title: The Pirate Bay

text: On 18 April 2011, Pirate Bay temporarily changed its name to "Research Bay", collaborating with P2P researchers of the Lund University Cybernorms group in a large poll of P2P users. The researchers published their results online on "The Survey Bay", as a public Creative Commons project in 2013. In January 2012, the site announced "The Promo Bay"; "doodles" by selected musicians, artists and others could be rotated onto the site's front page at a future date. Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho was promoted, offering a collection of his books for free download. By November, 10,000 artists were reported to have signed up. TPB preserves a dated collection of exhibited logos. On 2 December 2012, some ISPs in the UK such as BT, Virgin Media, and BE started blocking "The Promo Bay" but stopped a few days later when the BPI reversed its position.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: In January 2007, when the micronation of Sealand was put up for sale, the ACFI and The Pirate Bay tried to buy it. The Sealand government, however, did not want to be involved with The Pirate Bay, as it was their opinion that file sharing represented "theft of proprietary rights". A new plan was formed to buy an island instead, but this too was never implemented, despite the website having raised US$25,000 (€15,000) in donations for this cause.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: The P2P news blog "TorrentFreak" reported on 12 October 2007 that the Internet domain ifpi.com, which previously belonged to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, an anti-piracy organisation, had been acquired by The Pirate Bay. When asked about how they got hold of the domain, Sunde told "TorrentFreak", "It's not a hack, someone just gave us the domain name. We have no idea how they got it, but it's ours and we're keeping it." The website was renamed "The International Federation of Pirates Interests" However, the IFPI filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization shortly thereafter, which subsequently ordered The Pirate Bay to return the domain name to the IFPI.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: On 31 May 2006, a raid against The Pirate Bay and people involved with the website took place as ordered by Swedish judge Tomas Norström, later the presiding judge of the 2009 trial, prompted by allegations of copyright violations. Police officers shut down the website and confiscated its servers, as well as all other servers hosted by The Pirate Bay's Internet service provider, PRQ. The company is owned by two operators of The Pirate Bay. Three peopleGottfrid Svartholm, Mikael Viborg, and Fredrik Neijwere held by the police for questioning, but were released later that evening. All servers in the room were seized, including those running the website of Piratbyrån, an independent organisation fighting for file sharing rights, as well as servers unrelated to The Pirate Bay or other file sharing activities. Equipment such as hardware routers, switches, blank CDs, and fax machines were also seized.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) wrote in a press release: "Since filing a criminal complaint in Sweden in November 2004, the film industry has worked vigorously with Swedish and U.S. government officials in Sweden to shut this illegal website down." MPAA CEO Dan Glickman also stated, "Intellectual property theft is a problem for film industries all over the world and we are glad that the local government in Sweden has helped stop The Pirate Bay from continuing to enable rampant copyright theft on the Internet." The MPAA press release set forth its justification for the raid and claimed that there were three arrests; however, the individuals were not actually arrested, only held for questioning. The release also reprinted John G. Malcolm's allegation that The Pirate Bay was making money from the distribution of copyrighted material, a criticism denied by the Pirate Bay.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: After the raid, The Pirate Bay displayed a message that confirmed that the Swedish police had executed search warrants for breach of copyright law or assisting such a breach. The closure message initially caused some confusion because on 1 April 2005, April Fools' Day, The Pirate Bay had posted a similar message as a prank, stating that they were unavailable due to a raid by the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau and IFPI. Piratbyrån set up a temporary news blog to inform the public about the incident. On 2 June 2006, The Pirate Bay was available once again, with their logo depicting a pirate ship firing cannonballs at the Hollywood Sign. The Pirate Bay has servers in both Belgium and Russia for future use in case of another raid. According to The Pirate Bay, in the two years following the raid, it grew from 1 million to 2.7 million registered users and from 2.5 million to 12 million peers. The Pirate Bay now claims over 5 million active users.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: Sweden's largest technology museum, the Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology, acquired one of the confiscated servers in 2009 and exhibited it for having great symbolic value as a "big problem or a big opportunity".


title: The Pirate Bay

text: In September 2008, the Swedish media reported that the public preliminary investigation protocols concerning a child murder case known as the Arboga case had been made available through a torrent on The Pirate Bay. In Sweden, preliminary investigations became publicly available the moment a lawsuit is filed and can be ordered from the court by any individual. The document included pictures from the autopsy of the two murdered children, which caused their father Nicklas Jangestig to urge the website to have the pictures removed. The Pirate Bay refused to remove the torrent. The number of downloads increased to about 50,000 a few days later. On 11 September 2008, the website's press contact Peter Sunde participated in the debate program "Debatt" on the public broadcaster SVT. Sunde had agreed to participate on the condition that the father Nicklas Jangestig would not take part in the debate. Jangestig ultimately did participate in the program by telephone, which made Sunde feel betrayed by SVT. This caused The Pirate Bay to suspend all of its press contacts the following day.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: "I don't think it's our job to judge if something is ethical or unethical or what other people want to put out on the internet", said The Pirate Bay's spokesperson Peter Sunde to TV4.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: In September 2007, a large number of internal emails were leaked from anti-piracy company MediaDefender by an anonymous hacker. Some of the leaked emails discussed hiring hackers to perform DDoS attacks on The Pirate Bay's servers and trackers. In response to the leak, The Pirate Bay filed charges in Sweden against MediaDefender clients Twentieth Century Fox Sweden AB, EMI Sweden AB, Universal Music Group Sweden AB, Universal Pictures Nordic AB, Paramount Home Entertainment (Sweden) AB, Atari Nordic AB, Activision Nordic, Ubisoft Sweden AB, Sony BMG Music Entertainment (Sweden) AB, and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Nordic AB, but the charges were not pursued. MediaDefender's stocks fell sharply after this incident, and several media companies withdrew from the service after the company announced the leak had caused $825,000 in losses.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: Later, The Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde accused police investigator Jim Keyzer of a conflict of interest when he declined to investigate MediaDefender. Keyzer later accepted a job for MPAA member studio Warner Brothers. The leaked emails revealed that other MPAA member studios hired MediaDefender to pollute The Pirate Bay's torrent database. In an official letter to the Swedish Minister of Justice, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) requested assistance from the Swedish government to prevent The Pirate Bay from distributing video clips of the Beijing Olympics. The IOC claimed there were more than one million downloads of footage from the Olympics – mostly of the opening ceremony. The Pirate Bay, however, did not take anything down, and temporarily renamed the website to The Beijing Bay.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: The trial against the men behind the Pirate Bay started in Sweden on 16 February 2009. They were accused of breaking Swedish copyright law.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: The defendants, however, continued to be confident about the outcome. Half the charges against The Pirate Bay were dropped on the second day of the trial.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: The three operators of the site and their one investor Carl Lundström were convicted in Stockholm district court on 17 April 2009 and sentenced to one year in jail each and a total of 30 million kronor ($3.6 million, €2.7 million, £2.4 million sterling) in fines and damages. The defendants' lawyers appealed to the Svea Court of Appeal and requested a retrial in the district court, alleging bias on the part of judge Tomas Norström.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: On 13 May 2009, several record companies again sued Neij, Svartholm, Sunde and also The Pirate Bay's main internet service provider Black Internet. They required enforcement for ending The Pirate Bay's accessory to copyright infringement that had not stopped despite the court order in April, and in the complaint listed several pages of works being shared with the help of the site. The suit was joined by several major film companies on 30 July. The Stockholm district court ruled on 21 August that Black Internet must stop making available the specific works mentioned in the judgment, or face a 500,000 kronor fine. The company was notified of the order on 24 August, and they complied with it on the same day by disconnecting The Pirate Bay. Computer Sweden noted that the judgment did not order The Pirate Bay to be disconnected, but the ISP had no other option for stopping the activity on the site. It was the first time in Sweden for an ISP to be forced to stop providing access for a website. A public support fund fronted by the CEO of the ISP was set up to cover the legal fees of an appeal. Pirate Party leader Rickard Falkvinge submitted the case for Parliamentary Ombudsman review, criticising the court's order to make intermediaries responsible for relayed content and to assign active crime prevention tasks to a private party.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: On 28 October 2009, the Stockholm District Court ordered a temporary injunction on Neij and Svartholm with a penalty of 500,000 kronor each, forbidding them from participating in the operation of The Pirate Bay's website or trackers.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: On 21 May 2010, the Svea Court of Appeal decided not to change the orders on Black Internet or Neij and Svartholm.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: On 1 February 2012, the Supreme Court of Sweden refused to hear an appeal in the conviction case, and agreed with the decision of the Svea Court of Appeal, which had upheld the sentences in November 2011.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: On 2 September 2012, Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg was arrested in Cambodia. He was detained in Phnom Penh by officers executing an international warrant issued against him in April after he did not turn up to serve a one-year jail sentence for copyright violations. On 24 December 2012, administrators of TPB changed the homepage to urge users to send Warg, in jail, "gifts and letters".


title: The Pirate Bay

text: In March 2013, The Pirate Bay claimed in a blog post that it had moved its servers to North Korea. The incident turned out to be a hoax. In April 2013, within a week The Pirate Bay had moved its servers from Greenland to Iceland to St. Martin, either in response to legal threats or preemptively. In December 2013, the site changed its domain to .ac (Ascension Island), following the seizure of the .sx domain. On 12 December, the site moved to .pe (Peru), on 18 December to .gy (Guyana). Following the site's suspension from the .gy domain, on 19 December The Pirate Bay returned to .se (Sweden), which it had previously occupied between February 2012 and April 2013.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: The Pirate Bay trial was a joint criminal and civil prosecution in Sweden of four individuals charged for promoting the copyright infringement of others with The Pirate Bay site. The criminal charges were supported by a consortium of intellectual rights holders led by IFPI, who filed individual civil compensation claims against the owners of The Pirate Bay.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: Swedish prosecutors filed charges on 31 January 2008 against Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, and Peter Sunde; and Carl Lundström, a Swedish businessman who through his businesses sold services to the site. The prosecutor claimed the four worked together to administer, host, and develop the site and thereby facilitated other people's breach of copyright law. Some 34 cases of copyright infringements were originally listed, of which 21 were related to music files, 9 to movies, and 4 to games. One case involving music files was later dropped by the copyright holder who made the file available again on The Pirate Bay site. In addition, claims for damages of 117 million kronor ($13 million, €12.5 million) were filed. The case was decided jointly by a judge and three appointed lay judges. According to Swedish media, the lead judge, judge Norström, was a member of the Swedish Copyright Association and sat on the board of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property, but denied that his involvement constituted a conflict of interest.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: The trial started on 16 February 2009, in the district court ("tingsrätt") of Stockholm, Sweden. The hearings ended on 3 March 2009 and the verdict was announced at 11:00 am on Friday 17 April 2009: Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström were all found guilty and sentenced to serve one year in prison and pay a fine of 30 million Swedish krona (app. €2.7 million or US$3.5 million). All of the defendants appealed the verdict.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: The appeal trial concluded on 15 October 2010, and the verdict was announced on 26 November. The appeal court shortened sentences of three of the defendants who appeared in court that day. Neij's sentence was reduced to 10 months, Sunde's to eight, and Lundström's to four. However, the fine was increased from 32 to 46 million kronor.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: On 1 February 2012, the Supreme Court of Sweden refused to hear an appeal in the case, prompting the site to change its official domain name to thepiratebay.se from thepiratebay.org. The move to a .se domain was claimed to prevent susceptibility to US laws from taking control of the site. On 9 April 2013, the site changed its domain name to thepiratebay.gl, under the Greenland TLD, in anticipation of possible seizure by Swedish authorities of its .se domain. The change proved to be short lived, as the site returned to the .se domain on 12 April 2013 after being blocked on the .gl domain by Tele-Post, which administers domains in Greenland. Tele-Post cited a Danish court ruling that the site was in violation of copyright laws.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: Founders Svartholm, Neij, and Sunde were all released after having finished serving their sentences by 2015.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: In May 2007, The Pirate Bay was attacked by a group of hackers. They copied the user database, which included over 1.5 million users. The Pirate Bay claimed to its users that the data was of no value and that passwords and e-mails were encrypted and hashed. Some blogs stated that a group known as the AUH (Arga Unga Hackare, Swedish for "Angry Young Hackers") were suspected of executing the attack; however, the AUH stated on the "Computer Sweden" newspaper that they were not involved and would take revenge on those responsible for the attack.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: On 27 April 2009, the website of The Pirate Bay had fibre IPv4 connectivity issues. There was widespread speculation this was a forced outage from the Swedish anti-piracy group, accelerated somewhat by TPB adding contact details for the Swedish anti-piracy group's lawyers to its RIPE database record. The site and its forums were still available via IPv6 at the time.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: On 24 August 2009, one of The Pirate Bay's upstream providers was ordered to discontinue service for the website by a Swedish court in response to a civil action brought by several entertainment companies including Disney, Universal, Time Warner, Columbia, Sony, NBC, and Paramount. According to the TPB Blog, this caused a downtime of 3 hours; however, some users were unable to access the site immediately following the relocation due to unrelated technical difficulties. The site was fully operational again for everyone within 24 hours.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: On 6 October 2009, one of the IP transit providers to The Pirate Bay blocked all Pirate Bay traffic causing an outage for most users around the world. The same day, the site was reportedly back online at an IP address at CyberBunker, located in the Netherlands. It is not known whether The Pirate Bay is actually located at CyberBunker or whether they are using the CyberBunker service that routes CyberBunker IP addresses to any datacenter around the world. These routes are not visible to the outside world.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: CyberBunker was given a court injunction on 17 May 2010, taking the site offline briefly; later that day, hosting was restored by Sweden's Pirate Party. Former spokesman for the Pirate Bay, Peter Sunde, commented that it would now be very difficult to stop the site because it would now be seen as political censorship if anyone tries to shut it down.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: On 8 July 2010, a group of Argentine hackers gained access to The Pirate Bay's administration panel through a security breach via the backend of The Pirate Bay website. They were able to delete torrents and expose users' IP-addresses, emails and MD5-hashed passwords. The Pirate Bay was taken offline for upgrades. Users visiting the website were met by the following message: "Upgrading some stuff, database is in use for backups, soon back again. Btw, it's nice weather outside I think."


title: The Pirate Bay

text: On 16 May 2012, The Pirate Bay experienced a major DDoS attack, causing the site to be largely inaccessible worldwide for around 24 hours. The Pirate Bay said that it did not know who was behind the attack, although it "had its suspicions".


title: The Pirate Bay

text: On 5 May 2015, The Pirate Bay went offline for several hours, apparently as a result of not properly configuring its SSL certificate.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: On 30 June 2009, Swedish advertising company Global Gaming Factory X AB announced their intention to buy the site for 60 million kronor (approximately US$8.5 million) (30 million kronor in cash, 30 million kronor in GGF shares).


title: The Pirate Bay

text: The Pirate Bay founders stated that the profits from the sale would be placed in an offshore account where it would be used to fund projects pertaining to "freedom of speech, freedom of information, and the openness of the Internet". Assurances were made that "no personal data will be transferred in the eventual sale (since no personal data is kept)." Global Gaming Chief Executive Hans Pandeya commented on the site's future by saying "We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site", and announced that users would be charged a monthly fee for access to The Pirate Bay.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: Global Gaming Factory's letter of intent expired at the end of September 2009, without the transaction having taken place. This may be due to the company's financial difficulties. "PC World" magazine regarded the deal's future as "doomed".


title: The Pirate Bay

text: On 9 December 2014, police in Stockholm raided the company's premises and seized servers and other computers and equipment, which resulted in the website going offline. The raid was in response to a complaint from Rights Alliance, a Swedish anti-piracy group. The Pirate Bay was one of many peer-to-peer and torrent-related websites and apps that went down. One member of the crew was arrested. TorrentFreak reported that most other torrent sites reported a 5–10% increase in traffic from the displaced users, though the shutdown had little effect on overall piracy levels. In retaliation to the raid, a group of hackers claiming to be part of Anonymous allegedly leaked email log-in details of Swedish government officials. The Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde commented in a blog post that he was happy to see the website shut down, believing his successors have done nothing to improve the site, criticising in particular the increased use of advertisements.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: IsoHunt has since copied much of the original TPB database and made it accessible through oldpiratebay.org, a searchable index of old Pirate Bay torrents. IsoHunt also released a tool called The Open Bay, to allow users to deploy their own version of the Pirate Bay website. The tool is responsible for around 372 mirror sites. Since 17 December 2014, The Pirate Bay's Facebook page has been unavailable. On 22 December 2014, a website was resumed at the domain thepiratebay.se, showing a flip clock with the length of time in days and hours that the site had been offline, and a waving pirate flag. From this day TPB was hosted for a period in Moldova, on Trabia Network (Moldo-German company) servers. The Pirate Bay then began using the services of CloudFlare, a company which offers reverse proxy services. On 1 January 2015, the website presented a countdown to 1 February 2015. The website returned with a prominent phoenix logo displayed at the domain thepiratebay.se on 31 January 2015.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: Beginning in October 2018, the clearnet Pirate Bay website started to be inaccessible in some locations around the world, showing Error 522. As the result, direct visits to the website dropped by more than 32 percent in October. The incident was found to be unrelated to internet provider blocking or domain name problem, but the exact cause has not been determined. The site's Tor domain and proxies remained unaffected.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: The Error 522 problem occurred again in early March 2020, with the site's admins unable to say when it would be resolved.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: After one month, the site's functionality was restored with an update of the domain records and the Cloudflare nameservers.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: The Pirate Bay has sparked controversies and discussion about legal aspects of file sharing, copyright, and civil liberties and has become a platform for political initiatives against established intellectual property laws and a central figure in an anti-copyright movement. The website faced several shutdowns and domain seizures which "did little to take the site offline, as it simply switched to a series of new web addresses and continued to operate".


title: The Pirate Bay

text: The Pirate Bay's website has been blocked in some countries, despite the relative ease by which such blocks can be circumvented in most countries. While the URL to the Pirate Bay itself has been blocked in these countries, numerous mirror websites emerged to make the website available at different URLs, routing traffic around the block.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: According to Google chairman Eric Schmidt, "government plans to block access to illicit filesharing websites could set a 'disastrous precedent' for freedom of speech"; he also expressed that Google would "fight attempts to restrict access to sites such as the Pirate Bay".


title: The Pirate Bay

text: On 13 February 2017, Sweden's Patent and Market Court of Appeal decided that the broadband provider Bredbandsbolaget must block its customers from accessing file sharing site The Pirate Bay, overruling a district court ruling to the contrary from 2015. This is the first time a site was openly blocked in Sweden. The rest of the ISPs are expected to follow the same court orders.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: The ISP Telia was mandated to block the Pirate bay through a dynamic injunction on 12 December 2019. This means that when the rights holders find a website (IP and URL for the Pirate Bay) they can inform Telia who are legally required to block it in 2-3 weeks. Telia objected to this blocking order and attempted to appeal the injunction but lost on 29 June 2020 and must maintain the dynamic injunction for 3 years.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: After The Pirate Bay introduced a feature in March 2009 to easily share links to torrents on the social networking site Facebook, "Wired" found in May that Facebook had started blocking the links. On further inspection, they discovered that all messages containing links to The Pirate Bay in both public and in private messages, regardless of content, were being blocked. Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyers commented that Facebook might be working against the US Electronic Communications Privacy Act by intercepting user messages, but Facebook chief privacy officer Chris Kelly said that they have the right to use blocks on links where there is a "demonstrated disregard for intellectual property rights", following users' agreement on their terms of service. Links to other similar sites have not been blocked.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: In March 2012, Microsoft blocked Windows Live Messenger messages containing links to The Pirate Bay. When a user sends an instant message that contains a link to The Pirate Bay, Windows Live Messenger prompts a warning and claims "Blocked as it was reported unsafe". "We block instant messages if they contain malicious or spam URLs based on intelligence algorithms, third-party sources, and/or user complaints. Pirate Bay URLs were flagged by one or more of these and were consequently blocked", Microsoft told "The Register" in an emailed statement.


title: The Pirate Bay

text: The Pirate Bay is featured in "Steal This Film" (2006), a documentary series about society and filesharing, produced by The League of Noble Peers; in the Danish Documentary "Good Copy Bad Copy", which explores the issues surrounding file copyright; and the documentary "TPB AFK". The Pirate Bay has been a topic on the US-syndicated NPR radio show "On the Media".


title: The Pirate Bay

text: Björn Ulvaeus, member of the Swedish pop music group ABBA, criticised copyright infringing activities of The Pirate Bay supporters as "lazy and mean". In contrast, Brazilian best-selling author Paulo Coelho has embraced free sharing online. Coelho supports The Pirate Bay and offered to be a witness in the 2009 trial. He accounts much of his growing sales to his work shared on the Internet and comments that "a person who does not share is not only selfish, but bitter and alone".


title: Ana de Armas

text: Ana Celia de Armas Caso (; born 30 April 1988) is a Cuban and Spanish actress. She began her career in Cuba and had a leading role in the romantic drama "Una rosa de Francia" (2006). At age 18, she moved to Madrid, Spain, and starred in the popular drama "El internado" for six seasons from 2007 to 2010.


title: Ana de Armas

text: After moving to Los Angeles, de Armas had English-speaking roles in the psychological thriller "Knock Knock" (2015) and the comedy-crime film "War Dogs" (2016), and had a supporting role in the sports biopic "Hands of Stone" (2016). She rose to prominence with her role as the holographic AI projections Joi in the science fiction film "Blade Runner 2049" (2017). For her performance as nurse Marta Cabrera in the mystery film "Knives Out" (2019), she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress and won the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress. She subsequently played Bond girl Paloma in the James Bond film "No Time to Die" (2021), and garnered praise for portraying Marilyn Monroe in the biopic "Blonde" (2022). The latter earned her another nomination for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress.


title: Ana de Armas

text: De Armas was born in Havana, Cuba, and raised in the small city of Santa Cruz del Norte. Her maternal grandparents were migrants to Cuba from Spain. Her father Ramón worked in various jobs, including bank manager, teacher, school principal and deputy mayor of a town. He previously studied philosophy at a Soviet university. Her mother Ana worked in the human resources section of the Ministry of Education. De Armas has one older brother, Javier, a New York-based photographer who, in 2020, was questioned by Cuban police due to his critical stance on Decree 349 and his links to artists under government surveillance. While de Armas grew up with food rationing, fuel shortages and electricity blackouts during Cuba's Special Period, she has described her early life as happy.


title: Ana de Armas

text: During her childhood and adolescence, de Armas had no internet access and had limited knowledge of popular culture beyond Cuba. She was allowed to watch "20 minutes of cartoons on Saturday and the Sunday movie matinee." Her family did not own a "video or DVD player" and she watched Hollywood movies in her neighbor's apartment. She memorized and practiced monologues in front of the mirror, and decided to become an actress when she was 12. In 2002, aged 14, she successfully auditioned to join Havana's National Theatre of Cuba. She sometimes hitchhiked to attend the "rigorous" course. While a student, she filmed three movies. She left the four-year drama course months before presenting her final thesis because Cuban graduates are forbidden from leaving the country without completing three years of mandatory service to the community. At age 18, with Spanish citizenship through her maternal grandparents, she moved to Madrid to pursue an acting career.


title: Ana de Armas

text: In her native Cuba, de Armas had a starring role opposite Álex González in Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón's romantic drama "Una rosa de Francia" (2006). Cuban actor Jorge Perugorría suggested that the director consider de Armas for the role, after meeting her while attending a birthday party with his daughters. The director visited de Armas's drama school and interrupted the sixteen-year-old during her audition to inform her that the role was hers. She travelled to Spain as part of a promotional tour for the film and was introduced to Juan Lanja, who would later become her Spanish agent. She then starred in the movie "El edén perdido" (2007) and had a supporting role in Fernando Pérez's "Madrigal" (2007), filmed at night without the permission of her drama school tutors.


title: Ana de Armas

text: At age 18, de Armas moved to Madrid. Within two weeks of arriving, she met with casting director Luis San Narciso, who had seen her in "Una rosa de Francia". Two months later, he cast her as Carolina in the drama "El Internado", in which she starred for six seasons from 2007 to 2010. The television show, set in a boarding school, became popular with viewers and made de Armas a celebrity figure in Spain. In a break from filming, she starred in the successful coming-of-age comedy "Mentiras y Gordas" (2009). Despite the popularity of "El Internado", de Armas felt typecast and was mainly offered roles as youngsters. She asked to be written out of the show in its second to last season.


title: Ana de Armas

text: After spending a few months living in New York City to learn English, de Armas was persuaded to return to Spain to star in seventeen episodes of the historical drama "Hispania" (2010–2011). She then starred in Antonio Trashorras's horror films "El callejón" (2011) and "Anabel" (2015), and in the drama "Por un puñado de besos" (2014). During a long period without acting work, de Armas participated in workshops at Tomaz Pandur's Madrid theatre company and felt "very anxious" about the lack of momentum in her career.


title: Ana de Armas

text: With encouragement from her newly hired Hollywood agent, she decided to move to Los Angeles. When de Armas first arrived in Los Angeles in 2014, she had to start her career again "from scratch." She spoke very little English and, during early auditions, she often "didn't even know what [she] was saying." She spent four months in full-time education to learn English, not wanting to be confined to playing characters written specifically for Latina actresses. She starred opposite Keanu Reeves in her first Hollywood release—Eli Roth's erotic thriller "Knock Knock" (2015)—and learned her lines phonetically. Despite giving a positive review of the film, Randy Cordova of the "Arizona Republic" found de Armas to be "unconvincing" in her role. Reeves then telephoned de Armas to invite her to star in a Spanish-language role in the thriller "Daughter of God" which he acted in and produced. Producer Mark Downie hoped the film would be a star vehicle for de Armas, but due to executive meddling "Daughter of God" was severely edited with de Armas' former starring role reduced. The film was ultimately released as "Exposed" in 2016. Frank Scheck of "The Hollywood Reporter" noted that while she was "appealing" in her part, de Armas was unable to demonstrate her "character's intense emotional demands."


title: Ana de Armas

text: De Armas had a supporting role in Todd Phillips's "War Dogs" (2016), acting opposite Miles Teller as the wife of an arms dealer, and again learned her lines phonetically. David Ehrlich of IndieWire found her to be "memorable in a thankless role". She starred opposite Édgar Ramírez in the biopic "Hands of Stone" (2016) as the wife of Panamanian boxer Roberto Durán. Despite its delayed release, "Hands of Stone" was the first Hollywood film de Armas had filmed. She was contacted by director Jonathan Jakubowicz while still living in Madrid after watching her in "El Internado" and asked her to travel to Los Angeles to audition for the Spanish-language part. In reviewing the film, Christy Lemire of "RogerEbert.com" described de Armas as "a hugely charismatic presence. But except for a couple of showy moments, she gets little to do besides function as the dutiful wife."


title: Ana de Armas

text: In Denis Villeneuve's futuristic thriller "Blade Runner 2049" (2017), de Armas had a supporting role as Joi, the holographic AI girlfriend of Ryan Gosling's character, a blade runner. Mark Kermode of "The Guardian" said she "brings three-dimensional warmth to a character who is essentially a digital projection." Anthony Lane of "The New Yorker" found her to be "wondrous": "Whenever Joi appears, the movie's imaginative heart begins to race." While the performance was initially discussed as a breakthrough role, the film underperformed commercially, and de Armas spent much of the following year in her native Cuba, where she purchased a house. Also in 2017, she had a supporting role in the action thriller "Overdrive" as the love interest to Scott Eastwood's character. Stephen Dalton of "The Hollywood Reporter" wrote that she "radiates more kick-ass charisma than her thankless sidekick role might suggest."


title: Ana de Armas

text: In 2018, de Armas starred opposite Demián Bichir in John Hillcoat's medical drama "Corazón". She played a Dominican woman with heart failure in the short film, funded by Montefiore Medical Center to raise awareness of organ donation. While de Armas's scenes opposite Himesh Patel in the 2019 romantic comedy "Yesterday" were included in the film's trailer, they were cut from the final product. The director Danny Boyle said that, while de Armas was "really radiant" in her scenes, the introduction of a love triangle subplot did not test well with audiences.


title: Ana de Armas

text: De Armas's role as an immigrant nurse in the ensemble murder mystery film "Knives Out" (2019), written and directed by Rian Johnson, was widely praised and marked a breakthrough for the actress. When first approached about the project, she was unenthusiastic about the idea of playing a stereotypical "Latina caretaker" but soon realized that her character was "so much more than that." Tom Shone of "The Times" remarked, "The film's standout performance comes from its least well-known member, the Cuban de Armas, who manages the difficult task of making goodness interesting." Benjamin Lee of "The Guardian" said her "striking" performance left a "lasting impression." The film was a major box office success. De Armas was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical with her also winning the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress and the National Board of Review Award for Best Cast with the cast.


title: Ana de Armas

text: De Armas starred in four films released in the United States in 2020. She had a supporting role in the crime thriller "The Informer" as the wife of Joel Kinnaman's character. Guy Lodge of "Variety" found "her thin role all the more glaring in the wake of her "Knives Out" stardom." She appeared as a femme fatale in the noir crime drama "The Night Clerk". Brian Tallerico of "RogerEbert.com" said the film had "no idea" what to do with her "blinding charisma" while Katie Rife of "The AV Club" remarked that it would be remembered, "if at all, as a movie de Armas was way too good for." She starred opposite Wagner Moura in the Netflix biopic "Sergio" (2020) as Carolina Larriera, a U.N. official and the partner of diplomat Sérgio Vieira de Mello. John DeFore of "The Hollywood Reporter" found her "magnetic" while Jessica Kiang of "Variety" said she imbued the part "with an intelligence and will that makes her more than just de Mello's romantic foil." De Armas reunited with Moura to play the wife of one of the Cuban Five in Olivier Assayas's Netflix spy thriller "Wasp Network". The film was shot on location in Cuba; it was de Armas's first work in her home country since leaving as a teenager. Glenn Kenny of "The New York Times" found her "superb" while Jay Weissberg of "Variety" described her as "a joyous, bewitching presence whose career seems destined for the big time."


title: Ana de Armas

text: In 2021, de Armas reunited with Daniel Craig to play a Bond girl in Cary Joji Fukunaga's "No Time to Die". Fukunaga wrote the character of a Cuban CIA agent with de Armas in mind. She described the character as bubbly and "very irresponsible". In her short appearance in "No Time to Die", her character, Paloma, claimed to have little training but proved to be highly skilled. "No Time to Die" was a commercial success, grossing $774.2 million worldwide, and earned positive reviews. Peter Bradshaw of "The Guardian" praised de Armas' "witty and unworldly turn". De Armas starred in Adrian Lyne's erotic thriller "Deep Water", based upon the novel by Patricia Highsmith. She and Ben Affleck play a couple in an open marriage. In 2022, De Armas starred in the Russo brothers' Netflix action thriller "The Gray Man", alongside Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans. Neither "Deep Water" nor "The Gray Man" were particularly successful with critics and audiences.


title: Ana de Armas

text: De Armas portrayed Marilyn Monroe in the Netflix biopic "Blonde" (2022), based on the biographical fiction novel of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates. Director Andrew Dominik noticed de Armas's performance in "Knock Knock" and, while she went through a long casting process, Dominik secured the role for her after the first audition. In preparation, de Armas worked with a dialect coach for a year, read Oates' novel and also said she studied hundreds of photographs, videos, audio recordings, and films to prepare for the role. Despite criticism towards her casting, due to her having a notable Spanish accent, de Armas' performance was praised; Catherine Bray of "Empire" labeled de Armas' performance as "powerful", while Richard Lawson of "Vanity Fair" remarked that "De Armas is fiercely, almost scarily committed to the role, maintaining high and focused energy through every torrent of tears and screams and traumas." She received a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama.


title: Ana de Armas

text: De Armas will next star in the Apple TV+ film "Ghosted", also starring Chris Evans, for which she replaced Scarlett Johansson.


title: Ana de Armas

text: De Armas began a relationship with Spanish actor Marc Clotet in mid-2010 and they married in Costa Brava in July 2011. They divorced in early 2013. She was briefly engaged to American talent agent Franklin Latt during a relationship from early 2015 to late 2016. After meeting on the set of "Deep Water" in late 2019, de Armas dated American actor Ben Affleck from March 2020 to January 2021.


title: Ana de Armas

text: De Armas holds dual Cuban and Spanish citizenship. She moved to Los Angeles at 26, and resides in New York City as of 2022.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Freddie Mercury (born Farrokh Bulsara; 5 September 1946 – 24 November 1991) was a British singer and songwriter, who achieved worldwide fame as the lead vocalist of the rock band Queen. Regarded as one of the greatest singers in the history of rock music, he was known for his flamboyant stage persona and four-octave vocal range. Mercury defied the conventions of a rock frontman with his theatrical style, influencing the artistic direction of Queen.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Born in 1946 in Zanzibar to Parsi-Indian parents, Mercury attended English-style boarding schools in India from the age of eight and returned to Zanzibar after secondary school. In 1964, his family fled the Zanzibar Revolution, moving to Middlesex, England. Having studied and written music for years, he formed Queen in 1970 with guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor. Mercury wrote numerous hits for Queen, including "Killer Queen", "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Somebody to Love", "We Are the Champions", "Don't Stop Me Now" and "Crazy Little Thing Called Love". His charismatic stage performances often saw him interact with the audience, as displayed at the 1985 Live Aid concert. He also led a solo career and was a producer and guest musician for other artists.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Mercury was diagnosed with AIDS in 1987. He continued to record with Queen, and posthumously featured on their final album, "Made in Heaven" (1995). He announced his diagnosis the day before his death, from complications from the disease, in 1991 at the age of 45. In 1992, a concert in tribute to him was held at Wembley Stadium, in benefit of AIDS awareness. His career with Queen was dramatised in the 2018 biopic "Bohemian Rhapsody".


title: Freddie Mercury

text: As a member of Queen, Mercury was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003, and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2004. In 1990, he and the other Queen members were awarded the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music, and one year after his death, Mercury was awarded it individually. In 2005, Queen were awarded an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Song Collection from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors. In 2002, Mercury was voted number 58 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara in Stone Town in the British protectorate of Zanzibar (now part of Tanzania) on 5 September 1946. His parents, Bomi (1908–2003) and Jer Bulsara (1922–2016), were from the Parsi community of western India. The Bulsaras had origins in the city of Bulsar (now Valsad) in Gujarat. He had a younger sister, Kashmira.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: The family had moved to Zanzibar so that Bomi could continue his job as a cashier at the British Colonial Office. As Parsis, the Bulsaras practised Zoroastrianism. Mercury was born with four extra incisors, to which he attributed his enhanced vocal range. As Zanzibar was a British protectorate until 1963, Mercury was born a British subject, and on 2 June 1969 was registered a citizen of the United Kingdom and colonies after the family had emigrated to England.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Mercury spent most of his childhood in India where he began taking piano lessons at the age of seven while living with relatives. In 1954, at the age of eight, Mercury was sent to study at St. Peter's School, a British-style boarding school for boys, in Panchgani near Bombay. At the age of 12, he formed a school band, the Hectics, and covered rock and roll artists such as Cliff Richard and Little Richard. One of Mercury's former bandmates from the Hectics has said "the only music he listened to, and played, was Western pop music". A friend recalls that he had "an uncanny ability to listen to the radio and replay what he heard on piano". It was also at St. Peter's where he began to call himself "Freddie". In February 1963, he moved back to Zanzibar where he joined his parents at their flat.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: In the spring of 1964, Mercury and his family fled to England from Zanzibar to escape the violence of the revolution against the Sultan of Zanzibar and his mainly Arab government, in which thousands of ethnic Arabs and Indians were killed. They moved to 19 Hamilton Close, Feltham, Middlesex, a town west of central London. The Bulsaras briefly relocated to 122 Hamilton Road, before settling into a small house at 22 Gladstone Avenue in late October. After first studying art at Isleworth Polytechnic in West London, Mercury studied graphic art and design at Ealing Art College, graduating with a diploma in 1969. He later used these skills to design heraldic arms for his band Queen.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Following graduation, Mercury joined a series of bands and sold second-hand Edwardian clothes and scarves in Kensington Market in London with Roger Taylor. Taylor recalls, "Back then, I didn't really know him as a singer—he was just my mate. My crazy mate! If there was fun to be had, Freddie and I were usually involved." He also held a job as a baggage handler at Heathrow Airport. Other friends from the time remember him as a quiet and shy young man with a great interest in music. In 1969, he joined Liverpool-based band Ibex, later renamed Wreckage, which played "very Hendrix-style, heavy blues". He briefly lived in a flat above the Dovedale Towers, a pub close to Penny Lane in Liverpool's Mossley Hill district. When this band failed to take off, he joined an Oxford-based band, Sour Milk Sea, but by early 1970 this group had broken up as well.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: In April 1970, Mercury teamed up with guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor, to become lead singer of their band Smile. They were joined by bassist John Deacon in 1971. Despite the reservations of the other members and Trident Studios, the band's initial management, Mercury chose the name "Queen" for the new band. He later said, "It's very regal obviously, and it sounds splendid. It's a strong name, very universal and immediate. I was certainly aware of the gay connotations, but that was just one facet of it." At about the same time, he legally changed his surname, Bulsara, to Mercury. It was inspired by the line "Mother Mercury, look what they've done to me" from his song "My Fairy King".


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Shortly before the release of Queen's self-titled first album, Mercury designed the band's logo, known as the "Queen crest". The logo combines the zodiac signs of the four band members: two lions for Deacon and Taylor (sign Leo), a crab for May (Cancer), and two fairies for Mercury (Virgo). The lions embrace a stylised letter Q, the crab rests atop the letter with flames rising directly above it, and the fairies are each sheltering below a lion. A crown is shown inside the Q, and the whole logo is over-shadowed by an enormous phoenix. The Queen crest bears a passing resemblance to the Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom, particularly with the lion supporters.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Although Mercury's speaking voice naturally fell in the baritone range, he delivered most songs in the tenor range. His known vocal range extended from bass low F (F) to soprano high F (F). He could belt up to tenor high F (F). Biographer David Bret described his voice as "escalating within a few bars from a deep, throaty rock-growl to tender, vibrant tenor, then on to a high-pitched, perfect coloratura, pure and crystalline in the upper reaches". Spanish soprano Montserrat Caballé, with whom Mercury recorded an album, expressed her opinion that "the difference between Freddie and almost all the other rock stars was that he was selling the voice". She adds:


title: Freddie Mercury

text: His technique was astonishing. No problem of tempo, he sang with an incisive sense of rhythm, his vocal placement was very good and he was able to glide effortlessly from a register to another. He also had a great musicality. His phrasing was subtle, delicate and sweet or energetic and slamming. He was able to find the right colouring or expressive nuance for each word.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: The Who lead singer Roger Daltrey described Mercury as "the best virtuoso rock 'n' roll singer of all time. He could sing anything in any style. He could change his style from line to line and, God, that's an art. And he was brilliant at it." Discussing what type of person he wanted to play the lead role in his musical "Jesus Christ Superstar", Andrew Lloyd Webber said: "He has to be of enormous charisma, but he also has to be a genuine, genuine rock tenor. That's what it is. Really think Freddie Mercury, I mean that's the kind of range we're talking about."


title: Freddie Mercury

text: A research team undertook a study in 2016 to understand the appeal behind Mercury's voice. Led by Professor Christian Herbst, the team identified his notably faster vibrato and use of subharmonics as unique characteristics of Mercury's voice, particularly in comparison to opera singers. The research team studied vocal samples from 23 commercially available Queen recordings, his solo work, and a series of interviews of the late artist. They also used an endoscopic video camera to study a rock singer brought in to imitate Mercury's singing voice.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Mercury wrote 10 of the 17 songs on Queen's "Greatest Hits" album: "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Seven Seas of Rhye", "Killer Queen", "Somebody to Love", "Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy", "We Are the Champions", "Bicycle Race", "Don't Stop Me Now", "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", and "Play the Game". In 2003 Mercury was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame with the rest of Queen, and in 2005 all four band members were awarded an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Song Collection from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: The most notable aspect of his songwriting involved the wide range of genres that he used, which included, among other styles, rockabilly, progressive rock, heavy metal, gospel, and disco. As he explained in a 1986 interview, "I hate doing the same thing again and again and again. I like to see what's happening now in music, film and theatre and incorporate all of those things." Compared to many popular songwriters, Mercury also tended to write musically complex material. For example, "Bohemian Rhapsody" is non-cyclical in structure and comprises dozens of chords. He also wrote six songs from "Queen II" which deal with multiple key changes and complex material. "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", on the other hand, contains only a few chords. Although Mercury often wrote very intricate harmonies, he claimed that he could barely read music. He composed most of his songs on the piano and used a wide variety of key signatures.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Mercury was noted for his live performances, which were often delivered to stadium audiences around the world. He displayed a highly theatrical style that often evoked a great deal of participation from the crowd. A writer for "The Spectator" described him as "a performer out to tease, shock and ultimately charm his audience with various extravagant versions of himself." David Bowie, who performed at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert and recorded the song "Under Pressure" with Queen, praised Mercury's performance style, saying: "Of all the more theatrical rock performers, Freddie took it further than the rest ... he took it over the edge. And of course, I always admired a man who wears tights. I only saw him in concert once and as they say, he was definitely a man who could hold an audience in the palm of his hand." Queen guitarist Brian May wrote that Mercury could make "the last person at the back of the furthest stand in a stadium feel that he was connected". Mercury's main prop on stage was a broken microphone stand; after accidentally snapping it off the heavy base during an early performance, he realised it could be used in endless ways.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: One of Mercury's most notable performances with Queen took place at Live Aid in 1985. Queen's performance at the event has since been voted by a group of music executives as the greatest live performance in the history of rock music. The results were aired on a television program called "The World's Greatest Gigs". Mercury's powerful, sustained note during the a cappella section came to be known as "The Note Heard Round the World". In reviewing Live Aid in 2005, one critic wrote, "Those who compile lists of Great Rock Frontmen and award the top spots to Mick Jagger, Robert Plant, etc. all are guilty of a terrible oversight. Freddie, as evidenced by his Dionysian Live Aid performance, was easily the most godlike of them all." Photographer Denis O'Regan, who captured a definitive pose of Mercury on stage—arched back, knee bent and facing toward the sky—during his final tour with Queen in 1986, commented "Freddie was a once-in-a-lifetime showman". Queen roadie Peter Hince states, "It wasn't just about his voice but the way he commanded the stage. For him it was all about interacting with the audience and knowing how to get them on his side. And he gave everything in every show."


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Throughout his career, Mercury performed an estimated 700 concerts in countries around the world with Queen. A notable aspect of Queen concerts was the large scale involved. He once explained, "We're the Cecil B. DeMille of rock and roll, always wanting to do things bigger and better." The band was the first ever to play in South American stadiums, breaking worldwide records for concert attendance in the Morumbi Stadium in São Paulo in 1981. In 1986, Queen also played behind the Iron Curtain when they performed to a crowd of 80,000 in Budapest, in what was one of the biggest rock concerts ever held in Eastern Europe. Mercury's final live performance with Queen took place on 9 August 1986 at Knebworth Park in England and drew an attendance estimated as high as 200,000. A week prior to Knebworth, May recalled Mercury saying "I'm not going to be doing this forever. This is probably the last time." With the British national anthem "God Save the Queen" playing at the end of the concert, Mercury's final act on stage saw him draped in a robe, holding a golden crown aloft, bidding farewell to the crowd.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: As a young boy in India, Mercury received formal piano training up to the age of nine. Later on, while living in London, he learned guitar. Much of the music he liked was guitar-oriented: his favourite artists at the time were the Who, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, and Led Zeppelin. He was often self-deprecating about his skills on both instruments. However Brian May states Mercury "had a wonderful touch on the piano. He could play what came from inside him like nobody else – incredible rhythm, incredible passion and feeling." Keyboardist Rick Wakeman praised Mercury's playing style, saying he "discovered [the piano] for himself" and successfully composed a number of Queen songs on the instrument. From the early 1980s Mercury began extensively using guest keyboardists. Most notably, he enlisted Fred Mandel (a Canadian musician who also worked for Pink Floyd, Elton John, and Supertramp) for his first solo project. From 1982 Mercury collaborated with Morgan Fisher (who performed with Queen in concert during the Hot Space leg), and from 1985 onward Mercury collaborated with Mike Moran (in the studio) and Spike Edney (in concert).


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Mercury played the piano in many of Queen's most popular songs, including "Killer Queen", "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy", "We Are the Champions", "Somebody to Love", and "Don't Stop Me Now". He used concert grand pianos (such as a Bechstein) and, occasionally, other keyboard instruments such as the harpsichord. From 1980 onward, he also made frequent use of synthesisers in the studio. Brian May claims that Mercury used the piano less over time because he wanted to walk around on stage and entertain the audience. Although he wrote many lines for the guitar, Mercury possessed only rudimentary skills on the instrument. Songs like "Ogre Battle" and "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" were composed on the guitar; the latter featured Mercury playing rhythm guitar on stage and in the studio.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: As well as his work with Queen, Mercury put out two solo albums and several singles. Although his solo work was not as commercially successful as most Queen albums, the two off-Queen albums and several of the singles debuted in the top 10 of the UK Music Charts. His first solo effort goes back to 1972 under the pseudonym Larry Lurex, when Trident Studios' house engineer Robin Geoffrey Cable was working in a musical project, at the time when Queen were recording their debut album; Cable enlisted Mercury to perform lead vocals on the songs "I Can Hear Music" and "Goin' Back", both were released together as a single in 1973. Eleven years later, Mercury contributed to the soundtrack for the restoration of the 1927 Fritz Lang film "Metropolis". The song "Love Kills" was written for the film by Giorgio Moroder in collaboration with Mercury, and produced by Moroder and Mack; in 1984 it debuted at the number 10 position in the UK Singles Chart.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Mercury's two full albums outside the band were "Mr. Bad Guy" (1985) and "Barcelona" (1988). His first album, "Mr. Bad Guy", debuted in the top ten of the UK Album Charts. In 1993, a remix of "Living on My Own", a single from the album, posthumously reached number one on the UK Singles Charts. The song also garnered Mercury a posthumous Ivor Novello Award from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors. AllMusic critic Eduardo Rivadavia describes "Mr. Bad Guy" as "outstanding from start to finish" and expressed his view that Mercury "did a commendable job of stretching into uncharted territory". In particular, the album is heavily synthesiser-driven; that is not characteristic of previous Queen albums.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: His second album, "Barcelona", recorded with Spanish soprano vocalist Montserrat Caballé, combines elements of popular music and opera. Many critics were uncertain what to make of the album; one referred to it as "the most bizarre CD of the year". The album was a commercial success, and the album's title track debuted at No. 8 in the UK and was also a hit in Spain. The title track received massive airplay as the official anthem of the 1992 Summer Olympics (held in Barcelona one year after Mercury's death). Caballé sang it live at the opening of the Olympics with Mercury's part played on a screen, and again before the start of the 1999 UEFA Champions League Final between Manchester United and Bayern Munich in Barcelona.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: In addition to the two solo albums, Mercury released several singles, including his own version of the hit "The Great Pretender" by the Platters, which debuted at No. 5 in the UK in 1987. In September 2006 a compilation album featuring Mercury's solo work was released in the UK in honour of what would have been his 60th birthday. The album debuted in the UK top 10. In 2012, "", a documentary film directed by Rhys Thomas on Mercury's attempts to forge a solo career, premiered on BBC One.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: In 1981–1983 Mercury recorded several tracks with Michael Jackson, including a demo of "State of Shock", "Victory", and "There Must Be More to Life Than This". None of these collaborations were officially released at the time, although bootleg recordings exist. Jackson went on to record the single "State of Shock" with Mick Jagger for the Jacksons' album "Victory". Mercury included the solo version of "There Must Be More To Life Than This" on his "Mr. Bad Guy" album. "There Must Be More to Life Than This" was eventually reworked by Queen and released on their compilation album "Queen Forever" in 2014. In addition to working with Michael Jackson, Mercury and Roger Taylor sang on the title track for Billy Squier's 1982 studio release, "Emotions in Motion" and later contributed to two tracks on Squier's 1986 release, "Enough Is Enough", providing vocals on "Love is the Hero" and musical arrangements on "Lady With a Tenor Sax". In 2020, Mercury's music video for "Love Me Like There's No Tomorrow" was nominated for Best Animation at the Berlin Music Video Awards. Woodlock studio is behind the animation.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: In the early 1970s, Mercury had a long-term relationship with Mary Austin, whom he met through guitarist Brian May. Austin, born in Fulham, London, met Mercury in 1969 when she was 19 and he was 24 years old, a year before Queen had formed. He lived with Austin for several years in West Kensington, London. By the mid-1970s, he had begun an affair with David Minns, an American record executive at Elektra Records. In December 1976, Mercury told Austin of his sexuality, which ended their romantic relationship. Mercury moved out of the flat they shared, and bought Austin a place of her own nearby his new address of 12 Stafford Terrace, Kensington.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Mercury and Austin remained friends through the years; Mercury often referred to her as his only true friend. In a 1985 interview, he said of Austin: "All my lovers asked me why they couldn't replace Mary, but it's simply impossible. The only friend I've got is Mary, and I don't want anybody else. To me, she was my common-law wife. To me, it was a marriage. We believe in each other, that's enough for me." Mercury's final home, Garden Lodge, a twenty-eight room Georgian mansion in Kensington set in a quarter-acre manicured garden surrounded by a high brick wall, was picked out by Austin. Austin married the painting artist Piers Cameron; they have two children. Mercury was the godfather of her oldest son, Richard. In his will, Mercury left his London home to Austin having told her, "You would have been my wife, and it would have been yours anyway."


title: Freddie Mercury

text: During the early-to-mid-1980s, he was reportedly involved with Barbara Valentin, an Austrian actress, who is featured in the video for "It's a Hard Life". In another article, he said Valentin was "just a friend"; Mercury was dating German restaurateur Winfried "Winnie" Kirchberger during this time. Mercury lived at Kirchberger's apartment and thanked him "for board and lodging" in the liner notes of his 1985 album "Mr. Bad Guy". He wore a silver wedding band given to him by Kirchberger. A close friend described him as Mercury's "great love" in Germany.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: By 1985, he began another long-term relationship with Irish-born hairdresser Jim Hutton (1949–2010), whom he referred to as his husband. Mercury described their relationship as one built on solace and understanding, and said that he "honestly couldn't ask for better". Hutton, who tested HIV-positive in 1990, lived with Mercury for the last seven years of his life, nursed him during his illness, and was present at his bedside when he died. Mercury wore a gold wedding band, given to him by Hutton in 1986, until the end of his life. He was cremated with it on. Hutton later relocated from London to the bungalow he and Mercury had built for themselves in Ireland.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Radio disc jockey Kenny Everett met Mercury in 1974, when he invited the singer onto his Capital London breakfast show. As two of Britain's most flamboyant, outrageous and popular entertainers, they shared much in common and became close friends. In 1975, Mercury visited Everett, bringing with him an advance copy of the single "Bohemian Rhapsody". Despite doubting that any station would play the six-minute track, Everett placed the song on the turntable, and, after hearing it, exclaimed: "Forget it, it's going to be number one for centuries". Although Capital Radio had not officially accepted the song, Everett talked incessantly about a record he possessed but could not play. He then frequently proceeded to play the track with the excuse: "Oops, my finger must've slipped." On one occasion, Everett aired the song fourteen times over a single weekend. Capital's switchboard was overwhelmed with callers inquiring when the song would be released.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: During the 1970s, Everett became advisor and mentor to Mercury and Mercury served as Everett's confidant. Throughout the early-to-mid-1980s, they continued to explore their homosexuality and use drugs. Although they were never lovers, they did experience London nightlife together. By 1985, they had fallen out, and their friendship was further strained when Everett was outed in the autobiography of his ex-wife Lee Everett Alkin. In 1989, with their health failing, Mercury and Everett were reconciled.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: While some commentators claimed Mercury hid his sexual orientation from the public, others claimed he was "openly gay". In December 1974, when asked directly, "So how about being bent?" by the "New Musical Express", Mercury replied, "You're a crafty cow. Let's put it this way: there were times when I was young and green. It's a thing schoolboys go through. I've had my share of schoolboy pranks. I'm not going to elaborate further." Homosexual acts between adult males over the age of 21 had been decriminalised in the United Kingdom in 1967, seven years earlier. During public events in the 1980s, Mercury often kept a distance from his partner, Jim Hutton.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Mercury's flamboyant stage performances sometimes led journalists to allude to his sexuality. Dave Dickson, reviewing Queen's performance at Wembley Arena in 1984 for "Kerrang!", noted Mercury's "camp" addresses to the audience and even described him as a "posing, pouting, posturing tart". In 1992, John Marshall of "Gay Times" opined: "[Mercury] was a 'scene-queen,' not afraid to publicly express his gayness, but unwilling to analyse or justify his 'lifestyle' ... It was as if Freddie Mercury was saying to the world, 'I am what I am. So what?' And that in itself for some was a statement." In an article for "AfterElton", Robert Urban said: "Mercury did not ally himself to 'political outness,' or to LGBT causes."


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Some believe Mercury was bisexual; for example, regarding the creation of Celebrate Bisexuality Day, Wendy Curry said: "We were sitting around at one of the annual bi conventions, venting and someoneI think it was Gigisaid we should have a party. We all loved the great bisexual, Freddie Mercury. His birthday was in September, so why not Sept? We wanted a weekend day to ensure the most people would do something. Gigi's birthday was September 23rd. It fell on a weekend day, so, poof! We had a day." "The Advocate" said in May 2018, "Closeted throughout his life, Mercury, who was bisexual, engaged in affairs with men but referred to a woman he loved in his youth, Mary Austin, as 'the love of his life,' according to the biography "Somebody to Love: The Life, Death, and Legacy of Freddie Mercury"." Additionally, according to an obituary Mercury was a "self-confessed bisexual". The 2018 biopic of Mercury, "Bohemian Rhapsody", received criticism for its portrayal of Mercury's sexuality, which was described as "sterilized" and "confused", and was even accused of being "dangerous".


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Although he cultivated a flamboyant stage personality, Mercury was shy and retiring when not performing, particularly around people he did not know well, and granted very few interviews. He once said of himself: "When I'm performing I'm an extrovert, yet inside I'm a completely different man." On this contrast to "his larger-than-life stage persona", BBC music broadcaster Bob Harris adds he was "lovely, bright, sensitive, and quite vulnerable." While on stage, Mercury basked in the love from his audience. Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain's suicide note mentions how he admired and envied the way Mercury "seemed to love, relish in the love and adoration from the crowd".


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Mercury never discussed his ethnic or religious background with journalists. The closest he came to doing so was in response to a question about his outlandish persona, he said, "that's something inbred, it's a part of me. I will always walk around like a Persian popinjay", an oblique reference to his Indian Parsi background. Feeling a connection to Britain prior to arriving in England, the young Bulsara was heavily influenced by British fashion and music trends while growing up. According to his longtime assistant Peter Freestone, "if Freddie had his way, he would have been born aged 18 in Feltham." Harris states, "One of the things about Freddie was that he was very civilised and quite 'English'. I'd go over to his flat near Shepherd's Bush in the afternoon, and he'd get out the fine china and the sugar lumps and we'd have a cup of tea." His flamboyant dress sense and the emergence of glam rock in the UK in the early 1970s saw Mercury wear outfits designed by Zandra Rhodes.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: When asked by "Melody Maker" in 1981 if rock stars should use their power to try to shape the world for the better, Mercury responded, "Leave that to the politicians. Certain people can do that kind of thing, but very few. John Lennon was one. Because of his status, he could do that kind of preaching and affect people's thoughts. But to do this you have to have a certain amount of intellect and magic together, and the John Lennons are few and far between. People with mere talent, like me, have not got the ability or power." Mercury dedicated a song to the former member of The Beatles. The song, "Life is Real (Song for Lennon)", is included in the 1982 album "Hot Space". Mercury did occasionally express his concerns about the state of the world in his lyrics. His most notable "message" songs are "Under Pressure", "Is This the World We Created...?" (a song which Mercury and May performed at Live Aid, and also featured in "Greenpeace – The Album"), "There Must Be More to Life Than This", "The Miracle" (a song May called "one of Freddie's most beautiful creations") and "Innuendo".


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Mercury cared for at least ten cats throughout his life, including: Tom, Jerry, Oscar, Tiffany, Dorothy, Delilah, Goliath, Miko, Romeo, and Lily. He was against the inbreeding of cats for specific features and all except for Tiffany and Lily, both given as gifts, were adopted from the Blue Cross. Mercury "placed as much importance on these beloved animals as on any human life", and showed his adoration by having the artist Ann Ortman paint portraits of each of them. Mercury wrote a song for Delilah, "his favourite cat of all", which appeared on the Queen album "Innuendo". Mercury dedicated his liner notes in his 1985 solo album "Mr. Bad Guy" to Jerry and his other cats. It reads, "This album is dedicated to my cat Jerry—also Tom, Oscar, and Tiffany and all the cat lovers across the universe—screw everybody else!"


title: Freddie Mercury

text: In 1987, Mercury celebrated his 41st birthday at the Pikes Hotel, Ibiza, Spain, several months after discovering that he had contracted HIV. Mercury sought much comfort at the retreat and was a close friend of the owner, Anthony Pike, who described Mercury as "the most beautiful person I've ever met in my life. So entertaining and generous." According to biographer Lesley-Ann Jones, Mercury "felt very much at home there. He played some tennis, lounged by the pool, and ventured out to the odd gay club or bar at night." The birthday party, held on 5 September 1987, has been described as "the most incredible example of excess the Mediterranean island had ever seen", and was attended by some 700 people. A cake in the shape of Antoni Gaudi's "Sagrada Família" was provided for the party. The original cake collapsed and was replaced with a two-metre-long sponge cake decorated with the notes from Mercury's song "Barcelona". The bill, which included 232 broken glasses, was presented to Queen's manager, Jim Beach. Before his death, Mercury had told Beach, "You can do what you want with my music, but don't make me boring."


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Mercury exhibited HIV/AIDS symptoms as early as 1982. Authors Matt Richards and Mark Langthorne have stated in their biographical book about Mercury, "Somebody to Love: The Life, Death, and Legacy of Freddie Mercury", that Mercury secretly visited a doctor in New York City to get a white lesion on his tongue checked (which might have been hairy leukoplakia, one of the first signs of an infection) a few weeks before Queen's final American appearance with Mercury on "Saturday Night Live" on 25 September 1982. They also stated that he had associated with someone who was recently infected with HIV on the same day of their final US appearance, when he began to exhibit more symptoms.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: In October 1986, the British press reported that Mercury had his blood tested for HIV/AIDS at a Harley Street clinic. According to his partner, Jim Hutton, Mercury was diagnosed with AIDS in late April 1987. Around that time, Mercury claimed in an interview to have tested negative for HIV.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: The British press pursued the rumours over the next few years, fuelled by Mercury's increasingly gaunt appearance, Queen's absence from touring, and reports from his former lovers to tabloid journals. By 1990, rumours about Mercury's health were rife. At the 1990 Brit Awards held at the Dominion Theatre, London, on 18 February, Mercury made his final appearance on stage, when he joined the rest of Queen to collect the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Mercury and his inner circle of colleagues and friends continually denied the stories. It has been suggested that Mercury could have helped AIDS awareness by speaking earlier about his illness. Mercury kept his condition private to protect those closest to him; May later confirmed that Mercury had informed the band of his illness much earlier. Filmed in May 1991, the music video for "These Are the Days of Our Lives" features a very thin Mercury in his final scenes in front of the camera. Director of the video Rudi Dolezal comments, "AIDS was never a topic. We never discussed it. He didn't want to talk about it. Most of the people didn't even 100 percent know if he had it, apart from the band and a few people in the inner circle. He always said, 'I don't want to put any burden on other people by telling them my tragedy. The rest of the band were ready to record when Mercury felt able to come into the studio, for an hour or two at a time. May said of Mercury: "He just kept saying. 'Write me more. Write me stuff. I want to just sing this and do it and when I am gone you can finish it off.' He had no fear, really." Justin Shirley-Smith, the assistant engineer for those last sessions, said: "This is hard to explain to people, but it wasn't sad, it was very happy. He [Freddie] was one of the funniest people I ever encountered. I was laughing most of the time, with him. Freddie was saying [of his illness] 'I'm not going to think about it, I'm going to do this.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: After the conclusion of his work with Queen in June 1991, Mercury retired to his home in Kensington, West London. His former partner, Mary Austin, was a particular comfort in his final years, and in the last few weeks made regular visits to look after him. Near the end of his life, Mercury began to lose his sight, and declined so that he was unable to leave his bed. Mercury chose to hasten his death by refusing medication and took only painkillers. On 22 November 1991, Mercury called Queen's manager Jim Beach to his Kensington home to prepare a public statement, which was released the following day:


title: Freddie Mercury

text: On the evening of 24 November 1991, about 24 hours after issuing the statement, Mercury died at the age of 45 at his home in Kensington. The cause of death was bronchial pneumonia resulting from AIDS. His close friend Dave Clark of the Dave Clark Five was at the bedside vigil when Mercury died. Austin phoned Mercury's parents and sister to break the news, which reached newspaper and television crews in the early hours of 25 November.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Mercury's funeral service was conducted on 27 November 1991 by a Zoroastrian priest at West London Crematorium, where he is commemorated by a plinth under his birth name. In attendance at Mercury's service were his family and 35 of his close friends, including Elton John and the members of Queen. His coffin was carried into the chapel to the sounds of "Take My Hand, Precious Lord"/"You've Got a Friend" by Aretha Franklin. In accordance with Mercury's wishes, Mary Austin took possession of his cremated remains and buried them in an undisclosed location. The whereabouts of his ashes are believed to be known only to Austin, who has said that she will never reveal them.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Mercury spent and donated to charity much of his wealth during his lifetime, with his estate valued around £8 million at the time of his death. He bequeathed his home, Garden Lodge, and the adjoining Mews, as well as a 50% of all privately owned shares, to Mary Austin. His sister, Kashmira Cooke, received 25%, as did his parents, Bomi and Jer Bulsara, which Cooke acquired upon their deaths. He willed £500,000 to Joe Fannelli; £500,000 to Jim Hutton; £500,000 to Peter Freestone; and £100,000 to Terry Giddings. Mercury, who never drove a car because he had no licence, was often chauffeured around London in his Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow from 1979 until his death. The car was passed to his sister Kashmira who made it available for display at public events, including the West End premiere of the musical "We Will Rock You" in 2002, before it was auctioned off at the NEC in Birmingham in 2013 for £74,600.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Following his death, the outer walls of Garden Lodge in Logan Place became a shrine to Mercury, with mourners paying tribute by covering the walls in graffiti messages. Three years later "Time Out" magazine reported that "the wall outside the house has become London's biggest rock 'n' roll shrine". Fans continued to visit to pay their respects with letters appearing on the walls until 2017, when Austin had the wall cleared. Hutton was involved in a 2000 biography of Mercury, "Freddie Mercury, the Untold Story", and also gave an interview for "The Times" in September 2006 for what would have been Mercury's 60th birthday.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Regarded as one of the greatest lead singers in the history of rock music, he was known for his flamboyant stage persona and four-octave vocal range. Mercury defied the conventions of a rock frontman, with his highly theatrical style influencing the artistic direction of Queen.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: The extent to which Mercury's death may have enhanced Queen's popularity is not clear. In the United States, where Queen's popularity had lagged in the 1980s, sales of Queen albums went up dramatically in 1992, the year following his death. In 1992, one American critic noted, "What cynics call the 'dead star' factor had come into play—Queen is in the middle of a major resurgence." The movie "Wayne's World", which featured "Bohemian Rhapsody", also came out in 1992. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, Queen had sold 34.5 million albums in the United States by 2004, about half of which had been sold since Mercury's death in 1991.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Estimates of Queen's total worldwide record sales to date have been set as high as 300 million. In the United Kingdom, Queen have now spent more collective weeks on the UK Album Charts than any other musical act (including the Beatles), and "Queen's Greatest Hits" is the best-selling album of all time in the United Kingdom. Two of Mercury's songs, "We Are the Champions" and "Bohemian Rhapsody", have also each been voted as the greatest song of all time in major polls by Sony Ericsson and "Guinness World Records". Both songs have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame; "Bohemian Rhapsody" in 2004 and "We Are the Champions" in 2009. In October 2007 the video for "Bohemian Rhapsody" was voted the greatest of all time by readers of "Q" magazine.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Since his death, Queen were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, and all four band members were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003. Their Rock Hall of Fame citation reads, "in the golden era of glam rock and gorgeously hyper-produced theatrical extravaganzas that defined one branch of '70s rock, no group came close in either concept or execution to Queen." The band were among the inaugural inductees into the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2004. Mercury was individually posthumously awarded the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music in 1992. They received the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Song Collection from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors in 2005, and in 2018 they were presented the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: In November 1995, Mercury appeared posthumously on Queen's final studio album "Made in Heaven". The album featured Mercury's previously unreleased final recordings from 1991, as well as outtakes from previous years and reworked versions of solo works by the other members. The album cover features the Freddie Mercury statue that overlooks Lake Geneva superimposed with Mercury's Duck House lake cabin that he had rented. This is where he had written and recorded his last songs at Mountain Studios. The sleeve of the album contains the words, "Dedicated to the immortal spirit of Freddie Mercury."


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Featuring tracks such as "Too Much Love Will Kill You" and "Heaven for Everyone", the album also contains the song "Mother Love", the last vocal recording Mercury made before his death, which he completed using a drum machine, over which May, Taylor, and Deacon later added the instrumental track. After completing the penultimate verse, Mercury had told the band he "wasn't feeling that great" and stated, "I will finish it when I come back next time". He never made it back into the studio, so May later recorded the final verse of the song.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: A statue in Montreux, Switzerland, by sculptor Irena Sedlecká, was erected as a tribute to Mercury. It stands almost 10 feet (3 metres) high overlooking Lake Geneva and was unveiled on 25 November 1996 by Mercury's father and Montserrat Caballé, with bandmates Brian May and Roger Taylor also in attendance. Beginning in 2003 fans from around the world have gathered in Switzerland annually to pay tribute to the singer as part of the "Freddie Mercury Montreux Memorial Day" on the first weekend of September.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: In 1997 the three remaining members of Queen released "No-One but You (Only the Good Die Young)", a song dedicated to Mercury and all those that die too soon. In 1999 a Royal Mail stamp with an image of Mercury on stage was issued in his honour as part of the UK postal service's Millennium Stamp series. In 2009 a star commemorating Mercury was unveiled in Feltham, west London where his family moved upon arriving in England in 1964. The star in memory of Mercury's achievements was unveiled on Feltham High Street by his mother Jer Bulsara and Queen bandmate May.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: A statue of Mercury stood over the entrance to the Dominion Theatre in London's West End from May 2002 to May 2014 for Queen and Ben Elton's musical "We Will Rock You". A tribute to Queen was on display at the Fremont Street Experience in downtown Las Vegas throughout 2009 on its video canopy. In December 2009 a large model of Mercury wearing tartan was put on display in Edinburgh as publicity for the run of "We Will Rock You". Sculptures of Mercury often feature him wearing a military jacket with his fist in the air. In 2018, "GQ" magazine called Mercury's yellow military jacket from his 1986 concerts his best known look, while CNN called it "an iconic moment in fashion."


title: Freddie Mercury

text: For Mercury's 65th birthday in 2011, Google dedicated its Google Doodle to him. It included an animation set to his song, "Don't Stop Me Now". Referring to "the late, great Freddie Mercury" in their 2012 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction speech, Guns N' Roses quoted Mercury's lyrics from "We Are the Champions"; "I've taken my bows, my curtain calls, you've brought me fame and fortune and everything that goes with it, and I thank you all."


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Tribute was paid to Queen and Mercury at the closing ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. The band's performance of "We Will Rock You" with Jessie J was opened with a video of Mercury's "call and response" routine from 1986's Wembley Stadium performance, with the 2012 crowd at the Olympic Stadium responding appropriately. The frog genus "Mercurana", discovered in 2013 in Kerala, India, was named as a tribute because Mercury's "vibrant music inspires the authors". The site of the discovery is very near to where Mercury spent most of his childhood. In 2013, a newly discovered species of damselfly from Brazil was named "Heteragrion freddiemercuryi", honouring the "superb and gifted musician and songwriter whose wonderful voice and talent still entertain millions" — one of four similar damselflies named after the Queen bandmates, in tribute to Queen's 40th anniversary.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: On 1 September 2016, an English Heritage blue plaque was unveiled at Mercury's home in 22 Gladstone Avenue in Feltham, west London by his sister, Kashmira Cooke, and Brian May. Attending the ceremony, Karen Bradley, the UK Secretary of State for Culture, called Mercury "one of Britain's most influential musicians", and added he "is a global icon whose music touched the lives of millions of people around the world". On 24 February 2020 a street in Feltham was renamed Freddie Mercury Close during a ceremony attended by his sister Kashmira. On 5 September 2016, the 70th anniversary of Mercury's birth, asteroid 17473 Freddiemercury was named after him. Issuing the certificate of designation to the "charismatic singer", Joel Parker of the Southwest Research Institute added: "Freddie Mercury sang, 'I'm a shooting star leaping through the sky' — and now that is even more true than ever before." In an April 2019 interview, British rock concert promoter Harvey Goldsmith referred to Mercury as "one of our most treasured talents".


title: Freddie Mercury

text: In August 2019, Mercury was one of the honorees inducted in the Rainbow Honor Walk, a walk of fame in San Francisco's Castro neighbourhood noting LGBTQ people who have "made significant contributions in their fields". Freddie Mercury Alley is a alley next to the British embassy in the Ujazdów district in Warsaw, Poland, which is dedicated to Mercury, and was unveiled on 22 November 2019. Until the Freddie Mercury Close in Feltham was dedicated, Warsaw was the only city in Europe with a street dedicated to the singer. In January 2020, Queen became the first band to join Queen Elizabeth II on a British coin. Issued by the Royal Mint, the commemorative £5 coin features the instruments of all four band members, including Mercury's Bechstein grand piano and his mic and stand. In April 2022, a life-size statue of Mercury was unveiled in South Korea's resort island of Jeju.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Mercury has featured in international advertising to represent the UK. In 2001, a parody of Mercury, along with prints of other British music icons consisting of The Beatles, Elton John, Spice Girls, and The Rolling Stones, appeared in the Eurostar national advertising campaign in France for the Paris to London route. In September 2017 the airline Norwegian painted the tail fin of two of its aircraft with a portrait of Mercury to mark what would have been his 71st birthday. Mercury is one of the company's six "British tail fin heroes", alongside England's 1966 FIFA World Cup winning captain Bobby Moore, children's author Roald Dahl, novelist Jane Austen, pioneering pilot Amy Johnson, and aviation entrepreneur Sir Freddie Laker.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: As the first major rock star to die of AIDS, Mercury's death represented an important event in the history of the disease. In April 1992, the remaining members of Queen founded The Mercury Phoenix Trust and organised "The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert for AIDS Awareness", to celebrate the life and legacy of Mercury and raise money for AIDS research, which took place on 20 April 1992. The Mercury Phoenix Trust has since raised millions of pounds for various AIDS charities. The tribute concert, which took place at London's Wembley Stadium for an audience of 72,000, featured a wide variety of guests including Robert Plant (of Led Zeppelin), Roger Daltrey (of the Who), Extreme, Elton John, Metallica, David Bowie, Annie Lennox, Tony Iommi (of Black Sabbath), Guns N' Roses, Elizabeth Taylor, George Michael, Def Leppard, Seal and Liza Minnelli, with U2 also appearing via satellite. Elizabeth Taylor spoke of Mercury as "an extraordinary rock star who rushed across our cultural landscape like a comet shooting across the sky". The concert was broadcast live to 76 countries and had an estimated viewing audience of 1 billion people. The "Freddie For A Day" fundraiser on behalf of the Mercury Phoenix Trust takes place every year in London, with supporters of the charity including Monty Python comedian Eric Idle, and Mel B of the Spice Girls.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: The documentary, "Freddie Mercury: The Final Act", aired on BBC Two in 2021 and The CW in the US in April 2022. It covered Mercury's last days, how his bandmates and friends put together the Tribute Concert at Wembley, and interviewed medical professionals, people who tested HIV positive, and others who knew someone who died of AIDS. At the 50th International Emmy Awards in 2022 it won the International Emmy Award for Best Arts Programming.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Several popularity polls conducted over the past decade indicate that Mercury's reputation may have been enhanced since his death. For instance, in a 2002 vote to determine who the UK public considers the greatest British people in history, Mercury was ranked 58 in the list of the 100 Greatest Britons, broadcast by the BBC. He was further listed at the 52nd spot in a 2007 Japanese national survey of the 100 most influential heroes. Although he had been criticised by gay activists for hiding his HIV status, author Paul Russell included Mercury in his book "The Gay 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Gay Men and Lesbians, Past and Present". In 2008, "Rolling Stone" ranked Mercury 18 on its list of the Top 100 Singers Of All Time. Mercury was voted the greatest male singer in MTV's 22 Greatest Voices in Music. In 2011 a "Rolling Stone" readers' pick placed Mercury in second place of the magazine's Best Lead Singers of All Time. In 2015, "Billboard" magazine placed him second on their list of the 25 Best Rock Frontmen (and Women) of All Time. In 2016, "LA Weekly" ranked him first on the list of 20 greatest singers of all time, in any genre.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: On 24 November 1997, a monodrama about Freddie Mercury's life, titled "", opened in New York City. It presented Mercury in the hereafter: examining his life, seeking redemption and searching for his true self. The play was written and directed by Charles Messina and the part of Mercury was played by Khalid Gonçalves (né Paul Gonçalves) and then later, Amir Darvish. Billy Squier opened one of the shows with an acoustic performance of a song he had written about Mercury titled "I Have Watched You Fly".


title: Freddie Mercury

text: In 2016 a musical titled "Royal Vauxhall" premiered at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern in Vauxhall, London. Written by Desmond O'Connor, the musical told the alleged tales of the nights that Mercury, Kenny Everett and Princess Diana spent out at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern in London in the 1980s. Following several successful runs in London, the musical was taken to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2016 starring Tom Giles as Mercury.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: The 2018 biographical film "Bohemian Rhapsody" was, at its release, the highest-grossing musical biographical film of all time. Mercury was portrayed by Rami Malek, who received the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor, for his performance. While the film received mixed reviews and contained historical inaccuracies, it won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Drama.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: Mercury appeared as a supporting character in the BBC television drama "Best Possible Taste: The Kenny Everett Story", first broadcast in October 2012. He was portrayed by actor James Floyd. He was played by actor John Blunt in "The Freddie Mercury Story: Who Wants to Live Forever", first broadcast in the UK on Channel 5 in November 2016. Although the programme was criticised for focusing on Mercury's love life and sexuality, Blunt's performance and likeness to the singer did receive praise.


title: Freddie Mercury

text: In 2018, David Avery portrayed Mercury in the "Urban Myths" comedy series in an episode focusing on the antics backstage at Live Aid, and Kayvan Novak portrayed Mercury in an episode titled "The Sex Pistols vs. Bill Grundy". He was also portrayed by Eric McCormack (as the character Will Truman) on "Will & Grace" in the October 2018 episode titled "Tex and the City".


title: Wiki

text: A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the public or limited to use within an organization for maintaining its internal knowledge base.


title: Wiki

text: Wikis are enabled by wiki software, otherwise known as wiki engines. A wiki engine, being a form of a content management system, differs from other web-based systems such as blog software, in that the content is created without any defined owner or leader, and wikis have little inherent structure, allowing structure to emerge according to the needs of the users. Wiki engines usually allow content to be written using a simplified markup language and sometimes edited with the help of a rich-text editor. There are dozens of different wiki engines in use, both standalone and part of other software, such as bug tracking systems. Some wiki engines are open-source, whereas others are proprietary. Some permit control over different functions (levels of access); for example, editing rights may permit changing, adding, or removing material. Others may permit access without enforcing access control. Other rules may be imposed to organize content.


title: Wiki

text: There are hundreds of thousands of wikis in use, both public and private, including wikis functioning as knowledge management resources, note-taking tools, community websites, and intranets. Ward Cunningham, the developer of the first wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, originally described wiki as "the simplest online database that could possibly work". "Wiki" (pronounced ) is a Hawaiian word meaning "quick".


title: Wiki

text: The online encyclopedia project Wikipedia is the most popular wiki-based website, and is one of the most widely viewed sites in the world, having been ranked in the top twenty since 2007. Wikipedia is not a single wiki but rather a collection of hundreds of wikis, with each one pertaining to a specific language. The English-language Wikipedia has the largest collection of articles: , it has over 6 million articles.


title: Wiki

text: In their book "The Wiki Way: Quick Collaboration on the Web", Ward Cunningham and co-author Bo Leuf described the essence of the Wiki concept:


title: Wiki

text: A wiki enables communities of editors and contributors to write documents collaboratively. All that people require to contribute is a computer, Internet access, a web browser, and a basic understanding of a simple markup language (e.g. MediaWiki markup language). A single page in a wiki website is referred to as a "wiki page", while the entire collection of pages, which are usually well-interconnected by hyperlinks, is "the wiki". A wiki is essentially a database for creating, browsing, and searching through information. A wiki allows non-linear, evolving, complex, and networked text, while also allowing for editor argument, debate, and interaction regarding the content and formatting. A defining characteristic of wiki technology is the ease with which pages can be created and updated. Generally, there is no review by a moderator or gatekeeper before modifications are accepted and thus lead to changes on the website. Many wikis are open to alteration by the general public without requiring registration of user accounts. Many edits can be made in real-time and appear almost instantly online, but this feature facilitates abuse of the system. Private wiki servers require user authentication to edit pages, and sometimes even to read them. Maged N. Kamel Boulos, Cito Maramba, and Steve Wheeler write that the open wikis produce a process of Social Darwinism. "... because of the openness and rapidity that wiki pages can be edited, the pages undergo an evolutionary selection process, not unlike that which nature subjects to living organisms. 'Unfit' sentences and sections are ruthlessly culled, edited and replaced if they are not considered 'fit', which hopefully results in the evolution of a higher quality and more relevant page."