title: Bob Marley

text: 1969 brought another change to Jamaican popular music in which the beat slowed down even further. The new beat was a slow, steady, ticking rhythm that was first heard on The Maytals song "Do the Reggay." Marley approached producer Leslie Kong, who was regarded as one of the major developers of the reggae sound. For the recordings, Kong combined the Wailers with his studio musicians called Beverley's All-Stars, which consisted of the bassists Lloyd Parks and Jackie Jackson, the drummer Paul Douglas, the keyboard players Gladstone Anderson and Winston Wright, and the guitarists Rad Bryan, Lynn Taitt, and Hux Brown. As David Moskowitz writes, "The tracks recorded in this session illustrated the Wailers' earliest efforts in the new reggae style. Gone are the ska trumpets and saxophones of the earlier songs, with instrumental breaks now being played by the electric guitar." The songs recorded would be released as the album "The Best of The Wailers", including tracks "Soul Shakedown Party," "Stop That Train," "Caution," "Go Tell It on the Mountain," "Soon Come," "Can't You See," "Soul Captives," "Cheer Up," "Back Out," and "Do It Twice".


title: Bob Marley

text: Between 1968 and 1972, Bob and Rita Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer re-cut some old tracks with JAD Records in Kingston and London in an attempt to commercialise the Wailers' sound. Bunny later asserted that these songs "should never be released on an album ... they were just demos for record companies to listen to". In 1968, Bob and Rita visited songwriter Jimmy Norman at his apartment in the Bronx. Norman had written the extended lyrics for Kai Winding's "Time Is on My Side" (covered by the Rolling Stones) and had also written for Johnny Nash and Jimi Hendrix. A three-day jam session with Norman and others, including Norman's co-writer Al Pyfrom, resulted in a 24-minute tape of Marley performing several of his own and Norman-Pyfrom's compositions. This tape is, according to Reggae archivist Roger Steffens, rare in that it was influenced by pop rather than reggae, as part of an effort to break Marley into the US charts. According to an article in "The New York Times", Marley experimented on the tape with different sounds, adopting a doo-wop style on "Stay With Me" and "the slow love song style of 1960s artists" on "Splish for My Splash". An artist yet to establish himself outside his native Jamaica, Marley lived in Ridgmount Gardens, Bloomsbury, during 1972.


title: Bob Marley

text: In 1972, Bob Marley signed with CBS Records in London and embarked on a UK tour with soul singer Johnny Nash. While in London the Wailers asked their road manager Brent Clarke to introduce them to Chris Blackwell, who had licensed some of their Coxsone releases for his Island Records. The Wailers intended to discuss the royalties associated with these releases; instead, the meeting resulted in the offer of an advance of £4,000 to record an album. Since Jimmy Cliff, Island's top reggae star, had recently left the label, Blackwell was primed for a replacement. In Marley, Blackwell recognised the elements needed to snare the rock audience: "I was dealing with rock music, which was really rebel music. I felt that would really be the way to break Jamaican music. But you needed someone who could be that image. When Bob walked in he really was that image." The Wailers returned to Jamaica to record at Harry J's in Kingston, which resulted in the album "Catch a Fire".


title: Bob Marley

text: Primarily recorded on an eight-track, "Catch a Fire" marked the first time a reggae band had access to a state-of-the-art studio and were accorded the same care as their rock 'n' roll peers. Blackwell desired to create "more of a drifting, hypnotic-type feel than a reggae rhythm", and restructured Marley's mixes and arrangements. Marley travelled to London to supervise Blackwell's overdubbing of the album at Island Studios, which included tempering the mix from the bass-heavy sound of Jamaican music and omitting two tracks.


title: Bob Marley

text: The Wailers' first album for Island, "Catch a Fire", was released worldwide in April 1973, packaged like a rock record with a unique Zippo lighter lift-top. Initially selling 14,000 units, it received a positive critical reception. It was followed later that year by the album "Burnin'" which included the song "I Shot the Sheriff". Eric Clapton was given the album by his guitarist George Terry in the hope that he would enjoy it. Clapton was impressed and chose to record a cover version of "I Shot the Sheriff" which became his first US hit since "Layla" two years earlier and reached number 1 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 on 14 September 1974. Many Jamaicans were not keen on the new reggae sound on "Catch a Fire", but the Trenchtown style of "Burnin" found fans across both reggae and rock audiences.


title: Bob Marley

text: During this period, Blackwell gifted his Kingston residence and company headquarters at 56 Hope Road (then known as Island House) to Marley. Housing Tuff Gong Studios, the property became not only Marley's office but also his home.


title: Bob Marley

text: The Wailers were scheduled to open 17 shows in the US for Sly and the Family Stone. After four shows, the band was fired because they were more popular than the acts they were opening for. The Wailers disbanded in 1974, with each of the three main members pursuing a solo career.


title: Bob Marley

text: Despite the break-up, Marley continued recording as "Bob Marley & The Wailers". His new backing band included brothers Carlton and Aston "Family Man" Barrett on drums and bass respectively, Junior Marvin and Al Anderson on lead guitar, Tyrone Downie and Earl "Wya" Lindo on keyboards, and Alvin "Seeco" Patterson on percussion. The "I Threes", consisting of Judy Mowatt, Marcia Griffiths, and Marley's wife, Rita, provided backing vocals. In 1975, Marley had his international breakthrough with his first hit outside Jamaica, with a live version of "No Woman, No Cry", from the "Live!" album. This was followed by his breakthrough album in the United States, "Rastaman Vibration" (1976), which reached the Top 50 of the Billboard Soul Charts.


title: Bob Marley

text: On 3 December 1976, two days before "Smile Jamaica", a free concert organised by the Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley in an attempt to ease tension between two warring political groups, Marley, his wife, and manager Don Taylor were wounded in an assault by unknown gunmen inside Marley's home. Taylor and Marley's wife sustained serious injuries but later made full recoveries. Bob Marley received minor wounds in the chest and arm. The attempt on his life was thought to have been politically motivated, as many felt the concert was really a support rally for Manley. Nonetheless, the concert proceeded, and an injured Marley performed as scheduled, two days after the attempt. When asked why, Marley responded, "The people who are trying to make this world worse aren't taking a day off. How can I?" The members of the group Zap Pow played as Bob Marley's backup band before a festival crowd of 80,000 while members of The Wailers were still missing or in hiding.


title: Bob Marley

text: Marley left Jamaica at the end of 1976, and after a month-long "recovery and writing" sojourn at the site of Chris Blackwell's Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas, arrived in England, where he spent two years in self-imposed exile.


title: Bob Marley

text: Whilst in England, he recorded the albums "Exodus" and "Kaya". "Exodus" stayed on the British album charts for 56 consecutive weeks. It included four UK hit singles: "Exodus", "Waiting in Vain", "Jamming", and "One Love" (which interpolates Curtis Mayfield's hit, "People Get Ready"). During his time in London, he was arrested and received a conviction for possession of a small quantity of cannabis. In 1978, Marley returned to Jamaica and performed at another political concert, the One Love Peace Concert, again in an effort to calm warring parties. Near the end of the performance, by Marley's request, Michael Manley (leader of then-ruling People's National Party) and his political rival Edward Seaga (leader of the opposing Jamaica Labour Party) joined each other on stage and shook hands.


title: Bob Marley

text: Under the name Bob Marley and the Wailers 11 albums were released, four live albums and seven studio albums. The releases included "Babylon by Bus", a double live album with 13 tracks, was released in 1978 and received critical acclaim. This album, and specifically the final track "Jamming" with the audience in a frenzy captured the intensity of Marley's live performances.


title: Bob Marley

text: "Survival", a defiant and politically charged album, was released in 1979. Tracks such as "Zimbabwe", "Africa Unite", "Wake Up and Live", and "Survival" reflected Marley's support for the struggles of Africans. His appearance at the Amandla Festival in Boston in July 1979 showed his strong opposition to South African apartheid, which he already had shown in his song "War" in 1976. In early 1980, he was invited to perform at 17 April celebration of Zimbabwe's Independence Day.


title: Bob Marley

text: "Uprising" (1980) was Bob Marley's final studio album, and is one of his most religious productions; it includes "Redemption Song" and "Forever Loving Jah". "Confrontation", released posthumously in 1983, contained unreleased material recorded during Marley's lifetime, including the hit "Buffalo Soldier" and new mixes of singles previously only available in Jamaica.


title: Bob Marley

text: In July 1977, Marley was diagnosed with a type of malignant melanoma under a toenail. Contrary to urban legend, this lesion was not primarily caused by an injury during a football match that year but was instead a symptom of already-existing cancer. He had to see two doctors before a biopsy was made, which confirmed acral lentiginous melanoma. Unlike other melanomas, usually on skin exposed to the sun, acral lentiginous melanoma occurs in places that are easy to miss, such as the soles of the feet, or under toenails. Although it is the most common melanoma in people with dark skin, it is not widely recognised and was not mentioned in the most popular medical textbook of the time.


title: Bob Marley

text: Marley rejected his doctors' advice to have his toe amputated (which would have hindered his performing career), citing his religious beliefs, and instead, the nail and nail bed were removed and a skin graft was taken from his thigh to cover the area. Despite his illness, he continued touring and was in the process of scheduling a 1980 world tour.


title: Bob Marley

text: The album "Uprising" was released in May 1980. The band completed a major tour of Europe, where it played its biggest concert to 100,000 people in Milan, Italy. After the tour Marley went to the United States, where he performed two shows at Madison Square Garden in New York City as part of the Uprising Tour. He collapsed while jogging in Central Park and was taken to the hospital, where it was found that his cancer had spread to his brain, lungs, and liver.


title: Bob Marley

text: Marley's last concert took place two days later at the Stanley Theater (now The Benedum Center For The Performing Arts) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on 23 September 1980. The only known photographs from the show were included in Kevin Macdonald's 2012 documentary film "Marley".


title: Bob Marley

text: Shortly afterward, Marley's health deteriorated as his cancer had spread throughout his body. The rest of the tour was canceled and Marley sought treatment at the clinic of Josef Issels in Bavaria, Germany, where he underwent an alternative cancer treatment called Issels treatment partly based on avoidance of certain foods, drinks, and other substances. After eight months of failing to effectively treat his advancing cancer, Marley boarded a plane for his home in Jamaica. During the flight Marley's vital functions worsened. After landing in Miami, Florida, he was taken to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital (later University of Miami Hospital) for immediate medical attention, where he died on 11 May 1981, aged 36, due to the spread of melanoma to his lungs and brain. His final words to his son Ziggy were: "Money can't buy life."


title: Bob Marley

text: Marley was given a state funeral in Jamaica on 21 May 1981 that combined elements of Ethiopian Orthodoxy and Rastafari tradition. He was buried in a chapel near his birthplace with his guitar.


title: Bob Marley

text: On 21 May 1981, Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Seaga delivered the final funeral eulogy to Marley, saying:


title: Bob Marley

text: A statue was inaugurated, next to the national stadium on Arthur Wint Drive in Kingston to commemorate him. In 2006, the New York City Department of Education co-named a portion of Church Avenue from Remsen Avenue to East 98th Street in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn as "Bob Marley Boulevard". In 2008, a statue of Marley was inaugurated in Banatski Sokolac, Serbia.


title: Bob Marley

text: Internationally, Marley's message also continues to reverberate among various indigenous communities. For instance, members of the Native American Hopi and Havasupai tribes revere his work. There are also many tributes to Bob Marley throughout India, including restaurants, hotels, and cultural festivals.


title: Bob Marley

text: Marley evolved into a global symbol, which has been endlessly merchandised through a variety of media. In the light of this, author Dave Thompson in his book, "Reggae and Caribbean Music", laments what he perceives to be the commercialised pacification of Marley's more militant edge, stating:


title: Bob Marley

text: Several film adaptations have evolved as well. For instance, a feature-length documentary about his life, "Rebel Music", won various awards at the Grammys. With contributions from Rita, The Wailers, and Marley's lovers and children, it also tells much of the story in his own words. In February 2008, director Martin Scorsese announced his intention to produce a documentary movie on Marley. The film was set to be released on 6 February 2010, on what would have been Marley's 65th birthday. However, Scorsese dropped out due to scheduling problems. He was replaced by Jonathan Demme, who dropped out due to creative differences with producer Steve Bing during the beginning of editing. Kevin Macdonald replaced Demme and the film, "Marley", was released on 20 April 2012. In 2011, ex-girlfriend and filmmaker Esther Anderson, along with Gian Godoy, made the documentary "Bob Marley: The Making of a Legend", which premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.


title: Bob Marley

text: In October 2015, Jamaican author Marlon James's novel, "A Brief History of Seven Killings", a fictional account of the attempted assassination of Marley, won the 2015 Man Booker Prize at a ceremony in London.


title: Bob Marley

text: In February 2020, "Get Up, Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical" was announced by writer Lee Hall and director Dominic Cooke, starring Arinzé Kene as Bob Marley. It was premiered at London's Lyric Theatre on 20 October 2021, after being postponed from its original February premiere due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Bob Marley

text: Bob Marley was a member for some years of the Rastafari movement, whose culture was a key element in the development of reggae. He became an ardent proponent of Rastafari, taking its music out of the socially deprived areas of Jamaica and onto the international music scene. As part of being a Rastafarian he felt that Haile Selassie of Ethiopia was an incarnation of God or "Jah". Archbishop Abuna Yesehaq baptised Marley into the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, giving him the name Berhane Selassie, on 4 November 1980, shortly before his death.


title: Bob Marley

text: As a Rastafarian Marley supported the legalisation of cannabis or "ganja", which Rastafarians believe is an aid to meditation. Marley began to use cannabis when he converted to the Rastafari faith from Catholicism in 1966. He was arrested in 1968 after being caught with cannabis but continued to use marijuana in accordance with his religious beliefs. Of his marijuana usage, he said, "When you smoke herb, herb reveal yourself to you. All the wickedness you do, the herb reveal itself to yourself, your conscience, show up yourself clear, because herb make you meditate. Is only a natural t'ing and it grow like a tree." Marley saw marijuana usage as a vital factor in religious growth and connection with Jah, and as a way to philosophise and become wiser.


title: Bob Marley

text: Marley was a Pan-Africanist and believed in the unity of African people worldwide. His beliefs were rooted in his Rastafari religious beliefs. He was substantially inspired by Marcus Garvey, and had anti-imperialist and pan-Africanist themes in many of his songs, such as "Zimbabwe", "Exodus", "Survival", "Blackman Redemption", and "Redemption Song". "Redemption Song" draws influence from a speech given by Marcus Garvey in Nova Scotia, 1937. Marley held that independence of African countries from European domination was a victory for all those in the African diaspora. In the song "Africa Unite", he sings of a desire for all peoples of the African diaspora to come together and fight against "Babylon"; similarly, in the song "Zimbabwe", he marks the liberation of the whole continent of Africa, and evokes calls for unity between all Africans, both within and outside Africa.


title: Bob Marley

text: Bob Marley married Alpharita Constantia "Rita" Anderson in Kingston, Jamaica, on 10 February 1966. Marley had many children: four with his wife Rita, two adopted from Rita's previous relationships, and several others with different women. The official Bob Marley website acknowledges 11 children.


title: Bob Marley

text: Marley also has three notable grandchildren, musician Skip Marley, American football player Nico Marley, and model Selah Marley.


title: Bob Marley

text: Aside from music, association football played a major role throughout his life. As well as playing the game, in parking lots, fields, and even inside recording studios, growing up he followed the Brazilian club Santos and its star player Pelé and was also a supporter of English football club, Tottenham Hotspur and Argentine midfielder Ossie Ardiles, who played for the club from 1978 for a decade.


title: Bob Marley

text: Marley surrounded himself with people from the sport, and in the 1970s made the Jamaican international footballer Allan "Skill" Cole his tour manager. He told a journalist, "If you want to get to know me, you will have to play football against me and the Wailers."


title: Cameron Diaz

text: Cameron Michelle Diaz (born August 30, 1972) is an American actress. With a variety of works in film, she is widely recognised for her work in romantic comedies and animation. Diaz has received various accolades, including nominations for four Golden Globe Awards, a British Academy Film Award and three Screen Actors Guild Awards. She was named the highest-paid Hollywood actress over 40 in 2013. , the U.S. domestic box office grosses of Diaz's films total over $3 billion US, with worldwide grosses surpassing US$7 billion, making her the fifth highest-grossing U.S. domestic box office actress. Diaz's successful early roles cemented her as a sex symbol and one of the world's most bankable actresses.


title: Cameron Diaz

text: Born in San Diego, California, Diaz was raised in Long Beach. While still in high school, she signed a modeling contract with Elite Model Management. She made her film debut at age 21 opposite Jim Carrey in the comedy "The Mask" (1994). Following a supporting role in the romantic comedy "My Best Friend's Wedding" (1997), she starred as the titular character in the Farrelly brothers' comedy "There's Something About Mary" (1998), which brought her increased fame and her first Golden Globe nomination. Her following two projectsthe sports drama "Any Given Sunday" and Spike Jonze's fantasy film "Being John Malkovich" (both 1999)lent Diaz a reputation as a dramatic actress.


title: Cameron Diaz

text: Diaz had praised supporting roles in Cameron Crowe's "Vanilla Sky" (2001) and Martin Scorsese's "Gangs of New York" (2002) and had greater commercial success in the action comedy "Charlie's Angels" (2000) and , as well as for voicing Princess Fiona in the "Shrek" franchise (2001–2010). Her subsequent films include the comedies "In Her Shoes" (2005), "The Holiday" (2006), "What Happens in Vegas" (2008), "Knight and Day" (2010), "The Green Hornet" (2011), and "Bad Teacher" (2011). After starring in three critically panned but financially successful films in 2014, "The Other Woman", "Sex Tape" and "Annie", Diaz took a break from acting until 2022.


title: Cameron Diaz

text: Diaz has also written two health books: "The Body Book" (2013), a "New York Times" bestseller, and "The Longevity Book" (2016). Her personal life drew strong media attention throughout the course of her career, mostly regarding her relationships and fashion sense. In 2015, she married Good Charlotte guitarist Benji Madden; they have a daughter via surrogate in 2019.


title: Cameron Diaz

text: Cameron Michelle Diaz was born August 30, 1972, in San Diego, California to Billie (née Early), an import/export agent, and Emilio Diaz, a foreman of the California oil company Unocal. Diaz has an elder sister, Chimene. Her father's family is Cuban, and Diaz's ancestors had originally moved from Spain to Cuba. Later they settled in Ybor City, Tampa, Florida, before moving to the Los Angeles area, where her father was born. Her mother has predominantly English and German ancestry.


title: Cameron Diaz

text: Diaz was raised in Long Beach and attended Los Cerritos Elementary School, and then Long Beach Polytechnic High School, where she was a schoolmate of Snoop Dogg. She recalled her upbringing as frugal, stating: "I had amazing parents, they were awesome. We weren't privilegedvery much the opposite. My family would collect [soda] cans to turn in for extra money, because $20 meant something to us. But we were very happy."


title: Cameron Diaz

text: While still attending high school, Diaz signed a modeling contract with Elite Model Management at age 16, and appeared in advertisements for Calvin Klein and Levi's. The following year, at age 17, she was featured on the cover of the July 1990 issue of "Seventeen" magazine. Diaz also modeled for 2 to 3 months in Australia and shot a commercial for Coca-Cola in Sydney in 1991.


title: Cameron Diaz

text: In 1992, at age 19, she was photographed and videotaped topless for an S&M leather fashion lingerie editorial by John Rutter, a professional photographer. They were never released. Rutter approached Diaz in 2003, ahead of the release of "", offering to sell the pictures and video to her for $3.5million before attempting to sell them to prospective buyers. He stated that he was offering her first right of refusal to them; she saw it as attempted blackmail and sued him. In July 2004, the 30-minute video of the photo shoot, entitled "She's No Angel", was released on a Russian website. Rutter denied releasing it. On September 16, 2005, Rutter was sentenced to more than three years in prison for attempted grand theft, forgery, and perjury.


title: Cameron Diaz

text: At the age of 21, Diaz auditioned for "The Mask" playing a jazz singer named Tina Carlyle, based on the recommendation of an agent for Elite, who met the film's producers while they were searching for the lead actress. Having no previous acting experience, she started acting lessons after being cast. "The Mask" became one of the top ten highest-grossing films of 1994 and launched Diaz as a sex symbol. During this period, Diaz dated video producer Carlos de la Torre.


title: Cameron Diaz

text: Diaz subsequently starred in the independent black comedy "The Last Supper" (1995), playing one of several liberal graduate students who invite a group of extremist conservatives to a dinner to murder them. Roger Ebert deemed the film "a brave effort in a timid time, a Swiftian attempt to slap us all in the face and get us to admit that our own freedoms depend precisely on those of our neighbors, our opponents and, yes, our enemies." She then had a lead role as an ex-stripper in the dramatic comedy "Feeling Minnesota" (1996), in which she co-starred opposite Keanu Reeves, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Courtney Love. Emanuel Levy of "Variety" noted: "Sadly, with the notable exception of the attractive Diaz, who's well cast as the sexual aggressor and romantic manipulator, there are no exciting performances in the film." The same year, she was cast opposite Jennifer Aniston in the Edward Burns-directed comedy "She's the One" (1996), followed by a starring role in "Head Above Water" (1996), a crime-comedy in which she played an unfaithful wife implicated in her ex-lover's murder.


title: Cameron Diaz

text: She was scheduled to perform in the film "Mortal Kombat", but had to resign after breaking her hand while training for the role. Besides a starring part in the little-seen "A Life Less Ordinary", Diaz returned to mainstream in 1997 with the romantic comedy "My Best Friend's Wedding". In it, she starred opposite Julia Roberts, playing the wealthy fiancée of a sportswriter who is the long-time friend of Roberts' character. The film was a global box-office hit and is considered one of the best romantic comedy films of all time.


title: Cameron Diaz

text: In 1998 Diaz starred in "There's Something About Mary", as the titular role of a woman living in Miami having several men vying for her affections. It was remarked in "The Austin Chronicle": The sleeper hit was the highest-grossing comedy of 1998 in North America as well as the fourth-highest-grossing film of the year; it made US$176million in the United States and US$369million worldwide. She was nominated for a Golden Globe Award in the category of Best Actress – Musical or Comedy. Diaz also starred in the critically panned comedy "Very Bad Things" (1998).


title: Cameron Diaz

text: She starred in Spike Jonze's directorial debut "Being John Malkovich" (1999), portraying the pet-obsessed wife of an unemployed puppeteer who, through a portal, finds himself in the mind of actor John Malkovich. The film received widespread acclaim and was an arthouse success. Janet Maslin of "The New York Times" concluded that Diaz "does a hilarious turn" in her "frumpy wife" role, and Roger Ebert felt that the actress, "one of the best-looking women in movies, [...] here looks so dowdy we hardly recognize her [...] Diaz has fun with her talent by taking it incognito to strange places and making it work for a living". For her role, Diaz earned Best Supporting Actress nominations at the Golden Globe, BAFTA, and SAG Awards, however, she was snubbed for the Oscar, which was met with backlash. Her next film release in 1999 was Oliver Stone's sports drama "Any Given Sunday" (1999), in which veteran coach Tony D’Amato (Al Pacino) has fallen out of favor with her character Christina Pagniacci, the young woman who owns the team. While critical response was mixed, the film made US$100million globally.


title: Cameron Diaz

text: In the film adaptation "Charlie's Angels" (2000), Diaz, Drew Barrymore, and Lucy Liu played the trio of investigators in Los Angeles. The film was one of the highest-grossing films of the year, grossing US$264.1million. In 2001, Diaz starred in the Sundance-premiered independent drama "The Invisible Circus", as a young woman who commits suicide in Europe in the 1970s, and next in the year, she appeared in "Vanilla Sky", as the former lover of a self-indulgent and vain publishing magnate (Tom Cruise). A wide critical response and commercial success greeted "Vanilla Sky" upon its release; "Los Angeles Times" called her "compelling as the embodiment of crazed sensuality" and "The New York Times" said she gives a "ferociously emotional" performance. "San Francisco Chronicle" similarly stated of the film, "most impressive is Cameron Diaz, whose fatal-attraction stalker is both heartbreaking and terrifying." She earned nominations for Best Supporting Actress at the Golden Globe Awards, the SAG Awards, the Critics' Choice Awards, and the American Film Institute Awards for her performance in the film.


title: Cameron Diaz

text: Also in 2001, she voiced Princess Fiona in the animated film "Shrek". In the film, her character is plagued by a curse that transforms her into an ogress each and every sunset. Locked in a dragon-guarded castle for several years, she is rescued by the title character, whom she later comes to love. The film was a major commercial success, grossing US$484.4million worldwide and became the first movie to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. In 2002, Diaz headlined the romantic comedy "The Sweetest Thing", playing a single woman educating herself on wooing the opposite sex when she finally meets the man of her dreams. The film was a moderate commercial success with a global gross of US$68.6million.


title: Cameron Diaz

text: After completing "Shrek", Diaz starred in Martin Scorsese's epic period drama "Gangs of New York", set in the mid-19th century in the Five Points district of New York City; she took on the role of a pickpocket-grifter and the love interest of Leonardo DiCaprio's character. The film received positive reviews by critics and was a box office success, grossing a total of US$193million worldwide. A. O. Scott of "The New York Times", agreeing with other top critics on co-star Daniel Day-Lewis's presence overshadowing Diaz and DiCaprio, felt that the actress "ends up with no outlet for her spitfire energies, since her character is more a structural necessity — the linchpin of male jealousy — than a fully imagined person. The limitations of her role point to a more serious lapse, which is the movie's lack of curiosity about what women's lives might have been like in Old New York". Diaz next reprised her roles in the commercially successful sequels "" (2003), and "Shrek 2" (2004).


title: Cameron Diaz

text: Diaz received substantial defamation damages from suing American Media Incorporated, after the "National Enquirer" posted an article and pictures with the headline "Cameron Caught Cheating" on their website in May 2005. The photos claimed to show Diaz cheating on her boyfriend at the time, Justin Timberlake, with the married MTV producer of her show "Trippin'", Shane Nickerson. After Diaz complained, the article and pictures were removed from the web and the hard copy did not contain any of the content. The magazine apologized to Diaz, Timberlake, Nickerson and his wife for the distress caused and said the story was untrue and the picture showed no more than a goodbye hug between friends.


title: Cameron Diaz

text: In her following film, Diaz played opposite Toni Collette and Shirley MacLaine in "In Her Shoes" (2005), a comedy-drama film based on the novel of the same name by Jennifer Weiner, which focuses on the relationship between two sisters and their grandmother. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, and Diaz garnered acclaim for her performance of a dyslectic wild child engaged in a love-hate struggle with her plain, sensible sister (Collette), with "USA Today" calling it "her best work" at the time. She followed "In Her Shoes" with a role in Nancy Meyers' romantic comedy "The Holiday" (2006), also starring Kate Winslet, Jude Law, and Jack Black. In it she played Amanda, an American movie trailer producer who arranges a home exchange with a British woman (Winslet). The film became one of the biggest commercial successes of the year, grossing more than US$205million worldwide.


title: Cameron Diaz

text: Diaz's only film of 2007 was "Shrek the Third", the third installment in the "Shrek" franchise, which also featured Timberlake in a supporting role. Although the film was met with mixed reviews from critics, it grossed US$798million worldwide. The same year, Diaz also voiced Princess Fiona in a thirty-minute Christmas special, directed by Gary Trousdale. Diaz earned an estimated US$50 million during the period of a year ending June 2008, for her roles in the "Shrek" sequel and her next film "What Happens in Vegas" opposite Ashton Kutcher. A romantic comedy by Tom Vaughan, Diaz and Kutcher portrayed two strangers who awaken together to discover they have gotten married following a night in which they won a huge jackpot after playing the other's quarter. Critic reviews were negative but the film still grossed US$219million with a budget of US$35million.


title: Cameron Diaz

text: In 2009, she starred in "My Sister's Keeper" and "The Box". Based on Jodi Picoult's novel of the same name, "My Sister's Keeper" was released to mixed reviews in June 2009. In the drama, Diaz plays a former lawyer and mother of three, one of whom is dying of leukemia. A moderate commercial success, it grossed US$95million worldwide, mostly from its domestic run. Set in 1976, "The Box", written and directed by Richard Kelly, stars Diaz and James Marsden as a couple who receive a box from a mysterious man who offers them one million dollars if they press the button sealed within the dome on top of a box, knowing that someone, somewhere, will die from it. Critical response towards the psychological horror film was mixed, and, though having grossed its budget back, was considered a financial disappointment.


title: Cameron Diaz

text: In 2010, "Forbes" ranked Diaz as the richest female celebrity, ranking her number 60 among the wealthiest 100. Also that year, Diaz reprised her voice role of Princess Fiona in "Shrek Forever After", the fourth installment in the "Shrek" series. Although the film opened to mixed reviews from critics, it grossed a worldwide total of over US$752million and became the fifth top-grossing film released that year. The same year, she also voiced Princess Fiona in a thirty-minute Halloween special. Also in 2010, Diaz reunited with her "Vanilla Sky" co-star Tom Cruise in the action comedy film "Knight and Day". In it, Diaz plays a classic car restorer who unwittingly gets caught up with the eccentric secret agent Roy Miller, played by Cruise, who is on the run from the Secret Service. "Knight and Day" received mixed reviews, and while the comedy performed poorly at the box office in its debut, it became a sleeper hit at the box office with a worldwide gross of US$262million. Beginning in May 2010, Diaz began dating former New York Yankees player Alex Rodriguez. Their relationship ended in September 2011.


title: Cameron Diaz

text: In 2011, Diaz was cast as Lenore Case, a journalist, in the remake of the 1940s film "The Green Hornet". Directed by Michel Gondry, Diaz starred alongside Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, and Christoph Waltz in the superhero action comedy film. Released to mixed to negative reviews from critics, who called it an "overblown, interminable and unfunny update", the film ended its theatrical run on April 21, 2011, with a worldwide gross total of US$228million. The same year, she played opposite Justin Timberlake and Jason Segel in Jake Kasdan's adult comedy "Bad Teacher". In the film, Diaz plays an immoral, gold-digging Chicago-area middle school teacher at the fictional John Adams Middle School who curses at her students, drinks heavily, and smokes marijuana. Again, it received mostly negative reviews from critics who felt that "in spite of a promising concept and a charmingly brazen performance from Diaz, "Bad Teacher" is never as funny as it should be." A commercial hit however, the R-rated comedy grossed US$216million worldwide. Also in 2011, Diaz was listed among "CEOWorld Magazine"s Top Accomplished Women Entertainers.


title: Cameron Diaz

text: In 2012 Diaz was cast in "What to Expect When You're Expecting", directed by Kirk Jones and based on the pregnancy guide of the same name. Diaz, who filmed her scenes in a two-week period, portrays Jules Baxter, a contestant on a celebrity dance show and a host to a weight-loss fitness show, who becomes pregnant with her dance partner's baby. Upon release, the ensemble comedy received mostly negative reviews, but became a moderate commercial success with a worldwide gross of US$84.4million. Diaz's other film that year was "Gambit", a remake of the 1966 film of the same name directed by Michael Hoffman and scripted by Joel and Ethan Coen. The film received overwhelmingly negative reviews, and performed poorly at the box office, grossing only US$10million internationally. Diaz also voiced Sigmund Freud in "" (2012), a British animated comedy film that is a (deliberately) completely inaccurate portrayal of the life of Monty Python alumnus Graham Chapman.


title: Cameron Diaz

text: Diaz's only film project of 2013 was Ridley Scott's "The Counselor", co-starring Michael Fassbender, Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, and Brad Pitt. In the thriller about greed, death, the primal instincts of humans and their consequences, Diaz plays a pathological liar and a sociopath, an immigrant who is now living the high-life after escaping a sordid past as an exotic dancer. While the film's reception was negative, her performance was praised as one of her best in recent years.


title: Cameron Diaz

text: Diaz's first film of 2014 was the romantic revenge comedy "The Other Woman" opposite Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Leslie Mann, and Kate Upton. While "The Other Woman" received mostly negative reviews from critics, who felt that it settled for cheap laughs, it opened atop the US weekend box office with earnings of US$24.7million across the three days; it eventually made US$83.9million in North America and US$196.7million globally.


title: Cameron Diaz

text: Her next film release in 2014 was the comedy "Sex Tape", in which she starred with Segel again as a married couple waking up to discover that a sex tape they had made went missing, leading to a frantic search for its whereabouts. It ultimately became a moderate commercial success with a worldwide gross of US$126million. The role required Diaz to perform multiple scenes of nudity. On her decision to appear nude, Diaz said: "People have seen my butt. I've shown the top of my butt, the bottom of my butt. I'm not opposed to doing nudity, as long as it's part of the story. I'll do whatever has to get done if it's the right thing." Her final film that year was the film adaptation "Annie", co-starring Quvenzhané Wallis, Jamie Foxx, and Rose Byrne. She took on the role of Miss Colleen Hannigan, the cruel control freak of the foster home where the titular character resides. Upon its December premiere, "Annie" made US$133million worldwide, with Diaz's performance garnering polarized reviews; critics praising her effort, but ultimately calling it too "vampy", as well as "strident and obnoxious". Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" says that she "overacts the role to the point of hysteria". Diaz decided to take a break from acting following the release of "Annie", stating in July 2017 that she became tired of traveling for filming, and confirmed her retirement the following March.


title: Cameron Diaz

text: In late 2013, she published a health book, "", co-written with Sandra Bark. It was no. 2 on "The New York Times" Best Seller list in March 2014. She then released "The Longevity Book: The Science of Aging, the Biology of Strength, and the Privilege of Time" in June 2016. She has since invested in health and biotech startups, including Seed Health and Modern Acupuncture. In May 2019, she was a keynote speaker at The Infatuation's annual food festival, EEEEEATSCON. In 2020, Diaz launched an organic wine brand, Avaline, with business partner Katherine Power.


title: Cameron Diaz

text: In 2022, she appeared as a guest judge in the season opener episode of "RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars 7", and stated she was a huge fan of the show. Contestant Trinity the Tuck stated, "Some judges that come on don't seem to be present, but she was very knowledgeable."


title: Cameron Diaz

text: In June 2022, it was announced that Diaz would return to acting by starring alongside Foxx (their reunion since "Annie") in the Netflix action-comedy "Back in Action".


title: Cameron Diaz

text: In December 2022, it was revealed that a sequel to "The Holiday" was in preproduction. Diaz, Jude Law, Kate Winslet and Jack Black have all signed on to reprise their roles from the original. However, director Meyers and Winslet both denied the rumor.


title: Cameron Diaz

text: After appearing in "There's Something About Mary", Diaz briefly dated her co-star Matt Dillon. The following year, she began a relationship with actor Jared Leto, which ended in 2003. From 2003 to 2007, she dated singer Justin Timberlake. Diaz married musician Benji Madden at her home in Beverly Hills, California, on January 5, 2015, in a Jewish ceremony. The couple had been introduced ten months earlier by her close friend Nicole Richie who is married to Madden's twin brother Joel Madden. In December 2019, the couple welcomed a daughter via surrogate.


title: Cameron Diaz

text: Known for her environmental activism, she was an early adopter of the Toyota Prius hybrid and worked to promote Al Gore's Live Earth campaign, raising awareness of climate change. Diaz was also critical of the George W. Bush administration. She wore a T-shirt that read "I won't vote for a son of a Bush!" while making publicity visits for "Charlie's Angels". Diaz has been involved with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), the first and largest non-profit organization for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has spoken as an advocate for military families.


title: Cameron Diaz

text: Diaz has received various accolades throughout her career, including nominations for four Golden Globe Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards and a British Academy Film Award. In 2009, she was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.


title: Cameron Diaz

text: The following is a list of roles that have earned Diaz nominations for either an Academy Award (0), a British Academy Film Award (1), a Golden Globe Award (4), a Screen Actors Guild Award (3) or a Critics' Choice Movie Award (1).


title: Mia Khalifa

text: Mia Khalifa (; ; born 1993) is a Lebanese-American media personality and former pornographic film actress and webcam model. She began acting in pornography in October 2014, becoming the most viewed performer on Pornhub in two months. Her career choice was met with controversy in the Middle East, especially for a video in which she performed sexual acts while wearing a hijab.


title: Mia Khalifa

text: Born in Lebanon and raised Catholic in what she describes as a "very conservative" home, Khalifa attended a French-language private school in Beirut, where she also learned to speak English. She moved with her family to the United States in 2001, leaving their home in the wake of the South Lebanon conflict. After moving to the United States, her family lived in Montgomery County, Maryland, where she played lacrosse in high school. She has said she was bullied at school for being "the darkest and weirdest girl there", which intensified after the September 11 attacks. She attended Massanutten Military Academy in Woodstock, Virginia, and later graduated from the University of Texas at El Paso with a Bachelor of Arts in history. She supported herself while there by working as a bartender, model, and "briefcase girl" on a local "Deal or No Deal"-esque Spanish game show.


title: Mia Khalifa

text: Khalifa entered the professional pornographic film industry in October 2014. Her stage name was taken from the name of her dog, Mia, and American rapper Wiz Khalifa.


title: Mia Khalifa

text: She came to widespread attention after the release of a scene from Bang Bros in which she wears a hijab during a threesome with Sean Lawless and Julianna Vega. The scene brought Khalifa instant popularity, as well as criticism from writers and religious figures, and led to her parents publicly disowning her. Alex Hawkins, Vice President of Marketing for xHamster, said "The outrage it caused in the Arab world ended up being a bit of a 'Streisand effect'. Suddenly, everyone was searching for her. The effort to censor her only made her more ubiquitous." With more than 1.5 million views, the 22-year-old Khalifa became the most searched-for performer on the adult video sharing website Pornhub. On December 28 that year, Pornhub revealed that she was the No. 1 ranked performer on their website."


title: Mia Khalifa

text: After becoming the most searched-for actress on Pornhub, Khalifa received online death threats, including a manipulated image of Khalifa being held captive by an Islamic State executioner and a warning that she would be "the first person in Hellfire", to which she jokingly replied, "I've been meaning to get a little tan recently." Lebanese newspapers wrote articles critical of Khalifa, which she considered trivial due to other events in the region.


title: Mia Khalifa

text: In an interview with "The Washington Post", Khalifa said the controversial scene was satirical and should be taken as such, claiming that Hollywood films depicted Muslims in a far more negative light than any pornographer could. Among those who publicly spoke out to defend her decision to become an adult performer was British-Lebanese author Nasri Atallah, who stated, "The moral indignation ... is wrong for two reasons. First and foremost, as a woman, she is free to do as she pleases with her body. As a sentient human being with agency, who lives halfway across the world, she is in charge of her own life and owes absolutely nothing to the country where she happened to be born." Khalifa herself said of the controversy: "Women's rights in Lebanon are a long way from being taken seriously if a Lebanese American porn star that no longer resides there can cause such an uproar. What I once boasted to people as being the most Westernized nation in the Middle East, I now see as devastatingly archaic and oppressed."


title: Mia Khalifa

text: According to data from Pornhub, from January 3 to 6, 2015, searches for Khalifa increased five-fold. Around a quarter of those searches came from Lebanon, with substantial searches also from nearby countries Syria and Jordan. Almaza, a Lebanese brewery, ran an advertisement showing a bottle of their beer next to Khalifa's signature glasses, with the slogan: "We are both rated 18+." In January 2015, pop-rap duo Timeflies released a song titled "Mia Khalifa" in homage to her.


title: Mia Khalifa

text: In January 2015, Khalifa signed a long-term contract with Bang Bros' parent company, WGCZ Holding, who also own the largest free porn site XVideos. The contract required her to perform in multiple films each month. However, two weeks later, Khalifa had a change of heart and resigned. The negative attention she received from her global attention prompted her to leave the industry: "It was an eye-opener for me. I don't want any of this, whether it's positive or negative—but all of it was negative. I didn't think too much into it about how my friends and family and relationships were suffering." WGCZ Holding own a web page with a domain name using her stage name. Khalifa said it does not pay her for rights, even though it is written in her first-person voice.


title: Mia Khalifa

text: In a July 2016 interview with "The Washington Post", Khalifa stated that she had only performed in pornography for three months and had left the industry over a year before, changing to a "more normal job." She said, "I guess it was my rebellious phase. It wasn't really for me. I kind of smartened up and tried to distance myself from that." She said she continued to perform as a webcam model for Bang Bros for eleven months after she stopped shooting scenes before Complex Networks offered her to host a sports show. Carter Cruise, a former performer who became a disc jockey, criticized Khalifa for reinforcing the social stigma against sex work in distancing herself from her previous career.


title: Mia Khalifa

text: In January 2017, xHamster reported that Khalifa was the most searched-for adult actress of 2016. In 2018, three years after leaving the industry, she was still the second-highest ranked person on Pornhub. In August 2019, Khalifa stated that she made $12,000 working in porn by making an estimated $1,000 per scene – standard contractor compensation from production studios in the industry, according to Alec Helmy, president and publisher of adult entertainment industry news site XBIZ – and that she did not receive residuals from BangBros or from Pornhub and other free sites where BangBros uploaded the videos. While PornHub has not stated how much revenue Khalifa's videos had generated for the site, according to a 2019 estimate by Social Blade CEO Jason Urgo based on YouTube-like advertising revenue per-view, she could have made over $500,000 had she been a PornHub partner. In July 2020, more than 1.5 million people signed a Change.org petition campaigning for her videos to be removed from sites like Pornhub and BangBros and her Internet domains returned to her. BangBros sent her a cease and desist letter and set up a website to dispute statements she made about the company. BangBros says that Khalifa earned over $178,000 from them and their affiliates and was in the adult industry for more than two years.


title: Mia Khalifa

text: After three months working as an adult-film actor, Khalifa worked in Miami as a paralegal and bookkeeper. She transitioned into a career as a social media personality, webcam model, and sports commentator. She runs a YouTube channel; live streams on Twitch, and performed as a webcam model; sells photoshoots, merchandise, and access to exclusive content on membership website Patreon; and sold explicit photoshoots and videos on the social media website Findrow. Dan Steinberg of "The Washington Post" wrote in 2016 that, despite Khalifa's change of career, her social media feed was "still a bit more risqué than that of, say, Ben Bernanke."


title: Mia Khalifa

text: She has used her social media presence to support professional sports teams from the Washington, D.C. area. She and Gilbert Arenas hosted "Out of Bounds", a daily sports show on Complex News's YouTube channel, from October 2017 to February 2018. Afterwards, Khalifa co-hosted "Sportsball" alongside Tyler Coe on "Rooster Teeth". Its final episode was released on October 30, 2018.


title: Mia Khalifa

text: Khalifa married her high school boyfriend in February 2011. They separated in 2014 and divorced in 2016. In 2019 she married professional chef Robert Sandberg; they separated in 2020. As of 2022, she is in a relationship with Puerto Rican singer and rapper Jhay Cortez.


title: Mia Khalifa

text: Khalifa has a tattoo of the opening line of the National Anthem of Lebanon and another of the Lebanese Forces Cross. She got the latter after the October 2012 Beirut bombing, stating it was to "show solidarity with [her] father's political views." Both tattoos have come under scrutiny by her detractors. She has revealed that her parents stopped speaking to her because of her career choice. Her parents released a statement disassociating themselves from her actions and blaming her decision to enter the porn industry on her residence in a foreign country which had a different culture than theirs, and that her actions did not reflect her upbringing. They also said that they hoped that she would leave pornography, believing that her image did not honor her family or home country.


title: Mia Khalifa

text: In November 2016, an online petition called for Khalifa to be appointed by President-elect Donald Trump as the next United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.


title: Mia Khalifa

text: In 2018, the musical duo iLoveFriday released a diss track called "Mia Khalifa," in response to a fake tweet posted by a user impersonating Khalifa. The song became an internet meme after the "hit or miss" snippet gained popularity on the TikTok app. At the time, it was said to be one of the most well-known viral TikTok meme in the Western world, and had been used in over four million TikTok videos.


title: Mia Khalifa

text: At the 2021 CPI on the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil, senator Luis Carlos Heinze mentioned that a study published in "The Lancet" on the effectiveness of chloroquine as a COVID treatment was carried out by a company whose sales manager was a pornographic film actress. In response, senator Randolfe Rodrigues jokingly proposed "summon[ing] Mia Khalifa". Khalifa then wrote on Twitter, "I'm not a doctor, so don't take medical advise from fake memes of me you found on WhatsApp."


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: The Lord of the Rings is an epic high-fantasy novel by English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, intended to be Earth at some time in the distant past, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's book "The Hobbit", but eventually developed into a much larger work. Written in stages between 1937 and 1949, "The Lord of the Rings" is one of the best-selling books ever written, with over 150 million copies sold.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: The title refers to the story's main antagonist, the Dark Lord Sauron, who, in an earlier age, created the One Ring to rule the other Rings of Power given to Men, Dwarves, and Elves, in his campaign to conquer all of Middle-earth. From homely beginnings in the Shire, a hobbit land reminiscent of the English countryside, the story ranges across Middle-earth, following the quest to destroy the One Ring mainly through the eyes of the hobbits Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: Although often called a trilogy, the work was intended by Tolkien to be one volume of a two-volume set along with "The Silmarillion". For economic reasons, "The Lord of the Rings" was published over the course of a year from 29 July 1954 to 20 October 1955 in three volumes titled "The Fellowship of the Ring", "The Two Towers", and "The Return of the King". The work is divided internally into six books, two per volume, with several appendices of background material. Some later editions print the entire work in a single volume, following the author's original intent.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: Tolkien's work, after an initially mixed reception by the literary establishment, has been the subject of extensive analysis of its themes and origins. Influences on this earlier work, and on the story of "The Lord of the Rings", include philology, mythology, Christianity, earlier fantasy works, and his own experiences in the First World War.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: "The Lord of the Rings" has since been reprinted many times and translated into at least 38 languages. Its enduring popularity has led to numerous references in popular culture, the founding of many societies by fans of Tolkien's works, and the publication of many books about Tolkien and his works. It has inspired many derivative works, including paintings, music, films, television, video games, and board games. It has helped to create and shape the modern fantasy genre, within which it is considered one of the greatest books of all time.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: Award-winning adaptations of "The Lord of the Rings" have been made for radio, theatre, and film. It has been named Britain's best-loved novel of all time in the BBC's 2003 poll The Big Read.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: Tolkien presents "The Lord of the Rings" within a fictional frame story where he is not the original author, but merely the translator of part of an ancient document, the "Red Book of Westmarch". That book is modelled on the real "Red Book of Hergest", which similarly presents an older mythology. Various details of the frame story appear in the Prologue, its "Note on Shire Records", and in the Appendices, notably Appendix F. In this frame story, the "Red Book" is the purported source of Tolkien's other works relating to Middle-earth: "The Hobbit", "The Silmarillion", and "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil".


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: Although a major work in itself, "The Lord of the Rings" was only the last movement of a much older set of narratives Tolkien had worked on since 1917 encompassing "The Silmarillion", in a process he described as "mythopoeia".


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: "The Lord of the Rings" started as a sequel to Tolkien's work "The Hobbit," published in 1937. The popularity of "The Hobbit" had led George Allen & Unwin, the publishers, to request a sequel. Tolkien warned them that he wrote quite slowly, and responded with several stories he had already developed. Having rejected his contemporary drafts for "The Silmarillion", putting "Roverandom" on hold, and accepting "Farmer Giles of Ham", Allen & Unwin continued to ask for more stories about hobbits.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: Persuaded by his publishers, he started "a new Hobbit" in December 1937. After several false starts, the story of the One Ring emerged. The idea for the first chapter ("A Long-Expected Party") arrived fully formed, although the reasons behind Bilbo's disappearance, the significance of the Ring, and the title "The Lord of the Rings" did not come until the spring of 1938. Originally, he planned to write a story in which Bilbo had used up all his treasure and was looking for another adventure to gain more; however, he remembered the Ring and its powers and thought that would be a better focus for the new work. As the story progressed, he brought in elements from "The Silmarillion" mythology.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: Writing was slow, because Tolkien had a full-time academic position, marked exams to bring in a little extra income, and wrote many drafts. Tolkien abandoned "The Lord of the Rings" during most of 1943 and only restarted it in April 1944, as a serial for his son Christopher Tolkien, who was sent chapters as they were written while he was serving in South Africa with the Royal Air Force. Tolkien made another major effort in 1946, and showed the manuscript to his publishers in 1947. The story was effectively finished the next year, but Tolkien did not complete the revision of earlier parts of the work until 1949. The original manuscripts, which total 9,250 pages, now reside in the J. R. R. Tolkien Collection at Marquette University.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: Unusually for 20th century novels, the prose narrative is supplemented throughout by over 60 pieces of poetry. These include verse and songs of many genres: for wandering, marching to war, drinking, and having a bath; narrating ancient myths, riddles, prophecies, and magical incantations; and of praise and lament (elegy). Some, such as riddles, charms, elegies, and narrating heroic actions are found in Old English poetry. Scholars have stated that the poetry is essential for the fiction to work aesthetically and thematically, as it adds information not given in the prose, and it brings out characters and their backgrounds. The poetry has been judged to be of high technical skill, reflected in Tolkien's prose; for instance, he wrote much of Tom Bombadil's speech in metre.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: Tolkien worked on the text using his maps of Middle-earth as a guide, to ensure the elements of the story fitted together in time and space. He prepared a variety of types of illustration – maps, calligraphy, drawings, cover designs, even a facsimile painting of the Book of Mazarbul – but only the maps, the inscription on the Ring, and a drawing of the Doors of Durin were included in the first edition.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: The hardback editions sometimes had cover illustrations by Tolkien, sometimes by other artists. According to "The New York Times", Barbara Remington's cover designs for Ballantine's paperback editions "achieved mass-cult status in the 1960s, particularly on college campuses" across America.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: Tolkien drew on a wide array of influences including language, Christianity, mythology and Germanic heroic legend including the Norse "Völsunga saga", archaeology, especially at the Temple of Nodens, ancient and modern literature, like Finnish 19th-century epic poetry "The Kalevala" by Elias Lönnrot, and personal experience. He was inspired primarily by his profession, philology; his work centred on the study of Old English literature, especially "Beowulf", and he acknowledged its importance to his writings.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: Commentators have attempted to identify literary and topological antecedents for characters, places and events in Tolkien's writings; he acknowledged that he had enjoyed adventure stories by authors such as John Buchan and Rider Haggard. The Arts and Crafts polymath William Morris was a major influence, and Tolkien undoubtedly made use of some real place-names, such as Bag End, the name of his aunt's home.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: Tolkien stated, too, that he had been influenced by his childhood experiences of the English countryside of Worcestershire near Sarehole Mill, and its urbanisation by the growth of Birmingham, and his personal experience of fighting in the trenches of the First World War. Moreover, the militarization and industrialization inspired the character of Sauron and his forces. The Orcs represented the worst of it as workers that have been tortured and brutalized by the war and industry.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: Scholars and critics have identified many themes in the book with its complex interlaced narrative, including a reversed quest, the struggle of good and evil, death and immortality, fate and free will, the addictive danger of power, and various aspects of Christianity such as the presence of three Christ figures, for prophet, priest, and king, as well as elements like hope and redemptive suffering.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: There is a common theme throughout the work of language, its sound, and its relationship to peoples and places, along with hints of providence in descriptions of weather and landscape. Out of these, Tolkien stated that the central theme is death and immortality. To those who supposed that the book was an allegory of events in the 20th century, Tolkien replied in the foreword to the Second Edition that it was not, saying he preferred "history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers."


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: Some commentators have criticized the book for being a story about men for boys, with no significant women; or about a purely rural world with no bearing on modern life in cities; of containing no sign of religion; or of racism. Other commentators responded by noting that there are three powerful women in the book, Galadriel, Éowyn, and Arwen; that life, even in rural Hobbiton, is not idealised; that Christianity is a pervasive theme; and that Tolkien was sharply anti-racist both in peacetime and during the Second World War, while Middle-earth is evidently polycultural.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: A dispute with his publisher, George Allen & Unwin, led Tolkien to offer the work to William Collins in 1950. Tolkien intended "The Silmarillion" (itself largely unrevised at this point) to be published along with "The Lord of the Rings," but Allen & Unwin were unwilling to do this. After Milton Waldman, his contact at Collins, expressed the belief that "The Lord of the Rings" itself "urgently wanted cutting", Tolkien eventually demanded that they publish the book in 1952. Collins did not; and so Tolkien wrote to Allen and Unwin, saying, "I would gladly consider the publication of any part of the stuff", fearing his work would never see the light of day.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: For publication, the work was divided into three volumes to minimize any potential financial loss due to the high cost of type-setting and modest anticipated sales: "The Fellowship of the Ring" (Books I and II), "The Two Towers" (Books III and IV), and "The Return of the King" (Books V and VI plus six appendices). Delays in producing appendices, maps and especially an index led to the volumes being published later than originally hoped – on 29 July 1954, on 11 November 1954 and on 20 October 1955 respectively in the United Kingdom. In the United States, Houghton Mifflin published "The Fellowship of the Ring" on 21 October 1954, "The Two Towers" on 21 April 1955, and "The Return of the King" on 5 January 1956.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: "The Return of the King" was especially delayed as Tolkien revised the ending and prepared appendices (some of which had to be left out because of space constraints). Tolkien did not like the title "The Return of the King", believing it gave away too much of the storyline, but deferred to his publisher's preference. Tolkien wrote that the title "The Two Towers" "can be left ambiguous", but considered naming the two as Orthanc and Barad-dûr, Minas Tirith and Barad-dûr, or Orthanc and the Tower of Cirith Ungol. However, a month later he wrote a note published at the end of "The Fellowship of the Ring" and later drew a cover illustration, both of which identified the pair as Minas Morgul and Orthanc.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: Tolkien was initially opposed to titles being given to each two-book volume, preferring instead the use of book titles: e.g. "The Lord of the Rings": Vol. 1, "The Ring Sets Out" and "The Ring Goes South"; Vol. 2, "The Treason of Isengard" and "The Ring Goes East"; Vol. 3, "The War of the Ring" and "The End of the Third Age". However, these individual book titles were dropped, and after pressure from his publishers, Tolkien suggested the volume titles: Vol. 1, "The Shadow Grows"; Vol. 2, "The Ring in the Shadow"; Vol. 3, "The War of the Ring" or "The Return of the King".


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: Because the three-volume binding was so widely distributed, the work is often referred to as the "Lord of the Rings" "trilogy". In a letter to the poet W. H. Auden, who famously reviewed the final volume in 1956, Tolkien himself made use of the term "trilogy" for the work though he did at other times consider this incorrect, as it was written and conceived as a single book. It is often called a novel; however, Tolkien objected to this term as he viewed it as a heroic romance.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: The books were published under a profit-sharing arrangement, whereby Tolkien would not receive an advance or royalties until the books had broken even, after which he would take a large share of the profits. It has ultimately become one of the best-selling novels ever written, with 50 million copies sold by 2003 and over 150 million copies sold by 2007. The work was published in the UK by Allen & Unwin until 1990, when the publisher and its assets were acquired by HarperCollins.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: In the early 1960s Donald A. Wollheim, science fiction editor of the paperback publisher Ace Books, claimed that "The Lord of the Rings" was not protected in the United States under American copyright law because Houghton Mifflin, the US hardcover publisher, had neglected to copyright the work in the United States. Then, in 1965, Ace Books proceeded to publish an edition, unauthorized by Tolkien and without paying royalties to him. Tolkien took issue with this and quickly notified his fans of this objection. Grass-roots pressure from these fans became so great that Ace Books withdrew their edition and made a nominal payment to Tolkien.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: Authorized editions followed from Ballantine Books and Houghton Mifflin to tremendous commercial success. Tolkien undertook various textual revisions to produce a version of the book that would be published with his consent and establish an unquestioned US copyright. This text became the Second Edition of "The Lord of the Rings", published in 1965. The first Ballantine paperback edition was printed in October that year, selling a quarter of a million copies within ten months. On 4 September 1966, the novel debuted on "The New York Times"s Paperback Bestsellers list as number three, and was number one by 4 December, a position it held for eight weeks. Houghton Mifflin editions after 1994 consolidate variant revisions by Tolkien, and corrections supervised by Christopher Tolkien, which resulted, after some initial glitches, in a computer-based unified text.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: In 2004, for the 50th Anniversary Edition, Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, under supervision from Christopher Tolkien, studied and revised the text to eliminate as many errors and inconsistencies as possible, some of which had been introduced by well-meaning compositors of the first printing in 1954, and never been corrected. The 2005 edition of the book contained further corrections noticed by the editors and submitted by readers. Yet more corrections were made in the 60th Anniversary Edition in 2014. Several editions, including the 50th Anniversary Edition, print the whole work in one volume, with the result that pagination varies widely over the various editions.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: From 1988 to 1992 Christopher Tolkien published the surviving drafts of "The Lord of The Rings", chronicling and illuminating with commentary the stages of the text's development, in volumes 6–9 of his "History of Middle-earth" series. The four volumes carry the titles "The Return of the Shadow", "The Treason of Isengard", "The War of the Ring", and "Sauron Defeated".


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: The work has been translated, with varying degrees of success, into at least 38, and reportedly at least 70, languages. Tolkien, an expert in philology, examined many of these translations, and made comments on each that reflect both the translation process and his work. As he was unhappy with some choices made by early translators, such as the Swedish translation by Åke Ohlmarks, Tolkien wrote a "Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings" (1967). Because "The Lord of the Rings" purports to be a translation of the fictitious "Red Book of Westmarch", using the English language to represent the Westron of the "original", Tolkien suggested that translators attempt to capture the interplay between English and the invented nomenclature of the English work, and gave several examples along with general guidance.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: Early reviews of the work were mixed. The initial review in the "Sunday Telegraph" described it as "among the greatest works of imaginative fiction of the twentieth century". The "Sunday Times" echoed this sentiment, stating that "the English-speaking world is divided into those who have read "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit" and those who are going to read them." The "New York Herald Tribune" appeared to predict the books' popularity, writing in its review that they were "destined to outlast our time". W. H. Auden, a former pupil of Tolkien's and an admirer of his writings, regarded "The Lord of the Rings" as a "masterpiece", further stating that in some cases it outdid the achievement of John Milton's "Paradise Lost". Kenneth F. Slater wrote in Nebula Science Fiction, April 1955, "... if you don't read it, you have missed one of the finest books of its type ever to appear". On the other hand, in 1955, the Scottish poet Edwin Muir attacked "The Return of the King", writing that "All the characters are boys masquerading as adult heroes ... and will never come to puberty ... Hardly one of them knows anything about women", causing Tolkien to complain angrily to his publisher. In 1956, the literary critic Edmund Wilson wrote a review entitled "Oo, Those Awful Orcs!", calling Tolkien's work "juvenile trash", and saying "Dr. Tolkien has little skill at narrative and no instinct for literary form."


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: Within Tolkien's literary group, The Inklings, the work had a mixed reception. Hugo Dyson complained loudly at its readings, whereas C. S. Lewis had very different feelings, writing, "here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron. Here is a book which will break your heart." Lewis observed that the writing is rich, in that some of the 'good' characters have darker sides, and likewise some of the villains have "good impulses". Despite the mixed reviews and the lack of a paperback until the 1960s, "The Lord of the Rings" initially sold well in hardback.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: Judith Shulevitz, writing in "The New York Times", criticized the "pedantry" of Tolkien's literary style, saying that he "formulated a high-minded belief in the importance of his mission as a literary preservationist, which turns out to be death to literature itself". The critic Richard Jenkyns, writing in "The New Republic", criticized the work for a lack of psychological depth. Both the characters and the work itself were, according to Jenkyns, "anemic, and lacking in fibre". The science fiction author David Brin interprets the work as holding unquestioning devotion to a traditional hierarchical social structure. In his essay "Epic Pooh", fantasy author Michael Moorcock critiques the world-view displayed by the book as deeply conservative, in both the "paternalism" of the narrative voice and the power structures in the narrative. Tom Shippey, like Tolkien an English philologist, notes the wide gulf between Tolkien's supporters, both popular and academic, and his literary detractors, and attempts to explain in detail both why the literary establishment disliked "The Lord of the Rings", and the work's subtlety, themes, and merits, including the impression of depth that it conveys. The scholar of humanities Brian Rosebury analysed Tolkien's prose style in detail, showing that it was generally quite plain, varying to suit the voices of the different characters, and rising to a heroic register for special moments.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: In 1957, "The Lord of the Rings" was awarded the International Fantasy Award. Despite its numerous detractors, the publication of the Ace Books and Ballantine paperbacks helped "The Lord of the Rings" become immensely popular in the United States in the 1960s. The book has remained so ever since, ranking as one of the most popular works of fiction of the twentieth century, judged by both sales and reader surveys. In the 2003 "Big Read" survey conducted in Britain by the BBC, "The Lord of the Rings" was found to be the "Nation's best-loved book". In similar 2004 polls both Germany and Australia chose "The Lord of the Rings" as their favourite book. In a 1999 poll of Amazon.com customers, "The Lord of the Rings" was judged to be their favourite "book of the millennium". In 2019, the "BBC News" listed "The Lord of the Rings" on its list of the 100 most influential novels.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: The book has been adapted for radio four times. In 1955 and 1956, the BBC broadcast "The Lord of the Rings", a 13-part radio adaptation of the story. In the 1960s radio station WBAI produced a short radio adaptation. A 1979 dramatization of "The Lord of the Rings" was broadcast in the United States and subsequently issued on tape and CD. In 1981, the BBC broadcast "The Lord of the Rings", a new dramatization in 26 half-hour instalments.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: A variety of filmmakers considered adapting Tolkien's book, among them Stanley Kubrick, who thought it unfilmable, Michelangelo Antonioni, Jim Henson, Heinz Edelmann, and John Boorman.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: In 1978, Ralph Bakshi made an animated film version covering "The Fellowship of the Ring" and part of "The Two Towers", to mixed reviews. In 1980, Rankin/Bass released an animated TV special based on the closing chapters of "The Return of the King", gaining mixed reviews.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: In Finland, a live action television miniseries, "Hobitit", was broadcast in 1993 based on "The Lord of the Rings", with a flashback to Bilbo's encounter with Gollum in "The Hobbit".


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: A far more successful adaptation was Peter Jackson's live action "The Lord of the Rings" film trilogy, produced by New Line Cinema and released in three instalments as "" (2001), "" (2002), and "" (2003). All three parts won multiple Academy Awards, including consecutive Best Picture nominations. The final instalment of this trilogy was the second film to break the one-billion-dollar barrier and won a total of 11 Oscars (something only two other films in history, "Ben-Hur" and "Titanic", have accomplished), including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. Commentators including Tolkien scholars, literary critics and film critics are divided on , and if so the reasons for any changes, and the effectiveness of the result.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: "The Hunt for Gollum", a 2009 film by Chris Bouchard, and the 2009 "Born of Hope", written by Paula DiSante and directed by Kate Madison, are fan films based on details in the appendices of "The Lord of the Rings".


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: From September 2022, Amazon is presenting a multi-season television series of stories, "". It is set in the Second Age, long before the time of "The Lord of the Rings", based on materials in the novel's appendices.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: In 1990, Recorded Books published an audio version of "The Lord of the Rings", read by the British actor Rob Inglis. A large-scale musical theatre adaptation, "The Lord of the Rings", was first staged in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 2006 and opened in London in June 2007; it was a commercial failure.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: In 2013, artist Phil Dragash recorded a full unabridged version of the book, using score from Peter Jackson's movies.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: During the COVID-19 lockdown, Andy Serkis read the entire book of "The Hobbit" to raise money for charity. He then recorded the work again as an audiobook. The cover art was done by Alan Lee. In 2021, Serkis recorded "The Lord of the Rings" novels.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: The enormous popularity of Tolkien's work expanded the demand for fantasy. Largely thanks to "The Lord of the Rings," the genre flowered throughout the 1960s and enjoys popularity to the present day. The opus has spawned many imitations, such as "The Sword of Shannara", which Lin Carter called "the single most cold-blooded, complete rip-off of another book that I have ever read," as well as alternate interpretations of the story, such as "The Last Ringbearer".


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: "The Legend of Zelda", which popularized the action-adventure game genre in the 1980s, was inspired by "The Lord of the Rings" among other fantasy books. "Dungeons & Dragons", which popularized the role-playing game genre in the 1970s, features several races from "The Lord of the Rings," including halflings (hobbits), elves, dwarves, half-elves, orcs, and dragons. However, Gary Gygax, lead designer of the game, maintained that he was influenced very little by "The Lord of the Rings", stating that he included these elements as a marketing move to draw on the popularity the work enjoyed at the time he was developing the game.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: Because Dungeons & Dragons has gone on to influence many popular games, especially role-playing video games, the influence of "The Lord of the Rings" extends to many of them, with titles such as "Dragon Quest", "EverQuest", the "Warcraft" series, and "The Elder Scrolls" series of games as well as video games set in Middle-earth itself.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: In 1965, the songwriter Donald Swann, best known for his collaboration with Michael Flanders as Flanders & Swann, set six poems from "The Lord of the Rings" and one from "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil" ("Errantry") to music. When Swann met with Tolkien to play the songs for his approval, Tolkien suggested for "Namárië" (Galadriel's lament) a setting reminiscent of plain chant, which Swann accepted. The songs were published in 1967 as "The Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle", and a recording of the songs performed by singer William Elvin with Swann on piano was issued that same year by Caedmon Records as "Poems and Songs of Middle Earth".


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: Rock bands of the 1970s were musically and lyrically inspired by the fantasy-embracing counter-culture of the time. The British rock band Led Zeppelin recorded several songs that contain explicit references to "The Lord of the Rings", such as mentioning Gollum and Mordor in "Ramble On", the Misty Mountains in "Misty Mountain Hop", and Ringwraiths in "The Battle of Evermore". In 1970, the Swedish musician Bo Hansson released an instrumental concept album entitled "Sagan om ringen" ("The Saga of the Ring", the title of the Swedish translation at the time). The album was subsequently released internationally as "Music Inspired by Lord of the Rings" in 1972. From the 1980s onwards, many heavy metal acts have been influenced by Tolkien.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: In 1988, the Dutch composer and trombonist Johan de Meij completed his "Symphony No. 1 "The Lord of the Rings"". It had 5 movements, titled "Gandalf", "Lothlórien", "Gollum", "Journey in the Dark", and "Hobbits".


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: The 1991 album "Shepherd Moons" by the Irish musician Enya contains an instrumental titled "Lothlórien", in reference to the home of the wood-elves.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: "The Lord of the Rings" has had a profound and wide-ranging impact on popular culture, beginning with its publication in the 1950s, but especially during the 1960s and 1970s, when young people embraced it as a countercultural saga. "Frodo Lives!" and "Gandalf for President" were two phrases popular amongst United States Tolkien fans during this time. Its impact is such that the words "Tolkienian" and "Tolkienesque" have entered the "Oxford English Dictionary", and many of his fantasy terms, formerly little-known in English, such as "Orc" and "Warg", have become widespread in that domain.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: Among its effects are numerous parodies, especially "Harvard Lampoon" "Bored of the Rings", which has had the distinction of remaining continuously in print from its publication in 1969, and of being translated into at least 11 languages.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: In 1969, Tolkien sold the merchandising rights to "The Lord of The Rings" (and "The Hobbit") to United Artists under an agreement stipulating a lump sum payment of £10,000 plus a 7.5% royalty after costs, payable to Allen & Unwin and the author. In 1976, three years after the author's death, United Artists sold the rights to Saul Zaentz Company, who now trade as Tolkien Enterprises. Since then all "authorised" merchandise has been signed off by Tolkien Enterprises, although the intellectual property rights of the specific likenesses of characters and other imagery from various adaptations is generally held by the adaptors.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: Outside commercial exploitation from adaptations, from the late 1960s onwards there has been an increasing variety of original licensed merchandise, with posters and calendars created by illustrators such as Barbara Remington.


title: The Lord of the Rings

text: The work was named Britain's best novel of all time in the BBC's The Big Read. In 2015, the BBC ranked "The Lord of the Rings" 26th on its list of the 100 greatest British novels. It was included in "Le Monde"s list of "100 Books of the Century".


title: Lithuania

text: Lithuania (; ), officially the Republic of Lithuania ( ), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania shares land borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, Poland to the south, and Russia to the southwest. It has a maritime border with Sweden to the west on the Baltic Sea. Lithuania covers an area of , with a population of 2.8 million. Its capital and largest city is Vilnius; other major cities are Kaunas and Klaipėda. Lithuanians belong to the ethno-linguistic group of the Balts and speak Lithuanian, one of only a few living Baltic languages.


title: Lithuania

text: For millennia the southeastern shores of the Baltic Sea were inhabited by various Baltic tribes. In the 1230s, Lithuanian lands were united by Mindaugas, becoming king and founding the Kingdom of Lithuania on 6 July 1253. In the 14th century, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was the largest country in Europe; present-day Lithuania, Belarus, most of Ukraine, and parts of Poland and Russia were all lands of the Grand Duchy. The Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were in a "de facto" personal union from 1386 with the marriage of the Polish queen Hedwig and Lithuania's Grand Duke Jogaila, who was crowned King "jure uxoris" Władysław II Jagiełło of Poland. The Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania was established by the Union of Lublin in July 1569. The Commonwealth lasted more than two centuries, until neighbouring countries dismantled it in 1772–1795, with the Russian Empire annexing most of Lithuania's territory. As World War I ended, Lithuania's Act of Independence was signed on 16 February 1918, founding the modern Republic of Lithuania. In World War II, Lithuania was occupied first by the Soviet Union and then by Nazi Germany. Towards the end of the war in 1944, when the Germans were retreating, the Soviet Union reoccupied Lithuania. Lithuanian armed resistance to the Soviet occupation lasted until the early 1950s. On 11 March 1990, a year before the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union, Lithuania passed the Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania, becoming the first Soviet republic to proclaim its independence.


title: Lithuania

text: Lithuania is a developed country, with a high income advanced economy; ranking very high in the Human Development Index. It ranks favourably in terms of civil liberties, press freedom, internet freedom, democratic governance, and peacefulness. Lithuania is a member of the European Union, the Council of Europe, eurozone, the Nordic Investment Bank, Schengen Agreement, NATO and OECD. It participates in the Nordic-Baltic Eight (NB8) regional co-operation format and is a permanent observer of the Nordic Council.


title: Lithuania

text: The first known record of the name of Lithuania () is in a 9 March 1009 story of Saint Bruno in the Quedlinburg Chronicle. The Chronicle recorded a Latinized form of the name Lietuva: "Litua" (pronounced ). Due to the lack of reliable evidence, the true meaning of the name is unknown. Nowadays, scholars still debate the meaning of the word and there are a few plausible versions.


title: Lithuania

text: Since "Lietuva" has a suffix (-"uva"), the original word should have no suffix. A likely candidate is "Lietā". Because many Baltic ethnonyms originated from hydronyms, linguists have searched for its origin among local hydronyms. Usually, such names evolved through the following process: hydronym → toponym → ethnonym. Lietava, a small river not far from Kernavė, the core area of the early Lithuanian state and a possible first capital of the eventual Grand Duchy of Lithuania, is usually credited as the source of the name. However, the river is very small and some find it improbable that such a small and local object could have lent its name to an entire nation. On the other hand, such naming is not unprecedented in world history.


title: Lithuania

text: Artūras Dubonis proposed another hypothesis, that Lietuva relates to the word "leičiai" (plural of "leitis"). From the middle of the 13th century, "leičiai" were a distinct warrior social group of the Lithuanian society subordinate to the Lithuanian ruler or the state itself. The word "leičiai" is used in the 14–16th century historical sources as an ethnonym for Lithuanians (but not Samogitians) and is still used, usually poetically or in historical contexts, in the Latvian language, which is closely related to Lithuanian.


title: Lithuania

text: The first people settled in the territory of Lithuania after the last glacial period in the 10th millennium BC: Kunda, Neman and Narva cultures. They were traveling hunters and did not form stable settlements. In the 8th millennium BC, the climate became much warmer, and forests developed. The inhabitants of what is now Lithuania then travelled less and engaged in local hunting, gathering and fresh-water fishing. Agriculture did not emerge until the 3rd millennium BC due to a harsh climate and terrain and a lack of suitable tools to cultivate the land. Crafts and trade also started to form at this time. Over a millennium, the Indo-Europeans, who arrived in the 3rd – 2nd millennium BC, mixed with the local population and formed various Baltic tribes.


title: Lithuania

text: The Baltic tribes did not maintain close cultural or political contacts with the Roman Empire, but they did maintain trade contacts (see Amber Road). Tacitus, in his study "Germania", described the Aesti people, inhabitants of the south-eastern Baltic Sea shores who were probably Balts, around the year 97 AD. The Western Balts differentiated and became known to outside chroniclers first. Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD knew of the Galindians and Yotvingians, and early medieval chroniclers mentioned Old Prussians, Curonians and Semigallians.


title: Lithuania

text: The Lithuanian language is considered to be very conservative for its close connection to Indo-European roots. It is believed to have differentiated from the Latvian language, the most closely related existing language, around the 7th century. Traditional Lithuanian pagan customs and mythology, with many archaic elements, were long preserved. Rulers' bodies were cremated up until the conversion to Christianity: the descriptions of the cremation ceremonies of the grand dukes Algirdas and Kęstutis have survived.


title: Lithuania

text: From the 9th to the 11th centuries, coastal Balts were subjected to raids by the Vikings, and the kings of Denmark collected tribute at times. During the 10–11th centuries, Lithuanian territories were among the lands paying tribute to Kievan Rus', and Yaroslav the Wise was among the Ruthenian rulers who invaded Lithuania (from 1040). From the mid-12th century, it was the Lithuanians who were invading Ruthenian territories. In 1183, Polotsk and Pskov were ravaged, and even the distant and powerful Novgorod Republic was repeatedly threatened by the excursions from the emerging Lithuanian war machine toward the end of the 12th century.


title: Lithuania

text: From the late 12th century, an organized Lithuanian military force existed; it was used for external raids, plundering and the gathering of slaves. Such military and pecuniary activities fostered social differentiation and triggered a struggle for power in Lithuania. This initiated the formation of early statehood, from which the Grand Duchy of Lithuania developed. The disparate Lithuanian tribes along the Nemunas were united into the Lithuanian state by 1219, at the latest. The only Lithuanian Roman Catholic king, Mindaugas, was baptised as a Roman Catholic in 1251 and crowned as King of Lithuania on 6 July 1253.


title: Lithuania

text: After his assassination in 1263, pagan Lithuania was a target of the Christian crusades of the Teutonic Knights and the Livonian Order. Siege of Pilėnai is noted for the Lithuanians' defense against the intruders. Despite the devastating century-long struggle with the Orders, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania expanded rapidly, overtaking former Ruthenian principalities of Kievan Rus'.


title: Lithuania

text: On 22 September 1236, the Battle of Saulė between Samogitians and the Livonian Brothers of the Sword took place close to Šiauliai. The Livonian Brothers were defeated during it and their further conquest of the Balts lands were stopped. The battle inspired rebellions among the Curonians, Semigallians, Selonians, Oeselians, tribes previously conquered by the Sword-Brothers. Some thirty years' worth of conquests on the left bank of Daugava were lost. In 2000, the Lithuanian and Latvian parliaments declared 22 September to be the Day of Baltic Unity.


title: Lithuania

text: According to the legend, Grand Duke Gediminas was once hunting near the Vilnia River; tired after the successful hunt, he settled in for the night and dreamed of a huge Iron Wolf standing on top a hill and howling as strong and loud as a hundred wolves. "Krivis" (pagan priest) Lizdeika interpreted the dream that the Iron Wolf represents Vilnius Castles. Gediminas, obeying the will of the gods, built the city and gave it the name Vilnius – from the stream of the Vilnia River.


title: Lithuania

text: In 1362 or 1363, Grand Duke Algirdas achieved a decisive victory in the Battle of Blue Waters against the Golden Horde and stopped its further expansion in the present-day Ukraine. The victory brought the city of Kyiv and a large part of present-day Ukraine, including sparsely populated Podolia and Dykra, under the control of the expanding Grand Duchy of Lithuania. After taking Kyiv, Lithuania became a direct neighbor and rival of the Grand Duchy of Moscow.


title: Lithuania

text: By the end of the 14th century, Lithuania was one of the largest countries in Europe and included present-day Belarus, Ukraine, and parts of Poland and Russia. The geopolitical situation between the west and the east determined the multicultural and multi-confessional character of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The ruling elite practised religious tolerance and the Chancery Slavonic language was used as an auxiliary language to Latin for official documents.


title: Lithuania

text: In 1385, the Grand Duke Jogaila accepted Poland's offer to become its king. Jogaila embarked on gradual Christianization of Lithuania and established a personal union between Poland and Lithuania. Lithuania was one of the last pagan areas of Europe to adopt Christianity. While territories to the north had been Christianized in 1186 by Western merchants and missionaries who formed the Order of the Brothers and the Sword to spread Christianity through military organization, the Lithuanians had defeated the Order's militant efforts in 1236.


title: Lithuania

text: After two civil wars, Vytautas the Great became the Grand Duke of Lithuania in 1392. During his reign, Lithuania reached the peak of its territorial expansion, centralization of the state began, and the Lithuanian nobility became increasingly prominent in state politics. In the great Battle of the Vorskla River in 1399, the combined forces of Tokhtamysh and Vytautas were defeated by the Mongols. Thanks to close cooperation, the armies of Lithuania and Poland achieved a victory over the Teutonic Knights in 1410 at the Battle of Grunwald, one of the largest battles of medieval Europe.


title: Lithuania

text: In January 1429, at the Congress of Lutsk Vytautas received the title of King of Lithuania with the backing of Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor, but the envoys who were transporting the crown were stopped by Polish magnates in autumn of 1430. Another crown was sent, but Vytautas died in the Trakai Island Castle several days before it reached Lithuania. He was buried in the Cathedral of Vilnius.


title: Lithuania

text: After the deaths of Jogaila and Vytautas, the Lithuanian nobility attempted to break the union between Poland and Lithuania, independently selecting Grand Dukes from the Jagiellon dynasty. But, at the end of the 15th century, Lithuania was forced to seek a closer alliance with Poland when the growing power of the Grand Duchy of Moscow threatened Lithuania's Russian principalities and sparked the Muscovite–Lithuanian Wars and the Livonian War.


title: Lithuania

text: On 8 September 1514, the Battle of Orsha between Lithuanians, commanded by the Grand Hetman Konstanty Ostrogski, and Muscovites was fought. According to "Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii" by Sigismund von Herberstein, the primary source for information on the battle, the much smaller army of Poland–Lithuania (under 30,000 men) defeated a force of 80,000 Muscovite soldiers, capturing their camp and commander. The battle destroyed a military alliance against Lithuania and Poland. Thousands of Muscovites were captured as prisoners and used as labourers in the Lithuanian manors, while Konstanty Ostrogski delivered the captured Muscovite flags to the Cathedral of Vilnius.


title: Lithuania

text: The Livonian War was ceased for ten years with a Truce of Yam-Zapolsky signed on 15 January 1582 according to which the already Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth recovered Livonia, Polotsk and Velizh, but transferred Velikiye Luki to the Tsardom of Russia. The truce was extended for twenty years in 1600, when a diplomatic mission to Moscow led by Lew Sapieha concluded negotiations with Tsar Boris Godunov. The truce was broken when the Poles invaded Muscovy in 1605.


title: Lithuania

text: The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was created in 1569 by the Union of Lublin. As a member of the Commonwealth, Lithuania retained its institutions, including a separate army, currency, and statutory laws – the Statute of Lithuania. Eventually Polonization affected all aspects of Lithuanian life: politics, language, culture, and national identity. From the mid-16th to the mid-17th centuries, culture, arts, and education flourished, fueled by the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation. From 1573, the Kings of Poland and Grand Dukes of Lithuania were elected by the nobility, who were granted ever-increasing Golden Liberties. These liberties, especially the "liberum veto", led to anarchy and the eventual dissolution of the state.


title: Lithuania

text: The Commonwealth reached its Golden Age in the early 17th century. Its powerful parliament was dominated by nobles who were reluctant to get involved in the Thirty Years' War; this neutrality spared the country from the ravages of a political-religious conflict that devastated most of contemporary Europe. The Commonwealth held its own against Sweden, the Tsardom of Russia, and vassals of the Ottoman Empire, and even launched successful expansionist offensives against its neighbours. In several invasions during the Time of Troubles, Commonwealth troops entered Russia and managed to take Moscow and hold it from 27 September 1610 to 4 November 1612, when they were driven out after a siege.