congress was the true purchaser. They then used foreign flags to attempt to protect the vessels from the British fleet. The members of the Continental Congress appointed to the Committee included some of the most influential and responsible members of Congress: Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris, Robert Livingston, John Dickinson, Thomas Willing, Thomas McKean, John Langdon, and Samuel Ward. Recognizing the need for foreign intelligence and foreign alliances, the Second Continental Congress created the Committee of Correspondence (soon renamed the Committee of Secret Correspondence) by a resolution of November 29, 1775: The original Committee members—America's first foreign intelligence agency—were Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Johnson. Subsequent appointees included James Lovell, a teacher who had been arrested by the British after the Battle of Bunker Hill on charges of spying. He had later been exchanged for a British prisoner and was elected to the Continental Congress. On the Committee, he became the Congress' expert on codes and ciphers and has been called the father of American cryptanalysis. The committee employed secret agents abroad, conducted covert operations, devised codes and ciphers, funded propaganda activities, authorized the opening of private mail, acquired foreign publications for use in analysis, established a courier system, and developed a maritime capability apart from that of the Continental Navy, and engaged in regular communications with Britons and Scots who sympathized with the American cause. It met secretly in December 1775 with a French intelligence agent who visited Philadelphia under cover as a Flemish merchant. On April 17, 1777, the Committee of Secret Correspondence was renamed the Committee of Foreign Affairs but kept with its intelligence function. Matters of diplomacy were conducted by other committees or by the Congress as a whole. On January 10, 1781, the Department of Foreign Affairs—the forerunner of the Department of State—was created and tasked with "obtaining the most extensive and useful information relative to foreign affairs", the head of which was empowered to correspond "with all other persons from whom he may expect to receive useful information." On June 5, 1776, the Congress appointed John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Edward Rutledge, James Wilson, and Robert Livingston "to consider what is proper to be done with persons giving intelligence to the enemy or supplying them with provisions." They were charged with revising the Articles of War in regard to espionage directed against the American forces. The problem was an urgent one: Dr. Benjamin Church, chief physician of the Continental Army, had already been seized and imprisoned as a British agent, but there was no civilian espionage act, and George Washington thought the existing military law did not provide punishment severe enough to afford a deterrent. On November 7, 1775, the death penalty was added for espionage to the Articles of War, but the clause was not applied retroactively, and Dr. Church escaped execution. On August 21, 1776, the Committee's report was considered by the Congress, which enacted the first espionage act: RESOLVED, That all persons not members of, nor owing allegiance to, any of the United States of America, as described in a resolution to the Congress of the 29th of June last, who shall be found lurking as spies in or about the fortification or encampments of the armies of the United States, or of any of them, shall suffer death, according to the law and usage of nations, by sentence of a court martial, or such other punishment as such court martial may direct. It was resolved further that the act "be printed at the end of the rules and articles of war." On February 27, 1778, the law was broadened to include any "inhabitants of these states" whose intelligence activities aided the enemy in capturing or killing revolutionary forces. The Committee of Secret Correspondence insisted that matters pertaining to the funding and instruction of intelligence agents be held within the Committee. In calling for the Committee members to "lay their proceedings before Congress," the Congress, by resolution, authorized "withholding the names of the persons they have employed, or with whom they have corresponded." On May 20, 1776, when the Committee's proceedings—with the sensitive names removed—were finally read in the Congress, it was "under the injunction of secrecy." The Continental Congress, recognizing the need for secrecy in regard to foreign intelligence, foreign alliances and military matters, maintained "Secret Journals," apart from its public journals, to record its decisions in such matters. On November 9, 1775, the Continental Congress adopted its own oath of secrecy, one more stringent than the oaths of secrecy it would require of others in sensitive employment: RESOLVED, That every member of this Congress considers himself under the ties of virtue, honour and love of his country, not to divulge, directly or indirectly, any matter or thing agitated or debated in Congress, before the same shaft have been determined, without the leave of the Congress: nor any matter or thing determined in Congress, which a majority of the Congress shall order to be kept secret, And that if any member shall violate this agreement, he shall be expelled this Congress, and deemed an enemy to the liberties of America, and liable to be treated as such, and that every member signify his consent to this agreement by signing the same. On June 12, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the first secrecy agreement for employees of the new government. The required oath read: I do solemnly swear, that I will not directly or indirectly divulge any manner or thing which shall come to my knowledge as (clerk, secretary) of the board of War and Ordnance for the United Colonies. . . So help me God. The Continental Congress, sensitive to the vulnerability of its covert allies, respected their desire for strict secrecy. Even after France's declaration of war against England, the fact of French involvement prior to that time remained a state secret. When Thomas Paine, in a series of letters to the press in 1777, divulged details of the secret aid from the files of the Committee of Foreign Affairs (formerly, the Committee of Secret Correspondence), France's Minister to the United States, Conrad Alexander Gerard, protested to the president of the Congress that Paine's indiscreet assertions "bring into question the dignity and reputation of the King, my master, and that of the United States." Congress dismissed Paine, and by public resolution denied having received such aid, resolving that "His Most Christian Majesty, the great and generous ally of the United States, did not preface his alliance with any supplies whatever sent to America." In 1779, George Washington and John Jay, the president of the Continental Congress and a close associate of the Commander in Chief's on intelligence matters, disagreed about the effect disclosure of some intelligence would have on sources and methods. Washington wanted to publicize certain encouraging information that he judged would give "a certain spring to our affairs" and bolster public morale. Jay replied that the intelligence "is unfortunately of such a Nature, or rather so circumstanced, as to render Secrecy necessary." Jay prevailed. Robert Townsend, an important American agent in the British-occupied city of New York, used the guise of being a merchant, as did Silas Deane when he was sent to France by the Committee of Secret Correspondence. Townsend was usually referred to by his cover name of "Culper, Junior." When Major Benjamin Tallmadge, who directed Townsend's espionage work, insisted that he disengage himself from his cover business to devote more time to intelligence gathering, General Washington overruled him: it is not my opinion that Culper Junior should be advised to give up his present employment. I would imagine that with a little industry he will be able to carry on his intelligence with greater security to himself and greater advantages to us, under the cover of his usual business. . .. it prevents also those suspicions which would become natural should he throw himself out of the line of his present employment. Townsend also was the silent partner of a coffee house frequented by British officers, an ideal place for hearing loose talk that was of value to the American cause. Major John Clark's agents in and around British-controlled Philadelphia used several covers (farmer, peddler, and smuggler, among others) so effectively that only one or two operatives may have been detained. The agents traveled freely in and out of Philadelphia and passed intelligence to Washington about British troops, fortifications, and supplies, and of a planned surprise attack. Enoch Crosby, a counterintelligence officer, posed as an unsuspecting shoemaker (his civilian trade) to travel through southern New York state while infiltrating Loyalist cells. After the Tories started to suspect him when he kept "escaping" from the Americans, Crosby's superiors moved him to Albany, New York, where he resumed his undercover espionage. John Honeyman, an Irish weaver who had offered to spy for the Americans, used several covers (butcher, Tory, British agent) to collect intelligence on British military activities in New Jersey. He participated in a deception operation that left the Hessians in Trenton unprepared for Washington's attack across the Delaware River on December 26, 1776. In January 1778, Nancy Morgan Hart, who was tall, muscular, and cross-eyed, disguised herself as a "touched" or emotionally disturbed man, and entered Augusta, Georgia, to obtain intelligence on British defenses. Her mission was a success. Later, when a group of Tories attacked her home to gain revenge, she captured them all and was witness to their execution. In June 1778, General Washington instructed Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee to send an agent into the British fort at Stony Point, New York, to gather intelligence on the exact size of the garrison and the progress it was making in building defenses. Captain Allan McLane took the assignment. Dressing himself as a country bumpkin and utilizing the cover of escorting a Mrs. Smith into the fort to see her sons, McLane spent two weeks collecting intelligence within the British fort and returned safely. While serving in Paris as an agent of the Committee of Secret Correspondence, Silas Deane is known to have used a heat-developing invisible ink—a compound of cobalt chloride, glycerine and water—for some of his intelligence reports back to America. Even more useful to him later was a "sympathetic stain" created for secret communications by James Jay, a physician and the brother of John Jay. Dr. Jay, who had been knighted by George III, used the "stain" for reporting military information from London to America. Later he supplied quantities of the stain to George Washington at home and to Silas Deane in Paris. The stain required one chemical for writing the message and a second to develop it, affording greater security than the ink used by Deane earlier. Once, in a letter to John Jay, Robert Morris spoke of an innocuous letter from "Timothy Jones" (Deane) and the "concealed beauties therein," noting "the cursory examinations of a sea captain would never discover them, but transferred from his hand to the penetrating eye of a Jay, the diamonds stand confessed at once." Washington instructed his agents in the use of the "sympathetic stain," noting in connection with "Culper Junior" that the ink "will not only render his communications less exposed to detection, but relieve the fears of such persons as may be entrusted in its conveyance." Washington suggested that reports could be written in the invisible ink "on the blank leaves of a pamphlet. . . a common pocket book, or on the blank leaves at each end of registers, almanacks, or any publication or book of small value." Washington especially recommended that agents conceal their reports by using the ink in correspondence: "A much better way is to write a letter in the Tory stile with some mixture of family matters and between the lines and on the remaining part of the sheet communicate with the Stain the intended intelligence." Even though the Patriots took great care to write sensitive messages in invisible ink, or in code or cipher, it is estimated that the British intercepted and decrypted over half of America's secret correspondence during the war. American Revolutionary leaders used various methods of cryptography to conceal diplomatic, military, and personal messages. John Jay and Arthur Lee devised dictionary codes in which numbers referred to the page and line in an agreed- upon dictionary edition where the plaintext (unencrypted message) could be found. In 1775, Charles Dumas designed the first diplomatic cipher that the Continental Congress and Benjamin Franklin used to communicate with agents and ministers in Europe. Dumas's system substituted numbers for letters in the order in which they appeared in a preselected paragraph of French prose containing 682 symbols. This method was more secure than the standard alphanumeric substitution system, in which a through z are replaced with 1 through 26, because each letter in the plain text could be replaced with more than one number. The Culper Spy Ring used a numerical substitution code developed by Major Benjamin Tallmadge, the network's leader. The Ring began using the code after the British captured some papers indicating that some Americans around New York were using "sympathetic stain." Tallmadge took several hundred words from a dictionary and several dozen names of people or places and assigned each a number from 1 to 763. For example, 38 meant attack, 192 stood for fort, George Washington was identified as 711, and New York was replaced by 727. An American agent posing as a deliveryman transmitted the messages to other members of the Ring. One of them, Anna Strong (spy), signaled the message's location with a code involving laundry hung out to dry. A black petticoat indicated that a message was ready to be picked up, and the number of handkerchiefs identified the cove on Long Island Sound where the agents would meet. By the end of the war, several prominent Americans—among them Robert Morris, John Jay, Robert Livingston, and John Adams—were using other versions of numerical substitution codes. The Patriots had two notable successes in breaking British ciphers. In 1775, Elbridge Gerry and the team of Elisha Porter and the Rev. Samuel West, working separately at Washington's direction, decrypted a letter that implicated Dr. Benjamin Church, the Continental Army's chief surgeon, in espionage for the British. In 1781, James Lovell, who designed cipher systems used by several prominent Americans, determined the encryption method that British commanders used to communicate with each other. When a dispatch from Lord Cornwallis in Yorktown, Virginia, to General Henry Clinton in New York was intercepted, Lovell's cryptanalysis enabled Washington to gauge how desperate Cornwallis's situation was and to time his attack on the British lines. Soon after, another decrypt by Lovell provided warning to the French fleet off Yorktown that a British relief expedition was approaching. The French scared off the British flotilla, sealing victory for the Americans. The Continental Congress regularly received quantities of intercepted British and Tory mail. On November 20, 1775, it received some intercepted letters from Cork, Ireland, and appointed a committee made up of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Johnson, Robert Livingston, Edward Rutledge, James Wilson and George Wythe "to select such parts of them as may be proper to publish." The Congress later ordered a thousand copies of the portions selected by the Committee to be printed and distributed. A month later, when another batch of intercepted mail was received, a second committee was appointed to examine it. Based on its report, the Congress resolved that "the contents of the intercepted letters this day read, and the steps which Congress may take in consequence of said intelligence thereby given, be kept secret until further orders." By early 1776, abuses were noted in the practice, and Congress resolved that only the councils or committees of safety of each colony, and their designees, could henceforth open the mail or detain any letters from the post. When Moses Harris reported that the British had recruited him as a courier for their Secret Service, General Washington proposed that General Schuyler "contrive a means of opening them without breaking the seals, take copies of the contents, and then let them go on. By these means we should become masters of the whole plot." From that point on, Washington was privy to British intelligence pouches between New York and Canada. Dr. James Jay used the advanced technology of his time in creating the invaluable "sympathetic stain" used for secret communications. Perhaps the American Patriots' most advanced application of technology was in David Bushnell's Turtle, a one-man submarine created for affixing watchwork-timed explosive charges to the bottom of enemy ships. The "turtle," now credited with being the first use of the submarine in warfare, was an oaken chamber about five-and-a-half feet (1.6 m) wide and seven feet (2.1 m) high. It was propelled by a front-mounted, pedal-powered propeller at a speed of up to three miles per hour (5 km/h), had a barometer to read depth, a pump to raise or lower the submarine through the water, and provision for both lead and water ballast. When Bushnell learned that the candle used to illuminate instruments inside the "turtle" consumed the oxygen in its air supply, he turned to Benjamin Franklin for help. The solution: the phosphorescent weed, foxfire. Heavy tides thwarted the first sabotage operation. A copper-clad hull which could not be penetrated by the submarine's auger foiled the second. (The "turtle" did blow up a nearby schooner, however.) The secret weapon would almost certainly have achieved success against a warship if it had not gone to the bottom of the Hudson River when the mother ship to which it was moored was sunk by the British in October 1776. An early device developed for concealing intelligence reports when traveling by water was a simple weighted bottle that could be dropped overboard if there was a threat of capture. This was replaced by a wafer-thin leaden container in which a message was sealed. It would sink in water, and melt in fire, and could be used by agents on land or water. It had one drawback—lead poisoning if it was swallowed. It was replaced by a silver, bullet-shaped container that could be unscrewed to hold a message and which would not poison a courier who might be forced to swallow it. On May 29, 1775, the Continental Congress received the first of many intelligence estimates prepared in response to questions it posed to military commanders. The report estimated the size of the enemy force to be encountered in an attack on New York, the number of Continental troops needed to meet it, and the kind of force needed to defend the other New England colonies. An example of George Washington's interest in intelligence analysis and estimates can be found in instructions he wrote to General Putnam in August 1777:"Deserters and people of that class always speak of number. ... Indeed, scarce any person can form a judgement unless he sees the troops paraded and can count the divisions. But, if you can by any means obtain a list of the regiments left upon the island, we can compute the number of men within a few hundreds, over or under." On another occasion, in thanking James Lovell for a piece of intelligence, Washington wrote: "It is by comparing a variety of information, we are frequently enabled to investigate facts, which were so intricate or hidden, that no single clue could have led to the knowledge of them. ... Intelligence becomes interesting which but from its connection and collateral circumstances, would not be important." Colonel David Henley, Washington's intelligence chief for a short period in 1778, received these instructions when he wrote to Washington for guidance: "Besides communicating your information as it arises. ... you might make out a table or something in the way of columns, under which you might range, their magazines of forage, grain and the like, the different corps and regiments, the Works, where thrown up, their connexion, kind and extent, the officers commanding, with the numbers of guns &ca.; &ca.; This table should comprehend in one view all that can be learned from deserters, spies and persons who may come out from the enemy's boundaries." (It was common practice to interrogate travelers from such British strongholds as New York, Boston and Philadelphia.) George Washington was a skilled manager of intelligence. He utilized agents behind enemy lines, recruited both Tory and Patriot sources, interrogated travelers for intelligence information, and launched scores of agents on both intelligence and counterintelligence missions. He was adept at deception operations and tradecraft and was a skilled propagandist. He also practiced sound operational security. As an intelligence manager, Washington insisted that the terms of an agent's employment and his instructions be precise and in writing. He emphasized his desire for receiving written, rather than verbal, reports. He demanded repeatedly that intelligence reports be expedited, reminding his officers of those bits of intelligence he had received which had become valueless because of delay in getting them to him. He also recognized the need for developing many different sources so that their reports could be cross-checked, and so that the compromise of one source would not cut off the flow of intelligence from an important area. Washington sought and obtained a "secret service fund" from the Continental Congress, and expressed preference for specie, preferably gold: "I have always found a difficulty in procuring intelligence by means of paper money, and I perceive it increases." In accounting for the sums in his journals, he did not identify the recipients: "The names of persons who are employed within the Enemy's lines or who may fall within their power cannot be inserted." He instructed his generals to "leave no stone unturned, nor do not stick to expense" in gathering intelligence, and urged that those employed for intelligence purposes be those "upon whose firmness and fidelity we may safely rely." Washington retained full and final authority over Continental Army intelligence activities, but he delegated significant field responsibility to trusted officers. Although he regularly urged all his officers to be more active in collecting intelligence, Washington relied chiefly on his aides and specially designated officers to assist him in conducting intelligence operations. The first to assume this role appears to have been Joseph Reed, who fulfilled the duties of "Secretary, Adjutant General and Quarter Master, besides doing a thousand other little Things which fell incidentally." A later successor to Reed was Alexander Hamilton, who is known to have been deeply involved with the Commander-in-Chief's intelligence operations, including developing reports received in secret writing and investigating a suspected double agent. When Elias Boudinot was appointed Commissary General of Prisoners, responsible for screening captured soldiers and for dealing with the British concerning American patriots whom they held prisoner, Washington recognized that the post offered "better opportunities than most other officers in the army, to obtain knowledge of the Enemy's Situation, motions and... designs," and added to Boudinot's responsibilities "the procuring of intelligence." In 1778, Washington selected Brigadier General Charles Scott of Virginia as his "intelligence chief." When personal considerations made it necessary for Scott to step down, Washington appointed Colonel David Henley to the post temporarily, and then assigned it to Major Benjamin Tallmadge. Tallmadge combined reconnaissance with clandestine visits into British territory to recruit agents, and he attained distinction for his conduct of the Culper Ring operating out of New York. In 1776, George Washington picked Thomas Knowlton to command the Continental Army's first intelligence unit, known as "Knowlton's Rangers." Intelligence failure during the battle of Long Island convinced Washington that he needed an elite detachment dedicated to reconnaissance that reported directly to him. Knowlton, who had served in a similar unit during the French and Indian War, led 130 men and 20 officers—all hand-picked volunteers—on a variety of secret missions that were too dangerous for regular troops to conduct. The date 1776 on the seal of the Army's intelligence service today refers to the formation of Knowlton's Rangers. Other intelligence officers who served with distinction during the War of Independence included Captain Eli Leavenworth, Major Alexander Clough, Colonel Elias Dayton, Major John Clark, Major Allan McLane, Captain Charles Craig and General Thomas Mifflin. The first Patriot intelligence network on record was a secret group in Boston known as the Mechanics, which meant skilled workers. The group, also known as the Liberty Boys, apparently grew out of the old Sons of Liberty organization that had successfully opposed the Stamp Act. The Mechanics organized resistance to British authority and gathered intelligence. In the words of one of its members, Paul Revere, "in the Fall of 1774 and winter of 1775, I was one of upwards of thirty, chiefly mechanics, who formed ourselves into a Committee for the purpose of watching British soldiers and gaining every intelligence on the movements of the Tories." According to Revere, "We frequently took turns, two and two, to watch the (British) soldiers by patrolling the streets all night." In addition, the Mechanics sabotaged and stole British military equipment in Boston. Their security practices, however, were amateurish. They met in the same place regularly (the Green Dragon Tavern), and one of their leaders (Dr. Benjamin Church) was a British agent. Through their intelligence sources, the Mechanics were able to see through the cover story the British had devised to mask their march on Lexington and Concord. Dr. Joseph Warren, chairman of the Committee of Safety, charged Revere with the task of warning Samuel Adams and John Hancock at Lexington, Massachusetts, that they were the probable targets of the enemy operation. Revere arranged for the warning lanterns to be hung in Old North Church to alert patriot forces at Charlestown, and then set off on his famous ride. He completed his primary mission of notifying Adams and Hancock. Then Revere, along with Dr. Samuel Prescott and William Dawes, rode on to alert Concord, only to be apprehended by the British en route. Dawes got away, and Dr. Prescott managed to escape soon afterward and to alert the Patriots at Concord. Revere was interrogated and subsequently released, after which he returned to Lexington to warn Hancock and Adams of the proximity of British forces. Revere then turned to another mission, retrieving from the local tavern a trunk belonging to Hancock and filled with incriminating papers. With John Lowell, Revere went to the tavern and, as he put it, during "a continual roar of Musquetry... we made off with the Trunk." Paul Revere had served as a courier prior to his "midnight ride" and continued to do so during the early years of the war. One of his earlier missions was perhaps as important as the Lexington ride. In December 1774, Revere rode to the Oyster River in New Hampshire with a report that the British, under General Thomas Gage, intended to seize Fort William and Mary. Armed with this intelligence, Major John Sullivan of the colonial militia led a force of four hundred men in an attack on the fort. The one hundred barrels of gunpowder taken in the raid were ultimately used by the Patriots to cover their retreat from Bunker Hill. Nathan Hale is probably the best known but least successful American agent in the War of Independence. He embarked on his espionage mission into British- held New York as a volunteer, impelled by a strong sense of patriotism and duty. Before leaving on the mission he reportedly told a fellow officer: "I am not influenced by the expectation of promotion or pecuniary award; I wish to be useful, and every kind of service necessary to the public good becomes honorable by being necessary. If the exigencies of my country demand a peculiar service, its claims to perform that service are imperious." But dedication was not enough. Captain Hale had no training experience, no contacts in New York, no channels of communication, and no cover story to explain his absence from camp—only his Yale diploma supported his contention that he was a "Dutch schoolmaster." He was captured while trying to slip out of New York, was convicted as a spy and went to the gallows on September 22, 1776. Witnesses to the execution reported the dying words that gained him immortality (a paraphrase of a line from Joseph Addison's play Cato): "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." After he was accused of being a spy he stated his name, rank, and his reason for being there. He gave a soldier a letter to his family, which was ripped up. He asked to see a bible and was denied the right. The same day that Nathan Hale was executed in New York, British authorities arrested another Patriot and charged him with being a spy. Haym Salomon was a recent Jewish immigrant who worked as a stay-behind agent after Washington evacuated New York City in September 1776. Salomon was arrested in a round-up of suspected Patriot sympathizers and was confined to Sugar House Prison. He spoke several European languages and was soon released to the custody of General von Heister, commander of Hessian mercenaries, who needed someone who could serve as a German language interpreter in the Hessian commissary department. While in German custody, Salomon induced a number of the German troops to resign or desert. Eventually paroled, Salomon did not flee to Philadelphia as had many of his New York business associates. He continued to serve as an undercover agent and used his personal finances to assist American patriots held prisoner in New York. He was arrested again in August 1778, accused this time of being an accomplice in a plot to burn the British fleet and to destroy His Majesty's warehouses in the city. Salomon was condemned to death for sabotage, but he bribed his guard while awaiting execution and escaped to Philadelphia. There he came into the open in the role for which he is best known, as an important financier of the Revolution. Less than a year after Nathan Hale was executed, another American agent went to the gallows in New York. On June 13, 1777, General Washington wrote the President of Congress: "You will observe by the New York paper, the execution of Abm. (Abraham) Patten. His family deserves the generous Notice of Congress. He conducted himself with great fidelity to our Cause rendering Services and has fallen a Sacrifice in promoting her interest. Perhaps a public act of generosity, considering the character he was in, might not be so eligible as a private donation." "Most accurate and explicit intelligence" resulted from the work of Abraham Woodhull on Long Island and Robert Townsend in British-occupied New York City. Their operation, known as the Culper Ring from the operational names used by Woodhull (Culper Sr.) and Townsend (Culper Jr.), effectively used such intelligence tradecraft as codes, ciphers and secret ink for communications; a series of couriers and whaleboats to transmit reporting; at least one secret safe house, and numerous sources. The network was particularly effective in picking up valuable information from careless conversation wherever the British and their sympathizers gathered. One female member of the Culper Ring, known only by her codename "355," was arrested shortly after Benedict Arnold's defection in 1780 and evidently died in captivity. Details of her background are unknown, but 355 (the number meant "lady" in the Culper code) may have come from a prominent Tory family with access to British commanders and probably reported on their activities and personalities. She was one of several females around the debonaire Major André, who enjoyed the company of young, attractive, and intelligent women. Abraham Woodhull, 355's recruiter, praised her espionage work, saying that she was "one who hath been ever serviceable to this correspondence." Arnold questioned all of André's associates after his execution in October 1780 and grew suspicious when the pregnant 355 refused to identify her paramour. She was incarcerated on the squalid prison ship Jersey, moored in the East River. There she gave birth to a son and then died without disclosing that she had a common-law husband – Robert Townsend, after whom the child was named. One controversial American agent in New York was the King's Printer, James Rivington. His coffee house, a favorite gathering place for the British, was a principal source of information for Culper Jr. (Townsend), who was a silent partner in the endeavor. George Washington Parke Custis suggests that Rivington's motive for aiding the patriot cause was purely monetary. Custis notes that Rivington, nevertheless, "proved faithful to his bargain, and often would provide intelligence of great importance gleaned in convivial moments at Sir William's or Sir Henry's table, be in the American camp before the convivialists had slept off the effects of their wine. The King's printer would probably have been the last man suspected, for during the whole of his connection with the secret service his Royal Gazette piled abuse of every sort upon the cause of the American general and the cause of America." Rivington's greatest espionage achievement was acquiring the Royal Navy's signal book in 1781. That intelligence helped the French fleet repel a British flotilla trying to relieve General Cornwallis at Yorktown. Hercules Mulligan was a textile importer and ran a clothing shop that was also frequented by British officers in occupied New York. The Irish immigrant was a genial host, and animated conversation typified a visit to his emporium. Mulligan was the first to alert Washington to two British plans to capture the American Commander-in-Chief and to a planned incursion into Pennsylvania. Besides being an American agent, Mulligan also was a British counterintelligence failure. Before he went underground as an agent, he had been an active member of the Sons of Liberty and the New York Committees of Correspondence and Observation, local Patriot intelligence groups. Mulligan had participated in acts of rebellion, and his name had appeared on Patriot broadsides distributed in New York as late as 1776. But every time he fell under suspicion, the popular Irishman used his gift of "blarney" to talk his way out of it. The British evidently never learned that Alexander Hamilton, Washington's aide-de-camp, had lived in the Mulligan home while attending King's College, and had recruited Mulligan and possibly Mulligan's brother, a banker and merchant who handled British accounts, for espionage. Mulligan was assisted by his slave, Cato, who performed dangerous assignments as a courier. Lieutenant Lewis J. Costigin, walked the streets of New York freely in his Continental Army uniform as he collected intelligence. Costigin had originally been sent to New York as a prisoner and was eventually paroled under oath not to attempt escape or communicate intelligence. In September 1778, he was designated for prisoner exchange and freed of his parole oath. But he did not leave New York, and until January 1779 he roamed the city in his American uniform, gathering intelligence on British commanders, troop deployments, shipping, and logistics while giving the impression of still being a paroled prisoner. On May 15, 1780, General Washington instructed General Heath to send intelligence agents into Canada. He asked that they be those "upon whose firmness and fidelity we may safely rely," and that they collect "exact" information about Halifax in support of a French requirement for information on the British defense works there. Washington suggested that qualified draftsmen be sent. James Bowdoin, who later became the first president of the American Academy of Arts and Science, fulfilled the intelligence mission, providing detailed plans of Halifax harbor, including specific military works and even water depths. In August 1782, General Washington created the Badge of Military Merit, to be issued "whenever any singularly meritorious action is performed... not only instances of unusual gallantry, but also of extraordinary fidelity and essential service in any way." Through the award, said Washington, "the road to glory in a Patriot army and a free country is thus open to all." The following June, the honor was bestowed on Sergeant Daniel Bissell, who had "deserted" from the Continental Army, infiltrated New York, posed as a Tory, and joined Benedict Arnold's "American Legion." For over a year, Bissell gathered information on British fortifications, making a detailed study of British methods of operation, before escaping to American lines. Dominique L'Eclise, a Canadian who served as an intelligence agent for General Schuyler, had been detected and imprisoned and had all his property confiscated. After being informed by General Washington of the agent's plight, the Continental Congress on October 23, 1778, granted $600 to pay L'Eclise's debts and $60, plus one ration a day "during the pleasure of Congress," as compensation for his contribution to the American cause. Family legend contributes the colorful but uncorroborated story of Lydia Darragh and her listening post for eavesdropping on the British. Officers of the British force occupying Philadelphia chose to use a large upstairs room in the Darragh house for conferences. When they did, Mrs. Darragh would slip into an adjoining closet and take notes on the enemy's military plans. Her husband, William, would transcribe the intelligence in a form of shorthand on tiny slips of paper that Lydia would then position on a button mold before covering it with fabric. The message-bearing buttons were then sewn onto the coat of her fourteen-year-old son, John, who would then be sent to visit his elder brother, Lieutenant Charles Darragh, of the American forces outside the city. Charles would snip off the buttons and transcribe the shorthand notes into readable form for presentation to his officers. Lydia Darragh is said to have concealed other intelligence in a sewing-needle packet which she carried in her purse when she passed through British lines. Some espionage historians have questioned the credibility of the best-known story of Darragh's espionage: that she supposedly overheard British commanders planning a surprise night attack against Washington's army at Whitemarsh on December 4, 1777. Intelligence Operations in the American Revolutionary War Baker, Mark A. "Spies of Revolutionary Connecticut, From Benedict Arnold to Nathan Hale." 2014. General history of Connecticut espionage during the American Revolution., CIA. Intelligence in the War of Independence (Central Intelligence Agency" (2017) online, Crary, Catherine Snell. "The Tory and the Spy: The Double Life of James Rivington." William and Mary Quarterly (1959): 16#1 pp 61-72. online, Daigler, Kenneth A. "Spies, Patriots, and Traitors: American Intelligence in the Revolutionary War" 2014. . A comprehensive history of intelligence activities during the Revolutionary Era from the perspective of a career intelligence officer., Harty, Jared B. "George Washington: Spymaster and General Who Saved the American Revolution" (Staff paper, No. ATZL-SWV. Army Command And General Staff College Fort Leavenworth, School Of Advanced Military Studies, 2012) online., Kaplan, Roger. "The Hidden War: British Intelligence Operations during the American Revolution." William and Mary Quarterly (1990) 47#1: 115-138. online, Kilmeade, Brian, and Don Yaeger. George Washington's Secret Six: The Spy Ring that Saved the American Revolution (Penguin, 2016)., Mahoney, Henry Thayer and Marjorie Locke Mahoney. Gallantry in Action: A Biographic Dictionary of Espionage in the American Revolutionary War.. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, Inc., 1999. ., Misencik, Paul R. Sally Townsend, George Washington's Teenage Spy (McFarland, 2015)., Nagy, John A. Invisible Ink - Spycraft of the American Revolution. 2011. . General history on espionage during the American Revolution., Nagy, John A. Spies in the Continental Capital: Espionage Across Pennsylvania During the American Revolution. 2011. ., Nagy, John A. Dr. Benjamin Church, Spy: A Case of Espionage on the Eve of the American Revolution. 2013. ., Misencik, Paul R. The Original American Spies: Seven Covert Agents Of The Revolutionary War (McFarland Publishing, 2013)., O'Toole, George J.A. Honorable Treachery: A History of US Intelligence, Espionage, and Covert Action from the American Revolution to the CIA (2nd ed. 2014)., Rose, Alexander. Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring. 2007. . Focuses on the Culper Ring., Van Doren, Carl. Secret History of the American Revolution: An Account of the Conspiracies of Benedict Arnold and Numerous Others Drawn from the Secret Service Papers of the British Headquarters in North America now for the first time examined and made public (1941) online free; many primary sources "Spy Letters of the American Revolution" includes letters from numerous spies including Arnold's 1779-80 letters to Clinton and André, proposing treason; from the Clements Library] Mount Vernon studies and interviews on "Spying and Espionage", United States Central Intelligence Agency, "Intelligence in the War of Independence", Spy Letters of the American Revolution - William L. Clements Library, Bibliography of Intelligence and Espionage in the American Revolutionary War compiled by the United States Army Center of Military History The Culper Ring was a spy ring organized by Major Benjamin Tallmadge under orders from General George Washington in the summer of 1778, during the British occupation of New York City at the height of the American Revolutionary War. The "Culper" name was suggested by Washington, who devised it from Culpeper County, Virginia. The two main members of the ring were Abraham Woodhull and Robert Townsend, who used "Samuel Culper Sr." and "Samuel Culper Jr.", respectively, as aliases. Tallmadge was referred to by the alias "John Bolton." Tallmadge was in direct contact with the ring, but Washington often directed its operations. The ring's task was to send messages to General Washington about the activities of the British Army in New York City, the British headquarters and base of operations. The members of the ring operated mostly in New York City, Long Island, and Connecticut. Their covert operations started in late October 1778 and continued through the British evacuation of New York in 1783, but its heyday was between 1778 and 1781. The Culper Ring provided valuable information to General Washington, including the fact that the British planned a surprise attack on the newly allied French forces under Lieutenant General Rochambeau at Newport, Rhode Island, before the French could fully recover and set up defenses after their arduous sea journey to America. They also reported that the British planned to counterfeit American currency on the actual paper used for the Continental dollars, prompting the Continental Congress to retire the bills. The ring learned that Major General William Tryon's raid in Connecticut in July 1779 was a diversion to induce Washington to divide his forces, so that Lieutenant General Sir Henry Clinton could attack them piecemeal. And they discovered that a high-ranking American officer had been plotting with British Major John André to turn over the vitally important American fort at West Point, New York on the Hudson River and to surrender its garrison to the British—subsequently shown to be Benedict Arnold. The Culper Ring is often credited with the exposure of an attempt on Washington's life, but no official record of an attempt exists. Before Howe moved from Staten Island, Washington received information of varying utility from individual agents such as Lawrence Mascoll, who obtained some intelligence on Staten Island before August 23. After evacuating his troops from Brooklyn Heights, Washington asked Brigadier General William Heath and New York militia general George Clinton to set up "a channel of information" on Long Island, but he did not yet try to establish permanent agents behind enemy lines. His next agent was Captain Nathan Hale, who was captured during his effort to obtain intelligence in New York City by Loyalist ranger Lieutenant Colonel Robert Rogers; Hale was executed by the British on September 22, 1776. By January 1777, Washington thought that civilians would attract less attention as spies and that they must recruit other agents to gather intelligence. He asked William Duer to recommend someone to be the agent, and Duer recommended colleague Nathaniel Sackett. Washington appointed Captain Benjamin Tallmadge to be Sackett's contact with the army, as he was a classmate and friend of Nathan Hale. Sackett had developed some advancements and new methods for spying, such as keeping an agent in enemy territory and finding a means of regular communication, which he detailed in a letter to Washington on April 7. He discovered that the British were building flat- bottomed boats to use in a campaign against Philadelphia; he did not produce enough correct intelligence fast enough for Washington, however, and he was soon paid and dismissed. Early in 1777, American Colonel Elias Dayton set up a spy network on Staten Island to work in parallel with established American intelligence agent John Mersereau. Washington failed to stop the British at the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777, and they took Philadelphia on September 26. The focus of intelligence gathering then switched to Philadelphia, and Washington assigned Major John Clark, who had returned to the army after being severely wounded in a skirmish before the Battle of Brandywine. Clark set up a successful network of spies, but his unhealed wound and constant exertions wore him out, and he had to retire to a desk job. The focus of intelligence gathering returned to New York, where Washington lacked a spy network. On August 7, 1778, Washington received a letter from Lieutenant Caleb Brewster at Norwalk, Connecticut with an offer to report on the enemy, to which Washington cautiously agreed and replied with advice. Brewster sent his first report on August 27, including the condition of British warships after a storm and some battles with French warships at the beginning of the Battle of Rhode Island. He also reported that several regiments of British troops were boarding ships bound for Newport, Rhode Island. Washington assigned General Charles Scott to handle Brewster and find additional agents, and he asked Major Benjamin Tallmadge to assist Scott. Scott had many other duties and he found intelligence work uninteresting, so Tallmadge did most of it. Washington soon directly asked Tallmadge to recruit people who could be trusted to collect intelligence in New York City. Tallmadge recommended Abraham Woodhull of Setauket on Long Island as a contact for Brewster, who was a childhood friend of both Brewster and Tallmadge. He had been taken prisoner by an American ship a few months earlier and charged with illegal trading, of which he was in fact guilty. He was held in Connecticut until Tallmadge quietly talked with Governor Jonathan Trumbull, who released him. Before Woodhull left Connecticut, Tallmadge spoke with him about joining Washington's secret service. Tallmadge had dinner with Washington and Scott on August 25, during which he convinced Washington that Woodhull was trustworthy, Washington suggested the alias "Samuel Culper" after Culpeper County, Virginia where he had worked as a surveyor in his youth. Tallmadge was not getting along well with the difficult Scott, and their approaches to spying differed. Scott wished to continue using single-mission agents to sneak in and out of enemy lines, while Tallmadge favored embedding spies in enemy territory and establishing a secure line of communication back to base. Scott lost three out of five agents sent to spy on the British in New York City in early September, and Washington decided that Tallmadge's method should be used. He was communicating directly with Tallmadge as early as October 22 about setting up a network with Woodhull and Brewster. On October 29, Scott resigned as chief of intelligence, and Washington assigned Tallmadge to lead the intelligence network. Woodhull would go to New York City every few weeks to gather intelligence. His married sister Mary Underhill lived there, giving him a reason to visit. He was questioned at a British checkpoint on October 31, 1778, increasing his anxiety about the dangerous mission, but he returned to Setauket with valuable information about the British supply fleet. He provided a precise report on November 23 with the identity of British units and the numbers of troops and dispositions in New York City, proving his worth as a spy. Woodhull soon recruited his brother-in-law Amos Underhill to gather intelligence, who ran a boarding house in the city with his wife Mary, but Underhill's reports were often too vague to be of much value. At first, Woodhull had to return to Setauket to pass messages to Caleb Brewster which Brewster would take to Tallmadge, or to receive messages from Tallmadge via Brewster. Tallmadge set up couriers in December who would take messages the between New York and Setauket, initially Jonas Hawkins then mainly Austin Roe beginning in the early summer. The courier's task was to get the letters to Brewster, who would pick up messages at one of six secluded coves near Setauket and take them across Long Island Sound with his rotating whaleboat crews to Tallmadge at Fairfield, Connecticut. Tallmadge would then take them to Washington's headquarters. This time-consuming task was replaced in January 1779 by the assignment of express riders to take the messages from Tallmadge to Washington. Local tradition claims that Anna Strong, a resident of Setauket and a friend and neighbor of Abraham Woodhull, helped pass along messages from the spy ring by posting pre-arranged signals to indicate when one of the spies was ready to submit intelligence. If she hung a black petticoat on her clothesline, it meant that Brewster had arrived in town in his whaleboat. Next to that, she would hang a quantity of white handkerchiefs to indicate which of the six hiding places he was in. Woodhull used her signals to meet Brewster or to drop messages at one of the meeting places. Historian Richard Welch writes that the tradition of the clothesline signal is unverifiable, but it is known that the British suspected a woman at Setauket of Patriot activities who fits Anna's profile. Brewster occasionally would add his own report to the Culper messages. In a January 1779 report received by Washington in early February, Brewster sent some information about naval matters and boat building at New York City and warned that Loyalists were outfitting privateers for operations on Long Island Sound. This was with a message from Woodhull which precisely described the British regiments and commanders at the northern tip of Manhattan, totaling about 8,500 men. Woodhull also reported on British boat- building, confirming Brewster's report. Tallmadge and Washington thought that the boats might be planned transport for an attack against Connecticut from Major General William Tryon, who had conducted a raid during the winter. Woodhull became increasingly anxious about being discovered and did little in May and June 1779. John Wolsey was a Long Island privateer who was captured by the British. In order to secure parole, he told British officers on June 5 that Woodhull was up to something dubious. Colonel John Graves Simcoe, commander of the Queen's Rangers, came to Setauket to look for Woodhull, but he was in New York City, so Simcoe's men attacked and beat Woodhull's father Judge Richard Woodhull. Abraham Woodhull escaped arrest because Loyalist militia officer Colonel Benjamin Floyd vouched for him. Floyd was married to a member of the Woodhull family. In late June, Washington sent a letter to Tallmadge in which he identified George Higday as a possible operative to relieve Woodhull in New York City. The British had intercepted a June 13 letter from Washington referring to "C_____" and Tallmadge. On July 2, British cavalry under the command of Colonel Banastre Tarleton attacked Tallmadge's camp and captured his horse and some papers, including the letter mentioning Higday. They were trying to capture Tallmadge himself because they knew that he was head of Washington's intelligence operation. The second letter confirmed that an agent C______ was operating in New York City and that Tallmadge was the chief intelligence officer for Washington. Higday escaped execution but was of no use as a spy to Washington or to Clinton, who tried to recruit him as a double agent. Woodhull reported that he could not continue to operate in New York City after the visit from Simcoe in June because he was under suspicion, but he had a new agent lined up and would go to New York to finalize arrangements with him. In June 1779, Woodhull engaged Robert Townsend to gather intelligence in New York City, using the alias "Samuel Culper, Jr." Townsend was engaged in business there, and his presence would arouse less suspicion than Woodhull's visits. He also had access to British officers through several channels, including his own tailoring business. He wrote a society column in a Loyalist newspaper, and he owned an interest in a coffeehouse with Loyalist newspaper owner James Rivington, who also was a secret member of the Ring. Once Townsend began his intelligence activities in New York City, Woodhull operated almost exclusively from Setauket, and he revised the communications network. Townsend would pass intelligence to a courier—initially Hawkins, then Hawkins and Roe, and exclusively Roe after September 1779—who would take it to Setauket and pass it to Woodhull, usually via dead drop in a box hidden in a field which Roe rented from Woodhull. Woodhull would evaluate and comment on it and pass it to Brewster, who would take it across Long Island Sound, occasionally adding an intelligence note of his own, and pass it to Tallmadge. Tallmadge would usually add a cover letter with comments, and he sent and received messages by a relay of dragoons acting as couriers. Hawkins was bold at first, but he became increasingly anxious about British patrols. His role was reduced between April and July, when Tallmadge assigned a code number to Roe in his code directory but not to Hawkins. Woodhull wrote in a coded message on August 15 that Hawkins had to destroy a letter from Culper, Jr. or be captured. He also wrote that Hawkins insisted that his next meeting with Townsend be in an out of the way location. Townsend did not like taking the additional risk and was beginning to doubt Hawkins' reliability and to regret the destroyed messages. Hawkins finally stopped his courier services for the Ring in September 1779, as Townsend refused to deal with him any longer. Woodhull acted as courier on September 11 so that he could explain to Townsend the loss of the earlier letters, and Roe became the sole permanent courier for the Ring. Secrecy was so strict that Washington did not know the identity of all the operatives. Townsend was recruited by Woodhull and was especially insistent that his identity not be revealed, although Austin Roe and Jonas Hawkins needed to know him. Among the techniques that the Ring used to relay information were coded messages published in newspapers and invisible ink, called a sympathetic stain, to write between the lines of what appeared to be typical letters. In the first months of the Ring's operations, they were forced to rely on crude tactics to conceal their information before a complex web of codes and invisible ink were accessible, so they relied on a small number of codes for memory. Woodhull used the codes 10 (New York), 30 and 40 (Post Riders), and 20 (Setauket) in his first letter of correspondence. Tallmadge realized the significance of creating a code book to increase their vocabulary. By July 1779, he had completed pocket dictionaries with lists of verbs, nouns, people, and places with their corresponding code number. These dictionaries were given to General Washington, Woodhull, Townsend, and Tallmadge himself, to ensure that it did not get into enemy hands. With the use of the codes, the letters were very complex and required much effort to write and comprehend. The code book was a way that Washington made sure that the Culper Ring spies had more support and operated in greater secrecy than previous Continental spies, perhaps with Nathan Hale in mind. Tallmadge, Woodhull, and Townsend were given code names and code numbers, along with Washington, Brewster, Roe, and Rivington. George Washington's code number was 711. Hercules Mulligan was recruited to spy for the Continental Army in New York City by Alexander Hamilton. He was born in 1740, was a friend of Townsend's father, and was an active member of the Sons of Liberty. He had taken in Alexander Hamilton when Hamilton arrived in New York as an orphan in 1773 to attend King's College, and he had helped Hamilton obtain a commission in the army. He was married to Elizabeth Sanders, daughter of a Royal Navy admiral, and he also had a fashionable clothing business near Robert Townsend's establishment—and these things gave him access to officers who would talk to him about military matters. Mulligan began his activities in late 1776 or early 1777, well before formation of the Culper Ring. Historian Stephen Knott says that Mulligan cooperated with the Culper Ring, but mostly operated as a lone agent. Alexander Rose states that Mulligan gave Townsend information which Townsend added to his reports. Mulligan's slave Cato was his "faithful accomplice" in his intelligence activities. In January 1779, Cato delivered a message from Mulligan to George Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton that the British planned to kidnap or kill American leaders, including Washington and New Jersey Governor William Livingston. Mulligan had received the information from his brother Hugh, who was with Kortright and Company, a contractor for the British Army. The British arrested Mulligan on suspicion of espionage after Benedict Arnold defected in New York. Townsend ceased his activities for a time for fear that he, also, would be discovered. Woodhull passed on the information concerning Townsend's dejection and concern over the arrest of "one that hath been ever serviceable to this correspondence." Arnold did not have any hard evidence against Mulligan, so he was released, but he may have spent as many as five months in prison, until February 1781, and he continued to pick up intelligence after his release. He discovered that the British planned to ambush Washington while he was on his way to a meeting with Rochambeau on March 5, 1781. Mulligan and Cato remained under suspicion and could not communicate directly with Washington's headquarters, so Mulligan gave the information to Townsend, who sent it to Washington via the Culper Ring network. The message arrived in time for Washington to avoid the trap and travel to the meeting by another route. The members of the ring gathered information from a variety of sources, including persons other than unwitting British officers. Some of those informants or associates included Joseph Lawrence, a Long Island resident; Captain Nathan Woodhull, Woodhull's uncle who served as a Loyalist militia officer but provided information to Abraham Woodhull; Nathaniel Ruggles, a schoolmaster and physician born in 1713; Joshua Davis, a Brewster deputy and occasional substitute; George Smith, a whaleboat man who filled in for Brewster near the end of the war; and William T. Robinson, a merchant. Alexander Rose writes that John Cork was a code name for an unidentified informant. Harry Thayer Mahoney writes that John Corke of Groton, New York posed as a Tory and could travel back and forth to New York City because he was "exceedingly intimate at British headquarters." Corke wrote intelligence reports to Tallmadge in invisible ink or reported verbally to him. Mahoney states that Washington and Tallmadge considered Corke a valuable recruit for the Culper Ring. A letter by loyalist soldier Nehemia Marks was uncovered in 2015 which identifies brothers Nathaniel and Phillip Roe as supporters of the spy ring, with Nathaniel providing intelligence and Phillip material aid. The letter also provides evidence that the Culper ring operated in Drowned Meadow beyond Setauket and Oyster Bay, as previously believed. The letter is housed in the William L. Clements library at the University of Michigan, where it was discovered by a former resident of Port Jefferson researching the Culper Ring. Some sources note a female member of the ring known only as Agent 355, while others believe that this code number referred to Anna Strong or was simply a misunderstanding of a cryptic reference in one of Abraham Woodhull's letters. Other women were informants for the Culper Ring, such as Robert Townsend's sister Sarah (Sally) Townsend and Abraham Woodhull's sister Mary Underhill, who provided important information about Major John Andre and his alias of John Anderson, according to some sources. The general public was unaware of the Ring's existence until the 1930s. Robert Townsend's identity as "Culper, Jr." was discovered in 1929, with the examination of old letters written by Townsend in the Townsend family home. Historian Morton Pennypacker reviewed the letters and noticed that the handwriting in letters from the trunk, written by Robert Townsend, was similar to handwriting in letters written by "Samuel Culper, Jr." in George Washington's collection. Other evidence later corroborated Townsend's identity. James Rivington was confirmed by scholars to be a member of the ring only in the 1950s. James Fenimore Cooper's novel The Spy (1821) may have been based on the Culper Ring, and Woodhull and Townsend (as the combined Samuel Culper) specifically, Roseanna M. White's Ring of Secrets features the Culper Ring and continues with conjecture on possible later actions in Whispers from the Shadows and Circle of Spies, The AMC television series (2014-2017) is based on Alexander Rose's (2006) and tells a fictionalized version of the story of the Culper Ring, with a focus on Abe Woodhull and his correspondence with Washington during the war. Intelligence in the American Revolutionary War, Intelligence operations in the American Revolutionary War, Whaleboat War Bakeless, John. Turncoats, Traitors & Heroes. New York: Da Capo Press, 1998. Originally published New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1959. ., Baker, Mark Allen. Spies of Revolutionary Connecticut: From Benedict Arnold to Nathan Hale. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2014. ., Brady, Kevin M. Culper Spy Ring In Frank, Lisa Tendrich. An Encyclopedia of American Women at War: From the Home Front to the Battlefields. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2013. . p. 172., Ferling, John. Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. . (pbk.) Originally published in hard cover in 2007., Jones, Robert Francis. "The King of the Alley": William Duer, Politician, Entrepreneur, and Speculator, 1768-1799. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1992. ., Kahn, David. The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1996. ., Kilmeade, Brian and Don Yaeger. George Washington's Secret Six: The Spy Ring That Save the American Revolution. New York: Penguin Group, 2013. ., Knott, Stephen. Secret and Sanctioned: Covert Operations and the American Presidency. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. . Retrieved May 22, 2014., Leckie, Robert. George Washington's War: The Saga of the American Revolution. New York: Harper Perennial, a division of HarperCollins, 1993. . First published 1992., Macmillan, Margaret Burnham. The War Governors in the American Revolution. New York: Columbia University Press, 1943. . Retrieved April 22, 2014., Mahl, Tom E. Espionage's Most Wanted: The Top 10 Book of Malicious Moles, Blown Covers, and Intelligence Oddities. Potomac Books, Inc., 2003. . Retrieved May 1, 2014., Mahoney, Henry Thayer and Marjorie Locke Mahoney. Gallantry in Action: A Biographic Dictionary of Espionage in the American Revolutionary War. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, Inc., 1999. ., Misencik, Paul R. The Original American Spies: Seven Covert Agents of the Revolutionary War. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013. . p. 122., Naylor, Natalie A. Women in Long Island's Past: A History of Eminent Ladies and Everyday Lives. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2012. . Retrieved May 1, 2014., Nelson, David Paul. Culper Ring in Hastedt, Glenn, P., ed. Spies, Wiretaps, and Secret Operations: A-J. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011. ., Rose, Alexander. The Spy Who Never Was: The Strange Case of John Honeyman and Revolutionary War Espionage. In CIA Studies in Intelligence Journal, June 19, 2008. Retrieved May 30, 2014., Rose, Alexander. Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring. New York: Bantam Dell, a division of Random House, 2007. First published in hardcover in 2006. ., Schellhammer, Michael. George Washington and the Final British Campaign for the Hudson River, 1779. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., Inc., 2012. ., Sharp, Arthur G. Not Your Father's Founders: An "Amended" Look at America's First Patriots. Avon, MA: Adams Media, 2012. ., Tallmadge, Benjamin. Memoir of Col. Benjamin Tallmadge. New York: Thomas Holman, 1858. ., Ward, Christopher. John Richard Alden, ed. The War of the Revolution. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2011. . Originally published Old Saybrook, CT: Konecky & Konecky, 1952., Weigold, Marilyn E. The Long Island Sound: A History of Its People, Places, and Environment. New York: NYU Press, 2004. . Washington's Spies by Alexander Rose book talk at C-SPANvideo.org, Long Island's Spy Chain, Library of Congress hosting of the letters written by those involved in the Culper Ring, The Culper Spy Ring, Spy Networks: The Culper Gang, Three Village Historical Society Setauket Spy Ring Web Article, Caleb Brewster letter correspondence including with George Washington, Raynham Hall Museum During the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), management and treatment of prisoners of war (POWs) was very different from the standards of modern warfare. Modern standards, as outlined in the Geneva Conventions of later centuries, assume that captives will be held and cared for by their captors. One primary difference in the 18th century was that care and supplies for captives were expected to be provided by their own combatants or private resources. King George III of Great Britain had declared American forces traitors in 1775, which denied them prisoner of war status. However, British strategy in the early conflict included pursuit of a negotiated settlement and so officials declined to try or hang them, the usual procedure for treason, to avoid unnecessarily risking any public sympathy the British might still enjoy. Great Britain's neglect resulted in starvation and disease. Despite the lack of formal executions, neglect achieved the same results as hanging. American prisoners of war tended to be accumulated at large sites, which the British were able to occupy for extended periods of time. New York City, Philadelphia in 1777, and Charleston, South Carolina, were all major cities used to detain American prisoners of war. Facilities there were limited. The occupying army could sometimes be larger than the total civilian population. The surgeon in charge of the New York hospitals housing American prisoners, Francis Mercier, was accused of killing them by poisoning and by assault, and he was ultimately executed for an unrelated murder. The loyalist stronghold of St. Augustine, Florida, was also used by the British to detain patriot prisoners. Notable prisoners included Brigadier General Griffith Rutherford of the Salisbury District Brigade. The British solution to this problem was to use obsolete, captured, or damaged ships as prisons. Conditions were appalling, and many more Americans died of neglect in imprisonment than were killed in battle. While the Continental Army named a commissary to supply them, the task was almost impossible. Elias Boudinot, as one of the commissaries, was competing with other agents seeking to gather supplies for Washington's army at Valley Forge. Historian Edwin G. Burrows writes that "by the end of 1776, disease and starvation had killed at least half of those taken on Long Island and perhaps two-thirds of those captured at Fort Washington – somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 men in the space of two months." During the war, at least 16 hulks, including the infamous HMS Jersey, were placed by British authorities in the waters of Wallabout Bay off the shores of Brooklyn, New York as a place of incarceration for many thousands of American soldiers and sailors from about 1776 to about 1783. The prisoners of war were harassed and abused by guards who, with little success, offered release to those who agreed to serve in the British Navy. Over 10,000 American prisoners of war died from neglect. Their corpses were often tossed overboard but sometimes were buried in shallow graves along the eroding shoreline. Many of the remains became exposed or were washed up and recovered by local residents over the years and later interred nearby in the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument at Fort Greene Park, once the scene of a portion of the Battle of Long Island. Survivors of the British Prison Ships include the poet Philip Freneau, Congressmen Robert Brown and George Mathews. The later was involved in extensive advocacy efforts to improve the prison conditions on the ships. The American Revolution was an expensive war, and lack of money and resources led to the horrible conditions of British prison ships. The climate of the South worsened the difficult conditions. The primary cause of death in prison ships was diseases, as opposed to starvation. The British lacked decent and plentiful medical supplies for their own soldiers and had even less reserved for prisoners. Offshore in the North, conditions on prison ships caused many prisoners to enlist in the British military to save their lives. Most American POWs who survived incarceration were held until late 1779, when they were exchanged for British POWs. Prisoners who were extremely ill were often moved to hospital ships, but poor supplies precluded any difference between prison and hospital ships. American prisoners were housed in other parts of the British Empire. Over 100 prisoners were employed as slave laborers in coal mines in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia - they later chose to join the British Navy to secure their freedom. Other American prisoners were kept in England (Portsmouth, Plymouth, Liverpool, Deal, and Weymouth), Ireland, and Antigua. By late 1782 England and Ireland housed over 1,000 American prisoners, who, in 1783, were moved to France prior to their eventual release. Continental Army prisoners of war from Cherry Valley were held by Loyalists at Fort Niagara near Niagara Falls, New York and at Fort Chambly near Montreal. During the American Revolution, George Washington and his Continental Army put the laws of war into practice regarding prisoners of war, unlike their British opponents. The Americans believed that all captives should be taken prisoner. On September 14, 1775, Washington, commander of the Northern Expeditionary Force, at camp in Cambridge, Massachusetts, wrote to Colonel Benedict Arnold: "Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]... I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require." After winning the Battle of Trenton on the morning of December 26, 1776, Washington found himself left with hundreds of Hessian troops who had surrendered to the Americans. Washington ordered his troops to take the prisoners in and "treat them with humanity," which they did. "Let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren who have fallen into their hands," Washington said. The official stance in the capturing of enemy troops was one of mercy. Edward G. Burrows remarks that although British and Hessian captives did "fare better on the whole than their American counterparts," there were nevertheless "instances of outrageous cruelty" against them, that "certain state governments had particularly bad records of prisoner abuse", and that there were "numerous... complaints over the years from enemy prisoners about bad food, squalor and physical abuse." The treatment of prisoners of war varied from state to state. Provisions among the prisoners also varied but generally ranged from mediocre to bad in the last years of the war. The British and the Germans shared similar and differing experiences as POWs. The Continental Congress' policies on the treatment of POWs remained the same for all enemy combatants and so the prisoner system was generally the same for the two nationalities. However, the British troops were valued more than the German mercenaries and so there are much more examples of British prisoner exchanges than German prisoner exchanges. Americans grew to hate the British more than the Germans, who were much less ill-behaved than the British. The British were more likely to cause disturbances, get into fights, and oppose the guards and the militia since they had become more invested in the defeat of the Americans than the Germans were. Loyalists were the most hated POWs. The Continental Congress took the stance that since prisoners of war were enemy combatants, not criminals, the treatment of POWs differed from criminals. However, depending on the state, Loyalists were often treated more like criminals than POWs. Debate waged throughout the colonies whether to treat Loyalists as enemy soldiers or treasonous citizens. There were very few federal prisons as the Thirteen Colonies, and the Continental Congress were not in a position to create new ones to imprison British and German soldiers. Instead, Congress sent most British and Hessian prisoners to local American towns and ordered local officials to hold them under strict parole. The Continental Congress had the sole authority to decide where the prisoners went, and the local towns had little forewarning and no say in the matter. Prison towns found themselves with the burden of providing for hundreds or thousands of prisoners at a time. In towns that could not afford to feed prisoners, the prisoners were put to work to feed themselves. British and German prisoners cultivated gardens and worked for farms, craftsmen, and other forms of unskilled labor. Local communities attempted to make prison towns as profitable as possible and often helped prisoners find jobs or sent them to other towns and states for work. The more useful were the prisoners of war were, the less of an economic burden they were on the town. A town unable to erect barracks for the prisoners was forced to house them in community churches and even citizens' homes. The Continental Congress' forcing Americans to quarter prisoners was a major source of contention among the people. Even when British and Hessian prisoners of war were not being held in individual houses, they were still in public view, which caused general fear, resentment, and anger. Prisoners were generally not confined to their quarters and could remain in public for the duration of the day. Security proved to be a problem for prison towns. With no official police force and the military being preoccupied with war, local militias and volunteers generally guarded the prisoners of war. Protests in prison towns were common, and people who denied prisoners entry were punished for disobeying the Continental Congress in the form of fines, jail time, and even property expropriation. The reception prisoners received varied from place to place. Overall, the prisoners staying in Boston were in relative peace. The prisoners remarked that the general population of Boston was civil and tolerant of the prisoners. In Virginia and other southern states, wealthy planters and plantation owners were happy to have prisoners in Albemarle County because they could count on an even greater abundance of free or cheap labor. In contrast, the lower class lower in the South was generally much less tolerant to sharing residence with abundant prisoner populations. In Maryland, the state militia directly and aggressively challenged the Continental Army when it attempted to escort the prisoners of war into the state. The South had a collective fear of insurrection that emerged because of the slave population. On October 17, 1777, nearly 6,000 British and Hessian soldiers of the Convention Army surrendered to the Americans. That put the Continental Congress in the position of holding a massive number of prisoners of war on American soil, something that not happened much until then. It was already having trouble providing for the Continental Army, and after Saratoga, it also had to provide for enemy combatants. After British, German, and Canadian troops were defeated, General Burgoyne and General Gates were unable to agree in regard to the 5,900 prisoners. In the Convention of Saratoga, the terms were that the troops were going to be sent back to Europe and would never wage war with North America again. Congress saw that condition as an abysmal treaty for one of their greatest victories in the American Revolution and delayed its ratification repeatedly. General Burgoyne grew frustrated with Congress and openly condemned its actions. Congress used Burgoyne's words as evidence that he was planning to renounce the convention and suspended it until Great Britain recognized American independence. The Americans ended up holding the Convention Army for the duration of the war. "After spending the next year in camps near Cambridge and Rutland, Massachusetts, they were sent by Congress on an overland odyssey that, by the end of the war, took them down to Virginia, then up to Maryland, into Pennsylvania again, and finally back to Rutland. Almost every step of the way they contended with meagre rations, shortages of fuel, inadequate accommodations, and physical violence." Over the course of the revolution, the Convention Army was marched across the colonies. First, it was marched to Massachusetts and remained there for a year, and in 1778, it was moved to Virginia, where it remained for two years. In 1780, it was moved north and gradually dispersed to different states, cities, and towns for the rest of the war. The marches themselves were brutal on the soldiers, but their lives generally improved once they got to their destinations. The main reasons for the marches across America was security and finance. Once resources became scarce in Massachusetts, Congress ordered the army to be moved South. The war effort was very different in the North from the South. In 1780, it had become difficult to provide British and German prisoners of war and their guards with food in the South, where their presence had become a security risk. The British had started their official campaigns in the South, which brought the risk of insurrections. The Convention Army was thus ordered to march back North and was dispersed. There were three ways for a prisoner of war to achieve freedom after being captured: desertion, exchange, or parole. Most of the time, a small militia- hired guard was tasked to supervise the imprisonment of captured British and German soldiers. Their ability to watch over their prisoners efficiently was constantly tested. The Convention Army initially took their POW status gracefully but only because they were under the assumption that they would be sent home within a year. When it became clear that the Americans had no intention of allowing the British to return to Great Britain until the war ended, tensions between the soldiers and the guard escalated and desertions rose rapidly. Propaganda was used by Americans and by high-ranking captured British officials to dissuade troops from deserting, but it largely failed. Many of the prisoners who escaped captivity took American women with them and reared families. A large number of Hessians remained in the US after the war was over because they married American women. Between the time of the Siege of Yorktown (1781) and the signing of the Treaty of Paris (1783), many of the convention troops, by then mostly Germans, escaped and took up permanent residence in the United States. The American government did not have the means to prevent this. The two other official forms of reaching freedom (parole and exchange) was common among high-ranking officers. Parole specifically dealt with individual prisoners of war and so the process of being removed from imprisonment or house arrest and placed on parole was a very simple and speedy process. Most British and German prisoners of war thus sought after parole, but the breaking of parole was common, as many used it just to make desertion easier. Some British and Hessian prisoners of war were paroled to American farmers. Their labor made up for shortages caused by the number of men serving in the Continental Army. Exchange, however, was a very complex and slow process because it involved negotiation and diplomacy between a new and inexperienced nation and a state that absolutely refused to recognize American independence. A major hindrance to exchange was the reluctance of the British to concede non-rebel status to its adversaries. The British perception of the Americans being rebels prevented exchange. A degree of mutual acceptance between Congress and the States of the principle of exchange and procedure in its implementing must have been attained by the end of March 1777. Exchange was handled primarily by Congress, instead of state powers. While state and local government had considerable power over parole, the federal government had power of negotiating exchanges. The capture of thousands of British prisoners of war in the hands of the Americans had the effect of further dissuading British officials from hanging colonial prisoners, despite the abandoned hopes of a settlement by this stage, as they feared reprisals on prisoners being held by the Americans. After the Convention Army was captured, the rate of prisoner exchanges increased dramatically as a result. During the first years of the revolution, the Continental Congress tried to give prisoners of war the same amount of provisions as the soldiers guarding them. However, after the capture of the Convention Army resources turned scarce and the federal government had to rely on state governments to provide for prisoners of war. From 1777 to 1778, General Clinton was providing food and subsidence on the Convention Army, but he eventually decided to end his assistance and to place the full economic burden of providing for the prisoners on the US government. In order to compensate for its lack of resources that Congress could give to the British and German prisoners, they were moved them from state to state. The marches were largely a result of diminishing provisions. Aside from the official marching of the Convention Army, captured prisoners were paraded through cities after military victories as a form of celebration for the Americans and humiliation for their enemies. The parades were done to boost morale among Americans. The Revolutionary War had devastating effects on communities and to see clear examples of US progress and victory helped gain support for the war effort. Robert Brown, U.S. Congressman, Philip Freneau, poet, George Mathews, brigadier general, U.S. Congressman, governor of Georgia Armbruster. Eugene L. The Wallabout Prison Ships: 1776-1783. New York, 1920., Boyle, Joseph Lee, ed. Their Distress is Almost Intolerable: The Elias Boudinot Letterbook, 1777-1778; 2002, Heritage Books (paperback), ., Burrows, Edwin G. Forgotten Patriots: The Untold Story of American Prisoners During the Revolutionary War (NY: Basic Books, 2008), Cray, Robert E., Jr. "Commemorating the Prison Ship Dead: Revolutionary Memory and the Politics of Sepulture in the Early Republic, 1776-1808," William and Mary Quarterly (1999) 56#3 pp. 565–590 in JSTOR, Dabney, William M. After Saratoga: The Story of the Convention Army. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1954., Dandridge, Danske. American Prisoners of the Revolution. The Michie Company, Printers, Charlottsville, Va. 1911., Dandridge, Danske. American Prisoners of the Revolution. Baltimore. Genealogical Publishing Company. 1911., Krebs, Daniel. A Generous and Merciful Enemy: Life for German Prisoners of War during the American Revolution. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013., Lowenthal, Larry. Hell on the East River: British Prison Ships in the American Revolution. Fleischmanns, New York. Purple Mountain Press. 2009., Metzger, Charles H. The Prisoner in the American Revolution. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1971., Pope, Johnathan. "Law, Tradition, and Treason: Captured Americans During the American Revolution, 1775--1783" (M.A. Thesis, University of New Brunswick, 2003). online, Ranlet, Philip. In the Hands of the British: The Treatment of American POWs during the War of Independence. The Historian 62, no. 4 (2000): pp. 731–57 in JSTOR. Saratoga Articles of Convention, 1777, Britain's Prison Ships, 1776-1783, Prisoner Exchange and Parole in the American Revolution, The Exchange of Prisoners, The William and Mary Quarterly

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Boaty McBoatface is the lead boat of the Autosub Long-Range class of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). It is used for scientific research and is carried on the research vessel RRS Sir David Attenborough. Boaty McBoatface is owned by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and operated by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). Because of its complexity and its extended range, NERC classifies it as an autosub long range autonomous vehicle. The name Boaty McBoatface was originally proposed in a March 2016 online poll to name the ship that would eventually be named RRS Sir David Attenborough. Former BBC Radio Jersey presenter James Hand jokingly suggested Boaty McBoatface, a name the public liked and that quickly became the most popular choice. The name has been described as a homage to Hooty McOwlface, an owl named through an "Adopt-a-Bird" programme in 2012 that became popular on the internet. Although Boaty McBoatface was the most popular suggestion in the #NameOurShip poll, the suggestion to use the name for the mother ship was not followed; the Minister for Universities and Science, Jo Johnson, announced that the ship would be named Sir David Attenborough, and the name Boaty McBoatface would be used for one of the submersibles aboard instead. The results of the poll inspired similar results in other naming polls. The boat underwent advanced sea trials in 2016. Its maiden voyage was on 3 April 2017, to research how Antarctic Bottom Water leaves the Weddell Sea and enters the Southern Ocean through Orkney Passage, south of Chile. During this expedition, which was part of a project with the University of Southampton, the National Oceanography Centre, the British Antarctic Survey, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and Princeton University, it traveled at depths of up to and collected data on the water's temperature, salinity, and turbulence. Combined with measurements collected by RRS James Clark Ross, the data suggest that as winds over the Southern Ocean have gotten stronger, driven by the hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica and increases in greenhouse gases, they have increased the turbulence of deep ocean waters, leading to increased mixing of cold and warm water. According to National Oceanography Centre oceanographer Eleanor Frajka-Williams, "This was the unique new process that rapidly exchanges water between the cold and the warm and then spreads the effect of the different water properties over a larger area," more efficiently than the better-known processes that mix warm surface waters with cold water from the deep sea. This action rapidly warms the cold water, which contributes to rising sea levels, as water becomes less dense as it warms. This newly discovered action has not yet been included in models for predicting sea level rise and the effect of climate change on the ocean. The results were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Bjorn Baker's team at Sydney's Warwick Farm Racecourse caught wind of the crowdsourced name Boaty McBoatface and decided that they would pay homage to them by naming their new racehorse Horsey McHorseface. The news of Horsey McHorseface broke out on social media after his win at the Lathan Arthur Thompson Memorial Maiden in Cessnock, Australia. Horsey McHorseface was put to auction and sold for $17,325, but in 2017 was euthanized due to bone disease. Swedish transport company MTR Express conducted an online poll, not long after the one involving Boaty McBoatface, to name a new train on the Stockholm- Gothenburg line. Trainy McTrainface won the poll, and the train was named accordingly. Sydney Ferries allowed the public to name its fleet of Emerald- class ferries through a naming competition. It was announced that the most popular name was Boaty McBoatface but, as it had already been taken, the judges opted to go instead for the second-place choice, and one of the ferries was thus named Ferry McFerryface. After the Maritime Union of Australia refused to crew the vessel in protest at the name, it entered service named Emerald 6 with a Ferry McFerryface sticker below the bridge. It later emerged that the name Ferry McFerryface had received fewer than 200 votes in the poll; it had been selected by the New South Wales Transport Minister out of his personal preference for the name, which was subsequently changed. Megabus' United Kingdom operation hosted a Twitter poll in late 2017 to name some of their brand-new Plaxton Elite bodied Volvo B11RT interdeck coaches. Mega McMegaface won, and the name was applied to one of the vehicles. In March 2017 the Isle of Wight Council, which operates the Cowes Floating Bridge (a chain ferry across the Medina between Cowes and East Cowes), stated it was open to suggestions from residents for a new name for the vessel after originally registering it as Floating Bridge No.6. Despite council officials ruling out "Floaty McFloatface" as a name, a petition was later created to name the vessel Floaty McFloatface, attracting over 2,000 signatures and even caused the council to rescind its decision to veto the name. In 2016 Google released a grammar parsing software package, which they named Parsey McParseface. In December 2018 Formula E team Mahindra announced the name of their new car, Electro McElectroFace. In 2018 a naming contest for a sculpture of a Muskox took place in Yellowknife, NWT Canada. Musky McMuskoxface was a name in the running, but did not win. The successful winning name was instead Elon Muskox. In October 2018 Shropshire Council named a gritter (salt truck) Gritty McGritface after a public vote. In February 2019 Jagex named a sub-boss Bossy McBossface in their MMORPG Runescape. He can be found in the opening area of their third elite dungeon, The Shadow Reef, and is responsible for dropping the weapon Swordy McSwordFace. In June 2019 Southend-on-Sea Borough Council named a skate park Skatey McSkateface after a public vote. One explanation of the X-y McX-face style of meme at Slate A Royal Research Ship (RRS) is a merchant navy vessel of the United Kingdom that conducts scientific research for Her Majesty's Government. Organisations operating such ships include; the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and the National Oceanography Centre (NOC). A warrant from the Queen is required before a ship can be designated as an RRS. In the 1950s and 1960s the Royal Research Ships of the day were owned by the Admiralty, partially managed by the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA), and run as ships of that fleet. The work of the two Royal Research Ships operated by the British Antarctic Survey is complemented by a Royal Navy icebreaker, currently HMS Protector, which provides science logistics support to the British Antarctic Survey. All ships bear the prefix "RRS" - Royal Research Ship. On 25 April 2014 the government announced that £200 million would be invested in the construction of a new polar research vehicle, to replace Ernest Shackleton and James Clark Ross. The ship is to be built by Cammell Laird with construction expected to start in Autumn 2016. The new icebreaker will be designed with a helipad, on-board labs and the capability to deploy subs. The ship is due for completion in October 2019 and should enter service later that year. On 17 March 2016, the Natural Environment Research Council launched a poll to name the ship. By 29 March 2016, the leading name was RRS Boaty McBoatface with more than 101,000 votes. When polling closed on 16 April 2016, the name had 124,000 votes, more than four times that of its nearest rival, RRS Poppy-Mai. Many more, if not most of the suggested names were in jest. Other top 10-finishers were RRS Its Bloody Cold Here, Usain Boat, Boatimus Prime, and I Like Big Boats & I Cannot Lie. Another popular name, RRS Blas de Lezo (after Admiral Blas de Lezo), attracted over 38,000 votes before it was removed from voting for being "liable to cause offence". Jo Johnson, the Minister of State for Universities and Science, said that ministers were "unlikely to endorse the fantastic and very imaginative suggestions [because]... we want something that fits the mission and captures the spirit of scientific endeavour." In May 2016, it was announced that the new ship was to be named after the naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough, while Boaty McBoatface would be retained as the name of one of the new ship's ROVs. (1901), RRS William Scoresby (1926), (1929), (1956), (1962), (1970), (1985), (1999) Marine Scotland, History of research ships, Research vessel UK Natural Environment Research Council, UK National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, National Marine Facilities Division, Inter-Agency Committee on Marine Science and Technology RRS Sir David Attenborough is a research vessel owned by the Natural Environment Research Council, to be operated by the British Antarctic Survey for the purposes of both research and logistic support. In this, the ship is intended to replace a pair of existing vessels, and . The vessel is named after broadcaster and naturalist Sir David Attenborough. In 2014, the UK Government announced funding for the construction of a new polar research vessel for the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) to replace a pair of existing ships. This new ship was intended not only to be fully equipped with the latest instrumentation for the purposes of carrying out research in polar regions, for which it would have an improved icebreaking capability and greater endurance over the existing polar research vessel, but also to serve as a logistic support vessel for BAS teams in inshore locations. BAS contracted Houlder Ltd to undertake the basic design in which suggestions for the final configuration of the new ship were taken. Following the consultation period, in 2015, Rolls-Royce Holdings was selected to execute the detailed design and Cammell Laird in Birkenhead was selected as the preferred bidder to construct the ship. The ship is about long, with a beam of about . The draught is about with a planned cruising speed of with a range of at that speed. She is capable of carrying a helicopter and has a capacity for approximately of cargo. Accommodation is provided for 30 crew and 60 research staff. Sir David Attenborough has a twin-shaft hybrid diesel-electric propulsion system. The vessel's power plant consists of two 6-cylinder Bergen B33:45L6A and two 9-cylinder Bergen B33:45L9A main diesel generators, a harbour generator, and two battery systems each of capacity. The power plant, which can run with different configurations depending on the mission and operating conditions, produces electricity to power four asynchronous electric motors driving two 5-bladed controllable pitch propellers. This gives Sir David Attenborough a maximum speed of in open water and ability to break up to thick level ice at a speed of . At an economical cruising speed of , she has an operating range of . For manoeuvring and dynamic positioning, the vessel has four Tees White Gill thrusters, two in the bow and two in the stern. The vessel has been strengthened according to the International Association of Classification Societies (IACS) Unified Requirements for Polar Class Ships. Her ice class, Polar Class 4, is intended for year-round operation in thick first-year ice which may include old ice inclusions. However, her propulsion system is rated for Polar Class 5 which is intended for medium first-year ice. The first steel for the construction of the ship was cut in July 2016. The keel laying ceremony for the ship, yard number 1390, took place on 17 October 2016. The ship was constructed by combining individually fabricated blocks, much like the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers. The majority of the blocks will be manufactured by Cammell Laird at Birkenhead, but due to a tight schedule, the stern of the ship (named 'Block 10') was fabricated at the A&P; Group on the River Tyne. The section was transported to Merseyside on a barge in August 2017. The stern section was loaded onto the barge by heavy lifting company ALE, using self-propelled modular trailers (SPMT). The same procedure in reverse was then used to get the hull segment on to the slipway at Birkenhead. The hull of Sir David Attenborough was named by her namesake and launched on 14 July 2018. She was moved into a wet dock for the addition of her superstructure and fitting out. The ship was originally scheduled to be completed by October 2018. The official naming ceremony took place on 26 September 2019. A bottle of champagne was smashed across the ship's bow by Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge at Cammel Lair's shipyard in Birkenhead. Sir David Attenborough was present at the ceremony. Poet Laureate Simon Armitage wrote a poem "Ark" to celebrate the naming ceremony. In March 2016, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) announced that members of the public were being asked to suggest names for the ship. Names previously used would not be eligible, but otherwise it was open to suggestions. The NERC stated that they would have the final say, and that the most popular name in the poll would not necessarily be the one used. Former BBC Radio Jersey presenter James Hand jokingly suggested RRS "Boaty McBoatface". This quickly became the most popular choice and was the runaway winner when the poll closed, with 124,109 votes. The name has been described as a homage to "Hooty McOwlface", an owl named through an "Adopt-A-Bird" program in 2012 that became popular on the internet. On 6 May 2016, British science minister Jo Johnson announced that the choice had been made to name the ship after naturalist Sir David Attenborough, but that Boaty McBoatface would be the name of one of David Attenborough remotely controlled submersibles. A petition calling for Sir David Attenborough to change his name to Sir Boaty McBoatface "in the interest of democracy and humour" soon received over 3,800 signatures. In response to the poll, the Science and Technology Committee, a select committee of the House of Lords, announced that they were to review the process by which the ship was named. NERC chief executive Professor Duncan Wingham and NERC head of communications Julia Maddock faced the committee on 10 May. Professor James Wilsdon, an outreach director at Sheffield University, told MPs that he voted for Boaty McBoatface. Despite the controversy, NERC directors felt that their poll was a successful initiative in that it generated a lot of publicity regarding their organisation and research mission among the lay public. Other leading choices in the poll were Poppy-Mai, in honour of a toddler with incurable cancer, and Henry Worsley, for a British army officer who died in 2016 while attempting to complete the first solo and unaided crossing of the Antarctic. Spanish Internet trolls promoted the choice Blas de Lezo, a Spanish admiral who gave a humiliating defeat to the British Royal Navy in 1741. The organisers removed the option, which gathered more than 38,000 votes. On 12 May 2016, Google released a natural language parser named Parsey McParseface in reference to the boat naming contest, as part of their open- source SyntaxNet neural network framework. In September 2016, the US Air Force formally named its new stealth bomber currently under development as the Northrop Grumman B-21 "Raider". The name was chosen through a survey of airmen; among the rejected names was "Stealthy McStealthface". On 5 August 2016, Cartoon Network's long running animated series, Regular Show, released an episode titled "Spacey McSpaceTree". In 2017 the BBC Three (online) series Pls Like, a comedy mockumentary about the search for the next star vlogger, writer and star Liam Williams uses the vlogger name "Vloggy McVlogface". On 22 March 2016 the 0729 South West Trains Portsmouth to Waterloo service was playfully named Trainy McTrainface, and in July 2017 the same name was chosen in an online poll for a new train on the Stockholm-Gothenburg line. In May 2017, the Hunstanton Sea Life Sanctuary in the UK announced that the first Humboldt penguin chick to hatch in more than a decade had been named Fluffy McFluffyface by the sanctuary staff. In November 2017, Sydney Ferries allowed the public to name its fleet of Emerald-class ferries for use in Sydney Harbour, Australia through a naming competition. The most popular name was Boaty McBoatface but, as it had already been taken, New South Wales Transport Minister picked Ferry McFerryface out of his personal preference instead. After the Maritime Union of Australia refused to crew the vessel in protest at the name, it entered service named Emerald 6 with a Ferry McFerryface sticker below the bridge, and in January 2018, following revelations that the name wasn't a public vote winner but selected by the minister, it was renamed May Gibbs. In February 2019, the popular online game Runescape released an update which contained a new weapon named Swordy McSwordFace, which was to be dropped by a mini-boss named Bossy McBossFace

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In astronomy, the main sequence is a continuous and distinctive band of stars that appears on plots of stellar color versus brightness. These color- magnitude plots are known as Hertzsprung–Russell diagrams after their co- developers, Ejnar Hertzsprung and Henry Norris Russell. Stars on this band are known as main-sequence stars or dwarf stars. These are the most numerous true stars in the universe, and include the Earth's Sun. After condensation and ignition of a star, it generates thermal energy in its dense core region through nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium. During this stage of the star's lifetime, it is located on the main sequence at a position determined primarily by its mass, but also based upon its chemical composition and age. The cores of main-sequence stars are in hydrostatic equilibrium, where outward thermal pressure from the hot core is balanced by the inward pressure of gravitational collapse from the overlying layers. The strong dependence of the rate of energy generation on temperature and pressure helps to sustain this balance. Energy generated at the core makes its way to the surface and is radiated away at the photosphere. The energy is carried by either radiation or convection, with the latter occurring in regions with steeper temperature gradients, higher opacity or both. The main sequence is sometimes divided into upper and lower parts, based on the dominant process that a star uses to generate energy. Stars below about 1.5 times the mass of the Sun () primarily fuse hydrogen atoms together in a series of stages to form helium, a sequence called the proton–proton chain. Above this mass, in the upper main sequence, the nuclear fusion process mainly uses atoms of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen as intermediaries in the CNO cycle that produces helium from hydrogen atoms. Main-sequence stars with more than two solar masses undergo convection in their core regions, which acts to stir up the newly created helium and maintain the proportion of fuel needed for fusion to occur. Below this mass, stars have cores that are entirely radiative with convective zones near the surface. With decreasing stellar mass, the proportion of the star forming a convective envelope steadily increases. Main-sequence stars below undergo convection throughout their mass. When core convection does not occur, a helium-rich core develops surrounded by an outer layer of hydrogen. In general, the more massive a star is, the shorter its lifespan on the main sequence. After the hydrogen fuel at the core has been consumed, the star evolves away from the main sequence on the HR diagram, into a supergiant, red giant, or directly to a white dwarf. In the early part of the 20th century, information about the types and distances of stars became more readily available. The spectra of stars were shown to have distinctive features, which allowed them to be categorized. Annie Jump Cannon and Edward C. Pickering at Harvard College Observatory developed a method of categorization that became known as the Harvard Classification Scheme, published in the Harvard Annals in 1901. In Potsdam in 1906, the Danish astronomer Ejnar Hertzsprung noticed that the reddest stars—classified as K and M in the Harvard scheme—could be divided into two distinct groups. These stars are either much brighter than the Sun, or much fainter. To distinguish these groups, he called them "giant" and "dwarf" stars. The following year he began studying star clusters; large groupings of stars that are co-located at approximately the same distance. He published the first plots of color versus luminosity for these stars. These plots showed a prominent and continuous sequence of stars, which he named the Main Sequence. At Princeton University, Henry Norris Russell was following a similar course of research. He was studying the relationship between the spectral classification of stars and their actual brightness as corrected for distance—their absolute magnitude. For this purpose he used a set of stars that had reliable parallaxes and many of which had been categorized at Harvard. When he plotted the spectral types of these stars against their absolute magnitude, he found that dwarf stars followed a distinct relationship. This allowed the real brightness of a dwarf star to be predicted with reasonable accuracy. Of the red stars observed by Hertzsprung, the dwarf stars also followed the spectra-luminosity relationship discovered by Russell. However, the giant stars are much brighter than dwarfs and so do not follow the same relationship. Russell proposed that the "giant stars must have low density or great surface-brightness, and the reverse is true of dwarf stars". The same curve also showed that there were very few faint white stars. In 1933, Bengt Strömgren introduced the term Hertzsprung–Russell diagram to denote a luminosity-spectral class diagram. This name reflected the parallel development of this technique by both Hertzsprung and Russell earlier in the century. As evolutionary models of stars were developed during the 1930s, it was shown that, for stars of a uniform chemical composition, a relationship exists between a star's mass and its luminosity and radius. That is, for a given mass and composition, there is a unique solution for determining the star's radius and luminosity. This became known as the Vogt–Russell theorem; named after Heinrich Vogt and Henry Norris Russell. By this theorem, when a star's chemical composition and its position on the main sequence is known, so too is the star's mass and radius. (However, it was subsequently discovered that the theorem breaks down somewhat for stars of non-uniform composition.) A refined scheme for stellar classification was published in 1943 by William Wilson Morgan and Philip Childs Keenan. The MK classification assigned each star a spectral type—based on the Harvard classification—and a luminosity class. The Harvard classification had been developed by assigning a different letter to each star based on the strength of the hydrogen spectral line, before the relationship between spectra and temperature was known. When ordered by temperature and when duplicate classes were removed, the spectral types of stars followed, in order of decreasing temperature with colors ranging from blue to red, the sequence O, B, A, F, G, K and M. (A popular mnemonic for memorizing this sequence of stellar classes is "Oh Be A Fine Girl/Guy, Kiss Me".) The luminosity class ranged from I to V, in order of decreasing luminosity. Stars of luminosity class V belonged to the main sequence. In April 2018, astronomers reported the detection of the most distant "ordinary" (i.e., main sequence) star, named Icarus (formally, MACS J1149 Lensed Star 1), at 9 billion light-years away from Earth. When a protostar is formed from the collapse of a giant molecular cloud of gas and dust in the local interstellar medium, the initial composition is homogeneous throughout, consisting of about 70% hydrogen, 28% helium and trace amounts of other elements, by mass. The initial mass of the star depends on the local conditions within the cloud. (The mass distribution of newly formed stars is described empirically by the initial mass function.) During the initial collapse, this pre-main-sequence star generates energy through gravitational contraction. Once sufficiently dense, stars begin converting hydrogen into helium and giving off energy through an exothermic nuclear fusion process. When nuclear fusion of hydrogen becomes the dominant energy production process and the excess energy gained from gravitational contraction has been lost, the star lies along a curve on the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram (or HR diagram) called the standard main sequence. Astronomers will sometimes refer to this stage as "zero age main sequence", or ZAMS. The ZAMS curve can be calculated using computer models of stellar properties at the point when stars begin hydrogen fusion. From this point, the brightness and surface temperature of stars typically increase with age. A star remains near its initial position on the main sequence until a significant amount of hydrogen in the core has been consumed, then begins to evolve into a more luminous star. (On the HR diagram, the evolving star moves up and to the right of the main sequence.) Thus the main sequence represents the primary hydrogen-burning stage of a star's lifetime. The majority of stars on a typical HR diagram lie along the main-sequence curve. This line is pronounced because both the spectral type and the luminosity depend only on a star's mass, at least to zeroth-order approximation, as long as it is fusing hydrogen at its core—and that is what almost all stars spend most of their "active" lives doing. The temperature of a star determines its spectral type via its effect on the physical properties of plasma in its photosphere. A star's energy emission as a function of wavelength is influenced by both its temperature and composition. A key indicator of this energy distribution is given by the color index, B − V, which measures the star's magnitude in blue (B) and green-yellow (V) light by means of filters. This difference in magnitude provides a measure of a star's temperature. Main-sequence stars are called dwarf stars, but this terminology is partly historical and can be somewhat confusing. For the cooler stars, dwarfs such as red dwarfs, orange dwarfs, and yellow dwarfs are indeed much smaller and dimmer than other stars of those colors. However, for hotter blue and white stars, the size and brightness difference between so-called "dwarf" stars that are on the main sequence and the so-called "giant" stars that are not becomes smaller; for the hottest stars it is not directly observable. For those stars the terms "dwarf" and "giant" refer to differences in spectral lines which indicate if a star is on the main sequence or off it. Nevertheless, very hot main-sequence stars are still sometimes called dwarfs, even though they have roughly the same size and brightness as the "giant" stars of that temperature. The common use of "dwarf" to mean main sequence is confusing in another way, because there are dwarf stars which are not main-sequence stars. For example, a white dwarf is the dead core of a star that is left after the star has shed its outer layers, that is much smaller than a main-sequence star, roughly the size of Earth. These represent the final evolutionary stage of many main- sequence stars. By treating the star as an idealized energy radiator known as a black body, the luminosity L and radius R can be related to the effective temperature T by the Stefan–Boltzmann law: where σ is the Stefan–Boltzmann constant. As the position of a star on the HR diagram shows its approximate luminosity, this relation can be used to estimate its radius. The mass, radius and luminosity of a star are closely interlinked, and their respective values can be approximated by three relations. First is the Stefan–Boltzmann law, which relates the luminosity L, the radius R and the surface temperature T. Second is the mass–luminosity relation, which relates the luminosity L and the mass M. Finally, the relationship between M and R is close to linear. The ratio of M to R increases by a factor of only three over 2.5 orders of magnitude of M. This relation is roughly proportional to the star's inner temperature T, and its extremely slow increase reflects the fact that the rate of energy generation in the core strongly depends on this temperature, whereas it has to fit the mass–luminosity relation. Thus, a too high or too low temperature will result in stellar instability. A better approximation is to take ε = L/M, the energy generation rate per unit mass, as ε is proportional to T, where T is the core temperature. This is suitable for stars at least as massive as the Sun, exhibiting the CNO cycle, and gives the better fit R ∝ M. The table below shows typical values for stars along the main sequence. The values of luminosity (L), radius (R) and mass (M) are relative to the Sun—a dwarf star with a spectral classification of G2 V. The actual values for a star may vary by as much as 20–30% from the values listed below. All main-sequence stars have a core region where energy is generated by nuclear fusion. The temperature and density of this core are at the levels necessary to sustain the energy production that will support the remainder of the star. A reduction of energy production would cause the overlaying mass to compress the core, resulting in an increase in the fusion rate because of higher temperature and pressure. Likewise an increase in energy production would cause the star to expand, lowering the pressure at the core. Thus the star forms a self-regulating system in hydrostatic equilibrium that is stable over the course of its main sequence lifetime. Main-sequence stars employ two types of hydrogen fusion processes, and the rate of energy generation from each type depends on the temperature in the core region. Astronomers divide the main sequence into upper and lower parts, based on which of the two is the dominant fusion process. In the lower main sequence, energy is primarily generated as the result of the proton-proton chain, which directly fuses hydrogen together in a series of stages to produce helium. Stars in the upper main sequence have sufficiently high core temperatures to efficiently use the CNO cycle. (See the chart.) This process uses atoms of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen as intermediaries in the process of fusing hydrogen into helium. At a stellar core temperature of 18 million Kelvin, the PP process and CNO cycle are equally efficient, and each type generates half of the star's net luminosity. As this is the core temperature of a star with about 1.5 , the upper main sequence consists of stars above this mass. Thus, roughly speaking, stars of spectral class F or cooler belong to the lower main sequence, while A-type stars or hotter are upper main-sequence stars. The transition in primary energy production from one form to the other spans a range difference of less than a single solar mass. In the Sun, a one solar-mass star, only 1.5% of the energy is generated by the CNO cycle. By contrast, stars with 1.8 or above generate almost their entire energy output through the CNO cycle. The observed upper limit for a main-sequence star is 120–200 . The theoretical explanation for this limit is that stars above this mass can not radiate energy fast enough to remain stable, so any additional mass will be ejected in a series of pulsations until the star reaches a stable limit. The lower limit for sustained proton–proton nuclear fusion is about 0.08 or 80 times the mass of Jupiter. Below this threshold are sub-stellar objects that can not sustain hydrogen fusion, known as brown dwarfs. Because there is a temperature difference between the core and the surface, or photosphere, energy is transported outward. The two modes for transporting this energy are radiation and convection. A radiation zone, where energy is transported by radiation, is stable against convection and there is very little mixing of the plasma. By contrast, in a convection zone the energy is transported by bulk movement of plasma, with hotter material rising and cooler material descending. Convection is a more efficient mode for carrying energy than radiation, but it will only occur under conditions that create a steep temperature gradient. In massive stars (above 10 ) the rate of energy generation by the CNO cycle is very sensitive to temperature, so the fusion is highly concentrated at the core. Consequently, there is a high temperature gradient in the core region, which results in a convection zone for more efficient energy transport. This mixing of material around the core removes the helium ash from the hydrogen-burning region, allowing more of the hydrogen in the star to be consumed during the main-sequence lifetime. The outer regions of a massive star transport energy by radiation, with little or no convection. Intermediate-mass stars such as Sirius may transport energy primarily by radiation, with a small core convection region. Medium-sized, low-mass stars like the Sun have a core region that is stable against convection, with a convection zone near the surface that mixes the outer layers. This results in a steady buildup of a helium-rich core, surrounded by a hydrogen-rich outer region. By contrast, cool, very low-mass stars (below 0.4 ) are convective throughout. Thus the helium produced at the core is distributed across the star, producing a relatively uniform atmosphere and a proportionately longer main sequence lifespan. As non-fusing helium ash accumulates in the core of a main-sequence star, the reduction in the abundance of hydrogen per unit mass results in a gradual lowering of the fusion rate within that mass. Since it is the outflow of fusion-supplied energy that supports the higher layers of the star, the core is compressed, producing higher temperatures and pressures. Both factors increase the rate of fusion thus moving the equilibrium towards a smaller, denser, hotter core producing more energy whose increased outflow pushes the higher layers further out. Thus there is a steady increase in the luminosity and radius of the star over time. For example, the luminosity of the early Sun was only about 70% of its current value. As a star ages this luminosity increase changes its position on the HR diagram. This effect results in a broadening of the main sequence band because stars are observed at random stages in their lifetime. That is, the main sequence band develops a thickness on the HR diagram; it is not simply a narrow line. Other factors that broaden the main sequence band on the HR diagram include uncertainty in the distance to stars and the presence of unresolved binary stars that can alter the observed stellar parameters. However, even perfect observation would show a fuzzy main sequence because mass is not the only parameter that affects a star's color and luminosity. Variations in chemical composition caused by the initial abundances, the star's evolutionary status, interaction with a close companion, rapid rotation, or a magnetic field can all slightly change a main- sequence star's HR diagram position, to name just a few factors. As an example, there are metal-poor stars (with a very low abundance of elements with higher atomic numbers than helium) that lie just below the main sequence and are known as subdwarfs. These stars are fusing hydrogen in their cores and so they mark the lower edge of main sequence fuzziness caused by variance in chemical composition. A nearly vertical region of the HR diagram, known as the instability strip, is occupied by pulsating variable stars known as Cepheid variables. These stars vary in magnitude at regular intervals, giving them a pulsating appearance. The strip intersects the upper part of the main sequence in the region of class A and F stars, which are between one and two solar masses. Pulsating stars in this part of the instability strip that intersects the upper part of the main sequence are called Delta Scuti variables. Main- sequence stars in this region experience only small changes in magnitude and so this variation is difficult to detect. Other classes of unstable main- sequence stars, like Beta Cephei variables, are unrelated to this instability strip. The total amount of energy that a star can generate through nuclear fusion of hydrogen is limited by the amount of hydrogen fuel that can be consumed at the core. For a star in equilibrium, the energy generated at the core must be at least equal to the energy radiated at the surface. Since the luminosity gives the amount of energy radiated per unit time, the total life span can be estimated, to first approximation, as the total energy produced divided by the star's luminosity. For a star with at least 0.5 , when the hydrogen supply in its core is exhausted and it expands to become a red giant, it can start to fuse helium atoms to form carbon. The energy output of the helium fusion process per unit mass is only about a tenth the energy output of the hydrogen process, and the luminosity of the star increases. This results in a much shorter length of time in this stage compared to the main sequence lifetime. (For example, the Sun is predicted to spend burning helium, compared to about 12 billion years burning hydrogen.) Thus, about 90% of the observed stars above 0.5 will be on the main sequence. On average, main-sequence stars are known to follow an empirical mass-luminosity relationship. The luminosity (L) of the star is roughly proportional to the total mass (M) as the following power law: This relationship applies to main-sequence stars in the range 0.1–50 . The amount of fuel available for nuclear fusion is proportional to the mass of the star. Thus, the lifetime of a star on the main sequence can be estimated by comparing it to solar evolutionary models. The Sun has been a main-sequence star for about 4.5 billion years and it will become a red giant in 6.5 billion years, for a total main sequence lifetime of roughly 10 years. Hence: where M and L are the mass and luminosity of the star, respectively, formula_4 is a solar mass, formula_5 is the solar luminosity and formula_6 is the star's estimated main sequence lifetime. Although more massive stars have more fuel to burn and might intuitively be expected to last longer, they also radiate a proportionately greater amount with increased mass. This is required by the stellar equation of state; for a massive star to maintain equilibrium, the outward pressure of radiated energy generated in the core not only must but will rise to match the titanic inward gravitational pressure of its envelope. Thus, the most massive stars may remain on the main sequence for only a few million years, while stars with less than a tenth of a solar mass may last for over a trillion years. The exact mass-luminosity relationship depends on how efficiently energy can be transported from the core to the surface. A higher opacity has an insulating effect that retains more energy at the core, so the star does not need to produce as much energy to remain in hydrostatic equilibrium. By contrast, a lower opacity means energy escapes more rapidly and the star must burn more fuel to remain in equilibrium. Note, however, that a sufficiently high opacity can result in energy transport via convection, which changes the conditions needed to remain in equilibrium. In high-mass main-sequence stars, the opacity is dominated by electron scattering, which is nearly constant with increasing temperature. Thus the luminosity only increases as the cube of the star's mass. For stars below 10 , the opacity becomes dependent on temperature, resulting in the luminosity varying approximately as the fourth power of the star's mass. For very low- mass stars, molecules in the atmosphere also contribute to the opacity. Below about 0.5 , the luminosity of the star varies as the mass to the power of 2.3, producing a flattening of the slope on a graph of mass versus luminosity. Even these refinements are only an approximation, however, and the mass-luminosity relation can vary depending on a star's composition. When a main-sequence star has consumed the hydrogen at its core, the loss of energy generation causes its gravitational collapse to resume and the star evolves off the main sequence. The path which the star follows across the HR diagram is called an evolutionary track. Stars with less than are predicted to directly become white dwarfs when energy generation by nuclear fusion of hydrogen at their core comes to a halt, although no stars are old enough for this to have occurred. In stars more massive than , the hydrogen surrounding the helium core reaches sufficient temperature and pressure to undergo fusion, forming a hydrogen-burning shell and causing the outer layers of the star to expand and cool. The stage as these stars move away from the main sequence is known as the subgiant branch; it is relatively brief and appears as a gap in the evolutionary track since few stars are observed at that point. When the helium core of low-mass stars becomes degenerate, or the outer layers of intermediate-mass stars cool sufficiently to become opaque, their hydrogen shells increase in temperature and the stars start to become more luminous. This is known as the red giant branch; it is a relatively long-lived stage and it appears prominently in H–R diagrams. These stars will eventually end their lives as white dwarfs. The most massive stars do not become red giants; instead, their cores quickly become hot enough to fuse helium and eventually heavier elements and they are known as supergiants. They follow approximately horizontal evolutionary tracks from the main sequence across the top of the H–R diagram. Supergiants are relatively rare and do not show prominently on most H–R diagrams. Their cores will eventually collapse, usually leading to a supernova and leaving behind either a neutron star or black hole. When a cluster of stars is formed at about the same time, the main sequence lifespan of these stars will depend on their individual masses. The most massive stars will leave the main sequence first, followed in sequence by stars of ever lower masses. The position where stars in the cluster are leaving the main sequence is known as the turnoff point. By knowing the main sequence lifespan of stars at this point, it becomes possible to estimate the age of the cluster. Kippenhahn, Rudolf, 100 Billion Suns, Basic Books, New York, 1983. Stellar evolution is the process by which a star changes over the course of time. Depending on the mass of the star, its lifetime can range from a few million years for the most massive to trillions of years for the least massive, which is considerably longer than the age of the universe. The table shows the lifetimes of stars as a function of their masses. All stars are born from collapsing clouds of gas and dust, often called nebulae or molecular clouds. Over the course of millions of years, these protostars settle down into a state of equilibrium, becoming what is known as a main-sequence star. Nuclear fusion powers a star for most of its life. Initially the energy is generated by the fusion of hydrogen atoms at the core of the main-sequence star. Later, as the preponderance of atoms at the core becomes helium, stars like the Sun begin to fuse hydrogen along a spherical shell surrounding the core. This process causes the star to gradually grow in size, passing through the subgiant stage until it reaches the red giant phase. Stars with at least half the mass of the Sun can also begin to generate energy through the fusion of helium at their core, whereas more-massive stars can fuse heavier elements along a series of concentric shells. Once a star like the Sun has exhausted its nuclear fuel, its core collapses into a dense white dwarf and the outer layers are expelled as a planetary nebula. Stars with around ten or more times the mass of the Sun can explode in a supernova as their inert iron cores collapse into an extremely dense neutron star or black hole. Although the universe is not old enough for any of the smallest red dwarfs to have reached the end of their lives, stellar models suggest they will slowly become brighter and hotter before running out of hydrogen fuel and becoming low-mass white dwarfs. Stellar evolution is not studied by observing the life of a single star, as most stellar changes occur too slowly to be detected, even over many centuries. Instead, astrophysicists come to understand how stars evolve by observing numerous stars at various points in their lifetime, and by simulating stellar structure using computer models. Stellar evolution starts with the gravitational collapse of a giant molecular cloud. Typical giant molecular clouds are roughly across and contain up to . As it collapses, a giant molecular cloud breaks into smaller and smaller pieces. In each of these fragments, the collapsing gas releases gravitational potential energy as heat. As its temperature and pressure increase, a fragment condenses into a rotating sphere of superhot gas known as a protostar. A protostar continues to grow by accretion of gas and dust from the molecular cloud, becoming a pre-main-sequence star as it reaches its final mass. Further development is determined by its mass. Mass is typically compared to the mass of the Sun: means 1 solar mass. Protostars are encompassed in dust, and are thus more readily visible at infrared wavelengths. Observations from the Wide- field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have been especially important for unveiling numerous Galactic protostars and their parent star clusters. Protostars with masses less than roughly never reach temperatures high enough for nuclear fusion of hydrogen to begin. These are known as brown dwarfs. The International Astronomical Union defines brown dwarfs as stars massive enough to fuse deuterium at some point in their lives (13 Jupiter masses (), 2.5 × 10 kg, or ). Objects smaller than are classified as sub-brown dwarfs (but if they orbit around another stellar object they are classified as planets). Both types, deuterium-burning and not, shine dimly and die away slowly, cooling gradually over hundreds of millions of years. For a more-massive protostar, the core temperature will eventually reach 10 million kelvin, initiating the proton–proton chain reaction and allowing hydrogen to fuse, first to deuterium and then to helium. In stars of slightly over , the carbon–nitrogen–oxygen fusion reaction (CNO cycle) contributes a large portion of the energy generation. The onset of nuclear fusion leads relatively quickly to a hydrostatic equilibrium in which energy released by the core maintains a high gas pressure, balancing the weight of the star's matter and preventing further gravitational collapse. The star thus evolves rapidly to a stable state, beginning the main-sequence phase of its evolution. A new star will sit at a specific point on the main sequence of the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram, with the main-sequence spectral type depending upon the mass of the star. Small, relatively cold, low-mass red dwarfs fuse hydrogen slowly and will remain on the main sequence for hundreds of billions of years or longer, whereas massive, hot O-type stars will leave the main sequence after just a few million years. A mid-sized yellow dwarf star, like the Sun, will remain on the main sequence for about 10 billion years. The Sun is thought to be in the middle of its main sequence lifespan. Eventually the core exhausts its supply of hydrogen and the star begins to evolve off of the main sequence. Without the outward pressure generated by the fusion of hydrogen to counteract the force of gravity the core contracts until either electron degeneracy pressure becomes sufficient to oppose gravity or the core becomes hot enough (around 100 MK) for helium fusion to begin. Which of these happens first depends upon the star's mass. What happens after a low-mass star ceases to produce energy through fusion has not been directly observed; the universe is around 13.8 billion years old, which is less time (by several orders of magnitude, in some cases) than it takes for fusion to cease in such stars. Recent astrophysical models suggest that red dwarfs of may stay on the main sequence for some six to twelve trillion years, gradually increasing in both temperature and luminosity, and take several hundred billion more to collapse, slowly, into a white dwarf. Such stars will not become red giants as the whole star is a convection zone and it will not develop a degenerate helium core with a shell burning hydrogen. Instead, hydrogen fusion will proceed until almost the whole star is helium. Slightly more massive stars do expand into red giants, but their helium cores are not massive enough to reach the temperatures required for helium fusion so they never reach the tip of the red giant branch. When hydrogen shell burning finishes, these stars move directly off the red giant branch like a post-asymptotic-giant-branch (AGB) star, but at lower luminosity, to become a white dwarf. A star with an initial mass about will be able to reach temperatures high enough to fuse helium, and these "mid-sized" stars go on to further stages of evolution beyond the red giant branch. Stars of roughly become red giants, which are large non-main-sequence stars of stellar classification K or M. Red giants lie along the right edge of the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram due to their red color and large luminosity. Examples include Aldebaran in the constellation Taurus and Arcturus in the constellation of Boötes. Mid-sized stars are red giants during two different phases of their post-main-sequence evolution: red-giant-branch stars, with inert cores made of helium and hydrogen-burning shells, and asymptotic-giant- branch stars, with inert cores made of carbon and helium-burning shells inside the hydrogen-burning shells. Between these two phases, stars spend a period on the horizontal branch with a helium-fusing core. Many of these helium-fusing stars cluster towards the cool end of the horizontal branch as K-type giants and are referred to as red clump giants. When a star exhausts the hydrogen in its core, it leaves the main sequence and begins to fuse hydrogen in a shell outside the core. The core increases in mass as the shell produces more helium. Depending on the mass of the helium core, this continues for several million to one or two billion years, with the star expanding and cooling at a similar or slightly lower luminosity to its main sequence state. Eventually either the core becomes degenerate, in stars around the mass of the sun, or the outer layers cool sufficiently to become opaque, in more massive stars. Either of these changes cause the hydrogen shell to increase in temperature and the luminosity of the star to increase, at which point the star expands onto the red giant branch. The expanding outer layers of the star are convective, with the material being mixed by turbulence from near the fusing regions up to the surface of the star. For all but the lowest-mass stars, the fused material has remained deep in the stellar interior prior to this point, so the convecting envelope makes fusion products visible at the star's surface for the first time. At this stage of evolution, the results are subtle, with the largest effects, alterations to the isotopes of hydrogen and helium, being unobservable. The effects of the CNO cycle appear at the surface during the first dredge-up, with lower C/C ratios and altered proportions of carbon and nitrogen. These are detectable with spectroscopy and have been measured for many evolved stars. The helium core continues to grow on the red giant branch. It is no longer in thermal equilibrium, either degenerate or above the Schoenberg- Chandrasekhar limit, so it increases in temperature which causes the rate of fusion in the hydrogen shell to increase. The star increases in luminosity towards the tip of the red-giant branch. Red giant branch stars with a degenerate helium core all reach the tip with very similar core masses and very similar luminosities, although the more massive of the red giants become hot enough to ignite helium fusion before that point. In the helium cores of stars in the 0.6 to 2.0 solar mass range, which are largely supported by electron degeneracy pressure, helium fusion will ignite on a timescale of days in a helium flash. In the nondegenerate cores of more massive stars, the ignition of helium fusion occurs relatively slowly with no flash. The nuclear power released during the helium flash is very large, on the order of 10 times the luminosity of the Sun for a few days and 10 times the luminosity of the Sun (roughly the luminosity of the Milky Way Galaxy) for a few seconds. However, the energy is consumed by the thermal expansion of the initially degenerate core and thus cannot be seen from outside the star. Due to the expansion of the core, the hydrogen fusion in the overlying layers slows and total energy generation decreases. The star contracts, although not all the way to the main sequence, and it migrates to the horizontal branch on the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram, gradually shrinking in radius and increasing its surface temperature. Core helium flash stars evolve to the red end of the horizontal branch but do not migrate to higher temperatures before they gain a degenerate carbon-oxygen core and start helium shell burning. These stars are often observed as a red clump of stars in the colour-magnitude diagram of a cluster, hotter and less luminous than the red giants. Higher-mass stars with larger helium cores move along the horizontal branch to higher temperatures, some becoming unstable pulsating stars in the yellow instability strip (RR Lyrae variables), whereas some become even hotter and can form a blue tail or blue hook to the horizontal branch. The morphology of the horizontal branch depends on parameters such as metallicity, age, and helium content, but the exact details are still being modelled. After a star has consumed the helium at the core, hydrogen and helium fusion continues in shells around a hot core of carbon and oxygen. The star follows the asymptotic giant branch on the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram, paralleling the original red giant evolution, but with even faster energy generation (which lasts for a shorter time). Although helium is being burnt in a shell, the majority of the energy is produced by hydrogen burning in a shell further from the core of the star. Helium from these hydrogen burning shells drops towards the center of the star and periodically the energy output from the helium shell increases dramatically. This is known as a thermal pulse and they occur towards the end of the asymptotic-giant-branch phase, sometimes even into the post-asymptotic-giant-branch phase. Depending on mass and composition, there may be several to hundreds of thermal pulses. There is a phase on the ascent of the asymptotic-giant-branch where a deep convective zone forms and can bring carbon from the core to the surface. This is known as the second dredge up, and in some stars there may even be a third dredge up. In this way a carbon star is formed, very cool and strongly reddened stars showing strong carbon lines in their spectra. A process known as hot bottom burning may convert carbon into oxygen and nitrogen before it can be dredged to the surface, and the interaction between these processes determines the observed luminosities and spectra of carbon stars in particular clusters. Another well known class of asymptotic-giant-branch stars is the Mira variables, which pulsate with well-defined periods of tens to hundreds of days and large amplitudes up to about 10 magnitudes (in the visual, total luminosity changes by a much smaller amount). In more-massive stars the stars become more luminous and the pulsation period is longer, leading to enhanced mass loss, and the stars become heavily obscured at visual wavelengths. These stars can be observed as OH/IR stars, pulsating in the infra-red and showing OH maser activity. These stars are clearly oxygen rich, in contrast to the carbon stars, but both must be produced by dredge ups. These mid-range stars ultimately reach the tip of the asymptotic-giant-branch and run out of fuel for shell burning. They are not sufficiently massive to start full-scale carbon fusion, so they contract again, going through a period of post-asymptotic-giant-branch superwind to produce a planetary nebula with an extremely hot central star. The central star then cools to a white dwarf. The expelled gas is relatively rich in heavy elements created within the star and may be particularly oxygen or carbon enriched, depending on the type of the star. The gas builds up in an expanding shell called a circumstellar envelope and cools as it moves away from the star, allowing dust particles and molecules to form. With the high infrared energy input from the central star, ideal conditions are formed in these circumstellar envelopes for maser excitation. It is possible for thermal pulses to be produced once post- asymptotic-giant-branch evolution has begun, producing a variety of unusual and poorly understood stars known as born-again asymptotic-giant-branch stars. These may result in extreme horizontal-branch stars (subdwarf B stars), hydrogen deficient post-asymptotic-giant-branch stars, variable planetary nebula central stars, and R Coronae Borealis variables. In massive stars, the core is already large enough at the onset of the hydrogen burning shell that helium ignition will occur before electron degeneracy pressure has a chance to become prevalent. Thus, when these stars expand and cool, they do not brighten as dramatically as lower-mass stars; however, they were more luminous on the main sequence and they evolve to highly luminous supergiants. Their cores become massive enough that they cannot support themselves by electron degeneracy and will eventually collapse to produce a neutron star or black hole. Extremely massive stars (more than approximately ), which are very luminous and thus have very rapid stellar winds, lose mass so rapidly due to radiation pressure that they tend to strip off their own envelopes before they can expand to become red supergiants, and thus retain extremely high surface temperatures (and blue-white color) from their main-sequence time onwards. The largest stars of the current generation are about because the outer layers would be expelled by the extreme radiation. Although lower-mass stars normally do not burn off their outer layers so rapidly, they can likewise avoid becoming red giants or red supergiants if they are in binary systems close enough so that the companion star strips off the envelope as it expands, or if they rotate rapidly enough so that convection extends all the way from the core to the surface, resulting in the absence of a separate core and envelope due to thorough mixing. The core of a massive star, defined as the region depleted of hydrogen, grows hotter and more dense as it accretes material from the fusion of hydrogen outside the core. In sufficiently massive stars, the core reaches temperatures and densities high enough to fuse carbon and heavier elements via the alpha process. At the end of helium fusion, the core of a star consists primarily of carbon and oxygen. In stars heavier than about , the carbon ignites and fuses to form neon, sodium, and magnesium. Stars somewhat less massive may partially ignite carbon, but are unable to fully fuse the carbon before electron degeneracy sets in, and these stars will eventually leave an oxygen-neon-magnesium white dwarf. The exact mass limit for full carbon burning depends on several factors such as metallicity and the detailed mass lost on the asymptotic giant branch, but is approximately . After carbon burning is complete, the core of these stars reaches about and becomes hot enough for heavier elements to fuse. Before oxygen starts to fuse, neon begins to capture electrons which triggers neon burning. For a range of stars of approximately , this process is unstable and creates runaway fusion resulting in an electron capture supernova. In more massive stars, the fusion of neon proceeds without a runaway deflagration. This is followed in turn by complete oxygen burning and silicon burning, producing a core consisting largely of iron-peak elements. Surrounding the core are shells of lighter elements still undergoing fusion. The timescale for complete fusion of a carbon core to an iron core is so short, just a few hundred years, that the outer layers of the star are unable to react and the appearance of the star is largely unchanged. The iron core grows until it reaches an effective Chandrasekhar mass, higher than the formal Chandrasekhar mass due to various corrections for the relativistic effects, entropy, charge, and the surrounding envelope. The effective Chandrasekhar mass for an iron core varies from about in the least massive red supergiants to more than or more in more massive stars. Once this mass is reached, electrons begin to be captured into the iron-peak nuclei and the core becomes unable to support itself. The core collapses and the star is destroyed, either in a supernova or direct collapse to a black hole. When the core of a massive stars collapses, it will form a neutron star, or in the case of cores that exceed the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit, a black hole. Through a process that is not completely understood, some of the gravitational potential energy released by this core collapse is converted into a Type Ib, Type Ic, or Type II supernova. It is known that the core collapse produces a massive surge of neutrinos, as observed with supernova SN 1987A. The extremely energetic neutrinos fragment some nuclei; some of their energy is consumed in releasing nucleons, including neutrons, and some of their energy is transformed into heat and kinetic energy, thus augmenting the shock wave started by rebound of some of the infalling material from the collapse of the core. Electron capture in very dense parts of the infalling matter may produce additional neutrons. Because some of the rebounding matter is bombarded by the neutrons, some of its nuclei capture them, creating a spectrum of heavier-than-iron material including the radioactive elements up to (and likely beyond) uranium. Although non-exploding red giants can produce significant quantities of elements heavier than iron using neutrons released in side reactions of earlier nuclear reactions, the abundance of elements heavier than iron (and in particular, of certain isotopes of elements that have multiple stable or long-lived isotopes) produced in such reactions is quite different from that produced in a supernova. Neither abundance alone matches that found in the Solar System, so both supernovae and ejection of elements from red giants are required to explain the observed abundance of heavy elements and isotopes thereof. The energy transferred from collapse of the core to rebounding material not only generates heavy elements, but provides for their acceleration well beyond escape velocity, thus causing a Type Ib, Type Ic, or Type II supernova. Current understanding of this energy transfer is still not satisfactory; although current computer models of Type Ib, Type Ic, and Type II supernovae account for part of the energy transfer, they are not able to account for enough energy transfer to produce the observed ejection of material. However, neutrino oscillations may play an important role in the energy transfer problem as they not only affect the energy available in a particular flavour of neutrinos but also through other general-relativistic effects on neutrinos. Some evidence gained from analysis of the mass and orbital parameters of binary neutron stars (which require two such supernovae) hints that the collapse of an oxygen-neon-magnesium core may produce a supernova that differs observably (in ways other than size) from a supernova produced by the collapse of an iron core. The most massive stars that exist today may be completely destroyed by a supernova with an energy greatly exceeding its gravitational binding energy. This rare event, caused by pair-instability, leaves behind no black hole remnant. In the past history of the universe, some stars were even larger than the largest that exists today, and they would immediately collapse into a black hole at the end of their lives, due to photodisintegration. After a star has burned out its fuel supply, its remnants can take one of three forms, depending on the mass during its lifetime. For a star of , the resulting white dwarf is of about , compressed into approximately the volume of the Earth. White dwarfs are stable because the inward pull of gravity is balanced by the degeneracy pressure of the star's electrons, a consequence of the Pauli exclusion principle. Electron degeneracy pressure provides a rather soft limit against further compression; therefore, for a given chemical composition, white dwarfs of higher mass have a smaller volume. With no fuel left to burn, the star radiates its remaining heat into space for billions of years. A white dwarf is very hot when it first forms, more than 100,000 K at the surface and even hotter in its interior. It is so hot that a lot of its energy is lost in the form of neutrinos for the first 10 million years of its existence, but will have lost most of its energy after a billion years. The chemical composition of the white dwarf depends upon its mass. A star of a few solar masses will ignite carbon fusion to form magnesium, neon, and smaller amounts of other elements, resulting in a white dwarf composed chiefly of oxygen, neon, and magnesium, provided that it can lose enough mass to get below the Chandrasekhar limit (see below), and provided that the ignition of carbon is not so violent as to blow the star apart in a supernova. A star of mass on the order of magnitude of the Sun will be unable to ignite carbon fusion, and will produce a white dwarf composed chiefly of carbon and oxygen, and of mass too low to collapse unless matter is added to it later (see below). A star of less than about half the mass of the Sun will be unable to ignite helium fusion (as noted earlier), and will produce a white dwarf composed chiefly of helium. In the end, all that remains is a cold dark mass sometimes called a black dwarf. However, the universe is not old enough for any black dwarfs to exist yet. If the white dwarf's mass increases above the Chandrasekhar limit, which is for a white dwarf composed chiefly of carbon, oxygen, neon, and/or magnesium, then electron degeneracy pressure fails due to electron capture and the star collapses. Depending upon the chemical composition and pre-collapse temperature in the center, this will lead either to collapse into a neutron star or runaway ignition of carbon and oxygen. Heavier elements favor continued core collapse, because they require a higher temperature to ignite, because electron capture onto these elements and their fusion products is easier; higher core temperatures favor runaway nuclear reaction, which halts core collapse and leads to a Type Ia supernova. These supernovae may be many times brighter than the Type II supernova marking the death of a massive star, even though the latter has the greater total energy release. This instability to collapse means that no white dwarf more massive than approximately can exist (with a possible minor exception for very rapidly spinning white dwarfs, whose centrifugal force due to rotation partially counteracts the weight of their matter). Mass transfer in a binary system may cause an initially stable white dwarf to surpass the Chandrasekhar limit. If a white dwarf forms a close binary system with another star, hydrogen from the larger companion may accrete around and onto a white dwarf until it gets hot enough to fuse in a runaway reaction at its surface, although the white dwarf remains below the Chandrasekhar limit. Such an explosion is termed a nova. Ordinarily, atoms are mostly electron clouds by volume, with very compact nuclei at the center (proportionally, if atoms were the size of a football stadium, their nuclei would be the size of dust mites). When a stellar core collapses, the pressure causes electrons and protons to fuse by electron capture. Without electrons, which keep nuclei apart, the neutrons collapse into a dense ball (in some ways like a giant atomic nucleus), with a thin overlying layer of degenerate matter (chiefly iron unless matter of different composition is added later). The neutrons resist further compression by the Pauli Exclusion Principle, in a way analogous to electron degeneracy pressure, but stronger. These stars, known as neutron stars, are extremely small—on the order of radius 10 km, no bigger than the size of a large city—and are phenomenally dense. Their period of rotation shortens dramatically as the stars shrink (due to conservation of angular momentum); observed rotational periods of neutron stars range from about 1.5 milliseconds (over 600 revolutions per second) to several seconds. When these rapidly rotating stars' magnetic poles are aligned with the Earth, we detect a pulse of radiation each revolution. Such neutron stars are called pulsars, and were the first neutron stars to be discovered. Though electromagnetic radiation detected from pulsars is most often in the form of radio waves, pulsars have also been detected at visible, X-ray, and gamma ray wavelengths. If the mass of the stellar remnant is high enough, the neutron degeneracy pressure will be insufficient to prevent collapse below the Schwarzschild radius. The stellar remnant thus becomes a black hole. The mass at which this occurs is not known with certainty, but is currently estimated at between 2 and . Black holes are predicted by the theory of general relativity. According to classical general relativity, no matter or information can flow from the interior of a black hole to an outside observer, although quantum effects may allow deviations from this strict rule. The existence of black holes in the universe is well supported, both theoretically and by astronomical observation. Because the core-collapse mechanism of a supernova is, at present, only partially understood, it is still not known whether it is possible for a star to collapse directly to a black hole without producing a visible supernova, or whether some supernovae initially form unstable neutron stars which then collapse into black holes; the exact relation between the initial mass of the star and the final remnant is also not completely certain. Resolution of these uncertainties requires the analysis of more supernovae and supernova remnants. A stellar evolutionary model is a mathematical model that can be used to compute the evolutionary phases of a star from its formation until it becomes a remnant. The mass and chemical composition of the star are used as the inputs, and the luminosity and surface temperature are the only constraints. The model formulae are based upon the physical understanding of the star, usually under the assumption of hydrostatic equilibrium. Extensive computer calculations are then run to determine the changing state of the star over time, yielding a table of data that can be used to determine the evolutionary track of the star across the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram, along with other evolving properties. Accurate models can be used to estimate the current age of a star by comparing its physical properties with those of stars along a matching evolutionary track. (metallicity), – Rotations slow as stars age Astronomy 606 (Stellar Structure and Evolution) lecture notes, Cole Miller, Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, Astronomy 162, Unit 2 (The Structure & Evolution of Stars) lecture notes, Richard W. Pogge, Department of Astronomy, Ohio State University Stellar evolution simulator, Pisa Stellar Models, MESA stellar evolution codes (Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics), "The Life of Stars", BBC Radio 4 discussion with Paul Murdin, Janna Levin and Phil Charles (In Our Time, Mar. 27, 2003) A Cepheid variable () is a type of star that pulsates radially, varying in both diameter and temperature and producing changes in brightness with a well- defined stable period and amplitude. A strong direct relationship between a Cepheid variable's luminosity and pulsation period established Cepheids as important indicators of cosmic benchmarks for scaling galactic and extragalactic distances. This robust characteristic of classical Cepheids was discovered in 1908 by Henrietta Swan Leavitt after studying thousands of variable stars in the Magellanic Clouds. This discovery allows one to know the true luminosity of a Cepheid by simply observing its pulsation period. This in turn allows one to determine the distance to the star, by comparing its known luminosity to its observed brightness. The term Cepheid originates from Delta Cephei in the constellation Cepheus, identified by John Goodricke in 1784, the first of its type to be so identified. Cepheid variables are divided into two subclasses which exhibit markedly different masses, ages, and evolutionary histories: classical Cepheids and type II Cepheids. Delta Scuti variables are A-type stars on or near the main sequence at the lower end of the instability strip and were originally referred to as dwarf Cepheids. RR Lyrae variables have short periods and lie on the instability strip where it crosses the horizontal branch. Delta Scuti variables and RR Lyrae variables are not generally treated with Cepheid variables although their pulsations originate with the same helium ionisation kappa mechanism. Classical Cepheids (also known as Population I Cepheids, type I Cepheids, or Delta Cepheid variables) undergo pulsations with very regular periods on the order of days to months. Classical Cepheids are Population I variable stars which are 4–20 times more massive than the Sun, and up to 100,000 times more luminous. These Cepheids are yellow bright giants and supergiants of spectral class F6 – K2 and their radii change by (~25% for the longer-period I Carinae) millions of kilometers during a pulsation cycle. Classical Cepheids are used to determine distances to galaxies within the Local Group and beyond, and are a means by which the Hubble constant can be established. Classical Cepheids have also been used to clarify many characteristics of our galaxy, such as the Sun's height above the galactic plane and the Galaxy's local spiral structure. A group of classical Cepheids with small amplitudes and sinusoidal light curves are often separated out as Small Amplitude Cepheids or s-Cepheids, many of them pulsating in the first overtone. Type II Cepheids (also termed Population II Cepheids) are population II variable stars which pulsate with periods typically between 1 and 50 days. Type II Cepheids are typically metal-poor, old (~10 Gyr), low mass objects (~half the mass of the Sun). Type II Cepheids are divided into several subgroups by period. Stars with periods between 1 and 4 days are of the BL Her subclass, 10–20 days belong to the W Virginis subclass, and stars with periods greater than 20 days belong to the RV Tauri subclass. Type II Cepheids are used to establish the distance to the Galactic Center, globular clusters, and galaxies. A group of pulsating stars on the instability strip have periods of less than 2 days, similar to RR Lyrae variables but with higher luminosities. Anomalous Cepheid variables have masses higher than type II Cepheids, RR Lyrae variables, and our sun. It is unclear whether they are young stars on a "turned-back" horizontal branch, blue stragglers formed through mass transfer in binary systems, or a mix of both. A small proportion of Cepheid variables have been observed to pulsate in two modes at the same time, usually the fundamental and first overtone, occasionally the second overtone. A very small number pulsate in three modes, or an unusual combination of modes including higher overtones. On September 10, 1784, Edward Pigott detected the variability of Eta Aquilae, the first known representative of the class of classical Cepheid variables. However, the eponymous star for classical Cepheids is Delta Cephei, discovered to be variable by John Goodricke a few months later. The number of similar variables grew to several dozen by the end of the 19th century, and they were referred to as a class as Cepheids. Most of the Cepheids were known from the distinctive light curve shapes with the rapid increase in brightness and a hump, but some with more symmetrical light curves were known as Geminids after the prototype ζ Geminorum. A relationship between the period and luminosity for classical Cepheids was discovered in 1908 by Henrietta Swan Leavitt in an investigation of thousands of variable stars in the Magellanic Clouds. She published it in 1912 with further evidence. In 1913, Ejnar Hertzsprung attempted to find distances to 13 Cepheids using the motion through the sky. His research would later require revision, however. In 1915, Harlow Shapley used Cepheids to place initial constraints on the size and shape of the Milky Way, and of the placement of our Sun within it. In 1924, Edwin Hubble established the distance to classical Cepheid variables in the Andromeda Galaxy, until then known as the Andromeda Nebula, and showed that the variables were not members of the Milky Way. Hubble's finding settled the question raised in the "Great Debate" of whether the Milky Way represented the entire Universe or was merely one of numerous galaxies in the Universe. In 1929, Hubble and Milton L. Humason formulated what is now known as Hubble's Law by combining Cepheid distances to several galaxies with Vesto Slipher's measurements of the speed at which those galaxies recede from us. They discovered that the Universe is expanding (see the expansion of the Universe). However, the expansion of the Universe was posited several years before by Georges Lemaître. In the mid 20th century, significant problems with the astronomical distance scale were resolved by dividing the Cepheids into different classes with very different properties. In the 1940s, Walter Baade recognized two separate populations of Cepheids (classical and type II). Classical Cepheids are younger and more massive population I stars, whereas type II Cepheids are older fainter Population II stars. Classical Cepheids and type II Cepheids follow different period-luminosity relationships. The luminosity of type II Cepheids is, on average, less than classical Cepheids by about 1.5 magnitudes (but still brighter than RR Lyrae stars). Baade's seminal discovery led to a twofold increase in the distance to M31, and the extragalactic distance scale. RR Lyrae stars, then known as Cluster Variables, were recognized fairly early as being a separate class of variable, due in part to their short periods. Chief among the uncertainties tied to the classical and type II Cepheid distance scale are: the nature of the period-luminosity relation in various passbands, the impact of metallicity on both the zero-point and slope of those relations, and the effects of photometric contamination (blending) and a changing (typically unknown) extinction law on Cepheid distances. All these topics are actively debated in the literature. These unresolved matters have resulted in cited values for the Hubble constant (established from Classical Cepheids) ranging between 60 km/s/Mpc and 80 km/s/Mpc. Resolving this discrepancy is one of the foremost problems in astronomy since the cosmological parameters of the Universe may be constrained by supplying a precise value of the Hubble constant. Uncertainties have diminished over the years, due in part to discoveries such as RS Puppis. Delta Cephei is also of particular importance as a calibrator of the Cepheid period-luminosity relation since its distance is among the most precisely established for a Cepheid, partly because it is a member of a star cluster and the availability of precise Hubble Space Telescope/Hipparcos parallaxes. The accuracy of the distance measurements to Cepheid variables and other bodies within 7,500 lightyears is vastly improved by combining images from Hubble taken six months apart when the Earth and Hubble are on opposite sides of the Sun. The accepted explanation for the pulsation of Cepheids is called the Eddington valve, or κ-mechanism, where the Greek letter κ (kappa) denotes gas opacity. Helium is the gas thought to be most active in the process. Doubly ionized helium (helium whose atoms are missing both electrons) is more opaque than singly ionized helium. The more helium is heated, the more ionized it becomes. At the dimmest part of a Cepheid's cycle, the ionized gas in the outer layers of the star is opaque, and so is heated by the star's radiation, and due to the increased temperature, begins to expand. As it expands, it cools, and so becomes less ionized and therefore more transparent, allowing the radiation to escape. Then the expansion stops, and reverses due to the star's gravitational attraction. The process then repeats. The mechanics of the pulsation as a heat-engine was proposed in 1917 by Arthur Stanley Eddington (who wrote at length on the dynamics of Cepheids), but it was not until 1953 that S. A. Zhevakin identified ionized helium as a likely valve for the engine. Classical Cepheids include: Eta Aquilae, Zeta Geminorum, Beta Doradus, RT Aurigae, Polaris, as well as Delta Cephei., Type II Cepheids include: W Virginis and BL Herculis., Anomalous Cepheids include: XZ Ceti and BL Boötis. McMaster Cepheid Photometry and Radial Velocity Data Archive, American Association of Variable Star Observers, Stellar pulsation theory - Regular versus irregular variability, Survey of Warsaw University at Las Campanas Observatory: OGLE-III (Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment) Variable Stars catalog website, David Dunlap Observatory of Toronto University: Galactic Classical Cepheids database

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The 2018 Radio Disney Music Awards were held on June 22, 2018, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California. The ceremony was shown on Radio Disney and Disney Channel the following night on June 23, 2018 from 8:30 p.m.-01:30 a.m. (EDT) and on Disney International HD on July 29, 2018 from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m (IST). It was cancelled on Disney Channel in Southeast Asia due to unknown reasons. The nominees were announced via a nomination live stream on April 27, 2018., Voting began the day nominations released. The Radio Disney Music Awards (RDMA) is an annual awards show operated and governed by Radio Disney, an American radio network. Beginning in 2001, it was broadcast only on Radio Disney, but later began being televised on Disney Channel from 2014 onwards. The Radio Disney Music Awards honor the year's achievements in music, mainly in the teen pop genre, and are awarded based on popular vote from the network's listeners via online voting. The trophy awarded to a winner is known as the "Golden Mickey", a gold-colored statuette with a silhouette figure of Mickey Mouse donning headphones nicknamed the "Ardy", representing Radio Disney's initials. Before 2014, the ceremony was not televised beyond commercial interstitial segments for Disney Channel to promote their sister radio network. As of the seventh annual ceremony on April 26, 2014, the ceremony began to be televised in full a day after a tape delay, as the network attempts to compete with Nickelodeon's Kids' Choice Awards in airing awards programming. Starting in 2016, Canada was able to vote for the first time as Disney programming, formerly under the control of Family Channel, is now carried by Disney-branded Corus Entertainment networks in both English and French. On June 16, 2019, the Radio Disney Music Awards were renamed ARDYs: A Radio Disney Music Celebration and aired live for the first time instead of on a tape-delay. Best Female Artist, Best Male Artist, Best Music Group, Song of the Year, Best New Artist, Breakout Artist, Best Crush Song, Song to Dance to, Fiercest Fans, Best Song That Makes You Smile, Best Breakup Song, Best Collaboration, Best Song To Lip Sync To, Country Favorite Artist, Country Favorite Song, Country Best New Artist, Favorite Tour, Favorite Social Media Star, Favorite International Artist Artist with the Best Style, Most Talked About Artist, Best Artist Turned Singer, Best Music Video, Best Soundtrack Song, Catchiest New Song, Best Anthem, Best Album, Best Homework Song, Best Karaoke Song, Best Song to Air Guitar, Best Song to Watch Your Dad Sing, Best Song to Rock Out to with Your BFF, Funniest Celebrity Take, Best Acoustic Performance, Favorite Roadtrip Song Hero Award is an honor for contribution for the charitable work. 2014: Shakira, 2015: Jennifer Lopez, 2016: Gwen Stefani, 2017: Nick Jonas, 2018: Carrie Underwood, 2019: Avril Lavigne Icon Award is an honor for the music contribution and influence with the teenagers by long-time career artists. 2017: Britney Spears, 2018: Kelly Clarkson Heroes for Change Award is an honor for young non-artists who make a difference in the world with charitable work. 2013: Mary Dawson, Ben Harowitz, Misha Ahmad, Dara Reyes and Denzell Perry., 2014: Arianna Lopez, Matthew Kaplan and Yossymar Rojas., 2016: Whitney Stewart and Braeden Mannering. 2014: Chart Topper Award to Ariana Grande for her impact on the charts., 2014: Show Stopper Award to R5 for their sold out shows on Louder Tour. Below are the current rankings for the most wins and most nominated artist among female and male: This is a list of multiple nominated performers and actors with 10 or more career nominations. Hilary Duff is currently the most nominated performer with 35 nominations. 35 nominations Hilary Duff 22 nominations Vanessa Hudgens 21 nominations Avril Lavigne 19 nominations Ashley Tisdale 17 nominations Lindsay Lohan 16 nominations Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, Taylor Swift 15 nominations Zac Efron 14 nominations Justin Bieber, Kelly Clarkson 11 nominations R5 10 nominations Ariana Grande, JoJo The 2014 Radio Disney Music Awards were held on April 26, 2014, at the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live in Los Angeles, California. The ceremony was edited and aired on April 27, 2014 on Radio Disney and Disney Channel. The big winner was Selena Gomez taking home 3 ardys including song of the year. Pre-show Sabrina Carpenter – "Can't Blame a Girl for Trying", McClain – "He Loves Me", The Vamps – "Last Night", Alex Angelo – "It's Your Night" Main show Ariana Grande – "Problem", R5 – "(I Can't) Forget About You", Fifth Harmony – "Miss Movin' On", Zendaya – "Replay", Becky G – "Can't Get Enough", Austin Mahone – "Mmm Yeah" Post_show Aaliyah Rose - "Let it Go" Spencer Boldman, Dove Cameron, Emblem3, The cast of Girl Meets World, Rowan Blanchard, Sabrina Carpenter, Ben Savage, Danielle Fishel, Nolan Gould, Lucy Hale, Olivia Holt, Julianne Hough, Laura Marano, McClain, Maia Mitchell, Kelly Osbourne, Emily Osment, Jason Ritter, Jessica Sanchez, Cody Simpson, Booboo Stewart, The Vamps, Tyrel Jackson Williams On February 22, 2014, the nominations were announced. Demi Lovato, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift Justin Timberlake, Cody Simpson, Austin Mahone One Direction, Emblem3, R5 Fifth Harmony, Ariana Grande, Zendaya Becky G, Celeste Buckingham, The Vamps* "Come & Get It" - Selena Gomez, "Roar" - Katy Perry, "Best Song Ever" - One Direction "Still Into You" - Paramore, "Chloe (You're the One I Want)" - Emblem3, "What About Love" - Austin Mahone Swifties - Taylor Swift, Directioners - One Direction, Katycats - Katy Perry "Everything Has Changed" - Taylor Swift feat. Ed Sheeran, "Popular Song" - Mika feat. Ariana Grande, "Clarity" - Zedd feat. Foxes "Me & My Girls" - Fifth Harmony, "Here's to Never Growing Up" - Avril Lavigne, "Loud" - R5 "Ooh La La" - Britney Spears, "La Da Dee" - Cody Simpson, "The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)" - Ylvis Selena Gomez, Ariana Grande, Austin Mahone "The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)" - Ylvis, "Classic" - MKTO, "I Wish" - Cher Lloyd "Let It Go" - Idina Menzel (Frozen), "Crusin' For a Brusin'" - Ross Lynch (Teen Beach Movie), "Ooh La La" - Britney Spears (Smurfs 2) "Birthday" - Selena Gomez, "Dance with Me Tonight" - Olly Murs, "Wings" - Little Mix "Made in the USA" - Demi Lovato, "Best Day of My Life" - American Authors, "Pass Me By" - R5 Zendaya, Austin Mahone, Becky G Shakira received the Hero Award, an honor for contribution to charitable work. Arianna Lopez, Matthew Kaplan and Yossymar Rojas were honored for contribution for their charitable work. Ariana Grande was honored with the Chart Topper Award for her great performance on the charts., R5 was honored with the Show Stopper Award for their sold out shows on Louder Tour.

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"I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)" is a song written by Jim Steinman, and recorded by Meat Loaf with Lorraine Crosby. The song was released in 1993 as the first single from the album . The last six verses feature a female singer who was credited only as "Mrs. Loud" in the album notes. She was later identified as Lorraine Crosby. However, she does not appear in the video, in which her vocals are lip-synched by Dana Patrick. Meat Loaf promoted the single with US vocalist Patti Russo. The power ballad was a commercial success, reaching number one in 28 countries. The single was certified platinum in the United States and became Meat Loaf's first and only number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and the UK Singles Chart, and was the best-selling single of 1993 in the United Kingdom. The song earned Meat Loaf a Grammy Award for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Solo. The timings in this article refer to the original album version. There are many shorter single and radio edits. The song opens with a guitar played to sound like a revving motorcycle. Roy Bittan's piano begins to play along with the guitars and drums. The vocals begin at the 1:50 point. The opening vocals are accompanied by piano and backing vocals. The song then becomes much louder as the band, predominantly piano, plays the main melody for twenty seconds. An instrumental section follows the first verse and chorus, lasting over 45 seconds, with piano playing the title melody, accompanied by guitar and wordless background vocals by Todd Rundgren, Rory Dodd and Kasim Sulton. The lead vocals recommence with another verse. The phrase "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll" was changed to "Some days I just pray to the god of sex and drums and rock and roll" on the recording, although Meat Loaf occasionally sings the more familiar phrase in concert. At the 9:28 point, the song transforms into a duet coda. The structure of the verses remains, but the woman now asks what the man would do. He answers in the affirmative for the first four sections. The song's tone changes for the final two sections, in which the woman, Lorraine Crosby on the original recorded version, predicts that the man would eventually do things to upset her and their relationship. Both times, he denies it. The duet part was and still is performed regularly on stage by Meat Loaf with his current featured female vocalist Patti Russo. However, with the passing years their interplay during the coda has gradually taken on ironic overtones, if not overtly comedic ones, which were totally absent from the original album version. For example, in the 2007 show 3 Bats Live, after Russo sings "After a while you'll forget everything, it was a brief interlude and a midsummer night's fling", Meat Loaf stops the band and asks her (half-sung, half-spoken): "Why do you say this to me? Why do you keep saying these things to me every single night?", and she replies innocently (again half-sung): "It's in the lyrics". More funny exchanges of the same kind occur during their other live duets, such as the famous Bat Out of Hell track "Paradise by the Dashboard Light". Meat Loaf says that the question, "What is 'that'?" is one of the most popular questions he is asked. Each verse mentions two things that the man would do for love, followed by one thing that he will not do. The title phrase repetition reasserts that he "won't do that." Each mention of "that" is a reference to the particular promise that he made earlier in the same verse. The four things he says he will never do are: "forget the way you feel right now", "forgive myself if we don't go all the way tonight", "do it better than I do it with you", "stop dreaming of you every night of my life" At the song's conclusion, the woman predicts two things that he will do: "You'll see that it's time to move on", and "You'll be screwing around." To both of these, the male emphatically responds, "I won't do that!" In his 1998 VH1 Storytellers special, Meat Loaf even explained it on stage using a blackboard and a pointing stick. In a 1993 promotional interview, Steinman states that the definition of "that" is fully revealed in the song in each of the several verses in which it is mentioned. This sense would have been more clear if the lyric had been "and I won't do that" instead of "but I won't do that." It is the use of "but" instead of "and" that leads to the ambiguity. It sort of is a little puzzle and I guess it goes by - but they're all great things. 'I won't stop doing beautiful things and I won't do bad things.' It's very noble. I'm very proud of that song because it's very much like out of the world of Excalibur. To me, it's like Sir Lancelot or something - very noble and chivalrous. That's my favorite song on the record - it's very ambitious. Meat Loaf believed that the lyrics were unambiguous, but Steinman predicted that they would cause confusion. An early episode of the VH1 program Pop-up Video made this claim at the end of the song's video: "Exactly what Meat Loaf won't do for love remains a mystery to this day." A reviewer writing for AllMusic commented that "The lyrics build suspense by portraying a romance- consumed lover who pledges to do anything in the name of love except 'that,' a mysterious thing that he will not specify." Frank O'day says the lyrics provide "an enlightening example of how listeners project their own thoughts, values, and concerns onto the meaning of the song with misconstrued lyrics." The phrase "I would do anything for love but I won't do that" had previously appeared as a spoken interlude in the song "Getting So Excited," released in 1983 by Bonnie Tyler in her album Faster Than the Speed of Night. In this song, the phrase's meaning is more clear: a woman is refusing an offensive proposal. Steinman produced this record and wrote many of the songs but this song is credited to Alan Gruner. Steinman's songs are usually long, and "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)" is no exception. The song is a full 12 minutes, and Steinman was deeply upset when executives advised him that he had to cut it down to get radio play. Manager Allen Kovac warned that any song over five minutes would not be played on radio, saying that if Steinman and the group did not make the cuts then the stations would. Even after they made the cuts, Steinman sent his own version to the stations. The single version was edited down to five minutes and 13 seconds, with the motorcycle introduction omitted. The video version (which also appears on many international releases of the single) was whittled down to seven minutes and 38 seconds, with part of the motorcycle intro remaining. In the video version and single version, the lengthy instrumental break is completely omitted. In the video and single versions, the refrain is abridged as well; Lorraine Crosby sings six verses in the complete song. In the video version, the second and third verses are omitted. In the single version, the second, third, and fifth verses are omitted. Lorraine Crosby, a singer from England, was the guest singer, though AllMusic incorrectly attributes the female vocals to Ellen Foley. Crosby and her partner Stuart Emerson had moved to Los Angeles to work with Steinman, who became their manager. He secured them a contract with Meat Loaf's label MCA. While visiting the company's studios on Sunset Boulevard, Crosby was asked to provide guide vocals for Meat Loaf, who was recording "I'd Do Anything for Love". Crosby recalls, "In I went and sang it twice and I never thought anything more of it until six months later when I got a phone call saying, 'Would you mind if we used your vocals?'" As Crosby had recorded her part as guide vocals, she received no royalties from the song. Cher, Melissa Etheridge and Bonnie Tyler had been considered for the role. Tyler, who described Crosby as "a great friend of mine from Newcastle", said: "Meat Loaf was naughty, really: he gave her no acknowledgement on the album but I think her part really made that song." Michael Bay directed the music video. He also directed the videos for "Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer than They Are" and "Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through", also from Bat Out of Hell II. Filming took place in Los Angeles County, California in July 1993; the opening chase was filmed at Chávez Ravine, with the interior mansion scenes filmed at Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills. The cinematographer was Daniel Pearl, particularly known for filming The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in 1973. Pearl says that this video "is one of my personal all-time favorite projects... I think the cinematography is pure, and it tells a story about the song." The video is based on Beauty and the Beast and The Phantom of the Opera. Bob Keane did Meat Loaf's make-up, which took up to two hours to apply. The make-up was designed to be simple and scary, yet "with the ability to make him sympathetic." It went over budget, and was filmed in heat, across four days. According to one executive, it "probably had the budget of Four Weddings and a Funeral." It is the abridged seven-minute version, rather than the twelve-minute (11:58) album version. The actress in the video, Dana Patrick, is miming to Crosby's vocals; she did the same for Patti Russo's vocals in the 1995 song "I'd Lie for You (And That's the Truth)". According to the captions aired on Pop-Up Video, Patrick received several offers for record deals after the video aired, from executives who assumed she was actually singing in the video. The story begins with the opening credits saying: "I have travelled across the universe through the years to find her. Sometimes going all the way is just a start." We then see "The Beast" character - a deformed man portrayed by Meat Loaf, on a motorbike being chased by police officers and a helicopter. As the chase continues into night, the Beast passes through into a graveyard and into what appears to be a very ornate mausoleum hiding from his pursuers. He mournfully examines his deformed hands and features; as the officers enter and examine the mausoleum he crashes through the wall with his motorbike and he accidentally knocks down a police officer (whose shotgun goes off) and causes one of the chandeliers on the ceiling to fall and kill the officer. In desperation the Beast flees into the nearby woods where he comes across a beautiful woman bathing/cooling herself by a fountain. The woman appears to be in sunny daylight, while the rest of the woods and castle clearly show that it is night-time. The woman looks into a mirror and glimpses the Beast watching her. She turns and he flees leaving only an amulet hanging on a branch. The woman picks it up and pursues him. As she approaches the castle, the Beast is watching her movements through the reflection of his drink. As she comes into the castle the Beast hurriedly removes himself. The woman sits in his chair and rests by the fire. The beast watches her from his hall of mirrors and contemplates approaching her but is ashamed of his appearance. She later is seen having a bath interspersed with the police officers finding the dead officer's body and preparing to raid the castle. She is later seen trying to sleep while being seduced by 3 vampy women while the Beast sits in a chair (a reference to Dracula and the Brides). The Beast leaves the room and, seeing his reflection, begins to smash up the mirrors. The woman, hearing the noise, comes out and follows him into a presumable living room. The Beast observes her from above and levitates the chair she is sitting on. The Beast, then hearing the officers are near moves away, pulls the chair back down breaking a lamp. The two run away and the woman removes the Beast's hood so she can look at him clearly. She accepts him and caresses his face while they embrace. As they pull away, the Beast is returned to his human form, and the two disappear just before the police catch them. The woman and the transformed Beast finally ride off into the sunrise on his motorbike. In 2013, the song was covered in an M&M;'s commercial which aired during Super Bowl XLVII. The song is featured in the animated comedy Sausage Party and on its soundtrack. In the film the song is performed by an anthropomorphic meatloaf caricature of the singer. It was used in a 2017 commercial for Carvana and in the trailer for the 2018 comedy Blockers. The song also appeared on the EP Fire & Ashes by German symphonic metal band Xandria. On this version, Meat Loaf's vocal parts are done by Dianne van Giersbergen, while Lorraine Crosby's vocal parts are done by Valerio Recenti, singer of the Dutch rock band My Propane. The single cover is a cropped version of the painting Leavetaking by fantasy illustrator Michael Whelan, who also painted the Bat Out of Hell II cover. The song reached number one in the charts in 28 countries. In most countries, it was Meat Loaf's first and only number one solo single. It was number one in the US for five weeks and sold over 1.4 million copies there. In the UK, it topped the singles chart, and at seven minutes and 52 seconds, "I'd Do Anything for Love" becoming the longest song on top there since The Beatles' hit "Hey Jude". This was then broken when Oasis released their 1997 single "All Around the World", clocking in at 9 minutes and 20 seconds. In the UK, this was the biggest hit of 1993, selling 761,200 copies and staying at number one for seven weeks. As a result of its success, "Bat Out of Hell" was reissued in the UK, this time reaching the top ten (which it did not achieve on its first release in 1979), meaning Meat Loaf achieved the rare feat of having two singles in the UK top ten at the same time. In Germany, the song is the 7th best-selling pop hymn ever. Critical reaction was mixed. AllMusic said that "Meat Loaf sells the borderline-campy lyrics with a full-throated vocal whose stirring sense of conviction brings out the heart hidden behind the clever phrases." Meat Loaf won a Grammy Award for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Solo for the song. British adventurer Bear Grylls cites this song as his inspiration to apply for selection into the SAS: "Enthusiasm and determination count for so much more than skills, brains or qualifications... and all this expressed itself to me through Meatloaf's song!". Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell is the sixth studio album by American rock singer Meat Loaf and was written and produced by Jim Steinman. It was released in September 1993, sixteen years after Meat Loaf's first solo album Bat Out of Hell. The album reached number 1 in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia. Five tracks were released as singles, including "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)", which reached number 1 in 28 countries. The album was released by Virgin Records outside of North America, where it was released by MCA. The third part of the Bat trilogy, , was released in 2006. Like the first album of the trilogy, Bat Out of Hell II was a commercial success. It sold over 14 million copies worldwide. In the midst of the success of Bat Out of Hell, desperate for a follow-up, management and the record company put pressure on Steinman to stop touring in order to write a follow-up, provisionally titled Renegade Angel. In a 1981 BBC Rock Hour Special interview, Jim Steinman recalls the writing process. I started writing what I felt was Bat Out of Hell part 2, definitely like The Godfather part 1 and part 2, that's how I saw it. I wanted to do a continuation and I wanted to do an album that went even further and that was more extreme, if possible, which a lot of people felt wasn't possible but I just wanted to see if I could make a record that was even more heroic because that's what I thought of it ... Bat Out of Hell to me was ultimately very heroic though it was funny ... and I wanted to do one that to me would be even more heroic and more epic and a little more operatic and passionate. In a 1993 promotional interview for the album, Steinman reasserts the continuation of the Bat world. "I didn't call it Bat Out of Hell II just to identify with the first record. It really does feel like an extension of that... It was a chance to go back to that world and explore it deeper. It always seemed incomplete because I conceived it like a film, and what would you do without Die Hard 2?" Meat Loaf himself was more succinct. He told an interview at the time, "We called it Bat Out of Hell II 'cos that would help it sell shitloads." Steinman rejoined Meat Loaf and the band for a live performance in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1978 with the intention of going through the songs for Bat II after the show. However, someone broke into their dressing rooms during the show and stole several possessions, including the new lyric book. Then, Meat Loaf lost his voice and was unable to record Renegade Angel. Steinman says "he sounded literally like the little girl in The Exorcist... like a dragon trying to sing—it was a horrifying sound." Steinman "kept writing the music to Bat Out of Hell part 2... my sequel." Not being able to "bear for people not to hear those songs," Steinman recorded the album, retitled Bad for Good, as a solo project, although Rory Dodd contributed lead vocals on some songs. Four songs from Bad for Good were included on Bat Out of Hell II. In 1989, Steinman formed all-female vocal group Pandora's Box. The album, Original Sin, was a commercial flop, but featured two songs which would also appear on Bat II. However, according to Meat Loaf, one of them was written for him, saying that "Jim put "It Just Won't Quit" on Original Sin without telling me. I could have strangled him." By the time Meat Loaf set about finally recording Bat II in the early 90s, the industry's enthusiasm for the project had waned. According to the artist's then manager, Tommy Manzi, in an interview with HitQuarters, "That project was considered a joke as far as the industry was concerned," and Manzi's management company Left Bank were "laughed at" for attempting to revive the fortunes of a well-established act rather than focus on "the next hip band". After a series of financial and legal disputes during the 1980s, Steinman and Meat Loaf met at the singer's house in Connecticut at Christmas 1989 or 1990 and sang Bat Out of Hell on piano. Steinman says that "working together again seemed like the cool thing to do." Steinman gave Meat Loaf half the songs for the album, but refused to give him any more until he changed managers. The singer was being managed by Walter Winneck and George Gilbert, who Meat Loaf credits as being "honest guys" but, under Steinman's influence, thinks would be "incapable of dealing with the record companies" on Bat II. On Steinman's recommendation, he hired Allen Kovac. Recording of the album lasted from 1991 to 1993, first at Ocean Way Recording in Los Angeles, California, then at The Power Station in New York City, New York. Many of the performers from the original album returned for the sequel. Roy Bittan performed keyboard and piano on most tracks, with Todd Rundgren, Ellen Foley, Rory Dodd and Kasim Sulton returning to provide background vocals. Meat Loaf and the musicians are credited as co-arrangers, and Bittan and long-term Steinman collaborator Steven Rinkoff are credited as associate producers. The album was mixed by David Thoener with the exception of the final track, which was mixed by Rinkoff. According to Meat Loaf, he and Steinman only had one "big fight" throughout the album's production, which occurred during the mixing of "Life Is a Lemon". Production took a long time (see above), mainly because of the length of the songs. The singer says, "Jim's songs may be miniature operas, but they're always too long for radio." Steinman fought with Kovac over the edit of "I'd Do Anything for Love", with the manager advising that radio stations were unlikely to play anything over five minutes long. Steinman had secured a contract with Meat Loaf's recording label MCA for Lorraine Crosby, a club singer from North East England whom he was managing. While visiting the company's recording studios on Sunset Boulevard, Crosby was asked to provide guide vocals for Meat Loaf, who was recording "I'd Do Anything for Love". Crosby recalls, "I went and sang it twice and I never thought anything more of it until six months later when I got a phone call saying, 'Would you mind if we used your vocals?'" Cher, Melissa Etheridge and Bonnie Tyler had been considered for the role. However, as Crosby had recorded her part as guide vocals, she did not receive any royalties from the song. The album opens with "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)", a marathon twelve-minute opus which was edited for single release in some countries. The track begins with a guitar played to sound like a revving motorcycle, a reference to Todd Rundgren's contribution in the middle of "Bat Out of Hell". Each verse comprises two things that he would do for love, followed by one thing that he would not do. It is that latter parts of each chorus that is the "that" of the title. However, some people misunderstand the lyrics, claiming that the singer never identifies what the "that" is that he is unwilling to do, a confusion that Steinman predicted during production. The song combines stadium rock and ballad for much of its twelve minutes. However, near the end of the song, a female vocalist is introduced. Credited in the liner notes as Mrs. Loud, this part was sung by Lorraine Crosby. Rundgren points out that "the themes of the songs were darker." The second track, "Life is a Lemon and I Want My Money Back", demonstrates this pessimism. Several things are identified as "defective", including love, sex, gods, childhood and the future. AllMusic labels it "a stomping rocker that wraps serious feelings in a cryptically witty metaphor." Despite the pessimism, both AllMusic and Meat Loaf point out that "it is a funny song." The third track, "Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through", is a prayer to rock music, celebrating how it is always there to help you through troubled times. One of its lyrics is "You're never alone, 'cause you can put on the 'phones and let the drummer tell your heart what to do." The fourth track also has dark overtones. "It Just Won't Quit", Steinman explains, "is about the fact that there are some things you never shake off... That's love, I guess." "Out of the Frying Pan (And into the Fire)" is a more upbeat song. The album's sixth track, "Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer than They Are" is a three part narrative that uses pathetic fallacy, where the seasons (summer, winter and spring) reflect the atmosphere of the events being described, drawing "its inspiration from the singer's often-tragic childhood. The lyrics portray a man who has overcome tragedies in his life yet still feels haunted by their memory." Steinman says that it was "the hardest song to write and get across." It's a very passionate song. It's really, I think maybe, the most passionate one on the record. I mean, I'm really proud of it because that's really one that goes over-the-top in the sense that it's got images—it has religious imagery of resurrection, it's got images of fertility and rebirth, it has really very good sexual images, images of cars—which I always like. The track quotes lyrics from Bat Out of Hell's "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" ("It was long ago and it was far away"), as does the next track, "Wasted Youth", a spoken word fantasy monologue (a remixed version of "Love and Death and an American Guitar" from Steinman's Bad for Good album). The 1977 song's opening line "I remember every [...] little thing as if it happened only yesterday. I was barely seventeen" opens this track also, but instead of being "barely dressed" the protagonist "once killed a boy with a Fender guitar." Influenced by The Doors, Steinman wanted to write a piece where "the rhythm wasn't coming from the drums so much as the voice—the rhythm of the spoken voice and the heartbeat behind it." According to Steinman, "Good Girls Go to Heaven (Bad Girls Go Everywhere)" is a "teenage prayer". "Lost Boys and Golden Girls" is "Steinman's interpretation of the story of Peter Pan." The composer says that Peter Pan has "always been about my favorite story and I've always looked at it from the perspective that it's a great rock and roll myth because it's about—when you get right down to it—it's about a gang of lost boys who never grow up, who are going to be young forever and that's about as perfect an image for rock'n'roll as I can think of." The cover art was illustrated by sci-fi/fantasy artist Michael Whelan, following the style of Richard Corben's cover for Bat Out of Hell. It features the biker from the first cover flying on his motorcycle towards a giant bat perched on top of New York City's Chrysler Building, to which an angel is bound. Echoing the gravestones of the first cover, partially destroyed skyscrapers inhabit the lava landscape. Also like the first album, it features a 'Songs by Jim Steinman' credit, although smaller and located at the bottom of the cover. As well as providing thematic consistency with the original, the repetition of iconography also acted as a vital marketing tool. The marketing of the album was documented in an episode of the 1995 BBC television programme The Music Biz. Executives at Virgin Records thought that this was important to attract the target audience, who they believed no longer spent much time in record shops. They felt that similarities to the design of the first album, including Meat Loaf's name in Gothic typography, would entice consumers of the 1977 album to purchase this. The booklet contains all of the lyrics to the songs, each accompanied by a small Whelan illustration, which were used as the respective single covers. There is a suggestion to "support Tibet House, an organization dedicated to the unique culture of the Tibetan people which has the potential to make a valuable contribution to the world at large". Three tracks from the album were released as singles. "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)" became a worldwide #1 hit from this album. The song reached #1 in the charts in 28 countries. It spent seven weeks atop the UK Singles Chart, making it the most successful single in the UK that year. Simultaneously, Meat Loaf released "Bat Out of Hell" as a single, which also made the top ten in the United Kingdom. Meat Loaf remained the last artist to have two top-ten UK singles at the same time until the Manic Street Preachers in 2001. "Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through" reached #13 on the Billboard Hot 100, and #11 on the UK Singles Chart. The third single from the album, "Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are", did less well when it was released in 1994, reaching #38 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #26 in the United Kingdom. "Life Is a Lemon" peaked at #17 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart in the United States. Michael Bay directed three music videos from the album. "I'd Do Anything for Love" is based on Beauty and the Beast and The Phantom of the Opera. "Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through" features a runaway girl, played by Angelina Jolie. "Objects in the Rear View Mirror" illustrates the song's narrative. Featuring Robert Patrick, the video contained flying aircraft imagery that he would use in Armageddon and Pearl Harbor. In 1994, the three films were released as the VHS tape Meat Loaf – Bat Out of Hell 2 – Picture Show, which also included alternate versions of "Paradise by the Dashboard Light", "Life Is a Lemon and I Want My Money Back" and "I'd Do Anything for Love", all featuring lead vocalist Patti Russo. They were included on a DVD in 2006 with the 'Collectors Edition' release of the album. The album was a commercial hit, and has sold more than 14 million copies around the world. It was #1 for one week in the US on the Billboard 200, the UK Albums Chart for eleven non-consecutive weeks, and #1 in Australia for four weeks. Meat Loaf won a Grammy Award for Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance for "I'd Do Anything for Love" and received two Brit Awards nominations (Best International Male and Best Selling Single). Despite its huge commercial success, critical reception was mixed. The specialist music press were generally positive. Q magazine proclaimed, "truly this... is the genuine follow-up to the most over-the-top rock album of all time." Like most critics, Q referred to the excesses of Steinman's style, citing the length of the songs (Q says that "Objects..." running for 10 minutes and 12 seconds is "not necessary"). Unlike the original, where the epic loud songs were "offset by the softness of stuff like 'Two Out of Three Ain't Bad'…even the ballads are Roman orgies of sound and fury." This, they say, means "the album's probable theme—the crushing effect growing up has on teenage dreams—seems to get lost among the thud and blunder." However, overall, Q is positive, concluding with the sentiment that "Ultimately, Back Into Hell may not trash its predecessor, but as a mad, crunching, stadium rock album, it's probably the best thing of its kind you'll hear this year." Looking at how "Steinman's old-fashioned teen-dream rock 'n' roll fantasies" fits in with the music culture of 1993, Kerrang! suggests that it wouldn't appeal to "Nirvana and Metallica fans, but there's an older generation of rockers out there who will, quite properly, worship this album." Their four-star review declares that "it is a work of genius, a ready made rock classic and arguably the last word in rock operas." In The Tip Sheet, Jonathan King labelled it a "glorious, splendid album," celebrating Meat Loaf's "operatically gorgeous" voice and Steinman's "superb" songs, arrangements and production. "You'll be blown away. Better still you'll catch yourself openly laughing out loud at times with delight. You know what to expect yet it's constantly better, fresher and brighter than you hope. If they had a Mercury Music Prize for American albums, this would win it hands down." In a 1999 documentary celebrating the original album, Meat Loaf says that Bat Out of Hell polarizes people: some hate it, and some worship it. The bombast did not meet some critics' approval. As with the first album, Rolling Stone gave the album a mixed review. They call it "harmless, low-octane operatic drivel" with "insufferably long Steinman compositions with equally long names." Non-specialist publications gave the most negative reviews. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram also referred to the length of the songs, in which Steinman "vomits up 75 minutes of endlessly repeated choruses." The newspaper branded it "the worst pop album of 1993." The Des Moines Register thought that the album was "wallowing in excess so gratuitous as to make Michael Bolton, by comparison, seem a master of understatement... Mountains of banshee-like wailing guitars! Thunderous drums! Herniated vocals! Profoundly stupid lyrics! Gack. This isn't pandering to the lowest common denominator—it's lowering the lowest common denominator." Like the original, retrospective reviews have been appreciative. AllMusic appreciates the bombast and "the pseudo-operatic splendor of Jim Steinman's grandly cinematic songs. Responding to concerns about length and overstatement, they reply, "that's precisely the point of this album, and is also why it works so well. No other rock 'n' roller besides Meat Loaf could pull off the humor and theatricality of Back Into Hell and make it seem real. In that sense, it's a worthy successor to the original." Alongside the original version a two disc special edition was released, containing a foldout poster and a bonus disc containing three live tracks, which can also be found as B-sides to the "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)" singles. This was produced by Meat Loaf and recorded and mixed by David Thoener. It was recorded in New York, NY in July 1993. A two-disc "deluxe edition" was released by MCA on June 25, 2002. The first disc contains the remastered original album, while the second contains several radio edits and remixes. It was presented as a foldout double-disc set enhoused in a slipcase, with an extensive booklet with liner notes and rare photographs. AllMusic suggest that although the album deserves the attention, "the extra disc of material is [not] worth the time of anyone outside of fanatics... it doesn't really offer any revelations, curiosities, or an interesting listen for anybody else (and it may not be that interesting to those collectors, either)." In 2006, a three disc collector's edition was released by Virgin/EMI. The first disc contains the original album remastered and the second a live version of the original Bat Out of Hell album plus "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)", compiled from the various B-sides from the album's singles. The tracks were recorded live in New York during July 1993, except "For Crying Out Loud" which was recorded live in the United States in 1994. Live arrangements by Meat Loaf and the Neverland Express featuring Patti Russo as lead female vocalist. Tracks 1-6 and 8 were recorded and mixed by David Thoener, and the audio was remastered by Peter Mew with Nigel Reeve at Abbey Road Studios, London. The final disc is a DVD containing all three of the Michael Bay videos, and a featurette with an interview with Meat Loaf and Steinman, with behind the scenes footage from the video shoot of "I'd Do Anything for Love". All sections were directed by Michael Bay and produced by Propaganda Films. DVD produced by Abbey Road Interactive. Jim Steinman – arranger, "Meat Loaf and the musicians" – co-arranger, Todd Rundgren – background vocal arranger Mark Alexander – piano, backing vocals, Steve Buslowe – bass guitar, backing vocals, John Miceli – drums, Patti Russo – female lead vocals, backing vocals, Kasim Sulton – guitar, keyboards, backing vocals, Pat Thrall – lead guitar, backing vocals Kenny Aronoff – drums, Roy Bittan – piano, keyboards, Jeff Bova – organ (8), synthesizer, programming, Jimmy Bralower – drums (9), Steve Buslowe – bass guitar, Robert Coron – additional backing vocals (2), Lorraine Crosby – female lead vocals (1, as "Mrs. Loud"), backing vocals (2, 6), additional backing vocals (8), Brett Cullen – additional backing vocals (2), Rory Dodd – additional vocals (6), backing vocals (1-5, 9, 11), Stuart Emerson – backing vocals (2, 6), Ellen Foley – additional vocals (6), Cynthia Geary – additional backing vocals (2), Amy Goff – backing vocals (2), additional backing vocals (9), Elaine Goff – backing vocals (2), additional backing vocals (9), Max Haskett – backing vocals (6, 8), Curtis King – backing vocals (9), Michelle Little – additional backing vocals (2), Rick Marotta – drums (6, 8), Eddie Martinez – guitar (1, 2, 6, 8, 9), Brian Meagher – bagpipes (8), drums (8), Brian Meagher, Jr. – bagpipes (8), drums (8), Justin Meagher – bagpipes (8), drums (8), Meat Loaf – lead vocals, backing vocals (2, 4), Gunnar Nelson – backing vocals (2), Matthew Nelson – backing vocals (2), Bill Payne – piano (6, 8, 11), Lenny Pickett – saxophone (3, 9), Tim Pierce – guitar (1–5), Todd Rundgren – backing vocals (1–6, 8, 9), Jim Steinman – spoken word (7), additional backing vocals (2), Kasim Sulton – backing vocals, Pat Thrall – guitar (4, 5), Eric Troyer – backing vocals (11) Footnotes Bibliography Meat Loaf (Michael Lee Aday, born Marvin Lee Aday, September 27, 1947) is an American singer and actor. He is noted for his powerful, wide-ranging voice and for his theatrical live shows. Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell trilogy of albums—Bat Out of Hell, , and —has sold more than 50 million albums worldwide. More than 40 years after its release, Bat Out of Hell still sells an estimated 200,000 copies annually and stayed on the charts for over nine years, making it one of the best selling albums in history. After the commercial success of Bat Out of Hell and Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell, and earning a Grammy Award for Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance for the song "I'd Do Anything for Love", Meat Loaf nevertheless experienced some difficulty establishing a steady career within the United States. This did not stop him from becoming one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with worldwide sales of more than 80 million records. The key to this success was his retention of iconic status and popularity in Europe, especially the United Kingdom, where he received the 1994 Brit Award for best-selling album and single, appeared in the 1997 film Spice World, and ranks 23rd for the number of weeks spent on the UK charts, He ranks 96th on VH1's "100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock". Sometimes credited as Meat Loaf Aday, he has also appeared in over 50 movies and television shows, sometimes as himself or as characters resembling his stage persona. His most notable film roles include Eddie in [[The Rocky Horror Picture Show]] (1975), and Robert "Bob" Paulson in [[Fight Club]] (1999). His early stage work included dual roles in the original cast of [[The Rocky Horror Show]], and he was also in the musical [[Hair (musical)|Hair]], both [[Broadway theatre|on-]] and [[off-Broadway]]. Marvin Lee Aday was born in [[Dallas|Dallas, Texas]], the only child of Wilma Artie (née Hukel), a school teacher and a member of the Vo-di-o-do Girls gospel quartet, and Orvis Wesley Aday, a former police officer who went into business with his wife and one of their friends as the Griffin Grocery Company, selling a homemade cough remedy. His father was an alcoholic who would go on [[binge drinking|drinking binges]] for days at a time; this had started after he was invalided out of the army during World War II, hit with shrapnel from a mortar explosion. Aday and his mother would drive around to all the bars in Dallas, looking for Orvis to take him home. As a result, Aday often stayed with his grandmother, Charlsee Norrod. Meat Loaf relates a story in his autobiography, [[Meat Loaf: To Hell and Back|To Hell and Back]], about how he, a friend, and his friend's father drove out to [[Dallas Love Field|Love Field]] on [[Assassination of John F. Kennedy|November 22, 1963]] to watch [[John F. Kennedy]] land. After watching him leave the airport, they went to Market Hall, which was on Kennedy's parade route. On the way, they heard that Kennedy had been shot, so they headed to [[Parkland Hospital]], where they saw [[Jackie Kennedy]] get out of the car and [[Governor of Texas|Governor]] [[John Connally]] get pulled out, although they did not see the president taken out. In 1965, Aday graduated from [[Thomas Jefferson High School (Dallas)|Thomas Jefferson High School]], having already started his acting career via school productions such as [[Where's Charley?]] and [[The Music Man]]. After attending college at [[Lubbock Christian University|Lubbock Christian College]], he transferred to North Texas State University (now the [[University of North Texas]]). After he received his inheritance from his mother's death, he rented an apartment in Dallas and isolated himself for three and a half months. Eventually, a friend found him. A short time later, Aday went to the airport and caught the next flight leaving. The plane took him to [[Los Angeles]]. In Los Angeles, Aday formed his first band, "Meat Loaf Soul", after a nickname coined by his football coach because of his weight. During the recording of their first song, he hit a note so high that he managed to blow a fuse on the recording monitor. He was immediately offered three recording contracts, which he turned down. Meat Loaf Soul's first gig was in [[Huntington Beach, California|Huntington Beach]] in 1968 at the Cave, opening for [[Van Morrison]]'s band [[Them (band)|Them]], and [[Question Mark and the Mysterians]]. While performing their cover of the [[Howlin' Wolf]] song "[[Smokestack Lightning]]", the smoke machine they used made too much smoke and the club had to be cleared out. Later, the band was the opening act at [[California State University, Northridge|Cal State Northridge]] for [[Renaissance (band)|Renaissance]], [[Taj Mahal (musician)|Taj Mahal]], and [[Janis Joplin]]. The band then underwent several changes of lead guitarists, changing the name of the band each time. The new names included Popcorn Blizzard and Floating Circus. As Floating Circus, they opened for [[the Who]], [[the Fugs]], [[the Stooges]], [[MC5]], [[Grateful Dead]], and [[the Grease Band]]. Their regional success led them to release a single, "Once Upon a Time", backed with "Hello". Then Meat Loaf joined the Los Angeles production of the musical [[Hair (musical)|Hair]]. During an interview with New Zealand radio station [[ZM (New Zealand)|ZM]], Meat Loaf stated that the biggest life struggle he had to overcome was not being taken seriously in the music industry. He compared his treatment to that of a "circus clown". With the publicity generated from [[Hair (musical)|Hair]], Meat Loaf was invited to record with [[Motown]]. They suggested he do a duet with [[Shaun Murphy (singer)|Shaun "Stoney" Murphy]], who had performed with him in Hair, to which he agreed. The Motown production team in charge of the album wrote and selected the songs while Meat Loaf and Stoney came in only to lay down their vocals. The album, titled [[Stoney & Meatloaf]] (with Meat Loaf misspelled as one word) was completed in the summer of 1971 and released in September of that year. A single released in advance of the album, "What You See Is What You Get", reached number thirty-six on the Best Selling Soul Singles chart (the same chart is now titled [[Hot R&B;/Hip-Hop Songs]]) and seventy-one on the [[Billboard Hot 100|Billboard Hot 100]] chart. To support their album, Meat Loaf and Stoney toured with [[Jake Wade and the Soul Searchers]], opening for [[Richie Havens]], [[the Who]], [[the Stooges]], [[Bob Seger]], [[Alice Cooper]], and [[Rare Earth (band)|Rare Earth]]. Meat Loaf left soon after Motown replaced his and Stoney's vocals from the one song he liked, "Who Is the Leader of the People?" with new vocals by [[Edwin Starr]]. The album has been re-released after Meat Loaf's success, with Stoney's vocals removed. Meat Loaf's version of "Who Is the Leader of the People?" was released; however, the album failed. In December 1972, Meat Loaf was in the original [[off-Broadway]] production of Rainbow at the Orpheum Theatre in New York. After the tour, Meat Loaf rejoined the cast of Hair, this time on [[Broadway theater|Broadway]]. After he hired an agent, he auditioned for the [[Public Theater]]'s production of [[More Than You Deserve]]. During the audition Meat Loaf met his future collaborator [[Jim Steinman]]. He sang a former Stoney and Meatloaf favorite of his, "(I'd Love to Be) As Heavy as Jesus", and subsequently got the part of Rabbit, a maniac that blows up his fellow soldiers so they can "go home." [[Ron Silver]] and [[Fred Gwynne]] were also in the show. In the summer between the show's workshop production (April 1973) and full production (Nov 1973 - Jan 1974), he appeared in a [[Shakespeare in the Park (New York City)|Shakespeare In The Park]] production of [[As You Like It]] with [[Raul Julia]] and [[Mary Beth Hurt]]. He recorded a single of "More Than You Deserve", with a [[cover version|cover]] of "[[Blind Faith (Blind Faith album)|Presence of the Lord]]" as the B-side. He was only able to save three copies of it, because the record company did not allow its release.. He recorded it again (1981) in a slightly rougher voice. The original single came out on RSO SO-407 with some promotional copies bearing both songs, while some were double-A side copies with "More Than You Deserve" in mono and stereo on them. In late 1973, Meat Loaf was cast in the original L.A. Roxy cast of [[The Rocky Horror Show]], playing the parts of Eddie and Dr. Everett Scott. Two other cast members from More Than You Deserve were also part of this cast; [[Graham Jarvis]] (playing The Narrator) and [[Kim Milford]] (playing Rocky). The success of the musical led to the filming of [[The Rocky Horror Picture Show]] in which Meat Loaf played only Eddie, a decision he said made the movie not as good as the musical. About the same time, Meat Loaf and Steinman started work on [[Bat Out of Hell]]. Meat Loaf convinced [[Epic Records]] to shoot [[music video|videos]] for four songs, "[[Bat Out of Hell (song)|Bat Out of Hell]]", "[[Paradise by the Dashboard Light]]", "[[You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth]]", and "[[Two Out of Three Ain't Bad]]". He then convinced [[Lou Adler]], the producer of Rocky Horror, to run the "Paradise" video as a trailer to the movie. Meat Loaf's final theatrical show in New York was [[Gower Champion]]'s [[Rockabye Hamlet]], a [[Hamlet]] musical. It closed two weeks into its initial run. Meat Loaf later returned occasionally to perform "[[Hot Patootie – Bless My Soul]]" for a special Rocky Horror reunion or convention, and rarely at his own live shows (one performance of which was released in the 1996 [[Live Around the World (Meat Loaf album)|Live Around the World]] CD set). During his recording of the soundtrack for Rocky Horror, Meat Loaf recorded two more songs: "[[Stand by Me (Ben E. King song)|Stand by Me]]" (a [[Ben E. King]] cover), and "Clap Your Hands". They remained unreleased until 1984, when they appeared as B-sides to the "[[Nowhere Fast (song)|Nowhere Fast]]" single. In 1976, Meat Loaf recorded lead vocals for [[Ted Nugent]]'s album [[Free-for-All (Ted Nugent album)|Free-for-All]] when regular Nugent lead vocalist [[Derek St. Holmes]] temporarily quit the band. Meat Loaf sang lead on five of the album's nine tracks. As on the "Stoney & Meatloaf" album, he was credited as Meatloaf (one word) on the "Free-for-All" liner notes. Meat Loaf and Steinman started [[Bat Out of Hell]] in 1972, but did not get serious about it until the end of 1974. Meat Loaf decided to leave theatre, and concentrate exclusively on music. Then the [[National Lampoon (magazine)|National Lampoon]] show [[Lemmings (National Lampoon)|Lemmings]] opened on Broadway and it needed an understudy for [[John Belushi]], a close friend of Meat Loaf since 1972. It was at the Lampoon show that Meat Loaf met [[Ellen Foley]], the co-star who sang "[[Paradise by the Dashboard Light]]" and "[[Bat Out of Hell (song)|Bat Out of Hell]]" with him on the album Bat Out of Hell. After the Lampoon show ended, Meat Loaf and Steinman spent time seeking a record deal. Their approaches were rejected by each record company, because their songs did not fit any specific recognized [[music industry]] style. Finally, they performed the songs for [[Todd Rundgren]], who decided to produce the album, as well as play lead guitar on it (other members of Rundgren's band [[Utopia (American band)|Utopia]] also lent their musical talents). They then shopped the record around, but still had no takers until [[Cleveland International Records]] decided to take a chance. In October 1977, Bat Out of Hell was finally released. Meat Loaf and Steinman formed the band [[Neverland Express|The Neverland Express]] to tour in support of Bat Out of Hell. Their first gig was opening for [[Cheap Trick]] in Chicago. He gained national exposure as musical guest on [[Saturday Night Live]] on March 25, 1978. Guest host [[Christopher Lee]] introduced him by saying, "And now ladies and gentlemen I would like you to meet Loaf. (pauses, looks dumbfounded) I beg your pardon, what? (he listens to the director's aside) Oh! Why...why I'm sorry, yes, of course...ah... Ladies and gentlemen, Meat Loaf!" Bat Out of Hell has sold an estimated 43 million copies globally (15 million of those in the United States), making it one of the highest selling albums of all time. In the United Kingdom alone, its 2.1 million sales put it in 38th place. Despite peaking at No. 9 and spending only two weeks in the top ten in 1981, it has now clocked up 485 weeks on the [[UK Albums Chart]] (May 2015), a figure bettered only by Rumours by Fleetwood Mac—487 weeks. In Australia, it knocked the [[Bee Gees]] off the number No. 1 spot and went on to become the biggest-selling Australian album of all time. Bat Out of Hell is also one of only two albums that has never exited the Top 200 in the UK charts; this makes it the longest stay in any music chart in the world, although the published chart contains just 75 positions. In 1976, Meat Loaf appeared in the short-lived Broadway production of the rock musical [[Rockabye Hamlet]]. Steinman started to work on [[Bad for Good]], the album that was supposed to be the follow-up to 1977's Bat out of Hell, in 1979. During that time, a combination of touring, drugs and exhaustion had caused Meat Loaf to lose his voice. Without a singer, and pressured by the record company, Steinman decided that he should sing on Bad for Good himself, and write a new album for Meat Loaf; the result was [[Dead Ringer (album)|Dead Ringer]], which was later released in 1981, after the release of Steinman's Bad for Good. After playing the role of Travis Redfish in the movie [[Roadie (1980 film)|Roadie]], Meat Loaf's singing voice returned, and he started to work on his new album in 1980. Steinman had written five new songs which, in addition to the track "More Than You Deserve" (sung by Meat Loaf in the stage musical of the same name) and a reworked monologue, formed the album Dead Ringer, which was produced by Meat Loaf and Stephan Galfas, with backing tracks produced by [[Todd Rundgren]], Jimmy Iovine, and Steinman. (In 1976, Meat Loaf appeared on the track "Keeper Keep Us", from the Intergalactic Touring Band's self-titled album, produced by Galfas.) The song "[[Dead Ringer for Love]]" was the pinnacle of the album, and launched Meat Loaf to even greater success after it reached No. 5 in the United Kingdom and stayed in the charts for a surprising 19 weeks. [[Cher]] provided the lead female vocals in the song. A comedy/documentary movie was filmed to accompany the release of "Dead Ringer", written and produced by Meat Loaf's managers [[David Sonenberg]] and [[Al Dellentash]]. It featured Meat Loaf playing two roles: himself, and a Meat Loaf fan, 'Marvin'. Sonenberg persuaded [[CBS]] to advance money for the making of the movie, which was shown at the [[Toronto International Film Festival]] and won some favorable reviews. The album reached No. 1 in the United Kingdom, and three singles were released from the album: "Dead Ringer for Love" (with [[Cher]]), "I'm Gonna Love Her for Both of Us", and "Read 'Em and Weep". Following a dispute with his former songwriter Jim Steinman, Meat Loaf was contractually obliged to release a new album. Struggling for time, and with, it seemed, no resolution to his arguments with Steinman on the horizon (eventually, Steinman sued Meat Loaf, who subsequently sued Steinman as well), he was forced to find songwriters wherever he could. The resulting album was [[Midnight at the Lost and Found]]. According to Meat Loaf, Steinman had given the songs "[[Total Eclipse of the Heart]]" and "[[Making Love Out of Nothing at All]]" to Meat Loaf for this album. However, Meat Loaf's record company refused to pay for Steinman. This was hard luck for Meat Loaf, as [[Bonnie Tyler]]'s version of "Eclipse" and [[Air Supply]]'s version of "Making Love" topped the charts together, holding No. 1 and No. 2 for a period during 1983. Meat Loaf is credited with having been involved in the writing of numerous tracks on the album, including the title track, "Midnight at the Lost and Found". The title track still regularly forms part of Meat Loaf concerts, and was one of few 1980s songs to feature on the 1998 hit album [[The Very Best of Meat Loaf]]. This was Meat Loaf's final album to be released through [[Epic Records|Epic]]. It was also his last album release via [[Sony Music]] until 2011's "[[Hell In A Handbasket]]. On December 5, 1981, Meat Loaf and the Neverland Express were the musical guests for Saturday Night Live where he and former fellow Rocky Horror Picture Show actor [[Tim Curry]] performed a skit depicting a One-Stop Rocky Horror Shop. Later, Curry performed "The Zucchini Song" and Meat Loaf & the Neverland Express performed "Bat Out of Hell" and "Promised Land". In 1983, he released the self written [[Midnight at the Lost and Found]]. In 1984, Meat Loaf went to England to record the album [[Bad Attitude (album)|Bad Attitude]]; it was released that year. It features two songs by Steinman, both previously recorded. It was a minor success with a few commercially successful singles, the most successful being "[[Modern Girl (Meat Loaf song)|Modern Girl]]". The American release on RCA Records was in April 1985 and features a slightly different track list, as well as alternate mixes for some songs. The title track features a duet with [[the Who]]'s lead singer [[Roger Daltrey]]. "Modern Girl" was the first single taken from the album but was only a moderate success on the European Charts. In 1986 he and songwriter [[John Parr]] started recording a new album, [[Blind Before I Stop]]. In 1985, Meat Loaf took part in some comedy sketches in the UK, with [[Hugh Laurie]]. Meat Loaf also tried stand-up comedy, appearing several times in Connecticut. [[Blind Before I Stop]] was released in 1986. It features production, mixing, and general influence by [[Frank Farian]]. Meat Loaf gave songwriting another shot with this album and wrote three of the songs on the album. Released as a single (in the United Kingdom) was Rock 'n' Roll Mercenaries, which was a duet with rock singer [[John Parr]]. Another single released in the United Kingdom was "Special Girl". According to Meat Loaf's 1998 autobiography, the album sold poorly because of its production. Meat Loaf would have preferred to cancel the project and wait to work with more Steinman material. However, the album gained a cult following over the years, with the songs "Execution Day" and "Standing on the Outside" as standout tracks on the record. "Standing on the Outside" was also featured during the third season of the 1980s television series [[Miami Vice]]; it was used several times during the episode titled "Forgive Us Our Debts" (first aired December 12, 1986). In the former [[Soviet Union|USSR]], this was the first Meat Loaf album officially permitted to be published, in connection with the beginning of the collapse of the [[Iron Curtain]]. The song Masculine was the only song from the record that was a live show mainstay from 1987 to 1992. He then omitted that song in favor of Life Is a Lemon and I Want My Money Back, with the success of Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell. Meat Loaf performed "Thrashin" for the soundtrack of the 1986 skateboarding film [[Thrashin' (film)|Thrashin']] (directed by [[David Winters (choreographer)|David Winters]] and starring [[Josh Brolin]]). Following the success of Meat Loaf's touring in the 1980s, he and Steinman began work during the Christmas of 1990 on the sequel to Bat Out of Hell. After two years, [[Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell]] was finished. The artist's then manager, Tommy Manzi, later told [[HitQuarters]] that music industry insiders were wholly unenthusiastic about the idea of a comeback, and considered the project "a joke". The immediate success of "Bat Out of Hell II" quickly proved any doubters wrong, with the album going on to sell over 15 million copies, and the single "[[I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)]]" reaching number one in 28 countries. Meat Loaf won the [[Grammy Award for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Solo]] in [[Grammy Awards of 1994|1994]] for "I'd Do Anything for Love". This song stayed at No. 1 in the United Kingdom charts for seven consecutive weeks. The single features a female vocalist who was credited only as "Mrs. Loud". Mrs. Loud was later identified as [[Lorraine Crosby]], a performer from England. Meat Loaf promoted the song with American vocalist [[Patti Russo]] who performed lead female vocals on tour with him. In Germany, Meat Loaf was commercially successful following the release of Bat Out of Hell II. Also in 1994, he sang the U.S. national anthem "[[The Star Spangled Banner]]" at the [[Major League Baseball All-Star Game]]. He released the single "[[Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through]]", which reached No. 13 in the United States. In 1995, Meat Loaf released his seventh studio album, [[Welcome to the Neighbourhood]]. The album went platinum in the United States and the United Kingdom. It released three singles that hit the top 40, including [[I'd Lie for You (And That's the Truth)|I'd Lie for You]] (which reached No. 13 in the United States and No. 2 in the United Kingdom charts), and [[Not a Dry Eye in the House]] (which reached No. 7 in the UK charts). I'd Lie for You (And That's the Truth) was a duet with [[Patti Russo]], who had been touring with Meat Loaf and singing on his albums since 1993. Of the twelve songs on the album, two are written by Steinman. Both are cover versions, the "Original Sin" from [[Pandora's Box (band)|Pandora's Box]]'s Original Sin album and "Left in the Dark" first appeared on Steinman's own Bad for Good as well as the 1984 album [[Emotion (Barbra Streisand album)|Emotion]] by [[Barbra Streisand]]. The video had a bigger budget than any of his previous videos. His other singles "I'd Lie for You" and "Not a Dry Eye in the House" were written by [[Diane Warren]]. In 1998, Meat Loaf released [[The Very Best of Meat Loaf]]. Although not reaching the top ten in the United Kingdom, it went platinum in December of that year, and was already platinum around the rest of the world just after its release. The album featured all of Meat Loaf's best-known songs, a few from his less popular albums from the 1980s, and three new songs. The music on the two Steinman songs was written and composed by [[Andrew Lloyd Webber]]. The single from the album was "[[Is Nothing Sacred]]", written by Steinman with lyrics by [[Don Black (musician)|Don Black]]. The single version of this song is a duet with Patti Russo, whereas the album version is a solo song by Meat Loaf. The album did not feature any songs from his 1986 album Blind Before I Stop. In 2003, Meat Loaf released his album [[Couldn't Have Said It Better]]. Only for the third time in his career, Meat Loaf released an album without any songs written by Steinman (not counting live bonus tracks on special edition releases). Although Meat Loaf claimed that Couldn't Have Said It Better was "the most perfect album [he] did since Bat Out of Hell", it was not as commercially successful. The album was a minor commercial success worldwide and reached No. 4 in the UK charts, accompanied by a sellout world tour to promote the album and some of Meat Loaf's best selling singles. One such performance on his world tour was at Sydney's [[2003 NRL grand final]]. There were many writers for the album including Diane Warren and James Michael, who were both asked to contribute his 2006 album [[Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose]]. Diane Warren has written for Meat Loaf in the past with some commercially successful singles. James Michael had never written for Meat Loaf before and it was only his songs that were released as singles from the album. The album featured duets with Patti Russo and Meat Loaf's daughter [[Pearl Aday]]. From February 20 to 22, 2004, during an Australian tour, Meat Loaf performed with the [[Melbourne Symphony Orchestra]], titled [[Bat Out of Hell: Live with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra]]. The performance included the [[Australian Boys' Choir]] singing back-up on a Couldn't Have Said It Better track, "Testify". The show was released as a DVD and a CD called Meat Loaf and The Neverland Express featuring Patti Russo Live with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. The CD had few edited songs from the concert on it. Meat Loaf sold out over 160 concerts during his 2005 tour, "Hair of the Dog". On November 17, 2003, during a performance at London's [[Wembley Arena]], on his Couldn't Have Said It Better tour, he collapsed of what was later diagnosed as [[Wolff- Parkinson-White syndrome]]. The following week, he underwent a surgical procedure intended to correct the problem. As a result, Meat Loaf's insurance agency did not allow him to perform for any longer than one hour and 45 minutes. As well as singing his best known songs, Meat Loaf sang a cover version of the hit single "[[Black Betty]]". During this tour he also sang "Only When I Feel", a song meant to appear on his then-upcoming album Bat Out of Hell III. The song subsequently turned into "If It Ain't Broke (Break It)". [[File:Meat Loaf Birmingham NEC 2007.jpg|250px|right|thumb|On stage at Birmingham's NEC arena, 2007]] Meat Loaf and Steinman had begun to work on the third installment of Bat Out of Hell when Steinman suffered some health setbacks, including a heart attack. According to Meat Loaf, Steinman was too ill to work on such an intense project while Steinman's manager said health was not an issue. Steinman had registered the phrase "Bat Out of Hell" as a trademark in 1995. In May 2006, Meat Loaf sued Steinman and his manager in federal District Court in Los Angeles, seeking $50 million and an injunction against Steinman's use of the phrase. Steinman and his representatives attempted to block the album's release. An agreement was reached in July 2006. According to Virgin, "the two came to an amicable agreement that ensured that Jim Steinman's music would be a continuing part of the 'Bat Out of Hell' legacy." Denying reports in the press over the years of a rift between Meat Loaf and Steinman, Meat Loaf told [[Dan Rather]] that he and Steinman never stopped talking, and that the lawsuits reported in the press were between lawyers and managers, and not between Meat Loaf and Steinman. The album was released on October 31, 2006, and was produced by [[Desmond Child]]. The first single from the album "[[It's All Coming Back to Me Now]]" (featuring [[Marion Raven]]) was released on October 16, 2006. It entered the [[UK singles chart]] at No. 6, giving Meat Loaf his highest UK chart position in nearly 11 years. The album debuted at No. 8 on the Billboard 200, and sold 81,000 copies in its opening week, but after that did not sell well in the United States and yielded no hit singles, although it was certified gold. The album also featured duets with [[Patti Russo]] and [[Jennifer Hudson]]. In the weeks following the release of Bat III, Meat Loaf and the NLE (the [[Neverland Express]]) did a brief tour of America and Europe, known as the Bases Loaded Tour. In 2007, a newer, bigger worldwide tour began, [[The Seize the Night Tour]], with Marion Raven, serving as a supporting act, throughout the European and American tour. Portions of the tour in February 2007 were featured in the documentary [[Meat Loaf: In Search of Paradise]], directed by [[Bruce David Klein]]. The film was an official selection of the [[Montreal World Film Festival]] in 2007. It opened in theaters in March 2008 and was released on DVD in May 2008. During a performance at the [[Metro Radio Arena]] in [[Newcastle upon Tyne]], England, on October 31, 2007, at the opening of "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" he suggested that the crowd of thousands should enjoy the performance as it was the last of his career. He attempted to sing the first line of the song, but instead said "Ladies and gentlemen, I love you, thank you for coming, but I can no longer continue." Removing the jacket he was wearing, he thanked the audience for 30 years, said "goodbye forever" and left the stage. His tour promoter, Andrew Miller, denied that this was the end for Meat Loaf and said he would continue touring after suitable rest. The next two gigs in the tour, at the [[National Exhibition Centre|NEC]] and [[Manchester Evening News Arena]] were cancelled because of "acute [[laryngitis]]" and were rescheduled for late November. The concert scheduled for November 6, 2007 at London's [[Wembley Arena]] was also cancelled. Meat Loaf cancelled his entire European tour for 2007 after being diagnosed with a cyst on his vocal cords. After releasing a statement he said "It really breaks my heart not to be able to perform these shows," adding "I will be back." On June 27, 2008, Meat Loaf returned to the stage in [[Plymouth]], England, for the first show of [[The Casa de Carne Tour]] alongside his longtime duet partner Patti Russo, who debuted one of her own original songs during his show. The tour continued through July and August with twenty dates throughout England, Ireland, Germany, Portugal, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark. Six U.S. showdates were also added for October and December 2008. In May 2009, Meat Loaf began work on the album [[Hang Cool Teddy Bear]] in the studio with [[Green Day]]'s [[American Idiot]] album producer [[Rob Cavallo]], working with such writers as [[Justin Hawkins]], Rick Brantley, Ollie Wride, Tommy Henriksen and [[Jon Bon Jovi]]. Though not much was revealed officially to begin with, Meat Loaf gave away some information through videos he posted on Twitter and YouTube. The album is based on the story of a fictional soldier, whose "story" furnishes the theme. During his concert of March 19, 2011, held outside of Vancouver, B.C., Canada, Meat Loaf explained that he had wanted an insert put with the album to explain what the premise of the album was, but he said there were too many "bleeping" record label politics and it did not get done. He went on to tell the audience that the story was of a soldier who being wounded, had his life flash forward before his eyes, and the songs were telling the story of his life. The album is based on a short story by L.A.-based screenwriter and director Kilian Kerwin, a long-time friend of the singer. [[Hugh Laurie]] and [[Jack Black]] both perform on the album, Laurie plays piano on the song "If I Can't Have You", while Black sings a duet with Meat Loaf on "Like A Rose". Patti Russo and Kara DioGuardi also duet on the album. Queen's [[Brian May]] features on guitar along with [[Steve Vai]]. It received positive reviews from critics and fans alike. The first single from the album, "Los Angeloser", was released for download on April 5 with the album charting at number 4 in the official UK album chart on April 25, 2010. [[The Hang Cool Tour]] followed in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada with rave reviews from fans and critics. Patti Russo accompanied him on the tour, continuing through the summer of 2011. In May 2011, Meat Loaf confirmed in a video on his YouTube account, that he was in the process of recording a new album called [[Hell in a Handbasket]]. According to Meat Loaf, the album was recorded and produced by [[Paul Crook]]; Dough McKean did the mix with input from [[Rob Cavallo]]. The album features songs called "All of Me", "Blue Sky", "The Giving Tree", "Mad, Mad World", and a duet with Patti Russo called "Our Love and Our Souls". On July 6, the album had to be finished for the record company. They released it in October 2011 for Australia and New Zealand, and February 2012 for the rest of the world. Meat Loaf said, "It's really the first record I've ever put out about how I feel about life and how I feel about what's going on at the moment." The "Mad, Mad World" tour in connection with the album Hell in a Handbasket was launched in late June 2012. For the tour Meat Loaf has said, "People who come to Meat Loaf shows know what to expect. They know they're going to get full-on energy with the best rock 'n' roll band in the world. That's not an opinion. That's the truth." At the [[2011 AFL Grand Final|2011 Australian Football League Grand Final]], the pre-match entertainment was headlined by a 12-minute medley performed by Meat Loaf. The performance was panned as the worst in the 34-year history of AFL Grand Final pre-game entertainment in a multitude of online reviews by football fans and Australian sport commentators. Meat Loaf responded by calling online critics "butt-smellers", and the AFL "jerks", saying "I will go out of my way to tell any artist, 'Do not play for them. In response to this criticism, the AFL changed the format of the entertainment, effective from the 2012 Grand Final, to have a small pre-match show, a larger half-time show, and, for the first time, a free concert open to the public at the Melbourne Cricket Ground after the match. Meat Loaf said in 2011 that he planned to release a Christmas album called Hot Holidays. As of 2019, the album has not yet been released. In media interviews to promote his 2013 "Last at Bat" tour, Meat Loaf said he would work with Steinman again on an upcoming album called Brave and Crazy. The album was released in 2016 as [[Braver Than We Are]] on September 9 (Europe) and September 16 (North America). It features 10 tracks. Meat Loaf claimed in several interviews that he will be recording reworked versions of Steinman's songs "Braver Than We Are", "Speaking in Tongues", "Who Needs the Young", and "[[More (The Sisters of Mercy song)|More]]" (previously recorded by [[the Sisters of Mercy]]) for the album. Additionally, the song "Prize Fight Lover", originally issued as a download-only bonus track for Hang Cool Teddy Bear, has been re-recorded for the album. In January 2020, during an interview for 'The Mirror' Meat Loaf announced "I’m not old. I’ve got songs for another record and I’m reading a script.” Appeared playing the drums in the music video of the [[World Wrestling Federation]] wrestlers' rendition of "Land of 1,000 Dances" (from [[The Wrestling Album]]) in 1986., Appeared as the [[Spice Girls]]' bus driver in the 1997 movie [[Spice World (film)|Spice World]]., Appeared as Red in the thriller/drama [[Black Dog (film)|Black Dog]] alongside [[Patrick Swayze]] and [[Randy Travis]]., In 2000, he appeared as the [[viral meningitis]] addled Confederate Colonel Angus Devine in the sixth-season episode "[[Gettysburg (The Outer Limits)|Gettysburg]]" of [[The Outer Limits (1995 TV series)|The Outer Limits]] who is accidentally transported forward in time 150 years in a failed attempt to prevent the assassination of the President in 2013., Meat Loaf was featured as one of the celebrity drivers in the 2005 [[Toyota Pro/Celebrity Race]], finishing 12th overall., He also appeared in the [[South Park]] episode "[[Chef Aid]]". In a flashback, Meat Loaf claims that he started out as an unsuccessful artist named [[Couscous]]. After being booed off stage and almost deciding to quit, Chef tells him that his name might be the problem, and then hands him a plate of meatloaf to cheer him up., Meat Loaf appears (uncredited) as [[Jack Black]]'s father in the 2006 film [[Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny]], providing vocals on the film's opening song "[[Kickapoo (song)|Kickapoo]]". In the special features and commentary of the film's DVD release, it is noted that this is the first time Meat Loaf has sung for a movie soundtrack since The Rocky Horror Picture Show., Meat Loaf appeared, credited as Meat Loaf Aday, in the Season 5 episode of [[House (TV series)|House M.D.]], "Simple Explanation"., Meat Loaf appeared, credited as Meat Loaf Aday, in the Season 8 episode of [[Monk (TV series)|Monk]], "Mr. Monk and the Voodoo curse"., He appeared as Robert "Bob" Paulson, in [[David Fincher]]'s 1999 film [[Fight Club]] (as Meat Loaf Aday)., Along with his daughter [[Pearl Aday]], and longtime duet partner Patti Russo, he taped an episode of the FOX game show [[Don't Forget the Lyrics!]], which aired on May 22, 2009., On September 30, 2009, Meat Loaf appeared on the reality television show [[Ghost Hunters (TV series)|Ghost Hunters]] along with [[Jason Hawes]] and [[Grant Wilson]] and again on November 17, 2010 as a guest investigator at the [[Sloss Furnaces]] in [[Birmingham, Alabama]]., On October 26, 2010, Meat Loaf (credited as Meat Loaf Aday) appeared on the [[Fox Broadcasting Network|Fox]] television series [[Glee (TV series)|Glee]] in "[[The Rocky Horror Glee Show]]", the series' tribute episode to [[The Rocky Horror Picture Show]]., Circa 2011, an autographed photograph of Meat Loaf appeared as a [[sight-gag]] in a [[Farmers Insurance Group]] commercial., "The Big Interview" with Dan Rather, AXS TV, originally broadcast September 20, 2016 In 1984, Meat Loaf legally changed his first name from Marvin to Michael. Meat Loaf identifies as a Christian. Meat Loaf is a baseball fan and supporter of the [[New York Yankees]]. He is an avid [[fantasy baseball]] player and participates in multiple leagues every season. He is also a supporter of the English [[Association football|football]] team [[Hartlepool United F.C.|Hartlepool United]] and, in 2003, the BBC reported he was seeking a residence in the nearby area. He currently resides just outside [[Calabasas, California]], near [[Santa Monica Mountains#Named peaks|Saddle Peak]] and [[Santa Monica Mountains#Named peaks|Calabasas Peak]]. In June 2008, he took part in a football [[penalty shootout]] competition on behalf of two cancer charities in [[Newcastle upon Tyne]] in the United Kingdom. He auctioned shots to the 100 highest bidders and then took his place between the goal posts. He also participates in celebrity golf tournaments. Meat Loaf has expressed that he has [[social anxiety]], being quoted saying "I never meet anybody much in a social situation because when I go into a social situation, I have no idea what to do." He revealed that he does not "even go anywhere", and also feels he leads a "boring life", saying that he "completely freaked" when having to attend a party, and that he was "so nervous, so scared". He also said he met with fellow musicians chiefly in work-related situations as he was working a lot. On June 25, 2019, [[The New York Times Magazine]] listed Meat Loaf among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the [[2008 Universal fire]]. In December 1978, he went to [[Woodstock, New York|Woodstock]] to work with Steinman. It was at the [[Bearsville Records|Bearsville]] studio that Meat Loaf met his future wife, Leslie G. Edmonds; they were married within a month. Leslie had a daughter, [[Pearl Aday|Pearl]], from a previous marriage (Pearl later married [[Scott Ian]], the rhythm guitarist for the [[thrash metal]] band [[Anthrax (American band)|Anthrax]]). Meat Loaf and his family moved to [[Stamford, Connecticut]], in 1979. In 1981, Leslie gave birth to [[Amanda Aday]], later a television actress. For a brief time after Amanda's birth, they lived in nearby [[Westport, Connecticut|Westport]]. According to Meat Loaf, Pearl, then in the fifth grade, came home crying "because she had the wrong type of jeans and I said, 'That's it. We're gone. The family then moved to [[Redding, Connecticut]], "which is much more of a blue-collar, working- class kind of town, and it really didn't make any difference what kind of jeans you were wearing. I really liked it there." Meat Loaf coached children's baseball or softball in each of the Connecticut towns where he lived. In 1998, Meat Loaf relocated to [[California]]. Meat Loaf and Leslie divorced in 2001. He married Deborah Gillespie in 2007. At the start of his 2012 tour in Austin on June 22, Meat Loaf announced that he was a new resident (1 month) of Austin, Texas. Meat Loaf was a [[vegetarian]] for ten years and declared in late-2019 that he would 'go vegan for [[Veganuary]]' (January 2020). In October 2006, his private jet had to make an emergency landing at [[London Stansted Airport]] after the plane's forward landing gear failed. In 2011, Meat Loaf fainted on stage while performing in [[Pittsburgh]]. He collapsed again while on stage in [[Edmonton]] on 16 June 2016, due to severe dehydration after having cancelled two other shows due to illness. The playback containing his pre-recorded vocal track in Edmonton continued while he lay unconscious on the stage. In 2019, while in Texas, Meat Loaf fell on stage and broke his collar bone. Meat Loaf is not officially registered with any political party. He performed at the 1997 pre-inauguration ball for re-elected [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic]] President [[Bill Clinton]] and attended the [[First inauguration of George W. Bush|2001 inauguration]] of [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]] President [[George W. Bush]]. In 2008, Meat Loaf donated to the Presidential campaigns of [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican Party]] candidates [[Rick Santorum]] and [[John McCain]], the latter of whom became the party's candidate in that [[2008 United States presidential election|year's election]]. On October 25, 2012, Meat Loaf endorsed [[Mitt Romney]] for President of the United States, citing poor relations with [[Russia]] as a major reason he had been "arguing for Mitt Romney for a year". Meat Loaf explained, "I have never been in any political agenda in my life, but I think that in 2012 this is the most important election in the history of the United States." He cited "storm clouds" over the United States, and "thunder storms over Europe. There are hail storms – and I mean major hail storms! – in the Middle East. There are storms brewing through China, through Asia, through everywhere." The same day, he performed "[[America the Beautiful]]" standing next to Romney. [[Stoney & Meatloaf]] (1971), [[Bat Out of Hell]] (1977), [[Dead Ringer (album)|Dead Ringer]] (1981), [[Midnight at the Lost and Found]] (1983), [[Bad Attitude (album)|Bad Attitude]] (1984), [[Blind Before I Stop]] (1986), [[Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell]] (1993), [[Welcome to the Neighbourhood]] (1995), [[Couldn't Have Said It Better]] (2003), [[Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose]] (2006), [[Hang Cool Teddy Bear]] (2010), [[Hell in a Handbasket]] (2011), [[Braver Than We Are]] (2016) [[Bat Out of Hell Tour]] (1977–1979), [[Dead Ringer Tour]] (1981–1982), [[Midnight at the Lost and Found Tour]] (1983), [[Bad Attitude Tour]] (1984–1986), 20/20 World Tour (1987), Lost Boys and Golden Girls World Tour (1988), [[1989-1992 Tour]] (1989–1992), [[Everything Louder Tour]] (1993–1994), [[Born to Rock Tour]] (1995–1997), [[The Very Best of World Tour]] (1998–1999), [[The Storytellers Tour]] (1999–2000), [[ATLANTIC CITY GIGS]] (2001), [[Night of the Proms]] (2001), [[Just Having Fun with Friends Tour]] (2002–2003), [[The Last World Tour]] (2003–2004), [[Hair of the Dog Tour]] (2005), [[Bases Are Loaded Tour]] (2006), [[Seize the Night Tour / Three Bats Live Tour]] (2007), [[Casa De Carne Tour]] (2008), [[Hang Cool Tour]] (2010–2011), [[Guilty Pleasure Tour]] (2011), [[Mad Mad World Tour]] (2012), [[Last at Bat Farewell Tour]] (2013), [[Rocktellz & Cocktails]] (2013–2014), [[Live in Concert Tour]] (2015–2016), [[Braver Than We Are Tour]] (2017), [[My Tour]] (2018), [[Back Out Of Hell]] (announced, 2019) : with [[Caleb Johnson]] on vocals. [[List of best-selling music artists]] [[Category:Meat Loaf| ]] [[Category:1947 births]] [[Category:20th-century American male actors]] [[Category:20th-century American singers]] [[Category:21st-century American male actors]] [[Category:21st-century American singers]] [[Category:American hard rock musicians]] [[Category:American male film actors]] [[Category:American male singers]] [[Category:American male television actors]] [[Category:Arista Records artists]] [[Category:Atlantic Records artists]] [[Category:Epic Records artists]] [[Category:Grammy Award winners]] [[Category:Living people]] [[Category:Male actors from Texas]] [[Category:MCA Records artists]] [[Category:Motown artists]] [[Category:Music of Denton, Texas]] [[Category:Musicians from Dallas]] [[Category:Neverland Express members]] [[Category:Participants in American reality television series]] [[Category:People with social anxiety disorder]] [[Category:Singers from Texas]] [[Category:Thomas Jefferson High School (Dallas) alumni]] [[Category:University of North Texas alumni]] [[Category:Virgin Records artists]] [[Category:Ted Nugent Band members]]

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Ursula is a fictional character who appears in Walt Disney Pictures' 28th animated feature film The Little Mermaid (1989). Voiced by American actress Pat Carroll, Ursula is a villainous sea witch who offers a mermaid princess named Ariel in exchange to trade her voice for a pair of human legs, at first appearing to be providing the character with an opportunity to become human by temporarily transforming her into one so that she may earn the love of Prince Eric within three days. However, Ursula is, in fact, determined to sabotage Ariel's chances so that she can ultimately replace King Triton as ruler over Atlantica. Created by directors and screenwriters Ron Clements and John Musker, Ursula is based on the sea witch character who appears in the fairy tale "The Little Mermaid" by Hans Christian Andersen. However, her minor role was greatly expanded into that of a much more prominent villain for the film. Disney had struggled to cast Ursula for a year, during which the role was well sought after by several coveted television actresses at the time. Clements and Musker disagreed with lyricist Howard Ashman about who should voice the character. While the directors had written the role with Bea Arthur in mind, Ashman intended to offer it to soap opera star Joan Collins; both actresses rejected the part. When Ashman cast his second choice, Broadway actress Elaine Stritch, as Ursula, both stage veterans disagreed about the manner in which Ursula's song "Poor Unfortunate Souls" would be performed, and Pat Carroll was finally hired to replace Stritch after Ashman fired her. Deepening her own voice for the role, Carroll based her performance on a combination of Shakespearean actresses and car salespeople. Animated by Ruben A. Aquino, Ursula's original design was inspired by several different sea creatures, including manta rays and scorpion fish, before Clements finally decided to base the character on an octopus; her number of tentacles was reduced from eight to six for financial reasons. Ursula's appearance was also inspired by American actor and drag queen Divine. When The Little Mermaid was first released in 1989, Ursula was immediately embraced as one of Disney's best villains, and continues to be ranked highly among the studio's greatest by the media. Praised for being humorous and frightening, the character has garnered positive reviews from film critics, some of whom dubbed her Disney's strongest villain in decades. Meanwhile, Carroll's performance has garnered similar acclaim to the point that the role has eclipsed her previous body of work, ultimately becoming virtually synonymous with the character. At the behest of Disney executives Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, director and screenwriter Ron Clements was among several filmmakers instructed to research new story ideas that could potentially be adapted into the studio's next major animated film release. Clements first discovered Hans Christian Andersen's classic fairy tale "The Little Mermaid" at a local bookstore, and began deliberating why Disney had never attempted to adapt the story before. Clements eventually learned that Walt Disney himself had actually attempted to adapt the fairy tale into a feature-length animated film as early as the 1930s, but the project was ultimately shelved due in part to its sad ending. Clements suggested "The Little Mermaid" to Katzenberg, who finally green-lit it after having first rejected it. Hardly present in Andersen's original story, the sea witch is not a prominent character and lacks a proper name. Among Clements' ideas to alter the story, the filmmaker decided to "make the witch more of a villain", describing Ursula as "a fun character to develop" into such. In Andersen's tale, the sea witch is not a villain as much as she is "a disreputable mermaid." JR Thorpe of Bustle agreed that, in Andersen's story, "The sea witch isn't the enemy". Instead, "human ... nature is." While the original sea witch is willing to help the little mermaid despite the fact that she openly disagrees with her motives, Ursula is only interested in helping Ariel in the hopes of ultimately overthrowing her father. Emma James of Teen Ink observed that in addition to giving the character the name "Ursula", the studio "changed her role as a catalyst in the tale, and morphed her actions into those of an antagonist." Unlike the sea witch, Ursula deliberately intervenes in an attempt to keep the mermaid from success. Lyricist, producer and writer Howard Ashman had originally envisioned Ursula's relationship with King Triton as a soap opera, and thus drew inspiration from soap opera actress Joan Collins. Ursula was originally conceived as Triton's sister, which would have naturally made the character Ariel's aunt, but the idea was ultimately abandoned. However, their blood relationship is still vaguely alluded to when the character mentions a time during which she actually lived in Triton's palace. Clements and Musker had originally intended for Ursula to remain her original size at the end of the film. However, Katzenberg had just recently seen the film Die Hard (1988), which inspired him to request a "bigger" ending for The Little Mermaid, and thus he instructed the writers to have Ursula grow much larger in size during her climactic fight with Ariel and Eric. Ursula is voiced by American actress and comedian Pat Carroll. Carroll was not the filmmakers' first choice for the role; Clements, Musker and Ashman had long debated who should voice the villainness, the casting of whom was long and tedious, spanning an entire year. In his book Makin' Toons: Inside the Most Popular Animated TV Shows and Movies, author Allan Neuwirth documented that the filmmakers searched "for just the right performer who could put across the deep-voiced, world-weary, deadpan villainness they had in mind–but never quite snaring their catch". While Ashman was interested in actress Joan Collins because he was a fan of her performance as Alexis Colby in the soap opera Dynasty, Clements and Musker favored actress Bea Arthur, for whom they had actually written the role, describing Ursula as "having a Bea Arthur-type basso voice" in early drafts of their screenplay. Clements and Musker expected Arthur to accept the role because she had already been working for Disney's Touchstone Television on the sitcom The Golden Girls. However, Arthur's agent resented the directors-writers for insinuating that her client voice a witch, refusing to even present the script to the actress. With Arthur eliminated, Clements and Musker were forced to audition several other popular television actresses of the decade, including Nancy Marchand, Charlotte Rae and Roseanne Barr, the last of whom had originally auditioned for the supporting role of chambermaid Carlotta. Amused by her nasal voice, Howard invited the comedian to read for Ursula, but concluded that her approach was ultimately not suitable for the character. Jazz singer Nancy Wilson also auditioned. Meanwhile, Ashman himself had been similarly unsuccessful in recruiting Collins because Dynasty producer Aaron Spelling feared that the actress' reputation would be jeopardized should she voice an animated character. Thus, Ashman pursued Broadway veteran Elaine Stritch, of whom he had been a long- time fan. The audition process for Ursula required each hopeful to both recite a scene from the film and perform a Broadway-style song of their choice. The finalists became Clements and Musker's Rae versus Ashman's Stritch, the latter of whom ultimately won the role over Rae with her preferred rendition of Ursula's song "Poor Unfortunate Souls". Musker described Stritch's approach to Ursula as "an eccentric, loopy reading". However, Stritch and Ashman soon began to experience creative differences over "Poor Unfortunate Souls" because the actress refused to follow the lyricist's "very specific directions". After refusing to perform the song at Ashman's preferred tempo (combined with her alcoholism), the songwriter fired Stritch from the project, thus forcing Clements and Musker to find a replacement with yet another round of auditions. Carroll first learned of The Little Mermaid from her agent, and immediately agreed to audition for Ursula because she had always wanted to voice a Disney character. However, the actress felt that her chances were slim to none upon realizing that her competition largely consisted of famous film and television actresses. Musker described Carroll's audition approach as a hybrid of actors Maurice Evans and Tallulah Bankhead. Although confident in both her acting and singing auditions, Carroll did not hear back from her agent about the role until a year afterward, by which time she had already forgotten she had ever auditioned. Upon being cast, Carroll was entirely committed to the role, giving it complete precedence over all other jobs and projects at the time. Carroll's first task was to record "Poor Unfortunate Souls", her approach to which was remarkably different than Stritch's, first asking Howard to demonstrate exactly how he would like her to perform the song before attempting it. Carroll completely credits Ashman with her delivery, explaining, "I got the whole attitude from him ... and his shoulders would twitch a certain way, and his eyes would go a certain way ... I got more about that character from Howard singing that song than from anything else." Carroll also borrowed Ursula's habit of saying "innit" instead of "isn't it" from Ashman. Despite their strong working relationship, Carroll described working with Ashman and composer Alan Menken as a "brutal" experience because of the songwriters' "military" approach; she would often return home from recording sessions with blown vocal chords. Carroll recalled her daughter, filmmaker Tara Karsian, reassuring her that "you're in something that fifty years from now may be shown ... What you're working on now will be seen by our children, and our grandchildren, and our great-grandchildren" after complaining to her about one of her recording sessions. Describing her own performance as Shakespearean, Carroll perceived Ursula as an "ex-Shakespearean actress who now sold cars", which inspired her dry, theatrical interpretation. Carroll also deepened her own voice for the role. When Carroll watched the completed film for the first time, she was frightened by her own performance, comparing it to actress Margaret Hamilton's performance as the Wicked Witch of the West in the film The Wizard of Oz (1939). Actress Jodi Benson, who voices Ariel, briefly provides the voice of "Vanessa", Ursula's beautiful human alter-ego, in lieu of Carroll. With the writing and recording of "Poor Unfortunate Souls", Ursula became the first Disney villainness to receive her own song. In June 2019, it was announced that Melissa McCarthy is in talks to play Ursula in the upcoming live-action remake of The Little Mermaid, set to be directed by Rob Marshall. During production of The Little Mermaid, Ursula's design evolved and transformed dramatically. Animator Glen Keane's earliest sketches of Ursula were drawn to resemble Rae, specifically based on the actress' audition for the role. The short-lived casting of Stritch as Ursula and her subsequent performance eventually inspired the animators to design the character as "a tall, thin regal-looking sea witch" based on manta rays and scorpion fish, complete with a long cape. At one point, Ursula had also been drawn with spikes to resemble a spinefish. Ursula's appearance was largely inspired by American actor and drag queen Divine, who was best known for his frequent appearances in several films directed by filmmaker John Waters. Similarities were first drawn between the character and the actor after animator Rob Minkoff sketched "a vampy overweight matron", to which Ashman responded, "She looks like a Miami Beach matron ... playing Mah Jong by the pool.” The character shares Divine's signature eye makeup, jewelry and body type while originally sporting a Mohawk, the last of which was borrowed from the actor's Pink Flamingos (1972) character Babs Johnson. However, Minkoff had been drawing the character with a shark's tail at the time. Clements eventually decided to place Ursula's head on top of the body of an octopus instead, which ultimately resulted in her current design. The animators then studied the way in which octopuses move, explaining, "There was a very kind of seductive and yet scary aspect", which they incorporated into the character's own gait. The Pink Flamingos-inspired Mohawk was ultimately discarded because Disney felt that the hairstyle was "too over-the-top" for the film. Additionally, Ursula's face was also inspired by that of Madame Medusa from Disney's The Rescuers (1977). According to The Gospel according to Disney: Faith, Trust, and Pixie Dust author Mark I. Pinsky, Ursula became "the most grotesque characterization Disney ... have created for a female villain" at that time. Having animated previous Disney villains, Keane was originally approached to be the supervising animator of Ursula, but declined in favor of animating Ariel because he longed to do something different. Thus, Keane was replaced by Ruben A. Aquino. The character was originally drawn with a full set of eight tentacles similar to a real-life octopus, which were eventually reduced to a more manageable six because the original amount would have been too difficult and costly to animate. According to Carroll, this modification actually makes the character more similar to a squid than an octopus; whether or not Ursula is an octopus continues to be debated among both critics and devout fans, some of whom believe that the character's pair of arms actually account for the remaining two tentacles. Clements admitted that the character's six tentacles made animating her a challenge nonetheless. Ursula was intentionally designed to instill fear in The Little Mermaid's viewers. Animators studied Monstro from Disney's Pinocchio (1940) in order to animate the character's enlarged self emerging from the sea. Ursula's appearance was also based on that of the character Norma Desmond, who appears in the film Sunset Boulevard (1950). Divine never lived to see his own likeness appear in The Little Mermaid; the actor died in 1988, one year before the film's release. However, his cohorts agree that Divine would have greatly enjoyed Ursula. Documentarian Jeffrey Schwartz joked that the actor would have wanted to play Ursula himself had he known about the character, having once told Waters "When I was young, all I wanted to be was a Disney villain". About.com's David Nusair observed that "There’s no limit to how low Ursula will stoop to achieve her goals"; the character often relies on a combination of sorcery and deception to achieve them. "A bargainer of the worst kind", Ursula only agrees to help the less fortunate when she's confident that she can gain something from them in return. Identifying Ursula as Ariel's binary due to the character's experience and authority, Collision of Realities: Establishing Research on the Fantastic in Europe author Lars Schmeink described Ursula as a "more complex and mature character" than Ariel, embodying everything that the mermaid can potentially become. To Ariel, Ursula represents "the matronly image" who "instigate[s] the young princess' epic journey" as she longs to achieve the witch's "sage-like knowledge and power". Ursula teaches Ariel about womanhood, a theme From Mouse to Mermaid: The Politics of Film, Gender, and Culture author Elizabeth Belle noticed is absent in Anderson's story. According to Bell, "Ursula can retrieve Ariel from her destined alliance with patriarchy", observing that the witch actually "teaches Ariel that performance and voice and manifestations" are "liberations of gender". Teen Ink's Emma James believes that Ursula's death ultimately prevents Ariel from experiencing and learning from the consequences of her actions, concluding, "Ariel never really owns up to all the mishap she caused." Observing that Ursula actually warns Ariel about the consequences should she fail to earn a kiss from Eric, Laura Stampler of Time described the character as a "savvy contract negotiator". Writing for Collider, Dave Trumbore identified Ursula as the film's "Crossroads Demon". According to Gary Thompson of the Philadelphia Daily News, Ursula is similar to businesswoman Leona Helmsley. Makin' Toons: Inside the Most Popular Animated TV Shows and Movies author Allan Neuwirth observed that Ursula obeys Disney's "long- standing tradition of depicting classic scoundrels ... none so unsettling as their female villains." Neuwirth believes that the public's fear of Disney's female villains "stems from our expectations of nurturing, comfort and honesty from our mothers", while Disney's villainnesses, including Ursula, tend to "lust after ... youth and beauty." Ursula even goes as far as transforming herself into a beautiful young woman in order to trick Ariel's love interest into marrying her instead. Janet Wasko believes that Ursula's role as a powerful but antagonistic woman in The Little Mermaid alludes to the idea of patriarchy being preferable to matriarchy. Sophie Hall of Beamly identified Ursula as a woman struggling to "run the kingdom in a man’s world, having been kicked out for no specific reason." In her book Emerson Goes to the Movies: Individualism in Walt Disney Company's Post-1989 Animated Films, author Justyna Fruzińska claimed that "the masculine rule of Triton is presented as positive and opposed to the negative, feminine rule of Ursula". Understanding Disney: The Manufacture of Fantasy author Janet Wasko accused the film's treatment of Ursula of "eliminat[ing] many of the female characters and undermin[ing] [the] feminine power" present in Andersen's fairy tale. However, Wasko also argued that Ursula could possibly be considered a mother figure for Ariel; the tunnel of Ursula's cave resembles a vagina, while Ursula's mannerisms evoke those of a mother as she refers to Ariel as "my dear sweet child". Gwynne Watkins of Yahoo! accused Ursula of "assur[ing] Ariel that human men prefer their women to be silent". Meanwhile, in response to feminist critiques of the character, author Amy M. Davis observed in her book Handsome Heroes and Vile Villains: Masculinity in Disney's Feature Films that Ursula is actually responsible for giving Eric the "power to make Ariel permanently human". However, author Alan Dundes in his book Bloody Mary in the Mirror: Essays in Psychoanalytic Folkloristics in conjunction with co-author Lauren Dundes observed that Ursula becomes masculine and deep-voiced once she acquires Triton's trident, implying that even "the only powerful woman in the story fulfills her desire for supreme power by becoming masculine". Dundes and Dundes also observed that Ursula reverts to being feminine once she is impaled. In her book Tales, Then and Now: More Folktales as Literary Fictions for Young Adults, author Anna E. Altmann compared Ursula to Satan because both Ariel and Triton "sign a contract ... with her"; James Plath of Movie Metropolis described Ursula's contract as "a Mephistophelean bargain." Much like Satan, Ursula was banished from Triton's palace, similar to the way in which Lucifer was exiled from heaven. Felix Vasquez of Cinema Crazed believes that Ursula "is evil just for the sake of being evil". Writing for the Disney Archives, Dave Smith observed that Ursula "has the gross unsubtlety of Ratigan from 'The Great Mouse Detective' but substantially more brio." Describing Ursula as "Bejeweled and lip-pouting like an overweight, over-rich, over- pampered, over-the-top society hostess gone mad," Smith perceived the character as "all flair, flamboyance, and theatricality mixed with a touch of con-artistry", citing wrath as her only genuine emotion. Additionally, Ursula tends to act as though she is performing for an audience. Jay Boyar of the Orlando Sentinel compared the character's appearance to that of evangelist Tammy Faye. At times, Ursula tends to demonstrate stereotypically masculine physical traits. Describing the character as "A campy sea witch with an insatiable thirst for power", Rolling Stone's David Ehrlich believes that Ursula resembles a child of Divine and Donald Trump. Some critics identify the character with body positivity. According to Michaela Glover of The Odyssey, "Ursula portrays a bold business woman, not being afraid to show off her curves and use them, which defies the typical standards of beauty by also being a full figured woman." Ursula debuted in The Little Mermaid (1989) as a sea witch who is scheming to take advantage of the ambitions of King Triton's youngest daughter Princess Ariel in order to usurp the throne and turning merpeople into polyps for her garden. When Ariel saves and falls in love with a human named Prince Eric much to her father's chagrin, Ursula temporarily grants Ariel's wish to live as a human for three days in return for her voice. If she successfully earns a kiss from Eric by the end of the third day, Ariel will remain human permanently; if she fails, she will turn back into a mermaid and belong to Ursula forever. However, Ursula is determined to sabotage Ariel's and Eric's budding romance at any cost; when she realizes that Ariel and Eric are falling in love, Ursula transforms herself into a beautiful young woman named "Vanessa" and hypnotizes Eric, tricking him into agreeing to marry her instead. Ariel manages to thwart Ursula and Eric's wedding. Eric realizes that it was Ariel who saved him when her voice returns to her and is about to kiss her, but as the sun sets Ariel transforms back into a mermaid and is captured by Ursula. Triton confronts Ursula and agrees to give up himself and his magical trident in return for Ariel's freedom. Ursula then uses the trident to expand into monstrous proportions and attempts to kill Ariel and Eric, but Eric manages to impale Ursula with the splintered bowsprit of a wrecked ship, and she dies. With Ursula defeated, her power's cease, the merpeople turn back to normal, Triton's power is restored, and Ariel marries Eric once she is permanently transformed into a human. Ursula appears as the antagonist in four episodes of The Little Mermaid prequel television series: "Against the Tide", "Tail of Two Crabs", "Heroes" and "Ariel's Treasures". In all four episodes, she executes various plans to antagonize King Triton and take over Atlantica, but all fail. Ursula does not appear in the direct-to-video film because she is killed in the first film, but she is mentioned many times, mostly by her younger sister Morgana, also voiced by Pat Carroll. In the family portrait during the cut song "Gonna Get My Wish", Ursula was also depicted with light green skin similar to Morgana and their mother. Ursula appears in Disney park attractions such as the Fantasmic! show debuted in 1992 at Disneyland Park, as one of the Disney Villains summoned to destroy Mickey Mouse. A massive Ursula Audio-Animatronic appears in The Little Mermaid ~ Ariel's Undersea Adventure, a dark ride at Disney California Adventure, and Magic Kingdom. Ursula is a central character in the annual Halloween-themed fireworks show HalloWishes at the Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party "hard ticket" event. Ursula also appears at the tail end of the Little Mermaid unit in Walt Disney's Parade of Dreams at Disneyland. In the Kingdom Hearts video game, Ursula appears as one of Maleficent's co-conspirators, using the power of the Heartless to attack Atlantica and gain power. In this version of events, the official walkthrough states that Ursula was King Triton's fortuneteller before she was banished. Ursula is eventually defeated by Sora, Ariel, Donald Duck and Goofy. In , she appears as a facsimile created from Sora's memories. In Kingdom Hearts II, Ursula mysteriously returns through the powers of darkness and appears to Ariel, and recreates her film role. As the film's storyline is retold in the game, Ursula does not recognize Sora and company, and Ariel makes no mention of her defeat in the original Kingdom Hearts. In fact, when Ursula arrives to make the deal with Ariel, the latter reacts as though she has seen Ursula for the first time. Sora, however, does note that Ursula "got what she deserved" in the first game. At the story's climax, she is defeated when Eric hurls the trident straight through Ursula's chest, destroying her seemingly once and for all. However, she reappears in the , confronting Sora and Riku out at sea in her giant form from the end of the movie. The game gives conflicting hints on whether or not this Ursula is the "real one," and serves a very small role, providing the tutorial to the game's battle system and delivering a line that foreshadows the plot of the game's main antagonist, Xehanort. She has appeared for the concept art from Epic Mickey in 2010. When Ursula tries to kidnap Gremlin Gus, Mickey comes to the rescue and saved him from trying to let go of her clutches. Ursula appeared occasionally in the animated television series Disney's House of Mouse (2001) as one of Mickey's guests at the night club. In the feature film Mickey's House of Villains she participated in the musical number "It's Our House Now" alongside other Disney villains, and is one of Jafar's henchmen. In 2016, Rebel Wilson performed the role of Ursula at a stripped-down concert version of The Little Mermaid at the Hollywood Bowl, which featured the songs from the film and four songs from the Broadway musical. Wilson was praised for her performance, which was described by The Huffington Post as "pitch perfect". Queen Latifah portrayed Ursula in the 2019 television special, The Little Mermaid Live! which used a similar format of the live concerts at the Hollywood Bowl, by combining a screening of the film with live accompaniment by guest musicians and celebrities. Ursula has appeared in various Disney Press novels and tie-ins for the franchise. A comic book series "Disney's The Little Mermaid" was released in 1992, revolving around the adventures of Ariel living under the sea as a mermaid. Ursula appears in a few issues, notably "Serpent Teen", which depicts how Ursula obtained the sea serpent carcass that makes her home. My Side of the Story: Ursula (2004) retells the plot of the film from Ursula's point of view, and depicts Ursula having romantic feelings for Triton. The Villain Files (2005) depicts Ursula's youth living in Triton's castle while Ariel was a baby. Ursula is a main character in the 2016 young adult novel Poor Unfortunate Soul: A Tale of the Sea Witch by Serena Valentino. The novel is the third entry of the "Villains" series, a shared universe that crosses over various theatrical Disney films including Beauty and the Beast, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Sleeping Beauty. In this novel, Ursula is King Triton's younger sister who was betrayed by him as a child for choosing a tentacled form instead of a mermaid's tail, and grew up as a human in the town of Ipswich with an adoptive human father. Ursula returned to the sea when her adopted father was killed by the townsfolk for protecting her, befriending Athena, Queen of Atlantica, but was denied her inheritance by Triton and banished to the shadows. Ursula conspires with three other witches to steal Triton's soul and become ruler of all the seas, but is ultimately defeated. In the musical version of the original film, Sherie Rene Scott originated the live role, which she played until January 25, 2009. Other actresses who have played the role are Heidi Blickenstaff and Faith Prince. In this version, Ursula is King Triton's sister, a concept for the original film that was eventually dropped. When Ursula and Triton's father died, the pair were given equal share of the sea plus two magical items: Triton received the trident while Ursula received the magic Nautilus shell. Though the two were meant to rule the seas together, Ursula's greed and use of dark magic to usurp Triton led to her being banished. The desire for revenge and power is her motivation for the show. The musical's plot is similar to the film, with the exceptions that Ursula doesn't transform into Vanessa, and Ursula is ultimately defeated by Ariel, when the mermaid destroys the Nautilus shell that contains Ursula's power. In the revamped version of the musical developed by Glenn Casale in 2012, this backstory was changed to Ursula and Triton being the seventh and eighth of eight siblings. Ursula killed their older siblings one by one until she became a queen, and she forgot about Triton until he became old enough to depose her and become king. Ursula's motivation for revenge otherwise remains similar to the original book of the musical, with the addition that she was the one who killed Ariel's mother. In addition to her song from the film, Alan Menken and Glenn Slater wrote new songs for Ursula: "I Want the Good Times Back", which introduces Ursula and her backstory, "I Want the Good Times Back (reprise)", where Ursula orders Flotsam and Jetsam to sabotage Ariel's attempt to get Eric to kiss her, and a reprise of "Poor Unfortunate Souls", where Ursula forces Triton to sign a deal and claims the trident. An additional song was written for Ursula during the workshop stage, "Wasting Away", but this was replaced by "I Want the Good Times Back". Emily Skinner provided vocals for Ursula in the workshop. In the 2012 revamped version of the musical, "I Want the Good Times Back" is replaced with a new song, "Daddy's Little Angel". Two live-action versions of Ursula appear in the ABC television series Once Upon a Time. The Sea Goddess Ursula the Sea Goddess appears in Season 3, where she is voiced by Yvette Nicole Brown. In the episode "Ariel", Ursula is described as a sea goddess whom no one has seen for a thousand years. According to Ariel, Ursula gave merfolk the ability to gain legs once a year, when the tide is highest. Ariel uses this ability to visit Prince Eric at his castle, where he is having a ball honoring Ursula. Later, the Evil Queen (Lana Parrilla) disguises herself as Ursula in order to make a deal with Ariel and trick her into capturing Snow White. This physical disguise includes short white hair and tentacles, similar to Ursula's animated appearance. Although the Queen considers Ursula to be "a long-dead octopus", she is shocked when the real Ursula possesses a statue and warns the queen not to impersonate her again. The Sea Witch Ursula the Sea Witch is an antagonist who appears in the second half of Season 4, where she is portrayed as an adult by Merrin Dungey, and as a teenager by Tiffany Boone. The episode "Poor Unfortunate Soul" contains further flashbacks to Ursula's youth, when she was a teenage mermaid living under the sea with her father King Poseidon (Ernie Hudson). Ursula was gifted with a beautiful voice, which Poseidon wanted her to use to lure pirates to their death, in order to avenge the murder of Ursula's mother at the hands of an unnamed pirate. Ursula refused and instead befriended a pirate, Captain Hook (Colin O'Donoghue), who supported her desire for freedom. Ursula and Hook's friendship fell apart when Hook sealed Ursula's singing voice inside an enchanted shell, in order to punish Poseidon for destroying a weapon Hook wanted for himself. Ursula, angered and disappointed with both merfolk and humans, used Poseidon's trident to transform her tail into tentacles, emulating the ancient sea goddess that she was named after. The episodes "Heroes and Villains" and "Darkness on the Edge of Town" contain flashbacks to the Enchanted Forest past, where Ursula teamed up with fellow witches Maleficent (Kristin Bauer van Straten) and Cruella De Vil (Victoria Smurfit). The three of them worked together to try to defeat the heroes and find their happy endings, but failed. In the episode "Best Laid Plans", while trying to rescue Maleficent's baby from Snow and Charming, Ursula and Cruella fell into a portal that lead into the non-magical world. Three decades later, in modern day New York, Ursula is working as a cleaner in an aquarium when she is recruited by Rumplestiltskin, who also reunites her with Cruella. Ursula, Cruella and Rumplestiltskin then trick their way into entering the magical town of Storybrooke. In the episode "Unforgiven", they resurrect Maleficent to join their group. In the episode "Best Laid Plans" flashback it was shown that she and Cruella were sent from Enchanted Forrest before Dark Curse to World Without Magic because of Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Prince Charming (Josh Dallas). In the episode's "Poor Unfortunate Soul" present time, a remorseful Hook makes a deal with Ursula to get her singing voice back. They are only successful when Ariel intercedes, bringing Poseidon to Storybrooke so that he and Ursula can reconcile, and the enchantment is broken. Having achieved her happy ending, Ursula then tells Hook the full plan Rumplestiltskin has for the heroes, and afterward returns to the sea with her father. Ursula makes an appearance in the movie, voiced by Whoopi Goldberg. In the film, her daughter Uma is the main antagonist. During one scene, Ursula whips her tentacle out from the kitchen of her Fish and Chips shop and yells at Uma to stop singing and come to wash the dishes. Twenty years prior to the movie, Ursula had been banished on the Isle of the Lost with other villains. It's also revealed that Ursula and Maleficent had a rivalry over who gets to be the ruler of the island. Now, she has a daughter named Uma, who is feisty and manipulative just like her mom and she works at her mother's fish and chips shop. Uma and her archenemy, Mal, who is Maleficent's daughter, have a heated rivalry on the island. On Rise of the Isle of the Lost, Uma befriends with Harry, son of Captain Hook, who's also Uma's first mate at her pirate crew and Gil, son of Gaston, who's also in Uma's pirate crew. Uma, Harry, and Gil are on a quest to find King Triton's trident to get out of the island for good until Mal retrieve it and Uma swears that she will get her revenge on Mal. Ursula has earned a positive reception from entertainment critics. When The Little Mermaid was first released in 1989, film critics and audiences alike immediately embraced Ursula as one of Disney's best villains, as well as one of the studio's strongest and most powerful villains in several years. Film critic Roger Ebert dubbed Ursula Disney's "most satisfying villainess since" Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' Evil Queen, who debuted in 1937. Critics agree that Ursula played an important role in the overall success of The Little Mermaid. Samantha Rullo of Bustle reviewed Ursula as a "way more interesting" character than Ariel herself, while praising her for "rocking the best hair and makeup of any Disney villain." Also writing for Bustle, Caitlyn Callegari appreciated Ursula for "tell[ing] it like it is." Jay Boyar of the Orlando Sentinel hailed Ursula as "A total success" despite sharing some similarities with previous Disney villains. Janet Maslin of The New York Times described Ursula as "a fabulously campy creation embodying the film's well- developed sense of mischief." Describing the character as an "inventive high- camp villainess," the New York Daily News' Kathleen Carroll cited Ursula as a prime example of the film's "outstanding" animation. Hailing the character as "a visual feast," Variety considered Ursula to be among "the film’s more inspired inventions". William Thomas of Empire described Ursula as "truly quake-inducing", while Time's Eliana Dockterman enjoyed the fact that, unlike previous Disney villains, "Ursula doesn’t even pretend to be good ... Right off the bat, she owns her evil witchiness". Kilmeny Fane-Saunders, writing for Radio Times, warned parents that Ursula could possibly frighten young children. However, The Huffington Post's Hilary Sheinbau believes that "there are many of these people who walk ... talk and strive among us", concluding, "it’s important for kids to know that not everyone is going to look out for their best interests, however tempting some offers may be." Metro's Duncan Lindsay agreed that Ursula teaches children "that binding contracts are a necessary part of every deal. We can thank her for all of our business sense as we are always sure to triple check that paperwork when ... securing deals." Dave Smith of the Disney Archives wrote, "When anger does bring out her true emotion, the effects are staggering. Her look of stark hatred, even while her face is still human, must certainly have brought nightmares to young children. And when she finally changes into a giant, towering up through the waves and over puny mortals, the embodiment of fury is quite breathtaking." Smith concluded, "Earlier we may have chuckled at her villainy; at this moment, there is no laughter ... only genuine fear." Meanwhile, SMOSH's Francesco Marciuliano praised the character as "one of the most gleefully evil characters Disney has ever created." Carroll's vocal performance as Ursula has been met with similar praise. Michael Wilmington of the Los Angeles Times predicted that the actress "will make [the film] a hit". Roger Hurlburt of the Sun-Sentinel enthused, "If Academy Awards were given for vocal talents, then Pat Carroll ... certainly is deserving." Hurlburt went on to extol Carroll as "a tour de force ... making such previous Disney villainesses -- Cruella de Ville (sic) (101 Dalmatians) and the Evil Queen (Snow White) -- pale in comparison", while the Deseret News' Chris Hicks described her performance as "delightful". To-date, Carroll's interpretation of Ursula remains so respected that it has ultimately eclipsed her previous body of work as an actress, of which she is "most proud" nonetheless, not minding that she is associated with the role almost exclusively. Carroll explained that she continues to sign autographs "Dear Sweetlips: I hug you with my tentacles. Oceans of love, Ursula.' And then, underneath, in parentheses, I put 'Pat Carroll,' very small" because her fans are more likely to identify with her character than her. Revered as a fan favorite, Ursula has established herself as one of Disney's most iconic characters; she is widely regarded as one of the studio's "classic" villains. Author Corey Sandler described Ursula as a popular "anti- favorite" in his book Econoguide Disneyland Resort, Universal Studios Hollywood: And Other Major Southern California Attractions Including Disney's California Adventure. The character's impact as a villainness has ultimately eclipsed those of her predecessors. According to Laura Rosenfeld of Tech Times, Ursula has had the most profound influence out of all animated characters in the Disney canon. The character is considered to be one of the greatest Disney villains of all-time, and continues to be ranked highly on countdown lists compiled by various publications. Ursula topped E!'s Disney villains ranking; author John Boone concluded that "There will never be a Disney villain more wickedly wonderful than" Ursula. Yahoo! Movies ranked Ursula third, praising her "for being the first female Disney baddie to get her own song." On The Huffington Post's "Definitive Ranking Of 25 Classic Disney Villains", Ursula was also ranked third. About.com placed the character at number four in the website's "Top 10 Disney Villains" article. Babble.com ranked the character the fifth greatest Disney villain "From Bad to Worst". Moviefone ranked Ursula seventh on the website's list of the thirty greatest Disney villains of all-time. TVOvermind also ranked Ursula seventh in its article "Ranking the Top 10 Animated Disney Villains". Recognizing Ursula among "8 Disney villains who are better than the heroes", Beamly's Sophie Hall believes that the character "had more charisma than Ariel". By extension, Ursula is also often considered to be among the greatest animated villains of all-time. Sky Movies included the character on the website's list "Despicable Them: Top Animated Villains". The Toronto Sun ranked Ursula the third "top animated [villain] of all time". Ursula is also considered to be one of Disney's most terrifying villains. Oh My Disney ranked Ursula's line "Triton’s daughter will be mine and then I’ll make him writhe. I’ll see him wriggle like a worm on a hook!" the fifth "Most Sinister Disney Villain Quote". Meanwhile, Rolling Stone included the climactic sequence in which Ursula grows into a giant on the magazine's list of the "12 Scariest Moments in Kids' Films", comparing the sequence to the iconic shower scene in the horror film Psycho (1960), while BuzzFeed ranked the character's death fifth on the website's "Definitive Ranking Of The Most Horrific Disney Villain Deaths". In the wake of the release of Maleficent (2014), a live-action remake of Disney's Sleeping Beauty (1959) told from the perspective of the film's villain, several publications voted for Ursula among Disney villains who deserve to star in their own films, including Yahoo! Movies, MTV, Bustle and the New York Post. David Crow of Den of Geek selected actor John Travolta as his first choice for the role of Ursula because of his drag performance as Edna Turnblad in the film Hairspray (2007), a role actually originated by Divine, the actor upon whose appearance Ursula's design was based. Ursula's body type has been positively embraced by the public; the character has since been recognized as a symbol of body positivity. HelloGiggles believes that "Ursula has the most positive body image" out of all of Disney's villainnesses: "She may not be a size zero, like the other villains and heroines, but she’s equally as confident. She is sexy, she is glamorous and she shows of her curves with no apology." From 2007 onwards, Disney launched an advertising campaign called Disney Dreams Portraits featuring celebrities dressed up as various Disney characters and photographer Annie Leibovitz; Queen Latifah was photographed as Ursula for this campaign in 2011. In 2012 Disney released a Disney Villain line of dolls and make-up, and its revamped imagery was criticized for "slimming down" of Ursula to make her "marketable" and ignoring body diversity. For Halloween of 2013, Amber Riley portrayed Ursula in a celebrity parody/tribute of "Cell Block Tango" from Chicago titled "Spell Block Tango", directed by Todrick Hall, which was praised for its highlighting Disney villains. Lady Gaga wore an Ursula-inspired dress during . In the 2015 season of Dancing with the Stars, Rumer Willis dressed up as Ursula to perform a samba set to "Poor Unfortunate Souls". As arguably "the most famous example of a direct tie to the LGBT community," Ursula has also become something of a gay icon, due in part to sharing Divine's appearance and personality. The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning (also known as The Little Mermaid III in the working title) is a 2008 American animated direct-to-video fantasy film produced by DisneyToon Studios, and a prequel to Disney's 1989 animated film The Little Mermaid. Directed by Peggy Holmes, the film's story is set before the events of the original film, when Ariel is still young, and where all music has been banned from the underwater kingdom of Atlantica by King Triton after being heartbroken at his wife's death, and Ariel attempts to challenge this law. Jodi Benson and Samuel E. Wright reprise their roles as Ariel and Sebastian respectively, while Sally Field voices the film's new villainess, Marina Del Rey, and Jim Cummings replaces Kenneth Mars as King Triton, as Mars had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was unable to reprise the role. The film was released by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on August 26, 2008. The film received negative reviews with criticism aimed at the script and the music score, but the animation quality was praised. King Triton and his wife, Queen Athena, rule over the underwater kingdom of Atlantica, filled with music and laughter. They have seven young daughters: Attina, Alana, Adella, Aquata, Arista, Andrina and the youngest of whom is Ariel. One day, while the merpeople relax in a lagoon above water, Triton gives Athena a music box. However, a pirate ship approaches. Everyone escapes except Athena, who is killed by the ship when she tries to recover the music box. Triton becomes devastated by his wife’s death and throws the music box away, permanently banning music from Atlantica. Ten years later, Ariel and her sisters live under a strict routine maintained by their governess, Marina Del Rey and her assistant, Benjamin. Marina hates being the girls' governess and longs to be Triton's attaché, a job currently filled by Sebastian the crab. Ariel is frustrated by their current lifestyle, which brings her into arguments with her father. One day, Ariel encounters Flounder, a young tropical fish whom she later follows to an underground music club. She is overjoyed by the presence of music, and is shocked when she sees Sebastian performing there. When her presence is revealed, the entire band stops playing and hides, believing Ariel will tell her father about them. Ariel sings a song explaining her love of music and the remembrance of her mother, and she joins the club with an oath. Ariel returns to the palace and her sisters confront her over her disappearance, she explains where she was and the following night the girls go to the club to have fun, Marina finds them and she later reports their activities to Triton, who destroys the club with his trident. Sebastian, Flounder and the band are sent to prison, while Marina gets the job she wants. Triton confines his daughters to the palace and Ariel says that Triton wouldn’t have hated music if her mother hadn't wanted music forbidden. She swims to the bedroom, with her sisters following, and everyone is unhappy, aside from Marina. That night, Ariel frees her friends and leaves Atlantica. Sebastian leads them to a deserted place far away from the palace where Ariel finds Athena's music box, as Sebastian hoped. In the kingdom, Marina happily talks to Triton about her new job, but Attina informs Triton that Ariel is not in Atlantica, while Triton orders his guards to find her, angering Marina. In her lair, Marina tells Benjamin that she releases her electric eels from the dungeon. Marina is about to finish the job to have Sebastian killed and Ariel eliminated from the palace. Ariel, Flounder, and Sebastian decide to return to Atlantica to bring the music box to Triton, hoping that it will change his mind, as he has not remembered how to be happy after Athena died. On the way back, they are confronted by Marina and her eels. Before music is restored back into Atlantica, the final battle begins when Ariel is banned from Atlantica by Marina. Marina wants to stop them so she will retain her position of power, and a struggle ensues. Flounder and Ariel are rescued from Marina's electric eels by the band. While Triton arrives in time seeing that Ariel has helped the band defeat the eels by having them tangle themselves. Marina barrels towards Sebastian and tries to kill him, but Ariel pushes her away, getting hit in the process. Triton witnesses the incident and blames himself. He sings the lyrics of "Athena's Song", and Ariel recovers. Triton apologizes to her for not listening to her and sends her home to the palace before he orders his guards to place Marina under arrest. On the next day, thanks to Ariel, Triton restores music to Atlantica and appoints Sebastian as Atlantica's first official court composer, much to everyone's delight. Everyone, including Ariel and her sisters and their friends Flounder and Sebastian, rejoices except Marina; who is sent to jail. Jodi Benson as Ariel, Samuel E. Wright as Sebastian, Jim Cummings as King Triton and Shelbow, Sally Field as Marina Del Rey, Parker Goris as Flounder, Tara Strong as Adella and Andrina, Jennifer Hale as Alana, Grey DeLisle as Aquata and Arista, Kari Wahlgren as Attina, Jeff Bennett as Benjamin the manatee and the Swordfish Guards, Andrea Robinson as Queen Athena (singing voice), Lorelei Hill Butters as Queen Athena (speaking voice), Rob Paulsen as Ink Spot the octopus and Swifty the shrimp, Kevin Michael Richardson as Cheeks the blowfish and Ray-Ray the manta ray The film's working title was The Little Mermaid III, and it was originally scheduled for a mid-2007 release. When John Lasseter took over Disney Animation, more resources were spent on completing , and attention only returned to this film in July 2006 after the wrap up of Cinderella III. A teaser trailer and musical preview of the film (an alternate version of "Jump in the Line") were attached to the Platinum Edition DVD of The Little Mermaid, which was released in October 2006. At the time, the working title The Little Mermaid III was still being used. The score to the film was composed by James Dooley, who recorded the score with a 72-piece ensemble of the Hollywood Studio Symphony, as well as a big band, at the Sony Scoring Stage. The film features new songs written by Jeanine Tesori, along with covers of previously recorded calypso songs that were arranged by Dooley. No soundtrack has been released yet for the film. The songs featured in the film are: "Athena's Song" - Performed by Andrea Robinson (Queen Athena), "Just One Mistake" - Performed by Sally Field (Marina Del Rey), "I Remember" - Performed by Jodi Benson (Ariel), "Jump in the Line (Shake, Shake, Shake, Señora)" - Performed by Samuel E. Wright (Sebastian) and chorus, "Jump In The Line" (Shake, Shake, Shake, Senora) A cappella version - Performed by Parker Goris (Flounder), Samuel E. Wright (Sebastian), Jodi Benson (Ariel) and chorus, "Man Smart, Woman Smarter" (instrumental only), "Just One Mistake" (reprise) - Performed by Sally Field (Marina Del Rey), "I Will Sing" - Performed by Jeannette Bayardelle The film was released on Region 1 DVD in the United States on August 26, 2008, and on Region 2 DVD in the United Kingdom and Europe on September 22, 2008. The DVD contains special features including deleted scenes, a production featurette hosted by the director, games and activities, and a featurette hosted by Sierra Boggess (who played Ariel on Broadway) about the Broadway musical. On December 16, 2008, the film was released in a "The Little Mermaid Trilogy" boxed set that includes The Little Mermaid (Platinum Edition) and . On November 19, 2013, it was released on Blu-ray as a 2-movie collection alongside the sequel. The DVD became the top-selling DVD for the week ending August 31, selling 980,237 copies. Reviews of the film from audiences were largely positive, though the film received mixed to negative reviews from critics (33% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 6 reviews). The new villain, Marina Del Rey, has been criticized as being a poor follow-up to Ursula. The animation quality of the film has been praised as being "impressive" for a direct-to-video and comparable to that of the original film. A mildly negative review has described that in the film "goofiness often gets buried too often underneath a blah story that's much too run-of-the-mill to allow the emotional oomph of the characters' plights to truly impact". The music has also been criticized as being unmemorable, with one review stating that "to label this a musical would be false advertising". In the United Kingdom, the word "spastic" was cut from an interactive game in the extra features of the DVD and Blu-Ray releases by the BBFC to achieve a "U" rating. An uncut version was available rated "12". The word however appears uncensored in all versions of the full-length feature. "The Little Mermaid" () is a fairy tale written by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. The story follows the journey of a young mermaid who is willing to give up her life in the sea as a mermaid to gain a human soul. The tale was first published in 1837 as part of a collection of fairy tales for children. The original story has been a subject of multiple analyses by scholars such as Jacob Bøggild and Pernille Heegaard as well as the folklorist Maria Tatar. These analyses cover various aspects of the story from interpreting the themes to discussing why Andersen chose to write a tragic story with a happy ending. It has been adapted to various media, including musical theatre, anime, ballet, opera, and a Disney animated film. There is also a statue portraying the mermaid in Copenhagen, Denmark, where the story was written and first published. The Little Mermaid lives in an underwater kingdom with her widowed father (the sea king or Mer-King), her dowager grandmother, and her five older sisters, each of whom had been born one year apart. When a mermaid turns fifteen, she is permitted to swim to the surface for the first time to glimpse the world above, and when the sisters become old enough, each of them visits the upper world one at a time every year. As each returns, the Little Mermaid listens longingly to their various descriptions of the world inhabited by human beings. When the Little Mermaid's turn comes, she rises up to the surface, watches a birthday celebration being held on a ship in honor of a handsome prince, and falls in love with him from a safe distance. A violent storm hits, sinking the ship, and the Little Mermaid saves the prince from drowning. She delivers him unconscious to the shore near a temple. Here, she waits until a young woman from the temple and her ladies in waiting find him. To her dismay, the prince never sees the Little Mermaid or even realizes that it was she who had originally saved his life. The Little Mermaid becomes melancholic and asks her grandmother if humans can live forever. The grandmother explains that humans have a much shorter lifespan than a mermaid's 300 years, but that, when mermaids die, they turn to sea foam and cease to exist, while humans have an eternal soul that lives on in heaven. The Little Mermaid, longing for the prince and an eternal soul, visits the Sea Witch in a dangerous part of the ocean. The witch willingly helps her by selling her a potion that gives her legs in exchange for her tongue and beautiful voice, as the Little Mermaid has the most enchanting voice in the world. The witch warns the Little Mermaid that once she becomes a human, she will never be able to return to the sea. Consuming the potion will make her feel as if a sword is being passed through her body, yet when she recovers, she will have two human legs and will be able to dance like no human has ever danced before. However, she will constantly feel as if she is walking on sharp knives, and her feet will bleed terribly. In addition, she will obtain a soul only if she wins the love of the prince and marries him, for then a part of his soul will flow into her. Otherwise, at dawn on the first day after he marries someone else, the Little Mermaid will die with a broken heart and dissolve into sea foam upon the waves. After she agrees to the arrangement, the Little Mermaid swims to the surface near the prince's palace and drinks the potion. She is found by the prince, who is mesmerized by her beauty and grace, even though she is mute. Most of all, he likes to see her dance, and she dances for him despite suffering excruciating pain with every step. Soon, the Little Mermaid becomes the prince's favorite companion and accompanies him on many of his outings. When the prince's parents encourage their son to marry the neighboring princess in an arranged marriage, the prince tells the Little Mermaid he will not because he does not love the princess. He goes on to say he can only love the young woman from the temple, who he believes rescued him. It turns out that the princess from the neighboring kingdom is the temple girl, as she was sent to the temple for her education. The prince declares his love for her, and the royal wedding is announced at once. The prince and princess celebrate their new marriage on a wedding ship, and the Little Mermaid's heart breaks. She thinks of all that she has sacrificed and of all the pain she has endured for the prince. She despairs, thinking of the death that awaits her, but before dawn, her sisters rise out of the water and bring her a knife that the Sea Witch has given them in exchange for their long, beautiful hair. If the Little Mermaid kills the prince and lets his blood drip on her feet, she will become a mermaid once more, all her suffering will end, and she will live out her full life in the ocean with her family. However, the Little Mermaid cannot bring herself to kill the sleeping prince lying with his new bride, and she throws the knife and herself off the ship into the water just as dawn breaks. Her body dissolves into foam, but instead of ceasing to exist, she feels the warm sun and discovers that she has turned into a luminous and ethereal earthbound spirit, a daughter of the air. As the Little Mermaid ascends into the atmosphere, she is greeted by other daughters who tell her she has become like them because she strove with all her heart to obtain an immortal soul. Because of her selflessness, she is given the chance to earn her own soul by doing good deeds for mankind for 300 years, and will one day rise up into the Kingdom of God. "The Little Mermaid" was written in 1836 and first published by C.A. Reitzel in Copenhagen on 7 April 1837 in the first collection of Fairy Tales Told for Children. (Eventyr, fortalte for Børn. Første Samling. Tredie Hefte. 1837). The story was republished on 18 December 1849 as a part of Fairy Tales. 1850 (Eventyr. 1850) and again on 15 December 1862 as a part of the first volume of Fairy Tales and Stories. (Eventyr og Historier. Første Bind. 1862). The working title of the story was "Daughters of the Air," which are spirits who, as Andersen conceived them, can earn souls by doing three hundred years' worth of good deeds. At the end of the story, one of these spirits explains to the Little Mermaid that they do as many good things for humankind as they are able so that, at the end of those years, they can receive an immortal soul and "take part in the happiness of mankind." The spirits also explain that because the Little Mermaid refused to kill the Prince and has spent so much time in pain while still doing good things for men, she has "raised [herself] to the spirit-world" and can participate in the three hundred years of good deeds alongside the Daughters of the Air. P. L. Travers, author of Mary Poppins and noted folklore commentator, wrote, "This final message is more frightening than any other presented in the tale. The story descends into the Victorian moral tales written for children to scare them into good behavior... Andersen, this is blackmail. And the children know it and say nothing. There's magnanimity for you." Andersen, however, felt that his revised conclusion in which the mermaid is empowered to attain an immortal soul through her own agency was a decided improvement over the original ending, which climaxed in the mermaid's dissolution. In 1837, Andersen wrote to a friend, "I have not, like de la Motte Fouqué in Undine, allowed the mermaid's acquiring of an immortal soul to depend upon an alien creature, upon the love of a human being. I'm sure that's wrong! It would depend rather much on chance, wouldn't it? I won't accept that sort of thing in this world. I have permitted my mermaid to follow a more natural, more divine path." Other scholars like Jacob Bøggild and Pernille Heegaard notice the ending's shift away from tragedy as well. They point out that the events leading up to the mermaid's death should culminate in tragedy, but that the sudden twist allows the narrative to finish on a hopeful success. Bøggild and Heegaard argue that this disjointed ending was not the result of Anderson's sentimentality and religious beliefs, which have been attributed to his choice to stray from the tragic path he established in the rest of the narrative, but a conscious choice for ambiguity that stemmed from Anderson's skepticism towards idealized physical and religious symbols. In Maria Tatar's The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, the transformation of the little mermaid from sea creature to mermaid in human form, and then to a creature of the air, is believed to reflect Andersen's constant engagement with mutability and changes in identity. Tatar also suggests that the Little Mermaid did not give up everything for love alone. Tatar's interpretation of the tale is one that presents a rare heroine with an investigative curiosity which is shown through the mermaid's fascination of the unknown, the forbidden, and her intent on broadening her horizons from the start. Even before she sees the prince, she displays an intense longing to visit the world above the sea through her actions such as: arranging the flowers in her garden into the shape of the sun, listening to her grandmother and sisters' stories of the surface, and peeking in through the window of the prince's cabin during his birthday celebrations. Tatar argues that the mermaid wants, above all, to explore the world and discover things that are beyond what she already knows. The world above seems larger than her own and holds a greater range of possibilities to exercise her adventurous spirit. This is demonstrated in some versions of the story when the prince has a page boy's costume made for her so that she may ride on horseback and explore the land with him. Here, her willingness to cross-dress implies a willingness to transgress gender boundaries and take risks to be able to see the world. Tatar feels this also comments on Andersen's interests in changes in identity. In her analysis, Virginia Borges concludes that the story contains a message about love and self-sacrifice, and the dangers of accepting abuse or inconsiderate treatment in the name of love. Susan White interprets the story as the difficult liminal passage of the girl into the order of speech and social symbolism (power, politics, and agency) which is symbolically understood as masculine. The artist Pen Dalton has made use of Laura Mulvey's interpretation of fetishism in art to link The Little Mermaid to the wearing of fetishistic clothes, and obsessive cosmetic surgery with masculine fears of loss. Rictor Norton, in My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters through the Centuries, theorizes that The Little Mermaid was written as a love letter by Hans Christian Andersen to Edvard Collin. This is based on a letter Andersen wrote to Collin, upon hearing of Collin's engagement to a young woman, around the same time that the Little Mermaid was written. Andersen wrote "I languish for you as for a pretty Calabrian wench... my sentiments for you are those of a woman. The femininity of my nature and our friendship must remain a mystery." Andersen also sent the original story to Collin. Norton interprets the correspondence as a declaration of Andersen's homosexual love for Collin, and describes The Little Mermaid as an allegory for Andersen's life. In 1958, NBC began airing a new television show titled Shirley Temple's Storybook, an American children's anthology series that was hosted and narrated by actress Shirley Temple. The series features adaptations of fairy tales like Mother Goose and other family-oriented stories performed by well- known actors. The first season of sixteen black-and-white and colored episodes aired on NBC between 12 January 1958, and 21 December 1958, as Shirley Temple's Storybook. Thirteen episodes of the first season re-ran on ABC beginning on 12 January 1959. The second season of twenty-five color episodes aired on NBC as The Shirley Temple Show between 18 September 1960, and 16 July 1961 in much the same format that it had under its original title. The show aired their adaptation of The Little Mermaid on 5 March 1961 as episode 22 during the show's second season. Perhaps the most popular and most widely known version is the 1989 Disney film. The Little Mermaid is a 1989 American animated musical fantasy romance film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and Walt Disney Pictures. Loosely based on the Danish fairy tale of the same name by Hans Christian Andersen, the 1989 Disney film tells the story of a mermaid princess named Ariel, who dreams of becoming human; after falling in love with a human prince named Eric. Written, produced, and directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, with music by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman (who also served as a co- producer), the film features the voices of Jodi Benson, Christopher Daniel Barnes, and Pat Carroll among others. The Little Mermaid was originally planned as part of one of Walt Disney's earliest feature films, a proposed package film featuring vignettes of Hans Christian Andersen tales. Development started in the late 1930s, but was delayed due to various circumstances. In 1985, Ron Clements became interested in a film adaptation of The Little Mermaid while he was serving as a director on The Great Mouse Detective (1986). Clements discovered the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale while browsing through a bookstore. Believing the story provided an "ideal basis" for an animated feature film and keen on creating a film that took place underwater, Clements wrote and presented a two-page treatment of Mermaid to Disney CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg who approved of the idea for possible development the next day. While in production in the 1980s, the staff found, by chance, original story and visual development work done by Kay Nielsen for Disney's proposed 1930s Andersen feature. Many of the changes made by the staff in the 1930s to Hans Christian Andersen's original story were coincidentally the same as the changes made by Disney writers in the 1980s. A statue of The Little Mermaid sits on a rock in the Copenhagen harbor in Langelinie. This small and unimposing statue is a Copenhagen icon and a major tourist attraction. The statue was commissioned in 1909 by Carl Jacobsen, son of the founder of Carlsberg, after he had been fascinated by a ballet based on the fairy tale. The sculptor Edward Eriksen created the statue, which was unveiled on 23 August 1913. His wife, Eline Eriksen, was the model for the body. Ellen Price, the ballerina who danced the Little Mermaid in the 1909 Royal Danish Ballet production, was the model for the head and face. The statue has been severely vandalized several times. In May 2010, it was moved from its Copenhagen harbor emplacement for the first time ever, for transport to Expo 2010 in Shanghai, where it remained until 20 November 2010. A statue of 'The Little Mermaid' looks out over Larvotto beach in Monaco. She was created, in 2000, with layers and layers of metal by Kristian Dahlgard, in hommage to the Danes who live in Monaco and for the late Prince Rainier III to mark the 50th year of his reign. Some statues similar to The Little Mermaid are In Sicily. The first was placed in 1962 on the seafront in Giardini Naxos, and measures about four meters high over a fountain. A second always portraying a mermaid Post on a depth of sea about 18 meters. Inside the Marine Protected Area of Plemmiro of Siracusa. A third The Little Mermaid'statue is placed in Stresa in Piedmont. Mermaids in popular culture The Little Mermaid Gallery, See photos of The Little Mermaid, "The Little Mermaid", Jean Hersholt's English translation, Den lille Havfrue, original Danish text from the Danish Royal Library, Den lille havfrue, original manuscript (Odense City Museum), Surlalune: Annotated "The Little Mermaid", Paull's translation, with annotations, scans from six illustrated editions, and bibliography

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The Lake District National Park is a national park in North West England that includes all of the central Lake District, though the town of Kendal, some coastal areas, and the Lakeland Peninsulas are outside the park boundary. The area was designated a national park on 9 May 1951 (less than a month after the first UK national park designation — the Peak District). It retained its original boundaries until 2016 when it was extended by 3% in the direction of the Yorkshire Dales National Park to incorporate areas such as land of high landscape value in the Lune Valley. It is the most visited national park in the United Kingdom with 16.4 million visitors per year and more than 24 million visitor-days per year, the largest of the thirteen national parks in England and Wales, and the second largest in the UK after the Cairngorms National Park. Its aim is to protect the landscape by restricting unwelcome change by industry or commerce. Most of the land in the park is in private ownership, with about 55% registered as agricultural land. Landowners include: Individual farmers and other private landowners, with more than half of the agricultural land farmed by the owners., The National Trust owns about a quarter of the total area (including some lakes and land of significant landscape value)., The Forestry Commission and other investors in forests and woodland., United Utilities owns 8%, Lake District National Park Authority (3.9%) The National Park Authority is based at offices in Kendal. It runs a visitor centre on Windermere at a former country house called Brockhole, Coniston Boating Centre, and Information Centres. It is reducing its landholding. In common with all other national parks in England, there is no restriction on entry to, or movement within the park along public routes, but access to cultivated land is usually restricted to public footpaths, bridleways and byways. Much of the uncultivated land has statutory open access rights, which cover around 50% of the park. Farmland, settlement and mining have altered the natural scenery, and the ecology has been modified by human influence for millennia and includes important wildlife habitats. Having failed in a previous attempt to gain World Heritage status as a natural World Heritage Site, because of human activities, it was eventually successful in the category of cultural landscape and was awarded the status in 2017. Lake District National Park Authority England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to the west and Scotland to the north. The Irish Sea lies west of England and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south. The country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, and includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight. It is the largest country of British Isles. The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Palaeolithic period, but takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe deriving its name from the Anglia peninsula, who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century, and since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century, has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world. The English language, the Anglican Church, and English law – the basis for the common law legal systems of many other countries around the world – developed in England, and the country's parliamentary system of government has been widely adopted by other nations. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the world's first industrialised nation. England's terrain is chiefly low hills and plains, especially in central and southern England. However, there is upland and mountainous terrain in the north (for example, the Lake District and Pennines) and in the west (for example, Dartmoor and the Shropshire Hills). The capital is London, which has the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. England's population of over 55 million comprises 84% of the population of the United Kingdom, largely concentrated around London, the South East, and conurbations in the Midlands, the North West, the North East, and Yorkshire, which each developed as major industrial regions during the 19th century. The Kingdom of England – which after 1535 included Wales – ceased being a separate sovereign state on 1 May 1707, when the Acts of Union put into effect the terms agreed in the Treaty of Union the previous year, resulting in a political union with the Kingdom of Scotland to create the Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland (through another Act of Union) to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The name "England" is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means "land of the Angles". The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages. The Angles came from the Anglia peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area (present-day German state of Schleswig–Holstein) of the Baltic Sea. The earliest recorded use of the term, as "Engla londe", is in the late-ninth-century translation into Old English of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. The term was then used in a different sense to the modern one, meaning "the land inhabited by the English", and it included English people in what is now south-east Scotland but was then part of the English kingdom of Northumbria. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded that the Domesday Book of 1086 covered the whole of England, meaning the English kingdom, but a few years later the Chronicle stated that King Malcolm III went "out of Scotlande into Lothian in Englaland", thus using it in the more ancient sense. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, in which the Latin word Anglii is used. The etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars; it has been suggested that it derives from the shape of the Angeln peninsula, an angular shape. How and why a term derived from the name of a tribe that was less significant than others, such as the Saxons, came to be used for the entire country and its people is not known, but it seems this is related to the custom of calling the Germanic people in Britain Angli Saxones or English Saxons to distinguish them from continental Saxons (Eald-Seaxe) of Old Saxony between the Weser and Eider rivers in Northern Germany. In Scottish Gaelic, another language which developed on the island of Great Britain, the Saxon tribe gave their name to the word for England (Sasunn); similarly, the Welsh name for the English language is "Saesneg". A romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England, Lloegr, and made popular by its use in Arthurian legend. Albion is also applied to England in a more poetic capacity, though its original meaning is the island of Britain as a whole. The earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximately 780,000 years ago. The oldest proto-human bones discovered in England date from 500,000 years ago. Modern humans are known to have inhabited the area during the Upper Paleolithic period, though permanent settlements were only established within the last 6,000 years. After the last ice age only large mammals such as mammoths, bison and woolly rhinoceros remained. Roughly 11,000 years ago, when the ice sheets began to recede, humans repopulated the area; genetic research suggests they came from the northern part of the Iberian Peninsula. The sea level was lower than now and Britain was connected by land bridge to Ireland and Eurasia. As the seas rose, it was separated from Ireland 10,000 years ago and from Eurasia two millennia later. The Beaker culture arrived around 2,500 BC, introducing drinking and food vessels constructed from clay, as well as vessels used as reduction pots to smelt copper ores. It was during this time that major Neolithic monuments such as Stonehenge and Avebury were constructed. By heating together tin and copper, which were in abundance in the area, the Beaker culture people made bronze, and later iron from iron ores. The development of iron smelting allowed the construction of better ploughs, advancing agriculture (for instance, with Celtic fields), as well as the production of more effective weapons. During the Iron Age, Celtic culture, deriving from the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures, arrived from Central Europe. Brythonic was the spoken language during this time. Society was tribal; according to Ptolemy's Geographia there were around 20 tribes in the area. Earlier divisions are unknown because the Britons were not literate. Like other regions on the edge of the Empire, Britain had long enjoyed trading links with the Romans. Julius Caesar of the Roman Republic attempted to invade twice in 55 BC; although largely unsuccessful, he managed to set up a client king from the Trinovantes. The Romans invaded Britain in 43 AD during the reign of Emperor Claudius, subsequently conquering much of Britain, and the area was incorporated into the Roman Empire as Britannia province. The best- known of the native tribes who attempted to resist were the Catuvellauni led by Caratacus. Later, an uprising led by Boudica, Queen of the Iceni, ended with Boudica's suicide following her defeat at the Battle of Watling Street. The author of one study of Roman Britain suggested that from 43 AD to 84 AD, the Roman invaders killed somewhere between 100,000 and 250,000 people from a population of perhaps 2,000,000. This era saw a Greco-Roman culture prevail with the introduction of Roman law, Roman architecture, aqueducts, sewers, many agricultural items and silk. In the 3rd century, Emperor Septimius Severus died at Eboracum (now York), where Constantine was subsequently proclaimed emperor. There is debate about when Christianity was first introduced; it was no later than the 4th century, probably much earlier. According to Bede, missionaries were sent from Rome by Eleutherius at the request of the chieftain Lucius of Britain in 180 AD, to settle differences as to Eastern and Western ceremonials, which were disturbing the church. There are traditions linked to Glastonbury claiming an introduction through Joseph of Arimathea, while others claim through Lucius of Britain. By 410, during the Decline of the Roman Empire, Britain was left exposed by the end of Roman rule in Britain and the withdrawal of Roman army units, to defend the frontiers in continental Europe and partake in civil wars. Celtic Christian monastic and missionary movements flourished: Patrick (5th-century Ireland) and in the 6th century Brendan (Clonfert), Comgall (Bangor), David (Wales), Aiden (Lindisfarne) and Columba (Iona). This period of Christianity was influenced by ancient Celtic culture in its sensibilities, polity, practices and theology. Local "congregations" were centred in the monastic community and monastic leaders were more like chieftains, as peers, rather than in the more hierarchical system of the Roman-dominated church. Roman military withdrawals left Britain open to invasion by pagan, seafaring warriors from north-western continental Europe, chiefly the Saxons, Angles, Jutes and Frisians who had long raided the coasts of the Roman province and began to settle, initially in the eastern part of the country. Their advance was contained for some decades after the Britons' victory at the Battle of Mount Badon, but subsequently resumed, over-running the fertile lowlands of Britain and reducing the area under Brythonic control to a series of separate enclaves in the more rugged country to the west by the end of the 6th century. Contemporary texts describing this period are extremely scarce, giving rise to its description as a Dark Age. The nature and progression of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain is consequently subject to considerable disagreement. Roman-dominated Christianity had, in general, disappeared from the conquered territories, but was reintroduced by missionaries from Rome led by Augustine from 597 onwards. Disputes between the Roman- and Celtic-dominated forms of Christianity ended in victory for the Roman tradition at the Council of Whitby (664), which was ostensibly about haircuts and the date of Easter, but more significantly, about the differences in Roman and Celtic forms of authority, theology, and practice (Lehane). During the settlement period the lands ruled by the incomers seem to have been fragmented into numerous tribal territories, but by the 7th century, when substantial evidence of the situation again becomes available, these had coalesced into roughly a dozen kingdoms including Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex, East Anglia, Essex, Kent and Sussex. Over the following centuries, this process of political consolidation continued. The 7th century saw a struggle for hegemony between Northumbria and Mercia, which in the 8th century gave way to Mercian preeminence. In the early 9th century Mercia was displaced as the foremost kingdom by Wessex. Later in that century escalating attacks by the Danes culminated in the conquest of the north and east of England, overthrowing the kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia and East Anglia. Wessex under Alfred the Great was left as the only surviving English kingdom, and under his successors, it steadily expanded at the expense of the kingdoms of the Danelaw. This brought about the political unification of England, first accomplished under Æthelstan in 927 and definitively established after further conflicts by Eadred in 953. A fresh wave of Scandinavian attacks from the late 10th century ended with the conquest of this united kingdom by Sweyn Forkbeard in 1013 and again by his son Cnut in 1016, turning it into the centre of a short-lived North Sea Empire that also included Denmark and Norway. However, the native royal dynasty was restored with the accession of Edward the Confessor in 1042. A dispute over the succession to Edward led to the Norman conquest of England in 1066, accomplished by an army led by Duke William of Normandy. The Normans themselves originated from Scandinavia and had settled in Normandy in the late 9th and early 10th centuries. This conquest led to the almost total dispossession of the English elite and its replacement by a new French- speaking aristocracy, whose speech had a profound and permanent effect on the English language. Subsequently, the House of Plantagenet from Anjou inherited the English throne under Henry II, adding England to the budding Angevin Empire of fiefs the family had inherited in France including Aquitaine. They reigned for three centuries, some noted monarchs being Richard I, Edward I, Edward III and Henry V. The period saw changes in trade and legislation, including the signing of the Magna Carta, an English legal charter used to limit the sovereign's powers by law and protect the privileges of freemen. Catholic monasticism flourished, providing philosophers, and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge were founded with royal patronage. The Principality of Wales became a Plantagenet fief during the 13th century and the Lordship of Ireland was given to the English monarchy by the Pope. During the 14th century, the Plantagenets and the House of Valois both claimed to be legitimate claimants to the House of Capet and with it France; the two powers clashed in the Hundred Years' War. The Black Death epidemic hit England; starting in 1348, it eventually killed up to half of England's inhabitants. From 1453 to 1487 civil war occurred between two branches of the royal family – the Yorkists and Lancastrians – known as the Wars of the Roses. Eventually it led to the Yorkists losing the throne entirely to a Welsh noble family the Tudors, a branch of the Lancastrians headed by Henry Tudor who invaded with Welsh and Breton mercenaries, gaining victory at the Battle of Bosworth Field where the Yorkist king Richard III was killed. During the Tudor period, the Renaissance reached England through Italian courtiers, who reintroduced artistic, educational and scholarly debate from classical antiquity. England began to develop naval skills, and exploration to the West intensified. Henry VIII broke from communion with the Catholic Church, over issues relating to his divorce, under the Acts of Supremacy in 1534 which proclaimed the monarch head of the Church of England. In contrast with much of European Protestantism, the roots of the split were more political than theological. He also legally incorporated his ancestral land Wales into the Kingdom of England with the 1535–1542 acts. There were internal religious conflicts during the reigns of Henry's daughters, Mary I and Elizabeth I. The former took the country back to Catholicism while the latter broke from it again, forcefully asserting the supremacy of Anglicanism. Competing with Spain, the first English colony in the Americas was founded in 1585 by explorer Walter Raleigh in Virginia and named Roanoke. The Roanoke colony failed and is known as the lost colony after it was found abandoned on the return of the late-arriving supply ship. With the East India Company, England also competed with the Dutch and French in the East. During the Elizabethan period, England was at war with Spain. An armada sailed from Spain in 1588 as part of a wider plan to invade England and re-establish a Catholic monarchy. The plan was thwarted by bad coordination, stormy weather and successful harrying attacks by an English fleet under Lord Howard of Effingham. This failure did not end the threat: Spain launched two further armadas, in 1596 and 1597, but both were driven back by storms. The political structure of the island changed in 1603, when the King of Scots, James VI, a kingdom which had been a long-time rival to English interests, inherited the throne of England as James I, thereby creating a personal union. He styled himself King of Great Britain, although this had no basis in English law. Under the auspices of King James VI and I the Authorised King James Version of the Holy Bible was published in 1611. It has not only been ranked with Shakespeare's works as the greatest masterpiece of literature in the English language but also was the standard version of the Bible read by most Protestant Christians for four hundred years until modern revisions were produced in the 20th century. Based on conflicting political, religious and social positions, the English Civil War was fought between the supporters of Parliament and those of King Charles I, known colloquially as Roundheads and Cavaliers respectively. This was an interwoven part of the wider multifaceted Wars of the Three Kingdoms, involving Scotland and Ireland. The Parliamentarians were victorious, Charles I was executed and the kingdom replaced by the Commonwealth. Leader of the Parliament forces, Oliver Cromwell declared himself Lord Protector in 1653; a period of personal rule followed. After Cromwell's death and the resignation of his son Richard as Lord Protector, Charles II was invited to return as monarch in 1660, in a move called the Restoration. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, it was constitutionally established that King and Parliament should rule together, though Parliament would have the real power. This was established with the Bill of Rights in 1689. Among the statutes set down were that the law could only be made by Parliament and could not be suspended by the King, also that the King could not impose taxes or raise an army without the prior approval of Parliament. Also since that time, no British monarch has entered the House of Commons when it is sitting, which is annually commemorated at the State Opening of Parliament by the British monarch when the doors of the House of Commons are slammed in the face of the monarch's messenger, symbolising the rights of Parliament and its independence from the monarch. With the founding of the Royal Society in 1660, science was greatly encouraged. In 1666 the Great Fire of London gutted the City of London but it was rebuilt shortly afterwards with many significant buildings designed by Sir Christopher Wren. In Parliament two factions had emerged – the Tories and Whigs. Though the Tories initially supported Catholic king James II, some of them, along with the Whigs, during the Revolution of 1688 invited Dutch prince William of Orange to defeat James and ultimately to become William III of England. Some English people, especially in the north, were Jacobites and continued to support James and his sons. After the parliaments of England and Scotland agreed, the two countries joined in political union, to create the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. To accommodate the union, institutions such as the law and national churches of each remained separate. Under the newly formed Kingdom of Great Britain, output from the Royal Society and other English initiatives combined with the Scottish Enlightenment to create innovations in science and engineering, while the enormous growth in British overseas trade protected by the Royal Navy paved the way for the establishment of the British Empire. Domestically it drove the Industrial Revolution, a period of profound change in the socioeconomic and cultural conditions of England, resulting in industrialised agriculture, manufacture, engineering and mining, as well as new and pioneering road, rail and water networks to facilitate their expansion and development. The opening of Northwest England's Bridgewater Canal in 1761 ushered in the canal age in Britain. In 1825 the world's first permanent steam locomotive-hauled passenger railway – the Stockton and Darlington Railway – opened to the public. During the Industrial Revolution, many workers moved from England's countryside to new and expanding urban industrial areas to work in factories, for instance at Birmingham and Manchester, dubbed "Workshop of the World" and "Warehouse City" respectively. England maintained relative stability throughout the French Revolution; William Pitt the Younger was British Prime Minister for the reign of George III. During the Napoleonic Wars, Napoleon planned to invade from the south-east. However this failed to manifest and the Napoleonic forces were defeated by the British at sea by Lord Nelson and on land by the Duke of Wellington. The Napoleonic Wars fostered a concept of Britishness and a united national British people, shared with the Scots and Welsh. London became the largest and most populous metropolitan area in the world during the Victorian era, and trade within the British Empire – as well as the standing of the British military and navy – was prestigious. Political agitation at home from radicals such as the Chartists and the suffragettes enabled legislative reform and universal suffrage. Power shifts in east-central Europe led to World War I; hundreds of thousands of English soldiers died fighting for the United Kingdom as part of the Allies. Two decades later, in World War II, the United Kingdom was again one of the Allies. At the end of the Phoney War, Winston Churchill became the wartime Prime Minister. Developments in warfare technology saw many cities damaged by air-raids during the Blitz. Following the war, the British Empire experienced rapid decolonisation, and there was a speeding up of technological innovations; automobiles became the primary means of transport and Frank Whittle's development of the jet engine led to wider air travel. Residential patterns were altered in England by private motoring, and by the creation of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948. The UK's NHS provided publicly funded health care to all UK permanent residents free at the point of need, being paid for from general taxation. Combined, these changes prompted the reform of local government in England in the mid-20th century. Since the 20th century there has been significant population movement to England, mostly from other parts of the British Isles, but also from the Commonwealth, particularly the Indian subcontinent. Since the 1970s there has been a large move away from manufacturing and an increasing emphasis on the service industry. As part of the United Kingdom, the area joined a common market initiative called the European Economic Community which became the European Union. Since the late 20th century the administration of the United Kingdom has moved towards devolved governance in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. England and Wales continues to exist as a jurisdiction within the United Kingdom. Devolution has stimulated a greater emphasis on a more English-specific identity and patriotism. There is no devolved English government, but an attempt to create a similar system on a sub-regional basis was rejected by referendum. As part of the United Kingdom, the basic political system in England is a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary system. There has not been a government of England since 1707, when the Acts of Union 1707, putting into effect the terms of the Treaty of Union, joined England and Scotland to form the Kingdom of Great Britain. Before the union England was ruled by its monarch and the Parliament of England. Today England is governed directly by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, although other countries of the United Kingdom have devolved governments. In the House of Commons which is the lower house of the British Parliament based at the Palace of Westminster, there are 532 Members of Parliament (MPs) for constituencies in England, out of the 650 total. In the 2017 United Kingdom general election, the Conservative Party won 317 seats (the Speaker of the House not being counted as a Conservative), more than any other party, though not enough to achieve an overall majority. The Conservative party, headed by the prime minister Theresa May, won 55 more seats than the Labour Party, led by Jeremy Corbyn. The Scottish National Party (Scotland only) won 35 out of 59 Scottish seats in the House of Commons. As the United Kingdom is a member of the European Union, there are elections held regionally in England to decide who is sent as Members of the European Parliament. The 2014 European Parliament election saw the regions of England elect the following MEPs: 22 UK Independence Party (UKIP), 17 Conservatives, 17 Labour, 3 Greens, and one Liberal Democrat. Since devolution, in which other countries of the United Kingdom – Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – each have their own devolved parliament or assemblies for local issues, there has been debate about how to counterbalance this in England. Originally it was planned that various regions of England would be devolved, but following the proposal's rejection by the North East in a 2004 referendum, this has not been carried out. One major issue is the West Lothian question, in which MPs from Scotland and Wales are able to vote on legislation affecting only England, while English MPs have no equivalent right to legislate on devolved matters. This when placed in the context of England being the only country of the United Kingdom not to have free cancer treatment, prescriptions, residential care for the elderly and free top-up university fees, has led to a steady rise in English nationalism. Some have suggested the creation of a devolved English parliament, while others have proposed simply limiting voting on legislation which only affects England to English MPs. The English law legal system, developed over the centuries, is the basis of common law legal systems used in most Commonwealth countries and the United States (except Louisiana). Despite now being part of the United Kingdom, the legal system of the Courts of England and Wales continued, under the Treaty of Union, as a separate legal system from the one used in Scotland. The general essence of English law is that it is made by judges sitting in courts, applying their common sense and knowledge of legal precedent – stare decisis – to the facts before them. The court system is headed by the Senior Courts of England and Wales, consisting of the Court of Appeal, the High Court of Justice for civil cases, and the Crown Court for criminal cases. The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom is the highest court for criminal and civil cases in England and Wales. It was created in 2009 after constitutional changes, taking over the judicial functions of the House of Lords. A decision of the Supreme Court is binding on every other court in the hierarchy, which must follow its directions. Crime increased between 1981 and 1995 but fell by 42% in the period 1995–2006. The prison population doubled over the same period, giving it the highest incarceration rate in Western Europe at 147 per 100,000. Her Majesty's Prison Service, reporting to the Ministry of Justice, manages most prisons, housing over 85,000 convicts. The subdivisions of England consist of up to four levels of subnational division controlled through a variety of types of administrative entities created for the purposes of local government. The highest tier of local government were the nine regions of England: North East, North West, Yorkshire and the Humber, East Midlands, West Midlands, East, South East, South West, and London. These were created in 1994 as Government Offices, used by the UK government to deliver a wide range of policies and programmes regionally, but there are no elected bodies at this level, except in London, and in 2011 the regional government offices were abolished. The same boundaries remain in use for electing Members of the European Parliament on a regional basis. After devolution began to take place in other parts of the United Kingdom it was planned that referendums for the regions of England would take place for their own elected regional assemblies as a counterweight. London accepted in 1998: the London Assembly was created two years later. However, when the proposal was rejected by the 2004 North East England devolution referendum in the North East, further referendums were cancelled. The regional assemblies outside London were abolished in 2010, and their functions transferred to respective Regional Development Agencies and a new system of Local authority leaders' boards. Below the regional level, all of England is divided into 48 ceremonial counties. These are used primarily as a geographical frame of reference and have developed gradually since the Middle Ages, with some established as recently as 1974. Each has a Lord Lieutenant and High Sheriff; these posts are used to represent the British monarch locally. Outside Greater London and the Isles of Scilly, England is also divided into 83 metropolitan and non- metropolitan counties; these correspond to areas used for the purposes of local government and may consist of a single district or be divided into several. There are six metropolitan counties based on the most heavily urbanised areas, which do not have county councils. In these areas the principal authorities are the councils of the subdivisions, the metropolitan boroughs. Elsewhere, 27 non-metropolitan "shire" counties have a county council and are divided into districts, each with a district council. They are typically, though not always, found in more rural areas. The remaining non- metropolitan counties are of a single district and usually correspond to large towns or sparsely populated counties; they are known as unitary authorities. Greater London has a different system for local government, with 32 London boroughs, plus the City of London covering a small area at the core governed by the City of London Corporation. At the most localised level, much of England is divided into civil parishes with councils; in Greater London only one, Queen's Park, exists after they were abolished in 1965 until legislation allowed their recreation in 2007. Geographically England includes the central and southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain, plus such offshore islands as the Isle of Wight and the Isles of Scilly. It is bordered by two other countries of the United Kingdom: to the north by Scotland and to the west by Wales. England is closer to the European continent than any other part of mainland Britain. It is separated from France (Hauts-de-France) by a sea gap, though the two countries are connected by the Channel Tunnel near Folkestone. England also has shores on the Irish Sea, North Sea and Atlantic Ocean. The ports of London, Liverpool, and Newcastle lie on the tidal rivers Thames, Mersey and Tyne respectively. At , the Severn is the longest river flowing through England. It empties into the Bristol Channel and is notable for its Severn Bore (a tidal bore), which can reach in height. However, the longest river entirely in England is the Thames, which is in length. There are many lakes in England; the largest is Windermere, within the aptly named Lake District. Most of England's landscape consists of low hills and plains, with upland and mountainous terrain in the north and west of the country. The northern uplands include the Pennines, a chain of uplands dividing east and west, the Lake District mountains in Cumbria, and the Cheviot Hills, straddling the border between England and Scotland. The highest point in England, at , is Scafell Pike in the Lake District. The Shropshire Hills are near Wales while Dartmoor and Exmoor are two upland areas in the south-west of the country. The approximate dividing line between terrain types is often indicated by the Tees-Exe line. In geological terms, the Pennines, known as the "backbone of England", are the oldest range of mountains in the country, originating from the end of the Paleozoic Era around 300 million years ago. Their geological composition includes, among others, sandstone and limestone, and also coal. There are karst landscapes in calcite areas such as parts of Yorkshire and Derbyshire. The Pennine landscape is high moorland in upland areas, indented by fertile valleys of the region's rivers. They contain two national parks, the Yorkshire Dales and the Peak District. In the West Country, Dartmoor and Exmoor of the Southwest Peninsula include upland moorland supported by granite, and enjoy a mild climate; both are national parks. The English Lowlands are in the central and southern regions of the country, consisting of green rolling hills, including the Cotswold Hills, Chiltern Hills, North and South Downs; where they meet the sea they form white rock exposures such as the cliffs of Dover. This also includes relatively flat plains such as the Salisbury Plain, Somerset Levels, South Coast Plain and The Fens. England has a temperate maritime climate: it is mild with temperatures not much lower than in winter and not much higher than in summer. The weather is damp relatively frequently and is changeable. The coldest months are January and February, the latter particularly on the English coast, while July is normally the warmest month. Months with mild to warm weather are May, June, September and October. Rainfall is spread fairly evenly throughout the year. Important influences on the climate of England are its proximity to the Atlantic Ocean, its northern latitude and the warming of the sea by the Gulf Stream. Rainfall is higher in the west, and parts of the Lake District receive more rain than anywhere else in the country. Since weather records began, the highest temperature recorded was on 25 July 2019 at the Botanic Garden in Cambridge, while the lowest was on 10 January 1982 in Edgmond, Shropshire. The Greater London Built-up Area is by far the largest urban area in England and one of the busiest cities in the world. It is considered a global city and has a population larger than other countries in the United Kingdom besides England itself. Other urban areas of considerable size and influence tend to be in northern England or the English Midlands. There are 50 settlements which have been designated city status in England, while the wider United Kingdom has 66. While many cities in England are quite large, such as Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Newcastle, Bradford, Nottingham, population size is not a prerequisite for city status. Traditionally the status was given to towns with diocesan cathedrals, so there are smaller cities like Wells, Ely, Ripon, Truro and Chichester. England's economy is one of the largest in the world, with an average GDP per capita of £28,100 or $36,000. Usually regarded as a mixed market economy, it has adopted many free market principles, yet maintains an advanced social welfare infrastructure. The official currency in England is the pound sterling, whose ISO 4217 code is GBP. Taxation in England is quite competitive when compared to much of the rest of Europe – the basic rate of personal tax is 20% on taxable income up to £31,865 above the personal tax-free allowance (normally £10,000), and 40% on any additional earnings above that amount. The economy of England is the largest part of the UK's economy, which has the 18th highest GDP PPP per capita in the world. England is a leader in the chemical and pharmaceutical sectors and in key technical industries, particularly aerospace, the arms industry, and the manufacturing side of the software industry. London, home to the London Stock Exchange, the United Kingdom's main stock exchange and the largest in Europe, is England's financial centre, with 100 of Europe's 500 largest corporations being based there. London is the largest financial centre in Europe, and is the second largest in the world. The Bank of England, founded in 1694 by Scottish banker William Paterson, is the United Kingdom's central bank. Originally established as private banker to the government of England, since 1946 it has been a state-owned institution. The bank has a monopoly on the issue of banknotes in England and Wales, although not in other parts of the United Kingdom. The government has devolved responsibility to the bank's Monetary Policy Committee for managing the monetary policy of the country and setting interest rates. England is highly industrialised, but since the 1970s there has been a decline in traditional heavy and manufacturing industries, and an increasing emphasis on a more service industry oriented economy. Tourism has become a significant industry, attracting millions of visitors to England each year. The export part of the economy is dominated by pharmaceuticals, cars (although many English marques are now foreign-owned, such as Land Rover, Lotus, Jaguar and Bentley), crude oil and petroleum from the English parts of North Sea oil along with Wytch Farm, aircraft engines and alcoholic beverages. Most of the UK's £30 billion aerospace industry is primarily based in England. The global market opportunity for UK aerospace manufacturers over the next two decades is estimated at £3.5 trillion. GKN Aerospace – an expert in metallic and composite aerostructures is involved in almost every civil and military fixed and rotary wing aircraft in production is based in Redditch. BAE Systems makes large sections of the Typhoon Eurofighter at its sub-assembly plant in Salmesbury and assembles the aircraft for the RAF at its Warton plant, near Preston. It is also a principal subcontractor on the F35 Joint Strike Fighter – the world's largest single defence project – for which it designs and manufactures a range of components including the aft fuselage, vertical and horizontal tail and wing tips and fuel system. It also manufactures the Hawk, the world's most successful jet training aircraft. Rolls-Royce PLC is the world's second-largest aero-engine manufacturer. Its engines power more than 30 types of commercial aircraft, and it has more 30,000 engines currently in service across both the civil and defence sectors. With a workforce of over 12,000 people, Derby has the largest concentration of Rolls-Royce employees in the UK. Rolls-Royce also produces low-emission power systems for ships; makes critical equipment and safety systems for the nuclear industry and powers offshore platforms and major pipelines for the oil and gas industry. Much of the UK's space industry is centred on EADS Astrium, based in Stevenage and Portsmouth. The company builds the buses – the underlying structure onto which the payload and propulsion systems are built – for most of the European Space Agency's spacecraft, as well as commercial satellites. The world leader in compact satellite systems, Surrey Satellite Technology, is also part of Astrium. Reaction Engines Limited, the company planning to build Skylon, a single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane using their SABRE rocket engine, a combined- cycle, air-breathing rocket propulsion system is based Culham. Agriculture is intensive and highly mechanised, producing 60% of food needs with only 2% of the labour force. Two-thirds of production is devoted to livestock, the other to arable crops. Prominent English figures from the field of science and mathematics include Sir Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, Charles Darwin, Robert Hooke, James Prescott Joule, John Dalton, Lord Rayleigh, J. J. Thomson, James Chadwick, Charles Babbage, George Boole, Alan Turing, Tim Berners-Lee, Paul Dirac, Stephen Hawking, Peter Higgs, Roger Penrose, John Horton Conway, Thomas Bayes, Arthur Cayley, G. H. Hardy, Oliver Heaviside, Andrew Wiles, Francis Crick, Joseph Lister, Joseph Priestley, Thomas Young, Christopher Wren and Richard Dawkins. Some experts claim that the earliest concept of a metric system was invented by John Wilkins, the first secretary of the Royal Society, in 1668. As the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, England was home to many significant inventors during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Famous English engineers include Isambard Kingdom Brunel, best known for the creation of the Great Western Railway, a series of famous steamships, and numerous important bridges, hence revolutionising public transport and modern-day engineering. Thomas Newcomen's steam engine helped spawn the Industrial Revolution. The Father of Railways, George Stephenson, built the first public inter-city railway line in the world, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, which opened in 1830. With his role in the marketing and manufacturing of the steam engine, and invention of modern coinage, Matthew Boulton (business partner of James Watt) is regarded as one of the most influential entrepreneurs in history. The physician Edward Jenner's smallpox vaccine is said to have "saved more lives ... than were lost in all the wars of mankind since the beginning of recorded history." Inventions and discoveries of the English include: the jet engine, the first industrial spinning machine, the first computer and the first modern computer, the World Wide Web along with HTML, the first successful human blood transfusion, the motorised vacuum cleaner, the lawn mower, the seat belt, the hovercraft, the electric motor, steam engines, and theories such as the Darwinian theory of evolution and atomic theory. Newton developed the ideas of universal gravitation, Newtonian mechanics, and calculus, and Robert Hooke his eponymously named law of elasticity. Other inventions include the iron plate railway, the thermosiphon, tarmac, the rubber band, the mousetrap, "cat's eye" road marker, joint development of the light bulb, steam locomotives, the modern seed drill and many modern techniques and technologies used in precision engineering. The Department for Transport is the government body responsible for overseeing transport in England. There are many motorways in England, and many other trunk roads, such as the A1 Great North Road, which runs through eastern England from London to Newcastle (much of this section is motorway) and onward to the Scottish border. The longest motorway in England is the M6, from Rugby through the North West up to the Anglo-Scottish border, a distance of . Other major routes include: the M1 from London to Leeds, the M25 which encircles London, the M60 which encircles Manchester, the M4 from London to South Wales, the M62 from Liverpool via Manchester to East Yorkshire, and the M5 from Birmingham to Bristol and the South West. Bus transport across the country is widespread; major companies include National Express, Arriva and Go-Ahead Group. The red double-decker buses in London have become a symbol of England. National Cycle Route offers cycling routes nationally. There is a rapid transit network in two English cities: the London Underground; and the Tyne and Wear Metro in Newcastle, Gateshead and Sunderland. There are several tram networks, such as the Blackpool tramway, Manchester Metrolink, Sheffield Supertram and Midland Metro, and the Tramlink system centred on Croydon in South London. Rail transport in England is the oldest in the world: passenger railways originated in England in 1825. Much of Britain's of rail network lies in England, covering the country fairly extensively, although a high proportion of railway lines were closed in the second half of the 20th century. There are plans to reopen lines such as the Varsity Line between Oxford and Cambridge. These lines are mostly standard gauge (single, double or quadruple track) though there are also a few narrow gauge lines. There is rail transport access to France and Belgium through an undersea rail link, the Channel Tunnel, which was completed in 1994. England has extensive domestic and international aviation links. The largest airport is Heathrow, which is the world's busiest airport measured by number of international passengers. Other large airports include Manchester Airport, Stansted Airport, Luton Airport and Birmingham Airport. By sea there is ferry transport, both local and international, including from Liverpool to Ireland and the Isle of Man, and Hull to the Netherlands and Belgium. There are around of navigable waterways in England, half of which is owned by the Canal and River Trust, however, water transport is very limited. The Thames is the major waterway in England, with imports and exports focused at the Port of Tilbury in the Thames Estuary, one of the United Kingdom's three major ports. The National Health Service (NHS) is the publicly funded healthcare system in England responsible for providing the majority of healthcare in the country. The NHS began on 5 July 1948, putting into effect the provisions of the National Health Service Act 1946. It was based on the findings of the Beveridge Report, prepared by economist and social reformer William Beveridge. The NHS is largely funded from general taxation including National Insurance payments, and it provides most of its services free at the point of use, although there are charges for some people for eye tests, dental care, prescriptions and aspects of personal care. The government department responsible for the NHS is the Department of Health, headed by the Secretary of State for Health, who sits in the British Cabinet. Most of the expenditure of the Department of Health is spent on the NHS—£98.6 billion was spent in 2008–2009. In recent years the private sector has been increasingly used to provide more NHS services despite opposition by doctors and trade unions. The average life expectancy of people in England is 77.5 years for males and 81.7 years for females, the highest of the four countries of the United Kingdom. The South of England has a higher life expectancy than the North, however, regional differences do seem to be slowly narrowing: between 1991–1993 and 2012–2014, life expectancy in the North East increased by 6.0 years and in the North West by 5.8 years, the fastest increase in any region outside London, and the gap between life expectancy in the North East and South East is now 2.5 years, down from 2.9 in 1993. With over 53 million inhabitants, England is by far the most populous country of the United Kingdom, accounting for 84% of the combined total. England taken as a unit and measured against international states has the fourth largest population in the European Union and would be the 25th largest country by population in the world. With a density of 424 people per square kilometre, it would be the second most densely populated country in the European Union after Malta. The English people are a British people. Some genetic evidence suggests that 75–95% descend in the paternal line from prehistoric settlers who originally came from the Iberian Peninsula, as well as a 5% contribution from Angles and Saxons, and a significant Scandinavian (Viking) element. However, other geneticists place the Germanic estimate up to half. Over time, various cultures have been influential: Prehistoric, Brythonic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Viking (North Germanic), Gaelic cultures, as well as a large influence from Normans. There is an English diaspora in former parts of the British Empire; especially the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. Since the late 1990s, many English people have migrated to Spain. In 1086, when the Domesday Book was compiled, England had a population of two million. About 10% lived in urban areas. By 1801, the population was 8.3 million, and by 1901 30.5 million. Due in particular to the economic prosperity of South East England, it has received many economic migrants from the other parts of the United Kingdom. There has been significant Irish migration. The proportion of ethnically European residents totals at 87.50%, including Germans and Poles. Other people from much further afield in the former British colonies have arrived since the 1950s: in particular, 6% of people living in England have family origins in the Indian subcontinent, mostly India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. 2.90% of the population are black, from Africa and the Caribbean, especially former British colonies. There is a significant number of Chinese and British Chinese. In 2007, 22% of primary school children in England were from ethnic minority families, and in 2011 that figure was 26.5%. About half of the population increase between 1991 and 2001 was due to immigration. Debate over immigration is politically prominent; 80% of respondents in a 2009 Home Office poll wanted to cap it. The ONS has projected that the population will grow by nine million between 2014 and 2039. England contains one indigenous national minority, the Cornish people, recognised by the UK government under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities in 2014. As its name suggests, the English language, today spoken by hundreds of millions of people around the world, originated as the language of England, where it remains the principal tongue spoken by 98% of the population. It is an Indo-European language in the Anglo-Frisian branch of the Germanic family. After the Norman conquest, the Old English language was displaced and confined to the lower social classes as Norman French and Latin were used by the aristocracy. By the 15th century, English was back in fashion among all classes, though much changed; the Middle English form showed many signs of French influence, both in vocabulary and spelling. During the English Renaissance, many words were coined from Latin and Greek origins. Modern English has extended this custom of flexibility when it comes to incorporating words from different languages. Thanks in large part to the British Empire, the English language is the world's unofficial lingua franca. English language learning and teaching is an important economic activity, and includes language schooling, tourism spending, and publishing. There is no legislation mandating an official language for England, but English is the only language used for official business. Despite the country's relatively small size, there are many distinct regional accents, and individuals with particularly strong accents may not be easily understood everywhere in the country. As well as English, England has two other indigenous languages, Cornish and Welsh. Cornish died out as a community language in the 18th century but is being revived, and is now protected under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. It is spoken by 0.1% of people in Cornwall, and is taught to some degree in several primary and secondary schools. When the modern border between Wales and England was established by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542, many Welsh-speaking communities found themselves on the English side of the border. Welsh was spoken in Archenfield in Herefordshire into the nineteenth century, and by natives of parts of western Shropshire until the middle of the twentieth century if not later. State schools teach students a second language, usually French, German or Spanish. Due to immigration, it was reported in 2007 that around 800,000 school students spoke a foreign language at home, the most common being Punjabi and Urdu. However, following the 2011 census data released by the Office for National Statistics, figures now show that Polish is the main language spoken in England after English. In the 2011 census, 59.4% of the population of England specified their religion as Christian, 24.7% answered that they had no religion, 5% specified that they were Muslim, while 3.7% of the population belongs to other religions and 7.2% did not give an answer. Christianity is the most widely practised religion in England, as it has been since the Early Middle Ages, although it was first introduced much earlier in Gaelic and Roman times. This Celtic Church was gradually joined to the Catholic hierarchy following the 6th- century Gregorian mission to Kent led by St Augustine. The established church of England is the Church of England, which left communion with Rome in the 1530s when Henry VIII was unable to annul his divorce to the aunt of the king of Spain. The church regards itself as both Catholic and Protestant. There are High Church and Low Church traditions and some Anglicans regard themselves as Anglo-Catholics, following the Tractarian movement. The monarch of the United Kingdom is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, which has around 26 million baptised members (of whom the vast majority are not regular churchgoers). It forms part of the Anglican Communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury acting as its symbolic worldwide head. Many cathedrals and parish churches are historic buildings of significant architectural importance, such as Westminster Abbey, York Minster, Durham Cathedral, and Salisbury Cathedral. The 2nd-largest Christian practice is the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church. Since its reintroduction after the Catholic Emancipation, the Church has organised ecclesiastically on an England and Wales basis where there are 4.5 million members (most of whom are English). There has been one Pope from England to date, Adrian IV; while saints Bede and Anselm are regarded as Doctors of the Church. A form of Protestantism known as Methodism is the third largest Christian practice and grew out of Anglicanism through John Wesley. It gained popularity in the mill towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and amongst tin miners in Cornwall. There are other non-conformist minorities, such as Baptists, Quakers, Congregationalists, Unitarians and The Salvation Army. The patron saint of England is Saint George; his symbolic cross is included in the flag of England, as well as in the Union Flag as part of a combination. There are many other English and associated saints; some of the best-known are: Cuthbert, Edmund, Alban, Wilfrid, Aidan, Edward the Confessor, John Fisher, Thomas More, Petroc, Piran, Margaret Clitherow and Thomas Becket. There are non-Christian religions practised. Jews have a history of a small minority on the island since 1070. They were expelled from England in 1290 following the Edict of Expulsion, only to be allowed back in 1656. Especially since the 1950s, religions from the former British colonies have grown in numbers, due to immigration. Islam is the most common of these, now accounting for around 5% of the population in England. Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism are next in number, adding up to 2.8% combined, introduced from India and South East Asia. A small minority of the population practise ancient Pagan religions. Neopaganism in the United Kingdom is primarily represented by Wicca and Witchcraft religions, Druidry, and Heathenry. According to the 2011 UK Census, there are roughly 53,172 people who identify as Pagan in England, and 3,448 in Wales, including 11,026 Wiccans in England and 740 in Wales. The Department for Education is the government department responsible for issues affecting people in England up to the age of 19, including education. State-run and state-funded schools are attended by approximately 93% of English schoolchildren. Of these, a minority are faith schools (primarily Church of England or Roman Catholic schools). Children who are between the ages of 3 and 5 attend nursery or an Early Years Foundation Stage reception unit within a primary school. Children between the ages of 5 and 11 attend primary school, and secondary school is attended by those aged between 11 and 16. After finishing compulsory education, students take GCSE examinations. Students may then opt to continue into further education for two years. Further education colleges (particularly sixth form colleges) often form part of a secondary school site. A-level examinations are sat by a large number of further education students, and often form the basis of an application to university. Although most English secondary schools are comprehensive, in some areas there are selective intake grammar schools, to which entrance is subject to passing the eleven-plus exam. Around 7.2% of English schoolchildren attend private schools, which are funded by private sources. Standards in state schools are monitored by the Office for Standards in Education, and in private schools by the Independent Schools Inspectorate. Higher education students normally attend university from age 18 onwards, where they study for an academic degree. There are over 90 universities in England, all but one of which are public institutions. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is the government department responsible for higher education in England. Students are generally entitled to student loans to cover the cost of tuition fees and living costs. The first degree offered to undergraduates is the Bachelor's degree, which usually takes three years to complete. Students are then able to work towards a postgraduate degree, which usually takes one year, or towards a doctorate, which takes three or more years. Since the establishment of Bedford College (London), Girton College (Cambridge) and Somerville College (Oxford) in the 19th century, women also can obtain a university degree. England's universities include some of the highest-ranked universities in the world; University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, Imperial College London, University College London and King's College London are all ranked in the global top 30 in the 2018 QS World University Rankings. The London School of Economics has been described as the world's leading social science institution for both teaching and research. The London Business School is considered one of the world's leading business schools and in 2010 its MBA programme was ranked best in the world by the Financial Times. Academic degrees in England are usually split into classes: first class (1st), upper second class (2:1), lower second class (2:2), third (3rd), and unclassified. The King's School, Canterbury and King's School, Rochester are the oldest schools in the English-speaking world. Many of England's most well- known schools, such as Winchester College, Eton, St Paul's School, Harrow School and Rugby School are fee-paying institutions. Many ancient standing stone monuments were erected during the prehistoric period; amongst the best known are Stonehenge, Devil's Arrows, Rudston Monolith and Castlerigg. With the introduction of Ancient Roman architecture there was a development of basilicas, baths, amphitheaters, triumphal arches, villas, Roman temples, Roman roads, Roman forts, stockades and aqueducts. It was the Romans who founded the first cities and towns such as London, Bath, York, Chester and St Albans. Perhaps the best-known example is Hadrian's Wall stretching right across northern England. Another well-preserved example is the Roman Baths at Bath, Somerset. Early Medieval architecture's secular buildings were simple constructions mainly using timber with thatch for roofing. Ecclesiastical architecture ranged from a synthesis of Hiberno–Saxon monasticism, to Early Christian basilica and architecture characterised by pilaster-strips, blank arcading, baluster shafts and triangular headed openings. After the Norman conquest in 1066 various Castles in England were created so law lords could uphold their authority and in the north to protect from invasion. Some of the best-known medieval castles are the Tower of London, Warwick Castle, Durham Castle and Windsor Castle. Throughout the Plantagenet era, an English Gothic architecture flourished, with prime examples including the medieval cathedrals such as Canterbury Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and York Minster. Expanding on the Norman base there was also castles, palaces, great houses, universities and parish churches. Medieval architecture was completed with the 16th-century Tudor style; the four-centred arch, now known as the Tudor arch, was a defining feature as were wattle and daub houses domestically. In the aftermath of the Renaissance a form of architecture echoing classical antiquity synthesised with Christianity appeared, the English Baroque style of architect Christopher Wren being particularly championed. Georgian architecture followed in a more refined style, evoking a simple Palladian form; the Royal Crescent at Bath is one of the best examples of this. With the emergence of romanticism during Victorian period, a Gothic Revival was launched. In addition to this, around the same time the Industrial Revolution paved the way for buildings such as The Crystal Palace. Since the 1930s various modernist forms have appeared whose reception is often controversial, though traditionalist resistance movements continue with support in influential places. English folklore developed over many centuries. Some of the characters and stories are present across England, but most belong to specific regions. Common folkloric beings include pixies, giants, elves, bogeymen, trolls, goblins and dwarves. While many legends and folk-customs are thought to be ancient, for instance the tales featuring Offa of Angel and Wayland the Smith, others date from after the Norman invasion; Robin Hood and his Merry Men of Sherwood and their battles with the Sheriff of Nottingham being, perhaps, the best known. During the High Middle Ages tales originating from Brythonic traditions entered English folklore and developed into the Arthurian myth. These were derived from Anglo-Norman, Welsh and French sources, featuring King Arthur, Camelot, Excalibur, Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table such as Lancelot. These stories are most centrally brought together within Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain). Another early figure from British tradition, King Cole, may have been based on a real figure from Sub-Roman Britain. Many of the tales and pseudo-histories make up part of the wider Matter of Britain, a collection of shared British folklore. Some folk figures are based on semi or actual historical people whose story has been passed down centuries; Lady Godiva for instance was said to have ridden naked on horseback through Coventry, Hereward the Wake was a heroic English figure resisting the Norman invasion, Herne the Hunter is an equestrian ghost associated with Windsor Forest and Great Park and Mother Shipton is the archetypal witch. On 5 November people make bonfires, set off fireworks and eat toffee apples in commemoration of the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot centred on Guy Fawkes. The chivalrous bandit, such as Dick Turpin, is a recurring character, while Blackbeard is the archetypal pirate. There are various national and regional folk activities, participated in to this day, such as Morris dancing, Maypole dancing, Rapper sword in the North East, Long Sword dance in Yorkshire, Mummers Plays, bottle-kicking in Leicestershire, and cheese-rolling at Cooper's Hill. There is no official national costume, but a few are well established such as the Pearly Kings and Queens associated with cockneys, the Royal Guard, the Morris costume and Beefeaters. Since the early modern period the food of England has historically been characterised by its simplicity of approach and a reliance on the high quality of natural produce. During the Middle Ages and through the Renaissance period, English cuisine enjoyed an excellent reputation, though a decline began during the Industrial Revolution with the move away from the land and increasing urbanisation of the populace. The cuisine of England has, however, recently undergone a revival, which has been recognised by food critics with some good ratings in Restaurant's best restaurant in the world charts. An early book of English recipes is the Forme of Cury from the royal court of Richard II. Traditional examples of English food include the Sunday roast, featuring a roasted joint (usually beef, lamb, chicken or pork) served with assorted vegetables, Yorkshire pudding and gravy. Other prominent meals include fish and chips and the full English breakfast (generally consisting of bacon, sausages, grilled tomatoes, fried bread, black pudding, baked beans, mushrooms and eggs). Various meat pies are consumed, such as steak and kidney pie, steak and ale pie, cottage pie, pork pie (usually eaten cold) and the Cornish pasty. Sausages are commonly eaten, either as bangers and mash or toad in the hole. Lancashire hotpot is a well-known stew originating in the northwest. Some of the more popular cheeses are Cheddar, Red Leicester, Wensleydale, Double Gloucester and Blue Stilton. Many Anglo-Indian hybrid dishes, curries, have been created, such as chicken tikka masala and balti. Traditional English dessert dishes include apple pie or other fruit pies; spotted dick – all generally served with custard; and, more recently, sticky toffee pudding. Sweet pastries include scones (either plain or containing dried fruit) served with jam or cream, dried fruit loaves, Eccles cakes and mince pies as well as a wide range of sweet or spiced biscuits. Common non-alcoholic drinks include tea, the popularity of which was increased by Catherine of Braganza, and coffee; frequently consumed alcoholic drinks include wine, ciders and English beers, such as bitter, mild, stout and brown ale. The earliest known examples are the prehistoric rock and cave art pieces, most prominent in North Yorkshire, Northumberland and Cumbria, but also feature further south, for example at Creswell Crags. With the arrival of Roman culture in the 1st century, various forms of art such as statues, busts, glasswork and mosaics were the norm. There are numerous surviving artefacts, such as those at Lullingstone and Aldborough. During the Early Middle Ages the style favoured sculpted crosses and ivories, manuscript painting, gold and enamel jewellery, demonstrating a love of intricate, interwoven designs such as in the Staffordshire Hoard discovered in 2009. Some of these blended Gaelic and Anglian styles, such as the Lindisfarne Gospels and Vespasian Psalter. Later Gothic art was popular at Winchester and Canterbury, examples survive such as Benedictional of St. Æthelwold and Luttrell Psalter. The Tudor era saw prominent artists as part of their court, portrait painting which would remain an enduring part of English art, was boosted by German Hans Holbein, natives such as Nicholas Hilliard built on this. Under the Stuarts, Continental artists were influential especially the Flemish, examples from the period include Anthony van Dyck, Peter Lely, Godfrey Kneller and William Dobson. The 18th century was a time of significance with the founding of the Royal Academy, a classicism based on the High Renaissance prevailed, with Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds becoming two of England's most treasured artists. The Norwich School continued the landscape tradition, while the Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood, led by artists such as Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais, revived the Early Renaissance style with their vivid and detailed style. Prominent amongst 20th-century artists was Henry Moore, regarded as the voice of British sculpture, and of British modernism in general. Contemporary painters include Lucian Freud, whose work Benefits Supervisor Sleeping in 2008 set a world record for sale value of a painting by a living artist. Early authors such as Bede and Alcuin wrote in Latin. The period of Old English literature provided the epic poem Beowulf and the secular prose of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, along with Christian writings such as Judith, Cædmon's Hymn and hagiographies. Following the Norman conquest Latin continued amongst the educated classes, as well as an Anglo-Norman literature. Middle English literature emerged with Geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales, along with Gower, the Pearl Poet and Langland. William of Ockham and Roger Bacon, who were Franciscans, were major philosophers of the Middle Ages. Julian of Norwich, who wrote Revelations of Divine Love, was a prominent Christian mystic. With the English Renaissance literature in the Early Modern English style appeared. William Shakespeare, whose works include Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and A Midsummer Night's Dream, remains one of the most championed authors in English literature. Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, Philip Sydney, Thomas Kyd, John Donne, and Ben Jonson are other established authors of the Elizabethan age. Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes wrote on empiricism and materialism, including scientific method and social contract. Filmer wrote on the Divine Right of Kings. Marvell was the best-known poet of the Commonwealth, while John Milton authored Paradise Lost during the Restoration. Some of the most prominent philosophers of the Enlightenment were John Locke, Thomas Paine, Samuel Johnson and Jeremy Bentham. More radical elements were later countered by Edmund Burke who is regarded as the founder of conservatism. The poet Alexander Pope with his satirical verse became well regarded. The English played a significant role in romanticism: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, John Keats, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Blake and William Wordsworth were major figures. In response to the Industrial Revolution, agrarian writers sought a way between liberty and tradition; William Cobbett, G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc were main exponents, while the founder of guild socialism, Arthur Penty, and cooperative movement advocate G. D. H. Cole are somewhat related. Empiricism continued through John Stuart Mill and Bertrand Russell, while Bernard Williams was involved in analytics. Authors from around the Victorian era include Charles Dickens, the Brontë sisters, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy, H. G. Wells and Lewis Carroll. Since then England has continued to produce novelists such as George Orwell, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, C. S. Lewis, Enid Blyton, Aldous Huxley, Agatha Christie, Terry Pratchett, J. R. R. Tolkien, and J. K. Rowling. The traditional folk music of England is centuries old and has contributed to several genres prominently; mostly sea shanties, jigs, hornpipes and dance music. It has its own distinct variations and regional peculiarities. Wynkyn de Worde printed ballads of Robin Hood from the 16th century are an important artefact, as are John Playford's The Dancing Master and Robert Harley's Roxburghe Ballads collections. Some of the best-known songs are Greensleeves, Pastime with Good Company, Maggie May and Spanish Ladies amongst others. Many nursery rhymes are of English origin such as Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, Roses are red, Jack and Jill, London Bridge Is Falling Down, The Grand Old Duke of York, Hey Diddle Diddle and Humpty Dumpty. Traditional English Christmas carols include "We Wish You a Merry Christmas", "The First Noel", “I Saw Three Ships” and "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen". Early English composers in classical music include Renaissance artists Thomas Tallis and William Byrd, followed up by Henry Purcell from the Baroque period. German-born George Frideric Handel spent most of his composing life in London and became a national icon in Britain, creating some of the most well-known works of classical music, especially his English oratorios, The Messiah, Solomon, Water Music, and Music for the Royal Fireworks. One of his four Coronation Anthems, Zadok the Priest, composed for the coronation of George II, has been performed at every subsequent British coronation, traditionally during the sovereign's anointing. There was a revival in the profile of composers from England in the 20th century led by Edward Elgar, Benjamin Britten, Frederick Delius, Gustav Holst, Ralph Vaughan Williams and others. Present-day composers from England include Michael Nyman, best known for The Piano, and Andrew Lloyd Webber, whose musicals have achieved enormous success in the West End and worldwide. In the field of popular music, many English bands and solo artists have been cited as the most influential and best-selling musicians of all time. Acts such as The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Elton John, Queen, Rod Stewart and The Rolling Stones are among the highest selling recording artists in the world. Many musical genres have origins in (or strong associations with) England, such as British invasion, progressive rock, hard rock, Mod, glam rock, heavy metal, Britpop, indie rock, gothic rock, shoegazing, acid house, garage, trip hop, drum and bass and dubstep. Large outdoor music festivals in the summer and autumn are popular, such as Glastonbury, V Festival, and the Reading and Leeds Festivals. The most prominent opera house in England is the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. The Proms – a season of orchestral classical concerts held primarily at the Royal Albert Hall in London – is a major cultural event in the English calendar, and takes place yearly. The Royal Ballet is one of the world's foremost classical ballet companies, its reputation built on two prominent figures of 20th-century dance, prima ballerina Margot Fonteyn and choreographer Frederick Ashton. The Boishakhi Mela is a Bengali New Year festival celebrated by the British Bangladeshi community. It is the largest open-air Asian festival in Europe. After the Notting Hill Carnival, it is the second-largest street festival in the United Kingdom attracting over 80,000 visitors from across the country. England (and the UK as a whole) has had a considerable influence on the history of the cinema, producing some of the greatest actors, directors and motion pictures of all time, including Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, David Lean, Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, John Gielgud, Peter Sellers, Julie Andrews, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Helen Mirren, Kate Winslet and Daniel Day-Lewis. Hitchcock and Lean are among the most critically acclaimed filmmakers. Hitchcock's first thriller, (1926), helped shape the thriller genre in film, while his 1929 film, Blackmail, is often regarded as the first British feature film. Major film studios in England include Pinewood, Elstree and Shepperton. Some of the most commercially successful films of all time have been produced in England, including two of the highest-grossing film franchises (Harry Potter and James Bond). Ealing Studios in London has a claim to being the oldest continuously working film studio in the world. Famous for recording many motion picture film scores, the London Symphony Orchestra first performed film music in 1935. The Hammer Horror films starring Christopher Lee saw the production of the first gory horror films showing blood and guts in colour. The BFI Top 100 British films includes Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979), a film regularly voted the funniest of all time by the UK public. English producers are also active in international co-productions and English actors, directors and crew feature regularly in American films. The UK film council ranked David Yates, Christopher Nolan, Mike Newell, Ridley Scott and Paul Greengrass the five most commercially successful English directors since 2001. Other contemporary English directors include Sam Mendes, Guy Ritchie and Richard Curtis. Current actors include Tom Hardy, Daniel Craig, Benedict Cumberbatch and Emma Watson. Acclaimed for his motion capture work, Andy Serkis opened The Imaginarium Studios in London in 2011. The visual effects company Framestore in London has produced some of the most critically acclaimed special effects in modern film. Many successful Hollywood films have been based on English people, stories or events. The 'English Cycle' of Disney animated films include Alice in Wonderland, The Jungle Book and Winnie the Pooh. English Heritage is a governmental body with a broad remit of managing the historic sites, artefacts and environments of England. It is currently sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The charity National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty holds a contrasting role. 17 of the 25 United Kingdom UNESCO World Heritage Sites fall within England. Some of the best-known of these are: Hadrian's Wall, Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites, Tower of London, Jurassic Coast, Saltaire, Ironbridge Gorge, Studley Royal Park and various others. There are many museums in England, but perhaps the most notable is London's British Museum. Its collection of more than seven million objects is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world, sourced from every continent, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its beginning to the present. The British Library in London is the national library and is one of the world's largest research libraries, holding over 150 million items in all known languages and formats; including around 25 million books. The most senior art gallery is the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, which houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The Tate galleries house the national collections of British and international modern art; they also host the famously controversial Turner Prize. England has a strong sporting heritage, and during the 19th century codified many sports that are now played around the world. Sports originating in England include association football, cricket, rugby union, rugby league, tennis, boxing, badminton, squash, rounders, hockey, snooker, billiards, darts, table tennis, bowls, netball, thoroughbred horseracing, greyhound racing and fox hunting. It has helped the development of golf, sailing and Formula One. Football is the most popular of these sports. The England national football team, whose home venue is Wembley Stadium, played Scotland in the first ever international football match in 1872. Referred to as the "home of football" by FIFA, England hosted the 1966 FIFA World Cup, and won the tournament by defeating West Germany 4–2 in the final, with Geoff Hurst scoring a hat-trick. With a British television audience peak of 32.30 million viewers, the final is the most watched television event ever in the UK. At club level, England is recognised by FIFA as the birthplace of club football, due to Sheffield F.C. founded in 1857 being the world's oldest club. The Football Association is the oldest governing body in the sport, with the rules of football first drafted in 1863 by Ebenezer Cobb Morley. The FA Cup and The Football League were the first cup and league competitions respectively. In the modern day, the Premier League is the world's most-watched football league, most lucrative, and amongst the elite. As is the case throughout the UK, football in England is notable for the rivalries between clubs and the passion of the supporters, which includes a tradition of football chants. The European Cup (now UEFA Champions League) has been won by several English clubs. The most successful English football team in the European Cup/UEFA Champions League is Liverpool F.C. who have won the competition on six occasions. Other English success has come from Manchester United F.C., winning the competition on 3 occasions; Nottingham Forest F.C. on 2 occasions, Aston Villa F.C. and Chelsea F.C. have both won the trophy once. Cricket is generally thought to have been developed in the early medieval period among the farming and metalworking communities of the Weald. The England cricket team is a composite England and Wales, team. One of the game's top rivalries is The Ashes series between England and Australia, contested since 1882. The climax of the 2005 Ashes was viewed by 7.4 million as it was available on terrestrial television. England has hosted five Cricket World Cups (1975, 1979, 1983, 1999 and 2019), winning the 2019 edition in a final regarded as one of the greatest one day internationals ever played. They hosted the ICC World Twenty20 in 2009, winning this format in 2010 beating rivals Australia in the final. In the domestic competition, the County Championship, Yorkshire are by far the most successful club having won the competition 32 times outright and sharing it on 1 other occasion. Lord's Cricket Ground situated in London is sometimes referred to as the "Mecca of Cricket". William Penny Brookes was prominent in organising the format for the modern Olympic Games. In 1994, then President of the IOC, Juan Antonio Samaranch, laid a wreath on Brooke's grave, and said, "I came to pay homage and tribute to Dr Brookes, who really was the founder of the modern Olympic Games". London has hosted the Summer Olympic Games three times, in 1908, 1948, and 2012. England competes in the Commonwealth Games, held every four years. Sport England is the governing body responsible for distributing funds and providing strategic guidance for sporting activity in England. Rugby union originated in Rugby School, Warwickshire in the early 19th century. The England rugby union team won the 2003 Rugby World Cup, with Jonny Wilkinson scoring the winning drop goal in the last minute of extra time against Australia. England was one of the host nations of the competition in the 1991 Rugby World Cup and also hosted the 2015 Rugby World Cup. The top level of club participation is the English Premiership. Leicester Tigers, London Wasps, Bath Rugby and Northampton Saints have had success in the Europe-wide Heineken Cup. Rugby league was born in Huddersfield in 1895. Since 2008, the England national rugby league team has been a full test nation in lieu of the Great Britain national rugby league team, which won three World Cups but is now retired. Club sides play in Super League, the present-day embodiment of the Rugby Football League Championship. Rugby League is most popular among towns in the northern English counties of Lancashire, Yorkshire and Cumbria. The vast majority of English clubs in Super League are based in the north of England. Some of the most successful clubs include Wigan Warriors, Hull F.C. St. Helens, Leeds Rhinos and Huddersfield Giants; the former three have all won the World Club Challenge previously. Golf has been prominent in England; due in part to its cultural and geographical ties to Scotland, the home of Golf. There are both professional tours for men and women, in two main tours: the PGA and the European Tour. England has produced grand slam winners: Cyril Walker, Tony Jacklin, Nick Faldo, and Justin Rose in the men's and Laura Davies, Alison Nicholas, and Karen Stupples in the women's. The world's oldest golf tournament, and golf's first major is The Open Championship, played both in England and Scotland. The biennial golf competition, the Ryder Cup, is named after English businessman Samuel Ryder who sponsored the event and donated the trophy. Nick Faldo is the most successful Ryder Cup player ever, having won the most points (25) of any player on either the European or US teams. Tennis was created in Birmingham in the late 19th century, and the Wimbledon Championships is the oldest tennis tournament in the world, and widely considered the most prestigious. Wimbledon is a tournament that has a major place in the British cultural calendar. Fred Perry was the last Englishman to win Wimbledon in 1936. He was the first player to win all four Grand Slam singles titles and helped lead the Great Britain team to four Davis Cup wins. English women who have won Wimbledon include: Ann Haydon Jones in 1969 and Virginia Wade in 1977. In boxing, under the Marquess of Queensberry Rules, England has produced many world champions across the weight divisions internationally recognised by the governing bodies. World champions include Bob Fitzsimmons, Ted "Kid" Lewis, Randolph Turpin, Nigel Benn, Chris Eubank, Frank Bruno, Lennox Lewis, Ricky Hatton, Naseem Hamed, Amir Khan, Carl Froch, and David Haye. In women's boxing, Nicola Adams became the world's first woman to win an Olympic boxing Gold medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Originating in 17th and 18th-century England, the thoroughbred is a horse breed best known for its use in horse racing. The National Hunt horse race the Grand National, is held annually at Aintree Racecourse in early April. It is the most watched horse race in the UK, attracting casual observers, and three-time winner Red Rum is the most successful racehorse in the event's history. Red Rum is also the best-known racehorse in the country. The 1950 British Grand Prix at Silverstone was the first race in the newly created Formula One World Championship. Since then, England has produced some of the greatest drivers in the sport, including; John Surtees, Stirling Moss, Graham Hill (only driver to have won the Triple Crown), Nigel Mansell (only man to hold F1 and IndyCar titles at the same time), Damon Hill, Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button. It has manufactured some of the most technically advanced racing cars, and many of today's racing companies choose England as their base of operations for its engineering knowledge and organisation. McLaren Automotive, Williams F1, Team Lotus, Honda, Brawn GP, Benetton, Renault, and Red Bull Racing are all, or have been, located in the south of England. England also has a rich heritage in Grand Prix motorcycle racing, the premier championship of motorcycle road racing, and produced several World Champions across all the various class of motorcycle: Mike Hailwood, John Surtees, Phil Read, Geoff Duke, and Barry Sheene. Darts is a widely popular sport in England; a professional competitive sport, darts is a traditional pub game. The sport is governed by the World Darts Federation, one of its member organisations is the BDO, which annually stages the Lakeside World Professional Championship, the other being the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC), which runs its own world championship at Alexandra Palace in London. Phil Taylor is widely regarded as the best darts player of all time, having won 187 professional tournaments, and a record 16 World Championships. Trina Gulliver is the ten-time Women's World Professional Darts Champion of the British Darts Organisation. Another popular sport commonly associated with pub games is Snooker, and England has produced several world champions, including Steve Davis and Ronnie O'Sullivan. The English are keen sailors and enjoy competitive sailing; founding and winning some of the world's most famous and respected international competitive tournaments across the various race formats, including the match race, a regatta, and the America's Cup. England has produced some of the world's greatest sailors, including Francis Chichester, Herbert Hasler, John Ridgway, Robin Knox-Johnston, Ellen MacArthur, Mike Golding, Paul Goodison, and the most successful Olympic sailor ever Ben Ainslie. The St George's Cross has been the national flag of England since the 13th century. Originally the flag was used by the maritime Republic of Genoa. The English monarch paid a tribute to the Doge of Genoa from 1190 onwards so that English ships could fly the flag as a means of protection when entering the Mediterranean. A red cross was a symbol for many Crusaders in the 12th and 13th centuries. It became associated with Saint George, along with countries and cities, which claimed him as their patron saint and used his cross as a banner. Since 1606 the St George's Cross has formed part of the design of the Union Flag, a Pan-British flag designed by King James I. During the English Civil War and Interregnum, the New Model Army's standards and the Commonwealth's Great Seal both incorporated the flag of Saint George. There are numerous other symbols and symbolic artefacts, both official and unofficial, including the Tudor rose, the nation's floral emblem, and the Three Lions featured on the Royal Arms of England. The Tudor rose was adopted as a national emblem of England around the time of the Wars of the Roses as a symbol of peace. It is a syncretic symbol in that it merged the white rose of the Yorkists and the red rose of the Lancastrians—cadet branches of the Plantagenets who went to war over control of the nation. It is also known as the Rose of England. The oak tree is a symbol of England, representing strength and endurance. The Royal Oak symbol and Oak Apple Day commemorate the escape of King Charles II from the grasp of the parliamentarians after his father's execution: he hid in an oak tree to avoid detection before safely reaching exile. The Royal Arms of England, a national coat of arms featuring three lions, originated with its adoption by Richard the Lionheart in 1198. It is blazoned as gules, three lions passant guardant or and it provides one of the most prominent symbols of England; it is similar to the traditional arms of Normandy. England does not have an official designated national anthem, as the United Kingdom as a whole has God Save the Queen. However, the following are often considered unofficial English national anthems: Jerusalem, Land of Hope and Glory (used for England during the 2002 Commonwealth Games), and I Vow to Thee, My Country. England's National Day is 23 April which is St George's Day: St George is the patron saint of England. Outline of England, Outline of the United Kingdom English Heritage – National body protecting English heritage, Natural England – Wildlife and the natural world of England, VisitEngland – English Tourist Board, BBC News – England – News items from BBC News relating to England, GOV.UK – The Official Website of the British Government The Feldberg Lake District Nature Park () lies in the southeast of the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in the district of Mecklenburgische Seenplatte. A large part of the nature park lies within the municipality of the same name, the Feldberger Seenlandschaft ("Feldberg Lake District"). In addition the municipalities of Wokuhl-Dabelow, Grünow, Carpin, Godendorf and parts of the towns of Woldegk and Neustrelitz fall within the nature park. The western end of the park is also a part of Müritz National Park. The Feldberg Lake District Nature Park is characterised by its large lakes, the (Breiter Luzin, the Carwitzer See, the Schmaler Luzin, the Großer Fürstenseer See and Feldberger Haussee), the forests with their many plants and animals, including rare species, and also by its cultural landscape. Features of the park are its kettle bogs and the oldest beech woods in Germany in the nature reserve of Heilige Hallen. The landscape was shaped by the ice age. In the north of the park there is a region of terminal moraines; in the south is wooded sandur terrain. The central area with the Feldberg lakes is part of the terminal moraine of the Pomeranian Stage of the Weichselian glaciation. Here the topographic height differences are greater than is normal for North Germany. The highest hill is the Vogelkirsche (near the village of Schlicht north of the Breiter Luzin) with a height of 166.2 metres above sea level (NHN). The Breiter Luzin is the second deepest lake in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, with a depth of up to 58.3 metres. The state border with Brandenburg runs through the lakes of Krüselinsee and Großer Mechowsee and the southern part of the Carwitzer See. Many rare animals live here, such as the otter, which is the heraldic animal of the park, the black stork, the lesser spotted eagle, osprey and white-tailed eagle, the swollen river mussel and the whitefish. There are over 1,000 wild flower species in this nature park. The park has an area of c. 340 km, of which c. 38% is woodland, c. 11% is lakes and rivers, c. 45% is used for agriculture and c. 6% by infrastructure and housing. There are 14 nature reserves in the park, covering a total area of 3,714 hectares, which is 10.3 percent of the nature park’s area: Comthureyer Berg (13 ha), Conower Werder (54 ha), Feldberger Hütte (481 ha), Hauptmannsberg (44 ha), Heilige Hallen (68 ha), Hinrichshagen (1124 ha), Hullerbusch und Schmaler Luzin (345 ha), Keetzseen (329 ha), Krüselinsee und Mechowseen (481 ha), Kulowseen (199 ha), Sandugkensee (67 ha), Schlavenkensee (593 ha), Sprockfitz (27 ha), Zahrensee bei Dabelow (17 ha) List of nature parks in Germany Peter Wernicke et al.: Zwischen Havel und Strom. Die Naturparks Feldberger Seenlandschaft und Uckermärkische Seen. Herausgegeben vom Förderverein Feldberg-Uckermärkische Seenlandschaft. Thomas-Verlag, Leipzig 1998, 97 S.,, Klaus Borrmann: Lüttenhäger Oberförster. Leben und Wirken für die Wälder der Feldberger Seenlandschaft 1810 - 2001. Waldmuseum Lütt Holthus, Lüttenhagen 2001, 134 S. Verordnung zur Festsetzung des Naturparks "Feldberger Seenlandschaft" vom 13. Februar 1997, Naturpark-Seite des Landesamt für Umwelt, Naturschutz und Geologie M-V

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The history of the United States Dollar refers to more than 240 years since the Continental Congress of the United States authorized the issuance of Continental Currency in 1775. On April 2, 1792, the United States Congress created the United States dollar as the country's standard unit of money. The term dollar had already been in common usage since the colonial period when it referred to eight-real coin (Spanish dollar) used by the Spanish throughout New Spain. After the American Revolutionary War began in 1775, the Continental Congress began issuing paper money known as Continental currency, or Continentals. Continental currency was denominated in dollars from $ to $80, including many odd denominations in between. During the Revolution, Congress issued $241,552,780 in Continental currency. By the end of 1778, this Continental currency retained only between to of its original face value. By 1780, Continental bills – or Continentals – were worth just of their face value. Congress tried to reform the currency by removing the old bills from circulation and issuing new ones, but this met with little to no success. By May 1781, Continentals had become so worthless they ceased to circulate as money. Benjamin Franklin noted that the depreciation of the currency had, in effect, acted as a tax to pay for the war. In the 1790s, after the ratification of the United States Constitution, Continentals could be exchanged for treasury bonds at 1% of face value. Congress appointed Robert Morris to be Superintendent of Finance of the United States following the collapse of Continental currency. In 1782, Morris advocated the creation of the first financial institution chartered by the United States. The Bank of North America was funded in part by bullion coin, loaned to the United States by France. Morris helped finance the final stages of the war by issuing promissory notes in his name, backed by his own money. The Bank of North America also issued notes convertible into gold or silver. On July 6, 1785, the Continental Congress of the United States authorized the issuance of a new currency, the US dollar. However, runaway inflation and the collapse of the Continental currency prompted delegates at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 to include the gold and silver clause in the United States Constitution, preventing individual States from issuing their own bills of credit. Article One states they were prohibited to "make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts." Some people use this clause to argue that federal paper money is unconstitutional. The United States Mint was created by Congress following the passing of the Coinage Act of 1792. It was primarily tasked with producing and circulating coinage. The first Mint building was in Philadelphia, then the capital of the United States. The Mint was originally placed within the Department of State, until the Coinage Act of 1873 when it became part of the Department of the Treasury (in 1981 it was placed under the auspices of the Treasurer of the United States). The Mint had the authority to convert any precious metals into standard coinage for anyone's account with no seigniorage charge beyond refining costs. After the creation of the U.S. dollar, the fledgling American administration of President George Washington turned its attention to monetary issues again in the early 1790s, under the leadership of Alexander Hamilton, the Secretary of the Treasury at the time. Congress acted on Hamilton's recommendations, with the Coinage Act of 1792 that established the dollar as the basic unit of account for the United States. The word dollar is derived from Low Saxon cognate of the High German Thaler. The most commonly circulated and readily available currency, used by common Americans, at this time, was the Spanish peso, also known as the "Spanish milled dollar", which was valued for its high silver content. In the early 19th century, the intrinsic value of gold coins rose relative to their nominal equivalent in silver coins, resulting in the removal from commerce of nearly all gold coins, and their subsequent private melting. Therefore, in the Coinage Act of 1834, the 15:1 ratio of silver to gold was changed to a 16:1 ratio by reducing the weight of the nation's gold coinage. This created a new U.S. dollar that was backed by 1.50 grams (23.22 grains) of gold. However, the previous dollar had been represented by 1.60 g (24.75 grains) of gold. The result of this revaluation, which was the first devaluation of the U.S. dollar, was that the value in gold of the dollar was reduced by 6%. Moreover, for a time, both gold and silver coins were useful in commerce. In 1853, the weights of U.S. silver coins (except the dollar itself, which was rarely used) were reduced. This had the effect of placing the nation effectively (although not officially) on the gold standard. The retained weight in the dollar coin was a nod to bimetallism, although it had the effect of further driving the silver dollar coin from commerce. Foreign coins, including the Spanish dollar, were also, widely used, as legal tender, until 1857. With the enactment of the National Banking Act of 1863during the American Civil Warand its later versions that taxed states' bonds and currency out of existence, the dollar became the sole currency of the United States and remains so today. During the 19th century the dollar was less accepted around the world than the British pound. Nellie Bly carried Bank of England notes on her 1889–1890 trip around the world in 72 days; she also brought some dollars, Bly wrote, "to use at different ports as a test to see if American money was known outside of America". Traveling east from New York, she did not see American money until she found $20 gold pieces used as jewelry in Colombo; there Bly found that as currency dollars were accepted at a 60% discount. In 1878, the Bland–Allison Act was enacted to provide for freer coinage of silver. This act required the government to purchase between $2 million and $4 million worth of silver bullion each month at market prices and to coin it into silver dollars. This was, in effect, a subsidy for politically influential silver producers. The discovery of large silver deposits in the Western United States in the late 19th century created a political controversy. Due to the large influx of silver, the intrinsic value of the silver in the nation's coinage dropped precipitously. On one side were agrarian interests such as the Greenback Party that wanted to retain the bimetallic standard in order to inflate the dollar, which would allow farmers to more easily repay their debts. On the other side were Eastern banking and commercial interests, who advocated sound money and a switch to the gold standard. This issue split the Democratic Party in 1896. It led to the famous Cross of Gold speech given by William Jennings Bryan, and may have inspired many of the themes in The Wizard of Oz. Despite the controversy, the status of silver was slowly diminished through a series of legislative changes from 1873 to 1900, when a gold standard was formally adopted. The gold standard survived, with several modifications, until 1971. Note: all references to 'ounce' in this section are to the troy ounce as used for precious metals, rather than to the (smaller) avoirdupois ounce used in the United States customary units system for other goods. Bimetallism persisted until March 14, 1900, with the passage of the Gold Standard Act, which provided that: ... the dollar consisting of twenty-five and eight-tenths grains of gold nine-tenths fine, as established by section thirty-five hundred and eleven of the Revised Statutes of the United States, shall be the standard unit of value, and all forms of money issued or coined by the United States shall be maintained at a parity of value with this standard ... Thus the United States moved to a gold standard, making both gold and silver the legal- tender coinage of the United States, and guaranteed the dollar as convertible to 25.8 grains (1.672 grams, 0.05375 troy ounces) of gold, or a little over $18.60 per ounce. The gold standard was suspended twice during World War I, once fully and then for foreign exchange. At the onset of the war, U.S. corporations had large debts payable to European entities who began liquidating their debts in gold. With debts to Europe falling due, the dollar to (British) pound sterling exchange rate reached as high as $6.75:£1, far above the nominal (gold) parity of 4.8665:1. This caused large gold outflows until July 31, 1914, when the New York Stock Exchange closed and the gold standard was temporarily suspended. In order to defend the exchange rate of the dollar, the US Treasury Department authorized state and nationally chartered banks to issue emergency currency under the Aldrich-Vreeland Act, and the newly created Federal Reserve organized a fund to assure debts to foreign creditors. These efforts were largely successful, and the Aldrich- Vreeland notes were retired starting in November and the gold standard was restored when the New York Stock Exchange re-opened in December 1914. For as long as the United States remained neutral in the war, it remained the only country to maintain its gold standard, doing so without restriction on import or export of gold from 1915 to 1917. When the United States became a belligerent in the war, President Wilson banned gold export, thereby suspending the gold standard for foreign exchange. After the war, European countries slowly returned to their gold standards, though in somewhat altered form. During the Great Depression, every major currency abandoned the gold standard. Among the earliest, the Bank of England abandoned the gold standard in 1931 as speculators demanded gold in exchange for currency notes or in settlement of debts, threatening the solvency of the British monetary system. This pattern repeated throughout Europe and North America. In the United States, the Federal Reserve was forced to raise interest rates in order to protect the gold standard for the US dollar, worsening already severe domestic economic pressures. After bank runs became more pronounced in early 1933, people began to hoard gold coins as distrust for banks led to distrust for paper money, worsening deflation and depleting gold reserves. In early 1933, in order to fight severe deflation, Congress and President Roosevelt implemented a series of Acts of Congress and Executive Orders which suspended the gold standard except for foreign exchange, revoked gold as universal legal tender for debts, and banned private ownership of significant amounts of gold coin. These acts included Executive Order 6073, the Emergency Banking Act, Executive Order 6102, Executive Order 6111, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, 1933 Banking Act, House Joint Resolution 192, and later the Gold Reserve Act. These actions were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in the "Gold Clause Cases" in 1935. For foreign exchange purposes, the set $20.67 per ounce value of the dollar was lifted, allowing the dollar to float freely in foreign exchange markets with no set value in gold. This was terminated after one year. Roosevelt attempted first to restabilize falling prices with the Agricultural Adjustment Act; however, this did not prove popular, so instead the next politically popular option was to devalue the dollar on foreign exchange markets. Under the Gold Reserve Act the price of gold was fixed at $35 per ounce, making the dollar more attractive for foreign buyers (and making foreign currencies more expensive for those holding dollars). This change led to more conversion of gold into dollars, allowing the U.S. to effectively corner the world gold market. The suspension of the gold standard was considered temporary by many in markets and in the government at the time, but restoring the standard was considered a low priority to dealing with other issues. Under the post-World War II Bretton Woods system, all other currencies were valued in terms of U.S. dollars and were thus indirectly linked to the gold standard. The need for the U.S. government to maintain both a $35 per troy ounce (112.53cents/gram) market price of gold and also the conversion to foreign currencies caused economic and trade pressures. By the early 1960s, compensation for these pressures started to become too complicated to manage. In March 1968, the effort to control the private market price of gold was abandoned. A two-tier system began. In this system all central-bank transactions in gold were insulated from the free market price. Central banks would trade gold among themselves at $35/ounce (112.53¢/g) but would not trade with the private market. The private market could trade at the equilibrium market price and there would be no official intervention. The price immediately jumped to $43/ounce (138.25¢/g). The price of gold touched briefly back at $35/ounce (112.53¢/g) near the end of 1969 before beginning a steady price increase. This gold price increase turned steep through 1972 and hit a high that year of over $70/ounce (2.25$/g). By that time floating exchange rates had also begun to emerge, which indicated the de facto dissolution of the Bretton Woods system. The two-tier system was abandoned in November 1973. By then the price of gold had reached $100/ounce (3.22$/g). In the early 1970s, inflation caused by rising prices for imported commodities, especially oil, and spending on the Vietnam War that was not counteracted by cuts in other government expenditures, combined with a trade deficit to create a situation in which the dollar was worth less than the gold used to back it. In 1971, President Richard Nixon unilaterally ordered the cancellation of the direct convertibility of the United States dollar to gold. This act was known as the Nixon Shock. The sudden jump in the price of gold after the demise of the Bretton Woods accords was a result of the significant prior debasement of the US dollar due to excessive inflation of the monetary supply via central bank (Federal Reserve) coordinated fractional reserve banking under the Bretton Woods partial gold standard. In the absence of an international mechanism tying the dollar to gold via fixed exchange rates, the dollar became a pure fiat currency and as such fell to its free market exchange price versus gold. Consequently, the price of gold rose from $35/ounce (1.125 $/g) in 1969 to almost $500 (29 $/g) in 1980. Shortly after the dollar price of gold started its ascent in the early 1970s, the price of other commodities such as oil also began to rise. While commodity prices became more volatile, the average price of oil as expressed in gold (or vice versa) remained much the same in the 1990s as it had been in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Fearing the emergence of a gold-based economy separate from central banking, and with the corresponding threat of the collapse of the U.S. dollar, the U.S. government approved several changes to the trading on the COMEX. These changes resulted in a steep decline in the traded price of precious metals from the early 1980s onward. United States silver certificates were a type of representative money printed from 1878 to 1964 in the United States as part of its circulation of paper currency. They were produced in response to silver agitation by citizens who were angered by the Fourth Coinage Act, and were used alongside the gold-based dollar notes. The silver certificates were initially redeemable in the same face value of silver dollar coins, and later in raw silver bullion. Since the early 1920s, silver certificates were issued in $1, $5, and $10 denominations. In the 1928 series, only $1 silver certificates were produced. Fives and tens of this time were mainly Federal Reserve notes, which were backed by and redeemable in gold. In 1933, Congress passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act which included a clause allowing for the pumping of silver into the market to replace the gold. A new 1933 series of $10 silver certificate was printed and released, but not many were released into circulation. In 1934, a law was passed in Congress that changed the obligation on Silver Certificates so as to denote the current location of the silver. The last government regulation regarding the silver standard was in 1963, when President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 11110, delegating to the Treasury Secretary his authority to authorize the US Department of Treasury to issue silver certificates for any silver held by the U.S. Government in excess of that not already backing issued certificates. This was necessary because of Kennedy's signing of Public Law 88-36 on the same day, one of the effects of which was a repeal of the Silver Purchase Act of 1934-this act had authorized the Treasury Secretary to purchase silver bullion and issue silver certificates against it. Silver certificates continued to be issued for a short period of time in the $1 denomination, but were discontinued in late 1963. World War II devastated European and Asian economies while leaving the United States' economy relatively unharmed. As European governments exhausted their gold reserves and borrowed to pay the United States for war material, the United States accumulated large gold reserves. This combination gave the United States significant political and economic power following the war. The Bretton Woods agreement codified this economic dominance of the dollar after the war. In 1944, Allied nations sought to create an international monetary order that sustained the global economy and prevented the economic malaise that followed the First World War. The Bretton Woods agreement laid the foundations for an international monetary order that created rules and expectations for the international economic system. It created the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the predecessor of the World Bank, and an international monetary system based on fixed exchange rates. It valued the dollar at $35 per ounce of gold and the remaining signatories pegged their respective currency relative to the dollar, leading some economists to argue that Bretton Woods "dethroned" gold as the default asset. While Bretton Woods institutionalized the dollar's importance following the war, Europe and Asia faced dollar shortages. The international community needed dollars to finance imports from the United States to rebuild what was lost in the war. In 1948 Congress passed the European Recovery Program - generally known as the Marshall Plan – giving dollars to European countries to purchase imports needed to rebuild their economies. The plan helped European countries by providing them dollars to purchase the imports needed to produce exports, eventually allowing the countries to export enough of their own goods to obtain the dollars necessary to sustain their economies without reliance on any Marshall-like plan. At the same time, Joseph Dodge worked with Japanese officials and Congress to pass the Dodge Plan in 1949, which worked similarly to the Marshall Plan, but for Japan rather than Europe. The Marshall and Dodge plans' successes have brought new challenges to the U.S. dollar. In 1959, dollars in circulation around the world exceeded U.S. gold reserves, which became vulnerable to the equivalent of a bank run. In 1960, Yale economist Robert Triffin described the problem to Congress: either the dollar was not freely available and other countries could not afford to import American goods, or the dollar was freely available but confidence that the dollar could be converted to gold would wane. Eventually, the United States chose to devalue the dollar. During the early 1960s American officials largely prevented the conversion of dollars to gold with a series of "gentlemanly" agreements and other policies – which included the London Gold Pool - but these actions were not sustainable; the danger of a run on U.S. gold reserves was too high. With Nixon's election in 1968, American officials became increasingly concerned until Nixon finally issued Executive Order 11615 in August 1971, ending the direct convertibility of dollars to gold. He said, "We must protect the position of the American dollar as pillar of monetary stability around the world ... I am determined that the American dollar must never again be hostage in the hands of the international speculators." This became known as the Nixon Shock and marked the dollar's transition from the gold standard to a fiat currency. The United States enjoys some benefits because the dollar serves as the international reserve currency. The United States is less likely to face a balance of payments crisis. A United States Note, also known as a Legal Tender Note, was a type of paper money that was issued from 1862 to 1971 in the U.S. Having been current for over 100 years, they were issued for longer than any other form of U.S. paper money. They were known popularly as "greenbacks" in their day, a name inherited from the Demand Notes that they replaced in 1862. While issuance of United States Notes ended in January 1971, existing United States Notes are still valid currency in the United States today, though rarely seen in circulation. Both United States Notes and Federal Reserve Notes are parts of the national currency of the United States, and both have been legal tender since the gold recall of 1933. Both have been used in circulation as money in the same way. However, the issuing authority for them came from different statutes. United States Notes were created as fiat currency, in that the government has never categorically guaranteed to redeem them for precious metal - even though at times, such as after the specie resumption of 1879, federal officials were authorized to do so if requested. The difference between a United States Note and a Federal Reserve Note is that a United States Note represented a "bill of credit" and was inserted by the Treasury directly into circulation free of interest. Federal Reserve Notes are backed by debt purchased by the Federal Reserve, and thus generate seigniorage for the Federal Reserve System, which serves as a lending intermediary between the Treasury and the public. Today, like the currency of most nations, the dollar is fiat money, unbacked by any physical asset. A holder of a federal reserve note has no right to demand an asset such as gold or silver from the government in exchange for a note. Consequently, some proponents of the intrinsic theory of value believe that the near-zero marginal cost of production of the current fiat dollar detracts from its attractiveness as a medium of exchange and store of value because a fiat currency without a marginal cost of production is easier to debase via overproduction and the subsequent inflation of the money supply. In 1963, the words "PAYABLE TO THE BEARER ON DEMAND" were removed from all newly issued Federal Reserve notes. Then, in 1968, redemption of pre-1963 Federal Reserve notes for gold or silver officially ended. The Coinage Act of 1965 removed all silver from quarters and dimes, which were 90% silver prior to the act. However, there was a provision in the act allowing some coins to contain a 40% silver consistency, such as the Kennedy Half Dollar. Later, even this provision was removed, with the last circulating silver-content halves minted in 1969. All coins previously minted in silver for general circulation are now clad. During 1982, the composition of the cent was changed from copper to zinc with a thin copper coating. The content of the nickel has not changed since 1866 (except for 1942-1945 when silver and other metals were used to preserve nickel for war uses). Silver and gold coins are produced by the U.S. government, but only as non-circulating commemorative pieces or in sets for collectors. All circulating notes, issued from 1861 to present, will be honored by the government at face value as legal tender. This means that the federal government will accept old notes as payments for debts owed to the federal government (taxes and fees), or exchange old notes for new ones, but will not redeem notes for gold or silver, even if the note states that it may be thus redeemed. Some bills may have a premium to collectors. The only exception to this rule is the $10,000 gold certificate of Series 1900, a number of which were inadvertently released to the public because of a fire in 1935. This set is not considered to be "in circulation" and, in fact, is stolen property. However, the government canceled these banknotes and removed them from official records. Their value, relevant only to collectors, is approximately one thousand US dollars. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, there is $1.2 trillion in total US currency in worldwide circulation as of July 2013. The federal government began issuing paper currency during the American Civil War. As photographic technology of the day could not reproduce color, it was decided the back of the bills would be printed in a color other than black. Because the color green was seen as a symbol of stability, it was selected. These were known as "greenbacks" for their color and started a tradition of the United States' printing the back of its money in green. The author of that invention was chemist Christopher Der-Seropian. In contrast to the currency notes of many other countries, Federal Reserve notes of varying denominations are the same colors: predominantly black ink with green highlights on the front, and predominantly green ink on the back. Federal Reserve notes were printed in the same colors for most of the 20th century, although older bills called "silver certificates" had a blue seal and serial numbers on the front, and "United States notes" had a red seal and serial numbers on the front. In 1928, sizing of the bills was standardized (involving a 25% reduction in their current sizes, compared to the older, larger notes nicknamed "horse blankets"). The Secretary of the Treasury directed a reduction in paper currency from a inch by inch size to a inch by inch (6.31' x 2.69') size, which allowed the Treasury Department to produce 12 notes per inch by inch sheet of paper that previously would yield 8 notes at the old size. Modern U.S. currency, regardless of denomination, is 2.61 inches (66.3 mm) wide, 6.14 inches (156 mm) long, and 0.0043 inches (0.109 mm) thick. A single bill weighs about fifteen and a half grains (one gram) and costs approximately 4.2 cents for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to produce. Microprinting and security threads were introduced in the 1991 currency series. Another series started in 1996 with the $100 note, adding the following changes: A larger portrait, moved off-center to create more space to incorporate a watermark., The watermark to the right of the portrait depicting the same historical figure as the portrait. The watermark can be seen only when held up to the light (and had long been a standard feature of all other major currencies)., A security thread that will glow pink when exposed to ultraviolet light in a dark environment. The thread is in a unique position on each denomination., Color-shifting ink that changes from green to black when viewed from different angles. This feature appears in the numeral on the lower right-hand corner of the bill front., Microprinting in the numeral in the note's lower left-hand corner and on Benjamin Franklin's coat., Concentric fine-line printing in the background of the portrait and on the back of the note. This type of printing is difficult to copy well., The value of the currency written in 14pt Arial font on the back for those with sight disabilities., Other features for machine authentication and processing of the currency. Annual releases of the 1996 series followed. The $50 note followed on June 12, 1997, and introduced a large dark numeral with a light background on the back of the note to make it easier for people to identify the denomination. The $20 note in 1998 introduced a new machine-readable capability to assist scanning devices. The security thread glows green under ultraviolet light, and "USA TWENTY" and a flag are printed on the thread, while the numeral "20" is printed within the star field of the flag. The microprinting is in the lower left ornamentation of the portrait and in the lower left corner of the note front. , the $20 note was the most frequently counterfeited note in the United States. The new design of the $5 and $10 notes were released in 2000. May 13, 2003, The Treasury announced that it would introduce new colors into the $20 bill, the first U.S. currency since 1905 (not counting the 1934 gold certificates) to have colors other than green or black. The move was intended primarily to reduce counterfeiting, rather than to increase visual differentiation between denominations. The main colors of all denominations, including the new $20 and $50, remain green and black; the other colors are present only in subtle shades in secondary design elements. This contrasts with notes of the euro, Australian dollar, and most other currencies, where strong colours are used to distinguish each denomination from the other. The new $20 bills entered circulation October 9, 2003, the new $50 bills, September 28, 2004. The new $10 notes were introduced in 2006 and redesigned $5 bills began to circulate March 13, 2008. Each will have subtle elements of different colors, though will continue to be primarily green and black. The Treasury said it will update Federal Reserve notes every 7 to 10 years to keep up with counterfeiting technology. In addition, there have been rumors that future banknotes will use embedded RFID microchips as another anti- counterfeiting tool. The 2008 $5 bill contains significant new security updates. The obverse side of the bill includes patterned yellow printing that will cue digital image-processing software to prevent digital copying, watermarks, digital security thread, and extensive microprinting. The reverse side includes an oversized purple number 5 to provide easy differentiation from other denominations. On April 21, 2010, the U.S. Government announced a heavily redesigned $100 bill that featured bolder colors, color shifting ink, microlenses, and other features. It was scheduled to start circulating on February 10, 2011, but was delayed due to the discovery of sporadic creasing on the notes and "mashing" (when there is too much ink on the paper, the artwork on the notes are not clearly seen). The redesigned $100 bill was released October 8, 2013. It costs 11.8 cents to produce each bill. "The soundness of a nation's currency is essential to the soundness of its economy. And to uphold our currency's soundness, it must be recognized and honored as legal tender and counterfeiting must be effectively thwarted," Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said at a ceremony unveiling the $20 bill's new design. Prior to its current design, the most recent redesign of the U.S. dollar bill was in 1996. As a result of a 2008 decision in an accessibility lawsuit filed by the American Council of the Blind, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing is planning to implement a raised tactile feature in the next redesign of each note, except the $1 and the current version of the $100 bill. It also plans larger, higher-contrast numerals, more color differences, and distribution of currency readers to assist the visually impaired during the transition period. In 2016, the Treasury announced a number of design changes to the $5, $10 and $20 bills; to be introduced in this next redesign. The redesigns include: The back of the $5 bill will be changed to showcase historical events at the pictured Lincoln Memorial by adding portraits of Marian Anderson (due to her famous performance there after being barred from Constitution Hall due to her race), Martin Luther King Jr.'s (due to his famous I Have A Dream speech), and Eleanor Roosevelt (who arranged Anderson's performance)., The back of the $10 bill will be changed to show a 1913 march for women's suffrage in the United States, plus portraits of Sojourner Truth, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton., On the $20 bill, Andrew Jackson will move to the back (reduced in size, alongside the White House) and Harriet Tubman will appear on the front. Continental currency, Coinage Act of 1792, Coinage Act of 1849, National Banking Act (1863), Coinage Act of 1864, Coinage Act of 1873, Criticism of the Federal Reserve, History of central banking in the United States, Nixon shock (1971), International use of the U.S. dollar Joint Economic Committee Study, November 1998 The United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, more than two years after World War I started. A ceasefire and Armistice was declared on November 11, 1918. Before entering the war, the U.S. had remained neutral, though it had been an important supplier to the United Kingdom, France, and the other Allied powers. The U.S. made its major contributions in terms of supplies, raw material, and money, starting in 1917. American soldiers under General of the Armies John Pershing, Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), arrived at the rate of 10,000 men a day on the Western Front in the summer of 1918. During the war the U.S. mobilized over 4 million military personnel and suffered 110,000 deaths, including around 45,000 who died due to the 1918 Spanish influenza outbreak (30,000 before they even reached France). The war saw a dramatic expansion of the United States government in an effort to harness the war effort and a significant increase in the size of the U.S. Armed Forces. After a relatively slow start in mobilizing the economy and labor force, by spring 1918, the nation was poised to play a role in the conflict. Under the leadership of President Woodrow Wilson, the war represented the climax of the Progressive Era as it sought to bring reform and democracy to the world, although there was substantial public opposition to U.S. entry into the war. The American entry into World War I came on April 6, 1917, after a year long effort by President Woodrow Wilson to get the United States into the war. Apart from an Anglophile element urging early support for the British, American public opinion sentiment for neutrality was particularly strong among Irish Americans, German Americans and Scandinavian Americans, as well as among church leaders and among women in general. On the other hand, even before World War I had broken out, American opinion had been more negative toward Germany than towards any other country in Europe. Over time, especially after reports of atrocities in Belgium in 1914 and following the sinking of the passenger liner RMS Lusitania in 1915, the American people increasingly came to see Germany as the aggressor. As U.S. President, it was Wilson who made the key policy decisions over foreign affairs: while the country was at peace, the domestic economy ran on a laissez-faire basis, with American banks making huge loans to Britain and France — funds that were in large part used to buy munitions, raw materials, and food from across the Atlantic. Until 1917, Wilson made minimal preparations for a land war and kept the United States Army on a small peacetime footing, despite increasing demands for enhanced preparedness. He did, however, expand the United States Navy. In 1917, with Russia experiencing political upheaval following widespread disillusionment there over the war, and with Britain and France low on credit, Germany appeared to have the upper hand in Europe, while the Ottoman Empire clung to its possessions in the Middle East. In the same year, Germany decided to resume unrestricted submarine warfare against any vessel approaching British waters; this attempt to starve Britain into surrender was balanced against the knowledge that it would almost certainly bring the United States into the war. Germany also made a secret offer to help Mexico regain territories lost in the Mexican–American War in an encoded telegram known as the Zimmermann Telegram, which was intercepted by British Intelligence. Publication of that communique outraged Americans just as German U-boats started sinking American merchant ships in the North Atlantic. Wilson then asked Congress for "a war to end all wars" that would "make the world safe for democracy", and Congress voted to declare war on Germany on April 6, 1917. On December 7, 1917, the U.S. declared war on Austria-Hungary. U.S. troops began arriving on the Western Front in large numbers in 1918. After the war began in 1914, the United States proclaimed a policy of neutrality despite president Woodrow Wilson's antipathies against Germany. Early in the war, the United States started to favor the British and their allies. President Wilson aimed to broker a peace and sent his top aide, Colonel House, on repeated missions to the two sides, but each remained so confident of victory that they ignored peace proposals. When the German U-boat U-20 sank the British liner on 7 May 1915 with 128 US citizens aboard, Wilson demanded an end to German attacks on passenger ships, and warned that the US would not tolerate unrestricted submarine warfare in violation of "American rights" and of "international obligations." Wilson's Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, resigned, believing that the President's protests against the German use of U-boat attacks conflicted with America's official commitment to neutrality. On the other hand, Wilson came under pressure from war hawks led by former president Theodore Roosevelt, who denounced German acts as "piracy", and from British delegations under Cecil Spring Rice and Sir Edward Grey. U.S. Public opinion reacted with outrage to the suspected German sabotage of Black Tom in Jersey City, New Jersey on 30 July 1916, and to the Kingsland explosion on 11 January 1917 in present-day Lyndhurst, New Jersey. Crucially, by the spring of 1917 President Wilson's official commitment to neutrality had finally unraveled. Wilson realized he needed to enter the war in order to shape the peace and implement his vision for a League of Nations at the Paris Peace Conference. American public opinion was divided, with most Americans until early 1917 largely of the opinion that the United States should stay out of the war. Opinion changed gradually, partly in response to German actions in Belgium and the Lusitania, partly as German Americans lost influence, and partly in response to Wilson's position that America had to play a role to make the world safe for democracy. In the general public, there was little if any support for entering the war on the side of Germany. The great majority of German Americans, as well as Scandinavian Americans, wanted the United States to remain neutral; however, at the outbreak of war, thousands of US citizens had tried to enlist in the German army. The Irish Catholic community, based in the large cities and often in control of the Democratic Party apparatus, was strongly hostile to helping Britain in any way, especially after the Easter uprising of 1916 in Ireland. Most of the Protestant church leaders in the United States, regardless of their theology, favored pacifistic solutions whereby the United States would broker a peace. Most of the leaders of the women's movement, typified by Jane Addams, likewise sought pacifistic solutions. The most prominent opponent of war was industrialist Henry Ford, who personally financed and led a peace ship to Europe to try to negotiate among the belligerents; no negotiations resulted. Britain had significant support among intellectuals and families with close ties to Britain. The most prominent leader was Samuel Insull of Chicago, a leading industrialist who had emigrated from England. Insull funded many propaganda efforts, and financed young Americans who wished to fight by joining the Canadian military. By 1915, Americans were paying much more attention to the war. The sinking of the Lusitania aroused furious denunciations of German brutality. By 1915, in Eastern cities a new "Preparedness" movement emerged. It argued that the United States needed to build up immediately strong naval and land forces for defensive purposes; an unspoken assumption was that America would fight sooner or later. The driving forces behind Preparedness were all Republicans, notably General Leonard Wood, ex-president Theodore Roosevelt, and former secretaries of war Elihu Root and Henry Stimson; they enlisted many of the nation's most prominent bankers, industrialists, lawyers and scions of prominent families. Indeed, there emerged an "Atlanticist" foreign policy establishment, a group of influential Americans drawn primarily from upper-class lawyers, bankers, academics, and politicians of the Northeast, committed to a strand of Anglophile internationalism. The Preparedness movement had what political scientists call a "realism" philosophy of world affairs—they believed that economic strength and military muscle were more decisive than idealistic crusades focused on causes like democracy and national self-determination. Emphasizing over and over the weak state of national defenses, they showed that the United States' 100,000-man Army, even augmented by the 112,000-strong National Guard, was outnumbered 20 to one by the German army; similarly in 1915, the armed forces of Great Britain and the British Empire, France, Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Ottoman Empire, Italy, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Belgium, Japan and Greece were all larger and more experienced than the United States military. They called for UMT or "universal military service" under which the 600,000 men who turned 18 every year would be required to spend six months in military training, and then be assigned to reserve units. The small regular army would primarily be a training agency. Public opinion, however, was not willing to go that far. Both the regular army and the Preparedness leaders had a low opinion of the National Guard, which it saw as politicized, provincial, poorly armed, ill trained, too inclined to idealistic crusading (as against Spain in 1898), and too lacking in understanding of world affairs. The National Guard on the other hand was securely rooted in state and local politics, with representation from a very broad cross section of the US political economy. The Guard was one of the nation's few institutions that (in some northern states) accepted black men on an equal footing with white men. The Democratic party saw the Preparedness movement as a threat. Roosevelt, Root and Wood were prospective Republican presidential candidates. More subtly, the Democrats were rooted in localism that appreciated the National Guard, and the voters were hostile to the rich and powerful in the first place. Working with the Democrats who controlled Congress, Wilson was able to sidetrack the Preparedness forces. Army and Navy leaders were forced to testify before Congress to the effect that the nation's military was in excellent shape. In reality, neither the US Army nor US Navy was in shape for war in terms of manpower, size, military hardware or experience. The Navy had fine ships but Wilson had been using them to threaten Mexico, and the fleet's readiness had suffered. The crews of the Texas and the New York, the two newest and largest battleships, had never fired a gun, and the morale of the sailors was low. The Army and Navy air forces were tiny in size. Despite the flood of new weapons systems unveiled in the war in Europe, the Army was paying scant attention. For example, it was making no studies of trench warfare, poison gas or tanks, and was unfamiliar with the rapid evolution of aerial warfare. The Democrats in Congress tried to cut the military budget in 1915. The Preparedness movement effectively exploited the surge of outrage over the "Lusitania" in May 1915, forcing the Democrats to promise some improvements to the military and naval forces. Wilson, less fearful of the Navy, embraced a long-term building program designed to make the fleet the equal of the British Royal Navy by the mid-1920s, although this would not come to pass until after World War II. "Realism" was at work here; the admirals were Mahanians and they therefore wanted a surface fleet of heavy battleships second to none—that is, equal to Great Britain. The facts of submarine warfare (which necessitated destroyers, not battleships) and the possibilities of imminent war with Germany (or with Britain, for that matter), were simply ignored. Wilson's decision touched off a firestorm. Secretary of War Lindley Garrison adopted many of the proposals of the Preparedness leaders, especially their emphasis on a large federal reserves and abandonment of the National Guard. Garrison's proposals not only outraged the provincial politicians of both parties, they also offended a strongly held belief shared by the liberal wing of the Progressive movement, that was, that warfare always had a hidden economic motivation. Specifically, they warned the chief warmongers were New York bankers (such as J. P. Morgan) with millions at risk, profiteering munition makers (such as Bethlehem Steel, which made armor, and DuPont, which made powder) and unspecified industrialists searching for global markets to control. Antiwar critics blasted them. These selfish special interests were too powerful, especially, Senator La Follette noted, in the conservative wing of the Republican Party. The only road to peace was disarmament in the eyes of many. Garrison's plan unleashed the fiercest battle in peacetime history over the relationship of military planning to national goals. In peacetime, War Department arsenals and Navy yards manufactured nearly all munitions that lacked civilian uses, including warships, artillery, naval guns, and shells. Items available on the civilian market, such food, horses, saddles, wagons, and uniforms were always purchased from civilian contractors. Peace leaders like Jane Addams of Hull House and David Starr Jordan of Stanford University redoubled their efforts, and now turned their voices against the President because he was "sowing the seeds of militarism, raising up a military and naval caste." Many ministers, professors, farm spokesmen and labor union leaders joined in, with powerful support from a band of four dozen southern Democrats in Congress who took control of the House Military Affairs Committee. Wilson, in deep trouble, took his cause to the people in a major speaking tour in early 1916, a warm-up for his reelection campaign that fall. Wilson seemed to have won over the middle classes, but had little impact on the largely ethnic working classes and the deeply isolationist farmers. Congress still refused to budge, so Wilson replaced Garrison as Secretary of War with Newton Baker, the Democratic mayor of Cleveland and an outspoken opponent of preparedness. The upshot was a compromise passed in May 1916, as the war raged on and Berlin was debating whether America was so weak it could be ignored. The Army was to double in size to 11,300 officers and 208,000 men, with no reserves, and a National Guard that would be enlarged in five years to 440,000 men. Summer camps on the Plattsburg model were authorized for new officers, and the government was given $20 million to build a nitrate plant of its own. Preparedness supporters were downcast, the antiwar people were jubilant. The United States would now be too weak to go to war. Colonel Robert L. Bullard privately complained that "Both sides [Britain and Germany] treat us with scorn and contempt; our fool, smug conceit of superiority has been exploded in our faces and deservedly.". The House gutted the naval plans as well, defeating a "big navy" plan by 189 to 183, and canceling the battleships. The battle of Jutland (May 31/June 1, 1916) saw the main German High Seas Fleet engage in a monumental yet inconclusive clash with the far stronger Grand Fleet of the Royal Navy. Arguing this battle proved the validity of Mahanian doctrine, the navalists took control in the Senate, broke the House coalition, and authorized a rapid three-year buildup of all classes of warships. A new weapons system, naval aviation, received $3.5 million, and the government was authorized to build its own armor-plate factory. The very weakness of American military power encouraged Germany to start its unrestricted submarine attacks in 1917. It knew this meant war with America, but it could discount the immediate risk because the US Army was negligible and the new warships would not be at sea until 1919 by which time the war would be over, Berlin thought, with Germany victorious. The notion that armaments led to war was turned on its head: refusal to arm in 1916 led to war in 1917. In January 1917, Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare in hopes of forcing Britain to begin peace talks. The German Foreign minister, Arthur Zimmermann invited revolution-torn Mexico to join the war as Germany's ally against the United States if the United States declared war on Germany in the Zimmermann Telegram. In return, the Germans would send Mexico money and help it recover the territories of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona that Mexico lost during the Mexican–American War 70 years earlier. British intelligence intercepted the telegram and passed the information on to Washington. Wilson released the Zimmerman note to the public and Americans saw it as a casus belli—a justification for war. At first, Wilson tried to maintain neutrality while fighting off the submarines by arming American merchant ships with guns powerful enough to sink German submarines on the surface (but useless when the U-boats were under water). After submarines sank seven US merchant ships, Wilson finally went to Congress calling for a declaration of war on Germany, which Congress voted on April 6, 1917. As a result of the Russian February Revolution in 1917, the Tsar abdicated and was replaced by a Russian Provisional Government. This helped overcome Wilson's reluctance to having the US fight alongside a country ruled by an absolutist monarch. Pleased by the Provisional Government's pro-war stance, the US accorded the new government diplomatic recognition on March 9, 1917. Although the United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, it did not initially declare war on the other Central Powers, a state of affairs that Woodrow Wilson described as an "embarrassing obstacle" in his State of the Union speech. Congress declared war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire on December 7, 1917, but never made declarations of war against the other Central Powers, Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire or the various co-belligerents allied with the Central Powers. Thus, the United States remained uninvolved in the military campaigns in central and eastern Europe, the Middle East, the Caucasus, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Pacific. The home front saw a systematic mobilization of the entire population and the entire economy to produce the soldiers, food supplies, munitions, and money needed to win the war. Although the United States entered the war in 1917, there had been very little planning, or even recognition of the problems that the British and other Allies had to solve on their home fronts. As a result, the level of confusion was high in the first 12 months, then efficiency took control. The war came in the midst of the Progressive Era, when efficiency and expertise were highly valued. Therefore, the federal government set up a multitude of temporary agencies with 500,000 to 1,000,000 new employees to bring together the expertise necessary to redirect the economy into the production of munitions and food necessary for the war, as well as for propaganda purposes. The United States Food Administration under Herbert Hoover launched a massive campaign to teach Americans to economize on their food budgets and grow victory gardens in their backyards, where crops were produced for US soldiers. It managed the nation's food distribution and prices. In 1917 the government was unprepared for the enormous economic and financial strains of the war. Washington hurriedly took direct control of the economy. The total cost of the war came to $33 billion current dollars, which was 42 times as large as all Treasury receipts in 1916. A constitutional amendment legitimize income tax in 1913; its original very low levels were dramatically increased, especially at the demand of the Southern progressive elements. North Carolina Congressman Claude Kitchin, chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee argued that since Eastern businessman had been leaders in calling for war, they should pay for it. In an era when most workers earned under $1000 a year, the basic exemption was $2,000 for a family. Above that level taxes began at the 2 percent rate in 1917, jumping to 12 percent in 1918. On top of that there were surcharges of one percent for incomes above $5,000 to 65 percent for incomes above $1,000,000. As a result, the richest 22 percent of American taxpayers paid 96 percent of individual income taxes. Businesses faced a series of new taxes, especially on "excess profits" ranging from 20 percent to 80 percent on profits above pre-war levels. There were also excise taxes that everyone paid who purchased an automobile, jewelry, camera, or a motorboat. The greatest source of revenue came from war bonds, which were effectively merchandised to the masses through an elaborate innovative campaign to reach average Americans. Movie stars and other celebrities, supported by millions of posters, and an army of Four-Minute Men speakers explained the importance of buying bonds. In the third Liberty Loan campaign of 1918, more than half of all families subscribed. In total, $21 billion in bonds were sold with interest from 3.5 to 4.7 percent. The new Federal Reserve system encouraged banks to loan families money to buy bonds. All the bonds were redeemed, with interest, after the war. Before the United States entered the war, New York banks had loaned heavily to the British. After the U.S. entered in April 1917, the Treasury made $10 billion in long-term loans to Britain, France and the other allies, with the expectation the loans would be repaid after the war. Indeed, the United States insisted on repayment, which by the 1950s eventually was achieved by every country except Russia. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) and affiliated trade unions were strong supporters of the war effort. Fear of disruptions to war production by labor radicals provided the AFL political leverage to gain recognition and mediation of labor disputes, often in favor of improvements for workers. They resisted strikes in favor of arbitration and wartime policy, and wages soared as near- full employment was reached at the height of the war. The AFL unions strongly encouraged young men to enlist in the military, and fiercely opposed efforts to reduce recruiting and slow war production by pacifists, the anti-war Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and radical socialists. To keep factories running smoothly, Wilson established the National War Labor Board in 1918, which forced management to negotiate with existing unions. Wilson also appointed AFL president Samuel Gompers to the powerful Council of National Defense, where he set up the War Committee on Labor. After initially resisting taking a stance, the IWW became actively anti-war, engaging in strikes and speeches and suffering both legal and illegal suppression by federal and local governments as well as pro-war vigilantes. The IWW was branded as anarchic, socialist, unpatriotic, alien and funded by German gold, and violent attacks on members and offices would continue into the 1920s. World War I saw women taking traditionally men's jobs in large numbers for the first time in American history. Many women worked on the assembly lines of factories, producing trucks and munitions, while department stores employed African American women as elevator operators and cafeteria waitresses for the first time. The Food Administration helped housewives prepare more nutritious meals with less waste and with optimum use of the foods available. Most important, the morale of the women remained high, as millions joined the Red Cross as volunteers to help soldiers and their families, and with rare exceptions, women did not protest the draft. The Department of Labor created a Women in Industry group, headed by prominent labor researcher and social scientist Mary van Kleeck. This group helped develop standards for women who were working in industries connected to the war alongside the War Labor Policies Board, of which van Kleeck was also a member. After the war, the Women in Industry Service group developed into the U.S. Women's Bureau, headed by Mary Anderson. Crucial to US participation was the sweeping domestic propaganda campaign. In order to achieve this, President Wilson created the Committee on Public Information through Executive Order 2594 on April 13, 1917, which was the first state bureau in the United States that's main focus was on propaganda. The man charged by President Wilson with organizing and leading the CPI was George Creel, A once relentless journalist and political campaign organizer who would search without mercy for any bit of information that would paint a bad picture on his opponents. Creel went about his task with boundless energy. He was able to create an intricate, unprecedented propaganda system that plucked and instilled an influence on almost all phases of normal American life. In the press—as well as through photographs, movies, public meetings, and rallies—the CPI was able to douse the public with Propaganda that brought on American patriotism whilst creating an Anti-German image into the young populous, further quieting the voice of the pro-neutrality supporters. It also took control of market regarding the dissemination of war-related information on the American home front, which in turn promoted a system of voluntary censorship in the country's newspapers and magazines while simultaneously policing these same media outlets for seditious content or Anti-American support. The campaign consisted of tens of thousands of government-selected community leaders giving brief carefully scripted pro-war speeches at thousands of public gatherings. Along with other branches of government and private vigilante groups like the American Protective League, it also included the general repression and harassment of people either opposed to American entry into the war or of German heritage. Rumors about a German-induced attempt to start uprising among Black Americans caused a wave of lynchings to occur in the Southern United States. Other forms of propaganda included newsreels, photos, large-print posters (designed by several well-known illustrators of the day, including Louis D. Fancher and Henry Reuterdahl), magazine and newspaper articles, and billboards. At the end of the war in 1918, after the Armistice was signed, the CPI was disbanded, yet many of the tactics used by the CPI are still practice and used by governments today. The nation placed a great importance on the role of children, teaching them patriotism and national service and asking them to encourage war support and educate the public about the importance of the war. The Boy Scouts of America helped distribute war pamphlets, helped sell war bonds, and helped to drive nationalism and support for the war. As late as 1917, the United States maintained only a small army, one which was in fact smaller than thirteen of the nations and empires already active in the war. After the passage of the Selective Service Act in 1917, it drafted 4 million men into military service. By the summer of 1918, about 2 million US soldiers had arrived in France, about half of whom eventually saw front-line service; by the Armistice of November 11 approximately 10,000 fresh soldiers were arriving in France daily. In 1917, Congress gave US citizenship to Puerto Ricans when they were drafted to participate in World War I, as part of the Jones Act. In the end, Germany miscalculated the United States' influence on the outcome of the conflict, believing it would be many more months before US troops would arrive and overestimating the effectiveness of U-boats in slowing the American buildup. Beginning with the Battle of Saint-Mihiel, the first major battle involving the American Expeditionary Forces, the leaders of the United States war efforts were General of the Armies John J. Pershing, Navy Admiral William Sims, and Chief of Air Service Mason Patrick. The United States Navy sent a battleship group to Scapa Flow to join with the British Grand Fleet, destroyers to Queenstown, Ireland and submarines to help guard convoys. Several regiments of Marines were also dispatched to France. The British and French wanted US units to be used to reinforce their troops already on the battle lines and not to waste scarce shipping on bringing over supplies. The US rejected the first proposition and accepted the second. General John J. Pershing, American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) commander, refused to break up US units to serve as mere reinforcements for British Empire and French units. As an exception, he did allow African-American combat regiments to fight in French divisions. The Harlem Hellfighters fought as part of the French 16th Division, earning a unit Croix de Guerre for their actions at Château-Thierry, Belleau Wood, and Séchault. During the course of the war, 21,498 U.S. Army nurses (American military nurses were all women then) served in military hospitals in the United States and overseas. Many of these women were positioned near to battlefields, and they tended to over a million soldiers who had been wounded or were unwell. 272 U.S. Army nurses died of disease (mainly tuberculosis, influenza, and pneumonia). Eighteen African-American Army nurses served stateside caring for German prisoners of war (POWs) and African-American soldiers. They were assigned to Camp Grant, IL, and Camp Sherman, OH, and lived in segregated quarters. Hello Girls was the colloquial name for American female switchboard operators in World War I, formally known as the Signal Corps Female Telephone Operators Unit. During World War I, these switchboard operators were sworn into the Army Signal Corps. This corps was formed in 1917 from a call by General John J. Pershing to improve the worsening state of communications on the Western front. Applicants for the Signal Corps Female Telephone Operators Unit had to be bilingual in English and French to ensure that orders would be heard by anyone. Over 7,000 women applied, but only 450 women were accepted. Many of these women were former switchboard operators or employees at telecommunications companies. Despite the fact that they wore Army Uniforms and were subject to Army Regulations (and Chief Operator Grace Banker received the Distinguished Service Medal), they were not given honorable discharges but were considered "civilians" employed by the military, because Army Regulations specified the male gender. Not until 1978, the 60th anniversary of the end of World War I, did Congress approve veteran status and honorable discharges for the remaining women who had served in the Signal Corps Female Telephone Operators Unit. The first American women enlisted into the regular armed forces were 13,000 women admitted into active duty in the U.S. Navy during the war. They served stateside in jobs and received the same benefits and responsibilities as men, including identical pay (US$28.75 per month), and were treated as veterans after the war. The U.S. Marine Corps enlisted 305 female Marine Reservists (F) to "free men to fight" by filling positions such as clerks and telephone operators on the home front. In 1918 during the war, twin sisters Genevieve and Lucille Baker transferred from the Naval Coastal Defense Reserve and became the first uniformed women to serve in the U.S. Coast Guard. Before the war ended, several more women joined them, all of them serving in the Coast Guard at Coast Guard Headquarters. These women were demobilized when hostilities ceased, and aside from the Nurse Corps the uniformed military became once again exclusively male. In 1942, women were brought into the military again, largely following the British model. On the battlefields of France in spring 1918, the war-weary Allied armies enthusiastically greeted the fresh American troops. They arrived at the rate of 10,000 a day, at a time when the Germans were unable to replace their losses. The Americans won a victory at Cantigny, then again in defensive stands at Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Wood. The Americans helped the British Empire, French and Portuguese forces defeat and turn back the powerful final German offensive (Spring Offensive of March to July, 1918), and most importantly, the Americans played a role in the Allied final offensive (Hundred Days Offensive of August to November). However, many American commanders used the same flawed tactics which the British, French, Germans and others had abandoned early in the war, and so many American offensives were not particularly effective. Pershing continued to commit troops to these full- frontal attacks, resulting in high casualties without noticeable military success against experienced veteran German and Austrian-Hungarian units. Nevertheless, the infusion of new and fresh US troops greatly strengthened the Allies' strategic position and boosted morale. The Allies achieved victory over Germany on November 11, 1918 after German morale had collapsed both at home and on the battlefield. The government promptly canceled wartime contracts, ended the draft, and started to bring home its troops from Europe as fast as transport became available. However, there was no GI Bill or financial or educational benefits for veterans, and the lack became a major political issue, especially for the large veterans' groups such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the new American Legion. The readjustment period was marked by soaring unemployment, massive strikes, and race riots in 1919. The public demanded a return to "normalcy", and repudiated Wilson with the election of conservative Republican Warren G. Harding. United States campaigns in World War I, History of the United States (1865–1918), German prisoners of war in the United States, General Pershing WWI casualty list Bassett, John Spencer. Our War with Germany: A History (1919) online edition, Breen, William J. Uncle Sam at Home: Civilian Mobilization, Wartime Federalism, and the Council of National Defense, 1917-1919 (1984)), Capozzola, Christopher. Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen (2008), Chambers, John W., II. To Raise an Army: The Draft Comes to Modern America (1987), Clements, Kendrick A. The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson (1992), Coffman, Edward M. The War to End All Wars: The American Military Experience in World War I (1998), a standard military history. online free to borrow, Committee on Public Information. How the war came to America (1917) online 840pp detailing every sector of society, Cooper, John Milton. Woodrow Wilson: A Biography (2009), Cooper, John Milton. "The World War and American Memory." Diplomatic History (2014) 38#4 pp: 727-736., Doenecke, Justus D. Nothing Less than War: A New History of America's Entry into World War I (University Press of Kentucky, 2011), DuBois, W.E. Burghardt, "An Essay Toward a History of the Black Man in the Great War," The Crisis, vol. 18, no. 2 (June 1919), pp. 63–87., Hannigan, Robert E. The Great War and American Foreign Policy, 1914–24 (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2017)C, Kennedy, David M. Over Here: The First World War and American Society (2004), comprehensive coverage, Malin, James C. The United States After the World War (1930) online, Marrin, Albert. The Yanks Are Coming: The United States in the First World War (1986), May, Ernest R. The World War and American Isolation, 1914-1917 (1959) online at ACLS e-books, highly influential study, Nash, George H. The Life of Herbert Hoover: Master of Emergencies, 1917-1918 (1996) excerpt and text search, Paxson, Frederic L. Pre-war years, 1913-1917 (1936) wide-ranging scholarly survey, Paxson, Frederic L. American at War 1917-1918 (1939) wide-ranging scholarly survey online free, Resch, John P., ed. Americans at War: Society, culture, and the home front: volume 3:1901-1945 (2005), Schaffer, Ronald. America in the Great War: The Rise of the War-Welfare State (1991), Snow, William J. Signposts of Experience: World War Memoits of Major General William J. Snow, USA-Retired, Chief of Field Artillery 1918-1927. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, May 15, 2014. ., Trask, David F. The United States in the Supreme War Council: American War Aims and Inter-Allied Strategy, 1917–1918 (1961), Trask, David F. The AEF and Coalition Warmaking, 1917–1918 (1993) online free, Tucker, Spencer C., and Priscilla Mary Roberts, eds. The Encyclopedia of World War I : A Political, Social, and Military History (5 vol. 2005), Van Ells, Mark D. "America and World War I: A Traveler's Guide" (2014), Vaughn, Stephen. Holding Fast the Inner Lines: Democracy, Nationalism, and the Committee on Public Information (University of North Carolina Press, 1980), Venzon, Anne ed. The United States in the First World War: An Encyclopedia (1995), ; 904pp; full scale scholarly biography; winner of Pulitzer Prize; online free; 2nd ed. 1965, Woodward, David R. The American Army and the First World War (2014). 484 pp. online review, Woodward, David R. Trial by Friendship: Anglo-American Relations, 1917-1918 (1993) online, Young, Ernest William. The Wilson Administration and the Great War (1922) online edition, Zieger, Robert H. America's Great War: World War I and the American Experience (2000) Berg, Manfred, and Axel Jansen. "Americans in World War I–World War I in America." Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 17.4 (2018): 599-607. excerpt, Capozzola, Chris, et al. "Interchange: World War I." Journal of American History 102.2 (2015): 463-499. https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jav474, Cooper, John Milton Jr. “The World War and American Memory,” Diplomatic History 38:4 (2014): 727–36., Jones, Heather. “As the Centenary Approaches: The Regeneration of First World War Historiography” Historical Journal 56:3 (2013): 857–78, global perspective, Keene, Jennifer, “The United States” in John Horne, ed., A Companion to World War I (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 508–23., Keene, Jennifer D. "Remembering the 'Forgotten War': American Historiography on World War I." Historian 78#3 (2016): 439-468. online, Rubin, Richard. The Last of the Doughboys: The Forgotten Generation and their Forgotten World War (2013), Snell, Mark A., ed. Unknown Soldiers: The American Expeditionary Forces in Memory and Remembrance (Kent State UP, 2008)., Zeiler, Thomas W., Ekbladh, David K., and Montoya, Benjamin C., eds. Beyond 1917: The United States and the Global Legacies of the Great War (Oxford University Press, 2017) First-hand accounts of World War I veterans, The Library of Congress Veterans History Project. World War I (often abbreviated as WWI or WW1), also known as the First World War, the Great War, the Seminal Catastrophe, and initially in North America as the European War, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. Contemporaneously described as "the war to end all wars", it led to the mobilisation of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history. It is also one of the deadliest conflicts in history, with an estimated nine million combatants and seven million civilian deaths as a direct result of the war, while resulting genocides and the resulting 1918 influenza pandemic caused another 50 to 100 million deaths worldwide. On 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb Yugoslav nationalist, assassinated the Austro-Hungarian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, leading to the July Crisis. In response, on 23 July Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia. Serbia's reply failed to satisfy the Austrians, and the two moved to a war footing. A network of interlocking alliances enlarged the crisis from a bilateral issue in the Balkans to one involving most of Europe. By July 1914, the great powers of Europe were divided into two coalitions: the Triple Entente—consisting of France, Russia, and Britain—and the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy (the Triple Alliance was only defensive in nature, allowing Italy to stay out of the war until April 1915, when it joined the Allied Powers after its relations with Austria-Hungary deteriorated). Russia felt it necessary to back Serbia and, after Austria-Hungary shelled the Serbian capital of Belgrade on the 28July, approved partial mobilisation. Full Russian mobilisation was announced on the evening of 30July; on the 31st, Austria-Hungary and Germany did the same, while Germany demanded Russia demobilise within twelve hours. When Russia failed to comply, Germany declared war on Russia on 1August in support of Austria-Hungary, with Austria-Hungary following suit on 6August; France ordered full mobilisation in support of Russia on 2August. German strategy for a war on two fronts against France and Russia was to rapidly concentrate the bulk of its army in the West to defeat France within six weeks, then shift forces to the East before Russia could fully mobilise; this was later known as the Schlieffen Plan. On 2August, Germany demanded free passage through Belgium, an essential element in achieving a quick victory over France. When this was refused, German forces invaded Belgium on 3August and declared war on France the same day; the Belgian government invoked the 1839 Treaty of London and in compliance with its obligations under this, Britain declared war on Germany on 4August. On 12 August, Britain and France also declared war on Austria-Hungary; on the 23August, Japan sided with Britain, seizing German possessions in China and the Pacific. In November 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered the war on the side of the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia, and the Sinai Peninsula. The war was fought in and drew upon each power's colonial empire as well, spreading the conflict to Africa and across the globe. The Entente and its allies would eventually become known as the Allied Powers, while the grouping of Austria-Hungary, Germany and their allies would become known as the Central Powers. The German advance into France was halted at the Battle of the Marne and by the end of 1914, the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, marked by a long series of trench lines that changed little until 1917 (the Eastern Front, by contrast, was marked by much greater exchanges of territory). In 1915, Italy joined the Allied Powers and opened a front in the Alps. Bulgaria joined the Central Powers in 1915 and Greece joined the Allies in 1917, expanding the war in the Balkans. The United States initially remained neutral, though even while neutral it became an important supplier of war materiel to the Allies. Eventually, after the sinking of American merchant ships by German submarines, the declaration by Germany that its navy would resume unrestricted attacks on neutral shipping, and the revelation that Germany was trying to incite Mexico to make war on the United States, the U.S. declared war on Germany on 6April 1917. Trained American forces would not begin arriving at the front in large numbers until mid-1918, but ultimately the American Expeditionary Force would reach some two million troops. Though Serbia was defeated in 1915, and Romania joined the Allied Powers in 1916 only to be defeated in 1917, none of the great powers were knocked out of the war until 1918. The 1917 February Revolution in Russia replaced the Tsarist autocracy with the Provisional Government, but continuing discontent with the cost of the war led to the October Revolution, the creation of the Soviet Socialist Republic, and the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk by the new government in March 1918, ending Russia's involvement in the war. This allowed the transfer of large numbers of German troops from the East to the Western Front, resulting in the German March 1918 Offensive. This offensive was initially successful, but failed to score a decisive victory and exhausted the last of the German reserves. The Allies rallied and drove the Germans back in their Hundred Days Offensive, a continual series of attacks to which the Germans had no reply. Bulgaria was the first Central Power to sign an armistice—the Armistice of Salonica on 29 September 1918. On 30 October, the Ottoman Empire capitulated, signing the Armistice of Mudros. On 4November, the Austro-Hungarian empire agreed to the Armistice of Villa Giusti. With its allies defeated, revolution at home, and the military no longer willing to fight, Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated on 9November and Germany signed an armistice on 11 November 1918, effectively ending the war. World War I was a significant turning point in the political, cultural, economic, and social climate of the world. It is considered to mark the end of the Second Industrial Revolution and the Pax Britannica. The war and its immediate aftermath sparked numerous revolutions and uprisings. The Big Four (Britain, France, the United States, and Italy) imposed their terms on the defeated powers in a series of treaties agreed at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, the most well known being the German peace treaty—the Treaty of Versailles. Ultimately, as a result of the war the Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottoman, and Russian Empires ceased to exist, with numerous new states created from their remains. However, despite the conclusive Allied victory (and the creation of the League of Nations during the Peace Conference, intended to prevent future wars), a second world war would follow just over twenty years later. The term "world war" was first used in September 1914 by German biologist and philosopher Ernst Haeckel, who claimed that "there is no doubt that the course and character of the feared 'European War' ... will become the first world war in the full sense of the word," citing a wire service report in The Indianapolis Star on 20 September 1914. Prior to World War II, the events of 1914–1918 were generally known as the Great War or simply the World War. In October 1914, the Canadian magazine Maclean's wrote, "Some wars name themselves. This is the Great War." Contemporary Europeans also referred to it as "the war to end war" or "the war to end all wars" due to their perception of its then-unparalleled scale and devastation. After World WarII began in 1939, the terms became more standard, with British Empire historians, including Canadians, favouring "The First World War" and Americans "World WarI". For much of the 19th century, the major European powers had tried to maintain a tenuous balance of power among themselves, resulting in a complex network of political and military alliances. The biggest challenges to this were Britain's withdrawal into so-called splendid isolation, the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the post-1848 rise of Prussia under Otto von Bismarck. Victory in the 1866 Austro-Prussian War established Prussian hegemony in Germany, while victory over France in the 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War unified the German states into a German Reich under Prussian leadership. In 1873, to isolate France and avoid a war on two fronts, Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors (German: Dreikaiserbund) between Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany. Concerned by Russia's victory in the 1877–1878 Russo- Turkish War and their influence in the Balkans, the League was dissolved in 1878, with Germany and Austria-Hungary subsequently forming the 1879 Dual Alliance; this became the Triple Alliance when Italy joined in 1882. The practical details of these alliances were limited, since their primary purpose was to ensure cooperation between the three Imperial Powers and isolate France. Attempts by Britain in 1880 to resolve colonial tensions with Russia and diplomatic moves by France led to Bismarck reforming the League in 1881. When the League finally lapsed in 1887, it was replaced by the Reinsurance Treaty, a secret agreement between Germany and Russia to remain neutral if either were attacked by France or Austria-Hungary. In 1890, the new German Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, forced Bismarck to retire and was persuaded not to renew the Reinsurance Treaty by the new Chancellor, Leo von Caprivi. This allowed France to counteract the Triple Alliance with the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894 and the 1904 Entente Cordiale with Britain, while in 1907 Britain and Russia signed the Anglo-Russian Convention. The agreements did not constitute formal alliances, but by settling long-standing colonial disputes, they made British entry into any future conflict involving France or Russia a possibility; these interlocking bilateral agreements became known as the Triple Entente. The creation of the German Reich following victory in the 1871 Franco-Prussian War led to a massive increase in Germany's economic and industrial strength. Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz and Wilhelm II, who became Emperor in 1890, sought to use that to create a Kaiserliche Marine or Imperial German Navy to compete with Britain's Royal Navy for world naval supremacy. In doing so, they were influenced by US naval strategist Alfred Mahan, who argued possession of a blue-water navy was vital for global power projection; Tirpitz translated his books into German and Wilhelm made them required reading. However, it was also driven by Wilhelm's admiration of the Royal Navy and desire to outdo it. This resulted in the Anglo-German naval arms race but the launch of in 1906 gave the Royal Navy a technological advantage over its German rival, which they never lost. Ultimately, the race diverted huge resources to creating a German navy large enough to antagonise Britain, but not defeat it. In 1911, Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg acknowledged defeat, leading to the Rüstungswende or ‘armaments turning point', when Germany switched expenditure from the navy to the army. This was driven by Russia's recovery from the 1905 Revolution, specifically increased investment post 1908 in railways and infrastructure in its western border regions. Germany and Austria-Hungary relied on faster mobilisation to compensate for fewer numbers; it was concern at the closing of this gap that led to the end of the naval race, rather than a reduction in tension elsewhere. When Germany expanded its standing army by 170,000 men in 1913, France extended compulsory military service from two to three years; similar measures taken by the Balkan powers and Italy led to increased expenditure by the Ottomans and Austria-Hungary. Absolute figures are hard to calculate, due to differences in categorising expenditure, while they often omit civilian infrastructure projects with a military use, such as railways. However, from 1908 to 1913, defence spending by the six major European powers increased by over 50% in real terms. In October 1908, Austria-Hungary precipitated the Bosnian crisis of 1908–1909 by officially annexing the former Ottoman territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which it had occupied since 1878. This angered the Kingdom of Serbia and its patron, the Pan-Slavic and Orthodox Russian Empire. Russian political manoeuvring in the region destabilised peace accords that were already fracturing in the Balkans, which came to be known as the "powder keg of Europe". In 1912 and 1913, the First Balkan War was fought between the Balkan League and the fracturing Ottoman Empire. The resulting Treaty of London further shrank the Ottoman Empire, creating an independent Albanian state while enlarging the territorial holdings of Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece. When Bulgaria attacked Serbia and Greece on 16 June 1913, it sparked the 33-day Second Balkan War, by the end of which it lost most of Macedonia to Serbia and Greece, and Southern Dobruja to Romania, further destabilising the region. The Great Powers were able to keep these Balkan conflicts contained, but the next one would spread throughout Europe and beyond. On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir presumptive to the Austro- Hungarian Empire, visited the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo. A group of six assassins (Cvjetko Popović, Gavrilo Princip, Muhamed Mehmedbašić, Nedeljko Čabrinović, Trifko Grabež, and Vaso Čubrilović) from the Yugoslavist group Mlada Bosna, supplied with arms by the Serbian Black Hand, gathered on the street where the Archduke's motorcade was to pass, with the intention of assassinating him. The political objective of the assassination was to break off Austria-Hungary's South Slav provinces, which Austria-Hungary had annexed from the Ottoman Empire, so they could be combined into a Yugoslavia. Čabrinović threw a grenade at the car, but missed. Some nearby were injured by the blast, but Ferdinand's convoy carried on. The other assassins failed to act as the cars drove past them. About an hour later, when Ferdinand was returning from a visit at the Sarajevo Hospital with those wounded in the assassination attempt, the convoy took a wrong turn into a street where, by coincidence, Princip stood. With a pistol, Princip shot and killed Ferdinand and his wife Sophie. Although they were reportedly not personally close, the Emperor Franz Joseph was profoundly shocked and upset. The reaction among the people in Austria, however, was mild, almost indifferent. As historian Zbyněk Zeman later wrote, "the event almost failed to make any impression whatsoever. On Sunday and Monday (28 and 29 June), the crowds in Vienna listened to music and drank wine, as if nothing had happened." Nevertheless, the political effect of the murder of the heir to the throne was significant, and was described by historian Christopher Clark on the BBC Radio4 series Month of Madness as a "9/11 effect, a terrorist event charged with historic meaning, transforming the political chemistry in Vienna." The Austro-Hungarian authorities encouraged the subsequent anti-Serb riots in Sarajevo, in which Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks killed two Bosnian Serbs and damaged numerous Serb-owned buildings. Violent actions against ethnic Serbs were also organised outside Sarajevo, in other cities in Austro-Hungarian- controlled Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia. Austro-Hungarian authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina imprisoned and extradited approximately 5,500 prominent Serbs, 700 to 2,200 of whom died in prison. A further 460 Serbs were sentenced to death. A predominantly Bosniak special militia known as the Schutzkorps was established and carried out the persecution of Serbs. The assassination led to a month of diplomatic manoeuvring between Austria- Hungary, Germany, Russia, France and Britain, called the July Crisis. Austria- Hungary correctly believed that Serbian officials (especially the officers of the Black Hand) were involved in the plot to murder the Archduke, and wanted to finally end Serbian interference in Bosnia. On 23July, Austria-Hungary delivered to Serbia the July Ultimatum, a series of ten demands that were made intentionally unacceptable, in an effort to provoke a war with Serbia. Serbia decreed general mobilisation on 25July. Serbia accepted all the terms of the ultimatum except for article six, which demanded that Austrian delegates be allowed in Serbia for the purpose of participation in the investigation into the assassination. Following this, Austria broke off diplomatic relations with Serbia and, the next day, ordered a partial mobilisation. Finally, on 28 July 1914, a month after the assassination, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. On 25July, Russia, in support of Serbia, declared partial mobilisation against Austria-Hungary. On 30July, Russia ordered general mobilisation. German Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg waited until the 31st for an appropriate response, when Germany declared Erklärung des Kriegszustandes, or "Statement on the war status". Kaiser Wilhelm II asked his cousin, Tsar Nicolas II, to suspend the Russian general mobilisation. When he refused, Germany issued an ultimatum demanding its mobilisation be stopped, and a commitment not to support Serbia. Another was sent to France, asking her not to support Russia if it were to come to the defence of Serbia. On 1August, after the Russian response, Germany mobilised and declared war on Russia. This also led to the general mobilisation in Austria-Hungary on 4August. The German government issued demands to France that it remain neutral as they had to decide which deployment plan to implement, it being extremely difficult to change the deployment whilst it was underway. The modified German Schlieffen Plan, Aufmarsch II West, would deploy 80% of the army in the west, while Aufmarsch I Ost and Aufmarsch II Ost would deploy 60% in the west and 40% in the east. The French did not respond, but sent a mixed message by ordering their troops to withdraw from the border to avoid any incidents, and at the same time ordered the mobilisation of their reserves. Germany responded by mobilising its own reserves and implementing Aufmarsch II West. On 1 August, Wilhelm ordered General Helmuth von Moltke the Younger to "march the whole of the... army to the East" after being wrongly informed that the British would remain neutral if France was not attacked. Moltke told the Kaiser that attempting to redeploy a million men was unthinkable, and that making it possible for the French to attack the Germans "in the rear" would prove disastrous. Yet Wilhelm insisted that the German army should not march into Luxembourg until he received a telegram sent by his cousin George V, who made it clear that there had been a misunderstanding. Eventually the Kaiser told Moltke, "Now you can do what you want." On 2 August, Germany occupied Luxembourg, and on 3August declared war on France; on the same day, they sent the Belgian government an ultimatum demanding unimpeded right of way through any part of Belgium, which was refused. Early on the morning of 4August, the Germans invaded; King Albert ordered his military to resist and called for assistance under the 1839 Treaty of London. Britain demanded Germany comply with the Treaty and respect Belgian neutrality; it declared war on Germany at 19:00 UTC on 4August 1914 (effective from 23:00), following an "unsatisfactory reply". The strategy of the Central Powers suffered from miscommunication. Germany had promised to support Austria-Hungary's invasion of Serbia, but interpretations of what this meant differed. Previously tested deployment plans had been replaced early in 1914, but those had never been tested in exercises. Austro- Hungarian leaders believed Germany would cover its northern flank against Russia. Germany, however, envisioned Austria-Hungary directing most of its troops against Russia, while Germany dealt with France. This confusion forced the Austro-Hungarian Army to divide its forces between the Russian and Serbian fronts. Austria invaded and fought the Serbian army at the Battle of Cer and Battle of Kolubara beginning on 12 August. Over the next two weeks, Austrian attacks were thrown back with heavy losses, which marked the first major Allied victories of the war and dashed Austro-Hungarian hopes of a swift victory. As a result, Austria had to keep sizeable forces on the Serbian front, weakening its efforts against Russia. Serbia's defeat of the Austro-Hungarian invasion of 1914 has been called one of the major upset victories of the twentieth century. The campaign saw the very first use of medical evacuation by the Serbian army in autumn of 1915 and anti-aircraft warfare in the spring of 1915 after an Austrian plane was shot down with ground-to-air fire. When the war began, the German Order of Battle placed 80% of the army in the West, with the remainder acting as a screening force in the East. The plan was to quickly knock France out of the war, then redeploy to the East and do the same to Russia. The German offensive in the West was officially titled Aufmarsch II West, but is better known as the Schlieffen Plan, after its original creator. Schlieffen deliberately kept the German left (i.e. its positions in Alsace-Lorraine) weak to lure the French into attacking there, while the majority were allocated to the German right, so as to sweep through Belgium, encircle Paris and trap the French armies against the Swiss border (the French charged into Alsace-Lorraine on the outbreak of war as envisaged by their Plan XVII, thus actually aiding this strategy). However, Schlieffen's successor Moltke grew concerned that the French might push too hard on his left flank. As such, as the German Army increased in size in the years leading up to the war, he changed the allocation of forces between the German right and left wings from 85:15 to 70:30. Ultimately, Moltke's changes meant insufficient forces to achieve decisive success and thus unrealistic goals and timings. The initial German advance in the West was very successful: by the end of August the Allied left, which included the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), was in full retreat; French casualties in the first month exceeded 260,000, including 27,000 killed on 22 August during the Battle of the Frontiers. German planning provided broad strategic instructions, while allowing army commanders considerable freedom in carrying them out at the front; this worked well in 1866 and 1870 but in 1914, von Kluck used this freedom to disobey orders, opening a gap between the German armies as they closed on Paris. The French and British exploited this gap to halt the German advance east of Paris at the First Battle of the Marne from 5to 12 September and push the German forces back some . In 1911, the Russian Stavka had agreed with the French to attack Germany within 15 days of mobilisation; this was unrealistic and the two Russian armies that entered East Prussia on 17 August did so without many of their support elements. The Russian Second Army was effectively destroyed at the Battle of Tannenberg on 26–30 August but the Russian advance caused the Germans to re-route their 8th Field Army from France to East Prussia, a factor in Allied victory on the Marne. By the end of 1914, German troops held strong defensive positions inside France, controlled the bulk of France's domestic coalfields and had inflicted 230,000 more casualties than it lost itself. However, communications problems and questionable command decisions cost Germany the chance of a decisive outcome while it had failed to achieve the primary objective of avoiding a long, two- front war. This amounted to a strategic defeat; shortly after the Marne, Crown Prince Wilhelm told an American reporter; "We have lost the war. It will go on for a long time but lost it is already." New Zealand occupied German Samoa (later Western Samoa) on 30 August 1914. On 11 September, the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force landed on the island of Neu Pommern (later New Britain), which formed part of German New Guinea. On 28 October, the German cruiser sank the Russian cruiser Zhemchug in the Battle of Penang. Japan seized Germany's Micronesian colonies and, after the Siege of Tsingtao, the German coaling port of Qingdao on the Chinese Shandong peninsula. As Vienna refused to withdraw the Austro-Hungarian cruiser from Tsingtao, Japan declared war not only on Germany, but also on Austria- Hungary; the ship participated in the defence of Tsingtao where it was sunk in November 1914. Within a few months, the Allied forces had seized all the German territories in the Pacific; only isolated commerce raiders and a few holdouts in New Guinea remained. Some of the first clashes of the war involved British, French, and German colonial forces in Africa. On 6–7 August, French and British troops invaded the German protectorate of Togoland and Kamerun. On 10 August, German forces in South-West Africa attacked South Africa; sporadic and fierce fighting continued for the rest of the war. The German colonial forces in German East Africa, led by Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, fought a guerrilla warfare campaign during World WarI and only surrendered two weeks after the armistice took effect in Europe. Germany attempted to use Indian nationalism and pan-Islamism to its advantage, instigating uprisings in India, and sending a mission that urged Afghanistan to join the war on the side of Central Powers. However, contrary to British fears of a revolt in India, the outbreak of the war saw an unprecedented outpouring of loyalty and goodwill towards Britain. Indian political leaders from the Indian National Congress and other groups were eager to support the British war effort, since they believed that strong support for the war effort would further the cause of Indian Home Rule. The Indian Army in fact outnumbered the British Army at the beginning of the war; about 1.3 million Indian soldiers and labourers served in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, while the central government and the princely states sent large supplies of food, money, and ammunition. In all, 140,000 men served on the Western Front and nearly 700,000 in the Middle East. Casualties of Indian soldiers totalled 47,746 killed and 65,126 wounded during World WarI. The suffering engendered by the war, as well as the failure of the British government to grant self- government to India after the end of hostilities, bred disillusionment and fuelled the campaign for full independence that would be led by Mohandas K. Gandhi and others. Military tactics developed before World War I failed to keep pace with advances in technology and had become obsolete. These advances had allowed the creation of strong defensive systems, which out-of-date military tactics could not break through for most of the war. Barbed wire was a significant hindrance to massed infantry advances, while artillery, vastly more lethal than in the 1870s, coupled with machine guns, made crossing open ground extremely difficult. Commanders on both sides failed to develop tactics for breaching entrenched positions without heavy casualties. In time, however, technology began to produce new offensive weapons, such as gas warfare and the tank. After the First Battle of the Marne (5–12 September 1914), Allied and German forces unsuccessfully tried to outflank each other, a series of manoeuvres later known as the "Race to the Sea". By the end of 1914, the opposing forces were left confronting each other along an uninterrupted line of entrenched positions from Alsace to Belgium's North Sea coast. Since the Germans were able to choose where to stand, they normally had the advantage of the high ground; in addition, their trenches tended to be better built, since Anglo- French trenches were initially intended as "temporary," preparatory to breaking the German defences. Both sides tried to break the stalemate using scientific and technological advances. On 22 April 1915, at the Second Battle of Ypres, the Germans (violating the Hague Convention) used chlorine gas for the first time on the Western Front. Several types of gas soon became widely used by both sides, and though it never proved a decisive, battle-winning weapon, poison gas became one of the most-feared and best-remembered horrors of the war. Tanks were developed by Britain and France and were first used in combat by the British during the Battle of Flers–Courcelette (part of the Battle of the Somme) on 15 September 1916, with only partial success. However, their effectiveness would grow as the war progressed; the Allies built tanks in large numbers, whilst the Germans employed only a few of their own design, supplemented by captured Allied tanks. Neither side proved able to deliver a decisive blow for the next two years. Throughout 1915–17, the British Empire and France suffered more casualties than Germany, because of both the strategic and tactical stances chosen by the sides. Strategically, while the Germans mounted only one major offensive, the Allies made several attempts to break through the German lines. In February 1916 the Germans attacked French defensive positions at the Battle of Verdun, lasting until December 1916. The Germans made initial gains, before French counter-attacks returned matters to near their starting point. Casualties were greater for the French, but the Germans bled heavily as well, with anywhere from 700,000 to 975,000 casualties suffered between the two combatants. Verdun became a symbol of French determination and self-sacrifice. The Battle of the Somme was an Anglo-French offensive of July to November 1916. The opening day of the offensive (1 July 1916) was the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army, suffering 57,470 casualties, including 19,240 dead. The entire Somme offensive cost the British Army some 420,000 casualties. The French suffered another estimated 200,000 casualties and the Germans an estimated 500,000. Gun fire was not the only factor taking lives; the diseases that emerged in the trenches were a major killer on both sides. The living conditions made it so that countless diseases and infections occurred, such as trench foot, shell shock, blindness/burns from mustard gas, lice, trench fever, cooties (body lice) and the 'Spanish Flu'. To maintain morale, wartime censors minimised early reports of widespread influenza illness and mortality in Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States. Papers were free to report the epidemic's effects in neutral Spain (such as the grave illness of King Alfonso XIII). This created a false impression of Spain as especially hard hit, thereby giving rise to the pandemic's nickname, "Spanish Flu". Protracted action at Verdun throughout 1916, combined with the bloodletting at the Somme, brought the exhausted French army to the brink of collapse. Futile attempts using frontal assault came at a high price for both the British and the French and led to the widespread French Army Mutinies, after the failure of the costly Nivelle Offensive of April–May 1917. The concurrent British Battle of Arras was more limited in scope, and more successful, although ultimately of little strategic value. A smaller part of the Arras offensive, the capture of Vimy Ridge by the Canadian Corps, became highly significant to that country: the idea that Canada's national identity was born out of the battle is an opinion widely held in military and general histories of Canada. The last large-scale offensive of this period was a British attack (with French support) at Passchendaele (July–November 1917). This offensive opened with great promise for the Allies, before bogging down in the October mud. Casualties, though disputed, were roughly equal, at some 200,000–400,000 per side. The years of trench warfare on the Western front achieved no major exchanges of territory and, as a result, are often thought of as static and unchanging. However, throughout this period, British, French, and German tactics constantly evolved to meet new battlefield challenges. At the start of the war, the German Empire had cruisers scattered across the globe, some of which were subsequently used to attack Allied merchant shipping. The British Royal Navy systematically hunted them down, though not without some embarrassment from its inability to protect Allied shipping. Before the beginning of the war, it was widely understood that Britain held the position of strongest, most influential navy in the world. The publishing of the book The Influence of Sea Power upon History by Alfred Thayer Mahan in 1890 was intended to encourage the United States to increase their naval power. Instead, this book made it to Germany and inspired its readers to try to over-power the British Royal Navy. For example, the German detached light cruiser , part of the East Asia Squadron stationed at Qingdao, seized or destroyed 15 merchantmen, as well as sinking a Russian cruiser and a French destroyer. However, most of the German East-Asia squadron—consisting of the armoured cruisers and , light cruisers and and two transport ships—did not have orders to raid shipping and was instead underway to Germany when it met British warships. The German flotilla and sank two armoured cruisers at the Battle of Coronel, but was virtually destroyed at the Battle of the Falkland Islands in December 1914, with only Dresden and a few auxiliaries escaping, but after the Battle of Más a Tierra these too had been destroyed or interned. Soon after the outbreak of hostilities, Britain began a naval blockade of Germany. The strategy proved effective, cutting off vital military and civilian supplies, although this blockade violated accepted international law codified by several international agreements of the past two centuries. Britain mined international waters to prevent any ships from entering entire sections of ocean, causing danger to even neutral ships. Since there was limited response to this tactic of the British, Germany expected a similar response to its unrestricted submarine warfare. The Battle of Jutland (German: Skagerrakschlacht, or "Battle of the Skagerrak") in May/June 1916 developed into the largest naval battle of the war. It was the only full-scale clash of battleships during the war, and one of the largest in history. The Kaiserliche Marine's High Seas Fleet, commanded by Vice Admiral Reinhard Scheer, fought the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet, led by Admiral Sir John Jellicoe. The engagement was a stand off, as the Germans were outmanoeuvred by the larger British fleet, but managed to escape and inflicted more damage to the British fleet than they received. Strategically, however, the British asserted their control of the sea, and the bulk of the German surface fleet remained confined to port for the duration of the war. German U-boats attempted to cut the supply lines between North America and Britain. The nature of submarine warfare meant that attacks often came without warning, giving the crews of the merchant ships little hope of survival. The United States launched a protest, and Germany changed its rules of engagement. After the sinking of the passenger ship RMS Lusitania in 1915, Germany promised not to target passenger liners, while Britain armed its merchant ships, placing them beyond the protection of the "cruiser rules", which demanded warning and movement of crews to "a place of safety" (a standard that lifeboats did not meet). Finally, in early 1917, Germany adopted a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, realising the Americans would eventually enter the war. Germany sought to strangle Allied sea lanes before the United States could transport a large army overseas, but after initial successes eventually failed to do so. The U-boat threat lessened in 1917, when merchant ships began travelling in convoys, escorted by destroyers. This tactic made it difficult for U-boats to find targets, which significantly lessened losses; after the hydrophone and depth charges were introduced, accompanying destroyers could attack a submerged submarine with some hope of success. Convoys slowed the flow of supplies, since ships had to wait as convoys were assembled. The solution to the delays was an extensive program of building new freighters. Troopships were too fast for the submarines and did not travel the North Atlantic in convoys. The U-boats had sunk more than 5,000 Allied ships, at a cost of 199 submarines. World War I also saw the first use of aircraft carriers in combat, with launching Sopwith Camels in a successful raid against the Zeppelin hangars at Tondern in July 1918, as well as blimps for antisubmarine patrol. Faced with Russia in the east, Austria-Hungary could spare only one-third of its army to attack Serbia. After suffering heavy losses, the Austrians briefly occupied the Serbian capital, Belgrade. A Serbian counter-attack in the Battle of Kolubara succeeded in driving them from the country by the end of 1914. For the first ten months of 1915, Austria-Hungary used most of its military reserves to fight Italy. German and Austro-Hungarian diplomats, however, scored a coup by persuading Bulgaria to join the attack on Serbia. The Austro- Hungarian provinces of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia provided troops for Austria-Hungary in the fight with Serbia, Russia and Italy. Montenegro allied itself with Serbia. Bulgaria declared war on Serbia on 12 October 1915 and joined in the attack by the Austro-Hungarian army under Mackensen's army of 250,000 that was already underway. Serbia was conquered in a little more than a month, as the Central Powers, now including Bulgaria, sent in 600,000 troops total. The Serbian army, fighting on two fronts and facing certain defeat, retreated into northern Albania. The Serbs suffered defeat in the Battle of Kosovo. Montenegro covered the Serbian retreat towards the Adriatic coast in the Battle of Mojkovac in 6–7 January 1916, but ultimately the Austrians also conquered Montenegro. The surviving Serbian soldiers were evacuated by ship to Greece. After conquest, Serbia was divided between Austro-Hungary and Bulgaria. In late 1915, a Franco-British force landed at Salonica in Greece to offer assistance and to pressure its government to declare war against the Central Powers. However, the pro-German King Constantine I dismissed the pro- Allied government of Eleftherios Venizelos before the Allied expeditionary force arrived. The friction between the King of Greece and the Allies continued to accumulate with the National Schism, which effectively divided Greece between regions still loyal to the king and the new provisional government of Venizelos in Salonica. After intense negotiations and an armed confrontation in Athens between Allied and royalist forces (an incident known as Noemvriana), the King of Greece resigned and his second son Alexander took his place; Greece officially joined the war on the side of the Allies in June 1917. The Macedonian Front was initially mostly static. French and Serbian forces retook limited areas of Macedonia by recapturing Bitola on 19 November 1916 following the costly Monastir Offensive, which brought stabilisation of the front. Serbian and French troops finally made a breakthrough in September 1918 in the Vardar Offensive, after most of the German and Austro-Hungarian troops had been withdrawn. The Bulgarians were defeated at the Battle of Dobro Pole, and by 25 September British and French troops had crossed the border into Bulgaria proper as the Bulgarian army collapsed. Bulgaria capitulated four days later, on 29 September 1918. The German high command responded by despatching troops to hold the line, but these forces were far too weak to reestablish a front. The disappearance of the Macedonian Front meant that the road to Budapest and Vienna was now opened to Allied forces. Hindenburg and Ludendorff concluded that the strategic and operational balance had now shifted decidedly against the Central Powers and, a day after the Bulgarian collapse, insisted on an immediate peace settlement. The Ottomans threatened Russia's Caucasian territories and Britain's communications with India via the Suez Canal. As the conflict progressed, the Ottoman Empire took advantage of the European powers' preoccupation with the war and conducted large-scale ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian Christian populations, known as the Armenian Genocide, Greek Genocide, and Assyrian Genocide. The British and French opened overseas fronts with the Gallipoli (1915) and Mesopotamian campaigns (1914). In Gallipoli, the Ottoman Empire successfully repelled the British, French, and Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs). In Mesopotamia, by contrast, after the defeat of the British defenders in the Siege of Kut by the Ottomans (1915–16), British Imperial forces reorganised and captured Baghdad in March 1917. The British were aided in Mesopotamia by local Arab and Assyrian tribesmen, while the Ottomans employed local Kurdish and Turcoman tribes. Further to the west, the Suez Canal was defended from Ottoman attacks in 1915 and 1916; in August, a German and Ottoman force was defeated at the Battle of Romani by the ANZAC Mounted Division and the 52nd (Lowland) Infantry Division. Following this victory, an Egyptian Expeditionary Force advanced across the Sinai Peninsula, pushing Ottoman forces back in the Battle of Magdhaba in December and the Battle of Rafa on the border between the Egyptian Sinai and Ottoman Palestine in January 1917. Russian armies generally had success in the Caucasus. Enver Pasha, supreme commander of the Ottoman armed forces, was ambitious and dreamed of re-conquering central Asia and areas that had been lost to Russia previously. He was, however, a poor commander. He launched an offensive against the Russians in the Caucasus in December 1914 with 100,000 troops, insisting on a frontal attack against mountainous Russian positions in winter. He lost 86% of his force at the Battle of Sarikamish. The Ottoman Empire, with German support, invaded Persia (modern Iran) in December 1914 in an effort to cut off British and Russian access to petroleum reservoirs around Baku near the Caspian Sea. Persia, ostensibly neutral, had long been under the spheres of British and Russian influence. The Ottomans and Germans were aided by Kurdish and Azeri forces, together with a large number of major Iranian tribes, such as the Qashqai, Tangistanis, Luristanis, and Khamseh, while the Russians and British had the support of Armenian and Assyrian forces. The Persian Campaign was to last until 1918 and end in failure for the Ottomans and their allies. However, the Russian withdrawal from the war in 1917 led to Armenian and Assyrian forces, who had hitherto inflicted a series of defeats upon the forces of the Ottomans and their allies, being cut off from supply lines, outnumbered, outgunned and isolated, forcing them to fight and flee towards British lines in northern Mesopotamia. General Yudenich, the Russian commander from 1915 to 1916, drove the Turks out of most of the southern Caucasus with a string of victories. In 1917, Russian Grand Duke Nicholas assumed command of the Caucasus front. Nicholas planned a railway from Russian Georgia to the conquered territories, so that fresh supplies could be brought up for a new offensive in 1917. However, in March 1917 (February in the pre- revolutionary Russian calendar), the Tsar abdicated in the course of the February Revolution, and the Russian Caucasus Army began to fall apart. The Arab Revolt, instigated by the Arab bureau of the British Foreign Office, started June 1916 with the Battle of Mecca, led by Sherif Hussein of Mecca, and ended with the Ottoman surrender of Damascus. Fakhri Pasha, the Ottoman commander of Medina, resisted for more than two and half years during the Siege of Medina before surrendering in January 1919. The Senussi tribe, along the border of Italian Libya and British Egypt, incited and armed by the Turks, waged a small-scale guerrilla war against Allied troops. The British were forced to dispatch 12,000 troops to oppose them in the Senussi Campaign. Their rebellion was finally crushed in mid-1916. Total Allied casualties on the Ottoman fronts amounted 650,000 men. Total Ottoman casualties were 725,000 (325,000 dead and 400,000 wounded). Italy had been allied with the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires since 1882 as part of the Triple Alliance. However, the nation had its own designs on Austrian territory in Trentino, the Austrian Littoral, Fiume (Rijeka) and Dalmatia. Rome had a secret 1902 pact with France, effectively nullifying its part in the Triple Alliance; Italy secretly agreed with France to remain neutral if the latter was attacked by Germany. At the start of hostilities, Italy refused to commit troops, arguing that the Triple Alliance was defensive and that Austria-Hungary was an aggressor. The Austro-Hungarian government began negotiations to secure Italian neutrality, offering the French colony of Tunisia in return. The Allies made a counter-offer in which Italy would receive the Southern Tyrol, Austrian Littoral and territory on the Dalmatian coast after the defeat of Austria-Hungary. This was formalised by the Treaty of London. Further encouraged by the Allied invasion of Turkey in April 1915, Italy joined the Triple Entente and declared war on Austria-Hungary on 23 May. Fifteen months later, Italy declared war on Germany. The Italians had numerical superiority, but this advantage was lost, not only because of the difficult terrain in which the fighting took place, but also because of the strategies and tactics employed. Field Marshal Luigi Cadorna, a staunch proponent of the frontal assault, had dreams of breaking into the Slovenian plateau, taking Ljubljana and threatening Vienna. On the Trentino front, the Austro-Hungarians took advantage of the mountainous terrain, which favoured the defender. After an initial strategic retreat, the front remained largely unchanged, while Austrian Kaiserschützen and Standschützen engaged Italian Alpini in bitter hand-to-hand combat throughout the summer. The Austro- Hungarians counterattacked in the Altopiano of Asiago, towards Verona and Padua, in the spring of 1916 (Strafexpedition), but made little progress and were defeated by the Italians. Beginning in 1915, the Italians under Cadorna mounted eleven offensives on the Isonzo front along the Isonzo (Soča) River, northeast of Trieste. Of these eleven offensives, five were won by Italy, three remained inconclusive, and the other three were repelled by the Austro- Hungarians, who held the higher ground. In the summer of 1916, after the Battle of Doberdò, the Italians captured the town of Gorizia. After this victory, the front remained static for over a year, despite several Italian offensives, centred on the Banjšice and Karst Plateau east of Gorizia. The Central Powers launched a crushing offensive on 26 October 1917, spearheaded by the Germans, and achieved a victory at Caporetto (Kobarid). The Italian Army was routed and retreated more than to reorganise. The new Italian chief of staff, Armando Diaz, ordered the Army to stop their retreat and defend the Monte Grappa summit, where fortified defenses were constructed; the Italians repelled the Austro-Hungarian and German Army, and stabilised the front at the Piave River. Since the Italian Army had suffered heavy losses in the Battle of Caporetto, the Italian Government ordered conscription of the so-called 99 Boys (Ragazzi del '99): all males born in 1899 and prior, who were 18 years old or older. In 1918, the Austro-Hungarians failed to break through in a series of battles on the Piave and were finally decisively defeated in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto in October. On 1November, the Italian Navy destroyed much of the Austro-Hungarian fleet stationed in Pula, preventing it from being handed over to the new State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. On 3November, the Italians invaded Trieste from the sea. On the same day, the Armistice of Villa Giusti was signed. By mid-November 1918, the Italian military occupied the entire former Austrian Littoral and had seized control of the portion of Dalmatia that had been guaranteed to Italy by the London Pact. By the end of hostilities in November 1918, Admiral Enrico Millo declared himself Italy's Governor of Dalmatia. Austria-Hungary surrendered on 11 November 1918. Romania had been allied with the Central Powers since 1882. When the war began, however, it declared its neutrality, arguing that because Austria- Hungary had itself declared war on Serbia, Romania was under no obligation to join the war. On 4August 1916, Romania and the Entente signed the Political Treaty and Military Convention, that established the coordinates of Romania's participation in the war. In return, it received the Allies' formal sanction for Transylvania, Banat and other territories of Austria-Hungary to be annexed to Romania. The action had large popular support. On 27 August 1916, the Romanian Army launched an attack against Austria-Hungary, with limited Russian support. The Romanian offensive was initially successful in Transylvania, but a Central Powers counterattack by the drove them back. As a result of the Battle of Bucharest, the Central Powers occupied Bucharest on 6December 1916. Fighting in Moldova continued in 1917, but Russian withdrawal from the war in late 1917 as a result of the October Revolution meant that Romania was forced to sign an armistice with the Central Powers on 9December 1917. In January 1918, Romanian forces established control over Bessarabia as the Russian Army abandoned the province. Although a treaty was signed by the Romanian and Bolshevik Russian governments following talks between 5and 9March 1918 on the withdrawal of Romanian forces from Bessarabia within two months, on 27 March 1918 Romania formally attached Bessarabia, inhabited by a Romanian majority, to its territory, based on a resolution passed by the local assembly of that territory on its unification with Romania. Romania officially made peace with the Central Powers by signing the Treaty of Bucharest on 7May 1918. Under the treaty, Romania was obliged to end the war with the Central Powers and make small territorial concessions to Austria-Hungary, ceding control of some passes in the Carpathian Mountains, and to grant oil concessions to Germany. In exchange, the Central Powers recognised the sovereignty of Romania over Bessarabia. The treaty was renounced in October 1918 by the Alexandru Marghiloman government, and Romania nominally re-entered the war on 10 November 1918 against the Central Powers. The next day, the Treaty of Bucharest was nullified by the terms of the Armistice of Compiègne. Total Romanian deaths from 1914 to 1918, military and civilian, within contemporary borders, were estimated at 748,000. Russian plans for the start of the war called for simultaneous invasions of Austrian Galicia and East Prussia. Although Russia's initial advance into Galicia was largely successful, it was driven back from East Prussia by Hindenburg and Ludendorff at the battles of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes in August and September 1914. Russia's less developed industrial base and ineffective military leadership were instrumental in the events that unfolded. By the spring of 1915, the Russians had retreated to Galicia, and, in May, the Central Powers achieved a remarkable breakthrough on Poland's southern frontiers with their Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive. On 5August, they captured Warsaw and forced the Russians to withdraw from Poland. Despite Russia's success in the June 1916 Brusilov Offensive against the Austrians in eastern Galicia, the offensive was undermined by the reluctance of other Russian generals to commit their forces to support the victory. Allied and Russian forces were revived only briefly by Romania's entry into the war on 27 August, as Romania was rapidly defeated by a Central Powers offensive. Meanwhile, unrest grew in Russia as the Tsar remained at the front. The increasingly incompetent rule of Empress Alexandra drew protests and resulted in the murder of her favourite, Rasputin, at the end of 1916. In March 1917, demonstrations in Petrograd culminated in the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and the appointment of a weak Provisional Government, which shared power with the Petrograd Soviet socialists. This arrangement led to confusion and chaos both at the front and at home. The army became increasingly ineffective. Following the Tsar's abdication, Vladimir Lenin—with the help of the German government—was ushered by train from Switzerland into Russia 16 April 1917. Discontent and the weaknesses of the Provisional Government led to a rise in the popularity of the Bolshevik Party, led by Lenin, which demanded an immediate end to the war. The Revolution of November was followed in December by an armistice and negotiations with Germany. At first, the Bolsheviks refused the German terms, but when German troops began marching across Ukraine unopposed, the new government acceded to the Treaty of Brest- Litovsk on 3March 1918. The treaty ceded vast territories, including Finland, the Baltic provinces, parts of Poland and Ukraine to the Central Powers. Despite this enormous German success, the manpower required by the Germans to occupy the captured territory may have contributed to the failure of their Spring Offensive, and secured relatively little food or other materiel for the Central Powers war effort. With the adoption of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Entente no longer existed. The Allied powers led a small-scale invasion of Russia, partly to stop Germany from exploiting Russian resources, and to a lesser extent, to support the "Whites" (as opposed to the "Reds") in the Russian Civil War. Allied troops landed in Arkhangelsk and in Vladivostok as part of the North Russia Intervention. The Czechoslovak Legion fought on the side of the Entente. Its goal was to win support for the independence of Czechoslovakia. The Legion in Russia was established in September 1914, in December 1917 in France (including volunteers from America) and in April 1918 in Italy. Czechoslovak Legion troops defeated the Austro-Hungarian army at the Ukrainian village of Zborov, in July 1917. After this success, the number of Czechoslovak legionaries increased, as well as Czechoslovak military power. In the Battle of Bakhmach, the Legion defeated the Germans and forced them to make a truce. In Russia, they were heavily involved in the Russian Civil War, siding with the Whites against the Bolsheviks, at times controlling most of the Trans-Siberian railway and conquering all the major cities of Siberia. The presence of the Czechoslovak Legion near Yekaterinburg appears to have been one of the motivations for the Bolshevik execution of the Tsar and his family in July 1918. Legionaries arrived less than a week afterwards and captured the city. Because Russia's European ports were not safe, the corps was evacuated by a long detour via the port of Vladivostok. The last transport was the American ship Heffron in September 1920. On 12 December 1916, after ten brutal months of the Battle of Verdun and a successful offensive against Romania, Germany attempted to negotiate a peace with the Allies. However, this attempt was rejected out of hand as a "duplicitous war ruse". Soon after, the US President, Woodrow Wilson, attempted to intervene as a peacemaker, asking in a note for both sides to state their demands. Lloyd George's War Cabinet considered the German offer to be a ploy to create divisions amongst the Allies. After initial outrage and much deliberation, they took Wilson's note as a separate effort, signalling that the United States was on the verge of entering the war against Germany following the "submarine outrages". While the Allies debated a response to Wilson's offer, the Germans chose to rebuff it in favour of "a direct exchange of views". Learning of the German response, the Allied governments were free to make clear demands in their response of 14 January. They sought restoration of damages, the evacuation of occupied territories, reparations for France, Russia and Romania, and a recognition of the principle of nationalities. This included the liberation of Italians, Slavs, Romanians, Czecho-Slovaks, and the creation of a "free and united Poland". On the question of security, the Allies sought guarantees that would prevent or limit future wars, complete with sanctions, as a condition of any peace settlement. The negotiations failed and the Entente powers rejected the German offer on the grounds that Germany had not put forward any specific proposals. Events of 1917 proved decisive in ending the war, although their effects were not fully felt until 1918. The British naval blockade began to have a serious impact on Germany. In response, in February 1917, the German General Staff convinced Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg to declare unrestricted submarine warfare, with the goal of starving Britain out of the war. German planners estimated that unrestricted submarine warfare would cost Britain a monthly shipping loss of 600,000 tons. The General Staff acknowledged that the policy would almost certainly bring the United States into the conflict, but calculated that British shipping losses would be so high that they would be forced to sue for peace after five to six months, before American intervention could have an effect. Tonnage sunk rose above 500,000 tons per month from February to July. It peaked at 860,000 tons in April. After July, the newly re-introduced convoy system became effective in reducing the U-boat threat. Britain was safe from starvation, while German industrial output fell, and the United States joined the war far earlier than Germany had anticipated. On 3 May 1917, during the Nivelle Offensive, the French 2nd Colonial Division, veterans of the Battle of Verdun, refused orders, arriving drunk and without their weapons. Their officers lacked the means to punish an entire division, and harsh measures were not immediately implemented. The French Army Mutinies eventually spread to a further 54 French divisions, and 20,000 men deserted. However, appeals to patriotism and duty, as well as mass arrests and trials, encouraged the soldiers to return to defend their trenches, although the French soldiers refused to participate in further offensive action. Robert Nivelle was removed from command by 15 May, replaced by General Philippe Pétain, who suspended bloody large-scale attacks. The victory of the Central Powers at the Battle of Caporetto led the Allies to convene the Rapallo Conference at which they formed the Supreme War Council to co-ordinate planning. Previously, British and French armies had operated under separate commands. In December, the Central Powers signed an armistice with Russia, thus freeing large numbers of German troops for use in the west. With German reinforcements and new American troops pouring in, the outcome was to be decided on the Western Front. The Central Powers knew that they could not win a protracted war, but they held high hopes for success based on a final quick offensive. Furthermore, both sides became increasingly fearful of social unrest and revolution in Europe. Thus, both sides urgently sought a decisive victory. In 1917, Emperor Charles I of Austria secretly attempted separate peace negotiations with Clemenceau, through his wife's brother Sixtus in Belgium as an intermediary, without the knowledge of Germany. Italy opposed the proposals. When the negotiations failed, his attempt was revealed to Germany, resulting in a diplomatic catastrophe. In March and April 1917, at the First and Second Battles of Gaza, German and Ottoman forces stopped the advance of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, which had begun in August 1916 at the Battle of Romani. At the end of October, the Sinai and Palestine Campaign resumed, when General Edmund Allenby's XXth Corps, XXI Corps and Desert Mounted Corps won the Battle of Beersheba. Two Ottoman armies were defeated a few weeks later at the Battle of Mughar Ridge and, early in December, Jerusalem was captured following another Ottoman defeat at the Battle of Jerusalem. About this time, Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein was relieved of his duties as the Eighth Army's commander, replaced by Djevad Pasha, and a few months later the commander of the Ottoman Army in Palestine, Erich von Falkenhayn, was replaced by Otto Liman von Sanders. In early 1918, the front line was extended and the Jordan Valley was occupied, following the First Transjordan and the Second Transjordan attacks by British Empire forces in March and April 1918. In March, most of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force's British infantry and Yeomanry cavalry were sent to the Western Front as a consequence of the Spring Offensive. They were replaced by Indian Army units. During several months of reorganisation and training of the summer, a number of attacks were carried out on sections of the Ottoman front line. These pushed the front line north to more advantageous positions for the Entente in preparation for an attack and to acclimatise the newly arrived Indian Army infantry. It was not until the middle of September that the integrated force was ready for large-scale operations. The reorganised Egyptian Expeditionary Force, with an additional mounted division, broke Ottoman forces at the Battle of Megiddo in September 1918. In two days the British and Indian infantry, supported by a creeping barrage, broke the Ottoman front line and captured the headquarters of the Eighth Army (Ottoman Empire) at Tulkarm, the continuous trench lines at Tabsor, Arara, and the Seventh Army (Ottoman Empire) headquarters at Nablus. The Desert Mounted Corps rode through the break in the front line created by the infantry. During virtually continuous operations by Australian Light Horse, British mounted Yeomanry, Indian Lancers, and New Zealand Mounted Rifle brigades in the Jezreel Valley, they captured Nazareth, Afulah and Beisan, Jenin, along with Haifa on the Mediterranean coast and Daraa east of the Jordan River on the Hejaz railway. Samakh and Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee were captured on the way northwards to Damascus. Meanwhile, Chaytor's Force of Australian light horse, New Zealand mounted rifles, Indian, British West Indies and Jewish infantry captured the crossings of the Jordan River, Es Salt, Amman and at Ziza most of the Fourth Army (Ottoman Empire). The Armistice of Mudros, signed at the end of October, ended hostilities with the Ottoman Empire when fighting was continuing north of Aleppo. On or shortly before 15 August 1917 Pope Benedict XV made a peace proposal suggesting: No annexations, No indemnities, except to compensate for severe war damage in Belgium and parts of France and of Serbia, A solution to the problems of Alsace-Lorraine, Trentino and Trieste, Restoration of the Kingdom of Poland, Germany to pull out of Belgium and France, Germany's overseas colonies to be returned to Germany, General disarmament, A Supreme Court of arbitration to settle future disputes between nations, The freedom of the seas, Abolish all retaliatory economic conflicts, No point in ordering reparations, because so much damage had been caused to all belligerents At the outbreak of the war, the United States pursued a policy of non- intervention, avoiding conflict while trying to broker a peace. When the German U-boat U-20 sank the British liner RMS Lusitania on 7May 1915 with 128 Americans among the dead, President Woodrow Wilson insisted that America is "too proud to fight" but demanded an end to attacks on passenger ships. Germany complied. Wilson unsuccessfully tried to mediate a settlement. However, he also repeatedly warned that the United States would not tolerate unrestricted submarine warfare, in violation of international law. Former president Theodore Roosevelt denounced German acts as "piracy". Wilson was narrowly re-elected in 1916 after campaigning with the slogan "he kept us out of war". In January 1917, Germany decided to resume unrestricted submarine warfare, in the hopes of starving Britain into surrender. Germany did this realising it would mean American entry. The German Foreign Minister, in the Zimmermann Telegram, invited Mexico to join the war as Germany's ally against the United States. In return, the Germans would finance Mexico's war and help it recover the territories of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. The United Kingdom intercepted the message and presented it to the US embassy in the UK. From there it made its way to President Wilson who released the Zimmermann note to the public, and Americans saw it as casus belli. Wilson called on anti-war elements to end all wars, by winning this one and eliminating militarism from the globe. He argued that the war was so important that the US had to have a voice in the peace conference. After the sinking of seven US merchant ships by submarines and the publication of the Zimmermann telegram, Wilson called for war on Germany on 2April 1917, which the US Congress declared 4days later. The United States was never formally a member of the Allies but became a self-styled "Associated Power". The United States had a small army, but, after the passage of the Selective Service Act, it drafted 2.8 million men, and, by summer 1918, was sending 10,000 fresh soldiers to France every day. In 1917, the US Congress granted US citizenship to Puerto Ricans to allow them to be drafted to participate in World WarI, as part of the Jones–Shafroth Act. German General Staff assumptions that it would be able to defeat the British and French forces before American troops reinforced them were proven incorrect. The United States Navy sent a battleship group to Scapa Flow to join with the British Grand Fleet, destroyers to Queenstown, Ireland, and submarines to help guard convoys. Several regiments of US Marines were also dispatched to France. The British and French wanted American units used to reinforce their troops already on the battle lines and not waste scarce shipping on bringing over supplies. General John J. Pershing, American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) commander, refused to break up American units to be used as filler material. As an exception, he did allow African-American combat regiments to be used in French divisions. The Harlem Hellfighters fought as part of the French 16th Division, and earned a unit Croix de Guerre for their actions at Château-Thierry, Belleau Wood, and Sechault. AEF doctrine called for the use of frontal assaults, which had long since been discarded by British Empire and French commanders due to the large loss of life that resulted. Ludendorff drew up plans (codenamed Operation Michael) for the 1918 offensive on the Western Front. The Spring Offensive sought to divide the British and French forces with a series of feints and advances. The German leadership hoped to end the war before significant US forces arrived. The operation commenced on 21 March 1918 with an attack on British forces near Saint- Quentin. German forces achieved an unprecedented advance of . British and French trenches were penetrated using novel infiltration tactics, also named Hutier tactics after General Oskar von Hutier, by specially trained units called stormtroopers. Previously, attacks had been characterised by long artillery bombardments and massed assaults. In the Spring Offensive of 1918, however, Ludendorff used artillery only briefly and infiltrated small groups of infantry at weak points. They attacked command and logistics areas and bypassed points of serious resistance. More heavily armed infantry then destroyed these isolated positions. This German success relied greatly on the element of surprise. The front moved to within of Paris. Three heavy Krupp railway guns fired 183 shells on the capital, causing many Parisians to flee. The initial offensive was so successful that Kaiser Wilhelm II declared 24 March a national holiday. Many Germans thought victory was near. After heavy fighting, however, the offensive was halted. Lacking tanks or motorised artillery, the Germans were unable to consolidate their gains. The problems of re-supply were also exacerbated by increasing distances that now stretched over terrain that was shell-torn and often impassable to traffic. General Foch pressed to use the arriving American troops as individual replacements, whereas Pershing sought to field American units as an independent force. These units were assigned to the depleted French and British Empire commands on 28 March. A Supreme War Council of Allied forces was created at the Doullens Conference on 5November 1917. General Foch was appointed as supreme commander of the Allied forces. Haig, Petain, and Pershing retained tactical control of their respective armies; Foch assumed a co-ordinating rather than a directing role, and the British, French, and US commands operated largely independently. Following Operation Michael, Germany launched Operation Georgette against the northern English Channel ports. The Allies halted the drive after limited territorial gains by Germany. The German Army to the south then conducted Operations Blücher and Yorck, pushing broadly towards Paris. Germany launched Operation Marne (Second Battle of the Marne) on 15 July, in an attempt to encircle Reims. The resulting counter-attack, which started the Hundred Days Offensive, marked the first successful Allied offensive of the war. By 20 July, the Germans had retreated across the Marne to their starting lines, having achieved little, and the German Army never regained the initiative. German casualties between March and April 1918 were 270,000, including many highly trained stormtroopers. Meanwhile, Germany was falling apart at home. Anti-war marches became frequent and morale in the army fell. Industrial output was half the 1913 levels. In the late spring of 1918, three new states were formed in the South Caucasus: the First Republic of Armenia, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Georgia, which declared their independence from the Russian Empire. Two other minor entities were established, the Centrocaspian Dictatorship and South West Caucasian Republic (the former was liquidated by Azerbaijan in the autumn of 1918 and the latter by a joint Armenian-British task force in early 1919). With the withdrawal of the Russian armies from the Caucasus front in the winter of 1917–18, the three major republics braced for an imminent Ottoman advance, which commenced in the early months of 1918. Solidarity was briefly maintained when the Transcaucasian Federative Republic was created in the spring of 1918, but this collapsed in May, when the Georgians asked for and received protection from Germany and the Azerbaijanis concluded a treaty with the Ottoman Empire that was more akin to a military alliance. Armenia was left to fend for itself and struggled for five months against the threat of a full-fledged occupation by the Ottoman Turks before defeating them at the Battle of Sardarabad. The Allied counteroffensive, known as the Hundred Days Offensive, began on 8August 1918, with the Battle of Amiens. The battle involved over 400 tanks and 120,000 British, Dominion, and French troops, and by the end of its first day a gap long had been created in the German lines. The defenders displayed a marked collapse in morale, causing Ludendorff to refer to this day as the "Black Day of the German army". After an advance as far as , German resistance stiffened, and the battle was concluded on 12 August. Rather than continuing the Amiens battle past the point of initial success, as had been done so many times in the past, the Allies shifted attention elsewhere. Allied leaders had now realised that to continue an attack after resistance had hardened was a waste of lives, and it was better to turn a line than to try to roll over it. They began to undertake attacks in quick order to take advantage of successful advances on the flanks, then broke them off when each attack lost its initial impetus. The day after the Offensive began, Ludendorff said: "We cannot win the war any more, but we must not lose it either." On 11 August he offered his resignation to the Kaiser, who refused it, replying, "I see that we must strike a balance. We have nearly reached the limit of our powers of resistance. The war must be ended." On 13 August, at Spa, Hindenburg, Ludendorff, the Chancellor, and Foreign Minister Hintz agreed that the war could not be ended militarily and, on the following day, the German Crown Council decided that victory in the field was now most improbable. Austria and Hungary warned that they could continue the war only until December, and Ludendorff recommended immediate peace negotiations. Prince Rupprecht warned Prince Max of Baden: "Our military situation has deteriorated so rapidly that I no longer believe we can hold out over the winter; it is even possible that a catastrophe will come earlier." British and Dominion forces launched the next phase of the campaign with the Battle of Albert on 21 August. The assault was widened by French and then further British forces in the following days. During the last week of August the Allied pressure along a front against the enemy was heavy and unrelenting. From German accounts, "Each day was spent in bloody fighting against an ever and again on-storming enemy, and nights passed without sleep in retirements to new lines." Faced with these advances, on 2 September the German Supreme Army Command issued orders to withdraw in the south to the Hindenburg Line. This ceded without a fight the salient seized the previous April. According to Ludendorff, "We had to admit the necessity ... to withdraw the entire front from the Scarpe to the Vesle. In nearly four weeks of fighting beginning on 8August, over 100,000 German prisoners were taken. The German High Command realised that the war was lost and made attempts to reach a satisfactory end. On 10 September Hindenburg urged peace moves to Emperor Charles of Austria, and Germany appealed to the Netherlands for mediation. On 14 September Austria sent a note to all belligerents and neutrals suggesting a meeting for peace talks on neutral soil, and on 15 September Germany made a peace offer to Belgium. Both peace offers were rejected. In September the Allies advanced to the Hindenburg Line in the north and centre. The Germans continued to fight strong rear-guard actions and launched numerous counterattacks, but positions and outposts of the Line continued to fall, with the BEF alone taking 30,441 prisoners in the last week of September. On 24 September an assault by both the British and French came within of St. Quentin. The Germans had now retreated to positions along or behind the Hindenburg Line. That same day, Supreme Army Command informed the leaders in Berlin that armistice talks were inevitable. The final assault on the Hindenburg Line began with the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, launched by French and American troops on 26 September. The following week, co-operating French and American units broke through in Champagne at the Battle of Blanc Mont Ridge, forcing the Germans off the commanding heights, and closing towards the Belgian frontier. On 8October the line was pierced again by British and Dominion troops at the Battle of Cambrai. The German army had to shorten its front and use the Dutch frontier as an anchor to fight rear-guard actions as it fell back towards Germany. When Bulgaria signed a separate armistice on 29 September, Ludendorff, having been under great stress for months, suffered something similar to a breakdown. It was evident that Germany could no longer mount a successful defence. The collapse of the Balkans meant that Germany was about to lose its main supplies of oil and food. Its reserves had been used up, even as US troops kept arriving at the rate of 10,000 per day. The Americans supplied more than 80% of Allied oil during the war, and there was no shortage. News of Germany's impending military defeat spread throughout the German armed forces. The threat of mutiny was rife. Admiral Reinhard Scheer and Ludendorff decided to launch a last attempt to restore the "valour" of the German Navy. In northern Germany, the German Revolution of 1918–1919 began at the end of October 1918. Units of the German Navy refused to set sail for a last, large- scale operation in a war they believed to be as good as lost, initiating the uprising. The sailors' revolt, which then ensued in the naval ports of Wilhelmshaven and Kiel, spread across the whole country within days and led to the proclamation of a republic on 9November 1918, shortly thereafter to the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and to German surrender. With the military faltering and with widespread loss of confidence in the Kaiser leading to his abdication and fleeing of the country, Germany moved towards surrender. Prince Maximilian of Baden took charge of a new government on 3October as Chancellor of Germany to negotiate with the Allies. Negotiations with President Wilson began immediately, in the hope that he would offer better terms than the British and French. Wilson demanded a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary control over the German military. There was no resistance when the Social Democrat Philipp Scheidemann on 9November declared Germany to be a republic. The Kaiser, kings and other hereditary rulers all were removed from power and Wilhelm fled to exile in the Netherlands. Imperial Germany was dead; a new Germany had been born as the Weimar Republic. The collapse of the Central Powers came swiftly. Bulgaria was the first to sign an armistice, the Armistice of Salonica on 29 September 1918. German Emperor Wilhelm II in his telegram to Bulgarian Tsar Ferdinand I described situation: “Disgraceful! 62,000 Serbs decided the war!". On 29 September 1918, the German Supreme Army Command informed Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Imperial Chancellor Count Georg von Hertling, that the military situation facing Germany was hopeless . On 30 October, the Ottoman Empire capitulated, signing the Armistice of Mudros. On 24 October, the Italians began a push that rapidly recovered territory lost after the Battle of Caporetto. This culminated in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, which marked the end of the Austro-Hungarian Army as an effective fighting force. The offensive also triggered the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. During the last week of October, declarations of independence were made in Budapest, Prague, and Zagreb. On 29 October, the imperial authorities asked Italy for an armistice, but the Italians continued advancing, reaching Trento, Udine, and Trieste. On 3November, Austria-Hungary sent a flag of truce to ask for an armistice (Armistice of Villa Giusti). The terms, arranged by telegraph with the Allied Authorities in Paris, were communicated to the Austrian commander and accepted. The Armistice with Austria was signed in the Villa Giusti, near Padua, on 3November. Austria and Hungary signed separate armistices following the overthrow of the Habsburg Monarchy. In the following days the Italian Army occupied Innsbruck and all Tyrol with over 20,000 soldiers. On 11 November, at 5:00 am, an armistice with Germany was signed in a railroad carriage at Compiègne. At 11 am on 11 November 1918—"the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month"—a ceasefire came into effect. During the six hours between the signing of the armistice and its taking effect, opposing armies on the Western Front began to withdraw from their positions, but fighting continued along many areas of the front, as commanders wanted to capture territory before the war ended. The occupation of the Rhineland took place following the Armistice. The occupying armies consisted of American, Belgian, British and French forces. In November 1918, the Allies had ample supplies of men and materiel to invade Germany. Yet at the time of the armistice, no Allied force had crossed the German frontier, the Western Front was still some from Berlin, and the Kaiser's armies had retreated from the battlefield in good order. These factors enabled Hindenburg and other senior German leaders to spread the story that their armies had not really been defeated. This resulted in the stab-in-the-back legend, which attributed Germany's defeat not to its inability to continue fighting (even though up to a million soldiers were suffering from the 1918 flu pandemic and unfit to fight), but to the public's failure to respond to its "patriotic calling" and the supposed intentional sabotage of the war effort, particularly by Jews, Socialists, and Bolsheviks. The Allies had much more potential wealth they could spend on the war. One estimate (using 1913 US dollars) is that the Allies spent $58 billion on the war and the Central Powers only $25 billion. Among the Allies, the UK spent $21 billion and the US$17 billion; among the Central Powers Germany spent $20 billion. In the aftermath of the war, four empires disappeared: the German, Austro- Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian. Numerous nations regained their former independence, and new ones were created. Four dynasties, together with their ancillary aristocracies, fell as a result of the war: the Romanovs, the Hohenzollerns, the Habsburgs, and the Ottomans. Belgium and Serbia were badly damaged, as was France, with 1.4 million soldiers dead, not counting other casualties. Germany and Russia were similarly affected. A formal state of war between the two sides persisted for another seven months, until the signing of the Treaty of Versailles with Germany on 28 June 1919. The United States Senate did not ratify the treaty despite public support for it, and did not formally end its involvement in the war until the Knox–Porter Resolution was signed on 2July 1921 by President Warren G. Harding. For the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the state of war ceased under the provisions of the Termination of the Present War (Definition) Act 1918 with respect to: After the Treaty of Versailles, treaties with Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire were signed. However, the negotiation of the treaty with the Ottoman Empire was followed by strife, and a final peace treaty between the Allied Powers and the country that would shortly become the Republic of Turkey was not signed until 24 July 1923, at Lausanne. Some war memorials date the end of the war as being when the Versailles Treaty was signed in 1919, which was when many of the troops serving abroad finally returned home; by contrast, most commemorations of the war's end concentrate on the armistice of 11 November 1918. Legally, the formal peace treaties were not complete until the last, the Treaty of Lausanne, was signed. Under its terms, the Allied forces left Constantinople on 23 August 1923. After the war, the Paris Peace Conference imposed a series of peace treaties on the Central Powers officially ending the war. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles dealt with Germany and, building on Wilson's 14th point, brought into being the League of Nations on 28 June 1919. The Central Powers had to acknowledge responsibility for "all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by" their aggression. In the Treaty of Versailles, this statement was Article 231. This article became known as the War Guilt clause as the majority of Germans felt humiliated and resentful. Overall the Germans felt they had been unjustly dealt with by what they called the "diktat of Versailles". German historian Hagen Schulze said the Treaty placed Germany "under legal sanctions, deprived of military power, economically ruined, and politically humiliated." Belgian historian Laurence Van Ypersele emphasises the central role played by memory of the war and the Versailles Treaty in German politics in the 1920s and 1930s: Active denial of war guilt in Germany and German resentment at both reparations and continued Allied occupation of the Rhineland made widespread revision of the meaning and memory of the war problematic. The legend of the "stab in the back" and the wish to revise the "Versailles diktat", and the belief in an international threat aimed at the elimination of the German nation persisted at the heart of German politics. Even a man of peace such as [Gustav] Stresemann publicly rejected German guilt. As for the Nazis, they waved the banners of domestic treason and international conspiracy in an attempt to galvanise the German nation into a spirit of revenge. Like a Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany sought to redirect the memory of the war to the benefit of its own policies. Meanwhile, new nations liberated from German rule viewed the treaty as recognition of wrongs committed against small nations by much larger aggressive neighbours. The Peace Conference required all the defeated powers to pay reparations for all the damage done to civilians. However, owing to economic difficulties and Germany being the only defeated power with an intact economy, the burden fell largely on Germany. Austria-Hungary was partitioned into several successor states, including Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, largely but not entirely along ethnic lines. Transylvania was shifted from Hungary to Greater Romania. The details were contained in the Treaty of Saint-Germain and the Treaty of Trianon. As a result of the Treaty of Trianon, 3.3 million Hungarians came under foreign rule. Although the Hungarians made up approximately 54% of the population of the pre-war Kingdom of Hungary (according to the 1910 census), only 32% of its territory was left to Hungary. Between 1920 and 1924, 354,000 Hungarians fled former Hungarian territories attached to Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. The Russian Empire, which had withdrawn from the war in 1917 after the October Revolution, lost much of its western frontier as the newly independent nations of Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland were carved from it. Romania took control of Bessarabia in April 1918. The Ottoman Empire disintegrated, with much of its Levant territory awarded to various Allied powers as protectorates. The Turkish core in Anatolia was reorganised as the Republic of Turkey. The Ottoman Empire was to be partitioned by the Treaty of Sèvres of 1920. This treaty was never ratified by the Sultan and was rejected by the Turkish National Movement, leading to the victorious Turkish War of Independence and the much less stringent 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. Even though a lot of countries had already made a peace treaty, there was one exception, Andorra. Andorra declared war on Germany in August 1914, but, because it had a very small population, Andorra had never sent any soldiers to the battlefield. Because of that, Andorra was not allowed to go to the Treaty of Versailles, so the country had not made a peace treaty with Germany until 1958. When Andorra made the declaration of war, it had an army of 600 part-time militarymen, commanded by two officials. After 123 years, Poland re-emerged as an independent country. The Kingdom of Serbia and its dynasty, as a "minor Entente nation" and the country with the most casualties per capita, became the backbone of a new multinational state, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later renamed Yugoslavia. Czechoslovakia, combining the Kingdom of Bohemia with parts of the Kingdom of Hungary, became a new nation. Russia became the Soviet Union and lost Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, which became independent countries. The Ottoman Empire was soon replaced by Turkey and several other countries in the Middle East. In the British Empire, the war unleashed new forms of nationalism. In Australia and New Zealand the Battle of Gallipoli became known as those nations' "Baptism of Fire". It was the first major war in which the newly established countries fought, and it was one of the first times that Australian troops fought as Australians, not just subjects of the British Crown. Anzac Day, commemorating the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC), celebrates this defining moment. After the Battle of Vimy Ridge, where the Canadian divisions fought together for the first time as a single corps, Canadians began to refer to their country as a nation "forged from fire". Having succeeded on the same battleground where the "mother countries" had previously faltered, they were for the first time respected internationally for their own accomplishments. Canada entered the war as a Dominion of the British Empire and remained so, although it emerged with a greater measure of independence. When Britain declared war in 1914, the dominions were automatically at war; at the conclusion, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa were individual signatories of the Treaty of Versailles. Lobbying by Chaim Weizmann and fear that American Jews would encourage the United States to support Germany culminated in the British government's Balfour Declaration of 1917, endorsing creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. A total of more than 1,172,000 Jewish soldiers served in the Allied and Central Power forces in World WarI, including 275,000 in Austria-Hungary and 450,000 in Tsarist Russia. The establishment of the modern state of Israel and the roots of the continuing Israeli–Palestinian conflict are partially found in the unstable power dynamics of the Middle East that resulted from World WarI. Before the end of the war, the Ottoman Empire had maintained a modest level of peace and stability throughout the Middle East. With the fall of the Ottoman government, power vacuums developed and conflicting claims to land and nationhood began to emerge. The political boundaries drawn by the victors of World WarI were quickly imposed, sometimes after only cursory consultation with the local population. These continue to be problematic in the 21st-century struggles for national identity. While the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World WarI was pivotal in contributing to the modern political situation of the Middle East, including the Arab-Israeli conflict, the end of Ottoman rule also spawned lesser known disputes over water and other natural resources. The prestige of Germany and German things in Latin America remained high after the war but did not recovered to its pre-war levels. Indeed, in Chile the war bought an end to a period of intense scientific and cultural influence writer Eduardo de la Barra scorningly called "the German bewichment" (). Of the 60 million European military personnel who were mobilised from 1914 to 1918, 8 million were killed, 7 million were permanently disabled, and 15 million were seriously injured. Germany lost 15.1% of its active male population, Austria-Hungary lost 17.1%, and France lost 10.5%. In Germany, civilian deaths were 474,000 higher than in peacetime, due in large part to food shortages and malnutrition that weakened resistance to disease. By the end of the war, starvation caused by famine had killed approximately 100,000 people in Lebanon. Between 5and 10 million people died in the Russian famine of 1921. By 1922, there were between 4.5 million and 7million homeless children in Russia as a result of nearly a decade of devastation from World WarI, the Russian Civil War, and the subsequent famine of 1920–1922. Numerous anti-Soviet Russians fled the country after the Revolution; by the 1930s, the northern Chinese city of Harbin had 100,000 Russians. Thousands more emigrated to France, England, and the United States. The Australian prime minister, Billy Hughes, wrote to the British prime minister, Lloyd George, "You have assured us that you cannot get better terms. I much regret it, and hope even now that some way may be found of securing agreement for demanding reparation commensurate with the tremendous sacrifices made by the British Empire and her Allies." Australia received £5,571,720 war reparations, but the direct cost of the war to Australia had been £376,993,052, and, by the mid-1930s, repatriation pensions, war gratuities, interest and sinking fund charges were £831,280,947. Of about 416,000 Australians who served, about 60,000 were killed and another 152,000 were wounded. Diseases flourished in the chaotic wartime conditions. In 1914 alone, louse-borne epidemic typhus killed 200,000 in Serbia. From 1918 to 1922, Russia had about 25 million infections and 3million deaths from epidemic typhus. In 1923, 13 million Russians contracted malaria, a sharp increase from the pre-war years. In addition, a major influenza epidemic spread around the world. Overall, the 1918 flu pandemic killed at least 50 million people. Moreover, between 1915 and 1926, an epidemic of encephalitis lethargica spread around the world affecting nearly five million people. The social disruption and widespread violence of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the ensuing Russian Civil War sparked more than 2,000 pogroms in the former Russian Empire, mostly in Ukraine. An estimated 60,000–200,000 civilian Jews were killed in the atrocities. In the aftermath of World War I, Greece fought against Turkish nationalists led by Mustafa Kemal, a war that eventually resulted in a massive population exchange between the two countries under the Treaty of Lausanne. According to various sources, several hundred thousand Greeks died during this period, which was tied in with the Greek Genocide. World War I began as a clash of 20th-century technology and 19th-century tactics, with the inevitably large ensuing casualties. By the end of 1917, however, the major armies, now numbering millions of men, had modernised and were making use of telephone, wireless communication, armoured cars, tanks, and aircraft. Infantry formations were reorganised, so that 100-man companies were no longer the main unit of manoeuvre; instead, squads of 10 or so men, under the command of a junior NCO, were favoured. Artillery also underwent a revolution. In 1914, cannons were positioned in the front line and fired directly at their targets. By 1917, indirect fire with guns (as well as mortars and even machine guns) was commonplace, using new techniques for spotting and ranging, notably aircraft and the often overlooked field telephone. Counter-battery missions became commonplace, also, and sound detection was used to locate enemy batteries. Germany was far ahead of the Allies in using heavy indirect fire. The German Army employed and howitzers in 1914, when typical French and British guns were only and . The British had a 6-inch (152 mm) howitzer, but it was so heavy it had to be hauled to the field in pieces and assembled. The Germans also fielded Austrian and guns and, even at the beginning of the war, had inventories of various calibres of Minenwerfer, which were ideally suited for trench warfare. On 27 June 1917 the Germans used the biggest gun in the world, Batterie Pommern, nicknamed "Lange Max". This gun from Krupp was able to shoot 750 kg shells from Koekelare to Dunkirk, a distance of about . Much of the combat involved trench warfare, in which hundreds often died for each metre gained. Many of the deadliest battles in history occurred during World WarI. Such battles include Ypres, the Marne, Cambrai, the Somme, Verdun, and Gallipoli. The Germans employed the Haber process of nitrogen fixation to provide their forces with a constant supply of gunpowder despite the British naval blockade. Artillery was responsible for the largest number of casualties and consumed vast quantities of explosives. The large number of head wounds caused by exploding shells and fragmentation forced the combatant nations to develop the modern steel helmet, led by the French, who introduced the Adrian helmet in 1915. It was quickly followed by the Brodie helmet, worn by British Imperial and US troops, and in 1916 by the distinctive German Stahlhelm, a design, with improvements, still in use today. The widespread use of chemical warfare was a distinguishing feature of the conflict. Gases used included chlorine, mustard gas and phosgene. Relatively few war casualties were caused by gas, as effective countermeasures to gas attacks were quickly created, such as gas masks. The use of chemical warfare and small-scale strategic bombing (as opposed to tactical bombing) were both outlawed by the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, and both proved to be of limited effectiveness, though they captured the public imagination. The most powerful land-based weapons were railway guns, weighing dozens of tons apiece. The German version were nicknamed Big Berthas, even though the namesake was not a railway gun. Germany developed the Paris Gun, able to bombard Paris from over , though shells were relatively light at 94 kilograms (210 lb). Trenches, machine guns, air reconnaissance, barbed wire, and modern artillery with fragmentation shells helped bring the battle lines of World WarI to a stalemate. The British and the French sought a solution with the creation of the tank and mechanised warfare. The British first tanks were used during the Battle of the Somme on 15 September 1916. Mechanical reliability was an issue, but the experiment proved its worth. Within a year, the British were fielding tanks by the hundreds, and they showed their potential during the Battle of Cambrai in November 1917, by breaking the Hindenburg Line, while combined arms teams captured 8,000 enemy soldiers and 100 guns. Meanwhile, the French introduced the first tanks with a rotating turret, the Renault FT, which became a decisive tool of the victory. The conflict also saw the introduction of light automatic weapons and submachine guns, such as the Lewis Gun, the Browning Automatic Rifle, and the Bergmann MP18. Another new weapon, the flamethrower, was first used by the German army and later adopted by other forces. Although not of high tactical value, the flamethrower was a powerful, demoralising weapon that caused terror on the battlefield. Trench railways evolved to supply the enormous quantities of food, water, and ammunition required to support large numbers of soldiers in areas where conventional transportation systems had been destroyed. Internal combustion engines and improved traction systems for automobiles and trucks/lorries eventually rendered trench railways obsolete. On the Western Front neither side made impressive gains in the first three years of the war with attacks at Verdun, the Somme, Passchendaele, and Cambrai the exception was Nivelle's Offensive in which the German defence gave ground while mauling the attackers so badly that there were mutinies in the French Army. In 1918 the Germans smashed through the defence lines in three great attacks: Michael, on the Lys, and on the Aisne, which displayed the power of their new tactics. The Allies struck back at Soissons, which showed the Germans that they must return to the defensive, and at Amiens; tanks played a prominent role in both these assaults, as they had the year before at Cambrai. The areas in the East were larger. The Germans did well at the First Masurian Lakes driving the invaders from East Prussia, and at Riga, which led the Russians to sue for peace. The Austro-Hungarians and Germans joined for a great success at Gorlice–Tarnów, which drove the Russians out of Poland. In a series of attacks along with the Bulgarians they occupied Serbia, Albania, Montenegro and most of Romania. The Allies successes came later in Palestine, the beginning of the end for the Ottomans, in Macedonia, which drove the Bulgarians out of the war, and at Vittorio Veneto, the final blow for the Austro-Hungarians. The area occupied in East by the Central powers on 11 November 1918 was . Germany deployed U-boats (submarines) after the war began. Alternating between restricted and unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic, the Kaiserliche Marine employed them to deprive the British Isles of vital supplies. The deaths of British merchant sailors and the seeming invulnerability of U-boats led to the development of depth charges (1916), hydrophones (passive sonar, 1917), blimps, hunter-killer submarines (HMS R-1, 1917), forward-throwing anti-submarine weapons, and dipping hydrophones (the latter two both abandoned in 1918). To extend their operations, the Germans proposed supply submarines (1916). Most of these would be forgotten in the interwar period until World WarII revived the need. Fixed-wing aircraft were first used militarily by the Italians in Libya on 23 October 1911 during the Italo-Turkish War for reconnaissance, soon followed by the dropping of grenades and aerial photography the next year. By 1914, their military utility was obvious. They were initially used for reconnaissance and ground attack. To shoot down enemy planes, anti-aircraft guns and fighter aircraft were developed. Strategic bombers were created, principally by the Germans and British, though the former used Zeppelins as well. Towards the end of the conflict, aircraft carriers were used for the first time, with HMS Furious launching Sopwith Camels in a raid to destroy the Zeppelin hangars at Tondern in 1918. Manned observation balloons, floating high above the trenches, were used as stationary reconnaissance platforms, reporting enemy movements and directing artillery. Balloons commonly had a crew of two, equipped with parachutes, so that if there was an enemy air attack the crew could parachute to safety. At the time, parachutes were too heavy to be used by pilots of aircraft (with their marginal power output), and smaller versions were not developed until the end of the war; they were also opposed by the British leadership, who feared they might promote cowardice. Recognised for their value as observation platforms, balloons were important targets for enemy aircraft. To defend them against air attack, they were heavily protected by antiaircraft guns and patrolled by friendly aircraft; to attack them, unusual weapons such as air-to-air rockets were tried. Thus, the reconnaissance value of blimps and balloons contributed to the development of air-to-air combat between all types of aircraft, and to the trench stalemate, because it was impossible to move large numbers of troops undetected. The Germans conducted air raids on England during 1915 and 1916 with airships, hoping to damage British morale and cause aircraft to be diverted from the front lines, and indeed the resulting panic led to the diversion of several squadrons of fighters from France. On 19 August 1915, the German submarine U-27 was sunk by the British Q-ship . All German survivors were summarily executed by Baralongs crew on the orders of Lieutenant Godfrey Herbert, the captain of the ship. The shooting was reported to the media by American citizens who were on board the Nicosia, a British freighter loaded with war supplies, which was stopped by U-27 just minutes before the incident. On 24 September, Baralong destroyed U-41, which was in the process of sinking the cargo ship Urbino. According to Karl Goetz, the submarine's commander, Baralong continued to fly the US flag after firing on U-41 and then rammed the lifeboat—carrying the German survivors—sinking it. The Canadian hospital ship was torpedoed by the German submarine SM U-86 on 27 June 1918 in violation of international law. Only 24 of the 258 medical personnel, patients, and crew survived. Survivors reported that the U-boat surfaced and ran down the lifeboats, machine-gunning survivors in the water. The U-boat captain, Helmut Patzig, was charged with war crimes in Germany following the war, but escaped prosecution by going to the Free City of Danzig, beyond the jurisdiction of German courts. After the war, the German government claimed that approximately 763,000 German civilians died from starvation and disease during the war because of the Allied blockade. An academic study done in 1928 put the death toll at 424,000. Germany protested that the Allies had used starvation as a weapon of war. Sally Marks argued that the German accounts of a hunger blockade are a "myth," as Germany did not face the starvation level of Belgium and the regions of Poland and northern France that it occupied. According to the British judge and legal philosopher Patrick Devlin, "The War Orders given by the Admiralty on 26 August [1914] were clear enough. All food consigned to Germany through neutral ports was to be captured and all food consigned to Rotterdam was to be presumed consigned to Germany. ... The British were determined on the starvation policy, whether or not it was lawful." The German army was the first to successfully deploy chemical weapons during the Second Battle of Ypres (22 April – 25 May 1915), after German scientists working under the direction of Fritz Haber at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute developed a method to weaponize chlorine. The use of chemical weapons was sanctioned by the German High Command in an effort to force Allied soldiers out of their entrenched positions, complementing rather than supplanting more lethal conventional weapons. In time, chemical weapons were deployed by all major belligerents throughout the war, inflicting approximately 1.3 million casualties, but relatively few fatalities: About 90,000 in total. For example, there were an estimated 186,000 British chemical weapons casualties during the war (80% of which were the result of exposure to the vesicant sulfur mustard, introduced to the battlefield by the Germans in July 1917, which burns the skin at any point of contact and inflicts more severe lung damage than chlorine or phosgene), and up to one-third of American casualties were caused by them. The Russian Army reportedly suffered roughly 500,000 chemical weapon casualties in World WarI. The use of chemical weapons in warfare was in direct violation of the 1899 Hague Declaration Concerning Asphyxiating Gases and the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare, which prohibited their use. The effect of poison gas was not limited to combatants. Civilians were at risk from the gases as winds blew the poison gases through their towns, and they rarely received warnings or alerts of potential danger. In addition to absent warning systems, civilians often did not have access to effective gas masks. An estimated 100,000–260,000 civilian casualties were caused by chemical weapons during the conflict and tens of thousands more (along with military personnel) died from scarring of the lungs, skin damage, and cerebral damage in the years after the conflict ended. Many commanders on both sides knew such weapons would cause major harm to civilians but nonetheless continued to use them. British Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig wrote in his diary, "My officers and I were aware that such weapons would cause harm to women and children living in nearby towns, as strong winds were common in the battlefront. However, because the weapon was to be directed against the enemy, none of us were overly concerned at all." The war damaged chemistry's prestige in European societies, in particular the German variety. The ethnic cleansing of the Ottoman Empire's Armenian population, including mass deportations and executions, during the final years of the Ottoman Empire is considered genocide. The Ottomans carried out organised and systematic massacres of the Armenian population at the beginning of the war and portrayed deliberately provoked acts of Armenian resistance as rebellions to justify further extermination. In early 1915, a number of Armenians volunteered to join the Russian forces and the Ottoman government used this as a pretext to issue the Tehcir Law (Law on Deportation), which authorised the deportation of Armenians from the Empire's eastern provinces to Syria between 1915 and 1918. The Armenians were intentionally marched to death and a number were attacked by Ottoman brigands. While an exact number of deaths is unknown, the International Association of Genocide Scholars estimates 1.5 million. The government of Turkey has consistently denied the genocide, arguing that those who died were victims of inter-ethnic fighting, famine, or disease during World WarI; these claims are rejected by most historians. Other ethnic groups were similarly attacked by the Ottoman Empire during this period, including Assyrians and Greeks, and some scholars consider those events to be part of the same policy of extermination. At least 250,000 Assyrian Christians, about half of the population, and 350,000–750,000 Anatolian and Pontic Greeks were killed between 1915 and 1922. Many pogroms accompanied the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the ensuing Russian Civil War. 60,000–200,000 civilian Jews were killed in the atrocities throughout the former Russian Empire (mostly within the Pale of Settlement in present-day Ukraine). There were an estimated 7–12 million casualties during the Russian Civil War, mostly civilians. The German invaders treated any resistance—such as sabotaging rail lines—as illegal and immoral, and shot the offenders and burned buildings in retaliation. In addition, they tended to suspect that most civilians were potential francs-tireurs (guerrillas) and, accordingly, took and sometimes killed hostages from among the civilian population. The German army executed over 6,500 French and Belgian civilians between August and November 1914, usually in near-random large-scale shootings of civilians ordered by junior German officers. The German Army destroyed 15,000–20,000 buildings—most famously the university library at Louvain—and generated a wave of refugees of over a million people. Over half the German regiments in Belgium were involved in major incidents. Thousands of workers were shipped to Germany to work in factories. British propaganda dramatising the Rape of Belgium attracted much attention in the United States, while Berlin said it was both lawful and necessary because of the threat of franc-tireurs like those in France in 1870. The British and French magnified the reports and disseminated them at home and in the United States, where they played a major role in dissolving support for Germany. The British soldiers of the war were initially volunteers but increasingly were conscripted into service. Surviving veterans, returning home, often found they could discuss their experiences only amongst themselves. Grouping together, they formed "veterans' associations" or "Legions". A small number of personal accounts of American veterans have been collected by the Library of Congress Veterans History Project. About eight million men surrendered and were held in POW camps during the war. All nations pledged to follow the Hague Conventions on fair treatment of prisoners of war, and the survival rate for POWs was generally much higher than that of combatants at the front. Individual surrenders were uncommon; large units usually surrendered en masse. At the siege of Maubeuge about 40,000 French soldiers surrendered, at the battle of Galicia Russians took about 100,000 to 120,000 Austrian captives, at the Brusilov Offensive about 325,000 to 417,000 Germans and Austrians surrendered to Russians, and at the Battle of Tannenberg 92,000 Russians surrendered. When the besieged garrison of Kaunas surrendered in 1915, some 20,000 Russians became prisoners, at the battle near Przasnysz (February–March 1915) 14,000 Germans surrendered to Russians, and at the First Battle of the Marne about 12,000 Germans surrendered to the Allies. 25–31% of Russian losses (as a proportion of those captured, wounded, or killed) were to prisoner status; for Austria-Hungary 32%, for Italy 26%, for France 12%, for Germany 9%; for Britain 7%. Prisoners from the Allied armies totalled about 1.4 million (not including Russia, which lost 2.5–3.5 million men as prisoners). From the Central Powers about 3.3 million men became prisoners; most of them surrendered to Russians. Germany held 2.5 million prisoners; Russia held 2.2–2.9 million; while Britain and France held about 720,000. Most were captured just before the Armistice. The United States held 48,000. The most dangerous moment was the act of surrender, when helpless soldiers were sometimes gunned down. Once prisoners reached a camp, conditions were, in general, satisfactory (and much better than in World WarII), thanks in part to the efforts of the International Red Cross and inspections by neutral nations. However, conditions were terrible in Russia: starvation was common for prisoners and civilians alike; about 15–20% of the prisoners in Russia died, and in Central Powers imprisonment 8% of Russians. In Germany, food was scarce, but only 5% died. The Ottoman Empire often treated POWs poorly. Some 11,800 British Empire soldiers, most of them Indians, became prisoners after the Siege of Kut in Mesopotamia in April 1916; 4,250 died in captivity. Although many were in a poor condition when captured, Ottoman officers forced them to march to Anatolia. A survivor said: "We were driven along like beasts; to drop out was to die." The survivors were then forced to build a railway through the Taurus Mountains. In Russia, when the prisoners from the Czech Legion of the Austro-Hungarian army were released in 1917, they re-armed themselves and briefly became a military and diplomatic force during the Russian Civil War. While the Allied prisoners of the Central Powers were quickly sent home at the end of active hostilities, the same treatment was not granted to Central Power prisoners of the Allies and Russia, many of whom served as forced labour, e.g., in France until 1920. They were released only after many approaches by the Red Cross to the Allied Supreme Council. German prisoners were still being held in Russia as late as 1924. Military and civilian observers from every major power closely followed the course of the war. Many were able to report on events from a perspective somewhat akin to modern "embedded" positions within the opposing land and naval forces. In the Balkans, Yugoslav nationalists such as the leader, Ante Trumbić, strongly supported the war, desiring the freedom of Yugoslavs from Austria- Hungary and other foreign powers and the creation of an independent Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav Committee, led by Trumbić, was formed in Paris on 30 April 1915 but shortly moved its office to London. In April 1918, the Rome Congress of Oppressed Nationalities met, including Czechoslovak, Italian, Polish, Transylvanian, and Yugoslav representatives who urged the Allies to support national self-determination for the peoples residing within Austria- Hungary. In the Middle East, Arab nationalism soared in Ottoman territories in response to the rise of Turkish nationalism during the war, with Arab nationalist leaders advocating the creation of a pan-Arab state. In 1916, the Arab Revolt began in Ottoman-controlled territories of the Middle East in an effort to achieve independence. In East Africa, Iyasu V of Ethiopia was supporting the Dervish state who were at war with the British in the Somaliland Campaign. Von Syburg, the German envoy in Addis Ababa, said, "now the time has come for Ethiopia to regain the coast of the Red Sea driving the Italians home, to restore the Empire to its ancient size." The Ethiopian Empire was on the verge of entering World WarI on the side of the Central Powers before Iyasu's overthrow due to Allied pressure on the Ethiopian aristocracy. Iyasu was accused of converting to Islam. According to Ethiopian historian Bahru Zewde, the evidence used to prove Iyasu's conversion was a doctored photo of Iyasu wearing a turban provided by the Allies. Some historians claim the British spy T. E. Lawrence forged the Iyasu photo. A number of socialist parties initially supported the war when it began in August 1914. But European socialists split on national lines, with the concept of class conflict held by radical socialists such as Marxists and syndicalists being overborne by their patriotic support for the war. Once the war began, Austrian, British, French, German, and Russian socialists followed the rising nationalist current by supporting their countries' intervention in the war. Italian nationalism was stirred by the outbreak of the war and was initially strongly supported by a variety of political factions. One of the most prominent and popular Italian nationalist supporters of the war was Gabriele d'Annunzio, who promoted Italian irredentism and helped sway the Italian public to support intervention in the war. The Italian Liberal Party, under the leadership of Paolo Boselli, promoted intervention in the war on the side of the Allies and used the Dante Alighieri Society to promote Italian nationalism. Italian socialists were divided on whether to support the war or oppose it; some were militant supporters of the war, including Benito Mussolini and Leonida Bissolati. However, the Italian Socialist Party decided to oppose the war after anti-militarist protestors were killed, resulting in a general strike called Red Week. The Italian Socialist Party purged itself of pro-war nationalist members, including Mussolini. Mussolini, a syndicalist who supported the war on grounds of irredentist claims on Italian-populated regions of Austria-Hungary, formed the pro-interventionist Il Popolo d'Italia and the Fasci Rivoluzionario d'Azione Internazionalista ("Revolutionary Fasci for International Action") in October 1914 that later developed into the Fasci di Combattimento in 1919, the origin of fascism. Mussolini's nationalism enabled him to raise funds from Ansaldo (an armaments firm) and other companies to create Il Popolo d'Italia to convince socialists and revolutionaries to support the war. Once war was declared, many socialists and trade unions backed their governments. Among the exceptions were the Bolsheviks, the Socialist Party of America, the Italian Socialist Party, and people like Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, and their followers in Germany. Benedict XV, elected to the papacy less than three months into World WarI, made the war and its consequences the main focus of his early pontificate. In stark contrast to his predecessor, five days after his election he spoke of his determination to do what he could to bring peace. His first encyclical, Ad beatissimi Apostolorum, given 1November 1914, was concerned with this subject. Benedict XV found his abilities and unique position as a religious emissary of peace ignored by the belligerent powers. The 1915 Treaty of London between Italy and the Triple Entente included secret provisions whereby the Allies agreed with Italy to ignore papal peace moves towards the Central Powers. Consequently, the publication of Benedict's proposed of August 1917 was roundly ignored by all parties except Austria-Hungary. In Britain in 1914, the Public Schools Officers' Training Corps annual camp was held at Tidworth Pennings, near Salisbury Plain. Head of the British Army, Lord Kitchener, was to review the cadets, but the imminence of the war prevented him. General Horace Smith- Dorrien was sent instead. He surprised the two-or-three thousand cadets by declaring (in the words of Donald Christopher Smith, a Bermudian cadet who was present), that war should be avoided at almost any cost, that war would solve nothing, that the whole of Europe and more besides would be reduced to ruin, and that the loss of life would be so large that whole populations would be decimated. In our ignorance I, and many of us, felt almost ashamed of a British General who uttered such depressing and unpatriotic sentiments, but during the next four years, those of us who survived the holocaust—probably not more than one-quarter of us—learned how right the General's prognosis was and how courageous he had been to utter it. Voicing these sentiments did not hinder Smith-Dorrien's career, or prevent him from doing his duty in World WarI to the best of his abilities. Many countries jailed those who spoke out against the conflict. These included Eugene Debs in the United States and Bertrand Russell in Britain. In the US, the Espionage Act of 1917 and Sedition Act of 1918 made it a federal crime to oppose military recruitment or make any statements deemed "disloyal". Publications at all critical of the government were removed from circulation by postal censors, and many served long prison sentences for statements of fact deemed unpatriotic. A number of nationalists opposed intervention, particularly within states that the nationalists were hostile to. Although the vast majority of Irish people consented to participate in the war in 1914 and 1915, a minority of advanced Irish nationalists staunchly opposed taking part. The war began amid the Home Rule crisis in Ireland that had resurfaced in 1912, and by July 1914 there was a serious possibility of an outbreak of civil war in Ireland. Irish nationalists and Marxists attempted to pursue Irish independence, culminating in the Easter Rising of 1916, with Germany sending 20,000 rifles to Ireland to stir unrest in Britain. The UK government placed Ireland under martial law in response to the Easter Rising, though once the immediate threat of revolution had dissipated, the authorities did try to make concessions to nationalist feeling. However, opposition to involvement in the war increased in Ireland, resulting in the Conscription Crisis of 1918. Other opposition came from conscientious objectors—some socialist, some religious—who refused to fight. In Britain, 16,000 people asked for conscientious objector status. Some of them, most notably prominent peace activist Stephen Henry Hobhouse, refused both military and alternative service. Many suffered years of prison, including solitary confinement and bread and water diets. Even after the war, in Britain many job advertisements were marked "No conscientious objectors need apply". The Central Asian Revolt started in the summer of 1916, when the Russian Empire government ended its exemption of Muslims from military service. In 1917, a series of French Army Mutinies led to dozens of soldiers being executed and many more imprisoned. On 1–4 May 1917, about 100,000 workers and soldiers of Petrograd, and after them, the workers and soldiers of other Russian cities, led by the Bolsheviks, demonstrated under banners reading "Down with the war!" and "all power to the soviets!" The mass demonstrations resulted in a crisis for the Russian Provisional Government. In Milan, in May 1917, Bolshevik revolutionaries organised and engaged in rioting calling for an end to the war, and managed to close down factories and stop public transportation. The Italian army was forced to enter Milan with tanks and machine guns to face Bolsheviks and anarchists, who fought violently until 23 May when the army gained control of the city. Almost 50 people (including three Italian soldiers) were killed and over 800 people arrested. In September 1917, Russian soldiers in France began questioning why they were fighting for the French at all and mutinied. In Russia, opposition to the war led to soldiers also establishing their own revolutionary committees, which helped foment the October Revolution of 1917, with the call going up for "bread, land, and peace". The Decree on Peace, written by Vladimir Lenin, was passed on 8November 1917, following the success of the October Revolution. The Bolsheviks agreed to a peace treaty with Germany, the peace of Brest-Litovsk, despite its harsh conditions. The German Revolution of 1918-1919 led to the abdication of the Kaiser and German surrender. Conscription was common in most European countries. However, it was controversial in English-speaking countries. It was especially unpopular among minority ethnic groups—especially the Irish Catholics in Ireland and Australia, and the French Catholics in Canada. In Canada the issue produced a major political crisis that permanently alienated the Francophones. It opened a political gap between French Canadians, who believed their true loyalty was to Canada and not to the British Empire, and members of the Anglophone majority, who saw the war as a duty to their British heritage. Australia had a form of conscription at the outbreak of the war, as compulsory military training had been introduced in 1911. However, the Defence Act 1903 provided that unexempted males could be called upon only for home defence during times of war, not overseas service. Prime Minister Billy Hughes wished to amend the legislation to require conscripts to serve overseas, and held two non-binding referendums – one in 1916 and one in 1917 – in order to secure public support. Both were defeated by narrow margins, with farmers, the labour movement, the Catholic Church, and Irish-Australians combining to campaign for the "No" vote. The issue of conscription caused the 1916 Australian Labor Party split. Hughes and his supporters were expelled from the party, forming the National Labor Party and then the Nationalist Party. Despite the referendum results, the Nationalists won a landslide victory at the 1917 federal election. In Britain, conscription resulted in the calling up of nearly every physically fit man in Britain—six of ten million eligible. Of these, about 750,000 lost their lives. Most deaths were those of young unmarried men; however, 160,000 wives lost husbands and 300,000 children lost fathers. Conscription during the First World War began when the British government passed the Military Service Act in 1916. The act specified that single men aged 18 to 40 years old were liable to be called up for military service unless they were widowed with children or ministers of a religion. There was a system of Military Service Tribunals to adjudicate upon claims for exemption upon the grounds of performing civilian work of national importance, domestic hardship, health, and conscientious objection. The law went through several changes before the war ended. Married men were exempt in the original Act, although this was changed in June 1916. The age limit was also eventually raised to 51 years old. Recognition of work of national importance also diminished, and in the last year of the war there was some support for the conscription of clergy. Conscription lasted until mid-1919. Due to the political situation in Ireland, conscription was never applied there; only in England, Scotland and Wales. In the United States, conscription began in 1917 and was generally well received, with a few pockets of opposition in isolated rural areas. The administration decided to rely primarily on conscription, rather than voluntary enlistment, to raise military manpower for when only 73,000 volunteers enlisted out of the initial 1million target in the first six weeks of the war. In 1917 10 million men were registered. This was deemed to be inadequate, so age ranges were increased and exemptions reduced, and so by the end of 1918 this increased to 24 million men that were registered with nearly 3million inducted into the military services. The draft was universal and included blacks on the same terms as whites, although they served in different units. In all 367,710 black Americans were drafted (13% of the total), compared to 2,442,586 white (87%). Forms of resistance ranged from peaceful protest to violent demonstrations and from humble letter-writing campaigns asking for mercy to radical newspapers demanding reform. The most common tactics were dodging and desertion, and many communities sheltered and defended their draft dodgers as political heroes. Many socialists were jailed for "obstructing the recruitment or enlistment service". The most famous was Eugene Debs, head of the Socialist Party of America, who ran for president in 1920 from his prison cell. In 1917 a number of radicals and anarchists challenged the new draft law in federal court, arguing that it was a direct violation of the Thirteenth Amendment's prohibition against slavery and involuntary servitude. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the constitutionality of the draft act in the Selective Draft Law Cases on 7January 1918. Like all the armies of mainland Europe, Austria-Hungary relied on conscription to fill its ranks. Officer recruitment, however, was voluntary. The effect of this at the start of the war was that well over a quarter of the rank and file were Slavs, while more than 75% of the officers were ethnic Germans. This was much resented. The army has been described as being "run on colonial lines" and the Slav soldiers as "disaffected". Thus conscription contributed greatly to Austria's disastrous performance on the battlefield. The non-military diplomatic and propaganda interactions among the nations were designed to build support for the cause, or to undermine support for the enemy. For the most part, wartime diplomacy focused on five issues: propaganda campaigns; defining and redefining the war goals, which became harsher as the war went on; luring neutral nations (Italy, Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria, Romania) into the coalition by offering slices of enemy territory; and encouragement by the Allies of nationalistic minority movements inside the Central Powers, especially among Czechs, Poles, and Arabs. In addition, there were multiple peace proposals coming from neutrals, or one side or the other; none of them progressed very far. The first tentative efforts to comprehend the meaning and consequences of modern warfare began during the initial phases of the war, and this process continued throughout and after the end of hostilities, and is still underway, more than a century later. Historian Heather Jones argues that the historiography has been reinvigorated by the cultural turn in recent years. Scholars have raised entirely new questions regarding military occupation, radicalisation of politics, race, and the male body. Furthermore, new research has revised our understanding of five major topics that historians have long debated: Why the war began, why the Allies won, whether generals were responsible for high casualty rates, how the soldiers endured the horrors of trench warfare, and to what extent the civilian homefront accepted and endorsed the war effort. Memorials were erected in thousands of villages and towns. Close to battlefields, those buried in improvised burial grounds were gradually moved to formal graveyards under the care of organisations such as the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the American Battle Monuments Commission, the German War Graves Commission, and Le Souvenir français. Many of these graveyards also have central monuments to the missing or unidentified dead, such as the Menin Gate memorial and the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme. In 1915 John McCrae, a Canadian army doctor, wrote the poem In Flanders Fields as a salute to those who perished in the Great War. Published in Punch on 8December 1915, it is still recited today, especially on Remembrance Day and Memorial Day. National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri, is a memorial dedicated to all Americans who served in World WarI. The Liberty Memorial was dedicated on 1November 1921, when the supreme Allied commanders spoke to a crowd of more than 100,000 people. The UK Government has budgeted substantial resources to the commemoration of the war during the period 2014 to 2018. The lead body is the Imperial War Museum. On 3August 2014, French President Francois Hollande and German President Joachim Gauck together marked the centenary of Germany's declaration of war on France by laying the first stone of a memorial in Vieil Armand, known in German as Hartmannswillerkopf, for French and German soldiers killed in the war. World War I had a lasting impact on social memory. It was seen by many in Britain as signalling the end of an era of stability stretching back to the Victorian period, and across Europe many regarded it as a watershed. Historian Samuel Hynes explained: This has become the most common perception of World War I, perpetuated by the art, cinema, poems, and stories published subsequently. Films such as All Quiet on the Western Front, Paths of Glory and King & Country have perpetuated the idea, while war-time films including Camrades, Poppies of Flanders, and Shoulder Arms indicate that the most contemporary views of the war were overall far more positive. Likewise, the art of Paul Nash, John Nash, Christopher Nevinson, and Henry Tonks in Britain painted a negative view of the conflict in keeping with the growing perception, while popular war-time artists such as Muirhead Bone painted more serene and pleasant interpretations subsequently rejected as inaccurate. Several historians like John Terraine, Niall Ferguson and Gary Sheffield have challenged these interpretations as partial and polemical views: These beliefs did not become widely shared because they offered the only accurate interpretation of wartime events. In every respect, the war was much more complicated than they suggest. In recent years, historians have argued persuasively against almost every popular cliché of World WarI. It has been pointed out that, although the losses were devastating, their greatest impact was socially and geographically limited. The many emotions other than horror experienced by soldiers in and out of the front line, including comradeship, boredom, and even enjoyment, have been recognised. The war is not now seen as a 'fight about nothing', but as a war of ideals, a struggle between aggressive militarism and more or less liberal democracy. It has been acknowledged that British generals were often capable men facing difficult challenges, and that it was under their command that the British army played a major part in the defeat of the Germans in 1918: a great forgotten victory. Though these views have been discounted as "myths", they are common. They have dynamically changed according to contemporary influences, reflecting in the 1950s perceptions of the war as "aimless" following the contrasting Second World War and emphasising conflict within the ranks during times of class conflict in the 1960s. The majority of additions to the contrary are often rejected. The social trauma caused by unprecedented rates of casualties manifested itself in different ways, which have been the subject of subsequent historical debate. The optimism of la belle époque was destroyed, and those who had fought in the war were referred to as the Lost Generation. For years afterwards, people mourned the dead, the missing, and the many disabled. Many soldiers returned with severe trauma, suffering from shell shock (also called neurasthenia, a condition related to posttraumatic stress disorder). Many more returned home with few after-effects; however, their silence about the war contributed to the conflict's growing mythological status. Though many participants did not share in the experiences of combat or spend any significant time at the front, or had positive memories of their service, the images of suffering and trauma became the widely shared perception. Such historians as Dan Todman, Paul Fussell, and Samuel Heyns have all published works since the 1990s arguing that these common perceptions of the war are factually incorrect. The rise of Nazism and Fascism included a revival of the nationalist spirit and a rejection of many post-war changes. Similarly, the popularity of the stab-in-the-back legend (German: Dolchstoßlegende) was a testament to the psychological state of defeated Germany and was a rejection of responsibility for the conflict. This conspiracy theory of betrayal became common, and the German populace came to see themselves as victims. The widespread acceptance of the "stab-in-the-back" theory delegitimised the Weimar government and destabilised the system, opening it to extremes of right and left. Communist and fascist movements around Europe drew strength from this theory and enjoyed a new level of popularity. These feelings were most pronounced in areas directly or harshly affected by the war. Adolf Hitler was able to gain popularity by using German discontent with the still controversial Treaty of Versailles. World WarII was in part a continuation of the power struggle never fully resolved by World WarI. Furthermore, it was common for Germans in the 1930s to justify acts of aggression due to perceived injustices imposed by the victors of World WarI. American historian William Rubinstein wrote that: The 'Age of Totalitarianism' included nearly all the infamous examples of genocide in modern history, headed by the Jewish Holocaust, but also comprising the mass murders and purges of the Communist world, other mass killings carried out by Nazi Germany and its allies, and also the Armenian Genocide of 1915. All these slaughters, it is argued here, had a common origin, the collapse of the elite structure and normal modes of government of much of central, eastern and southern Europe as a result of World WarI, without which surely neither Communism nor Fascism would have existed except in the minds of unknown agitators and crackpots. One of the most dramatic effects of the war was the expansion of governmental powers and responsibilities in Britain, France, the United States, and the Dominions of the British Empire. To harness all the power of their societies, governments created new ministries and powers. New taxes were levied and laws enacted, all designed to bolster the war effort; many have lasted to this day. Similarly, the war strained the abilities of some formerly large and bureaucratised governments, such as in Austria-Hungary and Germany. Gross domestic product (GDP) increased for three Allies (Britain, Italy, and the United States), but decreased in France and Russia, in neutral Netherlands, and in the three main Central Powers. The shrinkage in GDP in Austria, Russia, France, and the Ottoman Empire ranged between 30% and 40%. In Austria, for example, most pigs were slaughtered, so at war's end there was no meat. In all nations, the government's share of GDP increased, surpassing 50% in both Germany and France and nearly reaching that level in Britain. To pay for purchases in the United States, Britain cashed in its extensive investments in American railroads and then began borrowing heavily from Wall Street. President Wilson was on the verge of cutting off the loans in late 1916, but allowed a great increase in US government lending to the Allies. After 1919, the US demanded repayment of these loans. The repayments were, in part, funded by German reparations that, in turn, were supported by American loans to Germany. This circular system collapsed in 1931 and some loans were never repaid. Britain still owed the United States $4.4 billion of World WarI debt in 1934, the last instalment was finally paid in 2015. Macro- and micro- economic consequences devolved from the war. Families were altered by the departure of many men. With the death or absence of the primary wage earner, women were forced into the workforce in unprecedented numbers. At the same time, industry needed to replace the lost labourers sent to war. This aided the struggle for voting rights for women. World War I further compounded the gender imbalance, adding to the phenomenon of surplus women. The deaths of nearly one million men during the war in Britain increased the gender gap by almost a million: from 670,000 to 1,700,000. The number of unmarried women seeking economic means grew dramatically. In addition, demobilisation and economic decline following the war caused high unemployment. The war increased female employment; however, the return of demobilised men displaced many from the workforce, as did the closure of many of the wartime factories. In Britain, rationing was finally imposed in early 1918, limited to meat, sugar, and fats (butter and margarine), but not bread. The new system worked smoothly. From 1914 to 1918, trade union membership doubled, from a little over four million to a little over eight million. Britain turned to her colonies for help in obtaining essential war materials whose supply from traditional sources had become difficult. Geologists such as Albert Ernest Kitson were called on to find new resources of precious minerals in the African colonies. Kitson discovered important new deposits of manganese, used in munitions production, in the Gold Coast. Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles (the so-called "war guilt" clause) stated Germany accepted responsibility for "all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies." It was worded as such to lay a legal basis for reparations, and a similar clause was inserted in the treaties with Austria and Hungary. However neither of them interpreted it as an admission of war guilt." In 1921, the total reparation sum was placed at 132 billion gold marks. However, "Allied experts knew that Germany could not pay" this sum. The total sum was divided into three categories, with the third being "deliberately designed to be chimerical" and its "primary function was to mislead public opinion ... into believing the "total sum was being maintained." Thus, 50 billion gold marks (12.5 billion dollars) "represented the actual Allied assessment of German capacity to pay" and "therefore ... represented the total German reparations" figure that had to be paid. This figure could be paid in cash or in kind (coal, timber, chemical dyes, etc.). In addition, some of the territory lost—via the treaty of Versailles—was credited towards the reparation figure as were other acts such as helping to restore the Library of Louvain. By 1929, the Great Depression arrived, causing political chaos throughout the world. In 1932 the payment of reparations was suspended by the international community, by which point Germany had paid only the equivalent of 20.598 billion gold marks in reparations. With the rise of Adolf Hitler, all bonds and loans that had been issued and taken out during the 1920s and early 1930s were cancelled. David Andelman notes "refusing to pay doesn't make an agreement null and void. The bonds, the agreement, still exist." Thus, following the Second World War, at the London Conference in 1953, Germany agreed to resume payment on the money borrowed. On 3October 2010, Germany made the final payment on these bonds. The war contributed to the evolution of the wristwatch from women's jewellery to a practical everyday item, replacing the pocketwatch, which requires a free hand to operate. Military funding of advancements in radio contributed to the postwar popularity of the medium. Lists of World War I topics, Outline of World War I (translated from the German), , reviewed in (via Highbeam.com), Bond, Brian. "The First World War" in C.L. Mowat, ed. The New Cambridge Modern History: Vol. XII: The Shifting Balance of World Forces 1898–1945 (2nd ed. 1968) online pp. 171–208. scholarly summary., Encyclopædia Britannica (12th ed. 1922) comprises the 11th edition plus three new volumes 30-31-32 that cover events since 1911 with thorough coverage of the war as well as every country and colony., Hirschfeld, Gerhard et al. eds. Brill's Encyclopedia of the First World War (2012), 1105pp, , Wilson's manoeuvring US into war, , general military history, Larsen, Daniel. "Intelligence in the First World War: The state of the field." Intelligence and National Security 29.2 (2014): 282–302., also published by Harper as "Ludendorff's Own Story, August 1914 – November 1918: The Great War from the Siege of Liège to the Signing of the Armistice as Viewed from the Grand Headquarters of the German Army" (original title Meine Kriegserinnerungen, 1914–1918), cites "Cf. articles signed XXX in La Revue de Deux Mondes, 1and 15 March 1920", Deals with technical developments, including the first dipping hydrophones Collins, Ross F. ed. World War I: Primary Documents on Events from 1914 to 1919 (Greenwood Press, 2008) online, Hammond's frontier atlas of the world war : containing large scale maps of all the battle fronts of Europe and Asia, together with a military map of the United States (1916) online free Deak, John. "The Great War and the Forgotten Realm: The Habsburg Monarchy and the First World War" Journal of Modern History (2014) 86#2 pp. 336–380., Iriye, Akira. "The Historiographic Impact of the Great War". Diplomatic History (July 2014), Jones, Heather. "As the centenary approaches: the regeneration of First World War historiography". Historical Journal (2013) 56#3 pp. 857–878., Jones, Heather. "Goodbye to all that?: Memory and meaning in the commemoration of the first world war". Juncture (2014) 20#4 pp. 287–291., Kitchen, James E., Alisa Miller and Laura Rowe, eds. Other Combatants, Other Fronts: Competing Histories of the First World War (2011) excerpt, Kramer, Alan. "Recent Historiography of the First World War – Part I", Journal of Modern European History (Feb. 2014) 12#1 pp. 5–27; "Recent Historiography of the First World War (Part II)", (May 2014) 12#2 pp. 155–174, Mulligan, William. "The Trial Continues: New Directions in the Study of the Origins of the First World War". English Historical Review (2014) 129#538 pp. 639–666., Reynolds, David. The Long Shadow: The Legacies of the Great War in the Twentieth Century (2014) Excerpt and text search, Sanborn, Joshua. "Russian Historiography on the Origins of the First World War Since the Fischer Controversy". Journal of Contemporary History (2013) 48#2 pp. 350–362., Sharp, Heather. "Representing Australia's Involvement in the First World War: Discrepancies between Public Discourses and School History Textbooks from 1916 to 1936". Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society (2014) 6#1 pp. 1–23., Trout, Stephen. "On the Battlefield of Memory: The First World War and American Remembrance, 1919–1941 (2013), Turan, Ömer. "Turkish Historiography of the First World War". Middle East Critique (2014) 23#2 pp. 241–257., Winter, Jay, ed. The Cambridge History of the First World War (2 vol. Cambridge University Press, 2014) 1914–1918-online International Encyclopedia of the First World War, The Heritage of the Great War / First World War. Graphic color photos, pictures and music, A multimedia history of World War I, European Newspapers from the start of the First World War and the end of the war, Powerpoint summary of the war, The World War I Document Archive Wiki, Brigham Young University, Maps of Europe covering the history of World War I at omniatlas.com, Maps of Africa covering the history of World War I in Africa at omniatlas.com, "World War I Crossroads" current discussions by scholars, World War I (First World War) Guide to websites, Documents from Mount Holyoke College, EFG1914 – Film digitisation project on First World War, WWI Films on the European Film Gateway, The British Pathé WW1 Film Archive, World War I British press photograph collection – A sampling of images distributed by the British government during the war to diplomats overseas, from the UBC Library Digital Collections, Personal accounts of American World War I veterans, Veterans History Project, Library of Congress. "Europe plunges into war", Europe at the end of the war National Library of New Zealand, State Library of New South Wales, US Library of Congress, Indiana University Bloomington, New York University, University of Alberta

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Descendants 2 is an American musical fantasy television film. It premiered as a Disney Channel Original Movie on July 21, 2017 on Disney Channel, and was simulcast on Disney-owned networks ABC, Disney XD, Freeform, Lifetime, and Lifetime Movies. It is the second installment in the Descendants franchise and the sequel to the 2015 film Descendants. The film stars Dove Cameron, Cameron Boyce, Sofia Carson, Booboo Stewart, Mitchell Hope, and China Anne McClain. A third film, Descendants 3, premiered on August 2, 2019. Mal struggles with her new celebrity life as the girlfriend of King Ben, putting a spell on her hair making it blonde, and uncomfortably maintaining a princess-like personality. She confides her issues in her friends Evie, Carlos, and Jay, but they are content with their new lives in Auradon and do not wish to return to the Isle of the Lost. Evie scolds Mal for relying on her mother's spell book to solve her issues. Carlos, wishing to ask Jane to the upcoming Cotillion dance, turns to Mal for help with honesty. Mal gives him a sweet that will make him speak the truth, but his dog, Dude, eats it, magically speaking the blunt truth in English. Ben eventually discovers Mal's reliance on magic, and she comes clean about her insecurities, causing a falling-out. Mal returns to the Isle, now ruled by her former rival Uma, Ursula's daughter, along with Harry and Gil, the sons of Captain Hook and Gaston. Mal visits hairstylist Dizzy Tremaine, Drizella's daughter, who restores her signature purple hair, saying she felt that Mal's blonde hair was unnatural. Harry discovers Mal's return and informs Uma. Ben, Evie, Jay, and Carlos learn of Mal's departure and sneak onto the Isle to find her, but Gil recognizes them. Ben confronts Mal, who rejects his feelings for what she thought was both his sake and Auradon's. Ben leaves dejected, only to be captured by Uma. Mal and Uma arm wrestle for Ben and Fairy Godmother's wand, which Uma wins. Uma then orders Mal and her friends to retrieve the Fairy Godmother's wand or Ben dies. Carlos and Jay return to Auradon Prep, where they create a replica of the wand using a 3D printer. They are caught by Lonnie, Mulan's daughter, who blackmails them into letting her come, having previously been rejected from Jay's sports team based on her gender. Uma speaks with Ben, bitter that she and the others were not chosen to go to Auradon. Ben takes this into account and invites her to Auradon, but Uma instead plots to make her own way there. Mal's group return, handing over the fake wand in exchange for Ben, but Uma realizes the forgery. The group flee back to Auradon, but Mal and Ben's relationship is still rocky. The villains' children come to terms that they cannot run from their pasts and agree to be honest with themselves and each other. Carlos confesses to Jane but struggles a little bit, while Jay appoints Lonnie as the captain of his team. Aboard a ship during the Cotillion, Ben stuns everyone by appearing with Uma, who he declares as his true love and announces he will destroy the barrier on the Isle. Jane unveils a stained glass display Ben commissioned to show his affection for Mal, who realizes he loved her for who she was all along. Suspecting Uma has given him a love potion, Mal confesses her love for Ben and kisses him, breaking the spell. Enraged, Uma leaps into the water using Ursula's magic seashell to transform into an octopus, and Mal fights back as a dragon. Ben intervenes, quelling the battle, and Uma returns the ring that Ben had originally given her when he had declared her as his true love. She leaves, despite his offer still standing. Mal and Ben reunite, Mal surrendering her spell book to the Fairy Godmother. Evie requests that Dizzy be allowed to attend Auradon Prep; when Dizzy is offered, she excitedly accepts. In a mid-credits scene, Uma addresses the audience, promising that the story is not over. Dove Cameron as Mal, daughter of Maleficent, Cameron Boyce as Carlos, son of Cruella de Vil, Sofia Carson as Evie, daughter of The Evil Queen, Booboo Stewart as Jay, son of Jafar, Mitchell Hope as Ben, son of Belle and Beast, Brenna D'Amico as Jane, daughter of the Fairy Godmother, Melanie Paxson as the Fairy Godmother, the headmistress of Auradon Prep and Jane's mother, Bobby Moynihan as the Voice of Dude, Carlos' dog who gains the power of speech., Thomas Doherty as Harry Hook, son of Captain Hook, Dylan Playfair as Gil, son of Gaston, Dianne Doan as Lonnie, daughter of Fa Mulan and Li Shang, Jedidiah Goodacre as Chad Charming, son of Cinderella and Prince Charming, Zachary Gibson as Doug, son of Dopey the Dwarf, Anna Cathcart as Dizzy Tremaine, daughter of Drizella Tremaine and granddaughter of Lady Tremaine, Dan Payne as the Beast, Queen Belle's husband and Ben's father, Keegan Connor Tracy as Belle, Beast's wife and Ben's mother, China Anne McClain as Uma, daughter of Ursula At the 2015 D23 Expo, Disney announced that a Descendants sequel film had been ordered. An official announcement was made on Disney Channel's Facebook page on October 15, 2015. Deadline Hollywood reported that Parriott and McGibbon would return as screenwriters and executive producers for the sequel and that the cast from the first film was expected to return. According to China Anne McClain, the post-credits scene featuring Uma saying to the public that "You didn’t think this was the end of the story?" was not included in the original script that she read. However, it was eventually decided to include it in order to foreshadow a possible further sequel, like in the case of the original film. On June 10, 2016, China Anne McClain, who was already voicing Freddie on the Descendants spinoff series , was announced to be playing Ursula's daughter, Uma, in Descendants 2. In July 2016 it was revealed that Thomas Doherty would play the role of Harry, the son of Captain Hook. In August 2016, Sarah Jeffery who portrays Audrey revealed that she would not be returning, while Brenna D'Amico revealed that she would be returning in Descendants 2, as were Dianne Doan, Jedidiah Goodacre, and Zachary Gibson. On July 19, 2017, it was announced on The View that Whoopi Goldberg would be providing the voice for Ursula, the Sea Witch and Uma's mother. Descendants 2 made its debut on Disney Channel in Canada on July 21, 2017, at the same time as the United States. In the United States, the film premiered simultaneously across six-Disney owned networks: Disney Channel, Disney XD, Freeform, ABC, Lifetime, and Lifetime Movies. On Disney Channel, the film premiered alongside the world premiere of Raven's Home, which premiered immediately after. In the UK, the film premiered on Disney Channel and Disney XD on October 20, 2017. In South Africa, the film premiered on October 6, 2017. In India, the film premiered on December 23, 2018 on Disney International HD. Descendants 2 was released on DVD on August 15, 2017. In the UK, it was released on DVD on October 23, 2017. In total, the film was viewed by 8.92 million viewers across six networks on the night of its premiere, up from its predecessor in 2015; at least 13 million people watched a minute of the film. On Disney Channel, the film was watched by 5.33 million viewers, and topped the night on cable television, receiving a 1.20 rating. Although down from the first film, it was the most- viewed telecast on the network since the first film. ABC's broadcast of the film received a 0.6/3 rating/share, drawing 2.41 million viewers; 0.47 million viewers watched the film on Disney XD with a 0.12 rating, 0.30 million viewers watched the film on Lifetime with a 0.09 rating, 0.26 million viewers watched the film on Freeform with a 0.08 rating, and 0.15 million viewers watched the film on Lifetime Movies with a 0.05 rating. In delayed viewing, the film rose to a total of 21 million viewers. On Disney Channel, the film placed second in the week of its DVR ratings, jumping 92% to a 2.3 rating, and topped the week in viewer gains, jumping 104% with an additional 5.54 million viewers, the biggest viewer gain on cable television in two years, totaling to 10.90 million viewers on Disney Channel. On Freeform, the film jumped 207% with an additional 0.54 million viewers, totaling to 0.80 million viewers on the network; on Lifetime Movie Network, the film gained 96% with an additional 0.14 million viewers, totaling to 0.29 million viewers on the network. Descendants 2 (Original TV Movie Soundtrack) is the soundtrack accompanying the film of the same name. The soundtrack and lead single, "Ways to Be Wicked", was announced on April 12, 2017. The soundtrack was released on July 21, 2017. The soundtrack debuted at number six on the U.S. Billboard 200 after earning 46,000 album-equivalent units, 35,000 of which were pure sales; sales for the soundtrack's debuting week were up from the previous film. It dropped to number nine on the chart for its second week, earning an additional 27,000 units. "Ways to Be Wicked", performed by Dove Cameron, Sofia Carson, Cameron Boyce, and Booboo Stewart, premiered on Radio Disney and then was officially released as first single on April 14 along with the pre-order of the soundtrack. It debuted at number 1 on the Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles. The song is produced by Sam Hollander and Josh Edmondson who wrote the song with Grant Michaels and Charity Daw. "What's My Name", performed by China Anne McClain, Thomas Doherty, and Dylan Playfair, premiered on Radio Disney and then was officially released as second single on June 2, 2017. "Rather Be With You", from "", performed by Dove Cameron, Sofia Carson, Lauryn McClain, and Brenna D'Amico, was released as first promotional single on October 28, 2016. "Evil", from Wicked World, performed by Dove Cameron, was released on December 9, 2016 as second promotional single. "Better Together", from Wicked World, performed by Dove Cameron and Sofia Carson, was released as third and final promotional single on March 3, 2017. "Chillin' Like a Villain", performed by Sofia Carson, Cameron Boyce, Booboo Stewart, and Mitchell Hope, peaked at number 95 on the US Billboard Hot 100. "It's Goin' Down", performed by Dove Cameron, Sofia Carson, Cameron Boyce, Booboo Stewart, China Anne McClain, Mitchell Hope, Thomas Doherty, and Dylan Playfair, peaked at number 77 on the Hot 100. "You and Me", performed by Dove Cameron, Sofia Carson, Cameron Boyce, Booboo Stewart, Mitchell Hope, and Jeff Lewis, debuted at number 20 on the Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles. On February 16, 2018, Disney Channel announced that a sequel, Descendants 3, is scheduled to premiere mid-2019. It premiered on August 2, 2019. A prequel novel called Rise of the Isle of the Lost was released on May 23, 2017. The novel details Uma's rise to power and her earlier history with Mal. The main plot details Uma planning to get the migrating trident of King Triton in order to help bring down the barrier surrounding the Isle of the Lost. In addition to the mentioning of Genie, Grumpy, and Merriwether being teachers at Auradon Prep, a third school called the Serpent Preparatory School for the Education of Miscreants is located on the Isle of the Lost which Uma, Harry Hook, and Gil attended. Serpent Prep is a rival of Dragon Hall. The book also introduced Yen Sid's Auradon intern Sophie, Ariel's niece Arabella, and Mulan and Shang's son Li'l Shang who is Lonnie's brother. There was a mentioning that the Stabbington brothers from Tangled are also on the Isle of the Lost where they have Stabbington Cousins. Other information listed here that was later referenced in the film was Audrey and Chad breaking up, the introduction of R.O.A.R., Mal keeping Maleficent's lizard form as a pet, and Evie having her magic mirror placed in the museum. The Descendants franchise consists of three Disney Channel musical fantasy adventure-comedy films directed by Kenny Ortega and created by Josann McGibbon and Sara Parriott. It is a spin-off of the Disney Princess franchise and serves as a continuation after the Disney Animated Classics series. Starring Dove Cameron, Cameron Boyce, Sofia Carson and Booboo Stewart each film chronicles the lives of the teenage children of four Disney-villains on the Isle of the Lost, and their move to Auradon at the request of the teenage son of Queen Belle and King Beast. The first film was released as a Disney Channel Original Movie in July 2015—however, following its success, a sequel was put into production and premiered across six Disney-owned networks in 2017. In 2019, the third film premiered on Disney Channel. Each film was accompanied by original music, and film soundtrack; the first soundtrack peaked at number one in the US, while the second soundtrack peaked at number six. Descendants premiered on July 31, 2015 on Disney Channel, and received immediate commercial success. Prior to its premiere, it was viewed more than one million times on the Disney Now app. On its premiere night, the film received 6.6 million viewers, becoming the most-watched broadcast on the network of 2015, and the highest-rated broadcast on the network since 2013. The film later went onto become the fifth most-watched original movie on cable television. The film's soundtrack debuted atop of the US Billboard 200, becoming the first Disney Channel original movie to do so since High School Musical 2 achieved the same feat in 2007. In the United States of Auradon, Belle and Beast rule as king and queen, twenty years after they married, united the settings of many Disney animated films, and banished all villains to the Isle of the Lost, a slum surrounded by a magic-suppressing barrier. Beast plans to abdicate in favor of his and Belle's son, Ben, who announces a program to invite four children from the Isle of the Lost to live in Auradon, away from the influence of their villainous parents: Carlos, son of Cruella de Vil; Jay, son of Jafar; Evie, daughter of the Evil Queen; and their gang's leader Mal, daughter of Maleficent. Maleficent orders them to steal the Fairy Godmother's magic wand and deactivate the barrier, so Maleficent can conquer Auradon. But the four find themselves fitting in and enjoying a normal childhood, and Mal begins a relationship with Ben, supplanting Audrey, daughter of Princess Aurora and Prince Phillip. When the barrier is inadvertently dispelled, Maleficent attacks Ben's coronation and transforms into a dragon. With Ben encouraging her to make her own choice, Mal decides to be good. She and her friends rebuke Maleficent, turning her into a small lizard, from which state she can recover if she fills her heart with love. The people of Auradon celebrate. Descendants 2 was announced on August 15, 2015, at the D23 Expo. The film premiered on July 21, 2017, and was simulcast on six channels: ABC, Disney Channel, Disney XD, Freeform, Lifetime, and Lifetime Movies. The movie was watched by 5.3 million viewers on Disney Channel and 8.9 million through all six networks. Mal struggles with her new celebrity life as King Ben's girlfriend, secretly using magic to maintain a lifestyle she feels is a façade. Mal decides she does not belong in Auradon; she returns to the Isle, where gang leadership has fallen to her old rival, pirate captain Uma (Ursula's daughter), and her first and second mates, respectively, Harry (Captain Hook's son) and Gil (Gaston's son). Evie, Jay, and Carlos agree to help Ben find her, but Mal rejects Ben, believing it best for him and Auradon. Uma captures Ben and demands the Fairy Godmother's wand in exchange for his life. Uma resents not being chosen to live in Auradon; Ben respects her as a leader and invites her to Auradon, but she vows to make her own way there instead. Using a 3D-printed decoy wand, Mal's group rescues Ben. At the shipboard Royal Cotillion, Uma appears as Ben's date and he announces he will destroy the barrier; Mal realizes Uma has cast a spell on Ben. When Mal discovers Ben commissioned a portrait that depicts her as she was before she changed herself with magic, she accepts the emotion of love and kisses Ben, breaking the spell. Uma and Mal battle, transforming into an octopus and a dragon, respectively. Ben tries to negotiate with Uma, but she leaves, unreconciled. Ben plans to bring more children from the Isle to Auradon. Disney Channel ordered the third film of the franchise on February 16, 2018. The film premiered on August 2, 2019. The movie received 4.6 million viewers on its premiere night. In the film, Ben proposes to Mal, making her the future queen of Auradon. However, threats from Uma, Mal's father Hades and Ben's ex- girlfriend Audrey has Mal trying to stop evil once and for all. Before the film's premiere air date, Disney Channel announced a live action mini series leading up to the event. Every day leading up to the release of the film, a new episode of would be released revealing more secrets about the students at Auradon Prep. Each episode of the series is under 5 minutes long, with 23 episodes in total. Right after the film finished airing on Disney Channel, it was announced that a CGI-animated short spinoff entitled would be released on September 18, 2015. Furthermore, former Phineas and Ferb storyboard artist Aliki Theofilopoulos Grafft announced on Twitter that she was directing the series, with Jenni Cook as producer, and that the original cast would be reprising their roles. On August 10, 2018, a short film, Under The Sea: A Descendants Short Story was announced and was released on September 28, 2018. The story revolves around Mal, played by Dove Cameron, who discovers a glowing orb in a forest, she then meets Dizzy, played by Anna Cathcart who is possessed by Uma's necklace. This book series details events that take place during the three movies. A prequel novel called The Isle of the Lost by Melissa de la Cruz, has the villains' descendants banding together to retrieve the Dragon's Eye. The book was released on May 5, 2015. The book has spent over 14 weeks as a Children's Middle Grade New York Times Best Seller. Besides detailing about the children of Maleficent, Jafar, Cruella De Vil, and the Evil Queen, it also talks about some of the known locations of the Isle of the Lost like Dragon Hall (the only school on the Isle of the Lost), Goblin Wharf (which is operated by goblins who would like amnesty for their involvement with Maleficent), Bargain Castle (which sells enchanted robes and bargain hats while the top floor is where Maleficent lives), Jafar's Junk Shop (which is owned by Jafar as mentioned in the film), Castle Far Away (where the Evil Queen lives), Hell Hall (where Cruella de Vil lives), and the Isle of the Doomed (which is hidden next to the Isle of the Lost). The sorcerer Yen Sid from Fantasia is positioned here by King Beast to work at Dragon Hall to help the students with formerly magical parents adapt to more modern methods since the Isle of the Lost's barrier negates all magic. Other villains mentioned or hinted to be on the Isle of the Lost are Captain Hook from Peter Pan (who is mentioned to own "Hook's Inlet and Shack" and is the father of Harriet, CJ, and Harry Hook), Ursula from The Little Mermaid (who owns "Ursula's Fish and Chips" while the Strait of Ursula that's named after her is what separates the Isle of the Lost from Charmington as well as her being the mother of Uma and the other Sea Witches), Dr. Facilier from The Princess and the Frog (who was the founder of Dragon Hall and the father of Freddie and Celia Facilier), Mother Gothel from Tangled (who is mentioned to be a teacher at Dragon Hall teaching "Selfishness 101" and is the mother of Ginny Gothel), Lady Tremaine and her two daughters Drizella and Anastasia from Cinderella (Lady Tremaine is the grandmother of Anastasia's son Anthony and Drizella's daughter Dizzy and a teacher at Dragon Hall teaching "Evil Schemes and Nasty Plots" while her cat Lucifer is the school mascot), Clayton from Tarzan (who is the father of Clay Clayton), Madame Mim from The Sword in the Stone (who has Mad Maddy as one of her granddaughters), Governor John Ratcliffe from Pocahontas, Gaston from Beauty and the Beast (who is the father of Gaston Jr, Gaston III, and Gil as well as the owner of "Gaston Duels Without Rules"), Shan Yu from Mulan, Shere Khan from The Jungle Book (who owns "Shere Khan Pawns"), Scar and his hyena cronies from The Lion King, the Coachman from Pinocchio (who operates a taxicab pulled by normal donkeys after spending a year rounding up the boys he had turned into donkeys), the Horned King from The Black Cauldron (who is mentioned to own "Cauldron Repair"), Professor Padraic Ratigan from The Great Mouse Detective, Yzma from The Emperor's New Groove (who is the mother of Yzla and Zevon), and Claude Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame (who is mentioned to own "Frollo's Creperie" and is the father of Claudine Frollo). The Isle of the Lost novel also mentioned an original character who was the former Royal Astronomer of Agrabah and an ally of Jafar who is the father of Reza. Another Descendants novel titled Return to the Isle of the Lost was released on May 24, 2016. While Ben is running Auradon while his parents are on a cruise, Mal, Jay, Carlos, and Evie receive threatening messages to return to the Isle of the Lost at the time when it ends up in worse shape ever since Maleficent's defeat and the fact that Cruella de Vil, the Evil Queen, and Jafar have gone missing. During this time, it was confirmed that the Crocodile from Peter Pan (who has various children swimming around "Hook's Inlet and Shack"), Edgar Balthazar from The Aristocats (who is mentioned to have a son named Eddie), Hades from Hercules (who is mentioned to have a son named Hadie, and is also revealed to be the father of Mal), and the Ringmaster from Dumbo (who is mentioned to have a daughter named Hermie Bing) are also imprisoned on the Isle of the Lost. It also introduces Hercules's son Herkie, Pinocchio's son Pin, Grumpy's son Gordon, Tiger Lily's daughter Tiger Peony, and King Arthur's son Artie in the book. Also as Freddie, Jordan, and Ally appear in the book, the story takes place during . A prequel novel called Rise of the Isle of the Lost was released on May 23, 2017. The novel details Uma's rise to power and her earlier history with Mal. The main plot details Uma planning to get the migrating trident of King Triton in order to help bring down the barrier surrounding the Isle of the Lost. In addition to the mentioning of Genie, Grumpy, and Merriwether being teachers at Auradon Prep, a third school called the Serpent Preparatory School for the Education of Miscreants is located on the Isle of the Lost which Uma, Harry Hook, and Gil attended. Serpent Prep is a rival of Dragon Hall. The book also introduced Yen Sid's Auradon intern Sophie, Ariel's niece Arabella, and Mulan and Shang's son Li'l Shang who is Lonnie's brother. There was a mentioning that the Stabbington brothers from Tangled are also on the Isle of the Lost where they have children called the Stabbington Cousins. Other information listed here that was later referenced in the film was Audrey and Chad breaking up, the introduction of R.O.A.R., Mal keeping Maleficent's lizard form as a pet, and Evie having her magic mirror placed in the museum. The fourth book in the series was published on June 4, 2019. Hades' minions Pain and Panic are confirmed to be on the Isle of the Lost. School of Secrets is a series of novels that serve as a continuation of the Descendants film. The first book, CJ's Treasure Chase, was released on August 30, 2016 and centers on Captain Hook's daughter, CJ Hook. The second book, Freddie's Shadow Cards, was released on November 1, 2016, and centers on Freddie, the daughter of Dr. Facilier. The third book, Ally's Mad Mystery, was released on February 28, 2017 and focuses on Ally, the daughter of Alice in Wonderland. The fourth novel, Lonnie's Warrior Sword, was released on August 25, 2017, and will focus on Lonnie, the daughter of Mulan and Li Shang, while the fifth book, Carlos's Scavenger Hunt, was released on November 14, 2017. A junior novelization of the film Descendants, adapted by Rico Green, was published on July 14, 2015. Other books have been released, including Mal's Diary, Mal's Spell Book, a poster book, and a Guide to Auradon Prep. List of Descendants characters China Anne McClain (born August 25, 1998) is an American actress and singer. She is a member of the sister girl group McClain. McClain's career began in 2005 when she was seven years old, acting in the film The Gospel (2005). She also played China James in Tyler Perry's Daddy's Little Girls (2007), along with Idris Elba and her two sisters. However, she became nationally known after 2007, when she joined the cast of the series Tyler Perry's House of Payne as Jazmine Payne. In 2010, she co-starred in Grown Ups (2010) as Charlotte McKenzie. McClain became internationally known after starring in the Disney Channel original television series A.N.T. Farm, landing the role as Chyna Parks, from 2011 to 2014. Disney released the soundtrack of the television series A.N.T. Farm on October 11, 2011. McClain sings six songs and two solos with her sisters on the soundtrack, which debuted in the Billboard 200 at number 29 with 14,000 copies sold in its first week. On the soundtrack, McClain sang her version of Taio Cruz's "Dynamite." The release containing the song "Calling All the Monsters" reached the eighty-sixth spot on the Billboard Hot 100. McClain was a co-star in the 2013 sequel Grown Ups 2. In 2014, she appeared on the reality singing competition series, ABC's Sing Your Face Off and was the youngest contestant on the show, winning the show's only season. McClain starred as Gabby Harrison in the Disney Channel original movie How to Build a Better Boy (2014) with Kelli Berglund. She also appears as the main villain Uma in the Disney Channel Original movie Descendants 2 (2017), playing Ursula's daughter and continued playing the role in Descendants 3. In 2018, McClain began portraying Jennifer Pierce in The CW superhero series Black Lightning. She also returned to her character (Jazmine Payne), as a recurring cast member in OWN's Tyler Perry’s The Paynes. McClain was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. Her father, Michael McClain, is a music producer. Her mother, Shontell, is a songwriter. She currently resides in Los Angeles, California with her family. McClain has said that she and her family are devout Christians, although they cannot always attend church regularly due to her and her sisters' musical and acting careers. McClain was discovered in 2005 by a music executive who heard her sing and encouraged director Rob Hardy to audition her for his 2005 feature film The Gospel. Her role caught the attention of Tyler Perry, who cast her as Jazmine Payne in the television series Tyler Perry's House of Payne. She appears in the movie Daddy's Little Girls with her sisters, Sierra and Lauryn, who are also actresses and play her older sisters in the film. McClain appeared in and guest starred in various other shows and movies such as Hannah Montana with Sierra McCormick, NCIS and the 2009 film Hurricane Season. Jonas, was also a Disney Channel shows she was on. She also appeared in the movie Grown Ups, as Charlotte McKenzie. McClain appeared on the Disney Channel series Wizards of Waverly Place in 2011 as Tina in one episode entitled "Wizards vs. Angels". In 2011, McClain was cast as the lead role in the Disney Channel series A.N.T. Farm. For the show, McClain recorded a cover of Taio Cruz's "Dynamite". She also sings the series theme song, "Exceptional". China Anne's first music video, for "Dynamite", premiered on July 23, 2011 on Disney Channel. After less than a week, more than 1 million views on YouTube were reported. She has appeared in an episode of PrankStars. She also appeared in the Chiddy Bang Opposite of Adults music video. For the Disney Channel Halloween special in 2011, she performed the song, "Calling All The Monsters". On June 14, 2011, China and her sisters – known as the McClain Sisters – signed with Hollywood Records. The A.N.T. Farm soundtrack was released on October 11, 2011, featuring China Anne's version of "Dynamite" by Taio Cruz. On September 28, 2011, China Anne released "Calling All The Monsters" to iTunes. "Calling All The Monsters" charted number 100 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. On November 24, 2011, China performed her song "Unstoppable" in the 85th Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. She co-starred in the 2013 sequel Grown Ups 2. On December 27, 2013, it was announced on her Twitter page that A.N.T. Farm would be ending after its 3rd season. On the same day, it was revealed that the McClain Sisters had left Hollywood Records. In the March/April 2014 issue of BYOU Magazine, China said it was "bittersweet" that A.N.T Farm was ending, and announced plans to focus on doing music with her sisters. McClain appeared on ABC's Sing Your Face Off television show, broadcast from May 31 – June 14, 2014, winning the show's first season. In 2015, McClain was featured in the FOX series Bones in the episode "The Lost in the Found", playing Kathryn Walling. She also appeared in the Netflix computer-animated series VeggieTales in the House, voiced the role Jenna Chive, a parody of herself. As a part of the various artist who contributed to the Descendants album McClain performed the song "Night is Young", the song was featured in the film and was also on the Descendants album. McClain also starred in the computer-animated series , based on the Disney Channel Original Movie Descendants. She voiced Freddie, the daughter of Dr. Facilier. She played the villain Uma, the daughter of Ursula, in Descendants 2 . She reprised the role in the third movie Descendants 3. In 2016, she recorded the action thriller film Blood Brother, co-starring with Trey Songz and Ron Killings. The film will be released in the summer. She was also part of the cast of 3D computer-animated action-drama film Bilal. In 2017, it was announced that she had been cast as Jennifer Pierce in the Black Lightning pilot for the CW. In July 2019, it was announced McClain had joined the cast of Hubie Halloween. China Anne McClain cites her parents, Michael and Shontell, as her biggest influences, as well as Michael Jackson, Hattie McDaniel, Rihanna, and Beyoncé.

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The second season of the My Hero Academia anime series was produced by Bones and directed by Kenji Nagasaki. Like the first season, it adapts Kōhei Horikoshi's My Hero Academia manga from the rest of the third volume through the end of the eighth volume over 25 episodes, and follows the adventures of Izuku Midoriya. The season originally ran from April 1 to September 30, 2017 on ytv in Japan, and Toho released the season on DVD and Blu-Ray in eight compilations, each containing two to four episodes, between July 19, 2017, and February 14, 2018. Funimation licensed the season for an English-language release in North America and released it in two compilations on April 3 and June 5, 2018. Funimation's adaptation ran from August 11, 2018 to February 24, 2019 on Adult Swim's Toonami block. The second season makes use of four pieces of theme music: two opening themes and two ending themes. The first opening theme, used for the first thirteen episodes, is performed by Kenshi Yonezu and the first ending theme is , performed by Little Glee Monster. For the rest of the season, the second opening theme is performed by amazarashi and the ending theme is by LiSA. Toho released the second season of the My hero Academia on DVD and Blu-ray in eight volumes in Japan, with the first volume being released on July 19, 2017, and the final volume being released on February 14, 2018. Funimation released the series in North America in two volumes, with the first volume being released on April 3, 2018, and the second volume released on June 5, 2018. Both volumes received a limited edition combo release, a standard edition combo release, and a standard edition DVD release. Sony Pictures UK distributed the series in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and released the series on standard edition DVD and Blu-ray volumes on April 2, 2018 and June 11, 2018. Universal Sony distributed the series in Australia and New Zealand, and initially released the series in limited edition volumes on May 9, 2018 and June 13, 2018, and on standard edition volumes on August 15, 2018. Funimation later released the series in Australia and New Zealand through Madman Entertainment, with the combo releases for part 1 and 2 being scheduled for December 4, 2019. The third season of the My Hero Academia anime series was produced by Bones and directed by Kenji Nagasaki. Like the rest of the series, it adapts Kōhei Horikoshi's My Hero Academia manga from the rest of the eighth volume through the beginning of the 14th volume over 25 episodes and follows the adventures of Izuku Midoriya. The third season ran from April 7 to September 29, 2018 on ytv in Japan. Toho released the season on DVD and Blu-Ray in eight compilations, each containing two to four episodes, between July 18, 2018, and February 13, 2019. Funimation licensed the season for an English-language release in North America and released the first compilation on May 7, 2019. Funimation's adaptation ran from March 3, 2019 to August 18, 2019 on Adult Swim's Toonami block. Four pieces of theme music are used for this season: two opening themes and two ending themes. For the first thirteen episodes, the opening theme is "Odd Future" by Uverworld and the first ending theme is by miwa. For the rest of the season, the second opening theme is "Make my Story" by Lenny Code Fiction and the ending theme is by Masaki Suda. Toho released the third season of the anime on DVD and Blu-ray in eight volumes in Japan, with the first volume being released on July 18, 2018, and the final volume being released on February 13, 2019. Funimation released the series in North America in two volumes, with the first volume released on May 7, 2019, and the second volume on September 3, 2019. The first volume received a limited edition combo release, along with a standard edition combo release, and a standard edition DVD release. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, Manga Entertainment is distributing the series for Funimation, releasing the first part in a limited edition combo release, along with a standard edition DVD and Blu-ray, on May 13, 2019, and the second part on September 9, 2019. In Australia and New Zealand, Madman Entertainment is distributing the series for Funimation, scheduling the first part for release in standard and limited editions on August 7, 2019, and the second part on November 6, 2019. The manga was adapted into an anime television series by Bones. Its first season aired in Japan from April 3 to June 26, 2016, followed by a second season from April 1 to September 30, 2017, then a third season from April 7 to September 29, 2018, and a fourth season from October 12, 2019. An animated film titled was released on August 3, 2018. A second animated film titled My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising will be released on December 20, 2019. There are plans for a live-action film by Legendary Entertainment. The series has been licensed for an English-language release by Viz Media and began serialization in their weekly digital manga anthology Weekly Shonen Jump on February 9, 2015. Shueisha began to simulpublish the series in English on the website and app Manga Plus in January 2019. The manga won the 2019 Harvey Award for Best Manga. As of December 2019, the manga had over 26 million copies in print. In a world where people with superpowers (known as ) are the norm, Izuku Midoriya has dreams of one day becoming a Hero, despite being bullied by his classmates for not having a Quirk. After being the only one to try and save his childhood bully Katsuki Bakugo from a villain, All Might, Japan's greatest Hero, saves him and bestows upon him All Might's own Quirk "One for All". The story follows Izuku's entrance into , a school for training the next generation of superheroes. Izuku and his new friends try to balance their Hero training with ordinary school duties. However, the League of Villains, an evil organization established by All Might's archenemy All For One, has plans to destroy all Heroes and take control of society. My Hero Academia is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Kōhei Horikoshi. It originated from the one-shot , which Horikoshi wanted to turn into a series following the end of Barrage. It began its serialization in the manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump on July 7, 2014. As of August 2, 2019, the series has been collected into twenty-four tankōbon volumes. The series is licensed for the English-language release in North America by Viz Media, who published the first volume on August 4, 2015. As the series is published in Japan, it is also released simultaneously in English digitally by Viz Media's Weekly Shōnen Jump. As of August 7, 2018, 14 volumes have been released. Shueisha began to simulpublish the series in English on the website and app Manga Plus in January 2019. A spin-off series entitled My Hero Academia Smash!! by Hirofumi Neda started in the Jump+ digital app on November 9, 2015, and finished on November 6, 2017. Five tankōbon volumes were released as of November 2017. The series has been licensed by Viz Media. Another spin-off series, My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, began being published by Weekly Shōnen Jump in 2017. The series is licensed for the English-language release in North America by Viz Media. The first volume was released in English on July 3, 2018. A third spin-off series, My Hero Academia: Team Up Mission by Yōkō Akiyama, began serialization in Saikyō Jump on August 2, 2019, with a prologue chapter debuting in Shōnen Jump GIGA on July 25, 2019. On October 29, 2015, the series' official Twitter announced that My Hero Academia would receive an anime adaptation produced by Studio Bones. With the anime announced, Toho registered the domain name "heroaca.com" as the anime's website. The anime is directed by Kenji Nagasaki, written by Yōsuke Kuroda, and featured character designs by Yoshihiko Umakoshi and music composed by Yuki Hayashi. The anime premiered on MBS and other Japan News Network stations in the Nichigo time slot at 5 P.M. on Sundays in Japan. The opening theme is "The Day", performed by Porno Graffitti and the ending theme is "Heroes", performed by Brian the Sun. In March 2016, Funimation announced they had licensed the international rights for streaming services, the home and broadcast release, and the merchandise rights. Universal Pictures UK distributed the first season in the United Kingdom and Ireland on behalf of Funimation, with Sony Pictures UK distributing the second season for Funimation, and Manga Entertainment distributing subsequent seasons for Funimation. In Australia and New Zealand, Universal Sony Pictures Home Entertainment distributed the first two seasons, on behalf of Funimation, with Madman Entertainment distributing season 3 onwards, in partnership with Funimation. A second season was announced in the Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine's 30th issue of 2016. It premiered on April 1, 2017, on NTV and YTV, and ended on September 30, 2017, with the staff and cast from the first season returning to reprise their roles. The first opening theme is performed by Kenshi Yonezu and the first ending theme is , performed by Little Glee Monster. The second opening theme is performed by amazarashi and the ending theme is by LiSA. A third season was announced in the 44th issue of Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine of 2017. The English dub premiered on April 7, 2018. The first opening theme is "Odd Future" by Uverworld, while the first ending theme is by Miwa. The second opening theme is "Make My Story" by Lenny Code Fiction and the second ending theme is by Masaki Suda. On April 19, 2018, Funimation announced that the series would air on Adult Swim's Toonami block starting on May 5. A fourth season was announced in the 44th issue of Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine of 2018. This was later confirmed with the airing of the final episode to season three on September 29, 2018. On December 19, 2018, the My Hero Academia website confirmed a release date of October 12, 2019, along with a key visual. Funimation had premiered the first episode of the fourth season at Anime Expo on July 6, 2019 with the English dub. Kenji Nagasaki is serving as chief director of the fourth season, with Masahiro Mukai as director. Funimation and Madman Entertainment will premiere the first episode of the English dub in Australia at Madman Anime Festival Melbourne and Perth on September 14 and October 4, 2019, respectively. The first opening theme is "Polaris" by Blue Encount, while the first ending theme is "Kōkai no Uta by Sayuri. The second opening theme is "Star Marker" by Kana-Boon, and the second ending theme is "Shout Baby" by Ryokuōshoku Shakai. An anime film was announced in December 2017 and features an original story set after the manga's "Final Exam" arc. Titled , the film had its world premiere at Anime Expo on July 5, 2018, and the Japanese theatrical release began screening on August 3, 2018, with the staff and cast from the anime series returning to reprise their roles. Funimation announced that they would release the film theatrically in the United States and Canada from September 25, 2018 to October 2, 2018. In October 2018, Legendary Entertainment acquired the rights to produce a live-action adaptation of My Hero Academia. On March 23, 2019, it was announced that a second animated film for My Hero Academia was in production. On July 7, 2019, the official Twitter account for My Hero Academia revealed the title as , and scheduled the film for release on December 20, 2019. A video game based on the anime, My Hero Academia: Battle for All, was announced in November 2015. The game was developed by Dimps and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment for the Nintendo 3DS handheld game console, where it released in Japan on May 19, 2016. A second video game, titled My Hero: One's Justice, was released for PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and Microsoft Windows on October 26, 2018. The game has sold over 500,000 units worldwide, as of January 2019. Izuku Midoriya, All Might and Katsuki Bakugo also appear as playable characters in the crossover game Jump Force. A third installment of the video game series, My Hero: One's Justice 2, was announced for release on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC. It releases in Japan on March 12, 2020 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch. My Hero Academia: The "Ultra" Stage, a stage musical adaptation, was first announced in 2018 and ran in Tokyo and Osaka from April 12 to April 29, 2019. The play was directed by Tsuneyasu Motoyoshi written by Hideyuki Nishimori, and choreographed by Umebō. Shunsuke Wada composed the music. A second stage play titled My Hero Academia: The "Ultra" Stage: A True Hero, will run from March 6 to April 25, 2020, with the cast and staff returning. A concert event titled My Hero Academia: The "Ultra" Live will be held in July 2020. The manga was nominated for the 8th Manga Taishō in 2015. It was nominated for the 40th Kodansha Manga Award for the shōnen category in 2016. The manga won the Sugoi Japan Award and the "Japan Expo Awards" in 2017. It was also nominated for the 44th Angoulême International Comics Festival for Best Youth Comic in the same year, and the 30th Harvey Awards for Best Manga. In 2019, the manga won the Harvey Award for Best Manga. Before the anime adaptation's premiere, manga author Masashi Kishimoto praised Kōhei Horikoshi's work, believing it would be a success overseas; Horikoshi, meanwhile, has cited Kishimoto's Naruto series as a primary source of inspiration. Volume 1 reached 7th place on the weekly Oricon manga chart with 71,575 copies sold. It sold out almost immediately on its first printing. Volume 2 reached 6th place, with 167,531 copies and, by January 18, 2015, had sold 205,179 copies. As of March 2017, there were over 10 million copies of My Hero Academia in circulation. As of August 2018, the manga had over 16 million copies in print. As of December 2018, the manga had over 20 million copies in print. As of December 2019, the manga had over 26 million copies in print. My Hero Academia was the 6th best selling manga in 2019. In 2019, My Hero Academia ranked 37th on the 19th "Book of the Year" list by Da Vinci magazine. The story has been noted to take inspiration from elements in superhero comics, such as the aesthetics of its characters. Alex Osborn of IGN gave the anime series positive marks, saying "The first season of My Hero Academia delivers thirteen episodes of fantastic action, elevated by a heartfelt story that's wrapped around a core cast of memorable and relatable characters." Osborn went on to state that the villains were underdeveloped. Due to the popularity of the series, characters of My Hero Academia were used to promote the Marvel Studios film . In November 2019, Polygon named My Hero Academia as one of the best anime of the 2010s, and Crunchyroll listed it in their "Top 25 best anime of the 2010s". IGN also listed My Hero Academia among the best anime series of the 2010s. Official page at Weekly Shōnen Jump

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"The Nights" is a song by Swedish DJ and record producer Avicii. It features uncredited vocals by singer/songwriter Nicholas Furlong. On 1 December 2014, it was released as a digital download by PRMD Music and Universal Island on Avicii's The Days / Nights EP, then on 11 January 2015 in the United Kingdom. The song peaked at number six on the UK Singles Chart and number one on the UK Dance Chart. On 23 January 2015, Avicii released "The Nights (Avicii by Avicii)", his own remix of the song. The song appears on the UK version of Avicii's second studio album Stories (2015). Furlong noted that he began writing the song as an ode to his father. The inspiration for the “pirate-y fight song” sound came to him while at a bar in Ireland. Furlong recalled: "I had been going back and forth with Jordan and Gabe about this song idea that merged commercially sound rock music with the signature sound of an Irish drinking song. When I returned to Los Angeles we all went into the studio." Furlong sent the original idea, titled "My Father Told Me", to Arash Pournouri, Avicii's manager. Pournouri recognised an immediate draw to the track, saying that the song had that same sense of euphoria which characterises so much of Avicii's music. In an interview with Yahoo! Music, Pournouri said: "It made absolute sense to work on it with Nick...[Avicii and I just needed] to make it more 'us' and that's what [we] did." Like his previous hits "Wake Me Up" and "Hey Brother", "The Nights" is a progressive house song containing elements of folk rock. It is written in the key of F# and has 126 BPM. On 1 December 2014, a lyric video to accompany the release of "The Nights" was released on YouTube. On 15 December 2014, the official music video for "The Nights" was released on YouTube and premiered on the front page of Yahoo Music. The video was produced, directed by, and stars "professional life liver" Rory Kramer, who filmed an exuberant action-packed recollection of his own life on roller coasters, surfing, snowboarding, skateboarding, balloon flying, making a four door convertible out of a Toyota, etc. – living a life to be remembered. Recording Recorded at Foxy Studios, Los Angeles, California Personnel Songwriting – Nicholas Furlong, Gabriel Benjamin, Jordan Suecof, John Feldmann, Tim Bergling, Production – Avicii, Co-production – Ash Pournouri, Vocals – Nicholas Furlong, Engineering and vocal production – Zakk Cervini, Acoustic guitar – Colin Brittain, Lap steel guitar – Will Carter, Live drums – Jordan Suecof, Additional vocals — The Mighty Riot "The Nights" was featured on the soundtrack of the EA Sports video game FIFA 15. The song was also used during Sportscenter's 'Images of 2014' segment on ESPN, recapping the year's best moments in sports. "The Nights" will be featured on the soundtrack of the video game WRC 5. It was the goal song of the Carolina Hurricanes from the 2015–16 season to the 2017-18 season, and the victory song of the New York Rangers since the 2015–16 season. Tim Bergling (; 8 September 1989 – 20 April 2018), known professionally as Avicii ( , ), was a Swedish DJ, electronic musician, and songwriter who specialized in audio programming, remixing and record producing. At the age of 16, Bergling began posting his remixes on electronic music forums, which led to his first record deal. He rose to prominence in 2011 with his single "Levels". His debut studio album, True (2013), blended electronic music with elements of multiple genres and received generally positive reviews. It peaked in the top ten in more than fifteen countries and topped international dance charts; the lead single, "Wake Me Up", topped most music markets in Europe and reached number four in the United States. In 2015, Bergling released his second studio album, Stories, and in 2017 he released an EP, Avīci (01). His catalog also included the singles "I Could Be the One" with Nicky Romero, "You Make Me", "X You", "Hey Brother", "Addicted to You", "The Days", "The Nights", "Waiting for Love", "Without You" and "Lonely Together". Bergling was nominated for a Grammy Award for his work on "Sunshine" with David Guetta in 2012 and "Levels" in 2013. Several music publications credit Bergling as among the DJs who ushered electronic music into Top 40 radio in the early 2010s. Bergling retired from touring in 2016 due to health problems, having suffered stress and poor mental health for several years. On 20 April 2018, Bergling died by suicide in Muscat, Oman. He was buried on 8 June in his hometown of Stockholm. His posthumous third album titled Tim was released in 2019. Tim Bergling was born on 8 September 1989 in Stockholm, Sweden, to Klas Bergling and actress Anki Lidén. Tim started mixing in his bedroom at the age of 8. He has three siblings, David Bergling, Linda Sterner and Anton Körberg. Inspired by his brother, who was also a DJ, he began making music at the age of 16. In May 2007, Bergling signed on with the Dejfitts Plays label. Bergling was a member of the Laidback Luke Forums, where he refined his craft and, at times, demonstrated his distinct deep house style. By 2009 to 2010, Bergling was a prolific producer and was releasing music incredibly quickly. His remixes during this period were "Sound of Now", "Muja", "Ryu" and "Even". Bergling explained that the name Avicii means "the lowest level of Buddhist hell" (see Avīci) and he chose the moniker because his real name was already used upon creating his Myspace page. Then, in 2010, Bergling released the hit song "Seek Bromance", which reached the top 20 in several countries, including Belgium, France, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, and Sweden. He also remixed Nadia Ali's classic single "Rapture" for her album Queen of Clubs Trilogy: Onyx Edition. In October 2010, Bergling signed with the European A&R; team with EMI Music Publishing. In 2011, Bergling released "Levels", which launched him into the mainstream. "Levels" reached the top ten in Austria, Belgium, Bosnia, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia and the United Kingdom, whilst topping the charts in Hungary, Norway and Sweden. In 2012, his collaboration track "Sunshine" with David Guetta was nominated for a Grammy award under the category for Best Dance Recording. His track "Fade into Darkness" was sampled by Leona Lewis on her single "Collide". The sampling was not accredited and led to controversy as Bergling attempted to block the single's release. The matter was resolved out of court with representatives stating "that Leona Lewis and Avicii will work together on the forthcoming single of Collide". On 23 March 2012, Bergling's unsigned single "Last Dance" was previewed on Pete Tong's show on BBC Radio 1. The song was later released on 27 August 2012. At Ultra Music Festival 2012 in Miami, he premiered two tracks, "Girl Gone Wild" (Avicii's UMF Remix) with Madonna and "Superlove" with Lenny Kravitz. Bergling's UMF Remix of "Girl Gone Wild" was released on 20 April 2012, and "Superlove" with Kravitz was released on 29 May 2012. After reaching two million followers on Facebook, Bergling released a new song titled "Two Million". It was put out as a free download on his official SoundCloud page. On 27 April 2012, Bergling released "Silhouettes". The song featured vocals from Salem Al Fakir and peaked at number 5 on the UK Dance charts and number 4 on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs. Bergling was a featured performer on 4 August 2012 at Lollapalooza festival in Chicago's Grant Park. On 12 August 2012, he released "Dancing in My Head" (Avicii's 'Been Cursed' Mix) on Beatport. The track features vocals from Eric Turner. A radio edit of the track, titled "Dancing in My Head" (Tom Hangs Mix) was released on 14 August 2012 on iTunes, and a remix EP was later released on 30 October 2012 featuring remixes from Charlie Bernardo and Michael Woods. On 26 September 2012, Bergling made history as the first DJ to headline the world- famous Radio City Music Hall in New York City. He performed two sold-out shows on 26 and 27 September. He was supported by Matt Goldman and Cazzette at the two shows. At his Radio City Music Hall shows, he played a preview of his new track with Mike Posner titled "Stay with You". On 29 December 2012, Bergling premiered many new songs at Lights All Night, Dallas Convention Center, some of which made it on to his first album, True. These unreleased songs included "I'll Be Gone" and "Let It Go". The instrumental of "Let It Go" was mixed with the a cappella of "Addicted to You" to become "Addicted to You (Avicii by Avicii)". On the same day, Bergling released "I Could Be the One" with Nicky Romero. After first being debuted at his shows almost a year earlier, the track finally got released via Bergling's record label LEVELS. The new vocal version was released along with an instrumental version, a radio edit, and remixes from Audrio and Didrick. On 9 January 2013, Bergling launched the Avicii X You project, a partnership with Ericsson designed to create the world's first "crowdsourced" hit song. The project enabled fans to send in basslines, effects, melodies, rhythms and vocals to Bergling as sound files over the Internet. The song features sequences from Kian Sang (melody), Naxsy (bassline), Martin Kupilas (beat), Ваня Хакси (break), Jonathan Madray, Mateusz Kolata, and Christian Westphalen (effects). Bergling acted as executive producer and created the finished song officially titled X You, which was released on 26 February 2013. On 30 January 2013, Bergling released "Three Million" featuring Negin to celebrate three million fans on his Facebook page. Bergling was nominated for a Grammy for Best Dance Recording with "Levels" at the 2013 Grammy Awards. He was nominated alongside Calvin Harris and Ne-Yo, Skrillex, Swedish House Mafia and John Martin, and Al Walser. The award show took place on 10 February 2013. From late February to early March 2013, Bergling toured Australia as one of the headline acts in the Future Music Festival alongside The Prodigy and The Stone Roses. In late February 2013, Bergling made his first South American tour, with concerts in Venezuela, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil and Chile. In March 2013, Bergling announced and premiered many new tracks from his new album True, which would later be set to be released in September, during his Main Stage set at Ultra Music Festival in Miami. The new tracks were experimental in nature. For example, Bergling brought out a stomping band to play through the new bluegrass-tinged song "Wake Me Up". Many of these new songs received mixed critical reviews after the concert. On 11 April 2013, Bergling released his new album promo mix on SoundCloud. It contained some songs from True and some of his non-album singles. It also contained some of his ID's such as "Black and Blue" and "Enough is Enough (Don't Give Up On Us)". The EBU and SVT announced on 15 April that Bergling, along with ex-ABBA members Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, had composed the anthem for the Eurovision Song Contest 2013. The song was performed for the first time in the Final on 18 May. On 14 June 2013, the world premiere of Bergling's new single, "Wake Me Up", was previewed by Pete Tong on BBC Radio 1, featuring vocals from Aloe Blacc. The song was later released on iTunes and radio on 25 June 2013. It is the first single from Bergling's album True, which was released on 16 September 2013. "Wake Me Up" was number 1 on the Spotify Global Chart and Bergling was at 2 in most streamed artist worldwide. "Wake Me Up" later went on to set a then record of 14 weeks as the number one hit on Billboards Dance/Electronic Songs list. The Official Charts Company announced on 21 July that "Wake Me Up" had become the UK's fastest selling single of 2013 after overtaking Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines", having sold 267,000 copies in its first week on sale in the UK. "Wake Me Up" subsequently became a major hit, topping the charts in over 20 countries including Australia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. On 19 October 2013, the DJ Mag 2013 Top 100 DJs List was announced, with Bergling ranking number 3 on the list. Hardwell became the new World No.1 displacing Armin Van Buuren. On 28 October 2013, Bergling released the single "Hey Brother" with vocals by Dan Tyminski. On 10 November, Bergling won his first award "Best Electronic" at the MTV EMA's. On 24 November 2013 he won the American Music Award for favorite Electronic Dance Music Artist. In December 2013, Bergling released his fourth single off the album, "Addicted to You", which reached number 5 in Australia, with vocals from Audra Mae, who also sings on "Shame on Me" and "Long Road to Hell", both tracks on the album. Bergling also released the single "Lay Me Down", featuring vocals from Adam Lambert and guitar from Nile Rodgers. On 29 December 2013, Bergling debuted his new track "Dreaming of Me", featuring vocals from Audra Mae, via episode 19 of his LE7ELS podcast. It is unknown whether it will be released in the future. On 8 March 2014, Bergling's Instagram account confirmed a collaboration with Madonna. The extent of the collaboration is unknown. On 21 March 2014, Bergling released a remixed edition of his album True titled True: Avicii By Avicii containing remixes by himself of all the tracks, excluding "Heart Upon My Sleeve" for unknown reasons. The promotion of this album was supposed to begin at the 2014 Ultra Music Festival, but Bergling announced he had been hospitalised on 28 March, and was unable to play his closing set at the festival. On 28 March 2014, FIFA and Sony Music Entertainment announced that Bergling would be collaborating with Carlos Santana, Wyclef Jean and Alexandre Pires for the official FIFA World Cup Anthem titled "Dar um Jeito (We Will Find a Way)". The anthem was performed at the FIFA World Cup closing ceremony on 13 July 2014. In July 2014, Bergling released his single "Lay Me Down". He also produced and collaborated with Chris Martin from Coldplay, co-writing and co-producing the track "A Sky Full of Stars" from the band's sixth studio album Ghost Stories, released on 19 May 2014. He also played and recorded the piano parts on the track. "A Sky Full of Stars" was released on 3 May as the second single from Ghost Stories. "Lovers on the Sun", a track Bergling co-produced with David Guetta, was released on 30 June 2014. Bergling also worked with Wyclef Jean on a single titled "Divine Sorrow" for the Haitian singer's upcoming album Clefication. In July 2014, Bergling told Rolling Stone that he had worked on 70 songs for his next album Stories, which would include collaborations with Jon Bon Jovi, Serj Tankian of System of a Down, Chris Martin, Wyclef Jean and Matisyahu. Describing the album, Bergling said: "It's going to be a lot more song- oriented." During his tour for True, he also performed his upcoming single "No Pleasing a Woman" with vocals from Billie Joe Armstrong of the American rock band Green Day. It has a similar instrumental to "Wake Me Up" albeit different chord progressions, along with "No Pleasing a Woman". Bergling also performed other upcoming songs like "In Love with Your Ghost" with Daniel "Danne" Adams- Ray, "Love to Fall" with Tom Odell and "Million Miles" with LP, which is the demo version of "Trouble", a song from Stories with vocals from Wayne Hector. "Lose Myself", a collaboration between Bergling and Chinese singer Wang Leehom, was released on 1 September 2014. On 8 September 2014, his 25th birthday, Bergling decided to cancel all of his remaining performances of 2014 due to health concerns. The following day, he announced through Denim & Supply that he would release his new single "The Days" later in 2014; a video was also featured with a preview of the track. "The Days" is a collaboration between Bergling and Robbie Williams, and was released on 3 October 2014 via PRMD. On 16 September 2014, it was announced through EA Sports that Bergling was debuting a new track called "The Nights" exclusively on FIFA 15. On 17 November 2014, it was officially announced that the track is to be released as a part of an EP together with "The Days". On 17 November 2014, Wyclef Jean released a track titled "Divine Sorrow" featuring Avicii. On 2 March 2015, Bergling performed live at Australia's Future Music Festival his upcoming single "Heaven", a collaboration with Coldplay frontman Chris Martin on vocals. The vocals were later resung by singer Simon Aldred from Cherry Ghost; Chris Martin will receive writing credits on "Heaven". However, the version with Chris Martin on vocals was finalized in 2018/2019 after Bergling's death and will be officially released on the posthumous third album "Tim". A lot of songs were leaked into the internet via Bergling's UMF set 2015. These songs include "Heaven", "Waiting For Love," and some of his ID's "For A Better Day", "City Lights", "Can't Catch Me", "True Believer", "What Would I Change It To", "Can't Love You Again" (previously leaked on the internet under the name "Don't Call") and "Attack". On 25 April 2015, Bergling announced on episode 35 of his LE7ELS podcast that he would be playing some of his unreleased songs on his show. He also previewed his bootleg of Kings of Tomorrow's song "Finally" and one of his old songs that he did with ASH, titled "Papa Was a Rolling Stone". On 6 May 2015, Bergling released his rework of Nina Simone's version of "Feeling Good", composed in 1964 by the English songwriters Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse. On 8 May 2015, Bergling previewed his song "I'll Be Gone" via episode 422 of Tiësto's Club Life Podcast which has a very similar instrumental to Liar Liar (Avicii by Avicii) albeit different vocals and chord progressions. It was leaked into the internet between 2013–2014 via the name "Stars" and is yet to be released. It also shares a similar drop to one of Bergling's ID's "Black and Blue". On 22 May 2015, Bergling premiered another single from Stories, "Waiting for Love". The track was co-produced by fellow DJ and producer Martin Garrix, and featured vocals from Simon Aldred of Cherry Ghost. On 25 May 2015, Bergling previewed three old tracks on episode 36 of his LE7ELS podcast: "Tracks of My Tears", "Sorry Mr. Atari" and "Time to Get lll", all of which are songs that Bergling had made years ago. "Tracks of My Tears" is the original version of Bergling's "All You Need is Love". On 27 May 2015, it was confirmed by a Swedish newspaper through an interview with Bergling that his sophomore album Stories would be released in late 2015. On 3 July 2015, Bergling previewed two tracks from his album Stories on episode 37 of his LE7ELS podcast: "Broken Arrows" featuring Zac Brown Band and "Can’t Catch Me" featuring Wyclef Jean and Matisyahu. He also played a full version of his track "Heaven" and said that he was doing another track with Chris Martin on vocals called "True Believer". Later, Bergling said that he is also singing on that track. On 18 July 2015, it was announced by Bergling that he had finally finished production on Stories after 2 years of work. A couple of weeks later, on 4 August 2015, it was announced that the final singles before the release of Stories would be "For a Better Day" featuring American singer Alex Ebert and "Pure Grinding" featuring vocals from Kristoffer Fogelmark and Earl St. Clair. On 27 August, Bergling released a teaser video on Instagram with the song "Pure Grinding" playing. The tracks "For a Better Day" and "Pure Grinding" were released the following day through Spotify and iTunes. On 26 September, Bergling announced "Stories – Megamix" on Spotify. Stories was released on 2 October 2015 alongside 3 promotional singles: "Broken Arrows" with Zac Brown, "Ten More Days" with Zak Abel and "Gonna Love Ya" with Sandro Cavazza. On 15 January 2016, Bergling released his remix of Morten's "Beautiful Heartbeat". Coca-Cola had partnered with Bergling for a global campaign anthem "Taste the Feeling" featuring Conrad Sewell. The song was released on 19 January. On 25 January, Bergling teamed up again with Coldplay to co-produce the band's single "Hymn for the Weekend", which was released as the second single from their album A Head Full of Dreams. In 2016, according to a report by Inc. magazine, Avicii was the 6th fastest-growing company in Europe, with a revenue of €7.7 million in 2014. On 19 March 2016, Bergling performed live at Ultra Music Festival and premiered new IDs such as "Without You (feat. Sandro Cavazza)", "We Burn (Faster Than Light)", and a collaboration with Australian pop star Sia (which he first played in Dubai). On 29 March, Bergling announced on Facebook that he would be retiring from performing live and touring in 2016. On 7 April 2016, Bergling announced that he was working on a third studio album. On 3 June 2016, Bergling released his collaboration with Otto Knows titled "Back Where I Belong". It's the second collaboration with the two producers after "Itrack", back in 2011. On 15 July 2016, Bergling released a remix of his own song, "Feeling Good". The remix was titled "Feeling Good (Avicii by Avicii)". This track was only released on Bergling's official YouTube channel. On 1 August, it appears to have been pulled with the YouTube video being made private. On 28 August 2016, Bergling performed his final live performance in Ibiza, before retiring from touring citing health concerns. His initial announcement was made on his website in April. On 23 April 2018, three days after his death, it was revealed by Tiësto that Swedish House Mafia's Ultra Music reunion inspired Avicii to take up DJing again which saw him through his final weeks until his death on 20 April. On 22 December 2016, a representative of Avicii Music AB had announced that Bergling had parted ways with long-time manager Ash Pournouri and At Night Management along with Ash's record label PRMD. The representative also announced that Bergling had signed on to Universal Music Sweden and was expected to release his third studio album in 2017. In June 2017, British singer Rita Ora debuted a semi-acoustic version of "Lonely Together" at a private event at Annabel's in London. "Lonely Together" was later the second single from Avīci (01). From 13 July to 2 August, Bergling shared one-minute snippets on Instagram, captioned "New music coming very very (very) soon!", with track titles as hashtags. Bergling uploaded teasers of each track from the EP online upon release. On 10 August 2017, Bergling released the six-track EP Avīci (01). Bergling said of the release: "I'm really excited to be back with music once again. It has been a long time since I released anything and a long time since I was this excited over new music! My focus on this first EP of the album was to get a mix of new and old songs: some that fans have been asking about and waiting for mixed with brand new songs that they haven't heard before!" In an interview with Pete Tong on BBC Radio 1, Bergling stated that the EP is one of three parts of his third studio album. On 11 September 2017, Bergling announced a documentary directed by his close and long time collaborator Levan Tsikurishvili, entitled . The documentary chronicles the artist's retirement from touring and features interviews from his colleagues David Guetta, Tiësto, Wyclef Jean, Nile Rodgers and Chris Martin of Coldplay. On 10 February 2018, Bergling released "Ghost", a collaboration with Swedish singer-songwriter Daniel Adams-Ray, who was credited as HUMAN. The song, which was leaked on the internet in 2014/2015 under the title "(I'm Still) In Love With Your Ghost", marks the second collaboration with the 2 Swedes following "Somewhere In Stockholm" from Bergling's album "Stories". Following Bergling's death that April, news outlets reported that at the time of his death, he had over 200 unreleased songs, some finished and others still in development. It was further stated that he had produced some of the best songs in his career before his passing. In August 2018, producer Carl Falk, who co-produced some of the songs on Bergling's Stories album in 2015 and Avici (01) in 2017, stated that he's putting the finishing touches on the Chris Martin collaboration "Heaven" (originally written during the Stories sessions) and that it might be posthumously released in a few months along with the third album. In April 2019, it was announced that the album Tim, which Avicii was working on before his death, would be released on 6 June 2019, with the first single, "SOS", released on 10 April. All proceeds from the sale of the album go towards the Tim Bergling Foundation. Also in April, it was announced an official biography of Avicii, written by Måns Mosesson, would be released in 2020, the proceeds also going to the Tim Bergling Foundation. A second single from the album, titled "Tough Love", was released on 9 May 2019. The music video for "Tough Love" was released on YouTube 14 May 2019. "Heaven" which was released on 6 June 2019 was the last single to be released from the album. The track was co-written by Coldplay's lead singer Chris Martin. Chris spoke about the collaboration on his socials citing that he co wrote the song with Avicii back in 2014 which Tim completed in 2016. The music video, called a "tribute video", which used old clips of Avicii, was released on 24 June 2019. On 28 June, Billboard cited "Heaven" as one of the best dance songs of the first half of 2019. On 8 September, on what would have been Avicii's 30th birthday, some unreleased songs, never meant to be heard by the public, were leaked on the internet. Two of them feature demo vocals from Tim himself, "Promises of Tears" and an early version of "No Pleasing A Woman". The latter was also sung by Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong. In December, two singles were released on the networks, "Alive" with Wyclef Jean and "Lethal Drug" with Chris Martin of Coldplay.. "Fades Away" featuring MishCatt was also released in December after being performed in Stockholm at the Avicii Tribute Concert for Mental Health. Bergling's influences included Daft Punk, Swedish House Mafia, and Eric Prydz. He described his introduction to electronic music as "listening to a lot of Daft Punk, way before I knew what house music was". Bergling's early work was deep house and progressive house, usually based on a four-chord structure, sub-bass and a simple synth melody. His debut studio album True featured a blending of music genres, including folktronica. While making the album, Bergling wanted to fuse the electronic music genre with soul, funk, blues, folk and country, as he felt that EDM had become too focused on "dirty drops". Its first single, "Wake Me Up", is a folk music crossover, which, as noted by The Observer writer, "tapped into the market potential of mixing EDM and country, a template many artists have since recreated". A Variety editor commented that Bergling's "distinct sound" was comprised by "soaring synths and keening melodies". Musicians such as Kygo, Skrillex, Diplo, Martin Garrix and Cheat Codes have cited him as a source of inspiration. After achieving widespread commercial success, Bergling began working with his manager and executive producer Ash Pournouri to start House for Hunger in 2011, a charity dedicated to alleviating global hunger. The pair wanted to showcase the giving spirit fostered by the house music community. Bergling explained, "You have to give something back. I am so fortunate to be in the position where I can actually do that. I feel lucky every day when I wake up and am able to do what I love and make a living." In addition to donating $1 million to Feeding America, a charity founded by John van Hengel, House for Hunger has helped fund the efforts of The Feed Foundation, started by Laura Bush, allowing it to distribute over 2 million school meals throughout Africa. He also supported campaigns against human trafficking and gang violence when he directed the videos for his tracks "For a Better Day" and "Pure Grinding". In January 2012, Bergling was hospitalized for 11 days in New York City with acute pancreatitis caused by excessive alcohol use. In 2014, Bergling underwent surgery and had both his appendix and gallbladder removed. In 2016, Bergling's health deteriorated, and he retired from performing live. In the 2017 documentary , directed by his close and longtime collaborator Levan Tsikurishvili, Bergling spoke about his physical and mental health struggles. The documentary depicts the pressure from his management to continue performing live in spite of his objections. High pressure from management and fans to continue touring and maintaining his public persona were cited as key reasons for his suicide, according to GQ. In a statement from the article, "Bergling feared upsetting fans. He was sensitive to the 'flood of hate mail' after cancelled gigs." His manager, Ash Pournouri, admitted that he knew of Bergling's health problems but refused to label them mental health problems. Furthermore, his management team only became aware of his painkiller addiction in November 2014. They staged two interventions for him, neither of which were successful. Pournouri rescheduled many shows in order for Bergling to recover in Stockholm. Having discovered his client's alcohol issues earlier, Pournouri set out to forbid his promoters from offering him alcohol, clearing out his minibar and focusing on his recovery. Problems worsened, however, when there were no crew to "keep tabs" on Bergling during his recuperation. Against his client's wishes, Pournouri claimed to have cancelled two more world tours, which would have added up to approximately US$2.9 million in profits. Avicii was dating Czech model Tereza Kačerová at the time of his death. Bergling died on 20 April 2018 near Muscat, Oman, at the age of 28. No cause of death was immediately given. On 21 April, the Omani police stated that there was "no criminal suspicion" or evidence of foul play in Bergling's death. On 26 April, his family released an open letter stating: On 1 May, TMZ reported that the cause of death was a suicide due to self-inflicted injuries with a broken wine bottle, with Bergling eventually dying of blood loss. On 22 May, Bergling's family announced plans for a private funeral with "the people who were closest to him". A funeral service was held on 8 June at the Skogskyrkogården cemetery in Stockholm. He was buried at Hedvig Eleonora Church in June 2018. On 20 May, American DJ duo, The Chainsmokers, and American singer-songwriter, Halsey, paid tribute to Bergling at the 2018 Billboard Music Awards before presenting the winner of the Top Hot 100 Song. The Chainsmokers’ Drew Taggart said, "His passing was a great loss for the music world and for us. He was an artist who inspired so many in so many ways, and simply put, he meant so much to us and everyone in the EDM community." Halsey then delivered an emotional discussion about mental health and emphasized the need for people to love and support each other. On 27 May, at BBC's Biggest Weekend, Rita Ora, Bergling's most recent collaborator, paid tribute to the late DJ, describing him as "a really good friend" who "changed [her] life". A similar tribute was also paid by Ora during King's Day and Capital's Summertime Ball. On 22 April 2018, American band OneRepublic paid tribute to Bergling by performing his hit single "Wake Me Up" during their show in Mumbai. On 21 May 2018, Tiësto played a medley of Bergling's songs at EDC Las Vegas. Aloe Blacc joined him on stage to perform "Wake Me Up". The 2018 edition of Tomorrowland saw several tributes to Bergling from Axwell Λ Ingrosso, Don Diablo, Nicky Romero, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, Zedd and Kygo, the latter mentioning that Bergling was his big influence in EDM. All DJs honoured his memory by playing his music in their sets during the festival which Michael Thivaios (Like Mike) described as Bergling's home. Thivaios continued calling Bergling "one of [his] best friends" and "a great inspiration". Avicii's songs "Levels" and "Wake Me Up" came second and eighth respectively in Tomorrowland 2018's most played songs. On 27 July, Russian DJ and lroducer Arty released a song called "Tim" as a tribute to Bergling. "I made a track for my friend," he stated. "I just want to honor his memory. I want to do something right, and in my opinion it's the right thing to do." In addition to the live tributes, many other artists including Eric Prydz, Imagine Dragons, Skrillex, Calvin Harris, Hardwell, Deadmau5, Marshmello and Zedd also paid tribute to Bergling on Twitter. One year after his death, tributes on social media continued to be paid by Nicky Romero, DJ Snake, Nile Rodgers, and the organisers of Tomorrowland amongst others. On 21 April 2018, a collection of Avicii's songs were played on the carillon within Dom Tower of Utrecht, performed by Malgosia Fiebig. On 16 November 2018, Bergling's family organised a public memorial service at the Hedvig Eleonora Church in Stockholm. The service saw a huge turn-out, with hundreds of fans filling the church to mourn and pay their respects. The service featured an orchestral choir which played music linking to events in Bergling's life and ended with a version of his 2013 number one hit "Wake Me Up". One fan described it as a "very moving" service and "a great tribute to Bergling". On 30 April 2019, the Mounted Royal Guards and the Life Guards' Dragoon Music Corps of the Swedish Army paid tribute to Avicii during a ceremony at Stockholm Palace, where brass renditions of his songs "Without You", "Hey Brother", and "Wake Me Up" were played. The 2019 Edition of the music festival Tomorrowland included a tribute in the decoration of the Main stage of the festival. In September 2019, it was announced that a tribute concert would be held in Stockholm on 5 December 2019 in memory of Avicii. The concert saw David Guetta, Kygo, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, Nicky Romero, and Laidback Luke headlining, along with a number of vocalists that Tim had worked with playing alongside a 30 piece orchestra, fulfilling one of Avicii's dreams for his music in a live setting. All profits went to the Tim Bergling Foundation. Following the start of ticket sales, the concert sold out in 30 minutes. In October of the same year, Avicii was honoured with a waxwork statue at the Madame Tussauds museum in New York City. The same month it was announced that the video game would be released. Gameplay includes single and multiplayer versions where players would use the game to recreate 25 of his hits throughout the years. A portion of the profits are set to be donated to the Tim Bergling Foundation. Rebecca May of The Guardian rated the game 4 stars, describing it as "an immersive musical tribute". On 26 March 2019, Bergling's family launched a mental illness and suicide prevention foundation, named after the late DJ, the Tim Bergling Foundation. The foundation works internationally and aims to educate people and businesses on the issues surrounding suicide and mental health. The foundation also works to tackle climate change, manage business development, and conserve endangered species. People in the music industry are already claiming Avicii's death has raised awareness of mental health in the industry. Avicii inspired many artists in the EDM genre, many of whom paid tribute to him after his death. Norwegian DJ Kygo cited Avicii as "[his] biggest inspiration and the reason why [he] started making electronic music." In addition, artists like Alan Walker and DubVision described him as an "icon" in EDM. Other artists such as Diplo, Sebastian Ingrosso, Felix Jaehn, and Martin Garrix, the last of whom collaborated with Avicii on his 2015 single "Waiting for Love", have also cited him as a source of inspiration, with the songs "Levels" and "Seek Bromance" being specifically mentioned as points of inspiration. On the day of his death, The Washington Post wrote an article citing Avicii as a pioneer artist in the attempt to bridge the gap between country and electronic music, crediting his 2013 hits "Wake Me Up" and "Hey Brother" as a good example of this movement. Avicii is also credited for influencing other attempts at continuing this genre crossover, including songs such as Zedd's "The Middle" and Hailee Steinfeld's "Let Me Go". Avicii also influenced a number of mainstream artists outside electronic music. Nile Rodgers said that in terms of melody writing, Avicii was "maybe one of the best, if not the best I’ve ever worked with." Mike Einziger of Incubus said "Some of the work we did together is some of the music I’m most proud of in my whole life." Dan Reynolds of Imagine Dragons said "working with [Avicii] was one of my favorite collaborative moments." Charlie Puth said that Avicii was "The man who really opened my eyes as to what my productions could one day sound like." Eric Clapton, who never publicly worked with Avicii, said he was "Inspired by Avicii", and dedicated a song off his Christmas album, Happy Xmas, to him. On 21 November 2019, Billboard named Avicii's 2011 hit "Levels" as one of the one hundred songs which defined the 2010s, whereas his 2013 hit "Wake Me Up" came 13th (and was the highest charting EDM song) on the Official Charts Company's chart of the decade. Studio albums True (2013), Stories (2015), Tim (2019) House for Hunger (2012), True Tour (2014), Stories World Tour (2015) Avicii was depicted on a Swedish postage stamp issued 15 January 2015 by PostNord Sverige., Avicii was named in the 2015 song "I Took a Pill in Ibiza" by American singer and songwriter Mike Posner. Posner recounts the event when he went to an Avicii show in Ibiza and got a mystery pill from someone, with the starting lyrics "I took a pill in Ibiza / To show Avicii I was cool". The song was made in the week they wrote a song together in Sweden called "Stay with You". Swedish popular music, Tim Bergling Foundation "SOS" is the first posthumous single by Swedish DJ Avicii featuring co- production from Albin Nedler and Kristoffer Fogelmark, and vocals from American singer Aloe Blacc. It was released on 10 April 2019 and is included on his posthumous third studio album Tim, released on 6 June 2019. The single is also his second number-one (and his first posthumously charted single to reach number-one), as well as Blacc's first, on Billboards Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart, in its 1 June 2019 issue. The song was produced by Albin Nedler, Kristoffer Fogelmark, and Avicii. It features an interpolation of "No Scrubs" by TLC, written by Tameka Cottle, Kandi Burruss, and Kevin "She'kspere" Briggs. The song was released alongside a video featuring comments on the Avicii Memory Board, as well as a behind-the-scenes video that was released two hours before release. It debuted at number one on the singles chart in Sweden on two days of sales. The song was completed by a team of writers and producers following Avicii's death in April 2018. It was said to be "75–80% done" at the time of his death. Co-producers Kristoffer Fogelmark and Albin Nedler confirmed that after Avicii's death, they received the MIDI file for the song that he had produced, and said that all the sounds and notes in the song were from Avicii himself without any additional production. The only additional production done on the track was for Aloe Blacc's vocals. Though Avicii had suggested Aloe Blacc as a potential singer for the song, Blacc recorded his vocals after Avicii's death. The song is written in the key of F minor. Credits adapted from Tidal. Albin Nedler – songwriter, producer, vocal producer, engineer, keyboards, programming, Kristoffer Fogelmark – songwriter, producer, vocal producer, engineer, keyboards, programming, Avicii – songwriter, producer, keyboards, programming, Tameka Cottle – songwriter, Kandi Burruss – songwriter, Kevin "She'kspere" Briggs – songwriter, Aloe Blacc – vocals, Marcus Thunberg Wessel – engineer, Richard "Segal" Huredia – engineer, Kevin Grainger – mixer and mastering, Julio Rodriguez Sangrador – assistant mixer and mastering List of number-one singles of 2019 (Finland), List of number-one singles of the 2010s (Sweden)

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John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated on November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza. Kennedy was riding with his wife Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally's wife Nellie when he was fatally shot by former U.S. Marine Lee Harvey Oswald firing in ambush from a nearby building. Governor Connally was seriously wounded in the attack. The motorcade rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital where President Kennedy was pronounced dead about 30 minutes after the shooting; Connally recovered. Oswald was arrested by the Dallas Police Department 70 minutes after the initial shooting. Oswald was charged under Texas state law with the murder of Kennedy, as well as that of Dallas policeman J. D. Tippit, who had been fatally shot a short time after the assassination. At 11:21 a.m. November 24, 1963, as live television cameras were covering his transfer from the city jail to the county jail, Oswald was fatally shot in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters by Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby. Oswald was taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital where he soon died. Ruby was convicted of Oswald's murder, though it was later overturned on appeal, and Ruby died in prison in 1967 while awaiting a new trial. After a 10-month investigation, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald assassinated Kennedy, that Oswald had acted entirely alone, and that Ruby had acted alone in killing Oswald. Kennedy was the eighth and most recent US President to die in office, and the fourth (following Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley) to be assassinated. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson automatically assumed the Presidency upon Kennedy's death. A later investigation, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) agreed with the Warren Commission that the injuries that Kennedy and Connally sustained were caused by Oswald's three rifle shots, but they also concluded that Kennedy was "probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy" as analysis of a dictabelt audio recording pointed to the existence of an additional gunshot and therefore "... a high probability that two gunmen fired at [the] President". The Committee was not able to identify any individuals or groups involved with the possible conspiracy. In addition, the HSCA found that the original federal investigations were "seriously flawed" with respect to information-sharing and the possibility of conspiracy. As recommended by the HSCA, the dictabelt evidence suggesting conspiracy was subsequently re- examined and rejected. It was determined that the dictabelt recorded different gunshots which were fired at another location in Dallas and at a different time which was not related to the assassination. In light of the investigative reports determining that "reliable acoustic data do not support a conclusion that there was a second gunman", the U.S. Justice Department concluded active investigations and stated "that no persuasive evidence can be identified to support the theory of a conspiracy in ... the assassination of President Kennedy". However, Kennedy's assassination is still the subject of widespread debate and has spawned numerous conspiracy theories and alternative scenarios. Polls conducted from 1966 to 2004 found that up to 80 percent of Americans suspected that there was a plot or cover-up. President John F. Kennedy chose to travel to Texas to smooth over frictions in the Democratic Party between liberals Ralph Yarborough and Don Yarborough (no relation) and conservative John Connally. A presidential visit to Texas was first agreed upon by Kennedy, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson (a Texas native), and Texas Governor John Connally while all three men were together in a meeting in El Paso on June 5, 1963. President Kennedy later decided to embark on the trip with three basic goals in mind: 1.) to help raise more Democratic Party presidential campaign fund contributions; 2.) begin his quest for reelection in November 1964; and 3.) to help mend political fences among several leading Texas Democratic party members who appeared to be fighting politically amongst themselves since the Kennedy-Johnson ticket had barely won Texas in 1960 (and had even lost in Dallas). President Kennedy's trip to Dallas was first announced to the public in September 1963. The exact motorcade route was finalized on November 18 and publicly announced a few days before November 22. Kennedy's motorcade route through Dallas with Johnson and Connally was planned to give the president maximum exposure to local crowds before his arrival for a luncheon at the Trade Mart, where he would meet with civic and business leaders. The White House staff informed the Secret Service that the President would arrive at Dallas Love Field via a short flight from Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth. The Dallas Trade Mart was preliminarily selected as the place for the luncheon, and Kenneth O'Donnell, President Kennedy's friend and appointments secretary, had selected it as the final destination on the motorcade route. Leaving from Dallas Love Field, the motorcade had been allotted 45 minutes to reach the Trade Mart at a planned arrival time of 12:15 p.m. The itinerary was designed to serve as a meandering 10-mile (16-km) route between the two places, and the motorcade vehicles could be driven slowly within the allotted time. Special Agent Winston G. Lawson, a member of the White House detail who acted as the advance Secret Service Agent, and Secret Service Agent Forrest V. Sorrels, Special Agent in charge of the Dallas office, were the most active in planning the actual motorcade route. On November 14, both men attended a meeting at Love Field and drove over the route that Sorrels believed was best suited for the motorcade. From Love Field, the route passed through a suburban section of Dallas, through Downtown along Main Street, and finally to the Trade Mart via a short segment of the Stemmons Freeway. The President had planned to return to Love Field to depart for a fundraising dinner in Austin later that day. For the return trip, the agents selected a more direct route, which was approximately four miles, or 6.4 kilometers (some of this route would be used after the assassination). The planned route to the Trade Mart was widely reported in Dallas newspapers several days before the event, for the benefit of people who wished to view the motorcade. To pass directly through Downtown Dallas, a route west along Main Street, rather than Elm Street (one block to the north) was chosen, since this was the traditional parade route and provided the maximal building and crowd views. The Main Street section of the route precluded a direct turn onto the Fort Worth Turnpike exit (which served also as the Stemmons Freeway exit), which was the route to the Trade Mart, as this exit was only accessible from Elm Street. Therefore, the planned motorcade route included a short one-block turn at the end of the downtown segment of Main Street, onto Houston Street for one block northward, before turning again west onto Elm, that way they could proceed through Dealey Plaza before exiting Elm onto the Stemmons Freeway. The Texas School Book Depository was situated at the northwest corner of the Houston and Elm Street intersection. Three vehicles were used for Secret Service and police protection in the Dallas motorcade. The first car, an unmarked white Ford (hardtop), carried Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry, Secret Service Agent Win Lawson, Sheriff Bill Decker and Dallas Field Agent Forrest Sorrels. The second car, a 1961 Lincoln Continental convertible, was occupied by driver Agent Bill Greer, SAIC Roy Kellerman, Governor John Connally, Nellie Connally, President Kennedy, and Jackie Kennedy. The third car, a 1955 Cadillac convertible code-named "Halfback", contained driver Agent Sam Kinney, ATSAIC Emory Roberts, presidential aides Ken O'Donnell and Dave Powers, driver Agent George Hickey and PRS agent Glen Bennett. Secret Service agents Clint Hill, Jack Ready, Tim McIntyre and Paul Landis rode on the running boards. On November 22—after a breakfast speech in Fort Worth, where President Kennedy had stayed overnight after arriving from San Antonio, Houston, and Washington, D.C., the previous day—the president boarded Air Force One, which departed at 11:10 and arrived at Love Field 15 minutes later. At about 11:40, the presidential motorcade left Love Field for the trip through Dallas, running on a schedule about 10 minutes longer than the planned 45, due to enthusiastic crowds estimated at 150,000–200,000 people, and two unplanned stops directed by the president. By the time the motorcade reached Dealey Plaza, they were only five minutes away from their planned destination. President Kennedy's open-top 1961 Lincoln Continental four-door convertible limousine entered Dealey Plaza at 12:30 p.m. CST. Nellie Connally, the First Lady of Texas, turned around to the President, who was sitting behind her, and commented, "Mr. President, you can't say Dallas doesn't love you", which President Kennedy acknowledged by saying, "No, you certainly can't." Those were Kennedy's last words. From Houston Street, the presidential limousine made the planned left turn onto Elm, providing it access to the Stemmons Freeway exit. As the vehicle turned onto Elm, the motorcade passed by the Texas School Book Depository. Suddenly, shots were fired at President Kennedy as his motorcade continued down Elm Street. About 80% of the witnesses recalled hearing three shots. A minority of the witnesses recognized the first gunshot they heard as weapon fire, but there was hardly any reaction to the first shot from a majority of the people in the crowd or those riding in the motorcade. Many bystanders later said that they heard what they first thought to either be a firecracker or the backfire of one of the vehicles shortly after the President had begun waving. Although some close witnesses recalled seeing the limousine slow down, nearly stop, or completely stop, the Warren Commission—based on the Zapruder film—found that the limousine had traveled an average speed of 11.2 miles per hour over the 186 ft of Elm Street immediately preceding the fatal head shot. Within one second of each other, Governor Connally and Mrs. Kennedy turn abruptly from looking to their left to looking to their right, beginning at Zapruder film frame 162. Connally, like the President, was a World War II military veteran but unlike him, a longtime hunter. Connally testified that he immediately recognized the sound as that of a high-powered rifle, then he turned his head and torso rightward, attempting to see President Kennedy behind him. Governor Connally testified he could not see the President, so he then started to turn forward again (turning from his right to his left). The governor also testified that when his head was facing about 20 degrees left of center, he was hit in his upper right back by a bullet that he did not hear get fired. The doctor who operated on Connally measured his head at the time he was hit as having turned 27 degrees left of center. After Connally was hit, he shouted, "Oh, no, no, no. My God. They're going to kill us all!" Mrs. Connally testified that just after hearing a loud, frightening noise that came from somewhere behind her and to her right, she turned toward President Kennedy and saw him raise up his arms and elbows, with his hands in front of his face and throat. She then heard another gunshot and then Governor Connally yelling. Mrs. Connally then turned away from Kennedy toward her husband, at which point another gunshot sounded, and both she and the limousine's rear interior were covered with fragments of skull, blood, and brain. According to the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations, Kennedy was waving to the crowds on his right with his right arm upraised on the side of the limo when a shot entered his upper back, penetrated his neck and slightly damaged a spinal vertebra and the top of his right lung. The bullet exited his throat nearly centerline just beneath his larynx and nicked the left side of his suit tie knot. He raised his elbows and clenched his fists in front of his face and neck, then leaned forward and left. Mrs. Kennedy, facing him, then put her arms around him in concern. According to the Warren Commission's single bullet theory, Governor Connally also reacted after the same bullet penetrated his back just below his right armpit. The bullet created an oval-shaped entry wound, impacted and destroyed four inches of his right fifth rib, and exited his chest just below his right nipple. This created a two-and-a-half inch oval-shaped air-sucking chest wound. That same bullet then entered his arm just above his right wrist and cleanly shattered his right radius bone into eight pieces. The bullet exited just below the wrist at the inner side of his right palm and finally lodged in his left inner thigh. The Warren Commission theorized that the "single bullet" struck sometime between Zapruder frames 210 and 225, while the House Select Committee theorized that it struck at approximately Zapruder frame 190. According to the Warren Commission, a second shot that struck the President was recorded at Zapruder film frame 313. The Commission made no conclusion as to whether this was the second or third bullet fired. The presidential limousine then passed in front of the John Neely Bryan north pergola concrete structure. The two investigative committees concluded that the second shot to hit the president entered the rear of his head (the House Select Committee placed the entry wound four inches higher than the Warren Commission placed it) and passed in fragments through his skull; this created a large, "roughly ovular" [sic] hole on the rear, right side of the head. The president's blood and fragments of his scalp, brain, and skull landed on the interior of the car, the inner and outer surfaces of the front glass windshield, the raised sun visors, the front engine hood, and the rear trunk lid. His blood and fragments also landed on the Secret Service follow-up car and its driver's left arm, as well on the motorcycle officers who were riding on both sides of the President just behind his vehicle. Secret Service Special Agent Clint Hill was riding on the left front running board of the follow-up car, which was immediately behind the Presidential limousine. Hill testified that he heard one shot, then, as documented in other films and concurrent with Zapruder frame 308, he jumped off into Elm Street and ran forward to board the trunk of the limousine and protect the President; Hill testified to the Warren Commission that he heard the fatal headshot as he was reaching the limousine, "approximately five seconds" after the first shot that he heard. After the President was shot in the head, Mrs. Kennedy began climbing out onto the back of the limousine, though she later had no recollection of doing so. Hill believed she was reaching for something, perhaps a piece of the President's skull. He jumped onto the back of the limousine while at the same time Mrs. Kennedy returned to her seat, and he clung to the car as it exited Dealey Plaza and accelerated, speeding to Parkland Memorial Hospital. After Mrs. Kennedy crawled back into her limousine seat, both Governor and Mrs. Connally heard her repeatedly say, "They have killed my husband. I have his brains in my hand." Mrs. Kennedy recalled, "All the ride to the hospital I kept bending over him saying, 'Jack, Jack, can you hear me? I love you, Jack.' I kept holding the top of his head down trying to keep the brains in." Governor Connally was riding in the same limousine in a seat directly in front of the President and three inches more to the left than Kennedy; he was also seriously injured, but survived. Doctors later stated that after the Governor was shot, his wife pulled him onto her lap, and the resulting posture helped close his front chest wound, which was causing air to be sucked directly into his chest around his collapsed right lung. James Tague, a witness to the assassination, received a minor wound to the right cheek while standing away from the depository's sixth floor easternmost window, in front of and slightly to the right of President Kennedy's head facing direction and more than below the top of the President's head. Tague's injury occurred when a bullet or bullet fragment with no copper casing struck the nearby Main Street south curb. A deputy sheriff noticed some blood on Tague's cheek, and Tague realized that something had stung his face during the shooting. When Tague pointed to where he had been standing, the police officer noticed a bullet smear on a nearby curb. Nine months later the FBI removed the curb, and a spectrographic analysis revealed metallic residue consistent with that of the lead core in Oswald's ammunition. Tague testified before the Warren Commission and initially stated that he was wounded on his cheek by either the second or third shot of the three shots that he remembered hearing. When the Commission counsel pressed him to be more specific, Tague testified that he was wounded by the second shot. The presidential limousine passed by the grassy knoll to the north of Elm Street at the time of the fatal head shot. As the motorcade left Dealey Plaza, police officers and spectators ran up the grassy hill and from the triple underpass, to the area behind a five-foot (1.5 m) high stockade fence atop the knoll, separating it from a parking lot. No sniper was found there. S. M. Holland, who had been watching the motorcade on the triple underpass, testified that "immediately" after the shots were fired, he saw a puff of smoke rising from the trees right by the stockade fence and then ran around the corner where the overpass joined the fence, but did not see anyone running from that area. Lee Bowers, a railroad switchman who was sitting in a two- story tower, had an unobstructed view of the rear of the stockade fence atop the grassy knoll during the shooting. He saw four men in the area between his tower and Elm Street. That included a middle-aged man and a younger man, standing apart near the triple underpass, who did not seem to know each other, and one or two uniformed parking lot attendants. At the time of the shooting, he saw "something out of the ordinary, a sort of milling around", which he could not identify. Bowers testified that one or both of the men were still there when motorcycle officer Clyde Haygood ran up the grassy knoll to the back of the fence. In a 1966 interview, Bowers clarified that the two men he saw were standing in the opening between the pergola and the fence, and that "no one" was behind the fence at the time the shots were fired. Meanwhile, Howard Brennan, a steamfitter who was sitting across the street from the Texas School Book Depository, notified police that he was watching the motorcade go by when he heard a shot that came from above and looked up to see a man with a rifle take another shot from a corner window on the sixth floor. He said he had seen the same man looking out the window minutes earlier. Brennan gave a description of the shooter, and Dallas police subsequently broadcast descriptions at 12:45, 12:48, and 12:55 p.m. After the second shot was fired, Brennan recalled that "This man [he] saw previous was aiming for his last shot [...] and maybe paused for another second as though to assure himself that he had hit his mark." As Brennan spoke to the police in front of the building, they were joined by Harold Norman and James Jarman, Jr., two employees of the Texas School Book Depository who had watched the motorcade from windows at the southeast corner of the building's fifth floor. Norman reported that he heard three gunshots come from directly over their heads. Norman also heard the sounds of a bolt-action rifle and cartridges dropping on the floor above them. Dallas police sealed off the exits from the Texas School Book Depository approximately between 12:33 and 12:50 p.m. There were at least 104 earwitnesses in Dealey Plaza who were on record with an opinion as to the direction from which the shots came. Fifty-four (51.9%) thought that all shots came from the Texas School Book Depository building. Thirty-three (31.7%) thought that they came from either the grassy knoll or the triple underpass. Nine (8.7%) thought that each shot came from a location entirely distinct from the knoll or the depository. Five (4.8%) believed that they heard shots from two locations, and 3 (2.9%) thought that the shots originated from a direction consistent with both the knoll and the depository. The Warren Commission additionally concluded that three shots were fired and said that "a substantial majority of the witnesses stated that the shots were not evenly spaced. Most witnesses recalled that the second and third shots were bunched together". Roy Truly, Lee Harvey Oswald's supervisor at the depository, reported him missing to the Dallas police. About 70 minutes after the assassination, Oswald was arrested for the murder of Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit. According to witness Helen Markam, Tippit had spotted Oswald walking along a sidewalk in the residential neighborhood of Oak Cliff, three miles from Dealey Plaza. Officer Tippit had earlier received a radio message that gave a description of the suspect being sought in the assassination, and he called Oswald over to the patrol car. Markam testified that after an exchange of words, Tippit got out of his car and Oswald shot him four times. Multiple witnesses saw a man they identified as Oswald shoot Tippit or flee the scene after emptying the bullet casings from his gun. Oswald was next seen by shoe store manager Johnny Brewer "ducking into" the entrance alcove of his store. Suspicious of this activity, Brewer watched Oswald continue up the street and slip into the nearby Texas Theatre without paying. Brewer alerted the theater's ticket clerk, who telephoned the police at about 1:40 p.m. According to M.N. McDonald, who was one of the arresting officers, Oswald resisted arrest and was attempting to draw his pistol when he was struck and forcibly restrained by the police. He was charged with the murders of President Kennedy and Officer Tippit later that night. Oswald denied shooting anyone and claimed he was a patsy who was arrested because he had lived in the Soviet Union. Oswald's case never came to trial. Two days after the assassination, as he was being escorted to a car in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters for the transfer from the city jail to the county jail, Oswald was fatally shot by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby. The incident was broadcast live on American television at 11:21 a.m. CST on Sunday, November 24. Unconscious, Oswald was rushed by ambulance to Parkland Memorial Hospital, the same facility where doctors had tried to save President Kennedy's life two days earlier; he died at 1:07 p.m. Oswald's death was announced on a TV news broadcast by Dallas police chief Jesse Curry. An autopsy was performed by Dallas County Medical Examiner Dr. Earl Rose at 2:45 p.m. the same day. The stated cause of death in the autopsy report was "hemorrhage secondary to gunshot wound of the chest". Arrested immediately after the shooting, Ruby later said that he had been distraught over the Kennedy assassination and that killing Oswald would spare "... Mrs. Kennedy the discomfiture of coming back to trial". An Italian Carcano M91/38 bolt-action rifle (see 6.5×52mm Mannlicher–Carcano cartridge) was found on the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository by Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman and Deputy Sheriff Eugene Boone soon after the assassination of President Kennedy. The recovery was filmed by Tom Alyea of WFAA-TV. This footage shows the rifle to be a Carcano, and it was later verified by photographic analysis commissioned by the HSCA that the rifle filmed was the same one later identified as the assassination weapon. Compared to photographs taken of Oswald holding the rifle in his backyard, "one notch in the stock at [a] point that appears very faintly in the photograph" matched, as well as the rifle's dimensions. The secondhand Carcano rifle had been purchased by Oswald the previous March under the alias "A. Hidell" and delivered to a post office in Dallas where Oswald had rented a post-office box. According to the Warren Report, a partial palm print belonging to Oswald was also found on the barrel of the gun, and a tuft of fibers found in a crevice of the rifle was consistent with the fibers and colors of the shirt Oswald was wearing at the time of his arrest. A bullet found on Governor Connally's hospital gurney and two bullet fragments found in the Presidential limousine were ballistically matched to this rifle. The staff at Parkland Hospital's Trauma Room 1 who treated President Kennedy observed that his condition was moribund, meaning that he had no chance of survival upon arriving at the hospital. George Burkley, the President's personal physician, stated that a gunshot wound to the skull was the cause of death. Burkley signed President Kennedy's death certificate. The President was pronounced dead at 1:00 p.m., CST (19:00 UTC) after all heart activity had ceased. Father Oscar Huber administered the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church. Father Huber told The New York Times that the President was already dead by the time he arrived at the hospital, and he had to draw back a sheet covering the President's face to administer the sacrament of Extreme Unction. President Kennedy's death was officially announced by White House Acting Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff at 1:33 p.m. CST (19:33 UTC). Kilduff was acting press secretary on the trip because Pierre Salinger was traveling to Japan with half the Cabinet, including Secretary of State Dean Rusk. Governor Connally, meanwhile, was taken to emergency surgery, where he underwent two operations that day. Members of the President's security detail were attempting to remove Kennedy's body from the hospital when they briefly scuffled with Dallas officials, including Dallas County Coroner Earl Rose, who believed that he was legally obligated to perform an autopsy before the President's body was removed. The Secret Service pushed through and Rose eventually stepped aside. The forensic panel of the HSCA, of which Rose was a member, later reported that Texas law indicated that it was the responsibility of the justice of the peace to determine the cause of death as well as the necessity of whether an autopsy was needed to determine the cause of death. Theran Ward, a justice of the peace in Dallas County, signed the official record of inquest as well as a second certificate of death. A few minutes after 2:00 p.m. CST (20:00 UTC), Kennedy's body was taken from Parkland Hospital to Love Field. His casket was loaded into the passenger compartment of Air Force One through the rear door, and placed at the rear in place of a removed row of seats. Johnson had accompanied Kennedy to Dallas and was riding two cars behind the President in the motorcade. The new President refused to leave for Washington without Kennedy's remains and his widow. At 2:38 p.m. CST (20:38 UTC), Lyndon Johnson, with Jacqueline Kennedy at his side, took the oath of office administered by federal judge Sarah T. Hughes on board Air Force One shortly before departing from Love Field for the flight back to Washington, D.C. The autopsy was performed at the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland; the procedure began at about 8 p.m. and ended at about midnight EST. The choice of autopsy hospital in the Washington, D.C., area was made at the request of Mrs. Kennedy, on the basis that John F. Kennedy had been a naval officer during World War II. The state funeral took place in Washington, D.C., during the three days that followed the assassination. The body of President Kennedy was flown back to Washington, D.C., and placed in the East Room of the White House for 24 hours. On the Sunday after the assassination, his coffin was carried on a horse-drawn caisson to the United States Capitol to lie in state. Throughout the day and night, hundreds of thousands of people lined up to view the guarded casket. Representatives from over 90 countries attended the state funeral on Monday, November 25. After the Requiem Mass at St. Matthew's Cathedral, the President was laid to rest 2.7 miles from the White House at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. No radio or television stations broadcast the assassination live. Most media crews did not ride with the motorcade, but were instead waiting at the Dallas Trade Mart in anticipation of President Kennedy's arrival there. Members of the media who were with the motorcade were riding at the rear of the procession. The Dallas police were recording their radio transmissions over two individual channels. A frequency designated as Channel One was used for routine police communications, while Channel Two was an auxiliary channel dedicated to the President's motorcade. Up until the time of the assassination, most of the broadcasts on the second channel consisted of Police Chief Jesse Curry's announcements of the location of the motorcade as it traveled through the city. President Kennedy's last seconds of traveling through Dealey Plaza were recorded on silent 8 mm film for the 26.6 seconds before, during, and immediately following the assassination. This famous film footage was taken by garment manufacturer and amateur cameraman Abraham Zapruder, and became known as the Zapruder film. Frame enlargements from the Zapruder film were published by Life magazine shortly after the assassination. The footage was first shown publicly as a film at the trial of Clay Shaw in 1969, and on television in 1975. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, in 1999 an arbitration panel ordered the United States government to pay $615,384 per second of film to Zapruder's heirs for giving the film to the National Archives. The complete film, which lasts for roughly over 26 seconds, was valued at $16 million. Zapruder was not the only person who photographed at least part of the assassination; a total of 32 photographers were in Dealey Plaza that day. Amateur movies taken by Orville Nix, Marie Muchmore (shown on television in New York on November 26, 1963), and photographer Charles Bronson captured the fatal shot, although at a greater distance than Zapruder did. Other motion picture films were taken in Dealey Plaza at or around the time of the shooting by Robert Hughes, F. Mark Bell, Elsie Dorman, John Martin Jr., Patsy Paschall, Tina Towner, James Underwood, Dave Wiegman, Mal Couch, Thomas Atkins, and an unknown woman in a blue dress on the south side of Elm Street. Still photos were taken by Phillip Willis, Mary Moorman, Hugh W. Betzner Jr., Wilma Bond, Robert Croft, and many others. Ike Altgens was the lone professional photographer in Dealey Plaza who was not in the press cars; he was a photo editor for the Associated Press in Dallas. An unidentified woman, nicknamed by researchers as the Babushka Lady, might have been filming the Presidential motorcade during the assassination. She was seen apparently doing so on film and in photographs taken by the others. Previously unknown color footage filmed on the assassination day by George Jefferies was released on February 19, 2007, by the Sixth Floor Museum. The film does not include the actual shooting, having been taken over 90 seconds beforehand and a couple of blocks away. The only detail relevant to the investigation of the assassination is a clear view of President Kennedy's bunched suit jacket, just below the collar, which has led to different calculations about how low in the back President Kennedy was first shot (see discussion above). After the Dallas Police arrested Oswald and collected physical evidence at the crime scenes, they held Oswald at their headquarters for interrogation. All afternoon, they asked Oswald about the Tippit shooting and the assassination of the President. They intermittently questioned him for approximately 12 hours between 2:30 p.m., on November 22, and 11 a.m., on November 24. Throughout this interrogation, Oswald denied any involvement with either Kennedy's assassination or Patrolman Tippit's murder. Captain Fritz of the homicide and robbery bureau did most of the questioning and kept only rudimentary notes. Days later, he wrote a report of the interrogation from notes he made afterwards. There were no stenographic or tape recordings. Representatives of other law enforcement agencies were also present, including the FBI and the Secret Service, and occasionally participated in the questioning. Several of the FBI agents who were present wrote contemporaneous reports of the interrogation. On the evening of the assassination, Dallas Police performed paraffin tests on Oswald's hands and right cheek in an apparent effort to determine, by means of a scientific test, whether or not he had recently fired a weapon. The results were positive for the hands and negative for the right cheek. These tests were unreliable, and the Warren Commission did not rely on the results of the test in making their findings. Oswald provided little information during his questioning by police. When confronted with evidence that he could not explain, he resorted to statements that were found to be false. The FBI was the first authority to complete an investigation. On December 9, 1963, the FBI issued a report and gave it to the Warren Commission. The FBI stated that three bullets were fired during the Kennedy assassination; the Warren Commission agreed with the FBI investigation that three shots were fired but disagreed with the FBI report on which shots hit Kennedy and which hit Governor Connally. The FBI report claimed that the first shot hit President Kennedy, the second shot hit Governor Connally, and the third shot hit President Kennedy in the head, killing him. In contrast, the Warren Commission concluded that one of the three shots missed, one of the shots hit President Kennedy and then struck Governor Connally, and a third shot struck President Kennedy in the head, killing him. The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, was established on November 29, 1963, by President Johnson to investigate the assassination. Its 888-page final report was presented to Johnson on September 24, 1964, and made public three days later. It concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the killing of President Kennedy and the wounding of Texas Governor John Connally, and that Jack Ruby also acted alone in the murder of Oswald. The Commission's findings and conclusions have since proven controversial and been both criticized and supported by later studies. The Commission took its unofficial name, "The Warren Commission", from its chairman, Chief Justice Earl Warren. According to published transcripts of Johnson's presidential phone conversations, some major officials were opposed to forming such a commission, and several commission members took part only with extreme reluctance. One of their chief reservations was that a commission would ultimately create more controversy than consensus, and those fears ultimately proved valid. All of the Warren Commission's records were submitted to the National Archives in 1964. The unpublished portion of those records was initially sealed for 75 years (to 2039) under a general National Archives policy that applied to all federal investigations by the executive branch of government, a period "intended to serve as protection for innocent persons who could otherwise be damaged because of their relationship with participants in the case". The 75-year rule no longer exists, supplanted by the Freedom of Information Act of 1966 and the JFK Records Act of 1992. In 1968, a panel of four medical experts appointed by Attorney General Ramsey Clark met in Washington, D.C., to examine various photographs, X-ray films, documents, and other evidence about the death of President Kennedy. The Clark Panel determined that President Kennedy was struck by two bullets fired from above and behind him, one of which traversed the base of the neck on the right side without striking bone and the other of which entered the skull from behind and destroyed its upper right side. The report also indicates that the skull shot entered well above the external occipital protuberance, which was at odds with the Warren Commission's findings. The United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States was set up under President Gerald Ford in 1975 to investigate the activities of the CIA within the United States. The commission was led by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, and is sometimes referred to as the Rockefeller Commission. Part of the commission's work dealt with the Kennedy assassination, specifically the head snap as seen in the Zapruder film (first shown to the general public in 1975), and the possible presence of E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis in Dallas. The commission concluded that neither Hunt nor Sturgis was in Dallas at the time of the assassination. The Church Committee is the common term referring to the 1975 United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a U.S. Senate committee chaired by Senator Frank Church, to investigate the illegal intelligence gathering by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after the Watergate incident. It also investigated the CIA and FBI conduct relating to the JFK assassination. Their report concluded that the investigation on the assassination by FBI and CIA were fundamentally deficient and that facts that may have greatly affected the investigation had not been forwarded to the Warren Commission by the agencies. The report hinted that there was a possibility that senior officials in both agencies made conscious decisions not to disclose potentially important information. As a result of increasing public and congressional skepticism regarding the Warren Commission's findings and the transparency of government agencies, House Resolution 1540 was passed in September 1976, creating the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) to investigate the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.. The Committee investigated until 1978, and in March 1979 issued its final report, concluding that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The chief reason for this conclusion was, according to the report's dissent, the subsequently discredited acoustic analysis of a police channel dictabelt recording. The Committee concluded that previous investigations into Oswald's responsibility were "thorough and reliable" but they did not adequately investigate the possibility of a conspiracy, and that Federal agencies performed with "varying degrees of competency". Specifically, the FBI and CIA were found to be deficient in sharing information with other agencies and the Warren Commission. Instead of furnishing all information relevant to the investigation, the FBI and CIA only responded to specific requests and were still occasionally inadequate. Furthermore, the Secret Service did not properly analyze information it possessed prior to the assassination and was inadequately prepared to protect the President. Concerning the conclusions of "probable conspiracy", four of the twelve committee members wrote dissenting opinions. In accordance with the recommendations of the HSCA, the Dictabelt recording and acoustic evidence of a second assassin was subsequently reexamined. In light of investigative reports from the FBI's Technical Services Division and a specially appointed National Academy of Sciences Committee determining that "reliable acoustic data do not support a conclusion that there was a second gunman", the Justice Department concluded "that no persuasive evidence can be identified to support the theory of a conspiracy in ... the assassination of President Kennedy". Although the final report and supporting volumes of the HSCA was publicly released, the working papers and primary documents were sealed until 2029 under Congressional rules and only partially released as part of the 1992 JFK Act. In 1992, the popular but controversial movie JFK had renewed public interest in the assassination and particularly in the still-classified documents referenced in the film's postscript. Largely in response to the film, Congress passed the JFK Act, or "President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992". The goal of the legislation was to collect at the National Archives and make publicly available all of the assassination-related records held by federal and state government agencies, private citizens and various other organizations. The JFK Act also mandated the creation of an independent office, the Assassination Records Review Board, to review the submitted records for completeness and continued secrecy. The Review Board was not commissioned to make any findings or conclusions regarding the assassination, just to collect and release all related documents. From 1994 until 1998, the Assassination Records Review Board gathered and unsealed about 60,000 documents, consisting of over 4 million pages. Government agencies requested that some records remain classified and these were reviewed under section 6 criteria of the JFK Act. There were 29,420 such records and all of them were fully or partially released, with stringent requirements for redaction. A staff report for the Assassinations Records Review Board contended that brain photographs in the Kennedy records are not of Kennedy's brain and show much less damage than Kennedy sustained. Boswell refuted these allegations. The Board also found that, conflicting with the photographic images showing no such defect, a number of witnesses, including at both the autopsy and Parkland Hospital, saw a large wound in the back of the president's head. The Board and board member, Jeremy Gunn, have also stressed the problems with witness testimony, asking people to weigh all of the evidence, with due concern for human error, rather than take single statements as "proof" for one theory or another. All remaining assassination-related records (approximately 5,000 pages) were scheduled to be released by October 26, 2017, with the exception of documents certified for continued postponement by the President under the following conditions: (1) "continued postponement is made necessary by an identifiable harm to the military, defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations" and (2) "the identifiable harm is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure." There was some concern among researchers that significant records, particularly those of the CIA, might still remain classified after 2017. Although these documents may include interesting historical information, all of the records were examined by the Review Board and were not determined to impact the facts of the Kennedy assassination. President Donald Trump said in October 2017 that he would not block the release of documents. On 26 April 2018, the deadline set by President Trump to release all JFK records, he blocked the release of some records until October 26, 2021. Many conspiracy theories posit that the assassination involved people or organizations in addition to Lee Harvey Oswald. Most current theories put forth a criminal conspiracy involving parties as varied as the FBI, the CIA, the U.S. military, the Mafia, Vice President Johnson, Cuban President Fidel Castro, the KGB, or some combination of those entities. Public opinion polls have consistently shown that a majority of Americans believe there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Gallup polls have also found that only 20–30% of the population believe that Oswald had acted alone. These polls also show that there is no agreement on who else may have been involved. Former Los Angeles District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi estimated that a total of 42 groups, 82 assassins, and 214 people had been accused in various Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories. The assassination evoked stunned reactions worldwide. The first hour after the shooting was a time of great confusion before the President's death was announced. The incident took place during the Cold War, and it was at first unclear whether the shooting might be part of a larger attack upon the United States. There was also concern whether Vice President Johnson, who had been riding two cars behind in the motorcade, was safe. The news shocked the nation. People wept openly and gathered in department stores to watch the television coverage, while others prayed. Traffic in some areas came to a halt as the news spread from car to car. Schools across the United States dismissed their students early. Anger against Texas and Texans was reported from some individuals. Various Cleveland Browns fans, for example, carried signs at the next Sunday's home game against the Dallas Cowboys decrying the city of Dallas as having "killed the President". However, there were also instances of Kennedy's opponents cheering the assassination. A journalist reported rejoicing in the streets of Amarillo, with a woman crying out, "Hey, great, JFK’s croaked!" The event left a lasting impression on many worldwide. As with the preceding attack on Pearl Harbor of December 7, 1941, and the subsequent September 11 attacks, asking "Where were you when you heard about President Kennedy's assassination" would become a common topic of discussion. The plane that served as Air Force One at the time of the assassination is on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. The 1961 Lincoln Continental limousine is on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. Jacqueline Kennedy's pink suit, the autopsy report, the X-rays, and President Kennedy's blood-stained clothing are in the possession of the National Archives, with access controlled by the Kennedy family. Other items in the Archives include equipment from Parkland Hospital trauma room; Oswald's rifle, diary, and revolver; bullet fragments; and the windshield of Kennedy's limousine. The Lincoln Catafalque, on which President Kennedy's coffin rested in the Capitol, is on display at the United States Capitol Visitor Center. In 1993 the three-acre park within Dealey Plaza, the buildings facing it, the overpass, and a portion of the adjacent railyardincluding the railroad switching towerwere incorporated into the Dealey Plaza Historic District by the National Park Service. Much of the area is accessible by visitors, including the park and grassy knoll. Elm Street is still an active thoroughfare; an X painted in the road marks the approximate spot at which the shots struck Kennedy and Connally. The Texas School Book Depository and its Sixth Floor Museum draw over 325,000 visitors annually, and contains a re- creation of the area from which Oswald fired. The Sixth Floor Museum also manages the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Memorial located one block east of Dealey Plaza. At the direction of the deceased President's brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, some items were destroyed by the United States government. The casket in which President Kennedy's body was transported from Dallas to Washington was dropped into the sea by the Air Force, because "its public display would be extremely offensive and contrary to public policy". Other items, the toe tag on Oswald's corpse, the catalog from which Oswald ordered his clothes worn by Ruby, and a window from the Texas School Book Depository, are in private hands. The Texas State Archives has the clothes Connally was wearing when he was shot. The gun Ruby used to kill Oswald later came into the possession of Ruby's brother Earl, and was sold in 1991 for $220,000. John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories, Trial of Clay Shaw, the only trial to be brought for the assassination of President Kennedy., Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, Assassination of John F. Kennedy in popular culture, Kennedy Curse, Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Assassination of James A. Garfield, Assassination of William McKinley, Curse of Tippecanoe, List of United States presidential assassination attempts and plots The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection – National Archives and Records Administration, JFK Assassination:A look back at the death of President John F. Kennedy 50 years ago – CBS News, "JFK: One PM Central Standard Time" – documentary produced by PBS, "The Assassination of President Kennedy" – radio documentary by Mike Swickey, "Weisberg Collection on the JFK Assassination" – Internet Archive, LIFE Magazine Nov. 25, 1966 United States President William McKinley was shot on the grounds of the Pan- American Exposition at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, New York, on September 6, 1901. He was shaking hands with the public when anarchist Leon Czolgosz shot him twice in the abdomen. McKinley died on September 14 of gangrene caused by the wounds. He was the third American president to be assassinated, following Abraham Lincoln in 1865 and James A. Garfield in 1881. McKinley was elected in 1900 for his second term. He enjoyed meeting the public and was reluctant to accept the security available to his office. Secretary to the President George B. Cortelyou feared that an assassination attempt would take place during a visit to the Temple of Music and took it off the schedule twice, but McKinley restored it each time. Czolgosz had lost his job during the economic Panic of 1893 and turned to anarchism, a political philosophy adhered to by recent assassins of foreign leaders. He regarded McKinley as a symbol of oppression and was convinced that it was his duty as an anarchist to kill him. He was unable to get near the President during an earlier visit, but he shot him twice as McKinley reached to shake his hand in the reception line at the temple. One bullet grazed McKinley; the other entered his abdomen and was never found. McKinley initially appeared to be recovering, but he took a turn for the worse on September 13 as his wounds became gangrenous, and he died early the next morning; Vice President Theodore Roosevelt succeeded him. Czolgosz was sentenced to death in the electric chair, and Congress passed legislation to officially charge the Secret Service with the responsibility for protecting the President. In September 1901, William McKinley was at the height of his power as president. Elected in 1896, during the serious economic depression resulting from the Panic of 1893, he had defeated his Democratic rival, William Jennings Bryan. McKinley led the nation both to a return to prosperity and to victory in the Spanish–American War in 1898, taking possession of such Spanish colonies as Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Re-elected handily in a rematch against Bryan in 1900, according to historical writer Eric Rauchway, "it looked as if the McKinley Administration would continue peaceably unbroken for another four years, a government devoted to prosperity". McKinley's original vice president, Garret Hobart, had died in 1899, and McKinley left the choice of a running mate to the 1900 Republican National Convention. In advance of the convention, New York's Republican political boss, Senator Thomas C. Platt, saw an opportunity to politically sideline his state's governor, former Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, by pushing for his nomination as vice president. Roosevelt accepted the nomination and was elected on McKinley's ticket. Leon Czolgosz was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1873, the son of Polish immigrants. The Czolgosz family moved several times as Paul Czolgosz, Leon's father, sought work throughout the Midwest. As an adult, Leon Czolgosz worked in a Cleveland factory until he lost his job in a labor dispute in 1893. Thereafter, he worked irregularly and attended political and religious meetings, trying to understand the reasons for the economic turmoil of the Panic of 1893. In doing so, he became interested in anarchism. By 1901, this movement was feared in the United States — New York's highest court had ruled that the act of identifying oneself as an anarchist in front of an audience was a breach of the peace. Anarchists had taken a toll in Europe by assassinating or attempting assassinations of a half-dozen officials and members of royal houses, and had been blamed for the 1886 Haymarket bombing in Chicago. Two American presidents had been assassinated in the 19th century—Abraham Lincoln in 1865 and James A. Garfield in 1881. Even considering this history, McKinley did not like security personnel to come between him and the people. When in his hometown, Canton, Ohio, he often walked to church or the business district without protection, and in Washington went on drives with his wife without any guard in the carriage. McKinley gave a short speech at his second inauguration on March 4, 1901. Having long been an advocate of protective tariffs, and believing the Dingley Tariff, passed during his first year in office, had helped the nation reach prosperity, McKinley planned to negotiate reciprocal trade agreements with other countries. This would open foreign markets to United States manufacturers that had dominated the domestic market thanks to the tariff, and who sought to expand. During a long trip planned for the months after his inauguration, he intended to make major speeches promoting this plan, culminating in a visit and address at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo on June 13. McKinley, his wife Ida, and their official party left Washington on April 29 for a tour of the nation by train, scheduled to conclude in Buffalo for a speech on what had been designated as "President's Day". He met with rapturous receptions in the Far West, which had never seen a president. In California, the First Lady became seriously ill, and for a time was thought to be dying. She recovered in San Francisco, but her husband canceled the remainder of the tour and the McKinleys returned to Washington. The speech at the Exposition was postponed until September 5, after McKinley spent some weeks in Washington and two months in Canton. He used his time in his Ohio home working on the Buffalo speech and in supervising improvements to his house. He intended to remain based in Canton until October. Czolgosz had lived on his parents' farm near Cleveland beginning in 1898, working little—he may have suffered a nervous breakdown. He is known to have attended a speech by anarchist Emma Goldman in May 1901 in Cleveland: he approached her before the speech and asked her to recommend books on anarchism; she obliged. The talk, in which Goldman did not advocate violence but expressed understanding for those driven to it, was a great influence on Czolgosz; he later stated that her words burned in his head. He came to see her at her Chicago home in July as she was about to depart on a trip with her daughter to Buffalo to see the fair, and the two anarchists rode together to the train station. Goldman expressed concern to another radical that Czolgosz (who was using the alias Fred Nieman) was following her around; soon after, he apparently departed Chicago. William Arntz, a worker at a park in Canton, stated that he had seen a man resembling Czolgosz in mid-1901, when the President was staying at home and sometimes visiting the park. The man was wearing two guns, and when Arntz reminded him that firearms were not permitted outside the park's shooting range, responded dismissively. Arntz sought the police, but the man was never found. Later in the summer, Czolgosz moved to Buffalo, though his reasons for doing so are not known. Author and journalist Scott Miller speculated that he may have chosen Buffalo because of its large Polish population. He boarded in the suburb of West Seneca and spent much of his time reading. Czolgosz then left for Cleveland, though what he did there is uncertain; he may have picked up anarchist literature or procured more money. After Cleveland, Czolgosz went to Chicago, where he saw a newspaper mention of President McKinley's impending visit to Buffalo. He returned to Buffalo, as yet uncertain of what he would do; at first, he only sought to be near the man who to him embodied injustice. On Tuesday, September 3, he made up his mind. Czolgosz later stated to the police: It was in my heart, there was no escape for me. I could not have conquered it had my life been at stake. There were thousands of people in town on Tuesday. I heard it was President's Day. All those people seemed bowing to the great ruler. I made up my mind to kill that ruler. On September 3, Czolgosz went to Walbridge's Hardware Store on Buffalo's Main Street and purchased a .32-caliber Iver Johnson revolver. He had as yet no clear plan for the assassination of the President. The following day, William and Ida McKinley arrived in Buffalo by train. The cannon that fired a salute to the President on his arrival in the city had been set too close to the track, and the explosions blew out several windows in the train, unnerving the First Lady. About a dozen people on the platform, believing the damage was caused by a bomb, shouted "Anarchists!" As William McKinley stepped down from the train to the official welcome, Czolgosz shoved his way forward in the crowd, but found the President too well guarded to make an attempt on his life. McKinley's trip to Buffalo was part of a planned ten-day absence from Canton, beginning on September 4, 1901, which was to include a visit in Cleveland to an encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic; he was a member as a Union veteran. The McKinleys stayed in Buffalo at the Milburn House, the large home of the Exposition's president, John G. Milburn. On Saturday, September 7, they were to travel to Cleveland and stay first at the home of businessman and future Ohio governor Myron Herrick, a friend of the President, and then with McKinley's close friend and adviser, Ohio Senator Mark Hanna. Upon arrival in Buffalo, the presidential party was driven through the fairgrounds on the way to the Milburn House, pausing for a moment at the Triumphal Bridge at the Exposition so the visitors could look upon the fair's attractions. While in Buffalo, McKinley had two days of events: On Thursday, September 5, he was to deliver his address and then tour the fair. The following day, he was to visit Niagara Falls, and, on his return to Buffalo, meet the public at the Temple of Music on the Exposition grounds. Part of the reason for bringing McKinley repeatedly to the fair was to swell the gate receipts; the popular President's visit was heavily advertised. The public reception at the Temple of Music was disliked by his personal secretary, George B. Cortelyou, who, concerned for the President's security, twice tried to remove it from the program. McKinley restored it every time; he wished to support the fair (he agreed with its theme of hemispheric cooperation), enjoyed meeting people, and was not afraid of potential assassins. When Cortelyou asked McKinley a final time to remove the event from the schedule, the President responded, "Why should I? No one would wish to hurt me." Cortelyou warned McKinley that many would be disappointed since the President would not have time to shake hands with all who would line up to meet him. McKinley responded, "Well, they'll know I tried, anyhow." Unable to persuade the President to alter his schedule, Cortelyou telegraphed to authorities in Buffalo, asking them to arrange extra security. On the morning of Thursday, September 5, the fair gates were opened at 6:00 a.m. to allow the crowds to enter early and seek good spots to witness the President's speech. The Esplanade, the large space near the Triumphal Bridge where the President was to speak, was filled with fairgoers; the crowd overflowed into the nearby Court of the Fountains. Of the 116,000 fairgoers that day, about 50,000 are believed to have attended McKinley's speech. The route between the Milburn House and the site of the speech was packed with spectators; McKinley's progress by carriage to the fair with his wife was accompanied by loud cheering. He ascended to a stand overlooking the Esplanade, and after a brief introduction by Milburn, began to speak. In his final speech, McKinley urged an end to American isolationism. He proposed trade arrangements which would allow US manufacturers new markets. "The period of exclusiveness is past. The expansion of our trade and commerce is the pressing problem. Commercial wars are unprofitable." The crowd greeted his speech with loud applause; at its conclusion, the President escorted Ida McKinley back to her carriage as she was to return to the Milburn House while he saw the sights at the fair. McKinley toured the pavilions of other Western Hemisphere nations, attracting crowds and applause wherever he went. He presided over a luncheon at the New York State Building, and attended a by- invitation-only reception at the Government Building. He was heavily guarded by soldiers and police, but still tried to interact with the public, encouraging those who tried to run to him by noticing them, and bowing to a group of loud young popcorn sellers. He made an unscheduled stop for coffee at the Porto Rican Building before returning to the Milburn House in the late afternoon. Despite a Cortelyou warning to the organizers that she might not attend due to her delicate health, Ida McKinley had been present at a luncheon in her honor by the Exposition's Board of Lady Managers, and after dinner, the President and First Lady returned to the fairgrounds, pausing at the Triumphal Bridge to watch the fair illuminated by electricity as the sun set. They went by boat to the Life Saving Station to view the fireworks from there before returning to the Milburn House. Czolgosz, gun in his pocket, had arrived early at the fair, and was quite close to the podium before McKinley arrived. He considered shooting the President during his speech, but felt he could not be certain of hitting his target; he was also being jostled by the crowd. Czolgosz had not made up his mind when McKinley concluded his speech and disappeared behind security guards. Nevertheless, he attempted to follow McKinley as the President began his tour of the fair, but was thrust back by officers. Czolgosz saw no further chance at getting close to the President that day, and he returned to his $2/week rented room above a saloon. On the morning of Friday, September 6, 1901, McKinley dressed formally as usual, then departed the Milburn House for a stroll through the neighborhood. The President nearly slipped away unguarded; when the police and soldiers noticed him leaving, they hurried after him. Czolgosz also rose early with the intent of lining up for the public reception at the Temple of Music; he reached the Exposition gates at 8:30 a.m., in time to see the President pass in his carriage en route to the train station for the visit to Niagara Falls. The McKinleys traveled by train to Lewiston, where they switched to trolleys to view the Niagara Gorge. When the party reached the municipality of Niagara Falls, they transferred to carriages to see the sights. The party rode halfway across the Honeymoon Bridge overlooking the Falls, though McKinley was careful not to enter Canada for reasons of protocol. It was a hot day, and Ida McKinley felt ill due to the heat; she was driven to the International Hotel to await her husband, who toured Goat Island before joining his wife for lunch. After smoking a cigar on the veranda, the President rode with his wife to the train which now awaited them nearby, and saw her settled there before touring the hydroelectric plant at the Falls. The train then returned to Buffalo so McKinley could attend the reception at the Temple of Music. Ida McKinley had originally intended to accompany her husband to the auditorium, but as she was not fully recovered, she decided to return to the Milburn House to rest. As the time allotted for the reception had been pared down to ten minutes, the President did not expect to be separated from his wife for long. As it was only 3:30 p.m., McKinley stopped for refreshments at the Mission Building before proceeding to the Temple of Music. When given the opportunity to host a public reception for President McKinley, fair organizers chose to site it in the Temple of Music—Louis L. Babcock, grand marshal of the Exposition, regarded the building as ideal for the purpose. The large auditorium was located close to the Esplanade, in the heart of the fair, and had doorways on each of its four sides. In addition to rows of chairs on the floor of the hall, it had spacious galleries. Babcock spent the morning of September 6 making some physical arrangements for the reception. Floor seating was removed to create a broad aisle, running from the east doors through which the public would be admitted, to where McKinley would stand. Once members of the public shook hands with McKinley, they would continue on to exit the building. An American flag was draped behind the President, both to screen him from behind and for decoration—several potted plants were arrayed around his place to create an attractive scene. Besides its utility for other purposes, the ornate building was one of the architectural features of the fair. Considerable arrangements had been made for the President's security. Exposition police were stationed at the doors; detectives from the Buffalo police guarded the aisle. In addition to McKinley's usual Secret Service agent, George Foster, two other agents had been assigned to the Buffalo trip because of Cortelyou's security concerns. Babcock was made nervous by a joke at lunch in an Exposition restaurant that the President might be shot during the reception. He had arranged for a dozen artillerymen to attend the reception in full-dress uniform, intending to use them as decoration. Instead, he had them stand in the aisle with instructions to close on any suspicious-looking person who might approach the President. These men were not trained in police work, and served to crowd the area in front of the President and obstruct the views of the detectives and Secret Service. At such events, Foster usually stood just to the left and behind McKinley. Milburn wished to stand to McKinley's left to be able to introduce anyone he knew in the line to the President, and Foster and another agent instead stood across the aisle from McKinley. Throughout the afternoon, crowds had filled the floor outside the blocked-off aisle, and the galleries as well, wanting to see the President, even if they could not greet him. McKinley arrived just on time, glanced at the arrangements, and walked over to his place, where he stood with Milburn on his left and Cortelyou on his right. The pipe organ began to play "The Star-Spangled Banner" as McKinley ordered the doors open to admit those who had waited to greet him. The police let them in, and McKinley prepared to perform his "favorite part of the job". An experienced politician, McKinley could shake hands with 50 people per minute, gripping their hands first so as to both guide them past him quickly and prevent his fingers from being squeezed. Cortelyou anxiously watched the time; about halfway through the ten minutes allotted, he sent word to Babcock to have the doors closed when the presidential secretary raised his hand. Seeing Cortelyou looking at his watch, Babcock moved towards the doors. As the reception continued, the organist played works by Johann Sebastian Bach. The procession of citizens shaking hands with their President was interrupted when 12-year-old Myrtle Ledger of Spring Brook, New York, who was accompanied by her mother, asked McKinley for the red carnation he always wore on his lapel. The President gave it to her, then resumed work without his trademark good- luck piece. The Secret Service men looked suspiciously on a tall, swarthy man who appeared restless as he walked towards the President, but breathed a sigh of relief when he shook hands with McKinley without incident and began to move towards the exit. The usual rule that those who approached the President must do so with their hands open and empty was not being enforced, perhaps due to the heat of the day, as several people were using handkerchiefs to wipe their brows; the man who followed the swarthy individual had his right hand wrapped in one, as if injured. Seeing this, McKinley reached for his left hand instead. As the two men's hands touched at 4:07 pm, Czolgosz shot McKinley twice in the abdomen with a .32 Iver Johnson revolver concealed under the handkerchief. As onlookers gazed in horror, and as McKinley lurched forward a step, Czolgosz prepared to take a third shot. He was prevented from doing so when James Parker, an American of African and Spanish descent from Georgia who had been behind Czolgosz in line, slammed into the assassin, reaching for the gun. A split second after Parker struck Czolgosz, so did Buffalo detective John Geary and one of the artillerymen, Francis O'Brien. Czolgosz disappeared beneath a pile of men, some of whom were punching or hitting him with rifle butts. He was heard to say, "I done my duty." McKinley staggered backwards and to the right, but was prevented from falling by Cortelyou, Milburn, and Detective Geary; they guided him across some fallen bunting to a chair. The President tried to convince Cortelyou he was not seriously injured, but blood was visible as he tried to expose his injury. Seeing the pummeling being taken by Czolgosz, McKinley ordered it stopped. Czolgosz was dragged away, but not before being searched by Agent Foster. When Czolgosz kept turning his head to watch the President while being searched, Foster struck him to the ground with one punch. After stopping the beating of Czolgosz, McKinley's next concern was for his wife, urging Cortelyou, "My wife – be careful, Cortelyou, how you tell her – oh, be careful." The initial crowd reaction had been panic, and an attempt to flee the hall, which was frustrated by others surging inwards to see what had occurred. As McKinley was carried out on a stretcher to an electric-powered ambulance, there was a moan from the crowd at the sight of the President's ashen face. Foster rode with him on the way to the fair's hospital. On the way there, McKinley felt in his clothing and came out with a metal object. "I believe that is a bullet." McKinley had been shot twice; one bullet had deflected off a button and only grazed him; the other had penetrated his abdomen. The ambulance carrying McKinley reached the Exposition hospital at 4:25 p.m. Although it usually dealt only with the minor medical issues of fairgoers, the hospital did have an operating theatre. At the time of the shooting, no fully qualified doctor was at the hospital, only nurses and interns. The best surgeon in the city, and the Exposition's medical director, Dr. Roswell Park, was in Niagara Falls, performing a delicate neck operation. When interrupted during the procedure on September 6 to be told he was needed in Buffalo, he responded that he could not leave, even for the President of the United States. He was then told who had been shot. Park, two weeks later, would save the life of a woman who suffered injuries almost identical to McKinley's. The first physician to arrive at the hospital was Dr. Herman Mynter, whom the President had met briefly the previous day; the wounded McKinley (who had a good memory for faces) joked that when he had met Mynter, he had not expected to need his professional services. As McKinley lay on the operating table, he stated of Czolgosz, "He didn't know, poor fellow, what he was doing. He couldn't have known." With Park unavailable and with the fading afternoon light the major source of illumination in the operating room, upon the arrival of another surgeon, Dr. Matthew D. Mann, the decision was made to operate at once to try to remove the remaining bullet. Mynter had given McKinley an injection of morphine and strychnine to ease his pain; Mann (a noted gynecologist without experience in abdominal wounds) administered ether to sedate McKinley as the wounded man murmured the Lord's Prayer. For hundreds of years, abdominal gunshot wounds had meant death by gangrene or other infection, with doctors able to do little more than ease pain. Only seventeen years previously, Dr. Emil Kocher, a Swiss surgeon, had been the first to successfully operate on a patient who had received such a wound. To increase the lighting, sunlight was reflected onto the wound by another physician; towards the end of the surgery, a better light was rigged. The hospital lacked basic surgical equipment such as retractors. With McKinley in a weakened condition, Mann could do little probing of the wound to try to find the bullet; his work was complicated by the fact that the President was obese. The surgeon made an incision in the President's skin, and found and removed a small piece of cloth which was embedded in the flesh. He probed with his finger and hand, finding damage to the digestive system—the stomach displayed both an entry and exit wound. Mann sewed up both holes in the organ, but could not find the bullet itself; he concluded it had lodged in the President's back muscles. He later wrote, "A bullet once it ceases to move does little harm." A primitive X-ray machine was on display at the fair but was not used on McKinley; Mann later stated that its use might have disturbed the patient and done little good. He used black silk thread to stitch the incision and wound, without drainage, and covered the area with a bandage. As the operation concluded, Dr. Park arrived from Niagara Falls; he was unwilling to interfere and at 5:20, McKinley was given another shot of painkiller and allowed to awaken. He was taken to the Milburn House by the electric ambulance. The First Lady had not been told of the President's shooting; once the surgery was complete, the presidential physician, Presley M. Rixey, gently told her what had occurred. Ida McKinley took the news calmly; she wrote in her diary, "Went to Niagra Falls this morning. My Dearest was receiving in a public hall on our return, when he was shot by a ... " Leech, in her biography of President McKinley, suggests that the First Lady could not write the word, "anarchist". Within minutes of the shots, the news was conveyed around the world by telegraph wire, in time for the late newspaper editions in the United States. In the era before radio, thousands stood in cities across the country outside newspaper offices, awaiting the latest bulletin from Buffalo. Fears that McKinley would not survive the day of his shooting were allayed by reassuring bulletins issued by Cortelyou based on information from the doctors. Large, threatening crowds assembled outside Buffalo police headquarters where Czolgosz was brought. Word that he had admitted to being an anarchist led to attacks on others of that belief: one was nearly lynched in Pittsburgh. At the Milburn House, McKinley seemed to be recovering. On Saturday, September 7, McKinley was relaxed and conversational. His wife was allowed to see him, as was Cortelyou; the President asked his secretary, "How did they like my speech?" and was pleased on hearing of positive reactions. Meanwhile, Vice President Roosevelt (who had been in Vermont), much of the Cabinet, and Senator Hanna hurried to Buffalo. Cortelyou continued to issue encouraging bulletins. The President was permitted few visitors, and complained of loneliness. As the crisis seemed to have passed, dignitaries started to leave on September 9, confident of the President's recovery. Roosevelt left for a vacation in the Adirondack Mountains after expressing outrage that Czolgosz might serve only a few years under New York State law for attempted murder, the maximum penalty for attempted murder in New York at that time being ten years. Attorney General Philander Knox went to Washington, searching for a means to bring Czolgosz under federal law. Secretary of State John Hay had been closely associated with the two presidents to be assassinated: he had been Lincoln's secretary, and a close friend of James Garfield. He arrived on September 10; met at the station by Babcock with an account of the President's recovery, Hay responded that the President would die. McKinley biographer H. Wayne Morgan wrote of the week following the shooting: His hearty constitution, everyone said, would see him through. The doctors seemed hopeful, even confident ... It is difficult to understand the cheer with which they viewed their patient. He was nearly sixty years old, overweight, and the wound itself had not been thoroughly cleaned or traced. Precautions against infections, admittedly difficult in 1901, were negligently handled. According to McKinley biographer Margaret Leech, McKinley's apparent recovery "was merely the resistance of his strong body to the gangrene that was creeping along the bullet's track through the stomach, the pancreas, and one kidney". Another X-ray machine was sent from New Jersey by its inventor, Thomas Edison. It was not used on the President; sources vary on why this was—Leech stated that the machine, which she says was procured by Cortelyou and accompanied by a trained operator, was not used on orders of the doctors in charge of McKinley's case. Miller recounts that doctors attempted to test it on a man of about McKinley's size, but it proved to be missing a crucial part, much to Edison's embarrassment. McKinley had been given nutritive enemas; on September 11, he took some broth by mouth. When it seemed to do him good, the following morning they allowed him toast, coffee, and chicken broth. His subsequent pain was diagnosed as indigestion; he was given purgatives and most doctors left after their evening consultation. In the early morning of September 13, McKinley suffered a collapse. Urgent word to return to Buffalo was sent to Vice President Roosevelt, from the nearest telegraph or telephone in the Adirondack wilderness; a park ranger was sent to find him. Specialists were summoned; although at first some doctors hoped that McKinley might survive with a weakened heart, by afternoon they knew the case was hopeless. As yet unknown to the doctors, gangrene was growing on the walls of his stomach and toxins were passing into his blood. McKinley drifted in and out of consciousness all day; when awake he was the model patient. By evening, McKinley too knew he was dying, "It is useless, gentlemen. I think we ought to have prayer." His friends and family were admitted, and the First Lady sobbed over him, "I want to go, too. I want to go, too." Her husband replied, "We are all going, we are all going. God's will be done, not ours" and with final strength put an arm around her. He may also have sung part of his favorite hymn, "Nearer, My God, to Thee", although other accounts have her singing it softly to him. Ida McKinley was led away, her place briefly taken by Senator Hanna. Morgan recounts their final encounter, "Sometime that terrible evening, Mark Hanna had approached the bedside, tears standing in his eyes, his hands and head shaking in disbelief that thirty years of friendship could end thus." When a tentative, formal greeting gained no coherent response, Hanna "cried out over the years of friendship, 'William, William, don't you know me?'" At 2:15 a.m. on Saturday, September 14, 1901, President McKinley died. At the time of McKinley's death, Roosevelt was on his return journey to Buffalo, racing over the mountain roads by carriage to the nearest railroad station, where a special train was waiting. When he reached that station at dawn, he learned of McKinley's death. An autopsy was performed later on the morning of McKinley's death; Mann led a team of 14 physicians. They found the bullet had passed through the stomach, then through the transverse colon, and vanished through the peritoneum after penetrating a corner of the left kidney. There was also damage to the adrenal glands and pancreas. Mynter, who participated in the autopsy, later stated his belief that the bullet lodged somewhere in the back muscles, though this is uncertain as it was never found. After four hours, Ida McKinley demanded that the autopsy end. A death mask was taken, and private services took place in the Milburn House before the body was moved to Buffalo City and County Hall for the start of five days of national mourning. McKinley's body was ceremoniously taken from Buffalo to Washington, and then to Canton. On the day of the funeral, September 19, as McKinley was taken from his home on North Market Street for the last time, all activity ceased in the nation for five minutes. Trains came to a halt, telephone and telegraph service was stopped. Leech stated, "the people bowed in homage to the President who was gone". In addition to the damage done by the bullet, the autopsy also found that the President was suffering from cardiomyopathy (fatty degeneration of the heart muscle). This would have weakened his heart and made him less able to recover from such an injury, and was thought to be related to his overweight frame and lack of exercise. Modern scholars generally believe that McKinley died of pancreatic necrosis, a condition that is difficult to treat today and would have been completely impossible for the doctors of his time. Czolgosz went on trial for the murder of McKinley in state court in Buffalo on September 23, 1901, nine days after the president died. Prosecution testimony took two days and consisted principally of the doctors who treated McKinley and various eyewitnesses to the shooting. Defense attorney Loran L. Lewis and his co- counsel called no witnesses, which Lewis in his closing argument attributed to Czolgosz's refusal to cooperate with them. In his 27-minute address to the jury, Lewis took pains to praise President McKinley; Miller notes that the closing argument was more calculated to defend the attorney's "place in the community, rather than an effort to spare his client the electric chair". After a bare half-hour of deliberations (which a jury member later remarked would have actually been sooner, if not examining the evidence), the jury convicted Czolgosz; he was subsequently sentenced to death and executed by electric chair on October 29, 1901. Acid was placed in the casket to dissolve his body, before burial in the prison graveyard. After McKinley's murder, newspaper editorials across the country heavily criticized the lack of protection afforded to American presidents. Though it still lacked any legislative mandate, by 1902, the Secret Service (a unit of the Treasury) was protecting President Theodore Roosevelt full-time. This did not settle the debate. Some in Congress recommended the United States Army be charged with protecting the President. In 1906, Congress passed legislation officially designating the Secret Service as the agency in charge of presidential security. The aftermath of the assassination saw a backlash against anarchists; the Buffalo police announced soon after the shooting that they believed Czolgosz had not acted alone, and several anarchists were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the attack. Czolgosz mentioned his contacts with Emma Goldman during the interrogation; authorities arrested her family to give her incentive to turn herself in, which she did on September 10. She spent nearly three weeks in jail; she, like all other arrestees thought to have conspired with Czolgosz, was released without charge. Anarchist colonies and newspapers were attacked by vigilantes; although no one was killed, there was considerable property damage. Fear of anarchists led to surveillance programs which were eventually consolidated in 1908 as the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Anti-anarchist laws passed in the wake of the assassination lay dormant for some years before being used during and after World War I, alongside newly passed statutes, against non-citizens whose views were deemed a threat. Among those deported in December 1919 was Goldman, who did not have United States citizenship. Leech believed the nation experienced a transition at McKinley's death: The new President was in office. The republic still lived. Yet, for a space, Americans turned from the challenge and the strangeness of the future. Entranced and regretful, they remembered McKinley's firm, unquestioning faith, his kindly, frock-coated dignity; his accessibility and dedication to the people: the federal simplicity that would not be seen again in Washington ... [After McKinley's death,] old men came to the [White House] on errands of state and politics, but their primacy was disputed by the young men crowding forward. The nation felt another leadership, nervous, aggressive, and strong. Under command of a bold young captain, America set sail on the stormy voyage of the twentieth century. Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Assassination of James A. Garfield, Assassination of John F. Kennedy, List of United States presidential assassination attempts and plots, Second-term curse Books Other sources McKinley Assassination: A bibliography by The Buffalo History Museum, McKinleyDeath.com: A comprehensive collection of primary source materials on the McKinley assassination, "The Last Days of a President" Library of Congress. Includes clips of McKinley's funeral train, McKinley at the Exposition, and the crowd outside the Temple of Music after the shooting., "Lights out in the City of Light"; Anarchy and Assassination at the Pan-American Exposition, Crime Library: McKinley assassination Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, was assassinated by well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, while attending the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. Shot in the head as he watched the play, Lincoln died the following day at 7:22 am, in the Petersen House opposite the theater. He was the first U.S. president to be assassinated, with his funeral and burial marking an extended period of national mourning. Occurring near the end of the American Civil War, the assassination was part of a larger conspiracy intended by Booth to revive the Confederate cause by eliminating the three most important officials of the United States government. Conspirators Lewis Powell and David Herold were assigned to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward, and George Atzerodt was tasked with killing Vice President Andrew Johnson. Beyond Lincoln's death, the plot failed: Seward was only wounded and Johnson's would-be attacker lost his nerve. After a dramatic initial escape, Booth was killed at the climax of a 12-day manhunt. Powell, Herold, Atzerodt and Mary Surratt were later hanged for their roles in the conspiracy. John Wilkes Booth, born in Maryland into a family of prominent stage actors, had by the time of the assassination become a famous actor and national celebrity in his own right. He was also an outspoken Confederate sympathizer; in late 1860 he was initiated in the pro-Confederate Knights of the Golden Circle in Baltimore. In March 1864, Ulysses S. Grant, commander of the Union armies, suspended the exchange of prisoners of war with the Confederate Army to increase pressure on the manpower-starved South. Booth conceived a plan to kidnap Lincoln in order to blackmail the North into resuming prisoner exchanges, and recruited Samuel Arnold, George Atzerodt, David Herold, Michael O'Laughlen, Lewis Powell (also known as "Lewis Paine"), and John Surratt to help him. Surratt's mother, Mary Surratt, left her tavern in Surrattsville, Maryland, and moved to a house in Washington, D.C., where Booth became a frequent visitor. While Booth and Lincoln were not personally acquainted, Lincoln had seen Booth at Ford's in 1863. After the assassination, actor Frank Mordaunt wrote that Lincoln, who apparently harbored no suspicions about Booth, admired the actor and had repeatedly invited him (without success) to visit the White House. Booth attended Lincoln's second inauguration on March 4, writing in his diary afterwards: "What an excellent chance I had, if I wished, to kill the President on Inauguration day!" On March 17, Booth and the other conspirators planned to abduct Lincoln as he returned from a play at Campbell Military Hospital. But Lincoln did not go to the play, instead attending a ceremony at the National Hotel; Booth was living at the National Hotel at the time and, had he not gone to the hospital for the abortive kidnap attempt, might have been able to attack Lincoln at the hotel. Meanwhile, the Confederacy was collapsing. On April 3, Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital, fell to the Union Army. On April 9 the General in Chief of the Armies of the Confederate States Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to the Commanding General of the United States Army Ulysses S. Grant and his Army of the Potomac after the Battle of Appomattox Court House. Confederate President Jefferson Davis and other Confederate officials had fled. But Booth continued to believe in the Confederate cause and sought a way to salvage it. There are various theories about Booth's motivations. In a letter to his mother, he wrote of his desire to avenge the South. Doris Kearns Goodwin has endorsed the idea that another factor was Booth's rivalry with his well-known older brother, actor Edwin Booth, who was a loyal Unionist. David S. Reynolds believes Booth greatly admired the abolitionist John Brown; Booth's sister Asia Booth Clarke quoted him as saying: "John Brown was a man inspired, the grandest character of the century!" On April 11, Booth attended Lincoln's speech at the White House in which Lincoln promoted voting rights for blacks; Booth said "That means nigger citizenship... That is the last speech he will ever give." Enraged, Booth urged Lewis Powell to shoot Lincoln on the spot. Whether Booth made this request because he was not armed and/or because he considered Powell a better shot than himself (Powell, unlike Booth, had served in the Confederate Army and thus had military experience) is not exactly known. In any event, Powell refused for fear of the crowd and Booth was either unable or unwilling to personally make an attempt on the President's life. However, Booth said to David Herold, "By God, I'll put him through." According to Ward Hill Lamon, three days before his death Lincoln related a dream in which he wandered the White House searching for the source of mournful sounds: However, Lincoln went on to tell Lamon that "In this dream it was not me, but some other fellow, that was killed. It seems that this ghostly assassin tried his hand on someone else." Paranormal investigator Joe Nickell writes that dreams of assassination would not be unexpected in the first place, considering the Baltimore Plot and an additional assassination attempt in which a hole was shot through Lincoln's hat. For months Lincoln had looked pale and haggard, but on the morning of the assassination he told people how happy he was. First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln felt such talk could bring bad luck. Lincoln told his cabinet that he had dreamed of being on a "singular and indescribable vessel that was moving with great rapidity toward a dark and indefinite shore", and that he'd had the same dream before "nearly every great and important event of the War" such as the victories at Antietam, Murfreesboro, Gettysburg and Vicksburg. On April 14, Booth's morning started at midnight. He wrote his mother that all was well, but that he was "in haste". In his diary, he wrote that "Our cause being almost lost, something decisive and great must be done". While visiting Ford's Theatre around noon to pick up his mail, Booth learned that Lincoln and Grant were to see Our American Cousin there that night. This provided him with an especially good opportunity to attack Lincoln since, having performed there several times, he knew the theater's layout and was familiar to its staff. He went to Mary Surratt's boarding house in Washington, D.C., and asked her to deliver a package to her tavern in Surrattsville, Maryland. He also asked her to tell her tenant Louis J. Weichmann to ready the guns and ammunition that Booth had previously stored at the tavern. The conspirators met for the final time at 7p.m. Booth assigned Lewis Powell to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward at his home, George Atzerodt to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson at the Kirkwood Hotel, and David E. Herold to guide Powell (who was unfamiliar with Washington) to the Seward house and then to a rendezvous with Booth in Maryland. John Wilkes Booth was the only well-known member of the conspiracy. It is likely he reasonably (but ultimately, incorrectly) assumed that the entrance of the Presidential Box would be guarded and that he would be the only plotter with a plausible chance of gaining access to the President, or at least to gain entry to the box without being searched for weapons first. Booth planned to shoot Lincoln at point-blank range with his single-shot Deringer, and then stab Grant, at Ford's Theatre. They were all to strike simultaneously shortly after ten o'clock. Atzerodt tried to withdraw from the plot, which to this point had involved only kidnapping, not murder, but Booth pressured him to continue. Despite what Booth had heard earlier in the day, Grant and his wife, Julia Grant, had declined to accompany the Lincolns, as Mary Lincoln and Julia Grant were not on good terms. Others in succession also declined the Lincolns' invitation, until finally Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée Clara Harris (daughter of New York Senator Ira Harris) accepted. At one point Mary Lincoln developed a headache and was inclined to stay home, but Lincoln told her he must attend because newspapers had announced that he would. One of Lincoln's bodyguards, William H. Crook, advised him not to go, but Lincoln said he had promised his wife. Lincoln told Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax, "I suppose it's time to go though I would rather stay" before assisting Mary into the carriage. The presidential party arrived late and settled into their box (two adjoining boxes with a dividing partition removed). The play was interrupted and the orchestra played "Hail to the Chief" as the full house of some 1,700 rose in applause. Lincoln sat in a rocking chair that had been selected for him from among the Ford family's personal furnishings. The cast modified a line of the play in honor of Lincoln: when the heroine asked for a seat protected from the draft, the replyscripted as, "Well, you're not the only one that wants to escape the draft"was delivered instead as, "The draft has already been stopped by order of the President!" A member of the audience observed that Mary Lincoln often called her husband's attention to aspects of the action onstage, and "seemed to take great pleasure in witnessing his enjoyment." At one point Mary Lincoln whispered to Lincoln, who was holding her hand, "What will Miss Harris think of my hanging on to you so?" Lincoln replied, "She won't think anything about it". In following years these words were traditionally considered Lincoln's last, though N.W. Miner, a family friend, claimed in 1882 that Mary Lincoln told him that Lincoln's last words expressed a wish to visit Jerusalem. With Crook off duty and Ward Hill Lamon away, policeman John Frederick Parker was assigned to guard the president's box. At intermission he went to a nearby tavern along with Lincoln's footman and coachman. It is unclear whether he returned to the theater, but he was certainly not at his post when Booth entered the box. In any event, there is no certainty that entry would have been denied to a celebrity such as Booth, and the fact that Booth had prepared a brace to bar the door after entering the box would indicate he was expecting a guard. Navy Surgeon George Brainerd Todd saw Booth arrive: Once through this door, which swung inward, Booth barricaded it by wedging a stick between it and the wall. From here a second door led to Lincoln's box. There is evidence that, earlier in the day, Booth had bored a peephole in this second door, though this is not certain. Booth knew the play by heart, and waited to time his shot with the laughter at one of the best lines of the play, delivered by actor Harry Hawk: "Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal; you sockdologizing old man-trap!". Lincoln was laughing at this line when he was shot. Booth opened the door, stepped forward, and shot Lincoln from behind with a derringer. The bullet entered Lincoln's skull behind his left ear, passed through his brain, and came to rest near the front of the skull after fracturing both orbital plates. Lincoln slumped over in his chair and then fell backward. Rathbone turned to see Booth standing in gunsmoke less than four feet behind Lincoln; Booth shouted a word that Rathbone thought sounded like "Freedom!" Rathbone jumped from his seat and struggled with Booth, who dropped the pistol and drew a knife, then stabbed Rathbone in the left forearm. Rathbone again grabbed at Booth as Booth prepared to jump from the box to the stage, a twelve-foot drop; Booth's riding spur became entangled on the Treasury flag decorating the box, and he landed awkwardly on his left foot. As he began crossing the stage, many in the audience thought he was part of the play. Booth held his bloody knife over his head, and yelled something to the audience. While it is traditionally held that Booth shouted the Virginia state motto, Sic semper tyrannis! ("Thus always to tyrants") either from the box or from the stage, witness accounts conflict. Most recalled hearing Sic semper tyrannis! but othersincluding Booth himselfsaid he yelled only Sic semper! (Some did not recall Booth saying anything in Latin.) There is similar uncertainty about what Booth shouted, next, in English: either "The South is avenged!", "Revenge for the South!", or "The South shall be free!" (Two witnesses remembered Booth's words as: "I have done it!") Immediately after Booth landed on the stage, Major Joseph B. Stewart climbed over the orchestra pit and footlights, and pursued Booth across the stage. The screams of Mary Lincoln and Clara Harris, and Rathbone's cries of "Stop that man!" prompted others to join the chase as pandemonium broke out. Booth ran across the stage and exited through a side door, en route stabbing orchestra leader William Withers, Jr. Booth had left a horse waiting outside in the alleyway. As he leapt into the saddle Booth pushed Joseph Burroughs (the man holding the horse) away, striking Burroughs with the handle of his knife. Charles Leale, a young Army surgeon, pushed through the crowd to the door of Lincoln's box but found it would not open. Rathbone, inside the door, soon noticed and removed the wooden brace with which Booth had jammed it shut. Leale entered the box to find Lincoln seated with his head leaning to his right as Mary held him and sobbed: "His eyes were closed and he was in a profoundly comatose condition, while his breathing was intermittent and exceedingly stertorous." Thinking Lincoln had been stabbed, Leale shifted him to the floor. Meanwhile, another physician, Charles Sabin Taft, was lifted from the stage into the box. After Taft and Leale opened Lincoln's shirt and found no stab wound, Leale located the gunshot wound behind the left ear. He found the bullet too deep to be removed, but was able to dislodge a clot, after which Lincoln's breathing improved; he learned that regularly removing new clots maintained Lincoln's breathing. As actress Laura Keene cradled the President's head in her lap, he pronounced the wound mortal. Leale, Taft, and another doctor, Albert King, decided that while Lincoln must be moved, a carriage ride to the White House was too dangerous. After considering Peter Taltavull's Star Saloon next door, they concluded to take Lincoln to one of the houses across the way. It rained as soldiers carried Lincoln into the street, where a man urged them toward the house of tailor William Petersen. In Petersen's first-floor bedroom, the exceptionally tall Lincoln was laid diagonally on the bed. More physicians arrived: Surgeon General Joseph K. Barnes, Charles Henry Crane, Anderson Ruffin Abbott, and Robert K. Stone (Lincoln's personal physician). All agreed Lincoln could not survive. Barnes probed the wound, locating the bullet and some bone fragments. Throughout the night, as the hemorrhage continued, they removed blood clots to relieve pressure on the brain, and Leale held the comatose president's hand with a firm grip, "to let him know that he was in touch with humanity and had a friend." Lincoln's older son Robert Todd Lincoln arrived sometime after midnight but twelve-year-old Tad Lincoln was kept away. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton arrived. Stanton insisted that the sobbing Mary Lincoln leave the sick room, then for the rest of the night essentially ran the United States government from the house, including directing the hunt for Booth and his confederates. Guards kept the public away, but numerous officials and physicians were admitted to pay their respects. Initially, Lincoln's features were calm and his breathing slow and steady. Later one of his eyes became swollen and the right side of his face discolored. Maunsell Bradhurst Field wrote in a letter to The New York Times that the President then started "breathing regularly, but with effort, and did not seem to be struggling or suffering." As he neared death, Lincoln's appearance became "perfectly natural" (except for the discoloration around his eyes). Shortly before 7a.m. Mary was allowed to return to Lincoln's side, and, as Dixon reported, "she again seated herself by the President, kissing him and calling him every endearing name." Lincoln died at 7:22 a.m. on April 15. Mary Lincoln was not present. In his last moments Lincoln's face became calm and his breathing quieter. Field wrote there was "no apparent suffering, no convulsive action, no rattling of the throat ... [only] a mere cessation of breathing". According to Lincoln's secretary John Hay, at the moment of Lincoln's death, "a look of unspeakable peace came upon his worn features". The assembly knelt for a prayer, after which Stanton said either "Now he belongs to the ages" or "Now he belongs to the angels." On Lincoln's death, Vice President Johnson became president, and was sworn in by Chief Justice Salmon Chase between 10 and 11a.m. Booth had assigned Lewis Powell to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward. On April 5 Seward had been thrown from his carriage, suffering a concussion, a broken jaw, and a broken arm. On the night of the assassination he was confined to bed at his home in Lafayette Park. Herold guided Powell to Seward's house. Powell carried an 1858 Whitney revolver (a large, heavy and popular gun during the Civil War) and a Bowie knife. William Bell, one of Seward's servants, answered the door when Powell knocked slightly after 10 pm. Powell told Bell that he had medicine from Seward's physician, and that his instructions were to personally show Seward how to take it. Overcoming Bell's skepticism, Powell made his way up the stairs to Seward's third-floor bedroom. At the top of the staircase he was stopped by Seward's son, Assistant Secretary of State Frederick W. Seward, to whom he repeated the medicine story; Frederick, suspicious, said his father was asleep. Hearing voices, Seward's daughter Fanny emerged from Seward's room and said, "Fred, Father is awake now"thus revealing to Powell where Seward was. Powell turned as if to start downstairs, but suddenly turned again and drew his revolver. He aimed at Frederick's forehead and pulled the trigger, but the gun misfired so he bludgeoned Frederick unconscious with it. Bell, yelling "Murder! Murder!", ran outside for help. Fanny opened the door again and Powell shoved past her to Seward's bed. He stabbed at Seward's face and neck, slicing open his cheek, but the splint doctors had fitted to Seward's broken jaw (often mistakenly described as a neck brace) prevented the blade from penetrating his jugular vein. He eventually recovered, though with serious scars on his face. Seward's son Augustus and Sergeant George F. Robinson, a soldier assigned to Seward, were alerted by Fanny's screams and received stab wounds in struggling with Powell. As Augustus went for a pistol, Powell ran downstairs toward the door, where he encountered Emerick Hansell, a State Department messenger. Powell stabbed Hansell in the back, then ran outside exclaiming "I'm mad! I'm mad!". Screams from the house had frightened Herold, who ran off, leaving Powell to find his own way in an unfamiliar city. Booth had assigned George Atzerodt to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson, who was staying at the Kirkwood House in Washington. Atzerodt was to go to Johnson's room at 10:15 p.m. and shoot him. On April 14 Atzerodt rented the room directly above Johnson's; the next day he arrived there at the appointed time and, carrying a gun and knife, went to the bar downstairs, where he asked the bartender about Johnson's character and behavior. He eventually became drunk and wandered off through the streets, tossing his knife away at some point. He made his way to the Pennsylvania House Hotel by 2 am, where he obtained a room and went to sleep. Earlier in the day, Booth had stopped by the Kirkwood House and left a note for Johnson: "I don't wish to disturb you. Are you at home? J. Wilkes Booth." One theory holds that Booth was trying to find out whether Johnson was expected at the Kirkwood that night; another holds that Booth, concerned that Atzerodt would fail to kill Johnson, intended the note to implicate Johnson in the conspiracy. Lincoln was mourned in both the North and South, and indeed around the world. Numerous foreign governments issued proclamations and declared periods of mourning on April 15. Lincoln was praised in sermons on Easter Sunday, which fell on the day after his death. On April 18, mourners lined up seven abreast for a mile to view Lincoln in his walnut casket in the White House's black- draped East Room. Special trains brought thousands from other cities, some of whom slept on the Capitol's lawn. Hundreds of thousands watched the funeral procession on April 19, and millions more lined the route of the train which took Lincoln's remains through New York to Springfield, Illinois, often passing trackside tributes in the form of bands, bonfires, and hymn-singing. Poet Walt Whitman composed "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", "O Captain! My Captain!", and two other poems, to eulogize Lincoln. Ulysses S. Grant called Lincoln "incontestably the greatest man I ever knew." Robert E. Lee expressed sadness. Southern-born Elizabeth Blair said that, "Those of Southern born sympathies know now they have lost a friend willing and more powerful to protect and serve them than they can now ever hope to find again." African-American orator Frederick Douglass called the assassination an "unspeakable calamity". British Foreign Secretary Lord Russell called Lincoln's death a "sad calamity." China's chief secretary of state for foreign affairs, Prince Kung, described himself as "inexpressibly shocked and startled". Ecuadorian President Gabriel Garcia Moreno said, "Never should I have thought that the noble country of Washington would be humiliated by such a black and horrible crime; nor should I ever have thought that Mr. Lincoln would come to such a horrible end, after having served his country which such wisdom and glory under so critical circumstances." The government of Liberia issued a proclamation calling Lincoln "not only the ruler of his own people, but a father to millions of a race stricken and oppressed." The government of Haiti condemned the assassination as a "horrid crime." Within half an hour of fleeing Ford's Theatre, Booth crossed the Navy Yard Bridge into Maryland. An army sentry questioned him about his late-night travel; Booth said that he was going home to the nearby town of Charles. Although it was forbidden for civilians to cross the bridge after 9 pm, the sentry let him through. David Herold made it across the same bridge less than an hour later and rendezvoused with Booth. After retrieving weapons and supplies previously stored at Surattsville, Herold and Booth went to the home of Samuel A. Mudd, a local doctor, who splinted the leg Booth had broken in jumping from the presidential box, and later made a pair of crutches for Booth. After a day at Mudd's house, Booth and Herold hired a local man to guide them to Samuel Cox's house. Cox in turn took them to Thomas Jones, a Confederate sympathizer who hid Booth and Herold in Zekiah Swamp for five days until they could cross the Potomac River. On the afternoon of April 24, they arrived at the farm of Richard H. Garrett, a tobacco farmer, in King George County, Virginia. Booth told Garrett he was a wounded Confederate soldier. An April 15 letter to Todd from his brother tells of the rumors in Washington about Booth: The hunt for the conspirators quickly became the largest in U.S. history, involving thousands of federal troops and countless civilians. Edwin M. Stanton personally directed the operation, authorizing rewards of $50,000 () for Booth and $25,000 each for Herold and John Surratt. Booth and Herold were sleeping at Garrett's farm on April 26 when soldiers from the 16th New York Cavalry arrived and surrounded the barn, then threatened to set fire to it. Herold surrendered, but Booth cried out, "I will not be taken alive!" The soldiers set fire to the barn and Booth scrambled for the back door with a rifle and pistol. Sergeant Boston Corbett crept up behind the barn and shot Booth in "the back of the head about an inch below the spot where his [Booth's] shot had entered the head of Mr. Lincoln", severing his spinal cord. Booth was carried out onto the steps of the barn. A soldier poured water into his mouth, which he spat out, unable to swallow. Booth told the soldier, "Tell my mother I die for my country." Unable to move his limbs, he asked a soldier to lift his hands before his face and whispered his last words as he gazed at them: "Useless ... useless." He died on the porch of the Garrett farm two hours later. Corbett was initially arrested for disobeying orders, but was later released and was largely considered a hero by the media and the public. Without Herold to guide him, Powell did not find his way back to the Surratt house until April 17. He told detectives waiting there that he was a ditch- digger hired by Mary Surratt, but she denied knowing him. Both were arrested. George Atzerodt hid at his cousin's farm in Germantown, Maryland, about northwest of Washington, where he was arrested April 20. The remaining conspirators were arrested by month's endexcept for John Surratt, who fled to Quebec where he was hidden by Roman Catholic priests. In September, he boarded a ship to Liverpool, England, staying in the Catholic Church of the Holy Cross there. From there, he moved furtively through Europe until joining the Pontifical Zouaves in the Papal States. A friend from his school days recognized him in there in early 1866 and alerted the U.S. government. Surratt was arrested by the Papal authorities but managed to escape under suspicious circumstances. He was finally captured by an agent of the United States in Egypt in November 1866. Scores of persons were arrested, including many tangential associates of the conspirators and anyone having had even the slightest contact with Booth or Herold during their flight. These included Louis J. Weichmann, a boarder in Mrs. Surratt's house; Booth's brother Junius (in Cincinnati at the time of the assassination); theater owner John T. Ford; James Pumphrey, from whom Booth hired his horse; John M. Lloyd, the innkeeper who rented Mrs. Surratt's Maryland tavern and gave Booth and Herold weapons and supplies the night of April 14; and Samuel Cox and Thomas A. Jones, who helped Booth and Herold cross the Potomac. All were eventually released except: The accused were tried by a military tribunal ordered by Johnson, who had succeeded to the presidency on Lincoln's death: The prosecution was led by U.S. Army Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt, assisted by Congressman John A. Bingham and Major Henry Lawrence Burnett. The use of a military tribunal provoked criticism from Edward Bates and Gideon Welles, who believed that a civil court should have presided, but Attorney General James Speed pointed to the military nature of the conspiracy and the facts that the defendants acted as enemy combatants and that martial law was in force at the time in the District of Columbia. (In 1866, in Ex parte Milligan, the United States Supreme Court banned the use of military tribunals in places where civil courts were operational.) Only a simple majority of the jury was required for a guilty verdict, and a two- thirds for a death sentence. There was no route for appeal other than to President Johnson. The seven-week trial included the testimony of 366 witnesses. All of the defendants were found guilty on June 30. Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold, and George Atzerodt were sentenced to death by hanging; Samuel Mudd, Samuel Arnold, and Michael O'Laughlen were sentenced to life in prison. Edmund Spangler was sentenced to six years. After sentencing Mary Surratt to hang, five jurors signed a letter recommending clemency, but Johnson refused to stop the execution; he later claimed he never saw the letter. Mary Surratt, Powell, Herold, and Atzerodt were hanged in the Old Arsenal Penitentiary on July 7. Mary Surratt was the first woman executed by the United States government. O'Laughlen died in prison in 1867. Mudd, Arnold, and Spangler were pardoned in February 1869 by Johnson. Spangler, who died in 1875, always insisted his sole connection to the plot was that Booth asked him to hold his horse. John Surratt stood trial in Washington in 1867. Four residents of Elmira, New York, claimed they had seen him there between April 13 and 15; fifteen others said they either saw him, or someone who resembled him, in Washington (or traveling to or from Washington) on the day of the assassination. The jury could not reach a verdict and John Surratt was released. Hodes, Martha. Mourning Lincoln (Yale University Press, 2015) 396 pp., King, Benjamin. A Bullet for Lincoln, Pelican Publishing, 1993., Lattimer, John. Kennedy and Lincoln, Medical & Ballistic Comparisons of Their Assassinations. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York. 1980. [includes description and pictures of Seward's jaw splint, not a neck brace], Steers Jr., Edward, and Holzer, Harold, eds. The Lincoln Assassination Conspirators: Their Confinement and Execution, as Recorded in the Letterbook of John Frederick Hartranft. Louisiana State University Press, 2009., Donald E. Wilkes, Jr., Lincoln Assassinated!, Lincoln Assassinated!, Part 2. Abraham Lincoln's Physician's Observation and Postmortem Reports: Original Documentation Shapell Manuscript Foundation, First Responder Dr. Charles Leale Eyewitness Report of Assassination, Lincoln Papers: Lincoln Assassination: Introduction, Original Documents Online: Lincoln Assassination Papers, April 14th, 1865, Ford's Theatre Ticket, Ford's Theatre National Historic Site, Abraham Lincoln's Assassination, Abraham Lincoln: A Resource Guide from the Library of Congress, Lincoln Conspiracy Photograph Album at George Eastman museum, The Men Who Killed Lincoln – slideshow by Life magazine, Various articles on the conspirators and Lincoln assassination myths, Dr. Samuel A. Mudd Research Site, The official transcript of the trial (as recorded by Benn Pitman and several assistants – originally published in 1865 by the United States Army Military Commission), Hanging the Lincoln Conspirators – detailed analysis and review of historic 1865 photograph

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In American, Canadian, Irish, and British cultures, a Christmas elf is a diminutive elf that lives with Santa Claus at the North Pole and acts as his helper. Christmas elves are often depicted as green or red clad with large, pointy ears and pointy hats. Santa's elves are often said to make the toys in Santa's workshop and take care of his reindeer, among other tasks. They were first introduced in literature by Louisa May Alcott in 1856. The Santa Claus character is much older, emerging in US folklore in the early 17th century from the historical figure St. Nicholas of Myra with attributes of various European Christmas traditions, especially from English Father Christmas and Dutch Sinterklaas. The association of Christmas presents with elves has precedents in the first half of the 19th century with the Tomte in Sweden and Nisse in Denmark, and St Nicholas himself is called an elf in A Visit from St. Nicholas (1823). The Christmas elf appeared in literature as early as 1850 when Louisa May Alcott completed, but never published a book entitled Christmas Elves. The image of the elves in the workshop was popularised by Godey's Lady's Book, with a front cover illustration for its 1873 Christmas Issue showing Santa surrounded by toys and elves with the caption, "Here we have an idea of the preparations that are made to supply the young folks with toys at Christmas time." During this time Godey's was immensely influential to the birth of Christmas traditions, having shown the first widely circulated picture of a modern Christmas tree on the front cover of its 1850 Christmas issue. Additional recognition was given in Austin Thompson's 1876 work "The House of Santa Claus, a Christmas Fairy Show for Sunday Schools". In Clement Clarke Moore's 1823 poem A Visit from St. Nicholas (more commonly known today as 'Twas the Night Before Christmas), Santa Claus himself is described in line 45 as, "He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf." Prior to the influence of St. Nicholas in Sweden, the job of giving out gifts was done by the Yule Goat. By 1891, the saint had become so well known that he could no longer be ignored. He became merged with Tomten, which was previously an elfish/dwarfish farm guardian. Following the work of artist Jenny Nyström, this hybrid figure became known as Jultomten. In the United States, Canada, and Britain, the modern children's folklore of Santa Claus typically includes diminutive elves at Christmas; green-clad elves with pointy ears and pointy hats as Santa's assistants or hired workers. They make the toys in a workshop located in the North Pole. In recent years, other toys—usually high-tech toys like computers, video games, DVDs and DVD players, and even mobile phones—have also been depicted as being ready for delivery, but not necessarily made, in the workshop as well. In this portrayal, elves slightly resemble nimble and delicate versions of the dwarves of Norse myth. Christmas elves have had their role expanded in modern films and television. For instance: In , the elves are a type of craft guild making traditional toys by hand and looking after Santa's reindeer., The elves' workshop is also featured regularly in films, such as in Elf (2003), starring Will Ferrell., The 1932 Disney short film, Santa's Workshop, features Santa Claus and his elves preparing for Christmas., A team of elves features prominently in the Rankin-Bass 1964 special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer., The Christmas Elves are featured in the 1998 TV movie Like Father, Like Santa., In the DreamWorks Animation film Rise of the Guardians, elves are very short beings who wear pointy hat-like clothes and assist Santa at the North Pole, but they don't make the toys, the elves are only led to believe this, as yetis are actually responsible for making the toys in the film., Disney had the theme of Christmas elves for their 2009 short film, Prep & Landing, which tells the tale of an elite group of elves that make houses ready for Santa's deliveries. It was the first holiday television special made by Walt Disney Animation Studios., The Christmas Elves were featured in Arthur Christmas., The 2018 movie, The Christmas Chronicles, elves are portrayed as diminutive rodent-like creatures with their own language, spoken also by Santa. They build everything from toys to cars, look after the reindeer and maintain Santa's sleigh. Valentine D'Arcy Sheldon's children's picture book, The Christmas Tree Elf, tells the origin story of how Santa met his elves. It also introduces Blink the elf, who introduces Santa to the elves and saves Christmas by extinguishing a Christmas tree fire. In European countries, Santa has differing helpers depending on the country. In The Netherlands and Belgium, St. Nicholas is accompanied by Zwarte Piet (Black Peter) whose inclusion has become a very controversial issue for the Blackface depiction of the character. He is also portrayed in colonial dress which harkens back to the era of Dutch and Belgian influence in Africa and therefore the slave trade. In Iceland the helpers are the Yule Lads; between December 12 and 24, a different Lad visits homes each day to leave presents and play tricks on children. In Germany the companions are the Knecht Ruprecht and in Luxembourg they are known as Hoesecker. In Nordic countries Christmas Elves are considered nisser and not elves and will usually wear only red instead of the green and red outfits they are known for in English speaking countries. SantaLand Diaries, The Elf on the Shelf All about "Santa's elves" Santa Claus: The Movie is a 1985 British-American Christmas film starring Dudley Moore, John Lithgow, and David Huddleston in the title role. It is the last major fantasy film produced by the Paris-based father-and-son production team of Alexander and Ilya Salkind. The film was directed by Jeannot Szwarc and released in North America on November 27, 1985, by TriStar Pictures. The 2005 DVD release was released by Anchor Bay Entertainment, under license from the film's current owner, StudioCanal; the 25th Anniversary home video release (which also now includes Blu-ray) was by Lionsgate Home Entertainment, again under StudioCanal's license. Santa Claus: The Movie is a straightforward attempt to explore the mysteries of Santa Claus with the key objective being to answer some of the basic questions many children have about the Santa mythos, such as how his reindeer fly, how he and his wife made it to the North Pole, and how he descends chimneys, among other things. The film chronicles the origins of Santa Claus, who, along with his wife Anya (Judy Cornwell), goes from being a simple working man to becoming an international icon of Christmas. At the same time, the film also tells a contemporary story in which one of Santa's elves (alternately referred to as the "Vendequm" onscreen), a visionary named Patch (Dudley Moore), sets out to employ Santa's toymaking methods on his own, unaware that he might be ruining the magic of Christmas in the process. The film was a financial failure and received mostly negative reviews from critics at the time of release. It has since become a beloved cult classic among many since its release on Home Video and later remastered DVDs . Sometime in the 14th century, Claus is a woodcarver in his mid-50s who, with his wife Anya, delivers his gifts to the children of local villages. One night, Claus, Anya and their two reindeer, Donner and Blitzen, are caught in a blizzard and succumb to the cold weather. However, they are saved by elves and transported to the vast "ice mountains, way up at the top of the world." Their expected arrival is heralded with the appearance of several elves, or as Claus's people call them in their legends, the Vendequm, led by the venerable and wise elf named Dooley. Claus and Anya also meet inventive elf Patch, and the more down-to-earth Puffy. Dooley tells Claus it is his destiny to deliver toys to the children of the world every Christmas Eve, which the elves will make in their large workshops. Donner and Blitzen are joined by six other reindeer and fed magic food that allows them to fly. When Christmas Eve comes, Claus is approached by the oldest of elves, the Ancient One, who renames him as "Santa Claus". Centuries pass as the mythology of Santa is created, until the 20th century, where Santa is exhausted by the ever-growing workload every year due to the world's increasing population. Anya suggests he enlist an assistant, a position for which Patch and Puffy compete with each other to see if Patch's radical progressiveness or Puffy's small-scale methodical approach can produce the most toys in a limited amount of time. Patch uses a machine he has invented, and although he wins, it begins to produce shoddy works without his knowledge. During his annual deliveries, Santa befriends a homeless 10-year-old orphan boy named Joe in New York City and takes him for a flight around the skyscrapers of Manhattan in his sleigh. Santa lets Joe take the reins, who flies the sleigh underneath the Brooklyn Bridge much to Santa's horror, who then playfully gets his own back on Joe by having his reindeer perform the "Super Duper Looper" around the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center — an aerial trick that involves them doing a complete 360 degree turn, but which Donner always fails to execute due to acrophobia. Santa takes Joe on his deliveries where they meet 9-year-old Cornelia, a wealthy child and also an orphan who fed Joe one previous night. On Christmas Day, Patch's toys begin to fall apart, prompting him to quit his job and let Puffy take over. Traveling to New York, Patch meets B.Z., Cornelia's step-uncle and a scheming executive of a toy company that faces a total shutdown by Congressional investigation due to unsafe products. Believing B.Z.'s toys are popular due to witnessing several toys being removed from a shop window, Patch decides to help B.Z. make better toys, using some of the reindeer feed to create lollipops which can make people fly and giving them to children for free. Patch also constructs a hovercraft called the Patchmobile to deliver the products like Santa and helps create a new holiday on March 25, which B.Z. declares "Christmas 2". Santa disapproves of Patch's actions (unaware the plan is to make Santa appreciate him again) and feels disheartened about continuing his job if the children of the world do not care anymore. Meanwhile, Patch is disturbed when B.Z. plans to turn himself into the face of Christmas and asks Patch to increase the amount of reindeer feed and develop the same product in the form of candy canes. While Patch works at night, B.Z.'s assistant, Dr. Eric Towzer, appears at his house and reveals that the candy canes are unstable and will explode if exposed to heat. B.Z. proposes they flee to Brazil and let Patch take the fall for their criminal neglect, which Towzer eventually approves of, despite initially urging B.Z. to reconsider his actions as children are involved. Joe and Cornelia eavesdrop on the conversation, but Joe is caught and tied up and gagged in the basement of B.Z.'s factory. Patch finds Joe and discovers Santa made a carving for Joe that resembles him (which was unintentional, but pointed out by Anya). Thrilled that Santa remembers him, Patch and Joe set off in the Patchmobile to the North Pole. Cornelia sends a letter to Santa informing him of the situation. Despite Comet and Cupid having the Flu, Santa gathers up the other six reindeer and he arrives to pick Cornelia up. Santa and Cornelia pursue the Patchmobile, which is carrying a huge supply of candy canes on the verge of exploding. Santa convinces his reindeer to perform the Super Duper Looper in order to catch Patch and Joe as the Patchmobile explodes. Meanwhile, B.Z.'s crimes are uncovered when Cornelia calls the police. As Dr. Towzer and B.Z.'s chauffeur, Grizzard, are arrested, B.Z. attempts to evade the cops by eating several candy canes and tries to fly out of his office window only to uncontrollably float away into the sky. The inhabitants of the North Pole celebrate the triumph with a joyous dance party, where Cornelia and Joe have been adopted by Santa, his wife and his elves; the film ends showing that B.Z., in spite of his pleas for help, is doomed to float into the depths of space, among the remains of the Patchmobile -which were affected by the explosion- as the end credits roll. David Huddleston as Santa Claus, the Christmas figure who delivers presents to every child in the world on Christmas Eve., Dudley Moore as Patch, a creative, inventive elf whose passion for and faith in the 20th Century is put to the test throughout the story., John Lithgow as B.Z., the main antagonist - an unscrupulous toy manufacturer who uses Patch in a larger scheme to take over Christmas., Judy Cornwell as Anya Claus, Santa's caring and supportive wife., Burgess Meredith as the Ancient One, the oldest and wisest of the elves., Jeffrey Kramer as Dr. Eric Towzer, B.Z.'s head of Research & Development., Christian Fitzpatrick as Joe, a homeless 10-year-old orphan boy living on the hard streets of New York who befriends Santa and becomes Cornelia's best friend and conscience., Carrie Kei Heim as Cornelia, B.Z.'s 9-year-old step-niece and orphan, who becomes Joe's conscience and best friend., John Barrard as Dooley, Santa's #2 at the North Pole., Anthony O'Donnell as Puffy, a bearded elf whose methodicalness foils against Patch's more radical progressiveness., Melvyn Hayes as Goober, head of the Sewing Department., Don Estelle as Groot, the elves' Senior Chef., Tim Stern as Boog, first of Patch's three best friends., Peter O'Farrell as Honka, second of Patch's three best friends., Christopher Ryan as Vout, third of Patch's three best friends., Keith Hayden as an Elf., Shannon Spruill as Bratty Kid at Ballet Class, Nigel Paterson as bass-playing Elf in 'Season's Greetings' scene. Conceived by Ilya Salkind in the wake of the apparently waning critical and U.S. box office success of 1983's Superman III and its immediate follow-up, 1984's Supergirl, Santa Claus: The Movie was directed by Jeannot Szwarc, who had directed Supergirl, from a story by David and Leslie Newman. David Newman, however, took sole screenplay credit. Pierre Spengler, Ilya's longtime partner, and the third key element of Team Salkind, joined Alexander's son as the project's producer. John Carpenter was originally offered the chance to direct, but also wanted a say in the writing, musical score and final cut of the film. Carpenter's original choice for the role of Santa was Brian Dennehy. Among the original choices to direct the film other than Carpenter were Lewis Gilbert, who, despite initial interest, could not agree with the Salkinds over certain aspects of the script. Robert Wise was also offered the chance to direct, but Wise had a different approach to the story. Guy Hamilton, who'd had to withdraw from directing Superman: The Movie in 1976 (because he was a tax exile, and, as such, could only spend 30 days in England, where the film would be filming), was very interested in directing and lobbied hard for the chance to do so, but only on the condition that the film be shot either in Los Angeles, Vancouver or Rome. Ultimately, the Salkinds chose Szwarc because of their excellent working relationship on Supergirl which many executives at TriStar Pictures believed was a masterpiece and would also become a mega hit. Santa Claus: The Movie was filmed in Buckinghamshire, England at Pinewood Studios, between August and November 1984. The film was photographed by Arthur Ibbetson, whose credits, among others, included the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971). Santa Claus: The Movie was his final feature film. Serving as film editor was Peter Hollywood. The production was designed by Anthony Pratt, with costume design concepts by Bob Ringwood. The visual effects unit, as well as several of the production staff, were Salkind stalwarts from the Superman films: Derek Meddings, director of visual and miniature effects; Roy Field, optical visual effects supervisor; and David Lane, flying and second unit director. The documentary, Santa Claus: The Making of The Movie, which chronicles the film's production, is introduced by David Huddleston, speaking straight to the camera in character as Santa, with Dudley Moore serving as on-screen host. The voice over commentary is performed by Ted Maynard, who had also done voice-overs for the film's original UK trailer. The documentary originally aired in the United States on ABC, on Christmas Eve, 1987. Anchor Bay Entertainment's now-out-of-print 20th anniversary DVD of the film included this documentary as a bonus feature; the Lionsgate DVD and Blu-ray versions currently feature the 50-minute feature as well. The Blu-ray version, however, also features a brief chronicle of the filming of the " 'Christmas II' Press Conference" sequence, as well as additional deleted scenes cut from the original theatrical version. Moore had always been the top choice to play the lead Elf in the film, Ilya Salkind having remembered a scene in Arthur in which Liza Minnelli's character asks Moore if he is Santa's Little Helper. Moore was attached to the project virtually from the outset, and therefore had a say on both scripting and choice of director. Originally, David Newman's first-draft script called for the character to be named Ollie; but Moore decided instead that the name should be changed to Patch, Patch being the nickname of his own young son, Patrick. Moore was briefly considered to play the role of the 5th dimension imp "Mr. Mxyzptlk" in the Salkind's aborted original script from Superman III and for the role of Nigel in Supergirl. He turned down that role, but suggested his long time friend and comic partner Peter Cook for the part. Ilya Salkind, from the very beginning, had wanted an American actor to portray Santa Claus because he felt that the film focused on a primary piece of Americana in much the same way that Superman: The Movie did. Brian Dennehy was the top choice of John Carpenter when he discussed the possibility of directing the film with the Salkinds. Jeannot Szwarc, however, felt that he needed an actor with more warmth than Dennehy, and toward that end, he had screen-tested such actors as David White (who, being in his late 60's, was considered too old for the role), and Moore's Arthur co-star Barney Martin. For a while, Ilya Salkind actively pursued Carroll O'Connor for the role before Szwarc showed him David Huddleston's screen-test, which won Salkind over. For the role of B.Z., the producers wanted a star with a similar stature to Gene Hackman when he had played Lex Luthor in Superman: The Movie. To this end, they offered the role to Harrison Ford who turned them down. They made offers to Dustin Hoffman, Burt Reynolds and Johnny Carson --- all of whom, for one reason or another, turned the part down. Eventually, John Lithgow was settled on after Salkind watched Terms of Endearment and realised that he had a Grinch-type look to him. The role of the Ancient Elf was written with James Cagney in mind; however, with Cagney being very weak in his old age, the legendary actor could not adequately assume the role, despite the fact that he liked the film's overall idea. Nonetheless, Cagney had no other choice but to turn the offer down, so Fred Astaire was considered. When this eventually came to nothing, Dudley Moore suggested his friend Burgess Meredith for the role, which he in the end won. At the time of the film's announcement in the middle of 1983, the British Press carried reports that diminutive actors such as David Jason, Patrick Troughton and Norman Wisdom would be cast alongside Dudley as fellow Elves. This ultimately came to nothing. The elves in the film are portrayed as legendary beings known as the Vendequm. According to the Santa Claus: The Movie novelization written by science fiction/fantasy novelist Joan D. Vinge, the elves keep watch over all that happens in the world that borders their own magical realm. The Vendequm are described as being extremely fond of children since, after all, only children can see them, due to the innocence of their youth. The elves are fond of making things for children, and so they often journeyed out into the children's world, leaving their newly crafted toys where children would find them. According to the novel, with the passing of each new century, and as civilizations continued to rise and fall, it became more and more difficult and dangerous for the elves to venture too far out into the human world. Thus, the vast majority of the toys the elves made could not be given out, and were left to gather dust in their magnificent storeroom, the Toy Tunnel. The novel also describes how, on a certain long-winter's night, the oldest and wisest elf of all, the Ancient One, foresaw the arrival of a man whose love for children would be equal to that of the elves. The Ancient One believed that this man would be the one to whom the elves would grant full immortality, along with the ability to deliver the elves' gifts to children all over the world. In addition to Patch, Dooley, Puffy, Boog, Honka, and Vout, the film's screenplay and cast listing features three additional elves: Groot, the Elves' Senior Chef; Goober, the head of the Elves' tailoring shop, who crafts Santa's full red robes; and Goobler, who trains several of his fellow elves in the art of painting toys with their own beards. Santa Claus: The Movie received negative reviews upon release, with a rating of 20% on Rotten Tomatoes, from the 20 reviews counted. Box Office Mojo lists the film's total United States box office gross as $23,717,291, less than its $30–50 million production budget. Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert noted some positive points to the film, writing that the film "does an interesting job of visualizing Santa's workshop" and Santa's elves. He also praised the film's special effects, particularly the New York City fly-over sequence involving Santa. Ebert also had some praise for Lithgow's "nice, hateful performance", but wrote that "the villain is not drawn big enough." He ceded that young children would probably like most of the film, but that older children and adults are "likely to find a lot of it a little thin." Vincent Canby of The New York Times was less positive than Ebert, calling the production "elaborate and tacky". He described the film as having "the manner of a listless musical without any production numbers". Unlike Ebert, he offered little praise for the film's production design. Canby quipped that "Santa's workshop must be the world's largest purchaser of low-grade plywood" and that the flyover sequences with Santa "aren't great." The only praise he had for the film's acting was for John Lithgow, who Canby wrote "(gave) the film's only remotely stylish performance." A more recent review by William Mager for the BBC echoed Canby and Ebert's comments. In his book Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas, critic Alonso Duralde lists Santa Claus: The Movie in his chapter of worst Christmas films ever. His reasons include weak plot, garish production design, blatant product placement (particularly for McDonald's, though Coke and Pabst Blue Ribbon are also prominent), and scenery-chewing overacting on the part of Lithgow. Duralde ultimately concludes that the film is "a train-wreck of a Christmas film that's so very wrong that you won't be able to tear yourself away from it." John Lithgow, in a 2019 interview, said, "It's just one of the tackiest movies I've ever been in. It seemed cheesy and it certainly never stuck...except in England. It is huge over there. I wish I had a nickel for every Englishman who's told me [it's their favorite film]. In England, that's half of what I'm known for." The soundtrack score was composed and conducted by Henry Mancini, composer of the themes from The Pink Panther and Peter Gunn, with veteran lyricist and screenwriter Leslie Bricusse contributing five original songs. The song "It's Christmas (All Over the World)" was written by Bill House and John Hobbs with Freddie Mercury in mind. While it is known that Mercury recorded a demo for the House/Hobbs song at Pinewood Studios, he was never to make a full commitment to the project, as he and his Queen bandmates had already committed themselves to the Highlander soundtrack. In the end, Mercury turned down the project, stating that he felt that Queen had become overcrowded with requests to work on film soundtracks; as a result, Sheena Easton was ultimately chosen to record the tune. As mentioned on the DVD commentary of the film by Jeannot Szwarc, Paul McCartney was asked to compose songs for the film. It is unknown why he did not do so in the end, but his song "Once Upon a Long Ago" had been indeed originally composed with the film in mind. Track listing "Main Title: Every Christmas Eve and Santa's Theme (Giving)" (Mancini/Bricusse), "Arrival of the Elves" (Mancini), "Making Toys" (Mancini/Bricusse), "Christmas Rhapsody: Deck the Halls/Joy to the World/Hark! The Herald Angels Sing/12 Days of Christmas/O Tannenbaum/The First Noel/Silent Night", "It's Christmas Again" (Mancini/Bricusse), "March of the Elves" (Mancini), "Patch, Natch!" (Mancini/Bricusse), "It's Christmas (All Over The World)" (Bill House, John Hobbs), "Shouldn't Do That" (Nick Beggs, Stuart Croxford, Neal Askew, Steve Askew), "Sleigh Ride over Manhattan" (Mancini), "Sad Patch" (Mancini), "Patch Versus Santa" (Mancini), "Thank You, Santa" (Mancini/Bricusse) Sung by Aled Jones Performed by the Ambrosian Children's Choir. Performed by the Ambrosian Singers Produced by Ken Scott and performed by Kaja Produced by Keith Olsen for Pogologo Corporation, and performed by Sheena Easton. The soundtrack was originally released on record and cassette by EMI America Records in 1985. Soon after, it went out of print and remained unavailable until 2009 when it was released on CD as a limited run of 1000 copies which sold out immediately upon release. This production suffered from several issues, most notably a master which had been subjected to heavy noise reduction resulting in a loss of sound quality. Additionally, the left & right channels had been erroneously flipped, a superficial re-edit had been performed on "It's Christmas (All Over the World)", and the song "Shouldn't Do That" by Kaja (Kajagoogoo) had been omitted due to licensing issues. In 2012 a deluxe three-disc set, including remastered tracks, outtakes and alternate versions and a 32-page booklet, was released. Marvel Comics published a comic book adaptation of the film by writer Sid Jacobson and artist Frank Springer in Marvel Super Special #39. Santa Claus in film Mrs. Claus (also known as Mrs. Santa Claus) is the fictional wife of Santa Claus, the Christmas gift-bringer in Western Christmas tradition. She is known for making cookies with the elves, caring for the reindeer, and preparing toys with her husband. The wife of Santa Claus is first mentioned in the short story "A Christmas Legend" (1849), by James Rees, a Philadelphia-based Christian missionary. In the story, an old man and woman, both carrying a bundle on the back, are given shelter in a home on Christmas Eve as weary travelers. The next morning, the children of the house find an abundance of gifts for them, and the couple is revealed to be not "old Santa Claus and his wife", but the hosts' long-lost elder daughter and her husband in disguise. Mrs. Santa Claus is mentioned by name in the pages of the Yale Literary Magazine in 1851, where the student author (whose name is given only as "A. B.") writes of the appearance of Santa Claus at a Christmas party: An account of a Christmas musicale at the State Lunatic Asylum in Utica, New York in 1854 included an appearance by Mrs. Santa Claus, with baby in arms, who danced to a holiday song. A passing references to Mrs. Santa Claus was made in an essay in Harper's Magazine in 1862; and in the comic novel The Metropolites (1864) by Robert St. Clar, she appears in a woman's dream, wearing "Hessian high boots, a dozen of short, red petticoats, an old, large, straw bonnet" and bringing the woman a wide selection of finery to wear. A woman who may or may not be Mrs. Santa Claus appeared in the children's book Lill in Santa Claus Land and Other Stories by Ellis Towne, Sophie May and Ella Farman, published in Boston in 1878. In the story, little Lill describes her imaginary visit to Santa's office (not in the Arctic, incidentally): Later, Lill's sister Effie ponders the tale: Much as in The Metropolites, Mrs. Santa Claus appears in a dream of the author E. C. Gardner in his article "A Hickory Back-Log" in Good Housekeeping magazine (1887), with an even more detailed description of her dress: Mrs. Claus proceeds to instruct the architect Gardner on the ideal modern kitchen, a plan of which he includes in the article. Santa Claus' wife made her most active appearance yet by Katharine Lee Bates in her poem "Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride" (1889). "Goody" is short for "Goodwife", i.e., "Mrs." In Bates' poem, Mrs. Claus wheedles a Christmas Eve sleigh-ride from a reluctant Santa in recompense for tending their toy and bonbon laden Christmas trees, their Thanksgiving turkeys, and their "rainbow chickens" that lay Easter eggs. Once away, Mrs. Claus steadies the reindeer while Santa goes about his work descending chimneys to deliver gifts. She begs Santa to permit her to descend a chimney. Santa grudingly grants her request and she descends a chimney to mend a poor child's tattered stocking and to fill it with gifts. Once the task is completed, the Clauses return to their Arctic home. At the end of the poem, Mrs. Claus remarks that she is the "gladdest of the glad" because she has had her "own sweet will". Since 1889, Mrs. Claus has been generally depicted in media as a fairly heavy- set, kindly, white-haired elderly female baking cookies somewhere in the background of the Santa Claus mythos. She sometimes assists in toy production, and oversees Santa's elves. It is worth noting that, when not portrayed as white-haired or elderly, she is often shown to have red hair. This could be because red hair is the color that most commonly fades to white with age. She is usually depicted wearing a fur dress of red or green. Her reappearance in popular media in the 1960s began with the children's book How Mrs. Santa Claus Saved Christmas, by Phyllis McGinley. Today, Mrs. Claus is commonly seen in cartoons, on greeting cards, in knick-knacks such as Christmas tree ornaments, dolls, and salt and pepper shakers, in storybooks, in seasonal school plays and pageants, in parades, in department store "Santa Lands" as a character adjacent to the throned Santa Claus, in television programs, and live action and animated films that deal with Christmas and the world of Santa Claus. Her personality tends to be fairly consistent; she is usually seen as a calm, kind, and patient woman, often in contrast to Santa himself, who can be prone to acting too exuberant. Mrs. Claus has appeared as a secondary character in children's books about Santa Claus and as the main character in titles about herself. Mrs. Santa Claus, Militant (one-act play) by Bell Elliott Palmer, 1914, The Great Adventure of Mrs. Santa Claus by Sarah Addington and Gertrude A. Kay, 1923, The Story of Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus and The Night Before Christmas by Alice and Lillian Desow Holland, 1946, How Mrs. Santa Claus Saved Christmas by Phyllis McGinley, 1963, Mrs. Santa Claus by Penny Ives, 1993, A Bit of Applause for Mrs. Claus by Jeannie Schick-Jacobowitz, 2003, The Story of Mrs. Santa Claus by Bethanie Tucker and Crystal McLaughlin, 2007, Mrs. Claus Takes A Vacation by Linas Alsenas, 2008, What Does Mrs. Claus Do? by Kate Wharton and Christian Slade, 2008, Annalina: The Untold Story of Mrs Claus by Adam Greenwood, 2011, tells the tale of the young woman who will one day become Mrs Claus. It has been adapted into a story book for young children with coloring pictures and serves as the pilot for a series of novellas about various different characters from the story., Mrs. Claus Says by Nancy Claus, 2005–present, an ongoing series of children's books about life in the North pole, narrated by Mrs. Claus. The first motion picture to depict Mrs. Claus was 1964's Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, where she was played by Doris Rich., Santa Claus is Comin' to Town featured Miss Jessica, a lovely schoolteacher who falls in love with and marries Kris Kringle, eventually becoming the classic Mrs. Claus., In the 1984 Tri-Star movie, The Night They Saved Christmas, Mrs. Claus, as played by June Lockhart to Art Carney's Santa, looked after the children when they visited the North Pole., Mrs. Claus (played by Judy Cornwell) is also a character in 1985's , where she played a vital role in the film's story. Her first name is Anya. It was her idea to give presents only to good children., In the 1993 movie The Nightmare Before Christmas, Mrs. Claus has a cameo appearance. She is seen in the kitchen of her and Santa Claus's home, preparing a lunch box and a vacuum flask for her husband to take to work., The 2002 movie The Santa Clause 2 centers on Tim Allen's character being forced to marry in order to continue his role as Santa. The "Mrs. Clause" confirms why every Santa has had a Mrs. Claus, because it is part of the Santa Clause. He ultimately finds genuine love in Carol Newman (Elizabeth Mitchell), the principal of his son Charlie's school, and in , she deals with being Mrs. Claus, having a baby, and being separated from her family., Played by Miranda Richardson in the 2007's Fred Claus (2007) starring Vince Vaughn and Paul Giamatti. Her name is Annette., In Arthur Christmas, Mrs. Claus' first name is Margaret and is the wife of Malcolm (the current Santa) and mother of both the title character Arthur and his older brother Steve. She is depicted as much more efficient than her husband., Mrs Claus (played by Goldie Hawn) briefly makes an appearance at the end of the 2018 Netflix movie The Christmas Chronicles. Mrs. Claus played a major role in several of Rankin/Bass' Christmas specials. In Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964), she is seen as pestering her husband to eat, lest he become a “skinny Santa,” and in Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July (a movie that unites characters from Rudolph and Frosty the Snowman, among other Rankin/Bass Christmas specials), Santa calls her "Jessica" at one point. In Santa Claus is Coming to Town (1970), she is introduced as a teacher named Jessica, who first meets Santa Claus (then known as Kris Kringle) as a young man, when he's trying to illegally deliver toys to a town run by a despotic ruler. She assists him, and thus becomes a wanted fugitive herself with Kringle and his confederates. In light of this sacrifice, Jessica and Santa soon fall in love with each other, and marry in the nearby forest. In 1974's The Year Without a Santa Claus and the 2006 live action remake, Mrs. Claus played a large role, as she attempts to show Santa (who wishes to stay home that year for Christmas when he feels no one appreciates or believes in him anymore) that there's still some Christmas spirit left in the world. Mrs. Claus also made appearances in several other Rankin/Bass specials. The lady was also portrayed in a television musical, Mrs. Santa Claus (1996), played by Angela Lansbury, with songs by Jerry Herman. Neglected by her husband, she goes to New York in 1910, and gets involved in agitating for women's rights and against child labor in toy manufacturing. Of course, she gets to learn how "Santa misses Mrs. Claus", as the sentimental song lyrics have it. She goes by the name of Anna. One of Mrs. Claus's most unusual television appearances is in The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy Christmas special Billy and Mandy Save Christmas. In this story her name is Nancy and she is a powerful vampiress who, angry that Santa leaves most of the work for her, turns him into a vampire so she can take a break (which is about the six or seventh time she's done so), when she gets the idea from Mandy to try and take over the world before Billy reconciles them. Another unusual appearance is in the Robot Chicken Christmas Special, during which, in a Dragon Ball Z parody sketch, she gains powers from the North Pole's radiation, and becomes a giant monster that Goku, Gohan, and Rudolph must destroy. In A Charlie Brown Christmas, Charlie Brown's sister Sally writes to Santa and asks, "How is your wife?" Later, in It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown, she writes Santa's wife herself, and, when Charlie Brown comments that some people call her "Mary Christmas," Sally congratulates her on choosing to keep her own surname. In Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales, Sally writes Santa Claus as "Samantha Claus", inadvertently thinking Samantha Claus is Santa Claus's wife. Mrs. Claus appears in A Chipmunk Christmas, where she buys Alvin a harmonica after he gives his old one to a sick boy. Her identity isn't revealed until the end, when Santa returns home and she greets him. Boost Mobile created some controversy with an ad featuring Mrs. Claus in bed with a snowman. One version was briefly aired on late-night TV while two alternate versions were posted online. Ad Age had some commentary about the spot, including “This latest ad from Boost Mobile and agency 180, Los Angeles, features Mrs. Claus doing something very, very bad." Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, CNN and a number of local TV news channels commented about the ads. For 2016, British clothing and food company Marks & Spencer launched an integrated marketing campaign centered on a modern interpretation of Mrs. Claus. The campaign included a three-minute ad released on 11 November 2016 which sees Mrs. Claus receiving a letter from a seven-year-old child asking for help with a gift for his older sister, whom the boy has a difficult relationship with. The ad depicts Mrs Claus as more modern than previous examples, with her riding a snowmobile and flying a helicopter while Santa is out delivering gifts in the traditional sleigh. At the conclusion of the ad, she says to Santa “Well it wouldn’t be fun if you knew all my secrets” suggesting she has a secret life assisting with Christmas present delivery. The brand also created a social media campaign in which Mrs. Claus answered requests and questions from members of the public. The ad was received positively by customers and the press with many people commending the brand for taking a feminist approach to a traditional character. The ad was directed by Academy-award winner Tom Hooper with Mrs Claus played by British actress Janet McTeer. Music was composed by Rachel Portman. The ad was created for Marks & Spencer by advertising agency Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe, a London- based division of Young & Rubican. In 1953 Nat King Cole had a single released, "The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot", featuring on the flipside his rendition of a song, "Mrs. Santa Claus", with accompaniment by Nelson Riddle's orchestra. In contrast to her stereotypical portrayal, Mrs. Claus is portrayed as a woman bored with her relationship with Santa Claus in the song "Surabaya-Santa" from Jason Robert Brown's musical Songs for a New World and in the Oszkars' off-color song "Mrs. Claus has a Headache Again". In 1971, comedy duo Cheech and Chong released their take on Mr. and Mrs. Claus in a skit entitled "Santa Claus and His Old Lady," in which Cheech is trying to write his version of a classic Hispanic Christmas song, and explains (in his own way) the origin of Santa and Mrs. Claus to his always-stoned friend, Chong. In 1987, George Jones and Tammy Wynette released a single, "Mr and Mrs Santa Claus", a love song sung by Jones and Wynette as Mr. and Mrs. Claus respectively. Bob Rivers recorded a parody of the soul song "Me and Mrs. Jones", entitled "Me and Mrs. Claus", on his 2002 album White Trash Christmas. Bob Ricci recorded a parody of the pop hit "Stacy's Mom", entitled "Mrs. Claus". In Saints Row IV How the Saints Saved Christmas DLC, Mrs. Claus appears along with her husband. Her first name is revealed to be Mary. While she is mostly Santa's sweet, caring, and devoted wife, she is also a tough, capable fighter ("decking the halls" as Santa puts it), and unlike her husband quick to reveal the truth behind the nature of the "North Pole", the changes in to standards of what is considered Naughty, what happened the one time Santa let someone else drive the sleigh with his reindeer, among other things. Her personality and attitude earn Mrs. Claus some respect from the Saints Boss. In "The Simpsons Tapped Out", during the 2017 Christmas event, "The Invasion Before Christmas", Kodos disguises herself as Mrs. Claus. In an effort to take over Christmas after being left out of Halloween, the Rigelian duo, Kang and Kodos, steal the identity of Santa and his wife. As the final prize of act one of the event, the skin, "Mrs. Kodos Claus", is unlocked by collecting 17,700 Rigellian Batteries. The costume portrays Mrs. Claus in a red, short sleeved outfit with glasses, slightly uneven lipstick, and a white mop hat. Upon unlocking the skin, the quest line, "Claus-Et Homemaker", activates, in which Mrs. Kodos Claus attempts to impersonate Mrs. Claus by doing housewife-esque things, such as baking cookies and cleaning the house. Not being skilled in any of these areas, she inevitably fails and gives up, turning to day drinking. By the end of the questline, she hires a maid, Shauna, to clean the house. Having fully satirized a lazier modern housewife, Mrs. Kodos Claus eventually murders Shauna and uses her skull as a Holiday decoration. In Temple Run 2, as a portrayed gameplay character, which has been made in the celebration of Christmas. Santa Claus' daughter, Santa Claus's reindeer Lill's Travels in Santa Claus Land, 1878, at Project Gutenberg, Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh-Ride, 1889, by Katherine Lee Bates, original edition and text., The Origin of American Christmas Myth and Customs

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Haley Joel Osment (born April 10, 1988) is an American actor. After a series of roles in television and film during the 1990s and 2000s, including a minor part in Forrest Gump playing the title character's son (also named Forrest Gump), Osment rose to fame for his performance as a young unwilling medium in M. Night Shyamalan's thriller film The Sixth Sense, which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He subsequently appeared in leading roles in several high-profile Hollywood films, including Steven Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Mimi Leder's Pay It Forward, and Secondhand Lions, alongside Michael Caine and Robert Duvall. He made his Broadway debut in 2008 in a short-lived revival of David Mamet's play American Buffalo, starring John Leguizamo and Cedric the Entertainer. Osment is also known for his voice-roles of Sora and Vanitas in the Kingdom Hearts video games, as well as his later roles in comedies such as Sex Ed and The Spoils of Babylon. Osment was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Theresa (née Seifert), a teacher, and Michael Eugene Osment, a theater and film actor, both natives of Birmingham, Alabama. Osment was raised Roman Catholic. He has one sibling, actress Emily Osment, who is almost four years younger. Osment's parents have described his childhood as a "good old-fashioned Southern upbringing". His father said that when Osment was learning to speak, he deliberately avoided using baby talk when communicating with his son. Osment was a student at Flintridge Preparatory School in La Cañada, California. As a child, he wrestled and played basketball, football, and golf. Visiting a store at age four, Osment signed up with a talent scout. Called back for an audition, he was asked to describe the biggest thing he had ever seen; his description of an IMAX theater screen helped win him a part in a Pizza Hut TV commercial. The commercial launched his career, and later that year he starred in the ABC TV sitcom Thunder Alley, his first role in series television. His first feature film role was as Forrest Gump's son, also named Forrest Gump, in the 1994 film of the same name. He also had a small part in another 1994 film, Mixed Nuts. Throughout the rest of the 1990s, Osment played regular or recurring roles in various TV series; including The Jeff Foxworthy Show and the final season of Murphy Brown, where he replaced Dyllan Christopher as Murphy's son, Avery. In addition, he made numerous guest appearances on shows, including The Larry Sanders Show, Walker, Texas Ranger, Touched by an Angel, Chicago Hope, The Pretender, and Ally McBeal. He appeared in the 1996 film Bogus, alongside Whoopi Goldberg and Gérard Depardieu and the 1998 made-for-TV movie The Lake, as well as I'll Remember April (1999), with future The Sixth Sense co-star Trevor Morgan. Osment first achieved stardom in 1999, when he appeared in The Sixth Sense, co-starring Bruce Willis. For his portrayal of Cole Sear, a psychic child, Osment won the Saturn Award for Best Performance by a Younger Actor. He was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, becoming the second-youngest performer ever to receive an Academy nomination for a supporting role, but lost the final Oscar vote to Michael Caine (with whom he would later work, appearing together in Secondhand Lions). One of Osment's lines in The Sixth Sense, "I see dead people," became a popular catchphrase and is often repeated or parodied on television programs and in other media. The phrase is #44 on the American Film Institute's list of 100 Movie Quotes. He made three minor (voice-only) guest appearances on the animated TV series Family Guy in 2000 and 2001. The 2000 Academy Awards ceremony honored another future co-star, Kevin Spacey, who, along with Helen Hunt, appeared in Osment's next film, Pay It Forward (2000). The following year, he appeared in Steven Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence, cementing his stature as one of the leading young actors in Hollywood. This role earned him his second Saturn Award for Best Younger Actor, and further critical acclaim. In reviewing the movie, critic Roger Ebert claimed that: "Osment, who is onscreen in almost every scene, is one of the best actors now working". In 2001, Osment starred in the Polish film, Edges of the Lord, as Romek. The movie was never released theatrically in the United States. Between 2002 and 2003, Osment lent his voice to films such as The Country Bears, The Hunchback of Notre Dame II and The Jungle Book 2, all from Walt Disney Pictures. He returned to live action with the 2003 film, Secondhand Lions. Osment lent his voice to the video game series Kingdom Hearts, providing the voice of Sora, the series' main character, and also Vanitas, a villain from the same series. Osment also voiced the character of Takeshi Jin in the English version of the Immortal Grand Prix anime television series. He appeared in Home of the Giants, playing a high school journalist opposite Ryan Merriman and Danielle Panabaker. He subsequently worked on Montana Amazon as both an actor and executive producer. The film starred Olympia Dukakis and debuted at the Orlando and Big Apple Film Festivals in November 2010, winning Best Feature Film at the latter. Osment made his Broadway debut at the Belasco Theatre in November 2008 playing the role of "Bobby", a young heroin addict, in a revival of David Mamet's American Buffalo; co-starring with John Leguizamo and Cedric the Entertainer. The show opened to mixed reviews, and a provisional statement was made on November 20, 2008, that it would close after the first week. In 2010, Osment signed for a leading role in the comedy film Sex Ed from MPCA, to play a college graduate who wants to teach geometry, but ends up as a sex education teacher while inexperienced himself. In January 2011, Entertainment Weekly reported that Osment had joined the cast of Sassy Pants, a comedy about a homeschooler with an over-bearing mother. Variety reported on June 27, 2011 that Osment would star in Wake the Dead, a modern-day retelling of the Frankenstein story, with production to begin the last quarter of 2011. As of mid-2014, no published status was available. In 2013, he appeared in a series of episodes of Amazon's Alpha House. He also co-starred in the Will Ferrell and Adam McKay-produced comedy melodrama miniseries The Spoils of Babylon and The Spoils Before Dying for IFC. Kevin Smith has further added to Osment's career resurgence with roles in the first two films of his True North Trilogy, first as Teddy Craft in Tusk and next as a fictionalized version of Canadian journalist Adrien Arcand in Yoga Hosers. In 2017, Osment held a recurring role in season 4 of HBO's Silicon Valley as VR expert and tech financier Keenan Feldspar. Also in 2017, Osment made an appearance on BBC America's Top Gear America as one of the guests in the fourth episode of season 1. In 2019, Osment had a supporting role in the Netflix film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, starring alongside Lily Collins while her character Liz follows the prosecution of Ted Bundy, who is played by Zac Efron. Osment also appeared as the character "Mesmer" in the Amazon series The Boys. Osment is an avid golfer who began playing at the age of 7. He played for the U.S. team in the All-Star Cup 2005, under team leader Mark O'Meara, and has participated in the Annual Michael Douglas & Friends Celebrity Golf Tournament. In 2006 Osment suffered a broken rib and fractured shoulder blade in an auto accident. Osment pleaded no contest to driving under the influence of alcohol and misdemeanor drug possession and was sentenced to three years' probation, 60 hours in an alcohol rehabilitation and education program, a fine of $1,500, and attendance at Alcoholics Anonymous. Osment plays the guitar and piano. He currently lives in New York City and graduated from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 2011. Home of the Giants is a 2007 American film, written and directed by Rusty Gorman that stars Haley Joel Osment, Ryan Merriman and Danielle Panabaker. The film has been described as a coming of age tale and sports drama. Like everyone in Riverton, Indiana, seventeen-year-old Robert "Gar" Gartland (Haley Joel Osment) loves his school's basketball team, the Riverton Giants. His best friend, Matt Morrison (Ryan Merriman), is the star of the Riverton Giants. When Matt makes Robert take part in the robbery of a small-time drug dealer, things do not go as planned and Robert faces the challenge of saving the team from a desperate predicament with the state championship and Matt’s future on the line. In Indiana, high school basketball is a way of life. This fanaticism serves as a backdrop for a story that explores peer pressure, perspective and the difference between a friend and a hero. Gar believes Matt can do no wrong. While he supports and encourages his best friend’s antics, Gar finds himself falling in love with Bridgette, an outsider who does not embrace the celebrity status given basketball players in her new hometown. From high school parties, pep rallies and Hoosier hysteria, to robbing a drug dealer, being stalked and blackmailed, defying a hero and confronting his adversaries, Gar comes to terms with his false belief, and gains a new level of awareness about himself and his hometown. Haley Joel Osment as Robert Gartland, Ryan Merriman as Matt Morrison, Danielle Panabaker as Bridgette Bachman, Kenneth Mitchell as Keith Morrison, Brent Briscoe as Prock, Stephen Michael Ayers as Coach Gordon, Jay Bilas as Himself, Johanna Braddy as Freshman, Wayne Coyne as Barfly Home of the Giants was first screened on May 9, 2007 at The Zanuck theater in Los Angeles. This screening was mainly for meant for the industry but fans also got the opportunity to attend the screening for free. Shortly after the first screening, Home of the Giants was screened 3 times at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2007. The next screening was in Chicago at the Landmark Theatres in Chicago on July 12, 2007. This was for a private audience mainly consisting of Rusty Gorman's friends and associates. Haley Joel Osment, Ryan Merriman and Nona Merriman attended this screening as well. The next series of screenings were at the Chicago International Film Festival (3 times) and Heartland Film Festival (6 times) in October 2007. While a distribution deal is still in the talks, several articles have suggested a spring 2008 release. The distribution deal should be finalized somewhere in November 2007. The next series of screenings are at the 6 Palm Beach International Film Festival (April 14, 2008) and Omaha Film Festival (February 20, 2008 and February 23, 2008). On October 10, 2008, the film screened at the Midwest Independent Film Festival in Chicago, and was later nominated for Best feature and Best director at the Best of the Midwest Awards. On January 7, 2009, the Region 4 DVD was released in Australia and on February 23, 2009 the Region 2 DVD was released in South Africa. 'Intense, superbly crafted thriller' - Indianapolis Business Journal, 'Skillful, believable and genuinely suspenseful' - Chicagoist.com, 'A dark-laced "Hoosiers" that scores from all over the story court' - Hollywood Reporter According to the official end crawl credits Principal photography for Home of the Giants occurred September 6, 2005 through October 9, 2005. Although the movie is set in Indiana, the basketball scenes were filmed in North Carolina. Many of the extras included students from area high schools, such as Wesleyan Christian Academy (students Andrew Smith, Daniel Gingerich, and Neal Lain), and local colleges such as Wake Forest University, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Both the Giants' and their opponents' pep bands were made up of members of the Walter Hines Page Senior High School Band of Greensboro, North Carolina. These musicians appear around the actors in many other shots. The Giants' cheerleaders are members of the Greensboro Allstars cheerleading squad coached by Amy Tyler. The Sixth Sense is a 1999 American supernatural horror thriller film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. The film tells the story of Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment), a boy who is able to see and talk to the dead, and Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis), a child psychologist who tries to help him. The film established Shyamalan as a writer and director, and introduced the cinema public to his traits, most notably his affinity for surprise endings. Released by Hollywood Pictures on August 6, 1999, the film was well-received by critics; praise was given to its acting performances (particularly Willis, Osment, and Toni Collette), atmosphere, and twist conclusion. The Sixth Sense was the second-highest-grossing film of 1999 (behind ), taking about $293 million in the US and $379 million in other markets. This made it the highest- grossing horror film (in unadjusted dollars) until 2017, when it was surpassed by It. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for Shyamalan, Best Supporting Actor for Osment, and Best Supporting Actress for Collette. Malcolm Crowe, a child psychologist in Philadelphia, returns home one night with his wife Anna after having been honored for his work. A young man appears in their bathroom and accuses Malcolm of failing him. Malcolm recognizes him as Vincent Grey, a former patient he treated as a child for hallucinations, but before he can talk Vincent down, Vincent shoots him and then himself. The next fall, Malcolm begins working with Cole Sear, a young boy. Malcolm feels he must help him in order to rectify his failure and reconcile with his wife, who has become distant and cold. Cole's mother Lynn worries about his social skills, especially after seeing signs of physical harm. Cole eventually confides his secret to Malcolm: he sees ghosts walking around like the living, unaware that they are dead. Initially, Malcolm thinks Cole is delusional and considers dropping his case. After listening to an audiotape from a session with Vincent, Malcolm hears a weeping man begging for help in Spanish and believes that Cole is telling the truth. He suggests that Cole try to find a purpose for his gift by communicating with the ghosts and helping them finish their business. Cole is unwilling at first, then finally agrees to try to help. Cole awakens one night to discover a ghost girl vomiting. After finding out who she is, Cole goes with Malcolm to the funeral reception at her home where he is directed to a box holding a videotape, which he gives to her father. The tape shows the girl's mother poisoning her daughter's food. By doing this, Cole has saved the girl's younger sister from the same fate. Learning to live with the ghosts he sees, Cole begins to fit in at school and is cast as the lead in the school play. Before departing, Cole suggests that Malcolm should try speaking to Anna while she is asleep. Stuck in traffic, Cole tells his mother his secret, and says that someone died in an accident down the road. When Lynn doesn't believe him, Cole tells her his grandmother visits him and describes how she saw Lynn in a dance performance when she was a child, giving details he could not have known. Malcolm returns home to find his wife asleep and their wedding video playing. While still asleep, Anna asks why he left her and drops Malcolm's wedding ring. Recalling what Cole told him about how dead people only see what they want to see, Malcolm starts to see things he did not see earlier. Malcolm suddenly remembers being shot and locates his gunshot wound that reveals he was actually killed by Vincent and he has been dead the whole time. Malcolm tells his wife she was never second to anything and that he loves her. Because of Cole's efforts, Malcolm's business is finally complete, and his spirit departs in a flash of light. Bruce Willis as Malcolm Crowe, Haley Joel Osment as Cole Sear, Toni Collette as Lynn Sear, Olivia Williams as Anna Crowe, Donnie Wahlberg as Vincent Grey, Glenn Fitzgerald as Sean, Mischa Barton as Kyra Collins, Trevor Morgan as Tommy Tammisimo, Bruce Norris as Mr. Stanley Cunningham, Angelica Page as Mrs. Collins, Greg Wood as Mr. Collins, M. Night Shyamalan as Dr. Hill, Peter Tambakis as Darren, Jeffrey Zubernis as Bobby David Vogel, then-president of production of Walt Disney Studios, read Shyamalan's spec script and instantly loved it. Without obtaining corporate approval, Vogel bought the rights to the script, despite the high price of $3 million and the stipulation that Shyamalan could direct the film. Disney later dismissed Vogel from his position at the studio, with Vogel leaving the company shortly thereafter. Disney—apparently in a show of little confidence in the film—sold the production rights to Spyglass Entertainment, while retaining the distribution rights and 12.5% of the film's box office receipt. During the casting process for the role of Cole Sear, Shyamalan had been apprehensive about Osment's video audition, saying later he was "this really sweet cherub, kind of beautiful, blond boy." Shyamalan saw the role as darker and more brooding but admitted that "He nailed it with the vulnerability and the need ... He was able to convey a need as a human being in a way that was amazing to see." The color red is intentionally absent from most of the film, but it is used prominently in a few isolated shots for "anything in the real world that has been tainted by the other world" and "to connote really explosively emotional moments and situations". Examples include the door of the church where Cole seeks sanctuary; the balloon, carpet, and Cole's sweater at the birthday party; the tent in which he first encounters Kyra; the volume numbers on Crowe's tape recorder; the doorknob on the locked basement door where Malcolm's office is located; the shirt that Anna wears at the restaurant; Kyra's mother's dress at the wake; and the shawl wrapped around the sleeping Anna. All of the clothes Malcolm wears during the film are items he wore or touched the evening before his death, which included his overcoat, his blue rowing sweatshirt and the different layers of his suit. Though the filmmakers were careful about clues of Malcolm's true state, the camera zooms slowly towards his face when Cole says, "I see dead people." In a special feature, the filmmakers mention they initially feared this would be too much of a giveaway, but decided to leave it in. Location filming took place mostly in streets and buildings of Philadelphia, notable at St. Augustine's Church on 4th and New Streets and on Saint Albans Street in Southwest Center City. Marisa Tomei was considered for the role of Lynn Sear. The film had a production budget of approximately $40 million (plus $25 million for prints and advertising). It grossed $26.6 million in its opening weekend and spent five weeks as the No. 1 film at the U.S. box office. It earned $293,506,292 in the United States and a worldwide gross of $672,806,292, ranking it 35th on the list of box-office money earners in the U.S. as of April 2010. Box Office Mojo estimates that the film sold over 57.5 million tickets in the US. In the United Kingdom, it was given at first a limited release on nine screens, and entered at No. 8 before climbing up to No. 1 the next week with 430 theatres playing the film. After a six-month online promotion campaign, The Sixth Sense was released on VHS and DVD by Hollywood Pictures Home Video on March 28, 2000. It would go on to become the top-selling DVD of 2000, with more than 2.5 million units shipped, as well as the top video rental title of all-time. The Sixth Sense received positive reviews; Osment in particular was widely praised for his performance. Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 86% of 153 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review, along with an average rating of 7.63/10. The site's consensus reads: "M. Night Shayamalan's The Sixth Sense is a twisty ghost story with all the style of a classical Hollywood picture, but all the chills of a modern horror flick." Metacritic rated it 64 out of 100 based on 35 reviews, meaning “generally favorable reviews”. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A-" on an A+ to F scale. By vote of the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, The Sixth Sense was awarded the Nebula Award for Best Script during 1999. The film was No. 71 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments, for the scene where Cole encounters a female ghost in his tent. It was named the 89th best American film of all time in a 2007 poll by the American Film Institute. The line "I see dead people" from the film became a popular catchphrase after its release, scoring No. 44 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes. The Sixth Sense also scored 60th place on AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills, honoring America's most "heart pounding movies". The Sixth Sense has received numerous awards and nominations, with Academy Award nomination categories ranging from those honoring the film itself (Best Picture), to its writing, editing, and direction (Best Director, Best Editing, and Best Original Screenplay), to its cast's performance (Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress). Especially lauded was the supporting role of actor Haley Joel Osment, whose nominations include an Academy Award, a Broadcast Film Critics Association Award, and a Golden Globe Award. Overall, The Sixth Sense was nominated for six Academy Awards and four British Academy Film Awards, but won none. The film received three nominations from the People's Choice Awards and won all of them, with lead actor Bruce Willis being honored for his role. The Satellite Awards nominated the film in four categories, with awards being received for writing (M. Night Shyamalan) and editing (Andrew Mondshein). Supporting actress Toni Collette was nominated for both an Academy Award and a Satellite award for her role in the film. James Newton Howard was honored by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers for his composition of the music for the film. In 2013, the Writers Guild of America ranked the screenplay #50 on its list of 101 Greatest Screenplays ever written. AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills – No. 60, AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes:, "I see dead people." – No. 44, AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – No. 89 List of ghost films

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The London Paper (stylised as thelondonpaper) was a free daily newspaper, published by NI Free Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International (who also own the companies that publish The Sun and The Times). It was available from Monday to Friday each week in Central London from 4 September 2006 until 18 September 2009 (its final print-run before closure). The paper was the first London newspaper to be published in direct competition with the Evening Standard since 1987 and Robert Maxwell's short-lived London Daily News. It was also the first newspaper to be launched by News International (the publisher's other titles were bought many years after initial publication). The week before The London Paper was first published, Associated Newspapers, the publisher of the Evening Standard, re-branded their existing free lunchtime newspaper Standard Lite to London Lite and changed the publishing time to include the evening rush-hour, a move that was widely seen as a 'spoiler' to protect against the launch of thelondonpaper. The paper, edited by Stefano Hatfield, was targeted towards young readers, with emphasis on celebrity and more light hearted news, there was little analysis of news stories and the paper used lots of images and colour. As a consequence of the launch of The London Paper as well as Associated Newspaper's own London Lite, the Evening Standard attempted to go more upmarket, emphasising the difference between the free newspapers and itself by adding the tagline "The Quality Newspaper" across the top of the front page, this changed on 12 October 2009 when, after a long history of paid circulation, the Evening Standard became a free sheet, replacing the London Lite. The London Paper was also the home of Em, the popular cartoon strip later featured in The Sun, and the City Girl column, written by novelist Alexandra Brown. It held the contract for evening free distribution in London National Rail stations, meaning it could be picked up at the same locations as Metro in the mornings. It was also believed to be bidding for the larger contract to distribute free newspapers at London Underground stations on weekday afternoons. However Transport for London later announced that the contract had been withdrawn after no acceptable bids were received. The paper was criticised for advertising other News Corp products, and for containing too much pointless celebrity news in the guise of serious news articles, such as a new Murdoch-backed music website and The Simpsons Movie. Its television listings also included Sky One alongside the five terrestrial channels. Like the other free London dailies, The London Paper was generally discarded by its readers as soon as they had finished. The use of resources to print something with such a short lifespan was criticised on environmental grounds. Westminster City Council estimated that free newspapers made up a quarter of all rubbish in the West End, much of which went un-recycled, although some stations have positioned recycling bins at entrances and exits specifically for the purpose of recycling free papers. On 20 August 2009, it was announced that The London Paper would cease publication due to consistent losses. On 18 September 2009, News International took the decision to cease publication of the newspaper, having its final print-run after it recorded pre-tax losses of £12.9m in its second year. On 13 August 2010, Rupert Murdoch announced that News Corp would distribute a similar digital newspaper as paid content for the iPad, mobile phones, and other digital devices. thelondonpaper.com Official website for The London Paper (now redirects to The Times website)., London's free newspapers revealed This Is Local London, The Guardian, 21 August 2009, The legacy of The London Paper The Independent is a British online publisher of news that was established in 1986 as a politically independent national morning printed newspaper published in London. Nicknamed the Indy, it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was published on Saturday 26 March 2016, leaving only the online edition. It tends to take a pro-market stance on economic issues. Until September 2011, the paper described itself on the banner at the top of every newspaper as "free from party political bias, free from proprietorial influence". It was controlled by Tony O'Reilly's Irish Independent News & Media from 1997 until it was sold to the Russian businessman and former KGB officer Alexander Lebedev in 2010. In June 2015, the newspaper had an average daily circulation of just below 58,000, 85 per cent down from its 1990 peak, while the Sunday edition had a circulation of just over 97,000. The daily edition was named National Newspaper of the Year at the 2004 British Press Awards. The website and mobile app have a combined monthly reach of 22,939,000. Launched in 1986, the first issue of The Independent was published on 7 October in broadsheet format. It was produced by Newspaper Publishing plc and created by Andreas Whittam Smith, Stephen Glover and Matthew Symonds. All three partners were former journalists at The Daily Telegraph who had left the paper towards the end of Lord Hartwell's ownership. Marcus Sieff was the first chairman of Newspaper Publishing, and Whittam Smith took control of the paper. The paper was created at a time of a fundamental change in British newspaper publishing. Rupert Murdoch was challenging long-accepted practices of the print unions and ultimately defeated them in the Wapping dispute. Consequently, production costs could be reduced which, it was said at the time, created openings for more competition. As a result of controversy around Murdoch's move to Wapping, the plant was effectively having to function under siege from sacked print workers picketing outside. The Independent attracted some of the staff from the two Murdoch broadsheets who had chosen not to move to his company's new headquarters. Launched with the advertising slogan "It is. Are you?", and challenging both The Guardian for centre-left readers and The Times as the newspaper of record, The Independent reached a circulation of over 400,000 by 1989. Competing in a moribund market, The Independent sparked a general freshening of newspaper design as well as, within a few years, a price war in the market sector. When The Independent launched The Independent on Sunday in 1990, sales were less than anticipated, partly due to the launch of the Sunday Correspondent four months prior, although this direct rival closed at the end of November 1990. Some aspects of production merged with the main paper, although the Sunday paper retained a largely distinct editorial staff. In the 1990s, The Independent was faced with price cutting by the Murdoch titles, and started an advertising campaign accusing The Times and The Daily Telegraph of reflecting the views of their proprietors, Rupert Murdoch and Conrad Black. It featured spoofs of the other papers' mastheads with the words The Rupert Murdoch or The Conrad Black, with The Independent below the main title. In April 1996, there was another refinancing, and in March 1998, O'Reilly bought the other shares of the company for £30 million, and assumed the company's debt. Brendan Hopkins headed Independent News, Andrew Marr was appointed editor of The Independent, and Rosie Boycott became editor of The Independent on Sunday. Marr introduced a dramatic if short-lived redesign which won critical favour but was a commercial failure, partly as a result of a limited promotional budget. Marr admitted his changes had been a mistake in his book, My Trade. Boycott left in April 1998 to join the Daily Express, and Marr left in May 1998, later becoming the BBC's political editor. Simon Kelner was appointed as the editor. By this time the circulation had fallen below 200,000. Independent News spent heavily to increase circulation, and the paper went through several redesigns. While circulation increased, it did not approach the level which had been achieved in 1989, or restore profitability. Job cuts and financial controls reduced the morale of journalists and the quality of the product. Ivan Fallon, on the board since 1995 and formerly a key figure at The Sunday Times, replaced Hopkins as head of Independent News & Media in July 2002. By mid-2004, the newspaper was losing £5 million per year. A gradual improvement meant that by 2006, circulation was at a nine-year high. In November 2008, following further staff cuts, production was moved to Northcliffe House, in Kensington High Street, the headquarters of Associated Newspapers. The two newspaper groups' editorial, management and commercial operations remained separate, but they shared services including security, information technology, switchboard and payroll. On 25 March 2010, Independent News & Media sold the newspaper to Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev for a nominal £1 fee and £9.25m over the next 10 months, choosing this option over closing The Independent and The Independent on Sunday, which would have cost £28m and £40m respectively, due to long-term contracts. In 2009, Lebedev had bought a controlling stake in the London Evening Standard. Two weeks later, editor Roger Alton resigned. In July 2011, The Independents columnist Johann Hari was stripped of the Orwell Prize he had won in 2008 after claims, to which Hari later admitted, of plagiarism and inaccuracy. In January 2012, Chris Blackhurst, editor of The Independent, told the Leveson inquiry that the scandal had "severely damaged" the newspaper's reputation. He nevertheless told the inquiry that Hari would return as a columnist in "four to five weeks". Hari later announced that he would not return to The Independent. Jonathan Foreman contrasted The Independents reaction to the scandal unfavourably with the reaction of American newspapers to similar incidents such as the Jayson Blair case, which led to resignations of editors, "deep soul-searching", and "new standards of exactitude being imposed". The historian Guy Walters suggested that Hari's fabrications had been an open secret amongst the newspaper's staff and that their internal inquiry was a "facesaving exercise". A proportion of articles are now behind a pay wall, that section is titled, 'Independent Minds'. The Independent and The Independent on Sunday endorsed "Remain" in the Brexit referendum of 2016. In March 2016 The Independent decided to close its print edition and become an online newspaper; the last printed edition was published on Saturday 26 March 2016. The Independent on Sunday published its last print edition on 20 March 2016 and was closed following that. The Independent began publishing as a broadsheet, in a series of celebrated designs. The final version was designed by Carroll, Dempsey and Thirkell following a commission by Nicholas Garland who, along with Alexander Chancellor, was unhappy with designs produced by Raymond Hawkey and Michael McGuiness – on seeing the proposed designs, Chancellor had said "I thought we were joining a serious paper". The first edition was designed and implemented by Michael Crozier, who was Executive Editor, Design and Picture, from pre- launch in 1986 to 1994. From September 2003, the paper was produced in both broadsheet and tabloid-sized versions, with the same content in each. The tabloid edition was termed "compact" to distance itself from the more sensationalist reporting style usually associated with "tabloid" newspapers in the UK. After launching in the London area and then in North West England, the smaller format appeared gradually throughout the UK. Soon afterwards, Rupert Murdoch's Times followed suit, introducing its own tabloid-sized version. Prior to these changes, The Independent had a daily circulation of around 217,500, the lowest of any major national British daily, a figure that climbed by 15% as of March 2004 (to 250,000). Throughout much of 2006, circulation stagnated at a quarter of a million. On 14 May 2004, The Independent produced its last weekday broadsheet, having stopped producing a Saturday broadsheet edition in January. The Independent on Sunday published its last simultaneous broadsheet on 9 October 2005, and thereafter followed a compact design until the print edition was discontinued. On 12 April 2005, The Independent redesigned its layout to a more European feel, similar to France's Libération. The redesign was carried out by a Barcelona-based design studio. The weekday second section was subsumed within the main paper, double-page feature articles became common in the main news sections, and there were revisions to the front and back covers. A new second section, "Extra", was introduced on 25 April 2006. It is similar to The Guardians "G2" and The Timess "Times2", containing features, reportage and games, including sudoku. In June 2007, The Independent on Sunday consolidated its content into a news section which included sports and business, and a magazine focusing on life and culture. On 23 September 2008, the main newspaper became full-colour, and "Extra" was replaced by an "Independent Life Supplement" focusing on different themes each day. Three weeks after the acquisition of the paper by Alexander Lebedev and Evgeny Lebedev in 2010, the paper was relaunched with another redesign on 20 April. The new format featured smaller headlines and a new pullout "Viewspaper" section, which contained the paper's comment and feature articles. From 26 October 2010, the same day as its sister paper, i, was launched, The Independent was printed on slightly thicker paper than before and ceased to be full-colour throughout, with many photographs and pictures (though none of those used in adverts) being printed in black and white only. On 11 October 2011, The Independent unveiled yet another new look, featuring a red, sans-serif masthead. In November 2013, the whole newspaper was overhauled again, including new custom fonts and a vertical masthead in black. Following the 2003 switch in format, The Independent became known for its unorthodox and campaigning front pages, which frequently relied on images, graphics or lists rather than traditional headlines and written news content. For example, following the Kashmir earthquake in 2005, it used its front page to urge its readers to donate to its appeal fund, and following the publication of the Hutton Report into the death of British government scientist David Kelly, its front page simply carried the word "Whitewash?" In 2003, the paper's editor, Simon Kelner, was named "Editor of the Year" at the What the Papers Say awards, partly in recognition of, according to the judges, his "often arresting and imaginative front-page designs". In 2008, however, as he was stepping down as editor, he stated that it was possible to "overdo the formula" and that the style of the paper's front pages perhaps needed "reinvention". Under the subsequent editorship of Chris Blackhurst, the campaigning, poster-style front pages were scaled back in favour of more conventional news stories. The weekday, Saturday and Sunday editions of The Independent all included supplements and pull-out subsections: On 23 January 2008, The Independent relaunched its online edition, www.independent.co.uk. The relaunched site introduced a new look, better access to the blog service, priority on image and video content, and additional areas of the site including art, architecture, fashion, gadgets and health. The paper launched podcast programmes such as "The Independent Music Radio Show", "The Independent Travel Guides", "The Independent Sailing Podcasts", and "The Independent Video Travel Guides". Since 2009, the website has carried short video news bulletins provided by the Al Jazeera English news channel. In 2014, The Independent launched a sister website, i100, a "shareable" journalism site with similarities to Reddit and Upworthy. When the paper was established in 1986, the founders intended its political stance to reflect the centre of the British political spectrum and thought that it would attract readers primarily from The Times and The Daily Telegraph. It has been seen as leaning to the left wing of the political spectrum, making it more a competitor to The Guardian. However, The Independent tends to take a liberal, pro-market stance on economic issues. The Independent on Sunday referred to itself as a "proudly liberal newspaper". The paper took a strong editorial position against the 2003 invasion of Iraq and aspects of US and UK foreign policy related to the War on Terrorism following the . In addition, The Independent has highlighted what it refers to as war crimes being committed by pro-government forces in the Darfur region of Sudan. The paper has been a strong supporter of electoral reform. The paper has also taken strong positions on environmental issues, campaigned against the introduction of ID cards, and campaigned against the restriction of mass immigration to the UK. In 1997, The Independent on Sunday launched a campaign for the decriminalisation of cannabis. Ten years later, it reversed itself, arguing that skunk, the cannabis strain "smoked by the majority of young Britons" in 2007, had become "25 times stronger than resin sold a decade ago". The paper supports the United Kingdom becoming a republic. Originally, it avoided royal stories, Whittam Smith later saying he thought the British press was "unduly besotted" with the Royal Family and that a newspaper could "manage without" stories about the monarchy. In 2007, Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, said of The Independent: "The emphasis on views, not news, means that the reporting is rather thin, and it loses impact on the front page the more you do that". In a 12 June 2007 speech, British Prime Minister Tony Blair called The Independent a "viewspaper", saying it "was started as an antidote to the idea of journalism as views not news. That was why it was called the Independent. Today it is avowedly a viewspaper not merely a newspaper". The Independent criticised Blair's comments the following day but later changed format to include a "Viewspaper" insert in the centre of the regular newspaper, designed to feature most of the opinion columns and arts reviews. A leader published on the day of the 2008 London mayoral election compared the candidates and said that, if the newspaper had a vote, it would vote first for the Green Party candidate, Sian Berry, noting the similarity between her priorities and those of The Independent, and secondly, with "rather heavy heart", for the incumbent, Ken Livingstone. An Ipsos MORI poll estimated that in the 2010 general election, 44% of regular readers voted Liberal Democrat, 32% voted Labour, and 14% voted Conservative, compared to 23%, 29%, and 36%, respectively, of the overall electorate. On the eve of the 2010 general election, The Independent supported the Liberal Democrats, arguing that "they are longstanding and convincing champions of civil liberties, sound economics, international co-operation on the great global challenges and, of course, fundamental electoral reform. These are all principles that this newspaper has long held dear. That is why we argue that there is a strong case for progressively minded voters to lend their support to the Liberal Democrats wherever there is a clear opportunity for that party to win". However, before the 2015 general election The Independent on Sunday desisted from advising its readers how to vote, writing that "this does not mean that we are a bloodless, value-free news-sheet. We have always been committed to social justice", but the paper recognised that it was up the readers to "make up [their] own mind about whether you agree with us or not". Rather than support a particular party, the paper urged all its reader to vote as "a responsibility of common citizenship". On 4 May 2015, the weekday version of The Independent said that a continuation of the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition after the general election would be a positive outcome. At the end of July 2018 The Independent led a campaign they called the "Final Say" – a change.org petition by editor Christian Broughton, for a binding referendum on the Brexit deal between the UK and the European Union. As of 2019, Independent in Arabic is owned and managed by Saudi Research and Marketing Group (SRMG), a major publishing organisation with close ties to the Saudi royal family. There have also been various guest editors over the years, such as Elton John on 1 December 2010, the Body Shop's Anita Roddick on 19 June 2003 and U2's Bono in 2006. Predominantly in The Independent: Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Bruce Anderson, Paul Arden, Archie Bland, Thom Brooks, Andrew Brown (writer), Cooper Brown, Michael Brown, Simon Calder, Alexa Chung, Rob Cowan, Sloane Crosley, Tracey Emin, Nigel Farage, Mitch Feierstein, Helen Fielding, Robert Fisk, Chris Gulker, Ian Hamilton, Howard Jacobson, Alex James, Peter Jenkins, Owen Jones, Andrew Keen, Dominic Lawson, John Lichfield, Philip Llewellin, Laura Lyons, Andy McSmith, Donald MacIntyre, Serena Mackesy, Tracey MacLeod, Rhodri Marsden, Jan McGirk, Deborah Orr, Christina Patterson, Peter Popham, Simon Read, Steve Richards, Lizzie Dearden, Ash Sarkar, Alexei Sayle, Will Self, Mark Steel, Catherine Townsend, Paul Vallely, Brian Viner, Lynne Walker, Andreas Whittam Smith, Claudia Winkleman Predominantly The Independent on Sunday: Janet Street-Porter—Editor-at-Large, Kate Bassett—Theatre, Patrick Cockburn, John Rentoul, Joan Smith, Paul Vallely and Alan Watkins—"Comment & Debate", Peter Cole—"On the Press", Rupert Cornwell—"Out of America", Hermione Eyre—Reviews, Jenny Gilbert—Dance, Christopher Hirst and Lucinda Rogers—"The Weasel" (weekly illustrated column 1995–2008), Dom Joly—"First Up" in The Sunday Review, Tim Minogue and David Randall—"Observatory", Cole Moreton—"News Analysis" (Regular double-spread), Anna Picard—Opera and Classical, Simon Price—Rock and Pop Timothy Allen The Independent sponsors the Longford Prize, in memory of Lord Longford. The Independent on Sunday (IoS) was the Sunday sister newspaper of The Independent. It ceased to exist in 2016, the last edition being published on 20 March; the daily paper ceasing print publication six days later. In October 2010, the i, a compact sister newspaper, was launched. The i is a separate newspaper but uses some of the same material. It was later sold to regional newspaper company Johnston Press, becoming that publisher's flagship national newspaper. The is online presence, i100, was restyled as indy100 and retained by Independent News & Media. The Independent supported U2 lead singer Bono's Product RED brand by creating The (RED) Independent, an occasional edition that gave half the day's proceeds to the charity. The first edition was in May 2006. Edited by Bono, it drew high sales. A September 2006 edition of The (RED) Independent, designed by fashion designer Giorgio Armani, drew controversy due to its cover shot, showing model Kate Moss in blackface for an article about AIDS in Africa. The Independent was awarded "National Newspaper of the Year" for 2003 and the Independent on Sunday was awarded "Front Page of the Year" for 2014's "Here is the news, not the propaganda", printed on 5 October 2014. Independent journalists have won a range of British Press Awards, including: "Business & Finance Journalist of the Year": Michael Harrison, 2000; Hamish McRae, 2005; Stephen Foley, 2008, "Cartoonist of the Year": Dave Brown, 2012, "Columnist of the Year": Robert Chalmers (Independent on Sunday), 2004; Mark Steel, 2014, "Foreign Reporter of the Year": Patrick Cockburn, 2014, "Interviewer of the Year": Mathew Norman, 2007; Deborah Ross, 2011, "Political Journalist of the Year": Francis Elliott (Independent on Sunday), 2005, "Specialist Journalist of the Year": Michael McCarthy, 2000; Jeremy Laurance, 2011, "Sports Journalist of the Year": James Lawton, 2010, "Young Journalist of the Year": Johann Hari, 2002; Ed Caesar, 2006 In January 2013, The Independent was nominated for the Responsible Media of the Year award at the British Muslim Awards. Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, Brett Straub incident Metro is the United Kingdom's highest-circulation print newspaper. It is published in tabloid format by DMG Media. The free newspaper is distributed from Monday to Friday (excluding public holidays and the period between Christmas Eve and New Year's Day inclusive) mornings on trains and buses, and at railway/Underground stations, airports and hospitals across selected urban areas of England, Wales and Scotland. Copies are also handed out to pedestrians. Metro is owned by Daily Mail and General Trust plc (DMGT), part of the same media group as the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday, but in some areas Metro operates as a franchise with a local newspaper publisher, rather than as a wholly owned concern. While being a sister paper to the conservative Daily Mail, the newspaper has never endorsed any political party or candidate, and claims to take a neutral political stance in its reporting. The Metro free newspaper concept originated in Sweden, where a publication of the same name was launched in 1995 by Metro International. British newspaper executives Jonathan Harmsworth and Murdoch MacLennan, from DMGT, were reportedly inspired by the idea and flew to Stockholm on a 'fact-finding mission' with a view to developing their own version. There were also reports in the late 1990s that both Metro International and Rupert Murdoch's News International were considering launching free newspapers in the UK which could be a commercial threat to DMGT's businesses. DMGT subsequently launched Metro, using the same name as Metro International's publications but with a different logo on Tuesday 16 March 1999. This UK version of Metro had no relation to Metro International or its sister newspapers in other countries. Metro was launched initially as a London-only newspaper with an original print run of 85,000 copies, which were distributed via dedicated bins in London Underground stations. The newspaper was produced at DMGT's printworks and office complex at Surrey Quays in south east London, away from the company's main newspaper office in Kensington, west London. In the years following its launch, the paper's distribution was gradually expanded to other major UK cities, including Manchester and Birmingham. By February 2003 Metro became operationally profitable for the first time. In 2004 its reach was extended further, becoming available in more urban areas including Nottingham, Bristol and Bath. Metro's circulation continued to rise in the following years, although readership temporarily dipped after the 7 July 2005 London bombings. There was a 1.8% decline - the equivalent of around 9,000 readers - in copies picked up in the weeks following the attacks due to a reduction in the number of people using London's public transport network, coupled with the temporary closure of some London Underground lines where Metro was distributed. Following several years of national expansion, in 2006 the newspaper's production was moved to DMGT's main newspaper offices at Northcliffe House in Kensington, west London. That same year the newspaper expanded further, launching in Cardiff and Liverpool in joint venture deals with Trinity Mirror. At the time of its 10th anniversary in 2009, the newspaper was distributed in 16 "major" UK cities and its circulation had grown to 1.3 million. Despite the increase in readership, that same year management also closed five regional Metro offices in Manchester, Glasgow, Newcastle, Birmingham and Bristol, which were responsible for producing regionalised arts, entertainment and food pages, citing "challenging economic conditions". By 2011 Metro's distribution network had expanded to more than 50 cities in the UK. That year media commentator Roy Greenslade said the publication was now making "bumper profits" and dubbed it "Britain's most successful national newspaper". On 10 October 2005 Metro Ireland was launched in Dublin. It followed a legal battle over the title's name with the publishers of the Irish Independent and Dublin's Evening Herald, which launched its own free newspaper called Herald AM. Both titles were loss-making, despite having a combined circulation of 145,000 in the Greater Dublin Area. On 2 July 2009, it was announced that the two freesheets would merge under the Metro banner, an operation completed by 2010. However the Irish edition was closed down in December 2014. For the first time in its history, Metro temporarily published seven days a week during the 2012 Summer Olympics and the 2012 Summer Paralympics, providing free copies to spectators at the Games as well as the general public. The newspaper struck a reported £2.25 million deal with sportswear manufacturer Adidas to run cover wrap adverts on each of the 17 days of the Olympics. After more than a decade in charge, editor Kenny Campbell was replaced as editor by Ted Young in 2014. Young's appointment coincided with a number of changes at the newspaper, including the separation of the print and online editions, along with an expansion of Metro's distribution in the UK. In November 2016, comedian Richard Herring stepped down from writing his weekly column for Metro. Fellow TV comedian Dom Joly later replaced him in the slot. In 2017, Metro became the most-read newspaper in the UK, according to monthly National Readership Survey figures. In March 2018 Metro officially overtook The Sun in total print circulation, according to ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulations (UK)) figures. The majority of the newspaper's content is produced at Northcliffe House in Kensington, west London. There are no regional editions within England and Wales, except for occasional differences in sports and arts content catered to specific local audiences. A separate, small team produces a Scottish edition of Metro, however often the only substantial difference between the two versions is the front page. The newspaper is divided into three main sections—news, features and sport. The news section includes Guilty Pleasures, which typically contains two or four pages of showbiz and entertainment news, a letters page, and a page dedicated for business news. A popular feature of the letters page is Rush Hour Crush, in which readers send in anonymous messages to fellow users of public transport who they consider attractive. The daily column has led to at least one marriage. The news section also features occasional feature columns from political pundits such as Sophy Ridge of Sky News. However, while offering analysis, these columns do not typically express endorsements of political positions or candidates, thus not being considered as op-ed columns as in other newspapers. The features section contains a mix of articles on travel, homes, style, and health, science, as well as arts coverage and entertainment listings. The puzzles page currently features a crossword and Sudoku. Metro launched a website version of the newspaper in July 2001. Between 2001 and 2014 most print edition articles were published on this website, along with additional online-only content such as blogs and opinion columns. In 2014 production of the newspaper and the website were separated. As a result, Metro newspaper and Metro Online are now produced by separate organisations and written independently by different editorial teams, while remaining part of the same parent company. The newspaper's content is now published online on a separate website. In the run-up to the 2015 United Kingdom general election, the-then UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage refused to be interviewed by Metro after accusing the newspaper of being biased against his party. This was denied by the newspaper's editor. All other national party leaders agreed to be interviewed, including Conservative prime minister David Cameron and Labour leader Ed Miliband. Prior to the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum Metro published a front-page cover-wrap advert on behalf of the Leave campaign, paid for by the Democratic Unionist Party. The following day the newspaper published another cover-wrap advert, this time from the Remain campaign. Editor Ted Young said both adverts, which each cost more than £250,000 to place, generated around 300 complaints each, accusing the newspaper of both pro and anti Brexit bias. In May 2019 the paper was condemned by National Union of Journalists and Public and Commercial Services Union after an internal document leaked to The Guardian showed evidence that Amber Rudd, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, had authorised the use of at least a quarter of a million pounds of public money for a ten-week run of advertorials to be placed in 'Metro' newspapers to 'challenge the myths' around the government's controversial Universal Credit programme. The Trussell Trust also ran a countercampaign called 'Universal Credit Uncovered'. In June 2019 The Mirror reported that 80 UK charities had filed a complaint to The Advertising Standards Authority over 'misleading Universal Credit' adverts in 'Metro'. In July 2019 The Advertising Standards Authority announced it was launching an investigation into the DWP ads; the move came after the Morning Star revealed that the 'Metro' had not run the controversial ads in its 3 July 2019 print edition. On 5 November 2019 The Advertising Standards Authority ruled that the campaign was misleading, branding the ads "exaggerated" and in some cases "unsubstantiated"; The Advertising Standards Authority upheld three complaint points whilst partially upholding a fourth. Metro has faced competition in parts of the UK from other free newspapers, along with rivalry from paid-for national titles. Current editor Ted Young has said his 'mantra' is to produce a newspaper which its readers would be willing to pay for. Metro International attempted to launch its own UK edition in 1999, being distributed in Newcastle upon Tyne's Tyne & Wear Metro system competing with DMGT's Metro. After battling alongside each other with the same name, Metro International's Metro changed its name to Morning News. This attempt was short-lived however, and Morning News was discontinued shortly afterwards. In 2005 Rupert Murdoch said he was "worried" by competition from Metro and that it had damaged the circulation of his own newspaper The Sun. He told a press conference he was watching the free newspaper market "keenly and apprehensively". Murdoch's News International subsequently launched a London- based evening freesheet in 2006 called The London Paper. This was closed on 18 September 2009. London Lite was another free, evening newspaper published in central London only from 2006 to 2009, at the time owned by the same parent company as Metro, and was seen as a 'spoiler' to protect against the commercial threat from The London Paper. Another rival is the London Evening Standard, which became a freesheet in 2009, although unlike Metro it is only published in the London region. Metro launched two new mobile app products in 2016: 11versus11, which is a football news app, and Guilty Pleasures, a celebrity news app. Both apps offer personalised content based on a user's interest profile. 11versus11 won the Best Lifestyle, Sports & Entertainment App award at the 2017 European Digital Media Awards. Digitiser metro.news Website with all Metro newspaper and app content, Metro e-edition Print e-edition and archive of Associated Newspapers' Metro newspaper, metro.co.uk Owned by Associated Newspapers but separate from Metro print edition, @MetroUKNews Metro newspaper Twitter account

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The Book of Leviticus () is the third book of the Torah and of the Old Testament; scholars generally agree that it developed over a long period of time, reaching its present form during the Persian Period between 538-332 BCE. Most of its chapters (1–7, 11–27) consist of God's speeches to Moses, which God commands Moses to repeat to the Israelites. This takes place within the story of the Israelites' Exodus after they escaped Egypt and reached Mt. Sinai (Exodus 19:1). The Book of Exodus narrates how Moses led the Israelites in building the Tabernacle (Exodus 35–40) with God's instructions (Exodus 25–31). Then in Leviticus, God tells the Israelites and their priests how to make offerings in the Tabernacle and how to conduct themselves while camped around the holy tent sanctuary. Leviticus takes place during the month or month-and- a-half between the completion of the Tabernacle (Exodus 40:17) and the Israelites' departure from Sinai (Numbers 1:1, 10:11). The instructions of Leviticus emphasize ritual, legal and moral practices rather than beliefs. Nevertheless, they reflect the world view of the creation story in Genesis 1 that God wishes to live with humans. The book teaches that faithful performance of the sanctuary rituals can make that possible, so long as the people avoid sin and impurity whenever possible. The rituals, especially the sin and guilt offerings, provide the means to gain forgiveness for sins (Leviticus 4–5) and purification from impurities (Leviticus 11–16) so that God can continue to live in the Tabernacle in the midst of the people. The English name Leviticus comes from the Latin Leviticus, which is in turn from the Greek Greek Λευιτικόν, Leuitikon, referring to the priestly tribe of the Israelites, “Levi.” The Greek expression is in turn a variant of the rabbinic Hebrew torat kohanim, "law of priests", as many of its laws relate to priests. In Hebrew the book is called Vayikra (), from the opening of the book, va-yikra "And He [God] called." "(The outlines from commentaries are similar, though not identical; compare those of Wenham, Hartley, Milgrom, and Watts) I. Laws on sacrifice (1:1–7:38) II. Institution of the priesthood (8:1–10:20) III. Uncleanliness and its treatment (11:1–15:33) IV. Day of Atonement: purification of the tabernacle from the effects of uncleanliness and sin (ch. 16) V. Prescriptions for practical holiness (the Holiness Code, chs. 17–26) VI. Redemption of votive gifts (ch. 27) Chapters 1–5 describe the various sacrifices from the sacrificers' point of view, although the priests are essential for handling the blood. Chapters 6–7 go over much the same ground, but from the point of view of the priest, who, as the one actually carrying out the sacrifice and dividing the "portions", needs to know how to do this. Sacrifices are between God, the priest, and the offerers, although in some cases the entire sacrifice is a single portion to God—i.e., burnt to ashes. Chapters 8–10 describe how Moses consecrates Aaron and his sons as the first priests, the first sacrifices, and God's destruction of two of Aaron's sons for ritual offenses. The purpose is to underline the character of altar priesthood (i.e., those priests with power to offer sacrifices to God) as an Aaronite privilege, and the responsibilities and dangers of their position. With sacrifice and priesthood established, chapters 11–15 instruct the lay people on purity (or cleanliness). Eating certain animals produces uncleanliness, as does giving birth; certain skin diseases (but not all) are unclean, as are certain conditions affecting walls and clothing (mildew and similar conditions); and genital discharges, including female menses and male gonorrhea, are unclean. The reasoning behind the food rules are obscure; for the rest the guiding principle seems to be that all these conditions involve a loss of "life force", usually but not always blood. Leviticus 16 concerns the Day of Atonement. This is the only day on which the High Priest is to enter the holiest part of the sanctuary, the holy of holies. He is to sacrifice a bull for the sins of the priests, and a goat for the sins of the laypeople. The priest is to send a second goat into the desert to "Azazel", bearing the sins of the whole people. Azazel may be a wilderness- demon, but its identity is mysterious. Chapters 17–26 are the Holiness code. It begins with a prohibition on all slaughter of animals outside the Temple, even for food, and then prohibits a long list of sexual contacts and also child sacrifice. The "holiness" injunctions which give the code its name begin with the next section: there are penalties for the worship of Molech, consulting mediums and wizards, cursing one's parents and engaging in unlawful sex. Priests receive instruction on mourning rituals and acceptable bodily defects. The punishment for blasphemy is death, and there is the setting of rules for eating sacrifices; there is an explanation of the calendar, and there are rules for sabbatical and Jubilee years; there are rules for oil lamps and bread in the sanctuary; and there are rules for slavery. The code ends by telling the Israelites they must choose between the law and prosperity on the one hand, or, on the other, horrible punishments, the worst of which will be expulsion from the land. Chapter 27 is a disparate and probably late addition telling about persons and things serving as dedication to the Lord and how one can redeem, instead of fulfill, vows. The majority of scholars have concluded that the Pentateuch received its final form during the Persian period (538–332 BC). Nevertheless, Leviticus had a long period of growth before reaching that form. The entire composition of the book of Leviticus is Priestly literature. Most scholars see chapters 1–16 (the Priestly code) and chapters 17–26 (the Holiness code) as the work of two related schools, but while the Holiness material employs the same technical terms as the Priestly code, it broadens their meaning from pure ritual to the theological and moral, turning the ritual of the Priestly code into a model for the relationship of Israel to God: as the tabernacle, which is apart from uncleanliness, becomes holy by the presence of the Lord, so He will dwell among Israel when Israel receives purification (becomes holy) and separates from other peoples. The ritual instructions in the Priestly code apparently grew from priests giving instruction and answering questions about ritual matters; the Holiness code (or H) used to be a separate document, later becoming part of Leviticus, but it seems better to think of the Holiness authors as editors who worked with the Priestly code and actually produced Leviticus as we now have it. Many scholars argue that the rituals of Leviticus have a theological meaning concerning Israel's relationship with its God. Jacob Milgrom was especially influential in spreading this view. He maintained that the priestly regulations in Leviticus expressed a rational system of theological thought. The writers expected them to be put into practice in Israel's temple, so the rituals would express this theology as well, as well as ethical concern for the poor. Milgrom also argued that the book's purity regulations (chaps. 11–15) have a basis in ethical thinking. Many other interpreters have followed Milgrom in exploring the theological and ethical implications of Leviticus's regulations (e.g. Marx, Balentine), though some have questioned how systematic they really are. Ritual, therefore, is not taking a series of actions for their own sake, but a means of maintaining the relationship between God, the world, and humankind. The main function of the priests is service at the altar, and only the sons of Aaron are priests in the full sense. (Ezekiel also distinguishes between altar-priests and lower Levites, but in Ezekiel the altar-priests are sons of Zadok instead of sons of Aaron; many scholars see this as a remnant of struggles between different priestly factions in First Temple times, finding resolution by the Second Temple into a hierarchy of Aaronite altar-priests and lower-level Levites, including singers, gatekeepers and the like). In chapter 10, God kills Nadab and Abihu, the oldest sons of Aaron, for offering "strange incense". Aaron has two sons left. Commentators have read various messages in the incident: a reflection of struggles between priestly factions in the post–Exilic period (Gerstenberger); or a warning against offering incense outside the Temple, where there might be the risk of invoking strange gods (Milgrom). In any case, there has been a pollution of the sanctuary by the bodies of the two dead priests, leading into the next theme, holiness. Ritual purity is essential for an Israelite to be able to approach Yahweh and remain part of the community. Uncleanliness threatens holiness; Chapters 11–15 review the various causes of uncleanliness and describe the rituals which will restore cleanliness; one is to maintain cleanliness through observation of the rules on sexual behaviour, family relations, land ownership, worship, sacrifice, and observance of holy days. Yahweh dwells with Israel in the holy of holies. All of the priestly ritual focuses on Yahweh and the construction and maintenance of a holy space, but sin generates impurity, as do everyday events such as childbirth and menstruation; impurity pollutes the holy dwelling place. Failure to ritually purify the sacred space could result in God leaving, which would be disastrous. Through sacrifice, the priest "makes atonement" for sin and the offerer receives forgiveness (but only if God accepts the sacrifice—forgiveness comes only from God). Atonement rituals involve the pouring or sprinkling of blood as the symbol of the life of the victim: the blood has the power to wipe out or absorb the sin. The two-part division of the book structurally reflects the role of atonement: chapters 1–16 call for the establishment of the institution for atonement, and chapters 17–27 call for the life of the atoned community in holiness. The consistent theme of chapters 17–26 is in the repetition of the phrase, "Be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy." Holiness in ancient Israel had a different meaning than in contemporary usage: it might have been regarded as the "god-ness" of God, an invisible but physical and potentially dangerous force. Specific objects, or even days, can be holy, but they derive holiness from being connected with God—the seventh day, the tabernacle, and the priests all derive their holiness from God. As a result, Israel had to maintain its own holiness in order to live safely alongside God. The need for holiness is for the possession of the Promised Land (Canaan), where the Jews will become a holy people: "You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt where you dwelt, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan to which I am bringing you...You shall do my ordinances and keep my statutes...I am the Lord, your God" (ch. 18:3). Leviticus, as part of the Torah, became the law book of Jerusalem's Second Temple as well as of the Samaritan temple. Evidence of its influence is evident among the Dead Sea Scrolls, which included fragments of seventeen manuscripts of Leviticus dating from the third to the first centuries BC. Many other Qumran scrolls cite the book, especially the Temple Scroll and 4QMMT. Jews and Christians have not observed Leviticus's instructions for animal offerings since the first century AD. Because of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD, Jewish worship has focused on prayer and the study of Torah. Nevertheless, Leviticus constitutes a major source of Jewish law and is traditionally the first book children learn in the Rabbinic system of education. There are two main Midrashim on Leviticus—the halakhic one (Sifra) and a more aggadic one (Vayikra Rabbah). The New Testament, particularly the Epistle to the Hebrews, uses ideas and images from Leviticus to describe Christ as the high priest who offers his own blood as a sin offering. Therefore, Christians do not make animal offerings either, as Gordon Wenham summarized: "With the death of Christ the only sufficient "burnt offering" was offered once and for all, and therefore the animal sacrifices which foreshadowed Christ's sacrifice were made obsolete." Christians generally have the view that the New Covenant supersedes (i.e., replaces) the Old Testament's ritual laws, which includes many of the rules in Leviticus. Christians therefore have usually not observed Leviticus' rules regarding diet, purity, and agriculture. Christian teachings have differed, however, as to where to draw the line between ritual and moral regulations. 613 commandments, En-Gedi Scroll, Paleo-Hebrew Leviticus scroll Leviticus at Bible gateway Bamberger, Bernard Jacob The Torah: A Modern Commentary (1981), Online versions of Leviticus: Hebrew:, Leviticus at Mechon-Mamre (Jewish Publication Society translation), Leviticus (The Living Torah) Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan's translation and commentary at Ort.org, Vayikra—Levitichius (Judaica Press) translation [with Rashi's commentary] at Chabad.org, ויקרא Vayikra—Leviticus (Hebrew—English at Mechon-Mamre.org), Christian translations:, The Book of Leviticus, Douay Rheims Version, with Bishop Challoner Commentaries, Online Bible at GospelHall.org (King James Version), Online Audio and Classic Bible at Bible-Book.org (King James Version), oremus Bible Browser (New Revised Standard Version), oremus Bible Browser (Anglicized New Revised Standard Version), Various versions Related article: Book of Leviticus article (Jewish Encyclopedia), The Literary Structure of Leviticus (chaver.com) Brief introduction Leviticus The Jubilee ( yōḇel; Yiddish: yoyvl) is the year at the end of seven cycles of shmita (Sabbatical years) and, according to Biblical regulations, had a special impact on the ownership and management of land in the Land of Israel. According to the Book of Leviticus, Hebrew slaves and prisoners would be freed, debts would be forgiven, and the mercies of God would be particularly manifest. Rabbinic literature mentions a dispute between the Sages and Rabbi Yehuda over whether it was the 49th year (the last year of seven sabbatical cycles, referred to as the Sabbath's Sabbath), or whether it was the following (50th) year. The Jubilee ("Year of Release") deals largely with land, property, and property rights. The biblical rules concerning Sabbatical years are still observed by many religious Jews in Israel, but the regulations for the Jubilee year have not been observed for many centuries. According to the Torah, observance of Jubilee only applies when the Jewish people live in the land of Israel according to their tribes. Thus, with the exile of the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh (about 600 BCE), Jubilee has not been applicable. The Septuagint rendered the Hebrew yovel as "a trumpet-blast of liberty" (ἀφέσεως σημασία apheseôs sêmasia), and the Vulgate by Latin iobeleus. Traditionally, it was thought that the English term Jubilee derives from the Hebrew term yobel (via Latin ), which in turn derives from yobhel, meaning ram; the Jubilee year was announced by a blast on a shofar, an instrument made from a ram's horn, during that year's Yom Kippur. An alternative etymology notes that the Latin verb iūbilō, "shout for joy," predates the Vulgate, and proposes that instead the Latin jubilo (meaning shout), as well as Middle Irish ilach (victory cry), New English yowl, and Ancient Greek iuzo (ἰύζω: shout), derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *yu- (shout for joy). In this theory, the Hebrew term for "jubilee" is a borrowing from neighboring Indo-European languages, rather than deriving from another Hebrew word. states: Ancient Near Eastern societies regularly declared noncommercial debts void, typically at the coronation of a new king or at the king’s order. Biblical scholars once argued that the Jubilee was an obvious development of the Sabbatical year. Rather than waiting for the 50th or 49th year, the Deuteronomic Code requires that Hebrew slaves be liberated during their 7th year of service, as does the Covenant Code, which some textual scholars regard as pre-dating the Holiness code; the Book of Ezekiel, which some textual scholars also regard as earlier than the Holiness Code, refers to a year of liberty (שנת דרור), during which property is returned to the original owner (or their heirs), (earlier written mentioning in Sum: ama-gi, ama-ar-gi, 'return to the mother') but the word דרור is used by Jeremiah to describe the release of slaves during the Sabbatical year, which various scholars take to imply that Ezekiel must have been referring to the sabbatical year. Scholars suspect that the transfer of these regulations to 49th or 50th year was a deliberate attempt to parallel the fact that Shavuot is 50 days after Passover, and follows seven weeks of harvest; this parallel is regarded as significant in Kabbalah. According to the documentary hypothesis, originally proposed by Julius Wellhausen, the Biblical chapters that contain the Jubilee and Sabbatical-year legislation (chapters 25 and 27 of Leviticus) were part of the so-called "P" or Priestly Code that Wellhausen believed represented the last stage in the development of Israel's religion. Wellhausen dated those chapters to a late exilic or post-exilic period though many modern proponents of the Documentary Hypothesis have arrived at different datings. Wellhausen's theory that the Jubilee and Sabbatical-year legislation was written in the exilic or post-exilic period, specifically after the time of Ezekiel, has always been challenged by scholars who have maintained the traditional position of Judaism and Christianity for the Mosaic authorship of Leviticus. Recently, however, the theories of Wellhausen and others who date the Jubilee and Sabbatical-year legislation to the exilic period or later have also been challenged by scholars who generally do not have a conservative view of the Bible. Yehezekel Kaufmann has argued that the book of Ezekiel quotes from the Sabbatical and Jubilee legislation of the Book of Leviticus, which must have been in existence before Ezekiel's writings. This argument has been expanded by Risa Levitt Kohn. Kohn examined in detail the 97 terms and phrases that are shared between Ezekiel and the Priestly Code. She concludes: John Bergsma provides a further argument against an exilic or post-exilic date for the codifying of the Jubilee and Sabbatical-year legislation, saying that the Sitz im Leben (life situation) of the exilic or post-exilic period is not at all addressed by this legislation. Bergsma therefore points out the incongruity of Wellhausen's ascribing an exilic or post-exilic date to the Jubilee and Sabbatical-year legislation, since this would conflict with the Sitz im Leben of Israel during, and after, the exile. In addition, Bergsma shows that the problem that this legislation was addressing was a problem recognized by the kings of Babylon in the second millennium BC, which naturally suggests the possibility of a much earlier date of codification. These Babylonian kings (to whom could be added Ammi-Saduqa) occasionally issued decrees for the cancellation of debts and/or the return of the people to the lands they had sold. Such "clean slate" decrees were intended to redress the tendency of debtors, in ancient societies, to become hopelessly in debt to their creditors, thus accumulating most of the arable land into the control of a wealthy few. The decrees were issued sporadically. Economist Michael Hudson maintains that the Biblical legislation of the Jubilee and Sabbatical years addressed the same problems encountered by these Babylonian kings, but the Biblical formulation of the laws presented a significant advance in justice and the rights of the people. This was due to the "clean slates" now being codified into law, rather than relying on the whim of the king. Furthermore, the regular rhythm of the Sabbatical and Jubilee years meant that everyone would know when the next release was due, thereby giving fairness and equity to both creditor and debtor. Hudson therefore maintains that not only was the Levitical legislation a significant advance over the prior attempts to deal with indebtedness, but this legislation was also eminently practical, in contradiction to many Biblical interpreters who are not economists and who have labeled it "utopian." The biblical regulations concerning the Jubilee year form part of the Holiness code, which appears in the Torah as part of the collections of laws given on Mount Sinai or Mount Horeb. According to these regulations, the Jubilee was to be sounded once 49 years had been counted, raising an ambiguity over whether the Jubilee was within the 49th year, or followed it as an intercalation in the 7-year sabbatical cycles; scholars and classical rabbinical sources are divided on the question. The biblical requirement is that the Jubilee year was to be treated like a Sabbatical year, with the land lying fallow, but also required the compulsory return of all property to its original owners or their heirs, except the houses of laymen within walled cities, in addition to the manumission of all Israelite indentured servants. The biblical regulations state that the land was to rest a "Sabbath" when the Children of Israel came to the land God was giving them Israel. The Seder Olam Rabbah (second century AD), stated that this verse meant that the counting was not to start until after the Israelites had gained control of Canaan, which the Seder Olam, based upon received tradition, placed at 14 years after their entry into the land. This interpretation has been largely adopted in later rabbinic scholarship. One reason for this interpretation of the Levitical text was that if counting started before the land was completely conquered, it would require the Israelites to return the land to the Canaanites within 50 years; similar nationalistic concerns about the impact of the Jubilee on land ownership have been raised by Zionist settlers. From a legal point of view, the Jubilee law effectively banned sale of land as fee simple, and instead land could only be leased for no more than 50 years. The biblical regulations go on to specify that the price of land had to be proportional to how many years remained before the Jubilee, with land being cheaper the closer it is to the Jubilee. Since the 49th year was already a sabbatical year, the land was required to be left fallow during it, but if the 50th year also had to be kept fallow, as the Jubilee, then no new crops would be available for two years, and only the summer fruits would be available for the following year, creating a much greater risk of starvation overall; Judah the Prince contended that the jubilee year was identical with the sabbatical 49th year. However, the majority of classical rabbis believed that the biblical phrase hallow the fiftieth year, together with the biblical promise that there would be three years worth of fruit in the sixth year, implies that the jubilee year was the 50th year. The opinion of the Geonim, and generally of later authorities, was that prior to the Babylonian captivity the Jubilee was the intercalation of the 50th year, but after the captivity ended the Jubilee was essentially ignored, except for the blast of the shofar, and coincided with the sabbatical 49th year; the reason was that the Jubilee was only to be observed when the Jews controlled all of Canaan, including the territories of Reuben and Gad and the eastern half-tribe of Manasseh. The length of the Jubilee cycle continues to be of interest to modern scholarship, as does the question of the practicality of the legislation, and whether it was ever put into effect on a nationwide basis. Regarding the length of the cycle, three significant scholarly studies devoted to the Jubilee and Sabbatical years agree that it was 49 years, while disagreeing somewhat on the interpretation of the other issues involved. These major studies were those of Benedict Zuckermann, Robert North, and Jean-François Lefebvre. The reasons given by these authors to support a 49-year cycle are both textual (examining all relevant Biblical texts) and practical. Calendrical document 4Q319 from the Dead Sea Scrolls "represents a calendrical system based on the weekly rotation of the twenty- four priestly courses during a six-year period and constructed into six consecutive Jubilees, i.e. 294 years.". An example of the textual argument is given by North in his comparison of with . The first passage establishes the timing, in days, for the Festival of Weeks (Shavuot), while the second prescribes the timing, in years, for the Jubilee. In the first passage, the start of counting for the Festival of Weeks is said to be "the day after the Sabbath" (mimaharat ha-shabat, ), and is to end "the day after the seventh Sabbath" (mimaharat ha-shabat ha-sheviyit, ). These seven weeks would constitute 49 days in most modern methods of reckoning. Nevertheless, verse 16 says that they are to be reckoned as 50 days. This method of reckoning (sometimes called "inclusive numbering") is fairly common in Scripture; for example, the Feast of Tabernacles is to last for seven days (), but the last day is called the eighth day (v. 36). North found this comparison between Leviticus 23 (Feast of Weeks) and Leviticus 25 (Jubilees) to be "the strongest possible support for the forty-ninth year" as the Jubilee year. His conclusion that the Jubilee was identical with the seventh Sabbatical year was followed by Lefebvre, for this as well as additional reasons. The consideration that the Jubilee was identical with the seventh Sabbatical year solves the various practical problems, as also addressed by these authors. If the Jubilee were separate from, and following the seventh Sabbatical year, then there would be two fallow years in succession. Lefebvre points out, however, that there is no support in Scripture for two voluntary fallow years in succession, even though some have misinterpreted as if this refers to a Jubilee year following a Sabbatical year, which is not the sense of the passage. Lefebvre shows that this cannot be the case because planting is mentioned for the eighth year; it is the year after a Sabbath, a year in which planting and harvesting resume. Another practical problem that would occur if the Jubilee cycle were 50 years is that, after the first cycle, the Jubilee and Sabbatical cycles would be out of phase unless the seventh Sabbatical cycle was stretched to eight years. But Scripture gives no instructions for making such an adjustment. Instead, it is assumed that the two cycles will always be in phase so that the shofar can be sounded in the seventh year of the seventh Sabbatical cycle. In contrast, the consideration that the Jubilee year is an intercalated year separate and distinct from the Sabbatical cycles resolves an issue of the requirement for observation of the Torah of both and . For in the former passage, the command is that sowing and pruning must occur for 6 consecutive years, whereas in the latter, the command is to neither sow, nor reap nor gather from untended vines in the Jubilee year. If the Jubilee year is the 50th year as confirmed by , it must necessarily be a separate year from the first 49 years comprising the whole of the first seven Sabbatical cycles, therefore it cannot be identical with the seventh Sabbatical year as 49 does not equal 50. Were the Jubilee year to be considered identical with year 1 of the following Sabbatical cycle, the requirement of observing 6 consecutive years of sowing and pruning could not be observed as only 5 years would therefore be available for sowing and reaping, not the specified six as requires. A lot of the misunderstanding is from not carefully reading the original Hebrew text. There was no requirement in the Law to observe 6 consecutive years of sowing. The command stated that you may sow for 6 years but in the 7th year the land must observe a sabbath rest. It would be a double negative to command the land to be sowed for 6 years in cases of famine and war. Although not cited by these authors, two historical arguments also argue for a 49-year cycle. The first is that the Samaritans celebrated a 49-year cycle. Although the Samaritans stopped counting for the Jubilee some hundreds of years ago, according to a recent report an effort is underway to determine the date when counting ceased in order to resume. The counting will again be according to a 49-year cycle. A second historical argument has been presented to the effect that the two instances of a Jubilee mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud (tractates Arakin 12a and Megillah 14b) appear to be proper historical remembrances, because the known calculation methods of rabbinic scholarship were incapable of correctly calculating the dates of the Jubilees mentioned. Rabbinic (Talmudic) scholarship always assumed non-accession reckoning for kings, whereby the first partial year of a king was double-counted both for him and as the last year of the deceased king. This reckoning would give 47 years from the Jubilee mentioned in the 18th year of Josiah (Megillah 14b) to the Jubilee that took place 14 years after Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians (Arakin 12a), whereas the correct difference was 49 years (623 BC to 574 BC). This has been presented as additional evidence that the cycle was 49 years, and further that the cycles were being measured until the last Jubilee in the days of Ezekiel, when the stipulations of the Jubilee year, long neglected except in the counting of the priests, could no longer be observed because the people were captive in a foreign land. The Seder Olam Rabbah recognized the importance of the Jubilee and Sabbatical cycles as a long-term calendrical system, and attempted at various places to fit the Sabbatical and Jubilee years into its chronological scheme. As mentioned above, the Seder Olam put forth the idea that the counting for these cycles was deferred until 14 years after entry into the land. The reasons for this are given in Seder Olam chapter 11. In Joshua chapter 14, Caleb mentions that he was 40 years old when he was sent out as a spy in the second year in the wilderness, and his present age was 85 , which meant he received his inheritance seven years after entering Canaan. Rabbi Jose assumed that everyone else received their inheritance when Caleb did, or had already received it, so that the allotment of the land to the tribes was finished at this time. Because the division of the land took seven years, the conquest that followed must also have taken seven years. "One has to say that 14 years Israel spent at Gilgal, seven when they were conquering and seven when they were distributing." Then, after putting up the Tabernacle at Shiloh, "At that moment, they started to count years for tithes, Sabbatical years, and Jubilee years." Another explanation has been offered for Rabbi Jose's postponement of counting until 14 years had elapsed. In this same chapter 11 of the Seder Olam, Rabbi Jose stated (for unknown reasons) that Israel's time in its land must have lasted an integral number of Jubilee periods. If this were true, one of those periods should have ended at the beginning of the exile in 587 BC. Yet Rabbi Jose also believed that Ezekiel 40:1 marked the beginning of the seventeenth Jubilee, and this was 14 years after the city fell. In other words, the Jubilee came 14 years too late, according to the idea that the time in the land must comprise an integral number of Jubilee cycles. Rodger Young proposes that the knowledge of when a genuine Jubilee was due was the real reason for the supposition of a delay before the start of counting: The reason for the fourteen-year delay in Seder ‘Olam 11 is that Rabbi Yose (primary author of the Seder ‘Olam) had the idée fixe that the total time that Israel spent in its land must come out to an exact number of Jubilee cycles. If that had been the case, then we should have expected that 587 BC, when the exile began, would have been at the end of a Jubilee period. However, Rabbi Yose cited Ezek 40:1 as designating the time of the seventeenth Jubilee, and since he knew this was fourteen years after the city fell, he presumed that counting had been delayed for fourteen years so that he could account for the fourteen years between the fall of the city and the observance of the seventeenth Jubilee. He also mentioned the previous Jubilee, in the time of Josiah. As much as he would have liked to put these last two Jubilees fourteen years earlier in order to be consistent with his idée fixe, Rabbi Yose could not do it because he knew these were historical dates, not dates that came from his own calculation. There is, of course, an alternative account of when counting started: at the entry into the land. This follows from a straightforward reading of the relevant text in Leviticus: The then spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai, saying, "Speak to the sons of Israel, and say to them, 'When you come into the land which I shall give you, then the land shall have a sabbath to the . Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its crop, but during the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath rest, a sabbath to the ... You are also to count off seven sabbaths of years for yourself, seven times seven years, so that you have the time of the seven sabbaths of years, namely, forty-nine years. You shall then sound a ram's horn abroad on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the day of atonement you shall sound a horn all through your land. You shall thus consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim a release through the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you (Leviticus 25:1–4, 8–10, NASB). The Talmud states that the people of Israel counted 17 Jubilees from the time they entered the Land of Canaan until their exile at the destruction of the First Temple. If counting is measured back 17 cycles from Ezekiel's Jubilee that began in Tishri of 574 BC, based on Thiele's computation, the first year of the first cycle would have been 1406 BC. According to the religious calendar that started the year in Nisan, and in accordance with Joshua 5:10 that places the entry in the land in Nisan, Nisan of 1406 BC is the month and year when counting started. But 1406 BC is the year of entry into the land that is traditionally derived by another method, namely taking Thiele's date of 931/930 BC for the start of the divided kingdom after Solomon's death, in conjunction with 1 Kings 6:1 (Solomon's fourth year was 480th year of Exodus- era), to derive the date of the Exodus in 1446 BC. The method of determining the date of the Exodus and entry into Canaan from the Jubilee cycles is independent of the method of deriving these dates from 1 Kings 6:1, yet the two methods agree. A different approach is taken in the Talmud (Arakhin 12a–b) which, like Seder Olam, assigns only 410 years to the First Temple, preceded by 480 years from the exodus to its building by Solomon (I Kings 6:1) in 832 BC, and its destruction in 422 BC. The Talmud (Arakhin 12b) accounts for 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, and 7 years taken to conquer the land of Canaan and 7 years to divide the land among the tribes, putting the first Jubilee cycle precisely 54 years after the exodus (i.e. in 1258 BC), and saying that the people of Israel counted 17 Jubilees from the time they entered the Land of Canaan until their departure, and that the last Jubilee occurred 14 years after the First Temple's destruction (i.e. in 408 BC). Talmudic exegete, Rashi, explains in the Talmud (Arakhin 12b) that the year of the First Temple's destruction (422 BC) was actually the 36th year in the Jubilee cycle, and that fourteen years later (408 BC) would have been the next Jubilee. This time span, taken together (from 1258 BC to 408 BC), accrues to 850 years, during which time the people counted seventeen Jubilees. The historian Josephus, however, had a different tradition, writing in his work Antiquities (10.8.5) that the First Temple stood 470 years, which would, of necessity, offset the number of Jubilee cycles. Moreover, Josephus' reckoning of the timeline of events does not always align with Seder Olam, the book on which rabbinic tradition is so dependent. The discrepancies between Josephus and Seder Olam have led some scholars to think that the dates prescribed in Seder Olam are only approximations, as Josephus brings down supportive evidence by making use of two basic epochs, the Olympiad era counting and in the Seleucid era counting, drawn principally from other writers, to verify the historicity of many of these events. In spite of their differences in the general span of years, there is not necessarily disagreement between them when Josephus refers to dates of Sabbatical years during the Second Temple period, as the time- frame for these dates overlap those mentioned in Seder Olam (chapter 30) for the Grecian, Hasmonean, and Herodian periods. The text of the Book of Leviticus argues that the Jubilee existed because the land was the possession of Yahweh, and its current occupiers were merely aliens or tenants, and therefore the land should not be sold forever. Midrashic sources argue that the Jubilee was created to preserve the original division of land between the Israelite tribes, as evidenced by the rabbinical tradition that the Jubilee should not be imposed until the Israelites were in control of Canaan. Leviticus also states that the Israelites were the servants of Yahweh, which classical rabbis took as justification for the manumission of Israelite slaves at the Jubilee, using the argument that no man should have two masters, and thus, as the servants of Yahweh, the Israelites should not also be the servants of men. A further theological insight afforded by the Jubilee cycles is explained in Andrew Steinmann's monograph on Biblical chronology. Steinmann has an extended discussion of the evidence for various pre-exilic Sabbatical years, and how they all occurred an integral number of seven-year periods before Ezekiel’s Jubilee (see the Historical Sabbatical Years article). He also notes that the date of the entry into the land implied by Ezekiel's Jubilee (the seventeenth) is in exact agreement with the date calculated from 1 Kings 6:1 and Joshua 5:6. These chronological considerations are usually neglected in discussions of the legislation for the Jubilee and Sabbatical years, but Steinmann stresses their theological importance as follows: Bank holiday, Jewish holidays, Jubilee in the Catholic Church, Sed festival The economic and social significance of the Sabbath and Sabbatical years by Manfred Davidmann, When is the Jubilee Year?, Model of land economy with Jubilee The Book of Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament, is Judaism's account of the creation of the world and the origins of the Jewish people. It is divisible into two parts, the primeval history (chapters 1–11) and the ancestral history (chapters 12–50). The primeval history sets out the author's (or authors') concepts of the nature of the deity and of humankind's relationship with its maker: God creates a world which is good and fit for mankind, but when man corrupts it with sin God decides to destroy his creation, saving only the righteous Noah to reestablish the relationship between man and God. The ancestral history (chapters 12–50) tells of the prehistory of Israel, God's chosen people. At God's command Noah's descendant Abraham journeys from his home into the God-given land of Canaan, where he dwells as a sojourner, as does his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob. Jacob's name is changed to Israel, and through the agency of his son Joseph, the children of Israel descend into Egypt, 70 people in all with their households, and God promises them a future of greatness. Genesis ends with Israel in Egypt, ready for the coming of Moses and the Exodus. The narrative is punctuated by a series of covenants with God, successively narrowing in scope from all mankind (the covenant with Noah) to a special relationship with one people alone (Abraham and his descendants through Isaac and Jacob). In Judaism, the theological importance of Genesis centers on the covenants linking God to his chosen people and the people to the Promised Land. Christianity has interpreted Genesis as the prefiguration of certain cardinal Christian beliefs, primarily the need for salvation (the hope or assurance of all Christians) and the redemptive act of Christ on the Cross as the fulfillment of covenant promises as the Son of God. Tradition credits Moses as the author of Genesis, as well as the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and most of Deuteronomy, but modern scholars increasingly see them as a product of the 6th and 5th centuries BC. Genesis appears to be structured around the recurring phrase elleh toledot, meaning "these are the generations," with the first use of the phrase referring to the "generations of heaven and earth" and the remainder marking individuals—Noah, the "sons of Noah", Shem, etc., down to Jacob. It is not clear, however, what this meant to the original authors, and most modern commentators divide it into two parts based on subject matter, a "primeval history" (chapters 1–11) and a "patriarchal history" (chapters 12–50). While the first is far shorter than the second, it sets out the basic themes and provides an interpretive key for understanding the entire book. The "primeval history" has a symmetrical structure hinging on chapters 6–9, the flood story, with the events before the flood mirrored by the events after; the "ancestral history" is structured around the three patriarchs Abraham, Jacob and Joseph. (The stories of Isaac do not make up a coherent cycle of stories and function as a bridge between the cycles of Abraham and Jacob.) God creates the world in six days and consecrates the seventh as a day of rest. God creates the first humans Adam and Eve and all the animals in the Garden of Eden but instructs them not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. A talking serpent portrayed as a deceptive creature or trickster, entices Eve into eating it against God's wishes, and she entices Adam, whereupon God throws them out and curses them—Adam to getting what he needs only by sweat and work, and Eve to giving birth in pain. This is interpreted by Christians as the fall of humanity. Eve bears two sons, Cain and Abel. Cain kills Abel after God accepts Abel's offering but not Cain's. God then curses Cain. Eve bears another son, Seth, to take Abel's place. After many generations of Adam have passed from the lines of Cain and Seth, the world becomes corrupted by human sin and Nephilim, and God determines to wipe out humanity. First, he instructs the righteous Noah and his family to build an ark and put examples of all the animals on it, seven pairs of every clean animal and one pair of every unclean. Then God sends a great flood to wipe out the rest of the world. When the waters recede, God promises he will never destroy the world with water again, using the rainbow as a symbol of his promise. God sees mankind cooperating to build a great tower city, the Tower of Babel, and divides humanity with many languages and sets them apart with confusion. God instructs Abram to travel from his home in Mesopotamia to the land of Canaan. There, God makes a covenant with Abram, promising that his descendants shall be as numerous as the stars, but that people will suffer oppression in a foreign land for four hundred years, after which they will inherit the land "from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates". Abram's name is changed to Abraham and that of his wife Sarai to Sarah, and circumcision of all males is instituted as the sign of the covenant. Due to her old age, Sarah tells Abraham to take her Egyptian handmaiden, Hagar, as a second wife. Through Hagar, Abraham fathers Ishmael. God resolves to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for the sins of their people. Abraham protests and gets God to agree not to destroy the cities for the sake of ten righteous men. Angels save Abraham's nephew Lot and his family, but his wife looks back on the destruction against their command and turns into a pillar of salt. Lot's daughters, concerned that they are fugitives who will never find husbands, get him drunk to become pregnant by him, and give birth to the ancestors of the Moabites and Ammonites. Abraham and Sarah go to the Philistine town of Gerar, pretending to be brother and sister (they are half-siblings). The King of Gerar takes Sarah for his wife, but God warns him to return her, and he obeys. God sends Sarah a son whom she will name Isaac; through him will be the establishment of the covenant. Sarah drives Ishmael and his mother Hagar out into the wilderness, but God saves them and promises to make Ishmael a great nation. God tests Abraham by demanding that he sacrifice Isaac. As Abraham is about to lay the knife upon his son, God restrains him, promising him numberless descendants. On the death of Sarah, Abraham purchases Machpelah (believed to be modern Hebron) for a family tomb and sends his servant to Mesopotamia to find among his relations a wife for Isaac; after proving herself, Rebekah becomes Isaac's betrothed. Keturah, Abraham's other wife, births more children, among whose descendants are the Midianites. Abraham dies at a prosperous old age and his family lays him to rest in Hebron. Isaac's wife Rebecca gives birth to the twins Esau, father of the Edomites, and Jacob. Through deception, Jacob becomes the heir instead of Esau and gains his father's blessing. He flees to his uncle where he prospers and earns his two wives, Rachel and Leah. Jacob's name is changed to Israel, and by his wives and their handmaidens he has twelve sons, the ancestors of the twelve tribes of the Children of Israel, and a daughter, Dinah. Joseph, Jacob's favorite son, makes his brothers jealous and they sell him into slavery in Egypt. Joseph prospers, after hardship, with God's guidance of interpreting Pharaoh's dream of upcoming famine. He is then reunited with his father and brothers, who fail to recognize him, and plead for food. After much manipulation, he reveals himself and lets them and their households into Egypt, where Pharaoh assigns to them the land of Goshen. Jacob calls his sons to his bedside and reveals their future before he dies. Joseph lives to an old age and exhorts his brethren, if God should lead them out of the country, to take his bones with them. Genesis takes its Hebrew title from the first word of the first sentence, Bereshit, meaning "In [the] beginning [of]"; in the Greek Septuagint it was called Genesis, from the phrase "the generations of heaven and earth". There are four major textual witnesses to the book: the Masoretic Text, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Septuagint, and fragments of Genesis found at Qumran. The Qumran group provides the oldest manuscripts but covers only a small proportion of the book; in general, the Masoretic Text is well preserved and reliable, but there are many individual instances where the other versions preserve a superior reading. For much of the 20th century most scholars agreed that the five books of the Pentateuch—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy—came from four sources, the Yahwist, the Elohist, the Deuteronomist and the Priestly source, each telling the same basic story, and joined together by various editors. Since the 1970s there has been a revolution leading scholars to view the Elohist source as no more than a variation on the Yahwist, and the Priestly source as a body of revisions and expansions to the Yahwist (or "non- Priestly") material. (The Deuteronomistic source does not appear in Genesis.) Scholars use examples of repeated and duplicate stories to identify the separate sources. In Genesis these include three different accounts of a Patriarch claiming that his wife was his sister, the two creation stories, and the two versions of Abraham sending Hagar and Ishmael into the desert. This leaves the question of when these works were created. Scholars in the first half of the 20th century came to the conclusion that the Yahwist is a product of the monarchic period, specifically at the court of Solomon, 10th century BC, and the Priestly work in the middle of the 5th century BC (with claims that the author is Ezra), but more recent thinking is that the Yahwist is from either just before or during the Babylonian exile of the 6th century BC, and the Priestly final edition was made late in the Exilic period or soon after. As for why the book was created, a theory which has gained considerable interest, although still controversial is "Persian imperial authorisation". This proposes that the Persians of the Achaemenid Empire, after their conquest of Babylon in 539 BC, agreed to grant Jerusalem a large measure of local autonomy within the empire, but required the local authorities to produce a single law code accepted by the entire community. The two powerful groups making up the community—the priestly families who controlled the Temple and who traced their origin to Moses and the wilderness wanderings, and the major landowning families who made up the "elders" and who traced their own origins to Abraham, who had "given" them the land—were in conflict over many issues, and each had its own "history of origins", but the Persian promise of greatly increased local autonomy for all provided a powerful incentive to cooperate in producing a single text. Genesis is perhaps best seen as an example of a creation myth, a type of literature telling of the first appearance of humans, the stories of ancestors and heroes, and the origins of culture, cities and so forth. The most notable examples are found in the work of Greek historians of the 6th century BC: their intention was to connect notable families of their own day to a distant and heroic past, and in doing so they did not distinguish between myth, legend, and facts. Professor Jean-Louis Ska of the Pontifical Biblical Institute calls the basic rule of the antiquarian historian the "law of conservation": everything old is valuable, nothing is eliminated. Ska also points out the purpose behind such antiquarian histories: antiquity is needed to prove the worth of Israel's traditions to the nations (the neighbours of the Jews in early Persian Palestine), and to reconcile and unite the various factions within Israel itself. In 1978 David Clines published his influential The Theme of the Pentateuch – influential because he was one of the first to take up the question of the theme of the entire five books. Clines' conclusion was that the overall theme is "the partial fulfillment – which implies also the partial nonfulfillment – of the promise to or blessing of the Patriarchs". (By calling the fulfillment "partial" Clines was drawing attention to the fact that at the end of Deuteronomy the people are still outside Canaan). The patriarchs, or ancestors, are Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, with their wives (Joseph is normally excluded). Since the name YHWH had not been revealed to them, they worshipped El in his various manifestations. (It is, however, worth noting that in the Jahwist source the patriarchs refer to deity by the name YHWH, for example in Genesis 15.) Through the patriarchs God announces the election of Israel, meaning that he has chosen Israel to be his special people and committed himself to their future. God tells the patriarchs that he will be faithful to their descendants (i.e. to Israel), and Israel is expected to have faith in God and his promise. ("Faith" in the context of Genesis and the Hebrew Bible means agreement to the promissory relationship, not a body of belief). The promise itself has three parts: offspring, blessings, and land. The fulfilment of the promise to each patriarch depends on having a male heir, and the story is constantly complicated by the fact that each prospective mother – Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel – is barren. The ancestors, however, retain their faith in God and God in each case gives a son – in Jacob's case, twelve sons, the foundation of the chosen Israelites. Each succeeding generation of the three promises attains a more rich fulfillment, until through Joseph "all the world" attains salvation from famine, and by bringing the children of Israel down to Egypt he becomes the means through which the promise can be fulfilled. Scholars generally agree that the theme of divine promise unites the patriarchal cycles, but many would dispute the efficacy of trying to examine Genesis' theology by pursuing a single overarching theme, instead citing as more productive the analysis of the Abraham cycle, the Jacob cycle, and the Joseph cycle, and the Yahwist and Priestly sources. The problem lies in finding a way to unite the patriarchal theme of divine promise to the stories of Genesis 1–11 (the primeval history) with their theme of God's forgiveness in the face of man's evil nature. One solution is to see the patriarchal stories as resulting from God's decision not to remain alienated from mankind: God creates the world and mankind, mankind rebels, and God "elects" (chooses) Abraham. To this basic plot (which comes from the Yahwist) the Priestly source has added a series of covenants dividing history into stages, each with its own distinctive "sign". The first covenant is between God and all living creatures, and is marked by the sign of the rainbow; the second is with the descendants of Abraham (Ishmaelites and others as well as Israelites), and its sign is circumcision; and the last, which does not appear until the book of Exodus, is with Israel alone, and its sign is Sabbath. A great leader mediates each covenant (Noah, Abraham, Moses), and at each stage God progressively reveals himself by his name (Elohim with Noah, El Shaddai with Abraham, Yahweh with Moses). Dating the Bible, Enûma Eliš, Genesis creation narrative, Historicity of the Bible, Mosaic authorship, Paradise Lost, Protevangelium, Wife–sister narratives in the Book of Genesis Fretheim, Terence E. "The Book of Genesis." In The New Interpreter's Bible. Edited by Leander E. Keck, vol. 1, pp. 319–674. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994. ., Hirsch, Samson Raphael. The Pentateuch: Genesis. Translated by Isaac Levy. Judaica Press, 2nd edition 1999. . Originally published as Der Pentateuch uebersetzt und erklaert Frankfurt, 1867–1878., Kass, Leon R. The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis. New York: Free Press, 2003. ., Plaut, Gunther. The Torah: A Modern Commentary (1981),, Sarna, Nahum M. The JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989. ., Speiser, E.A. Genesis: Introduction, Translation, and Notes. New York: Anchor Bible, 1964. . Book of Genesis Hebrew Transliteration, Book of Genesis illustrated, Genesis Reading Room (Tyndale Seminary): online commentaries and monographs on Genesis., Bereshit with commentary in Hebrew, בראשית Bereishit – Genesis (Hebrew – English at Mechon-Mamre.org), Genesis at Mechon-Mamre (Jewish Publication Society translation), Various versions, Genesis (The Living Torah) Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan's translation and commentary at Ort.org, Genesis (Judaica Press) at Chabad.org, Young's Literal Translation (YLT), New International Version (NIV), Revised Standard Version (RSV), Westminster-Leningrad codex, Aleppo Codex, Book of Genesis in Bible Book, Genesis in Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Greek, Latin, and English – The critical text of the Book of Genesis in Hebrew with ancient versions (Masoretic, Samaritan Pentateuch, Samaritan Targum, Targum Onkelos, Peshitta, Septuagint, Vetus Latina, Vulgate, Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion) and English translation for each version in parallel.

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Army Wives is an American drama television series that followed the lives of four army wives, one army husband, and their families. The series premiered on Lifetime on June 3, 2007 and ran for seven seasons, ending on June 9, 2013. The show had the largest series premiere in Lifetime's 23-year history, and the largest viewership in the 10:00 pm to 11:00 pm time slot since December 2007 for Lifetime. It received favorable reviews and several award nominations, and won five ASCAP Awards and one Gracie Allen Award. On September 21, 2012, the show was picked up for a thirteen-episode seventh season to air in 2013. In November 2012, it was confirmed that season 6 main cast members Catherine Bell, Wendy Davis, Terry Serpico, Brian McNamara, Kelli Williams, Alyssa Diaz, and Joseph Julian Soria would return as regulars. Kim Delaney's character, who did not appear in the final episodes of the sixth season, was written out. Season seven premiered in the United States on March 10, 2013, at 9 pm Eastern on Lifetime, and concluded on June 9, 2013. On September 24, 2013, Lifetime canceled the series after seven seasons. The network confirmed a two-hour retrospective special with cast members to celebrate the series that aired on March 16, 2014. Based on the non-fiction book originally titled Under the Sabers: The Unwritten Code of Army Wives, by Tanya Biank, the series is set at fictional Fort Marshall, at the old Charleston Naval Base, in North Charleston, South Carolina, home to the also fictional 23rd Airborne Division, a component unit of the XVII Airborne Corps. The show itself is filmed in various locations such as the Charleston Air Force Base (now Charleston Field) and the sound stage off Dorchester Road in the City of North Charleston. Some scenes have been shot in and around the City of Charleston. In Season 5 the 23rd is disbanded and the 32nd Airborne Division becomes the new resident unit, having moved to Fort Marshall from the fictional Fort Hope. The 23rd Airborne Division, XVII Airborne Corps and Fort Marshall are presumably based on the actual 82nd Airborne Division, XVIII Airborne Corps based at Fort Bragg, home of the airborne divisions and the United States Army Special Operations Command. In Season 7 Fort Marshall was merged with an Air Force base, mirroring the mergers of several Army posts with nearby Air Force bases as a result of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission. Mercer Army Medical Center is the fictional hospital on post where some of the characters worked. In the pilot episode of Army Wives, "A Tribe is Born", Roxy (Sally Pressman) accepts the marriage proposal of Private First Class Trevor LeBlanc (Drew Fuller) after dating for less than a week, and moves with her two children to his Army post. Floundering in her new life as an Army wife, she takes a job as a bartender at a local joint known for being a Jody bar (where civilian men go to hit on enlisted men's wives). While on the post, Roxy meets Claudia Joy Holden (Kim Delaney), who believes that her husband Col. Michael Holden (Brian McNamara) recently missed out on a promotion because of base politics. Another Army wife, Pamela Moran (Brigid Brannagh), is pregnant with twins; she is secretly acting as a surrogate to get her family out of debt. Pamela's husband Chase (Jeremy Davidson) is a non-commissioned officer assigned to the highly secretive and frequently deployed special operations unit Delta Force. Meanwhile, psychiatrist Roland Burton (Sterling K. Brown) is trying to reconnect with his wife, Lieutenant Colonel Joan Burton (Wendy Davis), who has just returned from Afghanistan. Denise Sherwood (Catherine Bell), a long-time friend of Claudia Joy, is dealing with her son Jeremy's anger issues, and her strict husband, Major Frank Sherwood (Terry Serpico), is about to be deployed. The unlikely group bonds when Pamela unexpectedly goes into labor at Claudia Joy's wives' tea party, and subsequently gives birth on the pool table in the bar where Roxy works. Not wanting everyone to know her family's dire financial situation, Pamela relies on these new friends to keep her surrogacy from being exposed. As the first season progresses, the four women and Roland all become close friends. Along with their spouses and other characters they face issues such as deployments, abuse, hostage situations, adultery, post-traumatic stress disorder, death and loss of friends and loved ones in combat, homophobia in the military, financial problems, and alcohol and prescription drug addiction. Though the show is based on the book of the same name, and some of the characters echo their book counterparts, significant differences exist. For example, in the book, Andrea Lynn Cory (the basis of Claudia Joy) loses her husband in a helicopter crash during a mission to find the remains of soldiers in Vietnam. The characters listed have appeared in multiple seasons, or for story arcs lasting at least three episodes: John White, Jr. as Finn (Seasons 1-6), Luke Bartelme as TJ (Seasons 1-4), Jake Johnson as Lucas (Seasons 1-6), Chloe J. Taylor as Katie (Seasons 1-6), Richard Bryant as Jeremy Sherwood (Seasons 1-6), Gigi Rice as Marda Brooks (Seasons 1, 2, 4 & 6), Melissa Ponzio as Angie (Seasons 1-3), Rhoda Griffis as Lenore Baker Ludwig (Seasons 1, 4 & 6), Patricia French as Betty Camden (Seasons 1 & 2), Kate Kneeland as Marilyn Polarski (Season 1), Seamus Dever as Dr. Chris Ferlhingetti (Season 2), Kelly Collins Lintz as Carla Wright (Season 2), Matthew Glave as LTC Evan Connor (Seasons 2 & 3), Mayte Garcia as Jennifer Connor (Seasons 2 & 3), Gavin McCulley as Captain Thomas (Season 3), Linden Ashby as Dr. Dan Seaver (Seasons 3, 6 & 7), Matthew M. Anderson as Soldier (Season 3), Clifton Powell as Terrence Price (Seasons 3 & 4), Javier Carrasquillo as SPC Augusto Giron (Seasons 3-5), Jeff Rose as MAJ Bryce Ogden (Seasons 3-5), Tim Parati as Chief, cook at the Hump Bar (Season 3-7), Antjuan Tobias as PFC Guy Riggs (Seasons 4 & 5), Harry Hamlin as Grant Chandler (Seasons 4 & 5), Lee Tergesen as Officer Clayton Boone (Seasons 4 & 5), Cory Hart as Whit Carter (Season 5), Connor Christie as TJ (Seasons 5-6) McCarrie McCausland as David Burton (Seasons 5-7), Ryan Michelle Bathe as Charlie (Season 6), Harper and Ruby Powell Peterson as Molly (Seasons 6 & 7), Robert John Burke as General Kevin Clarke (Seasons 6 & 7), Adam Boyer as SFC Leon "Ski" Wisniewski (Seasons 6 & 7), Joy Wren and Faith Wren as Sara Elizabeth Burton (Seasons 6 & 7), Kellie Martin as Army Intelligence Captain Nicole Galassini (Season 6), Susan Lucci as Audrey Whitaker (Season 6), Jason Pendergraft as Dr. Blake Hanson (Season 6), Larry Gilliard, Jr. as Marcus Williams (Season 6), Jordan Woods-Robinson as Scott Keller (Season 3), Viki Jeffords as Candace Tyler (Season 1, 6 & 7), Skyler Day as Sophie Clarke (Season 6), Chloe Lanier as Penny Campbell (Seasons 6 & 7), Joshua Henry as Corporal Quincy Montclair (Season 7), Ella Wahlestedt as Caroline Hall (Season 7), Caleb Barwick as Tanner (Season 7), Niles Fitch as Deuce Montclair (Season 7), Kaci Walfall as Nyah (Season 7), Tre Jamison as Gabe (Season 7) Army Wives was created by Katherine Fugate, based on the book Under the Saber: The Unwritten Code of Army Wives by Tanya Biank. Fugate told she received the book from The Mark Gordon Company and first thought it was to be adapted as a movie, since she had mostly written movies during her career. She met with Deborah Spera, the president of The Mark Gordon Company, and pitched a film adaptation of the book, which would begin and end with a murder. They presented the series to ABC and then to Lifetime. Fugate commented on the book: "I read that book, and it was very traumatic and very difficult, but it also opened the gates of a military post. We drive by them all the time, but we don't know what goes on inside". Fugate expressed her desire that the show remain accurate: "It's extremely important that I portray them accurately. I have great admiration for the wives. It's the last untold story, about how they maintain relationships and how they are single mothers much of the time. That story is why I created the series." The cast and crew have visited the army installations at Fort Bragg and Fort Belvoir and talked to army wives. The Department of Defense lent Black Hawk helicopters and humvees used in production. Principal photography takes place in a sound stage, while some outdoor scenes and shots are taken at the former Charleston Naval Shipyard, parts of Charleston Field and in the city itself. Local landmarks prominently featured include the Unitarian Church in Charleston and parts of the city's waterfront. Army Wives was produced by The Mark Gordon Company in association with ABC Studios. In December 2006, Samantha Corbin-Miller was named executive producer/showrunner of the show, which was at the time in development. However, by March 2007, it was announced that she had left the then upcoming series and was replaced by Jeff Melvoin. In August 2007, Dee Johnson took over Army Wives for Melvoin, becoming the third showrunner. She departed in March 2008, and Nick Thiel came aboard. In August 2008, the series' creator Katherine Fugate also left, stating: "With the show [being] such an established hit, now seems like a logical time for me to step away and focus on developing new projects." Melvoin returned in 2009 and was the showrunner from then. Each script was supervised by two advisers from the Army. Additionally Tanya Biank, whose book inspired the series, served as a military consultant on every episode. Lt. Colonel Todd Breassealle was also enlisted to provide insight on the military life. Cast member Brian McNamara (Michael Holden) directed several webisodes and two full episodes: the tenth episode of the fifth season and the eleventh episode of the sixth season. In September 2009, a survey to see which character should get its own spin-off was posted on Lifetime's Army Wives blog; Pamela Moran (Brigid Brannagh) was one of the most-chosen characters. On June 13, 2010, Deadline Hollywood reported that Lifetime was pursuing a spin-off procedural drama television series for Army Wives featuring Brannagh's character, police officer Pamela Moran. It was reported that an episode of the fourth season would serve as a backdoor pilot for the proposed spin-off. The seventeenth episode of the season, titled "Murder in Charleston", served as the backdoor pilot, airing on August 15, 2010. Written by Bruce Zimmerman and T.D. Mitchell, the episode sees Moran teaming up with detective Gina Holt (Gabrielle Union) on a murder related to a case Holt has been working on for the past three years in Atlanta. At the end of the episode, Holt tells Moran she should take a detective's exam and to look for her if she is in Atlanta. In September 2010, however, Lifetime did not pick up the spin-off series. Army Wives holds a score of 65 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on fifteen reviews for the first season. Writing for Cinema Blend, Kelly West found the series positively portrays real army wives through its main characters who are "all strong women with a good sense of the importance of friendship, love and appreciating the time they have with their husbands, who are often being deployed overseas for months or longer." She described the series as "engaging", adding: "As a drama about the bonds of friendship and the importance of family, Army Wives works. Is it a total chick show? Yeah, I’d say so. It gets a bit soapy but overall, it’s well written, the premise is original and the acting is good." New York Post columnist Linda Stasi gave Army Wives three-and-a-half out of four stars, referring to it as a "sexy, smart, compelling series", and also lauded the acting and the writing. The Chicago Tribune praised Lifetime for tackling, through Army Wives, the effects war has on the families "in a surprisingly straightforward manner." Reviewing the premiere, Michelle Hewitson of the New Zealand Herald wrote: "Anything with 'wives' in the title must mean cat fights. Anything with 'Army' in the title must mean some musing on the cost of war." Brian Lowry of Variety was less enthusiastic upon screening the first episodes, describing Army Wives as "a stereotypical sudser that wants to be From Here to Eternity but feels like All My Children: Military Edition." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Rob Owen was negative about the show's storylines as they "leave talented actors in their wake"; he described the storylines as "uninspired" and "unimaginative" and wrote that the show's format evokes the home-front portion of The Unit. The Chicago Tribune called Catherine Bell who "uses her typical subtlety and grace to give an intriguing interior life to Denise Sherwood," and Kim Delaney who portrays Claudia Joy Holden "the best two things about the show" while the newspaper deemed Roxy (Sally Pressman) "the most problematic character" because she does "preposterous and downright stupid things" in the first episodes. On the contrary, Rob Owen found Denise Sherwood and Claudia Joy Holden "the most passive, least interesting characters" and considered Roxy and Trevor (Drew Fuller) "the liveliest couple", adding the show "sparks to life anytime these two are on screen." Michelle Hewitson of the New Zealand Herald described Roxy as "a slapper with a heart of gold". Linda Stasi called Frank Sherwood, portrayed by Terry Serpico, a "rivetingly wonderful character." The second season received promotion from Barack Obama and John McCain who were running for President in 2008. The series opened its third season with 3.5 million viewers and a 2.4 rating among women 18-49, and a 1.0 rating among men 18-49. That made Wives the top- rated drama premiere in Lifetime's key demographic for 2009, though the show declined 22% among total viewers later in the year. The series opened its fifth season with a total of 4.2 million viewers, up 27% from the fourth- season premiere, and it scored a 1.4 rating among women 18-49. The episode is Lifetime’s second most watched original season premiere among the key demos, including Women 18+ (3.0 rating) and Adults 18+ (4.0 rating), behind only the season two debut of Army Wives. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment has released the first seven seasons on DVD. The series began airing in Ireland on Monday, October 15, 2007, on TG4 (in English) and in New Zealand on Thursday, June 19, 2008, on TV2. The series began airing in Australia on December 1, 2008, on Network Ten and currently on pay TV provider Foxtel. South African network M-Net also airs the series; the second season ended on M-Net on Monday, January 5, 2009. Sky Living in the United Kingdom broadcast the first three seasons. However, in February 2012, it was announced that the channel had not purchased the rights for the fourth season. The series also airs in Israel in the winter of 2008 on Yes stars Drama. In the French-speaking parts of Canada, Historia (TV channel) started airing the first season on January 4, 2010. The series was then brought to an associated channel, Series+, and which started airing from season 1 again on November 4, 2010, on a daily basis. The series began airing in the Netherlands in 2008 on NET 5, while the second season aired starting April 26, 2010. In the French-speaking part of Belgium, Wallonia, the first season began airing on RTL-TVI on August 3, 2008 whereas the second season was shown on cable television network BeTV starting from December 26, 2008. The first season and the first 13 episodes of the second were aired in the Arab World on MBC 4 while the third season began on Tuesday, May 11, 2010, on Fox Series. The series began airing in Russia on FOX Life and in Sweden the series is aired on Sjuan. In France, the show retitled American Wives was first broadcast on Monégasque channel TMC on November 27, 2008. His sister channel TF1 started airing the first season on August 13, 2012. The series aired on RTL Television in Croatia, starting on December 10, 2018. Tanya Biank Webcast Author Interview on Army Wives at the Pritzker Military Library on October 22, 2009 Colonel Joan Burton is a fictional character from the Lifetime television series Army Wives, portrayed by Wendy Davis. Joan is a native of the projects of South Side, Chicago. She once stated that her classmates in high school were all either doing drugs or getting pregnant. In Season 6, she tells Roland that she briefly experimented with marijuana in high school and that one of her good friends moved on to heroin and ended up dying of overdose. A coach at her school spotted her athletic potential and track became her outlet and a way out of her impoverished background. She attended college on an Army ROTC scholarship and joined the army. Joan is married to Dr. Roland Burton (Sterling K. Brown), which makes Roland the lone "Army husband" among the main characters. After returning from deployment in Season 1, Joan struggles with PTSD resulting from her experiences while deployed. Her relationship with Roland suffers, and he has a one-night stand with a visiting reporter due to his feelings of alienation and dissatisfaction. He confesses to Joan when she returns from abroad, leading talk of divorce. But the two reconcile following her announcement that she is pregnant and the explosion at the Hump Bar. Season 2 deals with Joan's pregnancy, and her daughter, Sara Elizabeth, is born at the end of the Season. Sara Elizabeth celebrates her first birthday in Season 4. Sara Elizabeth's godparents are Claudia Joy and General Michael Holden. She and Roland adopt David in Season 5 and his adoption is finalized in the Season 6 premiere. In the pilot episode Joan is introduced as a lieutenant colonel who returns from Afghanistan after nearly two years. Her career nearly ends with an Article 15 after a decision she makes causes one of her soldiers with PTSD to hold her husband Roland and Claudia Joy Holden hostage. She considers retiring to avoid a court martial and her career ending in disgrace, but Colonel Michael Holden changes his mind when she voluntarily separates herself from the army for a month to seek treatment at a VA clinic in Vermont for her PTSD. Throughout the first season, she struggles to cope with events that occurred while she was deployed, eventually leaving for a treatment facility. During the Season 1 finale, she discovers she is pregnant. The branch insignia on her service uniform indicates that she is an intelligence officer. She previously served as Michael's G-2 ( When the post commander Brigadier General Baker suffered a brain aneurysm, Michael is promoted to brigadier general and made post commander. He offers her the position as his executive officer (i.e. second in command), which she accepts. During this time, she hides her pregnancy while deciding whether or not to keep the baby. She has a change of heart when at the clinic to terminate her pregnancy and confesses to Roland that the thought of him and how he would make a great father drove her to change her mind about keeping the baby. When she finally confesses that she is pregnant, General Holden hires LTC Evan Connor to cover for her while she is on maternity leave. Connor tries to undermine her with every opportunity and even uses SPC Trevor LeBlanc, who was working as her assistant while recuperating from his injury, to get back at her indirectly. In the Season 2 finale, "Last Minute Changes," General Holden has received a transfer. His replacement, General Rutledge, is old friends with Connor. He tells Joan that Connor will be replacing her as deputy garrison commander and she will be deployed to Iraq. In the first episode of Season 3, she is told she will be leaving with her new unit in three months. While awaiting deployment, Joan continues to have run-ins with Connor. General Holden receives a promotion and is transferred back to the post as division commander. General Rutledge is transferred to the Pentagon while Connor remains on post. After settling back in, Holden asks Joan to take the position of his assistant. However, she declines, having come to the decision that her place is serving as brigade commander in Iraq. She sees herself as a combat officer. Holden is surprised by her decision but also admires it. In the episode "" Connor is pitted against Joan in the annual war games and is soundly defeated even though he made use of one of her staff to leak information to his side. At the end of the episode Connor is transferred to a desk job in logistics at the Pentagon at General Holden's request. Joan's decision to deploy even though a job on post was available causes much tension with Roland, but eventually he comes to accept her career choice. She deploys late in Season 3. In the Season 3 finale, she suffers an eye injury after her convoy comes under attack and she is struck by shrapnel when an RPG hits nearby. She recovers well after surgery in Germany and plans to return to her unit. However, General Holden calls to say he has nominated her for a prestigious temporary assignment with a task force rebuilding schools in Iraq. It's not a battlefield command, but it's an important high-profile assignment and will be good for her career. On arrival she finds the project behind schedule and over budget and employs diplomacy and organizational skills to work with the local contractor and get things back on track. There are some complications, but eventually she hires a new contractor and completes the project successfully. When her division is recalled, she returns to Fort Marshall to await her next combat deployment. Upon her return to Fort Marshall in Season 4, Roland notice small lapses in function, like putting her clothes in the wrong closet and loss of balance. Eventually she is diagnosed with Traumatic Brain Injury likely from the prior RPG attack. She was placed on convalescent leave and did not redeploy with the division. In the Season 5 premiere she was notified of her promotion to the rank of colonel and also received the additional duty of garrison commander. At the end of the series, she makes the decision to retire from the military. The following are the medals and service awards fictionally worn by Colonel Burton. Reviewing the show's second season, Patrick Luce of Monsters and Critics enjoyed Joan's pregnancy storyline, writing: "Davis’ character is so professional military that it was comic gold to see her going through the various changes that come with pregnancy, and the aftermath of having a baby. You can’t help but crack up watching the sleep-deprived Roland and Joan trying to function like before they had a baby. Working Moms praised the character in a 2010 article, defining the character as a working mom balancing a military career with marriage and a newborn baby, and adding, "She defied expectations and became Fort Marshall's first African American female lieutenant colonel." Wendy Davis has also received three NAACP Image Award nominations for her portrayal of Joan Burton under the category of "Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series" in 2008, 2009, and 2011. Joan Burton at Lifetime, Joan Burton on IMDb Lieutenant General Michael James Holden is a fictional character from the Lifetime television series Army Wives, portrayed by Brian McNamara. Michael was married to Claudia Joy Holden for 25 years. They met while Claudia Joy was studying at Harvard University and after Michael had graduated from West Point. He and Claudia Joy have known the Sherwoods for a long time; he and Frank first met while based at Fort Carson and were reunited twice, at Fort Bliss and now Fort Marshall. Their children grew up together and have known each since elementary school. Michael and Claudia Joy have two teenage daughters, Amanda Joy and Emmalin Jane. Amanda was born while he was in Kuwait during the Gulf War. Amanda was killed in a bombing that took place during the first season's finale. Claudia Joy and Michael are the godparents of Joan and Roland Burton's daughter, Sara Elizabeth, and to Frank and Denise Sherwood's daughter Molly Victoria. He enjoys fishing and hunting. At the start of the series Michael held the rank of colonel. He had been on course for a promotion but was passed over due to false allegations of racism. He is promoted to brigadier general and becomes the base commander in the Season 1 finale after General Baker retired following a brain aneurysm. After one year of being Brigadier General, Michael is offered a job at NATO in Brussels. He accepts but returns to Fort Marshall after only a few months due to a "reshuffling" and is instead made commander of the 23rd Airborne Division. He receives his second star at the end of Season 3. When the 23rd was disbanded and Fort Marshall slated for closure, he was to be transferred to The Pentagon as a G-3 in the Army Staff but considered retiring as he did not want to end his career "commanding a desk". He also hoped to let Claudia Joy have her own career as an attorney. However, due to the unexpected turnaround of events, Fort Marshall remained open and he is named commander of the fictional XVII Airborne Corps, the formation to which the 32nd and recently disbanded 23rd Airborne Divisions belong to. In season 6 episode 13, he receives word of his third star and in episode 19 he is seen wearing 3 stars for the first time. The following are the medals and service awards fictionally worn by General Holden. Explaining how he landed the role of Michael Holden, Brian McNamara said: "Apparently Katherine Fugate and April Webster had been looking for [someone to play] the role of Michael for quite a while. I was called in at the Nth hour, and Katherine felt that she'd finally found the actor to do it. I'm so grateful. I love playing Michael." McNamara based his portrayal of the character on his brother, a retired navy captain, and on Major General Tony Cucolo, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division from 2008 to 2011. Reviewing an episode of the second season, Andy Asensio of Zap2it wrote: "Michael is basically the nicest, sweetest guy ever. He's a wonderful guy. But is that necessarily what an Army post needs in a commander? This is a guy who gets really emotional about signing orders for soldiers to deploy, who tears up upon hearing that his second-in-command is pregnant, and who is overwhelmed by regret about the way he handled a recent decision as commander." Michael Holden at Lifetime

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"The Ugly Duckling" (Danish: Den grimme ælling) is a literary fairy tale by Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875). The story tells of a little bird born in a barnyard who suffers abuse from the others around him until, much to his delight (and to the surprise of others), he matures into a beautiful swan, the most beautiful bird of all. The story is beloved around the world as a tale about personal transformation for the better. “The Ugly Duckling” was first published 11 November 1843, with three other tales by Andersen in Copenhagen, Denmark to great critical acclaim. The tale has been adapted to various media including opera, musical, and animated film. The tale is completely Andersen's invention and owes no debt to fairy tales or folklore. When the story begins, a mother duck's eggs hatch. One of the little birds is perceived by the other birds and animals on the farm as an ugly little creature and suffers much verbal and physical abuse from them. He wanders sadly from the barnyard and lives with wild ducks and geese until hunters slaughter the flocks. He finds a home with an old woman, but her cat and hen tease and taunt him mercilessly and once again he sets off alone. The duckling sees a flock of migrating wild swans. He is delighted and excited, but he cannot join them, for he is too young and cannot fly. Winter arrives. A farmer finds and carries the freezing little duckling home, but the foundling is frightened by the farmer’s noisy children and flees the house. He spends a miserable winter alone in the outdoors, mostly hiding in a cave on the lake that partly freezes over. When spring arrives, a flock of swans descends on the lake. The ugly duckling, now having fully grown and matured, is unable to endure a life of solitude and hardship any more and decides to throw himself at the flock of swans deciding that it is better to be killed by such beautiful birds than to live a life of ugliness and misery. He is shocked when the swans welcome and accept him, only to realize by looking at his reflection in the water that he had been, not a duckling, but a swan all this time. The flock takes to the air, and the now beautiful swan spreads his gorgeous large wings and takes flight with the rest of his new family. Andersen first conceived the story in 1842 while enjoying the beauty of nature during his stay at the country estate of Bregentved, and lavished a year's worth of attention upon it. He initially considered "The Young Swans" as the tale's title but, not wanting to spoil the element of surprise in the protagonist’s transformation, discarded it for "The Ugly Duckling". He later confessed that the story was "a reflection of my own life", and, when the critic Georg Brandes questioned Andersen about whether he would write his autobiography, the poet claimed that it had already been written — "The Ugly Duckling". “The Ugly Duckling” was first published in Copenhagen, Denmark 11 November 1843 in New Fairy Tales. First Book. First Collection. 1844. (Nye Eventyr. Første Bind. Første Samling. 1844.). For the first time the phrase "told for children" was not part of the title--an omission Andersen scholar Jackie Wullschlager believes exhibited a new confidence on Andersen's part: "These [tales] were the most mature and perfectly constructed tales he had written, and though some of them at once became, and have remained, favorites of children, Andersen here melds together the childlike and the profound with exceptional artistry." The first edition of 850 was sold out by December 18, and Reitzel planned another 850. The tale was fourth and last in the volume that included (in contents order), "The Angel" ("Englen"), "The Nightingale" ("Nattergalen"), and "The Sweethearts; or, The Top and the Ball" ("Kjærestefolkene [Toppen og bolden]"). The volume sold out almost immediately and Andersen wrote on December 18, 1843: “The book is selling like hot cakes. All the papers are praising it, everyone is reading it! No books of mine are appreciated in the way these fairy tales are!” Andersen promoted the tale by reading it aloud at social gatherings. The tale was republished 18 December 1849 in Fairy Tales. 1850. (Eventyr. 1850.) and again 15 December 1862 in Fairy Tales and Stories. First Volume. 1862. (Eventyr og Historier. Første Bind. 1862.) The tale has since been translated into various languages and published around the world and has become the most famous story by Andersen. In reviewing Hans Christian Andersen: A New Life by biographer Jens Andersen, British journalist Anne Chisholm writes “Andersen himself was a tall, ugly boy with a big nose and big feet, and when he grew up with a beautiful singing voice and a passion for the theater he was cruelly teased and mocked by other children". The ugly duckling is the child of a swan whose egg accidentally rolled into a duck's nest. Speculation suggests that Andersen was the illegitimate son of Prince Christian Frederik (later King Christian VIII of Denmark), and found this out some time before he wrote the book, and then that being a swan in the story was a metaphor not just for inner beauty and talent but also for secret royal lineage. Bruno Bettelheim observes in The Uses of Enchantment that the Ugly Duckling is not confronted with the tasks, tests, or trials of the typical fairy tale hero. “No need to accomplish anything is expressed in “The Ugly Duckling”. Things are simply fated and unfold accordingly, whether or not the hero takes some action.” In conjunction with Bettelheim’s assessment, Maria Tatar notes in ’’The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen’’ that Andersen suggests that the Ugly Duckling's superiority resides in the fact that he is of a breed different from the barnyard rabble, and that dignity and worth, moral and aesthetic superiority are determined by nature rather than accomplishment. According to Carole Rosen, the story was inspired in part by Andersen's friend Jenny Lind. "The Ugly Duckling" became one of Andersen's best loved tales and was reprinted around the world. The tale was adapted to a variety of media. Films based on the tale include two Silly Symphonies animated shorts produced by Walt Disney called The Ugly Duckling. The first was produced in 1931 in black and white, and a remake in 1939 in Technicolor. The latter film won the 1939 Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons), and was the last Silly Symphony to be made. The main difference between the Andersen story and the Disney version is that, in the latter, the little bird's ordeal lasts for only a few minutes, not for months. In 1936, the Fleischer brothers adapted the story for their animated short "The Little Stranger", reversing the story by having an odd chick born into a family of ducks. In 1956 the Soviet animation studio Soyuzmultfilm produced its own 19 minutes version of The Ugly Duckling. The anime Princess Tutu is about a duck that turns into a swan-like ballerina. In 2006, the Danish animation studio A. Film produced a spin-off CG feature called The Ugly Duckling and Me!, and later produced a children's CG television series Ugly Duckling Junior which featured the same characters as the movie. The 1954 Tom and Jerry cartoon Downhearted Duckling is also based on the famous story. The tale has seen various musical adaptations. In 1914, the Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev composed a work for voice and piano based on Nina Meshcherskaya's adaptation of the tale and, in 1932, arranged the work for voice and orchestra. This was transcribed by Lev Konov in 1996, and his opera was a great success in Russia. Other musical versions include the song “The Ugly Duckling” composed by Frank Loesser and sung by Danny Kaye for the 1952 Charles Vidor musical film Hans Christian Andersen, and Honk!, a musical based on the tale which was produced in Britain and won an Olivier Award. The tale was adapted to a musical by Gail Deschamps and Paul Hamilton with a planned United States tour 2002-2003. In 1998, the musical played the Piccolo Spoleto for seventeen days. In 1999, Jerry Pinkney adapted the story as a children's picture book. In 2009, the Dance Theatre of Bradenton, Florida, presented the ballet version of the popular tale (Allison Norton: The Ugly Duckling). In 2010, Garri Bardin directed a feature-length stop-motion musical of the story set to Tchaikovsky's ballet music. In 2012, a musical adaptation of the story, with ten original songs, was released by JJ’s Tunes & Tales. The album, titled “The Ugly Duckling: Story with Songs” contains both songs and spoken narration, and was released independently on CD Baby and iTunes. Examples of song titles include: Hatching of the Eggs; A Better Place; Song of the Swans; What’s the Matter with You; It’s a Big, Big World; Pretty Good Place to Live. GivingTales – in 2015 a storytelling app for children was created in aid of Unicef. The Ugly Duckling read by Stephen Fry is included in this collection of fairy tales along with other stories. List of works by Hans Christian Andersen, Ugly duckling theorem, in philosophical logic, arguing that classification is not possible without bias The Ugly Duckling English translation by Jean Hersholt, SurLaLune's Annotated The Ugly Duckling, The Ugly Duckling in full length. The Ugly Duckling is a one-act play by A.A. Milne written . The king and queen are worried because their daughter, Princess Camilla, is very plain, or rather appears to be plain because of a spell put on her at birth. The spell says that only the eyes of true love will reveal her beauty. Her parents come up with a plan to marry her to a prince from a far-away land who doesn't know what she looks like. They force Camilla to trade places with her beautiful but silly maid, Dulcibella, before the prince arrives. However, Prince Simon has also disguised himself as his servant Carlo, and dressed Carlo up as the prince because he felt he wasn't handsome enough. Both the pretend prince and princess are insanely dull-witted, which just adds to the entertainment. Before the marriage of the two servants dressed as royalty, the real prince meets the real princess and they reveal their identity and begin to understand each other. Prince Simon tells Princess Camilla that she is very beautiful, although all other princes have found her to be hideously ugly. Then the princess reveals that she was given a gift from her great aunt that would make everyone ignorant of her real beauty, so that she wouldn't grow up vain – until the day she met her one true love. The play ends with a riddle, required to be answered correctly by the prince before he can wed the princess. What is it which has four legs and mews like a cat? -- The Chancellor Despite the fact that Carlo, the mock-prince, was given the correct answer beforehand, he answers incorrectly. The answer clearly should have been "cat", but Carlo's answer was "dog". Yet with some quick thinking from Prince Simon, Carlo gets all the answer right because Simon claims that what is referred to in this country as "cat" is referred to as "dog" in the mock- prince's country. In our country, we have an animal to which we have given the name “dog,” or, in the local dialect of the more mountainous districts, “doggie.” It sits by the fireside and purrs. -- The Prince At the very end, the king wonders why Princess Camilla is suddenly beautiful when the audience can see that it is because of the blessing–curse coming to fruition—Camilla has found her true love, the first one to whom she appears lovely. The Fall 2009 issue of the University of San Francisco literary journal Switchback features a story by Charles Haddox, "The Ugly Duckling", about a girl who has her own ugly duckling experience after being chosen to play the role of Princess Camilla in her junior high school's production of the play. Honk! is a musical adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen story The Ugly Duckling, incorporating a message of tolerance. The book and lyrics are by Anthony Drewe and music is by George Stiles (of the British songwriting duo Stiles and Drewe). The musical is set in the countryside and features Ugly – a cygnet who is mistaken as an ugly duckling upon falling into his mother's nest and is rejected by everyone but Ida (his mother), a sly tomcat who only befriends him out of hunger, and several other barnyard characters. The musical opened at The Watermill Theatre in England in 1993. The West End production opened in 1999 and won the 2000 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical The show is frequently produced by schools, as well as regional and community theatre groups in Britain, the U.S. and Canada. Newbury, England A version of Honk! opened in 1993 at The Watermill Theatre in Newbury, England, originally titled The Ugly Duckling or the Aesthetically Challenged Farmyard Fowl. It returned to the Watermill Theatre in December 2007. Both productions were directed by Steven Dexter. Scarborough, England The original production of Honk! officially opened in 1997, directed by Julia McKenzie, at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, England. West End The West End production opened on 11 December 1999 at The Royal National Theatre in London and won the 2000 Olivier Award for Best Musical. In Ireland the Dublin Premiere of the show received a nomination for Best Show in 2003 from the Association of Irish Musicals and came in second place in the Waterford International Festival of Light Opera for 2004. Nyack Honk! made its U.S. premiere at the Helen Hayes Performing Arts Center (since 2006 known as the Riverspace Arts in Nyack) in Nyack, New York in February 2000. Although somewhat well received, the Nyack production had a rough start. Just a week before opening the show was quickly re-imagined and restaged, having replaced a key member of the creative team. North Shore Music Theatre A slightly re-written production with a script more oriented to Americans opened at the North Shore Music Theatre in the same year as the Nyack production and had the same male lead, Gavin Creel, as Ugly. The NSMT production used almost the entire original creative team from Great Britain, with an American lighting designer. In its three-week run, over 30 regional theatres from around the US were inspired to include the show in their next season. Changes included the Turkey having a fear of Thanksgiving instead of Christmas, and the first line of the song, "A Poultry Tale" being changed from "In this backwater of England" to "In our patch behind the farmhouse". This version is licensed in the United States by Music Theatre International. 2017 London Revival, Union Theatre The 20th anniversary revival, directed by Andy Room, featured a cast of only seven, actor-musicians and was the first production to substitute the child cast for puppets. It featured some updated references in the script and was nominated for an Off West End Award for Best Production for Young People 8+. UK Tour, National Youth Music Theatre In 2017, the National Youth Music Theatre toured a production of Honk the Musical around the UK to venues such as Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds and The Rose Theatre, Kingston. 2019 UK Tour In 2019, an updated version of the 2017 Revival will tour the UK. An original cast album from the Scarborough production was released in 1998. Stiles and Drewe released the original demo recording in 2008. This features Claire Moore, Joanna Riding, Clive Rowe, Jenna Russell and the writers themselves. *These characters do not appear in Honk! Jr. (see below) **The character can be male or female. Should the role be played by a female, the character will be renamed Maggie Pie. The US version is called Jay Bird rather than Jack Daw, and the TV show is renamed "America's Most Feathered". Act I It is Spring, and Drake thinks about life on the farm. ("A Poultry Tale"). As he attempts to sneak away, Ida scolds him for neglecting their eggs that are about to hatch. Drake believes one huge egg is a turkey's egg, but Ida is doubtful. Ida expresses "The Joy of Motherhood" and is joined by her friend Maureen, when all of the "normal" eggs hatch. Drake takes the ducklings to learn to swim, leaving Ida to wait for the fifth egg to hatch ("Different" pre-reprise). It finally hatches to reveal Ugly. Ida is initially shocked but is overjoyed that the new arrival is not a turkey. As she teaches him to swim, she notices his amazing talent ("Hold Your Head Up High"). When Drake and the ducklings return, they are aghast at Ugly's appearance and, along with Maureen, Henrietta, the Turkey, and everyone else, make fun of him, while the Cat admires what a great meal he would be ("Look At Him"). As Ugly tries and fails to "quack," he realises he isn't the same as the others ("Different"). The Cat offers to be Ugly's friend and to treat him to lunch, which he happily accepts. Ugly tries to get Ida's permission, but she is too busy with the other ducklings. After Ugly leaves with the Cat, Ida realises Ugly is missing. Everyone splits up to look for him. In his lair, the Cat is preparing to eat Ugly, who is unaware of the danger ("Play with Your Food"). Just as the Cat is about to strike, the children playing outside send a ball flying through the window, hitting the Cat and causing him to fall into the pot. Ugly thinks he is hiding and goes to find a hiding place of his own, but ends up getting "Lost". Back at the duckyard, no one can find Ugly, and they mourn him ("The Elegy"), but Ida refuses to believe he is dead. Jay Bird (or Maggie Pie), interrupts and begins to interview Ida for "Britain's Most Feathered". Ida laments about what it's like to lose one of your children ("Every Tear a Mother Cries"). Ida continues to search for Ugly, leaving her other four ducklings with Drake. Meanwhile, Ugly comes across two military geese, Greylag and Dot, and begs for their help. They and their "squadron" of geese decide to go on a reconnaissance mission to find Ugly's home ("Wild Goose Chase"). However, there is a shoot going on in the marsh, so the Cat sneaks in and offers to help out by telling them when the shoot is over, hoping that they will leave him alone with Ugly. Greylag sees through the Cat's plan and takes him along. The Geese and the Cat head off to the shoot, which is still going on, and get shot down. Ugly, who didn't go on the mission with them, realises that the Cat is evil and had lied. Ida sets off to find Ugly, and they both vow to find each other and be reunited. ("Hold Your Head Up High" Reprise). Act II Ugly wanders into a house and meets Queenie and Lowbutt, a domesticated cat and chicken. They too make fun of him not only for his looks but also for not being of "their sort" ("It Takes All Sorts"). When they turn on the TV, they see Ida and Jay Bird broadcasting a missing notice for Ugly. Ugly recognises his mother and Queenie goes to call the advertised number. Just then the doorbell rings, and the Cat enters, poorly disguised as Drake. Ugly sees through the disguise, but Lowbutt believes he is actually Ugly's father. But when Queenie comes back in, the Cat falls in love. Queenie also thinks he is a duck, but she too falls in love when he removes his disguise ("Together"). Lowbutt is dismayed, so she helps Ugly to escape, leaving the Cat to decide between his meal and Queenie. He chooses to go after Ugly, leaving Lowbutt to console Queenie. Back at the farmyard, Drake is forced into some responsibility, and, now that the ducklings are almost a year old, they are beginning to give Drake a hard time as teenagers. Ida, still searching for Ugly, comes across everyone that Ugly has met ("The Collage"). Meanwhile, Ugly finds Penny, a swan, caught in some fishing line and untangles her. Penny, knowing Ugly is a swan, invites him to migrate with her, but Ugly insists that he can't. As Penny flies away, Ugly realises he is in love with her ("Now I've Seen You"), but is sad because he believes she could never love someone as ugly as himself. Just then, a Bullfrog comes hopping by. Noticing his bad mood, he tells Ugly about how "ugliness" is just a matter of taste and that someone out there will always love you "Warts and All". The song cheers Ugly up, and the bullfrog leaves. Suddenly, a net drops on Ugly's head. A farmer has caught him for his family's Sunday roast. When the Farmer goes to get his knife, the Cat sneaks back onstage and offers a deal; he will lead Ugly back to the farm, but Ugly has to promise to be the Cat's lunch. Ugly agrees, and both of them head back to the farmyard. On the way, the two get caught in a blizzard and freeze ("The Blizzard"). Ida unfortunately has gotten caught in it as well. Ida notices them and believes Ugly is dead. Penny and her family come to Ida and tell her to cry, that her tears of hope will save Ugly. Soon Ugly wakes up and realises he is not a duck, but a swan, then reunites with his mother ("Transformation"). Penny recognises that Ugly is the one who saved her earlier and the two confess their love to each other. The swans invite Ugly to come learn their ways. Although Ugly wants to stay with Ida, she insists that he go with the swans. As they fly off, Ida sings of how Ugly was different, but Ugly suddenly reappears with Penny, as they have decided to stay with Ida. Just before they leave, Ugly frees the Cat, who has remained frozen this entire time. As the Cat notices Ugly is not a duck but a swan, he goes insane before running away in defeat ("Melting Moggy"). Ugly, Penny and Ida return to the lake; everyone loves Ugly now that he is a swan. They ask for his forgiveness for making fun of him ("Look At Him" Reprise). Ugly happily accepts their apology and introduces Penny. Grace decides to relinquish the Red Band, now the Cygnet Ring, to Ugly, dubbing him "the finest bird on the lake". Act I "A Poultry Tale" -, "The Joy of Motherhood" -, "Different" (pre-reprise) -, "Hold Your Head up High" -, "Look at Him" -, "Different" -, "You Can Play With your Food" -, "Lost" - ^, "The Elegy" - ^, "Every Tear A Mother Cries" -, "The Wild Goose Chase" -, "Hold Your Head Up High" (Reprise) - ^ Act II "It Takes All Sorts" - ^, "Together" - ^, "The Collage" - ^, "Now I've Seen You" - ^, "Warts and All" -, "The Blizzard" -, "Transformation" -, "Melting Moggy" - ^, "Look At Him" (Reprise) -, "Warts And All" (Reprise) - ^These songs do not appear in Honk! Jr. A junior version of Honk! has been made for younger audiences. There are slight changes in Honk! Jr., notably the Cat could be played by either a male or female. Because of this, the characters Queenie and Lowbutt do not appear in this version, nor do the songs "It Takes All Sorts" and "Together". Certain songs are cut (see the song list above), whilst others, such as "Look At Him" are shortened with the lyrics slightly changed. The lyrics in "Warts and All" were also changed slightly to appeal to younger audiences. "The Wild Goose Chase", a song that normally appears at the end of the first act, opens Act 2 to fill the gap normally filled by Queenie and Lowbutt. The Guide to Musical Theatre, Talkin' Broadway Broadway & Off-Broadway theatre discussion, cast recording news, reviews of musicals and drama. George Stiles and Anthony Drewe official website, International Herald Tribune review, 1999, Honk! at the Music Theatre International website, Honk! JR. at the Music Theatre International website, Josef Weinberger production and licensing information for the UK

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Baby Driver is a 2017 action film written and directed by Edgar Wright. It stars Ansel Elgort as a young, musically driven getaway driver seeking freedom from a life of crime with his lover Debora (Lily James). Kevin Spacey, Jon Hamm, Eiza González, Jamie Foxx and Jon Bernthal (among others) appear in supporting roles. Eric Fellner and his Working Title Films partner Tim Bevan produced Baby Driver in association with Big Talk Productions' Nira Park. Sony and TriStar Pictures handled commercial distribution of the film. Baby Driver was financed through a partnership between TriStar and Media Rights Capital. The film is a longtime passion project Wright had developed for over two decades. He devised the idea well in his youth, and his early directing experience furthermore shaped his ambitions for Baby Driver. Originally based in Los Angeles, Wright later revised the film's setting to Atlanta, integrating the city's ethos into an important storytelling device. Principal photography took place in Atlanta over four months, from February to May 2016. Production involved the planning of meticulously coordinated stunts, choreography, and in-camera shooting. Critics have examined Baby Driver subject matter in thematic studies of the film, with emphasis on color symbolism and Baby's evolving morality. Baby Driver premiered at the South by Southwest festival on March 11, 2017, and was released in theaters in North America and the United Kingdom on June 28. It was well received by the media, though the characterization and scriptwriting drew occasional criticism. The National Board of Review selected Baby Driver as one of the top films of the year. It earned $226 million globally, bolstered by positive word-of-mouth support and fatiguing interest in blockbuster franchises. Baby Driver was a candidate for numerous awards, including three Academy Awards (for Best Film Editing, Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing), two BAFTAs, two Critics' Choice Awards, and a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy (Elgort), and won several other honors chiefly for technical achievement. The success of Baby Driver has increased studio interest in producing a sequel. Baby is a getaway driver in Atlanta. As a child, he survived a car crash that killed his parents and left him with tinnitus, and finds catharsis in music. Baby ferries crews of robbers assembled by Doc, a criminal mastermind, to pay off a debt as recompense for a stolen car. Between jobs, he remixes snippets of recorded conversations and cares for his deaf foster father Joseph. At Bo's Diner, he meets a waitress named Debora, and they start dating. Baby's next robbery goes awry after an armed bystander chases them down, but Baby evades him and the police. Having paid his debt, Baby quits his life of crime and starts delivering pizzas. Doc interrupts Baby's date with Debora and insists he join a post-office heist, threatening to hurt Debora and Joseph should he refuse. The crew consists of easygoing Buddy, his sharpshooter wife Darling, and trigger-happy Bats, who takes an immediate dislike to Baby. While the crew attempts to purchase illegal arms at a rendezvous, Bats recognizes one of the dealers as an undercover cop and opens fire. They kill most of the dealers. Afterward, Bats makes Baby stop at Debora's diner, unaware of Baby and Debora's romance. Baby, aware of Bats' homicidal habit, stops him from killing her to avoid paying. Doc is furious, revealing that the dealers were dirty cops on his payroll. He decides to cancel the heist, but Bats, Buddy and Darling disagree. Doc lets Baby decide; he chooses to go through with it. Baby attempts to slip away late that night, hoping to take Debora and leave Atlanta. He is stopped by Buddy and Bats, who have discovered his recordings and believe he is an informant; when they and Doc hear his mixtapes, they are convinced of his innocence. During the heist, Bats kills a security guard. Disgusted, Baby refuses to drive away, causing Bats to hit him. Baby rams the car into a rebar which impales Bats, killing him. The remaining three flee on foot. After the police kill Darling in a shootout, Buddy blames Baby for her death and vows to kill him. Baby steals a car and flees to his apartment. After leaving Joseph at an assisted living home with his heist earnings, Baby rushes to Bo's for Debora, where Buddy is waiting. Baby shoots Buddy and flees with Debora as police reinforcements swarm the restaurant. At the safe house, Doc refuses Baby's pleas for help, but relents when he sees Debora consoling him. Doc supplies them with cash and an escape route out of the country. The police confront the three in the parking garage, but Doc kills them all. Buddy ambushes them and kills Doc. A cat-and-mouse game ensues until Buddy has Baby at his mercy. He shoots next to both Baby's ears, bursting his ear-drums and temporarily deafening him, but the distraction allows Debora to subdue Buddy with a crowbar. After Baby shoots him in the leg, Buddy falls to his death. Baby surrenders after he and Debora encounter a police roadblock. At Baby's trial, Joseph, Debora, and other mutuals testify in his defense. He is sentenced to 25 years in prison, with a parole hearing after five. Debora stays in contact with Baby during his incarceration, and she waits for him with a newly-purchased vintage car when they are reunited. Ansel Elgort as Miles AKA "Baby":, Kevin Spacey as Doc:, Lily James as Debora:, Jon Hamm as Jason "Buddy" van Horn:, Jamie Foxx as Leon "Bats" Jefferson III:, Eiza González as Monica "Darling" Castello:, Jon Bernthal as Griff:, CJ Jones as Joseph: Other cast members include Flea as Eddie, Lanny Joon as JD, Sky Ferreira as Baby's biological mother, Lance Palmer as Baby's biological father, Big Boi and Killer Mike as restaurant patrons, Paul Williams as The Butcher, and Jon Spencer as a prison guard. Baby Driver is a longtime passion project Wright had been developing since 1995, when the writer-director was a struggling 21-year-old filmmaker living in suburban London. He had relocated to London to finish his first professional film, the low-budget western comedy A Fistful of Fingers, and to contemplate his future in entertainment. Wright's repeated listening to Orange (1994), the fourth studio album by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, provided the impetus for Baby Driver. At first he envisioned a high-speed car chase, which then evolved into a full sequence where the getaway driver dances to "Bellbottoms" in his car before the ensuing chase. Though this was ultimately written into the script as the film's opening sequence, Wright's nascent vision was far from a fully realized project. On a £25,000 budget, Wright developed the music video for Mint Royale's "Blue Song" in 2003, featuring a backstory gleaned from his early concept of Baby Driver. The video became an unexpected success, and although happy with his work, Wright was frustrated he had cannibalized an idea he felt had enormous potential. In retrospect, he admits his music video was a significant undertaking because it provided proof of concept for Baby Driver. The release of Wright's first major feature, Shaun of the Dead (2004), was another important catalyst not only for its artistic direction, but for signaling the start of a long-term working relationship between Wright and Working Title producers, who would assist with Baby Drivers development. By 2007, after signing a multi-picture deal with Working Title, and with a clearer vision of the project, the writer-director met with Steven Price to discuss early musical ideas for Baby Driver. The drafting of a story started around the release of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), but pre- production of the film stalled as Wright's other projects—The World's End (2013) and the then-forthcoming Ant-Man (2015), for which he had already prepared a script with Joe Cornish—took precedence. Work resumed immediately after Wright's departure from Ant-Man, when the studio began assembling their roster of actors and technical staff before shooting. In preparation, Wright spent time with ex-career criminals in Los Angeles and London to develop an accurate depiction of a real-life bank robber's work. Wright, lead film editor Paul Machliss, and Los Angeles-based editor Evan Shiff devised a pre-edit of Baby Driver with animatics in the initial stages of production. With Avid Media Composer, Machliss was tasked with syncopating each animatic to the corresponding soundtrack. He and Wright had an existing professional relationship from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and The World's End. In addition, Machliss worked on set providing input for the shoot, which was unusual given that film editors are rarely present at the production set of most films. Los Angeles was to have been Baby Driver original setting, but prohibitively expensive production costs made shooting there impractical. Instead, the studio toured cities that offered generous transferable tax credits for film production. This included Atlanta, which emerged as the frontrunner during preliminary scouting. Preserving the city's ethos was imperative for an authentic story, as Atlanta typically doubles for other global cities in blockbuster cinema. Wright spent about a week in the city observing the local scenery and culture to facilitate the necessary revisions to the script. He found Baby Drivers story was better realized in Atlanta because of the city's renown as a logistics hub. Principal photography, which lasted four months from February to May 2016, took place mostly in the central business district. Location shots emphasize many of Atlanta's landmarks (such as Peachtree Center), cultural institutions, even local media. Elsewhere, filming occurred in Gainesville and rural Monroe County, Georgia. Although other suburban areas of Atlanta were scouted for main unit filming, Wright preferred the urbanity of the city proper over the suburbs' dense foliage, which he considered an unsuitable backdrop for the film. Baby Driver contributed $30.1 million to the local economy. Wright cited Vanishing Point (1971), The Driver (1978), Point Break (1991), Reservoir Dogs (1993), and Heat (1995), among others, as significant influences on the film's visual hallmarks and creative direction. To evoke their aesthetic, one of the production's main goals was to produce Baby Driver using practical filmmaking techniques. This meant planning meticulously coordinated stunts, choreography, and shooting as much of the film in-camera as possible, using visual effects only when necessary. Baby Driver was director of photography Bill Pope's third film with Wright. They collaborated previously on Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and The World's End. Pope shot the project mostly in anamorphic format on 35mm film using Kodak film stock. Baby Driver was shot on Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL2 cameras with G-Series, T-Series, and C-Series anamorphic lenses. Occasionally, to capture more intense stunts, and to achieve unusual camera angles Wright demanded for certain scenes, the filmmakers shot in Super 35 format with specialized cameras. Panavision's Atlanta offices assisted the needs of the production when logistics management became challenging. The climactic scene in particular, staged in a parking garage on the Atlanta Falcons' training facility, which was only available at night, was difficult to shoot because of the dull lighting. They ended up filming the scene in digital format with the company's refurbished Arri Alexa cameras, which had greater exposure latitude. Few visual effects were used in Baby Driver as a result of Wright's emphasis on practical filmmaking. The London-based studio DNEG created most of the visual effects, under the supervision of Stuart Lashley and Shailendra Swarnkar. Their work for the film comprised 430 shots, created with a workforce of 120 specialized artists. The team's work began while viewing early animatics of Baby Driver, which they used as a reference to help conceive the film's audiovisual repertoire. DNEG used Nuke to animate car chase scenes that could not be rendered with in-camera effects. As these scenes were routinely updated with reshoots, the team was tasked with maintenance of the software's control tools so that artists would be readily equipped to work with the latest audio. Molinare also produced effects shots for Baby Driver. According to Lashley, key scenes that highlight the film's audiovisual repertoire were "Harlem Shuffle", the single tracking shot of Baby's coffee run through town, and "Tequila", the sequence of a deadly shootout between Doc's syndicate and undercover police. "Harlem Shuffle" was one of Baby Driver most elaborate sequences; filmmakers cached excess footage so the shot could be manageable. The set design of "Tequila" involved precise coordination of the in-camera effects. Once filmed, DNEG supplemented the live-action shots with projectile bullets, sparks, and gunfire flashes, while bearing in mind the imposing drum riffs of the soundtrack. The team found that compositing shots to audio, although suitable for live-action projects, presented unique challenges such as how to convey emotional cues to the viewer. For "Brighton Rock", the climactic sequence of Baby Driver, DNEG enhanced footage with computer-generated shots for safety and damage control. First, to portray characters being pummeled by cars, the team filmed the accidents in stages. The footage was then composited into complete shots, lending a sense of realism and control. The shot of Buddy's stolen police car falling in the parking garage atrium from the top level required setting up a shorter, safer drop at another side of the garage with a crane, to comply with the owner's demands. DNEG created a set extension from a lidar scan of the atrium, with superimposed special effects to extend the fall. Second-unit director Darrin Prescott coordinated the vehicular stunts on Baby Driver with Jeremy Fry, the project's stunt driver, and a team of other professionals. They rehearsed at the Atlanta Motor Speedway before receiving clearance to shoot in the city. At the rehearsals, filmmakers captured the stunts with specialized pursuit cranes, small cars with an installed camera crane. Machliss would then edit the footage into updated animatics, fleshing out the precision of the stunts in time for shooting. Fry performed many of the vehicular stunts; the actors were allowed to perform less demanding stunts with the proper training. Prescott saw Baby Driver as his biggest undertaking because of the complicated stunt work involved. One such scene features a "180 in and 180 out" maneuver, in which Fry makes 180-degree turns forward and backward in a narrow alley with several other vehicles in the way. This was shot in five or six takes. "There's a lot going through your head. You don't want Jeremy to get hurt. Also, there's a lot of money being spent to get this on camera. The cameras needed to be out of the way so nobody would get hurt", Prescott recalled. Another example is the freeway car chase scene midway in Baby Driver opening sequence. The production only had an eight-hour window to shoot because they did not have clearance to shut down I-85. With the limited time frame, the filmmakers rehearsed for only an hour before they began filming in early morning. This scene involved a number of high-speed jumps, and barrier jumps, among other stunts, that Prescott and his team carefully coordinated bearing traffic flow in mind. There were also 50 production vehicles encircled by a sprawling police motorcade, occupying all lanes of I-85. The choice of the getaway cars corresponded to specifications in the screenplay that they be nondescript and blend in with the surrounding traffic. Though Wright sought a Toyota Corolla based on data about frequently stolen cars, the production used a red Subaru WRX instead after the studio requested a vehicle that "could be a little sexier". Ryan Heffington oversaw the choreography. He was responsible for synchronizing the movement of the actors and stunt performers in the film's choreographic sequences. Baby Driver is Heffington's first foray into film, best known in the music industry for his work with Sia, Arcade Fire, and other artists. Compelled by the script, the choreographer was unfamiliar with Wright's prior work. He researched it after his initial interview for the job. The two detailed their artistic vision in early conversations, using songs with dramatic tempo changes or structure as templates. By the first day of shooting, Heffington was already supervising the "Harlem Shuffle" sequence, employing 50–60 extras for the set. Choreographing other sets was sometimes less taxing because Elgort and Foxx had prior dance experience. The production played the music as the cast rehearsed each sequence, shot by shot. When sound editing supervisor Julian Slater was first approached for Baby Driver, he was sent a copy of the script and a PDF file containing the curated selection of music, along with a rough audio mix. Working closely with music editor Bradley Farmer, the pair dissected each musical cue into a unique tempo map, thereby allowing for synchronization at any given time. This process required frequent pitch scaling of the sounds so they would not be off-pitch. One of their initial responsibilities was to create a sound for Baby's tinnitus. Slater and Farmer experimented with an array of sounds, some subtle, others more intense. Accordingly, they would adjust the frequency of an audio mix to correspond with their music cue. The intensity of Baby's tinnitus in the audio mix depended on his mood; for example, the more anxious he is, the louder the ringing. Managing tempo changes with the sound effects proved troublesome. Slater said, "For every layer that happens musically, have another layer that happens non-musically so that you perceive it only some of the time." The "Harlem Shuffle" sequence contains the audio team's most complex sound effects work. Completed in 25 takes, it features an assortment of subtle sound effects from engines, dialogue with changing nuance, and so forth. "Brighton Rock" posed another challenge for the filmmakers because the sequence required a new set of frequencies, altered voices, and other sounds to emphasize Baby's distorted point of view. The audio department spent eight days recording the car sound effects at the Atlanta Motor Speedway. For onboard recordings (the sounds heard from the perspective of the driver and passengers), sound effects recordist Watson Wu installed about six microphones per vehicle; one in the airbox, another on the radio dashboard, two near the exhausts, and two in the engine compartment. Boom operator James Peterson followed each car with a shotgun mic for the external recordings, while using XY stereo equipment to capture the noise of passing vehicles. The crew premixed their audio at the Twickenham Studios in London, while the final mixing took place at Goldcrest Films' Soho post-production facility. Wright and Price exchanged ideas throughout pre-production, selecting ten tracks to shape the project's musical direction. In total, the filmmakers licensed 36 tracks with Right Music, most written in the script well before shooting. Wright was unable to acquire the usage rights for certain hip hop and electronic songs written in the script because they contained uncleared samples. At that point, he pursued licensing of the sampled songs in question and used them in the soundtrack instead. Danger Mouse and Kid Koala composed the album's only original tracks, "Chase Me" and "Was He Slow?". "Chase Me" features contributions from Run the Jewels and Big Boi. For "Was He Slow?", which samples some of Spacey and Bernthal's dialogue, Kid Koala produced the song using analog equipment. Columbia imprint 30th Century Records released the Baby Driver soundtrack on June 23, 2017, on vinyl and CD. A follow-up album containing previously unreleased content was issued on April 13, 2018. Wright views Baby's moral shift as the thematic crux of the film. According to David Sims at The Atlantic, Baby's initial moral detachment manifests through his reliance on music, which he uses to escape the chaos in his environment, and his own tinnitus. It is only because of his obligation to protect Debora, Joseph, and the impending threat of crime on his livelihood, that Baby is forced to confront reality, no longer able to ignore the mayhem around him. Baby Driver employs some of the conventions of gangster film, chiefly heroic fatalism and uncompromising villainy. Characteristic of Wright's films, Baby Driver is driven by strong color cues. Colors are used symbolically to represent the personas of the core characters. Whereas Baby is dressed in drab colors that reflect his black-and-white perspective of the universe, his peers are associated with bright, vibrant colors that clash with this sensibility: red symbolizes Bats, purple and pink symbolize Darling, and blue represents Buddy. As the film progresses, the pressures of organized crime become overwhelming, and Baby's wardrobe evolves by proxy. He is seen in faint greys and bloodstained white shirts at that point. Costume designer Courtney Hoffman incorporated light grey colors into Baby's wardrobe to illustrate his struggle for freedom from the criminal world. Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times argues Baby Driver is an exploration of identity and personal style, and how said expression dictates one's status in society. In their piece for the Los Angeles Review of Books, David Hollingshead and Jane Hu examine race as an important thematic element in Baby Driver. They contend that certain aspects of the film, such as the casting choices and the reliance on a "white innocence" narrative, provide a subtext of "racial awareness" as well as commentary about the ethics of cultural appropriation. The global premiere of Baby Driver took place on March 11, 2017, at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. TriStar spearheaded the marketing campaign. Their strategy entailed aggressive social media engagement, a worldwide publicity tour, and the creation of a number of colorful, vintage- style character posters. TriStar and Sony initially scheduled a mid-August release for the film in North America and the United Kingdom, but in an unusual move, the studios expedited Baby Driver release six weeks early to June 28, as a result of the enthusiastic response from the film festival circuit. This was unusual because late summers are seldom competitive, and hence a much more favorable market for lower-budget films. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released Baby Driver through video on demand on September 12, 2017, and on Blu-ray Disc, DVD, and 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray combo formats the following October. Physical copies contain two hours of bonus content including behind-the-scenes footage, production rehearsals, a storyboard gallery, audio commentary, and the music video for "Blue Song". During its first week on sale in the United States, Baby Driver was the number two selling film on DVD and Blu-ray, with 226,657 units sold for $5.6 million. Baby Driver has sold 595,111 copies as of January 2018. The premium cable networks Showtime and FX have US broadcast syndication rights for Baby Driver. It is also available to authenticated Showtime subscribers via the network's streaming services. Baby Driver was a financial success. Although the film's performance faltered in China, it performed strongly in key North American and European markets until the end of its theatrical run. Baby Driver earned $107.8 million in the United States and Canada and $119.1 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $226.9 million, making it the 42nd highest-grossing film of 2017, and Wright's highest-grossing film to date. The TriStar–Media Rights Capital partnership recouped their budget with a $51.5 million net profit, factoring in marketing costs and other expenses. Good word-of-mouth support, as well as fatiguing interest in blockbuster franchises, were considered critical to Baby Driver box office success. In the United States, exit polling showed strong commercial potential across a variety of audiences. CinemaScore polls conducted during opening night revealed the average grade moviegoers gave Baby Driver was A− on an A+ to F scale. Audiences were mostly younger; 52% were under 25 and 57% were men. The main reasons given for seeing the film were its action (44%), the actors (26%), and Wright (16%). Hourly advanced ticket sales eclipsed that of . Predictions, while acknowledging the positive media response and word-of-mouth support for Baby Driver, were conflicted about the long-term commercial viability of an economical film in a fiercely competitive market. The film made $5.7M on its first day of wide release—including $2.1M from Tuesday-night previews—and earned another $3.3M the following Thursday. It went on to take second place at the weekend box office with $30M from 3,226 theaters, trailing Despicable Me 3. This return surpassed Sony's expectations for the weekend, and marked the best opening of any Wright-directed film in the United States to date. The second week in the United States saw the box office drop by 36.7% to $13M, and Baby Driver grossed another $8.8M the following weekend. By August 14, the film topped $100M domestically. TriStar re-expanded the film's theater presence for the week of August 25, earning $1.2M from 1,074 theaters, a 34% increase from the prior week. Baby Driver completed its theatrical run in North America on October 19, 2017. Baby Driver was released in 16 international markets between June 28 and July 2, 2017—its overall rank for the weekend was second to Despicable Me 3. The United Kingdom represented the film's largest taking with £3.6M ($4.6M) from 680 theaters. It took $1.8M in the second week, and the third week in the United Kingdom saw the box office drop by just 26%. As of the latest figures, Baby Driver earned $16.6M in the United Kingdom. On its opening weekend elsewhere, it earned $3.7M in Australia, $1.7M in Mexico, $1.7M in France, $1.2M in Germany, $1.2M in Brazil, $843,000 in Spain, and $620,000 in Malaysia. During its mid-September opening in South Korea, Baby Driver grossed $3.12M. By September 3, the film's international gross exceeded $102.2M. The American press considered Baby Driver among the strongest films of 2017. The film was selected by the National Board of Review as one of their top choices for the organization's annual . Several journalists praised the film for its craftsmanship, which they saw as an exercise of Wright's expertise. Empire Terri White called Baby Driver "one of the most utterly original films in years" that comes "as close to a car-chase opera as you'll ever see on screen". Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian felt the film was stylish and engaging, "packed with sheer brio and good nature", despite sticking with romantic notions of car chasing being a victimless crime, and Variety Peter Debruge said Baby Driver becomes a genre standout through "a mostly clever collection of jokes, sudden narrative U-turns, [...] aptly picked songs", and a strong emphasis on car chases. Reviews for the actors' performances were very positive in the media, often singling out Elgort and James for further praise, with their work described as "star-making" and "radiant". The characterization divided journalists: some criticized the depiction of the characters the actors played, often the women, in their reviews. Debora was viewed as a somewhat underdeveloped character by Eric Kohn of IndieWire, whereas White felt that, because of the sparse details of her backstory, she lacked depth and too often has little agency of her own. Richard Brody of The New Yorker considered Baby Driver dialogue "almost entirely functional", devoid of nuance, resulting in characters who are largely interchangeable despite the best efforts of a diverse cast. Others, such as David Edelstein of New York magazine and the Observer Thelma Adams, cited character development as one of the film's strengths. The scriptwriting and plot development in the film's climactic scenes were sources of criticism. Some reviewers cited the scriptwriting as Baby Driver biggest flaw, where rapid tonal shifts undermined the viewing experience. Cineaste Adam Nayman, for example, attributed the mistakes in the script to Wright's inexperience as a solo writer, and TheWrap saw the lost momentum as "jarring and uncommon" saying, "rarely do we see a filmmaker start so strong only to end with a whimper". Anthony Lane, writing for The New Yorker, was also critical because he felt the film takes itself too seriously and lacks the self-awareness of Wright's other action comedies such as Hot Fuzz (2007). On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 93% based on 355 reviews, with an average rating of 8.03/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Stylish, exciting, and fueled by a killer soundtrack, Baby Driver hits the road and it's gone – proving fast-paced action movies can be smartly written without sacrificing thrills". On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 86 out of 100, indicating "universal acclaim". The success of Baby Driver has increased studio interest in producing a sequel. Discussions of a sequel began in December 2017, as Wright announced his intent to develop the script to the media. The writer-director began drafting the screenplay in January 2019, introducing an ensemble of new characters to advance the story. By the following July, Wright had shown Elgort a copy of the completed script, currently under a tentative working title. List of American films of 2017, List of British films of 2017, List of films featuring the deaf and hard of hearing Kevin Spacey Fowler (born July 26, 1959), known professionally as Kevin Spacey, is an American actor, producer, and singer. Spacey began his career as a stage actor during the 1980s, obtaining supporting roles in film and television. He gained critical acclaim in the 1990s that culminated in his first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the neo-noir crime thriller The Usual Suspects (1995) and an Academy Award for Best Actor for the midlife crisis-themed drama American Beauty (1999). Spacey's other starring roles have included the comedy-drama film Swimming with Sharks (1994), the psychological thriller Seven (1995), the neo-noir crime film L.A. Confidential (1997), the drama Pay It Forward (2000), the science fiction-mystery film K-PAX (2001), the musical biopic Beyond the Sea (2004), the superhero film Superman Returns (2006), and the action film Baby Driver (2017). In Broadway theatre, Spacey won a Tony Award in 1991 for his role in Lost in Yonkers. In 2017, he hosted the 71st Tony Awards. He was the artistic director of the Old Vic theatre in London from 2004 until stepping down in mid-2015. From 2013 to 2017, he played Frank Underwood in the Netflix political drama series House of Cards, which won him a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama and two consecutive Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series. In October 2017, actor Anthony Rapp accused Spacey of making a sexual advance toward him in 1986, when Rapp was 14. Numerous other men subsequently came forward alleging that Spacey had sexually harassed or assaulted them. In December 2018, Spacey was charged with indecent assault and battery in relation to an accusation by anchorwoman Heather Unruh that he sexually assaulted her 18-year-old son, but by July 2019, the criminal charge had been dropped. As a result of the allegations, Netflix cut ties with Spacey, shelving his film Gore and removing him from the last season of House of Cards. Spacey's role as J. Paul Getty in Ridley Scott's film All the Money in the World (2017) was reshot with actor Christopher Plummer in his place. In 2018, Billionaire Boys Club (which had been completed before the allegations surfaced) was released with Spacey's role unchanged. Kevin Spacey Fowler was born in South Orange, New Jersey, to Kathleen Ann (née Knutson), a secretary, and Thomas Geoffrey Fowler, a technical writer and data consultant. Spacey has an older brother, Randy Fowler, who is a limousine driver and Rod Stewart impersonator in Boise, Idaho, and a sister, Julie Ann Fowler Keir, an office worker. His family relocated to Southern California when he was four years old. Randy Fowler (from whom Spacey is estranged) has stated that their father, whom he described as a racist "Nazi supporter", was sexually and physically abusive, and that Spacey had shut down emotionally and become "very sly and smart" to avoid whippings. Spacey attended Northridge Military Academy, Canoga Park High School in the 10th and 11th grades. He graduated co-valedictorian (along with Mare Winningham) of the class of 1977 of Chatsworth High School in Chatsworth, California. At Chatsworth, Spacey starred in the school's senior production of The Sound of Music, playing the part of Captain Georg von Trapp, with Winningham as Maria von Trapp. He started using his middle name "Spacey", which is also his paternal grandmother's maiden name. Spacey had tried to succeed as a comedian for several years before attending the Juilliard School in New York City, as a member of Group 12, where he studied drama with teacher Marian Seldes between 1979 and 1981. During this time period, he performed stand-up comedy in bowling alley talent contests. Spacey's first professional stage appearance was as a spear carrier in a New York Shakespeare Festival performance of Henry VI, Part 1 in 1981. The following year, he made his first Broadway appearance, as Oswald in a production of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts, starring Liv Ullmann. Then he portrayed Philinte in Molière's The Misanthrope. In 1984, Spacey appeared in a production of David Rabe's Hurlyburly, in which he rotated through each of the male parts (he would later play Mickey in the film version). Next came Anton Chekhov's The Seagull. In 1986, Spacey appeared in a production of Sleuth in a New Jersey dinner theatre. Spacey's prominence as a stage actor began in 1986, when he was cast opposite Jack Lemmon, Peter Gallagher and Bethel Leslie as Jamie, the eldest Tyrone son, in Jonathan Miller's lauded production of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night. Lemmon in particular would become a mentor to Spacey and was invited, along with Spacey's high school drama teacher, to be present when Spacey received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1999. Spacey made his first major television appearance in the second- season premiere of Crime Story, playing a Kennedy-esque American senator. Although his interest soon turned to film, Spacey remained actively involved in the live theater community. In 1991, he won a Tony Award for his portrayal of Uncle Louie in Neil Simon's Broadway hit Lost in Yonkers. Spacey's father was unconvinced that Spacey could make a career for himself as an actor, and did not change his mind until Spacey became well-known. Some of Spacey's early roles include a widowed, eccentric millionaire on L.A. Law; the television miniseries The Murder of Mary Phagan (1988), opposite Lemmon; and the comedy See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989). He earned a fan base after playing the criminally insane arms dealer Mel Profitt on the television series Wiseguy. Spacey quickly developed a reputation as a character actor, and was cast in bigger roles, including the malevolent office manager in the ensemble film Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), one-half of a bickering Connecticut couple in the dark comedy film The Ref (1994), and a malicious Hollywood studio boss in the satire Swimming with Sharks (1995), gaining him positive notices by critics. Spacey's performance as the enigmatic criminal Verbal Kint in Bryan Singer's 1995 neo-noir film The Usual Suspects won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Spacey appeared in the 1995 thriller Seven, making a sudden entrance late in the film as the serial killer John Doe after going unmentioned in the film's advertisements and opening credits. His work in Seven, The Usual Suspects and Outbreak earned him Best Supporting Actor honors at the 1995 Society of Texas Film Critics Awards. Spacey played an egomaniacal district attorney in A Time to Kill (1996), and founded Trigger Street Productions in 1997, with the purpose of producing and developing entertainment across various media. Spacey made his directorial debut with the film Albino Alligator (1996). The film was a box office bomb, grossing $339,379 with a budget of $6 million, but critics praised Spacey's direction. He also voiced Hopper in the animated film A Bug's Life (1998). Throughout his career, Spacey has been well known for playing villains; he remarked in 2013: "I think people just like me evil for some reason. They want me to be a son of a bitch." Spacey won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as a depressed suburban father who lusts after his teenage daughter's best friend in 1999's American Beauty; the same year, he was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Spacey won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor and earned another Tony nomination in 1999 for The Iceman Cometh. Spacey played a physically and emotionally scarred grade school teacher in Pay It Forward (2000), a patient in a mental institution who may or may not be an alien in K-Pax (2001), and singer Bobby Darin in Beyond the Sea (2004). The latter was a lifelong dream project for Spacey, who took on co-writing, directing, co- producing and starring duties in the biography/musical about Darin's life, career and relationship with actress Sandra Dee. Facing little interest for backing in the U.S., Spacey went to the United Kingdom and Germany for funding. Almost all of the film was made in Berlin. Spacey provided his own vocals on the film's soundtrack and appeared in several tribute concerts around the time of its release. Spacey received mostly positive reviews for his singing, as well as a Golden Globe nomination for his performance. However, reviewers criticized the age disparity between Spacey and Darin, noting that Spacey was too old to convincingly portray Darin, particularly during the early stages of the singer's life depicted in the film. Spacey hosted Saturday Night Live twice: first in 1997 with musical guest Beck and special guests Michael Palin and John Cleese from Monty Python's Flying Circus, and again in May 2006 with musical guest Nelly Furtado. In 2006, Spacey played Lex Luthor in the Bryan Singer superhero film Superman Returns. He was to return for its 2009 sequel, but the series was instead rebooted with the 2013 film Man of Steel. Spacey also appeared in Edison, which received a direct-to-video release in 2006. In 2008, Spacey played an MIT lecturer in the film 21. The film is based on Ben Mezrich's best seller Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions, a story of student MIT card-counters who used mathematical probability to aid them in card games such as blackjack. In early 2010, Spacey went to China to star in writer-director Dayyan Eng's black comedy film Inseparable, becoming the first Hollywood actor to star in a fully Chinese-funded film. In September 2006, Spacey said that he intended to take up British citizenship when it is offered to him. When asked about the UK's 2016 European Union membership referendum, Spacey replied, "I appreciate you asking me the question, but I am not a British citizen, I am a resident of Great Britain. And I have never in my twelve years ever gotten involved in politics in Great Britain. I think it's inappropriate for me as a, really as a guest, in Great Britain, so I'll leave that to the British people." On June 16, 2016, Spacey was awarded an honorary knighthood for his services to theatre. The honor, Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, was given at Clarence House by Prince Charles. While Spacey will be permitted to add the post-nominal letters, KBE, to his name, as a non-British citizen the award is honorary and he will not be able to style himself as "Sir Kevin". Spacey had previously been awarded the lesser rank of honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to drama in 2010. Spacey is well known in Hollywood for his impressions. When he appeared on Inside the Actors Studio, he imitated (at host James Lipton's request) Jack Lemmon, James Stewart, Johnny Carson, Katharine Hepburn, Clint Eastwood, John Gielgud, Marlon Brando, Christopher Walken, and Al Pacino. As a young actor in New York City, he used his skill to pretend to be Carson's son to obtain free theater tickets and enter Studio 54. Capitol/EMI's album Forever Cool (2007) features two duets with Spacey and an earlier recording of Dean Martin: "Ain't That a Kick in the Head" and "King of the Road". In December 2007, Spacey co-hosted the Nobel Peace Prize Concert along with Uma Thurman. Spacey is a patron of the Shakespeare Schools Festival, a charity that enables school children across the UK to perform Shakespeare in professional theatres. He also sits on the board of directors of the Motion Picture and Television Fund. On March 18, 2011, it was announced that Spacey was cast as Frank Underwood in the Netflix series House of Cards, adapted from a 1990 BBC political drama of the same name. He was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series at the 65th Primetime Emmy Awards in 2013, becoming the first lead actor to be Primetime Emmy-nominated from a web television series. Spacey went on to win the Golden Globe award for Best Actor in a Television Series Drama at the 72nd Golden Globe Awards and Screen Actors Guild nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series at the 21st Screen Actors Guild Awards for his season 2 performance. In July 2011, Spacey co-starred in the black comedy film Horrible Bosses, which grossed over $209.6 million at the box office. He executive produced the biographical survival thriller film Captain Phillips in 2013, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Spacey portrayed the antagonist Jonathan Irons in the 2014 video game through motion capture. He starred as President Richard Nixon in the comedy-drama Elvis & Nixon (2016), which is based on the meeting that took place between Nixon and singer Elvis Presley (Michael Shannon) in December 1970 wherein Presley requested Nixon swear him in as an undercover agent in the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. He next starred in the comedy film Nine Lives, as a man trapped in the body of a cat. The film was released on August 5, 2016. In March 2017, it was announced that Spacey would portray J. Paul Getty in Ridley Scott's All the Money in the World. He shot his role in the film in ten days over the summer of 2017. However, due to the sexual assault allegations against Spacey, it was announced on November 8, 2017 that all of his footage would be excised, and that Christopher Plummer would replace Spacey as Getty in reshoots. In spite of the very tight schedule, TriStar Pictures completed the new version of the film in time for a December 25 release. Spacey appeared in the film Billionaire Boys Club, which had a limited release on August 17, 2018. Vertical Entertainment stated that they would be taking no action to remove Spacey from the film, as it had been completed in late 2016, prior to the allegations made in October 2017. In February 2003, Spacey announced that he was returning to London to become the artistic director of the Old Vic, one of the city's oldest theatres. Appearing at a press conference with Judi Dench and Elton John, Spacey promised both to appear on stage and to bring in big-name talent. He undertook to remain in the post for a full ten years. The Old Vic Theatre Company staged shows eight months out of the year. Spacey's first season started in September 2004, and opened with the British premiere of the play Cloaca by Maria Goos, directed by Spacey, which opened to mixed reviews. In the 2005 season, Spacey made his UK Shakespearean debut, to good notices, in the title role of Richard II directed by Trevor Nunn. In mid-2006, Spacey said that he was having the time of his life working at the Old Vic; at that point in his career, he said, he was "trying to do things now that are much bigger and outside [myself]". Spacey performed in productions of National Anthems by Dennis McIntyre, and The Philadelphia Story by Philip Barry, in which he played C.K. Dexter Haven, the Cary Grant role in the film version. Critics applauded Spacey for taking on the management of a theatre, but noted that while his acting was impressive, his skills and judgment as a producer/manager had yet to develop. In the 2006 season, Spacey suffered a major setback with a production of Arthur Miller's Resurrection Blues, directed by Robert Altman. Despite an all- star cast (including Matthew Modine and future House of Cards co-star Neve Campbell) and the pedigree of Miller's script, Spacey's decision to lure Altman to the stage proved disastrous: after a fraught rehearsal period, the play opened to a critical panning, and closed after only a few weeks. Later in the year, Spacey starred in Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten, along with Colm Meaney and Eve Best. The play received excellent reviews for Spacey and Best, and was transferred to Broadway in 2007. For the spring part of the 2007–08 season, Jeff Goldblum and Laura Michelle Kelly joined Spacey as the three characters in David Mamet's 1988 play Speed-the-Plow. In 2009, he directed the premiere of Joe Sutton's Complicit, with Richard Dreyfuss, David Suchet and Elizabeth McGovern. Later that year, Trevor Nunn directed Spacey in a revival of Inherit the Wind. Spacey played defense lawyer Henry Drummond, a role that was made famous by Spencer Tracy in the 1960 film of the same name. Sam Mendes directed Spacey in Shakespeare's Richard III; Spacey played the title role. The show began in June 2011, commencing a worldwide tour culminating in New York in early 2012. In March 2014, it was announced that Spacey would star in a one-man play at the Old Vic to celebrate his ten years as artistic director. He took on the part of Clarence Darrow in the play. In January 2016 it was announced that Relativity Media, which was just emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy, had acquired Trigger Street Productions and that Spacey would become chairman of Relativity Studios while Dana Brunetti would become the studio's president. Spacey called the move "an incredible opportunity to make great entertainment" and said he considered it the "next evolution in my career". However, when the paperwork for the studio was filed for the court, it emerged that Spacey had opted out of assuming the chairmanship of the studios, and by the end of 2016 Brunetti had also left Relativity whilst both remained executive producers on House of Cards and . Spacey's political views have been described as left-leaning and mirroring some of those possessed by his fictional character in House of Cards. He is a Democrat and a friend of President Bill Clinton, having met Clinton before his presidency began. Spacey once described Clinton as "one of a shining light" in the political process. He additionally made a cameo appearance in the short film President Clinton: Final Days, a light-hearted political satire produced by the Clinton Administration for the 2000 White House Correspondents Dinner. Spacey met Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez in September 2007, but never spoke to the press about their encounter. During the trip, he donated money to the Venezuelan film studio Villa del Cine. In March 2011, following Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko's crackdown on the Belarusian democracy movement, Spacey joined Jude Law in a street protest in London against Lukashenko's regime. In October 2008, Spacey started the Kevin Spacey Foundation in the UK to encourage youth involvement in the arts. Headquartered in England and Wales, its purpose was to provide grants to individuals and organizations to help young people study the arts, particularly theatre. The charity shut down in February 2018 following sexual misconduct allegations against Spacey. In 2018, Earl Blue, owner of the security company VIP Protective Services, claimed that Spacey had used racial slurs against his predominantly African-American staff when they were hired on the House of Cards set in 2012, before getting Blue fired. On October 29, 2017, actor Anthony Rapp alleged that Spacey, while appearing intoxicated, made a sexual advance toward him in 1986, when Rapp was 14 and Spacey was 26. Rapp had also shared this story in a 2001 interview with The Advocate, but Spacey's name was redacted from publication to avoid legal disputes and public outing. Spacey stated through Twitter that he did not remember the encounter, but that he owed Rapp "the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior" if he had behaved as asserted. Fifteen others then came forward alleging similar abuse, including Boston anchorwoman Heather Unruh, who alleged that Spacey sexually assaulted her son; filmmaker Tony Montana; actor Roberto Cavazos; Richard Dreyfuss' son Harry; and eight people who worked on House of Cards. The Guardian was contacted by "a number of people" who alleged that Spacey "groped and behaved in an inappropriate way with young men" as artistic director of the Old Vic. On November 16, the Old Vic confirmed that it had received 20 testimonies of alleged inappropriate behavior by Spacey, with three persons stating that they had contacted the police. In December, Spacey's Usual Suspects co-star Gabriel Byrne said that production on that film was shut down for two days because Spacey made unwanted sexual advances toward a younger actor. The director of the film, Bryan Singer —himself accused of sexual misconduct— denied that production on the film was ever shut down. Norwegian author Ari Behn said Spacey had groped his genitals at a party, but that "I didn't experience it as sexual harrassment [...] for me it was a compliment." In the midst of the allegations, filming was suspended on the sixth and final season of House of Cards. Media Rights Capital (MRC), the production company behind the show, stated that it had implemented "an anonymous complaint hotline, crisis counselors, and sexual harassment legal advisors for the crew." MRC added that in 2012, "someone on the crew shared a complaint about a specific remark and gesture made by Kevin Spacey. Immediate action was taken following our review of the situation and we are confident the issue was resolved promptly to the satisfaction of all involved." According to MRC, Spacey "willingly participated in a training process and since that time MRC has not been made aware of any other complaints" involving him. The show had been due to end in 2018. The season was shortened from 13 episodes to eight, and Spacey was removed from the cast and his role as executive producer. The Gore Vidal biopic Gore starring Spacey, which was set to be distributed by Netflix, was canceled, and Netflix went on to sever all ties with him. Spacey was due to appear in All the Money in the World as industrialist J. Paul Getty; however, his scenes were cut and Christopher Plummer replaced him as Getty in reshoots. The International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences reversed its decision to honor Spacey with the 2017 International Emmy Founders Award. On November 1, 2017, Spacey stated that he would be seeking "evaluation and treatment" for his behavior. The following day, Variety reported that his publicist Staci Wolfe and talent agency Creative Artists Agency were ending their relationships with him. The Los Angeles District Attorney's office stated in April 2018 that it would investigate an allegation that Spacey had sexually assaulted an adult male in 1992. In July 2018, three more allegations of sexual assault against Spacey were revealed by Scotland Yard, bringing the total number of open investigations in the UK to six. In September 2018, a lawsuit filed at Los Angeles Superior Court claimed that Spacey sexually assaulted an unnamed masseur at a house in Malibu, California, in October 2016. On December 24, 2018, Spacey uploaded a video entitled "Let Me Be Frank" on YouTube. In the video, Spacey – while in character as Frank Underwood, the role he had portrayed in House of Cards – appeared to deny the real-life allegations against him. The video has been described in the media as "bizarre", "extraordinarily odd", "unsettling", and "alarming". Several actors, including Rapp, Alyssa Milano, Patricia and Rosanna Arquette, Ellen Barkin, and Rob Lowe, criticized and ridiculed the video on Twitter. As of December 2019, the video has over 11 million views, with 258,000 likes and 69,000 dislikes. A year later on December 24, 2019, Spacey posted another video titled "KTWK" to his YouTube channel, once again in-character as Underwood. In the video, he asks viewers not to "go on the attack" the next time someone does something they do not like, and suggests they "kill them with kindness" instead. The following day, Behn died by suicide, making him the third Spacey accuser to die in 2019. In December 2018, Spacey was charged with a felony for allegedly sexually assaulting journalist Heather Unruh's 18-year-old son in Nantucket, Massachusetts, in July 2016. Spacey pleaded not guilty to the charge on January 7, 2019. Unruh's son told police he was texting with his girlfriend throughout the alleged "groping" incident. Spacey's defense attorneys spent months trying to obtain copies of the texts and the phone itself. In mid-May 2019, her son's personal attorney informed the court that the cell phone in question is "missing". On June 4, 2019, the defense learned that when Unruh gave her son's cell phone to police in 2017, she admitted she had deleted some of the text messages. Later that month, her son filed a lawsuit against Spacey, claiming emotional damages. On July 5, 2019, he voluntarily dismissed the claims with prejudice. On July 17, 2019, the criminal assault charge against Spacey was dropped by the Cape and Islands prosecutors. Also, the anonymous massage therapist who accused him died of cancer and the last criminal case against Spacey was closed. An article in The Sunday Times Magazine in 1999 stated that Spacey's "love affair with acting, and the absence of a visible partner in the life of an attractive 40-year-old, has resulted in Esquire magazine asserting two years ago that he must be gay". Spacey responded to the rumors by telling Playboy and other interviewers that he was not gay, and telling Lesley White of The Sunday Times:I chose for a long time not to answer these questions because of the manner in which they were asked, and because I was never talking to someone I trusted, so why should I? Recently I chose to participate because it's a little hard on the people I love. In 1999, reports suggested Spacey was dating a script supervisor named Dianne Dreyer, with their relationship possibly dating back as far as 1992. In 2000, Spacey brought Dreyer to the Academy Awards; during the acceptance speech for his Best Actor award, Spacey stated, "Dianne, thank you for teaching me about caring about the right things, and I love you." In 2007, Gotham magazine quoted Spacey saying:I've never believed in pimping my personal life out for publicity. Although I might be interested in doing it, I will never do it. People can gossip all they want; they can speculate all they want. I just happened to believe that there's a separation between the public life and the private life. Everybody has the right to a private life no matter what their professions are. In October 2017, Spacey came out as gay when he apologized to Rapp for allegedly making a sexual advance toward him in 1986. Spacey said, "I have had relationships with both men and women. I have loved and had romantic encounters with men throughout my life, and I choose now to live as a gay man." His decision to come out via his statement was criticized by prominent members of the gay community, including Billy Eichner, George Takei, and Wanda Sykes, as an attempt to change the subject and shift focus from Rapp's accusation, for using his own drunkenness as an excuse for making sexual advances to a minor, and for implying a connection between being gay and sexually assaulting a minor. Beyond the Sea: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (2004) "That Old Black Magic" (1997, from the Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil soundtrack) "Mind Games" – – October 2, 2001, Radio City Music Hall List of actors with Academy Award nominations, List of actors with two or more Academy Awards in acting categories, List of actors with two or more Academy Award nominations in acting categories, List of LGBT Academy Award winners and nominees Edgar Howard Wright (born 18 April 1974) is an English director, screenwriter and producer. Recognized as an auteur, he is famous for his fast-paced and kinetic, satirical genre films, which feature extensive reliance on music, tracking steady-cam shots, dolly zooms and a signature editing style that includes transitions, whip-pans and wipes. He began making independent short films before making his first feature film A Fistful of Fingers (1995). Wright created and directed the comedy series Asylum in 1996, written with David Walliams. After directing several other television shows, Wright directed the sitcom Spaced (1999–2001), which aired for two series and starred frequent collaborators Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. In 2004, Wright directed the zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead starring Pegg and Frost, the first film in Wright's Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy. The film was co-written with Pegg—as were the next two entries in the trilogy, the buddy cop film Hot Fuzz (2007) and the science fiction comedy The World's End (2013). In 2010, Wright co-wrote and directed the action comedy film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, an adaptation of the graphic novel series. Along with Joe Cornish and Steven Moffat, he adapted The Adventures of Tintin (2011) for Steven Spielberg. Wright and Cornish co- wrote the screenplay for the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Ant-Man in 2015, which Wright intended to direct but abandoned, citing creative differences. His latest film, the action film Baby Driver, was released in 2017, before filming commenced on his next feature Last Night in Soho (2020). Wright has directed numerous music videos, including The Bluetones' "Keep the Home Fires Burning" (2000), The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster's "Psychosis Safari" (2002), Mint Royale's "Blue Song" (2002), Pharrell Williams' "Gust of Wind" (2014), and Beck's "Colors" (2018). Wright was born in Poole, Dorset and grew up predominantly in Wells in Somerset. He attended The Blue School, Wells from 1985 to 1992, and is honoured by a plaque at the school. Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, he directed many short films, first on a Super-8 camera that was a gift from a family member and later on a Video-8 camcorder that he won in a competition on the television programme Going Live. These films were mostly comedic pastiches of popular genres, such as the super hero-inspired Carbolic Soap and Dirty Harry tribute Dead Right (which was featured on the DVD release of Hot Fuzz). From 1992 to 1994, Wright attended the Bournemouth and Poole College of Art (now Arts University Bournemouth) and received an ND in Audio-Visual Design. In June 2018, Arts University Bournemouth awarded Wright an Honorary Fellowship alongside graphic designer Margaret Calvert, costume designer Jenny Beavan and dancer Darcey Bussell. On receiving the award Wright said "I'm thrilled to accept my honorary fellowship from AUB, or as I knew it back in 1992, the Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design. I still think very fondly of my time spent there." Edgar Wright is famous for including comedy in all the films he directs regardless of the main genre of the film. This is due to the influence of John Landis’ an American Werewolf in London which Wright claimed was “laugh out loud funny, genuinely scary, and having a lot of heart”. The comedic styling used in his cornetto trilogy was influenced by the more improvised style of the second Evil Dead movie. This influence was not only from the more horror- based movies but also comedy films such as Ferris Bueller’s Day off which used a variety of action shots that keep a fast pace such as in most of his films like baby driver which syncs the pacing of the songs used to the action on the screen. Wright made his feature film debut in 1995 with a low budget, independent spoof western, A Fistful of Fingers, which was picked up for a limited theatrical release and broadcast on the satellite TV channel Sky Movies. Despite Wright's dissatisfaction with the finished product, it caught the attention of comedians Matt Lucas and David Walliams, who subsequently chose him as the director of their Paramount Comedy channel production Mash and Peas. During this time he also worked on BBC programmes such as Is It Bill Bailey?, Alexei Sayle's Merry-Go-Round and Sir Bernard's Stately Homes. In an interview with journalist and author Robert K. Elder for The Film That Changed My Life, Wright attributes his edgy and comedic style to his love for An American Werewolf in London: I've always been fascinated by horror films and genre films. And horror films harboured a fascination for me and always have been something I've wanted to watch and wanted to make. Equally, I'm very fascinated by comedy. I suppose the reason that this film changed my life is that very early on in my film-watching experiences, I saw a film that was so sophisticated in its tone and what it managed to achieve. In 1998 writer/actors Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes were in the early stages of developing their sitcom Spaced for Channel 4 and thought of asking Wright to direct, having fondly remembered working with him on the 1996 Paramount comedy Asylum. Wright gave Spaced an unusual look for the sitcom genre, with dramatic camera angles and movement borrowed from the visual language of science fiction and horror films. Instead of shying away from these influences Wright makes an active effort to show his referencing, adding a 'Homage-O-Meter' to all of his releases, a device that displays each directorial nod he has made during shooting. In 2002, he made appearances as a scientist and a technician named Eddie Yorque during both series of Look Around You, a BBC programme created by a member of the Spaced cast, Peter Serafinowicz. He also made two brief appearances in Spaced, one in which he can be seen, along with other crew members on the series, lying asleep in Daisy Steiner's squat as she prepares to leave for her new house. The other is a brief appearance during the montage in the episode "Gone" where Daisy describes to Tim what she thinks would be a fun night out for the two. Edgar is sitting on the tube (with a beard) next to Tim and Daisy. The critical success of Spaced paved the way for Wright and Pegg to move to the big screen with Shaun of the Dead, a zombie comedy which mixed a "Brit flick" romantic comedy style with homages to the horror classics of George A. Romero and Sam Raimi. The film was a success critically and financially, and its rooting in American genre cinema helped to make it an international hit. The pair subsequently planned out a trilogy of British genre-comedies which were connected not by narrative but by their shared traits and motifs. The trilogy was named "The Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy" by the pair due to a running joke about the British ice cream product Cornetto and its effectiveness as a hangover cure. Wright explained to Clark Collis in an interview for Entertainment Weekly, "We put that joke in Shaun of the Dead where Nick asks for a Cornetto first thing in the morning. When I was at college, it was my hangover cure—probably still is my hangover cure. Then we put it into Hot Fuzz because we thought it would be a funny recurring thing. One journalist in the United Kingdom said, 'Is this going to be your theme as a trilogy?' and I said, 'Yes, it's like Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colors trilogy. This is the Three Flavors Cornetto trilogy.' It was just a joke that stuck." Collis observes that the films also feature "a running gag involving garden fences." The second installment was the comedy action thriller Hot Fuzz. Production started in March 2006 and the film was released in February 2007 in the United Kingdom and April 2007 in the United States. It revolves around Pegg's character, Nicholas Angel, a police officer who is transferred from London to rural Sandford, where grisly events soon take place. In 2007, Wright also directed a fake trailer insert for Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse, called Don't. It was a plotless trailer that mocked horror clichés, with lines such as, "If you... are thinking... of going ... into... this... house... DON'T!". In 2010, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was released; its over-$85 million budget dwarfed the £8 million budget of Hot Fuzz. The film, based on the graphic novel series Scott Pilgrim, was co- written, co-produced and directed by Wright. It took in roughly half its budget in box office, in spite of its critical reception and praise from fellow directors such as Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino and Jason Reitman. In November 2011, The Adventures of Tintin, directed by Steven Spielberg, produced by Peter Jackson, and based on Hergé's The Adventures of Tintin was released. Wright co-wrote the film with writing partner Joe Cornish and Steven Moffat. The film also co-starred Wright's frequent collaborators Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. The third installment of the trilogy, The World's End, premiered in London on 10 July 2013. The film is about several friends who reunite when one decides to repeat a pub crawl they did 20 years earlier. They have to get to The World's End pub without ending up in the gutter to do this, but some unusual powers are at work and what happens to them may determine what happens to humans as a species. Wright was developing a live-action film based on the Marvel Comics superhero Ant-Man with Joe Cornish since 2006. However, on 23 May 2014, Wright and Marvel Studios issued a joint statement announcing that Wright would exit the movie due to creative differences. According to Wright, he had been hired as writer-director but became unhappy when Marvel wanted to write a new script. In 2017, he said: "The most diplomatic answer is I wanted to make a Marvel movie but I don't think they really wanted to make an Edgar Wright movie ... having written all my other movies, that's a tough thing to move forward. Suddenly becoming a director for hire on it, you’re sort of less emotionally invested and you start to wonder why you’re there, really." He was replaced by Peyton Reed as director, with Adam McKay and star Paul Rudd rewriting the screenplay. He and Cornish received both screenplay and story credits, with Wright also credited as executive producer. In July 2014, Wright announced that his next film would be Baby Driver. Wright has described the film as "kind of like a musical", and Deadline Hollywood described it as "a collision of crime, action, music, and sound". The film stars Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, Lily James, Eiza González, Jon Hamm, and Jamie Foxx. The film began production on 11 February 2016 in Atlanta, and was released on 28 June 2017. In January 2019, it was announced that his next film will be a horror thriller film set in London and inspired by movies such as Don't Look Now and Repulsion. In February 2019, it was revealed that the title was Last Night in Soho, with Anya Taylor-Joy attached to star. In February, Matt Smith and Thomasin McKenzie joined the cast. Other confirmed crew members include co- screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns, editor Paul Machliss (who edited four episodes of Spaced in 2001 and all of Wright's films since Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), and Baby Driver production designer Marcus Rowland. The film is scheduled to be released on 25 September 2020. In October 2015, Wright was announced as director of the film adaptation of Neil Gaiman's novel Fortunately, The Milk. The time-travel story will be a hybrid of live-action and animation. The film will star Johnny Depp and will be co-written by Wright and Flight of the Conchords alumnus Bret McKenzie. In November 2015, it was announced that Wright would direct and co-write with David Walliams a DreamWorks Animation film centered on "the concept of shadows", that has been in development since 2010. Shadows, as the film was known, was to be Wright's animation directorial debut. The film has been in development for a long time, changing directors. Mark Dindal, who created the film's original story, was involved between 2010 and 2012, was replaced by Alessandro Carloni from 2012 to 2015, and Wright is slated to develop the picture. Three drafts of script were written but the project is on hold due to staff changes at DreamWorks leaving it in limbo. Wright has numerous other projects in development. In 2008, Wright was rumoured to be directing a remake of the 1961 British monster film Gorgo. It was reported the film would employ a man in a suit to portray its monster (as had the original film). Wright has also been attached to direct films including and a film version of the television series that would star Johnny Depp, which was announced in early 2012. In July 2014, Wright was announced as director of the film adaptation of Andrew Smith's novel Grasshopper Jungle for Sony Pictures. In July 2017 it was reported that Wright was approached by Sony officials for a Baby Driver sequel. Wright is interested in developing Baby Driver 2. In June 2018, Edgar announced he is making a documentary on the cult pop rock band Sparks. He had covered the band's concert in London in May at the O2 Forum Kentish Town. This concert will be included in the documentary. In April 2007, it was reported that Wright may expand Don't, a fake trailer made for Grindhouse, into a feature film. According to Eli Roth, he and Wright have discussed the possibility of pairing Don't with Thanksgiving for a Grindhouse sequel. Roth is quoted as saying "We're talking to Dimension about it. I think they're still trying to figure out Grindhouse 1 before we think about Grindhouse 2, but I've already been working on the outline for it and I would do it in a heartbeat." Wright cites Jon Spencer Blues Explosion as his favourite band. Several Blues Explosion songs feature in Wright's film Hot Fuzz, including one written specifically for the film; another of their songs also underscores the opening sequence of Baby Driver, which also featured Jon Spencer himself in a small role as a prison guard. Wright has directed two videos for his ex-girlfriend Charlotte Hatherley: "Summer" and "Bastardo". He has also directed promos for 80s Matchbox B-Line Disaster, Mint Royale and The Bluetones. Wright has a brother, Oscar, who is a comic book artist, contributing storyboards, conceptual art and promotional pictures for Edgar's films. For example, he designed comic book interpretations of the characters of Shaun of the Dead and created the animation for the flickbook PC Danny Butterman uses in Hot Fuzz, as well as the art for the "Plot Holes" features on both the Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead DVD releases. Oscar also was on set for the Hot Fuzz poster shoot to help Edgar out with the design. Oscar also directed the Charlotte Hatherley video for "Behave" and also designed the 8-bit Universal Pictures logo at the beginning of the movie Scott Pilgrim vs. the World along with Edgar. In 2019, he made an appearance as an non-player character in Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding. Wright has stated in The Film That Changed My Life that the film that most influenced him was John Landis' An American Werewolf in London. Wright also mentioned Sam Raimi's Evil Dead II and the Coen brothers' Raising Arizona as films that made him want to be a director. When he met Raimi and told him so, Raimi joked to him, "Don't say that, you make me feel old." In December 2007, Wright began guest programming at Repertory theatre the New Beverly Cinema following a sold-out screening of his films. He curated a two-week series of his favorite films dubbed "The Wright Stuff", hosting interviews with filmmakers and performers for each screening. The festival concluded with a double-bill of Evil Dead II and Raising Arizona. Wright returned for additional "The Wright Stuff" events in January 2011 and December 2011, the third series consisting of films Wright had been recommended by friends Bill Hader, Daniel Waters, Quentin Tarantino, Judd Apatow, Joss Whedon, John Landis and Joe Dante, but had never seen before. Wright's attempt to narrow the list based on public comment from visitors to his blog "produced another thousand suggestions." In August 2013, Wright programmed an additional double-feature series at the theater, "The World's End is Nigh", consisting of 12 movies that he called "stepping stones to our new movie" The World's End. Wright is a friend of fellow director Garth Jennings, and made cameos in his films The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Son of Rambow and Sing. Jennings himself had cameos in Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World's End. Executive producer only Attack the Block (2011), Sightseers (2012) The Director Interviews: Edgar Wright, Hot Fuzz at Filmmaker Magazine, 2004 interview with 2000ADReview, Edgar Wright on Hot Fuzz

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The Bessemer process was the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass production of steel from molten pig iron before the development of the open hearth furnace. The key principle is removal of impurities from the iron by oxidation with air being blown through the molten iron. The oxidation also raises the temperature of the iron mass and keeps it molten. Related decarburizing with air processes had been used outside Europe for hundreds of years, but not on an industrial scale. One such process (similar to puddling) was known in the 11th century in East Asia, where the scholar Shen Kuo of that era described its use in the Chinese iron and steel industry. In the 17th century, accounts by European travelers detailed its possible use by the Japanese. The modern process is named after its inventor, the Englishman Henry Bessemer, who took out a patent on the process in 1856. The process was said to be independently discovered in 1851 by the American inventor William Kelly though the claim is controversial. The process using a basic refractory lining is known as the "basic Bessemer process" or Gilchrist–Thomas process after the English discoverers Percy Gilchrist and Sidney Gilchrist Thomas. A system akin to the Bessemer process has existed since the 11th century in East Asia. Economic historian Robert Hartwell writes that the Chinese of the Song Dynasty innovated a "partial decarbonization" method of repeated forging of cast iron under a cold blast. Sinologist Joseph Needham and historian of metallurgy Theodore A. Wertime have described the method as a predecessor to the Bessemer process of making steel. This process was first described by the prolific scholar and polymath government official Shen Kuo (1031–1095) in 1075, when he visited Cizhou. Hartwell states that perhaps the earliest center where this was practiced was the great iron-production district along the Henan–Hebei border during the 11th century. In the 15th century the finery process, another process which shares the air-blowing principle with the Bessemer process, was developed in Europe. In 1740 Benjamin Huntsman developed the crucible technique for steel manufacture, at his workshop in the district of Handsworth in Sheffield. This process had an enormous impact on the quantity and quality of steel production, but it was unrelated to the Bessemer-type process employing decarburization. The Japanese may have made use of a Bessemer-type process, which was observed by European travelers in the 17th century. The adventurer Johan Albrecht de Mandelslo describes the process in a book published in English in 1669. He writes, "They have, among others, particular invention for the melting of iron, without the using of fire, casting it into a tun done about on the inside without about half a foot of earth, where they keep it with continual blowing, take it out by ladles full, to give it what form they please." According to historian Donald Wagner, Mandelslo did not personally visit Japan, so his description of the process is likely derived from accounts of other Europeans who had traveled to Japan. Wagner believes that the Japanese process may have been similar to the Bessemer process, but cautions that alternative explanations are also plausible. In the early 1850s, the American inventor William Kelly experimented with a method similar to the Bessemer process. Wagner writes that Kelly may have been inspired by techniques introduced by Chinese ironworkers hired by Kelly in 1854. When Bessemer's patent for the process was reported by Scientific American, Kelly responded by writing a letter to the magazine. In the letter, Kelly states that he had previously experimented with the process and claimed that Bessemer knew of Kelly's discovery. He wrote that "I have reason to believe my discovery was known in England three or four years ago, as a number of English puddlers visited this place to see my new process. Several of them have since returned to England and may have spoken of my invention there." Sir Henry Bessemer described the origin of his invention in his autobiography written in 1890. During the outbreak of the Crimean War, many English industrialists and inventors became interested in military technology. According to Bessemer, his invention was inspired by a conversation with Napoleon III in 1854 pertaining to the steel required for better artillery. Bessemer claimed that it "was the spark which kindled one of the greatest revolutions that the present century had to record, for during my solitary ride in a cab that night from Vincennes to Paris, I made up my mind to try what I could to improve the quality of iron in the manufacture of guns." At the time steel was used to make only small items like cutlery and tools, but was too expensive for cannons. Starting in January 1855 he began working on a way to produce steel in the massive quantities required for artillery and by October he filed his first patent related to the Bessemer process. He patented the method a year later in 1856. Bessemer licensed the patent for his process to four ironmasters, for a total of £27,000, but the licensees failed to produce the quality of steel he had promised—it was "rotten hot and rotten cold", according to his friend, William Clay—and he later bought them back for £32,500. His plan had been to offer the licenses to one company in each of several geographic areas, at a royalty price per ton that included a lower rate on a proportion of their output in order to encourage production, but not so large a proportion that they might decide to reduce their selling prices. By this method he hoped to cause the new process to gain in standing and market share. He realised that the technical problem was due to impurities in the iron and concluded that the solution lay in knowing when to turn off the flow of air in his process so that the impurities were burned off but just the right amount of carbon remained. However, despite spending tens of thousands of pounds on experiments, he could not find the answer. Certain grades of steel are sensitive to the 78% nitrogen which was part of the air blast passing through the steel. Bessemer was sued by the patent purchasers who couldn't get it to work. In the end Bessemer set up his own steel company because he knew how to do it, even though he could not convey it to his patent users. Bessemer's company became one of the largest in the world and changed the face of steel making. The solution was first discovered by English metallurgist Robert Forester Mushet, who had carried out thousands of experiments in the Forest of Dean. His method was to first burn off, as far as possible, all the impurities and carbon, then reintroduce carbon and manganese by adding an exact amount of spiegeleisen. This had the effect of improving the quality of the finished product, increasing its malleability—its ability to withstand rolling and forging at high temperatures and making it more suitable for a vast array of uses. Mushet's patent ultimately lapsed due to Mushet's inability to pay the patent fees and was acquired by Bessemer. Bessemer earned over 5 million dollars in royalties from the patents. The first company to license the process was the Manchester firm of W & J Galloway, and they did so before Bessemer announced it at Cheltenham in 1856. They are not included in his list of the four to whom he refunded the license fees. However, they subsequently rescinded their license in 1858 in return for the opportunity to invest in a partnership with Bessemer and others. This partnership began to manufacture steel in Sheffield from 1858, initially using imported charcoal pig iron from Sweden. This was the first commercial production. Alexander Lyman Holley contributed significantly to the success of Bessemer steel in the United States. His A Treatise on Ordnance and Armor is an important work on contemporary weapons manufacturing and steel-making practices. In 1862, he visited Bessemer's Sheffield works, and became interested in licensing the process for use in the US. Upon returning to the US, Holley met with two iron producers from Troy, New York, John F. Winslow and John Augustus Griswold, who asked him to return to the United Kingdom and negotiate with the Bank of England on their behalf. Holley secured a license for Griswold and Winslow to use Bessemer's patented processes and returned to the United States in late 1863. The trio began setting up a mill in Troy, New York in 1865. The factory contained a number of Holley's innovations that greatly improved productivity over Bessemer's factory in Sheffield, and the owners gave a successful public exhibition in 1867. The Troy factory attracted the attention of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which wanted to use the new process to manufacture steel rail. It funded Holley's second mill as part of its Pennsylvania Steel subsidiary. Between 1866 and 1877, the partners were able to license a total of 11 Bessemer steel mills. One of the investors they attracted was Andrew Carnegie, who saw great promise in the new steel technology after a visit to Bessemer in 1872, and saw it as a useful adjunct to his existing businesses, the Keystone Bridge Company and the Union Iron Works. Holley built the new steel mill for Carnegie, and continued to improve and refine the process. The new mill, known as the Edgar Thomson Steel Works, opened in 1875, and started the growth of the United States as a major world steel producer. Using the Bessemer process, Carnegie Steel was able to reduce the costs of steel railroad rails from $100 per ton to $50 per ton between 1873 and 1875. The price of steel continued to fall until Carnegie was selling rails for $18 per ton by the 1890s. Prior to the opening of Carnegie's Thomson Works, steel output in the United States totaled around 157,000 tons per year. By 1910, American companies were producing 26 million tons of steel annually. William Walker Scranton, manager and owner of the Lackawanna Iron & Coal Company in Scranton, Pennsylvania, had also investigated the process in Europe. He built a mill in 1876 using the Bessemer process for steel rails and quadrupled his production. Bessemer steel was primarily used in the United States for railroad rails. During the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, a major dispute arose over whether crucible steel should be used instead of the cheaper Bessemer steel. In 1877, Abram Hewitt wrote a letter urging against the use of Bessemer steel in the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. Bids had been submitted for both crucible steel and Bessemer steel; John A. Roebling's Sons submitted the lowest bid for Bessemer steel, but at Hewitt's direction, the contract was awarded to J. Lloyd Haigh Co.. Using the Bessemer process, it took between 10 and 20 minutes to convert three to five tons of iron into steel — it used to take at least a full day of heating, stirring and reheating to achieve this. The blowing of air through the molten pig iron introduces oxygen into the melt which results in oxidation, removing impurities found in the pig iron, such as silicon, manganese, and carbon in the form of oxides. These oxides either escape as gas or form a solid slag. The refractory lining of the converter also plays a role in the conversion — clay linings are used when there is little phosphorus in the raw material – this is known as the acid Bessemer process. When the phosphorus content is high, dolomite, or sometimes magnesite, linings are used in the alkaline Bessemer limestone process. These are also known as Gilchrist–Thomas converters, after their inventors, Percy Gilchrist and Sidney Gilchrist Thomas. In order to produce steel with desired properties, additives such as spiegeleisen (a ferromanganese alloy), can be added to the molten steel once the impurities have been removed. When the required steel had been formed, it was poured into ladles and then transferred into moulds while the lighter slag was left behind. The conversion process, called the "blow", was completed in approximately 20 minutes. During this period the progress of the oxidation of the impurities was judged by the appearance of the flame issuing from the mouth of the converter. The modern use of photoelectric methods of recording the characteristics of the flame greatly aided the blower in controlling final product quality. After the blow, the liquid metal was recarburized to the desired point and other alloying materials were added, depending on the desired product. A Bessemer converter could treat a "heat" (batch of hot metal) of 5 to 30 tons at a time. They were usually operated in pairs, one being blown while another was being filled or tapped. By the early 19th century the puddling process was widespread. Until technological advances made it possible to work at higher heats, slag impurities could not be removed entirely, but the reverberatory furnace made it possible to heat iron without placing it directly in the fire, offering some degree of protection from the impurity of the fuel source. Thus, with the advent of this technology, coal began to replace charcoal fuel. The Bessemer process allowed steel to be produced without fuel, using the impurities of the iron to create the necessary heat. This drastically reduced the costs of steel production, but raw materials with the required characteristics could be difficult to find. High-quality steel was made by the reverse process of adding carbon to carbon-free wrought iron, usually imported from Sweden. The manufacturing process, called the cementation process, consisted of heating bars of wrought iron together with charcoal for periods of up to a week in a long stone box. This produced blister steel. The blister steel was put in a crucible with wrought iron and melted, producing crucible steel. Up to 3 tons of expensive coke was burnt for each ton of steel produced. Such steel when rolled into bars was sold at £50 to £60 (approximately £3,390 to £4,070 in 2008) a long ton. The most difficult and work-intensive part of the process, however, was the production of wrought iron done in finery forges in Sweden. This process was refined in the 18th century with the introduction of Benjamin Huntsman's crucible steel-making techniques, which added an additional three hours firing time and required additional large quantities of coke. In making crucible steel, the blister steel bars were broken into pieces and melted in small crucibles, each containing 20 kg or so. This produced higher quality crucible steel but increased the cost. The Bessemer process reduced the time needed to make steel of this quality to about half an hour while requiring only the coke needed initially to melt the pig iron. The earliest Bessemer converters produced steel for £7 a long ton, although it initially sold for around £40 a ton. Sidney Gilchrist Thomas, a Londoner with a Welsh father, was an industrial chemist who decided to tackle the problem of phosphorus in iron, which resulted in the production of low grade steel. Believing that he had discovered a solution, he contacted his cousin, Percy Gilchrist, who was a chemist at the Blaenavon ironworks. The manager at the time, Edward Martin, offered Sidney equipment for large-scale testing and helped him draw up a patent that was taken out in May, 1878. Sidney Gilchrist Thomas's invention consisted of using dolomite or sometimes limestone linings for the Bessemer converter rather than clay, and it became known as the 'basic' Bessemer rather than the 'acid' Bessemer process. An additional advantage was that the processes formed more slag in the converter, and this could be recovered and used very profitably as a phosphate fertilizer. In 1898, Scientific American published an article called Bessemer Steel and its Effect on the World explaining the significant economic effects of the increased supply in cheap steel. They noted that the expansion of railroads into previously sparsely inhabited regions of the country had led to settlement in those regions, and had made the trade of certain goods profitable, which had previously been too costly to transport. The Bessemer process revolutionized steel manufacture by decreasing its cost, from £40 per long ton to £6–7 per long ton, along with greatly increasing the scale and speed of production of this vital raw material. The process also decreased the labor requirements for steel-making. Before it was introduced, steel was far too expensive to make bridges or the framework for buildings and thus wrought iron had been used throughout the Industrial Revolution. After the introduction of the Bessemer process, steel and wrought iron became similarly priced, and some users, primarily railroads, turned to steel. Quality problems, such as brittleness caused by nitrogen in the blowing air, prevented Bessemer steel from being used for many structural applications. Open-hearth steel was suitable for structural applications. Steel greatly improved the productivity of railroads. Steel rails lasted ten times longer than iron rails. Steel rails, which became heavier as prices fell, could carry heavier locomotives, which could pull longer trains. Steel rail cars were longer and were able to increase the freight to car weight from 1:1 to 2:1. As early as 1895 in the UK it was being noted that the heyday of the Bessemer process was over and that the open hearth method predominated. The Iron and Coal Trades Review said that it was "in a semi-moribund condition. Year after year, it has not only ceased to make progress, but it has absolutely declined." It has been suggested, both at that time and more recently, that the cause of this was the lack of trained personnel and investment in technology rather than anything intrinsic to the process itself. For example, one of the major causes of the decline of the giant ironmaking company Bolckow Vaughan of Middlesbrough was its failure to upgrade its technology. The basic process, the Thomas-Gilchrist process, remained in use longer, especially in Continental Europe, where iron ores were of high phosphorus content and the open-hearth process was not able to remove all phosphorus; almost all inexpensive construction steel in Germany was produced with this method in the 1950s and 1960s. It was eventually superseded by basic oxygen steelmaking. In the U.S., commercial steel production using this method stopped in 1968. It was replaced by processes such as the basic oxygen (Linz–Donawitz) process, which offered better control of final chemistry. The Bessemer process was so fast (10–20 minutes for a heat) that it allowed little time for chemical analysis or adjustment of the alloying elements in the steel. Bessemer converters did not remove phosphorus efficiently from the molten steel; as low-phosphorus ores became more expensive, conversion costs increased. The process permitted only limited amount of scrap steel to be charged, further increasing costs, especially when scrap was inexpensive. Use of electric arc furnace technology competed favourably with the Bessemer process resulting in its obsolescence. Basic oxygen steelmaking is essentially an improved version of the Bessemer process (decarburization by blowing oxygen as gas into the heat rather than burning the excess carbon away by adding oxygen carrying substances into the heat). The advantages of pure oxygen blast over air blast was known to Henry Bessemer, but the 19th-century technology was not advanced enough to allow for the production of the large quantities of pure oxygen to make it economically feasible for use. Cementation (metallurgy) process, Methods of crucible steel production Ferrous metallurgy is the metallurgy of iron and its alloys. It began far back in prehistory. The earliest surviving iron artifacts, from the 4th millennium BC in Egypt, were made from meteoritic iron-nickel. It is not known when or where the smelting of iron from ores began, but by the end of the 2nd millennium BC iron was being produced from iron ores from at least Greece to India, and more controversially Sub-Saharan Africa. The use of wrought iron (worked iron) was known by the 1st millennium BC, and its spread marked the Iron Age. During the medieval period, means were found in Europe of producing wrought iron from cast iron (in this context known as pig iron) using finery forges. For all these processes, charcoal was required as fuel. Steel (with a carbon content between pig iron and wrought iron) was first produced in antiquity as an alloy. Its process of production, Wootz steel, was exported before the 4th century BC from India to ancient China, Africa, the Middle East and Europe. Archaeological evidence of cast iron appears in 5th-century BC China. New methods of producing it by carburizing bars of iron in the cementation process were devised in the 17th century. During the Industrial Revolution, new methods of producing bar iron by substituting coke for charcoal were devised and these were later applied to produce steel, creating a new era of greatly increased use of iron and steel that some contemporaries described as a new Iron Age. In the late 1850s, Henry Bessemer invented a new steelmaking process, that involved blowing air through molten pig iron to burn off carbon, and so to produce mild steel. This and other 19th-century and later steel making processes have displaced wrought iron. Today, wrought iron is no longer produced on a commercial scale, having been displaced by the functionally equivalent mild or low carbon steel. The largest and most modern underground iron ore mine in the world is located in Kiruna, Norrbotten County, Lapland. The mine which is owned by Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara AB, a large Swedish mining company, has an annual production capacity of over 26 million tonnes of iron ore. Iron was extracted from iron–nickel alloys, which comprise about 6% of all meteorites that fall on the Earth. That source can often be identified with certainty because of the unique crystalline features (Widmanstätten patterns) of that material, which are preserved when the metal is worked cold or at low temperature. Those artifacts include, for example, a bead from the 5th millennium BC found in Iran and spear tips and ornaments from ancient Egypt and Sumer around 4000 BC. These early uses appear to have been largely ceremonial or ornamental. Meteoritic iron is very rare, and the metal was probably very expensive, perhaps more expensive than gold. The early Hittites are known to have bartered iron (meteoritic or smelted) for silver, at a rate of 40 times the iron's weight, with the Old Assyrian Empire in the first centuries of the second millennium BC. Meteoric iron was also fashioned into tools in the Arctic, about the year 1000, when the Thule people of Greenland began making harpoons, knives, ulus and other edged tools from pieces of the Cape York meteorite. Typically pea-size bits of metal were cold-hammered into disks and fitted to a bone handle. These artifacts were also used as trade goods with other Arctic peoples: tools made from the Cape York meteorite have been found in archaeological sites more than distant. When the American polar explorer Robert Peary shipped the largest piece of the meteorite to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City in 1897, it still weighed over 33 tons. Another example of a late use of meteoritic iron is an adze from around 1000 AD found in Sweden. Native iron in the metallic state occurs rarely as small inclusions in certain basalt rocks. Besides meteoritic iron, Thule people of Greenland have used native iron from the Disko region. Iron smelting—the extraction of usable metal from oxidized iron ores—is more difficult than tin and copper smelting. While these metals and their alloys can be cold-worked or melted in relatively simple furnaces (such as the kilns used for pottery) and cast into molds, smelted iron requires hot-working and can be melted only in specially designed furnaces. Iron is a common impurity in copper ores and iron ore was sometimes used as a flux, thus it is not surprising that humans mastered the technology of smelted iron only after several millennia of bronze metallurgy. The place and time for the discovery of iron smelting is not known, partly because of the difficulty of distinguishing metal extracted from nickel-containing ores from hot-worked meteoritic iron. The archaeological evidence seems to point to the Middle East area, during the Bronze Age in the 3rd millennium BC. However, wrought iron artifacts remained a rarity until the 12th century BC. The Iron Age is conventionally defined by the widespread replacement of bronze weapons and tools with those of iron and steel. That transition happened at different times in different places, as the technology spread. Mesopotamia was fully into the Iron Age by 900 BC. Although Egypt produced iron artifacts, bronze remained dominant until its conquest by Assyria in 663 BC. The Iron Age began in India about 1200 BC, in Central Europe about 600 BC, and in China about 300 BC. Around 500 BC, the Nubians who had learned from the Assyrians the use of iron and were expelled from Egypt, became major manufacturers and exporters of iron. One of the earliest smelted iron artifacts, a dagger with an iron blade found in a Hattic tomb in Anatolia, dated from 2500 BC. About 1500 BC, increasing numbers of non-meteoritic, smelted iron objects appeared in Mesopotamia, Anatolia and Egypt. Nineteen meteoric iron objects were found in the tomb of Egyptian ruler Tutankhamun, who died in 1323 BC, including an iron dagger with a golden hilt, an Eye of Horus, the mummy's head-stand and sixteen models of an artisan's tools. An Ancient Egyptian sword bearing the name of pharaoh Merneptah as well as a battle axe with an iron blade and gold-decorated bronze shaft were both found in the excavation of Ugarit. Although iron objects dating from the Bronze Age have been found across the Eastern Mediterranean, bronzework appears to have greatly predominated during this period. By the 12th century BC, iron smelting and forging, of weapons and tools, was common from Sub-Saharan Africa through India. As the technology spread, iron came to replace bronze as the dominant metal used for tools and weapons across the Eastern Mediterranean (the Levant, Cyprus, Greece, Crete, Anatolia and Egypt). Iron was originally smelted in bloomeries, furnaces where bellows were used to force air through a pile of iron ore and burning charcoal. The carbon monoxide produced by the charcoal reduced the iron oxide from the ore to metallic iron. The bloomery, however, was not hot enough to melt the iron, so the metal collected in the bottom of the furnace as a spongy mass, or bloom. Workers then repeatedly beat and folded it to force out the molten slag. This laborious, time-consuming process produced wrought iron, a malleable but fairly soft alloy. Concurrent with the transition from bronze to iron was the discovery of carburization, the process of adding carbon to wrought iron. While the iron bloom contained some carbon, the subsequent hot-working oxidized most of it. Smiths in the Middle East discovered that wrought iron could be turned into a much harder product by heating the finished piece in a bed of charcoal, and then quenching it in water or oil. This procedure turned the outer layers of the piece into steel, an alloy of iron and iron carbides, with an inner core of less brittle iron. The development of iron smelting was traditionally attributed to the Hittites of Anatolia of the Late Bronze Age. It was believed that they maintained a monopoly on iron working, and that their empire had been based on that advantage. According to that theory, the ancient Sea Peoples, who invaded the Eastern Mediterranean and destroyed the Hittite empire at the end of the Late Bronze Age, were responsible for spreading the knowledge through that region. This theory is no longer held in the mainstream of scholarship, since there is no archaeological evidence of the alleged Hittite monopoly. While there are some iron objects from Bronze Age Anatolia, the number is comparable to iron objects found in Egypt and other places of the same time period, and only a small number of those objects were weapons. A more recent theory claims that the development of iron technology was driven by the disruption of the copper and tin trade routes, due to the collapse of the empires at the end of the Late Bronze Age. These metals, especially tin, were not widely available and metal workers had to transport them over long distances, whereas iron ores were widely available. However, no known archaeological evidence suggests a shortage of bronze or tin in the Early Iron Age. Bronze objects remained abundant, and these objects have the same percentage of tin as those from the Late Bronze Age. The history of metallurgy in the Indian subcontinent began in the 2nd millennium BC. Archaeological sites in Gangetic plains have yielded iron implements dated between 1800–1200 BC. By the early 13th century BC, iron smelting was practiced on a large scale in India. In Southern India (present day Mysore) iron was in use 12th to 11th centuries BC. The technology of iron metallurgy advanced in the politically stable Maurya period and during a period of peaceful settlements in the 1st millennium BC. Iron artifacts such as spikes, knives, daggers, arrow-heads, bowls, spoons, saucepans, axes, chisels, tongs, door fittings, etc., dated from 600 to 200 BC, have been discovered at several archaeological sites of India. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote the first western account of the use of iron in India. The Indian mythological texts, the Upanishads, have mentions of weaving, pottery and metallurgy, as well. The Romans had high regard for the excellence of steel from India in the time of the Gupta Empire. Perhaps as early as 500 BC, although certainly by 200 AD, high-quality steel was produced in southern India by the crucible technique. In this system, high-purity wrought iron, charcoal, and glass were mixed in a crucible and heated until the iron melted and absorbed the carbon. Iron chain was used in Indian suspension bridges as early as the 4th century. Wootz steel was produced in India and Sri Lanka from around 300 BC. Wootz steel is famous from Classical Antiquity for its durability and ability to hold an edge. When asked by King Porus to select a gift, Alexander is said to have chosen, over gold or silver, thirty pounds of steel. Wootz steel was originally a complex alloy with iron as its main component together with various trace elements. Recent studies have suggested that its qualities may have been due to the formation of carbon nanotubes in the metal. According to Will Durant, the technology passed to the Persians and from them to Arabs who spread it through the Middle East. In the 16th century, the Dutch carried the technology from South India to Europe, where it was mass-produced. Steel was produced in Sri Lanka from 300 BC by furnaces blown by the monsoon winds. The furnaces were dug into the crests of hills, and the wind was diverted into the air vents by long trenches. This arrangement created a zone of high pressure at the entrance, and a zone of low pressure at the top of the furnace. The flow is believed to have allowed higher temperatures than bellows-driven furnaces could produce, resulting in better- quality iron. Steel made in Sri Lanka was traded extensively within the region and in the Islamic world. One of the world's foremost metallurgical curiosities is an iron pillar located in the Qutb complex in Delhi. The pillar is made of wrought iron (98% Fe), is almost seven meters high and weighs more than six tonnes. The pillar was erected by Chandragupta II Vikramaditya and has withstood 1,600 years of exposure to heavy rains with relatively little corrosion. Historians debate whether bloomery-based ironworking ever spread to China from the Middle East. One theory suggests that metallurgy was introduced through Central Asia. In 2008, two iron fragments were excavated at the Mogou site, in Gansu. They have been dated to the 14th century BC, belonging to the period of Siwa culture. One of the fragments was made of bloomery iron rather than meteoritic iron. The earliest cast iron artifacts, dating to 5th century BC, were discovered by archaeologists in what is now modern Luhe County, Jiangsu in China. Cast iron was used in ancient China for warfare, agriculture and architecture. Around 500 BC, metalworkers in the southern state of Wu achieved a temperature of 1130 °C. At this temperature, iron combines with 4.3% carbon and melts. The liquid iron can be cast into molds, a method far less laborious than individually forging each piece of iron from a bloom. Cast iron is rather brittle and unsuitable for striking implements. It can, however, be decarburized to steel or wrought iron by heating it in air for several days. In China, these iron working methods spread northward, and by 300 BC, iron was the material of choice throughout China for most tools and weapons. A mass grave in Hebei province, dated to the early 3rd century BC, contains several soldiers buried with their weapons and other equipment. The artifacts recovered from this grave are variously made of wrought iron, cast iron, malleabilized cast iron, and quench-hardened steel, with only a few, probably ornamental, bronze weapons. During the Han Dynasty (202 BC–220 AD), the government established ironworking as a state monopoly (repealed during the latter half of the dynasty and returned to private entrepreneurship) and built a series of large blast furnaces in Henan province, each capable of producing several tons of iron per day. By this time, Chinese metallurgists had discovered how to fine molten pig iron, stirring it in the open air until it lost its carbon and could be hammered (wrought). (In modern Mandarin-Chinese, this process is now called chao, literally, stir frying.) By the 1st century BC, Chinese metallurgists had found that wrought iron and cast iron could be melted together to yield an alloy of intermediate carbon content, that is, steel. According to legend, the sword of Liu Bang, the first Han emperor, was made in this fashion. Some texts of the era mention "harmonizing the hard and the soft" in the context of ironworking; the phrase may refer to this process. The ancient city of Wan (Nanyang) from the Han period forward was a major center of the iron and steel industry. Along with their original methods of forging steel, the Chinese had also adopted the production methods of creating Wootz steel, an idea imported from India to China by the 5th century AD. During the Han Dynasty, the Chinese were also the first to apply hydraulic power (i.e. a waterwheel) in working the bellows of the blast furnace. This was recorded in the year 31 AD, as an innovation by the Chinese mechanical engineer and politician Du Shi, Prefect of Nanyang. Although Du Shi was the first to apply water power to bellows in metallurgy, the first drawn and printed illustration of its operation with water power appeared in 1313 AD, in the Yuan Dynasty era text called the Nong Shu. In the 11th century, there is evidence of the production of steel in Song China using two techniques: a "berganesque" method that produced inferior, heterogeneous steel and a precursor to the modern Bessemer process that utilized partial decarbonization via repeated forging under a cold blast. By the 11th century, there was a large amount of deforestation in China due to the iron industry's demands for charcoal. By this time however, the Chinese had learned to use bituminous coke to replace charcoal, and with this switch in resources many acres of prime timberland in China were spared. Iron working was introduced to Greece in the late 10th century BC. The earliest marks of Iron Age in Central Europe are artifacts from the Hallstatt C culture (8th century BC). Throughout the 7th to 6th centuries BC, iron artifacts remained luxury items reserved for an elite. This changed dramatically shortly after 500 BC with the rise of the La Tène culture, from which time iron metallurgy also became common in Northern Europe and Britain. The spread of ironworking in Central and Western Europe is associated with Celtic expansion. By the 1st century BC, Noric steel was famous for its quality and sought-after by the Roman military. The annual iron output of the Roman Empire is estimated at 84,750 t. Though there is some uncertainty, some archaeologists believe that iron metallurgy was developed independently in sub-Saharan Africa (possibly in West Africa). Inhabitants of Termit, in eastern Niger smelted iron around 1500 BC. In the region of the Aïr Mountains in Niger there are also signs of independent copper smelting between 2500–1500 BC. The process was not in a developed state, indicating smelting was not foreign. It became mature about 1500 BC. Archaeological sites containing iron smelting furnaces and slag have also been excavated at sites in the Nsukka region of southeast Nigeria in what is now Igboland: dating to 2000 BC at the site of Lejja (Eze-Uzomaka 2009) and to 750 BC and at the site of Opi (Holl 2009). The site of Gbabiri (in the Central African Republic) has yielded evidence of iron metallurgy, from a reduction furnace and blacksmith workshop; with earliest dates of 896-773 BC and 907-796 BC respectively. Similarly, smelting in bloomery-type furnaces appear in the Nok culture of central Nigeria by about 550 BC and possibly a few centuries earlier. There is also evidence that carbon steel was made in Western Tanzania by the ancestors of the Haya people as early as 2,300-2,000 years ago (about 300 BC or soon after) by a complex process of "pre-heating" allowing temperatures inside a furnace to reach 1300 to 1400° C. Iron and copper working spread southward through the continent, reaching the Cape around AD 200. The widespread use of iron revolutionized the Bantu-speaking farming communities who adopted it, driving out and absorbing the rock tool using hunter-gatherer societies they encountered as they expanded to farm wider areas of savanna. The technologically superior Bantu-speakers spread across southern Africa and became wealthy and powerful, producing iron for tools and weapons in large, industrial quantities. The earliest records of bloomery-type furnaces in East Africa are discoveries of smelted iron and carbon in Nubia that date back between the 7th and 6th centuries BC, particularly in Meroe where there are known to have been ancient bloomeries that produced metal tools for the Nubians and Kushites and produced surplus for their economy. Iron technology was further advanced by several inventions in medieval Islam, during the Islamic Golden Age. These included a variety of water-powered and wind-powered industrial mills for metal production, including geared gristmills and forges. By the 11th century, every province throughout the Muslim world had these industrial mills in operation, from Islamic Spain and North Africa in the west to the Middle East and Central Asia in the east. There are also 10th-century references to cast iron, as well as archeological evidence of blast furnaces being used in the Ayyubid and Mamluk empires from the 11th century, thus suggesting a diffusion of Chinese metal technology to the Islamic world. Geared gristmills were invented by Muslim engineers, and were used for crushing metallic ores before extraction. Gristmills in the Islamic world were often made from both watermills and windmills. In order to adapt water wheels for gristmilling purposes, cams were used for raising and releasing trip hammers. The first forge driven by a hydropowered water mill rather than manual labour was invented in the 12th century Islamic Spain. One of the most famous steels produced in the medieval Near East was Damascus steel used for swordmaking, and mostly produced in Damascus, Syria, in the period from 900 to 1750. This was produced using the crucible steel method, based on the earlier Indian wootz steel. This process was adopted in the Middle East using locally produced steels. The exact process remains unknown, but it allowed carbides to precipitate out as micro particles arranged in sheets or bands within the body of a blade. Carbides are far harder than the surrounding low carbon steel, so swordsmiths could produce an edge that cut hard materials with the precipitated carbides, while the bands of softer steel let the sword as a whole remain tough and flexible. A team of researchers based at the Technical University of Dresden that uses X-rays and electron microscopy to examine Damascus steel discovered the presence of cementite nanowires and carbon nanotubes. Peter Paufler, a member of the Dresden team, says that these nanostructures give Damascus steel its distinctive properties and are a result of the forging process. There was no fundamental change in the technology of iron production in Europe for many centuries. European metal workers continued to produce iron in bloomeries. However, the Medieval period brought two developments—the use of water power in the bloomery process in various places (outlined above), and the first European production in cast iron. Sometime in the medieval period, water power was applied to the bloomery process. It is possible that this was at the Cistercian Abbey of Clairvaux as early as 1135, but it was certainly in use in early 13th century France and Sweden. In England, the first clear documentary evidence for this is the accounts of a forge of the Bishop of Durham, near Bedburn in 1408, but that was certainly not the first such ironworks. In the Furness district of England, powered bloomeries were in use into the beginning of the 18th century, and near Garstang until about 1770. The Catalan Forge was a variety of powered bloomery. Bloomeries with hot blast were used in upstate New York in the mid-19th century. The preferred method of iron production in Europe until the development of the puddling process in 1783-84. Cast iron development lagged in Europe because wrought iron was the desired product and the intermediate step of producing cast iron involved an expensive blast furnace and further refining of pig iron to cast iron, which then required a labor and capital intensive conversion to wrought iron. Through a good portion of the Middle Ages, in Western Europe, iron was still being made by the working of iron blooms into wrought iron. Some of the earliest casting of iron in Europe occurred in Sweden, in two sites, Lapphyttan and Vinarhyttan, between 1150 and 1350. Some scholars have speculated the practice followed the Mongols across Russia to these sites, but there is no clear proof of this hypothesis, and it would certainly not explain the pre-Mongol datings of many of these iron-production centres. In any event, by the late 14th century, a market for cast iron goods began to form, as a demand developed for cast iron cannonballs. An alternative method of decarburising pig iron was the finery forge, which seems to have been devised in the region around Namur in the 15th century. By the end of that century, this Walloon process spread to the Pay de Bray on the eastern boundary of Normandy, and then to England, where it became the main method of making wrought iron by 1600. It was introduced to Sweden by Louis de Geer in the early 17th century and was used to make the oregrounds iron favoured by English steelmakers. A variation on this was the German forge. This became the main method of producing bar iron in Sweden. In the early 17th century, ironworkers in Western Europe had developed the cementation process for carburizing wrought iron. Wrought iron bars and charcoal were packed into stone boxes, then sealed with clay to be held at a red heat continually tended in an oxygen-free state immersed in nearly pure carbon (charcoal) for up to a week. During this time, carbon diffused into the surface layers of the iron, producing cement steel or blister steel--also known as case hardened, where the portions wrapped in iron (the pick or axe blade) became harder, than say an axe hammer-head or shaft socket which might be insulated by clay to keep them from the carbon source. The earliest place where this process was used in England was at Coalbrookdale from 1619, where Sir Basil Brooke had two cementation furnaces (recently excavated in 2001-2005). For a time in the 1610s, he owned a patent on the process, but had to surrender this in 1619. He probably used Forest of Dean iron as his raw material, but it was soon found that oregrounds iron was more suitable. The quality of the steel could be improved by faggoting, producing the so-called shear steel. In the 1740s, Benjamin Huntsman found a means of melting blister steel, made by the cementation process, in crucibles. The resulting crucible steel, usually cast in ingots, was more homogeneous than blister steel. Early iron smelting used charcoal as both the heat source and the reducing agent. By the 18th century, the availability of wood for making charcoal was limiting the expansion of iron production, so that England became increasingly dependent for a considerable part of the iron required by its industry, on Sweden (from the mid-17th century) and then from about 1725 also on Russia. Smelting with coal (or its derivative coke) was a long sought objective. The production of pig iron with coke was probably achieved by Dud Dudley in the 1620s, and with a mixed fuel made from coal and wood again in the 1670s. However this was probably only a technological rather than a commercial success. Shadrach Fox may have smelted iron with coke at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire in the 1690s, but only to make cannonballs and other cast iron products such as shells. However, in the peace after the Nine Years War, there was no demand for these. In 1707, Abraham Darby I patented a method of making cast iron pots. His pots were thinner and hence cheaper than those of his rivals. Needing a larger supply of pig iron he leased the blast furnace at Coalbrookdale in 1709. There, he made iron using coke, thus establishing the first successful business in Europe to do so. His products were all of cast iron, though his immediate successors attempted (with little commercial success) to fine this to bar iron. Bar iron thus continued normally to be made with charcoal pig iron until the mid-1750s. In 1755 Abraham Darby II (with partners) opened a new coke-using furnace at Horsehay in Shropshire, and this was followed by others. These supplied coke pig iron to finery forges of the traditional kind for the production of bar iron. The reason for the delay remains controversial. It was only after this that economically viable means of converting pig iron to bar iron began to be devised. A process known as potting and stamping was devised in the 1760s and improved in the 1770s, and seems to have been widely adopted in the West Midlands from about 1785. However, this was largely replaced by Henry Cort's puddling process, patented in 1784, but probably only made to work with grey pig iron in about 1790. These processes permitted the great expansion in the production of iron that constitutes the Industrial Revolution for the iron industry. In the early 19th century, Hall discovered that the addition of iron oxide to the charge of the puddling furnace caused a violent reaction, in which the pig iron was decarburised, this became known as 'wet puddling'. It was also found possible to produce steel by stopping the puddling process before decarburisation was complete. The efficiency of the blast furnace was improved by the change to hot blast, patented by James Beaumont Neilson in Scotland in 1828. This further reduced production costs. Within a few decades, the practice was to have a 'stove' as large as the furnace next to it into which the waste gas (containing CO) from the furnace was directed and burnt. The resultant heat was used to preheat the air blown into the furnace. Apart from some production of puddled steel, English steel continued to be made by the cementation process, sometimes followed by remelting to produce crucible steel. These were batch-based processes whose raw material was bar iron, particularly Swedish oregrounds iron. The problem of mass-producing cheap steel was solved in 1855 by Henry Bessemer, with the introduction of the Bessemer converter at his steelworks in Sheffield, England. (An early converter can still be seen at the city's Kelham Island Museum). In the Bessemer process, molten pig iron from the blast furnace was charged into a large crucible, and then air was blown through the molten iron from below, igniting the dissolved carbon from the coke. As the carbon burned off, the melting point of the mixture increased, but the heat from the burning carbon provided the extra energy needed to keep the mixture molten. After the carbon content in the melt had dropped to the desired level, the air draft was cut off: a typical Bessemer converter could convert a 25-ton batch of pig iron to steel in half an hour. Finally, the basic oxygen process was introduced at the Voest-Alpine works in 1952; a modification of the basic Bessemer process, it lances oxygen from above the steel (instead of bubbling air from below), reducing the amount of nitrogen uptake into the steel. The basic oxygen process is used in all modern steelworks; the last Bessemer converter in the U.S. was retired in 1968. Furthermore, the last three decades have seen a massive increase in the mini-mill business, where scrap steel only is melted with an electric arc furnace. These mills only produced bar products at first, but have since expanded into flat and heavy products, once the exclusive domain of the integrated steelworks. Until these 19th-century developments, steel was an expensive commodity and only used for a limited number of purposes where a particularly hard or flexible metal was needed, as in the cutting edges of tools and springs. The widespread availability of inexpensive steel powered the Second Industrial Revolution and modern society as we know it. Mild steel ultimately replaced wrought iron for almost all purposes, and wrought iron is no longer commercially produced. With minor exceptions, alloy steels only began to be made in the late 19th century. Stainless steel was developed on the eve of World War I and was not widely used until the 1920s. Damascus Steel, History of steelmaking, Iron Age, Nok culture, Non-ferrous extractive metallurgy, Roman metallurgy, Bintie, a Chinese possibly carbon steel Ebrey, Walthall, Palais, (2006). East Asia: A Cultural, Social, and Political History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company., Knowles, Anne Kelly. (2013) Mastering Iron: The Struggle to Modernize an American Industry, 1800–1868 (University of Chicago Press) 334 pages, Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 4, Part 2; Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 4, Part 3., Pleiner, R. (2000) Iron in Archaeology. The European Bloomery Smelters, Praha, Archeologický Ústav Av Cr., Wagner, Donald (1996). Iron and Steel in Ancient China. Leiden: E. J. Brill., Woods, Michael and Mary B. Woods (2000). Ancient Machines: From Wedges to Waterwheels. Minneapolis: Twenty-First Century Books. A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally pig iron, but also others such as lead or copper. Blast refers to the combustion air being "forced" or supplied above atmospheric pressure. In a blast furnace, fuel (coke), ores, and flux (limestone) are continuously supplied through the top of the furnace, while a hot blast of air (sometimes with oxygen enrichment) is blown into the lower section of the furnace through a series of pipes called tuyeres, so that the chemical reactions take place throughout the furnace as the material falls downward. The end products are usually molten metal and slag phases tapped from the bottom, and waste gases (flue gas) exiting from the top of the furnace. The downward flow of the ore along with the flux in contact with an upflow of hot, carbon monoxide-rich combustion gases is a countercurrent exchange and chemical reaction process. In contrast, air furnaces (such as reverberatory furnaces) are naturally aspirated, usually by the convection of hot gases in a chimney flue. According to this broad definition, bloomeries for iron, blowing houses for tin, and smelt mills for lead would be classified as blast furnaces. However, the term has usually been limited to those used for smelting iron ore to produce pig iron, an intermediate material used in the production of commercial iron and steel, and the shaft furnaces used in combination with sinter plants in base metals smelting. Cast iron has been found in China dating to the 5th century BC, but the earliest extant blast furnaces in China date to the 1st century AD and in the West from the High Middle Ages. They spread from the region around Namur in Wallonia (Belgium) in the late 15th century, being introduced to England in 1491. The fuel used in these was invariably charcoal. The successful substitution of coke for charcoal is widely attributed to English inventor Abraham Darby in 1709. The efficiency of the process was further enhanced by the practice of preheating the combustion air (hot blast), patented by Scottish inventor James Beaumont Neilson in 1828. Archaeological evidence shows that bloomeries appeared in China around 800 BC. Originally it was thought that the Chinese started casting iron right from the beginning, but this theory has since been debunked by the discovery of 'more than ten' iron digging implements found in the tomb of Duke Jing of Qin (d. 537 BC), whose tomb is located in Fengxiang County, Shaanxi (a museum exists on the site today). There is however no evidence of the bloomery in China after the appearance of the blast furnace and cast iron. In China, blast furnaces produced cast iron, which was then either converted into finished implements in a cupola furnace, or turned into wrought iron in a fining hearth. Although cast iron farm tools and weapons were widespread in China by the 5th century BC, employing workforces of over 200 men in iron smelters from the 3rd century onward, the earliest blast furnaces constructed were attributed to the Han Dynasty in the 1st century AD. These early furnaces had clay walls and used phosphorus-containing minerals as a flux. Chinese blast furnaces ranged from around two to ten meters in height, depending on the region. The largest ones were found in modern Sichuan and Guangdong, while the 'dwarf" blast furnaces were found in Dabieshan. In construction, they are both around the same level of technological sophistication The effectiveness of the Chinese blast furnace was enhanced during this period by the engineer Du Shi (c. AD 31), who applied the power of waterwheels to piston-bellows in forging cast iron. Donald Wagner suggests that early blast furnace and cast iron production evolved from furnaces used to melt bronze. Certainly, though, iron was essential to military success by the time the State of Qin had unified China (221 BC). Usage of the blast and cupola furnace remained widespread during the Song and Tang Dynasties. By the 11th century, the Song Dynasty Chinese iron industry made a switch of resources from charcoal to coke in casting iron and steel, sparing thousands of acres of woodland from felling. This may have happened as early as the 4th century AD. The primary advantage of the early blast furnace was in large scale production and making iron implements more readily available to peasants. Cast iron is more brittle than wrought iron or steel, which required additional fining and then cementation or co-fusion to produce, but for menial activities such as farming it sufficed. By using the blast furnace, it was possible to produce larger quantities of tools such as ploughshares more efficiently than the bloomery. In areas where quality was important, such as warfare, wrought iron and steel were preferred. Nearly all Han period weapons are made of wrought iron or steel, with the exception of axe-heads, of which many are made of cast iron. Blast furnaces were also later used to produce gunpowder weapons such as cast iron bomb shells and cast iron cannons during the Song dynasty. The simplest forge, known as the Corsican, was used prior to the advent of Christianity. Examples of improved bloomeries are the (sometimes called wolf- furnace), which remained until the beginning of the 19th century. Instead of using natural draught, air was pumped in by a trompe, resulting in better quality iron and an increased capacity. This pumping of airstream in with bellows is known as cold blast, and it increases the fuel efficiency of the bloomery and improves yield. They can also be built bigger than natural draught bloomeries. The oldest known blast furnaces in the West were built in Dürstel in Switzerland, the Märkische Sauerland in Germany, and at Lapphyttan in Sweden, where the complex was active between 1205 and 1300. At Noraskog in the Swedish parish of Järnboås, there has also been found traces of blast furnaces dating even earlier, possibly to around 1100. These early blast furnaces, like the Chinese examples, were very inefficient compared to those used today. The iron from the Lapphyttan complex was used to produce balls of wrought iron known as osmonds, and these were traded internationally – a possible reference occurs in a treaty with Novgorod from 1203 and several certain references in accounts of English customs from the 1250s and 1320s. Other furnaces of the 13th to 15th centuries have been identified in Westphalia. The technology required for blast furnaces may have either been transferred from China, or may have been an indigenous innovation. Al-Qazvini in the 13th century and other travellers subsequently noted an iron industry in the Alburz Mountains to the south of the Caspian Sea. This is close to the silk route, so that the use of technology derived from China is conceivable. Much later descriptions record blast furnaces about three metres high. As the Varangian Rus' people from Scandinavia traded with the Caspian (using their Volga trade route), it is possible that the technology reached Sweden by this means. The step from bloomery to true blast furnace is not big. Simply just building a bigger furnace and using bigger bellows to increase the volume of the blast and hence the amount of oxygen leads inevitably into higher temperatures, bloom melting into liquid iron, and cast iron flowing from the smelters. Already the Vikings are known to have used double bellows, which greatly increases the volumetric flow of the blast. This Caspian region may also separately be the technological source for at furnace at Ferriere, described by Filarete. Water- powered bellows at in northern Italy in 1226 in a two-stage process. In this, the molten iron was tapped twice a day into water thereby granulating it. One means by which certain technological advances were transmitted within Europe was a result of the General Chapter of the Cistercian monks. This may have included the blast furnace, as the Cistercians are known to have been skilled metallurgists. According to Jean Gimpel, their high level of industrial technology facilitated the diffusion of new techniques: "Every monastery had a model factory, often as large as the church and only several feet away, and waterpower drove the machinery of the various industries located on its floor." Iron ore deposits were often donated to the monks along with forges to extract the iron, and within time surpluses were being offered for sale. The Cistercians became the leading iron producers in Champagne, France, from the mid-13th century to the 17th century, also using the phosphate-rich slag from their furnaces as an agricultural fertilizer. Archaeologists are still discovering the extent of Cistercian technology. At Laskill, an outstation of Rievaulx Abbey and the only medieval blast furnace so far identified in Britain, the slag produced was low in iron content. Slag from other furnaces of the time contained a substantial concentration of iron, whereas Laskill is believed to have produced cast iron quite efficiently. Its date is not yet clear, but it probably did not survive until Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries in the late 1530s, as an agreement (immediately after that) concerning the "smythes" with the Earl of Rutland in 1541 refers to blooms. Nevertheless, the means by which the blast furnace spread in medieval Europe has not finally been determined. Due to the casting of cannon, the blast furnace came into widespread use in France in the mid 15th century. The direct ancestor of these used in France and England was in the Namur region in what is now Wallonia (Belgium). From there, they spread first to the Pays de Bray on the eastern boundary of Normandy and from there to the Weald of Sussex, where the first furnace (called Queenstock) in Buxted was built in about 1491, followed by one at Newbridge in Ashdown Forest in 1496. They remained few in number until about 1530 but many were built in the following decades in the Weald, where the iron industry perhaps reached its peak about 1590. Most of the pig iron from these furnaces was taken to finery forges for the production of bar iron. The first British furnaces outside the Weald appeared during the 1550s, and many were built in the remainder of that century and the following ones. The output of the industry probably peaked about 1620, and was followed by a slow decline until the early 18th century. This was apparently because it was more economic to import iron from Sweden and elsewhere than to make it in some more remote British locations. Charcoal that was economically available to the industry was probably being consumed as fast as the wood to make it grew. The Backbarrow blast furnace built in Cumbria in 1711 has been described as the first efficient example. The first blast furnace in Russia opened in 1637 near Tula and was called the Gorodishche Works. The blast furnace spread from here to central Russia and then finally to the Urals. In 1709, at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, England, Abraham Darby began to fuel a blast furnace with coke instead of charcoal. Coke's initial advantage was its lower cost, mainly because making coke required much less labor than cutting trees and making charcoal, but using coke also overcame localized shortages of wood, especially in Britain and on the Continent. Metallurgical grade coke will bear heavier weight than charcoal, allowing larger furnaces. A disadvantage is that coke contains more impurities than charcoal, with sulfur being especially detrimental to the iron's quality. Coke's impurities were more of a problem before hot blast reduced the amount of coke required and before furnace temperatures were hot enough to make slag from limestone free flowing. (Limestone ties up sulfur. Manganese may also be added to tie up sulfur). Coke iron was initially only used for foundry work, making pots and other cast iron goods. Foundry work was a minor branch of the industry, but Darby's son built a new furnace at nearby Horsehay, and began to supply the owners of finery forges with coke pig iron for the production of bar iron. Coke pig iron was by this time cheaper to produce than charcoal pig iron. The use of a coal-derived fuel in the iron industry was a key factor in the British Industrial Revolution. Darby's original blast furnace has been archaeologically excavated and can be seen in situ at Coalbrookdale, part of the Ironbridge Gorge Museums. Cast iron from the furnace was used to make girders for the world's first iron bridge in 1779. The Iron Bridge crosses the River Severn at Coalbrookdale and remains in use for pedestrians. The steam engine was applied to power blast air, overcoming a shortage of water power in areas where coal and iron ore were located. The cast iron blowing cylinder was developed in 1768 to replace the leather bellows, which wore out quickly. The steam engine and cast iron blowing cylinder led to a large increase in British iron production in the late 18th century. Hot blast was the single most important advance in fuel efficiency of the blast furnace and was one of the most important technologies developed during the Industrial Revolution. Hot blast was patented by James Beaumont Neilson at Wilsontown Ironworks in Scotland in 1828. Within a few years of the introduction, hot blast was developed to the point where fuel consumption was cut by one-third using coke or two-thirds using coal, while furnace capacity was also significantly increased. Within a few decades, the practice was to have a "stove" as large as the furnace next to it into which the waste gas (containing CO) from the furnace was directed and burnt. The resultant heat was used to preheat the air blown into the furnace. Hot blast enabled the use of raw anthracite coal, which was difficult to light, to the blast furnace. Anthracite was first tried successfully by George Crane at Ynyscedwyn Ironworks in south Wales in 1837. It was taken up in America by the Lehigh Crane Iron Company at Catasauqua, Pennsylvania, in 1839. Anthracite use declined when very high capacity blast furnaces requiring coke were built in the 1870s. The blast furnace remains an important part of modern iron production. Modern furnaces are highly efficient, including Cowper stoves to pre-heat the blast air and employ recovery systems to extract the heat from the hot gases exiting the furnace. Competition in industry drives higher production rates. The largest blast furnace in the world is in South Korea, with a volume around . It can produce around of iron per year. This is a great increase from the typical 18th-century furnaces, which averaged about per year. Variations of the blast furnace, such as the Swedish electric blast furnace, have been developed in countries which have no native coal resources. Blast furnaces are currently rarely used in copper smelting, but modern lead smelting blast furnaces are much shorter than iron blast furnaces and are rectangular in shape. The overall shaft height is around 5 to 6 m. Modern lead blast furnaces are constructed using water-cooled steel or copper jackets for the walls, and have no refractory linings in the side walls. The base of the furnace is a hearth of refractory material (bricks or castable refractory). Lead blast furnaces are often open-topped rather than having the charging bell used in iron blast furnaces. The blast furnace used at the Nyrstar Port Pirie lead smelter differs from most other lead blast furnaces in that it has a double row of tuyeres rather than the single row normally used. The lower shaft of the furnace has a chair shape with the lower part of the shaft being narrower than the upper. The lower row of tuyeres being located in the narrow part of the shaft. This allows the upper part of the shaft to be wider than the standard. The blast furnaces used in the Imperial Smelting Process ("ISP") were developed from the standard lead blast furnace, but are fully sealed. This is because the zinc produced by these furnaces is recovered as metal from the vapor phase, and the presence of oxygen in the off-gas would result in the formation of zinc oxide. Blast furnaces used in the ISP have a more intense operation than standard lead blast furnaces, with higher air blast rates per m of hearth area and a higher coke consumption. Zinc production with the ISP is more expensive than with electrolytic zinc plants, so several smelters operating this technology have closed in recent years. However, ISP furnaces have the advantage of being able to treat zinc concentrates containing higher levels of lead than can electrolytic zinc plants. Modern furnaces are equipped with an array of supporting facilities to increase efficiency, such as ore storage yards where barges are unloaded. The raw materials are transferred to the stockhouse complex by ore bridges, or rail hoppers and ore transfer cars. Rail-mounted scale cars or computer controlled weight hoppers weigh out the various raw materials to yield the desired hot metal and slag chemistry. The raw materials are brought to the top of the blast furnace via a skip car powered by winches or conveyor belts. There are different ways in which the raw materials are charged into the blast furnace. Some blast furnaces use a "double bell" system where two "bells" are used to control the entry of raw material into the blast furnace. The purpose of the two bells is to minimize the loss of hot gases in the blast furnace. First, the raw materials are emptied into the upper or small bell which then opens to empty the charge into the large bell. The small bell then closes, to seal the blast furnace, while the large bell rotates to provide specific distribution of materials before dispensing the charge into the blast furnace. A more recent design is to use a "bell-less" system. These systems use multiple hoppers to contain each raw material, which is then discharged into the blast furnace through valves. These valves are more accurate at controlling how much of each constituent is added, as compared to the skip or conveyor system, thereby increasing the efficiency of the furnace. Some of these bell-less systems also implement a discharge chute in the throat of the furnace (as with the Paul Wurth top) in order to precisely control where the charge is placed. The iron making blast furnace itself is built in the form of a tall structure, lined with refractory brick, and profiled to allow for expansion of the charged materials as they heat during their descent, and subsequent reduction in size as melting starts to occur. Coke, limestone flux, and iron ore (iron oxide) are charged into the top of the furnace in a precise filling order which helps control gas flow and the chemical reactions inside the furnace. Four "uptakes" allow the hot, dirty gas high in carbon monoxide content to exit the furnace throat, while "bleeder valves" protect the top of the furnace from sudden gas pressure surges. The coarse particles in the exhaust gas settle in the "dust catcher" and are dumped into a railroad car or truck for disposal, while the gas itself flows through a venturi scrubber and/or electrostatic precipitators and a gas cooler to reduce the temperature of the cleaned gas. The "casthouse" at the bottom half of the furnace contains the bustle pipe, water cooled copper tuyeres and the equipment for casting the liquid iron and slag. Once a "taphole" is drilled through the refractory clay plug, liquid iron and slag flow down a trough through a "skimmer" opening, separating the iron and slag. Modern, larger blast furnaces may have as many as four tapholes and two casthouses. Once the pig iron and slag has been tapped, the taphole is again plugged with refractory clay. The tuyeres are used to implement a hot blast, which is used to increase the efficiency of the blast furnace. The hot blast is directed into the furnace through water-cooled copper nozzles called tuyeres near the base. The hot blast temperature can be from 900 °C to 1300 °C (1600 °F to 2300 °F) depending on the stove design and condition. The temperatures they deal with may be 2000 °C to 2300 °C (3600 °F to 4200 °F). Oil, tar, natural gas, powdered coal and oxygen can also be injected into the furnace at tuyere level to combine with the coke to release additional energy and increase the percentage of reducing gases present which is necessary to increase productivity. Blast furnaces operate on the principle of chemical reduction whereby carbon monoxide, having a stronger affinity for the oxygen in iron ore than iron does, reduces the iron to its elemental form. Blast furnaces differ from bloomeries and reverberatory furnaces in that in a blast furnace, flue gas is in direct contact with the ore and iron, allowing carbon monoxide to diffuse into the ore and reduce the iron oxide to elemental iron mixed with carbon. The blast furnace operates as a countercurrent exchange process whereas a bloomery does not. Another difference is that bloomeries operate as a batch process while blast furnaces operate continuously for long periods because they are difficult to start up and shut down. (See: Continuous production) Also, the carbon in pig iron lowers the melting point below that of steel or pure iron; in contrast, iron does not melt in a bloomery. Silica has to be removed from the pig iron. It reacts with calcium oxide (burned limestone) and forms a silicate which floats to the surface of the molten pig iron as "slag". Historically, to prevent contamination from sulfur, the best quality iron was produced with charcoal. The downward moving column of ore, flux, coke or charcoal and reaction products must be porous enough for the flue gas to pass through. This requires the coke or charcoal to be in large enough particles to be permeable, meaning there cannot be an excess of fine particles. Therefore, the coke must be strong enough so it will not be crushed by the weight of the material above it. Besides physical strength of the coke, it must also be low in sulfur, phosphorus, and ash. This necessitates the use of metallurgical coal, which is a premium grade due to its relative scarcity. The main chemical reaction producing the molten iron is: This reaction might be divided into multiple steps, with the first being that preheated blast air blown into the furnace reacts with the carbon in the form of coke to produce carbon monoxide and heat: The hot carbon monoxide is the reducing agent for the iron ore and reacts with the iron oxide to produce molten iron and carbon dioxide. Depending on the temperature in the different parts of the furnace (warmest at the bottom) the iron is reduced in several steps. At the top, where the temperature usually is in the range between 200 °C and 700 °C, the iron oxide is partially reduced to iron(II,III) oxide, FeO. At temperatures around 850 °C, further down in the furnace, the iron(II,III) is reduced further to iron(II) oxide: Hot carbon dioxide, unreacted carbon monoxide, and nitrogen from the air pass up through the furnace as fresh feed material travels down into the reaction zone. As the material travels downward, the counter-current gases both preheat the feed charge and decompose the limestone to calcium oxide and carbon dioxide: The calcium oxide formed by decomposition reacts with various acidic impurities in the iron (notably silica), to form a fayalitic slag which is essentially calcium silicate, : As the iron(II) oxide moves down to the area with higher temperatures, ranging up to 1200 °C degrees, it is reduced further to iron metal: The carbon dioxide formed in this process is re-reduced to carbon monoxide by the coke: The temperature- dependent equilibrium controlling the gas atmosphere in the furnace is called the Boudouard reaction: The "pig iron" produced by the blast furnace has a relatively high carbon content of around 4–5% and usually contains too much sulphur, making it very brittle, and of limited immediate commercial use. Some pig iron is used to make cast iron. The majority of pig iron produced by blast furnaces undergoes further processing to reduce the carbon and sulphur content and produce various grades of steel used for construction materials, automobiles, ships and machinery. Desulphurisation usually takes place during the transport of the liquid steel to the steelworks. This is done by adding calcium oxide, which reacts with the iron sulfide contained in the pig iron to form calcium sulfide (called lime desulfurization). In a further process step, the so-called basic oxygen steelmaking, the carbon is oxidized by blowing oxygen onto the liquid pig iron to form crude steel. Although the efficiency of blast furnaces is constantly evolving, the chemical process inside the blast furnace remains the same. According to the American Iron and Steel Institute: "Blast furnaces will survive into the next millennium because the larger, efficient furnaces can produce hot metal at costs competitive with other iron making technologies." One of the biggest drawbacks of the blast furnaces is the inevitable carbon dioxide production as iron is reduced from iron oxides by carbon and as of 2016, there is no economical substitute – steelmaking is one of the largest industrial contributors of the CO emissions in the world (see greenhouse gases). The challenge set by the greenhouse gas emissions of the blast furnace is being addressed in an ongoing European Program called ULCOS (Ultra Low CO Steelmaking). Several new process routes have been proposed and investigated in depth to cut specific emissions ( per ton of steel) by at least 50%. Some rely on the capture and further storage (CCS) of , while others choose decarbonizing iron and steel production, by turning to hydrogen, electricity and biomass. In the nearer term, a technology that incorporates CCS into the blast furnace process itself and is called the Top-Gas Recycling Blast Furnace is under development, with a scale-up to a commercial size blast furnace under way. The technology should be fully demonstrated by the end of the 2010s, in line with the timeline set, for example, by the EU to cut emissions significantly. Broad deployment could take place from 2020 on. Stone wool or rock wool is a spun mineral fibre used as an insulation product and in hydroponics. It is manufactured in a blast furnace fed with diabase rock which contains very low levels of metal oxides. The resultant slag is drawn off and spun to form the rock wool product. Very small amounts of metals are also produced which are an unwanted by-product and run to waste. For a long time, it was normal procedure for a decommissioned blast furnace to be demolished and either be replaced with a newer, improved one, or to have the entire site demolished to make room for follow-up use of the area. In recent decades, several countries have realized the value of blast furnaces as a part of their industrial history. Rather than being demolished, abandoned steel mills were turned into museums or integrated into multi-purpose parks. The largest number of preserved historic blast furnaces exists in Germany; other such sites exist in Spain, France, the Czech Republic, Japan, Luxembourg, Poland, Romania, Mexico, Russia and the United States. The blast furnace gas can be used to generate heat. So by reducing the constituents in blast furnace gas we can increase the calorific value and can be used to generate heat and rise the temperature in any furnace. The gas cleaning system contains two stages, the coarse cleaning system and the fine cleaning system. In the coarse cleaning system a dust catcher is used. A dust catcher is a cylindrical steel structure with conical top and bottom sections. It is also lined with refractory bricks. The principle of the dust catcher is that the dust-laden gas is given a sudden reverse in speed and direction. Because of their mass, the coarse dust particles cannot change their velocity easily, and hence settle to the bottom. Basic oxygen furnace, Blast furnace zinc smelting process, Crucible steel, Extraction of iron, Water gas, produced by a "steam blast", FINEX, Flodin process, , which covers ironworks of all kinds., Laskill American Iron and Steel Institute, Blast Furnace animation, Extensive picture gallery about all methods of making and shaping of iron and steel in North America and Europe. In German and English., Schematic diagram of blast furnace and Cowper stove

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Sandor Clegane, nicknamed the Hound, is a fictional character in the A Song of Ice and Fire series of fantasy novels by American author George R. R. Martin, and its television adaptation Game of Thrones. Introduced in 1996's A Game of Thrones, Sandor is the estranged younger brother of Ser Gregor Clegane, from the fictional Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. Sandor serves as King Joffrey Baratheon's personal bodyguard. He subsequently appeared in Martin's A Clash of Kings (1998), A Storm of Swords (2000), and A Feast for Crows (2005). Like his brother, Sandor is regarded as one of the fiercest and strongest fighters in the Seven Kingdoms. His face is marked by gruesome facial burns he received when his brother shoved his face into a brazier as children; ever since he has retained a crippling fear of fire. While initially appearing brutal and fatalistic, he later proves to be more sympathetic and compassionate, particularly through his relationships with Sansa and Arya Stark. Sandor is portrayed by Scottish actor Rory McCann in the HBO television adaptation. Sandor Clegane, known as The Hound, was the younger brother of Gregor Clegane, and was a retainer to House Lannister. He was regarded as one of the most dangerous and skilled fighters in Westeros. His size (in the novels he is 6'8", or 2 m and over 300 lbs, or 140 kg) and strength make him an imposing figure, though he is not quite as large as his brother. His face was distinguished by gruesome burn scars, which he received as a child when his brother pushed his head into a brazier. Consequently, Clegane feared fire and hated his brother. He was also scornful of knight's vows, as his brother was a knight, who nonetheless indulged in rape and murder. Clegane was described as a tormented man driven by anger and hate, aspiring only to kill his brother. Sandor is not a point of view character in the novels, so his actions are witnessed mainly through the eyes of Sansa Stark and Arya Stark, with some narrations from other characters such as Ned Stark, Tyrion Lannister, and Brienne of Tarth. In A Game of Thrones, he acts as bodyguard and servant to Prince Joffrey Baratheon, who calls him Dog. While escorting Sansa home, he reveals to her how his face was scarred and expresses much resentment of his brutish older brother and towards the concept of knighthood in general. Clegane leads the attack on the Stark forces in the Tower of the Hand. He is named a knight of Joffrey's Kingsguard towards the end of A Game of Thrones. Clegane advises Sansa to do whatever Joffrey tells her to do as the best way of staying alive. He is often assigned to guard Sansa, trying to protect her from Joffrey's abuse in A Clash of Kings. He flees King's Landing during the Battle of the Blackwater, due to the widespread use of wildfire, a fictional substance similar to Greek fire. In A Storm of Swords, he is captured by the Brotherhood Without Banners which sentences him to trial by combat. Sandor prevails and is set free. He later kidnaps Arya to ransom her to her brother Robb Stark and hopes to earn a place in Robb's service. He takes her to the Twins, where Robb is attending a wedding. However, just as they arrive, the Freys begin slaughtering the Starks. Sandor and Arya escape. They encounter three of Gregor's men at an inn, and Sandor is seriously injured in the ensuing fight. Arya abandons him to his apparent death. He is mentioned a few times in A Feast for Crows (2005), where the Elder Brother mentions to Brienne of Tarth that he found Sandor, who is now "at rest". However, the appearance of a mute gravedigger who matches Sandor physically and the Elder Brother's refusal to confirm if Sandor is dead imply that he may still be alive. Scottish actor Rory McCann has received acclaim for his portrayal of Sandor Clegane in the television adaptation of the series of books. Clegane is first introduced in the pilot episode when he accompanies the royal court on Robert Baratheon's visit to Winterfell. On the way back to King's Landing, Joffrey falsely accuses a butcher's boy, Mycah, of having attacked him, and Clegane kills the boy, attracting the hatred of Mycah's friend Arya Stark. During the Tourney of the Hand, Sandor's sadistic elder brother Gregor tries to kill Ser Loras Tyrell after Tyrell has unhorsed him, but Sandor defends Loras from Gregor until Robert orders the men to stop fighting. When Ned Stark accuses Joffrey of being a bastard born of incest and orders his arrest, Clegane assists the Lannister soldiers in the subsequent purge of the Stark household and Sansa Stark's capture, although he later comforts Sansa when Joffrey orders her face slapped and advises how to avoid future pain. With Joffrey's ascension to the throne, Clegane is named to the Kingsguard to replace the ousted Ser Barristan Selmy, although Clegane refuses to take his knight's vows. Sandor Clegane continues to defend Sansa, including by covering her after Joffrey orders her stripped in front of the assembled court and rescuing her from being gang-raped during the King's Landing riots. He participates in the Battle of the Blackwater against Stannis Baratheon's forces but is visibly horrified when Tyrion Lannister uses wildfire to incinerate much of Stannis' fleet; he ultimately deserts after witnessing a man burning alive in the battle. Before he leaves King's Landing, he offers to take Sansa north to Winterfell, which she refuses. It is during this season that Sandor Clegane admits to Sansa that he loves killing, saying that there is nothing more pleasing than bringing death upon others. In the Riverlands, Clegane is arrested by the Brotherhood Without Banners, a group of knights and soldiers sent by Eddard Stark to kill Gregor and restore order to the Riverlands. While being transported to their stronghold, he meets other members of the Brotherhood who are traveling with Arya Stark and tells them her true identity. At the Brotherhood's hideout, their leader Lord Beric Dondarrion accuses Clegane of being a murderer; although Clegane asserts that the murders were committed in order to protect Joffrey, Arya testifies that Clegane had killed Mycah despite the boy's not having harmed Joffrey. Lord Beric sentences Clegane to a trial by combat, which Clegane wins to secure his freedom. Although Clegane slays him, Lord Beric is immediately resurrected by the Red Priest Thoros of Myr. Clegane later captures Arya, intending to ransom her to King Robb Stark at the wedding of Edmure Tully and Roslin Frey at The Twins. However, as they arrive at the Twins, the Freys turn on and attack the Starks, and Clegane and Arya barely escape the massacre. With the rest of House Stark believed dead and the Riverlands now under the rule of House Frey, Clegane decides to ransom Arya to her aunt Lysa Arryn in the Vale. During their journey, Arya reveals to Clegane that she has not forgiven him for killing Mycah and has vowed to kill him. The duo arrive in the Vale to find that Lysa has ostensibly committed suicide. Returning from the Bloody Gate, they encounter the sworn sword to Arya's mother Catelyn, Brienne of Tarth, who had promised to take the Stark children to safety. When Arya refuses to go with Brienne, Brienne and Clegane engage in a brawl that culminates in Brienne's throwing Clegane off a cliff, gravely wounding him. Although Clegane begs Arya to kill him, she leaves him to die. It is revealed that Clegane survived; he had been discovered by Ray, a warrior turned septon. Clegane assists Ray and his followers in building a sept, but one day, after a brief journey into nearby woods to chop wood, Clegane returns to the community to find everyone slaughtered by rogue members of the Brotherhood Without Banners. Clegane takes up an ax to hunt down those responsible and kills four of them before discovering the remaining three about to be hanged by Lord Beric Dondarrion and Thoros of Myr, who inform him that the group were acting independently of the Brotherhood. Lord Beric allows Clegane to help hang two of the outlaws, followed by an offer to join the Brotherhood in their journey north to fight the White Walkers. During their journey north, the Brotherhood stops at a farm owned by a farmer Clegane had previously robbed. Inside, they find the bodies of the farmer and his daughter. Remorseful, Clegane digs them a grave with Thoros's help. Thoros has Clegane look into the flames of the Brotherhood's campfire, and in them the skeptical Clegane sees the White Walkers and their forces marching towards the Wall. The Brotherhood attempts to cross the Wall via Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, but are intercepted by wildling scouts manning the castle and are locked in the ice cells. Soon afterward, Jon Snow, Davos Seaworth, Jorah Mormont, and Gendry arrive at Eastwatch, intending to capture a wight to present to Cersei (now Queen of the Seven Kingdoms) as evidence the White Walkers exist. Clegane, Beric, and Thoros are released to accompany Jon, Jorah, Gendry, and the wilding Tormund Giantsbane beyond the Wall. The group soon captures a wight but is surrounded by the White Walkers and their army of wights, although not before Gendry flees to Eastwatch to request Daenerys Targaryen's aid. Daenerys arrives with her dragons before the group can be overrun. One dragon is killed and reanimated by the Night King, but Daenerys' group, less Jon - who stays behind to fight back the White Walkers - is able to flee. Clegane joins Jon, Daenerys, and Davos as they sail to King's Landing. At King's Landing, Clegane meets Brienne of Tarth. Despite their previous brutal fight, they converse on civil terms. Clegane learns that Arya is alive and with her family, prompting a rare smile. During the summit in the Dragon Pit outside King's Landing, Clegane confronts his brother and asks what they did to him then cuts off the answer and tells him he always knew who would come for him. Clegane brings out the trunk containing the wight, revealing to Cersei and Jaime Lannister the threat that lies beyond the wall. In the aftermath, Clegane sails to White Harbor with Daenerys' forces with the intention of travelling to Winterfell to aid Jon and Daenerys against the Night King. The Hound joins Daenerys, Jon, and their retinues as they march to Winterfell, where he is reunited with Arya and Sansa. The Hound and Arya make peace with one another before the dreaded Battle of Winterfell against the White Walkers. During the battle, the Hound is triggered by the use of fire to destroy the wights and is close to giving up, but is convinced by Beric to keep fighting, indicating towards Arya who is relentlessly fighting beside them. The Hound then travels to King's Landing to kill his brother along with Arya, who intends to kill Cersei. The two infiltrate the Red Keep amongst a crowd of civilians Cersei is using as human shields, but Daenerys begins burning the city down and the Red Keep begins to crumble. The Hound urges Arya to leave as he goes to find his brother. Arya thanks him, calling him by his true name for the first and only time, and bids him farewell. A fight ensues between the Clegane brothers, and Sandor struggles to even injure his inhuman brother. Gregor is momentarily disarmed after the Hound stabs him through the head, and the Hound tackles him off a stairway into the inferno below, resulting in both of their deaths. Stannis Baratheon is a fictional character in the A Song of Ice and Fire series of epic fantasy novels by American author George R. R. Martin, and its television adaptation Game of Thrones. He is the second son of Steffon Baratheon, the lord of Storm's End, and his wife Lady Cassana Estermont, and brother to King Robert and Renly. He is the Lord of Dragonstone and a claimant to the Iron Throne after his elder brother's death. Stannis's goals are frequently impeded by his lack of manpower and resources, owing to his unpopularity with other noble houses. He must therefore rely on the counsel of the foreign priestess Melisandre and his right-hand man, lowborn smuggler Davos Seaworth, who later becomes his Hand of the King. Stannis often struggles to escape the shadow of his two more overtly charismatic brothers, particularly Robert. Though first mentioned in 1996's A Game of Thrones, Stannis formally appeared in A Clash of Kings (1998), A Storm of Swords (2000) and A Dance with Dragons (2011). In December 2011, Martin posted a sample chapter from the yet-unfinished The Winds of Winter, told from Theon Greyjoy's viewpoint, which confirmed Stannis' return in the sixth book. Stannis is portrayed by English actor Stephen Dillane in the HBO television adaptation of the series, who has received significant critical praise for his performance. Stannis is a divisive character among fans of the books and television show alike, enjoying both great popularity for his dedication to justice and dark horse status, as well as opposition for his unrelenting attitude towards the Iron Throne. He has earned particular attention for the differences in his characterization between the novels and show, particularly during season five. Stannis Baratheon is the younger brother of King Robert and older brother of Renly. He is portrayed as a brooding and humorless man with a harsh but fair sense of duty and justice whose dour demeanor is often off-putting in comparison to his two more charismatic brothers. He is renowned as a skilled and prescient military commander. Although he is initially said to be extremely stubborn and inflexible, in later books he has shown some ability to use diplomacy and deception to achieve his goals. Stannis is not a point of view character in the novels, so his actions are witnessed and interpreted through the eyes of other people, predominantly Davos Seaworth and Jon Snow, and later Asha and Theon Greyjoy. Stannis was born as the second of Steffon Baratheon and Cassana Estermont's three sons, and in his youth he was constantly overshadowed by his older brother Robert. When Stannis was fourteen he witnessed his parents' death in a shipwreck off the coast of House Baratheon's castle of Storm's End, and subsequently lost his faith in the Seven Gods. During Robert's Rebellion, a teenage Stannis holds Storm's End in Robert's absence, but is besieged by Mace Tyrell and Paxter Redwyne for the best part of the year. Stannis' garrison only avoids starvation thanks to the smuggler Davos Seaworth, who evades the blockade by the Redwyne fleet to bring the Baratheon soldiers a cargo of onions and fish. When Eddard Stark arrives to lift the siege, Stannis knights Davos as reward for his aid, but also insists that Davos have four fingers removed as punishment for his years of illegal smuggling; Davos agrees, on the condition that Stannis removes the fingers himself. Stannis is subsequently tasked with building a new royal fleet to assault Dragonstone and capture the island, but arrives to find that Aerys II Targaryen's children Viserys and the newborn Daenerys had fled. Robert names Stannis Lord of Dragonstone, giving him control over the islands of Blackwater Bay and the nearby peninsula of Massey's Hook - but Stannis feels slighted, as their younger brother Renly is named Lord of Storm's End, giving him control over the entirety of the Stormlands. It is suggested that this was because Robert was following the custom of granting Dragonstone to the king's heir, but Stannis perceives it as an insult. Several years later, Stannis is married to Lady Selyse Florent, but Robert soiled their wedding bed by deflowering Selyse's cousin Delena, further insulting Stannis. Stannis and Selyse have a single daughter together, Shireen, who nearly dies in infancy after contracting greyscale and is left disfigured. Stannis, who is named Robert's Master of Ships, destroys the Iron Fleet under the command of Victarion Greyjoy at Fair Isle during the Greyjoy Rebellion and leads the conquest of Great Wyk, the largest of the Iron Islands, adding to his significant military resume. At the beginning of the first novel A Game of Thrones, Stannis comes to suspect that Robert's children with Cersei Lannister are not actually his, and reveals his suspicions to Robert's Hand of the King, Lord Jon Arryn. The two discover several of Robert's bastard children in King's Landing, and begin to gather proof, before Jon's sudden, untimely death. Stannis is frequently described as a large and sinewy man that towers over others, such as Davos Seaworth and Jon Snow, a Baratheon trait. He lacks the long black hair of his brothers, and is instead balding, although he keeps a close-cropped beard of the signature Baratheon black. His face is described as 'tight like cured leather' with hollow, gaunt cheeks. His eyes are described by Asha Greyjoy as 'deep, sunken pits', with a powerful stare that suggests an 'iron ferocity'. Stannis' most prominent characteristics are his flinty and austere demeanor, unrelenting stubbornness, and powerful sense of duty and justice, the latter of which he is notorious for throughout Westeros. He rarely forgives a slight; Jon Snow once comments that "Stannis Baratheon with a grievance was like a mastiff with a bone; he gnawed it down to splinters." His signature tic is grinding his teeth, often in the face of unpleasant or unforeseen circumstances. He is a renowned commander, sailor, and warrior, although he is a better tactician than fighter. Stannis is known for his brusqueness and lack of tact in social situations and finds himself uncomfortable around women, including his own wife. He abhors brothels and once tried to have them banned from King's Landing, which made him unpopular with the smallfolk there. He dresses plainly in dark clothing and is rarely seen without his sword and dagger. Stannis is plagued with bitterness at the lack of respect and affection he has been shown by his older brother King Robert, and even in childhood was described by the Baratheon family maester as "the most unloved of the three"; a "solemn and joyless" child "mature beyond his years". Stannis is an atheist, despite claims that he is being manipulated by the red priestess Melisandre. Although Stannis suffers from a lack of support and resources during the War of Five Kings, he is frequently described by his adversaries, including Tywin Lannister, as the most dangerous rival claimant. Above all he is characterized by his fearless and uncompromising pursuit of justice and duty - he is described by Varys in this way: "His claim is the true one, he is known for his prowess as a battle commander, and he is utterly without mercy. There is no creature on earth half so terrifying as a truly just man." When Robert travels to Winterfell to name Eddard as his new Hand, Stannis flees to Dragonstone with his forces, including most of the royal navy. Stannis suspects Cersei's involvement in Jon's death. It is later revealed that the true culprit was Jon's wife Lysa, who was persuaded to poison her husband by her lover, Petyr Baelish. Eddard continues Stannis and Jon's investigations, and discovers that Cersei's children are the products of her incestuous affair with her twin brother Jaime Lannister. After Robert's death, Eddard tries to replace Robert's presumed heir Joffrey Baratheon with Stannis, but loses the political struggle against the Lannisters and is executed. Stannis comes under the influence of the red priestess Melisandre, who believes that Stannis is the reincarnation of Azor Ahai, a messianic figure in her faith. Stannis declares himself the one true King; however, most of the Baratheon bannermen support the claim of his younger and much more charismatic brother, Renly, as does the powerful House Tyrell due to Renly's marriage to Margaery Tyrell. Stannis tries to negotiate with Renly, offering him the chance to become his heir, which offer Renly rejects, planning to have Stannis killed the next day. Renly is subsequently assassinated by a shadow conjured by Melisandre using Stannis' life force, and many of Renly's bannermen immediately swear allegiance to Stannis, although the Tyrells side with the Lannisters due to their offer to have Margaery marry Joffrey. Stannis assaults King's Landing by sea, but many of his men are killed when Tyrion Lannister detonates wildfire in the River Blackwater. Stannis' forces still nearly claim victory, but Lannister and Tyrell reinforcements arrive in time to drive Stannis' men away from King's Landing. However Rolland Storm, the Bastard of Nightsong, commands his forces well enough that Stannis is able to escape. Stannis retreats to Dragonstone with what is left of his army. He imprisons his Hand Lord Alester Florent, one of his wife's uncles, for trying to offer terms of surrender to the Lannisters. Another of Selyses' uncles, Ser Axell Florent, castellan of Dragonstone, aims to become Stannis' Hand of the King. He suggests a plan to attack Claw Isle in retaliation for Lord Celtigar's bending the knee to Joffrey, but Davos derides an attack on this defenseless island as evil. For this honest counsel Stannis names Davos as his new Hand. Melisandre tells Stannis to burn Edric Storm, one of Robert's bastards, as a sacrifice to raise dragons from Dragonstone. Stannis is conflicted about burning his nephew but uses Edric's blood collected by three leeches to curse the rival kings: Balon Greyjoy, Joffrey Baratheon, and Robb Stark. After Joffrey's, Balon's, and Robb's deaths seem to prove the power of king's blood, Stannis considers sacrificing Edric. Davos smuggles Edric off Dragonstone to the Free Cities, and then persuades Stannis to sail to the North and save the Night's Watch from the wildling army. After Melisandre burns Alester Florent as a sacrifice to R'hllor to ensure favorable winds, Stannis takes most of his remaining army and sails north to crush the wildling assault, managing to rout the whole host with few casualties. He remains at the Night's Watch headquarters at Castle Black to negotiate a settlement with the wildlings, and offers to legitimise Eddard's bastard Jon Snow if Jon will fight with Stannis' army. Jon, who has been elected Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, declines, as he has made an oath binding him to serve the Night's Watch. Stannis sends ravens to the Northern houses naming himself as king and asking for their support, but only House Karstark and a faction of House Umber swear allegiance. Stannis has the King-beyond-the-Wall Mance Rayder burned at the stake, and most of the wildlings bend the knee to Stannis, although Stannis is unaware that Melisandre had used glamours to switch Rayder and his lieutenant, the Lord of Bones. To rally the North, Stannis intends to attack House Bolton's castle The Dreadfort with the help of Arnolf Karstark, castellan of Karhold. In reality Arnolf is working with the Boltons, hoping to entrap Stannis and have his hostage great-nephew Harrion Karstark executed so his branch of the family can take Karhold. On Jon's advice, Stannis instead rallies the northern mountain clans and attacks Deepwood Motte, ousting the Ironborn holding the castle and taking Asha Greyjoy captive. He restores the castle to House Glover, thus winning their support and that of House Mormont. He marches on Winterfell to confront the Boltons, joined by the men of Arnolf Karstark and Mors Umber (one of the castellans of the Last Hearth), but his host is waylaid by heavy snows and forced to stop at a crofter's village three days away from Winterfell. A letter is later sent to Jon Snow by Ramsay Bolton claiming that Stannis has been defeated and killed, though it is unknown how much of the letter is true. George R. R. Martin confirmed to a fan in 2015 that Stannis is still alive in the books. In December 2011, Martin posted a sample chapter from the yet-unfinished sixth book The Winds of Winter, told from Theon Greyjoy's viewpoint, where Stannis is actively and efficiently preparing for the looming battle against the Bolton-Frey-Karstark alliance. He secures a loan by signing a blood contract with the Braavosi banker Tycho Nestoris, whose convoy managed to find Stannis' army, and plans to immediately send Tycho back to the Wall for safety. Tycho also brought a message from Jon Snow informing Stannis of Arnolf Karstark's planned treachery, after which Stannis arrested Arnolf, his son Arthor and his three grandsons and plans to execute them. He also subdued Tybald, the Dreadfort maester, who out of fear confesses that he has already revealed Stannis's position to the Boltons in Winterfell. Stannis then sends Ser Justin Massey to escort Tycho and the escaped "Arya Stark" back to Castle Black to reunite her with Jon Snow, in gratitude for Jon's counsel of gathering the northern mountain clans. Massey is to then travel to Braavos and use a loan from the Iron Bank to hire twenty thousand sellswords for Stannis. Stannis tells Massey that he may hear of Stannis's death in Braavos, but even if that news is true, Massey is to follow the orders as to seat his daughter Shireen on the Iron Throne. Stannis then interrogates Theon for information regarding the Boltons' military strength. When Theon taunts Stannis for not taking Ramsay seriously, Stannis confidently reveals that he already has a battle plan to utilize the terrain against the incoming Frey army. Stannis next receives Asha Greyjoy, and informs her that her brother Theon must be executed, as showing him mercy would mean losing all of the northmen. To spare Theon the agony of death by burning, Asha pleas Stannis to personally execute Theon by beheading in the tradition of the northmen. Stannis Baratheon is played by Stephen Dillane in the television adaption of the series of books. Stannis falls under the influence of Melisandre, a priestess of R'hllor who believes Stannis is the reincarnation of a legendary hero from her religion. After Robert's death, Stannis claims himself the true heir to the Iron Throne as Cersei's children are bastards born of incest. However, most of the Baratheon bannermen support the claim of the younger but far more charismatic Renly. Stannis confronts Renly and offers to make him his heir if he supports him, but Renly refuses, only using the negotiations as an opportunity to mock his brother, and intending to kill Stannis in battle the next day. Melisandre, who had seduced Stannis, gives birth to a shadow baby bearing Stannis' face that kills Renly, and many of Renly's bannermen immediately swear allegiance to Stannis. He then attacks King's Landing by sailing up Blackwater Bay. Stannis' force breaches the walls, but due to Tyrion Lannister's use of wildfire and the arrival of last-minute Lannister and Tyrell reinforcements, he is defeated. Nonetheless, he is convinced to continue fighting by Melisandre, and is further convinced by her magic as she shows him a vision of a battle in the flames. Stannis acquires one of Robert's bastards, Gendry, from the Brotherhood Without Banners and plans to sacrifice him to further his quest for the Iron Throne. After Davos Seaworth questions his course of action, Stannis has three leeches drawn with Gendry's blood and throws them into a fire, calling for the death of Robb Stark, Balon Greyjoy and Joffrey Baratheon. Upon the news of Robb's death, Davos releases Gendry to prevent him from being sacrificed. Stannis subsequently sentences Davos to death but is swayed by Melisandre, who encourages him to travel North to aid the Night's Watch against the White Walkers emerging from beyond the Wall. Stannis hears of Joffrey's death and chastises Davos again for releasing Gendry and not finding him a suitable army, prompting Davos to write to the Iron Bank of Braavos in Stannis' name to help pay for an army. The Iron Bank nearly refuses Stannis' request, but Davos manages to convince them that Stannis is the only one they can turn to since Tywin Lannister is nearing old age. Stannis and his army arrive at the Wall shortly after the Battle of Castle Black, interrupting a parley between Jon Snow and Mance Rayder and crushing the wildling force. Stannis learns that Jon is Ned Stark's son, and on Jon's advice, he places Mance and his men under arrest. He is later present at the funeral of the Night's Watch brothers who died during the Battle for Castle Black. Stannis begins plans to retake the North from Roose Bolton, hoping to recruit Mance's wildling army, if Mance will bend the knee to him. Mance refuses, and Stannis has him burnt at the stake. Stannis offers to legitimise Jon as a Stark to win the loyalty of the Northerners who refuse to recognise Stannis as their king, but Jon decides to remain loyal to his vows to the Night's Watch. Stannis marches on Winterfell, but his army is delayed by a large snowstorm. In the chaos Ramsay Bolton and his men infiltrate Stannis's camp, and destroy all supplies and horses. Melisandre persuades a reluctant Stannis to sacrifice Shireen to ensure victory. Although the snowstorm lifts, half of Stannis's army deserts him, Selyse commits suicide out of guilt, and Melisandre flees to Castle Black. Stannis decides to complete the march on foot. As his army arrives at Winterfell, it is swiftly defeated by a cavalry charge led by Ramsay Bolton. Stannis survives the battle, but is confronted by Brienne of Tarth, a former member of Renly's Kingsguard. Stannis confesses to killing Renly with blood magic, and Brienne executes him, telling Stannis she is killing him in the name of the 'rightful' King Renly. The English actor Stephen Dillane has received positive reviews for his performance as Stannis Baratheon, especially in the fifth season. On her review for "Sons of the Harpy", Sarah Hughes of The Guardian wrote, "Stephen Dillane has always been wonderful at showing us the core of this rigid, complex man." His performance on the same episode also received positive reviews from Vulture. Harri Sargeant of Hypable wrote, "Stephen Dillane has always been one of the classiest actors on the show, and his last moments as the King Who Almost Was saw as commanding a performance as ever." In her review for Mother's Mercy, Meghan O'Keefe of Decider wrote, "Whether you like Stannis or not, you have to admit that Stephen Dillane delivered a monumental performance this season." Cindy Davis of Pajiba wrote "After Shireen’s seemingly pointless death, it’s a testament to Stephen Dillane’s phenomenal skills that we could feel anything at all for a man who watched his daughter burned alive." Nick Steinberg of Goliath wrote, "Credit has to go to Stephen Dillane for his performance, especially in these last few episodes where he’s had to convey a form of grim tragedy that’s effectively conveyed the character’s downfall. For his part, Dillane expressed misgivings about his performance, telling The Times newspaper, "I didn’t know what I was doing until we’d finished filming and it was too late. The damage had been done. I thought no one would believe in me and I was rather disheartened by the end. I felt I’d built the castle on non-existent foundations.”" "The Lion and the Rose" is the second episode of the fourth season of HBO's fantasy television series Game of Thrones, and the 32nd overall. The episode was written by George R. R. Martin, the author of the A Song of Ice and Fire novels of which the series is an adaptation, and directed by Alex Graves. It aired on April 13, 2014. The episode focuses principally on the long-awaited royal wedding between Joffrey Baratheon and Margaery Tyrell, which ends tragically as Joffrey dies after drinking poisoned wine at the reception, a plot development that despite being in the books came as a shock to viewers since it abruptly killed the show's principal villain just a few episodes after the Red Wedding had violently killed off several of the show's protagonists. Other storylines include House Bolton's quest to retake the North, and Bran's continued journey north of The Wall. The title refers to the sigils of the wedding couple's respective houses – a lion for Joffrey Baratheon, who is in truth an illegitimate bastard, and a rose for Margaery Tyrell. Unlike his previous three episodes, his draft of the screenplay has some major differences from the episode as produced, with more minor characters and detail at the wedding feast. Most significantly, it sets up some plotlines from the books that the series would ultimately not use, such as Ramsay marrying an impostor woman posing as Arya instead of Sansa. It would have also resolved the unanswered question from the show's first season of who had been behind the attempted assassination of Bran Stark by implying more strongly than the books did that it was Joffrey, rather than Littlefinger as the series would suggest several seasons later. Ramsay hunts a woman with the assistance of his servant, Reek (formerly Theon) and his bedwarmer Myranda. Roose and his wife Walda arrive at the Dreadfort. Roose intended to trade Theon to the Ironborn for Moat Cailin, but now is unable to do so because Ramsay castrated Theon. After being informed of what really happened at Winterfell, Roose orders Locke to kill Bran and Rickon, who pose a threat to his new position as Warden of the North. Ramsay suggests that they also kill Jon. Roose orders Ramsay to occupy Moat Cailin. After stopping at weirwood, Bran has strange visions and reveals that he knows where they must go. Melisandre orders several men burned at the stake, including Selyse's brother Ser Axell Florent, as a tribute to the Lord of Light. Tyrion encourages Jaime to train his left hand with Bronn. Varys tells Tyrion that Cersei knows about Shae. Lord Mace Tyrell gives Joffrey a large gold goblet and Tywin gives him second Valyrian steel sword that Tywin had forged. Tyrion orders Bronn to escort Shae to the boat to sail for Essos. After Joffrey and Margaery's wedding ceremony, Jaime tells Loras that if he weds Cersei she would kill him in his sleep. Loras tells him that he knows about their incest. Cersei accuses Brienne of being in love with Jaime. Oberyn and his paramour Ellaria Sand tell Cersei and Tywin that Myrcella is in Dorne. After Joffrey presents a crude play with dwarves depicting the War of the Five Kings, he orders Tyrion to be his cupbearer. Joffrey eats cake that Margaery gives him, drinks wine that Tyrion gives him and begins choking. Dontos tells Sansa to flee with him. Joffrey, before dying, points at Tyrion and Cersei orders Tyrion arrested on charges of poisoning the king. The episode was written by George R. R. Martin, author of the A Song of Ice and Fire novels. Chapters adapted from A Storm of Swords to the episode were part of chapter 9 (Bran I), and chapters 59 and 60 (Sansa IV and Tyrion VIII). In 2018, Vanity Fair writer Joanna Robinson compared the episode as aired with an early draft by Martin archived at the Writers Guild of America library in Los Angeles. Unlike the two previous episodes he had written, this draft had significant differences from the produced version. Martin considers it the moment the show began to diverge considerably from the books, whose plotlines it had begun to outpace, and believes this may be why Martin wrote no more for the series. The most significant difference was an earlier, and different, resolution of the Catspaw plot arc, involving who had masterminded the attempted assassination of Bran Stark in season 1, precipitating the War of the Five Kings that dominated the next two seasons, than that ultimately filmed. In Martin's script, after Joffrey is presented with the Valyrian steel sword, reforged from that of the executed Ned Stark's Ice, as a wedding gift by his father, he says "I am no stranger to Valyrian steel." This remark prompts Tyrion Lannister, who was framed for the assassination attempt, to realize that Joffrey was actually behind it (as the books heavily imply); Tyrion then makes remarks to Joffrey, and later Sansa, insinuating that he knows this. Scenes that built on this disclosure remained in the final script. If this has made it to the screen, it would explain why Joffrey is so antagonistic towards his uncle, and it would have also set up Tyrion as a bigger suspect in Joffrey's poisoning. Tyrion in Martin's draft is also more violent to Shae when he warns her (honestly, as opposed to the series) that since his father knows why she is in King's Landing, he will have her killed. In Martin's draft, Bran's first vision is more extensive. While it does not include the Night King's first appearance onscreen as it does in the series, it would have been an extensive montage of scenes from the past, present and possible future in the series. Flashbacks would have included scenes of Ned cleaning Ice beneath a weirwood tree from the show's original pilot, Bran's uncle Benjen and Lyanna Stark as children (later shown in a more extensive flashback in season 6), King Aerys watching and laughing as Ned's father and brother are burned and Jaime and Cersei embracing in the old keep at Winterfell just before Bran discovered them. Scenes reflecting the show's present included Jon with Ghost, a bloodied Robb surrounded by the Red Wedding dead, and Arya holding her sword Needle as her face blurs and changes. Possible future images include a dragon's shadow passing over King's Landing, "hints of strange small children with very dark eyes" and a group of four distinctive northern hills behind a very large weirwood. The episode would also have set up some of the plotlines from the books that were not used in the later seasons of the series. Roose Bolton tells Ramsay that he has arranged for him to marry Arya as a way of consolidating the family's hold on the North; a role assigned to Sansa instead in the next season. Several lines were also intended to set up Jaime's trip to the Riverlands, which in the books immediately follows Joffrey's wedding but in the series was largely replaced by Jamie and Bronn's expedition to Dorne to bring Myrcella back to King's Landing. The two characters who take that trip instead in the books, along with many other minor characters from the wedding scenes, were in Martin's draft but eliminated from the produced version as showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss were beginning to focus on the more established characters in the later seasons. Robinson believes a note by Martin in the script suggests a different resolution to Ramsay's plot arc in the books, where he is still alive and in power at Winterfell at the end of A Dance with Dragons, in contrast to his death at the end of the sixth season of Game of Thrones. Martin's note told the showrunners that Ramsay's dogs would eventually battle the Stark children's direwolves, so the show should emphasize the former as much as possible to build audience anticipation. However, that never happened onscreen, where all but two of the wolves are dead as of the end of season 7, and seems unlikely in the books. Robinson believes this indicates that Ramsay will have a very different plot arc in the series' two final books. Lesser differences include a more protracted, bloodier death scene for Joffrey as the poison drives him to slash his own face, a more lavish feast, and Theon's appearance as Reek following Ramsay's extensive torture more closely resembling that described in the books, complete with whitened hair and missing fingers, something that would have required more extensive special effects for the remainder of the series, as well as speaking in rhyme. Similarly, the burning of the heretics on the beach at Dragonstone would have demonstrated the power of the Lord of Light, with the bonfires suddenly changing to different colors and apparitions of the now- forgiven dead seen briefly above; the scene would have also foreshadowed Shireen's sacrifice by the same method the next season. The scene where Varys warns Tyrion that Cersei has told Tywin about Shae, a short conversation on a garden path in the finished episode, instead takes place at more length in the Red Keep's dungeons, with Varys dressed as "a denizen of the dungeons" in armor, carrying a whip and wearing a false beard. Martin also wrote that some of the scenes should be shot from an individual character's point of view, much as most of his book chapters are written from the point of view of the character they take their name from. While he admitted that it had been difficult to bring that aspect of his story to the screen, he nevertheless attempted it here, calling for the scene where Ramsay and Myranda chase the woman to her death at the hands of his hounds to be seen from the woman's point of view as she runs and then falls to the ground, then from Theon's as he looks on defeated. The producers did, however, shoot scenes from the point of view of Bran's direwolf Summer, which Robinson notes saved them money since the animals have been expensive to shoot scenes with. The episode has the introduction of new recurring cast members Roger Ashton- Griffiths as Mace Tyrell, the Lord of Highgarden, and Elisabeth Webster as Walda Frey, Roose Bolton's new bride. Young actor Dean-Charles Chapman takes over the role of Tommen Baratheon as of this episode. In a cameo appearance, the Icelandic band Sigur Rós performed their rendition of "The Rains of Castamere" at King Joffrey's wedding, and again during the credits. With this episode, Iwan Rheon (Ramsay Snow) is promoted to series regular. "The Lion and the Rose" was watched by an estimated 6.31 million people during its first hour. In the United Kingdom, the episode was viewed by 1.651 million viewers, making it the highest-rated broadcast that week. It also received 0.095 million timeshift viewers. The episode received unanimous critical acclaim; according to Rotten Tomatoes all 35 reviews aggregated by the website were positive, with an average score of 9.5 out of 10. James Poniewozik at Time called it the best episode of the series, singling out the protracted wedding sequence for particular praise. Writing for The A.V. Club, Emily VanDerWerff gave the episode an "A" grade, calling it "one of the best episodes of this show, and Joffrey’s wedding is one of the best sequences in the whole series." VanDerWerff praised Martin's script as well as the directing by Alex Graves, which she said "smartly creates a real sense of tension throughout the sequence, even when nothing particularly dramatic is going on." In his review for IGN, Matt Fowler gave the episode a 9.4/10 and noted that it "featured a shocking death that was actually an immense crowd-pleaser." TVLine named Jack Gleeson the "Performer of the Week" for his performance in this episode. James Hibberd of Entertainment Weekly named it the third best television episode of 2014. at HBO.com

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When a Man Loves a Woman is a 1994 American romantic drama film directed by Luis Mandoki and starring Andy García, Meg Ryan, Tina Majorino, Mae Whitman, Ellen Burstyn, Lauren Tom and Philip Seymour Hoffman. It was written by Al Franken and Ronald Bass. For her performance as an alcoholic mother, Ryan received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Best Female Actor in a Leading Role. The film's title is taken from the song of the same name by Percy Sledge. Alice Green (Meg Ryan) is a school counselor who has a serious drinking problem and is married to Michael (Andy García), an airline pilot. Though she's lighthearted and loving, Alice is often reckless and, when drunk, even neglects her children: nine-year-old Jess (Tina Majorino) from a previous marriage, and four-year-old Casey (Mae Whitman), whose father is Michael. One afternoon, Alice enters their home in a drunken incoherent state. She dismisses the reluctant caretaker, who leaves her alone with her children. Still drinking, Alice is confronted by Jess concerned for her welfare. In return, she violently slaps Jess, who runs to her room crying. Alice enters the shower. Unable to control her balance and calling for Jess, she falls to the side and smashes through the shower door onto the bathroom floor. Fearing Alice has died, Jess contacts Michael who immediately flies home to be by Alice's side. After the incident and while in the hospital, Michael and Alice confront the truth about Alice's drinking. They jointly decide she must seek professional help for her alcoholism. Upon release from the hospital, a timid Alice enters a rehabilitation clinic. Michael finds himself now the main caretaker of their home and children, a role he struggles to maintain along with his career as an airline pilot. Meanwhile, at the clinic, Alice is flourishing; her recovery is painful but stabilizing and she is well-liked and respected by both staff and fellow clinic tenants alike. During a family visit day at the clinic, Alice immediately begins to rebuild her shattered bond with the children leaving Michael alone to wander the grounds uncomfortable and out of place in Alice's new lifestyle. Alice returns home sober yet guarded. She is vocal, strong and changed. Michael is having trouble adjusting to Alice's balance. He has become used to being the stable and controlled one in their relationship and is jealous of Alice's outside friendships and lack of dependence. Coming to terms with their estrangement, a reluctant Michael (believing therapy is for the weak) and a willing Alice see a marriage counselor who quickly establishes Michael's "co-dependency" on Alice's role as an alcoholic. Unable to find a medium and with tempers flared, Michael moves out and Alice becomes the main caretaker of their home and children. She is once again seen flourishing in her new role while Michael is unable to find control and seeks out a support group for spouses of alcoholics. Initially shy, Michael becomes a more vocal member of the group and shares his sorrow over his lack of understanding for the gravity his wife's sobriety would have on him, his children, and his marriage. Alice and Michael singularly return to the hospital to celebrate the birth of their caretaker's baby. They spend time together and as they depart Alice asks Michael if he would attend her 180-day sober speech where she will acknowledge her failings and accomplishments. She also tells him that she has been thinking about asking him to come home with her. Michael tells Alice he has been offered a job in Denver. For the first time since they both agreed Alice should enter rehab, they both agree Michael should take the position. The penultimate scene is Alice as she stands on a stage and tells her sobriety story; the toll it took on her, her children, and her marriage. She is funny, confident, sad but optimistic. Her audience is moved to tears. Her speech ends and she is surrounded by well wishers. Out of the crowd appears Michael. At ease with himself and Alice, he explains what he missed along the way..."to listen, to really listen." They share an intense, longing, passionate kiss. Meg Ryan as Alice Green, Andy García as Michael Green, Lauren Tom as Amy, Philip Seymour Hoffman as Gary, Tina Majorino as Jess Green, Mae Whitman as Casey Green, Ellen Burstyn as Emily Tom Hanks was considered for Garcia's role and Michelle Pfeiffer and Debra Winger were considered for Ryan's role. The film debuted at No.2 behind The Crow. It currently holds a 71% fresh rating among critics at Rotten Tomatoes, although it has a mixed reception and is seen unfavorably by many because of its length and the way it deals with alcoholism and stress in the family. James Berardinelli stated that the "ending is too facile", and that the film took "longer than necessary to arrive at its resolution", adding that there are moments in it where the script would strike a raw nerve with certain people because of how it judges alcoholics and deals with issues related to alcoholism. However, he said that the "film's poignancy is its strength, even if occasional didactic tendencies are its weakness". David Denby of New York Magazine called it an "earnest and highly prolonged counseling disappointment", a "pushy therapeutic exercise" which, although intelligent, features "endless talk, a stunted mise en scène, and a moral atmosphere of dogged and literal-minded persistence" which "overvalues its own sobriety". Roger Ebert, himself a recovering alcoholic, gave it four out of four stars, praising its artistic qualities just in passing (“I couldn't find a false note in Ryan's performance - and only one in Garcia's …”) but spending more time on its description of the role of the family enablers in development of alcoholism. 1. When a Man Loves a Woman 2. Crazy Love 3. El Gusto 4. Main Title 5. Garbage Compulsion 6. Homecoming 7. I Hit Her Hard 8. Dressing Casey 9. Gary 10. Michael Decides 11. Alice & Michael 12. Running From Mercy by Rickie Lee Jones 13. I'm a Good Man by Robert Cray 14. Everybody Hurts by R.E.M. 15. Stewart's Coat by Rickie Lee Jones "When a Man Loves a Woman" is a song by Jody Watley, released as the final single from her fourth album, Intimacy. While "When a Man Loves a Woman" peaked at #115 on the U.S. pop chart, it had a significantly more successful showing on the R&B; chart, where it landed at number 11. Also, "When a Man Loves a Woman" peaked at #33 in the UK, making it Watley's first Top 40 hit since "Friends" peaked at number 21 in 1989. In 1994, "When a Man Loves a Woman" was released in the UK with alternate gay- themed mixes by progressive house/trance outfit, BBG. The BBG mixes substituted the gender roles in their titles, hence they were "When a Man Loves a Man" and "When a Woman Loves a Woman". Watley's willingness to discuss gay issues was unprecedented at the time and still remains a rarity among artists to this day. U.S. Cassette Maxi-Single Album Version, Remix Version, D.J.'s club Mix, Instrumental Version UK CD Single "When a Man Loves a Woman" (Radio Mix), "When a Man Loves a Man" (BBG Deep Mix Edit), "When a Woman Loves a Woman" (BBG Deep Mix Edit), "Ecstasy" (B.Y.C. 12")" "When a Man Loves a Woman" is a song written by Calvin Lewis and Andrew Wright and first recorded by Percy Sledge in 1966 at Norala Sound Studio in Sheffield, Alabama. It made number one on both the Billboard Hot 100 and R&B; singles charts. Singer and actress Bette Midler recorded the song 14 years later and had a Top 40 hit with her version in 1980. In 1991, Michael Bolton recorded the song and his version peaked at number one on both the Billboard Hot 100 chart and the Billboard Adult Contemporary Singles chart. The song was initially recorded by Percy Sledge at Rick Hall's FAME Studios at Muscle Shoals, before being re-recorded at the nearby Norala Studios owned by Quin Ivy. The sidemen for the recording included Spooner Oldham, Farfisa organ; Marlin Greene, guitar; Albert "Junior" Lowe, double bass and Roger Hawkins, drums. Andrew Wright and Calvin Lewis did not play on the record. Rick Hall arranged a distribution deal with Atlantic Records, but Jerry Wexler asked that the song be re-recorded because the horns were out of tune. According to musician David Hood, "They went back in the studio and changed the horns, got different horn players to play on it. But then the tapes got mixed up and Atlantic put out their original version. So that's the hit." Released by Atlantic Records in April 1966, Sledge's recording reached number one on both the Billboard Hot 100 and R&B; singles charts, becoming the first number 1 hit recorded in Muscle Shoals. It is also one of seven number 1 hits to debut on the Billboard Hot 100 at number 100. The single was also a top ten hit in the UK reaching number four on its initial release and ultimately peaking at number two in 1987 on the UK Singles Chart after it was featured in a Levi's Jeans commercial. The Percy Sledge version is listed 53rd in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Also in 1987, it was reissued in the US to promote the soundtrack album for Oliver Stone's film Platoon. Calvin Lewis and Andrew Wright were members of the Esquires, a band in Sheffield, Alabama fronted by singer Percy Sledge. According to Wright, "We were set to play a Friday night dance, and we were practicing ... I was messing around on the organ when this riff came up out of nowhere. There was no one in the club but us. I told Calvin to go home and write some words." The next night, they rehearsed the emerging song with Sledge, changed it around, and soon afterwards auditioned the song for local businessman and radio DJ Quin Ivy. He liked the song but suggested that some of the words be changed to give a more positive message. Wright said, "We kept some of the phrases, worked on it for several weeks, and spent quite a bit of time in the studio." Although the writing of the song is credited to Lewis and Wright, Sledge later said that he should have received a co-writing credit. In one story, Sledge said that one night he was upset over a broken relationship and asked Lewis and Wright to play a slow blues over which he improvised lyrics describing his emotions; Quin Ivy was at the show and asked the band to refine the lyrics so that it could be recorded. Sledge said that he allowed Lewis and Wright to take the writing credits because they gave him the opportunity "to sing his heart out". In another interview, Sledge said:When I wrote the song at first, it was called "Why Did You Leave Me Baby". And I changed it from that to "When a Man Loves a Woman". I just reversed it. Quin told me that if I was to write some lyrics around that melody and the expression I'd put into "Why Did You Leave Me Baby", he believed it would've been a hit record. He was one of the top disc jockeys at that time. Sure enough, he asked me if I had any lyrics for that. He said, "That's it! Write a story around that title! What a song that would be with that feeling you had!" It was a song that was meant to be. It wasn't just what I had done; it was the musicians, the producer, the background singers, the right time. "When a Man Loves a Woman" was recorded by singer Michael Bolton in 1991 for his album Time, Love & Tenderness. His version of the song reached number one on the U.S. pop and adult contemporary singles charts. Bolton also received a Grammy Award for this song. This version has the distinction of being the last number one song to chart on the old Billboard Hot 100 charting system which relied on sales and airplay reports before switching over to Soundscan. Also, with the Percy Sledge original having reached number one previously, Bolton's version made it the seventh song in history to top the Hot 100 as recorded by multiple artists. A version of the song with revised lyrics, "When a Woman Loves a Man", was recorded by Esther Phillips in late 1966 and reached number 73 on the Hot 100 and number 26 on the R&B; chart., American singer and actress Bette Midler recorded the song in 1979 for the film The Rose. Her version of the single was released in 1980 and reached number 35 in the US Billboard Hot 100 chart., Three separate country music versions have made the Hot Country Songs charts: John Wesley Ryles (number 72 in 1976), Jack Grayson and Blackjack (number 18 in 1981) and Narvel Felts (number 60 in 1987). •Other artists that covered this song include: Burton Cummings (1978), Art Garfunkel (1988), Spencer Davis Group (1966), Gregg Allman (1997), Aaron Neville (2006), Johnny Rivers (1967), Mikael Rickfors (1975), Demis Roussos (1978) and Wes Montgomery (1967), Natalie Cole (1981) List of number-one adult contemporary singles of 1991 (U.S.) Percy Sledge article on The Standard Report, "When a Man Loves a Woman" in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs

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They Shoot Horses, Don't They? is a 1969 American drama film directed by Sydney Pollack, starring Jane Fonda, Michael Sarrazin, Susannah York, Red Buttons, Bruce Dern, Bonnie Bedelia and Gig Young. The screenplay, adapted from Horace McCoy's 1935 novel of the same name, was written by James Poe and Robert E. Thompson. The film focuses on a disparate group of characters desperate to win a Depression-era dance marathon and the opportunistic emcee who urges them on to victory. The film premiered at the 23rd Cannes Film Festival and was released theatrically in the United States on December 10, 1969. Upon release it was a critical and commercial success, grossing $12.6 million on a budget of $4.86 million, becoming the sixteenth highest grossing film of 1969. Critics praised its direction, screenplay, depiction of the depression era, and performances, most notably of Fonda's, which marked a significant turning point in her career. The film received nine nominations at the 42nd Academy Awards including Best Director, Best Actress (for Fonda), Best Supporting Actress (for York), Best Adapted Screenplay and winning Best Supporting Actor (for Young). It holds the Academy record for most nominations without one for Best Picture. Robert Syverton (Michael Sarrazin), who had once dreamed of becoming a great film director, recalls the events leading to an unstated crime. In his youth, he saw a horse break its leg, after which it was shot and put out of its misery. Years later, in 1932 during the Great Depression, he wanders into a dance marathon about to begin in the shabby La Monica Ballroom, perched over the Pacific Ocean on the Santa Monica Pier, near Los Angeles. He is recruited by MC Rocky (Gig Young) as a substitute partner for a cynical malcontent named Gloria (Jane Fonda), when her original partner is disqualified because of an ominous cough. Among the other contestants competing for a prize of 1,500 silver dollars is Harry Kline (Red Buttons), a middle-aged sailor; Alice (Susannah York) and her partner Joel (Robert Fields), both aspiring actors; and an impoverished farm worker James (Bruce Dern) and his pregnant wife Ruby (Bonnie Bedelia). Early in the marathon the weaker pairs are eliminated quickly, while Rocky observes the vulnerabilities of the stronger contestants and exploits them for the audience's amusement. Frayed nerves are exacerbated by the theft of one of Alice's dresses and Gloria's displeasure at the attention Alice receives from Robert. In retaliation, she takes Joel as her partner, but when he receives a job offer and departs, she aligns herself with Harry. Weeks into the marathon, in order to spark the paying spectators' enthusiasm, Rocky stages a series of derbies in which the exhausted contestants, clad in track suits, must race around the dance floor, with the last three couples eliminated. Harry has a fatal heart attack during one of the races, but the undeterred Gloria lifts him on her back and crosses the finish line. Harry dies as Gloria drags him. Alice, who witnesses his death, has a breakdown and is taken away. Lacking partners, Robert and Gloria again pair up. Rocky suggests the couple marry during the marathon, a publicity stunt guaranteed to earn them some cash, in the form of gifts from supporters such as Mrs. Laydon (Madge Kennedy). When Gloria refuses, he reveals the contest is not what it appears. Expenses will be deducted from the prize money, leaving the winner with close to nothing. Shocked by the revelation, the couple drops out of the competition. The two leave the dance hall and stand on the pier, overlooking the ocean. Gloria confesses how empty she is inside and tells Robert that she wants to kill herself, but when she takes out a gun and points it at herself, she cannot pull the trigger. Desperate, she asks Robert, "Help me." He obliges, and shoots her in the head, killing her. Questioned by the police as to the motive for his action, Robert responds: "They shoot horses, don't they?" The marathon continues with its few remaining couples, including James and Ruby. The eventual winners are not revealed. Jane Fonda as Gloria Beatty, Michael Sarrazin as Robert Syverton, Susannah York as Alice LeBlanc, Gig Young as Rocky, Red Buttons as Harry Kline, Bonnie Bedelia as Ruby, Michael Conrad as Rollo, Bruce Dern as James, Al Lewis as Turkey, Robert Fields as Joel Girard, Severn Darden as Cecil, Allyn Ann McLerie as Shirl, Madge Kennedy as Mrs. Laydon, Jacquelyn Hyde as Jackie, Felice Orlandi as Mario, Arthur Metrano as Max In the early 1950s, Norman Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin were looking for a project on which to collaborate, with Lloyd as director and Chaplin as producer. Lloyd purchased the rights to Horace McCoy's novel for $3,000 and planned to cast Chaplin's son, Sydney, and newcomer Marilyn Monroe in the lead roles. Once arrangements were completed, in 1952 Chaplin took his family on what was intended to be a brief trip to the United Kingdom for the London premiere of Limelight. During this trip, in part because Chaplin was accused of being a Communist supporter during the McCarthy era, FBI head J. Edgar Hoover negotiated with the Immigration and Naturalization Service to revoke his re-entry permit and the film project was cancelled. When McCoy died sixteen years later and the rights to the book reverted to his heirs, they refused to renew the deal with Lloyd, since nothing had come of his original plans. When Sydney Pollack signed to direct the film, he approached Jane Fonda for the role of Gloria. The actress, unimpressed by the script, declined but her husband Roger Vadim, who saw similarities between the book and works of the French existentialists, urged her to reconsider. Meeting with Pollack to discuss the script, she was surprised when he asked for her opinion. She later said, "It was the first time a director asked me for input on how I saw the character and the story." She read the script with a critical eye, made notes on the character and later observed in her autobiography, "It was a germinal moment [for me] ... This was the first time in my life as an actor that I was working on a film about larger societal issues, and instead of my professional work feeling peripheral to life, it felt relevant." Troubled about problems in her marriage at the time, she drew on her personal anguish to help her with her characterization. Warren Beatty originally was considered for the role of Robert Syverton and Pollack's first choice for Rocky was character actor Lionel Stander. The film is notable for using the technique of flashforwards (glimpses of the future), not commonly used in movies. They are used in the last 18 minutes of the film, as passages appear denoting the fate of Robert, just before the tragic shock ending. Costar Gig Young was noted for his deep characterization of Rocky: he patterned his character after the bandleader and radio personality Ben Bernie, and used Bernie's famous catchphrase, "Yowza! Yowza! Yowza!", for the character in the film. The film's soundtrack features numerous standards from the era. These include: "Easy Come, Easy Go" by Johnny Green and Edward Heyman, "Sweet Sue, Just You" by Victor Young and Will J. Harris, "Paradise" by Nacio Herb Brown and Gordon Clifford, "Coquette" by Johnny Green, Carmen Lombardo, and Gus Kahn, "The Japanese Sandman" by Richard A. Whiting and Ray Egan, "By the Beautiful Sea" by Harry Carroll and Harold R. Atteridge, "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler, "The Best Things in Life Are Free" by Buddy DeSylva, Lew Brown, and Ray Henderson, "Body and Soul" by Johnny Green, Edward Heyman, Robert Sour, and Frank Eyton, "I Cover the Waterfront" by Johnny Green and Edward Heyman, "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" by Jay Gorney and E. Y. Harburg, "I Found a Million Dollar Baby (in a Five and Ten Cent Store)" by Harry Warren, Billy Rose, and Mort Dixon, "Out of Nowhere" by Johnny Green and Edward Heyman, "California, Here I Come" by Buddy DeSylva, Joseph Meyer, and Al Jolson The ballroom band consisted of several professional jazz musicians, all uncredited. The band was led by Bobby Hutcherson and included Hugh Bell, Ronnie Bright, Teddy Buckner, Hadley Caliman, Teddy Edwards, Thurman Green, Joe Harris, Ike Isaacs, Harold Land and Les Robertson. A soundtrack album was released on ABC Records in 1969. The film was a box office success, grossing $12,600,000 on a $4.86 million budget, making it the 16th highest-grossing film of 1969. According to Variety the film earned $5,980,000 in theatrical rentals in North America. The film was screened at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival, but was not entered into the main competition. In the United States, the film was applauded for portraying the Depression era. Roger Ebert gave the film four stars out of four and named it as one of the best American movies of the 1970s: They Shoot Horses, Don't They? is a masterful re-creation of the [dance] marathon era for audiences that are mostly unfamiliar with it. In addition to everything else it does, "Horses" holds our attention because it tells us something we didn't know about human nature and American society. It tells us a lot more than that, of course, but because it works on this fundamental level as well it is one of the best American movies of the 1970s. In his review in The New York Times, Vincent Canby said, The movie is far from being perfect, but it is so disturbing in such important ways that I won't forget it very easily, which is more than can be said of much better, more consistent films ... The movie is by far the best thing that Pollack has ever directed (with the possible exception of The Scalphunters). While the cameras remain, as if they had been sentenced, within the ballroom, picking up the details of the increasing despair of the dancers, the movie becomes an epic of exhaustion and futility. Variety said, "Puffy-eyed, unshaven, reeking of stale liquor, sweat and cigarets, Young has never looked older or acted better. Fonda ... gives a dramatic performance that gives the film a personal focus and an emotionally gripping power." TV Guide rated the film four out of a possible four stars and said, Although it is at times heavy-handed, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? is a tour de force of acting. Fonda here got her first chance to prove herself as a serious, dramatic actress ... Young is superb in his role, a sharp switch from his usual bon vivant parts ... Pollack does one of his best jobs of directing, even if his primary strength lies in his rapport with actors. The look of the film is just right and Pollack skillfully evokes the ratty atmosphere amid which explosive emotions come to a boil ... [It] remains a suitably glum yet cathartic film experience. In 1996, Entertainment Weekly observed, "Sydney Pollack's dance-marathon movie has probably aged better than any American film of its time." Academy Awards The film won one Academy Award and was nominated in eight other categories. The film holds the record for being nominated for the most Academy Awards (nine) without receiving a nod for Best Picture. Academy Award for Best Director (Sydney Pollack, nominee), Academy Award for Best Actress (Jane Fonda, nominee), Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (Gig Young, winner), Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress (Susannah York, nominee), Academy Award for Best Art Direction (Art decorator: Harry Horner; Set decarator: Frank R. McKelvy, nominees), Academy Award for Best Costume Design (Donfeld, nominee), Academy Award for Best Film Editing (Fredric Steinkamp, nominee), Academy Award for Best Original Score (Johnny Green, nominee), Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (Robert E. Thompson and James Poe, nominees) Golden Globes Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama (nominee), Golden Globe Award for Best Director (Sydney Pollack, nominee), Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama (Jane Fonda, nominee), Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture (Susannah York, nominee), Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture (Gig Young, winner), Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor — Motion Picture (Red Buttons, nominee) BAFTAs BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Jane Fonda, nominee), BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Susannah York, winner), BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Gig Young, nominee), BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (Robert E. Thompson and James Poe, nominees), BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer (Michael Sarrazin, nominee) Other awards New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress (Jane Fonda, winner), Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures (Sydney Pollack, nominee), Writers Guild of America Award for Best Drama Adapted from Another Medium (Robert E. Thompson and James Poe, nominees), National Board of Review Award for Best Film (winner), Grand Prix of the Belgian Film Critics Association (winner) In later years, Turner Classic Movies observed, "By popularizing the title of McCoy’s novel, [the film] gave American argot a catch-phrase that's as recognizable today as when the movie first caught on." The title has been imitated in various media for topics having little relation to the plot or themes of the original film. Episodes of the television series That Girl, The Odd Couple, The Partridge Family, The Partners, Happy Days, Sledge Hammer!, In Loving Memory, Designing Women, Webster, WIOU, Class of '96, Due South, Melrose Place, Family Matters, Cybill, Fired Up, Spin City, Ally McBeal, ER, Sex and the City, Gilmore Girls, Twenty Good Years, Gossip Girl, Mike & Molly, and Bob's Burgers have used variations of the phrase for their titles., Humorist Patrick F. McManus titled one of his story collections They Shoot Canoes, Don't They? The Rolling Stones used the film set as a rehearsal space, prior to a pair of shows at The Forum as part of their 1969 U.S. tour. Welsh band Racing Cars recorded a song called They Shoot Horses Don't They? inspired by this movie. The video for Jack's Mannequin's "Dark Blue" pays homage to the film by portraying a lengthy dance marathon; at the end of the video it is revealed that the eliminated couples are taken to a pier similar to the one at the end of the film and forced to jump into the sea. They Shoot Horses, Don't They? was released to DVD by MGM Home Entertainment on October 19, 2004, as a Region 1 widescreen DVD. Kino Lorber released the film on Blu-Ray on September 5, 2017. List of American films of 1969 They Shoot Horses, Don't They? is a novel written by Horace McCoy and first published in 1935. The story mainly concerns a dance marathon during the Great Depression. It was adapted into Sydney Pollack's 1969 film of the same name. The story follows the narrator, Robert Syverten, a naive young man from Hollywood who dreams of being a film director. The story begins with Robert's sentencing for murder. He confesses that he "killed her," and that he doesn't "have a leg to stand on." He is advised to beg for mercy from the court. The story of his relationship with the girl he killed, Gloria Beatty, is thereafter intercut after every few chapters with short excerpts from the judge's sentencing. The excerpts of the judge's words are written in larger and larger type until the last page of the book concludes with the words written in small print: "And may God have mercy on your soul.” Robert meets Gloria on a morning when they have both failed to get parts as extras. She talks him into participating in a dance marathon contest. Like Robert, she is struggling to find work in Hollywood and believes the contest may be a way to get noticed by studio producers or movie stars. Gloria and Robert enter the dance contest, which is held at a large amusement pier on the beach, somewhere near Hollywood. The contests are long and grueling affairs, taking place over several weeks. Contestants dance for an hour and fifty minutes, then receive a ten-minute break. One hundred and forty-four couples start the contest. Robert and Gloria, like most of the contestants, are young, jobless, and drawn as much by the free food as by the $1,000 prize money. From the start, Gloria tells Robert that she wishes she were dead, a point she repeats in most of their conversations. Her parents are dead. She ran away to Dallas from a farm in West Texas where her uncle always made passes at her. In Dallas, she tried to commit suicide, then ran away to Hollywood with dreams of being in movies, but is finding only rejection. Robert considers her plain-looking and unlikely to find work as an actress. She tells Robert frequently that she doesn't have the courage to kill herself. The promoters of the contest try various schemes to increase attendance. They publicize the arrest of a contestant for murder. Every evening, they stage an elimination race, called a derby, in which the couples speed-walk around a track, the last-place couple being disqualified. The promoters stage a marriage of two contestants, who then lose a derby and should be eliminated. Instead, the promoters disqualify another couple. As the dance goes on, into the second and third week, the crowds grow larger. Newspapers cover the contest. Some couples receive sponsorships from local businesses, usually in the form of clothes. Hollywood personalities arrive to watch and are announced by the promoters. Gloria goads Robert into speaking with a famous director he recognizes in the crowd. A woman named Mrs. Layden attends the contest regularly and tells Robert that he and Gloria are her favorite couple. She later gets Robert and Gloria a sponsorship. As the contest grinds on, couples break down physically and drop out. Robert is consumed with claustrophobia and a desire to get outside into the sun. Gloria is tiring and having difficulty walking for the derby without Robert's help. Gloria is revealed throughout as angry, bitter and outspoken. She curses another male contestant because he won't allow his pregnant partner to get an abortion. Robert learns indirectly that Gloria is having sex with one of the promoters, presumably to gain an advantage in the event the fix should be put in again. When Robert tells her of his suspicions, Gloria tells him she doesn't feel she is worthy of doing anything else. When two elderly women from the local morals society threaten the promoters with shutting down the dance, Gloria is asked to witness the meeting. When she is left in the room with Mrs. Higby and Mrs. Witcher, she curses the women as spoiled, interfering hypocrites. After 879 hours of dancing and with 20 couples remaining, the contest is shut down when there is a murder at the dance hall's bar. A stray bullet from the shooting hits and kills Mrs. Layden. The promoters decide to give the remaining dancers $50 each for their efforts. Robert and Gloria go outside for the first time in five weeks and sit on the pier looking at the ocean. Gloria takes a pistol out of her bag and asks Robert to shoot her, which he does. He remembers when he was young, and his grandfather shot the beloved family horse, which had broken its leg. The police ask Robert why he shot Gloria, and he answers, "Because she asked me to." The policeman persists. Robert answers, "They shoot horses, don't they?" McCoy's novel was more popular abroad than in America when it was published at the height of the depression. The book was read in the existentialist circles of France. Although the novel had been distributed by underground literary groups during World War II, the novel's first French edition did not appear until 1946. Lee J. Richmond argues that ″With the exception of Nathaniel West's Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust, McCoy's novel is indisputably the best example of absurdist existentialism in American fiction″. In 2011 Anita Sethi for The Guardian writes "The brutality of the story is offset by the poetic beauty and precision of McCoy's narrative as it hones in on the thoughts and aspirations of its outsider characters, their troubled voices lingering in the mind. In our world of fleeting reality TV stardom, this stark, urgent novel feels more timely than ever. The novel has continually remained in print since 1935. They Shoot Horses, Don't They? was adapted for a film of the same title in 1969, with a screenplay by Robert E. Thompson and James Poe. The film, directed by Sydney Pollack, stars Michael Sarrazin as Robert, Jane Fonda as Gloria, and Gig Young as the dance marathon emcee. It was nominated for nine Academy Awards. In 1983 the novel was adapted by Ray Herman for a stage play that premiered at the Grant Street Theatre in South Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The play had several revivals in the UK in the 1990s and 2000s (Northern Stage, Newcastle upon Tyne in 1995). In 2001 the novel was again adapted for the stage by Rick Sparks and Gary Carter. Its premiere production for Greenway Arts Alliance in Los Angeles won 17 theatre awards. In 2016 Harvard University performed the Sparks–Carter adaptation. The fashion designer Alexander McQueen re-created the grueling dance marathon for his ready-to-wear fashion show for his spring 2004 Collection. Joe Jackson wrote the line "Enjoy the dance, they don't shoot horses" in his song Cha Cha loco (from the 1984 album Body and Soul). Linda McQuaig's 1995 book Shooting the Hippo, about the supposed and actual causes of the large government budget deficit at the time, opens with a chapter entitled "They shoot hippos, don't they?" This was in reference to an influential media piece on Canada's deficit which attempted to draw parallels between the Canadian situation and New Zealand's budget crisis a decade earlier, during which the New Zealand national zoo lost its government subsidy and shot its hippos. Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye Jane Seymour Fonda (born December 21, 1937) is an American actress, political activist, and former fashion model. She is the recipient of various accolades including two Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, the AFI Life Achievement Award, and the Honorary Golden Lion. Born to actor Henry Fonda and socialite Frances Ford Seymour, Fonda made her acting debut with the 1960 Broadway play There Was a Little Girl, for which she received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play, and made her screen debut later the same year with the romantic comedy Tall Story. She rose to prominence in the 1960s with such films as Period of Adjustment (1962), Sunday in New York (1963), Cat Ballou (1965), Barefoot in the Park (1967), and Barbarella (1968). Her first husband was Barbarella director Roger Vadim. A seven-time Academy Award nominee, she received her first nomination for They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), and went on to win two Best Actress Oscars in the 1970s for Klute (1971) and Coming Home (1978). Her other nominations were for Julia (1977), The China Syndrome (1979), On Golden Pond (1981), and The Morning After (1986). Consecutive hits Fun with Dick and Jane (1977), California Suite (1978), The Electric Horseman (1979), and 9 to 5 (1980) sustained Fonda's box-office drawing power, and she won a Primetime Emmy Award for her performance in the TV film The Dollmaker (1984). In 1982, she released her first exercise video, Jane Fonda's Workout, which became the highest-selling VHS of all time. It would be the first of 22 such videos over the next 13 years, which would collectively sell over 17 million copies. Divorced from her second husband Tom Hayden, she married billionaire media mogul Ted Turner in 1991 and retired from acting, following a row of commercially unsuccessful films concluded by Stanley & Iris (1990). Fonda divorced Turner in 2001 and returned to the screen with the hit Monster-in-Law (2005). Although Georgia Rule (2007) was the star's only other movie during the 2000s, in the early 2010s she fully re- launched her career. Subsequent films have included The Butler (2013), This Is Where I Leave You (2014), Youth (2015), Our Souls at Night (2017), and Book Club (2018). In 2009, she returned to Broadway after a 49-year absence from the stage, in the play 33 Variations which earned her a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play, while her major recurring role in the HBO drama series The Newsroom (2012–14) earned her two Primetime Emmy Award nominations. She also released another five exercise videos between 2009 and 2012. Fonda currently stars as Grace Hanson in the Netflix comedy series Grace and Frankie, which debuted in 2015 and has earned her nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award and three Screen Actors Guild Awards. Fonda was a visible political activist in the counterculture era during the Vietnam War. She was photographed sitting on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun on a 1972 visit to Hanoi, during which she gained the nickname "Hanoi Jane". During this time, she was effectively blacklisted in Hollywood. She has also protested the Iraq War and violence against women, and describes herself as a feminist and environmental activist. In 2005, along with Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem, she co-founded the Women's Media Center, an organization that works to amplify the voices of women in the media through advocacy, media and leadership training, and the creation of original content. Fonda serves on the board of the organization. Jane Seymour Fonda was born in New York City on December 21, 1937. Her parents were the Canadian-born socialite Frances Ford Brokaw (née Seymour; 1908–1950) and the American actor Henry Fonda (1905–1982). According to her father, the surname Fonda came from an Italian ancestor who immigrated to the Netherlands in the 1500s. There, he intermarried, and the family began to use Dutch given names, with Jane's first Fonda ancestor reaching New York in 1650. Fonda also has English, French, and Scottish ancestry. She was named for the third wife of Henry VIII, Jane Seymour, to whom she is distantly related on her mother's side. Her brother, Peter (1940–2019), was also an actor, and her maternal half-sister is Frances de Villers Brokaw (aka "Pan"), whose daughter is Pilar Corrias, the owner of the Pilar Corrias Gallery in London. In 1950, when Fonda was 12, her mother died by suicide while undergoing treatment at Craig House psychiatric hospital in Beacon, New York. Later that year, Fonda's father married the socialite Susan Blanchard (born 1928), 23 years his junior; this marriage ended in divorce. At 15 Fonda taught dance at Fire Island Pines, New York. Fonda attended Greenwich Academy in Greenwich, Connecticut; the Emma Willard School in Troy, New York; and Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. Before her acting career, she was a model and appeared twice on the cover of Vogue. Fonda became interested in acting as a teenager while appearing with her father in a charity performance of The Country Girl at the Omaha Community Playhouse. After dropping out of Vassar, she went to Paris for six months to study art. Upon returning to the states, in 1958, she met Lee Strasberg and the meeting changed the course of her life, Fonda saying, "I went to the Actors Studio and Lee Strasberg told me I had talent. Real talent. It was the first time that anyone, except my father – who had to say so – told me I was good. At anything. It was a turning point in my life. I went to bed thinking about acting. I woke up thinking about acting. It was like the roof had come off my life!" Fonda's stage work in the late 1950s laid the foundation for her film career in the 1960s. She averaged almost two movies a year throughout the decade, starting in 1960 with Tall Story, in which she recreated one of her Broadway roles as a college cheerleader pursuing a basketball star, played by Anthony Perkins. Frequent collaborator Robert Redford also made his debut in that film. Period of Adjustment and Walk on the Wild Side followed in 1962. The latter, in which she played a prostitute, earned her a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer. In 1963, she appeared in Sunday in New York. Newsday called her "the loveliest and most gifted of all our new young actresses". However, she also had detractors – in the same year, the Harvard Lampoon named her the "Year's Worst Actress" for The Chapman Report. Fonda's career breakthrough came with Cat Ballou (1965), in which she played a schoolmarm turned outlaw. This comedy Western received five Oscar nominations, with Lee Marvin winning best actor, and was one of the year's top ten films at the box office. It was considered by many to have been the film that brought Fonda to bankable stardom. The following year, she had a starring role in The Chase opposite Robert Redford, in their first film together, and two-time Oscar winner Marlon Brando. The film received some positive reviews, but Fonda's performance was noticed by Variety magazine: "Jane Fonda, as Redford's wife and the mistress of wealthy oilman James Fox, makes the most of the biggest female role." After this came the comedies Any Wednesday (1966), opposite Jason Robards and Dean Jones, and Barefoot in the Park (1967), again co-starring Redford. In 1968, she played the title role in the science fiction spoof Barbarella, which established her status as a sex symbol. In contrast, the tragedy They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969) won her critical acclaim and marked a significant turning point in her career; Variety magazine wrote, "Fonda, as the unremittingly cynical loser, the tough and bruised babe of the Dust Bowl, gives a dramatic performance that gives the film a personal focus and an emotionally gripping power." In addition, renowned film critic Pauline Kael, in her New Yorker review of the film, noted of Fonda: "[She] has been a charming, witty nudie cutie in recent years and now gets a chance at an archetypal character. Fonda goes all the way with it, as screen actresses rarely do once they become stars. She doesn't try to save some ladylike part of herself, the way even a good actress like Audrey Hepburn does, peeping at us from behind "vulgar" roles to assure us she's not really like that. Fonda stands a good chance of personifying American tensions and dominating our movies in the seventies as Bette Davis did in the thirties." For her performance, she won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress and earned her first Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Fonda was very selective by the end of the decade, turning down lead roles in Rosemary's Baby and Bonnie and Clyde. In the seventies, Fonda enjoyed her most critically acclaimed period as an actress despite some setbacks for her ongoing activism. According to writer and critic Hilton Als, her performances starting with They Shoot Horses, Don't They? "heralded a new kind of acting: for the first time, she was willing to alienate viewers, rather than try to win them over. Fonda's ability to continue to develop her talent is what sets her apart from many other performers of her generation. Fonda won her first Academy Award for Best Actress in 1971, again playing a prostitute, the gamine Bree Daniels, in Alan J. Pakula's murder mystery Klute. Prior to shooting, Fonda spent time interviewing several prostitutes and madams. Years later, Fonda discovered that "there was like a marriage, a melding of souls between this character and me, this woman that I didn't think I could play because I didn't think I was call girl material. It didn't matter." Upon its release, Klute was both a critical and commercial success, and Fonda's performance earned her widespread recognition. Pauline Kael wrote: "As an actress, [Fonda] has a special kind of smartness that takes the form of speed; she's always a little ahead of everybody, and this quicker beat – this quicker responsiveness – makes her more exciting to watch. This quality works to great advantage in her full- scale, definitive portrait of a call girl in Klute. It's a good, big role for her, and she disappears into Bree, the call girl, so totally that her performance is very pure – unadorned by "acting." She never stands outside Bree, she gives herself over to the role, and yet she isn't lost in it—she's fully in control, and her means are extraordinarily economical. She has somehow got to a plane of acting at which even the closest closeup never reveals a false thought and, seen on the movie streets a block away, she's Bree, not Jane Fonda, walking toward us. There isn't another young dramatic actress in American films who can touch her". Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun- Times also praised Fonda's performance, even suggesting that the film should have been titled Bree after her character: "What is it about Jane Fonda that makes her such a fascinating actress to watch? She has a sort of nervous intensity that keeps her so firmly locked into a film character that the character actually seems distracted by things that come up in the movie." During the 1971–1972 awards season, Fonda dominated the Best Actress category at almost every major awards ceremony; in addition to her Oscar win, she received her first Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama, her first National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress and her second New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress. Between Klute in 1971 and Fun With Dick and Jane in 1977, Fonda did not have a major film success. She appeared in A Doll's House (1973), Steelyard Blues and The Blue Bird (1976). In the former, some critics felt Fonda was miscast, but her work as Nora Helmer drew praise, and a review in The New York Times opined, "Though the Losey film is ferociously flawed, I recommend it for Jane Fonda's performance. Beforehand, it seemed fair to wonder if she could personify someone from the past; her voice, inflections, and ways of moving have always seemed totally contemporary. But once again she proves herself to be one of our finest actresses, and she's at home in the 1870s, a creature of that period as much as of ours." From comments ascribed to her in interviews, some have inferred that she personally blamed the situation on anger at her outspoken political views: "I can't say I was blacklisted, but I was greylisted." However, in her 2005 autobiography, My Life So Far, she rejected such simplification. "The suggestion is that because of my actions against the war my career had been destroyed ... But the truth is that my career, far from being destroyed after the war, flourished with a vigor it had not previously enjoyed." She reduced acting because of her political activism providing a new focus in her life. Her return to acting in a series of 'issue-driven' films reflected this new focus. In 1972, Fonda starred as a reporter alongside Yves Montand in Tout Va Bien, directed by Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin. The two directors then made Letter to Jane, in which the two spent nearly an hour discussing a news photograph of Fonda. Through her production company, IPC Films, she produced films that helped return her to star status. The 1977 comedy film Fun With Dick and Jane is generally considered her "comeback" picture. Critical reaction was mixed, but Fonda's comic performance was praised; Vincent Canby of The New York Times remarked, "I never have trouble remembering that Miss Fonda is a fine dramatic actress but I'm surprised all over again every time I see her do comedy with the mixture of comic intelligence and abandon she shows here." Also in 1977, she portrayed the playwright Lillian Hellman in Julia, receiving positive reviews from critics. Gary Arnold of the Washington Post described her performance as "edgy, persuasive and intriguingly tensed-up," commenting further, "Irritable, intent and agonizingly self-conscious, Fonda suggests the internal conflicts gnawing at a talented woman who craves the self-assurance, resolve and wisdom she sees in figures like Julia and Hammett." For her performance, Fonda won her first BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, her second Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama, and received her third Best Actress Oscar nomination. During this period, Fonda announced that she would make only films that focused on important issues, and she generally stuck to her word. She turned down An Unmarried Woman because she felt the part was not relevant. In 1978, Fonda was at a career peak after she won her second Best Actress Oscar for her role as Sally Hyde, a conflicted adulteress in Coming Home, the story of a disabled Vietnam War veteran's difficulty in re-entering civilian life. Upon its release, the film was a popular success with audiences, and generally received good reviews; Ebert noted that her Sally Hyde was "the kind of character you somehow wouldn't expect the outspoken, intelligent Fonda to play," and Jonathan Rosenbaum of the San Diego Reader felt that Fonda was "a marvel to watch; what fascinates and involves me in her performance are the conscientious effort and thought that seem to go into every line reading and gesture, as if the question of what a captain's wife and former cheerleader was like became a source of endless curiosity and discovery for her." Her performance also earned her a third Golden Globe Award for Best Actress as well, making this her second consecutive win. Also in 1978, she reunited with Alan J. Pakula to star in his post-modern Western drama Comes a Horseman as a hard-bitten rancher, and later took on a supporting role in California Suite, where she played a Manhattan workaholic and divorcee. Variety noted that she "demonstrates yet another aspect of her amazing range" and Time Out New York remarked that she gave "another performance of unnerving sureness." She won her second BAFTA Award for Best Actress in 1979 with The China Syndrome, about a cover-up of a vulnerability in a nuclear power plant. Cast alongside Jack Lemmon and Michael Douglas, in one of his early roles, Fonda played a clever, ambitious television news reporter. Vincent Canby, writing for the New York Times, singled out Fonda's performance for praise: "The three stars are splendid, but maybe Miss Fonda is just a bit more than that. Her performance is not that of an actress in a star's role, but that of an actress creating a character that happens to be major within the film. She keeps getting better and better." This role also earned her Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress. The same year, she starred in the western adventure-romance film The Electric Horseman with her frequent co-star, Robert Redford. Although the film received mixed reviews, The Electric Horseman was a box office success, becoming the eleventh highest-grossing film of 1979 after grossing a domestic total of nearly $62 million. In 1980, Fonda starred in 9 to 5 with Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton. The film was a huge critical and box office success, becoming the second highest- grossing release of the year. Fonda had long wanted to work with her father, hoping it would help their strained relationship. She achieved this goal when she purchased the screen rights to the play On Golden Pond, specifically for her father and her. The father-daughter rift depicted on screen closely paralleled the real-life relationship between the two Fondas; they eventually became the first father-daughter duo to earn Oscar nominations (Jane earned her first Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination) for their roles in the same film. On Golden Pond, which also starred four-time Oscar winner Katharine Hepburn, brought Henry Fonda his only Academy Award for Best Actor, which Jane accepted on his behalf, as he was ill and could not leave home. He died five months later. Fonda continued to appear in feature films throughout the 1980s, winning an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress for The Dollmaker (1984), and starring in the role of Dr. Martha Livingston in Agnes of God (1985). The following year, she played an alcoholic actress and murder suspect in the 1986 thriller The Morning After, opposite Jeff Bridges. In preparation for her role, Fonda modelled the character on the starlet Gail Russell, who, at 36, was found dead in her apartment, among empty liquor bottles. Writing for The New Yorker, Pauline Kael commended Fonda for giving "a raucous-voiced, down- in-the-dirty performance that has some of the charge of her Bree in Klute, back in 1971." For her performance, she was nominated for yet another Academy Award for Best Actress. She ended the decade by appearing in Old Gringo. This was followed by the romantic drama Stanley & Iris (1990) with Robert De Niro, which was her final film for 15 years. Both films did not fare well at the box office, and despite receiving mixed to negative reviews, Fonda's performance as the widowed Iris in the latter was praised by Vincent Canby, who stated, "Fonda's increasingly rich resources as an actress are evident in abundance here. They even overcome one's awareness that just beneath Iris's frumpy clothes, there is a firm, perfectly molded body that has become a multi- million-dollar industry." For many years Fonda took ballet class to keep fit, but after fracturing her foot while filming The China Syndrome, she was no longer able to participate. To compensate, she began participating in aerobics and strengthening exercises under the direction of Leni Cazden. The Leni Workout became the Jane Fonda Workout, which began a second career for her, continuing for many years. This was considered one of the influences that started the fitness craze among baby boomers, then approaching middle age. In 1982, Fonda released her first exercise video, titled Jane Fonda's Workout, inspired by her best-selling book, Jane Fonda's Workout Book. Jane Fonda's Workout became the highest selling home video of the next few years, selling over a million copies. The video's release led many people to buy the then-new VCR in order to watch and perform the workout at home. The exercise videos were produced and directed by Sidney Galanty, who helped to put the deal together with video distributor Stuart Karl, of Karl Home Video. Galanty produced the first video and 11 more after that. She would subsequently release 23 workout videos with the series selling a total of 17 million copies combined, more than any other exercise series. She released five workout books and thirteen audio programs, through 1995. After a fifteen-year hiatus, she released two new fitness videos on DVD in 2010, aiming at an older audience. In 1991, after three decades in film, Fonda announced her retirement from the film industry. In May 2005, she returned to the screen with the box office success Monster-in-Law, starring opposite Jennifer Lopez. Two years later, Fonda starred in the Garry Marshall-directed drama Georgia Rule alongside Felicity Huffman and Lindsay Lohan. Georgia Rule was panned by critics, but A. O. Scott of The New York Times felt the film belonged to Fonda and co-star Lohan, before writing, "Ms. Fonda's straight back and piercing eyes, the righteous jaw line she inherited from her father and a reputation for humorlessness all serve her well here, but it is her warmth and comic timing that make Georgia more than a provincial scold." In 2009, Fonda returned to Broadway for the first time since 1963, playing Katherine Brandt in Moisés Kaufman's 33 Variations. In a mixed review, Ben Brantley of the New York Times praised Fonda's "layered crispness" and her "aura of beleaguered briskness that flirts poignantly with the ghost of her spiky, confrontational screen presence as a young woman. For those who grew up enthralled with Ms. Fonda's screen image, it's hard not to respond to her performance here, on some level, as a personal memento mori." The role earned her a Tony nomination for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play. Fonda filmed her second movie in French when she had a leading role in the 2011 drama All Together. The same year she starred alongside Catherine Keener in Peace, Love and Misunderstanding, playing a hippie grandmother. In 2012, Fonda began a recurring role as Leona Lansing, CEO of a major media company, in HBO's original political drama The Newsroom. Her role continued throughout the show's three seasons, and Fonda received two Emmy nominations for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series. In 2013, Fonda had a small role in The Butler, portraying First Lady Nancy Reagan. She had more film work the following year, appearing in the comedies Better Living Through Chemistry and This is Where I Leave You. She also voiced a character on The Simpsons. She played an acting diva in Paolo Sorrentino's Youth in 2015, for which she earned a Golden Globe Award nomination. She also appeared in Fathers and Daughters (2015) with Russell Crowe. Fonda appears as the co-lead in the Netflix series Grace and Frankie. She and Lily Tomlin play aging women whose husbands reveal they are in love. Filming on the first season was completed in November 2014, and the show premiered online on May 8, 2015. In 2016, Fonda voiced Shuriki in Elena and the Secret of Avalor. In June 2016, the Human Rights Campaign released a video in tribute to the victims of the 2016 Orlando gay nightclub shooting; in the video, Fonda and others told the stories of the people killed there. Fonda starred in her fourth collaboration with Robert Redford in the 2017 romantic drama film Our Souls at Night. The film and Fonda's performance received critical acclaim upon release. In 2018, she starred opposite Diane Keaton, Mary Steenburgen, and Candice Bergen in the romantic comedy film Book Club. Although opened to mixed reviews, the film was a major box office success grossing $93.4 million against a $10 million budget, despite releasing the same day as Deadpool 2. Fonda is the subject of an HBO original documentary entitled Jane Fonda in Five Acts, directed by the documentarian Susan Lacy. Receiving rave reviews, it covers Fonda's life from childhood through her acting career and political activism and then to the present day. It premiered on HBO on September 24, 2018. During the 1960s, Fonda engaged in political activism in support of the Civil Rights Movement, and in opposition to the Vietnam War. Fonda's visits to France brought her into contact with leftist French intellectuals who were opposed to war, an experience that she later characterized as "small-c communism". Along with other celebrities, she supported the Alcatraz Island occupation by American Indians in 1969, which was intended to call attention to the failures of the government with regards to treaty rights and the movement for greater Indian sovereignty. She supported Huey Newton and the Black Panthers in the early 1970s, stating: "Revolution is an act of love; we are the children of revolution, born to be rebels. It runs in our blood." She called the Black Panthers "our revolutionary vanguard ... we must support them with love, money, propaganda and risk." She has been involved in the feminist movement since the 1970s and dovetails her activism in support of civil rights. In April 1970, Fonda, with Fred Gardner and Donald Sutherland formed the FTA tour ("Free The Army", a play on the troop expression "Fuck The Army"), an anti-war road show designed as an answer to Bob Hope's USO tour. The tour, described as "political vaudeville" by Fonda, visited military towns along the West Coast, aiming to establish a dialogue with soldiers about their upcoming deployments to Vietnam. The dialogue was made into a movie (F.T.A.) which contained strong, frank criticism of the war by servicemen and servicewomen; it was released in 1972. On May 4, 1970, Fonda appeared before an assembly at the University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque, to speak on GI rights and issues. The end of her presentation was met with a discomforting silence. The quiet was broken when Beat poet Gregory Corso staggered onto the stage. Drunk, Corso challenged Fonda, using a four-letter expletive: why hadn't she addressed the shooting of four students at Kent State by the Ohio National Guard, which had just taken place? Fonda in her autobiography revisited the incident: "I was shocked by the news and felt like a fool." On the same day, she joined a protest march on the home of university president Ferrel Heady. The protesters called themselves "They Shoot Students, Don't They?" – a reference to Fonda's recently released film, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, which had just been screened in Albuquerque. In the same year, Fonda spoke out against the war at a rally organized by Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. She offered to help raise funds for VVAW and was rewarded with the title of Honorary National Coordinator. On November 3, 1970, Fonda started a tour of college campuses on which she raised funds for the organization. As noted by The New York Times, Fonda was a "major patron" of the VVAW. Between 1965 and 1972, almost 300 Americans – mostly civil rights activists, teachers and pastors – traveled to North Vietnam to see firsthand the war situation with the Vietnamese. News media in the United States predominantly provided a U.S. viewpoint, and American travelers to Vietnam were routinely harassed upon their return to the States. Fonda also visited Vietnam, traveling to Hanoi in July 1972 to witness firsthand the bombing damage to the dikes. After touring and photographing dike systems in North Vietnam, she said the United States had been intentionally targeting the dike system along the Red River. Columnist Joseph Kraft, who was also touring North Vietnam, said he believed the damage to the dikes was incidental and was being used as propaganda by Hanoi, and that, if the U.S. Air Force were "truly going after the dikes, it would do so in a methodical, not a harum-scarum way". Sweden's ambassador to Vietnam, however, observed the bomb damage to the dikes and described it as "methodic". Other journalists reported that the attacks were "aimed at the whole system of dikes". Fonda was photographed seated on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun; the photo outraged a number of Americans, and earned her the nickname "Hanoi Jane". In her 2005 autobiography, she wrote that she was manipulated into sitting on the battery; she had been horrified at the implications of the pictures. In a 2011 entry at her official website, Fonda explained: It happened on my last day in Hanoi. I was exhausted and an emotional wreck after the 2-week visit ... The translator told me that the soldiers wanted to sing me a song. He translated as they sung. It was a song about the day 'Uncle Ho' declared their country's independence in Hanoi's Ba Dinh Square. I heard these words: 'All men are created equal; they are given certain rights; among these are life, Liberty and Happiness.' These are the words Ho pronounced at the historic ceremony. I began to cry and clap. 'These young men should not be our enemy. They celebrate the same words Americans do.' The soldiers asked me to sing for them in return ... I memorized a song called 'Day Ma Di', written by anti-war South Vietnamese students. I knew I was slaughtering it, but everyone seemed delighted that I was making the attempt. I finished. Everyone was laughing and clapping, including me ... Here is my best, honest recollection of what happened: someone (I don't remember who) led me towards the gun, and I sat down, still laughing, still applauding. It all had nothing to do with where I was sitting. I hardly even thought about where I was sitting. The cameras flashed ... It is possible that it was a set up, that the Vietnamese had it all planned. I will never know. But if they did I can't blame them. The buck stops here. If I was used, I allowed it to happen ... a two-minute lapse of sanity that will haunt me forever ... But the photo exists, delivering its message regardless of what I was doing or feeling. I carry this heavy in my heart. I have apologized numerous times for any pain I may have caused servicemen and their families because of this photograph. It was never my intention to cause harm. Fonda made radio broadcasts on Hanoi Radio throughout her two-week tour, describing her visits to villages, hospitals, schools, and factories that had been bombed, and denouncing U.S. military policy. During the course of her visit, Fonda visited American prisoners of war (POWs), and brought back messages from them to their families. When stories of torture of returning POWs were later being publicized by the Nixon administration, Fonda said that those making such claims were "hypocrites and liars and pawns", adding about the prisoners she visited, "These were not men who had been tortured. These were not men who had been starved. These were not men who had been brainwashed." In addition, Fonda told The New York Times in 1973, "I'm quite sure that there were incidents of torture ... but the pilots who were saying it was the policy of the Vietnamese and that it was systematic, I believe that's a lie." Her visits to the POW camp led to persistent and exaggerated rumors which were repeated widely, and continued to circulate on the Internet decades later. Fonda, as well as the named POWs, have denied the rumors, and subsequent interviews with the POWs showed these allegations to be false—the persons named had never met Fonda. In 1972, Fonda helped fund and organize the Indochina Peace Campaign, which continued to mobilize antiwar activists in the US after the 1973 Paris Peace Agreement, until 1975 when the United States withdrew from Vietnam. Because of her tour of North Vietnam during wartime and the subsequent rumors, resentment against her among some veterans and currently serving U.S. military persists. For example, when a U.S. Naval Academy plebe ritually shouted out "Goodnight, Jane Fonda!", the entire company of midshipmen plebes, who had not yet been born when Fonda protested against the Vietnam War, replied "Goodnight, bitch!" This practice has since been prohibited by the academy's Plebe Summer Standard Operating Procedures. In 2005, Michael A. Smith, a U.S. Navy veteran, was arrested for disorderly conduct in Kansas City, Missouri, after he spat chewing tobacco in Fonda's face during a book-signing event for her autobiography, My Life So Far. He told reporters that he "consider[ed] it a debt of honor", adding "she spit in our faces for 37 years. It was absolutely worth it. There are a lot of veterans who would love to do what I did." Fonda refused to press charges. In a 1988 interview with Barbara Walters, Fonda expressed regret for some of her comments and actions, stating: I would like to say something, not just to Vietnam veterans in New England, but to men who were in Vietnam, who I hurt, or whose pain I caused to deepen because of things that I said or did. I was trying to help end the killing and the war, but there were times when I was thoughtless and careless about it and I'm very sorry that I hurt them. And I want to apologize to them and their families. ... I will go to my grave regretting the photograph of me in an anti-aircraft gun, which looks like I was trying to shoot at American planes. It hurt so many soldiers. It galvanized such hostility. It was the most horrible thing I could possibly have done. It was just thoughtless. In a 60 Minutes interview on March 31, 2005, Fonda reiterated that she had no regrets about her trip to North Vietnam in 1972, with the exception of the anti-aircraft-gun photo. She stated that the incident was a "betrayal" of American forces and of the "country that gave me privilege". Fonda said, "The image of Jane Fonda, Barbarella, Henry Fonda's daughter ... sitting on an enemy aircraft gun was a betrayal ... the largest lapse of judgment that I can even imagine." She later distinguished between regret over the use of her image as propaganda and pride for her anti-war activism: "There are hundreds of American delegations that had met with the POWs. Both sides were using the POWs for propaganda ... It's not something that I will apologize for." Fonda said she had no regrets about the broadcasts she made on Radio Hanoi, something she asked the North Vietnamese to do: "Our government was lying to us and men were dying because of it, and I felt I had to do anything that I could to expose the lies and help end the war." In 2013, it was revealed that Fonda was one of approximately 1,600 Americans whose communications between 1967 and 1973 were monitored by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) as part of Project MINARET, a program that some NSA officials have described as "disreputable if not downright illegal". Fonda's communications, as well as those of her husband, Tom Hayden, were intercepted by Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). Under the UKUSA Agreement, intercepted data on Americans were sent to the U.S. government. On November 3, 1970, Fonda was arrested by authorities at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport on suspicion of drug trafficking. Her luggage was searched when she re-entered the United States after participating in an anti- war college speaking tour in Canada, and several small baggies containing pills were seized. Although Fonda protested that the pills were harmless vitamins, she was booked by police and then released on bond. Fonda alleged that the arresting officer told her he was acting on direct orders from the Nixon White House. As she wrote in 2009, "I told them what [the vitamins] were but they said they were getting orders from the White House. I think they hoped this 'scandal' would cause the college speeches to be canceled and ruin my respectability." After lab tests confirmed the pills were vitamins, the charges were dropped with little media attention. Fonda's mugshot from the arrest, in which she raises her fist in a sign of solidarity, has since become a widely published image of the actress. It was used as the poster image for the 2018 HBO documentary on Fonda, "Jane Fonda in Five Acts", with a giant billboard sporting the image erected in Times Square in September 2018. In 2017, she began selling merchandise with her mugshot image to benefit the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Power & Potential. In early March 2017, in an interview with Brie Larson, published by People magazine, Fonda stated, "One of the great things the women's movement has done is to make us realise that (rape and abuse is) not our fault. We were violated and it's not right." She said, "I've been raped, I've been sexually abused as a child and I've been fired because I wouldn't sleep with my boss." She said, "I always thought it was my fault; that I didn't do or say the right thing. I know young girls who've been raped and didn't even know it was rape. They think, 'It must have been because I said 'no' the wrong way.'" Through her work, Fonda said she wants to help abuse victims "realize that [rape and abuse] is not our fault". Fonda said that her difficult past led her to become such a passionate activist for women's rights. The actress is an active supporter of the V-Day movement, which works to stop violence against women and girls. In 2001, she established the Jane Fonda Center for Adolescent Reproductive Health, which aims to help prevent teen pregnancy. She was a victim of the "disease to please" in her early life, which plagued many American females of her generation. Fonda revealed in 2014 that her mother, Frances Ford Seymour, was recurrently sexually abused as young as eight, and this may have led to her suicide when Jane was 12. Fonda has been a longtime supporter of feminist causes, including V-Day, a movement to stop violence against women, inspired by the off-Broadway hit The Vagina Monologues, of which she is an honorary chairperson. She was at the first summit in 2002, bringing together founder Eve Ensler, Afghan women oppressed by the Taliban, and a Kenyan activist campaigning to save girls from genital mutilation. In 2001, she established the Jane Fonda Center for Adolescent Reproductive Health at Emory University in Atlanta to help prevent adolescent pregnancy through training and program development. On February 16, 2004, Fonda led a march through Ciudad Juárez, with Sally Field, Eve Ensler and other women, urging Mexico to provide sufficient resources to newly appointed officials in helping investigate the murders of hundreds of women in the rough border city. In 2004, she also served as a mentor to the first all-transgender cast of The Vagina Monologues. In the days before the September 17, 2006 Swedish elections, Fonda went to Sweden to support the new political party Feministiskt initiativ in their election campaign. In My Life So Far, Fonda stated that she considers patriarchy to be harmful to men as well as women. She also states that for many years, she feared to call herself a feminist, because she believed that all feminists were "anti-male". But now, with her increased understanding of patriarchy, she feels that feminism is beneficial to both men and women, and states that she "still loves men", adding that when she divorced Ted Turner, she felt like she had also divorced the world of patriarchy, and was very happy to have done so. In April 2016, Fonda said that while she was 'glad' that Bernie Sanders was running, she predicted Hillary Clinton would become the first female president, whose win Fonda believed would result in a "violent backlash". Fonda went on to say that we need to "help men understand why they are so threatened – and change the way we view masculinity." Fonda went to Seattle, in 1970 to support a group of Native Americans who were led by Bernie Whitebear. The group had occupied part of the grounds of Fort Lawton, which was in the process of being surplussed by the United States Army and turned into a park. The group was attempting to secure a land base where they could establish services for the sizable local urban Indian population, protesting that "Indians had a right to part of the land that was originally all theirs." The endeavor succeeded and the Daybreak Star Cultural Center was constructed in the city's Discovery Park. In addition to environmental reasons, Fonda has been a critic of oil pipelines because of their being built without consent on Native American Land. In 2017, Fonda responded to American President Donald Trump's mandate to resume construction of the controversial North Dakota Pipelines by saying that Trump "does this illegally because he has not gotten consent from the tribes through whose countries this goes" and pointing out that "the U.S. has agreed to treaties that require them to get the consent of the people who are affected, the indigenous people who live there." In December 2002, Fonda visited Israel and the West Bank as part of a tour focusing on stopping violence against women. She demonstrated with Women in Black against Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip outside the residence of Israel's Prime Minister. She later visited Jewish and Arab doctors, and patients at a Jerusalem hospital, followed by visits to Ramallah to see a physical rehabilitation center and Palestinian refugee camp. She was heckled by three members of Women in Green as she arrived to meet with leading Israeli feminists. In September 2009, she was one of more than 1,500 signatories to a letter protesting the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival's spotlight on Tel Aviv. The protest letter said that the spotlight on Tel Aviv was part of "the Israeli propaganda machine" because it was supported in part by funding from the Israeli government and had been described by the Israeli Consul General Amir Gissin as being part of a Brand Israel campaign intended to draw attention away from Israel's conflict with the Palestinians. Other signers included actor Danny Glover, musician David Byrne, journalist John Pilger, and authors Alice Walker, Naomi Klein, and Howard Zinn. Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center stated that "People who support letters like this are people who do not support a two- state solution. By calling into question the legitimacy of Tel Aviv, they are supporting a one-state solution, which means the destruction of the State of Israel." Hier continued, saying that "it is clear that the script [the protesters] are reading from might as well have been written by Hamas." Fonda, in The Huffington Post, said she regretted some of the language used in the original protest letter and how it "was perhaps too easily misunderstood. It certainly has been wildly distorted. Contrary to the lies that have been circulated, the protest letter was not demonizing Israeli films and filmmakers." She continued, writing "the greatest 're-branding' of Israel would be to celebrate that country's long standing, courageous and robust peace movement by helping to end the blockade of Gaza through negotiations with all parties to the conflict, and by stopping the expansion of West Bank settlements. That's the way to show Israel's commitment to peace, not a PR campaign. There will be no two-state solution unless this happens." Fonda emphasized that she, "in no way, support[s] the destruction of Israel. I am for the two-state solution. I have been to Israel many times and love the country and its people." Several prominent Atlanta Jews subsequently signed a letter to The Huffington Post rejecting the vilification of Fonda, who they described as "a strong supporter and friend of Israel". Fonda argued that the military campaign in Iraq will turn people all over the world against America, and asserted that a global hatred of America would result in more terrorist attacks in the aftermath of the war. In July 2005, Fonda announced plans to make an anti-war bus tour in March 2006 with her daughter and several families of military veterans, saying that some war veterans she had met while on her book tour had urged her to speak out against the Iraq War. She later canceled the tour due to concerns that she would divert attention from Cindy Sheehan's activism. In September 2005, Fonda was scheduled to join British politician and anti-war activist George Galloway at two stops on his U.S. book tour, Madison, Wisconsin and Chicago. She canceled her appearances at the last minute, citing instructions from her doctors to avoid travel following recent hip surgery. On January 27, 2007, Fonda participated in an anti-war rally and march held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., declaring that "silence is no longer an option". She spoke at an anti-war rally earlier that day at the Navy Memorial, where members of the organization Free Republic picketed in a counter protest. In the 2004 presidential election, her name was used as a disparaging epithet against John Kerry, a former VVAW leader, who was then the Democratic Party presidential candidate. Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie called Kerry a "Jane Fonda Democrat". Kerry's opponents also circulated a photograph showing Fonda and Kerry in the same large crowd at a 1970 anti-war rally, though they sat several rows apart. A faked composite photograph, which gave a false impression that the two had shared a speaker's platform, was also circulated. In 2015, Fonda expressed disapproval of President Barack Obama's permitting of Arctic drilling (Petroleum exploration in the Arctic) at the Sundance Film Festival. In July, she marched in a Toronto protest called the "March for Jobs, Justice, and Climate", which was organized by dozens of nonprofits, labor unions, and environmental activists, including Canadian author Naomi Klein. The march aimed to show businesses and politicians alike that climate change is inherently linked to issues that may seem unrelated. In addition to issues of civil rights, Fonda has been an opponent of oil developments and their adverse effects on the environment. In 2017, while on a trip with Greenpeace to protest oil developments, Fonda criticized Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau saying at the summit on climate change in Paris, known as the Paris agreement, Trudeau "talked so beautifully of needing to meet the requirements of the climate treaty and to respect and hold to the treaties with indigenous people ... and yet he has betrayed every one of the things he committed to in Paris." In October 2019, Fonda was arrested three times in consecutive weeks protesting climate change outside the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. She was arrested with members of the group Oil Change International on October 11, with Grace and Frankie co-star Sam Waterston on October 18, and with actor Ted Danson on October 25. On November 1, Fonda was arrested for the fourth consecutive Friday; also arrested were Catherine Keener and Rosanna Arquette. On December 13, Sally Field was arrested. On December 5 Fonda explained her position in a New York Times op-ed. On April 5, 2005, Random House released Fonda's autobiography My Life So Far. The book describes her life as a series of three acts, each thirty years long, and declares that her third "act" will be her most significant, partly because of her commitment to the Christian religion, and that it will determine the things for which she will be remembered. Fonda's autobiography was well received by book critics and noted to be "as beguiling and as maddening as Jane Fonda herself" in its Washington Post review, calling her a "beautiful bundle of contradictions". The New York Times called the book "achingly poignant". In January 2009, Fonda started chronicling her Broadway return in a blog with posts about topics ranging from her Pilates class to fears and excitement about her new play. She uses Twitter and has a Facebook page. In 2011, Fonda published a new book: Prime Time: Love, health, sex, fitness, friendship, spirit – making the most of all of your life. It offers stories from her own life as well as from the lives of others, giving her perspective on how to better live what she calls "the critical years from 45 and 50, and especially from 60 and beyond". Fonda's charitable works have focused on youth and education, adolescent reproductive health, environment, human services, and the arts. Fonda marketed her highly-successful line of exercise videos and books in order to fund the Campaign for Economic Democracy, a California lobbying organization she founded with her second husband Tom Hayden in 1978. Fonda has established the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Power and Potential (GCAPP) in the mid 1990s and the Fonda Family Foundation in the late 1990s. In the mid 2000s, Fonda founded the Jane Fonda Foundation in 2004 with one million dollars of her own money as a charitable corporation with herself as president, chair, director and secretary; Fonda contributes 10 hours each week on its behalf. In 2017, she began selling merchandise featuring her 1970 arrest mugshot on her website, the proceeds of which benefit GCAPP. Jane Fonda has been married and divorced three times. She married her first husband, the French film director Roger Vadim, on August 14, 1965 at the Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas. The couple had a daughter, Vanessa Vadim, born on September 28, 1968 in Paris, France and named after the actress and activist Vanessa Redgrave. On January 19, 1973, three days after obtaining a divorce from Vadim in Santo Domingo, Fonda married activist Tom Hayden in a free-form ceremony at her home in Laurel Canyon. Their son, Troy O'Donovan Garity, was born on July 7, 1973 in Los Angeles and was given his paternal grandmother's maiden name, as the names "Fonda and Hayden carried too much baggage". Fonda and Hayden named their son after Nguyen Van Troi. Hayden chose O'Donovan as the middle name after the Irish revolutionary Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa. In 1982, Fonda and Hayden unofficially adopted an African-American teenager, Mary Luana Williams (known as Lulu), whose parents were Black Panthers. Fonda and Hayden divorced on June 10, 1990 in Santa Monica. Fonda married her third husband, the cable-television tycoon and CNN founder Ted Turner, on December 21, 1991, at a ranch near Capps, Florida, about 20 miles east of Tallahassee. The pair divorced on May 22, 2001 in Atlanta. In 2009, Fonda began a relationship with the record producer Richard Perry. It ended in 2017. In a 2018 interview, Fonda stated that up to age 62, she always felt she had to seek the validation of men in order to prove to herself that she had value as a person, something she attributes to the early death of her mother's leaving her without a female role model. As a consequence, she attached herself to "alpha males", some of whom reinforced her feelings of inadequacy, despite her professional success. Fonda said that she came to see that attitude as a failing of the men in her life: "Some men have a hard time realizing that the woman they're married to is strong and smart and they have to diminish that, because it makes them feel diminished. Too bad we have defined masculinity in such a way that it's so easily shamed." Fonda grew up atheist but turned to Christianity in the early 2000s. She describes her beliefs as being "outside of established religion" with a more feminist slant and views God as something that "lives within each of us as Spirit (or soul)." She practices zazen and yoga. As a child, Fonda suffered from a poor self-image and lacked confidence in her appearance, an issue exacerbated by her father Henry Fonda. About that, Fonda said: I was raised in the '50s. I was taught by my father [actor Henry Fonda] that how I looked was all that mattered, frankly. He was a good man, and I was mad for him, but he sent messages to me that fathers should not send: Unless you look perfect, you're not going to be loved. In adulthood, Fonda developed bulimia, which took a toll on her quality of life for many years, an issue that also affected her mother Frances Ford Seymour, who died by suicide when Fonda was 12. On the subject of her recovery from bulimia, Fonda said, It was in my 40s, and if you suffer from bulimia, the older you get, the worse it gets. It takes longer to recover from a bout ... I had a career, I was winning awards, I was supporting nonprofits, I had a family. I had to make a choice: I live or I die. Fonda was diagnosed with breast cancer and osteoporosis in her later years. She underwent a lumpectomy in November 2010 and recovered. In April 2019, Fonda revealed she had had a cancerous growth removed from her lower lip the previous year and pre-melanoma growths removed from her skin. In 1962, Fonda was given the honorary title of "Miss Army Recruiting" by the Pentagon. In 1981, she was awarded the Women in Film Crystal Award. In 1994, the United Nations Population Fund made Fonda a Goodwill Ambassador. In 2004, she was awarded the Women's eNews 21 Leaders for the 21st Century award as one of Seven Who Change Their Worlds. In 2007, Fonda was awarded an Honorary Palme d'Or by Cannes Film Festival President Gilles Jacob for career achievement. Only three others had received such an award – Jeanne Moreau, Alain Resnais, and Gérard Oury. In December 2008, Fonda was inducted into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts. In November and December 2009, she received the National German Sustainability Award and New York Women's Agenda Lifetime Achievement Award. She was also selected as the 42nd recipient (2014) of the AFI Life Achievement Award. In 2017, she received a Goldene Kamera lifetime achievement award. She was one of fifteen women selected to appear on the cover of the September 2019 issue of British Vogue, by guest editor Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. List of actors with Academy Award nominations, List of actors with two or more Academy Award nominations in acting categories, List of actors with two or more Academy Awards in acting categories, List of awards and nominations received by Jane Fonda Andersen, Christopher. Citizen Jane. 1990: Henry Holt and Company; ., Davidson, Bill. Jane Fonda: An Intimate Biography. 1991: New American Library. ., Fine, Carla and Jane Fonda. Strong, Smart, and Bold: Empowering Girls for Life. 2001: Collins; ., Fonda, Jane. My Life So Far (2005): Random House. ., Fonda, Jane. Jane Fonda's Workout Book. 1986: Random House Value Publishing; ., Fonda, Jane, with Mignon McCarthy. Women Coming of Age. 1987: Random House Value Publishing; ., Fox, Mary Virginia and Mary Molina. Jane Fonda: Something to Fight for. 1980: Dillon Press; ., Freedland, Michael. Jane Fonda: The Many Lives of One of Hollywood's Greatest Stars. 1989: HarperCollins Publishers; ., French, Sean. Jane Fonda: A Biography. 1998: Trafalgar Square Publishing; ., Gilmore, John. Laid Bare: A Memoir of Wrecked Lives and the Hollywood Death Trip. Amok Books, 1997; ., Hershberger, Mary. Peace work, war myths: Jane Fonda and the antiwar movement. Peace & Change, Vol. 29, No. 3&4, July 2004., Hershberger, Mary. Jane Fonda's War: A Political Biography of an Antiwar Icon. 2005: New Press; ., Kiernan, Thomas. Jane: an intimate biography of Jane Fonda. 1973: Putnam; . Jane Fonda at the University of Wisconsin's Actors Studio audio collection, Jane Fonda Profile at Turner Classic Movies, About.com article about Fonda's Vietnam era activities, Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem discuss The Women's Media Center, their non-profit media organization. (video), Fonda Family Genealogy, Photo gallery at CBS News, Jane Fonda Video produced by, An Interview with Jane Fonda on Gender

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The Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World; ) is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor in New York, in the United States. The copper statue, a gift from the people of France to the people of the United States, was designed by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and its metal framework was built by Gustave Eiffel. The statue was dedicated on October 28, 1886. The Statue of Liberty is a figure of Libertas, a robed Roman liberty goddess. She holds a torch above her head with her right hand, and in her left hand carries a tabula ansata inscribed in Roman numerals with "JULY IV MDCCLXXVI" (July 4, 1776), the date of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. A broken shackle and chain lie at her feet as she walks forward, commemorating the recent national abolition of slavery. The statue became an icon of freedom and of the United States, and a national park tourism destination. It is a welcoming sight to immigrants arriving from abroad. Bartholdi was inspired by a French law professor and politician, Édouard René de Laboulaye, who is said to have commented in 1865 that any monument raised to U.S. independence would properly be a joint project of the French and U.S. peoples. Because of the post-war instability in France, work on the statue did not commence until the early 1870s. In 1875, Laboulaye proposed that the French finance the statue and the U.S. provide the site and build the pedestal. Bartholdi completed the head and the torch-bearing arm before the statue was fully designed, and these pieces were exhibited for publicity at international expositions. The torch-bearing arm was displayed at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, and in Madison Square Park in Manhattan from 1876 to 1882. Fundraising proved difficult, especially for the Americans, and by 1885 work on the pedestal was threatened by lack of funds. Publisher Joseph Pulitzer, of the New York World, started a drive for donations to finish the project and attracted more than 120,000 contributors, most of whom gave less than a dollar. The statue was built in France, shipped overseas in crates, and assembled on the completed pedestal on what was then called Bedloe's Island. The statue's completion was marked by New York's first ticker-tape parade and a dedication ceremony presided over by President Grover Cleveland. The statue was administered by the United States Lighthouse Board until 1901 and then by the Department of War; since 1933 it has been maintained by the National Park Service as part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument. Public access to the balcony around the torch has been barred since 1916. According to the National Park Service, the idea of a monument presented by the French people to the United States was first proposed by Édouard René de Laboulaye, president of the French Anti-Slavery Society and a prominent and important political thinker of his time. The project is traced to a mid-1865 conversation between Laboulaye, a staunch abolitionist, and Frédéric Bartholdi, a sculptor. In after-dinner conversation at his home near Versailles, Laboulaye, an ardent supporter of the Union in the American Civil War, is supposed to have said: "If a monument should rise in the United States, as a memorial to their independence, I should think it only natural if it were built by united effort—a common work of both our nations." The National Park Service, in a 2000 report, however, deemed this a legend traced to an 1885 fundraising pamphlet, and that the statue was most likely conceived in 1870. In another essay on their website, the Park Service suggested that Laboulaye was minded to honor the Union victory and its consequences, "With the abolition of slavery and the Union's victory in the Civil War in 1865, Laboulaye's wishes of freedom and democracy were turning into a reality in the United States. In order to honor these achievements, Laboulaye proposed that a gift be built for the United States on behalf of France. Laboulaye hoped that by calling attention to the recent achievements of the United States, the French people would be inspired to call for their own democracy in the face of a repressive monarchy." According to sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, who later recounted the story, Laboulaye's alleged comment was not intended as a proposal, but it inspired Bartholdi. Given the repressive nature of the regime of Napoleon III, Bartholdi took no immediate action on the idea except to discuss it with Laboulaye. Bartholdi was in any event busy with other possible projects; in the late 1860s, he approached Isma'il Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, with a plan to build Progress or Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia, a huge lighthouse in the form of an ancient Egyptian female fellah or peasant, robed and holding a torch aloft, at the northern entrance to the Suez Canal in Port Said. Sketches and models were made of the proposed work, though it was never erected. There was a classical precedent for the Suez proposal, the Colossus of Rhodes: an ancient bronze statue of the Greek god of the sun, Helios. This statue is believed to have been over high, and it similarly stood at a harbor entrance and carried a light to guide ships. Both the khedive and Lesseps declined the proposed statue from Bartholdi, citing the expensive cost. The Port Said Lighthouse was built instead, by François Coignet in 1869. Any large project was further delayed by the Franco-Prussian War, in which Bartholdi served as a major of militia. In the war, Napoleon III was captured and deposed. Bartholdi's home province of Alsace was lost to the Prussians, and a more liberal republic was installed in France. As Bartholdi had been planning a trip to the United States, he and Laboulaye decided the time was right to discuss the idea with influential Americans. In June 1871, Bartholdi crossed the Atlantic, with letters of introduction signed by Laboulaye. Arriving at New York Harbor, Bartholdi focused on Bedloe's Island (now named Liberty Island) as a site for the statue, struck by the fact that vessels arriving in New York had to sail past it. He was delighted to learn that the island was owned by the United States government—it had been ceded by the New York State Legislature in 1800 for harbor defense. It was thus, as he put it in a letter to Laboulaye: "land common to all the states." As well as meeting many influential New Yorkers, Bartholdi visited President Ulysses S. Grant, who assured him that it would not be difficult to obtain the site for the statue. Bartholdi crossed the United States twice by rail, and met many Americans who he thought would be sympathetic to the project. But he remained concerned that popular opinion on both sides of the Atlantic was insufficiently supportive of the proposal, and he and Laboulaye decided to wait before mounting a public campaign. Bartholdi had made a first model of his concept in 1870. The son of a friend of Bartholdi's, U.S. artist John LaFarge, later maintained that Bartholdi made the first sketches for the statue during his U.S. visit at La Farge's Rhode Island studio. Bartholdi continued to develop the concept following his return to France. He also worked on a number of sculptures designed to bolster French patriotism after the defeat by the Prussians. One of these was the Lion of Belfort, a monumental sculpture carved in sandstone below the fortress of Belfort, which during the war had resisted a Prussian siege for over three months. The defiant lion, long and half that in height, displays an emotional quality characteristic of Romanticism, which Bartholdi would later bring to the Statue of Liberty. Bartholdi and Laboulaye considered how best to express the idea of American liberty. In early American history, two female figures were frequently used as cultural symbols of the nation. One of these symbols, the personified Columbia, was seen as an embodiment of the United States in the manner that Britannia was identified with the United Kingdom and Marianne came to represent France. Columbia had supplanted the traditional European personification of the Americas as an "Indian princess", which had come to be regarded as uncivilized and derogatory toward Americans. The other significant female icon in American culture was a representation of Liberty, derived from Libertas, the goddess of freedom widely worshipped in ancient Rome, especially among emancipated slaves. A Liberty figure adorned most American coins of the time, and representations of Liberty appeared in popular and civic art, including Thomas Crawford's Statue of Freedom (1863) atop the dome of the United States Capitol Building. Artists of the 18th and 19th centuries striving to evoke republican ideals commonly used representations of Libertas as an allegorical symbol. A figure of Liberty was also depicted on the Great Seal of France. However, Bartholdi and Laboulaye avoided an image of revolutionary liberty such as that depicted in Eugène Delacroix's famed Liberty Leading the People (1830). In this painting, which commemorates France's July Revolution, a half-clothed Liberty leads an armed mob over the bodies of the fallen. Laboulaye had no sympathy for revolution, and so Bartholdi's figure would be fully dressed in flowing robes. Instead of the impression of violence in the Delacroix work, Bartholdi wished to give the statue a peaceful appearance and chose a torch, representing progress, for the figure to hold. Crawford's statue was designed in the early 1850s. It was originally to be crowned with a pileus, the cap given to emancipated slaves in ancient Rome. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, a Southerner who would later serve as President of the Confederate States of America, was concerned that the pileus would be taken as an abolitionist symbol. He ordered that it be changed to a helmet. Delacroix's figure wears a pileus, and Bartholdi at first considered placing one on his figure as well. Instead, he used a diadem, or crown, to top its head. In so doing, he avoided a reference to Marianne, who invariably wears a pileus. The seven rays form a halo or aureole. They evoke the sun, the seven seas, and the seven continents, and represent another means, besides the torch, whereby Liberty enlightens the world. Bartholdi's early models were all similar in concept: a female figure in neoclassical style representing liberty, wearing a stola and pella (gown and cloak, common in depictions of Roman goddesses) and holding a torch aloft. According to popular accounts, the face was modeled after that of Charlotte Beysser Bartholdi, the sculptor's mother, but Regis Huber, the curator of the Bartholdi Museum is on record as saying that this, as well as other similar speculations, have no basis in fact. He designed the figure with a strong, uncomplicated silhouette, which would be set off well by its dramatic harbor placement and allow passengers on vessels entering New York Bay to experience a changing perspective on the statue as they proceeded toward Manhattan. He gave it bold classical contours and applied simplified modeling, reflecting the huge scale of the project and its solemn purpose. Bartholdi wrote of his technique: Bartholdi made alterations in the design as the project evolved. Bartholdi considered having Liberty hold a broken chain, but decided this would be too divisive in the days after the Civil War. The erected statue does stride over a broken chain, half-hidden by her robes and difficult to see from the ground. Bartholdi was initially uncertain of what to place in Liberty's left hand; he settled on a tabula ansata, used to evoke the concept of law. Though Bartholdi greatly admired the United States Constitution, he chose to inscribe "JULY IV MDCCLXXVI" on the tablet, thus associating the date of the country's Declaration of Independence with the concept of liberty. Bartholdi interested his friend and mentor, architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, in the project. As chief engineer, Viollet-le-Duc designed a brick pier within the statue, to which the skin would be anchored. After consultations with the metalwork foundry Gaget, Gauthier & Co., Viollet-le-Duc chose the metal which would be used for the skin, copper sheets, and the method used to shape it, repoussé, in which the sheets were heated and then struck with wooden hammers. An advantage of this choice was that the entire statue would be light for its volume, as the copper need be only thick. Bartholdi had decided on a height of just over for the statue, double that of Italy's Sancarlone and the German statue of Arminius, both made with the same method. By 1875, France was enjoying improved political stability and a recovering postwar economy. Growing interest in the upcoming Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia led Laboulaye to decide it was time to seek public support. In September 1875, he announced the project and the formation of the Franco- American Union as its fundraising arm. With the announcement, the statue was given a name, Liberty Enlightening the World. The French would finance the statue; Americans would be expected to pay for the pedestal. The announcement provoked a generally favorable reaction in France, though many Frenchmen resented the United States for not coming to their aid during the war with Prussia. French monarchists opposed the statue, if for no other reason than it was proposed by the liberal Laboulaye, who had recently been elected a senator for life. Laboulaye arranged events designed to appeal to the rich and powerful, including a special performance at the Paris Opera on April 25, 1876, that featured a new cantata by composer Charles Gounod. The piece was titled La Liberté éclairant le monde, the French version of the statue's announced name. Initially focused on the elites, the Union was successful in raising funds from across French society. Schoolchildren and ordinary citizens gave, as did 181 French municipalities. Laboulaye's political allies supported the call, as did descendants of the French contingent in the American Revolutionary War. Less idealistically, contributions came from those who hoped for American support in the French attempt to build the Panama Canal. The copper may have come from multiple sources and some of it is said to have come from a mine in Visnes, Norway, though this has not been conclusively determined after testing samples. According to Cara Sutherland in her book on the statue for the Museum of the City of New York, was needed to build the statue, and the French copper industrialist Eugène Secrétan donated of copper. Although plans for the statue had not been finalized, Bartholdi moved forward with fabrication of the right arm, bearing the torch, and the head. Work began at the Gaget, Gauthier & Co. workshop. In May 1876, Bartholdi traveled to the United States as a member of a French delegation to the Centennial Exhibition, and arranged for a huge painting of the statue to be shown in New York as part of the Centennial festivities. The arm did not arrive in Philadelphia until August; because of its late arrival, it was not listed in the exhibition catalogue, and while some reports correctly identified the work, others called it the "Colossal Arm" or "Bartholdi Electric Light". The exhibition grounds contained a number of monumental artworks to compete for fairgoers' interest, including an outsized fountain designed by Bartholdi. Nevertheless, the arm proved popular in the exhibition's waning days, and visitors would climb up to the balcony of the torch to view the fairgrounds. After the exhibition closed, the arm was transported to New York, where it remained on display in Madison Square Park for several years before it was returned to France to join the rest of the statue. During his second trip to the United States, Bartholdi addressed a number of groups about the project, and urged the formation of American committees of the Franco-American Union. Committees to raise money to pay for the foundation and pedestal were formed in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. The New York group eventually took on most of the responsibility for American fundraising and is often referred to as the "American Committee". One of its members was 19-year-old Theodore Roosevelt, the future governor of New York and president of the United States. On March 3, 1877, on his final full day in office, President Grant signed a joint resolution that authorized the President to accept the statue when it was presented by France and to select a site for it. President Rutherford B. Hayes, who took office the following day, selected the Bedloe's Island site that Bartholdi had proposed. On his return to Paris in 1877, Bartholdi concentrated on completing the head, which was exhibited at the 1878 Paris World's Fair. Fundraising continued, with models of the statue put on sale. Tickets to view the construction activity at the Gaget, Gauthier & Co. workshop were also offered. The French government authorized a lottery; among the prizes were valuable silver plate and a terracotta model of the statue. By the end of 1879, about 250,000 francs had been raised. The head and arm had been built with assistance from Viollet- le-Duc, who fell ill in 1879. He soon died, leaving no indication of how he intended to transition from the copper skin to his proposed masonry pier. The following year, Bartholdi was able to obtain the services of the innovative designer and builder Gustave Eiffel. Eiffel and his structural engineer, Maurice Koechlin, decided to abandon the pier and instead build an iron truss tower. Eiffel opted not to use a completely rigid structure, which would force stresses to accumulate in the skin and lead eventually to cracking. A secondary skeleton was attached to the center pylon, then, to enable the statue to move slightly in the winds of New York Harbor and as the metal expanded on hot summer days, he loosely connected the support structure to the skin using flat iron bars which culminated in a mesh of metal straps, known as "saddles", that were riveted to the skin, providing firm support. In a labor- intensive process, each saddle had to be crafted individually. To prevent galvanic corrosion between the copper skin and the iron support structure, Eiffel insulated the skin with asbestos impregnated with shellac. Eiffel's design made the statue one of the earliest examples of curtain wall construction, in which the exterior of the structure is not load bearing, but is instead supported by an interior framework. He included two interior spiral staircases, to make it easier for visitors to reach the observation point in the crown. Access to an observation platform surrounding the torch was also provided, but the narrowness of the arm allowed for only a single ladder, long. As the pylon tower arose, Eiffel and Bartholdi coordinated their work carefully so that completed segments of skin would fit exactly on the support structure. The components of the pylon tower were built in the Eiffel factory in the nearby Parisian suburb of Levallois-Perret. The change in structural material from masonry to iron allowed Bartholdi to change his plans for the statue's assembly. He had originally expected to assemble the skin on-site as the masonry pier was built; instead he decided to build the statue in France and have it disassembled and transported to the United States for reassembly in place on Bedloe's Island. In a symbolic act, the first rivet placed into the skin, fixing a copper plate onto the statue's big toe, was driven by United States Ambassador to France Levi P. Morton. The skin was not, however, crafted in exact sequence from low to high; work proceeded on a number of segments simultaneously in a manner often confusing to visitors. Some work was performed by contractors—one of the fingers was made to Bartholdi's exacting specifications by a coppersmith in the southern French town of Montauban. By 1882, the statue was complete up to the waist, an event Barthodi celebrated by inviting reporters to lunch on a platform built within the statue. Laboulaye died in 1883. He was succeeded as chairman of the French committee by Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal. The completed statue was formally presented to Ambassador Morton at a ceremony in Paris on July 4, 1884, and de Lesseps announced that the French government had agreed to pay for its transport to New York. The statue remained intact in Paris pending sufficient progress on the pedestal; by January 1885, this had occurred and the statue was disassembled and crated for its ocean voyage. The committees in the United States faced great difficulties in obtaining funds for the construction of the pedestal. The Panic of 1873 had led to an economic depression that persisted through much of the decade. The Liberty statue project was not the only such undertaking that had difficulty raising money: construction of the obelisk later known as the Washington Monument sometimes stalled for years; it would ultimately take over three-and-a-half decades to complete. There was criticism both of Bartholdi's statue and of the fact that the gift required Americans to foot the bill for the pedestal. In the years following the Civil War, most Americans preferred realistic artworks depicting heroes and events from the nation's history, rather than allegorical works like the Liberty statue. There was also a feeling that Americans should design American public works—the selection of Italian-born Constantino Brumidi to decorate the Capitol had provoked intense criticism, even though he was a naturalized U.S. citizen. Harper's Weekly declared its wish that "M. Bartholdi and our French cousins had 'gone the whole figure' while they were about it, and given us statue and pedestal at once." The New York Times stated that "no true patriot can countenance any such expenditures for bronze females in the present state of our finances." Faced with these criticisms, the American committees took little action for several years. The foundation of Bartholdi's statue was to be laid inside Fort Wood, a disused army base on Bedloe's Island constructed between 1807 and 1811. Since 1823, it had rarely been used, though during the Civil War, it had served as a recruiting station. The fortifications of the structure were in the shape of an eleven-point star. The statue's foundation and pedestal were aligned so that it would face southeast, greeting ships entering the harbor from the Atlantic Ocean. In 1881, the New York committee commissioned Richard Morris Hunt to design the pedestal. Within months, Hunt submitted a detailed plan, indicating that he expected construction to take about nine months. He proposed a pedestal in height; faced with money problems, the committee reduced that to . Hunt's pedestal design contains elements of classical architecture, including Doric portals, as well as some elements influenced by Aztec architecture. The large mass is fragmented with architectural detail, in order to focus attention on the statue. In form, it is a truncated pyramid, square at the base and at the top. The four sides are identical in appearance. Above the door on each side, there are ten disks upon which Bartholdi proposed to place the coats of arms of the states (between 1876 and 1889, there were 38 U.S. states), although this was not done. Above that, a balcony was placed on each side, framed by pillars. Bartholdi placed an observation platform near the top of the pedestal, above which the statue itself rises. According to author Louis Auchincloss, the pedestal "craggily evokes the power of an ancient Europe over which rises the dominating figure of the Statue of Liberty". The committee hired former army General Charles Pomeroy Stone to oversee the construction work. Construction on the foundation began in 1883, and the pedestal's cornerstone was laid in 1884. In Hunt's original conception, the pedestal was to have been made of solid granite. Financial concerns again forced him to revise his plans; the final design called for poured concrete walls, up to thick, faced with granite blocks. This Stony Creek granite came from the Beattie Quarry in Branford, Connecticut. The concrete mass was the largest poured to that time. Norwegian immigrant civil engineer Joachim Goschen Giæver designed the structural framework for the Statue of Liberty. His work involved design computations, detailed fabrication and construction drawings, and oversight of construction. In completing his engineering for the statue's frame, Giæver worked from drawings and sketches produced by Gustave Eiffel. Fundraising for the statue had begun in 1882. The committee organized a large number of money-raising events. As part of one such effort, an auction of art and manuscripts, poet Emma Lazarus was asked to donate an original work. She initially declined, stating she could not write a poem about a statue. At the time, she was also involved in aiding refugees to New York who had fled anti- Semitic pogroms in eastern Europe. These refugees were forced to live in conditions that the wealthy Lazarus had never experienced. She saw a way to express her empathy for these refugees in terms of the statue. The resulting sonnet, "The New Colossus", including the iconic lines: "Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free", is uniquely identified with the Statue of Liberty and is inscribed on a plaque in its museum. Even with these efforts, fundraising lagged. Grover Cleveland, the governor of New York, vetoed a bill to provide $50,000 for the statue project in 1884. An attempt the next year to have Congress provide $100,000, sufficient to complete the project, also failed. The New York committee, with only $3,000 in the bank, suspended work on the pedestal. With the project in jeopardy, groups from other American cities, including Boston and Philadelphia, offered to pay the full cost of erecting the statue in return for relocating it. Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World, a New York newspaper, announced a drive to raise $100,000—the equivalent of $2.3 million today. Pulitzer pledged to print the name of every contributor, no matter how small the amount given. The drive captured the imagination of New Yorkers, especially when Pulitzer began publishing the notes he received from contributors. "A young girl alone in the world" donated "60 cents, the result of self denial." One donor gave "five cents as a poor office boy's mite toward the Pedestal Fund." A group of children sent a dollar as "the money we saved to go to the circus with." Another dollar was given by a "lonely and very aged woman." Residents of a home for alcoholics in New York's rival city of Brooklyn—the cities would not merge until 1898—donated $15; other drinkers helped out through donation boxes in bars and saloons. A kindergarten class in Davenport, Iowa, mailed the World a gift of $1.35. As the donations flooded in, the committee resumed work on the pedestal. On June 17, 1885, the French steamer Isère arrived in New York with the crates holding the disassembled statue on board. New Yorkers displayed their new- found enthusiasm for the statue. Two hundred thousand people lined the docks and hundreds of boats put to sea to welcome the ship. After five months of daily calls to donate to the statue fund, on August 11, 1885, the World announced that $102,000 had been raised from 120,000 donors, and that 80 percent of the total had been received in sums of less than one dollar. Even with the success of the fund drive, the pedestal was not completed until April 1886. Immediately thereafter, reassembly of the statue began. Eiffel's iron framework was anchored to steel I-beams within the concrete pedestal and assembled. Once this was done, the sections of skin were carefully attached. Due to the width of the pedestal, it was not possible to erect scaffolding, and workers dangled from ropes while installing the skin sections. Nevertheless, no one died during the construction. Bartholdi had planned to put floodlights on the torch's balcony to illuminate it; a week before the dedication, the Army Corps of Engineers vetoed the proposal, fearing that ships' pilots passing the statue would be blinded. Instead, Bartholdi cut portholes in the torch—which was covered with gold leaf—and placed the lights inside them. A power plant was installed on the island to light the torch and for other electrical needs. After the skin was completed, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, co-designer of Manhattan's Central Park and Brooklyn's Prospect Park, supervised a cleanup of Bedloe's Island in anticipation of the dedication. A ceremony of dedication was held on the afternoon of October 28, 1886. President Grover Cleveland, the former New York governor, presided over the event. On the morning of the dedication, a parade was held in New York City; estimates of the number of people who watched it ranged from several hundred thousand to a million. President Cleveland headed the procession, then stood in the reviewing stand to see bands and marchers from across America. General Stone was the grand marshal of the parade. The route began at Madison Square, once the venue for the arm, and proceeded to the Battery at the southern tip of Manhattan by way of Fifth Avenue and Broadway, with a slight detour so the parade could pass in front of the World building on Park Row. As the parade passed the New York Stock Exchange, traders threw ticker tape from the windows, beginning the New York tradition of the ticker-tape parade. A nautical parade began at 12:45 p.m., and President Cleveland embarked on a yacht that took him across the harbor to Bedloe's Island for the dedication. De Lesseps made the first speech, on behalf of the French committee, followed by the chairman of the New York committee, Senator William M. Evarts. A French flag draped across the statue's face was to be lowered to unveil the statue at the close of Evarts's speech, but Bartholdi mistook a pause as the conclusion and let the flag fall prematurely. The ensuing cheers put an end to Evarts's address. President Cleveland spoke next, stating that the statue's "stream of light shall pierce the darkness of ignorance and man's oppression until Liberty enlightens the world". Bartholdi, observed near the dais, was called upon to speak, but he declined. Orator Chauncey M. Depew concluded the speechmaking with a lengthy address. No members of the general public were permitted on the island during the ceremonies, which were reserved entirely for dignitaries. The only females granted access were Bartholdi's wife and de Lesseps's granddaughter; officials stated that they feared women might be injured in the crush of people. The restriction offended area suffragists, who chartered a boat and got as close as they could to the island. The group's leaders made speeches applauding the embodiment of Liberty as a woman and advocating women's right to vote. A scheduled fireworks display was postponed until November 1 because of poor weather. Shortly after the dedication, The Cleveland Gazette, an African American newspaper, suggested that the statue's torch not be lit until the United States became a free nation "in reality": When the torch was illuminated on the evening of the statue's dedication, it produced only a faint gleam, barely visible from Manhattan. The World characterized it as "more like a glowworm than a beacon." Bartholdi suggested gilding the statue to increase its ability to reflect light, but this proved too expensive. The United States Lighthouse Board took over the Statue of Liberty in 1887 and pledged to install equipment to enhance the torch's effect; in spite of its efforts, the statue remained virtually invisible at night. When Bartholdi returned to the United States in 1893, he made additional suggestions, all of which proved ineffective. He did successfully lobby for improved lighting within the statue, allowing visitors to better appreciate Eiffel's design. In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt, once a member of the New York committee, ordered the statue's transfer to the War Department, as it had proved useless as a lighthouse. A unit of the Army Signal Corps was stationed on Bedloe's Island until 1923, after which military police remained there while the island was under military jurisdiction. The statue rapidly became a landmark. Many immigrants who entered through New York saw it as a welcoming sight. Oral histories of immigrants record their feelings of exhilaration on first viewing the Statue of Liberty. One immigrant who arrived from Greece recalled: Originally, the statue was a dull copper color, but shortly after 1900 a green patina, also called verdigris, caused by the oxidation of the copper skin, began to spread. As early as 1902 it was mentioned in the press; by 1906 it had entirely covered the statue. Believing that the patina was evidence of corrosion, Congress authorized for various repairs, and to paint the statue both inside and out. There was considerable public protest against the proposed exterior painting. The Army Corps of Engineers studied the patina for any ill effects to the statue and concluded that it protected the skin, "softened the outlines of the Statue and made it beautiful." The statue was painted only on the inside. The Corps of Engineers also installed an elevator to take visitors from the base to the top of the pedestal. On July 30, 1916, during World War I, German saboteurs set off a disastrous explosion on the Black Tom peninsula in Jersey City, New Jersey, in what is now part of Liberty State Park, close to Bedloe's Island. Carloads of dynamite and other explosives that were being sent to Britain and France for their war efforts were detonated, and five people were killed. The statue sustained minor damage, mostly to the torch-bearing right arm, and was closed for ten days. The cost to repair the statue and buildings on the island was about . The narrow ascent to the torch was closed for public-safety reasons, and it has remained closed ever since. That same year, Ralph Pulitzer, who had succeeded his father Joseph as publisher of the World, began a drive to raise for an exterior lighting system to illuminate the statue at night. He claimed over 80,000 contributors, but failed to reach the goal. The difference was quietly made up by a gift from a wealthy donor—a fact that was not revealed until 1936. An underwater power cable brought electricity from the mainland and floodlights were placed along the walls of Fort Wood. Gutzon Borglum, who later sculpted Mount Rushmore, redesigned the torch, replacing much of the original copper with stained glass. On December 2, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson pressed the telegraph key that turned on the lights, successfully illuminating the statue. After the United States entered World War I in 1917, images of the statue were heavily used in both recruitment posters and the Liberty bond drives that urged American citizens to support the war financially. This impressed upon the public the war's stated purpose—to secure liberty—and served as a reminder that embattled France had given the United States the statue. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge used his authority under the Antiquities Act to declare the statue a national monument. The only successful suicide in the statue's history occurred five years later, when a man climbed out of one of the windows in the crown and jumped to his death, glancing off the statue's breast and landing on the base. In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the statue to be transferred to the National Park Service (NPS). In 1937, the NPS gained jurisdiction over the rest of Bedloe's Island. With the Army's departure, the NPS began to transform the island into a park. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) demolished most of the old buildings, regraded and reseeded the eastern end of the island, and built granite steps for a new public entrance to the statue from its rear. The WPA also carried out restoration work within the statue, temporarily removing the rays from the statue's halo so their rusted supports could be replaced. Rusted cast-iron steps in the pedestal were replaced with new ones made of reinforced concrete; the upper parts of the stairways within the statue were replaced, as well. Copper sheathing was installed to prevent further damage from rainwater that had been seeping into the pedestal. The statue was closed to the public from May until December 1938. During World War II, the statue remained open to visitors, although it was not illuminated at night due to wartime blackouts. It was lit briefly on December 31, 1943, and on D-Day, June 6, 1944, when its lights flashed "dot-dot-dot-dash", the Morse code for V, for victory. New, powerful lighting was installed in 1944–1945, and beginning on V-E Day, the statue was once again illuminated after sunset. The lighting was for only a few hours each evening, and it was not until 1957 that the statue was illuminated every night, all night. In 1946, the interior of the statue within reach of visitors was coated with a special plastic so that graffiti could be washed away. In 1956, an Act of Congress officially renamed Bedloe's Island as Liberty Island, a change advocated by Bartholdi generations earlier. The act also mentioned the efforts to found an American Museum of Immigration on the island, which backers took as federal approval of the project, though the government was slow to grant funds for it. Nearby Ellis Island was made part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument by proclamation of President Lyndon Johnson in 1965. In 1972, the immigration museum, in the statue's base, was finally opened in a ceremony led by President Richard Nixon. The museum's backers never provided it with an endowment to secure its future and it closed in 1991 after the opening of an immigration museum on Ellis Island. In 1970, Ivy Bottini led a demonstration at the statue where she and others from the National Organization for Women's New York chapter draped an enormous banner over a railing which read "WOMEN OF THE WORLD UNITE!" Beginning December 26, 1971, 15 anti-Vietnam War veterans occupied the statue, flying a US flag upside down from her crown. They left December 28 following a Federal Court order. The statue was also several times taken over briefly by demonstrators publicizing causes such as Puerto Rican independence, opposition to abortion, and opposition to US intervention in Grenada. Demonstrations with the permission of the Park Service included a Gay Pride Parade rally and the annual Captive Baltic Nations rally. A powerful new lighting system was installed in advance of the American Bicentennial in 1976. The statue was the focal point for Operation Sail, a regatta of tall ships from all over the world that entered New York Harbor on July 4, 1976, and sailed around Liberty Island. The day concluded with a spectacular display of fireworks near the statue. The statue was examined in great detail by French and American engineers as part of the planning for its centennial in 1986. In 1982, it was announced that the statue was in need of considerable restoration. Careful study had revealed that the right arm had been improperly attached to the main structure. It was swaying more and more when strong winds blew and there was a significant risk of structural failure. In addition, the head had been installed off center, and one of the rays was wearing a hole in the right arm when the statue moved in the wind. The armature structure was badly corroded, and about two percent of the exterior plates needed to be replaced. Although problems with the armature had been recognized as early as 1936, when cast iron replacements for some of the bars had been installed, much of the corrosion had been hidden by layers of paint applied over the years. In May 1982, President Ronald Reagan announced the formation of the Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Centennial Commission, led by Chrysler Corporation chair Lee Iacocca, to raise the funds needed to complete the work. Through its fundraising arm, the Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation, Inc., the group raised more than $350 million in donations for the renovations of both the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. The Statue of Liberty was one of the earliest beneficiaries of a cause marketing campaign. A 1983 promotion advertised that for each purchase made with an American Express card, the company would contribute one cent to the renovation of the statue. The campaign generated contributions of $1.7 million to the restoration project. In 1984, the statue was closed to the public for the duration of the renovation. Workers erected the world's largest free-standing scaffold, which obscured the statue from view. Liquid nitrogen was used to remove layers of paint that had been applied to the interior of the copper skin over decades, leaving two layers of coal tar, originally applied to plug leaks and prevent corrosion. Blasting with baking soda powder removed the tar without further damaging the copper. The restorers' work was hampered by the asbestos-based substance that Bartholdi had used—ineffectively, as inspections showed—to prevent galvanic corrosion. Workers within the statue had to wear protective gear, dubbed "moon suits", with self-contained breathing circuits. Larger holes in the copper skin were repaired, and new copper was added where necessary. The replacement skin was taken from a copper rooftop at Bell Labs, which had a patina that closely resembled the statue's; in exchange, the laboratory was provided some of the old copper skin for testing. The torch, found to have been leaking water since the 1916 alterations, was replaced with an exact replica of Bartholdi's unaltered torch. Consideration was given to replacing the arm and shoulder; the National Park Service insisted that they be repaired instead. The original torch was removed and replaced in 1986 with the current one, whose flame is covered in 24-karat gold. The torch reflects the Sun's rays in daytime and is lighted by floodlights at night. The entire puddled iron armature designed by Gustave Eiffel was replaced. Low-carbon corrosion-resistant stainless steel bars that now hold the staples next to the skin are made of Ferralium, an alloy that bends slightly and returns to its original shape as the statue moves. To prevent the ray and arm making contact, the ray was realigned by several degrees. The lighting was again replaced—night-time illumination subsequently came from metal-halide lamps that send beams of light to particular parts of the pedestal or statue, showing off various details. Access to the pedestal, which had been through a nondescript entrance built in the 1960s, was renovated to create a wide opening framed by a set of monumental bronze doors with designs symbolic of the renovation. A modern elevator was installed, allowing handicapped access to the observation area of the pedestal. An emergency elevator was installed within the statue, reaching up to the level of the shoulder. July 3–6, 1986, was designated "Liberty Weekend", marking the centennial of the statue and its reopening. President Reagan presided over the rededication, with French President François Mitterrand in attendance. July 4 saw a reprise of Operation Sail, and the statue was reopened to the public on July 5. In Reagan's dedication speech, he stated, "We are the keepers of the flame of liberty; we hold it high for the world to see." Immediately following the September 11 attacks, the statue and Liberty Island were closed to the public. The island reopened at the end of 2001, while the pedestal and statue remained off-limits. The pedestal reopened in August 2004, but the National Park Service announced that visitors could not safely be given access to the statue due to the difficulty of evacuation in an emergency. The Park Service adhered to that position through the remainder of the Bush administration. New York Congressman Anthony Weiner made the statue's reopening a personal crusade. On May 17, 2009, President Barack Obama's Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, announced that as a "special gift" to America, the statue would be reopened to the public as of July 4, but that only a limited number of people would be permitted to ascend to the crown each day. The statue, including the pedestal and base, closed on October 29, 2011, for installation of new elevators and staircases and to bring other facilities, such as restrooms, up to code. The statue was reopened on October 28, 2012, but then closed again a day later in advance of Hurricane Sandy. Although the storm did not harm the statue, it destroyed some of the infrastructure on both Liberty and Ellis Islands, including the dock used by the ferries that ran to Liberty and Ellis Islands. On November 8, 2012, a Park Service spokesperson announced that both islands would remain closed for an indefinite period for repairs to be done. Since Liberty Island had no electricity, a generator was installed to power temporary floodlights to illuminate the statue at night. The superintendent of Statue of Liberty National Monument, David Luchsinger—whose home on the island was severely damaged—stated that it would be "optimistically ... months" before the island was reopened to the public. The statue and Liberty Island reopened to the public on July 4, 2013. Ellis Island remained closed for repairs for several more months but reopened in late October 2013. The Statue of Liberty has also been closed due to government shutdowns and protests. During the October 2013 United States federal government shutdown, Liberty Island and other federally funded sites were closed. In addition, Liberty Island was briefly closed on July 4, 2018, after a woman protesting against American immigration policy climbed onto the statue. On October 7, 2016, construction started on the new Statue of Liberty Museum on Liberty Island. The new $70 million, museum may be visited by all who come to the island, as opposed to the museum in the pedestal, which only 20% of the island's visitors had access to. The new museum, designed by FXFOWLE Architects, is integrated with the surrounding parkland. Diane von Fürstenberg headed the fundraising for the museum, and the project received over $40 million in fundraising by groundbreaking. The museum opened on May 16, 2019. The statue is situated in Upper New York Bay on Liberty Island south of Ellis Island, which together comprise the Statue of Liberty National Monument. Both islands were ceded by New York to the federal government in 1800. As agreed in an 1834 compact between New York and New Jersey that set the state border at the bay's midpoint, the original islands remain New York territory though located on the New Jersey side of the state line. Liberty Island is one of the islands that are part of the borough of Manhattan in New York. Land created by reclamation added to the original island at Ellis Island is New Jersey territory. No charge is made for entrance to the national monument, but there is a cost for the ferry service that all visitors must use, as private boats may not dock at the island. A concession was granted in 2007 to Statue Cruises to operate the transportation and ticketing facilities, replacing Circle Line, which had operated the service since 1953. The ferries, which depart from Liberty State Park in Jersey City and the Battery in Lower Manhattan, also stop at Ellis Island when it is open to the public, making a combined trip possible. All ferry riders are subject to security screening, similar to airport procedures, prior to boarding. Visitors intending to enter the statue's base and pedestal must obtain a complimentary museum/pedestal ticket along with their ferry ticket. Those wishing to climb the staircase within the statue to the crown purchase a special ticket, which may be reserved up to a year in advance. A total of 240 people per day are permitted to ascend: ten per group, three groups per hour. Climbers may bring only medication and cameras—lockers are provided for other items—and must undergo a second security screening. There are several plaques and dedicatory tablets on or near the Statue of Liberty. A plaque on the copper just under the figure in front declares that it is a colossal statue representing Liberty, designed by Bartholdi and built by the Paris firm of Gaget, Gauthier et Cie (Cie is the French abbreviation analogous to Co.)., A presentation tablet, also bearing Bartholdi's name, declares the statue is a gift from the people of the Republic of France that honors "the Alliance of the two Nations in achieving the Independence of the United States of America and attests their abiding friendship.", A tablet placed by the American Committee commemorates the fundraising done to build the pedestal., The cornerstone bears a plaque placed by the Freemasons., In 1903, a bronze tablet that bears the text of Emma Lazarus's sonnet, "The New Colossus" (1883), was presented by friends of the poet. Until the 1986 renovation, it was mounted inside the pedestal; later, it resided in the Statue of Liberty Museum, in the base., "The New Colossus" tablet is accompanied by a tablet given by the Emma Lazarus Commemorative Committee in 1977, celebrating the poet's life. A group of statues stands at the western end of the island, honoring those closely associated with the Statue of Liberty. Two Americans—Pulitzer and Lazarus—and three Frenchmen—Bartholdi, Eiffel, and Laboulaye—are depicted. They are the work of Maryland sculptor Phillip Ratner. President Calvin Coolidge officially designated the Statue of Liberty as part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument in 1924. The monument was expanded to also include Ellis Island in 1965. The following year, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island were jointly added to the National Register of Historic Places, and the statue individually in 2017. On the sub-national level, the Statue of Liberty was added to the New Jersey Register of Historic Places in 1971, and was made a New York City designated landmark in 1976. In 1984, the Statue of Liberty was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The UNESCO "Statement of Significance" describes the statue as a "masterpiece of the human spirit" that "endures as a highly potent symbol—inspiring contemplation, debate and protest—of ideals such as liberty, peace, human rights, abolition of slavery, democracy and opportunity." Hundreds of replicas of the Statue of Liberty are displayed worldwide. A smaller version of the statue, one-fourth the height of the original, was given by the American community in Paris to that city. It now stands on the Île aux Cygnes, facing west toward her larger sister. A replica tall stood atop the Liberty Warehouse on West 64th Street in Manhattan for many years; it now resides at the Brooklyn Museum. In a patriotic tribute, the Boy Scouts of America, as part of their Strengthen the Arm of Liberty campaign in 1949–1952, donated about two hundred replicas of the statue, made of stamped copper and in height, to states and municipalities across the United States. Though not a true replica, the statue known as the Goddess of Democracy temporarily erected during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 was similarly inspired by French democratic traditions—the sculptors took care to avoid a direct imitation of the Statue of Liberty. Among other recreations of New York City structures, a replica of the statue is part of the exterior of the New York-New York Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. As an American icon, the Statue of Liberty has been depicted on the country's coinage and stamps. It appeared on commemorative coins issued to mark its 1986 centennial, and on New York's 2001 entry in the state quarters series. An image of the statue was chosen for the American Eagle platinum bullion coins in 1997, and it was placed on the reverse, or tails, side of the Presidential Dollar series of circulating coins. Two images of the statue's torch appear on the current ten-dollar bill. The statue's intended photographic depiction on a 2010 forever stamp proved instead to be of the replica at the Las Vegas casino. Depictions of the statue have been used by many regional institutions. Between 1986 and 2000, New York State issued license plates with an outline of the statue. The Women's National Basketball Association's New York Liberty use both the statue's name and its image in their logo, in which the torch's flame doubles as a basketball. The New York Rangers of the National Hockey League depicted the statue's head on their third jersey, beginning in 1997. The National Collegiate Athletic Association's 1996 Men's Basketball Final Four, played at New Jersey's Meadowlands Sports Complex, featured the statue in its logo. The Libertarian Party of the United States uses the statue in its emblem. The statue is a frequent subject in popular culture. In music, it has been evoked to indicate support for American policies, as in Toby Keith's song "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)", and in opposition, appearing on the cover of the Dead Kennedys' album Bedtime for Democracy, which protested the Reagan administration. In film, the torch is the setting for the climax of director Alfred Hitchcock's 1942 movie Saboteur. The statue makes one of its most famous cinematic appearances in the 1968 picture Planet of the Apes, in which it is seen half-buried in sand. It is knocked over in the science- fiction film Independence Day and in Cloverfield the head is ripped off. In Jack Finney's time-travel novel Time and Again, the right arm of the statue, on display in the early 1880s in Madison Square Park, plays a crucial role. Robert Holdstock, consulting editor of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, wondered in 1979: List of the tallest statues in the United States, Place des États-Unis, in Paris, France, Statues and sculptures in New York City, The Statue of Liberty (film), 1985 Ken Burns documentary film, List of statues by height Statue of Liberty National Monument, Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation, "A Giant's Task – Cleaning Statue of Liberty", Popular Mechanics (February 1932), Views from the webcams affixed to the Statue of Liberty, Made in Paris The Statue of Liberty 1877–1885 – many historical photographs, The Statue of Liberty, BBC Radio 4 discussion with Robert Gildea, Kathleen Burk & John Keane (In Our Time, February 14, 2008) "The Statue" is the sixth episode of the second season of the NBC sitcom Seinfeld, and the show's 11th episode overall. In the episode, protagonist Jerry Seinfeld (Jerry Seinfeld) inherits some old possessions of his grandfather. One of these is a statue, resembling one that his friend George Costanza (Jason Alexander) broke when he was ten years old. When Jerry sees the statue in the house of Ray (Michael D. Conway), the man who cleaned his apartment, he believes Ray stole the statue. Jerry struggles to get back at Ray, as his friend Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is editing a book written by Ray's girlfriend. The episode was written by Larry Charles and directed by Tom Cherones. The character of Jerry's neighbor Kramer (Michael Richards) is developed in this episode, as he goes undercover as a cop to retrieve the statue. Charles was interested in the development of Kramer, as he felt George and Jerry had their counterparts in co-creators Larry David and Seinfeld. Richards enjoyed how his character acted in the episode and encouraged Charles to continue exploiting the Kramer character. "The Statue" first aired on NBC on April 11, 1991 in the United States and was watched by over 23 million American homes. Jerry inherits some old possessions of his grandfather Irving. Among them is a statue that looks just like one George's family had until George broke it. Jerry promises that George can have it, but leaves it in his apartment for a few days. Kramer takes a few of Irving's old clothes, including a hat which he believes makes him look like Joe Friday of Dragnet. Elaine persuades Jerry to have his apartment cleaned by her client Rava's (Nurit Koppel) boyfriend Ray (Michael D. Conway). Jerry is very impressed by the quality of the cleaning; but when he and Elaine visit Rava, Jerry notices a statue with a vivid similarity to the one he inherited and believes Ray stole it. He calls Kramer to check his apartment, and when Kramer cannot find the statue there, Jerry’s suspicion is confirmed. Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer discuss the situation and Kramer urges Jerry to do something about it, but Elaine argues that Rava will no longer let her edit her book if Jerry does this. Jerry calls Ray and has lunch with him, while George sits in the next booth and eavesdrops on their conversation. Jerry and George ask him about the statue, but Ray gets offended and leaves when he hears their suspicion. Elaine and Rava get into an argument about Jerry's accusation, and Elaine is no longer allowed to edit Rava's book. Without notifying anybody, Kramer dresses up in Irving's old clothes and goes to Ray's apartment, pretending to be a cop, and recovers the statue. Kramer returns the statue to a grateful George. But while George is holding the statue, Kramer gives him a friendly pat on the back, causing him to drop the statue, which breaks when it hits the floor. The episode ends without ever revealing whether or not Ray had stolen the statue from Jerry's apartment. The episode contained several references to pop culture. George explains that he broke the original statue when he was using it as a microphone, singing the song "MacArthur Park", by Jimmy Webb; in early drafts of the script, George broke it while singing Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues". The episode also contained numerous references to the 1960s television crime drama Dragnet. This was because Larry Charles, who wrote the episode, watched a lot of reruns of the show when he was writing for Seinfeld. Kramer's manner when he retrieves the statue was inspired by Joe Friday, the central character of Dragnet. At the end of the episode Kramer states "Well, let's put it this way: I didn't take him to People's Court", a reference to the judicial television show. The episode was written by Larry Charles and directed by Tom Cherones, who directed all of the episodes in Season 2. "The Statue" was the second episode Charles wrote for the show, though it was the first to be aired. Charles was mostly interested in the development of the Kramer character, as he felt "Jerry and George were so well-defined through Larry [David] and Jerry, that there was less room for me to, sort of, expand on those personas. But Kramer was very unformed at the beginning of the show and it gave me an area of creativity to, sort of, expand upon. So I spent a lot of time with Kramer because he was a character that I could have an impact on in the future of the show". Richards enjoyed how his character evolved and, after the filming of the episode, went to Seinfeld, Charles, and David and said "we should keep going that way." He cites this episode, as well as "The Revenge" (in which Kramer puts concrete in a washing machine), as episodes that really defined the character. The first read-through of the episode was held on January 23, 1991, the same night the second season premiered. "The Statue" was filmed in front of a live audience six days later. A few scenes were changed prior to filming; in an early draft of the script Elaine sat next to George eavesdropping on Jerry and Ray's conversation. She would wear a floppy hat to look inconspicuous and would complain about it, stating that she looks like one of the Cowsills, a singing group that was active between the 1960s and 1970s. The same scene initially featured George admitting that he spied on Ray a day earlier, showing Ray pictures of him in a bar. Ray would reply that it was his day off and asks why George is not at work, to which George replies that he should be getting back and leaves. In the original script, Elaine and Rava would argue over who is a better person: Jerry or Ray. Writer's assistant Karen Wilkie can be seen in the audience during Seinfeld's stand-up comedy act. Nurit Koppel portrayed Rava, at the time she was known for her appearance in the CBS television movie Sweet Bird of Youth (1989) as well as a guest appearance on the NBC crime drama Hunter. Jane Leeves, who would later appear as Marla the Virgin in season four and season nine also auditioned for the part, she also went on to star in the NBC sitcom Frasier (1993–2004). In the script, Ray Thomas' description was, "although he carries cleaning equipment, he also carries the air of a pretentious mannerly, affected actor". Various actors auditioned for the part, among which were Hank Azaria, Michael D. Conway and Tony Shalhoub, who had also auditioned for the part of Kramer. Conway was eventually cast for the part. Norman Brenner, who worked as Richards' stand-in on the show for all its nine seasons, appears as an extra; he appears in the background when Jerry and Ray talk at Monk's Cafe. First broadcast in the United States on NBC on April 11, 1991, "The Statue" gained a Nielsen rating of 16.1 and an audience share of 26. This means that 16.1% of American households watched the episode, and that 26% of all televisions in use at the time were tuned into it. Nielsen estimated that over 23 million people watched the episode's initial broadcast, making it the tenth most-watched program of the week it was broadcast in. The episode received mixed reactions from critics. Writing for Entertainment Weekly, critics Mary Kaye Schilling and Mike Flaherty stated "Even Seinfeld's bit players must have some grounding in reality — you need to love to hate them. Ultimately, there's no redeeming comic payoff to Rava's and Ray's weirdness". Flaherty and Schilling graded the episode with a C-. Colin Jacobson of the DVD Movie Guide called the episode's storyline "fairly pedestrian", but felt the performances of Conway and Koppel saved the episode. Episode script New York was severely affected by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, particularly New York City, its suburbs, and Long Island. Sandy's impacts included the flooding of the New York City Subway system, of many suburban communities, and of all road tunnels entering Manhattan except the Lincoln Tunnel. The New York Stock Exchange closed for two consecutive days. Numerous homes and businesses were destroyed by fire, including over 100 homes in Breezy Point, Queens. Large parts of the city and surrounding areas lost electricity for several days. Several thousand people in midtown Manhattan were evacuated for six days due to a crane collapse at Extell's One57. Bellevue Hospital Center and a few other large hospitals were closed and evacuated. Flooding at 140 West Street and another exchange disrupted voice and data communication in lower Manhattan. At least 53 people died in New York as a result of the storm. Thousands of homes and an estimated 250,000 vehicles were destroyed during the storm, and the economic losses in New York City were estimated to be roughly $19 billion with an estimated $32.8 billion required for restoration across the state. On October 28, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency for every county in the state. He also asked for a pre-disaster declaration to better access federal assistance. Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano ordered voluntary evacuations of the South Shore storm surge area, which includes the area south of Sunrise Highway, as well as the North Shore's areas north of Route 25A and in elevations 15 feet above sea level or less. Shelters were opened at Levittown Memorial High School, Locust Valley High School, Nassau Community College and SUNY Old Westbury. In Suffolk County, officials ordered mandatory evacuations for residents of Fire Island and in surge zone areas in Babylon, Brookhaven, Islip, Riverhead, Southampton and Southold. Shelters were opened at Hampton Bays High School, Sachem East High School, and the Brentwood High School Sonderling Building. Most schools closed in Nassau and Suffolk counties on October 29, including Adelphi University, Hofstra University, Molloy College, Nassau Community College and Stony Brook University. On October 28, President Barack Obama signed an emergency declaration for the state of New York. The Metro-North Railroad and the Long Island Rail Road suspended service beginning 7 p.m. October 27 through October 29 and possibly October 30. Starbucks closed all of its outlets in the city and Long Island on October 28 at 4 p.m. to let employees get home before the transit system shut down. The stores remained closed on October 29. The Tappan Zee Bridge was closed October 29 at 4 p.m. EDT due to wind conditions. Mayor Michael Bloomberg told reporters on October 26 that the city had begun taking precautions but said at that time there was no call for mandatory evacuations and no plans to suspend the city's mass transit or cancel school. But on October 28, Governor Cuomo ordered the MTA, including the subway, closed and in a press conference immediately after Cuomo's announcement, Mayor Bloomberg ordered public schools closed on October 29. He ordered mandatory evacuations for Zone A which includes the southern tip of Manhattan, the Coney Island- Brighton Beach and Red Hook areas of Brooklyn, the entire Rockaways peninsula, much of Staten Island, City Island, and part of the Throggs Neck area of the Bronx. On October 28, officials activated the city's coastal emergency plan, with subway closings and the evacuation of residents in areas hit during Hurricane Irene in August 2011. More than 76 evacuation shelters were open around the city. The MTA announced that all subway, bus and commuter rail service would be suspended, beginning at 7 p.m. EDT on October 28 and expected to continue suspension through at least October 30. All PATH train service and stations were shut down at 12:01 a.m. October 29. 200 National Guard troops were deployed in the city. All bus carriers at the Port Authority Bus Terminal closed at 3 a.m. October 29. U.S. stock trading was suspended for October 29 and 30. It was the first two-day weather closure since the Great Blizzard of 1888. All state courts were closed October 29, except for arraignments and emergency applications. NYU Langone Medical Center cancelled all surgeries and medical procedures, except for emergency procedures. On October 27, Google postponed their planned Android event in New York City due to the storm. The Staten Island Ferry and East River Ferry services were suspended at least through October 29. Most bridges and tunnels closed. Major carriers cancelled all flights into and out of JFK, LaGuardia and Newark-Liberty airports until it was safe to fly. Broadway theater owners canceled all October 28 evening and October 29 performances. Alternate-side parking and parking meter regulations were suspended on October 29. Grand Central Terminal, Central Park and Battery Park were closed on October 29. The Holland Tunnel and the Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel closed at 2 p.m. EDT on October 29. The Tappan Zee Bridge was closed later on that day. One of the units at Indian Point nuclear power plant (Unit #3) was shut down around 10:45 p.m. October 29, because of external electrical grid issues according to plant operator Entergy. While moving ashore in New Jersey, the northern and eastern sides of Sandy were characterized with light, sporadic rainfall, but strong winds. Precipitation in New York reached in Sherman, in the extreme western portion of the state. The highest recorded wind gust in New York was at Islip. Supplemented by spring tide, the storm surge was approximately 14 feet above Mean Lower Low Water, flooding many tunnels and damaging electrical equipment. The 1821 Norfolk and Long Island Hurricane was similarly powerful but struck at low tide and thus caused less flooding. United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius declared a public health emergency on October 31 for New York. In response, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) sent 30 teams of workers into damaged areas of the New York region. During a news conference on November 1, Mayor Bloomberg announced that most parks would reopen on November 3; that Coney Island, the Rockaways, and parts of Staten Island would get temporary centers for the distribution of meals and bottles of water at a time; that AT&T; would bring cellphone-charging and cell service-enabled pods to certain areas of New York City; and that 400 members of the National Guard were to go door-to-door to deliver meals and supplies to elderly and home-bound residents. A relief fund was created for residents of Staten Island. United States Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano toured the island on November 2. Time Warner Cable donated $500,000 to the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City, and $50,000 each to the Red Cross of Northeastern New York and the Red Cross of Northern New Jersey. They also sent out vehicles with mobile charging stations and free WiFi access points, as well as opened all its WiFi spots in the city. United States Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano toured the island on November 2. On that same day, the state of New York created a $100 million fund to help people hit hardest. On November 3, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum was being pumped free of floodwater and reopened on the 6th. Five emergency mobile gas stations were deployed by the military on the same day, offering 10 free gallons per person. Thousands of runners who came to the city to run the New York City Marathon met in Central Park on November 4; due to the marathon's being called off, many went to Staten Island to help storm victims. On November 5, meteorologists began tracking a coastal nor'easter, that threatened cleanup and recovery efforts in the state on November 7 and 8. NYU Langone Medical Center, evacuated during the storm, began reopening on the same day, and about 750 workers resumed construction on Ground Zero. Governor Cuomo signed an executive order saying that displaced New Yorkers could vote in the 2012 United States elections at any polling place in the state. On November 7, Governor Cuomo fired Steven Kuhr, the head of the New York Office of Emergency Management, after Cuomo discovered that Kuhr had sent Suffolk County workers to clear a tree in his Long Island driveway as other victims needed help. A day later, Cuomo said that the estimated storm damage in New York state was $33 billion. New York City and the counties of Nassau and Suffolk imposed "odd-even" gasoline rationing, as New Jersey had, to ease congestion and frustration at filling stations. The system began on November 9 in the wake of a shortage. Cuomo also temporarily waived certain taxes and pollution restrictions on fuel deliveries. New York City schools remained closed through Friday, November 2 with classes resuming Monday for most students; but as many as 40,000 stayed home until November 7. Fifty-seven schools were still flooded as of that date. Many colleges and universities and K-12 schools in the tri-state area also cancelled classes. The Statue of Liberty was closed October 29, a day after its grand reopening. Both the statue and Ellis Island remained closed through 2012; the statue reopened July 4, 2013, while Ellis Island remained closed until 2014. The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation closed all state parks on Long Island until further notice, due to downed trees, dangling branches, beach erosion, and damaged boardwalks. On November 1, CBS News reported the 76 shelters opened initially were being consolidated down to 15. On November 6, Bloomberg announced the closing of parks, playgrounds and beaches again for 24 hours starting at noon November 7, as the nor'easter neared. Also on November 6, John Jay High School in Brooklyn, being used as a shelter for Sandy victims, was shut down after about a dozen storm refugees came down with a stomach virus. Bloomberg said the school would be closed November 7 instead of opening for classes as scheduled, so it could be cleaned and then reopened. On October 30, the tanker was driven ashore at Staten Island. On October 31, NY Waterway ferries between Hudson County, New Jersey, and Manhattan resumed service. The Staten Island Ferry resumed full service November 2 and Staten Island Railway the next day. On November 1, fuel ships started arriving in reopened New York Harbor. On November 2, Governor Cuomo signed an executive order waiving the state's requirements that fuel tankers register and pay a tax before unloading. The George Washington Bridge, Throgs Neck Bridge, Verrazano Bridge, and Whitestone Bridge closed at 7 p.m. EDT October 29. All road tunnels into Manhattan, except the Lincoln Tunnel, were flooded and closed, as were subway tunnels under the East River and the PATH subway system. Limited bus service resumed Tuesday evening, Oct 30. Limited MTA subway service was scheduled to resume on November 1 with two East River tunnels (59th Street and 63rd Street) in operation and shuttle bus service to Manhattan from Brooklyn termini. The Long Island Rail Road remained closed due to storm damage until November 8, 2012. The LIRR then re-opened with partial service to most of its branches, excluding Long Beach. Nassau Inter-County Express and Suffolk County Transit suspended and/or greatly limited service for the storm. In response to the flooding of tunnels and other infrastructure, the United States Army Corps of Engineers sent its National Unwatering Team. , MTA bus service began operating on a regular schedule. The subway system was tested with plans to resume limited service to 14 of the 23 services on November 1. PATH services remained suspended; the Long Island Rail Road resumed limited, hourly service; and Metro-North restored hourly service on its Harlem Line between North White Plains and Grand Central Terminal. All bridges and tunnels were open except the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel. Amtrak provided modified service starting on November 1, and the Port Authority Bus Terminal reopened with no Greyhound Lines service or commuter buses to New Jersey. On the morning of November 1, the first train, an A train, pulled out of Penn Station three days after tunnels were flooded. Subway service in Lower Manhattan except for the IRT Lexington Avenue Line and to Brooklyn was disconnected. The G train (which is a crosstown route between Queens and Brooklyn), as well as the Rockaway Park Shuttle and the part-time , , and trains, were also suspended. Governor Cuomo waived fares on MTA trains and buses through November 5. The Holland Tunnel opened to buses only on November 2. HOV restrictions on bridges and Lincoln Tunnel ended on that day. By November 3, 80 percent of subway service was restored. On November 6, the Queens Midtown Tunnel reopened one lane for buses heading into and out of Manhattan during rush hour. The Holland Tunnel reopened November 7 at 5 a.m. EST., while the Queens-Midtown Tunnel reopened on November 9 at 6 a.m. EST. The Hugh L. Carey Tunnel opened November 12 to limited rush-hour bus service. Delta Air Lines cancelled all flights out of LaGuardia Airport through October 30 at 8 p.m. EDT. The three major airports serving New York City, JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark, were closed as of 8 p.m. on October 29. More than 8,000 flights were canceled by 4 p.m. EDT for the day of October 30. LaGuardia and Newark had a total of 2,400 cancelled flights. As of early morning October 31, nearly 3,000 flights were canceled, but JFK and Newark airports began handling flights after 7 a.m. LaGuardia Airport reopened November 1 at 7:00 a.m. New York's Village Halloween Parade, held annually on October 31, was cancelled due to blackout conditions in Greenwich Village. A similar parade in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York was also cancelled for that same reason. After many complaints that running the race through affected areas would seem insensitive and would put further pressure on police and other service workers who would be better deployed in the recovery efforts, Mayor Bloomberg announced late afternoon November 2 that the New York City Marathon had been cancelled. The event was to take place on Sunday, November 4. Marathon officials said that it would not be rescheduled. The opening game at the Barclays Center between the National Basketball Association's Brooklyn Nets and New York Knicks originally scheduled to take place on November 1 was rescheduled for November 26. The soccer game between the New York Red Bulls and D.C. United in the 2012 Major League Soccer playoffs, scheduled for November 3, was moved to November 7, due to a power outage at Red Bull Arena in New Jersey. New York University Langone Medical Center was evacuated October 29 after the backup generators at the hospital failed due to flooding. Over 200 patients were safely transferred to other hospitals. Bellevue Hospital Center (about 500 patients), Coney Island Hospital, and Palisades Medical Center are additional New York City area hospitals which have been either partially or fully evacuated. The Emergency Medical Services of New York City faced a series of challenges and setbacks during the storm relating to the flooding, closure, and evacuation of hospitals and FDNY-EMS Stations across the city. Downtown Hospital was closed in preparation for the storm, but several hospitals were forced to close during the storm, including Bellevue Hospital, NYU Hospital, Manhattan VA Hospital, Metropolitan Hospital, Coney Island Hospital, and St. Johns Hospital. A fire broke out on the fourth floor of Coney Island Hospital, which proved difficult for Fire and EMS resources access due to flooding, high winds, and downed wires. Four out of five FDNY- EMS Stations in Manhattan were evacuated during the storm as flooding began to surround stations in low-lying areas, including EMS Station 4 (South Street, location of Division 1 Headquarters which was moved to Downtown Brooklyn during the storm), Station 7 (Chelsea), Station 8 (Bellevue), and Station 10 (Spanish Harlem/Metropolitan Hospital). Station 16, located at Harlem Hospital, did not have to evacuate. On October 29, National Guard troops arrived in Island Park, New York, as anecdotal accounts and earlier reports of a substation explosion were officially denied by a LIPA representative. On October 30, a helicopter rescue crew airlifted five adults and a child from the roof of a Staten Island house which was nearly submerged by flooding waters. On October 31, National Guard troops and local police were evacuating the last of 700 patients from Bellevue to other hospitals and local shelters. On November 6, some of the state's residents that had been evacuated for Sandy were evacuated a second time due to a nor'easter that was expected to bring high winds, rain and possible snow to areas of New York. On November 26, Governor Cuomo said Sandy cost the state $32 billion in damage and loss. Mayor Bloomberg announced earlier in the day that the storm caused $19 billion in losses in New York City, which was included in the estimate Cuomo gave. At the time of the disaster, a total of 43 civilians were confirmed to have died in New York City as a result of the hurricane. As of the morning of November 1, Con Ed had restored two power networks, but there were still more than 600,000 customers without power throughout the five boroughs. Con Ed predicted most all of Manhattan would be fully restored by November 3. By the afternoon of the same day, Con Ed said it expected to "restore the vast majority of customers who lost power by the weekend of November 10 and 11. The remaining customer restorations could take an additional week more." As of the morning of November 2, more than 1.3 million customers were without power, down from 2.2 million. As of 5:00 a.m. EDT (0900 GMT) on that date Con Edison said about 226,000 customers lacked service in Manhattan, 84,000 in Queens, 35,000 in Brooklyn, 54,000 in Staten Island 31,000 in the Bronx and 140,000 in Westchester. On Long Island, LIPA said it still had about 532,000 customers without power, down from more than 900,000. In the evening of November 2, LIPA said they expected to cut the number of customer outages by 150,000 by November 4. As of 4 a.m. November 3, Con Ed reported about: 94,769 customer outages in Manhattan, 81,372 customer outages in Queens, 37,504 customer outages in Staten Island, 31,448 customer outages in Brooklyn, 26,252 customer outages in the Bronx During the evening of November 3, Con Ed announced all Manhattan power networks were back online. Approximately 153,000 Con Ed customers were without power as of 8 p.m. November 3: 9,211 customer outages in Manhattan, 74,067 customer outages in Queens, 27,842 customer outages in Staten Island, 24,707 customer outages in Brooklyn, 19,501 customer outages in the Bronx As of around noon November 5, Con Ed reported those without electricity were: 3,825 customer outages in Manhattan, 38,397 customer outages in Queens, 17,465 customer outages in Staten Island, 22,887 customer outages in Brooklyn, 8,282 customer outages in the Bronx , there were still 8,200 people without power. On October 30, over 190 firefighters fought a six alarm fire that destroyed 111 structures and damaged another 20 in Breezy Point, Queens, as a result of the storm. The area had been under evacuation orders, but some residents rode out the storm. One firefighter and two residents were injured. The rescuers were in chest-deep water and had to use a boat to reach survivors. A transformer explosion is suspected to have caused the fire. On October 31, Breezy Point residents pledged to rebuild their community. In Suffolk County and on Fire Island, numerous people – including a dozen firefighters who sought to rescue a Massapequa home's two residents – were rescued by emergency crews via front-end loaders and "high axle" vehicles. One home in West Babylon and another in Lindenhurst were burning continuously, and both had to be knocked down with payloaders. Heavy winds caused a construction crane atop One57 to collapse, causing the area to be evacuated on October 29. The crane was secured to the building on November 3 and West 57th Street reopened to traffic that evening. Space Shuttle Enterprise, on board the flight deck of the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in the Hudson River, was damaged. The shuttle's inflatable structure appears to have first deflated and then been torn by the high winds. The storm damaged, destroyed, or severely flooded around 100,000 homes on Long Island. , more than 2,000 homes were deemed uninhabitable. Bloomberg stated on November 3 that there were 55,000 buildings in Zone A that were ordered to evacuate and must be inspected. Damaged structures included community centers in South Brooklyn. The offices of the Jewish Community Council of Greater Coney Island, as well as a senior home run by the organization, were affected. The Old Orchard Shoal Light in New York Harbor was destroyed by the hurricane. The hurricane damaged many homes beyond habitability. Governor Cuomo worked closely with President Barack Obama and with Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, which was even more hard-hit, to come to their aid. Cuomo allowed New York voters, via a specific provision aimed at accommodating those displaced, to cast provisional ballots for the 2012 election anywhere in New York state. He also appointed a commission to examine the responses of New York utilities to damage caused by the storm, and to help lower the energy costs of residents affected by the damage. The Cuomo administration used $140 million of the funds originally allocated to this commission in order to pay for the broadcast of national TV ads encouraging businesses to return to New York after the disaster. Many have been critical of the effort, including former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, who called the ads "fluff" and "a waste of taxpayer money". Governor Christie, a Republican, was criticized by fellow Republicans for his public praise of President Obama, a Democrat, during and after his post-Sandy visit to New Jersey. Although Christie endorsed Republican candidate Mitt Romney in the 2012 United States presidential election, critics complained that Christie's relationship with Obama following Sandy hurt Romney at the polls. Several years later, during Christie's own campaign for president, Republican opponents continued to raise the issue of his post-Sandy relationship with Obama. The incident was at least partly responsible for Christie's failure to win the Republican nomination for president. Looters and burglars were arrested in Coney Island, the Rockaways, and other parts of New York City and Long Island which had been evacuated or damaged by the storm. Some posed as Con Ed workers to fool their victims; some other, would-be-looters posed as rescue workers. On November 2, it was reported that "on Long Island, looting has become such a problem on the south shore in the wake of superstorm Sandy that state police are on patrol." In addition to the looting of homes and stores, armed robberies, criminal siphoning of gasoline out of vehicle gas tanks, and thefts of generators were reported. Some New Yorkers ignored advice to evacuate in advance of the nor'easter of November 7, in favor of protecting their property. Thefts were averted by residents, some armed, who surprised those who had broken into their homes; by the National Guard; and by neighborhood watch groups. On November 1, a St. Albans motorist was arrested on charges of menacing and criminal possession of a weapon after he tried to cut in line at a Mobil station on the corner of Astoria Boulevard and 43rd Street in Queens and pointed a pistol at another motorist who complained. Also, in Brooklyn, people argued at a Getty gas station. It was further reported that gasoline, in heavy demand for both vehicles and home generators, had become scarce and frustration with fuel supplies topped "the list of issues causing tensions to boil over in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, the states hardest hit by power outages in the wake of superstorm Sandy." As of November 6, police reported 41 arrests in New York City stemming from fights at gas lines. This excluded the arrest of one teenager in East Setauket, who pulled a knife on a BP employee when told they were out of high- octane gas. In the five days since Sandy first hit New York City, the NYPD reported a slight decline in the number of major felonies compared to the same period during the previous year. There was a 30% drop in robberies and felony assaults, as well as a single homicide compared to 7 homicides in 2011. Reported burglaries, however, had a small uptick from 267 in 2011 to 271 in Sandy's wake. Various flood barriers within the New York City area have been proposed in order to prevent another flood surge from being as destructive as Hurricane Sandy's. One proposed barrier, the New York Harbor Storm-Surge Barrier would be located offshore and consist of multiple systems of barriers at the mouths of major waterways. Another plan calls for a "Big U", a system of flood barriers around the southern third of Manhattan. In March 2019, mayor Bill de Blasio announced a Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency Plan, which would construct flood barriers around Lower Manhattan and possibly extend the shoreline at a cost of $10 billion. At the time, four of the project's phases had funding and were set to start construction between 2020 and 2021. National Hurricane Center advisories, Hurricane Recovery and Volunteer Resources, The New York Times, Mapping Hurricane Sandy's Deadly Toll – Interactive Feature – NYTimes.com, NYC Sandy Evacuation Zones | Visual.ly

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We Were Soldiers Once… and Young is a 1992 book by Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore (Ret.) and war journalist Joseph L. Galloway about the Vietnam War. It focuses on the role of the First and Second Battalions of the 7th Cavalry Regiment in the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley, the United States' first large-unit battle of the Vietnam War; previous engagements involved small units and patrols (squad, platoon, and company sized units). It was adapted into the 2002 film We Were Soldiers. The book was a New York Times best-seller. David Halberstam called it "A stunning achievement—paper and words with the permanence of marble. I read it and thought of The Red Badge of Courage, the highest compliment I can think of." General H. Norman Schwarzkopf said "We Were Soldiers Once...and Young is a great book of military history, written the way military history should be written." Since at least 1993 the book had been on the Marine Corps Commandant's Reading List for Career Level Enlisted. We Were Soldiers is a 2002 American war film directed by Randall Wallace and starring Mel Gibson. Based on the book We Were Soldiers Once… and Young (1992) by Lieutenant General (Ret.) Hal Moore and reporter Joseph L. Galloway, it dramatizes the Battle of Ia Drang on November 14, 1965. A French unit on patrol in Vietnam in 1954, during the final year of the First Indochina War, is ambushed by Viet Minh forces, probably the Battle of Mang Yang Pass. Viet Minh commander Nguyen Huu An orders his soldiers to "kill all they send, and they will stop coming". Eleven years later, the United States is fighting the Vietnam War. U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore (Mel Gibson) is chosen to train and lead a battalion. After arriving in Vietnam, he learns that an American base has been attacked, and is ordered to take his 400 men after the enemy and eliminate the North Vietnamese attackers, despite the fact that intelligence has no idea of the number of enemy troops. Moore leads a newly created air cavalry unit into the Ia Drang Valley. After landing, the soldiers capture a North Vietnamese soldier and learn from him that the location they were sent to is actually the base camp for a veteran North Vietnamese army division of 4,000 men. Upon arrival in the area with a platoon of soldiers, 2nd Lt. Henry Herrick spots an enemy scout and runs after him, ordering his reluctant soldiers to follow. The scout lures them into an ambush, resulting in several men being killed, including Herrick and his subordinates. The surviving platoon members are surrounded and cut off from the rest of the battalion. Sgt. Savage assumes command, calls in artillery, and uses the cover of night to keep the Vietnamese from overrunning their defensive position. Meanwhile, with helicopters constantly dropping off units, Moore manages to secure weak points before the North Vietnamese can take advantage of them. Despite being trapped and desperately outnumbered, the main U.S. force manages to hold off the North Vietnamese with artillery, mortars, and helicopter airlifts of supplies and reinforcements. Eventually, Nguyen Huu An, the commander of the North Vietnamese division, orders a large-scale attack on the American position. At the point of being overrun by the enemy, Moore orders 1st Lt. Charlie Hastings, his Forward Air Controller, to call in "Broken Arrow" (a call for all available combat aircraft to assist and attack enemy positions, even those close to the U.S. troops' position, because a position is being overrun and can no longer be defended). The aircraft attack with bombs, napalm, and machine guns, killing many PAVN and Viet Cong troops; but a friendly fire incident also results in American deaths. The North Vietnamese attack is repelled, and the surviving soldiers of Herrick's cut-off platoon, including Savage, are rescued. Meanwhile, back in the United States, Julia Moore (Madeleine Stowe) has become the leader of the American wives living on the base. When the Army begins to use yellow cab drivers to deliver telegrams notifying the next of kin of soldiers' deaths in combat, Julia personally assumes that emotional responsibility instead. Moore's troops regroup and secure the area. Nguyen Huu An plans a final assault on the Americans and sends most of his troops to carry out the attack, but Moore and his men overrun them and approach the enemy command center. Before the base camp guards can open fire, Major Bruce "Snake" Crandall and others helicopter gunships attack, destroying the bulk of the enemy force. With no more troops to call upon for defense, Huu An quickly orders the headquarters evacuated. Having achieved his objective, Moore returns to the helicopter landing zone to be picked up. Only after everyone (including the dead and wounded) is removed from the battlefield does he fly out of the valley. Some time later, Nguyen Huu An and his men arrive on the battlefield to collect their dead. He claims that the Americans will "think this was their victory. So this will become an American war." At the end of the film, it is revealed that the landing zone immediately reverted to North Vietnamese hands after the American troops were airlifted out. Hal Moore continued the battle in a different landing zone, and after nearly a year he returns home safely to Julia and his family. His superiors congratulate him for killing over 1,800 North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong soldiers. An older Moore visits the Vietnam War memorial and looks at the names of the soldiers who fell at Ia Drang. Mel Gibson as Lieutenant Colonel/Colonel Hal Moore, Madeleine Stowe as Julia Moore, Greg Kinnear as Major Bruce P. Crandall, Sam Elliott as Sergeant Major Basil L. Plumley, Chris Klein as 2nd Lieutenant Jack Geoghegan, Luke Benward as David Moore, Taylor Momsen as Julie Moore, Devon Werkheiser as Steve Moore, Keri Russell as Barbara Geoghegan, Barry Pepper as Joe Galloway, Mark McCracken as Captain Ed "Too Tall" Freeman, Đơn Dương as NVA Lieutenant Colonel Nguyễn Hữu An, Ryan Hurst as Sergeant Ernie Savage, Marc Blucas as 2nd Lieutenant Henry Herrick, Jsu Garcia as Captain Tony Nadal, Jon Hamm as Captain Matt Dillon, Clark Gregg as Captain Tom Metsker, Blake Heron as Sp4. Galen Bungum, Desmond Harrington as Sp4. Bill Beck, Dylan Walsh as Capt. Robert Edwards, Brian Tee as Pfc. Jimmy Nakayama, as 1st Lieutenant Charlie Hastings, USAF, Bellamy Young as Catherine LaPlante Metsker, Patrick St. Esprit as Maj. Gen. Henry E. Emerson, Jim Grimshaw as Maj. Gen. Harry Kinnard In the source book We Were Soldiers Once… And Young, Hal Moore complains that "Every damn Hollywood movie got it wrong"; director Randall Wallace has said he was inspired by this comment and became "determined to get it right this time". The film's final version, though getting many of the facts of the book presented onto film, is not entirely a historically accurate portrayal of the battle, nor is it entirely faithful to the book. For instance, the film depicts a heroic charge under the command of Lt. Col. Hal Moore at the end of the battle that destroys the Vietnamese reserve, ending the battle in an American victory (a fact that director Randall Wallace noted in the DVD commentary); in fact, there was no heroic final charge in the book, nor were the North Vietnamese forces destroyed, though the American commander Moore reported 834 enemy bodies and 1215 estimated KIA (one-third of the enemy force) while the US forces were reduced by 72 out of 395, with 18% fatal casualties. Lt. Col. Nguyen Huu An, the Vietnamese commander, did not see the conclusion at LZ X-Ray as the end of combat, and the Battle of Ia Drang continued the next day with combat action at LZ Albany where the 2/7th, with A Company 1/5th, found themselves in a fight for their lives against Lt. Col. Nguyen Huu An's reserve. Despite the differences from the book and departures from historical accuracy, Moore states in a documentary included in the video versions that this film is the first one "to get it right". We Were Soldiers is noteworthy for the use of the haunting lament Sgt. MacKenzie by Joseph Kilna MacKenzie. The film received mostly positive reviews. Roger Ebert, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, gave We Were Soldiers 3.5 stars out of 4, and praised its truthful and realistic battle scenes and how it follows the characters. "Black Hawk Down" was criticized because the characters seemed hard to tell apart. "We Were Soldiers" doesn't have that problem; in the Hollywood tradition it identifies a few key players, casts them with stars, and follows their stories. Lisa Schwarzbaum, from Entertainment Weekly, gave the film a B and noted its fair treatment of both sides. The writer-director bestows honor – generously, apolitically – not only on the dead and still living American veterans who fought in Ia Drang, but also on their families, on their Vietnamese adversaries, and on the families of their adversaries too. Rarely has a foe been portrayed with such measured respect for a separate reality, which should come as a relief to critics (I'm one) of the enemy's facelessness in Black Hawk Down; vignettes of gallantry among Vietnamese soldiers and such humanizing visual details as a Vietnamese sweetheart's photograph left behind, in no way interfere with the primary, rousing saga of a fine American leader who kept his promise to his men to "leave no one behind dead or alive." David Sterritt, from the Christian Science Monitor, criticized the film for giving a more positive image of the Vietnam War that, in his opinion, did not concur with reality. The films about Vietnam that most Americans remember are positively soaked in physical and emotional torment – from "Platoon," with its grunt's-eye view of combat, to "Apocalypse Now," with its exploration of war's dehumanizing insanity. Today, the pendulum has swung back again. If filmmakers with politically twisted knives once sliced away guts-and-glory clichés, their current equivalents hack away all meaningful concern with moral and political questions. "We Were Soldiers" is shameless in this regard, filling the screen with square-jawed officers who weep at carnage and fresh-faced GIs who use their last breaths to intone things like, "I'm glad I died for my country." Todd McCarthy, from Variety, wrote the film "presents the fighting realistically, violently and relatively coherently given the chaotic circumstances..." McCarthy further wrote, "Mel Gibson has the closest thing to a John Wayne part that anyone's played since the Duke himself rode into the sunset, and he plays it damn well." He summarized with, "Gibson's performance anchors the film with commanding star power to burn. This officer truly loves his men, and the credibility with which the actor is able to express Moore's leadership qualities as well as his sensitive side is genuinely impressive." Hal Moore, who had long been critical of many Vietnam War films for their negative portrayals of American servicemen, publicly expressed approval of the film and is featured in segments of the DVD. Some soldiers were less pleased: Retired Col Rick Rescorla, who played an important role in the book and was pictured on the cover (and later died in the September 11 attacks), was disappointed, after reading the script, to learn that he and his unit had been written out of the film. In one key incident, the finding of a vintage French bugle on a dying Vietnamese soldier, the English-born Rescorla is replaced by a nameless Welsh platoon leader. 1st Cavalry Division Cyril Richard Rescorla (May 27, 1939 – September 11, 2001) was a soldier, police officer and private security specialist of British origin. He served as a British army paratrooper during the Cyprus Emergency and a United States commissioned officer in the Vietnam War. He rose to the rank of colonel in the United States Army. As the director of security for the financial services firm Morgan Stanley at the World Trade Center, Rescorla anticipated attacks on the towers and implemented evacuation procedures credited with saving thousands of lives. He died during the attacks of September 11, 2001, while leading evacuees from the South Tower. Rescorla was born in Hayle, Cornwall, on May 27, 1939. He grew up there with his grandparents and his mother, who worked as a housekeeper and companion to the elderly. In 1943, Hayle served as headquarters for the 175th Infantry Regiment of the U.S. 29th Infantry Division, largely composed of U.S. soldiers from Maryland and Virginia preparing for the D-Day invasion of Normandy. Young Rescorla idolized the U.S. soldiers and wanted to become a soldier because of them. Rescorla was a natural sportsman, setting a school record in the shot put, and was an avid boxer. When a professional boxing match was scheduled between a British boxer and a U.S. heavyweight contender named Tami Mauriello, his friends backed the Briton. Rescorla said "I'm for Tammy" [sic] and after Mauriello won the fight everyone in Hayle knew him as "Tammy". Rescorla left Hayle in 1956, aged 17, to join the British military. At that time, Britain had conscription (known as National Service) whereby every young man was required to serve for two years in the Armed Forces. This could be avoided by signing on for three years, and this was generally regarded as a good option, for the treatment was better. Rescorla took that option, and enlisted in the British Army in 1957, training as a paratrooper with The Parachute Regiment and then serving with an intelligence unit in Cyprus during the EOKA Cypriot insurgency from 1957 to 1960. Rescorla's British medals included the General Service Medal (1918) with clasp Cyprus. General Service Medal (1918) with clasp Cyprus At the end of his Short-Service Commission, Rescorla joined the Northern Rhodesia Police (now the Zambia Police Service) as a police inspector on a three-year contract from 1960 to 1963, experiences which made him a fierce anti-Communist. It was during the latter post that he met and forged a "life- altering friendship" with American soldier Daniel J. Hill, who inspired Rescorla to later join the U.S. Army and fight in Vietnam in order to fight the communists. On returning to London he quickly joined the Metropolitan Police Service. His tenure at the Met was short-lived and he soon resigned and moved to the United States. He lived at a YMCA hostel in Brooklyn until he was able to enlist in the Army. "Rick", as he would thereafter be known, enlisted in the United States Army in 1963 and after basic training at Fort Dix, he attended Officer Candidate School and airborne training at Fort Benning. Upon graduating Rescorla was assigned as a platoon leader in the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). Rescorla was sent to Vietnam, where he served under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore. The two participated in the 1965 Battle of Ia Drang, which Moore would later describe in a 1992 book he co-authored We Were Soldiers Once… And Young, (from which the 2002 Mel Gibson film We Were Soldiers would be adapted); Rescorla is the soldier pictured on the book jacket cover. Co-author Lieutenant General Hal Moore described him as "the best platoon leader I ever saw". Rescorla's men nicknamed him "Hard Core" for his bravery in battle and revered him for his good humor and compassion towards his men. He is also mentioned in the book Baptism by Larry Gwin who also fought at Ia Drang. The fourteenth chapter of the book Rescorla's Game describes him as the "Cornish Hawk". Despite this tough image, according to his second wife and widow Susan Rescorla in her book, Touched by a Hero, music was "so central" to Rick's life that he sang to his troops in Vietnam to calm them – something he would later employ during 9/11. Rescorla's Vietnam War honors included the Silver Star, the Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster, a Purple Heart and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. Silver Star, Bronze Star with one oak leaf cluster, Purple Heart, Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry He left active duty in 1967, and reached the rank of Colonel in the United States Army Reserve before retiring from the military in 1990. In April 2001, Rescorla was chosen for induction into the Infantry Officer Candidate School Hall of Fame and was invited to participate in ceremonies at Fort Benning. After service in Vietnam, Rescorla returned to the U.S. and used his military benefits to study creative writing at the University of Oklahoma, eventually earning a Bachelor of Arts degree, followed by a Master of Arts degree in English, and a law degree from the Oklahoma City University School of Law. He then moved to South Carolina, where he taught criminal justice at the University of South Carolina for three years and published a textbook on the subject. Rescorla left teaching for higher-paying jobs in corporate security, joining Dean Witter Reynolds at their offices at the World Trade Center in New York City in 1985, and living in New Jersey. After the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, Rescorla worried about a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Because his old American friend from Rhodesia, Daniel Hill, was trained in counterterrorism, in 1990 Rescorla asked him to visit the World Trade Center to assess its security. When Rescorla asked Hill how he would attack the building were he a terrorist, Hill asked to see the basement, and after the two walked down to the basement parking garage without being stopped by any visible security, Hill pointed to an easily accessible load-bearing column, and said, "This is a soft touch. I’d drive a truck full of explosives in here, walk out, and light it off." That year, Rescorla and Hill wrote a report to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, insisting on the need for more security in the parking garage. Their recommendations, which would have been expensive to implement, were ignored, according to James B. Stewart's biography of Rescorla, Heart of a Soldier. Following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Rescorla invited Hill to New York, where he hired him as a security consultant in order to analyze the building's security. Although no arrests had yet been made in the case, Rescorla suspected that the bomb had been planted by Muslim terrorists, probably Palestinians, or that an Iraqi colonel of engineers might have orchestrated the attack. Hill let his beard grow and visited several mosques in New Jersey, showing up for morning prayers at dawn. He took on the character of an anti-American Muslim, speaking fluent Arabic, in order to infiltrate and interview the other visitors to the mosques. He concluded that the attack was likely planned by a radical imam at a mosque in New York or New Jersey. Followers of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, a radical Muslim cleric based in Brooklyn, were subsequently convicted of the bombing. Rescorla gained credibility and authority after the bombing, which resulted in a change to the culture of Morgan Stanley. Rescorla wanted the company out of the building because he continued to feel, as did Hill, that the World Trade Center was still a target for terrorists, and that the next attack could involve a plane crashing into one of the towers. He recommended to his superiors at Morgan Stanley that the company leave Manhattan office space, mentioning that labor costs were lower in New Jersey, and that the firm's employees and equipment would be safer in a proposed four-story building. However, this recommendation was not followed as the company's lease at the World Trade Center did not terminate until 2006. At Rescorla's insistence, all employees, including senior executives, then practiced emergency evacuations every three months. After Dean Witter merged with Morgan Stanley in 1997, the company eventually occupied twenty-two floors in the South Tower, and several floors in a building nearby. Rescorla's office was on the forty-fourth floor of the South Tower. Feeling that the authorities lost legitimacy after they failed to respond to his 1990 warnings, he concluded that employees of Morgan Stanley, which was the largest tenant in the World Trade Center, could not rely on first responders in an emergency, and needed to empower themselves through surprise fire drills, in which he trained employees to meet in the hallway between stairwells and go down the stairs, two by two, to the 44th floor. Rescorla's strict approach to these drills put him into conflict with some high-powered executives who resented the interruption to their daily activities, but he nonetheless insisted that these rehearsals were necessary to train the employees in the event of an actual emergency. He timed employees with a stopwatch when they moved too slowly and lectured them on fire emergency basics. Rescorla and Hill were also critical of the police response during the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, commenting, "The police were sitting outside while kids were getting killed. They should have put themselves between the perpetrators and the victims. That was abject cowardice." Rescorla felt that if he and Hill were younger, they "could have flown to Colorado, gone in that building, and ended it before the law did." At 8:46 a.m. on the morning of September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center (Tower 1). Rescorla heard the explosion and saw the tower burning from his office window in the 44th floor of the South Tower (Tower 2). When a Port Authority announcement came over the P.A. system urging people to stay at their desks, Rescorla ignored the announcement, grabbed his bullhorn, walkie-talkie, and cell phone, and began systematically ordering Morgan Stanley employees to evacuate, including the 1,000 employees in WTC 5. He directed people down a stairwell from the 44th floor, continuing to calm employees after the building lurched violently following the crash of United Airlines Flight 175 38 floors above into Tower 2 at 9:03 A.M. Morgan Stanley executive Bill McMahon stated that even a group of 250 people visiting the offices for a stockbroker training class knew what to do because they had been shown the nearest stairway. Rescorla had boosted morale among his men in Vietnam by singing Cornish songs from his youth, and now he did the same in the stairwell, singing songs like one based on the Welsh song "Men of Harlech": "Men of Cornwall stop your dreaming, Can’t you see their spearpoints gleaming? See their warriors’ pennants streaming, To this battlefield. Men of Cornwall stand ye steady, It cannot be ever said ye For the battle were not ready. Stand and never yield!" Between songs, Rescorla called his wife, telling her, "Stop crying. I have to get these people out safely. If something should happen to me, I want you to know I've never been happier. You made my life." After successfully evacuating most of Morgan Stanley's 2,687 employees, he went back into the building. When one of his colleagues told him he too had to evacuate the World Trade Center, Rescorla replied, "As soon as I make sure everyone else is out." He was last seen on the 10th floor, heading upward, shortly before the South Tower collapsed at 9:59 A.M. His remains were never found. Rescorla was declared dead three weeks after the attacks. Rescorla and his first wife, Betsy, met as students at the University of Oklahoma. They married in Dallas in 1972. The Rescorlas' first child was born in South Carolina in 1976 and their second in 1978, while they were living in Chicago. The family moved to New Jersey. Rescorla and Betsy divorced after their children were grown. In 1994, Rescorla was diagnosed with prostate cancer and underwent surgery to remove his prostate. Initially, the prognosis was positive, but by 1998 the cancer had spread to his bone marrow. He underwent treatment, which involved painful injections directly into his stomach every month, and pills that dehydrated him and caused his body to swell. He also employed traditional Chinese medicine and meditation. Rescorla met his second wife, Susan Greer, an assistant to a dean at Fairleigh Dickinson University and a twice-divorced mother of three daughters, in late July 1998 while jogging near her Morristown, New Jersey home. Rescorla had been living in the area to be near his children after the divorce, and Susan first spoke to him to ask him why he was jogging barefoot, an activity he picked up in Rhodesia, where few natives had worn shoes, and which he had begun out of curiosity. Rescorla also mentioned to her that he was writing a play, M’kubwa Junction, which was set in Rhodesia, and based on his time there. The two moved into a Morristown townhouse together that October and married on February 20, 1999, in St. Augustine, Florida, where Hill, who had lived there since 1975, would again serve as best man. Rescorla chose St. Augustine because he wanted to be married somewhere near the sea, to remind him of his homeland of Cornwall. They later honeymooned in Hayle, Cornwall, in May 2000. During this time Rescorla exhibited a positive outlook about his cancer. In addition to Arabic, Rescorla, fond of the food and the culture of the Portuguese community in Newark, New Jersey, was also learning to speak Portuguese. He was also fascinated with the American West, and was interested in experiencing the spiritual aspects of AmerIndian culture. He and Susan also participated in yoga, ballroom dancing and studying Italian together. Rescorla was survived by his wife, Susan, his two children and his three stepdaughters by Susan. Rescorla had requested that he be cremated, and his ashes be strewn in Hayle. Having revered the eagle as a symbol of both American freedom and Native American mysticism, he had also told Susan that when he died he wanted her to contribute money to an endowment for eagles. Rescorla was uncomfortable about being portrayed as a war hero. Although he had given some interviews to his Vietnam commander, Harold Moore, for his 1992 book, We Were Soldiers Once… And Young, Rescorla chose not to read it when he saw that its cover featured a combat photograph of him. When he learned that the book was being made into a film starring Mel Gibson, he told his wife, Susan that he had no intention of seeing it, as he felt uncomfortable with anything that portrayed him or other survivors as war heroes, commenting, "The real heroes are dead." Nevertheless, Rescorla's activities during the September 11 attacks were quickly brought to national attention by the news media, including a detailed account by Michael Grunwald in the October 28, 2001 edition of The Washington Post of Rescorla's life and "epic death, one of those inspirational hero-tales that have sprouted like wildflowers from the Twin Towers rubble." Other memorials and tributes to Rescorla include: At a small, brief memorial service attended by family and a few close friends on October 27, Susan recited "The White Rose", a Cornish folk song that Rescorla was fond of, and a hawk that had recently been restored to health was released into freedom., The Morristown police paid tribute to Rescorla at a fund-raising dinner. Susan Rescorla donated Rick Rescorla's dark green Lincoln Mark VIII, which had been left in the station parking lot, to be auctioned off for charity as a "hero’s car.", The town of Hayle, Cornwall also held a memorial service that was attended by the head of Morgan Stanley in London., Several days after the Hayle service a tribute for the British victims of the attacks was held at Westminster Abbey and attended by Queen Elizabeth., Rescorla was honored with the White Cross of Cornwall/An Grows Wyn a Gernow award from his native Cornwall in 2003 by the Revived Cornish Stannary Parliament., In 2009, a statue of Rescorla was unveiled on The Walk Of Honor at the National Infantry Museum at Fort Benning, Georgia., On November 11, 2009, Rescorla was inducted into the Oklahoma Military Hall of Fame., At the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, Rescorla is memorialized at the South Pool, on Panel S-46., The Rick Rescorla National Award for Resilience was created by the Department of Homeland Security to "recognize outstanding response to a catastrophic incident and leadership in fostering resilient and prepared communities.", On April 13, 2019, at the Long Rock train depot in Rescorla's native Cornwall, a new class 802 train was named "Rick Rescorla" in a ceremony that also named another train the "Solomon Browne", after the lifeboat and crew lost in the Penlee lifeboat disaster., On September 11, 2019, President Donald Trump announced that Rescorla would be honored with the Presidential Citizens Medal which was presented to Susan at a White House ceremony on November 7th. A 2002 biography of Rescorla, Heart of a Soldier by James B. Stewart (), was described by Time Magazine as "the best non-fiction book of 2002"., Rescorla was the subject of a 2005 documentary entitled The Man Who Predicted 9/11. The film was shown on Channel 4 in the UK and the History Channel in the United States., Amanda Ripley's 2008 book, The Unthinkable: Who survives When Disaster Strikes—and Why, profiles Rescorla in the "Conclusion" section of the book., Stewart's book became the basis of an opera of the same name by Christopher Theofanidis, with libretto by Donna Di Novelli. It was premiered by the San Francisco Opera on September 10, 2011, in a production starring Thomas Hampson as Rescorla and featuring soprano Melody Moore as Susan, "Rescorla’s wife and soul mate", and William Burden as Daniel J. Hill, "Rescorla’s best friend and fellow soldier". A recording of a San Francisco performance was broadcast by NPR September 8, 2012. John P. O'Neill, former FBI agent and WTC head of security who died in the attacks on 9/11 The Richard Rescorla Memorial Foundation, Voice of the Prophet - a 1998 Video interview with Rick Rescorla, "The Real Heroes are Dead" – The New Yorker, "B.A. of the Week Tribute", American Legion memorial pages:, Post 44, Post 149

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"Melting Pot" is the 1969 debut single from UK pop group Blue Mink. The song was written by Blue Mink's lead singer Roger Cook and long-time songwriter partner Roger Greenaway. The song peaked at number three in the UK Singles chart in the first week of 1970, and also reached Number 11 in Ireland. It became the opening track on the group's 1969 debut album, also titled Melting Pot. While the song has assimilationist undertones, it is generally considered a plea for racial harmony. However in 2015, BBC Three Counties DJ Iain Lee apologized for playing the song, which includes the lyric "yellow Chinkees". The song featured on episode 3 of I'm Alan Partridge series 1, entitled 'Watership Alan' , in which Alan sings the song whilst exercising in his hotel room alongside Michael, the caretaker, who is clearing out an air vent. Alan asks Michael whether the song is racist, but Michael says no on the basis that Chinese is both a race of people and a food. 7" (1969) 1. "Melting Pot" (Roger Cook/Roger Greenaway) 2. "Blue Mink" (Alan Parker) 7" (1969) 1. "Melting Pot" (Roger Cook/Roger Greenaway) 2. "But Not Forever" 7" (1975) 1. "Melting Pot" 2. "Gimme Reggae" In 1988 "Melting Pot" was covered by New Zealand female vocal group and covers band When the Cat's Away. Their version peaked at number one in the New Zealand charts, and charted for 15 weeks. The single was certified gold. It was one of three songs by New Zealand artists to reach number one in 1988. The group released a low-budget, self-produced music video, directed by photographer Kerry Brown. The video features the group performing with a band in a white room, footage of people of different ethnic groups around Auckland, and cats. 1. "Melting Pot" (Roger Cook/Roger Greenaway) 2. "Fire" (Bruce Springsteen) The reggae singer Max Romeo covered the song and released it as a single on the Unity label in the UK in 1970., Canadian band The Dublin Corporation recorded the song on Franklin 643 circa 1971., Tony Kingston also covered "Melting Pot" in 1972., The New Seekers recorded a version for their 1974 album, Together (member Eve Graham had originally been offered the song back in 1969)., English pop group Culture Club played a live version of "Melting Pot" in 1983. The live song was made available on the 2003 digital remaster of their 1983 album Colour By Numbers., Boyzone recorded a version on their 1996 album A Different Beat, which also featured the vocals of Madeline Bell. When the Cat's Away music video, Proposed New Zealand flag based on song The melting pot is a monocultural metaphor for a heterogeneous society becoming more homogeneous, the different elements "melting together" with a common culture, or vice versa, for a homogeneous society becoming more heterogeneous through the influx of foreign elements with different cultural backgrounds, possessing the potential to create disharmony within the previous culture. Historically, it is often used to describe the cultural integration of immigrants to the United States. The melting-together metaphor was in use by the 1780s. The exact term "melting pot" came into general usage in the United States after it was used as a metaphor describing a fusion of nationalities, cultures and ethnicities in the 1908 play of the same name. The desirability of assimilation and the melting pot model has been rejected by proponents of multiculturalism, who have suggested alternative metaphors to describe the current American society, such as a mosaic, salad bowl, or kaleidoscope, in which different cultures mix, but remain distinct in some aspects. The melting pot continues to be used as an assimilation model in vernacular and political discourse along with more inclusive models of assimilation in the academic debates on identity, adaptation and integration of immigrants into various political, social and economic spheres. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the metaphor of a "crucible" or "smelting pot" was used to describe the fusion of different nationalities, ethnicities and cultures. It was used together with concepts of the United States as an ideal republic and a "city upon a hill" or new promised land. It was a metaphor for the idealized process of immigration and colonization by which different nationalities, cultures and "races" (a term that could encompass nationality, ethnicity and race proper) were to blend into a new, virtuous community, and it was connected to utopian visions of the emergence of an American "new man". While "melting" was in common use the exact term "melting pot" came into general usage in 1908, after the premiere of the play The Melting Pot by Israel Zangwill. The first use in American literature of the concept of immigrants "melting" into the receiving culture are found in the writings of J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. In his Letters from an American Farmer (1782) Crevecoeur writes, in response to his own question, "What then is the American, this new man?" that the American is one who "leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world." In 1845, Ralph Waldo Emerson, alluding to the development of European civilization out of the medieval Dark Ages, wrote in his private journal of America as the Utopian product of a culturally and racially mixed "smelting pot", but only in 1912 were his remarks first published. In his writing, Emerson explicitly welcomed the racial intermixing of whites and non-whites, a highly controversial view during his lifetime. A magazine article in 1876 used the metaphor explicitly: In 1893, historian Frederick Jackson Turner also used the metaphor of immigrants melting into one American culture. In his essay The Significance of the Frontier in American History, he referred to the "composite nationality" of the American people, arguing that the frontier had functioned as a "crucible" where "the immigrants were Americanized, liberated and fused into a mixed race, English in neither nationality nor characteristics". In his 1905 travel narrative The American Scene, Henry James discusses cultural intermixing in New York City as a "fusion, as of elements in solution in a vast hot pot". The exact term "melting pot" came into general usage in the United States after it was used as a metaphor describing a fusion of nationalities, cultures and ethnicities in the 1908 play of the same name, first performed in Washington, D.C., where the immigrant protagonist declared: Israel Zangwill In The Melting Pot (1908), Israel Zangwill combined a romantic denouement with an utopian celebration of complete cultural intermixing. The play was an adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, set in New York City. The play's immigrant protagonist David Quixano, a Russian Jew, falls in love with Vera, a fellow Russian immigrant who is Christian. Vera is an idealistic settlement house worker and David is a composer struggling to create an "American symphony" to celebrate his adopted homeland. Together they manage to overcome the old world animosities that threaten to separate them. But then David discovers that Vera is the daughter of the Tsarist officer who directed the pogrom that forced him to flee Russia. Horrified, he breaks up with her, betraying his belief in the possibility of transcending religious and ethnic animosities. However, unlike Shakespeare's tragedy, there is a happy ending. At the end of the play the lovers are reconciled. Reunited with Vera and watching the setting sun gilding the Statue of Liberty, David Quixano has a prophetic vision: "It is the Fires of God round His Crucible. There she lies, the great Melting-Pot—Listen! Can't you hear the roaring and the bubbling? There gapes her mouth, the harbor where a thousand mammoth feeders come from the ends of the world to pour in their human freight". David foresees how the American melting pot will make the nation's immigrants transcend their old animosities and differences and will fuse them into one people: "Here shall they all unite to build the Republic of Man and the Kingdom of God. Ah, Vera, what is the glory of Rome and Jerusalem where all nations and races come to worship and look back, compared with the glory of America, where all races and nations come to labour and look forward!" Zangwill thus combined the metaphor of the "crucible" or "melting pot" with a celebration of the United States as an ideal republic and a new promised land. The prophetic words of his Jewish protagonist against the backdrop of the Statue of Liberty allude to Emma Lazarus's famous poem The New Colossus (1883), which celebrated the statue as a symbol of American democracy and its identity as an immigrant nation. Zangwill concludes his play by wishing, "Peace, peace, to all ye unborn millions, fated to fill this giant continent—the God of our children give you Peace." Expressing his hope that through this forging process the "unborn millions" who would become America's future citizens would become a unified nation at peace with itself despite its ethnic and religious diversity. In terms of immigrants to the United States, the "melting pot" process has been equated with Americanization, that is, cultural assimilation and acculturation. The "melting pot" metaphor implies both a melting of cultures and intermarriage of ethnicities, yet cultural assimilation or acculturation can also occur without intermarriage. Thus African-Americans are fully culturally integrated into American culture and institutions. Yet more than a century after the abolition of slavery, intermarriage between African- Americans and other ethnicities is much less common than between different white ethnicities, or between white and Asian ethnicities. Intermarriage between whites and non-whites, and especially African-Americans, was a taboo in the United States for a long time, and was illegal in many US states (see anti-miscegenation laws) until 1967. The melting pot theory of ethnic relations, which sees American identity as centered upon the acculturation or assimilation and the intermarriage of white immigrant groups, has been analyzed by the emerging academic field of whiteness studies. This discipline examines the "social construction of whiteness" and highlights the changing ways in which whiteness has been normative to American national identity from the 17th to the 20th century. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, European immigration to the United States became increasingly diverse and increased substantially in numbers. Beginning in the 1890s, large numbers of Southern and Eastern European immigrant groups such as the Italians, Jews, and Poles arrived. Many returned to Europe but those who remained merged into the cultural melting pot, adopting American lifestyles. By contrast, Chinese arrivals met intense hostility and new laws in the 1880s tried to exclude them, but many arrived illegally. Hostility forced them into "Chinatowns" or ethnic enclaves in the larger cities, where they lived a culture apart and seldom assimilated. The acquisition of Hawaii in 1898, with full citizenship for the residents of all races, greatly increased the Asian American population. In the early 20th century, the meaning of the recently popularized concept of the melting pot was subject to ongoing debate which centered on the issue of immigration. The debate surrounding the concept of the melting pot centered on how immigration impacted American society and on how immigrants should be approached. The melting pot was equated with either the acculturation or the total assimilation of European immigrants, and the debate centered on the differences between these two ways of approaching immigration: "Was the idea to melt down the immigrants and then pour the resulting, formless liquid into the preexisting cultural and social molds modeled on Anglo-Protestants like Henry Ford and Woodrow Wilson, or was the idea instead that everyone, Mayflower descendants and Sicilians, Ashkenazi and Slovaks, would act chemically upon each other so that all would be changed, and a new compound would emerge?" Nativists wanted to severely restrict access to the melting pot. They felt that far too many "undesirables," or in their view, culturally inferior immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe had already arrived. The compromises that were reached in a series of immigration laws in the 1920s established the principle that the number of new arrivals should be small, and, apart from family reunification, the inflow of new immigrants should match the ethnic profile of the nation as it existed at that time. National quotas were established that discouraged immigration from Poland, Italy and Russia, and encouraged immigration from Britain, Ireland and Germany. Intermarriage between Euro-American men and Native American women has been common since colonial days. In the 21st century some 7.5 million Americans claim Native American ancestry. In the 1920s the nation welcomed celebrities of Native American background, especially Will Rogers and Jim Thorpe, as well as Vice President Charles Curtis, who had been brought up on a reservation and identified with his Indian heritage. The mixing of whites and blacks, resulting in multiracial children, for which the term "miscegenation" was coined in 1863, was a taboo, and most whites opposed marriages between whites and blacks. In many states, marriage between whites and non-whites was even prohibited by state law through anti- miscegenation laws. As a result, two kinds of "mixture talk" developed: By the early 21st century, many white Americans celebrated the impact of African- American culture, especially in sports and music. Marriages between white Americans and African-Americans were still problematic in both communities. Israel Zangwill saw this coming in the early 20th century: "However scrupulously and justifiably America avoids intermarriage with the negro, the comic spirit cannot fail to note spiritual miscegenation which, while clothing, commercializing, and Christianizing the ex-African, has given 'rag- time' and the sex-dances that go with it, first to white America and then to the whole white world." White Americans long regarded some elements of African-American culture quintessentially "American", while at the same time treating African Americans as second-class citizens. White appropriation, stereotyping and mimicking of black culture played an important role in the construction of an urban popular culture in which European immigrants could express themselves as Americans, through such traditions as blackface, minstrel shows and later in jazz and in early Hollywood cinema, notably in The Jazz Singer (1927). Analyzing the "racial masquerade" that was involved in creation of a white "melting pot" culture through the stereotyping and imitation of black and other non-white cultures in the early 20th century, historian Michael Rogin has commented: "Repudiating 1920s nativism, these films [Rogin discusses The Jazz Singer, Old San Francisco (1927), Whoopee! (1930), King of Jazz (1930) celebrate the melting pot. Unlike other racially stigmatized groups, white immigrants can put on and take off their mask of difference. But the freedom promised immigrants to make themselves over points to the vacancy, the violence, the deception, and the melancholy at the core of American self-fashioning". Since World War II, the idea of the melting pot has become more racially inclusive in the United States, gradually extending also to acceptance of marriage between whites and non-whites. This trend towards greater acceptance of ethnic and racial minorities was evident in popular culture in the combat films of World War II, starting with Bataan (1943). This film celebrated solidarity and cooperation between Americans of all races and ethnicities through the depiction of a multiracial American unit. At the time blacks and Japanese in the armed forces were still segregated, while Chinese and Indians were in integrated units. Historian Richard Slotkin sees Bataan and the combat genre that sprang from it as the source of the "melting pot platoon", a cinematic and cultural convention symbolizing in the 1940s "an American community that did not yet exist", and thus presenting an implicit protest against racial segregation. However, Slotkin points out that ethnic and racial harmony within this platoon is predicated upon racist hatred for the Japanese enemy: "the emotion which enables the platoon to transcend racial prejudice is itself a virulent expression of racial hatred...The final heat which blends the ingredients of the melting pot is rage against an enemy which is fully dehumanized as a race of 'dirty monkeys.'" He sees this racist rage as an expression of "the unresolved tension between racialism and civic egalitarianism in American life". In Hawaii, as Rohrer (2008) argues, there are two dominant discourses of racial politics, both focused on "haole" (white people or whiteness in Hawaii) in the islands. The first is the discourse of racial harmony representing Hawaii as an idyllic racial paradise with no conflict or inequality. There is also a competing discourse of discrimination against nonlocals, which contends that "haoles" and nonlocal people of color are disrespected and treated unfairly in Hawaii. As negative referents for each other, these discourses work to reinforce one another and are historically linked. Rohrer proposes that the question of racial politics be reframed toward consideration of the processes of racialization themselves—toward a new way of thinking about racial politics in Hawaii that breaks free of the not racist/racist dyad. Throughout the history of the modern Olympic Games, the theme of the United States as a melting pot has been employed to explain American athletic success, becoming an important aspect of national self-image. The diversity of American athletes in the Olympic Games in the early 20th century was an important avenue for the country to redefine a national culture amid-a massive influx of immigrants, as well as American Indians (represented by Jim Thorpe in 1912) and blacks (represented by Jesse Owens in 1936). In the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, two black American athletes with gold and bronze medals saluted the U.S. national anthem with a "Black Power" salute that symbolized rejection of assimilation. The international aspect of the games allowed the United States to define its pluralistic self-image against the monolithic traditions of other nations. American athletes served as cultural ambassadors of American exceptionalism, promoting the melting pot ideology and the image of America as a progressive nation based on middle-class culture. Journalists and other American analysts of the Olympics framed their comments with patriotic nationalism, stressing that the success of U.S. athletes, especially in the high-profile track-and-field events, stemmed not from simple athletic prowess but from the superiority of the civilization that spawned them. Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City strongly revived the melting pot image, returning to a bedrock form of American nationalism and patriotism. The reemergence of Olympic melting pot discourse was driven especially by the unprecedented success of African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans in events traditionally associated with Europeans and white North Americans such as speed skating and the bobsled. The 2002 Winter Olympics was also a showcase of American religious freedom and cultural tolerance of the history of Utah's large majority population of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as well representation of Muslim Americans and other religious groups in the U.S. Olympic team. The concept of multiculturalism was preceded by the concept of cultural pluralism, which was first developed in the 1910s and 1920s, and became widely popular during the 1940s. The concept of cultural pluralism first emerged in the 1910s and 1920s among intellectual circles out of the debates in the United States over how to approach issues of immigration and national identity. The First World War and the Russian Revolution caused a "Red Scare" in the US, which also fanned feelings of xenophobia. During and immediately after the First World War, the concept of the melting pot was equated by Nativists with complete cultural assimilation towards an Anglo-American norm ("Anglo-conformity") on the part of immigrants, and immigrants who opposed such assimilation were accused of disloyalty to the United States. The newly popularized concept of the melting pot was frequently equated with "Americanization", meaning cultural assimilation, by many "old stock" Americans. In Henry Ford's Ford English School (established in 1914), the graduation ceremony for immigrant employees involved symbolically stepping off an immigrant ship and passing through the melting pot, entering at one end in costumes designating their nationality and emerging at the other end in identical suits and waving American flags. Opposition to the absorption of millions of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe was especially strong among popular writers such as Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard, who believed in the "racial" superiority of Americans of Northern European descent as member of the "Nordic race", and therefore demanded immigration restrictions to stop a "degeneration" of America's white racial "stock". They believed that complete cultural assimilation of the immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe was not a solution to the problem of immigration because intermarriage with these immigrants would endanger the racial purity of Anglo-America. The controversy over immigration faded away after immigration restrictions were put in place with the enactment of the Johnson-Reed Act in 1924. In response to the pressure exerted on immigrants to culturally assimilate and also as a reaction against the denigration of the culture of non-Anglo white immigrants by Nativists, intellectuals on the left, such as Horace Kallen in Democracy Versus the Melting-Pot (1915), and Randolph Bourne in Trans-National America (1916), laid the foundations for the concept of cultural pluralism. This term was coined by Kallen. Randolph Bourne, who objected to Kallen's emphasis on the inherent value of ethnic and cultural difference, envisioned a "trans- national" and cosmopolitan America. The concept of cultural pluralism was popularized in the 1940s by John Dewey. In the United States, where the term melting pot is still commonly used, the ideas of cultural pluralism and multiculturalism have, in some circles, taken precedence over the idea of assimilation. Alternate models where immigrants retain their native cultures such as the "salad bowl" or the "symphony" are more often used by sociologists to describe how cultures and ethnicities mix in the United States. Nonetheless, the term assimilation is still used to describe the ways in which immigrants and their descendants adapt, such as by increasingly using the national language of the host society as their first language. Since the 1960s, much research in Sociology and History has disregarded the melting pot theory for describing interethnic relations in the United States and other counties. The theory of multiculturalism offers alternative analogies for ethnic interaction including salad bowl theory, or, as it is known in Canada, the cultural mosaic. In the 1990s, political correctness in the United States emphasized that each ethnic and national group has the right to maintain and preserve its cultural distinction and integrity, and that one does not need to assimilate or abandon one's heritage in order to blend in or merge into the majority Anglo-American society. Nevertheless, some prominent scholars, such as Samuel P. Huntington in Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity, have expressed the view that the most accurate explanation for modern-day United States culture and inter-ethnic relations can be found somewhere in a fusion of some of the concepts and ideas contained in the melting pot, assimilation, and Anglo-conformity models. Under this theory, it is asserted that the United States has one of the most homogeneous cultures of any nation in the world. This line of thought holds that this American national culture derived most of its traits and characteristics from early colonial settlers from Britain, Ireland, and Germany. When more recent immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe brought their various cultures to America at the beginning of the 20th century, they changed the American cultural landscape just very slightly and, for the most part, assimilated into America's pre-existing culture, which had its origins in Northwestern Europe. The decision of whether to support a melting-pot or multicultural approach has developed into an issue of much debate within some countries. For example, the French and British governments and populace are currently debating whether Islamic cultural practices and dress conflict with their attempts to form culturally unified countries. In more ancient times, some marriages between distinctly different tribes and nations were due to royalty trying to form alliances with or to influence other kingdoms or to dissuade marauders or slave traders. Two examples, Hermodike I c.800BC and Hermodike II c.600BC were Greek princesses from the house of Agamemnon who married kings from what is now Central Turkey. These unions resulted in the transfer of ground-breaking technological skills into Ancient Greece, respectively, the phonetic written script and the use of coinage (to use a token currency, where the value is guaranteed by the state). Both inventions were rapidly adopted by surrounding nations through trade and cooperation and have been of fundamental benefit to the progress of civilization. Mexico has seen a variety of cultural influences over the years, and in its history has adopted a mixed assimilationist/multiculturalist policy. Mexico, beginning with the conquest of the Aztecs, had entered a new global empire based on trade and immigration. In the 16th and 17th centuries, waves of Spanish, and to a lesser extent, African and Filipino culture became embedded into the fabric of Mexican culture. It is important to note, however, that from a Mexican standpoint, the immigrants and their culture were no longer considered foreign, but Mexican in their entirety. The food, art, and even heritage were assimilated into a Mexican identity. Upon the independence of Mexico, Mexico began receiving immigrants from Central Europe, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, again, bringing many cultural influences but being quickly labeled as Mexican, unlike in the United States, where other culture is considered foreign. This assimilation is very evident, even in Mexican society today: for example, banda, a style of music originating in northern Mexico, is simply a Mexican take on Central European music brought by immigrants in the 18th century. Mexico's thriving beer industry was also the result of German brewers finding refuge in Mexico. Many famous Mexicans are actually of Arab descent; Salma Hayek and Carlos Slim. The coastal states of Guerrero and Veracruz are inhabited by citizens of African descent. Mexico's national policy is based on the concept of mestizaje, a word meaning "to mix". The immigrants are socially under pressure to adopt a Mexican nationality and become part of the broader culture (speaking Spanish, respect the Catholic heritage, help the society), while contributing useful cultural traits foreign to Mexican society. As with other areas of new settlement such as Canada, Australia, the United States, Brazil, New Zealand, The United Arab Emirates, and Singapore, Argentina is considered a country of immigrants. When it is considered that Argentina was second only to the United States (27 million of immigrants) in the number of immigrants received, even ahead of such other areas of newer settlement like Australia, Brazil, Canada and New Zealand; and that the country was scarcely populated following its independence, the impact of the immigration to Argentina becomes evident. Most Argentines are descended from colonial-era settlers and of the 19th- and 20th-century immigrants from Europe. An estimated 8% of the population is Mestizo, and a further 4% of Argentines are of Arab (in Argentina the Arab ethnicity is considered among the White people, just like in the US Census) or Asian heritage. In the last national census, based on self-identification, 600,000 Argentines (2% of the population) declared to be Amerindians Although various genetic tests show that in average, Argentines have 20 to 30% indigenous ancestry, which leads many who are culturally European, to identify as white, even though they are genetically mestizo. Most of the 6 million European immigrants arriving between 1850 and 1950, regardless of origin, settled in several regions of the country. Due to this large-scale European immigration, Argentina's population more than doubled, although half ended up returning to Europe or settling in the United States. The majority of these European immigrants came from Spain and Italy mostly, but to a lesser extent, Germany, France, and Russia. Small communities also descend from Switzerland, Wales, Scotland, Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, Ukraine, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Belgium, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Bulgaria, Armenia, Greece, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and several other regions. Italian population in Argentina arrived mainly from the northern Italian regions varying between Piedmont, Veneto and Lombardy, later from Campania and Calabria; Many Argentines have the gentilic of an Italian city, place, street or occupation of the immigrant as last name, many of them were not necessarily born Italians, but once they did the roles of immigration from Italy the name usually changed. Spanish immigrants were mainly Galicians and Basques. Millions of immigrants also came from France (notably Béarn and the Northern Basque Country), Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Finland, Russia and the United Kingdom. The Welsh settlement in Patagonia, known as Y Wladfa, began in 1865; mainly along the coast of Chubut Province. In addition to the main colony in Chubut, a smaller colony was set up in Santa Fe and another group settled at Coronel Suárez, southern Buenos Aires Province. Of the 50,000 Patagonians of Welsh descent, about 5,000 are Welsh speakers. The community is centered on the cities of Gaiman, Trelew and Trevelin. Brazil has long been a melting pot for a wide range of cultures. From colonial times Portuguese Brazilians have favoured assimilation and tolerance for other peoples, and intermarriage was more acceptable in Brazil than in most other European colonies. However, Brazilian society has never been completely free of ethnic strife and exploitation, and some groups have chosen to remain separate from mainstream social life. Brazilians of mainly European descent (Portuguese, Italian, French, German, Austrian, Spanish, Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Lithuanian, Hungarian, etc.) account for more than half the population, although people of mixed ethnic backgrounds form an increasingly larger segment; roughly two-fifths of the total are mulattoes (mulattos; people of mixed African and European ancestry) and mestizos (mestiços, or caboclos; people of mixed European and Indian ancestry). Portuguese are the main European ethnic group in Brazil, and most Brazilians can trace their ancestry to an ethnic Portuguese or a mixed-race Portuguese. Among European descendants, Brazil has the largest Italian diaspora, the second largest German diaspora, as well as other European groups. The country is also home to the largest Japanese diaspora outside Japan, the largest Arab community outside the Arab World and one of the top 10 Jewish populations. Colombia is a melting pot of races and ethnicities. The population is descended from three racial groups—Native Americans, blacks, and whites—that have mingled throughout the nearly 500 years of the country's history. No official figures were available, since the Colombian government dropped any references to race in the census after 1918, but according to rough estimates in the late 1980s, mestizos (white and Native American mix) constituted approximately 50% of the population, whites (predominantly Spanish origin, Italian, German, French, etc.) made a 25%, mulattoes (black-white mix) 14% and zambos (black and Native American mix) 4%, blacks (pure or predominantly of African origin) 3% percent, and Native Americans 1%. Costa Rican people is a very syncretic melting pot, because this country has been constituted in percentage since the 16th century by immigrants from all the European countries—mostly Spaniards and Italians with a lot of Germans, British, Swedes, Swiss, French and Croats—also as black people from Africa and Jamaica, Americans, Chinese, Lebanese and Latin Americans who have mestized over time with the large native populations (criollos, castizos, mulattos, blacks and tri-racial) creating the national average modern ethnic composition. Nowadays a great part of the Costa Rican inhabitants are considered white (84%), with minority groups of mulatto (7%), indigenous (2%), Chinese (2%) and black (1%). Also, over 9% of the total population is foreign- born (specially from Nicaragua, Colombia and the United States). The Indian subcontinent has a long history of inter-ethnic marriage dating back to ancient India. Various groups of people have been intermarrying for millennia in the Indian subcontinent, including speakers of Dravidian, Indo- Aryan, Austroasiatic, and Tibeto-Burman languages. On account of such diverse influences, the Indian subcontinent in a nut-shell appears to be a cradle of human civilization. Despite invasions in its recent history it has succeeded in organically assimilating incoming influences, blunting their wills for imperialistic hegemony and maintaining its strong roots and culture. These invasions, however, brought their own racial mixing between diverse populations and the Indian subcontinent is considered an exemplary "melting pot" (and not a "salad bowl") by many geneticists for exactly this reason. However, society in the Indian subcontinent has never been completely free of ethnic strife and exploitation, and some groups have chosen to remain separate from mainstream social life. Ethnic conflicts in Pakistan between Baloch, Pashtun, Punjabis, and Sindhis, are other impediments to the melting pot thesis. Afghanistan seems to be in the process of becoming a melting pot, as customs specific to particular ethnic groups are becoming summarily perceived as national traits of Afghanistan. The term Afghan was originally used to refer to the Pashtuns in the Middle Ages, and the intention behind the creation of the Afghan state was originally to be a Pashtun state, but later this policy changed, leading to the inclusion of non-Pashtuns in the state as Afghans. Today in Afghanistan, the development of a cultural melting pot is occurring, where different Afghanistan ethnic groups are mixing together to build a new Afghan ethnicity composed of preceding ethnicities in Afghanistan today, ultimately replacing the old Pashtun identity which stood for Afghan. With the churning growth of Persian, many ethnic groups, including de-tribalized Pashtuns, are adopting Dari Persian as their new native tongue. Many ethnic groups in Afghanistan tolerate each other, while the Hazara–Pashtun conflict was notable, and often claimed as a Shia-Sunni conflict instead of ethnic conflict, as this conflict was carried out by the Taliban. The Taliban, which are mostly ethnically Pashtun, have spurred Anti-Pashtunism across non-Pashtun Afghans. Pashtun–Tajik rivalries have lingered about, but are much milder. Reasons for this antipathy are criticism of Tajiks (for either their non- tribal culture or cultural rivalry in Afghanistan) by Pashtuns and criticism of Taliban (mostly composed of Pashtuns) by Tajiks. There have been rivalries between Pashtuns and Uzbeks as well, which is likely very similar to the Kyrgyzstan Crisis, which Pashtuns would likely take place as Kyrgyz (for having a similar nomadic culture), rivaling with Tajiks and Uzbeks (of sedentary culture), despite all being Sunni Muslims. In the early years of the state of Israel, the term melting pot (כור היתוך), also known as "Ingathering of the Exiles" (קיבוץ גלויות), was not a description of a process, but an official governmental doctrine of assimilating the Jewish immigrants that originally came from varying cultures (see Jewish ethnic divisions). This was performed on several levels, such as educating the younger generation (with the parents not having the final say) and (to mention an anecdotal one) encouraging and sometimes forcing the new citizens to adopt a Hebrew name. Activists such as the Iraq-born Ella Shohat that an elite which developed in the early 20th century, out of the earlier- arrived Zionist Pioneers of the Second and Third Aliyas (immigration waves)—and who gained a dominant position in the Yishuv (pre-state community) since the 1930s—had formulated a new Hebrew culture, based on the values of Socialist Zionism, and imposed it on all later arrivals, at the cost of suppressing and erasing these later immigrants' original culture. Proponents of the Melting Pot policy asserted that it applied to all newcomers to Israel equally; specifically, that Eastern European Jews were pressured to discard their Yiddish-based culture as ruthlessly as Mizrahi Jews were pressured to give up the culture which they developed during centuries of life in Arab and Muslim countries. Critics respond, however, that a cultural change effected by a struggle within the Ashkenazi-East European community, with younger people voluntarily discarding their ancestral culture and formulating a new one, is not parallel to the subsequent exporting and imposing of this new culture on others, who had no part in formulating it. Also, it was asserted that extirpating the Yiddish culture had been in itself an act of oppression only compounding what was done to the Mizrahi immigrants. Today the reaction to this doctrine is ambivalent; some say that it was a necessary measure in the founding years, while others claim that it amounted to cultural oppression. Others argue that the melting pot policy did not achieve its declared target: for example, the persons born in Israel are more similar from an economic point of view to their parents than to the rest of the population. The policy is generally not practised today though as there is less need for that—the mass immigration waves at Israel's founding have declined. Nevertheless, one fifth of current Israel's Jewish population have immigrated from former Soviet Union in the last two decades. The Jewish population includes other minorities such as Haredi Jews; Furthermore, 20% of Israel's population is Arab. These factors as well as others contribute to the rise of pluralism as a common principle in the last years. Already the Kievan Rus was a multi ethnic state where different ethnicities merged, including Slavs, Finns, Turks and Balts. Later the expansion of the Grand Duchy of Moscow and later of the Russian Empire throughout 15th to 20th centuries created a unique melting pot. Though the majority of Russians had Slavic-speaking ancestry, different ethnicities were assimilated into the Russian melting pot through the period of expansion. Assimilation was a way for ethnic minorities to advance their standing within the Russian society and state—as individuals or groups. It required adoption of Russian as a day-to- day language and Orthodox Christianity as religion of choice. The Roman Catholics (as in Poland and Lithuania) generally resisted assimilation. Throughout the centuries of eastward expansion of Russia Finno-Ugric and Turkic peoples were assimilated and included into the emerging Russian nation. This includes Mordvin, Udmurt, Mari, Tatar, Chuvash, Bashkir, and others. Surnames of many of Russia's nobility (including Suvorov, Kutuzov, Yusupov, etc.) suggest their Turkic origin. Groups of later, 18th- and 19th-century migrants to Russia, from Europe (Germans, French, Italians, Poles, Serbs, Bulgarians, Greeks, Jews, etc.) or the Caucasus (Georgians, Armenians, Ossetians, Chechens, Azeris and Turks among them) also assimilated within several generations after settling among Russians in the expanding Russian Empire. The Soviet people () was an ideological epithet for the population of the Soviet Union. The Soviet government promoted the doctrine of assimilating all peoples living in USSR into one Soviet people, accordingly to Marxist principle of fraternity of peoples. The effort lasted for the entire history of the Soviet Union, but did not succeed, as evidenced by developments in most national cultures in the territory after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The term has been used to describe a number of countries in Southeast Asia. Given the region's location and importance to trade routes between China and the Western world, certain countries in the region have become ethnically diverse. In Vietnam, a relevant phenomenon is "tam giáo đồng nguyên", meaning the co-existence and co-influence of three major religious teaching schools (Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism), which shows a process defined as "cultural addivity". In the pre-Spanish era the Philippines was the trading nexus of various cultures and eventually became the melting pot of different nations. This primarily consisted of the Chinese, Indian and Arab traders. This is also includes neighboring southeast Asian cultures. The cultures and races mixed with indigenous tribes, mainly of Austronesian descent (i.e. the Indonesians, Malays and Brunei) and the Negritos. The result was a mix of cultures and ideals. This melting pot of culture continued with the arrival of Europeans, mixing their western culture with the nation. The Spanish Empire colonized the Philippines for more than three centuries, and during the early 20th century, was conquered and annexed by the United States and occupied by the Empire of Japan during World War II. In modern times, the Philippines has been the place of many retired Americans, Japanese expatriates and Korean students. And continues to uphold its status as a melting pot state today. Schoolhouse Rock! has a song entitled "The Great American Melting Pot"., In 1969 the song "Melting Pot" was released by the UK band Blue Mink and charted at #3 in the UK Singles Chart. The lyrics espouse how the world should become one big melting pot where different races and religions are to be mixed, "churning out coffee coloured people by the score", referring to the possible pigmentation of children after such racial mixing., On The Colbert Report, an alternative to the melting pot culture was posed on The Wørd called "Lunchables", where separate cultures "co-exist" by being entirely separate and maintaining no contact or involvement (see also NIMBY)., In the band Laibach's song "America" from the album Volk, the expression appear in their lyrics in "America, the Melting pot". Assimilation (sociology), Cultural pluralism, Ethnic origin, Hyphenated American, Interculturalism, Lusotropicalism, More Irish than the Irish themselves, Multiculturalism in Canada, Multicultural media in Canada, Nation-building, Racial integration, The race of the future, Transculturation, Zhonghua Minzu Roger Frederick Cook (born 19 August 1940) is an English singer, songwriter and record producer, who has written many hit records for other recording artists. He has also had a successful recording career in his own right. He is best known for his collaborations with Roger Greenaway. Cook's co-compositions have included "You've Got Your Troubles", and the transatlantic million selling songs, "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" and "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress". They were the first UK songwriting partnership to win an Ivor Novello Award as 'Songwriters of the Year' in two successive years. In 1997, Cook became the first and so far only British songwriter to enter the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. Cook was born in Fishponds, Bristol, England. Most of the hits he has written have been in collaboration with Roger Greenaway, whom he originally met while they were members of a close harmony group, the Kestrels. Continuing on as a duo, Cook and Greenaway then had a brief but successful recording career between 1965 and 1967 as David and Jonathan, scoring hits with a cover version of the Beatles' "Michelle", and their own "Lovers of the World Unite". They also penned their first hit as songwriters for others in 1965, with "You've Got Your Troubles", a UK number 2 and US number 7 for the Fortunes. As a performer Cook is best remembered as a member of Blue Mink, sharing lead vocals with Madeline Bell. The group was formed in 1969, primarily as a producer's outfit, featuring a wealth of top session musicians including Herbie Flowers (bassist), Alan Parker (guitarist), Roger Coulam (keyboardist) and Barry Morgan (drummer), who were simultaneously members of the jazz / rock / big band fusion outfit CCS, another mainly recording act. Over the next four years Blue Mink had several Top 20 entries, mostly co-written by Cook, the most successful being "Melting Pot" and "Banner Man", before they disbanded in 1974. Cook also sang backing vocals on some of the earliest recordings by Elton John, and continued to record albums as a solo artist, including Study (1970), credited to Roger James Cooke, Meanwhile Back at the World (1972), Minstrel in Flight (1973) and Alright (1976). Amongst hits he has written with others, including Greenaway and writers such as Albert Hammond, Mike Hazlewood and Tony Macaulay are "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" (The New Seekers), "Good Times, Better Times" (Cliff Richard), "Softly Whispering I Love You" (The Congregation), "Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart" (Gene Pitney), "Home Lovin' Man" (Andy Williams), "Blame It on the Pony Express" (Johnny Johnson and the Bandwagon), "Something Old, Something New" (The Fantastics), "Conversations" and "Something Tells Me (Something's Gonna Happen Tonight)" (Cilla Black), "I've Got You on My Mind", "When You Are a King" and "My Baby Loves Lovin'" (White Plains), "Gasoline Alley Bred" and "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress" (The Hollies); "Freedom Come, Freedom Go" (The Fortunes), "Doctor's Orders" (Sunny), "I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman" (Whistling Jack Smith) and "Like Sister and Brother" (The Drifters). "Miracles" (Don Williams), Cook co-wrote "I Just Want to Dance with You" with John Prine; Prine recorded the song in 1986 for his album German Afternoons, and it was a hit for George Strait in 1998. Cook and Greenaway also wrote "High 'N' Dry" (Cliff Richard), which was the B-side of "Congratulations", the runner-up song for the UK Eurovision Song Contest in 1968. In 1975 Cook moved to the US and settled in Nashville, Tennessee, where he produced more hits including "Talking in Your Sleep" (Crystal Gayle in 1978, first recorded by Marmalade) and "Love Is on a Roll" (Don Williams). In 1977 he produced The Nashville Album, a record by Chip Hawkes, who had recently left the Tremeloes (but would rejoin the group a few years thereafter). He also opened a publishing company with accomplished songwriter Ralph Murphy named Pic-A-Lic. In 1992 he joined former Stranglers member Hugh Cornwell and guitarist Andy West to release an album, CCW. Later he turned to writing for the stage and he has worked on two musicals, Beautiful and Damned, based on the lives of Jazz Age author F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda, in collaboration with Les Reed; and Don't You Rock Me Daddio, set in 1957 at the height of the skiffle age, with Joe Brown. In 1997, Cook became the first (and so far only) British songwriter to enter the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. Cook's daughter, Katie, is a host/presenter for cable network CMT. Albums Study (1970), Meanwhile Back at the World (1972), Minstrel in Flight (1973), Alright (1976), Mother Tongue (1980) "Banner Man" (with Roger Greenaway and Herbie Flowers) Blue Mink, 1971 UK No. 3, "(Blame It) On the Pony Express" (with Roger Greenaway and Tony Macaulay) Johnny Johnson & the Bandwagon, 1970 UK No. 7, "Freedom Come, Freedom Go" (with Roger Greenaway, Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood) the Fortunes, 1971 UK No. 6, "Home Lovin' Man" (with Roger Greenaway and Tony Macaulay) Andy Williams, 1970 UK No. 7, "I Believe in You" (with Sam Hogin) 1980 Don Williams, "I Just Want to Dance with You" (with John Prine) 1986, "I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman" (with Roger Greenaway) Whistling Jack Smith, 1967 UK No. 5, "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" (with Roger Greenaway, Bill Backer and Billy Davis) The Hillside Singers, 1971 US No. 13; The New Seekers, 1971 UK No. 1, 1972 US No. 7, "If It Wasn't for the Reason That I Love You" (with Roger Greenaway) Miki Anthony, 1973 UK No. 27, "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress" (with Roger Greenaway and Allan Clarke) The Hollies, 1972 UK No. 32, US No. 2, "Melting Pot" (with Roger Greenaway) Blue Mink, 1969 UK No. 3, "Softly Whispering I Love You" (with Roger Greenaway) The Congregation, 1971 UK No. 4, 1972 Ger No. 10, US No. 29, "Something Tells Me (Something's Gonna Happen Tonight)" (with Roger Greenaway) Cilla Black, 1971 UK No. 3, "Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart" (with Roger Greenaway) Gene Pitney, 1967 UK No. 5; Marc Almond with Gene Pitney, 1989 UK No. 1, "A Way of Life" (with Roger Greenaway) Family Dogg, 1969 UK No. 6, "You've Got Your Troubles" (with Roger Greenaway) The Fortunes, 1965 UK No. 2 Who is Roger Cook? Official website

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Star Wars: The Last Jedi (also known as Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi) is a 2017 American epic space-opera film written and directed by Rian Johnson. It is the second installment of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, following (2015), and it is the eighth episode of the nine-part "Skywalker saga". It was produced by Lucasfilm and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. The film's ensemble cast includes Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Lupita Nyong'o, Domhnall Gleeson, Anthony Daniels, and Gwendoline Christie in returning roles, with Kelly Marie Tran, Laura Dern, and Benicio del Toro joining the cast. It features the first posthumous film performance by Fisher, who died in December 2016, and the film is dedicated to her memory. The Last Jedi follows Rey as she seeks the aid of Luke Skywalker, in hopes of turning the tide for the Resistance in the fight against Kylo Ren and the First Order, while General Leia Organa, Finn, and Poe Dameron attempt to escape a First Order attack on the dwindling Resistance fleet. The Last Jedi is part of a new trilogy of films announced after Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm in October 2012. It was produced by Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and Ram Bergman and executive produced by The Force Awakens director J. J. Abrams. John Williams, composer for the previous episodic films, returned to compose the score. A number of scenes were filmed at Skellig Michael in Ireland during pre-production in September 2015, but principal photography began at Pinewood Studios in England in February 2016 and wrapped in July 2016. Post-production was finished in September 2017. The Last Jedi had its world premiere at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on December 9, 2017, and was released in the United States on December 15, 2017. It grossed over $1.3billion worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing film of 2017, the seventh-highest-ever grossing film in North America, and the ninth-highest-grossing film of all time during its theatrical run. It is also the second-highest-grossing Star Wars film and turned a net profit of over $417 million. The film received positive reviews, with praise for its ensemble cast, musical score, visual effects, action sequences and emotional weight. The film received four nominations at the 90th Academy Awards, including Best Original Score and Best Visual Effects, as well as two nominations at the 71st British Academy Film Awards. A sequel, , was released on December 20, 2019. Shortly after the destruction of Starkiller Base, General Leia Organa leads the evacuation of Resistance forces from D'Qar, when a First Order fleet arrives. Against Leia's orders, Poe Dameron leads a costly counterattack that destroys a First Order dreadnought. The remaining Resistance escapes into hyperspace, but the First Order uses a device to track them, and attacks again. Kylo Ren hesitates to fire on the lead Resistance ship after sensing his mother Leia's presence on board, but his wingmen destroy the bridge, killing most of the Resistance's leaders. Leia is dragged into space, but survives by using the Force. While Leia recovers, Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo assumes command of the Resistance. Running low on fuel, the remaining fleet is pursued by the First Order. Rey travels to Ahch-To with Chewbacca and R2-D2 aboard the Millennium Falcon, and attempts to recruit Luke Skywalker to the Resistance. Under self-imposed exile, Luke refuses to help and says that the Jedi should end. Even with the encouragment of R2-D2 he refuses to return, but he agrees to give Rey three lessons in the ways of the Force. Rey and Kylo begin communicating through the Force, which puzzles them both. After Kylo tells Rey what happened between him and Luke that caused him to choose the dark side, Luke confesses that he momentarily contemplated killing Kylo upon sensing that Snoke was corrupting him; this prompted Kylo to destroy Luke's new Jedi Order. Convinced that Kylo can be redeemed, Rey leaves Ahch-To. Luke prepares to burn the Jedi library, but hesitates. The spirit of Luke's master Yoda appears and destroys the library by summoning a bolt of lightning. He encourages Luke to learn from his failure. Meanwhile, Poe entrusts Finn, mechanic Rose Tico, and BB-8 with a secret mission to deactivate the First Order's tracking device. Maz Kanata directs them to the casino town of Canto Bight, where they meet the hacker DJ. Pursued by the First Order, they escape the city with the help of stablehand children and racing animals they set free. Finn, Rose, and DJ infiltrate Snoke’s flagship, but are captured by Captain Phasma. Meanwhile, Kylo brings Rey to Snoke, who reveals that he created the connection between her and Kylo as part of a plan to defeat Luke. Holdo plans to evacuate the remaining members of the Resistance using small transport vessels. Believing her plan to be cowardly and futile, Poe leads a mutiny. Leia recovers and stuns Poe with a blaster, allowing the evacuation to proceed. Holdo remains aboard the ship as a decoy to mislead Snoke's fleet as the others flee to an abandoned base on Crait. DJ buys his freedom by revealing the Resistance's plan to General Hux, and the First Order fleet begins firing on the evacuation transports, destroying many. Ordered to kill Rey, Kylo instead kills Snoke and defeats his Praetorian Guard with her help. Rey hopes that Kylo has abandoned the dark side, but he instead asks her to rule the galaxy with him. Refusing, she battles him for control of Luke’s lightsaber, bisecting the weapon. Holdo sacrifices herself by slicing through Snoke's flagship at lightspeed, crippling the First Order fleet. Rey escapes the destruction while Kylo declares himself Supreme Leader. BB-8 frees Finn and Rose; they defeat Phasma and join the survivors on Crait. When the First Order arrives, Poe, Finn, and Rose attack with obsolete speeders. Rey and Chewbacca draw TIE fighters away in the Falcon, while Rose stops Finn from sacrificing himself. The First Order penetrates the Resistance fortress using a siege cannon. Luke appears and confronts the First Order, allowing the surviving Resistance to escape. Kylo orders the First Order's forces to fire on Luke, but they fail to harm him. He then engages Luke in a lightsaber duel; upon striking Luke, Kylo realizes that Luke is not physically present, but projecting his image through the Force. Rey helps the remaining Resistance escape on the Falcon. An exhausted Luke dies peacefully on Ahch-To, becoming one with the Force. Rey and Leia sense his death, and Leia tells Rey that the Resistance can rise again. At Canto Bight, the stablehands recount the story of Luke Skywalker; afterward, one of them moves a broom with the Force and gazes into space. Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, a powerful Jedi Master who has been in self-imposed exile on the planet Ahch-To, Hamill voices Dobbu Scay, named after the film's editor, Bob Ducsay. On Canto Bight, the character mistakes BB-8 for a slot machine., Carrie Fisher as General Leia Organa, twin sister to Luke, former princess of Alderaan, and a leading general in the Resistance, Adam Driver as Kylo Ren, Supreme Leader Snoke's disciple, who is strong with the Force. He is the son of Han Solo and Leia Organa, and Luke's nephew., Daisy Ridley as Rey, a highly Force-sensitive scavenger from the desert planet Jakku who joined the Resistance and goes to find Luke, John Boyega as Finn, a former stormtrooper of the First Order who defected to the Resistance, Oscar Isaac as Poe Dameron, a high-ranking X-wing fighter pilot in the Resistance, Andy Serkis as Supreme Leader Snoke, the leader of the First Order and Kylo Ren's master, Lupita Nyong'o as Maz Kanata, a pirate and ally of the Resistance, Domhnall Gleeson as General Hux, the former head of the First Order's Starkiller Base, Anthony Daniels as C-3PO, a humanoid protocol droid in the service of Leia Organa, Gwendoline Christie as Captain Phasma, the commander of the First Order's stormtroopers, Kelly Marie Tran as Rose Tico, a member of the Resistance who works in maintenance, Laura Dern as Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo, an officer in the Resistance, Benicio del Toro as DJ, an underworld codebreaker Frank Oz reprises his role as Yoda, the deceased former Jedi Master and Luke's wise mentor, who appears as a Force spirit. Joonas Suotamo appears as Chewbacca, taking over the role from Peter Mayhew after previously serving as his body double in The Force Awakens. Mayhew, who was 73 years old and suffering from chronic knee and back pain, is credited as "Chewbacca consultant". Billie Lourd, Mike Quinn, and Timothy D. Rose reprise their roles as Lieutenant Connix, Nien Nunb, and Admiral Ackbar respectively. Due to the death of Erik Bauersfeld, Admiral Ackbar is now voiced by Tom Kane. Amanda Lawrence appears as Commander D'Acy, and Mark Lewis Jones and Adrian Edmondson play Captains Canady and Peavey respectively. BB-8 is controlled by puppeteers Dave Chapman and Brian Herring, with initial voice work by Ben Schwartz and final sound effects voiced by Bill Hader modulated through a synthesizer. Jimmy Vee portrays R2-D2, taking over the role from Kenny Baker, who died on August 13, 2016. Veronica Ngo portrays Rose's sister Paige Tico, a Resistance gunner who sacrifices her life to destroy a First Order dreadnought. Justin Theroux plays the master codebreaker. Lily Cole plays his companion. Joseph Gordon-Levitt has a voice cameo as Slowen Lo. Warwick Davis plays Wodibin. Gareth Edwards, director of the Star Wars Anthology film Rogue One, has a cameo appearance as a Resistance Soldier, as does Gary Barlow. Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish also cameo in the film. Hermione Corfield appears as Tallissan "Tallie" Lintra, a Resistance A-Wing pilot and squadron leader. Noah Segan and Jamie Christopher appear as Resistance pilots Starck and Tubbs. Hugh Skinner cameos as a Resistance Officer. Hamill's children, Griffin, Nathan, and Chelsea, cameo as Resistance soldiers. Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Prince Harry filmed cameo appearances as stormtroopers. Tom Hardy also filmed an appearance as a stormtrooper, but his cameo was dropped from the final cut. In October 2012, Star Wars creator George Lucas sold his production company Lucasfilm, and with it the Star Wars franchise, to The Walt Disney Company. Disney announced a new trilogy of Star Wars films. J. J. Abrams was named director of the first episode in the trilogy, The Force Awakens, in January 2013. In June 2014, director Rian Johnson was reported to be in talks to write and direct its sequel, Episode VIII, and to write a treatment for the third film, Episode IX, with Ram Bergman producing both films. Johnson confirmed in August 2014 that he would direct Episode VIII. In September, filmmaker Terry Gilliam asked Johnson about what it felt like to take over something made famous by another filmmaker. Johnson responded: In December 2015, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy said "we haven't mapped out every single detail [of the sequel trilogy] yet" and that Abrams was collaborating with Johnson and that Johnson would in turn work with (then) Episode IX director Colin Trevorrow to ensure a smooth transition. Abrams is an executive producer along with Jason McGatlin and Tom Karnowski. Carrie Fisher died in December 2016. Lucasfilm announced the title for episode VIII as Star Wars: The Last Jedi, on January 23, 2017. Prior to the release of episode IX Carrie's brother Todd Fisher revealed the view that: “She was going to be the big payoff in the final film,” “She was going to be the last Jedi, so to speak.” The Last Jedi story begins immediately after The Force Awakens. Johnson had his story group watch films such as Twelve O'Clock High, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Gunga Din, Three Outlaw Samurai, Sahara, and Letter Never Sent for inspiration while developing ideas. He felt it was difficult to work on the film while The Force Awakens was being finished. Johnson wrote the scene with the mirrored versions of Rey to symbolise her search for identity; when she asks for a vision of her parents, she sees only herself. Rey learns that her parents were "nobodies" as it would be "the hardest thing" she and the audience could hear; Johnson likened the scene to Luke learning that Darth Vader is his father in The Empire Strikes Back. He said: "The easiest thing for Rey and the audience to hear is, Oh yeah, you’re so-and-so's daughter. That would be wish fulfillment and instantly hand her a place in this story on a silver platter. The hardest thing for her is to hear she’s not going to get that easy answer ... You’re going to have to find the strength to stand on your own two feet and define yourself in this story." During production, Hamill expressed disagreement with the direction of his character, Luke Skywalker, feeling Luke's disillusioned state was at odds with character. Hamill later said he regretted making his initial misgivings public and compared his disagreements to his clashes with George Lucas during the filming of Return of the Jedi. In September 2015, Disney shortlisted the female cast members to Gina Rodriguez, Tatiana Maslany, and Olivia Cooke. Later that month, Benicio del Toro confirmed that he would play a villain in the film, and Mark Hamill was also confirmed. In October 2015, Gugu Mbatha-Raw was rumored to have been cast in the film. In November, Jimmy Vee was cast as R2-D2. In November, Kennedy announced at the London premiere of The Force Awakens that the entire cast would return for Episode VIII, along with "a handful" of new cast members. In February 2016, at the start of filming, it was confirmed that Laura Dern and Kelly Marie Tran had been cast in unspecified roles. In April 2017, at Star Wars Celebration Orlando, Lucasfilm announced that Tran plays Resistance maintenance worker Rose Tico, which Johnson described as the film's largest new role. To keep Frank Oz's return as Yoda a secret, producers excluded Oz's name in the billing for the film's pre-release marketing and ensured that Oz stayed on set during filming. Second unit photography began during pre-production at Skellig Michael in Ireland on September 14, 2015, due to the difficulties of filming at that location during other seasons. It would have lasted four days, but filming was canceled for the first day due to poor weather and rough conditions. In November 2014, Ivan Dunleavy, chief executive of Pinewood Studios, confirmed that the film would be shot at Pinewood, with additional filming in Mexico. In September 2015, del Toro revealed that principal photography would begin in March 2016; Kennedy later said filming would begin in January 2016. The production began work on the 007 Stage at Pinewood Studios on November 15, 2015. Rick Heinrichs served as production designer. In January 2016, production of Episode VIII was delayed until February due to script rewrites. Filming was in danger of being delayed further due to an upcoming strike between the Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television and the Broadcasting, Entertainment, Cinematograph and Theatre Union. On February 10, 2016, Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed that principal photography had begun under the working title Space Bear. Additional filming took place in Dubrovnik, Croatia from March 9 to 16, as well as in Ireland in May. Malin Head in County Donegal and a mountain headland, Ceann Sibeal in County Kerry, served as additional filming locations. To increase the scenes' intimacy Driver and Ridley were both present when filming Kylo and Rey's Force visions. Location filming for the battle scenes on the planet Crait took place in July at the Salar de Uyuni salt flats in Bolivia. Principal photography wrapped on July 22, 2016, though as of early September, Nyong'o had not filmed her scenes. In February 2017, it was announced that sequences from the film were shot in IMAX. Production designer Rick Heinrichs said the original screenplay called for 160 sets, double what might be expected, but that Johnson did some "trimming and cutting". Ultimately 125 sets were created on 14 sound stages at Pinewood Studios. According to creature designer Neal Scanlan, The Last Jedi uses more practical effects than any Star Wars film, with 180 to 200 creatures created with practical effects, some cut from the final edit. For Yoda's appearance in the film as a Force ghost, the character was created using puppetry, as was done in the original Star Wars trilogy (as opposed to computer-generated imagery, which was used to create Yoda in most of the prequel trilogy). The film contains a reference to the 1985 Terry Gilliam film Brazil in its Canto Bight sequence, in which Finn and Rose are arrested for committing parking violation "27B/6". In July 2013, Kennedy announced at Star Wars Celebration Europe that John Williams would return to score the Star Wars sequel trilogy. Williams confirmed his assignment for The Last Jedi at a Tanglewood concert in August 2016, stating he would begin recording the score "off and on" in December 2016 until March or April 2017. On February 21, 2017, it was confirmed that recording was underway, with both Williams and William Ross conducting the sessions. In lieu of a traditional spotting session with Johnson, Williams was provided a temp track of music from his previous film scores as a reference for scoring The Last Jedi. The score briefly quotes "Aquarela do Brasil" by Ary Barroso in its "Canto Bight" track as another reference to the film Brazil. It also contains a brief quote of Williams performing his own theme for The Long Goodbye (co-composed by Johnny Mercer) during Finn and Rose's escape, but this is not in the official soundtrack release. The official soundtrack album was released by Walt Disney Records on December 15, 2017 in digipak CD, digital formats, and streaming services. In January 2015, Disney CEO Bob Iger stated that Episode VIII would be released in 2017, and in March, Lucasfilm announced a release date of May 26, 2017. In January 2016, The Last Jedi was rescheduled for December 15, 2017 in 3D and IMAX 3D. On January 23, 2017, the film's title was announced as Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Similarly to The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, "Episode VIII" was included in the film's opening crawl. The Last Jedi had its world premiere at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on December 9, 2017. The European premiere was held at the Royal Albert Hall in London on December 12, 2017, with a red carpet event. It was reported that Disney had placed notable conditions on U.S. cinemas screening The Last Jedi, which some operators described as onerous. Disney required that the film be screened in a cinema's largest auditorium for a four-week period (other Disney releases have had similar clauses, but only for two weeks), and was given a 65% cut of ticket sales (a percentage higher than the 55–60% average of other major films, and cited as the highest split ever demanded by a Hollywood film behind the 64% split of The Force Awakens). The agreement, which was required to be kept confidential, also contained regulations on promotions and restrictions on removing any scheduled screening. Violations were to be penalized with an additional 5% cut of ticket sales. Because of this, some cinemas declined to screen the film, particularly smaller or one- screen cinemas that would otherwise be barred from screening any other film during the commitment period. Industry representatives considered this policy reasonable, citing the performance of Disney releases and the Star Wars franchise, and that the guaranteed business attracted by the film, and concession sales, would make up for the larger cut of ticket sales. A set of eight promotional postage stamps were released on October 12, 2017, in the UK by the Royal Mail with artwork by Malcolm Tween. On September 19, 2017, Australia Post released a set of stamp packs. Tie-in promotional campaigns were done with Nissan Motors and Bell Media, among others. Two main trailers were released, followed by numerous television spots. Figurines of many of the characters were released in October, and advance tickets for Last Jedi went on sale in October. Several tie-in books were released on the same day of the North American release of the movie, including The Last Jedi: Visual Dictionary, and various children's reading and activity books. Related novelizations included the prequel book Cobalt Squadron, and the Canto Bight, a collection of novellas about the Canto Bight Casino. As with The Force Awakens, there is no official tie-in game for The Last Jedi, in favor of integrating content from the film into other Star Wars video games, including Star Wars Battlefront II, which introduced various content from the film, during the second week of the game's first "season". An update to the MOBA mobile game added new content from the sequel era, including some characters as they appeared in The Last Jedi. Characters from the film also appeared in the mobile RPG . Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment released Star Wars: The Last Jedi digitally in HD and 4K via digital download and Movies Anywhere on March 13, 2018, with an Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD physical release on March 27. It was the first Star Wars film to be released on the Ultra HD Blu-ray format. The official novelization is by Jason Fry, with an audiobook version narrated by Marc Thompson. There is a "junior novel" by Michael Kogge (2018 Lucasfilm Press), and an audiobook version narrated by Jessica Almasy. Star Wars: The Last Jedi grossed $620.2million in the United States and Canada, and $712.6million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $1.333billion. It had a worldwide opening of $450.8million, the seventh- biggest of all time, including $40.6million that was attributed to IMAX screenings, the second biggest for IMAX. It was estimated that the film would need to gross $800million worldwide to break even; Deadline Hollywood calculated the net profit of the film to be $417.5 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues, making it the most profitable release of 2017. On December 31, 2017, its 17th day of release, it passed the $1 billion threshold, becoming the fourth film of 2017, the fifteenth Disney film, the fourth Star Wars film and the thirty-second film overall to pass the mark. The film was the highest-grossing film of 2017, the second highest-grossing film in the series (behind The Force Awakens), the fourth highest-grossing film released by Walt Disney Studios, the sixth highest-grossing film in North America, and the ninth-highest-grossing film of all time. Pre-sale tickets went on sale in the United States on October 9, 2017, and as with The Force Awakens and Rogue One, ticket service sites such as Fandango had their servers crash due to heavy traffic and demand. In the United States and Canada, industry tracking had The Last Jedi grossing around $200million from 4,232 theaters in its opening weekend. The film made $45million from Thursday night previews, the second-highest amount ever (behind The Force Awakens $57million). It went on to make $104.8million on its first day (including previews), and $220million over the weekend, both the second- highest amounts of all time. The opening weekend figure included an IMAX opening-weekend of $25million, the biggest IMAX opening of the year, and the second biggest ever behind The Force Awakens. After dropping by 76% on its second Friday, the worst Friday-to-Friday drop in the series, the film fell by a total of 67.5% in its second weekend, grossing $71.6million. It was the largest second-weekend drop of the series, although it remained atop the box office. The three day total was the 14th biggest second weekend of all time. It grossed an additional $27.5million on Christmas Day, the second biggest Christmas Day gross of all time behind The Force Awakens ($49.3million), for a four-day weekend total of $99million. It made $52.4 million in its third weekend, again topping the box office. It also brought its domestic total to $517.1 million, overtaking fellow Disney vehicle Beauty and the Beast as the highest of 2017. It was the sixth biggest third weekend of all time. It had the seventh biggest New Year's Day gross of all time with $14.3 million, bringing the four day total to $66.8 million. It grossed $23.7 million and was surpassed the following weekend by (which was in its third week) and . In its first two days of release the film made $60.8million from 48 markets. The top countries were the United Kingdom ($10.2million), Germany ($6.1million), France ($6million), Australia ($5.6million) and Brazil ($2.5million). By the end of the weekend, the film made $230.8million outside the US and Canada, the ninth-highest of all time. This included $36.7million in the UK (third-highest), $23.6million in Germany (second-highest), $18.1million in France, $15.9million in Australia (second-highest), $14.4million in Japan, $8.5million in Russia, $8.3million in Spain, $7.2million in Brazil, $7million in Italy and Mexico, $6.0million in Sweden and $5.1million in South Korea. On its second weekend, it grossed $76.1million overseas and became the fourth-highest-grossing film of the year in Europe. As of January 21, the largest markets outside of the United States and Canada are the United Kingdom ($109.3million), Germany ($79.8million), France ($63.5million), Japan ($60.8million) and Australia ($43.5million). The film had a $28.7 million opening weekend in China, the lowest for a Star Wars film in that country since 2005. Star Wars: The Force Awakens opened to $52 million two years prior and Rogue One, which featured Chinese stars Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen, opened to $30 million in 2016. The Last Jedi added only $7 million during the week, to reach a total of $34.2 million in its first seven days. A week after its debut, China's movie exhibitors dropped the film's showtimes by 92 percent, from its 34.5% percent share of the territory's total screenings. The film grossed $910,000 in its third weekend, dropping to ninth place at the Chinese box office, overshadowed by new releases including Bollywood film Secret Superstar, Hollywood films Ferdinand and Wonder, and Chinese film A Better Tomorrow 2018. The Last Jedi grossed $41million in China, as of January 21, 2018. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 91% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 457 reviews, with an average rating of 8.09/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Star Wars: The Last Jedi honors the saga's rich legacy while adding some surprising twists — and delivering all the emotion-rich action fans could hope for." At Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 85 out of 100 based on 56 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com gave the film four out of four stars, praising the surprises and risks that it took, writing that "The movie works equally well as an earnest adventure full of passionate heroes and villains and a meditation on sequels and franchise properties ... [The film] is preoccupied with questions of legacy, legitimacy and succession, and includes multiple debates over whether one should replicate or reject the stories and symbols of the past." Writing for Rolling Stone, Peter Travers gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars, praising the cast and the direction: "You're in hyper-skilled hands with Johnson who makes sure you leave the multiplex feeling euphoric. The middle part of the current trilogy, The Last Jedi ranks with the very best Star Wars epics (even the pinnacle that is The Empire Strikes Back) by pointing the way ahead to a next generation of skywalkers – and, thrillingly, to a new hope." Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3.5/4 stars, saying, "Star Wars: The Last Jedi ... doesn't pack quite the same emotional punch [as The Force Awakens] and it lags a bit in the second half, [but] this is still a worthy chapter in the Star Wars franchise, popping with exciting action sequences, sprinkled with good humor and containing more than a few nifty 'callbacks' to previous characters and iconic moments." For The Hollywood Reporter, Todd McCarthy said, "Loaded with action and satisfying in the ways its loyal audience wants it to be, writer-director Rian Johnson's plunge into George Lucas' universe is generally pleasing even as it sometimes strains to find useful and/or interesting things for some of its characters to do." Will Gompertz, arts editor of BBC News, gave the film 4/5 stars, writing "Rian Johnson ... has not ruined your Christmas with a turkey. His gift to you is a cracker, a blockbuster movie packed with invention, wit, and action galore." Mark Kermode, British film critic, gave the film 4/5 stars saying Johnson "proves himself the master of the balancing act, keeping the warring forces of this intergalactic franchise in near-perfect harmony." The unpredictability of the plot was appreciated by reviewers such as Alex Leadbeater of Screen Rant, who commented specifically that the death of Snoke was "the best movie twist in years". Creator of the franchise George Lucas, who wasn't involved with the film's production, described The Last Jedi as "beautifully made" shortly after its release. His reaction to was generally more negative. Conversely, Richard Brody of The New Yorker wrote, "Despite a few stunning decorative touches (most of which involve the color red) and that brief central sequence of multiple Reys, the movie comes off as a work that's ironed out, flattened down, appallingly purified. Above all, it delivers a terrifyingly calculated consensus storytelling, an artificial universality that is achieved, in part, through express religious references." Kate Taylor of The Globe and Mail gave the film 2/4 stars, saying the film suffered from too many new additions and writing, "Nifty new animals, a maturing villain, a flagging heroine, muffled humour – as it seeks to uphold a giant cultural legacy, this unfolding trilogy struggles to maintain a balance that often seems just out of reach." Owen Gleiberman of Variety criticized the film for being too derivative of the past movies by saying that "it's now repeating things that have already been repeated. The rebels-up-against-it plot, with our heroes worn down to the nub of their fighting spirit, feels like a rehash of what we went through a year ago in Rogue One, and the attempts to echo the look and mood and darkening design of The Empire Strikes Back now make clear that the new trilogy is an official monument to nostalgia." Audience reception measured by scientific polling methods was highly positive. Audiences randomly polled by CinemaScore on opening day gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale. Surveys from SurveyMonkey and comScore's PostTrak found that 89% of audience members graded the film positively, including a rare five-star rating. User-generated scores at Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic were more negative. At Rotten Tomatoes, 43% of users rated the film 3.5 stars or higher out of 5, while at Metacritic, the average user score is 4.4 out of 10. Audience scores on such sites require only registration and do not ensure that contributing voters have seen the film. Several reviewers speculated that coordinated vote brigading from internet groups and bots contributed to the low scores. Quartz noted that some new accounts gave negative ratings to both The Last Jedi and , while Bleeding Cool stated that reviews for Thor: Ragnarok had tapered off but then "skyrocketed". In response to tampering claims shortly after the film's release, a Fandango executive stated that Rotten Tomatoes detected no unusual activity on The Last Jedi aside from a noticeable "uptick in the number of written user reviews". In 2019, a Rotten Tomatoes spokesperson said the film had been "seriously targeted" by a review-bombing campaign. Reviewers characterized The Last Jedi as divisive among audiences. Emily VanDerWerff of Vox found that dissatisfied fans saw the film as too progressive, disliked its humor, plot, or character arcs, or felt betrayed that it ignored fan theories. Other reviewers made similar observations. Particularly divisive was the reveal that Rey's parents are insignificant; many fans had expected her to be Luke's daughter or to share a lineage with another character from the original trilogy. There was also sentiment that Snoke's character was underdeveloped and that Luke's actions contradicted his previous heroic portrayal. Reviewers stated that fan theories were held so strongly among some viewers that it was difficult for them to accept different stories, but that other viewers appreciated the film's action, tone, and deviation from Star Wars tradition. , the final installment of the sequel trilogy, was released on December 20, 2019. Principal photography began on August 1, 2018. Colin Trevorrow was expected to direct the film, but on September 5, 2017, Lucasfilm announced that he had stepped down. A week later, Lucasfilm announced that J. J. Abrams would return to direct The Rise of Skywalker and co-write it with Chris Terrio. at, at, Star Wars: The Last Jedi at The Numbers Star Wars: The Clone Wars is an American computer-animated television series created by George Lucas and produced by Lucasfilm Animation, Lucasfilm and CGCG Inc. The series began with that was released on August 15, 2008, and debuted on Cartoon Network two months later on October 3, 2008. It is set in the fictional Star Wars galaxy during the three years between the prequel films and , the same time period as the previous 2D 2003 TV series . Each episode has a running time of 22 minutes to fill a half-hour time slot. Dave Filoni is the supervising director of the series. In early 2013, Lucasfilm announced that The Clone Wars would be "winding down". Super RTL, a German TV network, began airing the episodes on February 15, 2014. The sixth-season episodes were made available in the U.S. for streaming on Netflix, along with the entirety of the series, beginning March 7, 2014. A project known as The Clone Wars Legacy adapted unproduced story arcs into other formats, such as comics and novels. The series was revived for a seventh and final season of 12 new episodes, to be released on Disney+ on February 17, 2020. After viewing some of the completed footage of the early episodes on a big screen, the production team decided to weave the first few planned episodes together to form . This decision helped convince Time Warner to distribute the movie, and to encourage its subsidiary Cartoon Network to air the series. Christopher Lee, Anthony Daniels, and Samuel L. Jackson reprised their roles as Count Dooku, C-3PO, and Mace Windu, respectively, from the live-action films (although Lee and Jackson did not reprise their roles in the series). The series aired out of chronological order, with the story order being released retroactively on the official Star Wars website. Season 1 shows a wide variety of battles and adventures with Grievous and Dooku as the lead antagonists. Many of the episodes are stand-alone, but a common thread throughout the season is that the Republic and the Separatists attempt to convince various planets and races to side with them. In Season 2, the Sith resort to hiring bounty hunters and mercenaries to steal objects and intel or to assassinate targets for them. Meanwhile, the Jedi lead the Republic forces in an assault on the primary battle droid manufacturing facility. The first half of both Season 3 and Season 4 are diplomatic in nature; Season 3, in particular, has many stories that take place away from the battlefield. How different races and planets are affected by the galaxy-wide war are shown, as well as how the Republic Senate can make a bigger difference than even the Jedi Council at times. The first half of Season 3 is used mainly to make the Clone Wars series more cohesive as these first episodes created better chronology, setting themselves in and among the previous two seasons' episodes. The second half of both seasons, Anakin steps a little closer to the dark side. Meanwhile, the Sith experience turmoil among themselves. Season 5 is unique in that it consists of 5 four-part story arcs, 3 of which center on Ahsoka's character development. Meanwhile, the Separatists gain more ground, and the story of an old villain who has returned is further explored. Season 6 explores topics that are crucial in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, namely the creation of the clones and the details behind Order 66. Chancellor Palpatine gains even more power, and Yoda delves deeper into the nature of the Force. On December 5, 2011, a full-length feature cut of one of the Season 3 trilogies of episodes (the one composed by "Nightsisters," "Monster," and "Witches of the Mist") was released for download on iTunes as an uninterrupted movie that was previously shown at selected screenings in 2010. The three episodes were written by Katie Lucas, who had previously written the Season 1 episode "Jedi Crash" as well as the Season 3 episodes "Sphere of Influence" and "Assassin." A repeat of season one aired in "decoded" episode format. Each installment contained unobtrusive text windows giving supplemental information about the characters and events playing out on screen. On July 19, 2018, Lucasfilm announced at San Diego Comic-Con that The Clone Wars would return with 12 new episodes in a Season 7 to be released on Disney+. A trailer for the season was released on April 14, 2019 at Star Wars Celebration Chicago. On August 23, 2019, Filoni announced at the D23 Expo that it will be the final season, and it is scheduled to be released on February 17, 2020. Matt Lanter as Anakin Skywalker, Additional voices, James Arnold Taylor as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Plo Koon, Additional voices, Ashley Eckstein as Ahsoka Tano, Additional voices, Dee Bradley Baker as Clone Troopers, Saesee Tiin, Onaconda Farr, Bossk, Arok the Hutt, Additional voices, Tom Kane as Narrator, Yoda, Admiral Wullf Yularen, Additional voices, Matthew Wood as General Grievous, Battle Droids, Poggle the Lesser, Wat Tambor, Additional voices Ian Abercrombie (Seasons 1-5) / Tim Curry (Seasons 5–6) as Chancellor Palpatine / Darth Sidious, B.J. Hughes (Season 1) / Ahmed Best (Seasons 1-6) as Jar Jar Binks, Clancy Brown as Savage, Corey Burton as Count Dooku / Darth Tyranus, Cad Bane, Ziro the Hutt, Chairman Papanoida, Additional voices, Terrence C. Carson as Mace Windu, Jim Cummings as Hondo Ohnaka, Olivia d'Abo as Luminara Unduli, Anthony Daniels as C-3PO, Robin Atkin Downes as Castas, Cham Syndulla, Cin Drallig, Ima-Gun Di, Rush Clovis, Jon Favreau as Pre Vizsla, Dave Filoni as Embo, Jakoli, Nika Futterman as Asajj Ventress, Chi Eekway Papanoida, Gardulla the Hutt, Sy Snootles, TC-70, Jaime King as Aurra Sing, Cassie Cryar, Additional Voices, Brian George as King Katuunko, Chi Cho, Ki-Adi-Mundi, Anna Graves as Duchess Satine, Sugi, Meena Tills, Tiplar, Tiplee, Additional voices, Jennifer Hale as Aayla Secura, Riyo Chuchi, Tom Kenny as Nute Gunray, Phil LaMarr as Bail Organa, Kit Fisto, Orn Free Taa, Daniel Logan as Boba Fett, Clone Cadets, James C. Mathis III as Gregar Typho, Angelique Perrin as Adi Gallia, Mama the Hutt, Meredith Salenger as Barriss Offee, Che Amanwe Papanoida, Ione Marcy, Pluma Sodi, Kath Soucie as Mon Mothma, Jek Lawquane, Mina Bonteri, Jason Spisak as Lux Bonteri, Zinn Paulness, Stephen Stanton as Mas Amedda, Tarkin, Colonel Meebur Gascon, Moralo Eval, Additional voices, Catherine Taber as Padmé Amidala, Additional voices, Tasia Valenza as Shaak Ti, Sam Witwer as Darth Maul At April 2005's Star Wars Celebration III, Lucas stated that "we are working on a 3-D continuation of the that was on the Cartoon Network; we probably won't start that project for another year." In July 2005, pre-production had begun on the series, according to Steve Sansweet, head of Lucasfilm fan relations. Sansweet referred to the series as "the next generation of the Star Wars saga, a cutting edge 30-minute, 3-D computer-animation series based on the Clone Wars that take place between ... and ." Sansweet described the look of the new series as "a melding of Asian anime with unique 3-D animation styling." Primary production took place at the Lucasfilm Animation facility in Singapore. According to another statement by Sansweet, "Lucasfilm Animation will be hiring a total of about 300 digital artists and others in both California and Singapore locations to produce not only the series, but animated feature films in the years ahead." He said about the series, "to get the series underway, Lucasfilm Animation has hired key production and creative talent to lead the development of its first animation project." Sansweet has said that "a large component of the future of Star Wars and Lucasfilm is CGI animation." Lucasfilm Animation used Autodesk software to animate both the film and the series. The Maya 3D-modeling program was used to create the highly detailed worlds, characters and creatures. Character designer Kilian Plunkett referred to the character designs from Genndy Tartakovsky's , and animators reviewed designs from the 2D series when creating the animation style. Tartakovsky was not involved with the production, and criticized Lucas's decision to revisit the era. In 2007, Rob Coleman divulged that one episode was complete, with 15 more in production, and that he was going to direct 5 of the first 22 episodes. He revealed that the reaction from licensees was very positive, and that the final assembly of shows is done at Skywalker Ranch. Speaking at PaleyFest on March 3, 2007, Lucas revealed that the series would be episodic, and as such would not focus on Anakin Skywalker's story; with episodes dedicated to clone troopers and other characters. Lucas revealed further information in a fan interview, including a new character named Ahsoka Tano, over 100 episodes and a possible appearance by Boba Fett. The first trailer for the series was released on the official Star Wars website on May 8, 2007. In an interview in the September 24, 2007 issue of TV Guide, Lucas confirmed that 39 episodes of the series have been completed. On April 8, 2007, Ain't It Cool News reported that musician Eric Rigler had recorded music for the series. Rigler disclosed that each planet in the Star Wars galaxy would have its own theme music. The episode Mr. Rigler performed on was based on Bulgarian music and played on Uilleann pipes. Kevin Kiner composed the original score for each episode. Stuart Snyder, who oversaw Cartoon Network and other Turner Broadcasting System cable networks from 2007 to 2014, said he became interested in the new Clone Wars series immediately upon starting the job in May 2007. Snyder flew out to San Francisco, California to screen several episodes, and told Lucas the only place he wanted to see the show was on Cartoon Network. Snyder wished to create an action/adventure block of shows on Friday night in an attempt to rejuvenate Cartoon Network. Snyder expressed confidence that the shows would help boost ratings: "You catch me at a time where I have a smile on my face because of our internal results. I can say there's a little bit of bragging on the third quarter for us." The "Young Padawans" arc from Season 5 was intended to be aired separately from The Clone Wars as a feature-length pilot for a spin-off series that never materialized. Seasons 6, 7, and 8, were in some form of production at the time of the show's cancellation in March 2013, shortly after Lucasfilm was purchased by Disney. An online comic released alongside the series depicts story snippets between episodes. The Clone Wars premiered on October 3, 2008 at 9 p.m. on Cartoon Network. The Clone Wars on Cartoon Network is shown in a 16:9 (1.77:1) aspect ratio, cropped from its original aspect ratio (OAR) of 2.35:1 (as seen in the UK Sky Premiere screenings). The show began airing on their Adult Swim block on March 14, 2009, making the series the first Cartoon Network series to simultaneously air on both Cartoon Network and Adult Swim. The series also aired from January 15 to March 26, 2009 on TNT, making it the first form of animation to air on that channel in over a decade. On March 11, 2013, it was announced that The Clone Wars would be "winding down" to focus on the Star Wars sequel trilogy and a new series, Star Wars Rebels. On February 13, 2014, Netflix announced that starting on March 7, 2014 they would begin the US distribution of the entire TV series, including some previously unreleased director's cuts, and the previously unaired new season dubbed "The Lost Missions". The latter also became available for purchase on digital video stores, such as iTunes, in . The Netflix distribution of the series, along with the Blu-rays, included versions of some episodes with previously censored material deemed too inappropriate for the demographic of Cartoon Network. One of the most well- known edits was the removal of the character Ventress kissing a clone after she had stabbed him with her lightsaber. The show was removed from Netflix on April 7, 2019. For the upcoming revival and final season, the remaining episodes of the series will be exclusively available on Disney+. The first episode will be released on February 17, 2020. Warner Home Video distributed the videodisc releases of the first five seasons, while Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment handled the videodisc release of the sixth season as Star Wars: The Clone Wars – The Lost Missions. Apart from the season-by-season videodisc sets, there were also three special DVD releases consisting of four episodes from a particular season that reflected a certain story arc or theme: A Galaxy Divided, an early DVD release of the series which included the four season 1 episodes ("Ambush", "Shadow of Malevolence", "Destroy Malevolence", "Downfall of a Droid"), Clone Commandos, another DVD compilation that includes episode five "Rookies" as well as episodes 19 through 21 ("Storm over Ryloth", "Innocents of Ryloth" and "Liberty on Ryloth")., Darth Maul Returns, a feature-length "director's cut" edited together from Season 4 episodes "Massacre", "Bounty", "Brothers" and "Revenge" and was initially available exclusively at Target. According to the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 79% of critics have given the first season a positive review based on 19 reviews, with an average rating of 6.04/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "With an agreeably entertaining first season, Star Wars: The Clone Wars opens a fun, kid-friendly chapter of the franchise's sprawling mythology." 100% of critics have given the third and fifth seasons a positive review based on 5 reviews each, with an average rating of 8/10 and 7.85/10 respectively. 100% of critics have given the sixth season a positive review based on 13 reviews, with an average rating of 8.92/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "Sophisticated storytelling and quality animation make the sixth season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars a fitting end to the series." At Metacritic, the first season has a weighted average score of 64 out of 100 based on 9 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". On July 11, 2008, television critics were shown a completed episode of the series. The Hollywood Reporters Live Feed blog called the footage "likely the most photo-realistic animated TV series ever produced." On August 31, 2008, a sneak peek of the new series was shown on Cartoon Network. IGN named it the 89th best animated series. They specifically praised the episodes "Rookies", "Cloak of Darkness", and "Lair of Grievous" saying that their storylines stood out as some of the best in the Star Wars expanded universe. Star Wars: The Clone Wars became the most-watched series premiere in Cartoon Network history. The series averaged 3 million total viewers in its debut, according to Nielsen Media Research. Cartoon Network said the Star Wars spin-off ranked as the number one channel among all major animated networks in the time slot among total viewers (the largest in the demographic for any premiere telecast of an original Cartoon series). On July 23, 2010, at the San Diego Comic-Con, Craig Glenday, editor of the Guinness World Records, presented Star Wars: The Clone Wars supervising director Dave Filoni, CG supervisor Joel Aron, and lead designer Kilian Plunkett a certificate proclaiming the cartoon series "the highest rated sci-fi animation currently on television". Tech Times said that, "while the Star Wars prequel films fail to make audiences care about characters like Anakin Skywalker, The Clone Wars succeeds." At the time of cancellation in March 2013, 65 more episodes were in development. Thirteen of these episodes were finished to become part of Season 6: The Lost Missions, but there were still additional arcs that were never released. In September 2014, StarWars.com released details of three story arcs from the unfinished episodes. A four-episode arc continued the story of Darth Maul following the events from the season 5 episode "The Lawless". The story gave reason as to why Darth Maul was resurrected in the season 4 episode "Brothers". The four episodes were titled: "The Enemy of My Enemy", "A Tale of Two Apprentices", "Proxy War", and "Showdown on Dathomir". The arc was adapted into a four-part limited comic book series, Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir, which debuted in May 2014. The comic was the last Star Wars comic published by Dark Horse Comics before Lucasfilm transferred the license to Marvel Comics in 2014. The comic was collected into a trade paperback by Marvel in 2018. The comic utilized completed scripts and designs from the cancelled episodes of The Clone Wars. The Clone Wars supervising director Dave Filoni wrote on Facebook that the four completed source scripts "came out of one of our story conferences with George Lucas." The plot follows Darth Maul, who has been captured by Darth Sidious. He is tortured by Count Dooku for information about the Shadow Collective and the allies Maul has made. Maul escapes and heads to Zanbar to command the Death Watch army, but is followed by General Grievous and his droids. They battle Maul and the Mandalorians, who are soon overwhelmed by the droids. Maul flees and confers with Mother Talzin, who is revealed to be his biological mother, and plots to draw out Sidious by capturing Dooku and Grievous. The scheme works, and Talzin is able to restore herself to her physical form, but sacrifices herself to save Maul and is killed by Grievous. Although Maul escapes with a company of loyal Mandalorians, the Shadow Collective has fallen apart due to the conflict with Sidious, as the Hutts, Pykes, and Black Sun have all abandoned Maul. An 8-episode arc with Asajj Ventress and Jedi Quinlan Vos was adapted into Dark Disciple, a novel by Christie Golden released on July 7, 2015. The story follows Jedi Quinlan Vos partnering up with Nightsister Asajj Ventress, hoping to execute Count Dooku. Eric Goldman of IGN gave the book an 8 out of 10, saying it was great. Two arcs consisting each of 4 episodes were released on the official Star Wars website for free in the form of complete animatics, albeit with unfinished animation as those episodes only went through the earliest stages of production. Both were fully voiced by the cast. In September 2014, four unfinished episodes were released on the official Star Wars website. The arc took place on Utapau with Obi-Wan and Anakin investigating an arms deal involving the Separatists and a Kyber crystal. The arc also dealt with Anakin's feelings after the departure of Ahsoka. It was also included in the season 6 Blu-ray. The unfinished animatics for Bad Batch, a four-episode arc, were screened at the Star Wars Celebration convention in Anaheim, California on April 17, 2015. Scripted by Brent Friedman, it is a four-part story arc focusing on a ragtag unit of clone commandos of the same name. The arc was subsequently released on StarWars.com for free shortly after on April 29, 2015. The trailer released for the seventh season of The Clone Wars features a member of the Bad Batch. Seven video games have been released, which are based on the style and character designs of the series. , a fighting game released on November 11, 2008 for Wii., , an action-adventure game released on November 11, 2008 for Nintendo DS., , another action-adventure game taking place between Season 1 and Season 2, released on October 9, 2009 for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 2 and Nintendo DS., Clone Wars Adventures, an online PC game launched on September 15, 2010 online by Sony Online Entertainment and shut down on March 31, 2014., , released in March 2011 by TT Games for PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, Xbox 360, Wii, Nintendo DS, PC, Mac, and Nintendo 3DS, which further stylizes the characters as part of the Lego Star Wars theme and is mostly based on the first two seasons., Star Wars: The Clone Wars Pinball, a virtual pinball adaptation of the series' original run, released in 2013 as a purchaseable add-on for Zen Studios' Star Wars Pinball collection for most seventh- and eighth-generation home video game systems, computers and mobile devices., Disney Infinity 3.0, released in September 2015 by Disney Interactive for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Wii U, Microsoft Windows, iOS and Android, which stylizes select major characters from the show as action figures that become playable only via a toys-to-life NFC system. Each copy of the game comes with the playset, "Twilight of the Republic", which is an alternate storyline set during the Clone Wars era, along with two starting characters, Anakin and Ahsoka. Other characters from the show also appear, although most of them are not playable or are fought as bosses. Characters and/or locations from the show have also appeared in the following Star Wars games listed below: Star Wars: Galactic Defense, a now-defunct tower defense game released on iOS and Android by DeNA, in which a number of playable champions include characters from the show. Several levels in the main campaign also take place on the planet Felucia, a major Clone Wars hotspot featured in some episodes., , a turn-based RPG also released on iOS and Android by Electronic Arts, where some levels take place on planets depicted in the show (such as Dathomir) and a number of collectible, playable characters are from the show., , an online MOBA game released on iOS and Android by Netmarble, where an August 2017 update allowed players to recruit characters, vehicles and battle units from the series, as well as battle on planets like Felucia., Star Wars Battlefront II, a video game available on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, in which players can battle on or directly above planets like Ryloth and Kamino, where some battles in the series were fought. Wood, Taylor, Lanter and Burton also reprise their voice roles for four new playable heroes (General Grievous, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker and Count Dooku, respectively) being added to the game's third season in late 2018, themed after the Clone Wars. Footnotes Citations at, at, at Star Wars is an American epic space-opera media franchise created by George Lucas, which began with the eponymous 1977 film and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. The franchise has been expanded into various films and other media, including television series, video games, novels, comic books, theme park attractions, and , comprising an all-encompassing fictional universe. The franchise holds a Guinness World Records title for the "Most successful film merchandising franchise". In 2018, the total value of the Star Wars franchise was estimated at billion, and it is currently the fifth- highest-grossing media franchise of all time. The original film, retroactively subtitled Episode IV: A New Hope, was followed by the sequels (1980) and (1983), forming the original Star Wars trilogy. A prequel trilogy was later released, consisting of (1999), (2002), and (2005). Seven years later, Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney, relinquishing his ownership of the franchise. The sequel trilogy consists of (2015), (2017), and (2019). Together, the three trilogies form what has been referred to as the "Skywalker saga". All nine films were nominated for Academy Awards (with wins going to the first two released) and were commercially successful. Together with the theatrical spin- off films Rogue One (2016) and (2018), the combined box office revenue of the films equates to over billion, and it is currently the second-highest- grossing film franchise. The Star Wars franchise depicts the adventures of characters "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away", in which humans and many species of aliens (often humanoid) co-exist with robots, or 'droids', who may assist them in their daily routines; space travel between planets is common due to hyperspace technology. A mystical power known as 'the Force' is described in the original film as "an energy field created by all living things ... [that] binds the galaxy together." Through training and meditation, those whom "the Force is strong with" are able to perform various superpowers (such as telekinesis, precognition, telepathy, and manipulation of physical energy). The Force is wielded by two major knighthood orders at conflict with each other: the Jedi, peacekeepers of the Old Republic who act on the light side of the Force through non-attachment and arbitration, and the Sith, ancient enemies of the galactic democracy, who use the dark side by manipulating fear and aggression. While Jedi Knights can be numerous, the Dark Lords of the Sith (or 'Darths') are intended to be limited to two: a master and their apprentice. Force- wielders are very limited in numbers in comparison to the rest of the average population. The Jedi and Sith prefer the use of a weapon called lightsaber, which is the cylinder-like hilt of a sword (when turned off), but when turned on ignites a blade of energy that can cut through virtually any surface. Battles between the two factions result in duels, which are a mix between sword skills and the use of the Force. The rest of the average population, as well as renegades and soldiers, use laser-powered blaster firearms, which's deadly beams Force-users can deflect using lightsabers. Three ages are presented within an extended timeline: The Age of Republic: The era of the prequel trilogy, in which the democratic Old Galactic Republic is corrupted by its Supreme Chancellor, Palpatine—secretly the Sith lord Darth Sidious. After orchestrating the Clone Wars between the government and a Separatist confederation, Palpatine overthrows the Republic, and establishes the First Galactic Empire, declaring himself Emperor. The prequels feature a relatively sleek and new design aesthetic in comparison to the original trilogy., The Age of Rebellion: The era of the original trilogy, in which the Empire is fought by the Rebel Alliance in a Galactic Civil War that spans several years, climaxing with the death of the Emperor. The surviving Rebellion gives rise to the New Galactic Republic. The original trilogy depicts the galaxy as dirty and grimy in George Lucas's depiction of a "used universe"., The Age of Resistance: The era of the sequel trilogy, in which the remnants of the Empire reform as the First Order. Heroes of the former Rebellion, aided by the New Republic, lead the Resistance against the oppressive regime and its rulers, the mysterious being known as Snoke and his puppet master, the revived Palpatine. The films made a return to what J. J. Abrams called "the wonderful preposterousness" of practical effects that were used to create the original trilogy. The Star Wars film series centers around three sets of trilogies, which have collectively become known as the "Skywalker saga". They were produced non- chronologically, with Episodes IV–VI (the original trilogy) being released between 1977 and 1983, Episodes I–III (the prequel trilogy) being released between 1999 and 2005, and Episodes VII–IX (the sequel trilogy), being released between 2015 and 2019. Each trilogy focuses on a generation of the Force-sensitive Skywalker family. The original trilogy depicts the heroic development of Luke Skywalker, the prequels tell of the downfall of his father Anakin, while the sequels star Luke's nephew, Kylo Ren. An anthology series set between the main episodes entered development in parallel to the production of the sequel trilogy, described by Disney CFO Jay Rasulo as origin stories. The first entry, Rogue One (2016), tells the story of the rebels who steal the Death Star plans directly before Episode IV. (2018) focuses on Han Solo's backstory, also featuring Chewbacca and Lando Calrissian. Lucasfilm has a number of Star Wars movies in development, including a trilogy of films produced and written by Game of Thrones creators/showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. The installments were scheduled to be released in December 2022, 2024, and 2026. This changed in October 2019, when it was announced that the duo had stepped away from their Star Wars films, stating that their contract with Netflix made it so that they could not effectively work on the films. Kathleen Kennedy acknowledged that the studio would be open to the pair returning to work on their trilogy when their schedule allows. Another trilogy will be written by The Last Jedi writer/director Rian Johnson. It will be independent from the Skywalker saga. Additionally, a film based on the was reported to be in development with Laeta Kalogridis writing the script. This was confirmed by Kathleen Kennedy in April 2019. In September 2019, it was announced that Kennedy and Kevin Feige will collaborate to develop another Star Wars film. In 1971, George Lucas wanted to film an adaptation of the Flash Gordon serial, but could not obtain the rights, so he began developing his own space opera. After directing American Graffiti (1973), he wrote a two-page synopsis, which 20th Century Fox decided to invest in. By 1974, he had expanded the story into the first draft of a screenplay. The subsequent movie's success led Lucas to make it the basis of an elaborate film serial. With the backstory he created for the sequel, Lucas decided that the series would be a trilogy of trilogies. Most of the main cast would return for the two additional installments of the original trilogy, which were self-financed by Lucasfilm. Star Wars was released on May 25, 1977, and first subtitled Episode IV: A New Hope in the 1979 book The Art of Star Wars. Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back was released on May 21, 1980, also achieving wide financial and critical success. The final film in the trilogy, Episode VI: Return of the Jedi was released on May 25, 1983. The story of the original trilogy focuses on Luke Skywalker's quest to become a Jedi, his struggle with the evil Imperial agent Darth Vader, and the struggle of the Rebel Alliance to free the galaxy from the clutches of the Empire. According to producer Gary Kurtz, loose plans for a prequel trilogy were developed during the outlining of the original two films. In 1980, Lucas confirmed that he had the nine-film series plotted, but due to the stress of producing the original trilogy, he had decided to cancel further sequels by 1981. In 1983, Lucas explained that "There was never a script completed that had the entire story as it exists now ... As the stories unfolded, I would take certain ideas and save them ... I kept taking out all the good parts, and I just kept telling myself I would make other movies someday." Technical advances in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including the ability to create computer-generated imagery (CGI), inspired Lucas to consider that it might be possible to revisit his saga. In 1989, Lucas stated that the prequels would be "unbelievably expensive." In 1992, he acknowledged that he had plans to create the prequel trilogy. A theatrical rerelease of the original trilogy in 1997 "updated" the 20-year-old films with the style of CGI envisioned for the new trilogy. Episode I: The Phantom Menace was released on May 19, 1999, and Episode II: Attack of the Clones on May 16, 2002. Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, the first film in the franchise, was released on May 19, 2005. The first two movies were met with mixed reviews, with the third being received somewhat more positively. The trilogy begins 32 years before Episode IV and follows the Jedi training of Anakin Skywalker, Luke's father and his eventual fall from grace and transformation into the Sith lord Darth Vader, as well as the corruption of the Galactic Republic and rise of the Empire of Darth Sidious. Together with the original trilogy, Lucas has collectively referred to the first six episodic films of the franchise as "the tragedy of Darth Vader". Prior to releasing the original film, and made possible by its success, Lucas planned "three trilogies of nine films." He announced this to Time in 1978, and confirmed that he had outlined them in 1981. At various stages of development, the sequel trilogy was to focus on the rebuilding of the Republic, the return of Luke in a role similar to that of Obi-Wan in the original trilogy, Luke's sister (not yet determined to be Leia), Han, Leia, and . However, after beginning work on the prequel trilogy, Lucas insisted that Star Wars was meant to be a six-part series and that there would be no sequel trilogy. Lucas decided to leave the franchise in the hands of other filmmakers, announcing in January 2012 that he would make no more Star Wars films. In October of that year, The Walt Disney Company agreed to buy Lucasfilm and announced that Episode VII would be released in 2015. The co- chairman of Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy, became president of the company and served as executive producer of new Star Wars feature films. Lucas provided Kennedy his story treatments for the sequels during the 2012 sale, but in 2015 it was revealed Lucas's sequel outline had been discarded. The sequel trilogy also meant the end of the existing Star Wars expanded universe, which was discarded to give "maximum creative freedom to the filmmakers and also preserve an element of surprise and discovery for the audience." Episode VII: The Force Awakens was released on December 16, 2015, Episode VIII: The Last Jedi on December 13, 2017, and Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker on December 18, 2019, in many countries (2 days later for each episode in the U.S.). Episode VII was met with both critical and box office success, and Episode VIII, while also meeting critical and financial success, had a mixed reception from audiences. Episode IX received a mixed reception from critics and fans, although audiences leaned more positively. The sequel trilogy starts 30 years after Episode VI and focuses on the journey of the Force-sensitive orphan Rey, guided by Luke Skywalker. Along with ex-stormtrooper Finn and ace X-Wing pilot Poe Dameron, Rey helps the Resistance led by Leia fight the First Order commanded by Han and Leia's son (Luke's nephew), Kylo Ren. Before selling Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012, and parallel to his development of a sequel trilogy, George Lucas and original trilogy co-screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan started development on a standalone film about a young Han Solo. On February 5, 2013, Disney CEO Bob Iger made public the development of the Kasdan film. Disney CFO Jay Rasulo has described the standalone films as origin stories. Lucasfilm and Kennedy have stated that the standalone films would be referred to as the Star Wars anthology series (though the word anthology has not been used in any of the titles, instead carrying the promotional "A Star Wars Story" subtitle). Focused on how the Rebels obtained the Death Star plans introduced in the 1977 film, the first anthology film, Rogue One, was released on December 16, 2016, to favorable reviews and box office success. The second, , centered on a young Han Solo with Chewbacca and Lando as supporting characters, was released on May 25, 2018, to mixed reviews and underperformance at the box office. Despite this, more anthology films are expected to be released, following a hiatus after 2019's The Rise of Skywalker. The Star Wars franchise has been spun off to various television productions, including two animated series released in the mid-1980s. Further animated series began to be released in the 2000s, the first two of which focused on the Clone Wars. After Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm, only remained canon. Three live-action Star Wars series will be released on Disney+. The first, The Mandalorian, premiered on November 12. From 1976 to 2014, the term Expanded Universe (EU) was an umbrella term for all officially licensed Star Wars storytelling material set outside the events depicted within the theatrical films, including novels, comics, and video games. Lucasfilm maintained internal continuity between the films and television content and the EU material until April 25, 2014, when the company announced all of the EU works would cease production. Existing works would no longer be considered canon to the franchise and subsequent reprints would be rebranded under the Star Wars Legends label, with downloadable content for the massively multiplayer online game the only Legends material to still be produced. The Star Wars canon was subsequently restructured to only include the existing six feature films, the animated film (2008), and its companion animated series. All future projects and creative developments across all types of media would be overseen and coordinated by the story group, announced as a division of Lucasfilm created to maintain continuity and a cohesive vision on the storytelling of the franchise. Multiple comics series from Marvel and novels published by Del Rey were produced after the announcement. Star Wars in print predates the release of the first film, with the December 1976 novelization of Star Wars, initially subtitled "". Credited to Lucas, it was ghostwritten by Alan Dean Foster. The first "Expanded Universe" story appeared in Marvel Comics' Star Wars #7 in January 1978 (the first six issues being an adaptation of the film), followed by Foster's sequel novel Splinter of the Mind's Eye the following month. After penning the novelization of the original film, Foster followed it with the sequel Splinter of the Mind's Eye (1978). The novelizations of The Empire Strikes Back (1980) by Donald F. Glut and Return of the Jedi (1983) by James Kahn followed, as well as The Han Solo Adventures trilogy (1979–1980) by Brian Daley, and The Adventures of Lando Calrissian trilogy (1983) by L. Neil Smith. Timothy Zahn's bestselling Thrawn trilogy (1991–1993) reignited interest in the franchise and introduced the popular characters Grand Admiral Thrawn, Mara Jade, Talon Karrde, and Gilad Pellaeon. The first novel, Heir to the Empire, reached #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list, and the series finds Luke, Leia, and Han facing off against tactical genius Thrawn, who is plotting to retake the galaxy for the Empire. In The Courtship of Princess Leia (1994) by Dave Wolverton, set immediately before the Thrawn trilogy, Leia considers an advantageous political marriage to Prince Isolder of the planet Hapes, but she and Han ultimately marry. Steve Perry's (1996), set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, was part of a multimedia campaign that included a comic book series and video game. The novel introduced the crime lord Prince Xizor, another popular character who would appear in multiple other works. Other notable series from Bantam include the Jedi Academy trilogy (1994) by Kevin J. Anderson, the 14-book Young Jedi Knights series (1995–1998) by Anderson and Rebecca Moesta, and the series (1996–2012) by Michael A. Stackpole and Aaron Allston. Del Rey took over Star Wars book publishing in 1999, releasing what would become a 19-installment novel series called The New Jedi Order (1999–2003). Written by multiple authors, the series was set 25 to 30 years after the original films and introduced the Yuuzhan Vong, a powerful alien race attempting to invade and conquer the entire galaxy. The bestselling multi-author series Legacy of the Force (2006–2008) chronicles the crossover of Han and Leia's son Jacen Solo to the dark side of the Force; among his evil deeds, he kills Luke's wife Mara Jade as a sacrifice to join the Sith. Although no longer canon, the story is paralleled in The Force Awakens with Han and Leia's son Ben Solo, who has become the dark Kylo Ren. Three series set in the prequel era were introduced for younger audiences: the 18-book (1999–2002) chronicles the adventures of Obi-Wan Kenobi and his master Qui-Gon Jinn in the years before The Phantom Menace; the 11-book Jedi Quest (2001–2004) follows Obi-Wan and his own apprentice, Anakin Skywalker in between The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones; and the 10-book (2005–2008), set almost immediately after Revenge of the Sith, features Obi- Wan and the last few surviving Jedi. Although Thrawn had been designated a Legends character in 2014, he was reintroduced into the canon in the 2016 third season of Rebels, with Zahn returning to write more novels based in the character, and set in the new canon. Marvel Comics published a Star Wars comic book series from 1977 to 1986. Original Star Wars comics were serialized in the Marvel magazine Pizzazz between 1977 and 1979. The 1977 installments were the first original Star Wars stories not directly adapted from the films to appear in print form, as they preceded those of the Star Wars comic series. From 1985–1987, the animated children's series and inspired comic series from Marvel's Star Comics line. According to Marvel comics former Editor-In-Chief Jim Shooter, the strong sales of Star Wars comics saved Marvel financially in 1977 and 1978. Marvel's Star Wars series was one of the industry's top selling titles in 1979 and 1980. The only downside for Marvel was that the 100,000 copy sales quota was surpassed quickly, allowing Lippincott to renegotiate the royalty arrangements from a position of strength. In the late 1980s, Marvel dropped a new Star Wars comic it had in development, which was picked up by Dark Horse Comics and published as the popular Dark Empire series (1991–1995). Dark Horse subsequently launched dozens of series set after the original film trilogy, including Tales of the Jedi (1993–1998), (1995–1998), (1998–2006), Star Wars Tales (1999–2005), (2002–2006), and (2006–2010). After Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm, it was announced in January 2014 that in 2015 the Star Wars comics license would return to Marvel Comics, whose parent company, Marvel Entertainment, Disney had purchased in 2009. Launched in 2015, the first three publications were titled Star Wars, , and the limited series . John Williams composed the soundtracks for the nine episodic films; he has stated that he will retire from the franchise with The Rise of Skywalker. He also composed the theme "The Adventures of Han" for Solo: A Star Wars Story, which John Powell composed the rest of the score of. Michael Giacchino composed the score of Rogue One. Radio adaptations of the films were also produced. Lucas, a fan of the NPR- affiliated campus radio station of his alma mater the University of Southern California, licensed the Star Wars radio rights to KUSC-FM for US$1. The production used John Williams' original film score, along with Ben Burtt's sound effects. The first was written by science-fiction author Brian Daley and directed by John Madden. It was broadcast on National Public Radio in 1981, adapting the original 1977 film into 13-episodes. Mark Hamill and Anthony Daniels reprised their film roles. The overwhelming success, led to a 10-episode adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back debuted in 1983. Billy Dee Williams joined the other two stars, reprising his role as Lando Calrissian. In 1983, Buena Vista Records released an original, 30-minute Star Wars audio drama titled Rebel Mission to Ord Mantell, written by Daley. In the 1990s, Time Warner Audio Publishing adapted several Star Wars series from Dark Horse Comics into audio dramas: the three-part Dark Empire saga, Tales of the Jedi, , the Dark Forces trilogy, and Crimson Empire (1998). Return of the Jedi was adapted into 6-episodes in 1996, featuring Daniels. The Star Wars franchise has spawned over one hundred computer, video, and board games, dating back to some of the earliest home consoles. Some are based directly on the movie material, while others rely heavily on the non-canonical Expanded Universe (rebranded as Star Wars Legends and removed from the canon in 2014). Star Wars games have gone through three significant development eras, marked by a change in leadership among the developers: the early licensed games, those developed after the creation of LucasArts, and those created after the closure of the Lucasfilm division by Disney and the transfer of the license to Electronic Arts. The first era began with the first officially licensed electronic Star Wars game: Kenner's 1979 table-top Star Wars Electronic Battle Command. In 1982, Parker Brothers published the first Star Wars video game for the Atari 2600, . It was followed in 1983 by Atari's rail shooter arcade game Star Wars, which used vector graphics to replicate the Death Star trench run scene from the 1977 film. The next game, (1984), used more traditional raster graphics, while the following (1985) returned to vector graphics. Star Wars was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1991, followed by a the following year. Super Star Wars was also released in 1992, followed by two sequels over the next two years. The beginning of the second era is marked by the prominence of LucasArts and modern self-published games. LucasArts was founded after Star Wars creator George Lucas took interest in the increasing success of the video game market. Wanting to have more creative control over the games and their narratives, Lucas founded his own video-game development company, LucasArts. During this era, improved video game graphics allowed games to tell complex narratives, which allowed for the retelling of the films, and eventually original narratives set in the same continuity as the films, with voice-overs and CGI cutscenes. Lucasfilm had founded its own video game company in 1982, becoming best known for adventure games and World War II flight combat games. In 1993, LucasArts released , the first self-published Star Wars video game and the first space flight simulator based on the franchise. It was one of the best- selling video games of 1993 and established its own . The was released between 1998 and 2003, also focusing on space battles set during the films. After its acquisition by Disney, LucasArts ceased being a developer and video game rights were reassigned to Electronic Arts, marking the start of the third era. Games made during this era are considered canonical, and feature more influence from the Star Wars filmmakers. Disney partnered with Lenovo to create the augmented reality video game Jedi Challenges, released in November 2017. In August 2018, it was announced that Zynga would publish free-to-play Star Wars mobile games. The Battlefront games received a canonical reboot in 2017. was released in November 2019. In addition to the Disneyland ride Star Tours (1987) and its successor, (2011), many live attractions have been held at Disney parks, including the travelling exhibition , the Space Mountain spin-off Hyperspace Mountain, a walkthrough Launch Bay, and the night-time . An immersive themed area called (2019) opened at Disneyland and opened at Walt Disney World in mid-2019. A themed hotel, , is currently under construction at Walt Disney World. A multimedia project involves works released across multiple types of media. (1996) was a multimedia project set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi that included a novel by Steve Perry, a comic book series, a , and action figures. (2008–2010) was a similar project set between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope that included a novel, a and its , a graphic novel, a role-playing game supplement, and toys. The success of the Star Wars films led the franchise to become one of the most merchandised franchises in the world. While filming the original 1977 film, George Lucas decided to take a $500,000 pay cut to his salary as director in exchange for full ownership of the franchise's merchandising rights. By 1987, the first three films have made billion in merchandising revenue.By 2012, the first six films produced approximately billion in merchandising revenue. Kenner made the first Star Wars action figures to coincide with the release of the film, and today the original figures are highly valuable. Since the 1990s, Hasbro holds the rights to create action figures based on the saga. Pez dispensers began to be produced in 1997. Star Wars was the first intellectual property to be licensed in Lego history. Lego has produced animated parody short films and mini-series to promote their Star Wars sets. The Lego Star Wars video games are critically acclaimed bestsellers. In 1977, the board game Star Wars: Escape from the Death Star was released, not to be confused with the board game with the same name published in 1990. A Star Wars Monopoly and themed versions of Trivial Pursuit and Battleship were released in 1997, with updated versions released in subsequent years. The board game Risk has been adapted in two editions by Hasbro: (2005) and the (2006). Three Star Wars tabletop role-playing games have been developed: in the 1980s and 1990s, one by Wizards of the Coast in the 2000s, and one by Fantasy Flight Games in the 2010s. Star Wars trading cards have been published since the first "blue" series, by Topps, in 1977. Dozens of series have been produced, with Topps being the licensed creator in the United States. Some of the card series are of film stills, while others are original art. Many of the cards have become highly collectible with some very rare "promos", such as the 1993 Galaxy Series II "floating Yoda" P3 card often commanding US$1,000 or more. While most "base" or "common card" sets are plentiful, many "insert" or "chase cards" are very rare. From 1995 until 2001, Decipher, Inc. had the license for, created and produced a collectible card game based on the franchise. Star Wars features elements such as knighthood, chivalry, and Jungian archetypes such as 'the shadow'. There are also many references to Christianity, such as in the appearance of Darth Maul, whose design draws heavily from traditional depictions of the devil. Anakin was conceived of a virgin birth, and is assumed to be the "Chosen One", a messianic individual. However, unlike Jesus, Anakin falls from grace, remaining evil as Darth Vader until Return of the Jedi. According to Adam Driver, sequel trilogy villain Kylo Ren, who idolizes Vader, believes he is "doing what he thinks is right". George Lucas has said that the theme of the saga is redemption. The saga draws heavily from the hero's journey, an archetypical template developed by comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell. Each character—primarily Anakin, Luke, and Rey—follows the steps of the cycle or undergoes its reversal, becoming the villain. A defining step of the journey is "Atonement with the Father". Obi-Wan's loss of a father figure could have impacted his relationship with Anakin, whom both Obi-Wan and Palpatine are fatherlike mentors to. Luke's discovery that Vader is his father has strong repurcussions on the saga and is regarded as one of the most influential plot twists in cinema. Supreme Leader Snoke encourages Kylo Ren to kill his father, Han Solo. Kylo uses the fact that Rey is an orphan to tempt her into joining the dark side. According to Inverse, the final scene in The Last Jedi, which depicts servant children playing with a toy of Luke and one boy using the Force, symbolizes that "the Force can be found in people with humble beginnings." Political science has been an important element of Star Wars since the franchise launched in 1977, focusing on a struggle between democracy and dictatorship. Darth Vader's design, initially inspired by Samurai armor, also incorporated a German military helmet. Originally, Lucas conceived of the Sith as a group that served the Emperor in the same way that the Schutzstaffel served Adolf Hitler; this was condensed into one character in the form of Darth Vader. Stormtroopers borrow the name of World War I German "shock" troopers. Imperial officers wear uniforms resembling those of German forces during World War II, and political and security officers resemble the black- clad SS down to the stylized silver death's head on their caps. World War II terms were used for names in the films; e.g. the planets Kessel (a term that refers to a group of encircled forces) and Hoth (after a German general who served on the snow-laden Eastern Front). Shots of the commanders looking through AT-AT walker viewscreens in The Empire Strikes Back resemble tank interiors, and space battles in the original film were based on World War I and World War II dogfights. Palpatine being a chancellor before becoming the Emperor in the prequel trilogy alludes to Hitler's role before appointing himself Führer. Lucas has also drawn parallels to historical dictators such as Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, and politicians like Richard Nixon. The Great Jedi Purge mirrors the events of the Night of the Long Knives. The corruption of the Galactic Republic is modeled after the fall of the democratic Roman Republic and the formation of an empire. On the inspiration for the First Order formed "from the ashes of the Empire", The Force Awakens director J. J. Abrams spoke of conversations the writers had about how the Nazis could have escaped to Argentina after WWII and "started working together again." The Star Wars saga has had a significant impact on popular culture, with references to its fictional universe deeply embedded in everyday life. Phrases like "evil empire" and "May the Force be with you" have become part of the popular lexicon. The first Star Wars film in 1977 was a cultural unifier, enjoyed by a wide spectrum of people. The film can be said to have helped launch the science-fiction boom of the late 1970s and early 1980s, making science-fiction films a mainstream genre. The widespread impact made it a prime target for parody works and homages, with popular examples including Hardware Wars, Spaceballs, and . In 1989, the Library of Congress selected the original Star Wars film for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry, as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." The Empire Strikes Back, was selected in 2010. 35mm reels of the 1997 Special Editions were the versions initially presented for preservation because of the difficulty of transferring from the original prints, but it was later revealed that the Library possesses a copyright deposit print of the original theatrical releases. The original Star Wars film was a huge success for 20th Century Fox, and was credited for reinvigorating the company. Within three weeks of the film's release, the studio's stock price doubled to a record high. Prior to 1977, 20th Century Fox's greatest annual profits were $37 million, while in 1977, the company broke that record by posting a profit of $79 million. The franchise helped Fox to change from an almost bankrupt production company to a thriving media conglomerate. Star Wars fundamentally changed the aesthetics and narratives of Hollywood films, switching the focus of Hollywood-made films from deep, meaningful stories based on dramatic conflict, themes and irony to sprawling special-effects-laden blockbusters, as well as changing the Hollywood film industry in fundamental ways. Before Star Wars, special effects in films had not appreciably advanced since the 1950s. The commercial success of Star Wars created a boom in state-of-the-art special effects in the late 1970s. Along with Jaws, Star Wars started the tradition of the summer blockbuster film in the entertainment industry, where films open on many screens at the same time and profitable franchises are important. It created the model for the major film trilogy and showed that merchandising rights on a film could generate more money than the film itself did. The original Star Wars trilogy is widely considered one of the best film trilogies in history. Numerous filmmakers have been influenced by Star Wars, including Damon Lindelof, Dean Devlin, Roland Emmerich, John Lasseter, David Fincher, Joss Whedon, John Singleton, Kevin Smith, and later Star Wars directors J. J. Abrams and Gareth Edwards. Christopher Nolan cited Star Wars as an influence when making the 2010 blockbuster film Inception. Lucas's concept of a "used universe" particularly influenced Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) and Alien (1979), James Cameron's Aliens (1986) as well as The Terminator (1984), George Miller's Mad Max 2, and Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Regarding the return and expansion of the franchise, Lawrence Kasdan noted that the spin-offs were expanding the franchise into more of a shared universe beyond the previously linear saga, adding that one of the strengths of the franchise was how it all fell under the same continuity in comparison to other franchises. Kasdan also contrasted Star Wars to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, noting that Star Wars features less comedy than the latter, and adding that he felt a more comedic approach would "not be Star Wars" to him. Film critic Roger Ebert wrote in his book The Great Movies, "Like The Birth of a Nation and Citizen Kane, Star Wars was a technical watershed that influenced many of the movies that came after." It began a new generation of special effects and high-energy motion pictures. The film was one of the first films to link genres together to invent a new, high-concept genre for filmmakers to build upon. Finally, along with Steven Spielberg's Jaws, it shifted the film industry's focus away from personal filmmaking of the 1970s and towards fast- paced, big-budget blockbusters for younger audiences. Some critics have blamed Star Wars and Jaws for "ruining" Hollywood by shifting its focus from "sophisticated" films such as The Godfather, Taxi Driver, and Annie Hall to films about spectacle and juvenile fantasy, and for the industry shift from stand-alone, one and done films, towards blockbuster franchises with multiple sequels and prequels. One such critic, Peter Biskind, complained, "When all was said and done, Lucas and Spielberg returned the 1970s audience, grown sophisticated on a diet of European and New Hollywood films, to the simplicities of the pre-1960s Golden Age of movies... They marched backward through the looking-glass." In an opposing view, Tom Shone wrote that through Star Wars and Jaws, Lucas and Spielberg "didn't betray cinema at all: they plugged it back into the grid, returning the medium to its roots as a carnival sideshow, a magic act, one big special effect", which was "a kind of rebirth". The Star Wars saga has inspired many fans to create their own non-canon material set in the Star Wars galaxy. In recent years, this has ranged from writing fan fiction to creating fan films. In 2002, Lucasfilm sponsored the first annual Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards, officially recognizing filmmakers and the genre. Because of concerns over potential copyright and trademark issues, however, the contest was initially open only to parodies, mockumentaries, and documentaries. Fan fiction films set in the Star Wars universe were originally ineligible, but in 2007, Lucasfilm changed the submission standards to allow in-universe fiction entries. Lucasfilm has allowed but not endorsed the creation of fan fiction, as long as it does not attempt to make a profit. As the characters and the storyline of the original trilogy are so well known, educators have used the films in the classroom as a learning resource. For example, a project in Western Australia honed elementary school students storytelling skills by role-playing action scenes from the movies and later creating props and audio/visual scenery to enhance their performance. Others have used the films to encourage second-level students to integrate technology in the science classroom by making prototype lightsabers. Similarly, psychiatrists in New Zealand and the US have advocated their use in the university classroom to explain different types of psychopathology. Architecture of Star Wars, Jedi census phenomenon, Jediism, List of Star Wars creatures, Physics and Star Wars, Wookieepedia: The Star Wars Wiki, 501st Legion, Star Wars Celebration, Star Wars Day, Music of Star Wars, Star Wars documentaries, The Story of Star Wars, Technology in Star Wars, List of space science fiction franchises

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"Mr. Jones" is a song by American alternative rock band Counting Crows. It was released in December 1993 as the lead single and third track from their debut album, August and Everything After (1993). It was the band's first radio hit and has been described as a "breakout" single. "Mr. Jones" reached number seven in France, number five in the United States, and number one in Canada. "Mr. Jones" debuted on the US Billboard Hot 100 on February 19, 1994, and entered the top 10 five weeks later. On May 14, 1994, the song reached its peak US chart position at number five. The band's surprise success happened to coincide with Kurt Cobain's death. These events took a significant toll on Adam Duritz, the lead vocalist and principal songwriter. Duritz said in an interview, "We heard that, that [Kurt] had shot himself. And it really scared the hell out of me because I thought, these things in my life are getting so out of control." These events and feelings were the basis for "Catapult", the first track of Recovering the Satellites. According to Duritz (who was born in 1964), the song title had a hand in the naming by Jonathan Pontell of "Generation Jones", the group of people born between 1954 and 1965. "I feel honored that my song Mr. Jones was part of the inspiration for the name 'Generation Jones'." The song is about struggling musicians (Duritz and bassist Marty Jones of The Himalayans) who "want to be big stars," believing that "when everybody loves me, I will never be lonely." Duritz would later recant these values; and in some later concert appearances, "Mr. Jones" was played in a subdued acoustic style, if at all. On the live CD Duritz changes the lyrics "We all wanna be big, big stars, but we got different reasons for that" to "We all wanna be big, big stars, but then we get second thoughts about that"; he also changed the lyrics "when everybody loves you, sometimes that's just about as funky as you can be" to "when everybody loves you, sometimes that's just about as fucked up as you can be." Some believe the song is a veiled reference to the protagonist of Bob Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man", based on the lyric "I wanna be Bob Dylan, Mr. Jones wishes he was someone just a little more funky." According to Adam Duritz on VH1 Storytellers, "It's really a song about my friend Marty and I. We went out one night to watch his dad play, his dad was a Flamenco guitar player who lived in Spain (David Serva), and he was in San Francisco in the mission playing with his old Flamenco troupe. And after the gig we all went to this bar called the New Amsterdam in San Francisco on Columbus." In a 2013 interview, Duritz explained that even though the song is named for his friend Marty Jones, it is actually about Duritz himself. "I wrote a song about me, I just happened to be out with him that night," Duritz said. The inspiration for the song came as Duritz and Jones were drunk at a bar after watching Jones' father perform, when they saw Kenney Dale Johnson, longtime drummer for the musician Chris Isaak, sitting with three women. "It just seemed like, you know, we couldn't even manage to talk to girls, ... we were just thinking if we were rock stars, it'd be easier. I went home and wrote the song," Duritz said. In the live version of the song, as on the album , the first couplet of the song is a quotation of the 1967 song So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star by The Byrds. 1. "Mr. Jones" (LP version) – 4:32 2. "Raining in Baltimore" (LP version) – 4:42 3. "Mr. Jones" (acoustic version) – 4:44 4. "Rain King" (acoustic version) – 5:10 Composers – David Bryson, Adam Duritz, Performed by – Counting Crows, Producers – T-Bone Burnett, Bruce Ranes, Executive producer – Gary Gersh, Mixing – Scott Litt, Patrick McCarthy, Engineers – Patrick McCarthy, Bruce Ranes, Photography – Michael Tighe The band Hidden in Plain View did a cover of "Mr. Jones" which was released in 2004 on the album Dead and Dreaming: An Indie Tribute to the Counting Crows. "Mr. Jones" at Counting Crows' official web site., "Mr. Jones" at Lyrics Undercover: a podcast explaining the lyrics of the song and the identity of Mr. Jones. "Mr. Jones" is a song by American hip hop recording artist Mike Jones, released as the first single from his album The American Dream. At the end of the song, Mike Jones claims that there is a film called The American Dream coming out as well as the EP. The single debuted at 92 on the Billboard Hot 100, but the following week it fell off the chart. The video for "Mr. Jones" premiered on February 15, 2007 on BET's 106 and Park. Bun B, Lil' Flip, DJ Drama, Letoya Luckett, Slim Thug, and King Mello, all make cameo appearances. Rapper Lil Wayne used the music from this song, replacing Jones' lyrics with his own, and released the mix as "The Sky Is The Limit" on his 2007 mixtape Da Drought 3. US 12" "Mr. Jones" (Super Clean Radio Edit) – 4:02, "Mr. Jones" (Radio Edit) – 4:03, "Mr. Jones" (Instrumental) – 4:03, "Mr. Jones" (Album Version) – 4:03, "Mr. Jones" (A Cappella, Radio) – 3:56, "Mr. Jones" (A Cappella, Album) – 3:53 US CD "Mr. Jones" (Super Clean Radio Edit) – 4:02, "Mr. Jones" (Radio Edit) – 4:03, "Mr. Jones" (Instrumental) – 4:03, "Mr. Jones" (Album Version) – 4:03, "Mr. Jones" (A Cappella) (Radio) – 3:56, "Mr. Jones" (A Cappella) (Album) – 3:53 Mr. Jones is a 1993 American romantic drama film starring Richard Gere, Lena Olin, Anne Bancroft, Tom Irwin and Delroy Lindo, and directed by Mike Figgis. Mr. Jones (Richard Gere) is a man suffering from bipolar disorder, a disease that affords him periods of intense emotional pleasure and expansiveness but which also results in periods of suicidal depression. In one of his manic periods he jumps up onto the stage during a concert performance of Beethoven's ninth and starts conducting, in another he is on top of a construction site claiming he can fly. He is eventually taken to a psychiatric hospital where he meets Elizabeth "Libbie" Bowen (Lena Olin), a doctor who takes an interest in his condition and they slowly begin falling for each other whilst she tries to treat his condition. Richard Gere as Mr. Jones, Lena Olin as Dr. Elizabeth "Libbie" Bowen, Anne Bancroft as Dr. Catherine Holland, Tom Irwin as Dr. Patrick Shaye, Delroy Lindo as Howard, Lauren Tom as Amanda Chang, Bruce Altman as David, Lisa Malkiewicz as Susan, Albert Henderson as Patient The film was released to mixed reviews; movie historian Leonard Maltin remarked that "Gere is fine, but his onscreen behavior turns this into The Jester of Tides." Indeed, Gere received praise for his performance as the troubled title character. Many critics noted that the film would have been better if the romance plot between Jones and Libbie was left out, since it appeared forced and contrived. The movie debuted at No. 7 at the box office. Mr. Jones holds a 46% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. To prepare for the film, Richard Gere, Mike Figgis and Eric Roth did a tremendous amount of research and studying on bipolar disorder. Gere met with several people who have the disorder to gain insight and knowledge on what to accurately portray. There is a shorter director's cut that Figgis presented at the Munich film festival in 2006. Michelle Pfeiffer gave up the female lead to take on the part of Catwoman in Batman Returns. As in his earlier hit film, An Officer and a Gentleman, Gere's character rides a Triumph Bonneville motorcycle.

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This is a list of submarine topographical features, oceanic landforms and topographic elements. An abyssal plain is an underwater plain on the deep ocean floor, usually found at depths between and . Lying generally between the foot of a continental rise and a mid-ocean ridge, abyssal plains are among the flattest, smoothest and least explored regions on Earth. Abyssal plains are key geologic elements of oceanic basins (the other elements being an elevated mid-ocean ridge and flanking abyssal hills). In addition to these elements, active oceanic basins (those that are associated with a moving plate tectonic boundary) also typically include an oceanic trench and a subduction zone. Abyssal plains cover more than 33% of the ocean floor (about 23% of Earth's surface), but they are poorly preserved in the sedimentary record because they tend to be consumed by the subduction process. The abyssal plain is formed when the lower oceanic crust is melted and forced upwards by the asthenosphere layer of the upper mantle. As this basaltic material reaches the surface at mid-ocean ridges, it forms new oceanic crust. Abyssal plains result from the blanketing of an originally uneven surface of oceanic crust by fine-grained sediments, mainly clay and silt. Much of this sediment is deposited from turbidity currents that have been channeled from the continental margins along submarine canyons down into deeper water. The remainder of the sediment is composed chiefly of pelagic sediments. Use of a continuously recording fathometer enabled Tolstoy & Ewing in the summer of 1947 to identify and describe the first abyssal plain. This plain, located to the south of Newfoundland, is now known as the Sohm Abyssal Plain. Following this discovery many other examples were found in all the oceans. Following is a list of named abyssal plains and oceanic basins: Oceanic trenches are long, narrow topographic depressions of the seabed. They are the deepest parts of the ocean floor, and they define one of the most important natural boundaries on the Earth's solid surface: the one between two lithospheric plates. Trenches are a distinctive morphological feature of plate boundaries. Trenches are found in all oceans with the exception of the Arctic Ocean and they are most common in the North and South Pacific Oceans. There are three types of lithospheric plate boundaries: 1.) divergent (where lithosphere and oceanic crust is created at mid-ocean ridges), 2.) convergent (where one lithospheric plate sinks beneath another and returns to the mantle), and 3.) transform (where two lithospheric plates slide past each other). An oceanic trench is a type of convergent boundary at which two oceanic lithospheric slabs meet; the older (and therefore denser) of these slabs flexes and subducts beneath the other slab. Oceanic lithosphere moves into trenches at a global rate of about a tenth of a square meter per second. Trenches are generally parallel to a volcanic island arc, and about 200 km from a volcanic arc. Oceanic trenches typically extend 3 to 4 km (1.9 to 2.5 mi) below the level of the surrounding oceanic floor. The greatest ocean depth to be sounded is in the Challenger Deep of the Mariana Trench, at a depth of 10,911 m (35,798 ft) below sea level. The following is a list of the deepest parts of the Earth's oceans and seas (all depths are measured from sea level): Entries marked with, are the deepest parts of their respective water bodies, but are not oceanic trenches. An oceanic plateau is a large, relatively flat submarine region that rises well above the level of the ambient seabed. While many oceanic plateaus are composed of continental crust, and often form a step interrupting the continental slope, some plateaus are undersea remnants of large igneous provinces. Continental crust has the highest amount of silicon (such rock is called felsic). Oceanic crust has a smaller amount of silicon (mafic rock). The anomalous volcanism associated with the formation of oceanic plateaux at the time of the Cenomanian-Turonian boundary (90.4 million years) ago may have been responsible for the environmental disturbances that occurred at that time. The physical manifestations of this were elevated atmospheric and oceanic temperatures, a significant sea-level transgression, and a period of widespread anoxia, leading to the extinction of 26% of all genera. These eruptions would also have resulted in the emission of large quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, leading to global warming. Additionally, the emission of sulfur monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, and halogens into the oceans would have made seawater more acidic resulting in the dissolution of carbonate, and further release of . This runaway greenhouse effect was probably put into reverse by the decline of the anomalous volcanic activity and by increased -driven productivity in oceanic surface waters, leading to increased organic carbon burial, black shale deposition, anoxia and mass extinction in the ocean basins. Campbell Plateau (South Pacific), Challenger Plateau (South Pacific), Agulhas Plateau (Southwest Indian), Caribbean-Colombian Plateau (Caribbean), Exmouth Plateau (Indian), Hikurangi Plateau (Southwest Pacific), Kerguelen Plateau (Indian), Manihiki Plateau (Southwest Pacific), Marquesas Plateau (Southwest Pacific), Mascarene Plateau (Indian), Naturaliste Plateau (Indian), Ontong Java Plateau (Southwest Pacific), Shatsky Rise (North Pacific), Vøring Plateau (North Atlantic), Wrangellia Terrane (Northeast Pacific), Yermak Plateau (Arctic) A mid-ocean ridge is a general term for an underwater mountain system that consists of various mountain ranges (chains), typically having a valley known as a rift running along its spine, formed by plate tectonics. This type of oceanic ridge is characteristic of what is known as an oceanic spreading center, which is responsible for seafloor spreading. Aden Ridge, American-Antarctic Ridge, Carlsberg Ridge, Central Indian Ridge, Chile Rise, Cocos Ridge, East Pacific Rise, East Scotia Ridge, Explorer Ridge, Gakkel Ridge (Mid-Arctic Ridge), Gorda Ridge, Juan de Fuca Ridge, Knipovich Ridge (between Greenland and Spitsbergen), Kolbeinsey Ridge (North of Iceland), Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Mohns Ridge, Norfolk Ridge, Pacific-Antarctic Ridge, Palau-Kyushu Ridge, Reykjanes Ridge (South of Iceland), Southeast Indian Ridge, Southwest Indian Ridge, West Mariana Ridge Physical oceanography, Bathymetry, Challenger Deep, Hadal zone, List of oceanic landforms, List of seamounts by summit depth, Seamount, Submarine canyon The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south and is bounded by the continents of Asia and Australia in the west and the Americas in the east. At in area (as defined with an Antarctic southern border), this largest division of the World Ocean—and, in turn, the hydrosphere—covers about 46% of Earth's water surface and about one-third of its total surface area, making it larger than all of Earth's land area combined. The centers of both the Water Hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere are in the Pacific Ocean. The equator subdivides it into the North(ern) Pacific Ocean and South(ern) Pacific Ocean, with two exceptions: the Galápagos and Gilbert Islands, while straddling the equator, are deemed wholly within the South Pacific. Its mean depth is . The Mariana Trench in the western North Pacific is the deepest point in the world, reaching a depth of . The western Pacific has many peripheral seas. Though the peoples of Asia and Oceania have traveled the Pacific Ocean since prehistoric times, the eastern Pacific was first sighted by Europeans in the early 16th century when Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama in 1513 and discovered the great "southern sea" which he named Mar del Sur (in Spanish). The ocean's current name was coined by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan during the Spanish circumnavigation of the world in 1521, as he encountered favorable winds on reaching the ocean. He called it Mar Pacífico, which in both Portuguese and Spanish means "peaceful sea". Important human migrations occurred in the Pacific in prehistoric times. About 3000 BC, the Austronesian peoples on the island of Taiwan mastered the art of long-distance canoe travel and spread themselves and their languages south to the Philippines, Indonesia, and maritime Southeast Asia; west towards Madagascar; southeast towards New Guinea and Melanesia (intermarrying with native Papuans); and east to the islands of Micronesia, Oceania and Polynesia. Long-distance trade developed all along the coast from Mozambique to Japan. Trade, and therefore knowledge, extended to the Indonesian islands but apparently not Australia. By at least 878 when there was a significant Islamic settlement in Canton much of this trade was controlled by Arabs or Muslims. In 219 BC Xu Fu sailed out into the Pacific searching for the elixir of immortality. From 1404 to 1433 Zheng He led expeditions into the Indian Ocean. The first contact of European navigators with the western edge of the Pacific Ocean was made by the Portuguese expeditions of António de Abreu and Francisco Serrão, via the Lesser Sunda Islands, to the Maluku Islands, in 1512, and with Jorge Álvares's expedition to southern China in 1513, both ordered by Afonso de Albuquerque from Malacca. The east side of the ocean was discovered by Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1513 after his expedition crossed the Isthmus of Panama and reached a new ocean. He named it Mar del Sur (literally, "Sea of the South" or "South Sea") because the ocean was to the south of the coast of the isthmus where he first observed the Pacific. In 1519, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailed the Pacific East to West on a Spanish expedition to the Spice Islands that would eventually result in the first world circumnavigation. Magellan called the ocean Pacífico (or "Pacific" meaning, "peaceful") because, after sailing through the stormy seas off Cape Horn, the expedition found calm waters. The ocean was often called the Sea of Magellan in his honor until the eighteenth century. Magellan stopped at one uninhabited Pacific island before stopping at Guam in March 1521. Although Magellan himself died in the Philippines in 1521, Spanish Basque navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano led the remains of the expedition back to Spain across the Indian Ocean and round the Cape of Good Hope, completing the first world circumnavigation in a single expedition in 1522. Sailing around and east of the Moluccas, between 1525 and 1527, Portuguese expeditions discovered the Caroline Islands, the Aru Islands, and Papua New Guinea. In 1542–43 the Portuguese also reached Japan. In 1564, five Spanish ships carrying 379 explorers crossed the ocean from Mexico led by Miguel López de Legazpi, and sailed to the Philippines and Mariana Islands. For the remainder of the 16th century, Spanish influence was paramount, with ships sailing from Mexico and Peru across the Pacific Ocean to the Philippines via Guam, and establishing the Spanish East Indies. The Manila galleons operated for two and a half centuries, linking Manila and Acapulco, in one of the longest trade routes in history. Spanish expeditions also discovered Tuvalu, the Marquesas, the Cook Islands, the Solomon Islands, and the Admiralty Islands in the South Pacific. Later, in the quest for Terra Australis ("the [great] Southern Land"), Spanish explorations in the 17th century, such as the expedition led by the Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, discovered the Pitcairn and Vanuatu archipelagos, and sailed the Torres Strait between Australia and New Guinea, named after navigator Luís Vaz de Torres. Dutch explorers, sailing around southern Africa, also engaged in discovery and trade; Willem Janszoon, made the first completely documented European landing in Australia (1606), in Cape York Peninsula, and Abel Janszoon Tasman circumnavigated and landed on parts of the Australian continental coast and discovered Tasmania and New Zealand in 1642. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Spain considered the Pacific Ocean a mare clausum—a sea closed to other naval powers. As the only known entrance from the Atlantic, the Strait of Magellan was at times patrolled by fleets sent to prevent entrance of non-Spanish ships. On the western side of the Pacific Ocean the Dutch threatened the Spanish Philippines. The 18th century marked the beginning of major exploration by the Russians in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, such as the First Kamchatka expedition and the Great Northern Expedition, led by the Danish Russian navy officer Vitus Bering. Spain also sent expeditions to the Pacific Northwest, reaching Vancouver Island in southern Canada, and Alaska. The French explored and settled Polynesia, and the British made three voyages with James Cook to the South Pacific and Australia, Hawaii, and the North American Pacific Northwest. In 1768, Pierre-Antoine Véron, a young astronomer accompanying Louis Antoine de Bougainville on his voyage of exploration, established the width of the Pacific with precision for the first time in history. One of the earliest voyages of scientific exploration was organized by Spain in the Malaspina Expedition of 1789–1794. It sailed vast areas of the Pacific, from Cape Horn to Alaska, Guam and the Philippines, New Zealand, Australia, and the South Pacific. Growing imperialism during the 19th century resulted in the occupation of much of Oceania by European powers, and later Japan and the United States. Significant contributions to oceanographic knowledge were made by the voyages of HMS Beagle in the 1830s, with Charles Darwin aboard; HMS Challenger during the 1870s; the USS Tuscarora (1873–76); and the German Gazelle (1874–76). In Oceania, France obtained a leading position as imperial power after making Tahiti and New Caledonia protectorates in 1842 and 1853, respectively. After navy visits to Easter Island in 1875 and 1887, Chilean navy officer Policarpo Toro negotiated the incorporation of the island into Chile with native Rapanui in 1888. By occupying Easter Island, Chile joined the imperial nations. By 1900 nearly all Pacific islands were in control of Britain, France, United States, Germany, Japan, and Chile. Although the United States gained control of Guam and the Philippines from Spain in 1898, Japan controlled most of the western Pacific by 1914 and occupied many other islands during the Pacific War; however, by the end of that war, Japan was defeated and the U.S. Pacific Fleet was the virtual master of the ocean. The Japanese-ruled Northern Mariana Islands came under the control of the United States. Since the end of World War II, many former colonies in the Pacific have become independent states. The Pacific separates Asia and Australia from the Americas. It may be further subdivided by the equator into northern (North Pacific) and southern (South Pacific) portions. It extends from the Antarctic region in the South to the Arctic in the north. The Pacific Ocean encompasses approximately one-third of the Earth's surface, having an area of —significantly larger than Earth's entire landmass of some . Extending approximately from the Bering Sea in the Arctic to the northern extent of the circumpolar Southern Ocean at 60°S (older definitions extend it to Antarctica's Ross Sea), the Pacific reaches its greatest east-west width at about 5°N latitude, where it stretches approximately from Indonesia to the coast of Colombia—halfway around the world, and more than five times the diameter of the Moon. The lowest known point on Earth—the Mariana Trench—lies below sea level. Its average depth is , putting the total water volume at roughly . Due to the effects of plate tectonics, the Pacific Ocean is currently shrinking by roughly per year on three sides, roughly averaging a year. By contrast, the Atlantic Ocean is increasing in size. Along the Pacific Ocean's irregular western margins lie many seas, the largest of which are the Celebes Sea, Coral Sea, East China Sea (East Sea), Philippine Sea, Sea of Japan, South China Sea (South Sea), Sulu Sea, Tasman Sea, and Yellow Sea (West Sea of Korea). The Indonesian Seaway (including the Strait of Malacca and Torres Strait) joins the Pacific and the Indian Ocean to the west, and Drake Passage and the Strait of Magellan link the Pacific with the Atlantic Ocean on the east. To the north, the Bering Strait connects the Pacific with the Arctic Ocean. As the Pacific straddles the 180th meridian, the West Pacific (or western Pacific, near Asia) is in the Eastern Hemisphere, while the East Pacific (or eastern Pacific, near the Americas) is in the Western Hemisphere. The Southern Pacific Ocean harbors the Southeast Indian Ridge crossing from south of Australia turning into the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge (north of the South Pole) and merges with another ridge (south of South America) to form the East Pacific Rise which also connects with another ridge (south of North America) which overlooks the Juan de Fuca Ridge. For most of Magellan's voyage from the Strait of Magellan to the Philippines, the explorer indeed found the ocean peaceful; however, the Pacific is not always peaceful. Many tropical storms batter the islands of the Pacific. The lands around the Pacific Rim are full of volcanoes and often affected by earthquakes. Tsunamis, caused by underwater earthquakes, have devastated many islands and in some cases destroyed entire towns. The Martin Waldseemüller map of 1507 was the first to show the Americas separating two distinct oceans. Later, the Diogo Ribeiro map of 1529 was the first to show the Pacific at about its proper size. The status of Taiwan and China is disputed. For more information, see political status of Taiwan.", The status of North Korea and South Korea is disputed. For more information, see North Korea–South Korea relations" (US), Baker Island (US), Clipperton Island (France), (New Zealand), Coral Sea Islands (Australia), (France), (US), (China), Howland Island (US), Jarvis Island (US), Johnston Island (US), Kingman Reef (US), (China), Midway Atoll (US), (France), (New Zealand), (Australia), (US), Palmyra Atoll (US), (UK), (New Zealand), (France), Wake Island (US) This ocean has most of the islands in the world. There are about 25,000 islands in the Pacific Ocean. The islands entirely within the Pacific Ocean can be divided into three main groups known as Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia. Micronesia, which lies north of the equator and west of the International Date Line, includes the Mariana Islands in the northwest, the Caroline Islands in the center, the Marshall Islands to the east and the islands of Kiribati in the southeast. Melanesia, to the southwest, includes New Guinea, the world's second largest island after Greenland and by far the largest of the Pacific islands. The other main Melanesian groups from north to south are the Bismarck Archipelago, the Solomon Islands, Santa Cruz, Vanuatu, Fiji and New Caledonia. The largest area, Polynesia, stretching from Hawaii in the north to New Zealand in the south, also encompasses Tuvalu, Tokelau, Samoa, Tonga and the Kermadec Islands to the west, the Cook Islands, Society Islands and Austral Islands in the center, and the Marquesas Islands, Tuamotu, Mangareva Islands, and Easter Island to the east. Islands in the Pacific Ocean are of four basic types: continental islands, high islands, coral reefs and uplifted coral platforms. Continental islands lie outside the andesite line and include New Guinea, the islands of New Zealand, and the Philippines. Some of these islands are structurally associated with nearby continents. High islands are of volcanic origin, and many contain active volcanoes. Among these are Bougainville, Hawaii, and the Solomon Islands. The coral reefs of the South Pacific are low-lying structures that have built up on basaltic lava flows under the ocean's surface. One of the most dramatic is the Great Barrier Reef off northeastern Australia with chains of reef patches. A second island type formed of coral is the uplifted coral platform, which is usually slightly larger than the low coral islands. Examples include Banaba (formerly Ocean Island) and Makatea in the Tuamotu group of French Polynesia. The volume of the Pacific Ocean, representing about 50.1 percent of the world's oceanic water, has been estimated at some . Surface water temperatures in the Pacific can vary from , the freezing point of sea water, in the poleward areas to about near the equator. Salinity also varies latitudinally, reaching a maximum of 37 parts per thousand in the southeastern area. The water near the equator, which can have a salinity as low as 34 parts per thousand, is less salty than that found in the mid-latitudes because of abundant equatorial precipitation throughout the year. The lowest counts of less than 32 parts per thousand are found in the far north as less evaporation of seawater takes place in these frigid areas. The motion of Pacific waters is generally clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere (the North Pacific gyre) and counter-clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. The North Equatorial Current, driven westward along latitude 15°N by the trade winds, turns north near the Philippines to become the warm Japan or Kuroshio Current. Turning eastward at about 45°N, the Kuroshio forks and some water moves northward as the Aleutian Current, while the rest turns southward to rejoin the North Equatorial Current. The Aleutian Current branches as it approaches North America and forms the base of a counter-clockwise circulation in the Bering Sea. Its southern arm becomes the chilled slow, south-flowing California Current. The South Equatorial Current, flowing west along the equator, swings southward east of New Guinea, turns east at about 50°S, and joins the main westerly circulation of the South Pacific, which includes the Earth-circling Antarctic Circumpolar Current. As it approaches the Chilean coast, the South Equatorial Current divides; one branch flows around Cape Horn and the other turns north to form the Peru or Humboldt Current. The climate patterns of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres generally mirror each other. The trade winds in the southern and eastern Pacific are remarkably steady while conditions in the North Pacific are far more varied with, for example, cold winter temperatures on the east coast of Russia contrasting with the milder weather off British Columbia during the winter months due to the preferred flow of ocean currents. In the tropical and subtropical Pacific, the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) affects weather conditions. To determine the phase of ENSO, the most recent three-month sea surface temperature average for the area approximately to the southeast of Hawaii is computed, and if the region is more than above or below normal for that period, then an El Niño or La Niña is considered in progress. In the tropical western Pacific, the monsoon and the related wet season during the summer months contrast with dry winds in the winter which blow over the ocean from the Asian landmass. Worldwide, tropical cyclone activity peaks in late summer, when the difference between temperatures aloft and sea surface temperatures is the greatest; however, each particular basin has its own seasonal patterns. On a worldwide scale, May is the least active month, while September is the most active month. November is the only month in which all the tropical cyclone basins are active. The Pacific hosts the two most active tropical cyclone basins, which are the northwestern Pacific and the eastern Pacific. Pacific hurricanes form south of Mexico, sometimes striking the western Mexican coast and occasionally the southwestern United States between June and October, while typhoons forming in the northwestern Pacific moving into southeast and east Asia from May to December. Tropical cyclones also form in the South Pacific basin, where they occasionally impact island nations. In the arctic, icing from October to May can present a hazard for shipping while persistent fog occurs from June to December. A climatological low in the Gulf of Alaska keeps the southern coast wet and mild during the winter months. The Westerlies and associated jet stream within the Mid-Latitudes can be particularly strong, especially in the Southern Hemisphere, due to the temperature difference between the tropics and Antarctica, which records the coldest temperature readings on the planet. In the Southern hemisphere, because of the stormy and cloudy conditions associated with extratropical cyclones riding the jet stream, it is usual to refer to the Westerlies as the Roaring Forties, Furious Fifties and Shrieking Sixties according to the varying degrees of latitude. The ocean was first mapped by Abraham Ortelius; he called it Maris Pacifici following Ferdinand Magellan's description of it as "a pacific sea" during his circumnavigation from 1519 to 1522. To Magellan, it seemed much more calm (pacific) than the Atlantic. The andesite line is the most significant regional distinction in the Pacific. A petrologic boundary, it separates the deeper, mafic igneous rock of the Central Pacific Basin from the partially submerged continental areas of felsic igneous rock on its margins. The andesite line follows the western edge of the islands off California and passes south of the Aleutian arc, along the eastern edge of the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Kuril Islands, Japan, the Mariana Islands, the Solomon Islands, and New Zealand's North Island. The dissimilarity continues northeastward along the western edge of the Andes Cordillera along South America to Mexico, returning then to the islands off California. Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, New Guinea, and New Zealand lie outside the andesite line. Within the closed loop of the andesite line are most of the deep troughs, submerged volcanic mountains, and oceanic volcanic islands that characterize the Pacific basin. Here basaltic lavas gently flow out of rifts to build huge dome-shaped volcanic mountains whose eroded summits form island arcs, chains, and clusters. Outside the andesite line, volcanism is of the explosive type, and the Pacific Ring of Fire is the world's foremost belt of explosive volcanism. The Ring of Fire is named after the several hundred active volcanoes that sit above the various subduction zones. The Pacific Ocean is the only ocean which is almost totally bounded by subduction zones. Only the Antarctic and Australian coasts have no nearby subduction zones. The Pacific Ocean was born 750 million years ago at the breakup of Rodinia, although it is generally called the Panthalassic Ocean until the breakup of Pangea, about 200 million years ago. The oldest Pacific Ocean floor is only around 180 Ma old, with older crust subducted by now. The Pacific Ocean contains several long seamount chains, formed by hotspot volcanism. These include the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain and the Louisville Ridge. The exploitation of the Pacific's mineral wealth is hampered by the ocean's great depths. In shallow waters of the continental shelves off the coasts of Australia and New Zealand, petroleum and natural gas are extracted, and pearls are harvested along the coasts of Australia, Japan, Papua New Guinea, Nicaragua, Panama, and the Philippines, although in sharply declining volume in some cases. Fish are an important economic asset in the Pacific. The shallower shoreline waters of the continents and the more temperate islands yield herring, salmon, sardines, snapper, swordfish, and tuna, as well as shellfish. Overfishing has become a serious problem in some areas. For example, catches in the rich fishing grounds of the Okhotsk Sea off the Russian coast have been reduced by at least half since the 1990s as a result of overfishing. The quantity of small plastic fragments floating in the north-east Pacific Ocean increased a hundredfold between 1972 and 2012. The ever-growing Great Pacific garbage patch between California and Japan is three times the size of France. An estimated 80,000 metric tons of plastic inhabit the patch, totaling 1.8 trillion pieces. Marine pollution is a generic term for the harmful entry into the ocean of chemicals or particles. The main culprits are those using the rivers for disposing of their waste. The rivers then empty into the ocean, often also bringing chemicals used as fertilizers in agriculture. The excess of oxygen-depleting chemicals in the water leads to hypoxia and the creation of a dead zone. Marine debris, also known as marine litter, is human-created waste that has ended up floating in a lake, sea, ocean, or waterway. Oceanic debris tends to accumulate at the center of gyres and coastlines, frequently washing aground where it is known as beach litter. From 1946 to 1958, Marshall Islands served as the Pacific Proving Grounds for the United States and was the site of 67 nuclear tests on various atolls. Several nuclear weapons were lost in the Pacific Ocean, including one-megaton bomb lost during the 1965 Philippine Sea A-4 incident. In addition, the Pacific Ocean has served as the crash site of satellites, including Mars 96, Fobos-Grunt, and Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite. Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, Pacific Alliance, Pacific coast, Pacific Time Zone, Pacific War, Seven Seas, Trans-Pacific Partnership, War of the Pacific Paine, Lincoln. The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World (2015)., Samson, Jane. British imperial strategies in the Pacific, 1750–1900 (Ashgate Publishing, 2003). Davidson, James Wightman. "Problems of Pacific history." Journal of Pacific History 1#1 (1966): 5–21., Gulliver, Katrina. "Finding the Pacific world." Journal of World History 22#1 (2011): 83–100. online, Munro, Doug. The Ivory Tower and Beyond: Participant Historians of the Pacific (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009)., Routledge, David. "Pacific history as seen from the Pacific Islands." Pacific Studies 8#2 (1985): 81+ online, Samson, Jane. "Pacific/Oceanic History" in EPIC Pacific Ocean Data Collection Viewable on-line collection of observational data, NOAA In-situ Ocean Data Viewer plot and download ocean observations, NOAA PMEL Argo profiling floats Realtime Pacific Ocean data, NOAA TAO El Niño data Realtime Pacific Ocean El Niño buoy data, NOAA Ocean Surface Current Analyses – Realtime (OSCAR) Near-realtime Pacific Ocean Surface Currents derived from satellite altimeter and scatterometer data Deep-sea fish are fish that live in the darkness below the sunlit surface waters, that is below the epipelagic or photic zone of the sea. The lanternfish is, by far, the most common deep-sea fish. Other deep sea fishes include the flashlight fish, cookiecutter shark, bristlemouths, anglerfish, viperfish, and some species of eelpout. Only about 2% of known marine species inhabit the pelagic environment. This means that they live in the water column as opposed to the benthic organisms that live in or on the sea floor. Deep-sea organisms generally inhabit bathypelagic (1000–4000m deep) and abyssopelagic (4000–6000m deep) zones. However, characteristics of deep-sea organisms, such as bioluminescence can be seen in the mesopelagic (200–1000m deep) zone as well. The mesopelagic zone is the disphotic zone, meaning light there is minimal but still measurable. The oxygen minimum layer exists somewhere between a depth of 700m and 1000m deep depending on the place in the ocean. This area is also where nutrients are most abundant. The bathypelagic and abyssopelagic zones are aphotic, meaning that no light penetrates this area of the ocean. These zones make up about 75% of the inhabitable ocean space. The epipelagic zone (0–200m) is the area where light penetrates the water and photosynthesis occurs. This is also known as the photic zone. Because this typically extends only a few hundred meters below the water, the deep sea, about 90% of the ocean volume, is in darkness. The deep sea is also an extremely hostile environment, with temperatures that rarely exceed 3 °C (37.4 °F) and fall as low as −1.8 °C (28.76 °F) (with the exception of hydrothermal vent ecosystems that can exceed 350 °C, or 662 °F), low oxygen levels, and pressures between 20 and 1,000 atmospheres (between 2 and 100 megapascals). In the deep ocean, the waters extend far below the epipelagic zone, and support very different types of pelagic fishes adapted to living in these deeper zones. In deep water, marine snow is a continuous shower of mostly organic detritus falling from the upper layers of the water column. Its origin lies in activities within the productive photic zone. Marine snow includes dead or dying plankton, protists (diatoms), fecal matter, sand, soot and other inorganic dust. The "snowflakes" grow over time and may reach several centimetres in diameter, travelling for weeks before reaching the ocean floor. However, most organic components of marine snow are consumed by microbes, zooplankton and other filter-feeding animals within the first 1,000 metres of their journey, that is, within the epipelagic zone. In this way marine snow may be considered the foundation of deep-sea mesopelagic and benthic ecosystems: As sunlight cannot reach them, deep-sea organisms rely heavily on marine snow as an energy source. Some deep-sea pelagic groups, such as the lanternfish, ridgehead, marine hatchetfish, and lightfish families are sometimes termed pseudoceanic because, rather than having an even distribution in open water, they occur in significantly higher abundances around structural oases, notably seamounts and over continental slopes. The phenomenon is explained by the likewise abundance of prey species which are also attracted to the structures. Hydrostatic pressure increases by 1 atmosphere for every 10m in depth. Deep-sea organisms have the same pressure within their bodies as is exerted on them from the outside, so they are not crushed by the extreme pressure. Their high internal pressure, however, results in the reduced fluidity of their membranes because molecules are squeezed together. Fluidity in cell membranes increases efficiency of biological functions, most importantly the production of proteins, so organisms have adapted to this circumstance by increasing the proportion of unsaturated fatty acids in the lipids of the cell membranes. In addition to differences in internal pressure, these organisms have developed a different balance between their metabolic reactions from those organisms that live in the epipelagic zone. David Wharton, author of Life at the Limits: Organisms in Extreme Environments, notes "Biochemical reactions are accompanied by changes in volume. If a reaction results in an increase in volume, it will be inhibited by pressure, whereas, if it is associated with a decrease in volume, it will be enhanced". This means that their metabolic processes must ultimately decrease the volume of the organism to some degree. Most fish that have evolved in this harsh environment are not capable of surviving in laboratory conditions, and attempts to keep them in captivity have led to their deaths. Deep-sea organisms contain gas-filled spaces (vacuoles). Gas is compressed under high pressure and expands under low pressure. Because of this, these organisms have been known to blow up if they come to the surface. The fish of the deep-sea have evolved various adaptations to survive in this region. Since many of these fish live in regions where there is no natural illumination, they cannot rely solely on their eyesight for locating prey and mates and avoiding predators; deep-sea fish have evolved appropriately to the extreme sub-photic region in which they live. Many of these organisms are blind and rely on their other senses, such as sensitivities to changes in local pressure and smell, to catch their food and avoid being caught. Those that aren't blind have large and sensitive eyes that can use bioluminescent light. These eyes can be as much as 100 times more sensitive to light than human eyes. Also, to avoid predation, many species are dark to blend in with their environment. Many deep-sea fish are bioluminescent, with extremely large eyes adapted to the dark. Bioluminescent organisms are capable of producing light biologically through the agitation of molecules of luciferin, which then produce light. This process must be done in the presence of oxygen. These organisms are common in the mesopelagic region and below (200m and below). More than 50% of deep-sea fish, as well as some species of shrimp and squid, are capable of bioluminescence. About 80% of these organisms have photophores – light producing glandular cells that contain luminous bacteria bordered by dark colourings. Some of these photophores contain lenses, much like those in the eyes of humans, which can intensify or lessen the emanation of light. The ability to produce light only requires 1% of the organism's energy and has many purposes: It is used to search for food and attract prey, like the anglerfish; claim territory through patrol; communicate and find a mate, and distract or temporarily blind predators to escape. Also, in the mesopelagic where some light still penetrates, some organisms camouflage themselves from predators below them by illuminating their bellies to match the colour and intensity of light from above so that no shadow is cast. This tactic is known as counter-illumination. The lifecycle of deep-sea fish can be exclusively deep water although some species are born in shallower water and sink upon maturation. Regardless of the depth where eggs and larvae reside, they are typically pelagic. This planktonic — drifting — lifestyle requires neutral buoyancy. In order to maintain this, the eggs and larvae often contain oil droplets in their plasma. When these organisms are in their fully matured state they need other adaptations to maintain their positions in the water column. In general, water's density causes upthrust — the aspect of buoyancy that makes organisms float. To counteract this, the density of an organism must be greater than that of the surrounding water. Most animal tissues are denser than water, so they must find an equilibrium to make them float. Many organisms develop swim bladders (gas cavities) to stay afloat, but because of the high pressure of their environment, deep-sea fishes usually do not have this organ. Instead they exhibit structures similar to hydrofoils in order to provide hydrodynamic lift. It has also been found that the deeper a fish lives, the more jelly-like its flesh and the more minimal its bone structure. They reduce their tissue density through high fat content, reduction of skeletal weight — accomplished through reductions of size, thickness and mineral content — and water accumulation makes them slower and less agile than surface fish. Due to the poor level of photosynthetic light reaching deep-sea environments, most fish need to rely on organic matter sinking from higher levels, or, in rare cases, hydrothermal vents for nutrients. This makes the deep-sea much poorer in productivity than shallower regions. Also, animals in the pelagic environment are sparse and food doesn't come along frequently. Because of this, organisms need adaptations that allow them to survive. Some have long feelers to help them locate prey or attract mates in the pitch black of the deep ocean. The deep-sea angler fish in particular has a long fishing- rod-like adaptation protruding from its face, on the end of which is a bioluminescent piece of skin that wriggles like a worm to lure its prey. Some must consume other fish that are the same size or larger than them and they need adaptations to help digest them efficiently. Great sharp teeth, hinged jaws, disproportionately large mouths, and expandable bodies are a few of the characteristics that deep-sea fishes have for this purpose. The gulper eel is one example of an organism that displays these characteristics. Fish in the different pelagic and deep water benthic zones are physically structured, and behave in ways, that differ markedly from each other. Groups of coexisting species within each zone all seem to operate in similar ways, such as the small mesopelagic vertically migrating plankton-feeders, the bathypelagic anglerfishes, and the deep water benthic rattails. " Ray finned species, with spiny fins, are rare among deep sea fishes, which suggests that deep sea fish are ancient and so well adapted to their environment that invasions by more modern fishes have been unsuccessful. The few ray fins that do exist are mainly in the Beryciformes and Lampriformes, which are also ancient forms. Most deep sea pelagic fishes belong to their own orders, suggesting a long evolution in deep sea environments. In contrast, deep water benthic species, are in orders that include many related shallow water fishes. Below the epipelagic zone, conditions change rapidly. Between 200 metres and about 1000 metres, light continues to fade until there is almost none. Temperatures fall through a thermocline to temperatures between 3.9 °C (39 °F) and 7.8 °C (46 °F). This is the twilight or mesopelagic zone. Pressure continues to increase, at the rate of one atmosphere every 10 metres, while nutrient concentrations fall, along with dissolved oxygen and the rate at which the water circulates." Sonar operators, using the newly developed sonar technology during World War II, were puzzled by what appeared to be a false sea floor 300–500 metres deep at day, and less deep at night. This turned out to be due to millions of marine organisms, most particularly small mesopelagic fish, with swimbladders that reflected the sonar. These organisms migrate up into shallower water at dusk to feed on plankton. The layer is deeper when the moon is out, and can become shallower when clouds pass over the moon. This phenomenon has come to be known as the deep scattering layer. Most mesopelagic fish make daily vertical migrations, moving at night into the epipelagic zone, often following similar migrations of zooplankton, and returning to the depths for safety during the day. These vertical migrations often occur over large vertical distances, and are undertaken with the assistance of a swimbladder. The swimbladder is inflated when the fish wants to move up, and, given the high pressures in the messoplegic zone, this requires significant energy. As the fish ascends, the pressure in the swimbladder must adjust to prevent it from bursting. When the fish wants to return to the depths, the swimbladder is deflated. Some mesopelagic fishes make daily migrations through the thermocline, where the temperature changes between 50 °F (10 °C) and 69 °F (20 °C), thus displaying considerable tolerances for temperature change. These fish have muscular bodies, ossified bones, scales, well developed gills and central nervous systems, and large hearts and kidneys. Mesopelagic plankton feeders have small mouths with fine gill rakers, while the piscivores have larger mouths and coarser gill rakers. The vertically migratory fish have swimbladders. Mesopelagic fish are adapted for an active life under low light conditions. Most of them are visual predators with large eyes. Some of the deeper water fish have tubular eyes with big lenses and only rod cells that look upwards. These give binocular vision and great sensitivity to small light signals. This adaptation gives improved terminal vision at the expense of lateral vision, and allows the predator to pick out squid, cuttlefish, and smaller fish that are silhouetted against the gloom above them. Mesopelagic fish usually lack defensive spines, and use colour to camouflage themselves from other fish. Ambush predators are dark, black or red. Since the longer, red, wavelengths of light do not reach the deep sea, red effectively functions the same as black. Migratory forms use countershaded silvery colours. On their bellies, they often display photophores producing low grade light. For a predator from below, looking upwards, this bioluminescence camouflages the silhouette of the fish. However, some of these predators have yellow lenses that filter the (red deficient) ambient light, leaving the bioluminescence visible. The brownsnout spookfish, a species of barreleye, is the only vertebrate known to employ a mirror, as opposed to a lens, to focus an image in its eyes. Sampling via deep trawling indicates that lanternfish account for as much as 65% of all deep sea fish biomass. Indeed, lanternfish are among the most widely distributed, populous, and diverse of all vertebrates, playing an important ecological role as prey for larger organisms. The estimated global biomass of lanternfish is 550 - 660 million metric tonnes, several times the entire world fisheries catch. Lanternfish also account for much of the biomass responsible for the deep scattering layer of the world's oceans. Sonar reflects off the millions of lanternfish swim bladders, giving the appearance of a false bottom. Bigeye tuna are an epipelagic/mesopelagic species that eats other fish. Satellite tagging has shown that bigeye tuna often spend prolonged periods cruising deep below the surface during the daytime, sometimes making dives as deep as 500 metres. These movements are thought to be in response to the vertical migrations of prey organisms in the deep scattering layer. Below the mesopelagic zone it is pitch dark. This is the midnight (or bathypelagic zone), extending from 1000 metres to the bottom deep water benthic zone. If the water is exceptionally deep, the pelagic zone below 4000 metres is sometimes called the lower midnight (or abyssopelagic zone). Conditions are somewhat uniform throughout these zones; the darkness is complete, the pressure is crushing, and temperatures, nutrients and dissolved oxygen levels are all low. Bathypelagic fish have special adaptations to cope with these conditions – they have slow metabolisms and unspecialized diets, being willing to eat anything that comes along. They prefer to sit and wait for food rather than waste energy searching for it. The behaviour of bathypelagic fish can be contrasted with the behaviour of mesopelagic fish. Mesopelagic fish are often highly mobile, whereas bathypelagic fish are almost all lie-in-wait predators, normally expending little energy in movement. The dominant bathypelagic fishes are small bristlemouth and anglerfish; fangtooth, viperfish, daggertooth and barracudina are also common. These fishes are small, many about 10 centimetres long, and not many longer than 25 cm. They spend most of their time waiting patiently in the water column for prey to appear or to be lured by their phosphors. What little energy is available in the bathypelagic zone filters from above in the form of detritus, faecal material, and the occasional invertebrate or mesopelagic fish. About 20 percent of the food that has its origins in the epipelagic zone falls down to the mesopelagic zone, but only about 5 percent filters down to the bathypelagic zone. Bathypelagic fish are sedentary, adapted to outputting minimum energy in a habitat with very little food or available energy, not even sunlight, only bioluminescence. Their bodies are elongated with weak, watery muscles and skeletal structures. Since so much of the fish is water, they are not compressed by the great pressures at these depths. They often have extensible, hinged jaws with recurved teeth. They are slimy, without scales. The central nervous system is confined to the lateral line and olfactory systems, the eyes are small and may not function, and gills, kidneys and hearts, and swimbladders are small or missing. These are the same features found in fish larvae, which suggests that during their evolution, bathypelagic fish have acquired these features through neoteny. As with larvae, these features allow the fish to remain suspended in the water with little expenditure of energy. Despite their ferocious appearance, these beasts of the deep are mostly miniature fish with weak muscles, and are too small to represent any threat to humans. The swimbladders of deep sea fish are either absent or scarcely operational, and bathypelagic fish do not normally undertake vertical migrations. Filling bladders at such great pressures incurs huge energy costs. Some deep sea fishes have swimbladders which function while they are young and inhabit the upper epipelagic zone, but they wither or fill with fat when the fish move down to their adult habitat. The most important sensory systems are usually the inner ear, which responds to sound, and the lateral line, which responds to changes in water pressure. The olfactory system can also be important for males who find females by smell. Bathypelagic fish are black, or sometimes red, with few photophores. When photophores are used, it is usually to entice prey or attract a mate. Because food is so scarce, bathypelagic predators are not selective in their feeding habits, but grab whatever comes close enough. They accomplish this by having a large mouth with sharp teeth for grabbing large prey and overlapping gill rakers which prevent small prey that have been swallowed from escaping. It is not easy finding a mate in this zone. Some species depend on bioluminescence. Others are hermaphrodites, which doubles their chances of producing both eggs and sperm when an encounter occurs. The female anglerfish releases pheromones to attract tiny males. When a male finds her, he bites on to her and never lets go. When a male of the anglerfish species Haplophryne mollis bites into the skin of a female, he releases an enzyme that digests the skin of his mouth and her body, fusing the pair to the point where the two circulatory systems join up. The male then atrophies into nothing more than a pair of gonads. This extreme sexual dimorphism ensures that, when the female is ready to spawn, she has a mate immediately available. Many forms other than fish live in the bathypelagic zone, such as squid, large whales, octopuses, sponges, brachiopods, sea stars, and echinoids, but this zone is difficult for fish to live in. Sampling via deep trawling indicates that lanternfish account for as much as 65% of all deep-sea fish biomass. Indeed, lanternfish are among the most widely distributed, populous, and diverse of all vertebrates, playing an important ecological role as prey for larger organisms. With an estimated global biomass of 550 - 660 million metric tons, several times the entire world fisheries catch, lanternfish also account for much of the biomass responsible for the deep scattering layer of the world's oceans. In the Southern Ocean, Myctophids provide an alternative food resource to krill for predators such as squid and the king penguin. Although these fish are plentiful and prolific, currently only a few commercial lanternfish fisheries exist: These include limited operations off South Africa, in the sub- Antarctic, and in the Gulf of Oman. A 2006 study by Canadian scientists has found five species of deep-sea fish – blue hake, spiny eel – to be on the verge of extinction due to the shift of commercial fishing from continental shelves to the slopes of the continental shelves, down to depths of 1600 meters. The slow reproduction of these fish – they reach sexual maturity at about the same age as human beings – is one of the main reasons that they cannot recover from the excessive fishing. Census of Marine Life, Deep ocean water, Deep sea, Deep sea communities, Deep water fish, Demersal fish, Pelagic fish Moyle, PB and Cech, JJ (2004) Fishes, An Introduction to Ichthyology. 5th Ed, Benjamin Cummings. Gordon J. D. M. (2001) "Deep-sea fishes" In: John H. Steele, Steve A. Thorpe, Karl K. Turekian (Eds) Elements of Physical Oceanography, pages 227–233, Academic Press. ., Hoar WS, Randall DJ and Farrell AP (Eds) (1997) Deep-Sea Fishes, Academic Press. ., Shotton, Ross (1995) "Deepwater fisheries" In: Review of the state of world marine fishery resources, FAO Fisheries technical paper 457, FAO, Rome. ., Tandstad M, Shotton R, Sanders J and Carocci F (2011) "Deep-sea Fisheries" In: Review of the state of world marine fishery resources, pages 265–278, FAO Fisheries technical paper 569, FAO, Rome. . https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/abyss/life/bestiary.html, http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/photos/deep-sea-creatures/, Deep Sea Creatures - Articles, facts and images of deep sea animals

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The siege of Leningrad () was a prolonged military blockade undertaken from the south by the Army Group North of Nazi Germany against the Soviet city of Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) on the Eastern Front in World War II. The Finnish army invaded from the north, co-operating with the Germans until Finland had recaptured territory lost in the recent Winter War, but refused to make further approaches to the city. The siege started on 8 September 1941, when the Wehrmacht severed the last road to the city. Although Soviet forces managed to open a narrow land corridor to the city on 18 January 1943, the Red Army did not lift the siege until 27 January 1944, 872 days after it began. The blockade became one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history, and possibly the costliest in casualties suffered. Some historians classify it as genocide. Leningrad's capture was one of three strategic goals in the German Operation Barbarossa and the main target of Army Group North. The strategy was motivated by Leningrad's political status as the former capital of Russia and the symbolic capital of the Russian Revolution, its military importance as a main base of the Soviet Baltic Fleet, and its industrial strength, housing numerous arms factories. By 1939, the city was responsible for 11% of all Soviet industrial output. It has been reported that Adolf Hitler was so confident of capturing Leningrad that he had invitations printed to the victory celebrations to be held in the city's Hotel Astoria. Although various theories have been put forward about Germany's plans for Leningrad, including renaming the city Adolfsburg (as claimed by Soviet journalist Lev Bezymenski) and making it the capital of the new Ingermanland province of the Reich in Generalplan Ost, it is clear Hitler's intention was to utterly destroy the city and its population. According to a directive sent to Army Group North on 29 September, "After the defeat of Soviet Russia there can be no interest in the continued existence of this large urban centre. [...] Following the city's encirclement, requests for surrender negotiations shall be denied, since the problem of relocating and feeding the population cannot and should not be solved by us. In this war for our very existence, we can have no interest in maintaining even a part of this very large urban population." Hitler's ultimate plan was to raze Leningrad to the ground and give areas north of the River Neva to the Finns. Army Group North under Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb advanced to Leningrad, its primary objective. Von Leeb's plan called for capturing the city on the move, but due to Hitler's recall of 4th Panzer Group (persuaded by his Chief of General Staff, Franz Halder, to transfer this south to participate in Fedor von Bock's push for Moscow), von Leeb had to lay the city under siege indefinitely after reaching the shores of Lake Ladoga, while trying to complete the encirclement and reaching the Finnish Army under Marshal Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim waiting at the Svir River, east of Leningrad. Finnish military forces were north of Leningrad, while German forces occupied territories to the south. Both German and Finnish forces had the goal of encircling Leningrad and maintaining the blockade perimeter, thus cutting off all communication with the city and preventing the defenders from receiving any supplies – although Finnish participation in the blockade mainly consisted of recapture of lands lost in the Winter War. Thus, it is argued that much of the Finns participation was merely defensive. The Germans planned on lack of food being their chief weapon against the citizens; German scientists had calculated the city would reach starvation after only a few weeks. On Friday, 27 June 1941, the Council of Deputies of the Leningrad administration organised "First response groups" of civilians. In the next days, Leningrad's civilian population was informed of the danger and over a million citizens were mobilised for the construction of fortifications. Several lines of defences were built along the city's perimeter to repulse hostile forces approaching from north and south by means of civilian resistance. In the south, the fortified line ran from the mouth of the Luga River to Chudovo, Gatchina, Uritsk, Pulkovo and then through the Neva River. Another line of defence passed through Peterhof to Gatchina, Pulkovo, Kolpino and Koltushy. In the north the defensive line against the Finns, the Karelian Fortified Region, had been maintained in Leningrad's northern suburbs since the 1930s, and was now returned to service. A total of of timber barricades, of wire entanglements, of anti-tank ditches, 5,000 earth-and-timber emplacements and reinforced concrete weapon emplacements and of open trenches were constructed or excavated by civilians. Even the guns from the cruiser were moved inland to the Pulkovo Heights to the south of Leningrad. The 4th Panzer Group from East Prussia took Pskov following a swift advance and managed to reach Novgorod by 16 August. The Soviet defenders fought to the death, despite the German discovery of the Soviet defence plans on an officer's corpse. After the capture of Novgorod, General Hoepner's 4th Panzer Group continued its progress towards Leningrad. However, the 18th Army – despite some 350,000 men lagging behind – forced its way to Ostrov and Pskov after the Soviet troops of the Northwestern Front retreated towards Leningrad. On 10 July, both Ostrov and Pskov were captured and the 18th Army reached Narva and Kingisepp, from where advance toward Leningrad continued from the Luga River line. This had the effect of creating siege positions from the Gulf of Finland to Lake Ladoga, with the eventual aim of isolating Leningrad from all directions. The Finnish Army was then expected to advance along the eastern shore of Lake Ladoga. Army Group North (Feldmarschall von Leeb), 18th Army (von Küchler), XXXXII Corps (2 infantry divisions), XXVI Corps (3 infantry divisions), 16th Army (Busch), XXVIII Corps (von Wiktorin) (2 infantry, 1 armoured divisions), I Corps (2 infantry divisions), X Corps (3 infantry divisions), II Corps (3 infantry divisions), (L Corps – Under 9th Army) (2 infantry divisions), 4th Panzer Group (Hoepner), XXXVIII Corps (von Chappuis) (1 infantry division), XXXXI Motorized Corps (Reinhardt) (1 infantry, 1 motorised, 1 armoured divisions), LVI Motorized Corps (von Manstein) (1 infantry, 1 motorised, 1 armoured, 1 panzergrenadier divisions) Finnish Defence Forces HQ (Finnish Marshal Mannerheim), I Corps (2 infantry divisions), II Corps (2 infantry divisions), IV Corps (3 infantry divisions) XII Squadriglia MAS (Mezzi d'Assalto) (Italian for "12th Assault Vessel Squadron") ( Giuseppe Bianchini) Regia Marina Northern Front (Lieutenant General Popov), 7th Army (2 rifle, 1 militia divisions, 1 naval infantry brigade, 3 motorised rifle and 1 armoured regiments), 8th Army, X Rifle Corps (2 rifle divisions), XI Rifle Corps (3 rifle divisions), Separate Units (3 rifle divisions), 14th Army, XXXXII Rifle Corps (2 rifle divisions), Separate Units (2 rifle divisions, 1 Fortified area, 1 motorised rifle regiment), 23rd Army, XIX Rifle Corps (3 rifle divisions), Separate Units (2 rifle, 1 motorised divisions, 2 Fortified areas, 1 rifle regiment), Luga Operation Group, XXXXI Rifle Corps (3 rifle divisions), Separate Units (1 armoured brigade, 1 rifle regiment), Kingisepp Operation Group, Separate Units (2 rifle, 2 militia, 1 armoured divisions, 1 Fortified area), Separate Units (3 rifle divisions, 4 guard militia divisions, 3 Fortified areas, 1 rifle brigade) Of these, the 14th Army defended Murmansk and 7th Army defended Ladoga Karelia; thus they did not participate in the initial stages of the siege. The 8th Army was initially part of the Northwestern Front and retreated through the Baltics. (The 8th army was transferred to Northern Front on 14 July). On 23 August, the Northern Front was divided into the Leningrad Front and the Karelian Front, as it became impossible for front headquarters to control everything between Murmansk and Leningrad. Zhukov states, "Ten volunteer opolcheniye divisions were formed in Leningrad in the first three months of the war, as well as 16 separate artillery and machine-gun opolcheniye battalions." On 6 August, Hitler repeated his order: "Leningrad first, Donetsk Basin second, Moscow third." From August 1941 until January 1944, anything that happened between the Arctic Ocean and Lake Ilmen concerned the Wehrmachts Leningrad siege operations. Arctic convoys using the Northern Sea Route delivered American Lend-Lease and British food and war materiel supplies to the Murmansk railhead (although the rail link to Leningrad was cut off by Finnish armies just north of the city), as well as several other locations in Lapland. Finnish intelligence had broken some of the Soviet military codes and read their low-level communications. This was particularly helpful for Hitler, who constantly requested intelligence information about Leningrad. Finland's role in Operation Barbarossa was laid out in Hitler's Directive 21, "The mass of the Finnish army will have the task, in accordance with the advance made by the northern wing of the German armies, of tying up maximum Russian (sic – Soviet) strength by attacking to the west, or on both sides, of Lake Ladoga". The last rail connection to Leningrad was severed on 30 August, when the Germans reached the Neva River. On 8 September, the road to the besieged city was severed when the Germans reached Lake Ladoga at Shlisselburg, leaving just a corridor of land between Lake Ladoga and Leningrad which remained unoccupied by Axis forces. Bombing on 8 September caused 178 fires. On 21 September, German High Command considered how to destroy Leningrad. Occupying the city was ruled out "because it would make us responsible for food supply". The resolution was to lay the city under siege and bombardment, starving its population. "Early next year we enter the city (if the Finns do it first we do not object), lead those still alive into inner Russia or into captivity, wipe Leningrad from the face of the earth through demolitions, and hand the area north of the Neva to the Finns." On 7 October, Hitler sent a further directive signed by Alfred Jodl reminding Army Group North not to accept capitulation. By August 1941, the Finns advanced to within 20 km of the northern suburbs of Leningrad at the 1939 Finnish-Soviet border, threatening the city from the north; they were also advancing through East Karelia, east of Lake Ladoga, and threatening the city from the east. The Finnish forces crossed the pre-Winter War border on the Karelian Isthmus by eliminating Soviet salients at Beloostrov and Kirjasalo, thus straightening the frontline so that it ran along the old border near the shores of Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga, and those positions closest to Leningrad still lying on the pre-Winter War border. According to Soviet claims, the Finnish advance was stopped in September through resistance by the Karelian Fortified Region; however, Finnish troops had already earlier in August 1941 received orders to halt the advance after reaching their goals, some of which lay beyond the pre-Winter War border. After reaching their respective goals, the Finns halted their advance and started moving troops to East Karelia. For the next three years, the Finns did little to contribute to the battle for Leningrad, maintaining their lines. Their headquarters rejected German pleas for aerial attacks against Leningrad and did not advance farther south from the Svir River in occupied East Karelia (160 kilometres northeast of Leningrad), which they had reached on 7 September. In the southeast, the Germans captured Tikhvin on 8 November, but failed to complete their encirclement of Leningrad by advancing further north to join with the Finns at the Svir River. On 9 December, a counter-attack of the Volkhov Front forced the Wehrmacht to retreat from their Tikhvin positions in the River Volkhov line. On 6 September 1941, Germany's Chief of Staff Alfred Jodl visited Helsinki. His main goal was to persuade Mannerheim to continue the offensive. In 1941, President Ryti declared to the Finnish Parliament that the aim of the war was to restore the territories lost during the Winter War and gain more territories in the east to create a "Greater Finland". After the war, Ryti stated: "On August 24, 1941 I visited the headquarters of Marshal Mannerheim. The Germans aimed us at crossing the old border and continuing the offensive to Leningrad. I said that the capture of Leningrad was not our goal and that we should not take part in it. Mannerheim and Minister of Defense Walden agreed with me and refused the offers of the Germans. The result was a paradoxical situation: the Germans could not approach Leningrad from the north..." There was little or no systematic shelling or bombing from the Finnish positions. Mannerheim had spent most of his career in the Imperial Russian Army stationed at old St. Petersburg. The proximity of the Finnish border – from downtown Leningrad – and the threat of a Finnish attack complicated the defence of the city. At one point, the defending Front Commander, Popov, could not release reserves opposing the Finnish forces to be deployed against the Wehrmacht because they were needed to bolster the 23rd Army's defences on the Karelian Isthmus. Mannerheim terminated the offensive on 31 August 1941, when the army had reached the 1939 border. Popov felt relieved, and redeployed two divisions to the German sector on 5 September. Subsequently, the Finnish forces reduced the salients of Beloostrov and Kirjasalo, which had threatened their positions at the sea coast and south of the River Vuoksi. Lieutenant General Paavo Talvela and Colonel Järvinen, the commander of the Finnish Coastal Brigade responsible for Ladoga, proposed to the German headquarters the blocking of Soviet convoys on Lake Ladoga. The German command formed the 'international' naval detachment (which also included the Italian XII Squadriglia MAS) under Finnish command and the Einsatzstab Fähre Ost under German command. These naval units operated against the supply route in the summer and autumn of 1942, the only period the units were able to operate as freezing waters then forced the lightly equipped units to be moved away, and changes in front lines made it impractical to reestablish these units later in the war. The Leningrad Front (initially the Leningrad Military District) was commanded by Marshal Kliment Voroshilov. It included the 23rd Army in the northern sector between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga, and the 48th Army in the western sector between the Gulf of Finland and the Slutsk–Mga position. The Leningrad Fortified Region, the Leningrad garrison, the Baltic Fleet forces, and Koporye, Pulkovo, and Slutsk–Kolpino operational groups were also present. According to Zhukov, "Before the war Leningrad had a population of 3,103,000 and 3,385,000 counting the suburbs. As many as 1,743,129, including 414,148 children were evacuated" between 29 June 1941 and 31 March 1943. They were moved to the Volga area, the Urals, Siberia and Kazakhstan. By September 1941, the link with the Volkhov Front (commanded by Kirill Meretskov) was severed and the defensive sectors were held by four armies: 23rd Army in the northern sector, 42nd Army on the western sector, 55th Army on the southern sector, and the 67th Army on the eastern sector. The 8th Army of the Volkhov Front had the responsibility of maintaining the logistic route to the city in coordination with the Ladoga Flotilla. Air cover for the city was provided by the Leningrad military district PVO Corps and Baltic Fleet naval aviation units. The defensive operation to protect the 1,400,000 civilian evacuees was part of the Leningrad counter-siege operations under the command of Andrei Zhdanov, Kliment Voroshilov, and Aleksei Kuznetsov. Additional military operations were carried out in coordination with Baltic Fleet naval forces under the general command of Admiral Vladimir Tributs. The Ladoga Flotilla under the command of V. Baranovsky, S.V. Zemlyanichenko, P.A. Traynin, and B.V. Khoroshikhin also played a major military role in helping with evacuation of the civilians. The first success of the Leningrad air defense took place on the night of June 23. The Ju-88A bomber from the 1st air corps KGr.806 was damaged by the AA guns fire of the 15th battery of the 192nd anti-aircraft artillery regiment, and made an emergency landing. All crew members, including commander, Lieutenant Hans Turmeyer, were captured on the ground. The commander of the 15th battery, lieutenant, Alexey Pimchenkov was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. By Monday, 8 September, German forces had largely surrounded the city, cutting off all supply routes to Leningrad and its suburbs. Unable to press home their offensive, and facing defences of the city organised by Marshal Zhukov, the Axis armies laid siege to the city for "900 days and nights". The air attack of Friday, 19 September was particularly brutal. It was the heaviest air raid Leningrad would suffer during the war, as 276 German bombers hit the city killing 1,000 civilians. Many of those killed were recuperating from battle wounds in hospitals that were hit by German bombs. Six air raids occurred that day. Five hospitals were damaged in the bombing, as well as the city's largest shopping bazaar. Hundreds of people had run from the street into the store to take shelter from the air raid. Artillery bombardment of Leningrad began in August 1941, increasing in intensity during 1942 with the arrival of new equipment. It was stepped up further during 1943, when several times as many shells and bombs were used as in the year before. Against this, the Soviet Baltic Fleet Navy aviation made over 100,000 air missions to support their military operations during the siege. German shelling and bombing killed 5,723 and wounded 20,507 civilians in Leningrad during the siege. To sustain the defence of the city, it was vitally important for the Red Army to establish a route for bringing a constant flow of supplies into Leningrad. This route, which became known as the Road of Life (), was effected over the southern part of Lake Ladoga and the corridor of land which remained unoccupied by Axis forces between Lake Ladoga and Leningrad. Transport across Lake Ladoga was achieved by means of watercraft during the warmer months and land vehicles driven over thick ice in winter (hence the route becoming known as "The Ice Road"). The security of the supply route was ensured by the Ladoga Flotilla, the Leningrad PVO Corps, and route security troops. Vital food supplies were thus transported to the village of Osinovets, from where they were transferred and transported over 45 km via a small suburban railway to Leningrad. The route had to be used also to evacuate civilians, since no evacuation plans had been executed in the chaos of the first winter of the war, and the city was completely isolated until 20 November 1941, when the ice road over Lake Ladoga became operational. Vehicles risked becoming stuck in the snow or sinking through broken ice caused by constant German bombardments, but the road brought necessary military and food supplies in and took civilians and wounded soldiers out, allowing the city to continue resisting the enemy. The two-and-a-half-year siege caused the greatest destruction and the largest loss of life ever known in a modern city. On Hitler's direct orders the Wehrmacht looted and then destroyed most of the imperial palaces, such as the Catherine Palace, Peterhof Palace, Ropsha, Strelna, Gatchina, and other historic landmarks located outside the city's defensive perimeter, with many art collections transported to Germany. A number of factories, schools, hospitals and other civil infrastructure were destroyed by air raids and long range artillery bombardment. The 872 days of the siege caused extreme famine in the Leningrad region through disruption of utilities, water, energy and food supplies. This resulted in the deaths of up to 1,500,000 soldiers and civilians and the evacuation of 1,400,000 more (mainly women and children), many of whom died during evacuation due to starvation and bombardment. Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery alone in Leningrad holds half a million civilian victims of the siege. Economic destruction and human losses in Leningrad on both sides exceeded those of the Battle of Stalingrad, the Battle of Moscow, or the bombing of Tokyo. The siege of Leningrad ranks as the most lethal siege in world history, and some historians speak of the siege operations in terms of genocide, as a "racially motivated starvation policy" that became an integral part of the unprecedented German war of extermination against populations of the Soviet Union generally. Civilians in the city suffered from extreme starvation, especially in the winter of 1941–42. From November 1941 to February 1942 the only food available to the citizen was 125 grams of bread per day, of which 50–60% consisted of sawdust and other inedible admixtures. In conditions of extreme temperatures (down to ), and with city transport out of service, even a distance of a few kilometres to a food distribution kiosk created an insurmountable obstacle for many citizens. Deaths peaked in January–February 1942 at 100,000 per month, mostly from starvation. People often died on the streets, and citizens soon became accustomed to the sight of death. While reports of cannibalism appeared in the winter of 1941–42, NKVD records on the subject were not published until 2004. Most evidence for cannibalism that surfaced before this time was anecdotal. Anna Reid points out that "for most people at the time, cannibalism was a matter of second-hand horror stories rather than direct personal experience". Indicative of Leningraders' fears at the time, police would often threaten uncooperative suspects with imprisonment in a cell with cannibals. Dimitri Lazarev, a diarist during the worst moments in the Leningrad siege, recalls his daughter and niece reciting a terrifying nursery rhyme adapted from a pre-war song: NKVD files report the first use of human meat as food on 13 December 1941. The report outlines thirteen cases, which range from a mother smothering her eighteen-month-old to feed her three older children to a plumber killing his wife to feed his sons and nieces. By December 1942 the NKVD had arrested 2,105 cannibals – dividing them into two legal categories: corpse-eating (trupoyedstvo) and person-eating (lyudoyedstvo). The latter were usually shot while the former were sent to prison. The Soviet Criminal Code had no provision for cannibalism, so all convictions were carried out under Code Article 59–3, "special category banditry". Instances of person-eating were significantly lower than that of corpse-eating; of the 300 people arrested in April 1942 for cannibalism, only 44 were murderers. 64% of cannibals were female, 44% were unemployed, 90% were illiterate, 15% were rooted inhabitants, and only 2% had any criminal records. More cases occurred in the outlying districts than in the city itself. Cannibals were often unsupported women with dependent children and no previous convictions, which allowed for a certain level of clemency in legal proceedings. Given the scope of mass starvation, cannibalism was relatively rare. Far more common was murder for ration cards. In the first six months of 1942, Leningrad witnessed 1,216 such murders. At the same time, Leningrad was experiencing its highest mortality rate, as high as 100,000 people per month. Lisa Kirschenbaum notes that rates "of cannibalism provided an opportunity for emphasizing that the majority of Leningraders managed to maintain their cultural norms in the most unimaginable circumstances." On 9 August 1942, the Symphony No. 7 "Leningrad" by Dmitri Shostakovich was performed by the Leningrad Radio Orchestra. The concert was broadcast on loudspeakers placed throughout the city and also aimed towards the enemy lines. The same day had been previously designated by Hitler to celebrate the fall of the city with a lavish banquet at Leningrad's Astoria Hotel, and was a few days before the Sinyavino Offensive. The Sinyavino Offensive was a Soviet attempt to break the blockade of the city in early autumn 1942. The 2nd Shock and the 8th armies were to link up with the forces of the Leningrad Front. At the same time the German side was preparing an offensive to capture the city, Operation Nordlicht (Northern Light), using the troops freed up after the capture of Sevastopol. Neither side was aware of the other's intentions until the battle started. The offensive began on 27 August 1942 with some small-scale attacks by the Leningrad front, pre-empting "Nordlicht" by a few weeks. The successful start of the operation forced the Germans to redirect troops from the planned "Nordlicht" to counterattack the Soviet armies. The counteroffensive saw the first deployment of the Tiger tank, though with limited success. After parts of the 2nd Shock Army were encircled and destroyed, the Soviet offensive was halted. However, the German forces also had to abandon their offensive. The encirclement was broken in the wake of Operation Iskra (Spark), a full- scale offensive conducted by the Leningrad and Volkhov Fronts. This offensive started in the morning of 12 January 1943. After fierce battles the Red Army units overcame the powerful German fortifications to the south of Lake Ladoga, and on 18 January 1943, the Volkhov Front's 372nd Rifle Division met troops of the 123rd Rifle Brigade of the Leningrad Front, opening a wide land corridor, which could provide some relief to the besieged population of Leningrad. The siege continued until 27 January 1944, when the Soviet Leningrad–Novgorod Offensive expelled German forces from the southern outskirts of the city. This was a combined effort by the Leningrad and Volkhov Fronts, along with the 1st and 2nd Baltic Fronts. The Baltic Fleet provided 30% of aviation power for the final strike against the Wehrmacht. In the summer of 1944, the Finnish Defence Forces were pushed back to the other side of the Bay of Vyborg and the Vuoksi River. The siege was also known as the Leningrad Blockade and the 900-Day Siege. April: Hitler intends to occupy and then destroy Leningrad, according to plan Barbarossa and Generalplan Ost, 22 June: The Axis powers' invasion of Soviet Union begins with Operation Barbarossa., 23 June: Leningrad commander M. Popov, sends his second in command to reconnoitre defensive positions south of Leningrad., 29 June: Construction of the Luga defence fortifications () begins together with evacuation of children and women., June–July: Over 300,000 civilian refugees from Pskov and Novgorod escaping from the advancing Germans come to Leningrad for shelter. The armies of the North-Western Front join the front lines at Leningrad. Total military strength with reserves and volunteers reaches 2 million men involved on all sides of the emerging battle., 19–23 July: First attack on Leningrad by Army Group North is stopped south of the city., 27 July: Hitler visits Army Group North, angry at the delay. He orders Field Marshal von Leeb to take Leningrad by December., 31 July: Finns attack the Soviet 23rd Army at the Karelian Isthmus, eventually reaching northern pre-Winter War Finnish-Soviet border., 20 August – 8 September: Artillery bombardments of Leningrad hit industries, schools, hospitals and civilian houses., 21 August: Hitler's Directive No.34 orders "Encirclement of Leningrad in conjunction with the Finns.", 20–27 August: Evacuation of civilians is blocked by attacks on railways and other exits from Leningrad., 31 August: Finnish forces go on the defensive and straighten their front line. This involves crossing the 1939 pre-Winter War border and occupation of municipalities of Kirjasalo and Beloostrov., 6 September: German High Command's Alfred Jodl fails to persuade Finns to continue offensive against Leningrad., 2–9 September: Finns capture the Beloostrov and Kirjasalo salients and conduct defensive preparations., 8 September: Land encirclement of Leningrad is completed when the German forces reach the shores of Lake Ladoga., 10 September: Joseph Stalin appoints General Zhukov to replace Marshal Voroshilov as Leningrad Front and Baltic Fleet commander., 12 September: The largest food depot in Leningrad, the Badajevski General Store, is destroyed by a German bomb., 15 September: von Leeb has to remove the 4th Panzer Group from the front lines and transfer it to Army Group Center for the Moscow offensive., 19 September: German troops are stopped from Leningrad. Citizens join the fighting at the defence lines. 22 September: Hitler directs that "Saint Petersburg must be erased from the face of the Earth"., 22 September: Hitler declares, "...we have no interest in saving lives of the civilian population.", 8 November: Hitler states in a speech at Munich: "Leningrad must die of starvation.", 10 November: Soviet counter-attack begins, forcing Germans to retreat from Tikhvin back to the Volkhov River by 30 December, preventing them from joining Finnish forces stationed at the Svir River east of Leningrad., December: Winston Churchill wrote in his diary "Leningrad is encircled, but not taken.", 6 December: Great Britain declared war on Finland. This was followed by declaration of war from Canada, Australia, India and New Zealand. 7 January: Soviet Lyuban Offensive Operation is launched; it lasts 16 weeks and is unsuccessful, resulting in the loss of the 2nd Shock Army., January: Soviets launch battle for the Nevsky Pyatachok bridgehead in an attempt to break the siege. This battle lasts until May 1943, but is only partially successful. Very heavy casualties are experienced by both sides., 4–30 April: Luftwaffe Operation Eis Stoß (ice impact) fails to sink Baltic Fleet ships iced in at Leningrad., June–September: New German railway-mounted artillery bombards Leningrad with shells., August: The Spanish Blue Division (División Azul) transferred to Leningrad., 9 August 1942: The Symphony No. 7 "Leningrad" by Dmitri Shostakovich was performed in the city., 14 August – 27 October: Naval Detachment K clashes with Leningrad supply route on Lake Ladoga., 19 August: Soviets begin an eight-week-long Sinyavino Offensive, which fails to lift the siege, but thwarts German offensive plans (Operation Nordlicht). January–December: Increased artillery bombardments of Leningrad., 12–30 January: Operation Iskra penetrates the siege by opening a land corridor along the coast of Lake Ladoga into the city. The blockade is broken., 10 February – 1 April: The unsuccessful Operation Polyarnaya Zvezda attempts to lift the siege. 14 January – 1 March: Several Soviet offensive operations begin, aimed at ending the siege., 27 January: Siege of Leningrad ends. Germans forces pushed 60–100 km away from the city., January: Before retreating the German armies loot and destroy the historical Palaces of the Tsars, such as the Catherine Palace, the Peterhof Palace, the Gatchina Palace and the Strelna Palace. Many other historic landmarks and homes in the suburbs of St. Petersburg are looted and then destroyed, and a large number of valuable art collections are moved to Nazi Germany. During the siege some 3,200 residential buildings, 9,000 wooden houses were burned, and 840 factories and plants were destroyed in Leningrad and suburbs. Historian Michael Walzer summarized that "The Siege of Leningrad killed more civilians than bombing of Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined." The US Military Academy evaluated that Russian casualties during the siege were bigger than combined American and British casualties during the entire war. Almost all Finnish historians regard the siege as a German operation and do not consider that the Finns effectively participated in the siege. Russian historian Nikolai Baryshnikov argues that active Finnish participation did occur, but other historians have been mostly silent about it, most likely due to the friendly nature of post-war Soviet–Finnish relations. The main issues which count in favour of the former view are: (a) the Finns mostly stayed at the pre-Winter War border at the Karelian Isthmus (with small exceptions to straighten the frontline), despite German wishes and requests, and (b) they did not bombard the city from planes or with artillery and did not allow the Germans to bring their own land forces to Finnish lines. Baryshnikov explains that the Finnish military in the region was strategically dependent on the Germans, and lacked the required means and will to press the attack against Leningrad any further. Although the Finnish Army had no other intentions besides regaining their own land lost in the Winter War, the advances made contributed greatly to the war efforts of Germany. Deportations of Finns and Germans from the Leningrad area to inhospitable areas of the Soviet Union began in March 1942 using the Road of Life; many of their descendants still remain in those areas today. However, the situation in Leningrad during the blockade was worse in comparison with the eastern areas where most of the city residents were evacuated. Inhospitable areas of the Soviet Union hosted millions of the evacuees; many factories, universities, and theatres were also evacuated there. Even during the siege itself, war artifacts were collected and shown to the public by city authorities, such as the German aeroplane that was shot down and fell to the ground in Tauricheskiy Garden (). Such objects were displayed as a sign of the people's courage, and gathered in a specially allocated building of the former 19th century Salt Warehouses (). The exhibition was soon turned into a full-scale Museum of Leningrad Defence (now ). Several years after World War II, in the late 1940s – early 1950s, Stalin's supposed jealousy of Leningrad city leaders caused their destruction in the course of politically-motivated show trials forming the post-WWII Leningrad Affair (the pre-war purge followed the 1934 assassination of the popular city ruler Sergey Kirov). Now another generation of state and Communist Party functionaries of the city was wiped out, supposedly for publicly overestimating the importance of the city as an independent fighting unit and their own roles in defeating the enemy. Their brainchild, the Leningrad Defence Museum, was also destroyed, and many valuable exhibits were destroyed. The museum was revived in the late 1980s with the then wave of glasnost, when new shocking facts were published, showing both heroism of the wartime city and hardships and even cruelties of the period. The exhibition opened in its originally allocated building, but has not yet regained its original size and area, most of its former premises having been given before its revival over to the military and other governmental offices. Plans for a new modern building of the museum have been suspended due to the financial crisis, but under the present Defence Secretary Sergey Shoigu promises have been made to expand the museum at its present location. Commemoration of the siege got a second wind during the 1960s. Local artists dedicated their achievements to the Victory and memory of the war they saw. A leading local poet and war participant Mikhail Dudin suggested erecting a ring of monuments on the places of heaviest siege-time fighting and linking them into a belt of gardens around the city showing where the advancing enemy armies were stopped forever. That was the beginning of the Green Belt of Glory (ru: Зелёный пояс Славы). On 29 October 1966, a monument entitled Broken Ring (of the Siege, ) was erected at the 40th km of the Road of Life, on the shore of Lake Ladoga near the village of Kokkorevo. Designed and created by Konstantin Simun, the monument pays tribute not only to the lives saved via the frozen Ladoga, but also the many lives broken by the blockade. The Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad () was erected on 9 May 1975 in Victory Square, Saint Petersburg. The monument is a huge bronze ring with a gap in it, pointing towards the site that the Soviets eventually broke through the encircling German forces. In the centre a Russian mother cradles her dying soldier son. The monument has an inscription saying "900 days 900 nights". An exhibit underneath the monument contains artifacts from this period, such as journals. In later years, smaller-scale objects were added, such as memorial plaques to sources of water – a Siege-time Water-well and a river Ice-hole (Rus. polynya). During the siege, numerous deaths of civilians and soldiers led to considerable expansion of burial places later memorialised, of which the best known is Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery. Every year, on January 27, as part of the celebrations of the lifting of the siege, a military parade of the troops of the Western Military District and the St. Petersburg Garrison on Palace Square takes place. Close to 3,000 soldiers and cadets take part in the parade, which includes historical reenactors in Red Army uniforms, wartime tanks such as the T-34 and color guards carrying wartime flags such as the Banner of Victory and the standards of the different military fronts. Musical support is provided by the Massed Military Bands of the St. Petersburg Garrison under the direction of the Senior Director of Music of the Military Band of the Western Military District. The parade, which is usually led by the Chief of Staff of ZVO riding on a GAZ Tigr (a parade variant used since May 9, 2009), begins to the tune of March "Parad" by Semyon Tchernetsky. At this point, the ground column begins, starting with the corps of drums of the Kronstadt Sea Cadet Corps, followed by the following units: Combined Colour Guard, Historical Reenactors, Honour Guard Company of the Western Military District, Mikhailovsky Artillery Academy, Budyonny Military Academy of the Signal Corps, General of the Army A. V. Khrulev Military Logistics Academy, St. Petersburg Military Institute of Physical Fitness Culture and Sports, Alexander Mozhaysky Military Space Academy, N. G. Kuznetsov Naval Academy, 138th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade, 9th Guards Artillery Brigade, 25th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade, Military Police of the WMD, St. Petersburg Institute of the National Guard Forces Command, Saint Petersburg University of the State Fire Service of EMERCOM of Russia, Suvorov Military School, Kronstadt Sea Cadet Corps, Naval Cadet Corps, Nakhimov Naval School, St. Petersburg Young Army Patriotic Cadets Division (on behalf of the Young Army Cadets National Movement) World War II casualties, List of famines, Effect of the Siege of Leningrad on the city, Consequences of Nazism, Hero-City Obelisk, Eastern Front, Medal "For the Defence of Leningrad", Ribbon of Leningrad Victory Glantz, David M. The Battle for Leningrad, 1941 – 1944 (2002) 704 pages Dean, Debra (2006). The Madonnas of Leningrad. HarperCollins. ., Dunmore, Helen (2001). The Siege. Viking. 2002, Penguin. ., Hannah,Kristin (2010). "Winter Garden". St. Martin's Griffin, New York. 900days. A documentary about the Siege of Leningrad by Jessica Gorter., "In the vortex of congealed time", by Oleg Yuriev. An overview of the literature of the Siege of Leningrad., The Siege of Leningrad. A collection of documents, articles, excerpts from books about the siege and links to photographs and footage., Russian State Memorial Museum of Defence and Siege of Leningrad (in Russian), The Museum of the Siege of Leningrad at Google Cultural Institute The Battle of Krasny Bor was part of the Soviet offensive Operation Polyarnaya Zvezda. It called for a pincer attack near Leningrad, to build on the success of Operation Iskra and completely lift the Siege of Leningrad, encircling a substantial part of the German 18th Army. The offensive near the town of Krasny Bor, formed the western arm of the pincer. The Soviet offensive began on Wednesday, 10 February 1943. It produced noticeable gains on the first day but rapidly turned into a stalemate. The strong defense of the Spanish Blue Division and the German SS Polizei Division gave the German forces time to reinforce their positions. By February 13, the Soviet forces had stopped their offensive in this sector. The Siege of Leningrad began in early autumn 1941. By September 8, German and Finnish forces had surrounded the city, cutting off all supply routes to Leningrad and its suburbs. However, the original drive on the city failed and the city was subjected to a siege. During 1942 several attempts were made to breach the blockade, but they were all unsuccessful. The last such endeavour in 1942 was the Sinyavin Offensive. After the defeat of that effort, the front line returned to what it was previously and again separated Leonid Govorov's Leningrad Front in the city and Kirill Meretskov's Volkhov Front. Despite the failures of earlier operations, lifting the siege of Leningrad was a very high priority, so new offensive preparations began in November 1942, only weeks after the last offensive failed. In December, the operational plan was approved by the STAVKA (the Soviet High Command) and received the codename "Iskra" (Spark). By January 1943, the situation looked very good for the Soviet side. The German defeat at Stalingrad had weakened the German front. The Soviet forces were planning or conducting offensive operations across the entire front, especially in southern Russia. Amidst these conditions, "Iskra" was to become the first of several offensive operations aimed at inflicting a decisive defeat on Army Group North. Operation Iskra was a strategic victory for the Soviet forces and successfully opened a land corridor 8–10 km wide into the city. A railroad was swiftly built through it and allowed many more supplies to reach the city than the "Road of Life" (the truck route across the frozen Lake Ladoga), eliminating the possibility of the capture of the city and a German-Finnish linkup. At the same time, however, STAVKA knew that "Iskra" was incomplete as the corridor it had opened was narrow and was still in range of German artillery. Additionally, the important heights and strong point at Siniavino were still controlled by the Germans. This led Georgy Zhukov, the Soviet commander, to plan a much more ambitious offensive operation named Operation Polyarnaya Zvezda ("Polar Star"). Operation Polyarnaya Zvezda tried to build on the success of Operation Iskra and began only days later. Zhukov, who had overseen Iskra, was promoted to marshal of the Soviet Union on January 18, the day the two Soviet Fronts linked up and broke the blockade. This foresaw a three-front attack by the Northwestern Front [roughly equivalent to an army group], under Marshal Semyon Timoshenko; the Volkhov Front under Colonel General Kirill Meretskov, and the Leningrad Front under Colonel General Leonid Govorov, of which the 55th Army was now a part. The Northwestern Front was to attack the Ramushevo Corridor, which connected the Demyansk Salient, held by the Germans to their main positions since 1942. The destruction of the bulk of the German 16th Army in the pocket would allow the Front to exploit the gap in the German lines. The Leningrad and Volkov Fronts were to capitalize on the fact that the German 18th Army was stretched very thin in the January fighting and attack the army's flanks, aiming to link up near Tosno. Again, this would create a gap in the German lines. Overall, the goal of the offensive was nothing short of decisively defeating Army Group North and advancing to Lake Chud. The 55th Army's objective was to break open the vital Leningrad-Moscow Highway, starting from its jump-off position in Kolpino towards Tosno; it was to join up with a northbound pincer attack of the 54th Army of the Volkhov Front, thereby encircling German formations in the Mga sector. The highway is an important road/railway connection linking Moscow and Leningrad. The pivot point for this highway was Krasny Bor, situated between the highway and the railway line. 55th Army's attack would also hit sectors defended by other German formations which were established to secure flanks and draw them into battle. Once this attack had succeeded, the plan was for the second echelon forces to advance through the gap towards Tosno. The attack was planned for 10 February 1943, and was to jump off from Kolpino. The 55th Army planned to attack with a force of approximately 40,000 men and 30 tanks in first echelon, to be followed by a mobile group consisting of the 122nd Tank Brigade and the 35th Ski Brigade. On Wednesday, February 10, 1943, a massive artillery bombardment of 1,000 Soviet guns and mortars descended on the Spanish lines at precisely 6:45. Shells, mortars and Katyusha rockets pounded the trenches, bunkers and dugouts which had been constructed to strengthen the eastern flank of Army Group North. At 8.45 hours, the bombardment shifted from the front line onto Krasny Bor itself, also striking the villages of Podolvo and Raikelevo (located east and southeast of Krasny Bor, respectively), the latter being the location of Infantes' forward command post. At approximately 8:40, the 45th and 63rd Guards and the 72nd Rifle Divisions, followed by some tanks, advanced towards Staraia Mgsa (east of Krasny Bor), Krasny Bor, Raikelevo and Podolvo, with the 63rd Guards Rifle Division facing the 5,900 troops of the 250th Infantry Division, holding the eastern flank of the line. Pinned down by two hours of initial bombardment, Spanish formations were unable to retreat towards the town and in many cases fought to the death. The frontline was quickly overrun, and many Spanish formations were destroyed there. Inside Krasny Bor, a company of the 250th Infantry Division held the October Railway station, repulsing infantry charges and three tank assaults by advancing Soviet forces. By 11:00 the company was reduced to 40 combatants, yet these managed to hold the factory until 12:00, when they fell back into the town. From 9:00 to 10:40, isolated Spanish units fought off Soviet attacks but were cut off when the Soviets seized the October Railway. Now encircled, the units still holding the Leningrad-Moscow Highway decided to hold-on as long as possible and were destroyed in combat. The 55th Army, in the meantime, had advanced despite heavy casualties inflicted by the dug-in Spanish troops. The Soviets took Raikelevo, which cut off Podolvo from Krasny Bor. In Krasny Bor itself the Spanish artillery, engineers and other assorted stragglers came under attack from Soviet infantry and armour, and by 12:00, the 63rd Guards Rifle Division reported the capture of Krasny Bor, despite the fact that the southern half of the town was still controlled by the Spanish. Soviet tanks opened fire on a hospital and retreating ambulances but were eventually beaten off by Spanish troops armed with Molotov Cocktails and hand grenades. The afternoon brought belated support for the defenders in the form of a Luftwaffe fighter-bomber attack on the Soviet positions around the town of Kolpino, to the north of Krasny Bor, while the 45th Guards Rifle Division seized Mishkino. Sviridov decided to insert the mobile group into the battle late on the day, but they were stopped by a combination of fierce resistance and a sudden thaw that stopped the Ski Brigade from operating off-road. The German command reinforced the Spanish defenses with battle groups. The 63rd Guards Rifle Division advanced as far as the central-western part of the town, and after 15:15 managed to push a small formation into the rear of the Spanish division's forward command post. Meanwhile, the remaining Spanish troops were ordered to new positions on the Izhora River, to the west of the town. Here they held out against 63rd Guards Rifle Division's last attacks of the day. After 16:30 hours a battle group of the German 212th Infantry Division and two companies each of the Flemish and the Latvian Legions were able to support the Spanish with a counter-attack on the forest at Staraya Rechka, and by taking over the frontline from the highway to the Izhora River. Elements of the 212th relieved the Spanish troops still holding the southern half of Krasny Bor. At the end of the day, the 63rd Guards Rifle Division had advanced four or five kilometres and captured Krasny Bor, Mishkino, Staraya Mirza, Stepanovka, and Popovka Station. On its left wing, the attack by the 43rd Rifle Division and the 34th Ski Brigade had had initial success, driving the 4th SS Police Division into the Tosno River. In the Ishora River sector, the 72nd Rifle Division pushed back the lines of the Spanish towards the river, destroying the Field Replacement Battalion, but suffering up to 70% casualties in the process. The next day, February 11, 1943, left forward 63rd Guards Rifle Division units were surrounded in several places, but the 63rd Guards Rifle Division was in control of Krasny Bor by evening. A planned counter-attack by the Spanish division and the German 212th Infantry Division was thought likely to be successful but was ultimately not carried out due to concern over the overall position of the 18th Army. By February 13, 55th Army had lost almost a third of its initial strength and most of its tanks, and could no longer advance. The total penetration achieved reached a depth of four to five kilometres over a frontage of 14 kilometres. After the Spanish 262nd infantry Regiment and 1st Artillery Battalion evacuated, they bombarded the Soviet positions and attempted a counter-attack to recapture Krasny Bor on February 12. The attack by the 55th Army made a flanking assault by the 67th Army in the Sinyavino sector easier, because of the withdrawal of German forces from that sector. The main road to Moscow was still controlled by the 18th Army, despite the capture of three km of railway line, and the Soviets launched their last major attack in this sector on March 19, 1943. It was also repelled with heavy losses on both sides. Soviet general staff critiques after the battle highlighted the reasons for the failure of the attacks during Operation Polar Star as strongly fortified defenses, faulty reconnaissance, poor command and control on all levels, clumsy employment of tanks and ineffective artillery support. The failure by the 55th Army to follow through on its initial success meant that the encirclement of the German forces in the Mga sector had lost its northern pincer. Lack of success by the other attacking armies, for similar reasons, led to the overall failure of the grandly conceived Operation Polar Star. It would take almost another year before the 18th Army withdrew from the direct approaches to Leningrad. The German 50th Corps, in particular the 250th (Spanish) Infantry Division, had managed to hold the Red Army inside the perimeter of the siege of Leningrad, but at heavy cost. On February 15, the Blue Division reported casualties of 3,645 killed or wounded and 300 missing or taken prisoner, which amounted to a 70–75% casualty rate of the troops engaged in the battle. It claimed 11,000 Soviet troops of the 55th Army had been killed in the five days beginning February 9. Because of these heavy losses and Allied pressure on the Spanish government, the Blue Division was withdrawn to Germany and later disbanded. A new volunteer formation called the Blue Legion remained in combat on the Eastern Front, attached to the 121st Infantry Division until March 1944. It was then also disbanded and the majority of the volunteers sent back to Spain. The 55th Army eventually took part in breaking the siege of Leningrad, securing the Leningrad-Moscow line in 1944. It subsequently advanced into Estonia and fought against the Courland pocket until 1945. The Spaniards captured in the battle were not repatriated to Spain until 1954. Krasny Bor remains, for the most part, an obscure battle. The division was awarded a Blue Division Medal, personally designed by Adolf Hitler. Spanish casualties in all of the Soviet-German conflict totalled 22,700—3,934 battle deaths, 570 disease deaths, 326 missing or captured, 8,466 wounded, 7,800 sick, and 1,600 frostbitten. In action against the Spanish Division, the Red Army suffered 49,300 casualties. Soviet 55th Army, 38,000 soldiers – Lieutenant General Vladimir Petrovich Sviridov 43rd Rifle Division, 45th Guards Rifle Division, 63rd Guards Rifle Division, 122nd Tank Brigade, 31st Tank Regiment, 34th Ski Brigade, 35th Ski Brigade, Artillery and mortar regiments with a total strength of 1,000 guns and mortars German 50th Corps – General Philipp Kleffel Elements of 250. Infanterie-Division, 4,500 soldiers – Major General Emilio Esteban Infantes, 250 Field Replacement Battalion, 262 Regiment (three battalions), Ski Company, 250 Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Artillery Battalion (three Batteries) with 10.5 cm guns, One battery of 3rd Artillery Battalion with 10.5 cm guns, One battery of 4th Artillery Battalion with 15.0 cm guns, 250th Anti Tank Battalion with 37 mm Pak36 AT-guns, Assault sappers group, Independent anti-tank gun company with 75 mm Pak40 anti-tank guns., 4th SS Police Division - Major General Alfred Wünnenberg, Battle Group 11th Infantry Division, Battle Group 21st Infantry Division, Battle Group 212th Infantry Division, Battle Group 215th Infantry Division, Battle Group 227th Infantry Division, Battle Group 2nd SS Motorized Brigade, SS-Volunteer Legion Flanders (two companies) 1. Combat groups were from the Flanders Legion, 2nd SS Motorized Infantry Brigade, 11th, 21st, 212th, 215th, and 227th Infantry Divisions. 2. Glantz, D. p. 297 3. Map on p. 87 in Infantes, E.E. 4. Infantes, E.E. p. 81-2 5. Glantz, D. p. 585 Halisbury, Harrison E. 900 Days, The: The Siege of Leningrad Da Capo Press, 2003., Infantes, E.E. Blaue Division – Spaniens Freiwillige an der Ostfront. Druffel 1977, Kleinfeld, Gerald L., Tambs, Lewis A. Hitler's Spanish Legion: The Blue Division in Russia. Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1979., Wylie, Nevile. European Neutrals and Non-Belligerents during the Second World War. Cambridge University Press, 2001. 250.Infanterie-Division by Jason Pipes, Commemorative Medal for Spanish Volunteers, Google-Earth Geographic Blue Division Project (spanish) The Days of Military Honour (, dni voinskoy slavy) are special memorable dates in the Russian Armed Forces dedicated to the most outstanding victories won by Russia. Some of these dates are state holidays but the majority of them is celebrated purely in the armed forces, while 7 November is marked by parades in Moscow and Samara. The Days of Military Honour include: 27 January – the day of lifting of the Siege of Leningrad, 1944;, 2 February – victory in the Battle of Stalingrad, 1943;, 23 February – Defender of the Fatherland Day, state holiday;, 18 April – victory over the Teutonic Knights in the Battle on the Ice, 1242;, 9 May – Victory Day, state holiday;, 7 July – naval victory over Turkey in the Battle of Chesma, 1770;, 10 July – victory over Sweden in the Battle of Poltava, 1709;, 9 August – naval victory over Sweden in the Battle of Gangut, 1714;, 23 August – victory over Germany in the Battle of Kursk, 1943;, 8 September – the day of the Battle of Borodino, 1812;, 11 September – naval victory over Turkey in the Battle of Tendra, 1790;, 21 September – victory over the Golden Horde in the Battle of Kulikovo, 1380;, 4 November – the day of liberation of Moscow from the Polish invaders, 1612, state holiday;, 7 November – the day of the 1941 military parade on the Red Square in Moscow;, 1 December – naval victory over Turkey in the Battle of Sinop, 1853;, 5 December – the day of launching of the counter-offensive in the Battle of Moscow, 1941;, 24 December – victory over Turkey in the Siege of Izmail, 1790. For events before 1900, these dates do not coincide with the Gregorian dates of the events. Rather, they seem to be based on the Julian calendar, which is still used by the Russian Orthodox Church. For example, the Battle of Borodino (26 August 1812 Julian or 7 September 1812 Gregorian) is commemorated on 8 September Gregorian, which corresponds to 26 August Julian from 1900 to 2099. The Battle of Kulikovo was on 8 September 1380 Julian (Gregorian did not exist, but theoretically 16 September 1380) and is commemorated on 21 September Gregorian, which corresponds to 8 September Julian from 1900 to 2099.

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Love & Basketball is a 2000 American romantic drama film starring Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps. The film tells the story of Quincy McCall (Epps) and Monica Wright (Lathan), two next-door neighbors in Los Angeles, California who are pursuing their basketball careers before eventually falling for each other. The film was produced by 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, and marks the directorial debut of screenwriter Gina Prince-Bythewood. The film received slight competition and comparison from a film with a similar theme, Girlfight. Monica and Quincy have wanted to be professional basketball stars since they were kids. The two became childhood sweethearts in 1981, when Monica’s family moved to Los Angeles from Atlanta, moving into the house next door to Quincy’s. Quincy's father, Zeke, is the star shooting guard for the Los Angeles Clippers. Quincy is shocked that a girl could love basketball as much as he does, and can play so well. They share their first kiss on the first day of school. The story jumps to 1988, when both Monica and Quincy are the respective leaders of their high school teams, with Quincy touted as one of the top prospects in the country. While popular with the girls, he and Monica are still good friends. Monica, on the other hand, struggles with her fiery emotions on the court, often resulting in technical fouls at critical moments of games, damaging potential scouting opportunities. Monica also struggles with the emotions she secretly still harbors for Quincy. She also struggles with her mother, Camille, pressuring her to give up basketball and "act like a lady." Through soul searching, Monica learns to control her emotions and leads her team to the state championship game. When she and her team came up short, Monica feels devastated. Monica begins to recover from the championship loss with the help of her older sister, Lena, who gives her a makeover. She even finds Monica a college friend to take her to her spring dance. Despite having a date of his own, Quincy notices Monica and compliments her new appearance. Later that night, they both speak outside her window and reveal to each other how their dates didn't meet their needs. Monica asks Quincy to open her letter from USC - which reveals she has been accepted. Quincy has accepted an offer from USC as well, and they celebrate with a kiss. This leads to them finally acting on their feelings, making love that night. The story moves to their freshman year at USC, where they are managing themselves as athletes, students, and a couple. While Quincy finds instant success on the court, Monica struggles for playing time, behind senior guard Sidra O'Neal. Monica has run ins with the head coach, Ellie Davis. Her relationship with Quincy becomes more and more strained. Quincy struggles to deal with the media attention, while clashing against his father’s efforts to convince Quincy to finish college before going pro. While Monica earns the starting point guard spot at the end of the season, Quincy feels she was not there for him when he was having problems with his father, and the couple splits up. The story jumps to 1993. Monica is playing professional basketball with an International Women's Basketball Association (IBWA) team in Barcelona. She misses home, but can't imagine a life that doesn’t include basketball. While Monica leads her team to a dominant victory in the championship game, she starts to realize that her love for basketball isn't the same as it was before. Having left USC after his freshman season, Quincy is now in his fifth year in the pros. He has been traded to the Los Angeles Lakers, but tears his ACL in a game. Monica flies home to see him, and is saddened to meet Quincy's fiancée, Kyra. Monica also falls into the usual squabbles with her mother Camille. Quincy completes physical therapy, while his wedding draws closer. Monica has quit basketball to work at a bank. Seeing how unhappy Monica is, Camille encourages her to fight for her career and the man she loves. Quincy and Monica meet and reminisce. Monica challenges him to a game of one-on-one, with high stakes; if he loses, he calls off the wedding and chooses Monica. Quincy agrees and wins, but can no longer be apart from Monica and chooses her instead. The film jumps to 1998. Monica is playing in the new WNBA. Quincy and their baby daughter cheer on Monica during her game. Cast and crew adapted from AllRovi. Sanaa Lathan as Monica Wright, Kyla Pratt as Young Monica, Omar Epps as Quincy McCall, Glenndon Chatman as Young Quincy, Alfre Woodard as Camille Wright, Monica's mom, Dennis Haysbert as Zeke McCall, Quincy's father, Debbi Morgan as Nona McCall, Quincy's mother, Harry J. Lennix as Nathan Wright, Monica's dad, Boris Kodjoe as Jason, Gabrielle Union as Shawnee, Monica Calhoun as Kerry, Regina Hall as Lena Wright, Monica's sister, Christine Dunford as Coach Davis, Tyra Banks as Kyra, Quincy's fiancé, Al Foster as Coach Hiserman From August 1999 to October 1999 Love & Basketball is the soundtrack to the film, released April 18, 2000, on Overbrook Entertainment and New Line Records. Production for the album came from several recording artists, including Raphael Saadiq, Angie Stone, Zapp, and Steve "Silk" Hurley. In the US, the album peaked at number 45 on the Billboard 200 and number 15 on R&B;/Hip-Hop Albums. Stacia Proefrock of Allmusic gave the album a three-of-five star review, saying "Songs like MeShell Ndege'ocello's 'Fool of Me' help punctuate this story of childhood friends who love each other almost as much as they love the game of basketball. Other highlights of the soundtrack include songs from MC Lyte, Al Green, and Rufus." Love & Basketball was released in the United States on April 21, 2000. Love & Basketball received generally favorable reviews from film critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 70, based on 28 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable". At Rotten Tomatoes, which is similar to Metacritic, the film received an aggregated score of 82%, based on 87 reviews stating, "Confident directing and acting deliver an insightful look at young athletes." Film reviewer Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly gave Love & Basketball an A- review. She enjoyed how the film portrayed women's sports in general and says "The speed and wiliness of the game itself ensure that movies about men who shoot hoops are exciting, but the novelty of watching women bring their own physical grace to the contest is a turn-on." Schwarzbaum also appreciated Prince-Bythewood's directing skills, claiming "[She] is also vigilant and honest about the hard sacrifices made in pursuit of sexual equality. And for that, she scores big in her first pro game." Rachel Deahl of AllRovi gave the film 3.5 out of 5 stars. In her review she complimented Epps and Lathan on their performances, and said, "Love & Basketball serves as a somber reminder of how few films exist (much less love stories, much less ones that focus on the female perspective) about multi- dimensional African-American characters outside the ghetto." Film critic Desson Howe of The Washington Posts Entertainment Guide wrote, "Love and Basketball had moments of such tenderness and sophistication, complimented by such romantic dreaminess between lead performers Omar Epps and Sanaa Lathan. First-time filmmaker Gina Prince-Bythewood's film joins such films as The Best Man and The Wood, which look for the class, not the crass, in African American life." Howe gave the film a favorable review. New York Post film critic Jonathan Foreman gave the film a mixed review; he appreciated how the film "effectively conveys the excitement of basketball from a player's point of view", but says it's filled with fake-sounding dialogue you only find in the cheesiest TV movies." Roger Ebert, film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, says "The film is not as taut as it could have been, but I prefer its emotional perception to the pumped-up sports clichés I was sort of expecting. It's about the pressures of being a star athlete; the whole life, not the game highlights. I'm not sure I quite believe the final shot, though. I think the girl suits up for the sequel." Ebert gave the film three out of four stars. Robert Wilonsky of the Dallas Observer gave the film a negative review, saying, "[it] is a film built upon transitions so weak and obvious it's astonishing the entire thing doesn't collapse on itself. You want to root for it, as you would any rookie underdog, but it offers nothing to cheer for." He also elaborates on the acting, stating "Omar Epps possesses a chiseled body and a blank stare [...] Lathan is only slightly better, but she's stuck in a hollow role." Love & Basketball was released in North America on April 21, 2000 to 1,237 theaters. It grossed $3,176,000 its first day and ending its North American weekend with $8,139,180, which was the second-highest grossing movie of the April 21–23, 2000 weekend, only behind U-571. Love & Basketball grossed $27,459,615 in the United States, which is ninth all-time for a basketball film and thirty-seventh all-time for a sports drama. The film grossed $27,728,118 worldwide; $268,503 (1%) was grossed outside of the United States. BET Awards | 2001 Black Reel Awards | rowspan="6" | 2001 Humanitas Prize | 2000 Independent Spirit Awards | 2000 Key Art Awards | 2001 NAACP Image Award | rowspan="5" | 2001 Erika Ringor (born 1974) is an American film actress. She has appeared on R Kelly's Trapped In The Closet as Roxanne Ringor was born in Inglewood, California. She has a diverse ethnicity, a mix of African American, Filipina, and Caucasian ancestry. Raised by her mother Laura Ringor, Erika’s acting interest began at an early age during her high school years. She attended California State University, Long Beach and graduated with honors, receiving her bachelor of arts degree in Drama and Technical Film. During her college years Ringor played principal roles in stage plays such as Hair, Shelley Garrett's Beauty Shop and Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf. Ringor first appeared in Love & Basketball. Since then, she has acted in many film and television productions, including R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet, the Wendy Williams biography Queen of Media, the television series Moonlight, and recurring roles on The Young and the Restless. erikaringor.com personal site, Ringor as Roxanne in R. Kelly's Trapped In The Closet series Gabrielle Monique Union-Wade ( Union; born October 29, 1972) is an American actress, voice artist, activist, and author. She began her career in the 1990s, appearing on television sitcoms, before landing supporting roles in teenage comedic films She's All That and 10 Things I Hate About You (1999). Her breakthrough role was in the 2000 film Bring It On. Union is also known for her performances in the romantic comedy films The Brothers (2001), Deliver Us from Eva (2003), Daddy's Little Girls (2007), Think Like a Man (2012) and Think Like a Man Too (2014). She also had starring roles in the CBS medical drama series City of Angels (2000) and films Bad Boys II (2003), Cradle 2 the Grave (2003), Neo Ned (2005), Cadillac Records (2008), Top Five (2014) and Breaking In (2018). In 2013, Union began starring as lead character in the BET drama series Being Mary Jane, for which she has received an NAACP Image Award. She co-starred in the 2016 film The Birth of a Nation, and next appeared in Almost Christmas (2016) and Sleepless (2017). Union is also the author of a memoir, We're Going to Need More Wine (2017), and an activist who works on issues around women's health and violence against women. Gabrielle Union was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the daughter of Theresa ( Glass), a phone company manager and social worker, and Sylvester E. Union, a military sergeant. She was raised Roman Catholic. During her childhood, she was taught to be "an independent woman, standing on my own two feet, and that's the road I opted to take." According to Union, her mother taught her to have a "world perspective" and took her to a gay pride parade at the age of eight after the family moved to Pleasanton, California, where she attended Foothill High School. Her parents divorced after thirty years of marriage. Union has said, "They handled their divorce and our subsequent transition into a blended family with grace and dignity and respect. They always put us first and didn't involve us. I'm lucky that I can just mirror what my parents did and always put the kids first. They're pretty awesome. I'm lucky." Union grew up with self-esteem issues relating to her appearance, as she believed growing up that "blonde was the ideal of beauty, and if I looked nothing like that, then I must be ugly." On her college football memories, Union reflected, "In my family if you couldn't talk Cornhusker football—that means knowing the black shirt defense, knowing the I-back formation—then you don't get to have an opinion. When I first toured the Nebraska campus and I saw Turner Gill walk, I freaked out. That was like the biggest star-struck moment I've probably ever had in my life. But it's because I grew up in a household that always talked specifically Cornhusker football and Big 8 sports, at the time." Union has said her personality as a young person was "mean" until her trainer A.J. Johnson confronted her over the behavior during a party the two were attending. In 1992, at the age of 19, Union was attacked and raped at her part-time job at a Payless shoe store by a robber. Union has stated that she would not have survived the attack had it not been for lessons she learned by watching Oprah Winfrey's talk show. She later successfully sued Payless for negligence, alleging that the store failed to warn employees about the assailant, who had been positively identified robbing another Payless location prior to her rape. Union has a bachelor's degree in sociology from UCLA. Union started her acting career in minor roles. Her first audition was for Saved by the Bell. Other earlier roles included teen movies such as 10 Things I Hate About You, She's All That, and Love & Basketball. In 1997, Union appeared in the sixth-season episode of — as the Klingon N'Garen. She also appeared in Sister, Sister as Vanessa, in Smart Guy as Denise, and in five episodes of 7th Heaven as Keesha Hamilton. She also appeared on an episode of Friends, "The One with the Cheap Wedding Dress", as Kristen, a love interest to both Ross & Joey. Union appeared in the 2000 film Love & Basketball. In the same year, she performed the role of Isis in the cheerleading movie Bring It On, opposite Kirsten Dunst. Bring It On helped push Union into the mainstream. Union has said that of all her films, Bring It On gave her the "biggest boost". It led to Union being cast in the CBS television drama City of Angels as Dr. Courtney Ellis. Union was featured in The Brothers and was seen as having a "beguiling sincerity, even when she's fudging the truth." Union was cast in her first leading role in the 2003 film Deliver Us from Eva with LL Cool J. This was her second time working with the rapper since making a cameo in his video "Paradise" in 2002. When casting Eva, director Gary Hardwick was looking for an actress capable of instantly changing "from funny to caustic and dramatic." Hardwick had previously worked with Union in The Brothers and believed she was perfect for the role of Eva. Union's role in the film was met by praise, with Dustin Putman of All-Reviews.com wrote that she was "the star attraction, and the number-one reason to even consider seeing the film." Union drew influence from her father for the "stern" look she had in the film, admitting that she had stolen it from him. In 2003, Union landed the role of Will Smith's character's girlfriend, Syd, in the film Bad Boys II, a box-office success grossing more than $273 million worldwide. Union felt that she had been "blessed" with her role in the film, feeling it elevated her career. The following year she appeared in Something the Lord Made. Union starred with Jamie Foxx in the film Breakin' All the Rules in 2004. The film was unpopular with critics. She appeared in the 2005 film Neo Ned, costarring Jeremy Renner and portraying an African-American woman with delusions that she is Adolf Hitler. They were noted by Mark Olsen of the Los Angeles Times as having "a strange, offbeat chemistry that drives the film." She won an award for Best Actress in Neo Ned at the Palm Beach International Film Festival, and the film received awards at several festivals. She starred in the 2005 remake of The Honeymooners with comedian Cedric The Entertainer. Union starred in the short- lived ABC series Night Stalker. She called the series a "reworking" rather than a remake. Union admitted that at the time of getting the script, she was turned off, but became interested after reading the script at her agent's insistence. She then met with series creator Frank Spotnitz and executive producer Daniel Sackheim, who told her they thought of her anytime they thought of the character. In 2006, she starred as Busta Rhymes' love interest in the music video for Rhymes' "I Love My Chick". Union starred in the 2007 film Daddy's Little Girls by Tyler Perry (released on Valentine's Day). She played Julia Rossmore, a romantically challenged attorney. The role was written with her in mind. Before working with Perry, she went to see his stage show to both understand him and his audience. She filmed Daddy's Little Girls over the summer of 2006 in Atlanta, Georgia. Union was seen as performing her character well along with Idris Elba and having a "great sense of comedic timing". Union's character also drew comparisons to Eva, her role in Deliver Us from Eva. According to Union, Perry had specifically approached her over not turning the role into the same character. Union made an appearance in the 2007 Christmas film The Perfect Holiday, which opened on December 12. Since she had no children of her own, Union used her mother and sister to portray the divorced single mother of three in the film. Union initially turned down the role, as she did not want to get typecast for playing a mother until she was told of other actresses that had played similar roles and still found success in their careers. In an interview with Art Nouveau Magazine, Union complained about the lack of roles for black actresses and actors in Hollywood: "There used to be [roles] specifically written black, if you knew Denzel was doing a movie you knew his wife, girl or love interest was going to be black [but] that's not necessarily the case anymore. You’re in that room with every amazingly talented actress of every hue, and it's a dogfight, it's hard". Moreover, although she often plays weak, insecure characters, Union believes that "Hollywood needs to recognize all shades of African-American beauty." In 2008 Union appeared on Ugly Betty for three episodes (36–38) as Renee, Wilhelmina Slater's (Vanessa L. Williams) sister and Daniel Meade's (Eric Mabius) love interest. She also made a cameo appearance in the music video for Ne-Yo's "Miss Independent". Union appeared in the 2008 film Cadillac Records. Union was reported to have signed to the film in March 2008. She portrayed Geneva Wade, who later married Muddy Waters. Waters was portrayed by Jeffrey Wright, who Union played opposite to. Union also worked with Beyoncé, who she had known since she was a teenager. Union was seen as a "pleasant surprise" to the film and her performance was said to have shown she had larger acting range than her previous roles. Union later called taking the role of Geneva Wade in the film the best business decision she had ever made. Union appeared in the 2008 film Meet Dave, playing the love interest of Eddie Murphy's character. Union said the film was a gift. That same year, she wrote the foreword for Hill Harper's Letters to a Young Sister: DeFINE your Destiny. Union joined the cast of the U.S. television series Life on NBC and appeared in four episodes prior to its cancellation in May 2009. She appeared in the ABC series FlashForward alongside John Cho and Joseph Fiennes as Zoey Andata, a role for which she was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 2010. She appeared in episodes of Army Wives and in 2010 and 2011. Union was reported to be joining the cast in June 2010. Union was reported in May 2011 to have landed roles in Think Like a Man, a romantic comedy based on Steve Harvey's book Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, and an indie film, Family Tree. In June 2011, Union defended the music video for the Rihanna single "Man Down" after it sparked controversy for Rihanna depicting a rape victim shooting and killing her attacker. Union related that every rape victim was "unique", which extended to how they believed justice should be carried out. In January 2012, Union was announced to be a participant in Bounce TV's documentary Our History. In 2012 she worked with Tyler Perry on the romantic comedy Good Deeds, playing the role of Natalie, the soon to be wife of Perry's character Wesley Deeds. Union said that after she read the script she became interested in working with Tyler Perry again. and enjoyed working with the cast. She then appeared in Steve Harvey's film Think Like a Man. Union related to her character from having married and divorced young. She and Meagan Good were seen as having taken advantage of their "straightforward characters to add spots of comic zest as well." Her next appearance was In Our Nature. The film was the directorial debut of Brian Savelson, the writing ability of whom Union was impressed. Savelson had offered Union the role two years prior to the film's release, in 2010. Union saw In Our Nature as a personal victory for her career. In 2013, she began starring in the BET network show Being Mary Jane. Union learned of the series while auditioning for Scandal for the role of Olivia Pope, which ultimately went to Kerry Washington. Union has said that she is content with having lost the role in Scandal to Washington: "I didn't get Scandal, but I got something better -- which is my own show." Union was impressed with the show's quality and professionalism. Also in 2013 Union starred in Ava DuVernay's short film The Door as part of Miu Miu's Women's Tales campaign. Union reprised her role as Kristen in Think Like a Man Too in 2014, which received mostly negative reviews. She believed the film would do well and faced comparisons to her character, who was a newlywed while Union was engaged at the time, a similarity she dispelled by insisting she kept her relationship "enjoyable, fresh and exciting". Union was announced in July 2014 as a producer in the Lifetime film With This Ring. She was featured in Chris Rock's Top Five, playing the fiancée of Rock's character. Union viewed her character as being similar to members of the Kardashian family or the Braxton sisters. In November 2015, Union began voicing Nala in the Disney movie and series The Lion Guard. In October 2016, Union was featured in The Birth of a Nation as Esther, a slave in the Antebellum South who is raped by a white man. Union stated in an op-ed with the Los Angeles Times that she took the role due to her relating to it as a rape victim. Later that year, Union had a prominent role as Rachel Meyers in the comedy film Almost Christmas, released in November. Ariel Scotti of The New York Times panned Union's performance: "Each overused phrase that falls out of her character, Rachel's, vindictive, childish mouth takes viewers further out of the movie experience." In 2017, Union launched Flawless by Gabrielle Union, a line of hair-care products catered to people with textured hair. In September 2017 Union announced a collaborative partnership with Invicta watches that included a line of watches she designed. Currently she stars as Syd Burnett, in the Bad Boys spin-off television series LA's Finest with Jessica Alba. The series is a Charter Spectrum original series which premiered May 13, 2019. The series has been renewed for a second season. Union also was a judge for America's Got Talent for its fourteenth season, but failed to hire her for another season in November 2019, allegedly after she spoke out against racism. Union's fellow America's Got Talent judge Julianne Hough was also sacked from the show after one season. Citing she enjoyed her time on the show and thankful for the opportunity In April 2017, Union announced her first book, a memoir, entitled We're Going to Need More Wine. The book "feature[s] personal stories and reflections on a range of topics that continue to define the contemporary landscape: sexuality, womanhood, friendship, race, marriage, and beauty." Union described the book as "the good, the bad, and the WTF." The book was published by Dey Street Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, on October 17, 2017. In December 2017, We're Going to Need More Wine was named a Best Book of the Year by a Black Author by The Root. Union is a spokeswoman for Neutrogena. She became affiliated with Neutrogena in 2004. It was reported in November 2014 that Union became ambassador for nail polish company SensatioNail. She became the company's first celebrity ambassador and creative advisor. In 2010, Union launched Love & Blessings, a clothing line for plus-sized women. The line was inspired by Union's full- figured sister. In March 2014, Union released her first wine, "Vanilla Puddin'". Union is an advocate for survivors of assault and has voiced her support for Jada, a Texas teenager who was sexually assaulted after passing out during a party; her sexual assault was filmed and posted in clips online, and has been mocked by others on social networking websites. Union has also spoken about the importance of therapy and how she received family and workplace support to quickly access therapy. Union addressed the shooting of Trayvon Martin and stated, "When you have influence I think it's the responsible thing to do, to speak out on an issue when you see injustice. I'm still fighting for Trayvon [...] we all should." In the months following Martin's death, Union supported a petition that called for Florida District Attorney Norman Wolfinger to bring charges against George Zimmerman. After Zimmerman was acquitted of charges in Martin's death in July 2013, Union remarked, "Apparently walking while black is a crime punishable by death." Union was angered by Todd Akin's position on abortion, which he explained as a woman not being able to get pregnant in the case of "legitimate rape". Tanganyika Williams, the aunt of NBA player Matt Barnes, was killed on July 8, 2014. Union posted on both Instagram and Twitter, calling for anyone with information on the killer of Barnes's aunt to report their information to authorities. Oprah Winfrey stated that Union's Fierce and Fearless Award acceptance speech—in which Union admitted she once reveled "in gossip and rumors"—inspired her because she "had never heard anyone be that honest in public or private about the competition and fierce drive to be seen and succeed in Hollywood." In February 2012, Union was identified as a suspicious person by airport security and was subjected to a "hair patdown". She tweeted about the experience. "Hopefully my weave doesn't cause turbulence," Union joked. "It's clearly very powerful." Union ran in the Global Race for the Cure in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, June 2, 2012, in honor of her friend Kristen Martinez, who died from breast cancer. Union was present at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. on August 23, 2013, and unveiled a limited-edition 1963 March on Washington stamp to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the march. In 2008, Union supported Barack Obama in his presidential campaign, the election interesting her differently from past elections. After working on the unsuccessful pilot for Army Wives, Union was appointed by President Obama to work with the National Advisory Committee for Violence Against Women. Obama contacted her specifically after learning that the pilot had fallen through. Union participated in the Obama campaign's "Greater Together" initiative as part of his re-election campaign in 2012. Union called on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to release his tax returns and birth certificate, noting his father George W. Romney had released his own tax returns while a presidential candidate. The office of Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed in November 2014 announced a campaign entitled "Take a Stand" and its commission of a short film featuring Union and Tika Sumpter. Union is an Ambassador in Susan G. Komen for the Cure's Circle of Promise. Union became a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood's breast health initiative and launched the Women Are Watching campaign with other actresses in 2012. In October 2014, it was announced that Union would be designing T-shirts to bring attention to the Women Are Watching campaign. Union met NFL player Chris Howard at a party in 1999. They married on May 5, 2001, and separated in October 2005. The divorce was finalized in 2006. Union said that when she got divorced she "sort of realized that she hadn't been making sound choices which were the best for her to pursue her hopes and dreams and aspirations and passions." In a 2014 interview, Union stated that she may have rushed into the relationship for the wrong reasons, noting that, "in my 20s, I was all about getting the ring". Union had earlier reflected that she spent much of the marriage "upset" and from the relationship, she realized that the men in her life were "just human". In 2009, Union began dating NBA player Dwyane Wade. They married on August 30, 2014, in Miami, Florida, and she became a stepmother to his three sons. Union stated in an interview prior to the marriage that she and Wade would be signing a prenuptial agreement to protect their individual assets. Union and Wade spent their honeymoon in the Maldives and Tanzania. In 2018, they welcomed the birth of their daughter, who was born via surrogate due to Union's struggles with miscarriages.

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The history of the New York Yankees Major League Baseball (MLB) team spans more than a century. Frank J. Farrell and William Stephen Devery bought the rights to an American League (AL) club in New York City after the 1902 season. The team, which became known as the Yankees in 1913, rarely contended for the AL championship before the acquisition of outfielder Babe Ruth after the 1919 season. With Ruth in the lineup, the Yankees won their first AL title in 1921, followed by their first World Series championship in 1923. Ruth and first baseman Lou Gehrig were part of the team's Murderers' Row lineup, which led the Yankees to a then-AL record 110 wins and a Series championship in 1927 under Miller Huggins. They repeated as World Series winners in 1928, and their next title came under manager Joe McCarthy in 1932. The Yankees won the World Series every year from 1936 to 1939 with a team that featured Gehrig and outfielder Joe DiMaggio, who recorded a record hitting streak during New York's 1941 championship season. New York set a major league record by winning five consecutive championships from 1949 to 1953, and appeared in the World Series nine times from 1955 to 1964. Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, and Whitey Ford were among the players fielded by the Yankees during the era. After the 1964 season, a lack of effective replacements for aging players caused the franchise to decline on the field, and the team became a money-loser for owners CBS while playing in an aging stadium. George Steinbrenner bought the club in 1973 and regularly invested in new talent, using free agency to acquire top players. Yankee Stadium was renovated and reopened in 1976 as the home of a more competitive Yankees team. Despite clubhouse disputes, the team reached the World Series four times between 1976 and 1981 and claimed the championship in 1977 and 1978. New York continued to pursue their strategy of signing free agents into the 1980s, but with less success, and the team eventually sank into mediocrity after 1981. In the early 1990s, the team began to improve as their roster was rebuilt around young players from their minor league system, including Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera. After earning a playoff berth in 1995, the Yankees won four of the next five World Series, and the 1998–2000 teams were the last in MLB to win three straight Series titles. As the 2000s progressed, the Yankees' rivalry with the Boston Red Sox increased in intensity as the sides met multiple times in the American League Championship Series (ALCS), trading victories in 2003 and 2004. New York regularly reached the postseason, but were often defeated in the first two rounds. In 2009, the Yankees opened a new Yankee Stadium and won the World Series for the 27th time in team history, an MLB record. The Yankees appeared in the ALCS four times during the 2010s, but lost on each occasion. At the end of the 1900 baseball season, the Western League was positioned by its president, Ban Johnson, as a new major league that would compete with the established National League (NL). The league was reorganized and renamed the American League (AL), and eight cities fielded teams in the 1901 season. A Baltimore team had played in the NL through the 1899 season, after which the club was shut down by the league. Baltimore was one of three former NL cities where the AL placed teams in an effort to reach underserved fans. The new Orioles' first manager was John McGraw, who had held the same position for the previous Baltimore team in 1899; McGraw also held an ownership stake. In 1901, their first season, the Orioles had a 68–65 win–loss record and finished in fifth place in the AL. During the season, there were numerous disputes between Johnson and McGraw over disciplinary issues, which continued into the following year. Rumors began to spread that Johnson was interested in relocating the team to New York City, in an attempt to compete directly with the NL. McGraw left the Orioles and joined the New York Giants as their manager; he transferred his interest in the Baltimore team to the Giants as part of the deal. Several Orioles—including Roger Bresnahan and Joe McGinnity—joined the Giants after McGraw's departure, and the Giants gained a majority of the Orioles' stock. The league managed to take back control of the team from the Giants; after the Orioles forfeited a game because they lacked enough active players, Johnson ordered that the team be "restocked with players essentially given away by the other teams in order to play out the schedule", according to author Marty Appel. The Orioles finished last in the league both in the standings and in attendance. The AL and NL signed an agreement after the 1902 season that ended the leagues' battles for players, which had led to increasing salaries. Johnson sought the right to locate an AL team in New York City, which was granted as part of the leagues' peace agreement. His intention was for the team to play in Manhattan, but the idea was opposed by Giants owner John T. Brush and former owner Andrew Freedman, who were connected to the city's Tammany Hall political organization. They blocked several potential stadium locations, before a pair of Tammany Hall politicians, Frank J. Farrell and William Stephen Devery, purchased the New York franchise in the AL. The pair paid for the team. It is not clear whether Farrell and Devery purchased the remains of the Orioles and moved them to New York, or if they received an expansion franchise. It was the last change in the lineup of MLB teams for half a century. The ballpark for the New York team was constructed between 165th and 168th Streets, on Broadway in Manhattan. Formally known as American League Park, it was nicknamed Hilltop Park because of its relatively high elevation. The team did not have an official nickname; it was often called the New York Americans in reference to the AL. Another common nickname for the club was the Highlanders, a play on the last name of the team's president, Joe Gordon, and the British military unit, the Gordon Highlanders. The team acquired players such as outfielder Willie Keeler and pitcher Jack Chesbro. The player-manager was Clark Griffith, obtained from the Chicago White Sox. On April 22, 1903, the Highlanders began their season with a 3–1 loss to the Washington Senators; eight days later, they won their first game in Hilltop Park, defeating the Senators 6–2. New York fell out of contention for the AL pennant in May, falling to seventh place after playing games away from Hilltop Park for a 24-day period while construction on the stadium concluded. With a final record of 72–62 after wins in 19 of 29 games played in September, New York finished in fourth. Chesbro won 41 games in New York's 1904 season, still an AL record. New York contended for the AL pennant with the Boston Americans (later nicknamed the Red Sox); Johnson aided New York by helping the team acquire multiple players in trades, including Boston's Patsy Dougherty. Boston and New York faced each other in a season-ending five-game series that decided the pennant winner, and was played from October 7–10. Boston won two of the first three games, which meant that New York needed to win the two contests scheduled on October 10 to win the AL title. With the score of the first game tied 2–2 in the ninth inning, Chesbro threw a wild pitch that allowed a runner on third base to score, giving Boston a 3–2 victory that clinched the AL pennant; New York won the now-meaningless second game. New York's performance declined in 1905, as numerous pitchers dealt with arm injuries and conditioning issues. After losing 18 of 25 games in May, the Highlanders ended the season in sixth. In its 1906 season, New York again contended for the AL championship. With 13 games left, the team held a one-game lead over the White Sox, but finished in second place three games behind Chicago. According to Appel, "What would follow would be a string of mediocre to bad seasons and not a very good attraction for baseball-crazed New York fans." New York recorded a fifth-place finish in 1907, with 70 wins, 22 fewer than the league champion Detroit Tigers. The 1908 and 1909 teams finished last and fifth, respectively, and there were multiple managerial changes in the period. New York had a second-place finish in 1910, but did not seriously contend for the pennant. Manager George Stallings and first baseman Hal Chase, the team captain, clashed towards the end of the season; facing opposition from Ban Johnson, who wanted him to resign as manager, Stallings left the position. Chase managed New York's last 14 games. The following season, New York had a sixth-place finish. Early in the season, New York allowed the Giants to play in Hilltop Park after the Giants' stadium, the Polo Grounds, burned down; the arrangement lasted until June 28, when the rebuilt Polo Grounds opened. Chase resigned as manager before New York's 1912 season; Harry Wolverton accepted the position. That year, New York had a last-place finish with a record of 50–102, the winning percentage of .329 the lowest-ever for the club. After their first couple of seasons in New York City, team ownership infrequently invested in new players. The ownership group of Farrell and Devery spent their money on personal pursuits such as gambling, leaving them with little to put into the team. New York's star player, Chase, consorted frequently with gamblers. Author Jim Reisler dubbed him "the most crooked player to ever play the game" because of reports that he took part in game fixing. The club also had difficulty drawing fans to Hilltop Park. Appel wrote that "maybe the best thing you could say about the ballpark was that it never burned down." By the end of the 1912 season, Farrell was searching for a site to build a new stadium on. New York started playing home games at the Polo Grounds in 1913 as tenants of the Giants. Before the 1913 season, the team gained an official nickname for the first time. Either "Yankees" or "Yanks" had been used frequently since 1904 in newspapers such as the New York Evening Journal, since "Highlanders" was hard to fit in headlines. Such unofficial nicknames were common during that era, but thereafter the official name took hold—the New York Yankees. A third major league, the Federal League (FL), began play in 1914 and lasted for two years. While the Yankees did not have to contend with direct competition for fans, as the FL chose to place its New York City franchise in Brooklyn instead of Manhattan, the team nearly lost leading pitcher Ray Caldwell to the rival league after the 1914 season. With the Yankees finishing seventh in 1913 and sixth in 1914, Farrell and Devery sold the team to brewery magnate Jacob Ruppert and former United States Army engineer Tillinghast L'Hommedieu Huston. The Yankees had rarely been profitable over the previous 10 years, and carried debts of $20,000. The sale was completed on January 11, 1915, as the pair paid a combined $460,000. Ruppert called the team "an orphan ball club, without a home of its own, without players of outstanding ability, without prestige." The new owners intended to spend freely to improve the club's talent level and made a major purchase in 1915, buying pitcher Bob Shawkey from the Philadelphia Athletics. In spite of this, the Yankees' 69 wins were only enough for fifth in the league. After wearing different designs during the Highlanders years, in 1915 the Yankees introduced white uniforms with pinstripes and an interlocking "NY" logo during games at the Polo Grounds; this remains their home uniform design today. For road games, the team began to wear gray uniforms with "New York" across the chest from 1913; the Yankees still wear similar garb. Following the acquisition of third baseman Frank "Home Run" Baker from the Athletics, the 1916 Yankees had 80 wins and contended for the AL pennant for most of the season, before suffering a run of injuries to key players, including Baker. In the Yankees' 1917 season, New York finished in sixth; Bill Donovan, the club's manager since 1915, was fired in the offseason. Ruppert replaced him with Miller Huggins, completing the hire while Huston was overseas fighting in World War I. The Yankees contended for first place in the war-shortened 1918 campaign along with the Red Sox and Cleveland Indians, but lost numerous players to military service and were fourth at 60–63. After the season, the Yankees acquired three players—including outfielder Duffy Lewis and pitcher Ernie Shore—in a trade with the Red Sox, the winners of the 1918 World Series. In 1919, the club made another trade with Boston, acquiring pitcher Carl Mays for two players and $40,000. The midseason deal provoked a dispute between the teams and Ban Johnson, who unsuccessfully attempted to block it. Mays had a 9–3 pitching record as a Yankee, and the team improved to 80–59 for the season; the mark was good for third in the AL. The 1919 season was the first in which the Yankees played games at the Polo Grounds on Sundays; until then, blue laws had banned Sunday baseball in New York state. The Yankees' attendance more than doubled in 1919, rising to about 619,000. The Giants soon moved to force the Yankees out of the Polo Grounds, in an effort to secure more Sunday home games. On December 26, 1919, the Yankees made an agreement with the Red Sox to purchase outfielder Babe Ruth for $25,000 cash and $75,000 in promissory notes. The deal, which was announced on January 5, 1920, was called "the most famous transaction in sports" by author Glenn Stout. After tying for the MLB home run lead in 1918 with the Athletics' Tilly Walker (with 11), Ruth broke the single-season record with 29 in 1919. At the same time, he sought a new contract that would double his $10,000 yearly salary. After the trade, Boston did not win another World Series championship until 2004; an alleged jinx against the Red Sox, which was known as the Curse of the Bambino (after a nickname for Ruth), was first brought up when they lost the 1986 World Series and became widely discussed after Dan Shaughnessy authored a book with the title. The deal became a symbol of "how things [would] always go wrong for the Red Sox and right for the Yankees", according to Stout. With Ruth in the lineup, the Yankees' fortunes were transformed. Playing on four World Series champion teams, Ruth hit 659 home runs and scored 1,959 runs with the Yankees; both marks are team records as of 2018. He is second in club history with 1,978 runs batted in and accumulated 2,518 hits as a Yankee, third on the team's all-time list. As well as prowess on the field, Ruth had a larger-than- life personality, bringing him and his team a huge amount of press and public attention. The addition of Ruth helped the Yankees increase their attendance to 1,289,422 for the 1920 season; it was the first time that any MLB team drew more than one million fans in a year. His skills and charm appealed to large segments of the New York City population; Stout wrote that "He belonged to everyone." New York was the AL attendance leader for 13 of Ruth's 15 seasons with the team; the Yankees became solidly profitable as well, making over $370,000 in 1920 and remaining in the black for the rest of the decade. In 1920, Ruth hit 54 home runs for a new record; his total was higher than that of all other MLB teams but the Philadelphia Phillies. New York had 95 wins, the most in team history to that point, but fell three wins short of the AL championship and finished third. In an August 16 game against the Indians, a pitch from Mays hit Indians shortstop Ray Chapman in the head, leading to his death; the Yankees slumped after the incident as Cleveland captured the pennant. After the season, the Yankees hired general manager Ed Barrow from the Red Sox. Barrow made numerous trades with his former club, including one immediately after his departure that brought catcher Wally Schang and pitcher Waite Hoyt to New York. The Yankees also became involved in another dispute with Ban Johnson, this time over the replacement of baseball's existing governing body, the National Commission, after reports came out that the 1919 World Series had been fixed. The Yankees and 10 other franchises—including the entire NL—supported the idea of a three-man committee drawn from outside baseball running MLB, and for a time a move by the Yankees to the NL was rumored; ultimately, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was named MLB's first commissioner. The 1921 season began a 44-year period in which the Yankees were, according to author Richard Worth, "The greatest sustained winning 'empire' in sports". Ruth surpassed his own record by hitting 59 home runs. He also led MLB in on- base percentage with a .512 mark for the season. The Yankees won the AL pennant for the first time, winning 98 games in the regular season; the total gave them the league championship by a margin of games over Cleveland. In the best-of-nine 1921 World Series, they faced the Giants and won the first two games, but their opponents claimed the Series title when they won five of the next six games. Ruth suffered an arm infection, which limited his playing time in the later part of the Series. He and Bob Meusel participated in exhibition games during the offseason, in violation of MLB rules forbidding players on pennant-winning teams from barnstorming after the World Series. Season-long suspensions were considered a possibility, but Landis decided to suspend the pair for six weeks. Despite the setback, New York had 94 wins and repeated as AL champions. The St. Louis Browns were the closest pursuers, finishing one game behind New York. In the World Series, the Yankees again faced the Giants in an all-New York matchup; the Series changed to a best-of-seven format that year. The Giants defeated the Yankees in five games, including one that ended in a tie when it was suspended because of darkness. By 1923, the teams no longer shared the Polo Grounds, as Giants owner Charles Stoneham had attempted to evict the Yankees in 1920. Although the attempt was unsuccessful, and Stoneham and the Yankees' owners agreed to a two-year lease renewal, the Giants decided against giving the Yankees an extension after 1922. The treatment pushed the Yankees into seeking their own stadium. In 1921, the team bought a plot of land in the Bronx, and the construction crew finished the new ballpark before the 1923 season. Yankee Stadium, a triple-deck facility, was originally designed to hold more than 55,000 spectators; it was later able to hold over 70,000. Writer Peter Carino called the stadium "a larger and more impressive facility than anything yet built to house a baseball team." At Yankee Stadium's inaugural game on April 18, 1923, Ruth hit the first home run in the stadium, which sportswriter Fred Lieb named "the House That Ruth Built" as the Yankees would not have needed such a large stadium without the Ruth- driven attendance. Ruth himself had a resurgence after receiving vocal criticism for his 1922 World Series performance. He shared the MLB lead with Cy Williams by hitting 41 home runs in the 1923 season, and had a career-best .393 batting average; his performance earned him the AL Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award. The Yankees finished first for the third consecutive year, and faced the Giants again in the 1923 World Series. Giants outfielder Casey Stengel hit game-winning home runs in two of the first three games of the World Series, but Ruth's three home runs helped the Yankees win in six games for their first MLB title. Off the field, Ruppert purchased Huston's share of the Yankees for $1.25 million, assuming full ownership of the club. The Yankees did not return to the World Series in either of the following two seasons. By 1925, New York had fallen to seventh place. That year marked the team's last losing season until 1965; the 39-year streak of winning seasons is an MLB record. Lou Gehrig became the starting first baseman in 1925, earning a spot in the lineup he would not relinquish for almost 15 years, a then-record consecutive games played streak. The Yankees made more talent upgrades before their 1926 season, which included the signing of infielder Tony Lazzeri, who spent over a decade with the club. New York's performance on the field surpassed preseason expectations, and a 16-game winning streak in May gave the team a substantial lead. With a three-game final margin over the Indians, the Yankees won the pennant and a spot in the 1926 World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. After the Yankees took a 3–2 series lead, the Cardinals won the final two games in Yankee Stadium to claim the Series title. Ruth hit three home runs in the fourth game, but made the final out of the Series on a failed stolen base attempt. The Yankees' lineup in the 1927 season, which featured Ruth, Gehrig, Lazzeri, Meusel, Mark Koenig, and Earle Combs, was known as Murderers' Row for its power hitting. The team led in the standings throughout. The Yankees took first place in early May, and by the end of June had posted a 49–20 record, giving them a large lead in the AL standings; by mid-September, they had clinched the pennant. The 1927 Yankees had a 110–44 record in the regular season, and broke the AL record for wins in a year. Ruth's total of 60 home runs set a single-season home run record that stood for 34 years. Gehrig added 47 home runs and his 175 RBI topped the AL; he won the first of his two AL MVP Awards. The Yankees completed the season by sweeping the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1927 World Series. The 1927 Yankees squad is included among the great teams in baseball history. To begin the 1928 season, the Yankees went on a 34–8 run and took a sizable lead. The Athletics chased them for the AL pennant towards the end of the season, but New York won the title again and faced the Cardinals in the 1928 World Series, sweeping them in four games. Coming off a 54-home run regular season, Ruth had three more and a .625 batting average in the Series, while Gehrig batted .545 with four home runs. With the Yankees' run of three straight league pennants and two World Series titles came criticism from fans of other teams, who decried the team's dominance. Calls to "Break up the Yankees!" were made, and critics hoped that the team would sell Gehrig to separate him from Ruth; Ruppert declined to do so. The Yankees' run of pennants was broken up by a rising Philadelphia Athletics team, which denied the Yankees a fourth straight AL championship in 1929. The team's manager, Huggins, died on September 25. After Art Fletcher managed for the rest of the year, Shawkey took the position for the 1930 season, in which the Yankees had a third-place finish. The Yankees fired Fletcher and hired Joe McCarthy; in his first season as manager, the team won 94 games but finished second behind the Athletics. McCarthy's team was undergoing a transition from Murderers' Row; new contributors included Bill Dickey, who had first played for the Yankees in 1928, and pitchers Red Ruffing and Lefty Gomez. Ruffing, who had a 39–96 record with the Red Sox before being traded to New York, ended up 231–124 in his Yankees career. In 1932, McCarthy's Yankees returned to the top of the AL with 107 wins, enough for a 13-game margin over the Athletics. The Yankees met the Chicago Cubs in the 1932 World Series and swept them four games to none. Gehrig had three home runs, eight RBI, and a .529 batting average for the Series, while Ruth contributed a pair of home runs in the third game at Chicago's Wrigley Field. The second of Ruth's home runs was his "called shot"; after pointing towards the center field stands, according to some post-game press reports, Ruth homered to break a 4–4 tie in the fifth inning. Although accounts of the incident vary greatly, author Eric Enders called the home run "the most talked-about hit in baseball history". The Yankees began cutting their payroll in 1933, as their finances were strained by the Great Depression. Regardless, the makeup of the team was minimally impacted in comparison to the Athletics, who were forced to sell key players to lower their expenses. From 1933 to 1935, the Yankees posted three consecutive second-place finishes. Ruth's performance declined from previous seasons in 1933 and 1934, his final years with the team. The Yankees released Ruth from his contract before the 1935 season, and Gehrig took a leadership role for the club; he was named New York's captain. New York was beginning to see results from an initiative to buy minor league teams in an effort to reduce the cost of obtaining players; after buying their first minor league club in 1929, the Yankees had a 15-team system by 1937. Players developed in the farm system entered the Yankee lineup beginning in the mid-1930s, and into the early 1960s this remained the team's primary player acquisition method. McCarthy worked to regulate player behavior in areas such as mental focus and off-field attire; the Yankees acquired a "corporate image" that they retained for many years. New York's 1936 season was Joe DiMaggio's first with the club. The young center fielder was signed in 1934 from the Pacific Coast League's San Francisco Seals, and made his debut with the Yankees in 1936, gaining an extra year's experience with the Seals. DiMaggio had a .323 batting average, 29 home runs, and 125 RBI in his rookie season. Gehrig won the AL MVP Award for his season, in which he hit a career-high 49 home runs, with a .354 batting average and 152 RBI. Behind these performances, the Yankees had a 102-win season and won the AL pennant, before defeating the Giants in the 1936 World Series, four games to two. After a second consecutive 102-win regular season and AL championship in the 1937 season, the Yankees again defeated the Giants in the Series—this time winning 4–1. The 1938 Yankees had 48 victories in 61 games during one stretch, and won the team's third straight AL championship despite a drop in batting performance by Gehrig. In the 1938 World Series, the Yankees swept the Chicago Cubs in four games. Ruppert died early in 1939; before his death, he sold his ownership interest to Barrow, who took over as the Yankees' president. Financially, the club's position had improved from earlier in the decade; after posting a net loss of around $170,000 from 1931 to 1935, the team made over $1 million during the next four years. The 1939 Yankees lost the services of Gehrig early in the season. After starting the year poorly, he was replaced by Babe Dahlgren, ending his streak of 2,130 consecutive games played; he was later diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which forced him to retire. Despite the loss of Gehrig, New York fielded a team that posted 106 victories in 1939, 17 more than the second- place team. DiMaggio was named MVP of the league; he led the AL in batting average (.381) and was second in RBI (126). Ruffing led the Yankees' pitchers with 20 wins. In the 1939 World Series, the Yankees swept the Cincinnati Reds in four games for the club's fourth consecutive Series championship. Writers have given the 1936–39 Yankees acclaim for their success in regular season and World Series play; Stout wrote that the 1939 squad was "magnificent", and that their campaign was "wholly without drama" besides Gehrig's departure from the lineup. In response to the Yankees' dominance, after the 1939 season the AL temporarily barred most transactions between the last pennant winner and other league teams in an attempt to prevent New York from improving its roster. The Yankees' run of championships ended in 1940; the team had 18 more losses than in the previous season and finished second, two games behind the Tigers. DiMaggio recorded base hits in 56 consecutive games for the Yankees during the 1941 season, breaking the MLB record of 44 games that had been set by Willie Keeler in 1897. His hitting streak lasted from May 15 to July 17, when DiMaggio failed to record a hit during a game against the Indians at Cleveland Stadium. After winning the AL pennant, the Yankees met the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1941 World Series, prevailing in five games. In Game 4, the Yankees trailed 4–3 in the ninth inning and were on the verge of defeat when Tommy Henrich struck out; Dodgers catcher Mickey Owen was unable to field the pitch, allowing Henrich to reach base. That began a four-run game-winning rally, and New York won the championship in Game 5 the following day. The attack on Pearl Harbor occurred during the offseason, and some baseball players immediately joined the Armed Forces. Most of the Yankees' roster remained with the team in 1942, and the club repeated as AL champions despite Gomez's departure. In the 1942 World Series, the Cardinals gave the Yankees their first Series loss since 1926, after winning in eight consecutive appearances. DiMaggio and other Yankees entered the military before the 1943 season, but the club won the AL championship for the 14th time and 7th since 1936. The Cardinals met the Yankees in a World Series rematch, and New York won four games to one. After 1943, more of the team's players were drafted into military, and the Yankees ended 1944 in third place, one position higher than they finished the following season. A group consisting of Larry MacPhail, Dan Topping, and Del Webb bought the Yankees, their stadium, and the franchise's minor league teams for $2.8 million in 1945. Under the new ownership, Yankee Stadium underwent extensive renovations that included the installation of lights. With the war over and the return of players from overseas, the Yankees set an MLB single-season home attendance record by attracting 2,265,512 fans in 1946. McCarthy resigned as manager early in the season. The Yankees used two other managers during the year (Bill Dickey and Johnny Neun), and ended 1946 in third place. Catcher Yogi Berra made his Yankees debut that year; in his 18-season career, Berra won the AL MVP Award three times. Bucky Harris was brought in to be the manager, and his 1947 team won the AL pennant and defeated the Dodgers in a seven-game World Series. After the end of the Series, MacPhail sold his share of Yankees ownership to Topping and Webb for $2 million. Despite contending late into the season, the 1948 Yankees finished in third place. Harris was released and the Yankees brought in Casey Stengel to manage. At the time, Stengel had "a reputation as a bit of a clown", according to Appel, and had been unsuccessful in two previous MLB managing stints. As the Yankees' manager, he optimized matchups by using a platoon system, playing more left-handed batters against right-handed pitchers. Numerous injuries affected the team during the 1949 season but it battled with the Red Sox for the AL pennant; before a season-ending two-game series at Yankee Stadium, New York trailed Boston by one game and needed a pair of wins. By scores of 5–4 and 5–3, the Yankees won the two games and the league championship. New York won a World Series rematch with the Dodgers in five games. Stengel was named AL Manager of the Year in his first season. The Yankees faced another competitive pennant race in 1950, as the Tigers joined New York and Boston at the top of the AL. Late in the season, the Yankees broke a tie with the Tigers for first place and went on to win the pennant. In the 1950 World Series, the Yankees swept the Phillies; the second game was decided by a DiMaggio home run in the tenth inning. Following the season, Yankee Phil Rizzuto was named AL MVP after recording 200 base hits during the regular season. Fan interest in attending games had begun declining throughout MLB in the late-1940s, and the Yankees faced a drop-off in their crowds after 1947, when they sold about 2.2 million tickets. By 1957, season attendance was down by over 700,000. New York baseball fans had the option of watching games on television instead by the early 1950s. The Yankees joined the other New York City franchises in allowing game telecasts. This was a departure from the team's strategy when radio broadcasts were introduced. Regular season games of the Yankees were not broadcast until 1939, as management believed that fewer fans would attend games if they could listen on radios. DiMaggio played his final MLB season in 1951, while highly touted outfielder Mickey Mantle made his debut for New York. Pitcher Allie Reynolds threw two no-hitters during 1951, as the Yankees claimed the AL pennant for the third straight year. They then won the 1951 World Series against the Giants, four games to two. When their 1952 team took the AL pennant, the Yankees had an opportunity to match the four straight World Series championships won by the team from 1936 to 1939. In another Yankees–Dodgers matchup, New York fell behind three games to two, but victories in games six and seven gave the Yankees the title. New York and Brooklyn were matched again in the 1953 World Series, and a Billy Martin base hit that decided the sixth and final game of the Series gave the Yankees another four games to two victory and a fifth title in a row. As of 2016, the 1949–1953 Yankees are the only MLB teams to win five straight World Series; no team since has won more than three in a row. The Yankees won 103 games in 1954, the most yet for a Stengel-managed team, but the Indians took the pennant with a then-AL record 111 wins. One year later, the 1955 Yankees faced the Dodgers in the World Series. After the teams split the first six games of the Series, the Yankees lost the seventh and final game 2–0, giving the Dodgers their first Series win. Elston Howard, the first African American player in Yankees history, made his debut in 1955. His arrival came eight years after MLB's color line had been broken, as the Yankees' management had sought to avoid integrating the club's roster. As teams such as the Dodgers added black players, the Yankees turned down numerous opportunities to acquire Negro league talent. Management feared alienating white fans and harbored stereotypes of African American players. Author Robert Cohen called these views "symbolic of the overall arrogance of Yankee ownership and management, as well as their prevailing racial attitudes." In 1956, Mantle won the MVP award for a season in which he led the AL and MLB in batting average (.353), home runs (52), and RBIs (130), becoming the second Yankee (after Gehrig in 1934) to win a Triple Crown. The 1956 Yankees won the franchise's seventh AL championship under Stengel and advanced to a World Series rematch with the Dodgers. In Game 5, with the Series even at 2–2, Yankees pitcher Don Larsen threw a perfect game. In seven games, the Yankees won the Series. By 1957, the Yankees had won 15 of the last 21 AL pennants. The team's minor- league system had been reduced to 10 teams from a peak of 22, and its scouting system was acclaimed by Sports Illustrated's Roy Terrell as "the best in all baseball." Instead of signing many players for their organization, the Yankees concentrated on acquiring a smaller number of highly skilled players, according to head scout Paul Krichell. The club recruited players by selling them on the "fame, fortune and fat shares of a World Series pot" that came with making New York's roster. The 1957 Yankees reached that year's World Series, but lost in seven games to the Milwaukee Braves. Following the Series, the Giants and Dodgers left New York City for California, leaving the Yankees as New York's only MLB team. Despite their status as the sole New York City- based franchise, the Yankees' 1958 attendance decreased from previous seasons as the team could not attract bereft Giants and Dodgers fans. In the 1958 World Series, the Yankees had an opportunity to avenge their defeat to the Braves. The Yankees fell behind by losing three of the first four games, but won the final three games of the Series to claim another championship. The Yankees were unable to defend their AL and World Series championships in 1959, as they ended up with a 79–75 record, their worst record since 1925, good for third place. When Arnold Johnson (a friend of Topping and Yankees general manager George Weiss) became the owner of the Kansas City Athletics in 1955, his new team made many transactions with the Yankees. From 1956 to 1960, the Athletics traded many young players to the Yankees for cash and aging veterans. The trades strengthened the Yankees' roster, but brought criticism from rival clubs. Before their 1960 season, the Yankees made one such trade with the Athletics in which they acquired outfielder Roger Maris. In his first Yankees season, Maris led the league in slugging percentage, RBIs, and extra base hits, finished second with 39 home runs, and won the AL MVP Award. The 1960 Yankees won the AL pennant for the 10th time in 12 years under Stengel, and outscored the Pirates 55–27 in the seven World Series games. However, the team lost four of them, falling short of a Series championship after Bill Mazeroski hit a walk-off home run in the final game, ending a contest that Appel called "one of the most memorable in baseball history." The season turned out to be Stengel's last as Yankees manager; he indicated that his age played a role in the team's decision, saying, "I'll never make the mistake of being seventy again." Ralph Houk was chosen to replace Stengel. During the 1961 season, both Mantle and Maris chased Ruth's single-season home run record of 60, and the pair attracted much press attention as the year progressed. Ultimately, an infection forced Mantle to leave the lineup and bow out of the race in mid-September with 54 home runs. Maris continued, though, and on October 1, the final day of the season, he homered against Red Sox pitcher Tracy Stallard into the right field stands of Yankee Stadium, breaking the record with 61. Commissioner Ford Frick decreed that two separate records be kept, as the Yankees played a 154-game schedule in 1927 (beginning in 1961, AL teams played 162 games to accommodate the league's expansion to 10 teams). MLB did away with the dual records 30 years later, giving Maris sole possession of the single-season home run record before it was broken in 1998 by Mark McGwire. The Yankees won the pennant with 109 regular season wins, at the time the club's second-highest single-season total, and defeated the Cincinnati Reds in five games to win the franchise's 19th World Series. The team hit 240 home runs to break the MLB single-season record. Maris won another AL MVP Award, while Whitey Ford captured the Cy Young Award, having posted a 25–4 record. The team gained a reputation as one of the strongest the Yankees had fielded, along with the 1927 and 1939 Yankees. New York returned to the World Series in 1962, facing the San Francisco Giants. After exchanging victories in the first six games of the Series, the Yankees won the decisive seventh game 1–0 to clinch the title. The Yankees again reached the World Series in their 1963 campaign, but were swept in four games by the Los Angeles Dodgers. Houk left the manager's position to become the team's general manager and the newly retired Berra was named manager. After dealing with player injuries and internal dissension, the Yankees rallied from third place late in the 1964 season and won the AL pennant by one game over the White Sox. It was their fifth straight World Series appearance and fourteenth in the past sixteen years. The team faced the St. Louis Cardinals in a series that included a walk-off home run by Mantle to end the third game. Despite Mantle's game- winning hit, the Yankees were defeated by the Cardinals in seven games, and Berra was fired. In 1964, CBS announced that it was purchasing 80 percent of the Yankees for $11.2 million. The television network bought the remaining 20 percent, originally retained by Topping and Webb, during the next two years. Topping left as team president after the sale; CBS executive Mike Burke replaced him. From 1962 to the sale, Topping and Webb had sharply curtailed the Yankees' investment in their minor league system, to show greater profits. As a result, the team lacked capable replacements for its aging players. Other factors affected the club's fortunes as well. The team had been slow in signing African American players even after Howard, and lost the opportunity to sign future stars. As most American League clubs dragged their feet in integrating their rosters, the rapid decline of the Yankees' white stars left them on the same footing as the rest of the league. Also, the 1965 introduction of the MLB draft, which allowed the clubs with the worst records to have the first selections, meant that the Yankees could not outbid other teams for young talent. Their trade pipeline with the A's had dried up by 1960, as new A's owner Charlie Finley announced his intention to avoid trading with New York. Competition for the attention of local fans had been provided by the expansion New York Mets, founded in 1962. By 1964, the new club started a 12-year streak of outdrawing the Yankees; the Mets also won the 1969 World Series. The Yankees had a record of 77–85 in 1965, and their sixth-place finish was their lowest since 1925. It was only their second finish in the second division since 1918. Johnny Keane, who was hired to succeed Berra as manager, was fired after the Yankees lost 16 of 20 games to start their 1966 season; Houk named himself as Keane's replacement. A last-place finish—their first since 1912—followed at season's end, and the Yankees ended up one position higher, ninth, the following season. Ford, Howard, Mantle, and Maris all retired or were traded to other clubs between 1966 and 1969. Attendance at Yankee Stadium fell to between 1 and 1.3 million fans per season from 1965 to 1971, and dropped below 1 million in 1972. One 1966 game had a crowd of 413 fans; television announcer Red Barber was fired by the Yankees after discussing the low attendance during his telecast. After fifth-place finishes in 1968 and 1969 (the latter in the newly created six-team American League East division), the 1970 Yankees improved to second in the AL East with a 93–69 record, finishing behind the Baltimore Orioles. Catcher Thurman Munson played his first full season for the Yankees and won AL Rookie of the Year honors for 1970. New York had 11 more losses during their 1971 season than they had in 1970, but in 1972 they contended for the AL East title and a playoff berth. Late in the season, the Yankees were in a four-way tie for the most wins in the division, but a slump caused them to fall to fourth by the end of their campaign with a record of 79–76. Less than a decade into its ownership of the Yankees, CBS moved to sell the team in 1972. In eight years, the team posted an $11 million loss under CBS, losing money in all but two years. Along with the decrease in attendance, the Yankees' television revenues fell by more than 80 percent from their peak, and in 1973 were more than $1 million below what the Mets earned from their broadcasting agreement. A group of investors, led by Cleveland-based shipbuilder George Steinbrenner, purchased the club from CBS on January 3, 1973 for $10 million. Despite an initial promise that he would "stick to building ships" and remain in the background, Steinbrenner proved to be a hands-on owner, clashing with Burke and forcing him out of his leadership position. Describing the level of control displayed by the lead owner, investor John McMullen stated, "There is nothing in life quite so limited as being a limited partner of George Steinbrenner." The 1973 Yankees held the AL East lead entering August, but faded and ended the year fourth. The 1973 season was the team's last in Yankee Stadium before the building was renovated. The Yankees had become concerned about the drop in attendance and the poor conditions of the stadium's surroundings. For a time, New Jersey sought to attract sports teams to the Meadowlands Sports Complex, and New York City acted to prevent the Yankees from moving. The city paid $24 million to buy Yankee Stadium and the adjacent land, and in 1972 agreed to renovations. Work on the stadium finished in 1976, and the Yankees were required to play at the Mets' home field, Shea Stadium, in 1974 and 1975. During the first of those seasons, the team nearly won the AL East, finishing behind the Orioles in a race that was decided in the final games. The Yankees were helped by an early-season trade that brought first baseman Chris Chambliss to the team, and improved to 89 wins from 1973's 80 victories. After the 1974 season, star pitcher Catfish Hunter was declared a free agent because of a skipped insurance payment. The Yankees signed him to a $3.75 million, four-year contract. It was the beginning of a long-term franchise philosophy of using free agency to acquire talent; Stout writes that they "were the first team to comprehend what free agency meant", as it provided an advantage over lower- spending rivals and generated fan and media interest. Hunter had 23 wins during the Yankees' 1975 season, but the team did not contend for the playoffs after July. New York fired manager Bill Virdon in August and hired Billy Martin as his replacement. With Martin as the helm, the Yankees returned to the postseason in their first season in the renovated Yankee Stadium, winning the 1976 AL East title by a 10 1/2-game margin over the Orioles. Munson was named AL MVP, with a .302 batting average and a total of 105 RBIs that was second-best in the AL. The 1976 American League Championship Series (ALCS) between the Yankees and Kansas City Royals went to a deciding fifth game, which was won by New York on a walk-off home run by Chambliss. The Yankees did not win a game against the Cincinnati Reds in the 1976 World Series. Free agency was introduced more fully from the 1976 offseason; outfielder Reggie Jackson, who had spent one season with the Orioles after being traded by the Athletics, was the most significant player available in that first offseason. Steinbrenner signed Jackson to a five-year, $2.96 million contract, giving the Yankees a key player, but one who had difficulty fitting in with the rest of the team. Martin had opposed Jackson's signing, and many players were angered by comments Jackson made that were critical of Munson. Jackson and Martin nearly came to blows in the Yankees' dugout during one game against the Red Sox, in which Martin removed Jackson for being slow to field a ball. The incident sparked media reports of disputes between Martin and Steinbrenner, and further conflict between Martin and Jackson. The Yankees of the late-1970s, noted for clubhouse conflict and on-field success, were later nicknamed "The Bronx Zoo", after a book of the same name by pitcher Sparky Lyle, and at the time, New York and the baseball world were agog at their antics. The 1977 Yankees won the AL East and defeated the Royals in the 1977 ALCS. Trailing 3–2 in the top of the ninth inning of the decisive fifth game, the Yankees scored three times to gain a berth in the World Series. Against the Dodgers, the Yankees prevailed in six games for their first Series championship since 1962. Jackson hit a record five home runs in the Series, including three in Game 6 on consecutive pitches, against three different Dodgers pitchers. Jackson gained his own candy bar and the nickname "Mr. October". Before their 1978 season, the Yankees added relief pitcher Goose Gossage, even though their closer was reigning Cy Young Award winner Lyle. By the middle of July, the team was 14 games behind the Red Sox and infighting had begun again. After making comments to reporters criticizing both Jackson and Steinbrenner, Martin resigned and Bob Lemon was hired as manager. The Yankees closed the gap that Boston had opened on them, and by the start of a four-game series at Fenway Park on September 7, the Red Sox' lead was down to four games. Over the course of the series, nicknamed "The Boston Massacre", the Yankees outscored the Red Sox 42–9, winning each game. The teams finished the regular season with identical records, and an AL East tie-breaker game was held on October 2. Losing 2–0 in the seventh inning, the Yankees took the lead on a three-run home run by shortstop Bucky Dent, and eventually won 5–4. After beating the Kansas City Royals for the third consecutive year in the ALCS, the Yankees faced the Dodgers again in the 1978 World Series. They lost the first two games on the road, but then returned to Yankee Stadium and won three consecutive games before clinching a Series championship in Game 6 in Los Angeles. Pitcher Ron Guidry was the Cy Young Award winner in 1978, having posted 25 wins against 3 losses with a 1.74 ERA, and 248 strikeouts. Eighteen of his strikeouts came in his June 17 appearance against the California Angels, which broke the franchise record. On August 2, 1979, Munson was killed in a plane crash. Martin, who had returned as manager after Steinbrenner fired Lemon in June, said that with his death, "The whole bottom fell out of the team." The 1979 Yankees finished fourth with an 89–71 record. Steinbrenner fired Martin after the season and replaced him with Dick Howser, who led the Yankees to 103 wins and the AL East title in 1980. Jackson led the AL with 41 home runs and posted a .300 batting average for the Yankees, who finished three games ahead of the Orioles. Their stay in the postseason was brief, as the Royals beat them in three straight games to win the ALCS. Before their 1981 campaign, the Yankees signed Dave Winfield to a 10-year contract worth $23 million, a record at the time. The season was shortened by a strike, and the Yankees qualified for the playoffs by virtue of leading the AL East when the work stoppage began. They defeated the Milwaukee Brewers in a divisional playoff round in five games. and won the AL pennant with three straight wins over the Athletics in the ALCS. The Yankees won the first two games of the 1981 World Series against Los Angeles, but the Dodgers won the next four games and the championship. Following the team's loss to the Dodgers in the 1981 World Series, the Yankees had a 15-year absence from the World Series, the longest since the time before their initial appearance in 1921. As the 1980s progressed, the Yankees regularly spent heavily on free agents who were often aging and proved to be declining in performance. The atmosphere of turmoil around the club discouraged some players from signing contracts with New York; they either ignored the Yankees' offers or used them to get more money from other teams. Steinbrenner traded prospects for veterans; sportswriter Buster Olney called this "a practice that ultimately inflicted serious damage on the organization, leaving the team without the needed influx of young and cheap talent." With Steinbrenner at the helm, the team continued to change managers frequently; there were 21 managerial changes in his first two decades of ownership; Martin served five separate stints as New York's manager. The 1982 and 1983 Yankees were fifth and third, respectively. Henry Fetter wrote of the following year's team, which had several aging players, "The 1984 Yanks had assembled an all- star lineup—but it was that of 1979." In what became a trend in future seasons, the Yankees lacked effective pitching, undoing the efforts of a top- tier offense that included players such as Winfield and first baseman Don Mattingly, one of the few star hitters produced by the farm system during the era. Mattingly led the AL in batting average in 1984—beating out Winfield for the league lead. The Yankees' 1985 season began with a batting lineup improved by an offseason trade for Rickey Henderson, the future MLB career stolen base and runs scored record holder. Mattingly was AL MVP in 1985, with 145 RBI and a personal-best 35 home runs, while Guidry won 22 games. The Yankees had 97 wins, two off the division leader Toronto Blue Jays. The 1986 side's win total fell to 92, but it was only enough for second place again behind Boston. Mattingly hit an MLB record six grand slam home runs in 1987, but dealt with back pain that limited his effectiveness in his remaining years. The Yankees fell to fourth, beginning a six-year streak of fourth or worse. The Yankees had the most wins of any MLB team during the 1980s, but missed the playoffs eight times during the decade and did not win a World Series. Many New York baseball fans chose to support an exciting Mets team. From 1984 to 1992, a period that featured their 1986 World Series victory, the Mets' attendance topped that of the Yankees every year. Despite falling attendance, the Yankees' finances were not significantly harmed, as they had a 12-year television rights contract with the Madison Square Garden network that gave them a record $500 million and flexibility to increase their payroll if desired. Winfield's tenure with the team ended when he was traded in May 1990. The 1990 team lost 95 games to finish at the bottom of the AL East, and its .414 winning percentage was the franchise's worst since 1913. The Yankees underwent a dramatic change in their front office that year, which Glenn Stout cites as a turning point for the club. Winfield had become a target of Steinbrenner in previous years. At one 1985 game, he criticized Winfield by calling him "Mr. May", that is, a player who only performed well early in the season. Steinbrenner also resented Winfield's salary as too high, and was critical of a charitable foundation run by him. A gambler was paid by Steinbrenner "for damaging information" about Winfield, an incident that resulted in an indefinite ban from then-commissioner Fay Vincent in 1990; three years later, Steinbrenner was reinstated. Under new general manager Gene Michael, the Yankees allowed their minor league talent more time to improve their skills and more of a chance to play for the Yankees if they were good enough. Michael focused on on-base percentage in deciding which hitters to pursue, and emphasized left-handed batters who might take advantage of Yankee Stadium's short right-field porch. The players developed by the team during its rebuilding years included outfielder Bernie Williams, a future AL batting average leader, and a group—Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, and Mariano Rivera—that became the centerpiece during the 1996–2000 period, and was later nicknamed the "Core Four". After a 71-win 1991 season, the Yankees replaced their incumbent manager, Stump Merrill, with Buck Showalter, who increased the playing time given to young players. While the 1992 Yankees were 20 games behind the AL East winner, offseason acquisitions—third baseman Wade Boggs, pitcher Jimmy Key, and outfielder Paul O'Neill—helped the 1993 team to an 88–74 record and New York's highest finish (second) in seven seasons. By 1994, the Yankees had progressed to the point where they led the AL with a 70–43 record going into the homestretch of the regular season. Their campaign was cut short by a players' strike, which resulted in the cancellation of the playoffs and 1994 World Series. Many media members believed that the Yankees might have reached the World Series if not for the strike. A year later, the team reached the playoffs and gave Mattingly his first career postseason appearance by winning the first AL wild card berth, but it was eliminated in a five-game Division Series (ALDS) against the Seattle Mariners. Mattingly did not return to the Yankees for their 1996 season, and the club replaced Showalter with Joe Torre. Although the managerial change met with a mixed reception by the press, Torre received praise for his handling of players as his managerial career progressed; Olney remarked that he was able to "defuse powder-keg issues and serve as a buffer between Steinbrenner and the players." Jeter won the AL Rookie of the Year Award in his first full season with the Yankees, and Pettitte with 21 wins was second in AL Cy Young Award voting and Rivera posted an 8–3 record and 2.09 ERA as the club won a division title. New York reached the 1996 World Series, where they lost the first two games at home to the Atlanta Braves by a combined score of 16–1. But New York won three straight contests in Atlanta, including a Game 4 in which they scored eight straight runs to rally from a 6–0 deficit. With a 3–2 win in Game 6, the Yankees won the World Series for the first time in 18 years. For 1997, the Yankees signed starting pitcher David Wells and allowed closer John Wetteland to leave in free agency, enabling Rivera to inherit the role. The 1997 Yankees earned a wild card playoff berth, but lost three games to two against the Cleveland Indians in the ALDS. In preparation for their 1998 season, the Yankees replaced general manager Bob Watson with Brian Cashman. The club made many player acquisitions, gaining the services of third baseman Scott Brosius, second baseman Chuck Knoblauch, and starting pitcher Orlando Hernández. The Yankees won 28 of their first 37 games—a stretch that concluded with a perfect game pitched by Wells—and by August were 76–27. The 1998 Yankees are considered by some writers to be among the greatest teams in baseball history, having compiled a then-AL record of 114 regular-season wins against 48 losses. After playoff series wins over the Texas Rangers and Indians, New York defeated the San Diego Padres in four consecutive World Series games for their 24th Series title. After the 1998 season, Wells was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays for Roger Clemens, who had just completed two consecutive Cy Young Award-winning seasons. In a regular season that included another perfect game by a Yankees pitcher, this one by David Cone, New York led the AL East with 98 wins and beat the Rangers in the ALDS. This led to an ALCS against the rival Red Sox. New York won the first two games en route to a 4–1 series win, and went on to sweep the Braves in the 1999 World Series. The postseason results gave the 1998–99 Yankees a 22–3 playoff record, and the team held a 12-game winning streak in World Series competition dating back to 1996. Although the 2000 Yankees had an 87–74 regular season record that was the worst among playoff qualifiers, the team won consecutive playoff series to claim the AL championship. New York's pennant placed them in the 2000 World Series against the cross-town Mets, the first Subway Series in 44 years. With a four games to one victory, the Yankees gained their third successive title. As of 2019, the 2000 Yankees are the most recent MLB team to repeat as World Series champions and the Yankees of 1998–2000 are the last team to win three consecutive World Series. Free agent pitcher Mike Mussina signed with the Yankees before their 2001 season began, and the club pulled away from the Red Sox as the year progressed to claim another divisional championship, as Clemens won 20 games. The September 11 attacks interrupted the season, and the resumption of baseball in New York became a symbol of how the city recovered from the destruction of the Twin Towers. After falling behind 2–0 in the ALDS against the Athletics, the Yankees won three straight contests to advance to the ALCS. They prevailed in five games against the Seattle Mariners, who had tied a single-season MLB record with 116 regular season wins, for the team's fourth straight AL pennant. The Arizona Diamondbacks gained a two-game lead in the 2001 World Series before the Yankees won three consecutive ballgames; New York home runs with two outs in the ninth inning of Games 4 and 5 led to extra inning wins in both games, with Game 4 ended by a Jeter home run. The Yankees' championship streak ended, though, as the Diamondbacks won the Series in seven games with a late rally in the final inning of Game 7. After the 2001 season, several players from the late 1990s and early 2000s Yankees teams departed. New York won their fifth AL East title in a row in its 2002 campaign, but the Anaheim Angels defeated the Yankees in the ALDS. The Yankees' major acquisition in the offseason was leading Japanese hitter Hideki Matsui of the Yomiuri Giants. Another signing, that of Cuban pitcher José Contreras, led to complaints from Red Sox CEO Larry Lucchino, who dubbed his team's rivals "the Evil Empire". Tensions between the rivals increased in the coming seasons, and writers called the rivalry one of the most intense and well known in North American professional sports. By 2003, New York's overall payroll had reached almost $153 million, more than the Padres, Brewers, Royals, and Tampa Bay Devil Rays combined. Criticism of the Yankees' spending such as Lucchino's was frequently raised; during a 15-year stretch from 1999 to 2013, they had the biggest MLB player payroll every year. Jeter became the Yankees' captain in their 2003 season. The team faced the Red Sox in the ALCS. The series came down to a seventh game, and the Yankees fell behind before three eighth-inning runs forced a 5–5 tie and extra innings. Aaron Boone, a third baseman acquired by New York in a mid-season trade, hit a walk-off home run in the 11th inning to give New York the pennant. The Yankees were then defeated by the Florida Marlins in the World Series, four games to two. The Yankees added power hitting to their lineup in the offseason, signing free agent Gary Sheffield and trading for shortstop Alex Rodriguez, who became a third baseman with New York. Three of the starting pitchers from the previous season—Clemens, Pettitte, and Wells—left the team before the season. Despite the losses, the 2004 Yankees managed to top the AL East with 101 wins and defeat the Twins three games to one in the ALDS. The victory set up an ALCS rematch with the Red Sox. The Yankees took a 3–0 series lead before losing four consecutive games, becoming the first team in MLB history to lose a best- of-seven series after winning the first three games. The 2005 season featured an AL MVP performance by Rodriguez, who hit a league-leading 48 home runs with 130 RBIs and a .321 batting average. The Yankees beat the Red Sox for the division title because they won 10 of their 19 contests against Boston; both teams had 95–67 records. The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim defeated the Yankees in five games in the first round of the postseason. The 2006 Yankees kept at the same level, as they won the AL East for the ninth straight year but were eliminated in the ALDS by the Detroit Tigers three games to one. Rodriguez again won the AL MVP award in 2007, as his 54 home runs and 156 RBIs topped the AL; he scored 143 runs, the highest single-season number by a player since 1985. After starting the year 21–29, the Yankees rallied to win the AL's wild card berth; it was the first time in 10 seasons that they did not win the AL East. New York's season ended in the first round of the playoffs; the Indians won the opening two games of the ALDS and finished the series in four games. Manager Torre did not re-sign after the season, and Joe Girardi took his place. Rodriguez, who used an opt-out clause in his contract to become a free agent, stayed with the Yankees by signing for $275 million over 10 seasons, an MLB record. The 2008 season was the Yankees' last in which they played at the original Yankee Stadium. The club had sought a new stadium to increase revenues, following the example set by other MLB teams. It was also the first in which Hal and Hank Steinbrenner ran the team as general partners; though George Steinbrenner was still the principal owner on paper, he yielded operational responsibilities during the 2007 offseason. Yankee Stadium was the site of the 2008 All-Star Game, but for the first time in 14 years did not host playoff action. New York ended the year third in the AL East and failed to qualify for the postseason. The new Yankee Stadium, which cost a record $1.5 billion, was constructed near the old facility. As built, it had a capacity of approximately 52,000, with 52 luxury suites. Monument Park, which holds plaques and monuments honoring former Yankees personnel, was built beyond the center field fence; its collection was transplanted from the old stadium. For the 2009 season, the team committed over $400 million in future salaries to three free agents: pitchers CC Sabathia and A. J. Burnett, and first baseman Mark Teixeira. New York won 90 of its last 134 games, and broke the franchise single-season record by hitting 244 home runs. Another club record was broken by Jeter, who passed Gehrig as the Yankees' all-time hits leader on September 11. New York posted 103 wins in 2009 and beat out the Red Sox for the division title by eight games. In the AL playoffs, the Yankees defeated the Twins in the ALDS and the Angels in the ALCS, advancing to the World Series. There, they faced the defending Series champions, the Philadelphia Phillies. Behind a six-RBI effort by Matsui in the sixth and final game, the Yankees defeated the Phillies to win their record 27th Series championship. George Steinbrenner died in July 2010. The Yankees won the league's wild card berth, but their title defense was ended by the Texas Rangers in the ALCS. Multiple Yankees players set individual marks in 2011. Jeter joined the 3,000 hit club on July 9; he was the first player to do so while playing for the club. Later in the season, Rivera posted the 602nd save of his career, breaking the all-time record that had been held by Trevor Hoffman. The Yankees won the AL East, but lost in the ALDS to the Tigers. Rivera suffered a season-ending injury to his right knee in May 2012 while catching fly balls before a game against the Royals. Even without their longtime closer, the 2012 Yankees gained a 10-game lead by mid-July, and held off the Orioles to win the division title by a final margin of two games. After defeating the Orioles in a five-game ALDS, the Yankees were swept by the Tigers in the ALCS. During Game 1 of the 2012 ALCS, Jeter broke his right ankle while attempting to field a ball. He was one of many Yankees to miss playing time during the club's 2013 campaign; 20 players were placed on the disabled list at least once. The team had an opportunity to win a wild-card playoff spot, but faded late in the season. It was only the second time since 1995 that New York did not qualify for postseason play. In the offseason, second baseman Robinson Canó departed New York for the Mariners in free agency, but the Yankees signed starting pitcher Masahiro Tanaka, who was coming off a 24–0 year with Japan's Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, to a seven-year contract. Rodriguez was suspended for the 2014 season by MLB for using performance-enhancing drugs. The 2014 Yankees, the last with Jeter in their lineup, fell four games short of a postseason berth with an 84–78 record. Despite signing several new hitters prior to the season, the team finished third from last in the AL in runs scored. The offense improved in 2015, ending the regular season with the second-most runs in MLB. New York gained a wild card berth with a second-place finish, but was defeated by the Houston Astros in a one-game playoff. The Yankees traded several veteran players during their 2016 season and received Gleyber Torres, Clint Frazier, and Justus Sheffield, among others, in return. In August 2016, Rodriguez was released from his contract. The club had 84 wins, but missed the playoffs for the third time in four years. As the Yankees' on-field performance declined after 2009, their attendance and television ratings fell; revenue from ticket and luxury suite sales at Yankee Stadium decreased by more than 40 percent from 2009 to 2016. The 2017 Yankees featured a group of young players who became known as the "Baby Bombers". Among them were outfielder Aaron Judge, catcher Gary Sánchez, starting pitcher Luis Severino, and first baseman Greg Bird. Judge hit a league-leading 52 home runs, the most ever by a rookie; he was the AL MVP runner-up and won AL Rookie of the Year honors. New York earned a postseason berth and reached the ALDS by beating the Twins in the AL wild card game. The Indians gained a two-game lead in the ALDS, but the Yankees won three consecutive times to advance to the ALCS. Against the Astros, the Yankees lost in seven games. After 10 years as the team's manager, Girardi was replaced by Boone. New York acquired outfielder Giancarlo Stanton, the 2017 NL MVP, in an offseason trade with the Marlins. Stanton had 38 of the 267 home runs hit by the Yankees in 2018, as the club set an MLB single-season record. They again qualified for the playoffs and made it to the ALDS, where they faced the Red Sox. The Yankees were defeated three games to one by their rivals, falling short of a return to the ALCS. In 2019, the Yankees won 103 games and the AL East championship. The team hit 306 home runs, surpassing the previous season's record and finishing second in MLB behind the Twins, their opponents in the ALDS. After sweeping Minnesota, New York had another ALCS matchup with Houston. A walk-off home run by José Altuve in the sixth game gave the Astros their third playoff elimination of the Yankees in five years. The 2010s was the first calendar decade since the 1910s in which the Yankees did not win a pennant. As of 2019, the Yankees' 27 World Series championships are 16 more than the number won by the St. Louis Cardinals, who have the second-most titles among MLB teams. New York's championship total is the highest of any franchise in a major North American professional sports league; the National Hockey League's Montreal Canadiens are second behind the Yankees with 24 Stanley Cup wins. The 40 pennants won by the Yankees places them 17 in front of the Cardinals for the most won by an MLB team. The Giants and Dodgers are the only other clubs with 20 or more pennants. The Baseball Hall of Fame has inducted over 40 players and managers who have worn Yankees pinstripes. Forbes magazine has labeled the Yankees the most valuable team in baseball every year since 1998; the franchise was worth an estimated $4.6 billion in 2019. In Glenn Stout's Yankees history book, the author wrote: The Mets–Yankees rivalry refers to the latest incarnation of the Subway Series, which is the interleague rivalry between New York City's Major League Baseball (MLB) teams: the New York Mets and the New York Yankees. The Mets are a member club of MLB's National League (NL) East division, and the Yankees are a member club of MLB's American League (AL) East division. Until interleague play started, the two teams had only met in exhibition games. Since the inception of interleague play, the two teams have played each other in every regular season since 1997. From 1999 through 2012, they have played six games per season: two three-game series (one series in each team's ballpark). In 2013, the two teams met four times: a pair of two-game series. Both clubs have qualified for the postseason in the same season on four separate occasions: , , , and , and faced off in the 2000 World Series. Analysts of the game have commented that the rivalry is the best reason for interleague play. The Mets–Yankees rivalry has its origins in the histories of the Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Giants, and Yankees, the three Major League Baseball teams of New York City from 1903–57. For most of that time, the Giants played in Manhattan, the Dodgers in Brooklyn, and the Yankees in the Bronx. Throughout their time in New York, the three teams chronicled a fierce intra-city rivalry. The Dodgers–Giants rivalry was formed by both teams' competition for dominance in the National League, exemplified by Bobby Thomson's Shot Heard 'Round the World in the 1951 National League tie-breaker series. The Yankees, as the city's only American League team, would form the Giants–Yankees rivalry and Dodgers–Yankees rivalry around their multiple Subway Series competitions with the two teams, where the Yankees would compile a 10-3 record in the thirteen all-New York World Series. However, in , both of New York's National League teams moved to California, the Giants to San Francisco to become the San Francisco Giants, and the Dodgers to Los Angeles to become the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Yankees were New York City's only Major League Baseball team until , when the expansion Mets joined the National League. The Mets sought to create a fan base from fans of the departed National League teams, and adopted the Giants' NY insignia in the Giant color of orange set against a cap of Dodger blue, colors that also adorn the New York City flag and coat of arms. The Mets played their first two seasons in the Giants' old stadium, the Polo Grounds, before moving into Shea Stadium in the borough of Queens. Before the creation of Interleague play, teams from the National League never played teams from the American League in official games except during the World Series. The teams occasionally met in spring training exhibition games and from 1963 to 1983 they played annually in the Mayor's Trophy Game, an in- season exhibition game, where the Yankees posted a record of 10–8–1 over the Mets. In , Major League Baseball scheduled official regular season games between the American and National Leagues for the first time. On June 16, the Mets and Yankees played their first official game at Yankee Stadium, which the Mets won 6–0 behind Dave Mlicki. The Yankees won the next two games for a series win. The Mets acquired Mike Piazza for the 1998 season and made a run for the playoffs, but were eliminated in the last regular game series of the season by the Atlanta Braves. The Yankees won that year's interleague series at Shea Stadium two games to one, and would also win the 1998 World Series, the first of three straight titles for them. David Cone won 20 games in 1998 for the Yankees, just 10 years after he accomplished the same feat for the Mets, becoming the only player to win 20 games for both teams. These interleague games between the Mets and Yankees would come to be referred to as a Subway Series, extending the use of that phrase outside the historical context of an all-New York World Series. In 1999, Major League Baseball expanded Interleague play, allowing the Mets and Yankees to host a series at their home stadiums. At Shea, the Mets won their first series against the Yankees, 2 games to 1, though the regular season series was tied by virtue of a Yankees series win (2 to 1) at Yankee Stadium earlier that year. That year marked the first time both teams reached the playoffs in the same season, though the Mets needed an extra game for their first playoff appearance since losing the 1988 National League Championship Series. Both the Mets and Yankees reached their respective League Championship Series and played their respective rivals. The Mets were defeated by their division rival Atlanta Braves in their LCS, while the Yankees defeated longtime rival Boston Red Sox in that year's ALCS. The Yankees then swept the Braves in the 1999 World Series for their 25th franchise title. During the regular season on July 8, 2000, the Yankees defeated the Mets by identical 4-2 scores in both ends of an unusual day-night doubleheader. With the first game played at Shea Stadium and the nightcap at Yankee Stadium, it was the first time since 1903 that two teams played two games in different stadiums on the same day. Dwight Gooden won the first game with a six inning effort in his first start since returning to the Yankees. Roger Clemens won the nightcap. However, in the second game of that double header, an event occurred that made the rivalry between the two teams more contentious. Clemens hit Mets' star Mike Piazza in the helmet with an inside fastball, causing Piazza to suffer a concussion and placing him on the disabled list. The Mets and Yankees returned to the playoffs that year and won their respective pennants, meeting in the 2000 World Series for their first championship contest. It was the Yankees' fourth appearance in five years and the Mets' first appearance since winning the title in . It was the first Subway Series World Series since . Game 1 went to extra innings in what was then the longest World Series game of all time, with the Yankees winning on a walk-off hit by former Met José Vizcaíno. Controversy ensued in Game 2 when Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens faced Mets catcher Mike Piazza for the first time since the hit- by-pitch earlier that season. In the match-up, Piazza shattered his bat after fouling off one of Clemens' pitches, and the splintered bathead hurtled towards the mound. Clemens threw the bathead towards the baseline and nearly hit Piazza who had been running down the foul line. The incident caused both benches to clear. The Yankees won the game 6-5. The Mets won Game 3, snapping the Yankees' fourteen-game winning streak in World Series play dating back to 1996 and Yankees hurler Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez's previously undefeated postseason record (6–0). However, this would prove to be the only high point for the Mets. Derek Jeter hit a home run on the first pitch of Game 4, immediately shifting momentum back to the Yankees who would win the game. Footage of this home run currently serves as the background for the title screen of YES Network's "Yankeeography" series. Despite no game in the series being decided by more than two runs, the Yankees would only require five games to beat the Mets. Al Leiter, a former Yankees prospect, would take the mound for the Mets in Game 5 and lose. The Yankees clinched their third straight World Series championship when Mariano Rivera got Mike Piazza to pop up for the final out of Game 5. World Series MVP Derek Jeter said of the Mets: "In my opinion, the Mets were the toughest team we have played in my five years here. Every one of these games could have gone either way. They could have given up after [losing] the first two games, but they never quit. You can't say enough about the New York Mets." This World Series win was sense of revenge for Roger Clemens, because he won the World Series in the same stadium he lost it in 1986 while with the Red Sox. Members of the Mets' 1986 team threw out the ceremonial first pitch before the clinching game. The 12.4 television rating and 21 share of the 2000 World Series was the worst in history when it was played. For the Mets, the 12.4 rating was less than half of what they were when during their previous appearance, when Game 7 drew a 38.9 rating and 55 share. The Mets were aided by the St. Louis Cardinals for this series. The Cardinals' sweep of the Atlanta Braves in the NLDS eliminated what had been a particularly difficult opponent during the season for the Mets; the Braves had eliminated the Mets from the playoffs on the final day of the season and in the 1999 NLCS. The 2000 championship was the Yankees' last title until their 2009 World Series win. Since their appearance in 2000, the Mets would have several losing seasons until the emergence of David Wright and José Reyes. In , there was a moment of peace in the rivalry in the aftermath of the attacks in New York City. During the weekend of September 21–23, Shea Stadium hosted the first professional sporting event in New York City since the attacks when the Mets hosted the Atlanta Braves while Yankee Stadium hosted a special memorial service titled "Prayer for America." On June 15, , Roger Clemens faced the Mets for the first time at Shea Stadium since the Piazza controversy. Anticipation mounted about retaliation against Clemens. Mets manager Bobby Valentine chided Clemens by saying he wore a "skirt" when compared to past pitchers who threw hard at people like Bob Gibson and Don Drysdale because Clemens did not have to bat in the American League. When the game arrived, Clemens was forced to bat and Mets pitcher Shawn Estes attempted to hit Clemens in retaliation but instead threw a pitch behind Clemens, prompting the home plate umpire to warn both benches. Estes later homered off of Clemens as the Mets won the game 8-0. In , the Yankees become the first team to sweep the season series, winning all six games, including a two-park day-night doubleheader. In , however, the Mets won the season series for the first time, going 4–2 and sweeping the three games at Shea Stadium. In 2005, the Mets signed Manager Willie Randolph, who coached with the Yankees for over a decade. Randolph played much of his career with the Yankees and also played for the Mets before retiring as a player. Because of his history with the Yankees championship teams of the 70s (as a player) and the 90s (as a coach), he holds a very cordial relationship with Yankees fans despite his tenure with the Mets organization, as noted by a Subway (a pun on the restaurant's name and the Subway Series) commercial featuring him and former Yankees manager Joe Torre, who had managed the Yankees during their most recent dynastic run. Torre had also been associated with the Mets as they were the last team he ever played for and the first team he ever managed. On August 2, 2008, less than two months after his abrupt and controversial dismissal as Mets manager, Randolph was greeted with a standing ovation by the Yankee Stadium crowd when he appeared in a Yankees uniform for the Old-Timers' Game. On June 26, 2005, the Mets won their first series at Yankee Stadium and were three outs from a sweep when Jason Giambi's bases-loaded single off of Braden Looper in the ninth drove home the tying and winning runs for the Yankees, who forced a season series split with the Mets. On May 19, 2006, in the first Subway Series of that year at Shea, the Yankees took the lead three times in the first four innings, but the Mets rallied each time against Randy Johnson and the game was tied 6-6 going into the bottom of the ninth. With two outs and runners on first and second, David Wright drives home the winning run for the Mets with a single off of Yankees' closer Mariano Rivera. On May 20, 2006, less than 24 hours after the Mets' comeback win, Pedro Martínez and Duaner Sánchez kept the Yankees scoreless for eight innings while the Mets scored four runs off of Mike Mussina. In the top of the ninth, however, closer Billy Wagner, who pitched a perfect ninth the night before to get the win, gave up four runs to tie the game and force extra innings. In the top of the 11th, Andy Phillips singled in the go-ahead run for the Yankees while Mariano Rivera pitched two shutout innings for the win. History would be made at the 2006 Major League Baseball All-Star Game when two positions on both teams are manned by players from teams of the same city. David Wright and José Reyes started at third base and shortstop respectively for the National League while Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter started at the same respective positions for the American League. Both teams in finished at the top of their division in the same season for the first time in history. For the Yankees, this was their ninth straight division title, while the Mets won their first division title since 1988. Despite sharing baseball's best regular season record (97-65), they would have disappointing postseasons as both lost en route to the two teams that eventually met in that year's World Series, the Detroit Tigers and St. Louis Cardinals. The teams' inverse success relationship was highlighted in . On May 29, the Yankees were tied for last place and 14.5 games back of the Boston Red Sox while the Mets were in first place ahead of the Atlanta Braves by four games, with the lead being as high as seven in mid-September. A late season meltdown led to the Mets being eliminated from playoff contention, losing the NL East title to the Philadelphia Phillies on the last day of the season. On the other hand, the Yankees, though unable to finish first in the AL East for the first time since 1997, rebounded from their losing ways and clinched their 13th consecutive playoff berth. In an article written in the New York Daily News on March 25, 2008, Alex Rodriguez said how he regretted signing with the Texas Rangers (the team the Yankees acquired him from) in the first place and wished he had signed with the Mets rather than Texas. Rodriguez grew up a Mets fan and of former Mets first baseman turned announcer Keith Hernandez. Rodriguez stated how he listened to his agent Scott Boras about taking more money instead and did not want to make the same mistake of not being on a team he liked playing for by leaving the Yankees. On June 27 of that year, in the first game of a two-stadium, day-night doubleheader against the Yankees, Carlos Delgado scores 9 RBIs (including a grand slam) in a 15–6 victory for the Mets, setting a team record for most RBIs in a single game and tying the record for most RBIs in a single game by a visiting player at Yankee Stadium. For just the second time, the Mets won the season series against the Yankees, 4–2, including the Mets' only sweep at the old Yankee Stadium. The 2008 season marked the first time since 1993 that both the Yankees and Mets failed to qualify for postseason, the first time for the Yankees since that year and the second straight year where the Mets were eliminated on the last day of the season. It was also the last year both teams played at their old respective ballparks, Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium. Yogi Berra, who played for both teams and managed both teams, was present at the closing ceremonies of both stadiums. Both teams finished with the same record (89-73) that year. The season was the first year that both teams played in their new stadiums, Mets at Citi Field and the Yankees at the new Yankee Stadium. The Yankees took it one step further and opened their new stadium with their 27th World Series championship against the Philadelphia Phillies, the defending champions, becoming the first team to inaugurate two stadiums with World Series wins. On June 12, 2009, both teams played each other for the first time at the new Yankee Stadium. The game had several lead changes, including Mariano Rivera giving up the go ahead run to the Mets in the 8th. In the bottom of the 9th, after Derek Jeter stole 2nd base and Mark Teixeira was intentionally walked, the Mets new closer Francisco Rodríguez (K-Rod) paired off against Alex Rodriguez (A-Rod). In what seemed a routine pop with two outs, Mets 2nd baseman and three time gold glove award winner Luis Castillo dropped the ball. Teixeira wound up scoring the winning run all the way from first on the error to give the Yankees the 9-8 victory. It would prove to be the Yankees' 7th walk off game that season and the first statistical blown save for K-Rod as a Met. After the game, injured Yankees pitcher Brian Bruney criticized K-Rod and his animated behavior on the mound to reporters. "[It] couldn't have happened to a better guy on the mound, either", said Bruney. "He's got a tired act. ... He gets what he deserves, man. I just don't like watching the guy pitch. I think it's embarrassing." Rodriguez responded, "Instead of sending a message in the paper, next time when he sees me at Citi Field, come up to me and say it. Don't be sending a message to the media. I don't even know who that guy is, somewhere in Double-A and not even pitching one full season." Two days later, Francisco Rodriguez confronted Bruney during batting practice and are separated by teammates. The Yankees shutout the Mets 15–0 in the biggest blowout in the history of the series, tagging Mets ace Johan Santana for nine runs in innings, the most Santana has ever allowed in his career. On June 26, 2009, the two teams played each other for the first time at Citi Field. Alex Rodriguez hit his 564th home run, moving past Reggie Jackson into 11th place on the career home run list. The Yankees defeat the Mets 9–1 after the Mets committed three errors that led to four runs in the second inning, the most ever against the Yankees. Two days after that, Yankees closer Mariano Rivera, who entered the game to face a batter in the 8th inning, bats against Mets closer Francisco Rodriguez at the top of the 9th inning. Rivera drew a walk with the bases loaded, forcing home Brett Gardner to earn his first career RBI. Rivera would go on to finish the game and earn his 500th career save as the Yankees swept the series at Citi Field. May 22, 2010 had the Mets win their first Subway Series game at Citi Field with a 5-3 victory over the Yankees. Countering that, on June 20, 2010, the Yankees earned their 9,500th franchise victory with a 4-0 win over the Mets. Mark Teixeira provided the only runs of the game with a third inning grand slam off of Johan Santana. 2011 started off with a trade between the two teams. On January 3, the Yankees signed left-handed relief pitcher Pedro Feliciano away from the Mets. Under the rules of the collective bargaining agreement of the time, the Yankees had to compensate the Mets a draft pick. The Mets would use this draft pick to get pitcher Michael Fulmer. Feliciano would immediately go on the disabled list for the Yankees due to his overuse by the Mets during his career. Setbacks in surgery would prevent him from ever throwing a pitch for the Yankees during the entirety of the two-year contract. During the July 3rd game between the two teams, the Mets, down to their final strike and on the verge of getting swept at Citi Field by the Yankees for the second time in three years, tie the final game of that year's Subway Series against Mariano Rivera in the bottom of the ninth on an RBI single from Ronny Paulino. In 23 previous save opportunities against the Mets, spanning the regular season and the 2000 World Series, Rivera had converted 22 (his only previous blown save against the team was on July 10, 1999). The Mets would win in the 10th inning on an RBI single from Jason Bay, who had been struggling all season, off of Héctor Noesí, though the loss was charged to former Mets pitcher Luis Ayala. Manager Terry Collins called the game "enormous." The Yankees still won the season series 4 games to 2. On July 12, 2011, days after gaining entry into the 3,000 hit club, Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter elected to sit out of the 2011 Major League Baseball All-Star Game citing "physical and emotional exhaustion" and recovery from a recent visit to the disabled list. Jeter, who throughout his career had been praised by people in and out of baseball for good behavior, was criticized by some players and officials including Mets outfielder Carlos Beltrán. Beltrán stated that "I do believe, as a ballplayer, if you have no injuries, you should be here...the fans are the ones that vote for you and want to see you here." Mets shortstop José Reyes, who also was injured, also opined on the incident saying "I want to come no matter what happens." The two teams met again in June 2012. On June 8, after pitching the first no-hitter in Mets history in his previous start, Johan Santana gives up a career-worst four home runs to the Yankees in the first Subway Series game of the year as the Mets, who were held hitless by Hiroki Kuroda until the sixth, lose 9-1. Two days later, after Rafael Soriano blew his first save of the year by surrendering an RBI double to Ike Davis in the top of the ninth, Russell Martin hit a home-run in the bottom of the inning off of Jon Rauch to give the Yankees a 5-4 win and first-ever sweep of the Mets at the new Yankee Stadium. On June 22, one day before first pitch between the two teams at Citi Field, Mets closer Frank Francisco taunted the Yankees by calling them chicken. Francisco's teammates greeted him in the Mets club house the next day with the Chicken Dance and put up a picture of Derek Jeter's head on the body of a chicken. "I can't wait to strike out those chickens, I want to strike out the side against them. I've done it before." Francisco would later go on to say "I make a simple comment, just that they complain a lot--for every call, for everything, I thought it was funny. I didn't expect to make a big deal." Although he would not strike out the side and allow two base runners, Francisco did notch the save in the first game of the series before going on the disabled list. Mets reliever Tim Byrdak would go as far to bring a live chicken into the clubhouse and named it "Little Jerry Seinfeld" in honor of a Seinfeld episode. The chicken was used as an unofficial mascot and was donated to an animal farm sanctuary in upstate New York a few days later. Francisco later admitted he himself raised chickens and is an expert about them. Despite the Mets winning the opener, the Yankees wound up winning the next two games, including halting Mets pitcher R.A. Dickey's scoreless inning streak of innings to win the series. Yankees outfielder Nick Swisher playfully quipped at the end of the series "who's chicken now?" For the first time ever on Opening Day, both teams played their first game in New York on April 1, 2013. In his last regular season game ever at Citi Field on May 28, Mariano Rivera was honored by Mets owner Jeff Wilpon and threw out the first pitch of the game to former Mets closer John Franco. Young Mets phenom Matt Harvey, who grew up a Yankees fan, had an impressive line – 8IP 6H 1ER 0BB 10K – but left with a 1-0 deficit. Rivera would come into the game in the bottom of the 9th and promptly give up a double to Mets second baseman Daniel Murphy. David Wright would get another hit to drive in Murphy and contribute to Rivera's first blown save of the year. The next batter Lucas Duda would get the game- winning hit off Rivera to gave him the first blown save of his career where he did not record at least one out. The Mets swept the season series for the first time in 2013. That July, Robinson Canó of the Yankees and David Wright of the Mets are named captains for the All-Star Game home run derby at Citi Field. In December, the Mets agreed to terms with outfielder Curtis Granderson on a four-year contract worth $60 million on December 6, 2013. Granderson played for the Yankees from 2010 to 2013. "A lot of the people I've met in New York have always said that, 'True New Yorkers are Mets fans,'" said Granderson during a press conference making the deal official. "So I'm excited to get a chance to see them all out there." Around the same time, the Yankees agreed to sign Carlos Beltrán, who was a Met from 2005 to 2011. In 2015, both teams qualified in the postseason. The Yankees lost the Houston Astros in the 2015 American League Wild Card Game, while the Mets lost the 2015 World Series to the Kansas City Royals. In September 2017, due to Hurricane Irma, the Tampa Bay Rays had their series with the Yankees relocated to Citi Field. In reaction to a home run hit by Yankees third baseman Todd Frazier, Mets fan Gary Dunaier was caught on camera with a stern face and gesturing a thumbs down to protest the Yankees success. The video of the incident went viral and Frazier and the Yankees would later adopt the thumbs down gesture as a rallying cry celebration to close out their season and during their playoff run. During the following off-season, Frazier would sign with the Mets. The 2018 season marked the first time since 1992 that both the Mets and the Yankees had new managers to start the season. The Yankees parted ways with Joe Girardi after they lost in the 2017 ALCS to the eventual champion Houston Astros, and was replaced as skipper with 2003 ALCS hero Aaron Boone; Mets manager Terry Collins announced his retirement and moved into the team's front office after the season ended. Mickey Callaway, former pitching coach for the Cleveland Indians, took over as Mets manager. Marv Throneberry Yankees 1955, 1958–1959; Mets 1962–1963, Yogi Berra Yankees 1946–1963; Mets 1965, Ron Swoboda Mets 1965–1970; Yankees 1971–1973, Elliott Maddox Yankees 1974–1976; Mets 1978–1980, Willie Randolph Yankees 1976–1988; Mets 1992, Darryl Strawberry Mets 1983–1990; Yankees 1995–1999, Rickey Henderson Yankees 1985–1989; Mets 1999–2000, David Cone Mets 1987–1992, 2003; Yankees 1995–2000, Dwight Gooden Mets 1984–1994; Yankees 1996–1997, 2000, Al Leiter Yankees 1987–1989, 2005; Mets 1998–2004, Jose Vizcaino Mets 1994–1996; Yankees 2000, Gary Sheffield Yankees 2004–2006; Mets 2009, Carlos Beltrán Mets 2005–2011; Yankees 2014–2016, Curtis Granderson Yankees 2010–2013; Mets 2014–2017, Ike Davis Mets 2010–2014; Yankees 2016, Kelly Johnson Yankees 2014; Mets 2015, 2016, Neil Walker Mets 2016–2017; Yankees 2018, Todd Frazier Yankees 2017; Mets 2018–2019, Anthony Swarzak Yankees 2016; Mets 2018, Robinson Cano Yankees 2005–2013; Mets 2019–present, Adeiny Hechavarria Yankees 2018; Mets 2019, Dellin Betances Yankees 2011, 2013–2019; Mets 2020–present Casey Stengel Yankees 1949–1960; Mets 1962–1965, Yogi Berra Yankees 1964, 1984–1985; Mets 1972–1975, Joe Torre Mets 1977–1981; Yankees 1996–2007, Dallas Green Yankees 1989; Mets 1993–1996 Alongside the players and the team staff, it is the fans that have defined the rivalry that has been present since the beginning of interleague play. The two teams' stadium fan groups, which would tend to meet each other during the current interleague Subway Series, are (with their respective assigned sections): Bleacher Creatures - Yankees, Section 203, Yankee Stadium (active since mid-1990s, formerly at sections 37 and 39 of the old Yankee Stadium), The 7 Line Army - Mets, Big Apple Reserved Section, Citi Field (active since 2012) In 1998, the Independent Budget Office of the city of New York published a study on the economic effect of the city's two Major League Baseball teams. The study included an analysis of where fans of both the Mets and the Yankees resided. The study found that 43% of Mets fans lived in one of the five boroughs of New York, 39% in the tri-state area outside the city and 12% elsewhere. Mets fans were more likely to be found in Queens and the Long Island counties of Nassau and Suffolk, whereas Manhattan, the Bronx, Staten Island, New Jersey, Connecticut, and the counties of Westchester and Rockland, as well as the upper Hudson Valley and the upstate New York region, leaned more towards the Yankees. Mets, Yankees and Toronto Blue Jays fans are shared in Western New York. In addition, many local Italian Americans are Yankees fans. In what The Wall Street Journal called an "Exclusive Poll" conducted in 2010, the newspaper compared the differences between Mets fans and Yankees fans. The poll found: While Yankees fans outnumbered Mets fans by almost two-to-one (60% to 33%), Mets fans tend to be more invested in their team: "Not only do they monitor their team's progress more often (75% of Mets fans follow the team on a daily basis vs. 60% of Yankees fans) and make more bets, they listen to substantially more sports radio (26% to 17%).", Mets fans drink more:, Male Mets fans were 43% more likely than Yankees fans to drink beer:, They also drink more in general: the percentage of male Yankees fans who said they don't drink was almost double that of their Mets counterparts (28% to 17%)., There was no statistically significant disparity in income between the two fanbases:, The poll found 30% of Yankees fans made over $100,000 annually, compared to 22% of Mets fans, a gap which was within the poll's 3.8% margin of error., While Yankees fans were more likely to fall into the upper and lower brackets, Mets fans were more likely to be middle class., Mets fans were more likely to own pets (47% to 42%) and be married (51% to 41%). Historically, Yankees fans tend to root for the New York Giants (who once played in Yankee Stadium) and the New York Rangers (all three being the older, more established teams), while Mets fans tend to root for the New York Jets (who once played in Shea Stadium) and New York Islanders. However, some Yankees fans root for the Jets (both teams have intense rivalries with Boston, as the fierce Yankees–Red Sox rivalry has led to the rivalry between the New York Jets and the New England Patriots and the New York Knicks and the Boston Celtics), while some Mets fans root for the Giants as part of their hatred for their counterparts in Philadelphia (Phillies and Eagles), as well as the rivalry between the New York Rangers and the Philadelphia Flyers in the National Hockey League. In fact, the differing allegiances between Mets and Yankees fans and their respective football team could be best seen in the Jets 30 point 4th quarter comeback over the Dolphins, which took place during the 2000 World Series. There were "Let's Go Yankees" chants, which were later countered by "Let's Go Mets" chants or "Yankees Suck". There are also many Mets/Football Giants fans. These fans are offspring of Dodgers/Giants Baseball fans of the 1940s and 50s, who were also fans of the great NY Giants Football Teams of the 1950s (when they were NY's only pro-football team). However, that fan-base was cut dramatically when the Jets arrived in the 1960s. Many argue that this group of Mets/Giants fans were split into Mets/Jets fans because back them one could not get a seat at a Giants game in Yankee Stadium, while one could get season tickets to the NY Jets who by now had already played in the Mets ballpark (Shea Stadium). And, to boot, it made sense to some because the Jets were an exciting team led by Joe Namath (even winning the Super Bowl in 1969, the same year the Miracle Mets won the World Series), whereas the Giants were a dreadful team in the 1960s to early 1970s. There were then two distinct groups: Mets/Giants fans and Mets/Jets fans. With the arrival of the Major League Soccer to the city in the 1990s and with now two teams based there (the older New York Red Bulls and the newer New York City FC, which plays currently in Yankee Stadium), the rivalry between the baseball fans has not expanded to the same level as in other sports, through these soccer clubs' fanbases share the same hatred of the New England Revolution and Philadelphia Union with the fans of the other NYC-based pro sports teams, whilch have the same hatred for the Boston pro sports teams and their athletes and coaches (and for Mets fans, teams from Philadelphia). Fans of the Yankees today, due in part to the team's part ownership of the newer club, would tend to support their home matches at Yankee Stadium and away matches while Mets fans support the much older Red Bulls, which play in New Jersey, some Yankees fans, through, support the Red Bulls because of it being the city's more established soccer team in the MLS proper. In the National Basketball Association, Mets fans tend to back the New York Knicks, which shares the same colors with them, while Yankees fans support the Brooklyn Nets which they owe partly to YES Network, the current television broadcaster, which was the result of the YankeeNets LLC creation in the late 1990s as part of the brief merger of the teams' business functions as well as the fact that current radio announcer John Sterling previously was the PBP man for Nets broadcasts in the 70s, however some fans of both teams do it the reverse way around (Yankees fans supporting the older Knicks, Mets fans the younger Nets team based in Brooklyn). Fans of both teams, regardless of baseball team support, share common hatred of the Boston Celtics, while Mets fans shared their hatred as well of the Philadelphia 76ers regardless of being a fan of either one of the two teams or both. Outside Major League Baseball, the teams rivalry has shown passions from fans of both sides. In the 1991 movie City Slickers starring Billy Crystal, Crystal's character is seen wearing a Mets hat. Crystal himself in reality is an avid and outspoken Yankees fan, so much that he had a personal friendship with his boyhood idol Mickey Mantle in as much he produced the movie 61, about Mantle and Roger Maris's chase for Babe Ruth's all-time record for home runs hit in a season. Crystal also celebrated his 60th birthday by signing a one-day contract with the Yankees in the 2008 Spring training., In the movie Two Weeks Notice, Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant's characters Lucy Kelson and George Wade attended a Mets game. When an opposing player hit a pop-fly and Mets catcher Mike Piazza went towards the stands to get it, Lucy reached over and stole the pop fly from Piazza, preventing him from getting the player out. Piazza quipped saying she should be a Yankees fan., During the 2000 World Series, the Mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani, showed no remorse in his partisan support of the Yankees despite being the sitting mayor in office, though he had attended Mets games before and after. Examples of this include the Mets opened the 1996 season, he threw out the ceremonial first pitch along with the Governor of New York George Pataki, during the Mets' season opener in , and when the Mets hosted the first professional sporting event in New York since September 11, 2001., In 2010, pop star singer and Yankees fan Lady Gaga, attended a Mets game at Citi Field with the San Diego Padres where she gave Mets fans the middle finger. Actor and comedian Jerry Seinfeld, a Mets fan, criticized Gaga for the incident due to children being at the game and became upset knowing that she had done the action from his personal luxury box., In 2013, Chris Christie, former Governor of New Jersey, stated his support of the Mets and confusion over why Yankees fans jeer Mets fans: OK, here's what I don't understand about Yankees fans: The Mets stink. We're awful. And the Yankees are usually really good. So why do you boo us? You should feel badly for us. We root for this awful team that never wins and yet the Yankees fans boo us. I don't understand that. And other Mets fans say boo to the Yankees because they say boo to us and is not fair about that so they should care about the 2 New York team especially when they go see the team play the subway series and they should all cheer up on the subway series. Subway Series, Major League Baseball rivalries, Other New York sporting rivalries:, Knicks–Nets rivalry - NBA, Islanders–Rangers rivalry - NHL, Hudson River Derby - MLS, Giants–Jets rivalry - NFL Subway Series Yankees vs. Mets history and boxscores, , Subway-series-pressure-too-much-for-r-a-dickey, Subway-series-new-york-yankees-new-york-mets-make-memorable The Staten Island Yankees are a minor league baseball team, located in the New York City borough of Staten Island. Nicknamed the "Baby Bombers", the Yankees are a Short-Season A classification affiliate of the New York Yankees and play in the New York–Penn League at Richmond County Bank Ballpark along the waterfront in St. George. The Yankees last won the league championship in the 2011 season. The Staten Island Yankees were brought to Staten Island in 1999 in a deal brokered by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. The team came from the Watertown Indians and the Oneonta Yankees. The Staten Island Yankees played their first two seasons at College of Staten Island Baseball Complex before moving into the Richmond County Bank Ballpark for the 2001 season. The first SI Yankee to reach the major leagues as a New York Yankee was pitcher Jason Anderson, pitching in relief in an 8-4 Yankee win over the Toronto Blue Jays at the Rogers Centre. The first Staten Island Yankee to reach the majors for any team was Wily Mo Peña, who broke in with the Cincinnati Reds. On March 26, 2006, the Staten Island Advance reported that the teams' majority owners, the Getzler family, were considering selling their 51% share of the team, and were asking for between three and five million dollars. The New York Yankees purchased the Getzler's interest in the team and in return hired Mandalay Sports Properties to run the day-to-day operations of the team. Part of the agreement was that the New York Yankees and Mandalay become equal partners and Mandalay now owns 50% of the Staten Island Yankees. In 2006, the Yankees were managed by Gaylen Pitts, noted for frequently being ejected from games. In a game on August 25, 2006, Pitts was ejected and then returned to the field in sandals after a batter was hit by a pitch in the 9th inning of a 21-6 victory over the Brooklyn Cyclones. In 2007, the Yankees were managed by Mike Gillespie, who led the 1998 USC Trojans to a College World Series championship. Gillespie led the Baby Bombers to their third consecutive playoff appearance before losing to the Brooklyn Cyclones in 2007 NYPL Playoffs, 2 games to none. Former Florida Gator coach Pat McMahon had managed the Yankees for the 2008 season. Former major league catcher Josh Paul had managed the Yankees for the 2009 season and returned for the 2010 season. Due to Dave Eiland taking a leave of absence, manager Josh Paul was summoned to fill in as the New York Yankees bullpen coach. Until Paul returns, former major leaguer Jody Reed is filling in as the interim manager for the Staten Island Yankees. On June 20, 2016 the team launched a campaign to rename the organization starting with the 2017 season. On September 8, 2016, the potential names were whittled down to 5, with an online vote beginning on the team's website from that date; the candidate names were the Bridge Trolls, Heroes, Killer Bees, Pizza Rats, and Rock Pigeons. Ultimately, the team decided to retain the Yankees moniker but to call itself the Staten Island Pizza Rats for select games as an alternate identity. Since their inception the Staten Island Yankees have a total of 42 players to reach the major leagues not including players who have played for the team while on a rehab assignment. The Following players have made rehab appearances for the Staten Island Yankees. Orlando Hernandez (2001), José Contreras (2003), Kevin Brown (2004), Steve Karsay (2004), Felix Rodríguez (2005), Octavio Dotel (2006), Jeff Karstens (2007) - Only former SI Yankee to return on an MLB rehab assignment, Darrell Rasner (2007), Jonathan Albaladejo (2008), Phil Hughes (2011) The original Staten Island Yankees Mascot is Scooter the "Holy Cow." A combination of New York Yankees shortstop Phil "Scooter" Rizzuto and his commentating catch phrase "Holy Cow!" Scooter debuted for the Staten Island Yankees when the franchise relocated from Watertown, New York, in 1999. In the summer of 2003, the Baby Bombers debuted Scooter's sisters Red and Huckleberry (or "Huck"). Since then, Scooter and his sisters have been a staple at SI Yankee games, leading fan rallies and between-inning on-field games. The cows are known to have a The Three Stooges-like relationship in which Red and Huck often team up to trick and trap Scooter 6 - Brett Gardner, 17 - Robinson Canó, 19 - Jason Anderson, 41 - Chien-Ming Wang, 42 - Jackie Robinson Staten Island Yankees web site, Baseball-Reference.com

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"Where Do You Go" is a song written by Peter Bischof and Franz Reuther. It was first recorded by German Eurodance band La Bouche in 1995 as an album-only song from their Sweet Dreams album. A cover version of the song was recorded by Europop group No Mercy, taken from their debut album, My Promise. On May 13, 1996, it was released as their first single and became a worldwide hit entering the top 5 not only in Germany, where the trio was based, but also in Australia, Austria, France, Switzerland, UK and US. In 2017, BuzzFeed ranked the song at number 8 in their list of The 101 Greatest Dance Songs Of the '90s. Singer Marty Cintron was discovered by German music producer Frank Farian when he played at a club in Ocean Drive, Miami. He suggested that they should do a project together. Cintron then went to Farians studio in Germany. Farian thought the best way to go was with a group, so Cintron introduced him to twin brothers and dancers Ariel and Gabriel Hernández which he had worked with earlier. They had toured with Prince and been in some of his videos. The first song the group recorded was "Missing", which Farian had gotten permission to record after hearing the song in Ibiza. Their version made it to the top 5 in Switzerland and became a big hit throughout Europe. But it was their next single, "Where Do You Go", which was released in May 1996, that became an international success. It peaked at number-one in Denmark, Ireland and Scotland, and within the top 5 in Australia, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the US. "Where Do You Go" (Ocean Drive Mix) was featured in the 1998 American comedy film A Night at the Roxbury. "Where Do You Go" is a dance track with a 4/4 rhythm structure, running at a speed of 127 beats per minute. It is built around a drum beat that was sampled from the Todd Terry remix of the song "Missing", by English act Everything But The Girl. The chorus hook "where do you go, my lovely?" references Peter Sarstedt's 1969 hit "Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)". Billboard wrote about the song: "Look for this Latin male trio to continue Arista's winning streak of slam-dunking Euro-splashed dance ditties on pop radio. This time, the beats are spiked with fluttering acoustic guitar riffs and making for a jam that will have punters revisiting their fave old hustle dance steps. Icing on the cake is an immediately contagious chorus and an irresistible a cappella breakdown midway through the song. Fun, fun, fun." The Gavin Report wrote: "This trio of experienced dancers/performers will find a warm reception from Top 40 programmers searching for fresh sounds to fill those Pop/Dance slots. The threesome hail from Miami and are currently breaking in Europe with this polished, uptempo production." The music video was directed by Hannes Rossacher and premiered in September 1996. It was filmed in Miami, Florida. CD single 1. "Where Do You Go" (Radio Mix) – 4:18 2. "Where Do You Go" (Ocean Drive Mix) – 7:27 European CD maxi 1. "Where Do You Go" (Radio Mix) – 4:28 2. "Where Do You Go" (Ocean Drive Mix) – 7:27 3. "Where Do You Go" (Club Mix) – 7:10 4. "Where Do You Go" (Spike Mix) – 6:25 5. "Where Do You Go" (Spike Dub Mix) – 6:05 6. "Where Do You Go" (Manumission Mix) – 5:33 7" single 1. "Where Do You Go" (Radio Mix) – 4:15 2. "Where Do You Go" (Trip House Mix) – 4:26 12" maxi 1. "Where Do You Go" (Trip House Mix) – 7:10 2. "Where Do You Go" (Manumission Mix) – 5:34 3. "Where Do You Go" (Spike Mix) – 6:22 4. "Where Do You Go" (Spike Dub Mix) – 6:07 "Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)?" is a song by the British singer–songwriter Peter Sarstedt. Its recording was produced by Ray Singer, engineered by John Mackswith at Lansdowne Recording Studios and released in 1969. It was a number-one 1 hit in the UK Singles Chart for four weeks in 1969, and was awarded the 1970 Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically. In the United States, the record reached No. 61 on the Cash Box Top 100 Singles. The single also peaked at No. 70 on the Billboard Hot 100 that May. The music has been described as "a faux European waltz tune," and the arrangement is a very simple one of strummed acoustic guitar and bass guitar, with brief bursts of French-style accordion at the start and the end. The arranger and conductor was Ian Green. The song is about a fictional girl named Marie-Claire who grows up on the poverty-stricken backstreets of Naples, becomes a member of the jet set, and goes on to live in Paris. The lyrics describe her from the perspective of a childhood friend; it is left unclear whether they have remained close. The rhetorical question of the title suggests that her glamorous lifestyle might not have brought Marie-Claire happiness or contentment. Even though Sarstedt himself was not French, the song benefited from the contemporary awareness in Britain of such French and Belgian singers as Serge Gainsbourg and Jacques Brel (Belgium-born of Flemish descent). The lyrics contain a large number of contemporary and other references: Marlene Dietrich: German American actress and singer, Zizi Jeanmaire: French ballerina, Pierre Balmain: French designer of elegant fashions, Boulevard Saint-Michel: street in the Latin Quarter of Paris, The Rolling Stones: popular British rock and roll band, Sacha Distel: French singer and musician, Sorbonne: University of Paris, Picasso: Spanish pioneer of modern art, Juan-les-Pins: fashionable beach resort on the French Riviera, Topless swimsuit: first conceived by Austrian American fashion designer Rudi Gernreich in 1964, Saint Moritz: fashionable ski resort in the Engadin, Swiss Alps, Napoleon brandy: a blended brandy in which the youngest brandy of the blend has been aged for at least six years, Aga Khan: world-traveling Islamic leader and racehorse owner The version on the album Peter Sarstedt is longer than the radio edit version released as a single, having extra stanzas beginning "You go to the embassy parties . . ." and "You're in between twenty and thirty. . . ." It is often suspected that the name Marie-Claire is inspired by Marie Claire magazine, a women's fashion weekly that began in 1937 in France. One theory says that the song is about the Italian actress Sophia Loren, who was abandoned by her father and had a poverty-stricken life in Naples. Another theory has the song being inspired by Danish singer and actress Nina van Pallandt. According to Alan Cooper: "Sarstedt insisted it was not written with actress Sophia Loren in mind. 'Yes, it's a portrait of a poor-born girl who becomes a member of the European jet set. And yes, there's reference to her growing up on the 'back streets of Naples,' so I can see why people may think it was written with Sophia Loren in mind. But that's just a coincidence. I really wasn't thinking of anyone specific.'" The song was written in Copenhagen. In 2009 Sarstedt spoke to a gossip columnist for the Daily Express. He admitted he had lied about the song being about a socialite who died in a fire. He said that the song was about his girlfriend at the time, whom he later married and then divorced. According to Mark Steyn, "Anita is now a dentist in Copenhagen. Peter Sarstedt has spent 40 years singing about wanting to look inside her head. And for most of that time Anita has made a living by looking inside yours." The song was a hit far exceeding Sarstedt's other work, although he is not a one-hit wonder. In 1998 he was earning £60,000 annually in royalties from it. DJ John Peel repeatedly stated that the song was one of his least favourites. On his show on BFBS radio on 1 July 1989, he said: “It's a terrible, smug, self-satisfied, hideous record. Really have hated it ever since I first heard it.” The song was used as a soundtrack in Wes Anderson's 2007 film The Darjeeling Limited and in Jennifer Saunders's 2016 film . In 1997 Sarstedt recorded a sequel, "The Last of the Breed (Lovely 2)," on his CD England's Lane. This picks up the story of Marie Claire 20 years on, living now in London. It names more people and places, including Belgravia, Ballets Russes, Cape Town, Claridge's, Gstaad, John Galliano, Harrods, Jerusalem, Long Island, Milan, Rudolf Nureyev, Palm Beach, Rio de Janeiro, and Isabella Rossellini. In recent years, Sarstedt and a co-writer were working on a further sequel, "Farewell Marie-Claire," in which the story was brought to a conclusion. The song was to feature the same waltz feel as the original. But Sarstedt's retirement from the music industry meant that the track was abandoned. "Wingmen" is the ninth episode of the second season and twenty first overall of the HBO comedy series Flight of the Conchords. This episode first aired in the United States on March 15, 2009. It is the penultimate episode of the second season. Bret enlists Jemaine and Dave to help him try to land a girlfriend. Murray regrets making Greg his scapegoat. Bret becomes attracted to Savannah, a woman who works in a pet shop. His shyness causes him to constantly buy goldfish from her while he builds up courage to ask her out. Bret asks Jemaine to be his wingman and they borrow a headset from Dave's store so that Jemaine and Dave can feed him advice from a distance. He says it is an idea he got from a sitcom. When that idea fails, Bret convinces Jemaine to pretend to mug Savannah, so he can save her and be seen positively in her eyes. It is another idea he got from a sitcom. Jemaine enlists the aid of his friend John, who mugged them in the third episode of season one. Bret meets Savannah in the street and starts to walk her home. She ends up asking him out for dinner. Then, before Bret can stop them, Jemaine and John execute the pretend mugging plan. Due to force of habit, John actually does steal Savannah's purse, which leads to both him and Jemaine getting arrested. Jemaine is later released, and Savannah soon finds out that Bret faked the mugging and breaks up with him. Meanwhile, Murray has unfairly made Greg the scapegoat for a mistake at work. He quickly regrets it and becomes convinced Greg is furious at him, despite Greg seeming perfectly calm about the situation. He spends the rest of the episode trying to patch up their friendship. As Bret walks into the apartment, he picks up a guitar and launches into song about his day and the girl that he met and romanced. Jemaine adds humorous skeptical comments between Bret's lines. At the end of the song Bret admits that "95% of the song is made up", and that he invented most of it after simply noticing a girl at the local pet store. The song is a parody of Peter Sarstedt's "Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)" and also of Billy Joel's "Piano Man". In the lyrics of this song, Bret demonstrates to Savannah how "freaky" he can be sexually. It features several surreal scenes in which the lyrics are comically stretched to include rhymes ("I flip some clips on my lips, I clip some chips to your hips"). The song features bizarre backgrounds and costumes, in an attempt to seem freaky, including Bret in a vampire cape with fangs as well as Jemaine in a haz-mat. This song is a parody of Beck's "Nicotine & Gravy" and "Debra". The pet store where Savannah works is a real Petland Discounts store at 510 5th Avenue in Brooklyn. The ideas Bret says he got from sitcoms are plot devices that have featured in many TV shows including Friends, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld. At the start of the episode, Bret asks Jemaine if he would be his wingman, "like in Top Gun". Jemaine asked Bret to be his wingman in the season one episode "Girlfriends" and Bret also referenced Top Gun at that time. Later, Murray asks Jemaine to be his wingman when he attempts to apologise to Greg. Dave references NeverNeverLand during another episode of confusion about the nationality of Bret and Jemaine.

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The Yellowstone Caldera is a volcanic caldera and supervolcano in Yellowstone National Park in the Western United States, sometimes referred to as the Yellowstone Supervolcano. The caldera and most of the park are located in the northwest corner of Wyoming. The major features of the caldera measure about 34 by 45 miles (55 by 72 km). The caldera formed during the last of three supereruptions over the past 2.1 million years: the Huckleberry Ridge eruption 2.1 million years ago (which created the Island Park Caldera and the Huckleberry Ridge Tuff); the Mesa Falls eruption 1.3 million years ago (which created the Henry's Fork Caldera and the Mesa Falls Tuff); and the Lava Creek eruption approximately 630,000 years ago (which created the Yellowstone Caldera and the Lava Creek Tuff). Volcanism at Yellowstone is relatively recent, with calderas that were created during large eruptions that took place 2.1 million, 1.3 million, and 630,000 years ago. The calderas lie over a hotspot under the Yellowstone Plateau where light and hot magma (molten rock) from the mantle rises toward the surface. The hotspot appears to move across terrain in the east-northeast direction, but in fact the hotspot is much deeper than terrain and remains stationary while the North American Plate moves west-southwest over it. Over the past 18 million years or so, this hotspot has generated a succession of violent eruptions and less violent floods of basaltic lava. Together these eruptions have helped create the eastern part of the Snake River Plain (to the west of Yellowstone) from a once-mountainous region. At least a dozen of these eruptions were so massive that they are classified as supereruptions. Volcanic eruptions sometimes empty their stores of magma so swiftly that the overlying land collapses into the emptied magma chamber, forming a geographic depression called a caldera. The oldest identified caldera remnant straddles the border near McDermitt, Nevada–Oregon, although there are volcaniclastic piles and arcuate faults that define caldera complexes more than in diameter in the Carmacks Group of southwest-central Yukon, Canada, which are interpreted to have been formed 70 million years ago by the Yellowstone hotspot. Progressively younger caldera remnants, most grouped in several overlapping volcanic fields, extend from the Nevada–Oregon border through the eastern Snake River Plain and terminate in the Yellowstone Plateau. One such caldera, the Bruneau-Jarbidge caldera in southern Idaho, was formed between 10 and 12 million years ago, and the event dropped ash to a depth of one foot (30 cm) away in northeastern Nebraska and killed large herds of rhinoceros, camel, and other animals at Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park. The United States Geological Survey ("USGS") estimates there are one or two major caldera- forming eruptions and 100 or so lava extruding eruptions per million years, and "several to many" steam eruptions per century. The loosely defined term "supervolcano" has been used to describe volcanic fields that produce exceptionally large volcanic eruptions. Thus defined, the Yellowstone Supervolcano is the volcanic field which produced the latest three supereruptions from the Yellowstone hotspot; it also produced one additional smaller eruption, thereby creating the West Thumb of Yellowstone Lake 174,000 years ago. The three supereruptions occurred 2.1 million, 1.3 million, and approximately 630,000 years ago, forming the Island Park Caldera, the Henry's Fork Caldera, and Yellowstone calderas, respectively. The Island Park Caldera supereruption (2.1 million years ago), which produced the Huckleberry Ridge Tuff, was the largest, and produced 2,500 times as much ash as the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption. The next biggest supereruption formed the Yellowstone Caldera (~ 630,000 years ago) and produced the Lava Creek Tuff. The Henry's Fork Caldera (1.2 million years ago) produced the smaller Mesa Falls Tuff, but is the only caldera from the Snake River Plain-Yellowstone hotspot that is plainly visible today. Non-explosive eruptions of lava and less-violent explosive eruptions have occurred in and near the Yellowstone caldera since the last supereruption. The most recent lava flow occurred about 70,000 years ago, while a violent eruption excavated the West Thumb of Lake Yellowstone around 150,000 years ago. Smaller steam explosions occur as well: an explosion 13,800 years ago left a diameter crater at Mary Bay on the edge of Yellowstone Lake (located in the center of the caldera). Currently, volcanic activity is exhibited via numerous geothermal vents scattered throughout the region, including the famous Old Faithful Geyser, plus recorded ground-swelling indicating ongoing inflation of the underlying magma chamber. The volcanic eruptions, as well as the continuing geothermal activity, are a result of a great cove of magma located below the caldera's surface. The magma in this cove contains gases that are kept dissolved by the immense pressure under which the magma is contained. If the pressure is released to a sufficient degree by some geological shift, then some of the gases bubble out and cause the magma to expand. This can cause a chain reaction. If the expansion results in further relief of pressure, for example, by blowing crust material off the top of the chamber, the result is a very large gas explosion. According to analysis of earthquake data in 2013, the magma chamber is long and wide. It also has underground volume, of which 6–8% is filled with molten rock. This is about 2.5 times bigger than scientists had previously imagined it to be; however, scientists believe that the proportion of molten rock in the chamber is much too low to allow another supereruption. The source of the Yellowstone hotspot is controversial. Some geoscientists hypothesize that the Yellowstone hotspot is the effect of an interaction between local conditions in the lithosphere and upper mantle convection. Others suggest an origin in the deep mantle (mantle plume). Part of the controversy is the relatively sudden appearance of the hotspot in the geologic record. Additionally, the Columbia Basalt flows appeared at the same approximate time in the same place, causing speculation about their common origin. As the Yellowstone hotspot traveled to the east and north, the Columbia disturbance moved northward and eventually subsided. An alternate theory to the mantle plume model was proposed in 2018. It is suggested that the volcanism may be caused by upwellings from the lower mantle resulting from water-rich fragments of the Farallon Plate descending from the Cascadia subduction region, sheared off at a subducted spreading rift. Volcanic and tectonic actions in the region cause between 1,000 and 2,000 measurable earthquakes annually. Most are relatively minor, measuring a magnitude of 3 or weaker. Occasionally, numerous earthquakes are detected in a relatively short period of time, an event known as an earthquake swarm. In 1985, more than 3,000 earthquakes were measured over a period of several months. More than 70 smaller swarms were detected between 1983 and 2008. The USGS states these swarms are likely caused by slips on pre-existing faults rather than by movements of magma or hydrothermal fluids. In December 2008, continuing into January 2009, more than 500 quakes were detected under the northwest end of Yellowstone Lake over a seven-day span, with the largest registering a magnitude of 3.9. Another swarm started in January 2010, after the Haiti earthquake and before the Chile earthquake. With 1,620 small earthquakes between January 17, 2010, and February 1, 2010, this swarm was the second-largest ever recorded in the Yellowstone Caldera. The largest of these shocks was a magnitude 3.8 that occurred on January 21, 2010. This swarm reached the background levels by February 21. On March 30, 2014, at 6:34 AM MST, a magnitude 4.8 earthquake struck Yellowstone, the largest recorded there since February 1980. In February 2018, more than 300 earthquakes occurred, with the largest being a magnitude 2.9. The last full-scale eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano, the Lava Creek eruption which happened approximately 640,000 years ago, ejected approximately of rock, dust and volcanic ash into the sky. Geologists are closely monitoring the rise and fall of the Yellowstone Plateau, which has been rising as quickly as per year, as an indication of changes in magma chamber pressure. The upward movement of the Yellowstone caldera floor between 2004 and 2008—almost each year—was more than three times greater than ever observed since such measurements began in 1923. From 2004 to 2008, the land surface within the caldera moved upward as much as at the White Lake GPS station. By the end of 2009, the uplift had slowed significantly and appeared to have stopped. In January 2010, the USGS stated that "uplift of the Yellowstone Caldera has slowed significantly" and that uplift continues but at a slower pace. The U.S. Geological Survey, University of Utah and National Park Service scientists with the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory maintain that they "see no evidence that another such cataclysmic eruption will occur at Yellowstone in the foreseeable future. Recurrence intervals of these events are neither regular nor predictable." This conclusion was reiterated in December 2013 in the aftermath of the publication of a study by University of Utah scientists finding that the "size of the magma body beneath Yellowstone is significantly larger than had been thought". The Yellowstone Volcano Observatory issued a statement on its website stating, Although fascinating, the new findings do not imply increased geologic hazards at Yellowstone, and certainly do not increase the chances of a 'supereruption' in the near future. Contrary to some media reports, Yellowstone is not 'overdue' for a supereruption. Other media reports were more hyperbolic in their coverage. A study published in GSA Today, the monthly news and science magazine of the Geological Society of America, identified three fault zones on which future eruptions are most likely to be centered. Two of those areas are associated with lava flows aged 174,000–70,000 years, and the third is a focus of present-day seismicity. In 2017, NASA conducted a study to determine the feasibility of preventing the volcano from erupting. The results suggested that cooling the magma chamber by 35 percent would be enough to forestall such an incident. NASA proposed introducing water at high pressure 10 kilometers underground. The circulating water would release heat at the surface, possibly in a way that could be used as a power source. If enacted, the plan would cost about $3.46 billion. Nevertheless, according to Brian Wilson of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a completed project might trigger, instead of prevent, an eruption. Studies and analysis may indicate that the greater hazard comes from hydrothermal activity which occurs independently of volcanic activity. Over 20 large craters have been produced in the past 14,000 years, resulting in such features as Mary Bay, Turbid Lake, and Indian Pond which was created in an eruption about 1300 BC. In a 2003 report, USGS researchers proposed that an earthquake may have displaced more than (576,000,000 US gallons) of water in Yellowstone Lake, creating colossal waves that unsealed a capped geothermal system and led to the hydrothermal explosion that formed Mary Bay. Further research shows that very distant earthquakes reach and have effects upon the activities at Yellowstone, such as the 1992 7.3 magnitude Landers earthquake in California’s Mojave Desert that triggered a swarm of quakes from more than away, and the 2002 7.9 magnitude Denali fault earthquake away in Alaska that altered the activity of many geysers and hot springs for several months afterward. In 2016, the United States Geological Survey announced plans to map the subterranean systems responsible for feeding the area's hydrothermal activity. According to the researchers, these maps could help predict when another supereruption occurs. Iceland hotspot and Iceland plume describes aspects of volcanic processes, Long Valley Caldera, Valles Caldera, La Garita Caldera: examples of other calderas close to but not related to Yellowstone., Lake Toba, Toba catastrophe theory The Snake River Plain and the Yellowstone Hot Spot, Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, FAQ relating to the supervolcano, Supervolcano documentary from BBC, Interactive: When Yellowstone Explodes from National Geographic, The Yellowstone magmatic system from the mantle plume to the upper crust (46,000 km3 magma reservoir below chamber) Supervolcano is a 2005 British-Canadian disaster television film that originally aired on 13 March 2005 on BBC One, and released by the BBC on 10 April 2005 on the Discovery Channel. It is centered on the speculated and potential eruption of the volcanic caldera of Yellowstone National Park. Its tagline is "Scientists know it as the deadliest volcano on Earth. You know it...as Yellowstone." Richard Lieberman, the scientist in charge of Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, gives a press conference with his colleagues Jock Galvin, Dave, Matt and Nancy, and their boss, Michael Eldridge, to present their new virtual imagery simulator VIRGIL, which Eldgridge claims will greatly aid in their research. Reporter Maggie Chin asks about the possibility of an eruption, which Rick dismisses as a remote possibility. After an earthquake triggers a tsunami on one of the park's lakes, Maggie interviews Kenneth "Ken" Wylie on TV about his new book on volcanoes. Rick is upset by Ken's appearance and it is revealed that the two are brothers-in-law. Rick and Ken later argue, with Rick accusing Ken of creating a mass panic in order to sell his book but not without Fiona's intervention. The undersecretary of FEMA, Wendy Reiss, visits and asks Rick about the worst-case scenario if Yellowstone does release a super eruption. He shows her a simulation, revealing the devastating results of an ashfall across the US should the volcano ever erupt. After a hydrothermal event at the Norris Geyser Basin and more questions from the press, Rick's team runs a simulation of possible eruptions on VIRGIL. They learn that even a moderate eruption could potentially destabilize the rest of the magma chamber under Yellowstone and trigger a super eruption. Rick's colleagues go to a field office cabin in the park to gather more information. After more seismic events, the park is closed. Maggie Chin comes to Yellowstone anyway, and Rick sends Matt to give her a personal tour of the park. They find harmonic tremors near Norris, indicating that an eruption of unknown scale is imminent. Shortly afterward, animals begin to flee the park. An email about the expected eruption leaks to the press, causing a national panic. FEMA schedules a press conference in Washington, DC, at which Rick is pressured into saying that the eruption will not be large. While Rick is flying back from the conference, his colleagues in the field office finish plugging in the latest data for the eruption. They discover that the top of the magma chamber alone has more than enough eruptable magma to destabilize the chamber and trigger a super eruption. As they realize this, the volcano erupts violently, severely damaging the field office, and injuring Jock. Matt then investigated the eruption and contacted Dave about it to inform Rick. Jock then rode the helicopter as he needed medical attention while Nancy & Matt rode their truck, despite Jock's protests. The resulting pyroclastic flow overtakes and kills Nancy and Matt as they flee in their truck. Rick contacts Dave, another team member who left before the eruption to set up a backup office in a hotel in Boseman. They work to figure out the vent's size and communicate with FEMA. Meanwhile, FEMA discovers via a fighter jet that the vent is blowing ash east across the US and across major commercial air routes, prompting them to clear American airspace and take other protective measures. Rick's flight goes directly into the ash cloud, damaging the airplane's engines, and they make an emergency landing in Cheyenne. Rick and Ken decided to go to the FEMA office in Denver. After calling his wife, Fiona, they were caught under the ashfall. They then decided to find a nearby military installation. Dave, with his link to FEMA, finds more vents beginning to open in the caldera. Before he can observe more than five vents opening up, the motel roof collapses due to heavy ashfall, destroying the backup office and killing him. Rick and Ken managed to reach the military installation safely, despite the heavy ashfall, but not without suffering colds. Rick then makes contact with FEMA with the help of a military sergeant, and determines that the vents are going to merge into one massive caldera in an eruption on the scale of the Huckleberry Ridge Eruption, the largest in Yellowstone's history. Government officials try to come up with a plan to save the 25 million people trapped by the ashfall, but Rick convinces them that they cannot possibly hope to do so; the ash will make it impossible for planes to safely evacuate people or drop supplies. Instead, following his advice, FEMA creates the "Walk to Life" program, telling people to walk through the ash to safety. One week after the eruption started, the ground above the magma chamber begins to fall into the empty space left by the ejected magma, signalling the end of the eruption. However, the lingering atmospheric effects throw the world into a volcanic winter. Much of the US has been rendered uninhabitable. The Walk to Life program saved 7.3 million of the 25 million people trapped by the ash, including Rick and Ken, who managed to walk out of the ashfall. Michael Riley as Rick Lieberman, Gary Lewis as Jock Galvin, Shaun Johnston as Matt, Adrian Holmes as Dave Price, Jennifer Copping as Nancy, Rebecca Jenkins as Wendy Reiss, Tom McBeath as Michael Eldridge, Robert Wisden as Kenneth Wylie, Susan Duerden as Fiona Lieberman, Emy Aneke as Johnson Jane McLean as Maggie Chin, Garwin Sanford as Bob Mann, Sam Charles as William Lieberman, Kevin McNulty as Joe Foster, Shelagh Mitchell as Fiona's Mother, Jay Hernandez as USAF Airman, Leslie Reyes as Rachel, Joanna Gosling as herself, Chris Lowe as himself, Anna Jones as herself Superstorm, a 2007 miniseries by the same producers, Supervolcano by the BBC, Website by the Discovery Channel The Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park is the largest hot spring in the United States, and the third largest in the world, after Frying Pan Lake in New Zealand and Boiling Lake in Dominica. It is located in the Midway Geyser Basin. Grand Prismatic Spring was noted by geologists working in the Hayden Geological Survey of 1871, and named by them for its striking coloration. Its colors match most of those seen in the rainbow dispersion of white light by an optical prism: red, orange, yellow, green, and blue. The first records of the spring are from early European explorers and surveyors. In 1839, a group of fur trappers from the American Fur Company crossed the Midway Geyser Basin and made note of a "boiling lake", most likely the Grand Prismatic Spring, with a diameter of . In 1870 the Washburn–Langford–Doane Expedition visited the spring, noting a geyser nearby (later named Excelsior). The vivid colors in the spring are the result of microbial mats around the edges of the mineral-rich water. The mats produce colors ranging from green to red; the amount of color in the microbial mats depends on the ratio of chlorophyll to carotenoids and on the temperature gradient in the runoff. In the summer, the mats tend to be orange and red, whereas in the winter the mats are usually dark green. The center of the pool is sterile due to extreme heat. The deep blue color of the water in the center of the pool results from the intrinsic blue color of water. The effect is strongest in the center of the spring, because of its sterility and depth. The spring is approximately in diameter and is deep. The spring discharges an estimated of water per minute.

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The following are historical lists of the youngest members of the United States Congress, in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. These members would be the equivalent to the "Baby of the House" in the parliaments of Commonwealth countries; the U.S. Congress does not confer a similar title upon its youngest members. Youngest U.S. congresspersons tend to be older than the youngest MPs in Commonwealth countries. This is partly so because minimum ages are written into Article One of the United States Constitution, which bars persons under the age of 25 from serving in the House and persons under the age of 30 from serving in the Senate. Additionally, in the political culture of the United States, many young politicians prefer to gain experience in local and state offices before running for Congress. Although the vast majority of members of Congress had such experience before arriving in Washington, D.C., the number of those who did not has increased recently. On November 6, 2018, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Democratic Party, New York) and Abby Finkenauer (Democratic Party, Iowa) won their general election campaigns and respectively became the youngest and second-youngest congresswomen ever elected. On taking office, they became the youngest two members of the 116th United States Congress; Ocasio-Cortez also became the youngest congresswoman in United States history. Josh Hawley is the youngest sitting senator of the 116th United States Congress at age . He replaced Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, who at was the youngest senator of the 115th Congress. The average age of Senators is now higher than in the past. In the 19th century, several state legislatures elected Senators in their late twenties despite the Constitutional minimum age of 30, such as Henry Clay, who was sworn into office at age 29. Sources: Congressional Biographical Directory and House Document No. 108-222, Biographical Directory of the United States Congress 1774 – 2005 Dean of the United States House of Representatives, Dean of the United States Senate Jed Joseph Johnson Jr. (December 27, 1939 – December 16, 1993) was an American politician, and a U.S. Representative from Oklahoma. Born in Washington, D.C., the son of Jed Johnson and Beatrice Luginbyhl Johnson, Johnson attended public schools in Chickasha, Oklahoma, and Friends Seminary in New York City. He served as a congressional page and graduated from the Capitol Page School in Washington, D.C., in 1957. He graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 1961. Johnson served as a delegate to the International Student Movement for the United Nations Conference at Lund, Sweden, in 1961, and as president of the United States Youth Council from 1962 to 1964. He led a delegation from the organization to West Africa in 1963, and served as a member of the United States National Commission for UNESCO. He served three years as a nongovernmental observer at the United Nations. Elected at the age of twenty- four, Johnson was the second youngest person ever elected to the U.S. Congress. Taking his U.S. House seat just six days after his twenty-fifth birthday, he was the youngest House member to legally to assume office. On November 15, 1964, twelve days after his election victory, Johnson appeared on the CBS Television Network panel show What's My Line?. Playing the game and sharing laughs that night with the new house member was legendary comedian and guest panelist Groucho Marx. Johnson served as a Democrat to the 89th Congress from January 3, 1965, to January 3, 1967. Johnson voted in favor of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1966 to the 90th Congress. He served as special assistant to the Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity from 1967 to 1968, and as a member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from 1968 to 1972. He was also a consultant to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities in 1973. He resided in Alexandria, Virginia, and served as executive director of the United States Association of Former Members of Congress from 1974 until his death. Johnson died in Falls Church, Virginia, on December 16, 1993, as the result of a cerebral aneurysm. He is survived by his wife, Sydney, and daughters Alice and Sydney. Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture - Johnson, Jed Jr. Paul Davis Ryan (born January 29, 1970) is an American politician who served as the 54th speaker of the United States House of Representatives from October 2015 to January 2019. He was also the 2012 vice presidential nominee of the Republican Party, running unsuccessfully alongside Mitt Romney. Ryan, a native of Janesville, Wisconsin, graduated from Miami University in 1992. He spent five years working for Republicans in Washington, D.C. and returned to Wisconsin in 1997 to work at his family's construction company. Ryan was elected to Congress to represent the following year, replacing an incumbent Republican who ran for U.S. Senate. Ryan would represent the district for 20 years. He chaired the House Budget Committee from 2011 to 2015 and briefly chaired the House Ways and Means Committee in 2015 prior to being elected Speaker of the House in October 2015 following John Boehner's retirement. A self-proclaimed deficit hawk, Ryan was a major proponent of Social Security privatization in the mid-2000s. In the 2010s, two proposals heavily influenced by Ryan—"The Path to Prosperity" and "A Better Way"—advocated for the privatization of Medicare, the conversion of Medicaid into a block grant program, the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, and significant federal tax cuts. As Speaker, he had a role in passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. His other major piece of legislation, the American Health Care Act of 2017, passed the House but failed in the Senate by one vote. Ryan's tenure as Speaker of the House—most of which coincided with a period of unified Republican control of the federal government—saw a significant increase in federal government spending and deficits. Ryan declined to run for re-election in the 2018 midterm elections. With the Democratic Party taking control of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi succeeded Ryan as Speaker of the House. Paul Davis Ryan was born in Janesville, Wisconsin, the youngest of four children of Elizabeth "Betty" Ann (née Hutter), who later became an interior designer, and Paul Murray Ryan, a lawyer. He is a fifth-generation Wisconsinite. His father was of Irish ancestry and his mother of German and English descent. One of Ryan's paternal ancestors settled in Wisconsin prior to the Civil War. His great-grandfather, Patrick William Ryan, founded an earthmoving company in 1884, which later became P. W. Ryan and Sons and is now known as Ryan Incorporated Central. Ryan's grandfather, Stanley M. Ryan, was appointed United States Attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin. In 2018, while filming a segment for the PBS series Finding Your Roots, Ryan learned that he is 3 percent Ashkenazi Jewish. Ryan attended St. Mary's Catholic School in Janesville, then attended Joseph A. Craig High School, where he was elected president of his junior class, and thus became prom king. As class president Ryan was a representative of the student body on the school board. Following his second year, Ryan took a job working the grill at McDonald's. He was on his high school's ski, track, and varsity soccer teams and played basketball in a Catholic recreational league. He participated in several academic and social clubs including the Model United Nations. Ryan and his family often went on hiking and skiing trips to the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Although Ryan's father was not a lifelong heavy drinker, staying sober for nearly twenty years after his first stint in rehabilitation, he had become an alcoholic by the time Ryan was a teenager. Ryan later commented that his relationship with his father, whom he revered as a young child, stating that "[alcohol] made him more distant, irritable and stressed ... whiskey had washed away some of the best parts of the man I knew." When he was 16, Ryan found his 55-year-old father lying dead in bed of a heart attack, something Ryan later partially attributed to heavy alcohol consumption. Following the death of his father, Ryan's grandmother moved in with the family. As she had Alzheimer's, Ryan helped care for her while his mother commuted to college in Madison, Wisconsin. From the time of his father's death until his 18th birthday, Ryan received Social Security survivors benefits, which were saved for his college education. His mother later married widower Bruce Douglas. Ryan has a bachelor's degree in economics and political science from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he became interested in the writings of Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Milton Friedman. He often visited the office of libertarian professor Richard Hart to discuss the theories of these economists and of Ayn Rand. Hart introduced Ryan to National Review, and with Hart's recommendation Ryan began an internship in the D.C. office of Wisconsin U.S. Senator Bob Kasten where he worked with Kasten's foreign affairs adviser. Ryan attended the Washington Semester program at American University. He worked summers as a salesman for Oscar Mayer and once got to drive the Wienermobile. Ryan was a member of the College Republicans, and volunteered for the congressional campaign of John Boehner. He was a member of the Delta Tau Delta social fraternity. Betty Ryan reportedly urged her son to accept a congressional position as a legislative aide in Senator Kasten's office, which he did after graduating in 1992. In his early years working on Capitol Hill, Ryan supplemented his income by working as a waiter, as a fitness trainer, and at other jobs. A few months after Kasten lost to Democrat Russ Feingold in the November 1992 election, Ryan became a speechwriter for Empower America (now FreedomWorks), a conservative advocacy group founded by Jack Kemp, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and William Bennett. Ryan later worked as a speechwriter for Kemp, the Republican vice presidential candidate in the 1996 United States presidential election. Kemp became Ryan's mentor, and Ryan has said he had a "huge influence". In 1995, Ryan became the legislative director for then-U.S. Congressman Sam Brownback of Kansas. In 1997 he returned to Wisconsin, where he worked for a year as a marketing consultant for the construction company Ryan Incorporated Central, owned by his relatives. Ryan was first elected to the House in 1998, winning the 1st District seat of Republican Mark Neumann, a two-term incumbent who had vacated his seat to make an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate. Ryan won the Republican primary over 29-year-old pianist Michael J. Logan of Twin Lakes, and the general election against Democrat Lydia Spottswood. This made him the second-youngest member of the House. Reelected eight times, Ryan never received less than 55 percent of the vote in a congressional election. He defeated Democratic challenger Jeffrey C. Thomas in the 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006 elections. In the 2008 election, Ryan defeated Democrat Marge Krupp. In the 2010 general election, he defeated Democrat John Heckenlively and Libertarian Joseph Kexel. In 2012, under Wisconsin election law, Ryan was allowed to run concurrently for vice president and for Congress and was not allowed to remove his name from the Congressional ballot after being nominated for the vice presidency. He faced Democratic nominee Rob Zerban. As of July 25, 2012, Ryan had over $5.4 million in his congressional campaign account, more than any other House member. He was reelected with 55 percent of his district's vote and 44 percent of the vote in his hometown, Janesville. Zerban again challenged Ryan in the 2014 House election. Ryan won with 63 percent of his district's vote. In the 2016 Republican primary election, Ryan faced businessman Paul Nehlen, who had been endorsed by Sarah Palin. Because of Nehlen's support for Trump, Trump publicly thanked him on Twitter and later told The Washington Post that Nehlen was "running a very good campaign", even though he did not endorse him. On August 5, 2016, Trump endorsed Ryan's re-election after pressure from fellow Republican leaders. In the August 9, 2016 primary election, Ryan overwhelmingly defeated Nehlen, taking over 84 percent of the vote. In the November general election, Ryan faced Democrat Ryan Solen and won with 65 percent of his district's vote. Ryan became the ranking Republican member of the House Budget Committee in 2007 and became chairman of the committee in 2011 after Republicans took control of the House. That same year, he was selected to deliver the Republican response to the State of the Union address. As of August 2012, Ryan had been the primary sponsor of more than 70 bills or amendments, and only two of those bills had become law. One, passed in July 2000, renamed a post office in Ryan's district; the other, passed in December 2008, lowered the excise tax on arrow shafts. As of August 2012, Ryan had also co-sponsored 975 bills, of which 176 had passed; 22% of these bills were originally sponsored by a Democrat. Ryan was a "reliable supporter of the [George W. Bush] administration's foreign policy priorities" who voted for the 2002 Iraq Resolution, authorizing the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In 2010, Ryan was a member of the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (Bowles-Simpson Commission), which was tasked with developing a plan to reduce the federal deficit. He voted against the final report of the commission. In 2012, Ryan accused the nation's top military leaders of using "smoke and mirrors" to remain under budget limits passed by Congress. Ryan later said that he misspoke on the issue and called General Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to apologize for his comments. On September 25, 2015, John Boehner formally announced to House Republicans his intention to resign from the speakership and the House. Among those interested in the post, Kevin McCarthy, who had wide support among Republicans, including Boehner, and Ryan, who was set to officially nominate him, was considered the presumptive favorite. His candidacy was opposed by conservative House Republicans of the Freedom Caucus, and when it became clear that caucus members would not support his candidacy, McCarthy withdrew his name from consideration on October 8. This led many Republicans to turn to Ryan as a compromise candidate. The push included a plea from Boehner, who reportedly told Ryan that he was the only person who could unite the House Republicans at a time of turmoil. Ryan released a statement that said, "While I am grateful for the encouragement I've received, I will not be a candidate." The next day however, close aides of Ryan's confirmed that Ryan had re- evaluated the situation, and was considering the possibility of a run. Ryan confirmed on October 22, that he would seek the speakership after receiving the endorsements of two factions of House Republicans, including the conservative Freedom Caucus. Ryan, upon confirming his bid for the speakership, stated, "I never thought I'd be speaker. But I pledged to you that if I could be a unifying figure, then I would serve – I would go all in. After talking with so many of you, and hearing your words of encouragement, I believe we are ready to move forward as one, united team. And I am ready and eager to be our speaker." On October 29, Ryan was elected Speaker, receiving 236 votes, an absolute majority of the 435-member chamber. Democrat Nancy Pelosi received 184 votes, with 12 more going to others. After the vote Ryan delivered his first remarks as speaker-elect and was sworn in by John Conyers, the dean of the House, becoming, at age , the youngest person elected as speaker since James G. Blaine (age ) in 1869. Later, he named lobbyist John David Hoppe as his Chief of Staff. After Donald Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee in the 2016 presidential election on May 4, 2016, Ryan was hesitant to endorse him, stating on May 5 that he was "not ready". Ryan and Trump met in private on May 12, releasing a joint statement afterward, acknowledging their differences but stating "we recognize that there are also many important areas of common ground." On June 2, Ryan announced his support for Trump in an op-ed in The Janesville Gazette. The following day, June 3, amid Trump's criticism of Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel, Ryan said Trump's critique "just was out of left field for my mind," and voiced disagreement with him. On June 7, Ryan disavowed Trump's comments about Curiel because he believed they were "the textbook definition of a racist comment". Nevertheless, Ryan continued to endorse Trump, believing that more Republican policies will be enacted under Donald Trump than presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. On June 15, after Kevin McCarthy stated during a conversation among Republicans, "There's two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump. Swear to God", Ryan interjected, "No leaks. This is how we know we're a real family here." On July 5, after FBI Director James Comey advocated against pressing charges against Clinton for her email scandal, Ryan said Comey's decision "defies explanation" and stated that "[d]eclining to prosecute Secretary Clinton for recklessly mishandling and transmitting national security information will set a terrible precedent." In October 2016, following the Donald Trump Access Hollywood controversy, Ryan disinvited Trump from a scheduled campaign rally, and announced that he would no longer defend or support Trump's presidential campaign but would focus instead on Congressional races. He also freed down-ticket congress members to use their own judgment about Trump, saying "you all need to do what's best for you and your district." Trump then went on to attack Ryan, accusing him and other "disloyal" Republicans of deliberately undermining his candidacy as part of "a whole sinister deal". Two months after the 2016 elections, Ryan was re-elected Speaker of the House on January 3, 2017, the opening day of the 115th Congress. He received 239 votes to House Democratic Leader Pelosi's 189 votes (with 5 more going to others). On February 7, 2017, Ryan told reporters a replacement for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) would be introduced "this year" amid speculation Donald Trump would not act toward doing so until the following year. On March 9, Ryan gave a 30-minute lecture explaining the proposed replacement for the ACA, titled the American Health Care Act (AHCA). On March 30, Ryan said that he did not intend to work with Democrats on repealing and replacing the ACA, reasoning their involvement would lead to "government running health care." On April 4, Ryan confirmed renewed discussions of an ACA replacement, but warned that a replacement was in the "conceptual" stages of its development. On May 4, the House narrowly voted for the AHCA to repeal the ACA. On May 9, Ryan said that "a month or two" would pass before the Senate would pass its own ACA repeal and replacement legislation. The Senate created several of its own versions of the act but was unable to pass any of them. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Ryan suggested that candidate Trump should release his tax returns. In a May 18, 2017 news conference, Ryan said Congress' goal was "calendared 2017 for tax reform" and reported progress was being made in doing so. In December 2017, both houses of Congress passed a $1.5 trillion tax bill called the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Trump signed it into law on December 22. The tax law is projected to add an additional $1.5 trillion to the national debt over a decade, but the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation also estimated that the GDP level on average would be 0.7% higher during the same period. In the weeks leading up to his retirement announcement, Ryan also championed a $1.3 trillion government-wide spending bill that boosted military spending significantly. Politico noted that Ryan "clamored for austerity when he's been in the minority, trashing Democrats as profligate budget-busters, but he's happily busted budgets in the majority." During a June 12, 2017 news conference, Ryan expressed support for strong sanctions on Russia in response to Russian interference in the 2016 elections and its annexation of the Crimea, saying that Russia's actions were "unacceptable". He urged Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Congressional oversight committees to "do their jobs so that we can get to the bottom of all of this." In July Congress passed a bill imposing new sanctions on Russia and giving Congress the power to overrule White House attempts to roll back sanctions. Both houses passed the bill with veto-proof majorities (98-2 in the Senate, 419-3 in the House), so Trump reluctantly signed it into law on August 2, 2017. Ryan provided political cover for Devin Nunes, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, who many characterized as a source of the dysfunction in the committee as it investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election. Nunes accused the Obama administration of improperly “unmasking” the identities of Trump associates (which led Nunes' temporary recusal from the committee's Russia investigation), accused the FBI of misconduct, leaked the text messages of Senator Mark Warner (in an effort to misleadingly suggest impropriety on his behalf), and threatened to impeach FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The House Intelligence Committee was one of few so-called "select" committees in Congress, which meant that it was up to Ryan to decide the chairman of the committee. Despite having favored comprehensive immigration earlier in his congressional career, Speaker Ryan prevented immigration legislation from being advanced in the House. When President Trump ended Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) – which granted temporary stay for undocumented immigrants brought into the United States as minors – Ryan said DACA recipients should "rest easy" because Congress would solve the problem for them, but Ryan backed no bills to protect DACA recipients. An article in The Washington Post described Ryan's relationship with President Trump as "friendly, if occasionally uneasy," adding that "Ryan did little to check the president or encourage oversight of his administration." Ryan supported Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey, and did not support legislation to protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Ryan said that legislation to protect Mueller's investigation was not "necessary". On April 11, 2018, Ryan announced that he would not run for re-election in November, saying, "I like to think I've done my part, my little part in history to set us on a better course." In response, Trump tweeted, "Speaker Paul Ryan is a truly good man, and while he will not be seeking re-election, he will leave a legacy of achievement that nobody can question." After Republicans lost control of the House in the 2018 midterm elections, Ryan suggested that there were irregularities about the election results in California. Ryan said that California's election system was "bizarre", "defies logic" and that "there are a lot of races there we should have won." After Ryan's remarks were reported on, Ryan's spokesperson said "The Speaker did not and does not dispute the results". Following Ryan's departure from the House of Representatives, a poll by Daily Kos indicated public support of Ryan to be at 12 percent, with 71 percent disapproving of Ryan and 17 percent unsure; this was one of the lowest-ever approval ratings for an outgoing Speaker of the House. Following Ryan's retirement announcement, an article in The Washington Post stated that Ryan was "leav[ing] behind a legacy of dramatically expanded government spending and immense deficits, a GOP president unchecked, a broken immigration system, and a party that's fast abandoning the free-trade principles that he himself championed." According to the Associated Press, Ryan "achieved one of his career goals: rewriting the tax code"; however, "on his other defining aim — balancing the budget and cutting back benefit programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — Ryan has utterly failed". As Speaker of the House of Representatives, Ryan was not a chair or a member of any committee. Prior to his speakership, Ryan held the following assignments: Committee on Ways and Means (Chairman), Subcommittee on Health House Republican Caucus, Caucus of House Conservatives Republican Study Committee, United States Congressional International Conservation Caucus, Middle East Economic Partnership Caucus, Prayer Caucus, Sportsmen's Caucus (Co-Chair), Congressional Western Caucus In fiscal year 2008, Ryan garnered $5.4 million in congressional earmarks, including $3.28 million for bus service in Wisconsin, $1.38 million for the Ice Age Trail, and $735,000 for the Janesville transit system. In 2009, he successfully advocated with the Department of Energy for stimulus funds for energy initiatives in his district. Other home district projects he has supported include a runway extension at the Rock County Airport, an environmental study of the Kenosha Harbor, firefighting equipment for Janesville, road projects in Wisconsin, and commuter rail and streetcar projects in Kenosha. In 2008, Ryan pledged to stop seeking earmarks. Prior to that he had sought earmarks less often than other representatives. Taxpayers for Common Sense records show no earmarks supported by Ryan for fiscal years 2009 and 2010. In 2012, Ryan supported a request for $3.8 million from the Department of Transportation for a new transit center in Janesville, which city officials received in July. Ryan was an active member of a task force established by Wisconsin governor Jim Doyle that tried unsuccessfully to persuade General Motors to keep its assembly plant in Janesville open. He made personal contact with GM executives to try to convince them to save or retool the plant, offering GM hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer-funded incentives. Following the closure of factories in Janesville and Kenosha, constituents expressed dissatisfaction with Ryan's voting history. During the 2011 Congressional summer break, Ryan held town hall meetings by telephone with constituents. The only public meetings Ryan attended in his district required an admission fee of at least $15. In August 2011, constituents in Kenosha and Racine protested when Ryan would not meet with them about economic and employment issues, after weeks of emailed requests from them. His Kenosha office locked its doors and filed a complaint with the police, who told the protesters that they were not allowed in Ryan's office. Ryan maintained a mobile office to serve constituents in outlying areas. Dan Balz of The Washington Post wrote that Ryan was promoted as a candidate for Vice President "by major elements of the conservative opinion makers, including The Wall Street Journal editorial page, the Weekly Standard and the editor of National Review". On August 11, 2012, the Romney campaign announced Ryan as its choice for Vice President through its "Mitt's VP" mobile app. It was reported that Romney had offered the position to Ryan on August 1, 2012, the day after returning from a foreign policy trip to the United Kingdom, Poland, and Israel. On August 11, 2012, Ryan formally accepted Romney's invitation to join his campaign as his running mate, in front of the USS Wisconsin in Norfolk. Ryan is the first individual from Wisconsin as well as the first member of Generation X to run on a major party's national ticket. Also in August 2012, the Associated Press published a story saying that while the Tea Party movement had wanted a nominee other than Romney, it had gotten "one of its ideological heroes" in the Vice Presidential slot. According to the article, Ryan supports the Tea Party's belief in "individual rights, distrust of big government and an allegorical embrace of the Founding Fathers". According to a statistical-historical analysis conducted by Nate Silver, "Ryan is the most conservative Republican member of Congress to be picked for the vice-presidential slot since at least 1900" and "is also more conservative than any Democratic nominee [for vice president who previously served in the Congress] was liberal, meaning that he is the furthest from the center" of any vice presidential candidate chosen from Congress since the turn of the 20th century. Political scientist Eric Schickler commented that while Ryan "may well be the most conservative vice presidential nominee in decades," the NOMINATE methodology "is not suited to making claims about the relative liberalism or conservatism of politicians" over a long time span. A USA Today/Gallup poll found that 39% thought Ryan was an "excellent" or "pretty good" vice presidential choice, compared to 42% who felt he was a "fair" or "poor" choice. Ryan formally accepted his nomination at the 2012 Republican National Convention on August 29, 2012. In his acceptance speech, he promoted Mitt Romney as the presidential candidate, supported repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), said that he and Romney had a plan to generate 12 million new jobs over the ensuing four years, and promoted founding principles as a solution: "We will not duck the tough issues—we will lead. We will not spend four years blaming others—we will take responsibility. We will not try to replace our founding principles, we will reapply our founding principles." The speech was well received by the convention audience and praised for being well-delivered. Some fact-checkers purported that there were important factual omissions and that he presented details out of context. Conservative media (including Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post, the Investor's Business Daily, and Fox News) disputed some of the fact-checkers' findings. Politifact.com rated 33 of Ryan's statements which it suspected of being false or misleading as True: 10.5%, Mostly True: 18%, Half True: 21%, Mostly False: 36%, False: 9%, and Pants on Fire: 6%. On October 11, 2012, Ryan debated his Democratic counterpart, incumbent Vice President Joe Biden, in the only vice presidential debate of the 2012 election cycle. Romney and Ryan lost the 2012 presidential election, but Ryan retained his seat in the House of Representatives. The Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), a Super PAC, has been closely linked and aligned with Ryan. Ryan has directed major GOP donors towards the CLF. Ryan's political positions were generally conservative, with a focus on fiscal policy. Ryan "played a central role in nearly all" the policy debates of the period 2010–2012. In 2012, Ryan voted against the Simpson-Bowles commission proposal to reduce the deficit, because the proposal raised taxes and failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act. While he was a self-proclaimed deficit hawk, Ryan's tenure of Speaker of the House saw a major expansion in government spending and a ballooning of deficits despite unified Republican control of Congress and the White House, no recession and no new foreign conflict. Ryan subscribed to supply-side economics and supported tax cuts including eliminating the capital gains tax, the corporate income tax, the estate tax, and the Alternative Minimum Tax. Ryan supports deregulation, including the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act of 1999, which repealed some financial regulation of banks from the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933. During the economic recovery from the Great Recession of the late 2000s, Ryan supported the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which authorized the Treasury to purchase toxic assets from banks and other financial institutions, and the auto industry bailout; Ryan opposed the Credit CARD Act of 2009, which expanded consumer protections regarding credit card plans, and the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which strengthened financial regulation. In 2016, Ryan rolled out a set of anti-poverty proposals that "seek to expand work requirements for those receiving federal benefits, to give states and local jurisdictions a greater role in administering those benefits, to better measure the results of federal programs for the poor, and to crack down on waste, fraud and abuse." Ryan believes federal poverty reduction programs are ineffective and he supports cuts to welfare, child care, Pell Grants, food stamps, and other federal assistance programs. Ryan supports block granting Medicaid to the states and the privatization of social security and Medicare. Ryan supported the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit and opposes the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as "Obamacare." Ryan supported the American Health Care Act of 2017 (AHCA), the 2017 House Republican plan to repeal and replace the ACA. In 2012, The New York Times said Ryan was "his party's most forceful spokesman for cutting entitlement spending." Ryan's non-fiscal policy positions were subject to additional national attention with his 2012 candidacy for Vice President. Ryan is pro-life and opposes abortion rights. Ryan opposed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which provides that the 180-day statute of limitations for filing an equal-pay lawsuit regarding pay discrimination resets with each new paycheck affected by that discriminatory action. In 2012, Ryan supported civil unions and opposed same-sex marriage. Ryan supported school vouchers, and supported the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001 and its repeal the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015. Ryan is unsure, and believes climate scientists are unsure, of the impact of human activity on climate change. Ryan supported tax incentives for the petroleum industry and opposed them for renewable energy. Ryan supported gun rights and opposed stricter gun control. Ryan supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ryan condemned Barack Obama's decision not to block a UN resolution criticizing Israeli settlement building in the occupied Palestinian territories as "absolutely shameful". Ryan supported President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. He stated: "Jerusalem has been, and always will be, the eternal, undivided capital of the State of Israel." Following the 2018 Russia–United States summit, in which Donald Trump stated that he believed Russian government did not interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Ryan confirmed his belief that Russian government interfered and advocated for more economic sanctions against Russia for the interference. Ryan supported U.S. involvement in the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen and used his power to block a House vote on the war in Yemen. At a 2005 Washington, D.C. gathering celebrating the 100th anniversary of Ayn Rand's birth, Ryan credited Rand with having inspired him to get involved in politics. In a speech that same year at the Atlas Society, he said he grew up reading Rand, and that her books taught him about his value system and beliefs. Ryan required staffers and interns in his congressional office to read Rand and gave copies of her novel Atlas Shrugged as gifts to his staff for Christmas. In his Atlas Society speech, he also described Social Security as a "socialist-based system". In 2009, Ryan said, "What's unique about what's happening today in government, in the world, in America, is that it's as if we're living in an Ayn Rand novel right now. I think Ayn Rand did the best job of anybody to build a moral case of capitalism, and that morality of capitalism is under assault." In April 2012, after receiving criticism from Georgetown University faculty members on his budget plan, Ryan rejected Rand's philosophy as atheistic, saying it "reduces human interactions down to mere contracts". He also called the reports of his adherence to Rand's views an "urban legend" and stated that he was deeply influenced by his Roman Catholic faith and by Thomas Aquinas. In March 2019, Ryan joined the board of directors of Fox Corporation, the owner of Fox News Channel and the Fox broadcast network. He has since joined the faculty of the University of Notre Dame. In April 2019, Ryan was nominated as the delegation leader to represent President Trump to visit Taipei. He attended the 40th anniversary ceremony of Taiwan Relations Act with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen. Ryan married Janna Christine Little, a tax attorney and graduate of Wellesley College and George Washington University Law School, in December 2000. Little, a native of Madill, Oklahoma, is the granddaughter of Reuel Little, who helped found the American Party to support the 1968 presidential campaign of George Wallace. Her cousin is former Democratic Representative Dan Boren (D-OK). The Ryans live in the Courthouse Hill Historic District of Janesville, Wisconsin. They have three children: Elizabeth "Liza" Anne, Charles Wilson, and Samuel Lowery. A Roman Catholic, Ryan is a member of St. John Vianney Catholic Church in Janesville. 2004, 2010 – Guardian of Small Business Award, National Federation of Independent Business, 2008 – Defending the American Dream Award, Americans for Prosperity, Wisconsin chapter, 2009 – Manufacturing Legislative Excellence Award, National Association of Manufacturers, 2009 – Honorary Degree, Miami University, 2010 – Legislator of the Year Award, International Franchise Association, 2011 – Statesmanship Award, Claremont Institute, 2011 – Fiscy Award for responsible financial stewardship and fiscal discipline in government., 2011 – Leadership Award, Jack Kemp Foundation, 2011 – Freedom and Prosperity Award, Mason Contractors Association of America, 2012 – Chair, Honorary Board of the Archery Trade Association, 2014 – Alexander Hamilton Award, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, 2018 – Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service Works about Ryan Works by Ryan Paul Ryan, Wisconsin Historical Society

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The fifth season of the sitcom Full House originally aired between September 17, 1991 and May 12, 1992 on ABC. In season five, Jesse and Rebecca become parents when Becky gives birth to twin boys, Nicky and Alex. Meanwhile, Jesse & The Rippers launch a new song which eventually becomes successful. Joey gets his own show The Legend of Ranger Joe which becomes a success. D.J. starts high school, and gets her own room while Stephanie and Michelle share a room. Stephanie starts fourth grade and Michelle starts kindergarten. Danny finds love. John Stamos as Jesse Katsopolis, Bob Saget as Danny Tanner, Dave Coulier as Joey Gladstone, Candace Cameron as D.J. Tanner, Jodie Sweetin as Stephanie Tanner, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen as Michelle Tanner, Lori Loughlin as Rebecca "Becky" Donaldson, Andrea Barber as Kimmy Gibbler List of Full House episodes General references This is a list of the characters from the American television sitcom Full House and its sequel series Fuller House. The former ran for eight seasons on ABC from September 22, 1987 to May 23, 1995. Fuller House followed 21 years later, airing on Netflix beginning February 26, 2016. The fourth season was released on December 14, 2018. Notes Jesse Katsopolis (portrayed by John Stamos) is Danny's brother-in-law, Pam's younger brother, making him the maternal uncle to DJ, Stephanie, and Michelle. Later in the series, he also becomes the spouse of Rebecca Donaldson, Danny's co-host on Wake Up, San Francisco, by whom he has two children, twin sons Nicholas and Alexander, better known as Nicky and Alex. The character underwent several name changes throughout the series' development and filming. He was originally named Adam Cochran during production, though this was ultimately changed to Jesse, at Stamos' request. Later, producers changed his last name from Cochran to one of Greek origin, to Katsopolis, also at the request of Stamos, who is Greek American. Finally, in the fifth season, it is revealed that Jesse was originally named Hermes, after his great-grandfather, but his mother changed it to Jesse at his request after he entered primary school, as his peers bullied him for his name. In contrast with Danny, Jesse is portrayed as being irresponsible most of the time, but occasionally serves as a responsible adult when a responsible adult is needed (such as when he discovers Stephanie's classmate is a child abuse victim in the season six episode "Silence is Not Golden"). Jesse is revealed as a high school dropout in season six's "Educating Jesse", though in an earlier plot (in season four's "One Last Kiss") about a high school reunion, he mentions not wearing his cap to his graduation because he did not want to mess up his hair. Jesse's obsession with his hair becomes a major trait of his throughout the series, as well as his obsession with Elvis Presley. His obsession with the former is fully established in the season two premiere "Cutting it Close", which focuses on Jesse's tough time coping when Stephanie accidentally cuts off a hunk of his mullet, which leads to him getting into a motorcycle accident that lands him in a full arm cast; later episodes reveal that he has a special comb called Mr. Goodpart (which gets damaged in a melee to purchase a Mighty Mutant Super Kids Super Fortress for Michelle in season eight's "I've Got a Secret") and that he gives pep talks to his hair (as revealed in season seven's "Wrong- Way Tanner"). Jesse first moves into the house with virtually no experience in taking care of young children or babies, but starts to learn the ropes along the way. He becomes closer to all of his nieces over the course of the series, especially Michelle, whom he affectionately nicknames "munchkin" and "shorty", among others. In the first season, Jesse works for his father Nick's exterminating business before leaving to pursue work in advertising, frequently working with Joey. He later works with Joey as co-hosts of an afternoon drive time show on local radio station KFLH called The Rush Hour Renegades. Further along in the series, in season seven's "Smash Club: The Next Generation", Jesse becomes the new owner of The Smash Club. Although he was shown to be a sports fan as well as a good athlete in the earlier seasons, it is revealed in later seasons that Jesse hated all sports (especially basketball, as revealed in "Air Jesse" from season eight) and was not very athletic. Jesse's main passion is music, and struggles to "hit it big" with his band, Jesse and the Rippers (in the earlier part of the series). However, his increasing responsibilities to his family, radio job, and as owner of a club, lead his band members to kick him out of the band (in the season eight premiere "Comet's Excellent Adventure"); in "Making Out is Hard to Do", he briefly decides to quit being a musician until he has a nightmare in which he appears on Downbeat (a Behind the Music-style show-within-a-dream-sequence) has him dream that his family hates him, Rebecca has divorced him (and moved on with Joey) and Jesse himself was a mechanic, as well as overweight and balding (because of a scalp infection), with Kimmy Gibbler (dressed in the attire of the Married... with Children character Peggy Bundy) as a wife. Two episodes later in "To Joey, With Love," he subsequently starts a new band called Hot Daddy and the Monkey Puppets. In Fuller House, Jesse, Becky, and Danny all move to Los Angeles. Jesse becomes the music composer for General Hospital while Becky and Danny start a new nationally syndicated talk show called, Wake Up USA. In the season two finale, Jesse and Becky adopt a baby girl whom they name Pamela after his sister. Somewhere along the line Jesse became a stay at home dad. When Becky and Danny get fired from Wake Up USA, they try to get their old jobs back but the station only wanted her back to co-host an all women's talk show. Jesse, Becky and Pamela are all moving back to San Francisco, and he also bought back the Smash Club (which is now a laundromat) along with Joey. Daniel Ernest "Danny" Tanner (portrayed by Bob Saget, John Posey in the unaired pilot) is left with three young daughters to raise after his wife, Pam, dies in a car accident caused by a drunk driver. At the beginning of the series, he works as a sportscaster for Channel 8 News. In the season two episode "Tanner vs. Gibbler", he is chosen by his station's general manager Mr. Strowbridge to be the co-host for the station's new morning talk show, Wake Up, San Francisco, alongside Rebecca Donaldson. In season one's "The Big Three-O," Danny's beloved car, "Bullet," is severely damaged after another driver rear-ends the vehicle, leading it roll out of park and become submerged in the San Francisco Bay as Jesse and Joey shop for new seat covers for the car to surprise Danny with as a present for his 30th birthday; Jesse and Joey end up bidding for a new car that is identical in appearance, unknowingly competing with Danny, who purchases the car (and later named it "Walter") after he calls the car dealership that Jesse and Joey are and places a bid over the phone. Danny goes on his first date since his wife's death in the season one episode "Sea Cruise," as part of a fishing trip that was intended to only include himself, Jesse and Joey; he is seen going out on dates on select occasions throughout the series. While Rebecca goes on maternity leave in season five just before giving birth to his nephews Nicky and Alex, Danny ends up falling in love with her co-host replacement, Vicky Larson. The two of them begin dating in season five's "Easy Rider," becoming Danny's most serious relationship since he became a widower, and the two later become engaged in the season six finale "The House Meets the Mouse". However, their relationship turned into a long-distance situation as Vicky was assigned various reporting jobs away from San Francisco. In season seven's "The Perfect Couple," Vicky ended up getting her dream job of anchoring the network news in New York City, but a long-distance relationship did not work for either of them, so Danny decides to break up with her; this leads him to a mass feng shui habit in the following episode, "Is It True About Stephanie?," to which his family acknowledges was his way of trying to cope with his breakup. Danny eventually meets fellow single parent Claire Mahan in season eight episode "Making Out Is Hard to Do," and go on a date in the episode "Claire and Present Danger." Although he is not established with this trait early on (season one's "The Return of Grandma" depicts him as begrudgingly trying to clean the messy house with Jesse and Joey after their mothers threaten to move in if they cannot keep the place clean), much of the humor surrounding Danny's character comes from his obsession with cleaning and cleanliness. Danny can often be found cleaning for cleaning's sake, sometimes even cleaning his cleaning products (in a version of the original season three opening titles, seen during episodes in which Lori Loughlin does not appear as Rebecca Donaldson, Danny is even shown to be cleaning his floor vacuum with a handheld vacuum). He says the family motto is "clean is good, dirt is bad". Danny views spring cleaning as his equivalent to Christmas and home movies as his New Year's Eve (as revealed in the season two episode "Goodbye, Mr. Bear"). His quirkiness and generally "unhip dad" personality are also targets for humor. He is a skilled pool, dart player and guitarist (as respectively revealed in season four's, "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun," and season eight's, "To Joey, with Love"). Like most other characters, he generally cannot stand Kimmy Gibbler, considering her as “an annoying, obnoxious nuisance”; at times, urging D.J. to make new friends whenever Kimmy does something that irritates him. Danny also has one brother and one sister, and his parents are divorced. Unlike his brother-in- law Jesse (who is more into rock-and-roll), Danny has a taste for 1970s Disco music; one of his favorite songs is "Play That Funky Music" by Wild Cherry. In the first episode of Fuller House, Danny and Becky relocate to Los Angeles for their new talk show, Wake Up USA, and it is revealed that Danny got remarried to a woman named Teri. During the second season Danny goes through a little bit of a mid-life crisis since he just turned 60. In season three Danny reveals that him and Teri got divorced. Danny and Becky asked for raises on their show but since they asked for too much they are fired and replaced by Mario Lopez. After feeling sorry for themselves they go back to Wake Up San Francisco to ask for their old jobs back but the station only wants Becky back. To cheer him up, the girls somehow tracked down Vicky and surprised him with her. He invites her to the 30th "Dadi-versary" party the girls threw for him, Jesse and Joey. Since Becky, Jesse and Joey are all moving back to San Francisco, Danny announces he's moving back too, and back into the house. In season four Becky's talk show The Gab was a success but it turned back into Wake Up San Francisco. Danny refused to audition to be her co-host, and briefly lived life as an retiree. He eventually realizes that he misses being on air and gets his old job back. Joseph Alvin "Joey" Gladstone (portrayed by Dave Coulier) is the childhood best friend of Danny Tanner, and adulthood best friend of Jesse Katsopolis. Joey moved in with Danny shortly after the death of Danny's wife, Pam, to help raise D.J., Stephanie, and Michelle. Joey works as a stand-up comedian, whose act usually includes vocal imitations of cartoon characters such as Popeye, Bullwinkle J. Moose, Pepé Le Pew and others. Joey initially slept in the alcove of Danny's living room. However, after complaining of not being able to find privacy, Danny reconstructs his basement garage into a bedroom for him in the season one episode "Joey's Place" (prior to the reveal, Joey contemplates moving out after the family's behavior makes him believe that Jesse and Danny can handle taking care of the girls and that he is not needed). Joey nearly quits comedy in the season one episode "But Seriously, Folks," after Phyllis Diller (who was there as an audience member) hogs his slot at a comedy club, deciding to change his name to Joe and become a serious businessman. He reverses his decision after D.J. decides to quit practicing the guitar, realizing that he is not setting a good example. Although there was some tension between Joey and Jesse when they first move in with the Tanners, they quickly become good friends to the point where Jesse asks Joey to be his best man at his wedding. Even so, Joey's perceived immaturity does irritate Jesse at times. Joey usually handles the day-to-day raising of the kids by doing chores like making meals, driving the kids to school appointments, and after school activities, taking care of Michelle as a baby, and helping the kids with their homework. Joey also buys D.J. her first car for her 16th birthday in the season six episode "Grand Gift Auto," which ends up getting repossessed after the police discover that the car had been stolen; Joey nearly moves out again after the family's attempts to try illustrate that Joey is not capable of committing a crime make him believe that the rest of the family thinks of him as a big joke. It is in this episode that Joey reveals that he had wished to have siblings as he grew up as an only child (even imaging that he was part of The Brady Bunch), and that being part of the Tanner family gave him the extended family he always wanted. In season four's "Viva Las Joey," Joey is reunited with his estranged father (at the arrangement of Stephanie and D.J.), a former serviceman in the Armed Forces, with whom Joey did not get along with growing up due to his strict parenting style and his disapproval of Joey's dream of being a comedian; his father realizes that Joey made the right career decision when he sees him perform as an opening act for Wayne Newton in Las Vegas. Joey has held various jobs in addition to his work as a stand-up comic. For a while during seasons two and three, Joey and Jesse run an advertising business, J&J; Creative Services, in which they partnered to compose jingles for television and radio commercials. In season four's "Joey Goes Hollywood," Joey wins a role he secretly auditions for in a sitcom co-starring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello called Surf's Up. Joey's most successful job was portraying "Ranger Joe," on an afternoon children's variety television show. He was given the job to replace retiring original host "Ranger Roy" in season five's "The Legend of Ranger Joe," only to be fired after triggering Roy's acute physical paranoia when hugging him as a thank you; after Danny informs Joey of this while telling him of his firing, Joey ends up saving Roy from a "hug-o-gram" that he had sent to gratitude for the job; he then gets rehired after Roy becomes impressed with Joey's hosting skills when he takes over for Roy on his last show. Ranger Joe's sidekick is his wise-cracking woodchuck marionette puppet "Mr. Woodchuck" (first seen in "The Legend of Ranger Joe" and last seen in "Michelle Rides Again"). Joey quits his job in season six's "Radio Days," after he becomes disgruntled with his boss Mr. Strowbridge's wife as his co-host. Jesse and Joey subsequently become co-hosts of a successful afternoon show on radio station KFLH called, Rush Hour Renegades. Besides his impressions, much of Joey's humor comes from his depiction as a man child, particularly the fact that he still watches cartoons as an adult and has an extensive knowledge of animation. Joey has moved to Las Vegas in Fuller House, and is now married with four kids. His wife Ginger (Laura Bell Bundy) is a magician, and their kids, Phyllis, Lewis, Joan, and Jerry are very loud and obnoxious. Joey and his kids are moving back to San Francisco since his wife will be working as a magician on a cruise ship for six months. He also bought back the Smash Club with Jesse. Donna Jo Margaret "D.J." Tanner-Fuller (portrayed by Candace Cameron Bure) is Danny and Pam's oldest child. Over the course of the show's run, D.J. attends Frasier Street Elementary, Van Atta Junior High and Bayview High School. In the pilot episode "Our Very First Show," she ends up having to share her bedroom with Stephanie in order to allow Jesse to move into Stephanie's old bedroom; due to problems with privacy regarding Stephanie, in the season five episode "Take My Sister, Please," she sells Danny on an idea to switch rooms with Michelle, who in turn would move in with Stephanie (only after convincing Michelle to move in with Stephanie, after she rejects the offer to move in with her older sister). D.J. is typically the daughter who acts the most practical, often giving advice to her younger sisters, Michelle and Stephanie. Although she sometimes bickers with them, she cares for them deeply. As D.J. entered into middle school, she started to deal with more serious issues like puberty and dating. She has her first serious relationship with Steve Hale (who was first introduced in the season five episode "Sisters in Crime"), who later becomes a real fixture in her life (and a regular character beginning in season six) when their characters return from a summer abroad in Spain. Their relationship lasts until they break up in the season seven episode "Love on the Rocks," when they realize that the passion in their relationship is gone, but they agree to remain friends. D.J. has on-and-off relationships (during the show's final season) with guitarist Viper (a member of Jesse's new band Hot Daddy and the Monkey Puppets) and rich kid Nelson, but both relationships do not last (the two end up vying for D.J.'s affections in the season eight episode "D.J.'s Choice," only for D.J. to reject them both after their fighting gets to be too much for her to bear). In the series finale "Michelle Rides Again," Steve shows up at the Tanner house to take D.J. to her senior prom and they share a kiss. Her best friend throughout the show was next-door neighbor Kimmy Gibbler, who was the complete opposite of D.J. in every way. In season eight, D.J. gets accepted to University of California, Berkeley and it is implied she will go to college there after graduating high school (after she was rejected from her first choice, Stanford University). In Fuller House, D.J. is a recent widow and mother of three kids, Jackson, Max and Tommy, and lives with Stephanie and Kimmy. D.J. has since become a veterinarian. When her boss retires, his son, Matt Harmon, and D.J. take over the pet clinic. Matt and Steve fight for D.J.'s affection, but both end up dating other people after D.J. says she's not ready to commit someone new yet. Realizing they have feelings for each other, Matt breaks up with his girlfriend and starts dating D.J. On the way to Steve's wedding in Japan, D.J., wearing a sleeping mask – and thinking she's talking to Kimmy – unknowingly tells Steve that she was going to pick him over Matt, and she feels like she's losing her soulmate. Steve tells Kimmy about D.J.'s confession and his intention to confront D.J. but changes his mind after he witnesses Matt proposing to D.J. The next day, before the wedding starts, Kimmy tells D.J. that Steve was the one who heard what she said on the plane. At the altar, Steve calls off the wedding, and D.J. breaks her engagement to Matt. Back home, the two decide to wait a month before they start dating, out of respect to their exes. After their "third, first date," Steve tells D.J. that the Los Angeles Lakers want him to be the team's foot specialist. He chooses to stay with her, but D.J. calls the team and says that he will take the job. After a few months Steve quits his job so that he can date DJ. Steve proposes to D.J. in season five. Stephanie Judith Tanner (portrayed by Jodie Sweetin) is the witty, sarcastic middle child of Danny and Pam, the younger sister of D.J., and the older sister of Michelle. Her mother died when she was five years old. Her catchphrases during the early seasons of the series include "how rude!," "well, pin a rose on your nose!" and "hot dog". She eventually evolved into something of a tomboy in seasons four and five. Stephanie has a habit of spying on D.J.'s life by reading her diary and eavesdropping on her telephone calls (having been caught in the act several times), and is generally the most athletic and nosiest of the Tanner girls. Her best friends in school are Gia Mahan and Mickey, whom she meets in season seven (the former is the only one who appears through to season eight). Of the three sisters, Stephanie has dealt with the toughest issues, such as peer pressure into smoking (in season seven's "Fast Friends"), "make-out" parties (in season eight's "Making Out is Hard to Do"), joyriding (in season eight's "Stephanie's Wild Ride"), and uncovering a classmate's child abuse (in season six's "Silence is Not Golden"), as well as the death of her mother when she was only five. In her early years, she is very sentimental about Mr. Bear, a stuffed animal that her mother gave to her after Michelle was born (this was the focal point of the season two episode "Goodbye Mr. Bear"). She and Jesse are the most abrasive when it comes to how they feel about Kimmy Gibbler. In Fuller House, Stephanie volunteers to give up her life in London to move back into her childhood home to help take care of her sister's three kids. Kimmy volunteers to move in as well much to Stephanie's dismay but she soon puts her abrasive feelings aside, and becomes friends with her. Stephanie confesses to D.J. that she can't have kids but wants to. Stephanie starts a relationship with Kimmy's younger brother Jimmy. Becky schedules Stephanie for a pelvic exam and turns out she has three vivable eggs and can have a baby via surrogacy. Since she hasn't been dating Jimmy for that long she doesn't want to put pressure on him for being the father, and throwing him into a lifelong commitment so soon in their relationship. He wants to be the father. They are able to make embryos and Kimmy volunteers to be the surrogate mother. Kimmy is able to get pregnant with the embryos. At the end of season four Kimmy gives birth to a baby girl, and Jimmy proposes to Stephanie which she accepts. Stephanie names the baby Danielle "Danni" Jo, named after her dad and D.J.. Michelle Elizabeth Tanner (played by twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen), is Danny and Pam's youngest daughter. Danny is more overprotective of Michelle than the other girls. Michelle was just a baby when Pam died, so she hardly remembers her mom. Jesse and Joey's misadventures in taking care of her when she was a baby provided a great deal of humor. Once Michelle started to grow up, she became the focus of more of the show's storylines. Her best friends, Teddy and Denise, appear frequently in later seasons. She also has other friends, such as Derek Boyd, Lisa Leeper, and bossy Aaron Bailey, who Michelle has an uneasy friendship with. Her favorite toys (in earlier seasons) are Barney, a plush bear who hangs on the wall above her bed, and her stuffed pig. It is apparent that Jesse is somewhat closer to her than her sisters, and he gives her nicknames such as "munchkin", "shorty" and "rugrat". She is known for her many recurring catchphrases such as "you got it, dude!", "you're in big trouble, mister!", "oh, puh-lease!", "aw, nuts!", "duh!", and "no way, José!" Michelle does not appear in Fuller House but it is mentioned that she is now living in New York, and owns a fashion company. (a real-life reference to the character's actresses being fashion designers currently) Rebecca Donaldson "Becky" Katsopolis (portrayed by Lori Loughlin) is a sarcastic, practical, but very loving and well-educated woman who becomes the love interest and later wife of Jesse Katsopolis. Becky was born in Valentine, Nebraska and decided to pursue journalism as a career while in high school. Becky moves to San Francisco to become the co-host of Wake Up, San Francisco, being paired with Danny as her co-host; the two become close friends, although she often quips about Danny's quirks and tendency to ramble in his conversations. Reluctant to admit her feelings for Jesse, she initially resists his advances but eventually falls in love with him. The two almost elope in Lake Tahoe in the season two finale "Luck Be a Lady", but back out when Becky realizes that she and Jesse are not really ready to get married. They eventually get married (in the second part of the season four episode "The Wedding") on Valentine's Day. After Jesse has a bittersweet farewell to the rest of the family when he decides to move into Rebecca's apartment in the season four episode "Fuller House", Rebecca agrees to move in with the Tanners and Joey when she discovers how much Jesse misses them, living together in the attic (which Jesse and Joey have converted into an apartment). Becky helps to transform Jesse, although she still teases him about his obsession with his hair and love of Elvis. She also serves as a mother figure to the girls at times; most prominently giving advice to D.J. as she becomes a teenager. Becky gives birth to twin boys Nicholas and Alexander on Michelle's fifth birthday in part two of the season five episode "Happy Birthday, Babies". She and Jesse name Alexander after a teacher who inspired her to become a journalist and Nicholas after Jesse's father. Becky is offered a producer role on Wake Up, San Francisco in the season eight episode "The Producer", which results in Danny briefly quitting the show due to him being passed over for such a promotion. In Fuller House, she, Jesse, and Danny all move to Los Angeles to start their new jobs. She and Danny now host a nationally syndicated talk show called, Wake Up USA. Becky gets baby fever when around D.J.'s youngest son, Tommy. She and Jesse end up adopting a baby girl whom they name Pamela. Becky and Danny get fired from Wake Up USA when they ask for too much money. They ask for their old jobs back at Wake Up San Francisco but the station wants only her back. They want her to host an all-women's talk show called The Gab. She, Jesse and Pamela move back to San Francisco. The Gab is a hit but turns back into Wake Up San Francisco. When the show starts back up Danny refuses to audition to be her co-host, which results in her being stuck with a Neanderthal co-host, but not long after he is able to get his old job back. Kimberly Louise "Kimmy" Gibbler (portrayed by Andrea Barber, recurring since season one and upgraded to a series regular in season five) is D.J.'s best friend and the Tanners' annoying but well-meaning next-door neighbor. Kimmy and D.J. have been best friends since the Gibblers moved next door to the Tanners, despite their differing personalities; the two have temporarily ended their friendship multiple times during the show's run due to disputes over various situations, but always end up reconciling and forgiving each other. Most of the Tanner family cannot stand her (Danny, Stephanie and Jesse are especially annoyed by her, with Stephanie often making jabs at her lack of intelligence and other unusual quirks and Danny urging D.J. to make new friends and often asking Kimmy to leave the house). She is often known to be a poor student in school, and had copied D.J.'s homework during most of the early seasons. Kimmy is the subject of a recurring gag in the series, regarding her terrible foot odor, which becomes noticeable to other people mainly once she removes her shoes; Kimmy also becomes aware of this in a scene in the season seven episode "The Apartment", in which she accidentally grabs one of her shoes while searching for her phone when Danny calls her to find out the whereabouts of D.J. (who had fallen asleep on her boyfriend Steve's couch while watching a movie in his apartment). She is also known to be addicted to shopping. In the episode "Another Opening, Another No Show", Jesse and Kimmy get locked in a closet on the night of the grand re-opening of The Smash Club, after the door handle breaks off in Jesse's hand; while there, Kimmy finally tells Jesse how much it hurts when he and the other Tanners (except for D.J.) pick on her. He finally tries to stop picking on her and tells the Tanners to try to go easy on her. However, their behavior towards her remains the same in later episodes, although she never seems to mind it anymore. Kimmy's only serious relationship is with Duane (who is introduced in season eight episode "Taking the Plunge"), a very air-headed boy who was only known to say "whatever". Ironically, he was shown to have a fondness for Shakespearean works as he passionately quoted a line from Shakespeare's 18th sonnet. In "Taking the Plunge," Kimmy decides to run off to Reno and elope with Duane after she was rejected by the colleges that she had applied to, and is afraid that D.J. will go off to school and forget her. When D.J., Jesse, and Danny arrive at the chapel to stop her from getting married too young, D.J. tells her that she will always be her best friend no matter what. In the two-part series finale "Michelle Rides Again," she tries to find D.J. a blind date for prom, and ends up surprising her with her ex-boyfriend Steve instead. Sometime after high school Kimmy married a race car driver named Fernando, and had a daughter named Ramona. In the Fuller House sequel series, she gets separated from Fernando, then she and Ramona move into the Tanner family home after D.J's husband died. She moved in to help her along with Stephanie. Kimmy starts a party planning business called Gibbler Style. Kimmy volunteers to be Stephanie and Jimmy's surrogate mother. At the end of season four Kimmy gives birth to Stephanie and Jimmy's baby girl. Steven "Steve" Hale (originally introduced as Steve Peters; portrayed by Scott Weinger) is D.J.'s first steady boyfriend. He is introduced in the season five episode "Sisters in Crime" as D.J.'s date to a movie that she ends up taking Michelle and Stephanie to, and returns to the series as a regular character in the sixth-season premiere "Come Fly With Me" (which establishes the character as played by Weinger in his original appearance the season prior). Steve is two years older than D.J. and is a star member of the high school wrestling team. He is known for having a healthy appetite, and often eats at the Tanners' when he visits. In "A Very Tanner Christmas," Steve receives an acceptance letter to a party school in Florida that he had applied to (this causes the two to briefly break up due to D.J.'s concern that she would miss him), but decides to go to a local community college in order to improve his grades and continue his relationship with D.J. In the season six episode "Prom Night," both he and D.J. attend Steve's prom where he is elected prom king (although his ex-girlfriend—whose affections he later rejects—is named prom queen). Steve and D.J. break up in the season seven episode "Love on the Rocks," after they realize that their relationship was not as passionate as it used to be, but they decide to remain friends. When D.J. needs a date for her senior prom, Kimmy surprises her and gets Steve to be her date. After college Steve becomes a podiatrist. In Fuller House Steve is a divorcee and his ex took half what he's worth. With him and D.J. both now single he tries to start a relationship with her again. He ends up later getting engaged to woman named C.J. who is just like D.J. On the way to Japan, thinking that Kimmy is sitting next to her, D.J. confesses that she was going to pick Steve not Matt, and feels like she is losing her soulmate. Steve was the one who actually heard it. At the altar he realizes he still loves D.J. and can't marry C.J. so he calls the wedding off. D.J who still has feelings for Steve break up with Matt. A month after the almost wedding they start dating again. There is bad news for the reunited couple when the Lakers want him to be their foot specialist. He declines the job to stay with D.J., but she calls the team to say he will take the job. Steve tells her they will back together in six months. After a few months on the job Steve quits his job and moves back home so he can be with DJ. He proposes to her in season five. Nicholas "Nicky" and Alexander "Alex" Katsopolis, (played by Daniel and Kevin Renteria as babies during season five; Blake and Dylan Tuomy-Wilhoit as toddlers for seasons 6–8) are the twin sons of Jesse and Becky Katsopolis. The two were born in the season five episode "Happy Birthday, Babies," on the date of Michelle's fifth birthday. Becky named Alex after a high school teacher who inspired her to venture into a career in journalism, while Jesse chose to name Nicky after his father, for giving him great hair. They have strawberry-blond hair and are fun-loving toddlers, with minor distinctions between them. Nicky is more quiet and sweet, while Alex is more outspoken and mischievous. They often repeat each other's words. In Fuller House, the twins are portrayed as dimwitted young adults who are strongly despised by their once-doting parents, who find them to be annoying and immature. However, they decide to run a fish taco food truck together upon completion of college. It's later mentioned by Kimmy, that they live in the food truck - much to Jesse's delight. Jackson Fuller (portrayed by Michael Campion) is D.J.'s oldest son. When Kimmy and her daughter, Ramona, move in Jackson has to give up his room and move in with his brother Max. Jackson and Ramona don't get along at first but become like brother and sister. Jackson has shown to be a good older brother to Max and Tommy. Jackson likes to do stunts, and joins the football team to impress Ramona's friend, Lola. He likes to call himself "J. Money" and "Action Jackson". He briefly dates Lola but she breaks up with him for being too clingy. While attending summer school he becomes friends with Gia's daughter Rocki, much to D.J's dislike. The eventually become a couple but at prom when his friends ask why he's with her, he pretends to say bad things about her to impress them but she overhears him in the photobooth and walks off. She breaks up with him. Jackson discovers he is good at kicking the football and becomes the star kicker on the football team. Max Fuller (portrayed by Elias Harger) is D.J.'s well dressed and intelligent middle child. He likes science, and is shown to be a clean freak like his grandfather. Max has rivalries with Kimmy's fiancé Fernando and classmate Taylor. Max's girlfriend is Rose, the daughter of Steve's fiancée C.J. Ramona Gibbler (portrayed by Soni Nicole Bringas) is the daughter of Kimmy Gibbler and her ex-husband/fiancé, Fernando. She is not thrilled when she has to move into the Tanner family home and change schools. Ramona quickly befriends one of the popular girls in school, Lola Wong, and briefly dates Jackson's friend, Bobby Popko. She is an aspiring dancer. Tommy Fuller, Jr. (portrayed by twins, Dashiell and Fox Messitt) is D.J.'s youngest son. Like his aunt Michelle he also loses a parent as a baby. Fernando Hernandez-Guerrero-Fernandez-Guerrero (portrayed by Juan Pablo Di Pace), is Kimmy Gibbler's race car driving ex-husband/fiancé. At the start of Fuller House, he and Kimmy are separated due to his unfaithfulness to her. Fernando begins to miss her and tries to win her back. It works, but he ends up finally signing their divorce papers. He only does this to repropose, which she accepts. Fernando retires from his racing career, and moves in. Ten months after moving in, he buys Kimmy's childhood home and moves in with her brother. Matt Harmon (portrayed by John Brotherton) is D.J.'s partner at the Harmon/Fuller Pet Care. He originally intended to fill in for his dad while he was away on a trip to India but decides to stay in San Francisco. When his dad retires he has Matt and D.J. take over the business. Matt and Steve fight for D.J.'s affection. She and him eventually begin dating. While in Japan for Steve and C.J's wedding, Matt proposed to D.J. and she says yes. The next day at the wedding Steve calls off his wedding, and D.J. breaks off her engagement. A heartbroken Matt walks off. He goes on an eight-day vacation and when he comes back to work he tells D.J. he doesn't know how he able to work with her if they're not together anymore. He takes some time off to think, and when he returns he tells her that he will be opening up a new pet clinic two blocks down. He opens his new clinic and tries to sabotage her business as a way to hurt her like she did him. His clinic doesn't last long when him and DJ realize they work better together as partners. Matt eventually starts dating Gia much to DJ's annoyance. In season five the two eloped while in Las Vegas. Before becoming a veterinary doctor Matt used to be an underwear model. Lola Wong (portrayed by Ashley Liao) is Ramona's best friend and Jackson's ex- girlfriend. Lola's father gets a job in Fresno and she moves. Jimmy Gibbler (portrayed by Adam Hagenbuch) is Kimmy's younger brother. One day he walks into the family's backyard and hears Stephanie singing. The two end up kissing, and are interrupted by Kimmy who informs Stephanie that he is her brother. Jimmy and Stephanie begin dating. When Stephanie gets the news that she can have a baby via surrogacy, she thinks it's too soon in their relationship to ask him to be the father. After finding that out from Kimmy, he tells her that he wants to be her baby's father. Kimmy volunteers to be his and Stephanie's surrogate. In the season four finale Kimmy gives birth to their baby girl, Danielle. Danielle "Dani" Jo Gibbler is Stephanie and Jimmy's daughter. Comet (portrayed by Buddy) is a golden retriever who is a pet of the Tanner family. He first appeared in "And They Call it Puppy Love" where his mother Minnie got into the Tanner family's backyard where she had her puppies. Out of the puppies, Comet was the one that the Tanner family kept. In Fuller House, Steve's dog Comet Jr. Jr. (Comet's grand pup) has puppies and D.J. allows Max to pick a puppy. He names him Cosmo. The dog actor that played Cosmo, also named Cosmo, died in December 2019, shortly after production on the series ended. Vicky Larson (played by Gail Edwards) is Danny's girlfriend during seasons five and six and was briefly his fiancée from the season six episode "The House Meets the Mouse" until halfway through season seven. Vicky is very focused on her career, which proves to be the undoing in her long-distance relationship with Danny. They meet in season five's "Nicky and/or Alexander," when Vicky fills in for Becky (who is on maternity leave) on Wake Up, San Francisco, and start dating two episodes later in "Easy Rider". Later in season five's "Play It Again, Jesse," Danny insists that she take a news anchor job in Chicago that she was offered once Becky returns, and that starts a long-distance relationship (that goes from mid-season five to mid-season seven). Danny eventually proposes to her when she comes along on the family's vacation to Walt Disney World in "The House Meets the Mouse". However, Vicky later gets her dream job—anchoring the network news in New York City in the season seven episode "The Perfect Couple" (the character's final appearance); as a result, she cannot come to live with Danny and his family in San Francisco, nor is Danny able to uproot his family in California. Therefore, to the dismay of themselves and Danny's family, they have a mutual breakup. Vicky often gives advice, such as helping D.J. with her relationship with Steve, and helping Danny to deal with it and serves as a motherly figure to D.J., Stephanie, and Michelle. Vicky makes a brief appearance in the season three finale of Fuller House. D.J. and Stephanie apparently tracked her down to cheer up Danny. He invites her to the 30th "Dadiversary" party the girls threw for Danny, Joey and Jesse., Nick Katsopolis (played by John Aprea) is Jesse and Pam's father and maternal grandfather to D.J., Stephanie, and Michelle. He is an avid fan of Elvis Presley, just like Jesse. Also, like his son, he is very much interested in his hair and women (as he states in the season two episode "Our Very First Christmas Show", "there are two things Katsopolis men are known for: kissing and great hair"). Nick is the owner of an insect extermination business. He met his wife, Irene, the day that Elvis was drafted into the United States Army. Nick was a firm but caring parent. In the episode, "D.J.'s Day Off" it is mentioned that he would punish Jesse severely. This combination is also seen in the episode "It Is Not My Job", when Jesse quits the extermination business Nick responds with: "If you're out of the business, you're out of the family." Later on, he explains this by saying that he did not build up the business to sell it to a stranger. His love for his family is also shown by the fact that Irene bringing in Michelle curbed his anger. When Michelle was getting ready to do a television commercial for marshmallows in the season two episode "El Problema Grande de D.J.", he remarked that Michelle looked like a little blonde version of the redhead he likes on Gilligan's Island, which was revealed to be Tina Louise by Irene. In honor of inheriting Nick's hair, Jesse names one of his twin sons after him. Nicky and Alex never interact with their grandparents on-screen like the girls have, as Nick and Irene are last seen in season four. Nick re-appears in season three of Fuller House when he comes to take care of Tommy while everyone else goes to Japan for Steve's wedding. Nick mentions to Tommy about going out to find women, so it is assumed that him and Irene are no longer together or she is no longer living., Irene Katsopolis (played by Yvonne Wilder, and by Rhoda Gemignani in "The Return of Grandma") is Jesse and Pam's mother, the wife of Nick Katsopolis, and maternal grandmother to D.J., Stephanie, and Michelle. She often talked about diapering Jesse's "tushy", and touched his and other people's "tushies," which made Jesse mad; at other times, she would talk about when Jesse was a kid. She often mentioned how she is older than Nick, and her passion for younger men (which makes Nick feel inferior at times)., Claire Tanner (portrayed by Alice Hirson, and Doris Roberts) is Danny's mother. She helped Danny raise the girls in the first few months after the death of Danny's wife, Pam, prior to Jesse and Joey moving into the house. She appeared in only three episodes: "Our Very First Show" and "The Return of Grandma" (as portrayed by Hirson), and in "Granny Tanny" (as portrayed by Roberts)., Teddy (played by Tahj Mowry) is Michelle's best friend. He first appeared in the season five premiere "Double Trouble," when Michelle meets him on their first day of kindergarten following the advice that Joey told Michelle that the best way to make new friends was by being funny, and does a Bullwinkle impression. He accompanies her when she needs a "date" to sneak out and join Danny on a date with Vicky in the season five episode "Bachelor of the Month". He is also the one whose house Michelle runs away to in "The Devil Made Me Do It" later that season (Tahj Mowry's real-life sisters Tia and Tamera Mowry appear in that episode in a dual role as Teddy's older sister). He moves to Amarillo, Texas in the season six episode "The Long Goodbye"; Teddy returns in the season seven episode "Be Your Own Best Friend", when his father's job moves him back to San Francisco. He and Michelle even consider trying to be boyfriend and girlfriend in third grade in the season eight episode "Dateless in San Francisco", but find that it is no fun for children their age., Denise Frazer (played by Jurnee Smollett) is Michelle's best female friend, introduced in the season six episode "The Long Goodbye". She replaces Teddy as Michelle's best friend after Teddy moves to Texas. Denise, like Teddy before her, often gets Michelle into trouble. In the season seven episode "Be Your Own Best Friend," Teddy moves back to San Francisco, leaving Michelle to choose between him and Denise for whom to serve as her best friend. Danny makes her understand that it is possible to have more than one best friend. Michelle ultimately forms a trio of friends with Teddy and Denise at the end of that episode. In the season seven episode "Too Little Richard Too Late," it is revealed that Denise's uncle is Little Richard (who guest starred in the episode). Denise does not appear after that episode, having been written out without explanation due to Smollett's role in the short-lived ABC sitcom On Our Own (which aired during the 1994–95 season, concurring with the run of Full Houses eighth and final season)., Aaron Bailey (played by Miko Hughes) is Michelle's recurring and longest running classmate. Introduced in the season three episode "Bye, Bye Birdie", he is the typical class bully, who tends to be annoying and rude at times. He pinches Michelle in the season four episode "A Pinch for a Pinch," which results in Jesse telling Michelle to fight back by pinching him in retaliation. When the teacher punishes them, Jesse takes Michelle home, pulling her out of preschool. While that behavior does not continue, his obnoxious ways continue throughout the series. In other episodes, he treats Jesse as either an equal or underlying rival. In addition, he also creates trouble for D.J. and Kimmy when they have boys over while Kimmy is babysitting in season four's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun". Danny even remarks (in season seven) that they are watching Aaron for several days "until his regular babysitter stops twitching". He is sometimes seen being nice to Michelle., Gia Mahan (played by Marla Sokoloff) is Stephanie's archenemy (beginning with her first appearance in the season seven episode "Fast Friends"), who later becomes her best friend (starting with the conclusion of "Is It True About Stephanie?" from that same season, but more prominently during season eight). She leads Stephanie into dangerous or not-so-smart situations. Stephanie gets involved in a few wild, irresponsible things because of Gia, such as going to a make-out party planned by her in the season eight episode "Making Out is Hard to Do", and (almost) smoking in "Fast Friends". Conversely, Stephanie was also a positive influence on Gia. During an unknown time when her parents had been through a divorce, Gia is shown as a cigarette-smoking, rebellious teen with horrible grades. She is two years older than Stephanie, as she was held back in school. Viewers learn (as of "Making Out is Hard to Do") that because of Stephanie, Gia has stopped smoking, became more respectful, improved her grades, and lost her inclination to play pranks on other people. Gia becomes the target of put downs at the hands of Michelle in much the same way as Kimmy is targeted by Stephanie. Over time, Michelle becomes quite creative with her insults. Gia reappears in season two of Fuller House when Kimmy gets the idea of getting their band "Girl Talk" back together. Things don't go well when Gia and D.J. have a hard time getting along. In season three, it was revealed that Gia has a daughter named Roxanne “Rocki” (portrayed by Landry Bender) who is in summer school with Jackson. In season four she starts dating Matt much to DJ's annoyance. In season five they elope while in Las Vegas. Matt is her fourth husband., Kathy Santoni (played by Anne Marie McEvoy) is a classmate of D.J.'s. While only appearing in four episodes (beginning with season three's "Back to School Blues"), Kathy Santoni is mentioned in several episodes by various characters. In the season seven episode "The Apartment," it is revealed that she got married and pregnant at age 16. Kathy shows up to her 20th high school reunion in Fuller House., Harry Takayama (played by Nathan Nishiguchi in Full House; Michael Sun Lee in Fuller House) is the first on-screen friend of Stephanie's (appearing in season two, beginning with the episode "Middle Age Crazy"). He usually calls her "Chief", and she refers to him as her boyfriend—without understanding that term's full meaning (as Stephanie put it in Harry's first appearance, "you're a boy, and you're my friend; that makes you my boyfriend"). Stephanie decides to have a pretend wedding with Harry in "Middle Age Crazy," feeling that she is not receiving attention from the rest of the family. His last appearance is in the season three episode "Nerd For a Day". In the episode "Pal Joey," Harry becomes infatuated with D.J. after she teaches him a mathematic problem using oranges. Over the years him and Stephanie stayed in touch, and she jokingly refers to him as her "husband". In Fuller House, when a thousand roses showed up to the house, Stephanie wonders if Harry sent them. Turns out he didn't send them and is actually getting married., Derek S. Boyd (played by Blake McIver Ewing) is one of Michelle's friends (appearing in eight episodes total throughout seasons six through eight). Michelle first meets Derek in the episode "The Play's the Thing," when he lands the role of Yankee Doodle in their school play, America the Beautiful. Though Michelle is initially jealous of Derek for winning the part over her (due in no small part to the fact that both of her sisters played Yankee Doodle in the same play), she helps him recover from a case of stage-fright, and they eventually become friends. Derek is very educated and well-spoken for a boy of his age, though also a bit on the wimpy side. He also shows signs of being a bit obsessive-compulsive. As shown in several episodes (including in his first appearance), he is also shown to be a very talented singer. In the scene in which he is first introduced, Derek says he blends in with his surroundings., Lisa Leeper (played by Kathryn Zaremba) is one of Michelle's friends (featured in six episodes during the eighth season, beginning with "I've Got a Secret"); in the episode We Got the Beat," Lisa is shown to be an extremely good singer when she sings a duet of "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" with Derek., Nelson Burkhardt (played by Jason Marsden/ Hal Sparks in Fuller House) is a love interest for D.J. that is introduced in the season eight premiere "Comet's Excellent Adventure". Nelson is a teenager who comes from a very wealthy family, and dates D.J. on-and-off for some time (ironically, it is in his first appearance that D.J. breaks up with him; he ends up going on a date with Kimmy three episodes later in "I've Got a Secret"). Not much is revealed about Nelson's background or family, aside from the fact that he is very rich, and often throws and attends big parties on yachts. Though in "Taking the Plunge," he mentions that his cousin, Regina – with whom he sets Joey up on a date – is visiting the United States from England. Toward the latter stages of his "relationship" with D.J., in "D.J.'s Choice," he gets into a "tug-of-war" with Viper to be D.J.'s boyfriend, to which she declines both boys. Nelson shows up to his and D.J.'s 20th High School Reunion in season two of Fuller House., Cindy (played by Debra Sandlund) is a girlfriend of Danny's, appearing in three episodes during season four, beginning with the episode "Terror in Tanner Town". It is revealed that she works as a dry cleaner in that episode, and she first met Danny when he comes to the store as a customer. She also has a precocious and troublesome 10-year-old son named Rusty., Rusty (portrayed by Jordan Christopher Michael) is the son of Cindy, Danny's girlfriend in season four, first appearing in "Terror in Tanner Town". Rusty has a penchant of performing mischievous antics and practical jokes that wreak havoc on the family. During a crazy prank that Rusty started in "Secret Admirer," he misunderstood D.J.'s words and believed that she was romantically interested in him. This caused him to develop a brief crush on her, but quickly got over it when the other members of the family caught on to his prank, in which he sent a letter intended to D.J. (without signing his name on it) that ends up being circulated to the rest of the family as well as Kimmy and Cindy, resulting in everyone mistakenly believing that someone else in the group was interested in them. He was last seen in "Stephanie Plays the Field," training for baseball with Stephanie., C.J. Harbenberger (played by Virginia Williams) is Steve's fiancée and mother to Max's friend, Rose. C.J. is strikingly similarly to D.J., Bobby Popko (played by Isaak Presley) is Jackson's best friend and Ramona's ex-boyfriend., Taylor (played by Lucas Jaye) is Max's friend who challenges him., Rose Harbenberger (played by Mckenna Grace) is C.J.'s daughter, and Max's love interest., Rocki (played by Landry Bender) is Gia's daughter who attends summer school with Jackson and is Jackson's new love interest. They become a couple in the finale episode of season three but she breaks up with him in season four. They get back together in season five. The sixth season of the sitcom Full House originally aired on ABC between September 22, 1992 and May 18, 1993. In season six, Danny proposes to Vicky as she gladly accepts. Jesse and Joey are both fired from their daytime jobs and instead become radio hosts on the show "Rush Hour Renegades," which eventually turns into a success. Rebecca also has to deal with Jesse's recent climb to stardom as he tours Japan with his band for the first half of the season, in the second half of the season, he returns to high school to get his diploma. D.J. is a sophomore in high school and gets her first real boyfriend, Steve Hale, who begins his senior year in high school; Stephanie is in fifth grade; Michelle starts first grade. John Stamos as Jesse Katsopolis, Bob Saget as Danny Tanner, Dave Coulier as Joey Gladstone, Candace Cameron as D.J. Tanner, Jodie Sweetin as Stephanie Tanner, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen as Michelle Tanner, Lori Loughlin as Rebecca Donaldson-Katsopolis, Andrea Barber as Kimmy Gibbler, Scott Weinger as Steve Hale List of Full House episodes General references

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The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Men's Basketball Tournament is a single-elimination tournament for men's college basketball teams in the United States. It determines the champion of Division I, the top level of play in the NCAA, and the media often describes the winner as the national champion of college basketball. The NCAA Tournament has been held annually since 1939, and its field grew from eight teams in the beginning to sixty-five teams by 2001; as of 2011, sixty-eight teams take part in the tournament. Teams can gain invitations by winning a conference championship or receiving an at-large bid from a 10-person committee. The semifinals of the tournament are known as the Final Four and are held in a different city each year, along with the championship game; Indianapolis, the city where the NCAA is based, will host the Final Four every five years until 2040. Each winning university receives a rectangular, gold-plated trophy made of wood. The first NCAA Tournament was organized by the National Association of Basketball Coaches. Oregon won the inaugural tournament, defeating Ohio State 46–33 in the first championship game. Before the 1941 tournament, control of the event was given to the NCAA. In the early years of the tournament, it was considered less important than the National Invitation Tournament (NIT), a New York City- based event. Teams were able to compete in both events in the same year, and three of those that did so—Utah in 1944, Kentucky in 1949, and City College of New York (CCNY) in 1950—won the NCAA Tournament. The 1949–50 CCNY team won both tournaments (defeating Bradley in both finals), and is the only college basketball team to accomplish this feat. By the mid-1950s, the NCAA Tournament became the more prestigious of the two events, and in 1971 the NCAA barred universities from playing in other tournaments, such as the NIT, if they were invited to the NCAA Tournament. The 2013 championship won by Louisville was the first men's basketball national title to ever be vacated by the NCAA after the school and its coach at the time, Rick Pitino, were implicated in a 2015 sex scandal involving recruits. The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has been the most successful college in the NCAA Tournament, winning 11 national titles. Ten of those championships came during a 12-year stretch from 1964 to 1975. UCLA also holds the record for the most consecutive championships, winning seven in a row from 1967 to 1973. Kentucky has the second-most titles, with eight. North Carolina is third with six championships, while Duke and Indiana follow with five each. Virginia is the most recent champion, having defeated Texas Tech in the final of the 2019 tournament. Among head coaches, John Wooden is the all-time leader with 10 championships; he coached UCLA during their period of success in the 1960s and 1970s. Duke's Mike Krzyzewski is second all-time with five titles. Indicates vacated by NCAA NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship records, Helms Athletic Foundation national champions The result was later stricken from the NCAA record books after it was discovered that the team had committed a rules violation., Oklahoma A&M; changed its name to Oklahoma State in 1957., Louisville won the 2013 national championship game, but the NCAA vacated the title in 2018. General Specific The NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament, also known and branded as NCAA March Madness, is a single-elimination tournament played each spring in the United States, currently featuring 68 college basketball teams from the Division I level of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), to determine the national championship. The tournament was created in 1939 by the National Association of Basketball Coaches, and was the idea of Ohio State coach Harold Olsen. Played mostly during March, it has become one of the most famous annual sporting events in the United States. The tournament teams include champions from 32 Division I conferences (which receive automatic bids), and 36 teams which are awarded at-large berths. These "at-large" teams are chosen by an NCAA selection committee, then announced in a nationally televised event on the Sunday preceding the "First Four" play-in games, currently held in Dayton, Ohio, and dubbed Selection Sunday. The 68 teams are divided into four regions and organized into a single-elimination "bracket", which pre-determines, when a team wins a game, which team it will face next. Each team is "seeded", or ranked, within its region from 1 to 16. After the First Four, the tournament occurs during the course of three weekends, at pre- selected neutral sites across the United States. Teams, seeded by rank, proceed through a single-game elimination bracket beginning with a "first four" consisting of 8 low-seeded teams playing in 4 games for a position in the first round the Tuesday and Wednesday before the first round begins, a first round consisting of 64 teams playing in 32 games over the course of a week, the "Sweet Sixteen" and "Elite Eight" rounds the next week and weekend, respectively, and – for the last weekend of the tournament – the "Final Four" round. The Final Four is usually played during the first weekend of April. These four teams, one from each region (East, South, Midwest, and West), compete in a preselected location for the national championship. The tournament has been at least partially televised on network television since 1969. Currently, the games are broadcast by CBS, TBS, TNT, and truTV under the trade-name NCAA March Madness. These networks paid the NCAA to broadcast the games in 2011. The contract was for 14 years and they paid 10.8 billion dollars. However, in 2018 that contract was extended for another seven years making it valid through the year 2032. The average payment over the years comes out to be 891 million dollars a year. Since 2011, all games are available for viewing nationwide and internationally. As television coverage has grown, so too has the tournament's popularity. Currently, millions of Americans fill out a bracket, attempting to correctly predict the outcome of 63 games of the tournament (not including the First Four games). With 11 national titles, UCLA has the record for the most NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championships; John Wooden coached UCLA to 10 of its 11 titles. The University of Kentucky (UK) is second, with eight national titles. The University of North Carolina is third, with six national titles, and Duke University and Indiana University are tied for fourth with five national titles. The University of Connecticut is sixth with four national titles. The University of Kansas (KU) & Villanova University are tied for seventh with three national titles. The University of Cincinnati, The University of Florida, Michigan State University, North Carolina State, Oklahoma State, and The University of San Francisco all have two national titles. Since 1985, when the tournament expanded to 64 teams, Duke has won five championships; North Carolina and UConn have each won four; Kentucky & Villanova have three; Kansas & Florida have two; and Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Michigan State, Louisville, Syracuse, UCLA, UNLV, Virginia, and Wyoming have one. The NCAA has changed the tournament format several times since its inception, most often being an increase of the number of teams. This section describes the tournament as it has operated since 2011. A total of 68 teams qualify for the tournament played during March and April. Thirty-two teams earn automatic bids as their respective conference champions. Of the 32 Division I "all-sports" conferences (defined as those that sponsor men's and women's basketball), all 32 currently hold championship tournaments to determine which team receives the automatic qualification. The Ivy League was the last Division I conference that did not conduct a tournament; through the 2015–16 season, it awarded its tournament berth to the regular-season champion. If two or more Ivies shared a regular-season championship, a one- game playoff (or series of such playoffs) was used to decide the tournament participant. Since 2017, the league conducts their own postseason tournament. The remaining 36 tournament slots are granted to at-large bids, which are determined by the Selection Committee in a nationally televised event on the Sunday preceding the First Four play-in tournament and dubbed Selection Sunday by the media and fans, by a group primarily of conference commissioners and school athletic directors who are appointed into service by the NCAA. The committee also determines where all sixty-eight teams are seeded and placed in the bracket. The tournament is divided into four regions and each region has at least sixteen teams, but four additional teams are added per the decision of the Selection Committee. (See: First Four, below.) The committee is charged with making each of the four regions as close as possible in overall quality of teams from wherever they come from. The names of the regions vary from year to year, and are broadly geographic (such as "West", "South", "East", and "Midwest"). From 1957 to 1984, the "Mideast", roughly corresponding to the Southeastern region of the United States, designation was used. From 1985 to 1997, the Mideast region was known as "Southeast" and again changed to "South" starting from 1998. The selected names roughly correspond to the location of the four cities hosting the regional finals. From 2004 to 2006, the regions were named after their host cities, e.g. the Phoenix Regional in 2004, the Chicago Regional in 2005, and the Minneapolis Regional in 2006, but reverted to the traditional geographic designations beginning in 2007. For example, during 2012, the regions were named South (Atlanta, Georgia), East (Boston, Massachusetts), Midwest (St. Louis, Missouri), and West (Phoenix, Arizona). The selection committee ranks the whole field of 68 teams from 1 to 68. (It did not make this information public until 2012.) The committee then divides the teams amongst the regions. The top four teams will be distributed among the four regions, and each will receive a No. 1 seed within that region. The next four ranked teams will then be distributed among the four regions, each receiving a No. 2 seed in their region, and the process continues down the line, with some exceptions (as is explained below). Carried to its logical conclusion, this would give each region seventeen teams—seeded from No. 1 to No. 17—but, each region has only sixteen teams (from No. 1 to No. 16). As can be seen below, the actual seeding depends on (among other factors) the rankings of the eight teams that the committee selects for the "First Four" opening round (see the next paragraph and the "First Four" section below). The selection committee is also instructed to place teams so that whenever possible, teams from the same conference cannot meet until the regional finals. Additionally, it is also instructed to avoid any possible rematches of regular-season or previous year's tournament games during the First and Second rounds. Further restrictions are listed in the Venues section below. To comply with these other requirements, the selection committee may move one or several teams up or down one seed from their respective original seed line. Thus, for example, the 40th overall ranked team, originally slated to be a No. 10 seed within a particular region, may instead be moved up to a No. 9 seed or moved down to a No. 11 seed. In addition, the rankings of the eight teams selected for the "First Four" play-in round will likewise affect the final seedlings. The bracket is thus established, and during the semifinals, the champion of the top-ranked number 1 seed's region will play against the champion of the fourth-ranked number 1 seed's region, and the champion of the second-ranked number 1 seed's region will play against the champion of the third-ranked number 1 seed's region. In the men's tournament, all sites are nominally neutral; teams are prohibited from playing tournament games on their home courts prior to the Final Four (though in some cases, a team may be fortunate enough to play in or near its home state or city). By current NCAA rules, any court on which a team hosts more than three regular-season games (in other words, not including conference tournament games) is considered a "home court". The exception to this rule is the University of Dayton, which would be allowed to play a game in the "First Four" round in their home arena as they did in 2015. However, while a team can be moved to a different region if its home court is being used during any of the first two weeks of the tournament, the Final Four venue is determined years in advance, and cannot be changed regardless of participants. For this reason a team could potentially play in a Final Four on its home court, though this is unlikely, since the Final Four is staged at venues larger than most college basketball arenas. (The most recent team to play the Final Four in its home city was Butler during 2010; its home court then seated only 10,000, as opposed to the 70,000-plus capacity of Lucas Oil Stadium, the Final Four venue.) The tournament consists of several rounds. They are currently named, in order of first to last: The First Four, The First Round (the Round of 64), The Second Round (the Round of 32), The Regional Semi-finals (participating teams are known popularly as the "Sweet Sixteen"), The Regional Finals (participating teams are known commonly as the "Elite Eight"), The National Semi-finals (participating teams are referred to officially as the "Final Four"), The National Championship The tournament is single-elimination, which increases the chance of an underdog and lower-seeded "Cinderella team" advancing to subsequent rounds. Although these lower-ranked teams are forced to play stronger teams, they need only one win to advance (instead of needing to win a majority of games in a series, as in professional basketball). First held during 2011, the First Four are games between the four lowest- ranked at-large teams and the four lowest-ranked automatic-bid (conference- champion) teams. First Four At-large seeds During the First Round (the Round of 64), the No. 1 seed plays the No. 16 seed in all regions; the No. 2 team plays the No. 15, and so on. The effect of this seeding structure ensures that the better a team is ranked (and therefore seeded), the worse-ranked (and presumably weaker) their opponents will be. Sixteen first-round games are played on the Thursday following the "First Four" round. The remaining sixteen first-round games are played Friday. At this point the contestants are reduced to 32 teams. The Second Round (the Round of 32) is played on Saturday and Sunday immediately after the first round. The second round consists of Thursday's winners playing in eight games on Saturday, followed by Friday's winners playing in the remaining eight second-round games on Sunday. Thus, after the first weekend, 16 teams remain, commonly known as the "Sweet Sixteen." The teams that are still competing after the first weekend advance to the regional semifinals (the Sweet Sixteen) and finals (the Elite Eight), which are played during the second weekend of the tournament (again, the games are split into Thursday/Saturday and Friday/Sunday). Unlike hockey, teams are not re-seeded where the number one seed in each conference would play the lowest ranked. Four regional semi-final games are played Thursday and four are played Friday. After Friday's games, 8 teams (the Elite Eight) remain. Saturday features two regional final games matching Thursday's winners and Sunday's two final games match Friday's winners. After the second weekend of the tournament, the four regional champions are the "Final Four." The winners of each region advance to the Final Four, where the national semifinals are played on Saturday and the national championship is played on Monday. As is noted above, which regional champion will play which, and in which semifinal they play, is determined by the overall rankings of the four No. 1 seeds in the original bracket, not on the ranks of the eventual Final Four teams themselves. 2013 title vacated by NCAA. Mid-major teams—which are defined as teams from the America East Conference (America East), Atlantic Sun Conference (ASUN), Big Sky Conference (Big Sky), Big South Conference (Big South), Big West Conference (Big West), Colonial Athletic Conference (CAA), Conference USA (C-USA), Horizon League (Horizon), Ivy League (Ivy), Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC), Mid-American Conference (MAC), Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC), Missouri Valley Conference (MVC), Mountain West Conference (MW), Northeast Conference (NEC), Ohio Valley Conference (OVC), Patriot League (Patriot), Southern Conference (SoCon), Southland Conference (Southland), Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC), Summit League (Summit), Sun Belt Conference (Sun Belt), West Coast Conference (WCC), and the Western Athletic Conference (WAC)—have experienced success in the tournament at various times. The last time, as of 2019, a mid- major team won the National Championship was 1990 when UNLV won with a 103-73 win over Duke, since UNLV was then a member of the Big West and since 1999 has been a member of the MW; the Big West was not then considered a power conference, nor is the MW today. However, during the tenure of UNLV's coach at the time, Jerry Tarkanian, the Runnin' Rebels were widely viewed as a major program despite their conference affiliation (a situation similar to that of Gonzaga in the 2010s). The last time, as of 2019, an independent mid-major team won the National Championship was 1977 when Marquette won with a 67-59 win over North Carolina. However, at the time, a significant minority of NCAA Division I schools were still independents, with several of these, including Marquette, being traditional basketball powers. (Marquette is now a member of the Big East Conference, the one non-football league that is universally considered a major basketball conference.) The last time, as of 2019, a mid- major team from a small media market (defined as a market out of the top 25 television markets in the United States in 2019) won the National Championship was arguably 1962 when Cincinnati, then in the MVC, won 71–59 over Ohio State of the Big Ten, since Cincinnati's TV market is listed 35th in the nation as of 2019. However, there was much less of a division between "major" and "mid- major" conferences in 1962, and the MVC was generally seen in that day as a major basketball conference. The last time the Final Four was composed, as of 2019, of at least 75% mid-major teams (3/4), i.e. excluding all present-day major conferences or their predecessors, was 1979, where Indiana State, then as now of the Missouri Valley Conference (which had lost several of its most prominent programs, among them Cincinnati, earlier in the decade); Penn, then as now in the Ivy League; and DePaul, then an independent, participated in the Final Four, only to see Indiana State lose to Michigan State. The last time, as of 2019, the Final Four has been composed of at least 50% mid-major teams (2/4) was 2011, when VCU, then of the Colonial Athletic Association, and Butler, then of the Horizon League, participated in the Final Four, only to see Butler lose to Connecticut. Two of the three most recent Final Fours have involved a single "mid-major" team by the definition used here—the 2017 and 2018 tournaments, in which Gonzaga and Loyola–Chicago were respectively involved (although by 2017 Gonzaga, which has appeared in every NCAA tournament in the 21st century, was generally considered a major program despite its membership in the mid-major WCC). To date, as of 2019, no Final Four has been composed of 100% mid-major teams (4/4), therefore guaranteeing a mid-major team winning the National Championship. Arguably the tournament with the most mid-major success was the 1970 tournament, where the Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight, Final Four, and National Championship Game had 63% representation of mid-major teams in the Sweet 16 (10/16), 75% representation in the Elite 8 (6/8), 75% representation in the Final 4 (3/4), and 50% representation in the National Championship Game (1/2). Jacksonville lost to UCLA in the National Championship, with New Mexico State defeating St. Bonaventure for third place. Below is a table that shows the performance of mid-major teams from the Sweet Sixteen round to the National Championship Game from 1939—the tournament's first year—to the present day. Notes The first column is a list of every mid-major conference. For the conferences that have predecessor names, a footnote (below the table) lists those names and years. Opposite each conference's name are the schools that have appeared in the tournament from the Sweet Sixteen onwards when the school was a member of the conference or a predecessor conference., Some of the conferences that are now considered mid-majors were regarded as major conferences in the past. For example: The Missouri Valley Conference was considered a major basketball conference until many of its most prominent members left in the mid-1970s (before Indiana State's 1979 run to the title game)., Conference USA was considered a major conference at its formation in 1995. It arguably became a mid-major in 2005, when several of its more prominent teams left for the Big East Conference, and unquestionably became a mid-major during the early-2010s realignment cycle., The WAC was considered a major conference until 1999, when 8 of its 16 members left to form the Mountain West Conference., The MW was considered a major basketball conference until 2011, when two of its most prominent basketball programs (BYU and Utah) left for other conferences (West Coast Conference and Pac-12, respectively). As alluded to above, certain programs that were members of "mid-major" conferences during deep tournament runs are nonetheless widely viewed as having been major programs at that time. The same applies to many programs that were independent before the 1980s. Examples include (but are not limited to) San Francisco in the 1950s, Marquette in the 1970s, UNLV in the last part of the 20th century, and Gonzaga today. This table shows mid-major teams that saw success in the tournament from now- defunct conferences or were independents. The Metro Conference, which operated from 1975 to 1995, is not listed here because it was considered a major basketball conference throughout its history. Most notably, Louisville, which was a member for the league's entire existence, won both of its NCAA- recognized titles (1980, 1986) while in the Metro. List of schools with the longest time between NCAA tournament appearances (minimum 20-year drought): Through 2018, four schools that were considered "major college" by the Associated Press when it published its first college basketball rankings in 1948, and have been continuously in the AP's "major" classification, have yet to reach the national tournament. While the NCAA did not split into divisions until 1956 (university and college), the AP has distinguished "major colleges" from "small colleges" throughout the history of its basketball rankings. The NCAA tournament has changed its format many times over the years, many of which are listed below. The NCAA tournament field has expanded a number of times throughout its history. After the conclusion of the 2010 tournament, there was speculation about increasing the tournament size to as many as 128 teams. On April 1, the NCAA announced that it was looking at expanding to 96 teams for 2011. On April 22, the NCAA announced a new television contract with CBS/Turner that expanded the field to 68 teams. From 2011 to 2015, the round of 64 was deemed to be the second round; beginning in 2016, the round of 64 was again deemed to be the first round. The process of seeding was first used in 1978 for automatically qualified (Q) and at-large (L) teams respectively, and then for all teams within their respective region in 1979. Starting in 2004, the NCAA began releasing full seeding numbers making known the overall #1 seed. When seeding, the NCAA has used the following names for the four regions with the exception of 2004 to 2006 when they were named after host cities: East, West, Midwest ("Southwest" in 2011), South (1998–2010 and 2012–present, "Mideast" 1957–1984, "Southeast" 1985–1999 and 2011) Vacated. Bold denotes team also won tournament. † Overall #1 Seed starting in 2004. To date, only Kentucky and Virginia have had a #1 seed in each of the four regions Last updated through 2018 tournament. * Vacated appearances excluded (see #1 seeds by year and region). For a list of all the cities and arenas that have hosted the Final Four, go to Host cities, below. Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City, Missouri hosted the Final Four nine times followed by the third Madison Square Garden in New York City which hosted seven times, and Louisville's Freedom Hall which hosted six times. Additionally, Indianapolis has hosted the Final Four seven times, across three venues. From 1997 to 2013, the NCAA required that all Final Four sessions take place in domed stadiums with a minimum capacity of 40,000, usually having only half of the dome in use. The Metrodome in Minneapolis, which usually hosted baseball and football, had one of the long ends of the court along the first base line with temporary stands surrounding the court so that much of the outfield is isolated from the action. The same was true of football stadiums like the Alamodome in San Antonio and the RCA Dome in Indianapolis. The last NBA arena to host the Final Four was the Meadowlands Arena, then known as Continental Airlines Arena, in 1996. As of 2009, the minimum was increased to 70,000, by adding additional seating on the floor of the dome, and raising the court on a platform three feet above the dome's floor, which is usually crowned for football, like the setup at Ford Field in Detroit which hosted the 2009 Final Four. In September 2012, the NCAA began preliminary discussions on the possibility of returning occasional Final Fours to basketball-specific arenas in major metropolitan areas. According to ESPN.com writer Andy Katz, when Mark Lewis was hired as NCAA executive vice president for championships during 2012, "he took out a United States map and saw that both coasts are largely left off from hosting the Final Four." Lewis added in an interview with Katz, I don't know where this will lead, if anywhere, but the right thing is to sit down and have these conversations and see if we want our championship in more than eight cities or do we like playing exclusively in domes. None of the cities where we play our championship is named New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago or Miami. We don't play on a campus. We play in professional football arenas. Under then-current criteria, only ten stadiums, all but one of which are current NFL venues, could be considered as Final Four locations: AT&T; Stadium, Arlington (opened in 2009), AT&T; Stadium, originally known as Cowboys Stadium, holds the world record basketball attendance when 108,713 attended the 2010 NBA All-Star Game., Allegiant Stadium, Las Vegas (opening in 2020), The Dome at America's Center, St. Louis (opened in 1995), Ford Field, Detroit (opened in 2002), Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis (opened in 2008), Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Atlanta (opened in 2017), replaced the Georgia Dome, operational August 1992 to March 2017, Mercedes-Benz Superdome, New Orleans (opened in 1975), NRG Stadium, Houston (opened in 2002), State Farm Stadium, Glendale (opened in 2007), U.S. Bank Stadium, Minneapolis (opened in 2016), replaced the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, operational April 1982 to January 2014 Two domed stadiums that have hosted past Final Fours—the Alamodome (1998, 2004, 2008, 2018) and Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida (1999)—were considered too small to be eligible to host, despite the Alamodome being a college football stadium and having a permanent seating capacity of 65,000. The basketball setup at the Alamodome prior to 2018 used only half of the stadium and had a capacity of 39,500. This was changed for the 2018 Final Four to place a raised court at the center of the stadium as has been done with other football facilities. The first instance of a domed stadium being used for an NCAA Tournament Final Four was the Houston Astrodome in 1971, but the Final Four would not return to a dome until 1982, when the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans hosted the event for the first time. On June 12, 2013, Katz reported that the NCAA had changed its policy. In July 2013, the NCAA had a portal available on its website for venues to make Final Four proposals in the 2017–2020 period, and there were no restrictions on proposals based on venue size. Also, the NCAA decided that future regionals will no longer be held in domes. In Katz' report, Lewis indicated that the use of domes for regionals was intended as a dry run for future Final Four venues, but this particular policy was no longer necessary because all of the Final Four sites from 2014 to 2016 had already hosted regionals. At least one other report indicated that the new policy would still allow a completely new domed stadium, or an existing dome that has never hosted a Final Four (such as State Farm Stadium), to receive a regional if it is awarded a future Final Four. In November 2014, reflecting the new policy's effect, the NCAA announced that what is now State Farm Stadium would host the Final Four in 2017. Prior to 1975, only one team per conference could be in the NCAA tournament. However, after several highly ranked teams in the country were denied entrance into the tournament (e.g., South Carolina, which was 14-0 in ACC regular season play during 1970 but lost in the ACC tournament; Southern Cal, which was ranked #2 in the nation during 1971; and Maryland, which was ranked #3 in the nation in 1974 but lost the ACC tournament championship game to eventual national champion North Carolina State), the NCAA began to place at-large teams in the tournament, instead of just conference champions. At times during the pre-at-large era, the NIT tournament competed for prestige with the NCAA tournament. However, in the 1950s the NCAA ruled that no team could compete in both tournaments. But when 8th ranked Marquette declined its invitation in 1970 after coach Al McGuire complained about the Warriors' regional placement and instead went to the NIT (which it won), the NCAA changed the rule to forbid a team that declines an NCAA Tournament bid from participating in any post-season tournament. Since then, the NCAA tournament has clearly been the major one, with conference champions and the majority of the top-ranked teams participating in it. A third-place game was held from 1946 to 1981. Additionally, when the tournament was first held in 1939 with only two regionals (East and West), the West held a third-place game, but the East did not. The East began holding its own third-place game in 1941, and from then on every regional held a third- place game through the 1975 tournament. Beginning in 2001, the field was expanded from 64 to 65 teams, adding to the tournament what was informally known as the "play-in game." This was in response to the creation of the Mountain West Conference during 1999. Originally, the winner of the Mountain West's tournament did not receive an automatic bid, and doing so would mean the elimination of one of the at-large bids. As an alternative to eliminating an at-large bid, the NCAA expanded the tournament to 65 teams. The #64 and #65 seeds were seeded in a regional bracket as the 16a/16b seeds, and then played the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Opening Round Game (the "play-in game") on the Tuesday preceding the first weekend of the tournament. This game was always played at the University of Dayton Arena in Dayton, Ohio. During 2011, the tournament expanded to 68 teams. Four "play-in" games are now played, officially known as the "First Four". However, the teams playing in the First Four are not automatically seeded #16; their seeding is determined by the committee on Selection Sunday. Explaining the reasoning for this format, selection committee chairman Dan Guerrero said, "We felt if we were going to expand the field it would create better drama for the tournament if the First Four was much more exciting. They could all be on the 10 line or the 12 line or the 11 line." From 1985 to 2010, the round consisting of 64 teams and 32 games was called the "first round", while the round consisting of 32 teams and 16 games was called the "second round". From 2011 to 2015, the "First Four" became the first round. The round after the "First Four", the round of 64 played on Thursday and Friday, was called the "second round"; the round of 32 was then called the "third round", consisting of games played on Saturday and Sunday. In 2016, the naming reverted to the round of 64 being the "first round" once again, and the round of 32 being the "second round". For the 1985 to 2001 tournaments, all teams playing at a first- or second- round site fed into the same regional site. Since 2002, the tournament has used the "pod system" designed to limit the early-round travel of as many teams as possible. In the pod system, each of the eight first- and second- round sites is assigned two pods, where each group of four teams play each other. A host site's pods may be from different regions, and thus the winners of each pod would advance into separate regional tournaments. The possible pods by seeding are: Pod #1: 1v16, 8v9, Pod #2: 2v15, 7v10, Pod #3: 3v14, 6v11, Pod #4: 4v13, 5v12 Since 2004, the semi-final matches during the first day of the Final Four weekend have been determined by a procedure based upon the original seeding of the full field. From 1973 through 2003, the pitting of regional champions in the semi-finals was on a rotational basis. Prior to 1973, one semifinal matched the champions of the eastern regions, and the other matched the champions of the western regions. On several occasions NCAA tournament teams played their games in their home arena. In 1959, Louisville played at its regular home of Freedom Hall; however, the Cardinals lost to West Virginia in the semifinals. In 1984, Kentucky defeated Illinois, 54-51 in the Elite Eight on its home court of Rupp Arena. In 1985, Dayton played its first-round game against Villanova (it lost 51-49) on its home floor. In 1986 (beating Brown before losing to Navy) and '87 (beating Georgia Southern and Western Kentucky), Syracuse played the first 2 rounds of the NCAA tournament in the Carrier Dome. Also in 1986, LSU played in Baton Rouge on its home floor for the first 2 rounds despite being an 11th seed (beating Purdue and Memphis State). In 1987, Arizona lost to UTEP on its home floor in the first round. In 2015, Dayton played at its regular home of UD Arena, and the Flyers beat Boise State in the First Four. Since the inception of the modern Final Four in 1952, only once has a team played a Final Four on its actual home court—Louisville in 1959. But through the 2015 tournament, three other teams have played the Final Four in their home cities, one other team has played in its metropolitan area, and six additional teams have played the Final Four in their home states through the 2015 tournament. Kentucky (1958 in Louisville), UCLA (1968 and 1972 in Los Angeles, 1975 in San Diego), and North Carolina State (1974 in Greensboro) won the national title; Louisville (1959 at its home arena, Freedom Hall); Purdue (1980 in Indianapolis) lost in the Final Four; and California (1960 in suburban San Francisco), Duke (1994 in Charlotte), Michigan State (2009 in Detroit), and Butler (2010 in Indianapolis) lost in the final. In 1960, Cal had nearly as large an edge as Louisville had the previous year, only having to cross the San Francisco Bay to play in the Final Four at the Cow Palace in Daly City; the Golden Bears lost in the championship game to Ohio State. UCLA had a similar advantage in 1968 and 1972 when it advanced to the Final Four at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, not many miles from the Bruins' homecourt of Pauley Pavilion (also UCLA's home arena before the latter venue opened in 1965, and again during the 2011-12 season while Pauley was closed for renovations); unlike Louisville and Cal, the Bruins won the national title on both occasions. Butler lost the 2010 title from its Indianapolis campus and was regarded as the host school, as it is most times whenever the NCAA holds a tournament in Indianapolis (in the 2013 tournament, Butler's former conference, the Horizon League, was considered the host for the Midwest Regional rather than Butler). Before the Final Four was established, the East and West regionals were held at separate sites, with the winners advancing to the title game. During that era, three New York City teams, all from Manhattan, played in the East Regional at Madison Square Garden—frequently used as a "big-game" venue by each team—and advanced at least to the national semifinals. NYU won the East Regional in 1945 but lost in the title game, also held at the Garden, to Oklahoma A&M.; CCNY played in the East Regional in both 1947 and 1950; the Beavers lost in the 1947 East final to eventual champion Holy Cross but won the 1950 East Regional and national titles at the Garden. In 1974, North Carolina State won the NCAA tournament without leaving its home state of North Carolina. The team was put in the East Region, and played its regional games at its home arena Reynolds Coliseum. NC State played the final four and national championship games at nearby Greensboro Coliseum. While not its home state, Kansas has played in the championship game in Kansas City, Missouri, only 45 minutes from the campus in Lawrence, Kansas, not just once, but four times. In 1940, 1953, and 1957 the Jayhawks lost the championship game each time at Municipal Auditorium. In 1988, playing at Kansas City's Kemper Arena, Kansas won the championship, over Big Eight–rival Oklahoma. Similarly, in 2005, Illinois played in St. Louis, Missouri, where it enjoyed a noticeable homecourt advantage, yet still lost in the championship game to North Carolina. The NCAA had banned the Bon Secours Wellness Arena, originally known as Bi-Lo Center, and Colonial Life Arena, originally Colonial Center, in South Carolina from hosting tournament games, despite their sizes (16,000 and 18,000 seats, respectively) because of an NAACP protest at the Bi-Lo Center during the 2002 first and second round tournament games over that state's refusal to completely remove the Confederate Battle Flag from the state capitol grounds, although it had already been relocated from atop the capitol dome to a less prominent place in 2000. Following requests by the NAACP and Black Coaches Association, the Bi-Lo Center, and the newly built Colonial Center, which was built for purposes of hosting the tournament, were banned from hosting any future tournament events. As a result of the removal of the battle flag from the South Carolina State Capitol, the NCAA lifted its ban on South Carolina hosting games in 2015, and it was able to host in 2017 due to House Bill 2 (see next section). On September 12, 2016, the NCAA stripped the State of North Carolina of hosting rights for seven upcoming college sports tournaments and championships held by the association, including early round games of the 2017 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament scheduled for the Greensboro Coliseum. The NCAA argued that House Bill 2 made it "challenging to guarantee that host communities can help deliver [an inclusive atmosphere]". Bon Secours Wellness Arena was able to secure the bid to be the replacement site. As a tournament ritual, the winning team cuts down the nets at the end of regional championship games as well as the national championship game. Starting with the seniors, and moving down by classes, players each cut a single strand off of each net; the head coach cuts the last strand connecting the net to the hoop, claiming the net itself. An exception to the head coach cutting the last strand came in 2013, when Louisville head coach Rick Pitino gave that honor to Kevin Ware, who had suffered a catastrophic leg injury during the tournament. This tradition is credited to Everett Case, the coach of North Carolina State, who stood on his players' shoulders to accomplish the feat after the Wolfpack won the Southern Conference tournament in 1947. CBS, since 1987 and yearly to 2015, in the odd-numbered years since 2017, and TBS, since 2016, the even-numbered years, close out the tournament with One Shining Moment, performed by Luther Vandross. Just as the Olympics awards gold, silver, and bronze medals for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place, respectively, the NCAA awards the National Champions a gold-plated Wooden NCAA National Championship trophy. The loser of the championship game receives a silver-plated National Runner-Up trophy for second place. Since 2006, all four Final Four teams receive a bronze plated NCAA Regional Championship trophy; prior to 2006, only the teams who did not make the title game received bronze plated trophies for being a semifinalist. The champions also receive a commemorative gold championship ring, and the other three Final Four teams receive Final Four rings. The National Association of Basketball Coaches also presents a more elaborate marble/crystal trophy to the winning team. Ostensibly, this award is given for taking the top position in the NABC's end-of-season poll, but this is invariably the same as the NCAA championship game winner. In 2005, Siemens AG acquired naming rights to the NABC trophy, which is now called the Siemens Trophy. Formerly, the NABC trophy was presented right after the standard NCAA championship trophy, but this caused some confusion. Since 2006, the Siemens/NABC Trophy has been presented separately at a press conference the day after the game. After the championship trophy is awarded, one player is selected and then awarded the Most Outstanding Player award (which almost always comes from the championship team). It is not intended to be the same as a Most Valuable Player award although it is sometimes informally referred to as such. Because the National Basketball Association Draft takes place just three months after the NCAA tournament, NBA executives have to decide how players' performances in a maximum of seven games, from the First Four to the championship game, should affect their draft decisions. A 2012 study for the National Bureau of Economic Research explores how the March tournament affects the way that professional teams behave in the June draft. The study is based on data from 1997 to 2010 that looks at how college tournament standouts performed at the NBA level. The researchers determined that a player who outperforms his regular season averages or who is on a team that wins more games than its seed would indicate will be drafted higher than he otherwise would have been. At the same time, the study indicated that professional teams don't take college tournament performance into consideration as much as they should, as success in the tournament correlates with elite professional accomplishment, particularly top-level success, where a player makes the NBA All-Star Team three or more times. "If anything, NBA teams undervalue the signal provided by unexpected performance in the NCAA March Madness tournament as a predictor of future NBA success." Since 2010, the NCAA has had a joint contract with CBS and Turner Broadcasting. The coverage of the tournament is split between CBS, TNT, TBS, and truTV. Broadcasters from CBS, TBS, and TNT's sports coverage are shared across all four networks, with CBS' college basketball teams supplemented with Turner's NBA teams, while studio segments take place at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York City and Turner's studios in Atlanta. In the New York-based studio shows, CBS' Greg Gumbel and Clark Kellogg are joined by Ernie Johnson, Jr., Kenny Smith, and Charles Barkley of TNT's Inside the NBA while Seth Davis of CBS assists with Casey Stern and various NBA TV personalities. While two of Turner's NBA voices, Kevin Harlan and Ian Eagle, are already employed by CBS in other capacities, they also lend analysts Reggie Miller, Chris Webber, Grant Hill, and Reggie Miller and secondary play-by-play man Brian Anderson to CBS. In turn, CBS announcers Jim Nantz, Brad Nessler, Spero Dedes, Andrew Catalon, and Carter Blackburn appear on Turner network broadcasts along with analysts Len Elmore, Bill Raftery, and Dan Bonner. The current contract runs through 2024 and, for the first time in history, provides for the nationwide broadcast each year of all games of the tournament. All First Four games air on truTV. A featured first- or second-round game in each time "window" is broadcast on CBS, while all other games are shown either on TBS, TNT or truTV. The regional semifinals, better known as the Sweet Sixteen, are split between CBS and TBS. CBS had the exclusive rights to the regional finals, also known as the Elite Eight, through 2014. That exclusivity extended to the entire Final Four as well, but after the 2013 tournament Turner Sports elected to exercise a contractual option for 2014 and 2015 giving TBS broadcast rights to the national semifinal matchups. CBS kept its national championship game rights. Since 2015, CBS and TBS split coverage of the Elite Eight. Since 2016 CBS and TBS alternate coverage of the Final Four and national championship game, with TBS getting the final two rounds in even-numbered years, and CBS getting the games in odd-numbered years. March Madness On Demand would remain unchanged, although Turner was allowed to develop their own service. The CBS broadcast provides the NCAA with over $500 million annually, and makes up over 90% of the NCAA's annual revenue. The revenues from the multibillion-dollar television contract are divided among the Division I basketball playing schools and conferences as follows: 1/6 of the money goes directly to the schools based on how many sports they play (one "share" for each sport starting with 14, which is the minimum needed for Division I membership)., 1/3 of the money goes directly to the schools based on how many scholarships they give out (one share for each of the first 50, two for each of the next 50, ten for each of the next 50, and 20 for each scholarship above 150)., 1/2 of the money goes to the conferences based on how well they did in the six previous men's basketball tournaments (counting each year separately, one share for each team getting in, and one share for each win except in the Final Four and, prior to the 2008 tournament, the Play-in game). In 2007, based on the 2001 through 2006 tournaments, the Big East received over $14.85 million, while the eight conferences that did not win a first-round game in those six years received slightly more than $1 million each. Most conferences distribute most of the revenue evenly to its member institutions, regardless of performance. The Division I Men's Basketball tournament is the only NCAA championship tournament where the NCAA does not keep the profits. CBS has been the major partner of the NCAA in televising the tournament since 1982, but there have been many changes in coverage since the tournament was first broadcast in 1969. From 1969 to 1981, the NCAA tournament aired on NBC, but not all games were televised. The early rounds, in particular, were not always seen on TV. In 1982, CBS obtained broadcast television rights to the NCAA tournament. In 1980, ESPN began showing the opening rounds of the tournament. This was the network's first contract signed with the NCAA for a major sport, and helped to establish ESPN's following among college basketball fans. ESPN showed six first-round games on Thursday and again on Friday, with CBS, from 1982 to 1990, then picking up a seventh game at 11:30 pm ET. Thus, 14 of 32 first- round games were televised. ESPN also re-ran games overnight. At the time, there was only one ESPN network, with no ability to split its signal regionally, so ESPN showed only the most competitive games. During the 1980s, the tournament's popularity on television soared. However, ESPN became a victim of its own success, as CBS was awarded the rights to cover all games of the NCAA tournament, starting in 1991. Only with the introduction of the so-called "play-in" game (between the 64 seed and the 65 seed) in the 2000s, did ESPN get back in the game (and actually, the first time this "play-in" game was played in 2001, the game was aired on The National Network, using CBS graphics and announcers, as both CBS and TNN were both owned by Viacom at the time. Through 2010, CBS broadcast the remaining 63 games of the NCAA tournament proper. Most areas saw only eight of 32 first- round games, seven of 16 second-round games, and four of eight regional semifinal games (out of the possible 56 games during these rounds; there would be some exceptions to this rule in the 2000s). Coverage preempted regular programming on the network, except during a 2-hour window from about 5 ET until 7 ET when the local affiliates could show programming. The CBS format resulted in far fewer hours of first-round coverage than under the old ESPN format but allowed the games to reach a much larger audience than ESPN was able to reach. During this period of near-exclusivity by CBS, the network provided to its local affiliates three types of feeds from each venue: constant feed, swing feed, and flex feed. Constant feeds remained primarily on a given game, and were used primarily by stations with a clear local interest in a particular game. Despite its name, a constant feed occasionally veered away to other games for brief updates (as is typical in most American sports coverage), but coverage generally remained with the initial game. A swing feed tended to stay on games believed to be of natural interest to the locality, such as teams from local conferences, but may leave that game to go to other games that during their progress become close matches. On a flex feed, coverage bounced around from one venue to another, depending on action at the various games in progress. If one game was a blowout, coverage could switch to a more competitive game. A flex feed was provided when there were no games with a significant natural local interest for the stations carrying them, which allowed the flex game to be the best game in progress. Station feeds were planned in advance and stations had the option of requesting either constant or flex feed for various games. In 1999, DirecTV began broadcasting all games otherwise not shown on local television with its Mega March Madness premium package. The DirecTV system used the subscriber's ZIP code to black out games which could be seen on broadcast television. Prior to that, all games were available on C-Band satellite and were picked up by sports bars. In 2003, CBS struck a deal with Yahoo! to offer live streaming of the first three rounds of games under its Yahoo! Platinum service, for $16.95 a month. In 2004, CBS began selling viewers access to March Madness On Demand, which provided games not otherwise shown on broadcast television; the service was free for AOL subscribers. In 2006, March Madness On Demand was made free, and continued to be so to online users through the 2011 tournament. For 2012, it once again became a pay service, with a single payment of $3.99 providing access to all 67 tournament games. In 2013, the service, now renamed March Madness Live, was again made free, but uses Turner's rights and infrastructure for TV Everywhere, which requires sign-in though the password of a customer's cable or satellite provider to watch games, both via PC/Mac and mobile devices. Those that do not have a cable or satellite service or one not participating in Turner's TV Everywhere are restricted to games carried on the CBS national feed and three hours (originally four) of other games without sign-in, or coverage via Westwood One's radio coverage. Effective with the 2018 tournament, the national semifinals and final are under TV Everywhere restrictions if they are aired by Turner networks; before then, those particular games were not subject to said restrictions. In addition, CBS Sports Network (formerly CBS College Sports Network) had broadcast two "late early" games that would not otherwise be broadcast nationally. These were the second games in the daytime session in the Pacific Time Zone, to avoid starting games before 10 AM. These games are also available via March Madness Live and on CBS affiliates in the market areas of the team playing. In other markets, newscasts, local programming or preempted CBS morning programming are aired. CBSSN is scheduled to continue broadcasting the official pregame and postgame shows and press conferences from the teams involved, along with overnight replays. The Final Four has been broadcast in HDTV since 1999. From 2000 to 2004, only one first/second round site and one regional site were designated as HDTV sites. In 2005, all regional games were broadcast in HDTV, and four first and second round sites were designated for HDTV coverage. Local stations broadcasting in both digital and analog had the option of airing separate games on their HD and SD channels, to take advantage of the available high definition coverage. Beginning in 2007, all games in the tournament (including all first and second-round games) were available in high definition, and local stations were required to air the same game on both their analog and digital channels. However, due to satellite limitations, first round "constant" feeds were only available in standard definition. Moreover, some digital television stations, such as WRAL-TV in Raleigh, North Carolina, choose to not participate in HDTV broadcasts of the first and second rounds and the regional semifinals, and used their available bandwidth to split their signal into digital subchannels to show all games going on simultaneously. By 2008, upgrades at the CBS broadcast center allowed all feeds, flex and constant, to be in HD for the tournament. As of 2011, ESPN International holds international broadcast rights to the tournament, distributing coverage to its co-owned networks and other broadcasters. ESPN produces the world feed for broadcasts of the Final Four and championship game, produced using ESPN College Basketball staff and commentators. Best outcomes for low seeds since expansion to 64 teams in 1985: In 2018, UMBC became the first No. 16 seed to defeat a No. 1 seed in the men's tournament, shocking Virginia 74–54. Before this breakthrough, five other 16 seeds lost by 4 or fewer points: While ultimately Murray State lost to Michigan State by 4 points (75–71) in 1990, it was the only No. 16 team to take a game into overtime., East Tennessee State lost to Oklahoma in 1989 (1 point, 72–71), Princeton lost to Georgetown in 1989 (1 point, 50–49), Western Carolina lost to Purdue in 1996 (2 points, 73–71), Fairleigh Dickinson lost to Michigan in 1985 (4 points, 59–55) Villanova in 1985, a No. 8 seed, was the lowest seeded team to win the tournament., The lowest-seeded combination in the national championship game is the 2014 pairing of No. 7 seed UConn and No. 8 seed Kentucky. UConn won, to become the second-lowest-seeded team to win the tournament., The pairing of No. 8 seed Butler and No. 11 seed VCU in the 2011 National Semifinals game had the lowest seeded combination (No. 8 v. No. 11) to play in a National Semifinals game., Penn's 1979 Final Four appearance is also notable as they made it as a No. 9 seed—out of 10 teams in their region—making them the lowest seed to make the Final Four in the pre-64-team era., Butler is the only team to make consecutive Final Fours (let alone Championship Games) while not being a No. 1 or No. 2 seed either time (No. 5 in 2010, No. 8 in 2011)., 1991, 2013, and 2016 were the only years where at least one team of every seed (other than the No. 16s) advanced to the Round of 32., Richmond is the only team to win first-round games ranked as a No. 15, No. 14, No. 13, and No. 12 seed., 2012 was the only tournament to feature two upsets by No. 15 seeds over No. 2 seeds in the round of 64 (there have been eight all-time)., 1986, 1995, and 2015 were the only tournaments to feature two upsets by No. 14 seeds over No. 3 seeds in the round of 64., 2014 produced the highest total seed differential in an NCAA Tournament, with 111 across all the rounds of play. That is, the aggregate seed difference among the 22 games won by lower-seeded teams (e.g., No. 14 Mercer over No. 3 Duke, No. 8 Kentucky over No. 1 Wichita State) was 111., 2013 was the only tournament to have three teams seeded No. 12 or lower in the Sweet Sixteen: No. 12 Oregon, No. 13 La Salle, and No. 15 Florida Gulf Coast., 2017, South Carolina entering as a 7th seed in their region, beat Duke a No. 2 seed, Baylor, a No. 3 seed and Florida, a No. 4 seed to reach the Final Four., The 2018 South Region was the first regional since seeding began in 1979 in which no top-4 seed advanced to the Sweet Sixteen (No. 5 Kentucky, No. 7 Nevada, No. 9 Kansas State, No. 11 Loyola–Chicago)., Furthermore, the Elite Eight pairing of No. 9 Kansas State and No. 11 Loyola-Chicago was the lowest-seeded pairing to play in a Regional Final., Georgetown is the only team to lose in five consecutive tournament appearances against a team seeded at least five spots lower:, 2008 (Round of 32): No. 10 Davidson 74, No. 2 Georgetown 70., 2010 (Round of 64): No. 14 Ohio 97, No. 3 Georgetown 83., 2011 (Round of 64): No. 11 VCU 74, No. 6 Georgetown 56., 2012 (Round of 32): No. 11 NC State 66, No. 3 Georgetown 63., 2013 (Round of 64): No. 15 Florida Gulf Coast 78, No. 2 Georgetown 68. As noted above, despite numerous instances of early-round tournament upsets, only one No. 1 seed has lost in the first round to a No. 16 seed. However, while seeding is one way of measuring the impact of an upset, prior to the implementation of seeding, point spread was the better determinant of an upset, and a loss by a highly favored team remains for many the definition of "upset". As the NCAA forbids any association with gambling, and point spreads vary depending on the bookie taking the bets, these are unofficial. Norfolk State +21.5 over Missouri 86–84 in 2012, UMBC +20.5 over Virginia 74–54 in 2018, Santa Clara +20 over Arizona 64–61 in 1993., Coppin State +18.5 over South Carolina 78–65 in 1997, Arkansas–Little Rock +17.5 over Notre Dame 90–83 in 1986, Hampton +17.5 over Iowa State 58–57 in 2001 Connecticut +9.5 over Duke, 77–74, in 1999, Villanova +9 over Georgetown, 66–64, in 1985, Kansas +8 over Oklahoma, 83–79, in 1988, North Carolina State +7.5 over Houston, 54–52 in 1983, Texas Western +6.5 over Kentucky, 72–65 in 1966 It has happened only once that all four No. 1 seeds made it to the Final Four: 2008 – Kansas (champion), North Carolina, UCLA, Memphis Thrice (twice since the field expanded to 64 teams) the Final Four has been without a No. 1 seed: 1980 – No. 2 Louisville (champion), No. 5 Iowa, No. 6 Purdue, No. 8 UCLA, 2006 – No. 2 UCLA, No. 3 Florida (champion), No. 4 LSU, No. 11 George Mason, 2011 – No. 3 Connecticut (champion), No. 4 Kentucky, No. 8 Butler, No. 11 VCU Since 1985, there have been 4 instances of three No. 1 seeds reaching the Final Four; 13 instances of two No. 1 seeds making it; and 14 instances of just one No. 1 seed reaching the Final Four. There have been eight occasions (seven times since the field expanded to 64) that the championship game has been played between two No. 1 seeds: 1982 – North Carolina beat Georgetown, 1993 – North Carolina beat Michigan, 1999 – Connecticut beat Duke, 2005 – North Carolina beat Illinois, 2007 – Florida beat Ohio State, 2008 – Kansas beat Memphis, 2015 – Duke beat Wisconsin, 2017 – North Carolina beat Gonzaga Since 1985 there have been 18 instances of one No. 1 seed reaching the Championship Game (No. 1 seeds are 13-5 against other seeds in the title game) and 8 instances where no No. 1 seed made it to the title game. In 1997, Arizona achieved a record when it became the only team to beat three No. 1 seeds in a single tournament. Arizona (No. 4 seed) beat Kansas in its own Southeast region, then beat North Carolina in the Final Four and finally Kentucky in the Championship game. The most No. 1 seeds any team can face in the tournament is three (provided that the team itself is not a No. 1 seed, in which case it can only face two No. 1 seeds in the tournament)., In 2011, the highest seed to advance to the Final Four was No. 3 seed Connecticut, making the 2011 tournament the only time that neither a No. 1 seed nor a No. 2 seed advanced into the final weekend of play. In the same tournament, Butler made history as the first program to make consecutive Final Fours while not being seeded No. 1 or No. 2 in either season., There have been 16 teams that have entered the tournament unbeaten. Four of those teams were from UCLA, and all those Bruin teams won each of those tournaments. However, of the other 12 teams entering the tournament unbeaten, just three went on to win the tournament. For details, see table below., In 1980, 1981, and 1982, when the tournament was 48 teams, DePaul was seeded No. 1 but was defeated in the first round., Theoretically, a No. 1 seed's most difficult six-game path to win the tournament is to defeat a No. 16, a No. 8, a No. 4, a No. 2, a No. 1, and a No. 1 - the highest possible opposing seeds in successive rounds. No No. 1 seed has ever won all six such games, though two teams have won the first five., In the 2002 tournament, Maryland reached the final after defeating teams seeded 16/8/4/2/1; they won the tournament after defeating No. 5 Indiana in the final., In the 2015 tournament, Wisconsin reached the final after defeating teams seeded 16/8/4/2/1. In the final, they faced No. 1 Duke with a chance to complete the full six-game path. However, Wisconsin lost the final. The following teams entered the tournament ranked No. 1 in at least one of the AP, UPI, or USA Today polls and won the tournament: The team's record here refers to their record before the first game of the NCAA tournament. The NCAA tournament has undergone dramatic expansion since 1975, and since the tournament was expanded to 48 teams in 1980, no unbeaten teams have failed to qualify. (As, by definition, a team would have to win its conference tournament, and thus secure an automatic bid to the tournament, to be undefeated in a season, the only way a team could finish undefeated and not reach the tournament is if the team is banned from postseason play; as of 2016, no team banned from postseason play has finished undefeated since 1980. Other possibilities for an undefeated team to fail to qualify: the team is independent, or the conference does not yet have an automatic bid.) Before that, there were occasions on which a team achieved perfection in the regular season, yet did not appear in the NCAA tournament. During 1939, Long Island University finished the regular season unbeaten but decided to accept instead an invitation to the second NIT (which they won) instead of the first and only NABC tournament (later called the NCAA tournament), as the NIT was more prestigious at the time. It wasn't until the mid-1950s that the NCAA required that its tournament would have "first choice" in determining teams for their field. Before then, many of the more successful teams during the regular season chose to play in the NIT instead of the NCAA tournament., During 1940, Seton Hall finished the regular season 19–0, but their record had been built largely against weak teams and thus did not earn them an invitation to the postseason tournament., During 1941, Milwaukee State finished the regular season 16–0, but their record had been built largely against weak teams and thus did not earn them an invitation to the postseason tournament., During 1944, Army finished the regular season unbeaten. But owing to World War II, the Cadets did not accept an invitation to postseason play., During 1954, Kentucky finished 25–0 and were invited to the tournament, but declined the invitation., During 1973 the North Carolina State Wolfpack finished the regular season 27–0 and ranked #2 (behind undefeated and eventual tournament champion UCLA) but were barred from participating in the NCAA tournament while on probation for recruiting violations., During 1979, the Alcorn State Braves finished the regular season 27–0, but did not receive an invitation to the NCAA Tournament. The Braves accepted a bid to the NIT, where they lost in the second round to eventual NIT champion Indiana. There have been nine times in which the tournament did not include the reigning champion (the previous year's winner): 1978 champion Kentucky went 19–12 in 1979. The Wildcats accepted an invitation to the National Invitation Tournament, losing their first-round game in overtime to Clemson, 68–67., Both 1979 champion Michigan State (12–15) and 1979 runner up Indiana State (16–11) failed to qualify for the 1980 NCAA Tournament. Furthermore, neither was invited to the National Invitation Tournament, and Michigan State is the only team to finish the subsequent season with a losing record. Following the 1979 NCAA tournament, Indiana State lost Larry Bird to graduation, and Magic Johnson left Michigan State after his sophomore season to enter the NBA draft., 1983 champion North Carolina State went 19–13 in 1984. The Wolfpack accepted an invitation to the National Invitation Tournament, losing their first-round game to Florida State, 74–71 in Reynolds Coliseum., 1986 champion Louisville went 18–14 in 1987. The team declined an invitation to the postseason National Invitation Tournament., 1988 champion Kansas went 19–12 in 1989. However, the team was ineligible for participation in the 1989 NCAA Tournament due to NCAA sanctions for recruiting violations., 2007 (and 2006) champion Florida and 2007 runner up Ohio State both failed to qualify for the NCAA Tournament in 2008. Both accepted invitations to that year's postseason National Invitation Tournament, and both made it to the semifinals. Florida fell to Massachusetts in the semifinals, and Ohio State beat UMass in the NIT Championship Game to win the tournament., 2009 champion North Carolina went 20–17 in 2010. The Tar Heels accepted an invitation to the National Invitation Tournament, and reached the finals, losing to Dayton., 2012 champion Kentucky went 21–11 in 2013 and failed to make that tournament. The Wildcats were invited to the National Invitation Tournament, where they lost to Robert Morris in the first round of the tournament., 2014 champion UConn went 20–14 in 2015 and failed to make that tournament. The Huskies were invited to the National Invitation Tournament and lost to Arizona State in the first round. 10 National Championships 5 National Championships 4 National Championships 3 National Championships 2 National Championships 1 National Championship 5 Mike Krzyzewski (1991, 1992, 2001, 2010, 2015), 3 Roy Williams (2005, 2009, 2017), 3 Jim Calhoun (1999, 2004, 2011), 2 Jay Wright (2016, 2018), 1 Tony Bennett (2019), 1 Jim Boeheim (2003), 1 John Calipari (2012), 1 Tom Izzo (2000), 1 Bill Self (2008), 1 Tubby Smith (1998) Five coaches, Three coaches, Two coaches Rick Pitino is the only coach to have officially taken three different teams to the Final Four: Providence (1987), Kentucky (1993, 1996, 1997) and Louisville (2005). John Calipari has also taken three teams to the Final Four, but has had his runs with UMass and Memphis vacated due to NCAA violations. There are 12 coaches who have officially coached two different schools to the Final Four -- Roy Williams, Eddie Sutton, Frank McGuire, Lon Kruger, Hugh Durham, Jack Gardner, Lute Olson, Gene Bartow, Forddy Anderson, Lee Rose, Bob Huggins, and Lou Henson. Larry Brown took UCLA to the Final Four in 1980, but it was vacated due to NCAA violations. He also took Kansas in 1986 and 1988. Point differentials, or margin of victory, can be viewed either by the championship game, or by a team's performance over the whole tournament. Largest margin of victory in a championship game 30 points, by UNLV in 1990 (103–73, over Duke) Overtime games in a championship game Eight times the championship game has been tied at the end of regulation. On one of those occasions (1957) the game went into double and then triple overtime. North Carolina 54, Kansas 53/3OT (1957), Utah 42, Dartmouth 40 (1944), Cincinnati 65, Ohio St. 60 (1961), Loyola 60, Cincinnati 58 (1963), Michigan 80, Seton Hall 79 (1989), Arizona 84, Kentucky 79 (1997), Kansas 75, Memphis 68 (2008), Virginia 85, Texas Tech 77 (2019) Smallest margin of victory in a championship game 1 point, on six occasions Indiana 69, Kansas 68 (1953), North Carolina 54, Kansas 53/3OT (1957), California 71, West Virginia 70 (1959), North Carolina 63, Georgetown 62 (1982), Indiana 74, Syracuse 73 (1987), Michigan 80, Seton Hall 79/OT (1989) Largest point differential accumulated over the entire tournament by championship teams Teams that played 6 games +129 Kentucky 1996, +124 Villanova 2016, +121 North Carolina 2009, +112 UNLV 1990, +106 Villanova 2018 Teams that played 5 games +115 Loyola of Chicago 1963, +113 Indiana 1981, +104 Michigan State 1979, +69 San Francisco 1955, +66 Indiana 1976 Teams that played 4 games +95 UCLA 1967, +85 UCLA 1968, +78 Ohio State 1960, +76 UCLA 1969, +72 UCLA 1970, +72 UCLA 1972 Teams that played 3 games +56 Oklahoma A&M; 1945, +52 Kentucky 1949, +51 Indiana 1940, +47 Kentucky 1948, +46 Oregon 1939 Teams winning the championship and obtaining a margin of 10 points in every game of the tournament Achieved 13 times by 10 different schools Oregon (1939), Kentucky (1949), San Francisco (1956), Ohio State (1960), UCLA (1967, 1970 and 1973), Michigan State (1979 and 2000), Indiana (1981), Duke (2001), North Carolina (2009), Villanova (2018) Since the inception of the 64-team tournament in 1985, each seed-pairing has played 140 games in the Round of 64, with the following results: The No. 1 seed is 139–1 against the No. 16 seed (), The No. 2 seed is 132–8 against the No. 15 seed (), The No. 3 seed is 119–21 against the No. 14 seed (), The No. 4 seed is 111–29 against the No. 13 seed (), The No. 5 seed is 90–50 against the No. 12 seed (), The No. 6 seed is 88–52 against the No. 11 seed (), The No. 7 seed is 85–55 against the No. 10 seed (), The No. 8 seed is 68–72 against the No. 9 seed () In the 1/16 vs. 8/9 bracket: In the 2/15 vs. 7/10 bracket: In the 3/14 vs. 6/11 bracket: In the 4/13 vs. 5/12 bracket: In the 1/8/9/16 vs. 4/5/12/13 bracket:, In the 2/7/10/15 vs. 3/6/11/14 bracket: This table lists all the cities that have hosted or will host the Final Four, as well as the venues in which the Final Four was or will be played. For additional information about a particular year's tournament, click on the year to go directly to that year's NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament or go to the main article. There are pools or private gambling-related contests as to who can predict the tournament most correctly. The filling out of a tournament bracket has been referred to as a "national pastime." Filling out a tournament bracket with predictions is called the practice of "bracketology" and sports programming during the tournament is rife with commentators comparing the accuracy of their predictions. On The Dan Patrick Show, a wide variety of celebrities from various fields (such as Darius Rucker, Charlie Sheen, Neil Patrick Harris, Ellen DeGeneres, Dave Grohl, and Brooklyn Decker) have posted full brackets with predictions. Former President Barack Obama's bracket was posted on the White House website. There are many different tournament prediction scoring systems. Most award points for correctly picking the winning team in a particular match up, with increasingly more points being given for correctly predicting later round winners. Some provide bonus points for correctly predicting upsets, the amount of the bonus varying based on the degree of upset. Some just provide points for wins by correctly picked teams in the brackets. There are 2^63 or 9.2 quintillion possibilities for the possible winners in a 64-team NCAA bracket, making the odds of randomly picking a perfect bracket (i.e. without weighting for seed number) 9.2 quintillion to 1. With the expansion of the tournament field to 68 teams in 2011, there are now 2^67 or 147.57 quintillion possibilities if one includes the first four opening round games. There are numerous awards and prizes given by companies for anyone who can make the perfect bracket. One of the largest was done by a partnership between Quicken Loans and Berkshire Hathaway, which was backed by Warren Buffett, with a $1 billion prize to any person(s) who could correctly predict the outcome of the 2014 tournament. No one was able to complete the challenge and win the $1 billion prize. As indicated below, none of these phrases are exclusively used in regard to the NCAA tournament. Nonetheless, they are associated widely with the tournament, sometimes for legal reasons, sometimes just because it's become part of the American sports vernacular. March Madness is a popular on-ending basketball tournaments played in March. March Madness is also a registered trademark currently owned exclusively by the NCAA. H. V. Porter, an official with the Illinois High School Association (and later a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame), was the first person to use March Madness to describe a basketball tournament. Porter published an essay named March Madness during 1939, and during 1942, he used the phrase in a poem, Basketball Ides of March. Through the years the use of March Madness was increased, especially in Illinois, Indiana, and other parts of the Midwest. During this period the term was used almost exclusively in reference to state high school tournaments. During 1977, Jim Enright published a book about the Illinois tournament entitled March Madness. Fans began associating the term with the NCAA tournament during the early 1980s. Evidence suggests that CBS sportscaster Brent Musburger, who had worked for many years in Chicago before joining CBS, popularized the term during the annual tournament broadcasts. The NCAA has credited Bob Walsh of the Seattle Organizing Committee for starting the March Madness celebration in 1984. Only during the 1990s did either the IHSA or the NCAA think about trademarking the term, and by that time a small television production company named Intersport had already trademarked it. IHSA eventually bought the trademark rights from Intersport, and then went to court to establish its primacy. IHSA sued GTE Vantage, an NCAA licensee that used the name March Madness for a computer game based on the college tournament. During 1996, in a historic ruling, Illinois High School Association v. GTE Vantage, Inc., the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit created the concept of a "dual-use trademark", granting both the IHSA and NCAA the right to trademark the term for their own purposes. After the ruling, the NCAA and IHSA joined forces and created the March Madness Athletic Association to coordinate the licensing of the trademark and investigate possible trademark infringement. One such case involved a company that had obtained the internet domain name marchmadness.com and was using it to post information about the NCAA tournament. During 2003, by March Madness Athletic Association v. Netfire, Inc., the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit decided that March Madness was not a generic term, and ordered Netfire to relinquish the domain name to the NCAA. Later during the 2000s, the IHSA relinquished its ownership share in the trademark, although it retained the right to use the term in association with high school championships. During October 2010, the NCAA reached a settlement with Intersport, paying $17.2 million for the latter company's license to use the trademark. This is a popular term for the regional semifinal round of the tournament, consisting of the final 16 teams. As in the case of "March Madness", this was first used by a high school federation—in this case, the Kentucky High School Athletic Association (KHSAA), which has used the term for decades to describe its own season-ending tournaments. It officially registered the trademark in 1988. Unlike the situation with "March Madness", the KHSAA has retained sole ownership of the "Sweet Sixteen" trademark; it licenses the term to the NCAA for use in collegiate tournaments. The term Final Four refers to the last four teams remaining in the playoff tournament. These are the champions of the tournament's four regional brackets, and are the only teams remaining on the tournament's final weekend. (While the term "Final Four" was not used during the early decades of the tournament, the term has been applied retroactively to include the last four teams in tournaments from earlier years, even when only two brackets existed.) Some claim that the phrase Final Four was first used to describe the final games of Indiana's annual high school basketball tournament. But the NCAA, which has a trademark on the term, says Final Four was originated by a Plain Dealer sportswriter, Ed Chay, in a 1975 article that appeared in the Official Collegiate Basketball Guide. The article stated that Marquette University "was one of the final four" of the 1974 tournament. The NCAA started capitalizing the term during 1978 and converting it to a trademark several years later. During recent years, the term Final Four has been used for other sports besides basketball. Tournaments which use Final Four include the EuroLeague in basketball, national basketball competitions in several European countries, and the now-defunct European Hockey League. Together with the name Final Four, these tournaments have adopted an NCAA-style format in which the four surviving teams compete in a single-elimination tournament held in one place, typically, during one weekend. The derivative term "Frozen Four" is used by the NCAA to refer to the final rounds of the Division I men's and women's ice hockey tournaments. Until 1999, it was just a popular nickname for the last two rounds of the hockey tournament; officially, it was also known as the Final Four. Although there is not any official definition of what constitutes a Cinderella team, there does seem to be a consensus that such teams represent small schools, are usually low-seeded in the tournament, and achieves at least one unexpected win in the tournament. A recent example of this is Florida Gulf Coast University, a relatively new school that held its first classes in 1997 and became Division I postseason eligible in 2011. They made their first appearance in the 2013 tournament, winning two games to become the first #15 seed to advance to the Sweet Sixteen. The term was popularized as a result of City College of New York's successful run in the 1950 tournament. The 2009 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament was a single-elimination tournament in which 65 schools competed to determine the national champion of the men's NCAA Division I college basketball as a culmination of the 2008–09 basketball season. The tournament began on March 17, 2009, and concluded with the championship game on April 6 at Ford Field in Detroit, Michigan, where the University of North Carolina defeated Michigan State to become the champion. The 2009 tournament marked the first time for a Final Four having a minimum seating capacity of 70,000 and by having most of the tournament in the February Sweeps of the Nielsen Ratings due to the digital television transition in the United States on June 12, 2009, which also made this the last NCAA Basketball Tournament, in all three divisions, to air in analog television. The University of Detroit Mercy hosted the Final Four, which was the 71st edition. Prior to the start of the tournament, the top ranked team was Louisville in both the AP Top 25 and the ESPN/USA Today Coaches' Polls, followed by North Carolina, Memphis, and Pittsburgh. Only the Tar Heels of North Carolina were the regional winners and played in the Final Four. The Tar Heels completed one of the most dominant runs in the tournament's history by winning each of their games by at least twelve points. For the first time since seeding began, all #1-#3 seeds made it into the Sweet 16, and for the third consecutive time, all #1 seeds made the Elite Eight. Four schools made their NCAA tournament debut, all respective conference champions: Binghamton (America East), Morgan State (MEAC), Stephen F. Austin (Southland), and North Dakota State (Summit), a school in its first season of Division I eligibility. Sixty-five teams were selected for the tournament. Thirty of the teams earned automatic bids by winning their conference tournaments. The automatic bid of the Ivy League, which does not conduct a postseason tournament, went to , its regular season champion. The remaining 34 teams were granted "at-large" bids by the NCAA Selection Committee. Two teams play an opening-round game, popularly called the "play-in game". The winner of that game advances to the main draw of the tournament as a 16 seed and plays a top seed in one of the regionals. The 2009 game was played on Tuesday, March 17, at the University of Dayton Arena in Dayton, Ohio, as it has since its inception in 2001. All 64 teams were seeded 1 to 16 within their regions; the winner of the play-in game automatically received a 16 seed. The Selection Committee seeded the entire field from 1 to 65. SEC commissioner Michael Slive served his last year as chairman of the committee. The first and second-round games were played at the following sites: First and Second Rounds: Thursday and Saturday, March 19 and 21, 2009 First and Second Rounds: Friday and Sunday, March 20 and 22, 2009 The four regionals are officially named after their areas, a practice which resumed in 2007. Between 2004 and 2006, the regionals were named for their host cities. The following were the sites for the 2009 regionals: Regionals: Thursday and Saturday, March 26 and 28, 2009 Regionals: Friday and Sunday, March 27 and 29, 2009 Regional winners advanced to the Final Four, hosted at Ford Field in Detroit, Michigan by the University of Detroit Mercy on April 4 (semifinals) and April 6 (National Championship). Detroit was the 28th new host city, and Ford Field the 35th new venue, to host the Final Four. The tournament featured six new stadiums, including two domed stadiums. The Phoenix suburb of Glendale was host for the first time, with games being held at the University of Phoenix Stadium, home to football's Arizona Cardinals. Indianapolis also hosted at a new domed stadium, Lucas Oil Stadium, the replacement for the RCA Dome. After an eight-year hiatus, the tournament returned to Memphis at the FedExForum, the third venue in the city to host the tournament. Kansas City also introduced a new arena, the Sprint Center, after the previous eight appearances at Kemper Arena. For only the second time, the city of Miami hosted games, this time at the American Airlines Arena, home to the NBA's Miami Heat. And for the first time since 1975, the tournament returned to Portland, at the Rose Garden. This was the last tournament to feature the Metrodome, which closed in early 2014, and was replaced with U.S. Bank Stadium, which will host the 2019 Final Four. Results to date * – Denotes overtime period All times in U.S. EDT. Winner advanced to 16th seed in Midwest Regional vs. (1) Louisville. Goran Suton of Michigan State was the Midwest regional most outstanding player. He was joined by Spartan teammates Kalin Lucas and Travis Walton, Louisville's Earl Clark and Kansas's Cole Aldrich on the NCAA Tournament All- Midwest Regional team. To play the top-seeded Louisville Cardinals in the first round, Morehead State defeated Alabama State 58–43, with the Eagles keeping the Hornets without a lead the entire game. This marked the first time either team had played in the tournament in five years; the Eagles had not played since 1984. Morehead State fell to Louisville 74–54, the 100th time a 1 seed beat a 16 seed in the tournament since seeding began. However, the Eagles managed to keep the game close until halftime, when Louisville led by only 2 points. In the second half, the Cardinals began to apply their signature fullcourt pressure, forcing turnovers and outscoring Morehead State 22–6 at the beginning of the half. Leon Buchanan's 17 points for the Eagles were not enough to upset Louisville, whose top scorers, Samardo Samuels and Terrence Williams, scored a combined 28 points. Morehead State has not beaten Louisville in 52 years until 2011. In two overtimes, the Siena Saints beat the Ohio State Buckeyes 74–72. Ohio State had the advantage of playing an hour from their campus, and received 25 points, nine rebounds, and eight assists from Evan Turner. The Saints made 6 out of 23 3-pointers and had 22 turnovers. Accordingly, Siena trailed for most of the game, but scored the last four points in regulation to force overtime. At the end of the first overtime, Siena's Ronald Moore drained his first 3-pointer to force a second overtime. With 3.9 seconds left in that overtime, he hit a second three from the same location to give the Saints a late 2-point lead. In an attempt to send the game into a third overtime, Turner shot a 15-footer immediately afterwards, but he missed it. This was Siena's fifth appearance in the tournament, after beating Vanderbilt University in 2008 as a 13 seed. The Arizona-Utah matchup was not as close. The Fifth-seeded Utah Utes were upset by twelfth-seeded Arizona Wildcats, one of the last teams to make it in the tournament and a questionable entry, by a score of 84–71. The Utes closed the lead to two with roughly five minutes left in the game, but the Wildcats' answer was a 10–1 run. Utah's Luke Nevill committed two fouls less than four minutes into the game and scored only 12 points. Nic Wise of Arizona, meanwhile, led the team with 29 points, with 21 in the second half. Tyler Kepkay led the Utes with a team 19 points in his embarking performance. The Cleveland State-Wake Forest game was an even larger upset. In their second bid in the tournament, the Cleveland State Vikings shocked the Wake Forest Demon Deacons 84–69. This 15-point win ties for third-greatest victory margin for a 13 seed over a 4 seed. Wake Forest, once ranked first in the country, had 16 turnovers in the matchup, compared to six for the Vikings. James Johnson of the Demon Deacons scored 22 points, although this could not compensate for a substandard offense. Their scoring leader, Jeff Teague, finished with 10 points, half his average. For these reasons, Wake Forest never obtained a lead, while Cleveland State sank three consecutive 3-pointers in the early minutes of the game. For the first time in 19 years, Dayton advanced to the second round of the tournament with a win over West Virginia 68–60. This also ended West Virginia's first-round winning streak, which had lasted since 1992. Chris Wright led the Dayton Flyers with 27 points, a career high, while also chalking up 10 rebounds. Charles Little also aided the Flyers with 18 points. Darryl Bryant, who led West Virginia with 21 points, shot two consecutive three-pointers to bring Dayton's lead to 48–47 with 11:02 minutes left in the game. However, that was the closest the Mountaineers had to a lead outside the beginning of the game. In their first eligible year, North Dakota State appeared in the tournament, facing defending champion Kansas. The three- seeded Kansas Jayhawks staved off the fourteenth-seeded Bison's upset bid with an 84–74 victory. Ben Woodside shined with 37 points for the Bison, his sixth game of the season with at least 30 points. However, Sherron Collins and Cole Aldrich proved too much for North Dakota State, accounting for 65 percent of the Jayhawks' points with 32 and 23 respectively. The tenth-seeded USC Trojans demolished the seventh-seeded Boston College Eagles by a score of 72–55, helped by Taj Gibson's 10-for-10 shooting from the field, tied for the second- best NCAA tournament field-goal shooting performance in history. He led the team with 24 points and recorded six rebounds, five assists, and three blocks. Dwight Lewis also added 20 points for the Trojans. After leading 34–30 at halftime, the Eagles scored just a single field goal during one 13-minute stretch, as part of a 23.1 shooting percentage in the second half. Robert Morris, the region's 15 seed, was blown away by second-seeded Michigan State 77–62. The game was tied with 4:44 left in the first half, but then the Colonials went almost 20 minutes without scoring a single point. The Spartans took advantage of this for a 21–0 run that sealed the game in their favor. The Colonials' Jeremy Chappell was the only team member to score double-digit points with 11, and he also led the team with six rebounds, two steals, and three blocks. Raymar Morgan was the Spartans' leading scorer with 16 points. Ninth-seeded Siena faced top seed Louisville, with the Cardinals emerging victorious 79–72. Taking advantage of Louisville's 19 turnovers, the Saints came back from a 12-point deficit with 17:21 left in the game to snatch the lead around the 9-minute mark. Edwin Ubiles broke through Louisville's full- court pressure and added 24 points for Siena. Terrence Williams, known as one of the most relaxed players on the Cardinals roster, saved his team by grabbing rebounds and making 3s. He led the team with 24 points, 15 rebounds, two steals, and four assists. Earl Clark also helped the Cardinals' cause with 12 points and 12 rebounds. In a 12 vs. 13 seed Cinderella matchup, Arizona handily defeated Cleveland State. The Wildcats' zone defense puzzled Cleveland State, and their fast breaks sealed the game. The smallest deficit the Vikings faced was 48–44 about midway through the second half, though the Wildcats then went on a 13–2 run led by Nic Wise's five consecutive points. His 21 points led the team's four double-digit scorers. Arizona was excellent behind the free-throw line, finishing 24 for 28. Cole Aldrich's triple-double with 13 points, 20 rebounds, and 10 blocked shots paved the way for a third-seeded Kansas win over 11 seed Dayton. This was only the sixth triple-double in NCAA tournament history. With 43 points, Dayton scored the fewest points they had all season, compared to Kansas's 60. Despite their small point total, the Flyers shot 72 times, its most all season, amounting to a 22.2 shooting percentage. The Jayhawks were also not having one of their better offensive games, with Sherron Collins being an exception; he made 25 points. This marked the third straight Sweet Sixteen appearance for Kansas. Playing the tenth- seeded USC Trojans, second-seeded Michigan State utilized Travis Walton's career-high 18 points for a 74–69 win. Normally known as a defensive player and averaging 4.9 points per game, Walton shot 8 for 13 from the field. His team out-rebounded USC 33 to 23, and USC made only one three-point play. Star Trojan Taj Gibson was in foul trouble throughout much of the game, and yet his teammates rallied for 14 lead changes and 16 ties. Dwight Lewis, who gave a 19-point performance overall, scored six consecutive points for USC for a late tie. The Spartans only earned a victory after the Trojans missed their last nine shots. With the win, Michigan State has made it to the Sweet 16 eight times of the last 12 years, more than any other team except Duke. Louisville, the region's top seed, routed twelfth-seeded Arizona 103–64. In NCAA tournament history, this was Louisville's largest win and Arizona's largest loss. It was no surprise, given the Cardinals' 57.6 field goal percentage and their 48% shooting behind the arc. Their fullcourt pressure forced 15 turnovers on the Wildcats the entire game, including nine in the first half. Earl Clark led the Cardinals with 19 points, whose ballhandling garnered 29 assists. This was the most lopsided Sweet 16 victory since 1972. The Michigan State-Kansas matchup was much more intense. After overcoming a 13-point first half deficit, the Spartans won 67–62. They shot 16 of 17 from the foul line, and on their only miss they rebounded the ball and gave Raymar Morgan the only points of the night on a dunk. Such rallies in the second half narrowed the deficit and occasionally took the lead, although the Jayhawks responded and were up by 2 with 2 minutes left in the game. They were helped by Sherron Collins and Cole Aldrich's combined 37 points. However, Kalin Lucas of the Spartans, who had scored 11 points in the first 39 minutes of the game, made seven straight points with 48 seconds left. Goran Suton also added nine rebounds, five steals, and a season-high 20 points for Michigan State. Michigan State defeated overall number one seed Louisville, 64–52, to advance to their fifth Final Four since 1999. Michigan State held Louisville to their second lowest point total of the season with their man-to-man defense keeping them out of sync all game. Center Goran Suton had 19 points and Durrel Summers had 12 in the rout. Earl Clark had 19 for Louisville. A. J. Price was named MVP of the West Regional. He was joined by teammate Kemba Walker, Missouri's DeMarre Carroll and J. T. Tiller and Memphis' Tyreke Evans on the NCAA West All-regional team. Forward Quincy Pondexter scored 23 points to lead his Washington Huskies to a first round 71–58 win over Mississippi State Bulldogs in the West Regional. Only Barry Stewart put up double digit points (14) for the Bulldogs. Pac-10 champions Washington Huskies scored 46 points in the second half, but it was not enough to beat the Purdue Boilermakers in the second round of West Regional, falling short by two points (76–74). Leaders for Purdue were JaJuan Johnson with 22 points and Keaton Grant with 12 rebounds. Isaiah Thomas with 24 points and Jon Brockman with 18 rebounds led the Huskies. Connecticut faced Purdue at University of Phoenix Stadium in a West Regional semifinal. It was UConn who took full advantage of many Purdue mistakes and, even though Robbie Hummel was able to shoot quite well scoring 17 points, it was Hasheem Thabeet and the Huskies who pulled away for a 72–60 win to move onto the regional finals. In the nightcap of the sweet sixteen matchups, two sets of Tigers met, pitting Missouri against Memphis in a matchup that saw teams with similar fast-paced styles meet. Missouri was able to pull away with a 27–7 run that gave them a 64–40 lead. Though Memphis attempted to claw back into the game through Tyreke Evans' 33 points, it was JT Tiller, DeMarre Carroll, and Leo Lyons that moved on to meet UConn in the regional final along with the rest of their Missouri Tigers. Kemba Walker came off the UConn bench to spark them to a victory over the 3 seeded Missouri Tigers. Scottie Reynolds was named Regional most outstanding player. He was joined by teammates Dwayne Anderson and Dante Cunningham, Panthers Sam Young and DeJuan Blair on the NCAA East All-Regional team. UCLA Bruins' Alfred Aboya scored two free-throw points with 48 seconds remaining in the game to help UCLA get by VCU in the first round at the East Regional in Philadelphia's Wachovia Center with Maynor's potential game winning jumper bouncing off the rim at the buzzer. Top scorers in the game were Eric Maynor (21) for VCU and Josh Shipp (16) for UCLA. Villanova Wildcats, playing at home against an American University team that featured 5 seniors, fell behind early as American hit a barrage of 3 pointers. However, in the 2nd half, Villanova was able to take advantage of 20 free throws in the final 13 minutes of the game to win against American. No. 12 seed Wisconsin upset #5 seed Florida St. 61–59 in OT. Down 31–19 at the half, the Badgers' Jason Bohannon made a three-point jumper to give Wisconsin the lead with 45 seconds left in regulation. Trevon Hughes fouled Toney Douglas, who made two free throws to send the game into over-time. In over-time, the Badgers trailed by one with just seconds left when Hughes made a twisting shot from the lane over two defenders to put the Badgers ahead 60–59. Hughes was also fouled on the shot, and made the resulting free throw to make the score 61–59. Florida State had just enough time to run a full court in-bounds play but, the pass was deflected at half court thus securing the Badger victory. By six Wildcats scoring double-digit points, Villanova ended UCLA's hope of going to the Final Four for the fourth time in a row. Dante Cunningham had 18 points; Reggie Redding and Corey Fisher had 13; Corey Stokes put up 12; eleven points came from Scottie Reynolds and ten points were put up by Dwayne Anderson for the winning team. Josh Shipp had 18 points and Alfred Aboya had 8 rebounds for UCLA. Villanova (#3) upset Duke (#2), 77–54, to advance to the Regional Championship game to face Pittsburgh (#1). The Wildcats, who were ahead by 3 at half-time, were led in scoring by Scottie Reynolds (16), Dante Cunningham (14) and Reggie Redding (11). Number one seed Pittsburgh was upset by the Villanova Wildcats, 78–76 in the East Regional Finals, denying the Panthers a chance for a first national championship in men's basketball. With five seconds remaining, Levance Fields, who was fouled by Corey Fisher, shot two free-throws to tie the game for Pitt. But Scottie Reynolds' one-second jumper was good to give Villanova an upset victory. Pitt's Sam Young scored 28 points and DeJuan Blair had 20 points. Dwayne Anderson was top scorer for the Wildcats with 17 points. Ty Lawson was the South regional MVP and he was joined on the All-regional team by teammates Danny Green and Tyler Hansbrough as well as Blake Griffin and Syracuse's Jonny Flynn. WKU advanced to the second round for a second consecutive year as a 12 seed, beating 5th seeded Illinois. 10th seeded Michigan upset 7th seeded Clemson 62–59 in its first tournament win since 1998. It was Michigan's first tournament appearance in 11 years after the school was rocked with sanctions and punishments from the Chris Webber scandal in the mid-2000s. All final four teams in the tournament had won at least one national championship. Entering the tournament, North Carolina had the most, with four (1957, 1982, 1993, 2005); Connecticut had two; (1999, 2004); Michigan State also had two; (1979, 2000), and Villanova won one; (1985). The Spartans had home court advantage by playing in their home state. Six teams have played the Final Four in their home states, but only four of them won. UCLA (1968, 1972, 1975) and North Carolina State (1974) won the national title, but Duke (1994) and Purdue (1980) lost in the Final Four. The biggest advantage came in 1968 and 1972 when UCLA played the championship game at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, which is a short distance from Pauley Pavilion, their home court since 1965. Michigan State, with 7 minutes to play, finally took hold of the game and defeated the number one seed Connecticut to advance to the championship game against North Carolina. The Spartans started the game with a 7-point run, but the Huskies came back to take a lead in the first half. Michigan State took it back and was leading by two at the half. Connecticut had the lead twice early in the second period. Michigan State, led by guard Kalin Lucas with 21 points and forward Raymar Morgan with 18 points, was just too much at the end for the Huskies. Scoring for Connecticut was shared by Jeff Adrien (13), Stanley Robinson (15), Hasheem Thabeet (17) and A.J. Price (15). After the first five minutes, North Carolina used an 11-point run to end Villanova's hope for a national championship and put the Tar Heels into the championship game for a chance to win their fifth title in nine trips. Ty Lawson produced 22 points, followed by Wayne Ellington with 20 points and Tyler Hansbrough with 18 points. Hansbrough, the sixth-leading scorer in tournament history, pulled down 11 rebounds. For Roy Williams, who coached North Carolina to a national championship in 2005, it is back to the title game again. This 71st title game featured #1 seed North Carolina, which had a 4–4 record in the finals, versus #2 seed Michigan State, which had a 2–0 record going into the game. It was also a matchup featuring future Hall of Fame coach Tom Izzo, who guided Michigan State to the championship in 2000 in his 5 trips to the Final Four, against current Hall of Famer Roy Williams, who won the title in 2005 in 7 Final Fours. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the 1979 national title game between Michigan State Spartans and the Sycamores of Indiana State, Hall of Fame players Earvin "Magic" Johnson and Larry Bird, who had played against each other, presented the game ball at the 2009 NCAA national championship game Monday night. The game was a rematch of "BasketBowl II", of 2008's ACC-Big Ten Challenge, won by the Tar Heels 98–63. That game was also played at Ford Field. North Carolina, with a first bucket from Deon Thompson, took off and ran to a 21-point lead at the 10-minute mark. The lead grew to 24 with less than 5 minutes remaining in the first half, with most points coming from Wayne Ellington (15). The Spartans were behind 34–55 at the half, a tournament record lead for the Tar Heels. Goran Suton had the most points for Michigan State. In the second half, Michigan State made a comeback to within 13 points of North Carolina with 4:56 to go in the game, but was unable to overcome the record 21 turnovers. Roy Williams and his Tar Heels defeated the Spartans 89–72 to take home his second trophy for the university. Ty Lawson set a record with 8 steals. Wayne Ellington, North Carolina (Most Outstanding Player), Tyler Hansbrough, North Carolina, Ty Lawson, North Carolina, Kalin Lucas, Michigan State, Goran Suton, Michigan State Largest tournament point differential (+121) by the champion since 1996 (a new record was set in 2016 after the Villanova Wildcats defeated the North Carolina Tar Heels)., Highest attended National Semifinal Games (72,456) in Final Four history, breaking the old record of 64,959 (a new record was set in 2014)., Highest attended National Championship Game (72,922) in Final Four history breaking the old record of 64,959 (a new record was set in 2014)., Highest total Final Four attendance (145,378) ever breaking the old record of 129,918 (a new record was set in 2014)., Roy Williams is one of four active coaches to win multiple titles. Billy Donovan, Mike Krzyzewski and Jim Calhoun are the three other coaches., Nielsen ratings for the Championship Game were down 7% to 11.9/19 versus a 12.8/20 the previous year. The entire tournament averaged a 6.3/13, a 5% increase., Blake Griffin of Oklahoma was the winner of the John Wooden Award, presented by the Los Angeles Athletic Club on Friday, April 10 in Los Angeles., 708,296 fans in attendance over the course of 35 sessions. *Morehead State won the Opening Round game. The America East, Atlantic Sun, Big Sky, Big South, Big West, CAA, Ivy, MAC, MEAC, MVC, NEC, Patriot, Southland, SoCon, SWAC, Summit, and WAC conferences all went 0–1. The columns R32, S16, E8, F4, and CG respectively stand for the Round of 32, Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight, Final Four, and Championship Game. Once again, except for the play-in game, which was telecast on ESPN, CBS and CBS College Sports Network served as broadcasters on television for the tournament. The only change from past years at the Final Four was that Jim Nantz worked with Clark Kellogg in the color commentary position instead of Billy Packer, who left CBS in July 2008. Studio: Greg Gumbel, Greg Anthony and Seth Davis, Jim Nantz and Clark Kellogg and Tracy Wolfson (she was only used as a backstage reporter for the Final Four and NCAA Championship game) – First & Second Round at Greensboro, North Carolina; South Regional at Memphis, Tennessee; Final Four at Detroit, Michigan, Dick Enberg or Carter Blackburn and Jay Bilas – Blackburn Thursday afternoon; Enberg Thursday night, First & Second round at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; West Regional at Glendale, Arizona, Verne Lundquist and Bill Raftery – First & Second Round at Dayton, Ohio; East Regional at Boston, Massachusetts, Gus Johnson and Len Elmore – First & Second Round at Minneapolis, Minnesota; Midwest Regional at Indianapolis, Indiana, Kevin Harlan and Dan Bonner – First & Second Round at Portland, Oregon, Ian Eagle and Jim Spanarkel – First & Second Round at Miami, Florida, Craig Bolerjack and Bob Wenzel – First & Second Round at Boise, Idaho, Tim Brando and Mike Gminski – First & Second Round at Kansas City, Missouri For the play-in game in Dayton, ESPN had Brent Musburger, Steve Lavin and Erin Andrews working as the announcers. Some CBS affiliates put additional game broadcasts on digital subchannels, or, as in the following two instances, on other stations: WOIO and WUAB (Raycom Media duopoly): On March 20, WOIO aired Ohio State vs. Siena, while Cleveland State vs. Wake Forest was on WUAB at the same time. The Cleveland area has a substantial number of OSU alumni, and Mansfield, although part of the Cleveland market, is equidistant to both Columbus and Cleveland., KOTV and KQCW (Griffin Media duopoly): Also on March 20, KOTV aired Oklahoma State vs. Tennessee; at the same time, Kansas vs. North Dakota State was on KQCW. The reason for this simulcast is that part of the Tulsa market includes Coffeyville and other communities at the southern end of Kansas. Westwood One was once again the radio home for the tournament. Marc Vandermeer and Steve Lappas – at Dayton, Ohio Bill Rosinski and Kyle Macy – at Greensboro, North Carolina, Kevin Kugler and Pete Gillen – at Kansas City, Missouri, Wayne Larrivee and John Thompson – at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Dave Sims and P.J. Carlesimo – at Portland, Oregon, Ted Robinson and Bill Frieder – at Boise, Idaho, Mark Champion and Kelly Tripucka – at Dayton, Ohio, Tom McCarthy and Kevin Grevey – at Miami, Florida, Brad Sham and Reid Gettys – at Minneapolis, Minnesota Kevin Kugler and John Thompson – East Regional at Boston, Massachusetts, Ian Eagle and Pete Gillen – Midwest Regional at Indianapolis, Indiana, Kevin Harlan and P.J. Carlesimo – South Regional at Memphis, Tennessee, Wayne Larrivee and Bill Frieder – West Regional at Glendale, Arizona Kevin Kugler, John Thompson and Bill Raftery – at Detroit, Michigan CBC Television, uses the CBS broadcast and commentators, the CBC personalities, themes and graphics. One HD / ESPN Australia, uses the CBS broadcast and commentators. ESPN Brasil, uses the CBS broadcast. * Europe, North Africa and Middle East: ESPN America Live/delayed on Basketball TV, and recorded on C/S9; uses the CBS broadcast and commentators. Yahoo! Sports and NCAA.com also broadcast the entire tournament live for free on the internet. 2009 NCAA Division II Men's Basketball Tournament, 2009 NCAA Division III Men's Basketball Tournament, 2009 NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Tournament, 2009 NCAA Division II Women's Basketball Tournament, 2009 NCAA Division III Women's Basketball Tournament, 2009 National Invitation Tournament, 2009 Women's National Invitation Tournament, 2009 NAIA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament, 2009 NAIA Division II Men's Basketball Tournament, 2009 NAIA Division I Women's Basketball Tournament, 2009 NAIA Division II Women's Basketball Tournament, 2009 College Basketball Invitational, 2009 CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournament, 2008–09 NCAA Division I men's basketball season

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Major League Soccer (MLS) is a men's professional soccer league sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation which represents the sport's highest level in the United States. The league comprises 26 teams—23 in the U.S. and 3 in Canada and constitutes one of the major professional sports leagues in both countries. The league plans to expand to 30 teams with the additions of Austin FC and Charlotte in 2021, then Sacramento Republic FC and a St. Louis franchise in 2022. The regular season runs from March (or late February) to October, with each team playing 34 games; the team with the best record is awarded the Supporters' Shield. Fourteen teams compete in the postseason MLS Cup Playoffs through October and November, culminating in the championship game, the MLS Cup. MLS teams also play in domestic competitions against teams from other divisions in the U.S. Open Cup and in the Canadian Championship. MLS teams also compete against continental rivals in the CONCACAF Champions League. With an average attendance of over 20,000 per game, MLS has the third highest average attendance of any sports league in the U.S. after the National Football League (NFL) and Major League Baseball (MLB), and is the seventh highest attended professional soccer league worldwide. Major League Soccer was founded in 1993 as part of the United States' successful bid to host the 1994 FIFA World Cup. The first season took place in 1996 with ten teams. MLS experienced financial and operational struggles in its first few years: the league lost millions of dollars, teams played in mostly empty American football stadiums, and two teams folded in 2002. Since then, MLS has expanded to 26 teams, soccer-specific stadiums have proliferated around the league, average attendance exceeds that of the National Hockey League (NHL) and National Basketball Association (NBA), the Designated Player Rule allows teams to sign star players such as David Beckham, MLS secured national TV contracts, and the league is now profitable. Instead of operating as an association of independently owned teams, MLS is a single entity in which each team is owned by the league and individually operated by the league's investors. The investor-operators control their teams as owners control teams in other leagues, and are commonly (but inaccurately) referred to as the team's owners. The league has a fixed membership like most sports leagues in the United States and Canada, which makes it one of the world's few soccer leagues that does not use promotion and relegation, a practice that is uncommon in the two countries. MLS headquarters is located in New York City. Major League Soccer's regular season runs from March (or late February) to October. Teams are geographically divided into the Eastern and Western Conferences, playing 34 games in an unbalanced schedule. With 26 teams in 2020, each team plays two games (home and away) against teams in its conference and one game against all but 3 teams in the opposite conference. The 2020 season is the first season in league history in which teams will not play against every other team in the league. Midway through the season, teams break for the annual All-Star Game, and exhibition game containing the league's best players. 2020 is the first year in which the MLS All-Stars will play against the all-stars from Mexico's Liga MX. At the end of the regular season, the team with the highest point total is awarded the Supporters' Shield and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. Unlike most major soccer leagues around the world, but similar to other leagues in the Americas, the MLS regular season is followed by a postseason knockout tournament. Fourteen teams participate in the MLS Cup Playoffs in October, which concludes with the MLS Cup championship game in early November. Major League Soccer's spring-to-fall schedule results in scheduling conflicts with the FIFA calendar and with summertime international tournaments such as the World Cup and the Gold Cup, causing several players to miss some MLS matches. While MLS has looked into changing to a fall-to-spring format, there are no current plans to do so. If the league were to change its schedule, a substantial winter break would still be necessary due to teams being located in harsh winter climates. It would also have to compete with the popularity and media presence of the National Football League (NFL) in the fall and winter as well as the National Basketball Association (NBA) and National Hockey League (NHL), which both run on fall-to-spring schedules. MLS teams also play in other international and domestic competitions. Every year, five MLS teams — four from the U.S. and one from Canada — play in the CONCACAF Champions League against other clubs from the CONCACAF region (Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean). Two U.S.-based MLS teams qualify based on MLS regular-season results: the team with the most points in the Western conference and the team with the most points in the Eastern conference. The third U.S. team to qualify is the winner of the MLS Cup. A fourth U.S.-based MLS team can qualify via the U.S. Open Cup. If a team qualifies through multiple berths, or if any of the MLS berths are taken by a Canada-based MLS team, the berth is reallocated to the best U.S.-based team in the overall table that has otherwise not qualified. Canadian MLS clubs play against other Canadian clubs in the Canadian Championship for the one CONCACAF Champions League spot allocated to Canada. No MLS club has won the Champions League since it began its current format in 2008, but MLS teams have reached the final three times: Real Salt Lake in 2011, Montreal Impact in 2015, and Toronto FC in 2018. Since 2018, the previous year's MLS Cup champion plays in the Campeones Cup, a single game against the Campeón de Campeones from Liga MX, hosted by the MLS team in September. The inaugural edition saw Tigres UANL defeat Toronto FC 3–1 on September 19, 2018, at BMO Field in Toronto. Another inter-league competition, the Leagues Cup, was established in 2019. The 2020 edition of the tournament will pair eight MLS clubs against eight Liga MX clubs in a single-elimination tournament hosted in the United States, reviving an inter-league rivalry that previously took place in the now defunct North American Superliga. MLS's 26 teams are divided between the Eastern and Western Conferences. Each club is allowed up to 28 players on its first team roster. All 28 players are eligible for selection to each 18-player game-day squad during the regular season and playoffs. MLS has regularly expanded since the 2005 season. The league plans to expand to 30 teams with the addition of Austin FC and Charlotte in 2021, and Sacramento Republic FC and St. Louis in 2022. The league features numerous rivalry cups that are contested by two or more teams, usually geographic rivals. Each trophy is awarded to the team with the better regular-season record in games involving the two teams. The concept is comparable to rivalry trophies played for by U.S. college football teams. Notes Major League Soccer is the most recent of a series of men's premier professional national soccer leagues established in the United States and Canada. The predecessor of MLS was the North American Soccer League (NASL), which existed from 1968 until 1984. In 1988, in exchange for FIFA awarding the right to host the 1994 World Cup, U.S. Soccer promised to establish a Division 1 professional soccer league. In 1993, U.S. Soccer selected Major League Professional Soccer (the precursor to MLS) as the exclusive Division 1 professional soccer league. Major League Soccer was officially formed in February 1995 as a limited liability company. MLS began play in 1996 with ten teams. The first game was held on April 6, 1996, as the San Jose Clash defeated D.C. United before 31,000 fans at Spartan Stadium in San Jose in a game broadcast on ESPN. The league had generated some buzz by managing to lure some marquee players from the 1994 World Cup to play in MLS—including U.S. stars such as Alexi Lalas, Tony Meola and Eric Wynalda, and foreign players such as Mexico's Jorge Campos and Colombia's Carlos Valderrama. D.C. United won the MLS Cup in three of the league's first four seasons. The league added its first two expansion teams in 1998—the Miami Fusion and the Chicago Fire; the Chicago Fire won its first title in its inaugural season. After its first season, MLS suffered from a decline in attendance. The league's low attendance was all the more apparent in light of the fact that eight of the original ten teams played in large American football stadiums. One aspect that had alienated fans was that MLS experimented with rules deviations in its early years in an attempt to "Americanize" the sport. The league implemented the use of shootouts to resolve tie games. MLS also used a countdown clock and halves ended when the clock reached 0:00. The league realized that the rule changes had alienated some traditional soccer fans while failing to draw new American sports fans, and the shootout and countdown clock were eliminated after the 1999 season. The league's quality was cast into doubt when the U.S. men's national team, which was made up largely of MLS players, finished in last place at the 1998 World Cup. Major League Soccer lost an estimated $250 million during its first five years, and more than $350 million between its founding and 2004. The league's financial problems led to Commissioner Doug Logan being replaced by Don Garber, a former NFL executive, in August 1999. Following decreased attendance and increased losses by late 2001, league officials planned to fold but were able to secure new financing from owners Lamar Hunt, Philip Anschutz, and the Kraft family to take on more teams. MLS announced in January 2002 that it had decided to contract the Tampa Bay Mutiny and Miami Fusion, leaving the league with ten teams. Despite the financial problems, though, MLS did have some accomplishments that would set the stage for the league's resurgence. Columbus Crew Stadium, now known as Mapfre Stadium, was built in 1999, becoming MLS's first soccer-specific stadium. This began a trend among MLS teams to construct their own venues instead of leasing American football stadiums. In 2000, the league won an antitrust lawsuit, Fraser v. Major League Soccer, that the players had filed in 1996. The court ruled that MLS's policy of centrally contracting players and limiting player salaries through a salary cap and other restrictions were a legal method for the league to maintain solvency and competitive parity. The 2002 FIFA World Cup, in which the United States unexpectedly made the quarterfinals, coincided with a resurgence in American soccer and MLS. MLS Cup 2002 drew 61,316 spectators to Gillette Stadium, the largest attendance in an MLS Cup final until 2018. MLS limited teams to three substitutions per game in 2003, and adopted International Football Association Board (IFAB) rules in 2005. MLS underwent a transition in the years leading up to the 2006 World Cup. After marketing itself on the talents of American players, the league lost some of its homegrown stars to prominent European leagues. For example, Tim Howard was transferred to Manchester United for $4 million in one of the most lucrative contract deals in league history. Many more American players did make an impact in MLS. In 2005, Jason Kreis became the first player to score 100 career MLS goals. The league's financial stabilization plan included teams moving out of large American football stadiums and into soccer-specific stadiums. From 2003 to 2008, the league oversaw the construction of six additional soccer-specific stadiums, largely funded by owners such as Lamar Hunt and Phil Anschutz, so that by the end of 2008, a majority of teams were now in soccer-specific stadiums. It was also in this era that MLS expanded for the first time since 1998. Real Salt Lake and Chivas USA began play in 2005, with Chivas USA becoming the second club in Los Angeles. By 2006 the San Jose Earthquakes owners, players and a few coaches moved to Texas to become the expansion Houston Dynamo, after failing to build a stadium in San Jose. The Dynamo became an expansion team, leaving their history behind for a new San Jose ownership group that formed in 2007. In 2007 the league expanded beyond the United States' borders into Canada with the Toronto FC expansion team. Major League Soccer took steps to further raise the level of play by adopting the Designated Player Rule, which helped bring international stars into the league. The 2007 season witnessed the MLS debut of David Beckham. Beckham's signing had been seen as a coup for American soccer, and was made possible by the Designated Player Rule. Players such as Cuauhtémoc Blanco (Chicago Fire) and Juan Pablo Ángel (New York Red Bulls), are some of the first Designated Players who made major contributions to their clubs. The departures of Clint Dempsey and Jozy Altidore, coupled with the return of former U.S. national team stars Claudio Reyna and Brian McBride, highlighted the exchange of top prospects to Europe for experienced veterans to MLS. By 2008, San Jose had returned to the league under new ownership, and in 2009, the expansion side Seattle Sounders FC began play in MLS. The Sounders set a new average attendance record for the league, with 30,943 spectators per match, and were the first expansion team to qualify for the playoffs since 1998. The 2010 season ushered in an expansion franchise in the Philadelphia Union and their new PPL Park stadium (now known as Talen Energy Stadium). The 2010 season also brought the opening of the New York Red Bulls' soccer-specific stadium, Red Bull Arena, and the debut of French striker Thierry Henry. The 2011 season brought further expansion with the addition of the Vancouver Whitecaps FC, the second Canadian MLS franchise, and the Portland Timbers. Real Salt Lake reached the finals of the 2010–11 CONCACAF Champions League. During the 2011 season, the Galaxy signed another international star in Republic of Ireland all-time leading goalscorer Robbie Keane. MLS drew an average attendance of 17,872 in 2011, higher than the average attendances of the NBA and NHL. In 2012, the Montreal Impact became the league's 19th franchise and the third in Canada, and made their home debut in front of a crowd of 58,912, while the New York Red Bulls added Australian all-time leading goalscorer Tim Cahill. In 2013, MLS introduced New York City FC as its 20th team, and Orlando City Soccer Club as its 21st team, both of which would begin playing in 2015. In 2013, the league implemented its "Core Players" initiative, allowing teams to retain key players using retention funds instead of losing the players to foreign leagues. Among the first high-profile players re-signed in 2013 using retention funds were U.S. national team regulars Graham Zusi and Matt Besler. Beginning in summer of 2013 and continuing in the run up to the 2014 World Cup, MLS began signing U.S. stars based abroad, including Clint Dempsey, Jermaine Jones, and Michael Bradley from Europe; and DaMarcus Beasley from Mexico's Liga MX. By the 2014 season, fifteen of the nineteen MLS head coaches had previously played in MLS. By 2013, the league's popularity had increased to the point where MLS was as popular as Major League Baseball among 12- to 17-year-olds, as reported by the 2013 Luker on Trends ESPN poll, having jumped in popularity since the 2010 World Cup. In 2014, the league announced Atlanta United FC as the 22nd team to start playing in 2017. Even though New York City FC and Orlando City were not set to begin play until 2015, each team made headlines during the summer 2014 transfer window by announcing their first Designated Players – Spain's leading scorer David Villa and Chelsea's leading scorer Frank Lampard to New York, and Ballon d'Or winner Kaká to Orlando. The 2014 World Cup featured 21 MLS players on World Cup rosters and a record 11 MLS players playing for foreign teams – including players from traditional powerhouses Brazil (Júlio César) and Spain (David Villa); in the U.S. v. Germany match the U.S. fielded a team with seven MLS starters. On September 18, 2014, MLS unveiled their new logo as part of the "MLS Next" branding initiative. In addition to the new crest logo, MLS teams display versions in their own colors on their jerseys. Chivas USA folded following the 2014 season, while New York City FC and Orlando City SC joined the league in 2015 as the 19th and 20th teams. Sporting Kansas City and the Houston Dynamo moved from the Eastern Conference to the Western Conference in 2015 to make two 10-team conferences. In early 2015, the league announced that two teams—Los Angeles FC and Minnesota United—would join MLS in either 2017 or 2018. The 20th season of MLS saw the arrivals of several players who have starred at the highest levels of European club soccer and in international soccer: Giovanni dos Santos, Kaká, Andrea Pirlo, Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard, Didier Drogba, David Villa, and Sebastian Giovinco. On December 6, 2015, MLS announced its intent to expand to 28 teams. MLS confirmed in August 2016 that Minnesota United would begin play in 2017 along with Atlanta United FC. In April 2016, the league's commissioner Don Garber reiterated the intention of the league to expand to 28 teams, with the next round of expansion "likely happening in 2020". In December 2016, he updated the expansion plans stating that the league will look to approve the 25th and 26th teams in 2017 and to start play in 2020. In January 2017, the league received bids from 12 ownership groups. In July 2017, it was reported that Major League Soccer had rejected a $4 billion offer by MP & Silva to acquire all television rights to the league for 10 years following the conclusion of its current contracts with Fox, ESPN, and Univision. While it represents a substantial increase over the current agreements, MP & Silva insisted that the deal would be conditional on Major League Soccer adopting a promotion and relegation system similar to other international leagues. Although the league stated that it rejected the offer due to the exclusive periods that the current rightsholders have to negotiate extensions to their contracts, it was pointed out by the media that Major League Soccer had long-opposed the adoption of promotion and relegation, continuing to utilize the fixed, franchise-based model used in other U.S. sports leagues. Furthermore, MP & Silva founder Riccardo Silva appeared to have a conflict of interest because he also owned Miami FC of the NASL, which stood to benefit from such a promotion and relegation system. In October 2017, Columbus Crew SC owner Anthony Precourt announced plans to move the franchise to Austin, Texas by 2019. The announcement spawned a league-wide backlash and legal action against the league by the Ohio state government. On August 15, 2018, the Austin City Council voted to approve an agreement with Precourt to move Crew SC to Austin, and on August 22, 2018, the club's new name, Austin FC, was announced. After negotiations between Precourt and Jimmy Haslam, owner of the Cleveland Browns, were announced, MLS made it clear that Austin would receive an expansion team only after a deal to sell Columbus to a local buyer had completed. The purchase of Crew SC by Haslam's group was finalized in late December 2018, and on January 15, 2019, Austin FC was officially announced as a 2021 MLS entry. MLS announced on December 20, 2017, that it would be awarding an expansion franchise to Nashville, who would play in a yet-to-be- built 27,000-seat soccer-specific stadium, Nashville Fairgrounds Stadium, and would join MLS in 2020. The management of the Nashville franchise announced in February 2019 that the MLS side would assume the Nashville SC name then in use by the city's USL Championship team. On January 29, 2018, MLS awarded Miami an expansion team, led by David Beckham. Inter Miami CF will start play in the 2020 season and open a proposed 25,000-seat stadium soon after. An expansion team was awarded to Cincinnati, Ohio on May 29, 2018, to the ownership group of USL's FC Cincinnati. The team, which assumed the existing FC Cincinnati name, started MLS play in 2019 and will move to a new stadium in 2021 with a minimum capacity of 26,000 seats. On March 19, 2019, MLS announced a ‘multi- year strategic partnership’ that made casino operator MGM Resorts International the league's first official gaming partner. Roar Digital, a joint venture of MGM and UK gambling operator GVC Holdings, will become the league's exclusive sports betting partner. In 2013, New York City FC agreed to pay a record $100 million expansion fee for the right to join MLS in 2015. This record was surpassed by the ownership groups of FC Cincinnati and Nashville SC, which each paid $150 million to join MLS (FC Cincinnati in 2019 and Nashville SC in 2020). The same amount was paid as an effective entrance fee by a group that bought Columbus Crew SC in 2018, which led to that team's previous operator receiving rights to Austin FC, set to join MLS in 2021. MLS has also announced the ownership groups of the 28th and 29th teams will each pay a $200 million entrance fee. With an average attendance of over 20,000 per game, MLS has the third highest average attendance of any sports league in the U.S. after the National Football League (NFL) and Major League Baseball (MLB), and is the seventh highest attended professional soccer league worldwide. The league plans to expand to 30 teams with the addition of Austin FC and Charlotte in 2021, and Sacramento and St. Louis in 2022. Commissioner Don Garber has suggested that another round of expansion could lead to 32 teams in MLS. As of the 2019 season, 26 different clubs have competed in the league, with 13 having won at least one MLS Cup, and 13 winning at least one Supporters' Shield. The two trophies have been won by the same club in the same year on seven occasions (two clubs have accomplished the feat twice). MLS Cup titles and Supporters' Shield Wins Major League Soccer operates under a single-entity structure in which teams and player contracts are centrally owned by the league. Each team has an investor-operator that is a shareholder in the league. In order to control costs, MLS shares revenues and holds players contracts instead of players contracting with individual teams. In Fraser v. Major League Soccer, a lawsuit filed in 1996 and decided in 2002, the league won a legal battle with its players in which the court ruled that MLS was a single entity that can lawfully centrally contract for player services. The court also ruled that even absent their collective bargaining agreement, players could opt to play in other leagues if they were unsatisfied. Having multiple clubs operated by a single investor was a necessity in the league's first ten years. At one time Phil Anschutz's AEG operated six MLS franchises and Lamar Hunt's Hunt Sports three franchises. In order to attract additional investors, in 2002 the league announced changes to the operating agreement between the league and its teams to improve team revenues and increase the incentives to be an individual club operator. These changes included granting operators the rights to a certain number of players they develop through their club's academy system each year, sharing the profits of Soccer United Marketing, and being able to sell individual club jersey sponsorships. As MLS appeared to be on the brink of overall profitability in 2006 and developed significant expansion plans, MLS announced that it wanted each club to have a distinct operator. The league has attracted new investors that have injected more money into the league. Examples include Red Bull's purchase of the MetroStars from AEG in 2006 for over $100 million. For the 2014 season, the league assumed control of the former Chivas USA club, which had suffered from mismanagement and poor financial results under its individual operator relationship. The league eventually dissolved the team, in favor of awarding rights to a second soccer club in the Los Angeles area to a new investor group on October 30, 2014. The league now has 30 investor-operators for its 26 current and 4 future clubs. Since December 2015, when AEG sold its remaining 50% interest in the Houston Dynamo, the former multiple-team operators AEG and Hunt Sports, with the LA Galaxy and FC Dallas respectively, now only control one franchise. Don Garber has been the commissioner of Major League Soccer since 1999, serving as the league's chief executive. The league's first commissioner was Doug Logan, who served in the role from 1995 to 1999. Mark Abbott, a former MLS business partner, has served as the league's President and Deputy Commissioner since 2006. The average salary for MLS players is $373,094, lower than the average salaries in England's second-tier EFL Championship ($420,000 in 2015), the Netherlands' Eredivisie ($445,000), or Mexico's Liga MX ($418,000 in 2015). The league's minimum player salary increased in 2017 to $65,000 for most players, and roster players #25–30 saw their minimum salary increased to $53,000. MLS salaries are limited by a salary cap, which MLS has had in place since the league's inception in 1996. The purpose of the salary cap is to prevent the team's owners from unsustainable spending on player salaries and to prevent a competitive imbalance among teams. The salary cap survived a legal challenge by the players in the Fraser v. Major League Soccer lawsuit. The 2017 salary cap increased to $3.845 million per team. Teams may augment their squads by signing players from other leagues. MLS has two transfer windows—the primary pre-season transfer window lasts three months from mid February until mid May, and the secondary mid season transfer window runs one month from early July to early August. When an MLS club sells one of its players overseas, the club and the league split the transfer revenues, with the club retaining from 33% to 75% depending on the player's status and tenure. MLS teams have a limited number of international roster slots that they can use to sign non-domestic players. However, MLS teams often obtain green cards for their non-domestic players in order to qualify them for domestic status and thus free up international roster slots. In 2015, 49% of MLS players were born outside of the U.S. and Canada, with players from 58 countries represented. MLS has also introduced various initiatives and rules intended to improve quality of players while still maintaining the salary cap. Rules concerning Designated Players and allocation money allow for additional wage spending that is exempt from the salary cap. These initiatives have brought about an increase in on-field competition. The designated player (DP) rule allows teams to sign a limited number of players whose salary exceeds the maximum cap, each DP player only counts as $480,625 (the maximum non-DP salary) against the cap in 2017. Instituted in 2007, England's David Beckham was the first signing under the DP rule. The DP rule has led to large income inequality in MLS with top DPs earning as much as 180 times more than a player earning the league minimum. In the 2013 season 21% of the league's wage spending went to just 5 players, this stretched to 29% on the top 6 players in the 2014 season. The league's "Core Players" initiative allows teams to re- sign players using retention funds that do not count against the salary cap. Retention funds were implemented in 2013 as a mechanism for MLS to retain key players; among the first high-profile players re-signed using retention funds were U.S. national team regulars Graham Zusi and Matt Besler. MLS teams can also obtain allocation money, which is money that the team can use on player salaries that does not count against the cap, and teams can earn allocation money in several ways, such as from the transfer fees earned by selling players to teams in other leagues. MLS teams can also use Targeted Allocation Money (often referred to as TAM), an initiative announced in 2015. Teams can use TAM funds to attract high-profile players by "buying down" contracts of players to below the Designated Player level. High-profile players for which TAM funds were used include Hector Villalba and Zlatan Ibrahimović. MLS has introduced various initiatives and rules intended to develop young players. Rules concerning Generation Adidas players and home grown players provide incentives for clubs to develop and retain young players. MLS has required all of its teams to operate youth development programs since 2008. MLS roster rules allow teams to sign an unlimited number players straight from their academies and bypassing the draft process. There is also supplementary salary budget made by MLS only for homegrown players that are registered using senior roster slots called homegrown player funds. One of the most prominent and lucrative examples of success in "home-grown" development was Jozy Altidore, who rose to prominence as a teenager in MLS before his record transfer fee $10 million move to Villarreal in Spain in 2008. The various MLS teams' development academies play matches in a U.S. Soccer developmental league against youth academies from other leagues such as the North American Soccer League (NASL), which had been a Division II league prior to 2018, and USL Pro, originally a Division III league but now the Division II USL Championship. The league operates a Generation Adidas program, which is a joint venture between MLS and U.S. Soccer that encourages young American players to enter MLS. The Generation Adidas program has been in place since 1997, and has introduced players such as Landon Donovan, Clint Dempsey, Tim Howard and Michael Bradley into MLS. Players under the Home Grown Player rule are signed to Generation Adidas contracts, all players on Generation Adidas contracts are "off budget players" and their salaries do not count against the cap. MLS formerly operated a reserve league that gave playing time to players who were not starters for their MLS teams. The Reserve League was formed in 2005, and operated through 2014 (with the exception of the 2009 & 2010 seasons). MLS began integrating its Reserve League with the league then known as USL Pro in 2013, and after the 2014 season folded the Reserve League, with MLS now requiring all teams to either affiliate with a USL team or field their own reserve side in that league. Since 1999, the league has overseen the construction of twelve stadiums specifically designed for soccer. The development of soccer-specific stadiums owned by the teams has generated a better gameday experience for the fans. The soccer-specific stadiums have yielded positive financial results as teams were no longer required to pay to rent out facilities and gained control over revenue streams such as concessions, parking, naming rights, and the ability to host non-MLS events. Several teams have doubled their season tickets following the team's move into a soccer-specific stadium. The establishment of soccer-specific stadiums is considered the key to the league and the ability of teams to turn a profit. In 2006, Tim Leiweke, then CEO of Anschutz Entertainment Group, described the proliferation of soccer-specific stadiums as the turning point for MLS. Columbus Crew owner Lamar Hunt started this trend in 1999 by constructing Columbus Crew Stadium, now known as Mapfre Stadium, as MLS's first soccer-specific stadium. The Los Angeles Galaxy followed four years later with the opening of the Home Depot Center, now Dignity Health Sports Park, in 2003. FC Dallas opened Pizza Hut Park, now Toyota Stadium, in 2005, and the Chicago Fire began playing their home games in Toyota Park, now SeatGeek Stadium, in 2006. The 2007 season brought the opening of Dick's Sporting Goods Park for the Colorado Rapids and BMO Field for Toronto FC. Near the end of the 2008 season, Rio Tinto Stadium became the home of Real Salt Lake, which meant that for the first time in MLS history a majority of MLS's teams (8 out of 14) played in soccer-specific stadiums. Red Bull Arena, the new home of the New York Red Bulls opened for the start of the 2010 season, and the Philadelphia Union opened PPL Park, since renamed Talen Energy Stadium, in June 2010, midway through their inaugural season. The following season, in 2011, the Portland Timbers made their MLS debut in a newly renovated Jeld-Wen Field, now renamed Providence Park, which was originally a multi-purpose venue but turned into a soccer-specific facility. Also in 2011, Sporting Kansas City moved to new Livestrong Sporting Park, now Children's Mercy Park. The Houston Dynamo relocated to their new home at BBVA Compass Stadium, now BBVA Stadium, in 2012. In the same year, the Montreal Impact joined the league in an expanded Stade Saputo, which reopened in June 2012, when renovations pushed the seating capacity to over 20,000. The Impact has used Olympic Stadium for early season matches and for games that require a larger capacity. The San Jose Earthquakes, who had played at Buck Shaw Stadium from 2008 until 2014, opened their new Avaya Stadium before the 2015 season. The Orlando City SC expansion team intended to begin constructing Orlando City Stadium, a soccer-specific facility now known as Exploria Stadium, in 2014 to be completed in 2015. Delays caused by changes to the stadium plans pushed back the new venue's opening, first to late in the 2016 season and finally to the start of the 2017 season. Orlando City played at the Florida Citrus Bowl Stadium, now Camping World Stadium, while awaiting the construction of their new venue through the 2016 season. Exploria Stadium hosted its first MLS match on March 5, 2017 against New York City FC as Orlando City Stadium. The development of additional MLS stadiums has continued to progress. D.C. United had played their home games at former NFL and Major League Baseball venue RFK Stadium. In 2013, D.C. United announced the signing of a public-private partnership term sheet to build a new soccer stadium in Washington, D.C., and a final deal was reached in late 2014. In late February 2017, D.C. United finally broke ground on their new stadium, Audi Field. After 21 years of playing at RFK Stadium, DC United played their first game at Audi field in July 2018. Two teams have announced their desire to build a soccer-specific stadium, although these teams have not finalized the stadium site and received all necessary government approvals. New York City FC play home games at Yankee Stadium, a Major League Baseball venue, although they intend to move into a soccer-specific stadium in the future. The New England Revolution play home games at a National Football League venue, Gillette Stadium, but are currently in discussion with the City of Boston regarding a potential soccer-specific stadium in South Boston. Several remaining clubs play in stadiums not originally built for MLS and have not announced plans to move. The Seattle Sounders FC play at CenturyLink Field, a dual-purpose facility used for both American football and soccer. The Vancouver Whitecaps FC joined the league with Portland in 2011 and temporarily held matches at Empire Field before moving into the refurbished BC Place in October 2011, a retractable-roof stadium that hosts Canadian football as well as soccer. Of the three teams that made their MLS debuts in 2017 and 2018, one opened a soccer-specific stadium in 2019, a second is playing in a shared football stadium, and the last opened a soccer-specific stadium for its inaugural 2018 season. Minnesota United FC, which debuted in 2017, built Allianz Field in St. Paul which hosted its inaugural game against New York City FC on April 13, 2019. Until that time, the team played in Minneapolis at TCF Bank Stadium, home to University of Minnesota football. Atlanta United FC began play in 2017 at a college football facility, Georgia Tech's Bobby Dodd Stadium, before moving into its permanent home at the retractable-roof Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which it shares with the NFL's Atlanta Falcons; the two teams share a common owner and the stadium is equipped with screens to cordon off the upper tiers for most matches. Los Angeles FC, which began play in 2018, opened Banc of California Stadium on the former site of the Los Angeles Sports Arena in April of its inaugural season. FC Cincinnati made its MLS debut in 2019 at Nippert Stadium, the football home of the University of Cincinnati. The stadium had been home to FCC's USL Championship predecessor for all of its three seasons of play. The club plans to move within Cincinnati to the new West End Stadium in 2021. Inter Miami currently plans to start play in 2020 at the new Lockhart Stadium at the former site of the old Lockhart Stadium in Fort Lauderdale before opening Miami Freedom Park in 2022. Nashville SC has announced it will play the 2020 and 2021 seasons at an NFL facility, the Tennessee Titans' Nissan Stadium, before opening the Nashville Fairgrounds Stadium in 2022. Austin FC plans to open its own stadium when it begins play in 2021. Major League Soccer began to demonstrate positive signs of long-term profitability as early as 2004 with the single-entity ownership structure, salary cap, and the media and marketing umbrella Soccer United Marketing (SUM) all contributing towards MLS's financial security. As soccer-specific stadiums are built, ownership expands, and television coverage increases, MLS has seen its revenues increase while controlling costs. Television coverage and revenue have increased since the league's early years. In 2006, MLS reached an 8-year TV deal with ESPN spanning the 2007–2014 seasons, and marked the first time that MLS earned rights fees, reported to be worth $7–8 million annually. In September 2012 the league extended its distribution agreement with London- based Media rights agency MP & Silva until 2014 in a deal worth $10 million annually. Total league TV revenues are over $40 million annually. In 2011, MLS earned $150 million when it sold a 25% stake in SUM. In early 2005, MLS signed a 10-year, $150 million sponsorship deal with Adidas for its jerseys and other equipment. In 2007, MLS teams started selling ad space on the front of jerseys to go along with the league-wide sponsorship partners who had already been advertising on the back of club jerseys, following the practice of international sport, specifically soccer. MLS established a floor of $500,000 per shirt sponsorship, with the league receiving a flat fee of $200,000 per deal. As of July 2014, sixteen teams had signed sponsorship deals to have company logos placed on the front of their jerseys (and another team is directly owned by its shirt sponsor), and the league average from jersey sponsors was about $2.4 million. All MLS teams have had jersey sponsors since February 2016. Sleeve sponsorship will be introduced to MLS in the 2020 season, with the teams able to sell a section on the right arm where the league logo patch is normally positioned. The Los Angeles Galaxy made a profit in 2003 in their first season at The Home Depot Center, and FC Dallas turned a profit after moving into Pizza Hut Park in 2005. For each season between 2006 and 2009, two to three MLS clubs (generally clubs with a soccer-specific stadium) were reported as profitable by the league. By 2012 the league had shown a marked improvement in its financial health. In November 2013, Forbes published a report that revealed that ten of the league's nineteen teams earned an operating profit in 2012, while two broke even and seven had a loss. Forbes estimated that the league's collective annual revenues were $494 million, and that the league's collective annual profit was $34 million. Forbes valued the league's franchises to be worth $103 million on average, almost three times as much as the $37 million average valuation in 2008. The Seattle Sounders FC franchise was named the most valuable at $175 million, a 483% gain over the $30 million league entrance fee it paid in 2009. The trend in increased team values has continued with MLS teams seeing a strong 52% increase in franchise values from 2012 to 2014. In August 2015 Forbes updated its MLS franchise values with the most profitable team measuring $245 million and the least $105 million. The average value jumped from $103 to $157 million. As of 2018 Forbes estimates Atlanta United FC are the most valuable MLS team, worth $330 million, while the Colorado Rapids are the lowest value, at $155 million. These valuations do not include the value of stadiums or training facilities owned by the respective clubs. MLS teams typically use commercial flights to transport players and staff between matches, with only four charter flights allowed under league rules. MLS follows the rules and standards of the International Football Association Board (IFAB). The playoff extra time structure follows IFAB standards: two full 15-minute periods, followed by a penalty shootout if necessary. U.S. Soccer hired the first full-time professional referees in league history in 2007 as part of the league's "Game First" initiatives. Major League Soccer has been implementing fines and suspensions since the 2011 season for simulation (diving) through its Disciplinary Committee, which reviews plays after the match. The first player fined under the new rule was Charlie Davies, fined $1,000 for intentionally deceiving match officials. MLS uses the list of banned substances published by the World Anti-Doping Agency. In the early years of MLS, teams were typically given official nicknames in the style of other U.S. sports leagues (e.g., Columbus Crew, Los Angeles Galaxy, New England Revolution). Several club names in MLS originated with previous professional soccer clubs, such as the 1970s-era NASL team names San Jose Earthquakes, Seattle Sounders, Portland Timbers and Vancouver Whitecaps. D.C. United and Miami Fusion FC were the only two MLS teams to adopt European naming conventions during the 1990s. In recent years, European-style names have become increasingly common in MLS, with expansion teams such as Real Salt Lake, Toronto FC, New York City FC, Atlanta United FC, Minnesota United FC, and FC Cincinnati, along with rebrandings such as FC Dallas (formerly the Dallas Burn) and Sporting Kansas City (formerly the Kansas City Wizards). The beverage company Red Bull GmbH owns the New York Red Bulls as well as other sports teams outside the U.S. As of the 2020 season, MLS matches are broadcast nationally by ESPN networks and Fox Sports in English, and Univision networks in Spanish under an eight- year contract. Each broadcaster has a window for national regular season matches, with UniMás airing a game on Friday nights in Spanish and additional matches on Univision Deportes Network, and ESPN and Fox Sports 1 airing games on Sunday evenings in English. ESPN, FS1, and Univision share in coverage of the playoffs, while ABC and FOX alternate broadcasting the MLS Cup final in English. In total, at least 125 matches are aired per-season across all three networks. The three contracts have an average estimated value of $90 million per season—five times larger than the average $18 million value of the previous contracts with ESPN, Univision, and NBC Sports. Matches not televised nationally are broadcast regionally, often by regional sports networks like Fox Sports Networks, Comcast SportsNet, Spectrum Sports and Root Sports, and sometimes by terrestrial stations like KTXA, WRDQ anad KMYU. Regionally televised matches are available outside their local markets on ESPN+. From 2012 to 2014, MLS matches were broadcast by NBC Sports, with 40 matches per year—primarily on NBCSN, and select matches broadcast on the NBC network. The move from Fox Soccer to the more widely distributed NBCSN proved successful, with viewership numbers doubling for the 2012 season over those of Fox Soccer. Coverage of MLS expanded into Canada in 2007 with the addition of Toronto FC. Currently, English-language national MLS broadcast rights in Canada are held by the TSN networks through a five-year deal first renewed in 2017. The networks primarily broadcast matches involving the league's Canadian franchises, in combination with separate "regional" rights deals giving TSN exclusive rights to all Toronto FC and Vancouver Whitecaps FC matches. A limited number of matches are also carried by CTV. TVA Sports holds exclusive French-language rights to MLS in Canada as of the 2017 season. As part of a separate "regional" rights deal, it also holds exclusive rights to all Montreal Impact games. In 2018, online streaming service DAZN obtained Major League Soccer's digital out-of-market service MLS Live—with live and on-demand streaming of matches featuring U.S. teams (matches with Canadian teams are only available after a 48-hour delay to protect the league's main rightsholders TSN and TVA Sports). MLS also entered into a four-year contract with Sky Sports to broadcast two MLS matches per week in the United Kingdom and Ireland from 2015 to 2019. As part of the agreement, Sky Sports broadcast at least two MLS regular-season matches each week, as well as the MLS All-Star Game, every MLS Cup Playoff game, and the MLS Cup final. The matches appeared across Sky's family of networks. It also carried weekly MLS highlights across various platforms, including Sky Sports News and SkySports.com. Sky Sports also broadcast at least one match from MLS's "Decision Day" – the final day of the MLS regular season. Many of the matches on Decision Day every year are expected to determine the final spots for the MLS Cup Playoffs. DSport, owned by Discovery Communications, will televise league matches in India beginning in 2017. Major League Soccer is a playable league in both the FIFA and the Football Manager series. The league made its video game debut in 1999 with FIFA 2000. In 2000, Konami released ESPN MLS GameNight, and two years later, they released its sequel, ESPN MLS ExtraTime 2002. The league made its first appearance in the management series Football Manager 2005 in 2004. Statistics below are for all-time leaders. Statistics are for regular season only. Bold indicates active MLS players. Statistics below are for all-time leaders who are still playing. Statistics are for regular season only. At the conclusion of each season, the league presents several awards for outstanding achievements, mostly to players, but also to coaches, referees, and teams. The finalists in each category are determined by voting from MLS players, team employees, and the media. MLS Best XI, Sigi Schmid Coach of the Year Award, MLS Comeback Player of the Year Award, MLS Defender of the Year Award, MLS Fair Play Award (individual), MLS Fair Play Award (team), MLS Goal of the Year Award, MLS Goalkeeper of the Year Award, MLS Golden Boot, Landon Donovan MVP Award, MLS Newcomer of the Year Award, MLS Referee of the Year Award, MLS Rookie of the Year Award, MLS Save of the Year Award eMLS Cup, Generation Adidas, List of MLS drafts, List of Major League Soccer seasons, List of American and Canadian soccer champions, MLS All-Star Game, MLS Combine, MLS Players Union, MLS rivalry cups, Sueño MLS, U.S. soccer league system, U.S. Open Cup, World Series of Soccer (MLS) Sebastian Giovinco (; born 26 January 1987) is an Italian professional footballer who plays for Saudi Arabian club Al Hilal and the Italy national team as a forward. A quick and creative player on the ball, with excellent vision, technical skills, and an eye for goal, he is a free kick specialist and is capable of playing in several offensive positions. Due to his short stature, dynamic abilities and pace, Giovinco acquired the nickname formica atomica ("atomic ant", after the eponymous Hanna-Barbera character) in his youth. In 2015, he was named one of the 100 best footballers in the world by The Guardian, FourFourTwo, and L'Équipe. Giovinco began his professional footballing career with Italian club Juventus in Serie B in 2006, where he was promoted to the first team after his success with the club's youth squad; in his first season, he helped the senior side win the title and earn promotion to Serie A, establishing himself as a promising prospect in the number 10 role. After struggling to break into the starting line-up however, he spent successful stints on loan with Italian clubs Empoli and Parma, where he matured as a player, before earning a move back to Juventus in 2012. Upon his return to the Turin club, he won two consecutive league titles, but once again struggled to maintain a spot in the team's starting eleven. This resulted in a high-profile move to Toronto FC of Major League Soccer in early 2015, in a deal which made him the league's highest paid player. After joining the Canadian club, Giovinco soon established himself as one of the best players in MLS. During his first year with the club, he broke several league records, including the record for most combined goals and assists in a single season, also helping Toronto FC to qualify for the MLS Cup Playoffs for the first time in the club's history, and winning himself the MLS Golden Boot, the MLS Newcomer of the Year Award, and the MLS MVP Award. In 2016, he won his first title with Toronto FC, the 2016 Canadian Championship, and became the club's all-time top goalscorer, helping the club to qualify for the Playoffs once again, reaching the MLS Cup Final. In 2017, he won his second Canadian Championship, winning the George Gross Memorial Trophy for the best player of the competition, captured the Supporters' Shield, and also won the 2017 MLS Cup with Toronto FC – for a domestic treble. In 2018, Giovinco helped Toronto FC reach the final of the CONCACAF Champions League, and was awarded the Golden Ball as the tournament's best player, also capturing his third consecutive Canadian Championship with the club, although Toronto FC failed to qualify for the Playoffs. In 2019, he joined Saudi Arabian club Al Hilal, where he won the AFC Champions League in his first year with the team. At international level, Giovinco has represented Italy at all levels since first being called up by the under-16 side in 2003; at youth level, he took part at the 2008 Summer Olympics with the Italian under-23 side, and later helped the Italy under-21 side to the semi-finals of the 2009 UEFA European Under-21 Football Championship. He made his debut with the Italy senior side in 2011, and has since collected over 20 caps; he later also took part at UEFA Euro 2012 (winning a runners-up medal) and at the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup (winning a bronze medal), and scored his first international goal during the latter tournament. Giovinco was born in Turin to a Sicilian father, Giovanni, originally from Bisacquino in the province of Palermo, and a Calabrian mother, Elvira, originally from Catanzaro, who moved from Southern Italy. He grew up in Beinasco, a comune southwest of the city, in a family of Milan fans, and joined the Juventus youth system in 1996, when he was nine. His younger brother Giuseppe was also part of the Juventus Youth Academy and currently plays in Serie C. After joining the Juventus youth system, Giovinco flourished through the ranks of the club and impressed especially during the 2005–06 season, winning the Campionato Nazionale Primavera, as well as the Coppa Italia and Supercoppa Primavera, and also reaching the final at the Viareggio Tournament, where he was named best player of the competition. Giovinco was promoted to the first team during the 2006–07 season and also played his last season in the Primavera squad. His professional debut came on 12 May 2007, in the Serie B match against Bologna; he came on as a substitute in place of Raffaele Palladino, and marked his first appearance with an assist for David Trezeguet's tap-in. Since then, he had been tipped to be Alessandro Del Piero's heir in the creative number 10 role behind the main striker, known as the trequartista, rifinitore, or fantasista, in Italian. Juventus won the Serie B title that season, earning promotion to Serie A the following season. On 4 July 2007, Giovinco was loaned out to Empoli. He made his Serie A debut on 26 August, coming on as a substitute against Fiorentina. Giovinco scored his first Serie A goal on 30 September against Palermo in a 3–1 win. He made his European debut in the UEFA Cup on 4 October against Zürich. Giovinco finished his first season in Serie A with 6 goals in 35 appearances, and was given the Leone d’Argento award, by the club. Despite Giovinco's promising performances, Empoli were unable to avoid relegation, and he returned to Juventus at the end of the season. On 26 June 2008, Giovinco officially returned to Juventus. Giovinco played his first Serie A match for Juventus on 24 September, against Catania, before assisting both goals for Vincenzo Iaquinta in the 2–2 draw with BATE Borisov in the Champions League on 30 September, his first start for the club. On 7 December, he scored his first goal for Juventus, a free kick against Lecce in a 2–1 win. In October 2008, he signed a contract extension, tying him to Juventus until the summer of 2013. Despite a promising start, Giovinco did not play regularly and made sporadic appearances throughout the season, both in the starting eleven and off the bench, as he struggled to fit into Claudio Ranieri's preferred 4–4–2 formation, and was often used out of position on the left wing. However, he did earn praise in the media for the Man of the match performance that he produced when he was started in Juventus's home fixture in Serie A against Bologna on 14 March 2009, in which he first set-up a goal from a corner and later scored another from a half-volley to help Juventus come from behind to win the match 4–1. He eventually finished the season with 3 goals in 27 appearances in all competitions, 2 of which came from 19 Serie A appearances. The following season, when the club's new manager, Ciro Ferrara, was forced into a tactical switch due to injuries to first choice midfielders, Mauro Camoranesi and Claudio Marchisio, Giovinco was variously inserted into the starting line-up; he helped Juventus to a 5–1 defeat of Sampdoria in only his fourth start of the season. Under the following manager, Alberto Zaccheroni, he was hardly featured. In April, he sustained a training ground injury and was ruled out for the rest of the season after undergoing tests. On 5 August 2010, Parma announced the signing of Giovinco on loan from Juventus, with an option to buy half of the player's transfer rights at the end of the season. He made his Parma debut against Brescia in a 2–0 win on 29 August. He scored his first goal for Parma on 12 September 2010, a free kick in a 2–1 loss to Catania. An impressive start to the season earned Giovinco a call up to represent the Italian national team. On 6 January 2011, Giovinco scored two goals for Parma in a 4–1 win against his parent club, Juventus. After initially struggling to settle-in at Parma, he refound his form towards the end of the season and made his break-through with the club, finishing his first season at the club with 7 goals in 30 appearances in the league. At the end of the season, on 22 June 2011, Parma exercised the option to buy half of Giovinco's contract for a fee of €3 million. On 11 September, the first match of the 2011–12 season, Giovinco scored against Juventus once again, where he found the net from a penalty in a 4–1 away defeat. On 6 May, he scored a volley from 30 yards out against Siena in the penultimate match of the season, which ended in a 2–0 away win. In his second season with Parma, Giovinco finished as the club's leading goalscorer (15) and assist provider (11) in Serie A, helping the team to an eighth-place finish in the league; in total, he made 70 appearances during his two seasons with the club, scoring 23 goals, and providing 22 assists. On 21 June 2012, Juventus announced that it had purchased the other half of Giovinco's transfer rights from Parma for €11 million, tying him to the Turin club until 30 June 2015. Although he had stated that he would have been pleased to wear the number 10 shirt, which was vacated after Juventus legend Alessandro Del Piero left the club, Giovinco was handed the number 12 jersey under manager Antonio Conte. On 11 August 2012, Giovinco won his first title with Juventus, helping the team to defeat Napoli 4–2 in the 2012 Supercoppa Italiana. Giovinco started in the first league match of the 2012–13 season against his former club, Parma; Juventus won the match 2–0, although Giovinco suffered a minor injury two minutes from the end of the game. In the following league match against Udinese on 2 September, Giovinco scored two goals and won a penalty, which was converted by Chilean teammate Arturo Vidal, as Juventus went on to defeat the Friuli team 4–1 in Udine. Giovinco scored his first career UEFA Champions League goal against FC Nordsjælland on 7 November, a match which Juventus won 4–0 at Juventus Stadium. He scored the third goal as Juventus beat defending champions Chelsea 3–0 at home, and also contributed to Juventus' 1–0 away win against Shakhtar Donetsk, which allowed Juventus to top their group undefeated and advance to the knockout stages for first time since the 2008–09 tournament. On 1 December, Giovinco scored his fifth league goal of the season in the Derby della Mole against Torino, also recording an assist on one of Claudio Marchisio's two goals in a 3–0 victory at home. Giovinco scored the only goal of the match in a Coppa Italia 1–0 win against Cagliari, allowing Juventus to progress to the quarter-finals of the competition; coincidentally, Giovinco (who was wearing the number 12 shirt for Juventus at the time) scored in the 12th minute of the second half of the match, which took place on 12 December 2012 (12/12/12), while the goal was also his twelfth for the club. Juventus eventually managed to retain their Serie A title that season, with Giovinco managing 7 goals in the league, and 11 in total in all competitions, as Juventus reached the quarter-finals of the 2012–13 UEFA Champions League, and the semi-finals of the 2012–13 Coppa Italia, only to lose out to the winners of the respective competitions, Bayern Munich and Lazio. Giovinco missed out on Juventus's 2013 Supercoppa Italiana victory, and he initially went scoreless in the 2013–14 season until finally netting a notable goal in a 3–2 win over rivals Milan on 6 October 2013. Giovinco fell out of form again and struggled to gain playing time, but he managed to break his goal drought on 14 April 2014, with a goal against Udinese, taking the ball past a defender and scoring with a left footed curling shot from outside the box. Overall, Giovinco managed 2 goals in 17 Serie A appearances that season, and one goal in the Coppa Italia, as Juventus won their third consecutive Serie A title. During the 2014–15 season under Massimiliano Allegri, Giovinco scored two goals in a 6–1 win over Hellas Verona in the Coppa Italia, on 15 January 2015, helping Juventus to the quarter-finals of the competition; both of his goals came in the first half, with the first coming from a free kick, and the second in injury time. On 19 January 2015, Giovinco signed with Canadian team Toronto FC of Major League Soccer (MLS). He was set to join the team upon the completion of the Serie A season in July 2015. He signed a five-year contract with a reported annual salary of $7 million, making him the highest paid player in MLS ahead of Orlando City SC's Kaká, and the highest paid Italian player in all leagues until the arrival of Andrea Pirlo to New York City FC later that year. On 2 February, Juventus announced that Giovinco had left the club five months earlier than originally expected in order to kick-start his career in MLS with Toronto FC. Giovinco made his debut for Toronto FC against Vancouver Whitecaps on 7 March. He provided an assist for Jozy Altidore's equalising goal in the 32nd minute. He scored his first goal for Toronto FC on 4 April, in a 3–2 loss to Chicago Fire, also later setting up Benoît Cheyrou's goal. On 13 May, Giovinco scored and assisted a goal in a 3–2 home win over Montreal Impact in the return leg of the 2015 Canadian Championship semi-finals, although Montreal progressed to the final on away goals, having won the home leg 1–0. After setting up two goals in TFC's 3–1 home win over San José on 30 May, Giovinco was voted Major League Soccer Player of the Week by the North American Soccer Reporters, for week 13 of the 2015 MLS season. Following his two goals in Toronto FC's 2–1 away win over D.C. United, he was named MLS Player of the Week for a second consecutive time the following week. On 12 July 2015, Giovinco achieved Toronto FC's first ever hat-trick in MLS play against New York City FC in a 4–4 draw at Yankee Stadium, and set up the fourth goal during the match, also missing a penalty. It was also the third fastest hat trick scored in the league's history at 9 minutes. Following the match, he received the player of the week award for the third time in the 2015 MLS season. After scoring and assisting in a 2–1 home win over Philadelphia Union on 18 July 2015, Giovinco was one of the 22 players to be named to the 2015 MLS All-Star Game roster, although he was later ruled out of the match due to injury, and replaced by his teammate Altidore. On 5 August 2015, Giovinco scored a hat-trick in a 4–1 home win over Orlando City to bring him to the top of the MLS scoring tables with 16 goals, also breaking the club's single-season record of 15 goals set in 2010 by Dwayne De Rosario in the process. On 6 August 2015, he was named the Etihad Airways MLS Player of the Month for July 2015. On 14 August 2015, Giovinco's free kick goal against Orlando City was awarded the MLS Goal of the Week Award. On 29 August 2015, he was substituted in the 51st minute in a 2–1 win over Montreal Impact due to an adductor strain; although it was reported that the injury was not serious, he was ruled out indefinitely. On 3 September 2015, he was named the MLS Player of the Month for August, winning the award for a second consecutive time. He returned to the starting line-up in a 3–1 home defeat to the New England Revolution ten days later. On 26 September, Giovinco broke the MLS record for most combined goals and assists in a single season, previously held by Chris Wondolowski, with his 15th and 16th assists of the season in a 3–2 home win over Chicago, bringing his total tally to 35. Upon review the following day, Jonathan Osorio's goal from a Giovinco "cross" was later credited as Giovinco's goal by the MLS, which meant that he broke another record, by becoming the first player to manage at least 20 goals and 10 assists in a single MLS season, as his 16th assist was changed to his 20th goal. On 14 October, after coming off the bench, he scored the decisive goal in a 2–1 home win over New York Red Bulls, when he started a dribbling run past several players on the left flank, which culminated in a left-footed strike just inside the area; the win allowed Toronto FC to qualify for the MLS playoffs for the first time in their history. This goal was later nominated as a finalist for the MLS Goal of the Year Award, but was beaten out by Krisztián Németh. Several pundits praised his performances, expressing the opinion that this goal was the best goal of the season, and the greatest in Toronto FC's club history. The pundits also praised Giovinco as arguably not only one of the top players of the current MLS season, but also already as one of the greatest players in MLS history. Giovinco had just returned from international duty earlier that day, having appeared for Italy the day before in a Euro 2016 qualifying match in Rome. On 25 October 2015, Giovinco assisted Altidore in a 2–1 away defeat to Montreal in the final match of the regular season, ending the regular season with 22 goals and 16 assists, which allowed him to win the 2015 Audi MLS Golden Boot as both the joint top-scorer (alongside Kei Kamara) and the top-assist provider of the league in his first year with the club, with a record 38 combined goals and assists; as a result, he became the first MLS player ever to win both the top scorer and the top assist provider awards in the same season, as well as the first Italian and Toronto FC player to win these awards. In the playoffs, Toronto FC were eliminated in the knock-out round, following a 3–0 away defeat to domestic rivals Montreal Impact on 29 October. In November 2015, Giovinco was named one of the three finalists for both the 2015 MLS Newcomer of the Year Award and the 2015 MLS MVP Award, winning both awards on 23 November and 2 December respectively, while three days before the latter, on 29 November, he was named to the MLS Best XI. On 30 December, Giovinco was named the "Transaction of the Year" by MLS. Giovinco started off his second season with an 82nd-minute penalty in a 2–0 away win over Supporters' Shield holders New York Red Bulls, on 6 March; he later also set up Marky Delgado's goal in added time. On 16 April, he scored the then-fastest goal in Toronto FC history at 57 seconds in a 1–0 away win over D.C. United, surpassing the previous record holder Reggie Lambe's by one minute and 50 seconds set in 2012. A week later, he scored both goals in a 2–0 win away to the Montreal Impact in the 401 Derby; with these goals, he equalled De Rosario as the club's all-time top scorer in the MLS with 28 goals in 40 appearances. Giovinco was named to the Team of the Week for his performances. On 7 May, Toronto's home opener, he set up rookie Tsubasa Endoh for his first ever MLS goal in a 1–0 win over FC Dallas, at the newly renovated BMO Field. On 14 May, Giovinco overtook De Rosario as the club's outright all-time top scorer in the MLS, scoring two goals and setting up another in a 4–3 home defeat to Canadian rivals Vancouver. On 29 June, Giovinco helped Toronto FC win the Canadian Championship over Vancouver 2–2 on aggregate, winning on away goals, as he scored the only goal in the first leg on 21 June. On 14 July, he won the 2016 Best MLS Player ESPY Award. In July 2016, Giovinco was included in the roster for the 2016 MLS All-Star Game. After an eight-game goal drought, Giovinco scored a hat-trick against D.C. United, on 23 July, in a 4–1 home win, also surpassing De Rosario's previous all-time record as Toronto FC's top scorer by two goals to 35 goals. With two goals from free kicks during the match, including his seventh in the MLS, he broke David Beckham's record for most goals from set-pieces in the league since 2010. He was named to the Team of the Week once again for his performances, and was also named MLS Player of the Week for the first time that season. On 27 August, Giovinco was brought off the field after the later diagnosis of strains in his quadriceps and adductor in the eventual 1–0 loss in the 401 Derby with Montreal at home; although he was initially expected to be sidelined for a month, the injury was more severe than expected, and he ended up missing seven weeks of play. He finally returned to action on 16 October, against Montreal once again, helping to set up Toronto FC's equaliser in a 2–2 away draw. On 26 October, Giovinco scored the opening goal of a 3–1 home win over Philadelphia, both his and Toronto FC's first MLS Playoff goal in the MLS Cup Playoffs, and was later involved in his team's next two goals; this was Toronto FC's first ever playoff win, which enabled the team to progress to the Eastern Conference Semi-finals for the first time. On 6 November in the second leg of the Eastern Conference Semi-finals, Giovinco scored a hat-trick in a 5–0 away win over New York City FC, 7–0 on aggregate, to progress to the Eastern Conference Finals in an all Canadian derby against Montreal Impact. In the first leg of the Eastern Conference Final on 22 November, Giovinco set up Jozy Altidore's goal in a 3–2 away loss to Montreal. Toronto FC later beat Montreal Impact 5–2 in extra time in the return leg at home on 30 November, as Giovinco once again set up Altidore's goal, winning on an aggregated score of 7–5, making Toronto FC the first Canadian team to compete in an MLS Cup Final; although he was forced off in the 97th minute due to cramp in his calf, he was later declared fit to play against Seattle Sounders in the 2016 MLS Cup Final. On 5 December, he was named to the MLS Best XI for the second season in a row, despite being left off the finalists list for the MLS MVP. In the 2016 MLS Cup Final against Seattle, held at BMO Field on 10 December, Giovinco's performance was largely stifled by Seattle's heavy and aggressive defending, despite initially creating an early goalscoring chance for Altidore; throughout the match, he was fouled a total of six times and had several shots blocked. A scoring opportunity came in the 48th minute, but his shot was skewed wide of the near post. He was eventually substituted for Tosaint Ricketts in the 103rd minute, due to an apparent injury, and consequently, despite being the club's main penalty kick taker, was not used in the resulting shoot-out, which Toronto FC lost 5–4, following a 0–0 draw after extra-time. Regarding Giovinco's substitution, coach Greg Vanney stated in the post-match press conference: "He couldn't move. He looked at me. It's not like I take him off because I want to. I look at him and he gives me the sign that he can’t go any more and when he feels like he can’t go, he feels like he’s more of a liability to the group than anything. That’s the decision. It's not one that I generally want to make, but we had to." The arrival of Spanish playmaker Victor Vázquez in midfield at the beginning of the 2017 season saw less responsibility placed on Giovinco and captain Michael Bradley to create Toronto FC's goalscoring opportunities, and this in turn freed up the Italian, enabling him to focus more on his attacking game. Coach Greg Vanney also switched tactics from a 4–4–2 diamond to a 3–5–2 formation, benefiting Giovinco's and Altidore's attacking partnership by allowing them to play closer together, and with Vázquez supporting them as the team's main creator, the attacking duo began to demonstrate a deeper understanding and an increased awareness of each other's movements, which improved their link-up play, and saw an increase in Altidore's goalscoring output throughout the season. Giovinco scored his first goal of the season in a 2–2 home draw to expansion team Atlanta United, on 8 April 2017. On 27 June, Giovinco scored both goals in a 2–1 home win over Montreal in the 2017 Canadian Championship final second leg – edging Montreal 3–2 on aggregate; he also won the George Gross Memorial Trophy for the most valuable player of the tournament. On 30 July, Giovinco scored two goals and set up another in a 4–0 home win over New York City FC; his second goal of the match, which came from a free kick, was his 50th MLS goal, and his record-breaking 10th MLS goal from a free kick. While Giovinco was ruled out on injury, Toronto FC won the Supporters' Shield for most points in the league that season, following a 4–2 home win over New York Red Bulls on 30 September. In Toronto FC's last match of the regular season on 22 October, Giovinco scored from a free kick on his 100th appearance for the club in a 2–2 away draw to Atlanta; in doing so, Toronto FC broke the MLS regular season point record of 68 points, set by LA Galaxy in 1998, by one point. The goal was also Giovinco's sixth free kick goal of the season, which set the record for most free kicks scored in an MLS regular-season. On 30 October, in the first leg of the Eastern Conference Semi-finals in the 2017 MLS Cup Playoffs, Giovinco scored the match-winning goal from a free kick in a 2–1 away win over New York Red Bulls. Giovinco was subsequently included among the finalists for the 2017 MLS MVP award, after being omitted from the list of finalists for the award the previous season. On 5 November, in the second leg of the Eastern Conference Semi-finals, Giovinco received a booking for dissent in the 80th minute, causing his suspension for the Conference Finals as he also received a yellow in the first leg; Toronto FC lost the match 1–0 at home, but still advanced to the next round on away goals. Giovinco returned to action in the second leg of the Eastern Conference Finals against Columbus Crew on 29 November, at BMO field; he was involved in the only goal of the match, scored by Altidore, which saw Toronto win the Eastern Conference for the second consecutive year, and earn a place in the 2017 MLS Cup Final. On 30 November, Giovinco was named to the MLS Best XI for the third season in a row. On 9 December, in a rematch of the previous year's final at BMO field, Toronto defeated Seattle 2–0 in the 2017 MLS Cup, and became the first MLS team to complete a domestic treble with their victory, as well as the first Canadian team to win the MLS Cup; Giovinco was involved in both goals, and gave the final pass to goalscorer Altidore for the opener. On 20 February 2018, Giovinco opened the season with his first appearance in the CONCACAF Champions League, the first leg of a round of 16 match-up away to the Colorado Rapids, where he set up Jonathan Osorio's opening goal before later adding one himself for a 2–0 win. On 7 March, in the first leg of the CONCACAF Champions League quarter-finals, Giovinco set up Jonathan Osorio in the last minute of regulation time to give Toronto FC a 2–1 home win against Mexican side Tigres UANL. In the second leg, held on 13 March, Giovinco was involved in both of his team's goals in an eventual 3–2 away defeat, helping to create an own goal and later scoring another himself from a free kick; the result enabled Toronto FC to progress to the semi-finals of the competition for only the second time in their history, on away goals, following a 4–4 draw on aggregate. On 3 April, Giovinco scored the opening goal from the penalty spot in a 3–1 home win over Club América in the first leg of the semi-final, later setting up Toronto FC's goal in the 1–1 away draw at the Estadio Azteca in the second leg on 10 April, to advance 4–2 on aggregate to the finals. After a 2–1 home loss to Guadalajara on 17 April in the first leg of the finals, Giovinco scored the aggregate-equalising goal in 2–1 away win to Guadalajara in the return leg on 25 April, which took the match straight to penalty shoot-out; Giovinco scored Toronto FC's first penalty but eventually lost the Champions League final 4–2 in a penalty shoot-out. Giovinco won the Golden Ball as the tournament's best player; he was directly involved in 11 of the 13 goals that Toronto FC scored in the competition, and notched four goals and three assists in eight appearances, which also made him the joint top- scorer of the tournament alongside teammate and Golden Boot winner Jonathan Osorio. On 16 May, Giovinco was fined an undisclosed amount by the MLS Disciplinary Committee for failing to leave the field in a timely and orderly manner after receiving a red card in a league loss away to the New England Revolution on 12 May. On 15 August, Giovinco scored a goal and assisted two more in a 5–2 home win over Vancouver Whitecaps to win the 2018 Canadian Championship 7–4 on aggregate. Reigning MLS Cup champions Toronto FC failed to qualify for the playoffs after a 2–1 home loss against the Vancouver Whitecaps on October 6, 2018, with three games left to play in the season. Giovinco finished the 2018 MLS campaign with a goal in a 4–1 home win over Atlanta in the final match of the regular season on 28 October. After negotiations with Toronto fell through during the off-season, on 30 January 2019, Giovinco bid the club farewell with a post on Instagram: On 30 January 2019, Toronto FC sold Giovinco to Saudi Arabian club Al Hilal for an undisclosed fee. On 12 February 2019, Giovinco scored on his debut with the club, his club's third goal of a 4–1 home win over Al-Qadsiah. On 23 April, he scored his first AFC Champions League goal, the only goal in a 1–0 home win over Esteghlal. He is one of very few players to have now scored in three different club continental competitions in his career (UEFA Champions League, CONCACAF Champions League, and AFC Champions League). On 17 September, he scored in a 3–1 home win over Al-Ittihad, which enabled Al Hilal to progress to the semi-finals of the AFC Champions League. On 1 October, in the first leg of the semi-finals of the competition, he assisted Ali Al-Bulaihi's goal in a 4–1 away win over Al Sadd. In the second leg, on 22 October, he set up Bafétimbi Gomis's goal in a 4–2 home defeat, which saw Al Hilal advance to the final of the competition 6–5 on aggregate. In the second leg of the 2019 AFC Champions League Final on 24 November, Giovinco assisted Salem Al- Dawsari's opening goal in an eventual 2–0 away win over Urawa Red Diamonds, which saw Al Hilal win the title with a 3–0 aggregate victory; the title also allowed the team to qualify for the 2019 FIFA Club World Cup. Giovinco started in the FIFA Club World Cup third-place play-off against Monterrey on 21 December; following a 2–2 draw after regulation time, he scored Al Hilal's second spot kick in the resulting shoot-out, although the former side ultimately won the match 4–3 on penalties. Giovinco has represented Italy at every youth level from the under-16 level onwards. He was called up to Italy under-21 by head coach Pierluigi Casiraghi to make his U-21 debut in the 2009 European Championship opening qualifier on 1 June 2007 and helped in their 4–0 defeat of Albania. He also played at the 2008 Toulon Tournament, where he appeared in all five matches, and was voted the most valuable player of the competition, scoring two goals in the opening game against the Ivory Coast, and netting the winning penalty in the semi- final shoot-out against Japan. Italy ultimately won the competition, defeating Chile 1–0 in the final. That summer, he and Juventus teammates Claudio Marchisio and Paolo De Ceglie were named in the squad for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China. On 7 August 2008, he scored the opening goal in a 3–0 win against Honduras in the first match of the competition where he struck the ball from outside of the box with his weaker left foot; Italy were eliminated in the quarter-finals of the competition, following a 3–2 loss to Belgium on 16 August. In the summer of 2009, Giovinco was called up to the U-21 side for the European Championships in Sweden after playing a part in their successful qualifying campaign. Giovinco started in every single match at the tournament, but Italy lost to eventual winners Germany 1–0 in a tightly contested semi-final. Due to his performances throughout the European Championship, he was named to the Team of the Tournament, and was also included in the list of the top ten players of the competition. Giovinco was called up for International duty for the first time in nearly two years while on loan at Parma, earning his first senior call-up for Italy on 6 February 2011; he made his Italy senior team debut on 9 February, in a friendly match against Germany in Dortmund, which ended in a 1–1 draw, coming on as a second-half substitute for Stefano Mauri. In his second international appearance, against Ukraine, he provided an assist from a back-heel for Alessandro Matri's goal as Italy won the match 2–0 in Kiev. After some promising substitute appearances, manager Cesare Prandelli stated that he would give Giovinco his full international debut as a starter alongside Antonio Cassano, which came later that year on 11 October, in a 3–0 home win over Northern Ireland in a European qualifier. Giovinco was named part of Italy's 23-man squad for UEFA Euro 2012. Giovinco appeared as a substitute in the two opening group matches of the tournament against Spain and Croatia, almost assisting a goal against Spain in the opening match, as the earlier goalscorer Antonio Di Natale put his lobbed pass over the bar. Italy finished as runners up to Spain in the final in a 4–0 loss. Giovinco started in the first game of Italy's 2014 World Cup Qualification campaign against Bulgaria in Sofia, wearing the number 10 jersey; the match ended in a 2–2 draw. He scored his first goal for Italy in the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup group stage match against Japan, wearing the number 10 shirt; in addition to scoring the match-winning goal, he also helped to win a penalty, which was converted by Mario Balotelli, and thus ensured a 4–3 win, which allowed Italy to progress to the semi-finals of the competition for the first time in their history. In the semi-finals, Giovinco came on during the second half of extra time; the match ended 0–0 and went to penalties as Giovinco netted his penalty for Italy, however, Spain won 7–6 due to Leonardo Bonucci's miss. Italy subsequently won the bronze medal match against Uruguay, also on penalties, after the match had ended 2–2 after extra time. Due to the lack of playing time during the 2013–14 season, Giovinco missed out on the 2014 World Cup and was not named in the provisional nor the final squad. In October 2014, Giovinco was called up by the new Italy manager, and his former Juventus manager, Antonio Conte, for an UEFA Euro 2016 qualifying match against Azerbaijan in Palermo, which Italy won 2–1 on 10 October. Giovinco came on during the second half, and he helped set up Giorgio Chiellini's second, match-winning goal, also hitting the cross-bar towards the end of the match, from a strike outside the area, after an individual dribbling run. Following his strong performances for MLS side Toronto FC, Giovinco was called up to the national team once again in August 2015 for Italy's Euro 2016 qualifying matches against Malta and Bulgaria in September, and was set to become the first MLS player to represent Italy. He was ultimately ruled out of both matches after sustaining an adductor injury against Montreal Impact, and New York City FC's Andrea Pirlo became the first MLS player to play for Italy, during the same qualifiers. In October 2015, he was named to the Italian national team for the UEFA Euro 2016 qualifiers against Azerbaijan and Norway on 10 and 13 October. He made a substitute appearance in Italy's 3–1 away win over Azerbaijan, which guaranteed the Italians a place at Euro 2016; he came on in the 79th minute and later hit the cross-bar from a free kick after being fouled by Badavi Guseynov, who was subsequently sent off. On 13 October, he came off of the bench once again and was involved in both goals as Italy came from behind to defeat Norway 2–1 in Rome, and top their group. On 23 May 2016, Giovinco, along with fellow MLS compatriot Pirlo, was left off of Conte's 30-player shortlist for Italy's Euro 2016 squad. Regarding their omission, Conte commented in a press conference, "When you make a certain choice and go to play in certain leagues, you do so taking it into account that they could pay the consequences from a footballing viewpoint". In response to his omission, Giovinco stated, "I was upset. I need to keep improving so I can find my place back on the national team; I've said before, the league is continuing to grow and it's a beautiful league." Under Conte's successor, Gian Piero Ventura, Giovinco was once again omitted from Italy's team, both for the 2018 World Cup qualifiers and for friendlies, in spite of his club form for Toronto FC in the MLS; when asked about the omissions of Giovinco and Domenico Criscito from his squad, Ventura commented: "Giovinco is a different story. I have done everything to help him but the reality is that he plays in a league [the MLS] that doesn't count for much, and the number of goals he scores is less important because with the quality he has got, he is bound to make a difference in that league. The problem is that if you play in that type of league, and you get used to playing in that type of league, it becomes a problem of mentality. Criscito, on the other hand, is a great player, I've seen him grow. The problem is that he has to fight to rediscover his spark and he needs that because he is just a little behind. The problem with Giovinco is the same. How long would it take to get him to show that spark?" Italy failed to qualify for the World Cup for the first time in 60 years, with Giovinco's agent claiming that the team should have selected him. On 5 October 2018, Giovinco was called up, for the first time in three years, by new manager Roberto Mancini for a friendly match on 10 October against Ukraine and a UEFA Nations League match against Poland on 14 October, however, he was an unused substitute for both matches. Giovinco is a small, quick, technically gifted, and agile player, with noted dribbling skills, balance, acceleration, and excellent ball control; these characteristics allow him to beat opponents, hold up the ball with his back to goal or in tight spaces, and create space for teammates, despite his lack of strong physical attributes. Although he is capable of scoring goals, he is also adept creating chances for his teammates, possessing good link-up play as well as notable playmaking skills, and he is known for his vision, creativity, and his passing and striking ability with both feet, despite being naturally right footed. Furthermore, he is highly regarded for his accuracy and ball delivery from free kicks, and is considered to be a set piece specialist in the media, as several of his goals have come from dead ball situations; he is also effective at scoring from penalties. A versatile attacker, Giovinco is capable of playing in several offensive positions, and he is usually deployed in a free role as a second striker, behind or off of another forward, although he is also capable of playing as a winger, on either flank, or in a deeper playmaking role in the centre of the pitch, as a creative attacking midfielder; he has also been used in a more offensive, central role, as a main striker, or even as a false 9. In May 2013, Sebastian and his partner Sharj Milano celebrated the birth of their first child, Jacopo; the couple have been in a relationship since 2007. Their daughter Alma was born in August 2016. Giovinco features in EA Sports' FIFA video game series; he appeared on the cover of the MLS custom edition of FIFA 16. Second-most combined goals and assists in a single MLS season: 38 (22 goals and 16 assists in 2015), First MLS player to lead the league in goals and assists in the same season: 2015, First MLS player to record consecutive seasons of 30+ combined goals and assists: 2015, 2016, First MLS player to record at least 20 goals and 10 assists in a single regular-season: 2015 (22 goals and 16 assists in total), Most free kick goals in a single MLS regular-season: 6, MLS all-time regular-season leading goalscorer from free kicks: 13, MLS all-time leading goalscorer from free kicks: 14, Toronto FC all-time leading goalscorer: 83 goals, Toronto FC all-time leading goalscorer in the MLS: 68 goals, Toronto FC all-time leading goalscorer in the Canadian Championship: 6, Most league goals for Toronto FC in a season: 22, Most goals for Toronto FC in a season (all competitions): 23, Most goals for Toronto FC in a league match: 3, Second-fastest goal for Toronto FC: 57 seconds, Most goals in the Canadian Championship: 6, Fastest player to reach 100 combined goals and assists in MLS history: 58 goals and 42 assists in 95 games Juventus Senior Squad Serie A: 2012–13, 2013–14, Serie B: 2006–07, Supercoppa Italiana: 2012, 2013 Primavera Squad Torneo di Viareggio: 2005, Campionato Nazionale Primavera: 2005–06, Supercoppa Primavera: 2006, Coppa Italia Primavera: 2007 Toronto FC MLS Cup: 2017, Eastern Conference Championship (Playoffs): 2016, 2017, Supporters' Shield: 2017, Canadian Championship: 2016, 2017, 2018, Trillium Cup: 2016, 2017 Al Hilal AFC Champions League: 2019 Italy UEFA European Championship: Runner-up 2012, FIFA Confederations Cup: Third place 2013 Italy U-21 Toulon Tournament: 2008, UEFA European Under-21 Championship: Semi-finalist 2009 Campionato Nazionale Primavera Best Player: 2005–06, Toulon Tournament Player of the Tournament: 2008, UEFA European Under-21 Championship Team of the Tournament: 2009, MLS All-Star (4): 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, MLS Best XI (3): 2015, 2016, 2017, MLS MVP Award: 2015, MLS Golden Boot: 2015, MLS Top Assist Provider: 2015, MLS Newcomer of the Year Award: 2015, MLS Player of the Month: July 2015, August 2015, Best MLS Player ESPY Award: 2016, George Gross Memorial Trophy: 2017, Canadian Championship Top scorer: 2017, Audi Player Index Award (2): 2016, 2017, Red Patch Boys Player of the Year (2): 2015, 2016, CONCACAF Champions League Golden Ball: 2018, CONCACAF Champions League Best XI: 2018, CONCACAF Men's Best XI: 2018, CONCACAF Men's Player of the Year: 2018 (Third Place) Giovinco's Toronto FC Profile, Giovinco's AIC Profile, Giovinco's LegaSerieA Profile, National team statistics on Italian FA website, Profile at Italia1910.com Dwayne Anthony De Rosario (born May 15, 1978) is a Canadian professional soccer player, who plays as a forward or as an attacking midfielder. De Rosario last played for the Mississauga MetroStars of the Major Arena Soccer League. A versatile attacker, he played for the Toronto Lynx, FSV Zwickau and Richmond Kickers early in his career. He came to prominence in the 2000s playing in Major League Soccer for the San Jose Earthquakes, Houston Dynamo, Toronto FC, New York Red Bulls and D.C. United. A four-time MLS Cup champion, he also won the 2011 MLS Most Valuable Player award. He is the seventh-leading scorer in MLS history with 104 goals. Internationally, De Rosario represented the Canadian national team from 1998 to 2015 where he is their all-time leading scorer, with 22 goals in 81 games. De Rosario is a 2000 CONCACAF Gold Cup champion and four-time Canadian Player of the Year. As part of the Canadian Soccer Association's 2012 centennial celebration, he was honoured on the all-time Canada XI men's team. Born in Scarborough, Ontario, De Rosario is the son of Guyanese immigrants to Canada. As a 14-year-old, De Rosario rejected an offer from A.C. Milan after a successful trial due to him not being ready to commit to living in Italy. De Rosario began his professional career in 1997 at the age of 18, signing with the Toronto Lynx of the A-League. Halfway through the season, however, De Rosario opted to change clubs, signing with German side FSV Zwickau. After two seasons with Zwickau, De Rosario opted to return to North America, signing with the Richmond Kickers in 1999. After a slow 1999 season, in which he registered two goals and five assists, De Rosario exploded in 2000, contributing 15 goals and five assists while leading the team to a 20–6–1 record. The next season, when Canadian Frank Yallop was named head coach of the San Jose Earthquakes, De Rosario was one of his first acquisitions. De Rosario proved Yallop's judgment right, scoring five goals and four assists in only 1,072 minutes for the Earthquakes in 2001, playing an important role as the team went on to win the MLS Cup; he scored the golden goal in the final and was named MLS Cup MVP. De Rosario had similar success in 2002, registering four goals and eight assists in 1,637 minutes, though the Quakes fell short of a repeat. In 2003, a torn ACL hobbled De Rosario for much of the season but he still managed to make a late surge, registering four goals and three assists in only 686 minutes and helping lead the team to a second MLS Cup championship. De Rosario played 1,211 minutes in 2004, scoring five goals, including the 2004 MLS Goal of the Year, and three assists. In December 2004 De Rosario had a trial with Nottingham Forest, but he was not offered a contract by the team. In 2005, following Landon Donovan's departure, De Rosario moved to midfield and promptly led MLS in assists with 13, while scoring nine goals, including the 2005 MLS Goal of the Year – the only player ever to receive that honour in two consecutive years – for a powerful bending free kick in the last regular season game against the Los Angeles Galaxy. He was named to the MLS Best XI six times (2005–07, 2009–11). Due to San Jose's failure to reach a stadium agreement with AEG, De Rosario, along with the rest of his Earthquakes teammates, moved to Houston for the 2006 season. During the 2006 MLS All-Star Game in Chicago, De Rosario scored the only goal of the game in the 70th minute to lift the MLS All Stars to a 1–0 win over Chelsea, a pre-season friendly for the London club. De Rosario was one of only four players on the MLS team to play the entire match. De Rosario and the Houston Dynamo captured the 2006 MLS Cup title by beating the New England Revolution on November 12, 2006. The Dynamo won in a shootout, and De Rosario successfully converted his penalty kick. De Rosario signed a contract extension with Houston through 2010, where he was reported to make $325,000 per year. He was later transferred to Toronto before the end of his contract. The next year, De Rosario assisted on Joseph Ngwenya's equalizing goal and scored the winning goal of the 2007 MLS Cup final, giving Houston a 2–1 win over the Revolution and the Dynamo their second championship. De Rosario was named MLS Cup MVP, the first player ever to win the award twice. De Rosario made his third consecutive all-star appearance at the 2008 MLS All- Star Game in his home country, when the game was held in Toronto. He scored the decisive goal on a penalty kick in the 69th minute in the MLS All-Stars' 3–2 victory over West Ham United. De Rosario was traded to Toronto FC on December 12, 2008 in return for Julius James and allocation money, after long speculation that De Rosario would move to his hometown club. He made his competitive debut for Toronto FC on Saturday, March 21 against the Kansas City Wizards, setting up Jim Brennan for Toronto's first goal in a 3–2 victory. He scored his first goal for Toronto from a header in a 1–1 draw at BMO Field against FC Dallas. De Rosario was expected to miss the first two to four weeks of Toronto FC's training camp due to a calf injury obtained in the January 31, 2010 match against Jamaica, and returned to game action in Toronto's 1–0 preseason win versus the University of South Florida. On April 8, 2010, De Rosario was named captain of Toronto FC, the second in the club's history, after the retirement of Jim Brennan. Two days later, De Rosario scored his first goal of the 2010 season, his team's first, in a 4–1 loss to the New England Revolution. On April 15, 2010, De Rosario scored twice in Toronto's 2–1 home opener win against the Philadelphia Union. In his next game versus the Colorado Rapids, De Rosario scored his fourth goal of the season, and more importantly, became Toronto FC's all-time leading scorer in the regular season. De Rosario again found the back of the net on April 25 in a 2–0 home win against Seattle Sounders FC, scoring the first goal, his fifth of the season. Until O'Brian White scored the second goal for Toronto, De Rosario had previously scored all of Toronto's goals up until that point in the season. For his efforts in that game, he was awarded the MLS Player of the Week for week 5. De Rosario was again honoured with the Player of the Week award on week 10 of the MLS season, for his two-goal performance against his former team the San Jose Earthquakes. De Rosario had scored the second and third goal in Toronto FC's 3–1 win. De Rosario continued to have a successful 2010 season for Toronto, culminating in a spot on the MLS All-Star team, scoring a goal in the 5–2 loss to Manchester United. On August 3, 2010, De Rosario scored against C.D. Motagua in the second leg of Toronto FC's CONCACAF Champions League preliminary round tie, which at the time, put TFC ahead on 2–1 on aggregate. They would eventually win 3–2 on aggregate. On December 28, De Rosario was confirmed to be on trial with Scottish Premier League club Celtic by manager Neil Lennon. Dwayne and Celtic inquired about the possibility of a short-term loan deal until the MLS season kicked off in March, however new Toronto FC coach Aron Winter and the league denied any further negotiations. De Rosario scored the first Toronto goal of the 2011 season on March 19 in a 4–2 away defeat to Vancouver Whitecaps FC in what was the league's first all Canadian match up. The goal scored in the 20th minute was also the 8000th goal scored in Major League Soccer's history. New York Red Bulls acquired De Rosario on April 1, 2011 in exchange for midfielder Tony Tchani, defender Danleigh Borman and a first round 2012 MLS SuperDraft pick. He scored his first goal for New York on a penalty, as the second goal, in a 3–2 loss to Chivas USA. D.C. United acquired De Rosario on June 27, 2011, in exchange for midfielder Dax McCarty. He scored his first goal for the club against his former club New York Red Bulls on his return to Red Bull Arena. On July 30, 2011 his double gave United a 2–0 victory over former club, San Jose. On August 6, 2011 he led United to a 3–3 draw against Toronto F.C. with his hat-trick. All three goals were scored while United played with ten men following an early ejection of goalkeeper Bill Hamid. His second hat-trick was recorded on September 25, 2011 as he recorded all three goals in the span of 9 minutes, setting another MLS record. De Rosario completed the season with a total of 16 goals and 12 assists over 32 games. Of those, 13 goals and 7 assists were made during his 17 games with United. On August 29, 2012, De Rosario scored his 100th MLS goal, in a 2–2 home draw against the Red Bulls. He was the seventh player to reach the milestone. After having his option declined by D.C. United, De Rosario returned to Toronto FC on December 18, 2013, after being chosen in the 2013 MLS Re-Entry Draft. He officially signed with the club on January 9, 2014. It was announced on December 3, 2014 that Toronto had declined the option to renew De Rosario's contract. De Rosario announced his retirement on May 10, 2015, and that he would be taking an ambassador role with Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment. In October 2018 De Rosario came out of retirement to sign with the newly- formed MASL club, the Mississauga MetroStars; he later scored his first goal for the club in the MetroStars's opening match, an 11–3 loss away to the Baltimore Blast. De Rosario represented the Canadian U-20 team at the 1997 FIFA World Youth Championship, and the Canadian U-23 team at the 1999 Pan American Games in Winnipeg. He received his first senior cap for Canada on May 18, 1998 against FYR Macedonia at the age of 20. He won the 2000 CONCACAF Gold Cup with Canada and represented them as well at the 2001 FIFA Confederations Cup. In 2007, De Rosario won the male Canadian Player of the Year award making it three consecutive years receiving the honour. In 2007, he scored five goals in eight games, the most in a year for the CMNT since John Catliff in 1993. De Rosario was picked for his first CONCACAF Gold Cup in four years, after being selected by coach Stephen Hart in late May 2011 for the 23 man tournament roster. After a disappointing, 2–0 defeat to United States in the opening game of the group Canada failed to exit the group with a 1–1–1 record, they only managed to score two goals both from De Rosario at the penalty spot. De Rosario continued his goal scoring for with two goals in the opening stage of 2014 FIFA World Cup qualification, one came against Saint Lucia in early September and the other against Saint Kitts and Nevis in mid November. His goal against Saint Kitts, was his 19th international goal which tied him as Canadian all-time top goal scorer with Dale Mitchell. On December 14, De Rosario was awarded 2011 Canadian Player of the Year receiving 47.7% of the vote, Simeon Jackson in second and Josh Simpson finishing in third. This was the fourth time De Rosario was honoured with the award. On September 7, 2012 De Rosario scored his 20th goal for Canada in a 2014 FIFA World Cup qualification match against Panama, making him the all-time leading goal scorer for Canada. In De Rosario's final appearance for Canada, he scored a goal in a 1–1 draw with Iceland on January 19, 2015. De Rosario adopted a strict vegan diet in 1994, but started eating fish ten years later. He is married to Brandy De Rosario and has four children. His cousin is Olympic hurdler Priscilla Lopes-Schliep. San Jose Earthquakes MLS Cup: 2001, 2003, Supporters' Shield: 2005 Houston Dynamo MLS Cup: 2006, 2007 Toronto FC Canadian Championship: 2009, 2010 D.C. United U.S. Open Cup: 2013 Canada CONCACAF Gold Cup: 2000 MLS All-Star: 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, Canadian Players of the Year: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2011, MLS Best XI: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, George Gross Memorial Trophy: 2009, 2010, Red Patch Boys Player of the Year: 2009, MLS MVP Award: 2011, MLS Golden Boot: 2011, MLS Goal of the Year Award: 2004, 2005 Dwayne De Rosario at CanadaSoccer.com