title: Norse mythology

text: Odin must share half of his share of the dead with a powerful goddess, Freyja. She is beautiful, sensual, wears a feathered cloak, and practices seiðr. She rides to battle to choose among the slain and brings her chosen to her afterlife field Fólkvangr. Freyja weeps for her missing husband Óðr and seeks after him in faraway lands. Freyja's brother, the god Freyr, is also frequently mentioned in surviving texts, and in his association with the weather, royalty, human sexuality, and agriculture brings peace and pleasure to humanity. Deeply lovesick after catching sight of the beautiful jötunn Gerðr, Freyr seeks and wins her love, yet at the price of his future doom. Their father is the powerful god Njörðr. Njörðr is strongly associated with ships and seafaring, and so also wealth and prosperity. Freyja and Freyr's mother is Njörðr's unnamed sister (her name is unprovided in the source material). However, there is more information about his pairing with the skiing and hunting goddess Skaði. Their relationship is ill-fated, as Skaði cannot stand to be away from her beloved mountains, nor Njörðr from the seashore. Together, Freyja, Freyr, and Njörðr form a portion of gods known as the Vanir. While the Aesir and the Vanir retain distinct identification, they came together as the result of the Aesir–Vanir War.


title: Norse mythology

text: While they receive less mention, numerous other gods and goddesses appear in the source material. (For a list of these deities, see List of Germanic deities.) Some of the gods heard less of include the apple-bearing goddess Iðunn and her husband, the skaldic god Bragi; the gold-toothed god Heimdallr, born of nine mothers; the ancient god Týr, who lost his right hand while binding the great wolf Fenrir; and the goddess Gefjon, who formed modern-day Zealand, Denmark.


title: Norse mythology

text: Various beings outside of the gods are mentioned. Elves and dwarfs are commonly mentioned and appear to be connected, but their attributes are vague and the relation between the two is ambiguous. Elves are described as radiant and beautiful, whereas dwarfs often act as earthen smiths. A group of beings variously described as jötnar, thursar, and trolls (in English these are all often glossed as "giants") frequently appear. These beings may either aid, deter, or take their place among the gods. The Norns, dísir, and aforementioned valkyries also receive frequent mention. While their functions and roles may overlap and differ, all are collective female beings associated with fate.


title: Norse mythology

text: In Norse cosmology, all beings live in Nine Worlds that center around the cosmological tree Yggdrasil. The gods inhabit the heavenly realm of Asgard whereas humanity inhabits Midgard, a region in the center of the cosmos. Outside of the gods, humanity, and the jötnar, these Nine Worlds are inhabited by beings, such as elves and dwarfs. Travel between the worlds is frequently recounted in the myths, where the gods and other beings may interact directly with humanity. Numerous creatures live on Yggdrasil, such as the insulting messenger squirrel Ratatoskr and the perching hawk Veðrfölnir. The tree itself has three major roots, and at the base of one of these roots live the Norns, female entities associated with fate. Elements of the cosmos are personified, such as the Sun (Sól, a goddess), the Moon (Máni, a god), and Earth (Jörð, a goddess), as well as units of time, such as day (Dagr, a god) and night (Nótt, a jötunn).


title: Norse mythology

text: The afterlife is a complex matter in Norse mythology. The dead may go to the murky realm of Hel—a realm ruled over by a female being of the same name, may be ferried away by valkyries to Odin's martial hall Valhalla, or may be chosen by the goddess Freyja to dwell in her field Fólkvangr. The goddess Rán may claim those that die at sea, and the goddess Gefjon is said to be attended by virgins upon their death. Texts also make reference to reincarnation. Time itself is presented between cyclic and linear, and some scholars have argued that cyclic time was the original format for the mythology. Various forms of a cosmological creation story are provided in Icelandic sources, and references to a future destruction and rebirth of the world—Ragnarok—are frequently mentioned in some texts.


title: Norse mythology

text: According to the "Prose Edda" and the "Poetic Edda" poem, "Völuspá", the first human couple consisted of Ask and Embla; driftwood found by a trio of gods and imbued with life in the form of three gifts. After the cataclysm of Ragnarok, this process is mirrored in the survival of two humans from a wood; Líf and Lífþrasir. From these two humankind is foretold to repopulate the new and green earth.


title: Norse mythology

text: With the widespread publication of translations of Old Norse texts that recount the mythology of the North Germanic peoples, references to the Norse gods and heroes spread into European literary culture, especially in Scandinavia, Germany, and Britain. During the later 20th century, references to Norse mythology became common in science fiction and fantasy literature, role-playing games, and eventually other cultural products such as comic books and Japanese animation. Traces of the mythology can also be found in music and has its own genre, viking metal. Bands such as Amon Amarth, Bathory, Burzum and Månegarm have written songs about Norse mythology. Norse mythology is prevalent in the children's book series, Magnus Chase, by Rick Riordan.


title: Lily Allen

text: Lily Rose Beatrice Allen (born 2 May 1985) is an English singer-songwriter and actress. She is the daughter of actor Keith Allen and film producer Alison Owen. Her music career began in 2005 when she made some of her vocal recordings public on Myspace and the publicity resulted in airplay on BBC Radio 1 and a contract with Regal Recordings. Her first mainstream single, "Smile", reached number one on the UK Singles Chart in July 2006. Her debut record, "Alright, Still", was well received, selling over 2.6 million copies worldwide and bringing Allen nominations at the Grammy Awards, the Brit Awards, and the MTV Video Music Awards.


title: Lily Allen

text: In 2009, her second studio album—"It's Not Me, It's You"—saw a genre shift, having more of an electropop feel, rather than the ska and reggae influences of the first one. The album debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and the Australian ARIA Charts and was well received by critics, noting the singer's musical evolution and maturity. It spawned the hit singles "The Fear", "Not Fair" and "Fuck You". This success saw her receive the Brit Award for British Female Solo Artist at the 2010 Brit Awards. Allen and Amy Winehouse were credited with starting a process that led to the "year of the women" media label in 2009 that saw five female artists making music of "experimentalism and fearlessness" nominated for the Mercury Prize. She has released two further albums: "Sheezus" (2014), which debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart, and "No Shame" (2018) debuting at number eight.


title: Lily Allen

text: Allen also ventured into other careers; in 2008, she hosted her own television talk show, "Lily Allen and Friends", on BBC Three before launching her own record label, In the Name Of, in 2011. In 2018, Allen released her autobiographical book, "My Thoughts Exactly." Allen has since resumed her screen acting career from 1998; she appeared in the 2019 film "How to Build a Girl". In 2021, she made her West End debut in the new play "", for which she received a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for Best Actress.


title: Lily Allen

text: Allen was born on 2 May 1985 in Hammersmith, West London, the daughter of Keith Allen, a Welsh-born actor, and British film producer Alison Owen. She has an older sister, Sarah; a younger brother, actor Alfie (subject of her song "Alfie"); and a younger sister, Rebecca. Lily Allen's mother was from a devoutly Catholic working-class Portsmouth family, and was 17 when she gave birth to Sarah. Allen is the goddaughter of Wild Colonials vocalist Angela McCluskey and third-cousin of singer Sam Smith.


title: Lily Allen

text: At the age of three, Allen appeared in "The Comic Strip Presents..." episode "The Yob", which her father had co-written. When she was four, her father left the family. During her early childhood, Allen lived with her family on a council estate. They later settled in Islington. For that time, the family lived with comedian Harry Enfield while her mother dated him. The Clash singer and guitarist Joe Strummer was close to Allen.


title: Lily Allen

text: Allen attended 13 schools, including King Charles III's junior alma mater, the Independent Hill House School, Millfield, Bedales School and was expelled from several of them for drinking and smoking. When Allen was eleven, former University of Victoria music student Rachel Santesso overheard Allen singing "Wonderwall" by Oasis in the school's playground; impressed, Santesso, who later became an award-winning soprano and composer, called Allen into her office the next day and started giving her lunchtime singing lessons. This led to Allen singing "Baby Mine" from Disney's "Dumbo" at a school concert.


title: Lily Allen

text: Allen told "Loveline" that the audience was "brought to tears at the sight of a troubled young girl doing something good". At that point Allen said she knew that music was something she needed to do either as a lifelong vocation or to get it out of her system. She played the piano to grade 5 standard and achieved grade 8 in singing. Allen also played violin, guitar and trumpet and was a member of a chamber choir. Her first solo was "In the Bleak Midwinter". In 1998, Allen appeared in the music video to the Fat Les song "Vindaloo". She dropped out of school at age fifteen, not wanting to "spend a third of her life preparing to work for the next third of her life, to set herself up with a pension for the next third of her life."


title: Lily Allen

text: When her family went to Ibiza on holiday, Allen told her mother that she was staying with friends but remained in Sant Antoni de Portmany instead. She earned money by working at a Plastic Fantastic record store and dealing ecstasy at the age of 15. Allen met her first manager, George Lamb in Ibiza. She first recorded the vocals for "On Me Head Not Off Me Head" written by her father for "" in 2001, and was featured in the 2002 song by her father's group Fat Les, "Who Invented Fish and Chips". She started to work with music producers, and recorded a demo. She was rejected by several labels, which she attributed to her drinking and being the daughter of Keith Allen. She eventually used her father's connections to get signed to London Records in 2002. When the executive who had signed her left, the label lost interest and she left without releasing the folk songs many of which were written by her father. She then studied horticulture to become a florist, but changed her mind and returned to music. Allen began writing songs, while her manager introduced her to production duo Future Cut in 2004. They worked in a small studio in the basement of an office building.


title: Lily Allen

text: In 2005, Allen was signed to Regal Recordings; they gave her £25,000 to produce an album, though they were unable to provide much support for it due to their preoccupation with other releases such as "X&Y" (Coldplay) and "Demon Days" (Gorillaz). Allen then created an account on MySpace and began posting demos that she recorded in November 2005. The demos attracted thousands of listeners, and 500 limited edition 7-inch vinyl singles of "LDN" were rush-released, reselling for as much as £40. Allen also produced two mixtapes – "My First Mixtape" and "My Second Mixtape" – to promote her work. As she accumulated tens of thousands of MySpace friends, "The Observer Music Monthly" (OMM), a magazine published in "The Observer", took interest in March 2006. Few people outside of her label's A&R department knew who she was, so the label was slow in responding to publications wanting to report about her. She received her first major mainstream coverage, appearing in the magazine's cover story two months later.


title: Lily Allen

text: The success convinced her label to allow her more creative control over the album and to use some of the songs that she had written instead of working with mainstream producers. Allen decided to work with producers Greg Kurstin and Mark Ronson, finishing the rest of the album in two weeks. Allen's debut album, "Alright, Still", was released in July 2006. Most of the tracks had been previewed on her MySpace page, including the singles "Smile", "LDN", "Knock 'Em Out", and "Alfie". In September 2006, "Smile" was made available on the US version of iTunes Store. By December 2006, her music video for "Smile" had been played on various music channels as well as the song getting a little airplay. "Entertainment Weekly" named "Alright, Still" as one of the top 10 albums of 2006 despite the fact that it had not yet been released in the US. Allen also did several promotional ads for MTV as their "Discover and Download" artist of the month for January 2007. The album was released in the US on 30 January 2007, landing at 20 on the "Billboard" 200. By January 2009, the album had sold 960,000 copies in the UK and 520,000 copies in the US.


title: Lily Allen

text: In 2007, she played the newly launched Park Stage at the Glastonbury Festival, replacing MIA who had cancelled. During the festival she reunited two members of The Specials, an act that guitarist Lynval Golding claimed played a "massive part" in the group's 2009 reunion. She also sang the vocals on the top ten single, "Oh My God", a cover of the Kaiser Chiefs song by Mark Ronson. On 1 July 2007, Allen appeared at the Concert for Diana held at Wembley Stadium, London to celebrate the life of Princess Diana. She sang "LDN" and "Smile". Allen's single "Littlest Things" from her album produced by Ronson, helped earn him a "Producer of the Year – Non Classical" 2008 Grammy Award. She also provided background vocals to a couple of songs on the Kaiser Chiefs' third album in 2008. Allen won a 2008 BMI songwriting award for "Smile".


title: Lily Allen

text: Allen later performed at a benefit concert for War Child, an international child protection agency that works with children affected by war. Backed by Keane, Allen sang "Smile" and "Everybody's Changing".


title: Lily Allen

text: After the release of her first album, her parent record company, EMI, was taken over by Terra Firma. She also changed her management company from Empire Artist Management to Twenty-First Artists, although her core team remained in place. At the urging of her record company, Allen tried unsuccessfully to create the album with several writers and producers. Allen eventually returned to Greg Kurstin who had written three songs for "Alright, Still." The album was produced by Kurstin at Eagle Rock Studios in Los Angeles. Before returning to Kus, Allen co-wrote the songs for the album with Kurstin who played piano on it. This is a change from her earlier work in which she wrote lyrics for finished tracks. Allen released a statement saying "We decided to try and make bigger sounding, more ethereal songs, real songs ... I wanted to work with one person from start to finish to make it one body of work. I wanted it to feel like it had some sort of integrity. I think I've grown up a bit as a person and I hope it reflects that." She posted two new song demos on her MySpace page and planned to release a mixtape to give her fans an idea of what the new direction was.


title: Lily Allen

text: Allen cancelled a scheduled appearance at the 2008 Isle of Wight Festival, telling festival promoter John Giddings the reason for the cancellation was that her album was behind schedule. Giddings said that the reason given was not acceptable and possibly a lie. Giddings decided not to sue her. Photos of her drunk and topless in the Cannes Film Festival were also widely covered in the press. Her appearance at the 2008 "Glamour" Awards also generated criticism, as she showed up intoxicated wearing a dress covered in decapitated Bambi figures, and had an on-stage, expletive-laced exchange with Elton John. On 29 June 2008, Allen performed at the Glastonbury Festival alongside producer Mark Ronson. An emotional Allen dedicated her performance of "Littlest Things" to her grandmother who died the night before. "It's Not Me, It's You" was first scheduled for an early 2008 release, but her miscarriage and creative issues delayed the release date to the autumn. During autumn 2008, EMI was undergoing restructuring. Due to this environment, a decision was made to move the album's eventual release date. An online game, "Escape the Fear," was created by Matmi as part of the viral marketing campaign targeted at people unaware of Allen or the album. Since its release, "The Game" has topped the worldwide viral charts three times, including the week of Christmas—a highly contested time of the year. By 18 February 2009, "The Game" had been played over two million times. The singer and The Clash guitarist Mick Jones performed The Clash's song "Straight to Hell" on an album for the charity Heroes.


title: Lily Allen

text: "It's Not Me, It's You" was released in February 2009. It debuted at the number 1 position in the UK, Canada, and Australia and the number 5 position in the United States. The album has been certified platinum in the United Kingdom. The release of the album was a factor in EMI more than trebling their earnings. The first single from the album, "The Fear", was number 1 for the first four weeks in the UK after its release. The second single released from the album, "Not Fair", reached the number 9 position. She began her It's Not Me, It's You World Tour in March, touring throughout the next two years until September 2010. Her work on this album with Greg Kurstin earned her the "Songwriters of the Year" at the 2010 Ivor Novello Awards. In addition, she won with Kurstin "Best Song Musically and Lyrically" and "Most Performed Work" for "The Fear". Allen appeared overwhelmed by this recognition from what she considered "real awards". In October 2010, Allen won her second BMI Pop Song Award by the United States music licensing organisation Broadcast Music Incorporated for extensive United States radio airplay of her song, "The Fear".


title: Lily Allen

text: Allen and Jamie Hince, guitarist for The Kills, raised £48,350 for the children's charity The Hoping Foundation. The pair sang "Dream a Little Dream of Me" at a karaoke auction fundraiser.


title: Lily Allen

text: In September 2009, Allen announced that she was considering a career in acting, that she would not renew her record contract, and that she had "no plans" to make another record. In September 2010, she gave her last performance for two and a half years, supporting Muse at Wembley Stadium in London, England. She featured on the UK top five single, "Just Be Good to Green" by Professor Green in June 2010. The following month, she started writing songs for the musical version of "Bridget Jones's Diary" which was scheduled to open in London's West End in 2012. Also in 2011, T-Pain used a verse from Allen's "Who'd Have Known" as the chorus to the song "5 O'Clock", which became the second single from his album "Revolver". The song, which also features Wiz Khalifa, was released in September 2011, and reached number ten on the ""Billboard" Hot 100" chart, making it Allen's first Top 10 single in the United States.


title: Lily Allen

text: In June 2012, Allen confirmed she was in the studio working with Greg Kurstin on new music. She later changed her professional name from Lily Allen to Lily Rose Cooper and appeared on the track "True Love" on Pink's sixth studio album, "The Truth About Love", released in September 2012. In February 2013, she performed live at a Paris fashion show produced by Mark Ronson in what she called her "mumback", and foreshadowed the release of a new album "inspired by her experiences of motherhood" by the end of 2013. In August 2013, she changed her professional name back to Lily Allen and tweeted new music would be arriving "soon".


title: Lily Allen

text: In November 2013, Allen recorded a cover of Keane's "Somewhere Only We Know" for the John Lewis Christmas advert with a portion of the song's sales earnings donated to Save the Children's Philippine Typhoon Appeal campaign. Released as a download single, it reached number one in the UK singles chart on 24 November. On 12 November 2013, Allen premiered the video for her new song "Hard Out Here" on her official website. The song was released as a download the following week and entered the UK singles chart at number nine, giving Allen two simultaneous top ten hit singles. In December 2013, Allen was announced as one of the newest signees at Warner Bros. Records due to Warner Music Group acquiring Parlophone from Universal Music Group in May 2013. On 13 January 2014, the song "Air Balloon" was premiered on BBC Radio 1 and was released on 2 March 2014, as the second single from Allen's third studio album "Sheezus". The album was released on 5 May 2014. Allen performed at the Glastonbury Festival 2014.


title: Lily Allen

text: Following the release of "Sheezus" (2014), Allen had an "identity crisis". She did not enjoy the music she was being asked to create and believed people within the music industry were controlling her musical choices. Allen mentioned on the podcast "News Roast" that she is working on a new album, which will mainly deal with herself, her relationship with her children, the breakdown of her marriage, substance abuse, etc. Allen has been working with Mark Ronson. In late 2017, Allen uploaded numerous songs online in preparation for the album, including the track titled "Family Man". When conceiving the album Allen wanted to work through her problems via music. Allen decided to do this because she felt that people are often led "by outside forces" when they are trying to express themselves – something she wanted to explore when creating "No Shame".


title: Lily Allen

text: Later that year, in December, a song called "Trigger Bang" was leaked and featured rapper Giggs. On 24 January 2018 Allen announced her new album would be called "No Shame". The album was released 8 June 2018. "No Shame" was nominated for a Mercury Prize, with the album being one of 12 to be shortlisted for the award. An electropop album, "No Shame" takes influence from dancehall and reggae, and features confessional lyrics that discuss the breakdown of Allen's marriage and friendships, maternal guilt, substance abuse, along with social and political issues. Upon release "No Shame" was met with generally positive reviews from music critics, who praised the album's mature lyrical content and themes, Allen's artistic evolution, the composition and production. The album peaked at number eight on the UK Albums Chart, it reached the top 40 on the New Zealand and Irish charts and became Allen's fourth consecutive top 10 album in Australia. To promote the album, Allen embarked on her worldwide No Shame Tour.


title: Lily Allen

text: In April 2019, Allen revealed on Beats 1 radio that she was working on her next record which would be a "concept album". Allen later said in March 2020 that her new album only features "odd mentions" of her past addictions as she has "moved on mentally so far from that time". She said: "This album I've been doing, I've been writing for just over a year, but I feel like I've moved on mentally so far from that time."


title: Lily Allen

text: In the Glastonbury Festival 2022, Allen appeared during Olivia Rodrigo's set to perform "Fuck You", as a protest against the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that abortion was not protected by the Constitution of the United States. "The Guardian" described it as a "thrilling and furious" moment. Allen later said that she was unsure that she could perform "on a stage like that sober again", being nearly three years sober.


title: Lily Allen

text: In June 2021, Allen announced that she would be playing the lead role of Jenny in the West End play "" at the Noël Coward Theatre from 3 August 2021. The play, directed by Matthew Dunster and written by Danny Robins saw Allen debut in August 2021. Reviewing the play for "The Independent", Annabel Nugent wrote, "Allen is superb as Jenny. Exhaustion thrums a fraction below her palpable fear – just visible enough in her performance to have you questioning Jenny's version of events". In 2022, she received a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for Best Actress, and also won a WhatsOnStage Award for her performance.


title: Lily Allen

text: Allen made an appearance as a lady-in-waiting in the 1998 film "Elizabeth", which was co-produced by her mother. She later appeared as Elizabeth Taylor in "How to Build a Girl" in July 2019, alongside her brother Alfie.


title: Lily Allen

text: On 10 June 2022, it was announced that she would star alongside Freema Agyeman in Sharon Horgan's comedy-drama "Dreamland" for Sky Max. It was developed from a short starring Morgana Robinson that aired in 2017.


title: Lily Allen

text: Allen signed a one series contract to present her own BBC Three TV show titled "Lily Allen and Friends" based on the social networking phenomenon that helped to launch her music career. Guests included Mark Ronson, Joanna Page, James Corden, Lauren Laverne, Róisín Murphy, Louis Walsh, and Danny Dyer. The show attracted only 2 per cent of the total multi-channel audience despite a high-profile nationwide marketing campaign. Citing Allen's rapid development as a TV host and her popularity among its target audience BBC Three announced it was renewing "Lily Allen and Friends" for a second season. BBC Three controller Danny Cohen later said that the show would not air in the spring of 2009 as originally scheduled because of music commitments.


title: Lily Allen

text: In 2009, Allen was named the face of the National Portrait Gallery as part of the gallery's marketing campaign. The picture was photographed by Nadav Kander emblazoned with the words, "vocalist, lyricist, florist". Karl Lagerfeld, the head designer for Chanel personally hired and photographed Allen for a campaign to promote a luxury line of handbags due to launch in September 2009. Allen and her sister opened their own clothing store titled "Lucy in Disguise" on 15 September 2010. Allen did not entirely abandon music during this period, in which she focused on starting her family. In January 2011, she launched her own record label, In the Name Of, with financial backing from Sony Music. The label released the debut album of Tom Odell. The label closed in 2014. In May 2016, Allen announced the launch of her second record label, Bank Holiday Records. British-American R&B singer Celeste was one of the first artists to sign to the label.


title: Lily Allen

text: On 20 September 2018, Allen published the memoir "My Thoughts Exactly" with Blink Publishing. It was nominated for the FutureBook Campaign of the Year. The book is one of seven chosen by the "Evening Standard" as the "best celebrity memoirs of 2018". It is one of nine books listed under the "Showbusiness" category of "The Guardian"s best books of 2018.


title: Lily Allen

text: In October 2020, Allen worked with the sex tech company Womanizer to create her own sex toy called "Liberty", a clitoral pump. She is the chief liberation officer at Womanizer and is heading up their #IMasturbate campaign which encourages women to embrace their own sexuality. Liberty was positively reviewed in "The Independent" and "Mashable". The product sucks and massages the clitoris without making direct contact, using sonic waves to induce sexual pleasure. It is waterproof and has six different intensity levels. Allen had previously recommended Womanizer's products in her autobiography "My Thoughts Exactly".


title: Lily Allen

text: Allen has spoken publicly about her seven-year stalking ordeal and the effect it had on her life. Her stalker, Alex Gray, first made contact with Allen in 2008 when he sent her a series of tweets, claiming he had written her song "The Fear", under the Twitter handle "@lilyallenisRIP". He then sent Allen threatening letters to her home, her clothes shop, her record label and her manager's office. In October 2015, he sent an email to his mother stating he was planning on murdering a celebrity and went on to spend nights in Allen's back garden, broke into her bedroom whilst she was sleeping, and ultimately forced Allen to move. Allen has strongly criticised the Metropolitan Police for their inaction in the case, which included refusals to show Allen a picture of her stalker, lending her a panic alarm before demanding it back and refusal to believe stalking incidents were linked. In April 2016, Gray was convicted of burglary and harassment. At Harrow Crown Court on 10 June, Judge Martyn Barklem sentenced him to an indefinite hospital order. Gray was also made the subject of a restraining order and banned from entering the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham or the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.


title: Lily Allen

text: Allen said that she isolated herself following the stalking incidents, believing that "nobody was taking me seriously because the police weren't taking me seriously". This coincided with her divorce, in which she says "everyone sided with [Cooper]", and her album "No Shame" became the outlet for her issues. In February 2017, Allen said that she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.


title: Lily Allen

text: Allen has been quite outspoken regarding her body image throughout her career. In an interview for "Lorraine", an ITV breakfast program, Allen mentions that she "used to sleep for days so that [she] didn't eat" and that her relationship with her body was "not great" in her 20s. When asked about being influenced by the pressure of the music industry to "look a certain way in order to sell records," she replied that due to her defiant way of dealing with these unrealistic expectations, she was often criticized far more than the average musician. In January 2021, Allen gave an interview to discuss how she became addicted to the prescription drug Adderall in 2014 in order to lose weight before supporting Miley Cyrus on her Bangerz tour. She began a journey of recovery soon after when she was tempted to try heroin.


title: Lily Allen

text: In November 2010, she took legal action against Associated Newspapers, the parent company of the "Daily Mail" after the "Daily Mail" published photographs of her home, citing invasion of privacy and copyright infringement.


title: Lily Allen

text: Allen began dating musician Ed Simons of the Chemical Brothers in September 2007, and in December, Allen announced that she and Simons were expecting a child. Allen announced that she suffered a miscarriage in January 2008. However, in her 2018 memoir "My Thoughts Exactly", Allen writes that she "fake[d]" the miscarriage due to fears over how tabloids would report the story. After five months of dating, Allen's relationship with Simons ended. Allen has stated that she spent three weeks in a psychiatric clinic due to depression.


title: Lily Allen

text: In July 2009, Allen began dating Sam Cooper, a builder and decorator. On 5 August 2010, Allen announced that she was pregnant with her and Cooper's first child, later confirmed to be a boy, due early in 2011. She experienced complications early in the pregnancy, including "about a week and a half of really heavy bleeding." In late October, six months into her pregnancy, Allen contracted a viral infection which caused her to suffer a stillbirth, announced on 1 November. On 6 November, Allen was admitted to a hospital, where she responded well to treatment for septicaemia. In February 2017, Allen explained that she was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder after the stillbirth.


title: Lily Allen

text: Allen and Cooper became engaged in December 2010 while on holiday in Bali. They wed on 11 June 2011 at St. James Church in Cranham, Gloucestershire, England. The designer of Allen's wedding dress confirmed she was several months pregnant on the wedding day. Allen gave birth to her daughter, Ethel Mary, in 2011. She gave birth to her second daughter, Marnie Rose, in 2013, following which she experienced postnatal depression.


title: Lily Allen

text: On 2 September 2018, Allen posted on Instagram that she had had sex with female escorts in 2014 whilst married to Cooper, and whilst on tour promoting "Sheezus". Allen had included details of these events in her book "My Thoughts Exactly", and said that she made the Instagram post as the "Daily Mail" were planning to publish an article about it the following day. Saying that "I'm not proud, but I'm not ashamed", Allen has linked the events to her postnatal depression and the breakdown of her marriage. Allen has criticised the press for portraying the events as a "lesbian prostitute sex romp".


title: Lily Allen

text: In "My Thoughts Exactly", Allen writes that she had an affair with Liam Gallagher when he was married to Nicole Appleton. In mid-2015, Allen and Cooper broke up, after she told him about her acts of infidelity. In June 2018, it was publicly announced that a "friendly divorce" from Cooper had been finalised and they would share custody of their children.


title: Lily Allen

text: Allen began a relationship with actor David Harbour in 2019. They made their red carpet debut during the 26th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards. A day after they obtained their marriage certificate, they got married on 7 September 2020 in Las Vegas, in a wedding that was officiated by an Elvis impersonator.


title: Lily Allen

text: Allen considers herself to be a socialist. Although she is a staunch supporter of the Labour Party, she was credited with helping inspire a parliamentary rebellion against former Prime Minister Gordon Brown when she wrote to all members of parliament asking them to back an amendment to an energy bill, requiring a reward scheme for home production of renewable energy. She later confirmed her support for the Labour Party and then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown in particular.


title: Lily Allen

text: After the British government's plans to implement a three-strikes policy for file sharing copyright infringement, Allen came out in support for disconnecting repeat offenders. Creating a blog titled "It's Not Alright" against file sharing, it subsequently came to light that she had copied text directly from the Techdirt website of an interview with 50 Cent, without attribution. This led to accusations that Allen had infringed on other artists' copyrights by creating mix tapes early in her career, that she then made available via her website. A group of supporters of filesharing, operating under the name "Anonymous", launched a denial of service attack dubbed Operation Payback that shut down Allen's website and targeted other critics.


title: Lily Allen

text: On 1 October 2009, Allen and several other musicians released the world's first digital musical petition aimed at pressuring world leaders attending the December 2009 climate change summit in Copenhagen. The petition included a cover of the song "Beds Are Burning" by Midnight Oil.


title: Lily Allen

text: During the London assembly and mayoral elections in April 2016, Allen announced that she would be giving "half her vote to the Women's Equality Party" – by voting for them on the London-wide Assembly list but voting Labour elsewhere.


title: Lily Allen

text: In June 2016, Allen published several tweets and attended protests in support of Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, after mass resignations from his cabinet and a leadership challenge.


title: Lily Allen

text: On 15 June 2017, Allen appeared on Channel 4 News to discuss the Grenfell Tower fire. She claimed that "the death count has been downplayed by the mainstream media", disputing the then official figure of 17 fatalities by saying, "I'm hearing from people that the figure is much closer to 150". The official death toll is now 72.


title: Lily Allen

text: In November 2019, Allen declared during the 2019 UK general election campaign that the Labour Party manifesto was "the best I've ever seen" and shared a picture of her polling card with the caption: "Tories OUT."


title: Lily Allen

text: Due to her outspokenness, Allen was the subject of many controversies early in her career. Disparaging remarks about musicians such as Luke Pritchard of The Kooks, Bob Geldof, Cheryl, Nicola Roberts, Amy Winehouse, Kylie Minogue and Katy Perry have all garnered minor press attention. She later said that making fun of other pop stars was a result of a lack of confidence, saying "I felt like 'Oh God, I'm short, fat, ugly and I hate all these people who flaunt their beauty.'"


title: Lily Allen

text: On 28 June 2007, Allen was arrested in London for allegedly assaulting photographer Kevin Rush while she was leaving a nightclub in London's West End. Prior to this, she had expressed discomfort with attention from the paparazzi on her Myspace blog.<ref name="http://www.people.com/people/article/0,20044150,00.html"></ref> By February 2009, she had stopped addressing controversies about herself on her blog because she found it "boring when people just pick stuff up and write about it. People get hurt, people get upset." In September 2009, she shut down her Myspace account and stopped social networking completely in December due to the abuse she was taking.


title: Lily Allen

text: In May 2009, French football magazine "So Foot" published a fake interview in which Allen was quoted as making derogatory remarks about David and Victoria Beckham and Ashley and Cheryl Cole. Some of the material was reprinted in the British tabloid "The Sun". Both publications later apologised and paid damages to Allen. In October 2009, after having created her career on MySpace, Allen deleted her social media accounts and announced "I am now a neo-luddite. Goodbye". She re-activated her accounts four months later in February 2010.


title: Lily Allen

text: Allen's November 2013 video for "Hard out Here" was accused of being racist for its use of mostly black dancers in an allegedly "disapproving" manner. Allen responded that ethnicity was not a factor in hiring the dancers, and the video was a lighthearted satirical look at objectification of women in modern pop music. In November 2016, Allen apologised for the video in an interview with Annie Mac, stating "I definitely wanted to make a feminist statement. But I was guilty of assuming that there was a one-size-fits-all where feminism is concerned."


title: Lily Allen

text: Allen's early released songs saw her singing against retro productions. Her songs also featured other elements, such as the ska influence on second single, "LDN". She was also noted for her liberal use of crude words in her lyrics. Allen has said she cringes now when listening to tracks from "Alright, Still", as it reminds her that she was a "sort of over-excitable teenager who desperately wanted attention" when she wrote it. Wanting to move on from the retro sound that many other artists had adapted since her debut, Allen ventured in a new direction sonically and lyrically in her second studio album, "It's Not Me, It's You". "The Fear", the first single from the album, is an electro-pop track denouncing consumerism. Her new musical direction and willingness to write lyrics that tackled less-common subjects were lauded by some critics.


title: Lily Allen

text: Joe Strummer, a close friend of Allen's father Keith, played mixtapes of Brazilian music and Jamaican reggae and ska when she was young. Allen stated that she had "always been into very black music" such as ska, reggae, and hip hop music. Since she did not know how to rap, she chose to use reggae as a point of reference when making "Alright, Still". The album's music blends ska and reggae with pop melodies. Allen's melodies are influenced by the jazz improvisation techniques of American singers Blossom Dearie and Ella Fitzgerald. The album's beats are influenced by various genres such as jazz and grime. Singers Lady Gaga, Tegan and Sara, Bridgit Mendler, Jullie and Victoria Justice have each been influenced by Allen.


title: Lily Allen

text: Allen has received 31 awards and 73 nominations for her music, including nominations for nine BRIT Awards (one won), one Grammy Award, three Ivor Novello Awards (three won), one Mercury Prize and twelve NME Awards (three won). For her acting, she has been nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award.


title: Henry Ford

text: Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist, business magnate, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. By creating the first automobile that middle-class Americans could afford, he converted the automobile from an expensive luxury into an accessible conveyance that profoundly impacted the landscape of the 20th century.


title: Henry Ford

text: His introduction of the Ford Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry. As the Ford Motor Company owner, he became one of the richest and best-known people in the world. He is credited with "Fordism", the mass production of inexpensive goods coupled with high wages for workers. Ford had a global vision, with consumerism as the key to peace. His intense commitment to systematically lowering costs resulted in many technical and business innovations, including a franchise system that put dealerships throughout North America and major cities on six continents. Ford left most of his vast wealth to the Ford Foundation and arranged for his family to permanently control it.


title: Henry Ford

text: Ford was also known for promoting antisemitic content, including "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", through his newspaper "The Dearborn Independent", and his book, "The International Jew." In July, 1938, four months after the German annexation of Austria, Ford accepted the highest medal that Nazi Germany bestowed on a foreigner, the Grand Cross of the Order of the German Eagle.


title: Henry Ford

text: Henry Ford was born July 30, 1863, on a farm in Springwells Township, Michigan. His father, William Ford (1826–1905), was born in County Cork, Ireland, to a family that had emigrated from Somerset, England in the 16th century. His mother, Mary Ford (née Litogot; 1839–1876), was born in Michigan as the youngest child of Belgian immigrants; her parents died when she was a child and she was adopted by neighbors, the O'Herns. Henry Ford's siblings were Margaret Ford (1867–1938); Jane Ford (c. 1868–1945); William Ford (1871–1917) and Robert Ford (1873–1934). Ford finished eighth grade at a one room school, Springwells Middle School. He never attended high school; he later took a bookkeeping course at a commercial school.


title: Henry Ford

text: His father gave him a pocket watch when he was 12. At 15, Ford dismantled and reassembled the timepieces of friends and neighbors dozens of times, gaining the reputation of a watch repairman. At twenty, Ford walked four miles to their Episcopal church every Sunday.


title: Henry Ford

text: Ford was devastated when his mother died in 1876. His father expected him to take over the family farm eventually, but he despised farm work. He later wrote, "I never had any particular love for the farm—it was the mother on the farm I loved."


title: Henry Ford

text: In 1879, Ford left home to work as an apprentice machinist in Detroit, first with James F. Flower & Bros., and later with the Detroit Dry Dock Co. In 1882, he returned to Dearborn to work on the family farm, where he became adept at operating the Westinghouse portable steam engine. He was later hired by Westinghouse to service their steam engines.


title: Henry Ford

text: Ford stated two significant events occurred in 1875 when he was 12. He received the watch, and he witnessed the operation of a Nichols and Shepard road engine, "...the first vehicle other than horse-drawn that I had ever seen". In his farm workshop, Ford built a "steam wagon or tractor" and a steam car, but thought "steam was not suitable for light vehicles," as "the boiler was dangerous." Ford also said that he "did not see the use of experimenting with electricity, due to the expense of trolley wires, and "no storage battery was in sight of a weight that was practical." In 1885, Ford repaired an Otto engine, and in 1887 he built a four-cycle model with a one-inch bore and a three-inch stroke. In 1890, Ford started work on a two-cylinder engine.


title: Henry Ford

text: Ford stated, "In 1892, I completed my first motor car, powered by a two-cylinder four horsepower motor, with a two-and-half-inch bore and a six-inch stroke, which was connected to a countershaft by a belt and then to the rear wheel by a chain. The belt was shifted by a clutch lever to control speeds at 10 or 20 miles per hour, augmented by a throttle. Other features included 28-inch wire bicycle wheels with rubber tires, a foot brake, a 3-gallon gasoline tank, and later, a water jacket around the cylinders for cooling. Ford added that "in the spring of 1893 the machine was running to my partial satisfaction and giving an opportunity further to test out the design and material on the road." Between 1895 and 1896, Ford drove that machine about 1000 miles. He then started a second car in 1896, eventually building three of them in his home workshop.


title: Henry Ford

text: Ford married Clara Jane Bryant (1866–1950) on April 11, 1888, and supported himself by farming and running a sawmill. They had one child, Edsel Ford (1893–1943).


title: Henry Ford

text: In 1891, Ford became an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company of Detroit. After his promotion to Chief Engineer in 1893, he had enough time and money to devote attention to his experiments on gasoline engines. These experiments culminated in 1896 with the completion of a self-propelled vehicle, which he named the Ford Quadricycle. He test-drove it on June 4. After various test drives, Ford brainstormed ways to improve the Quadricycle.


title: Henry Ford

text: Also in 1896, Ford attended a meeting of Edison executives, where he was introduced to Thomas Edison. Edison approved of Ford's automobile experimentation. Encouraged by Edison, Ford designed and built a second vehicle, completing it in 1898. Backed by the capital of Detroit lumber baron William H. Murphy, Ford resigned from the Edison Company and founded the Detroit Automobile Company on August 5, 1899. However, the automobiles produced were of a lower quality and higher price than Ford wanted. Ultimately, the company was not successful and was dissolved in January 1901.


title: Henry Ford

text: With the help of C. Harold Wills, Ford designed, built, and successfully raced a 26-horsepower automobile in October 1901. With this success, Murphy and other stockholders in the Detroit Automobile Company formed the Henry Ford Company on November 30, 1901, with Ford as chief engineer. In 1902, Murphy brought in Henry M. Leland as a consultant; Ford, in response, left the company bearing his name. With Ford gone, Leland renamed the company the Cadillac Automobile Company.


title: Henry Ford

text: Teaming up with former racing cyclist Tom Cooper, Ford also produced the 80+ horsepower racer "999," which Barney Oldfield was to drive to victory in a race in October 1902. Ford received the backing of an old acquaintance, Alexander Y. Malcomson, a Detroit-area coal dealer. They formed a partnership, "Ford & Malcomson, Ltd." to manufacture automobiles. Ford went to work designing an inexpensive automobile, and the duo leased a factory and contracted with a machine shop owned by John and Horace E. Dodge to supply over $160,000 in parts. Sales were slow, and a crisis arose when the Dodge brothers demanded payment for their first shipment.


title: Henry Ford

text: In response, Malcomson brought in another group of investors and convinced the Dodge Brothers to accept a portion of the new company. Ford & Malcomson was reincorporated as the Ford Motor Company on June 16, 1903, with $28,000 capital. The original investors included Ford and Malcomson, the Dodge brothers, Malcomson's uncle John S. Gray, Malcolmson's secretary James Couzens, and two of Malcomson's lawyers, John W. Anderson and Horace Rackham. Because of Ford's volatility, Gray was elected president of the company. Ford then demonstrated a newly designed car on the ice of Lake St. Clair, driving in 39.4 seconds and setting a new land speed record at . Convinced by this success, race driver Barney Oldfield, who named this new Ford model "999" in honor of the fastest locomotive of the day, took the car around the country, making the Ford brand known throughout the United States. Ford also was one of the early backers of the Indianapolis 500.


title: Henry Ford

text: The Model T debuted on October 1, 1908. It had the steering wheel on the left, which every other company soon copied. The entire engine and transmission were enclosed; the four cylinders were cast in a solid block; the suspension used two semi-elliptic springs. The car was very simple to drive, and easy and cheap to repair. It was so cheap at $825 in 1908 ($ today), with the price falling every year, that by the 1920s, a majority of American drivers had learned to drive on the Model T, despite the fact that drivers who were only familiar with the Model T's unique foot-operated planetary transmission and steering-column operated throttle-cum-accelerator had to learn a completely different set of skills to drive any other gasoline-powered automobile of the time.


title: Henry Ford

text: Ford created a huge publicity machine in Detroit to ensure every newspaper carried stories and ads about the new product. Ford's network of local dealers made the car ubiquitous in almost every city in North America. As independent dealers, the franchises grew rich and publicized not just the Ford but also the concept of automobiling; local motor clubs sprang up to help new drivers and encourage them to explore the countryside. Ford was always eager to sell to farmers, who looked at the vehicle as a commercial device to help their business. Sales skyrocketed—several years posted 100% gains on the previous year. In 1913, Ford introduced moving assembly belts into his plants, which enabled an enormous increase in production. Although Ford is often credited with the idea, contemporary sources indicate that the concept and development came from employees Clarence Avery, Peter E. Martin, Charles E. Sorensen, and C. Harold Wills. (See Ford Piquette Avenue Plant)


title: Henry Ford

text: Sales passed 250,000 in 1914. By 1916, as the price dropped to $360 for the basic touring car, sales reached 472,000.


title: Henry Ford

text: By 1918, half of all cars in the United States were Model Ts. All new cars were black; as Ford wrote in his autobiography, "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black." Until the development of the assembly line, which mandated black because of its quicker drying time, Model Ts were available in other colors, including red. The design was fervently promoted and defended by Ford, and production continued as late as 1927; the final total production was 15,007,034. This record stood for the next 45 years, and was achieved in 19 years from the introduction of the first Model T (1908).


title: Henry Ford

text: Henry Ford turned the presidency of Ford Motor Company over to his son Edsel Ford in December 1918. Henry retained final decision authority and sometimes reversed the decisions of his son. Ford started another company, Henry Ford and Son, and made a show of taking himself and his best employees to the new company; the goal was to scare the remaining holdout stockholders of the Ford Motor Company to sell their stakes to him before they lost most of their value. (He was determined to have full control over strategic decisions.) The ruse worked, and Ford and Edsel purchased all remaining stock from the other investors, thus giving the family sole ownership of the company.


title: Henry Ford

text: In 1922, Ford also purchased Lincoln Motor Co., founded by Cadillac founder Henry Leland and his son Wilfred during World War I. The Lelands briefly stayed to manage the company, but were soon expelled from it. Despite this acquisition of a premium car maker, Henry displayed relatively little enthusiasm for luxury automobiles in contrast to Edsel, who actively sought to expand Ford into the upscale market. The original Lincoln Model L that the Lelands had introduced in 1920 was also kept in production, untouched for a decade until it became too outdated. It was replaced by the modernized Model K in 1931.


title: Henry Ford

text: By the mid-1920s, General Motors was rapidly rising as the leading American automobile manufacturer. GM president Alfred Sloan established the company's "price ladder" whereby GM would offer an automobile for "every purse and purpose" in contrast to Ford's lack of interest in anything outside the low-end market. Although Henry Ford was against replacing the Model T, now 16 years old, Chevrolet was mounting a bold new challenge as GM's entry-level division in the company's price ladder. Ford also resisted the increasingly popular idea of payment plans for cars. With Model T sales starting to slide, Ford was forced to relent and approve work on a successor model, shutting down production for 18 months. During this time, Ford constructed a massive new assembly plant at River Rouge for the new Model A, which launched in 1927.


title: Henry Ford

text: In addition to its price ladder, GM also quickly established itself at the forefront of automotive styling under Harley Earl's Arts & Color Department, another area of automobile design that Henry Ford did not entirely appreciate or understand. Ford would not have a true equivalent of the GM styling department for many years.


title: Henry Ford

text: By 1926, flagging sales of the Model T finally convinced Ford to make a new model. He pursued the project with a great deal of interest in the design of the engine, chassis, and other mechanical necessities, while leaving the body design to his son. Although Ford fancied himself an engineering genius, he had little formal training in mechanical engineering and could not even read a blueprint. A talented team of engineers performed most of the actual work of designing the Model A (and later the flathead V8) with Ford supervising them closely and giving them overall direction. Edsel also managed to prevail over his father's initial objections in the inclusion of a sliding-shift transmission.


title: Henry Ford

text: The result was the successful Ford Model A, introduced in December 1927 and produced through 1931, with a total output of more than four million. Subsequently, the Ford company adopted an annual model change system similar to that recently pioneered by its competitor General Motors (and still in use by automakers today). Not until the 1930s did Ford overcome his objection to finance companies, and the Ford-owned Universal Credit Corporation became a major car-financing operation. Henry Ford still resisted many technological innovations such as hydraulic brakes and all-metal roofs, which Ford vehicles did not adopt until 1935–36. For 1932 however, Ford dropped a bombshell with the flathead Ford V8, the first low-price eight-cylinder engine. The flathead V8, variants of which were used in Ford vehicles for 20 years, was the result of a secret project launched in 1930 and Henry had initially considered a radical X-8 engine before agreeing to a conventional design. It gave Ford a reputation as a performance make well-suited for hot-rodding.


title: Henry Ford

text: Ford did not believe in accountants; he amassed one of the world's largest fortunes without ever having his company audited under his administration. Without an accounting department, Ford had no way of knowing exactly how much money was being taken in and spent each month, and the company's bills and invoices were reportedly guessed at by weighing them on a scale. Not until 1956 would Ford be a publicly-traded company.


title: Henry Ford

text: Also, at Edsel's insistence, Ford launched Mercury in 1939 as a mid-range make to challenge Dodge and Buick, although Henry also displayed relatively little enthusiasm for it.


title: Henry Ford

text: Ford was a pioneer of "welfare capitalism", designed to improve the lot of his workers and especially to reduce the heavy turnover that had many departments hiring 300 men per year to fill 100 slots. Efficiency meant hiring and keeping the best workers.


title: Henry Ford

text: Ford astonished the world in 1914 by offering a $5 per day wage ($ today), which more than doubled the rate of most of his workers. A Cleveland, Ohio, newspaper editorialized that the announcement "shot like a blinding rocket through the dark clouds of the present industrial depression". The move proved extremely profitable; instead of constant employee turnover, the best mechanics in Detroit flocked to Ford, bringing their human capital and expertise, raising productivity, and lowering training costs. Ford announced his $5-per-day program on January 5, 1914, raising the minimum daily pay from $2.34 to $5 for qualifying male workers.


title: Henry Ford

text: Detroit was already a high-wage city, but competitors were forced to raise wages or lose their best workers. Ford's policy proved that paying employees more would enable them to afford the cars they were producing and thus boost the local economy. He viewed the increased wages as profit-sharing linked with rewarding those who were most productive and of good character. It may have been Couzens who convinced Ford to adopt the $5-day wage.


title: Henry Ford

text: Real profit-sharing was offered to employees who had worked at the company for six months or more, and, importantly, conducted their lives in a manner of which Ford's "Social Department" approved. They frowned on heavy drinking, gambling, and on what are now called deadbeat dads. The Social Department used 50 investigators and support staff to maintain employee standards; a large percentage of workers were able to qualify for this "profit-sharing".


title: Henry Ford

text: Ford's incursion into his employees' private lives was highly controversial, and he soon backed off from the most intrusive aspects. By the time he wrote his 1922 memoir, he had spoken of the Social Department and the private conditions for profit-sharing in the past tense. He admitted that "paternalism has no place in the industry. Welfare work that consists in prying into employees' private concerns is out of date. Men need counsel and men need help, often special help; and all this ought to be rendered for decency's sake. But the broad workable plan of investment and participation will do more to solidify the industry and strengthen the organization than will any social work on the outside. Without changing the principle we have changed the method of payment."


title: Henry Ford

text: In addition to raising his workers' wages, Ford also introduced a new, reduced workweek in 1926. The decision was made in 1922, when Ford and Crowther described it as six 8-hour days, giving a 48-hour week, but in 1926 it was announced as five 8-hour days, giving a 40-hour week. The program apparently started with Saturday being designated a workday, before becoming a day off sometime later. On May 1, 1926, the Ford Motor Company's factory workers switched to a five-day, 40-hour workweek, with the company's office workers making the transition the following August.


title: Henry Ford

text: Ford had decided to boost productivity, as workers were expected to put more effort into their work in exchange for more leisure time. Ford also believed decent leisure time was good for business, giving workers additional time to purchase and consume more goods. However, charitable concerns also played a role. Ford explained, "It is high time to rid ourselves of the notion that leisure for workmen is either 'lost time' or a class privilege."


title: Henry Ford

text: Ford was adamantly against labor unions. He explained his views on unions in Chapter 18 of "My Life and Work". He thought they were too heavily influenced by leaders who would end up doing more harm than good for workers despite their ostensible good motives. Most wanted to restrict productivity as a means to foster employment, but Ford saw this as self-defeating because, in his view, productivity was necessary for economic prosperity to exist.


title: Henry Ford

text: He believed that productivity gains that obviated certain jobs would nevertheless stimulate the broader economy and grow new jobs elsewhere, whether within the same corporation or in others. Ford also believed that union leaders had a perverse incentive to foment perpetual socio-economic crises to maintain their power. Meanwhile, he believed that smart managers had an incentive to do right by their workers, because doing so would maximize their profits. However, Ford did acknowledge that many managers were basically too bad at managing to understand this fact. But Ford believed that eventually, if good managers such as he could fend off the attacks of misguided people from both left and right (i.e., both socialists and bad-manager reactionaries), the good managers would create a socio-economic system wherein neither bad management nor bad unions could find enough support to continue existing.


title: Henry Ford

text: To forestall union activity, Ford promoted Harry Bennett, a former Navy boxer, to head the Service Department. Bennett employed various intimidation tactics to quash union organizing. On March 7, 1932, during the Great Depression, unemployed Detroit auto workers staged the Ford Hunger March to the Ford River Rouge Complex to present 14 demands to Henry Ford. The Dearborn police department and Ford security guards opened fire on workers leading to over sixty injuries and five deaths. On May 26, 1937, Bennett's security men beat members of the United Automobile Workers (UAW), including Walter Reuther, with clubs. While Bennett's men were beating the UAW representatives, the supervising police chief on the scene was Carl Brooks, an alumnus of Bennett's Service Department, and [Brooks] "did not give orders to intervene". The following day photographs of the injured UAW members appeared in newspapers, later becoming known as The Battle of the Overpass.


title: Henry Ford

text: In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Edsel—who was president of the company—thought Ford had to come to a collective bargaining agreement with the unions because the violence, work disruptions, and bitter stalemates could not go on forever. But Ford, who still had the final veto in the company on a "de facto" basis even if not an official one, refused to cooperate. For several years, he kept Bennett in charge of talking to the unions trying to organize the Ford Motor Company. Sorensen's memoir makes clear that Ford's purpose in putting Bennett in charge was to make sure no agreements were ever reached.


title: Henry Ford

text: The Ford Motor Company was the last Detroit automaker to recognize the UAW, despite pressure from the rest of the U.S. automotive industry and even the U.S. government. A sit-down strike by the UAW union in April 1941 closed the River Rouge Plant. Sorensen recounted that a distraught Henry Ford was very close to following through with a threat to break up the company rather than cooperate. Still, his wife Clara told him she would leave him if he destroyed the family business. In her view, it would not be worth the chaos it would create. Ford complied with his wife's ultimatum and even agreed with her in retrospect. Overnight, the Ford Motor Company went from the most stubborn holdout among automakers to the one with the most favorable UAW contract terms. The contract was signed in June 1941. About a year later, Ford told Walter Reuther, "It was one of the most sensible things Harry Bennett ever did when he got the UAW into this plant." Reuther inquired, "What do you mean?" Ford replied, "Well, you've been fighting General Motors and the Wall Street crowd. Now you're in here and we've given you a union shop and more than you got out of them. That puts you on our side, doesn't it? We can fight General Motors and Wall Street together, eh?"


title: Henry Ford

text: Like other automobile companies, Ford entered the aviation business during World War I, building Liberty engines. After the war, it returned to auto manufacturing until 1925, when Ford acquired the Stout Metal Airplane Company.


title: Henry Ford

text: Ford's most successful aircraft was the Ford 4AT Trimotor, often called the "Tin Goose" because of its corrugated metal construction. It used a new alloy called Alclad that combined the corrosion resistance of aluminum with the strength of duralumin. The plane was similar to Fokker's V.VII-3m, and some say that Ford's engineers surreptitiously measured the Fokker plane and then copied it. The Trimotor first flew on June 11, 1926, and was the first successful U.S. passenger airliner, accommodating about 12 passengers in a rather uncomfortable fashion. Several variants were also used by the U.S. Army. The Smithsonian Institution has honored Ford for changing the aviation industry. 199 Trimotors were built before it was discontinued in 1933, when the Ford Airplane Division shut down because of poor sales during the Great Depression.


title: Henry Ford

text: Ford opposed war, which he viewed as a terrible waste, and supported causes that opposed military intervention. Ford became highly critical of those who he felt financed war, and he tried to stop them. In 1915, the pacifist Rosika Schwimmer gained favor with Ford, who agreed to fund a Peace Ship to Europe, where World War I was raging. He led 170 other peace activists. Ford's Episcopalian pastor, Reverend Samuel S. Marquis, accompanied him on the mission. Marquis headed Ford's Sociology Department from 1913 to 1921. Ford talked to President Woodrow Wilson about the mission but had no government support. His group went to neutral Sweden and the Netherlands to meet with peace activists. A target of much ridicule, Ford left the ship as soon as it reached Sweden. In 1915, Ford blamed "German-Jewish bankers" for instigating the war.


title: Henry Ford

text: According to biographer Steven Watts, Ford's status as a leading industrialist gave him a worldview that warfare was wasteful folly that retarded long-term economic growth. The losing side in the war typically suffered heavy damage. Small business were especially hurt, for it takes years to recuperate. He argued in many newspaper articles that a focus on business efficiency would discourage warfare because, “If every man who manufactures an article would make the very best he can in the very best way at the very lowest possible price the world would be kept out of war, for commercialists would not have to search for outside markets which the other fellow covets.” Ford admitted that munitions makers enjoyed wars, but he argued the most businesses wanted to avoid wars and instead work to manufacture and sell useful goods, hire workers, and generate steady long-term profits.


title: Henry Ford

text: Ford's British factories produced Fordson tractors to increase the British food supply, as well as trucks and warplane engines. When the U.S. entered the war in 1917, Ford went quiet on foreign policy. His company became a major supplier of weapons, especially the Liberty engine for warplanes and anti-submarine boats.


title: Henry Ford

text: In 1918, with the war on and the League of Nations a growing issue in global politics, President Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, encouraged Ford to run for a Michigan seat in the U.S. Senate. Wilson believed that Ford could tip the scales in Congress in favor of Wilson's proposed League. "You are the only man in Michigan who can be elected and help bring about the peace you so desire," the president wrote Ford. Ford wrote back: "If they want to elect me let them do so, but I won't make a penny's investment." Ford did run, however, and came within 7,000 votes of winning, out of more than 400,000 cast statewide. He was defeated in a close election by the Republican candidate, Truman Newberry, a former United States Secretary of the Navy. Ford remained a staunch Wilsonian and supporter of the League. When Wilson made a major speaking tour in the summer of 1919 to promote the League, Ford helped fund the attendant publicity.


title: Henry Ford

text: Ford had opposed the United States' entry into World War II and continued to believe that international business could generate the prosperity that would head off wars. Ford "insisted that war was the product of greedy financiers who sought profit in human destruction". In 1939, he went so far as to claim that the torpedoing of U.S. merchant ships by German submarines was the result of conspiratorial activities undertaken by financier war-makers. The financiers to whom he was referring was Ford's code for Jews; he had also accused Jews of fomenting the First World War. In the run-up to World War II and when the war erupted in 1939, he reported that he did not want to trade with belligerents. Like many other businessmen of the Great Depression era, he never liked or entirely trusted the Franklin Roosevelt Administration, and thought Roosevelt was inching the U.S. closer to war. Ford continued to do business with Nazi Germany, including the manufacture of war materiel. However, he also agreed to build warplane engines for the British government. In early 1940, he boasted that Ford Motor Company would soon be able to produce 1,000 U.S. warplanes a day, even though it did not have an aircraft production facility at that time. Ford was a prominent early member of the America First Committee against World War II involvement, but was forced to resign from its executive board when his involvement proved too controversial.


title: Henry Ford

text: Beginning in 1940, with the requisitioning of between 100 and 200 French POWs to work as slave laborers, "Ford-Werke" contravened Article 31 of the 1929 Geneva Convention.


title: Henry Ford

text: When Rolls-Royce sought a U.S. manufacturer as an additional source for the Merlin engine (as fitted to Spitfire and Hurricane fighters), Ford first agreed to do so and then reneged. He "lined up behind the war effort" when the U.S. entered in December 1941.


title: Henry Ford

text: Before the U.S. entered the war, responding to President Roosevelt's call in December 1940 for the "Great Arsenal of Democracy", Ford directed the Ford Motor Company to construct a vast new purpose-built aircraft factory at Willow Run near Detroit, Michigan. Ford broke ground on Willow Run in the spring of 1941, B-24 component production began in May 1942, and the first complete B-24 came off the line in October 1942. At , it was the largest assembly line in the world at the time. At its peak in 1944, the Willow Run plant produced 650 B-24s per month, and by 1945 Ford was completing each B-24 in eighteen hours, with one rolling off the assembly line every 58 minutes. Ford produced 9,000 B-24s at Willow Run, half of the 18,000 total B-24s produced during the war.


title: Henry Ford

text: When Edsel Ford died of cancer in 1943, aged only 49, Henry Ford nominally resumed control of the company, but a series of strokes in the late 1930s had left him increasingly debilitated, and his mental ability was fading. Ford was increasingly sidelined, and others made decisions in his name. The company was controlled by a handful of senior executives led by Charles Sorensen, an important engineer and production executive at Ford; and Harry Bennett, the chief of Ford's Service Unit, Ford's paramilitary force that spied on, and enforced discipline upon, Ford employees. Ford grew jealous of the publicity Sorensen received and forced Sorensen out in 1944. Ford's incompetence led to discussions in Washington about how to restore the company, whether by wartime government fiat, or by instigating a coup among executives and directors.


title: Henry Ford

text: Nothing happened until 1945 when, with bankruptcy a serious risk, Ford's wife Clara and Edsel's widow Eleanor confronted him and demanded he cede control of the company to his grandson Henry Ford II. They threatened to sell off their stock, which amounted to three quarters of the company's total shares, if he refused. Ford was reportedly infuriated, but had no choice but to give in. The young man took over and, as his first act of business, fired Harry Bennett.


title: Henry Ford

text: All his life, Ford was a conspiracy theorist, drawing on a long tradition of false allegations against Jews. Ford claimed that Jewish internationalism posed a threat to traditional American values, which he deeply believed were at risk in the modern world. Part of his racist and antisemitic legacy includes the funding of square-dancing in American schools because he hated jazz and associated its creation with Jewish people. In 1920 Ford wrote, "If fans wish to know the trouble with American baseball they have it in three words—too much Jew."


title: Henry Ford

text: In 1918, Ford purchased his hometown newspaper, "The Dearborn Independent". A year and a half later, Ford began publishing a series of articles in the paper under his own name, claiming a vast Jewish conspiracy was affecting America. The series ran in 91 issues. Every Ford dealership nationwide was required carry the paper and distribute it to its customers. Ford later bound the articles into four volumes entitled "The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem," which was translated into multiple languages and distributed widely across the US and Europe. "The International Jew" blamed nearly all the troubles it saw in American society on Jews. The "Independent" ran for eight years, from 1920 until 1927. With around 700,000 readers of his newspaper, Ford emerged as a "spokesman for right-wing extremism and religious prejudice."


title: Henry Ford

text: In Germany, Ford's "The International Jew, the World's Foremost Problem" was published by Theodor Fritsch, founder of several antisemitic parties and a member of the Reichstag. In a letter written in 1924, Heinrich Himmler described Ford as "one of our most valuable, important, and witty fighters". Ford is the only American mentioned favorably in Hitler's autobiography "Mein Kampf." Adolf Hitler wrote, "only a single great man, Ford, [who], to [the Jews'] fury, still maintains full independence ... [from] the controlling masters of the producers in a nation of one hundred and twenty millions." Speaking in 1931 to a "Detroit News" reporter, Hitler said "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration," explaining his reason for keeping a life-size portrait of Ford behind his desk. Steven Watts wrote that Hitler "revered" Ford, proclaiming that "I shall do my best to put his theories into practice in Germany", and modeling the Volkswagen Beetle, the people's car, on the Model T. Max Wallace has stated, "History records that ... Adolf Hitler was an ardent Anti-Semite before he ever read Ford's "The International Jew"." Ford also paid to print and distribute 500,000 copies the antisemitic fabricated text "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion". Historians say Hitler distributed Ford’s books and articles throughout Germany, stoking the hatred that helped fuel the Holocaust.


title: Henry Ford

text: On February 1, 1924, Ford received Kurt Ludecke, a representative of Hitler, at home. Ludecke was introduced to Ford by Siegfried Wagner (son of the composer Richard Wagner) and his wife Winifred, both Nazi sympathizers and antisemites. Ludecke asked Ford for a contribution to the Nazi cause, but was apparently refused.


title: Henry Ford

text: Ford's articles were denounced by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). While these articles explicitly condemned pogroms and violence against Jews, they blamed the Jews themselves for provoking them. According to some trial testimony, none of this work was written by Ford, but he allowed his name to be used as an author. Friends and business associates have said they warned Ford about the contents of the "Independent" and that he probably never read the articles (he claimed he only read the headlines). On the other hand, court testimony in a libel suit, brought by one of the targets of the newspaper, alleged that Ford did know about the contents of the "Independent" in advance of publication.


title: Henry Ford

text: A libel lawsuit was brought by San Francisco lawyer and Jewish farm cooperative organizer Aaron Sapiro in response to the antisemitic remarks, and led Ford to close the "Independent" in December 1927. News reports at the time quoted him as saying he was shocked by the content and unaware of its nature. During the trial, the editor of Ford's "Own Page", William Cameron, testified that Ford had nothing to do with the editorials even though they were under his byline. Cameron testified at the libel trial that he never discussed the content of the pages or sent them to Ford for his approval. Investigative journalist Max Wallace noted that "whatever credibility this absurd claim may have had was soon undermined when James M. Miller, a former "Dearborn Independent" employee, swore under oath that Ford had told him he intended to expose Sapiro."


title: Henry Ford

text: Michael Barkun observed: "That Cameron would have continued to publish such anti-Semitic material without Ford's explicit instructions seemed unthinkable to those who knew both men. Mrs. Stanley Ruddiman, a Ford family intimate, remarked that "I don't think Mr. Cameron ever wrote anything for publication without Mr. Ford's approval." According to Spencer Blakeslee, "[t]he ADL mobilized prominent Jews and non-Jews to publicly oppose Ford's message. They formed a coalition of Jewish groups for the same purpose and raised constant objections in the Detroit press. Before leaving his presidency early in 1921, Woodrow Wilson joined other leading Americans in a statement that rebuked Ford and others for their antisemitic campaign. A boycott against Ford products by Jews and liberal Christians also had an impact, and Ford shut down the paper in 1927, recanting his views in a public letter to Sigmund Livingston, president of the ADL." Wallace also found that Ford's apology was likely, or at least partly, motivated by a business that was slumping as a result of his antisemitism, repelling potential buyers of Ford cars. Up until the apology, a considerable number of dealers, who had been required to make sure that buyers of Ford cars received the "Independent", bought up and destroyed copies of the newspaper rather than alienate customers.


title: Henry Ford

text: Ford's 1927 apology was well received. "Four-fifths of the hundreds of letters addressed to Ford in July 1927 were from Jews, and almost without exception they praised the industrialist..." In January 1937, a Ford statement to "The Detroit Jewish Chronicle" disavowed "any connection whatsoever with the publication in Germany of a book known as the "International Jew"". Ford, however, allegedly never signed the retraction and apology, which were written by others—rather, his signature was forged by Harry Bennett—and Ford never actually recanted his antisemitic views, stating in 1940: "I hope to republish "The International Jew" again some time."


title: Henry Ford

text: In July 1938, the German consul in Cleveland gave Ford, on his 75th birthday, the award of the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest medal Nazi Germany could bestow on a foreigner. James D. Mooney, vice president of overseas operations for General Motors, received a similar medal, the Merit Cross of the German Eagle, First Class.


title: Henry Ford

text: On January 7, 1942, Ford wrote another letter to Sigmund Livingston disclaiming direct or indirect support of "any agitation which would promote antagonism toward my Jewish fellow citizens". He concluded the letter with, "My sincere hope that now in this country and throughout the world when the war is finished, hatred of the Jews and hatred against any other racial or religious groups shall cease for all time."


title: Henry Ford

text: The distribution of "The International Jew" was halted in 1942 through legal action by Ford, despite complications from a lack of copyright. It is still banned in Germany. Extremist groups often recycle the material; it still appears on antisemitic and neo-Nazi websites. Testifying at Nuremberg, convicted Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach who, in his role as "Gauleiter" of Vienna, deported 65,000 Jews to camps in Poland, stated: "The decisive anti-Semitic book I was reading and the book that influenced my comrades was ... that book by Henry Ford, "The International Jew". I read it and became anti-Semitic. The book made a great influence on myself and my friends because we saw in Henry Ford the representative of success and also the representative of a progressive social policy."


title: Henry Ford

text: Robert Lacey wrote in "Ford: The Men and the Machines" that a close Willow Run associate of Ford reported that when he was shown newsreel footage of the Nazi concentration camps, he "was confronted with the atrocities which finally and unanswerably laid bare the bestiality of the prejudice to which he contributed, he collapsed with a stroke – his last and most serious." Ford had suffered previous strokes and his final cerebral hemorrhage occurred in 1947 at age 83.


title: Henry Ford

text: Ford's philosophy was one of economic independence for the United States. His River Rouge Plant became the world's largest industrial complex, pursuing vertical integration to such an extent that it could produce its own steel. Ford's goal was to produce a vehicle from scratch without reliance on foreign trade. He believed in the global expansion of his company. He believed that international trade and cooperation led to international peace, and he used the assembly line process and production of the Model T to demonstrate it.


title: Henry Ford

text: He opened Ford assembly plants in Britain and Canada in 1911, and soon became the biggest automotive producer in those countries. In 1912, Ford cooperated with Giovanni Agnelli of Fiat to launch the first Italian automotive assembly plants. The first plants in Germany were built in the 1920s with the encouragement of Herbert Hoover and the Commerce Department, which agreed with Ford's theory that international trade was essential to world peace and reduced the chance of war. In the 1920s, Ford also opened plants in Australia, India, and France, and by 1929, he had successful dealerships on six continents. Ford experimented with a commercial rubber plantation in the Amazon jungle called Fordlândia; it was one of his few failures.


title: Henry Ford

text: In 1929, Ford made an agreement with the Soviets to provide technical aid over nine years in building the first Soviet automobile plant (GAZ) near Nizhny Novgorod (Gorky) (an additional contract for construction of the plant was signed with The Austin Company on August 23, 1929). The contract involved the purchase of $30,000,000 worth of knocked-down Ford cars and trucks for assembly during the first four years of the plant's operation, after which the plant would gradually switch to Soviet-made components. Ford sent his engineers and technicians to the Soviet Union to help install the equipment and train the workforce, while over a hundred Soviet engineers and technicians were stationed at Ford's plants in Detroit and Dearborn "for the purpose of learning the methods and practice of manufacture and assembly in the Company's plants". Said Ford: "No matter where industry prospers, whether in India or China, or Russia, the more profit there will be for everyone, including us. All the world is bound to catch some good from it."


title: Henry Ford

text: By 1932, Ford was manufacturing one-third of the world's automobiles. It set up numerous subsidiaries that sold or assembled the Ford cars and trucks:


title: Henry Ford

text: Ford's image transfixed Europeans, especially the Germans, arousing the "fear of some, the infatuation of others, and the fascination among all". Germans who discussed "Fordism" often believed that it represented something quintessentially American. They saw the size, tempo, standardization, and philosophy of production demonstrated at the Ford Works as a national service—an "American thing" that represented the culture of the United States. Both supporters and critics insisted that Fordism epitomized American capitalist development, and that the auto industry was the key to understanding economic and social relations in the United States. As one German explained, "Automobiles have so completely changed the American's mode of life that today one can hardly imagine being without a car. It is difficult to remember what life was like before Mr. Ford began preaching his doctrine of salvation". For many Germans, Ford embodied the essence of successful Americanism.


title: Henry Ford

text: In "My Life and Work", Ford predicted that if greed, racism, and short-sightedness could be overcome, then economic and technological development throughout the world would progress to the point that international trade would no longer be based on (what today would be called) colonial or neocolonial models and would truly benefit all peoples.


title: Henry Ford

text: Ford maintained an interest in auto racing from 1901 to 1913 and began his involvement in the sport as both a constructor and a driver, later turning the wheel over to hired drivers. On October 10, 1901, he defeated Alexander Winton in a race car named "Sweepstakes"; it was through the wins of this car that Ford created the Henry Ford Company. Ford entered stripped-down Model Ts in races, finishing first (although later disqualified) in an "ocean-to-ocean" (across the United States) race in 1909, and setting a one-mile (1.6 km) oval speed record at Detroit Fairgrounds in 1911 with driver Frank Kulick. In 1913, he attempted to enter a reworked Model T in the Indianapolis 500 but was told rules required the addition of another to the car before it could qualify. Ford dropped out of the race and soon thereafter exited racing permanently, citing dissatisfaction with the sport's rules, demands on his time by the booming production of the Model T, and his low opinion of racing as a worthwhile activity.


title: Henry Ford

text: In "My Life and Work" Ford speaks (briefly) of racing in a rather dismissive tone, as something that is not at all a good measure of automobiles in general. He describes himself as someone who raced only because in the 1890s through 1910s, one had to race because prevailing ignorance held that racing was the way to prove the worth of an automobile. Ford did not agree. But he was determined that as long as this was the definition of success (flawed though the definition was), then his cars would be the best that there were at racing. Throughout the book, he continually returns to ideals such as transportation, production efficiency, affordability, reliability, fuel efficiency, economic prosperity, and the automation of drudgery in farming and industry, but rarely mentions, and rather belittles, the idea of merely going fast from point A to point B.


title: Henry Ford

text: Nevertheless, Ford did make quite an impact on auto racing during his racing years, and he was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1996.


title: Henry Ford

text: When Edsel Ford, President of Ford Motor Company, died of cancer in May 1943, the elderly and ailing Henry Ford decided to assume the presidency. By this point, Ford, nearing 80 years old, had had several cardiovascular events (variously cited as heart attacks or strokes) and was mentally inconsistent, suspicious, and generally no longer fit for such immense responsibilities.


title: Henry Ford

text: Most of the directors did not want to see him as president. But for the previous 20 years, though he had long been without any official executive title, he had always had "de facto" control over the company; the board and the management had never seriously defied him, and this time was no different. The directors elected him, and he served until the end of the war. During this period the company began to decline, losing more than $10 million a month ($ today). The administration of President Franklin Roosevelt had been considering a government takeover of the company in order to ensure continued war production, but the idea never progressed.


title: Henry Ford

text: His health failing, Ford ceded the company presidency to his grandson Henry Ford II in September 1945 and retired. He died on April 7, 1947, of a cerebral hemorrhage at Fair Lane, his estate in Dearborn, at the age of 83. A public viewing was held at Greenfield Village where up to 5,000 people per hour filed past the casket. Funeral services were held in Detroit's Cathedral Church of St. Paul and he was buried in the Ford Cemetery in Detroit.


title: Henry Ford

text: A compendium of short biographies of famous Freemasons, published by a Freemason lodge, lists Ford as a member. The Grand Lodge of New York confirms that Ford was a Freemason, and was raised in Palestine Lodge No. 357, Detroit, in 1894. When he received the 33rd degree of the Scottish Rite in 1940, he said, "Masonry is the best balance wheel the United States has."


title: Henry Ford

text: In 1923, Ford's pastor, and head of his sociology department, Episcopal minister Samuel S. Marquis, claimed that Ford believed, or "once believed," in reincarnation.


title: Henry Ford

text: Ford published an anti-smoking book, circulated to youth in 1914, called "The Case Against the Little White Slaver", which documented many dangers of cigarette smoking attested to by many researchers and luminaries. At the time, smoking was ubiquitous and not yet widely associated with health problems, making Ford's opposition to cigarettes unusual.


title: Henry Ford

text: Henry Ford had a long-held interest in materials science and engineering. He enthusiastically described his company's adoption of vanadium steel alloys and subsequent metallurgic R&D work.


title: Henry Ford

text: Ford also had a long-standing interest in plastics developed from agricultural products, particularly soybeans. He cultivated a relationship with George Washington Carver for this purpose. Soybean-based plastics were used in Ford automobiles throughout the 1930s in plastic parts such as car horns, in paint and other components. The project culminated in 1942, when Ford patented an automobile made almost entirely of plastic, attached to a tubular welded frame. It weighed 30% less than a steel car and was said to be able to withstand blows ten times greater than steel. It ran on grain alcohol (ethanol) instead of gasoline. The design never caught on.


title: Henry Ford

text: Ford was interested in engineered woods ("Better wood can be made than is grown") (at this time plywood and particle board were little more than experimental ideas); corn as a fuel source, via both corn oil and ethanol; and the potential uses of cotton. Ford was instrumental in developing charcoal briquets, under the brand name "Kingsford". His brother-in-law, Edward G. Kingsford, used wood scraps from the Ford factory to make the briquets.


title: Henry Ford

text: In 1927, Ford partnered with Thomas Edison and Harvey Samuel Firestone (each contributing $25,000) to create the Edison Botanic Research Corp. in Fort Myers, Florida to seek a native source of rubber.


title: Henry Ford

text: Ford had a vacation residence in Fort Myers, Florida, next to that of Thomas Edison, which he bought in 1915 and used until approximately 1930. It still stands today as a museum.


title: Henry Ford

text: He also had a vacation home (known today as the "Ford Plantation") in Richmond Hill, Georgia, which is now a private community. Ford started buying land in this area and eventually owned 70,000 acres (110 square miles) there. In 1936, Ford broke ground for a beautiful Greek revival style mansion on the banks of the Ogeechee River on the site of a 1730s plantation. The grand house, made of Savannah-gray brick, had marble steps, air conditioning, and an elevator. It sat on of manicured lawns and flowering gardens. The house became the center of social gatherings with visitations by the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and the DuPonts. It remains the centerpiece of The Ford Plantation today. Ford converted the 1870s-era rice mill into his personal research laboratory and powerhouse and constructed a tunnel from there to the new home, providing it with steam. He contributed substantially to the community, building a chapel and schoolhouse and employing numerous local residents.


title: Henry Ford

text: Ford had an interest in "Americana". In the 1920s, he began work to turn Sudbury, Massachusetts, into a themed historical village. He moved the schoolhouse supposedly referred to in the "Mary Had a Little Lamb" nursery rhyme from Sterling, Massachusetts, and purchased the historic Wayside Inn. The historical village plan never came to fruition. He repeated the concept of collecting historic structures with the creation of Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. It may have inspired the creation of Old Sturbridge Village as well. About the same time, he began collecting materials for his museum, which had a theme of practical technology. It was opened in 1929 as the Edison Institute. The museum has been greatly modernized and is still open today.


title: Justin Hartley

text: Justin Scott Hartley (born January 29, 1977) is an American actor. He has played Fox Crane on the NBC daytime soap opera "Passions" (2002–2006), Oliver Queen/Green Arrow on The CW television series "Smallville" (2006–2011), and Adam Newman on the CBS daytime soap opera "The Young and the Restless" (2014–2016) which earned him a Daytime Emmy nomination. He also had recurring roles in the third season of the television drama series "Revenge" (2013–2014) and in the final three seasons of the drama series "Mistresses" (2014–2016).


title: Justin Hartley

text: Hartley gained wider attention for starring as Kevin Pearson in the NBC drama series "This Is Us", from 2016 to 2022, for which he was thrice nominated for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. He has since starred in the films "A Bad Moms Christmas" (2017) and "The Noel Diary" (2022).


title: Justin Hartley

text: Hartley was born when his family was residing in Knoxville, Illinois, and born at the nearby hospital in Galesburg. He was raised in the Chicago suburb of Orland Park, with his brother Nathan, and sisters Megan and Gabriela. After graduating from Carl Sandburg High School, he attended Southern Illinois University Carbondale and University of Illinois at Chicago where he majored in history and theater.


title: Justin Hartley

text: In 2006, he played the starring role as Aquaman in a television pilot for The CW titled "Aquaman" (or "Mercy Reef"), but it was not picked up as a series. Hartley did a seven-episode run as billionaire Oliver Queen on the CW series "Smallville" later that year. In 2008, he returned to "Smallville" as a regular cast member, following the departures of Kristin Kreuk, Michael Rosenbaum, Laura Vandervoort, and John Glover. Hartley also co-wrote the 2010 episode "Sacrifice" and directed the 2011 episode "Dominion". In 2008, he starred as Tom in the film "Red Canyon", filmed in the badlands of Utah.


title: Justin Hartley

text: After "Smallville", Hartley starred opposite Mamie Gummer in The CW comedy-drama "Emily Owens, M.D.", but the show was cancelled after one season. He also guest-starred on "Chuck", "Castle", and "Hart of Dixie", and from 2013 to 2014, he had a recurring role as Victoria Grayson's (Madeleine Stowe) illegitimate son, Patrick Osbourne, on the ABC primetime soap opera "Revenge". In February 2014, Hartley landed the lead role of Tim opposite Anna Camp in the ABC comedy pilot "Damaged Goods", but the show was never picked up to series.


title: Justin Hartley

text: In March 2014, he was cast in a recurring role in the second season of the ABC drama series "Mistresses" as plastic surgeon Scott Trosman, a love interest for Josslyn Carver (Jes Macallan). In November 2014, Hartley took over the role of Adam Newman on the CBS daytime soap opera "The Young and the Restless", and played the role until September 2016.


title: Justin Hartley

text: In 2015, it was announced that Hartley had been cast in a series regular role on the NBC drama series "This Is Us", which debuted in September 2016. He and the cast won Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series at the 24th Screen Actors Guild Awards. In 2017, he had a co-starring role in the comedy film "A Bad Moms Christmas". In August 2020 Hartley signed on to star and executive produce a film adaptation of "The Noel Diary", based on the novel of the same name.


title: Justin Hartley

text: In 2003, Hartley began dating his "Passions" co-star Lindsay Korman (who played Theresa Lopez-Fitzgerald). After six months, the two became engaged on November 13, 2003. They married on May 1, 2004, in a small ceremony. On July 3, 2004, Korman gave birth to their daughter. On May 6, 2012, after eight years of marriage, it was announced that she had filed for divorce in the Los Angeles County Superior Court, citing "irreconcilable differences". They remain on amicable terms and share joint custody of their daughter.


title: Justin Hartley

text: In January 2014, actress Chrishell Stause's representation confirmed that Hartley and Stause were dating and in July 2016, they announced their engagement. They were married on October 28, 2017. Hartley and Stause resided in Valley Glen, Los Angeles. In November 2019, Hartley filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. Stause filed for dissolution of the marriage in December 2019. The divorce was finalized on February 22, 2021.


title: Bill Russell

text: William Felton Russell (February 12, 1934 – July 31, 2022) was an American professional basketball player who played as a center for the Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association (NBA) from 1956 to 1969. A five-time NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) and a 12-time NBA All-Star, he was the centerpiece of the Celtics dynasty that won 11 NBA championships during his 13-year career. Russell and Henri Richard of the National Hockey League are tied for the record of the most championships won by an athlete in a North American sports league. Russell is widely considered to be one of the greatest basketball players of all time. He led the San Francisco Dons to two consecutive NCAA championships in 1955 and 1956, and he captained the gold-medal winning U.S. national basketball team at the 1956 Summer Olympics.