title: Columbus, Ohio

text: There are also several private schools in the area, such as St. Paul's Lutheran School, a K-8 Christian school of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod in Columbus.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: Some sources determine that the first kindergarten in the United States was established here by Louisa Frankenberg, a former student of Friedrich Fröbel. Frankenberg immigrated to the city in 1838 and opened her kindergarten in the German Village neighborhood in that year. The school did not work out, so she returned to Germany in 1840. In 1858, Frankenberg returned to Columbus and established another early kindergarten in the city. Frankenberg is often overlooked, with Margarethe Schurz instead given credit for her "First Kindergarten" she operated for two years.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: In addition, Indianola Junior High School (now the Graham Elementary and Middle School) became the nation's first junior high school in 1909, helping to bridge the difficult transition from elementary to high school at a time when only 48% of students continued their education after the ninth grade.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: The Columbus Metropolitan Library (CML) has served central Ohio residents since 1873. The system has 23 locations throughout Central Ohio, with a total collection of 3 million items. This library is one of the country's most-used library systems and is consistently among the top-ranked large city libraries according to Hennen's American Public Library Ratings. CML was rated the No. 1 library system in the nation in 1999, 2005 and 2008. It has been in the top four every year since 1999, when the rankings were first published in the "American Libraries" magazine, often challenging upstate neighbor Cuyahoga County Public Library for the top spot.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: The classes of the Columbus Japanese Language School, a weekend Japanese school, are held in a facility from the school district in Marysville, while the school office is in Worthington. Previously it held classes at facilities in the city of Columbus.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: Several weekly and daily newspapers serve Columbus and Central Ohio. The major daily newspaper in Columbus is "The Columbus Dispatch". There are also neighborhood- or suburb-specific papers, such as the Dispatch Printing Company's "ThisWeek Community News", the "Columbus Messenger", the "Clintonville Spotlight" and the "Short North Gazette". "The Lantern" and "1870" serve the Ohio State University community. Alternative arts, culture or politics-oriented papers include "ALIVE" (formerly the independent "Columbus Alive" and now owned by the "Columbus Dispatch"), "Columbus Free Press" and "Columbus Underground" (digital-only). The "Columbus Magazine", "CityScene", "614 Magazine" and "Columbus Monthly" are the city's magazines.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: Columbus is the base for 12 television stations and is the 32nd-largest television market as of September 24, 2016. Columbus is also home to the 36th-largest radio market.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: Numerous medical systems operate in Columbus and Central Ohio. These include OhioHealth, which has three hospitals in the city proper: Mount Carmel Health System, which has one hospital among other facilities; the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, which has a primary hospital complex and an east campus in Columbus; and Nationwide Children's Hospital, which is an independently operated hospital for pediatric health care. Hospitals in Central Ohio are ranked favorably by the "U.S. News & World Report", where numerous hospitals are ranked as among the best in particular fields in the United States. Nationwide Children's is regarded as among the top 10 children's hospitals in the country, according to the report.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: Numerous utility companies operate in Central Ohio. Within Columbus, power is sourced from Columbus Southern Power, an American Electric Power subsidiary. Natural gas is provided by Columbia Gas of Ohio, while water is sourced from the City of Columbus Division of Water.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: The city's two main corridors since its founding are Broad and High Streets. They both traverse beyond the extent of the city; High Street is the longest in Columbus, running (23.4 across the county), while Broad Street is longer across the county, at .


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: The city's street plan originates downtown and extends into the old-growth neighborhoods, following a grid pattern with the intersection of High Street (running north–south) and Broad Street (running east–west) at its center. North–south streets run 12 degrees west of due north, parallel to High Street; the avenues (vis. Fifth Avenue, Sixth Avenue, Seventh Avenue, and so on) run 12 degrees off from east–west.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: The address system begins its numbering at the intersection of Broad and High, with numbers increasing in magnitude with distance from Broad or High, as well as cardinal directions used alongside street names. Numbered avenues begin with First Avenue, about north of Broad Street, and increase in number as one progresses northward. Numbered streets begin with Second Street, which is two blocks west of High Street, and Third Street, which is a block east of High Street, then progress eastward from there. Even-numbered addresses are on the north and east sides of streets, putting odd addresses on the south and west sides of streets. A difference of 700 house numbers means a distance of about (along the same street). For example, 351 W. Fifth Ave. is approximately west of High Street on the south side of Fifth Avenue. Buildings along north–south streets are numbered in a similar manner: the building number indicates the approximate distance from Broad Street, the prefixes "N" and "S" indicate whether that distance is to be measured to the north or south of Broad Street and the street number itself indicates how far the street is from the center of the city at the intersection of Broad and High.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: This street numbering system does not hold true over a large area. The area served by numbered avenues runs from about Marble Cliff to South Linden to the Airport, and the area served by numbered streets covers Downtown and nearby neighborhoods to the east and south, with only a few exceptions. There are quite few intersections between numbered streets and avenues. Furthermore, named streets and avenues can have any orientation. For example, while all of the numbered avenues run east–west, perpendicular to High Street, many named, non-numbered avenues run north–south, parallel to High. The same is true of many named streets: while the numbered streets in the city run north–south, perpendicular to Broad Street, many named, non-numbered streets run east–west, perpendicular to High Street.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: The addressing system, however, covers nearly all of Franklin County, with only a few older suburbs retaining self-centered address systems. The address scale of 700 per mile results in addresses approaching, but not usually reaching, 10,000 at the county's borders.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: Other major, local roads in Columbus include Main Street, Morse Road, Dublin-Granville Road (SR-161), Cleveland Avenue/Westerville Road (SR-3), Olentangy River Road, Riverside Drive, Sunbury Road, Fifth Avenue and Livingston Avenue.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: Columbus is bisected by two major Interstate Highways: Interstate 70 running east–west and Interstate 71 running north to roughly southwest. They combine downtown for about in an area locally known as "The Split," which is a major traffic congestion point, especially during rush hour. U.S. Route 40, originally known as the National Road, runs east–west through Columbus, comprising Main Street to the east of downtown and Broad Street to the west. U.S. Route 23 runs roughly north–south, while U.S. Route 33 runs northwest-to-southeast. The Interstate 270 Outerbelt encircles most of the city, while the newly redesigned Innerbelt consists of the Interstate 670 spur on the north side (which continues to the east past the Airport and to the west where it merges with I-70), State Route 315 on the west side, the I-70/71 split on the south side and I-71 on the east. Due to its central location within Ohio and abundance of outbound roadways, nearly all of the state's destinations are within a two- or three-hour drive of Columbus.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: The Columbus riverfront hosts several bridges. The Discovery Bridge connects downtown to Franklinton across Broad Street. The bridge opened in 1992, replacing a 1921 concrete arch bridge; the first bridge at the site was built in 1816. The Main Street Bridge opened on July 30, 2010. The bridge has three lanes for vehicular traffic (one westbound and two eastbound) and another separated lane for pedestrians and bikes. The Rich Street Bridge opened in July 2012 adjacent to the Main Street Bridge, connecting Rich Street on the east side of the river with Town Street on the west. The Lane Avenue Bridge is a cable-stayed bridge that opened on November 14, 2003, in the University District. The bridge spans the Olentangy River with three lanes of traffic each way.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: The city's primary airport, John Glenn Columbus International Airport, is on the city's east side. Formerly known as Port Columbus, John Glenn provides service to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and Cancun, Mexico (on a seasonal basis), as well as to most domestic destinations, including all the major hubs along with San Francisco, Salt Lake City and Seattle. The airport was a hub for discount carrier Skybus Airlines and continues to be home to NetJets, the world's largest fractional ownership air carrier. According to a 2005 market survey, John Glenn Columbus International Airport attracts about 50% of its passengers from outside of its radius primary service region. It is the 52nd-busiest airport in the United States by total passenger boardings.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: Rickenbacker International Airport, in southern Franklin County, is a major cargo facility that is used by the Ohio Air National Guard. Allegiant Air offers nonstop service from Rickenbacker to Florida destinations. Ohio State University Don Scott Airport and Bolton Field are other large general-aviation facilities in the Columbus area.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: In 1907, 14-year-old Cromwell Dixon built the "SkyCycle," a pedal-powered blimp, which he flew at Driving Park. Three years later, one of the Wright brothers' exhibition pilots, Phillip Parmalee, conducted the world's first commercial cargo flight when he flew two packages containing 88 kilograms of silk from Dayton to Columbus in a Wright Model B.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: Military aviators from Columbus distinguished themselves during World War I. Six Columbus pilots, led by top ace Eddie Rickenbacker, achieved 42 "kills" – a full 10% of all US aerial victories in the war, and more than the aviators of any other American city.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: After the war, Port Columbus Airport (now known as John Glenn Columbus International Airport) became the axis of a coordinated rail-to-air transcontinental system that moved passengers from the East Coast to the West. TAT, which later became TWA, provided commercial service, following Charles Lindbergh's promotion of Columbus to the nation for such a hub. Following the failure of a bond levy in 1927 to build the airport, Lindbergh campaigned in the city in 1928, and the next bond levy passed that year. On July 8, 1929, the airport opened for business with the inaugural TAT westbound flight from Columbus to Waynoka, Oklahoma. Among the 19 passengers on that flight was Amelia Earhart, with Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone attending the opening ceremonies.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: In 1964, Ohio native Geraldine Fredritz Mock became the first woman to fly solo around the world, leaving from Columbus and piloting the "Spirit of Columbus". Her flight lasted nearly a month and set a record for speed for planes under .


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: Columbus maintains a widespread municipal bus service called the Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA). The service operates 41 routes with a fleet of 440 buses, serving approximately 19 million passengers per year. COTA operates 23 regular fixed-service routes, 14 express services, a bus rapid transit route, a free downtown circulator, night service, an airport connector and other services. LinkUS, an initiative between COTA, the city, and the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, is planning to add more rapid transit to Columbus, with three proposed corridors operating by 2030, and potentially a total of five by 2050.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: Intercity bus service is provided at the Columbus Bus Station by Greyhound, Barons Bus Lines, Miller Transportation, GoBus and other carriers.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: Columbus does not have passenger rail service. The city's major train station, Union Station, was a stop along Amtrak's National Limited train service until 1977 and was razed in 1979, and the Greater Columbus Convention Center now stands in its place. Until Amtrak's founding in 1971, the Penn Central ran the "Cincinnati Limited" to Cincinnati to the southwest (in prior years the train continued to New York City to the east); the "Ohio State Limited" between Cincinnati and Cleveland, with Union Station serving as a major intermediate stop (the train going unnamed between 1967 and 1971); and the "Spirit of St. Louis," which ran between St. Louis and New York City until 1971. The station was also a stop along the Pennsylvania Railroad, the New York Central Railroad, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the Norfolk and Western Railway, the Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati Railroad, and the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad. As the city lacks local, commuter or intercity trains, Columbus is now the largest city and metropolitan area in the U.S. without any passenger rail service. Numerous proposals to return rail service have been introduced; currently Amtrak plans to restore service to Columbus by 2035.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: Cycling as transportation is steadily increasing in Columbus with its relatively flat terrain, intact urban neighborhoods, large student population and off-road bike paths. The city has put forth the 2012 Bicentennial Bikeways Plan, as well as a move toward a Complete Streets policy. Grassroots efforts such as Bike to Work Week, Consider Biking, Yay Bikes, Third Hand Bicycle Co-op, Franklinton Cycleworks and "Cranksters", a local radio program focused on urban cycling, have contributed to cycling as transportation.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: Columbus also hosts urban cycling "off-shots" with messenger-style "alleycat" races, as well as unorganized group rides, a monthly Critical Mass ride, bicycle polo, art showings, movie nights and a variety of bicycle-friendly businesses and events throughout the year. All this activity occurs despite Columbus's frequently inclement weather.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: The Main Street Bridge, opened in 2010, features a dedicated bike and pedestrian lane separated from traffic.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: The city has its own public bicycle system. CoGo Bike Share has a network of about 600 bicycles and 80 docking stations. PBSC Urban Solutions, a company based in Canada, supplies technology and equipment. Bird electric scooters have also been introduced.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: The city of Columbus has a higher-than-average percentage of households without a car. In 2015, 9.8% of Columbus households lacked a car, a number that fell slightly to 9.4% in 2016. The national average was 8.7% in 2016. Columbus averaged 1.55 cars per household in 2016, compared to a national average of 1.8.


title: Columbus, Ohio

text: Columbus has 10 sister cities as designated by Sister Cities International. Columbus established its first sister city relationship in 1955 with Genoa, Italy. To commemorate this relationship, Columbus received as a gift from the people of Genoa, a bronze statue of Christopher Columbus. The statue overlooked Broad Street in front of Columbus City Hall from 1955 to 2020; it was removed during the George Floyd protests.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: Louis Farrakhan (; born Louis Eugene Walcott, May 11, 1933) is an American religious leader, black supremacist, anti-white and antisemitic conspiracy theorist, and former singer who heads the Nation of Islam (NOI). Prior to joining the NOI, he was a calypso singer who used the stage name Calypso Gene. Earlier in his career, he served as the minister of mosques in Boston and Harlem and was appointed National Representative of the Nation of Islam by then NOI leader Elijah Muhammad. He adopted the name Louis X, before being named Louis Farrakhan.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: After Warith Deen Mohammed reorganized the original NOI into the orthodox Sunni Islamic group American Society of Muslims, Farrakhan began to rebuild the NOI as "Final Call". In 1981, he officially adopted the name "Nation of Islam", reviving the group and establishing its headquarters at Mosque Maryam. The Nation of Islam is an organization which the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) describes as a hate group. Farrakhan’s antisemitic statements and views have been condemned by the SPLC, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and other monitoring organizations. According to the SPLC, the NOI promotes a "fundamentally anti-white theology" amounting to an "innate black superiority over whites". Farrakhan's views and remarks have also been called homophobic. He has disputed these assertions.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: In October 1995, he organized and led the Million Man March in Washington, D.C. Due to health issues, he reduced his responsibilities with the NOI in 2007. However, Farrakhan has continued to deliver sermons and speak at NOI events. In 2015, he led the .


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: Farrakhan was banned from Facebook in 2019 along with other public figures considered to be extremists.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: Farrakhan was born Louis Eugene Walcott on May 11, 1933, in The Bronx, New York City, the younger of two sons of Sarah Mae Manning (1900–1988) and Percival Clark, immigrants from the Anglo-Caribbean islands. His mother was born in Saint Kitts, while his father was Jamaican. The couple separated before their second son was born, and Farrakhan says he never knew his biological father.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: In a 1996 interview with Henry Louis Gates Jr., he speculated that his biological father, "a light-skinned man with straight hair from Jamaica", may have been Jewish.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: After his stepfather died in 1936, the Walcott family moved to Boston, where they settled in the largely African-American neighborhood of Roxbury.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: Walcott received his first violin at the age of five and by the time he was 12 years old, he had been on tour with the Boston College Orchestra. A year later, he participated in national competitions and won them. In 1946, he was one of the first black performers to appear on the Ted Mack "Original Amateur Hour", where he also won an award. Walcott and his family were active members of the Episcopal St. Cyprian's Church in Roxbury.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: Walcott attended the Boston Latin School, and later the English High School, from which he graduated. He completed three years at Winston-Salem Teachers College, where he had a track scholarship.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: In 1953, Walcott married Betsy Ross (later known as Khadijah Farrakhan) while he was in college. Due to complications from his new wife's first pregnancy, Walcott dropped out after completing his junior year of college to devote time to his wife and their child. Farrakhan is the father of 9 children and grandfather of basketball player Mustapha Farrakhan Jr.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: In the 1950s, Walcott began his professional music career as a singer billed as "The Charmer". At this point, earning $500 a week, Walcott was touring the northeastern and midwestern United States, sometimes also using the nickname "Calypso Gene". In 1953–1954, preceding Harry Belafonte's success with his album "Calypso" (released in 1956), he recorded and released a dozen cheeky, funny tunes as "The Charmer" in a mixed mento/calypso style, including "Ugly Woman", "Stone Cold Man" and calypso standards like "Zombie Jamboree", "Hol 'Em Joe", "Mary Ann" and "Brown Skin Girl". Some were reissued: "Don’t Touch Me Nylon" has mild, explicit sexual lyrics as well as "Female Boxer", which contains some sexist overtones and "Is She Is, Or Is She Ain't" (inspired by Christine Jorgensen's sex change operation).


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: In February 1955, he was headlining a show in Chicago, Illinois, called "Calypso Follies". There he first came in contact with the teachings of the Nation of Islam (NOI) through Rodney Smith, a friend and saxophonist from Boston. Walcott and his wife Betsy were invited to the Nation of Islam's annual Saviours' Day address by Elijah Muhammad. Prior to going to Saviours' Day, due to then-Minister Malcolm X's media presence, Walcott had never heard of Elijah Muhammad, and like many outside of the Nation of Islam, he thought that Malcolm X was the leader of the Nation of Islam.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: In 1955, Walcott fulfilled the requirements to be a registered Muslim/registered believer/registered laborer. He memorized and recited verbatim the 10 questions and answers of the NOI's Student Enrollment. He then wrote a Saviour's Letter that must be sent to the NOI's headquarters in Chicago. The Saviour's Letter must be copied verbatim, and have the identical handwriting of the Nation of Islam's founder, Wallace Fard Muhammad.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: After having the Saviour's Letter reviewed, and approved by the NOI's headquarters in Chicago in July 1955, Walcott received a letter of approval from the Nation of Islam acknowledging his official membership as a registered Muslim/registered believer/registered laborer in the NOI. As a result, he received his "X." The "X" was considered a placeholder, used to indicate that Nation of Islam members' original African family names had been lost. They acknowledged that European surnames were slave names, assigned by the slaveowners in order to mark their ownership. Members of the NOI used the "X" while they were waiting for their Islamic names, which some NOI members received later in their conversions.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: Hence, Louis Walcott became Louis X. Elijah Muhammad then replaced his "X" with the "holy name" Farrakhan, which is a corruption of the Arabic word فرقان "furqan", which means "The Criterion". On a very different tone from his calypso songs, he recorded two tunes as Louis X, criticizing racism in "A White Man's Heaven Is a Black Man's Hell," a record album which was issued on Boston's "A Moslem Sings" label in 1960. The summer after Farrakhan's conversion, Elijah Muhammad stated that all musicians in the NOI had to choose between music and the Nation of Islam.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: After nine months of being a registered Muslim in the NOI and a member of Muhammad's Temple of Islam in Boston, where Malcolm X was the minister, Farrakhan became his assistant minister. Eventually he became the official minister after Elijah Muhammad transferred Malcolm X to Muhammad's Temple of Islam No. 7 on West 116th St. in Harlem, New York City. Louis X continued to be mentored by Malcolm X, until the latter's assassination in 1965.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: The day that Malcolm X died in Harlem, Farrakhan happened to be in Newark, New Jersey on rotation, 45 minutes away from where Malcolm X was assassinated. After Malcolm X's death, Elijah Muhammad appointed Farrakhan to the two prominent positions that Malcolm held before being dismissed from the NOI. Farrakhan became the national spokesman/national representative of the NOI and was appointed minister of the influential Harlem Mosque (Temple), where he served until 1975.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: Farrakhan made numerous incendiary statements about Malcolm X, contributing to what was called a "climate of vilification." Three men from a Newark, NOI mosque—Thomas Hagan, Muhammad Abdul Aziz (aka Norman 3X Butler) and Kahlil Islam (aka Thomas 15X Johnson)—were convicted of the killing and served prison sentences. Only Hagan ever admitted his role.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: Warith Deen Mohammed, the seventh son of Elijah and Clara Muhammad, was declared the new leader of the Nation of Islam at the annual Saviours' Day Convention in February 1975, a day after his father died. He made substantial changes in the organization in the late 1970s, taking most of its members into a closer relationship with orthodox Islam, and renaming the group "World Community of Islam in the West", and eventually renaming it the American Society of Muslims, to indicate the apparent changes which had occurred in the group. He rejected the deification of the Nation of Islam's founder Wallace D. Fard as Allah in person, the Mahdi of the Holy Qur'an and the messiah of the Bible, welcomed white worshipers who were once considered devils and enemies in the NOI as equal brothers, sisters, and friends. At the beginning of these changes, Chief Min. Warith Deen Mohammed gave some Euro-Americans X's, and he extended efforts at inter-religious cooperation and outreach to Christians and Jews. He changed his position and title from Chief Minister Wallace Muhammad to Imam Warith Huddin Mohammad, and finally changed them to Imam Warith Al-Deen Mohammed.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: Farrakhan joined Mohammed's movement and followed Imam Warith Al-Deen Mohammed, and eventually became a Sunni Imam under him for years from 1975 to 1978. Imam Mohammed gave Imam Farrakhan the name Abdul-Haleem. In 1978, Imam Farrakhan distanced himself from Mohammed's movement. In a 1990 interview with "Emerge" magazine, Farrakhan said that he had become disillusioned with Mohammed's movement and decided to "quietly walk away" from it rather than cause a schism among its members. In 1978, Farrakhan and a small number of supporters decided to rebuild what they considered the original Nation of Islam upon the foundations established by Wallace Fard Muhammad, and Elijah Muhammad. This decision was made without public announcement.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: In 1979, Farrakhan's group founded a weekly newspaper entitled "The Final Call", which was intended to be similar to the original "Muhammad Speaks" newspaper that Malcolm X claimed to have started, Farrakhan had a weekly column in "The Final Call". In 1981, Farrakhan and his supporters held their first Saviours' Day convention in Chicago, Illinois, and took back the name of the Nation of Islam. The event was similar to the earlier Nation's celebrations, last held in Chicago on February 26, 1975. At the convention's keynote address, Farrakhan announced his attempt to restore the Nation of Islam under Elijah Muhammad's teachings.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: On October 24, 1989, at a press conference at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Washington, DC, Minister Farrakhan described a vision which he had on September 17, 1985 in Tepoztlán, Mexico. In this 'Vision-like' experience he was carried up to "a Wheel, or what you call an unidentified flying object", as in the Bible's Book of Ezekiel. During this experience, he heard the voice of Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: He said in the press conference that Elijah Muhammad "spoke in short cryptic sentences and as he spoke a scroll full of cursive writing rolled down in front of my eyes, but it was a projection of what was being written in my mind. As I attempted to read the cursive writing, which was in English, the scroll disappeared and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad began to speak to me." [Elijah Muhammad said], "President Reagan has met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to plan a war. I want you to hold a press conference in Washington, D.C., and announce their plan and say to the world that you got the information from me, Elijah Muhammad, on the Wheel."


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: During that same press conference Farrakhan stated that he believed his "experience" was proven: "In 1987, in "The New York Times" Sunday magazine and on the front page of "The Atlanta Constitution", the truth of my vision was verified, for the headlines of "The Atlanta Constitution" read, 'President Reagan Planned War Against Libya.'" Farrakhan added "In the article which followed, the exact words that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad spoke to me on the Wheel were found; that the President had met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and planned a war against Libya in the early part of September 1985."


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: Qubilah Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz, was arrested on January 12, 1995 accused of conspiracy to assassinate Farrakhan in retaliation for the murder of her father, for which she believed he was responsible. According to Stanford University historian Clayborne Carson, "[her family] resented Farrakhan and had good reason to because he was one of those in the Nation responsible for the climate of vilification that resulted in Malcolm X's assassination". Some critics later alleged that the FBI had used paid informant Michael Fitzpatrick to frame Shabazz, who was four years old when her father was killed. Nearly four months later, on May 1, Shabazz accepted a plea agreement under which she maintained her innocence but accepted responsibility for her actions.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: Farrakhan visited Turkey at invitation on February 18, 1996 and met with the country's leading Islamist political figure, Necmettin Erbakan, and his Welfare Party's officials. He said that the Turkish people must decide whether it wants to have a secular or Islamic government.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: That year in October, Farrakhan convened a broad coalition of what he and his supporters claimed was one million men in Washington, D.C., for the Million Man March. The count however fell far below the hoped-for numbers. The National Park Service estimated that approximately 440,000 were in attendance. Farrakhan threatened to sue the National Park Service because of the low estimate from the Park Police.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: Farrakhan and other speakers called for black men to renew their commitments to their families and communities. In Farrakhan's 2 hours he quoted from spirituals as well as the Old and New Testaments and termed himself a prophet sent by God to show America its evil. The event was organized by many civil rights and religious organizations and drew men and their sons from across the United States of America. Many other distinguished African Americans addressed the throng, including: Maya Angelou; Rosa Parks; Martin Luther King III, Cornel West, Jesse Jackson and Benjamin Chavis. In 2005, together with other prominent African Americans such as the New Black Panther Party leader Malik Zulu Shabazz, the activist Al Sharpton, Addis Daniel and others, Farrakhan marked the 10th anniversary of the Million Man March by holding a second gathering, the Millions More Movement, October 14–17 in Washington D.C.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: The Anti-Defamation League classifies Farrakhan as a racist and the Southern Poverty Law Center considers the Nation of Islam (NOI) as a hate group and a black nationalist organization. According to the SPLC, the NOI's theology claims black superiority over whites. According to the NOI, whites were created 6,600 years ago as a "race of devils" by an evil scientist named Yakub, a story which originated with the founder of the NOI, Wallace D. Fard.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: The split in the NOI into two factions after Eljiah Muhammad died in 1975, was caused in part because new leader Warith Mohammed wished to reject the Yakub myth, while national spokesman Farrakhan wanted to reaffirm it. At an event in Milwaukee in August 2015, Farrakhan said: "White people deserve to die, and they know, so they think it’s us coming to do it".


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: Both the Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center classify Farrakhan as an antisemite. Farrakhan has accused Jews of controlling the media, government, and global economy, along with being behind the Atlantic slave trade, Jim Crow laws, and black oppression in general. He regularly calls Jews "Satanic" and has repeatedly praised Adolf Hitler as a “very great man.”


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: The Simon Wiesenthal Center included some of Farrakhan's comments on its list of the Top 10 antisemitic slurs in 2012.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: In June 1984, after returning from a visit to Libya, Farrakhan delivered a sermon that was recorded by a "Chicago Sun-Times" reporter. A transcript from part of the sermon was published in "The New York Times":


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: Farrakhan has repeatedly denied referring to Judaism as a "gutter religion" by explaining that he was instead referring to what he believed was the Israeli Government's use of Judaism as a political tool. In a June 18, 1997, letter to a former "Wall Street Journal" editor Jude Wanniski he stated:


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: In response to Farrakhan's speech, Nathan Pearlmutter, then Chair of the Anti-Defamation League, referred to Farrakhan as the new "Black Hitler" and "Village Voice" journalist Nat Hentoff also characterized the NOI leader as a "Black Hitler" while he was a guest on a New York radio talk-show.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: In response, Farrakhan announced during a March 11, 1984, speech which was broadcast on a Chicago radio station:


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: At a later meeting of the Nation of Islam at Madison Square Garden in 1985, Farrakhan said of the Jews: "And don't you forget, when it's God who puts you in the ovens, it's forever!" He has also claimed that German Jews financed the Holocaust in a speech at the Mosque Maryam, Chicago in March 1995: "German Jews financed Hitler right here in America...International bankers financed Hitler and poor Jews died while big Jews were at the root of what you call the Holocaust". Almost three years later at a Saviors' Day gathering in the same city, he said: "The Jews have been so bad at politics they lost half their population in the Holocaust. They thought they could trust in Hitler, and they helped him get the Third Reich on the road."


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: On March 23, 2002, Farrakhan visited Kahal Kadosh Shaare Shalom in Kingston, Jamaica, which was his first visit to a synagogue, in an attempt to repair his relationship with the Jewish community. Farrakhan was accepted to speak at Shaare Shalom in the native country of his father, after being rejected to appear at American synagogues, many of whom had fear of sending the wrong signals to the Jewish community.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: Farrakhan made antisemitic comments during his May 16–17, 2013 visit to Detroit in which he accused President Obama of having “surrounded himself with Satan…members of the Jewish community". Jews, according to Farrakhan, "have mastered the civilization now, but they’ve mastered it in evil". In a weekly lecture series titled "The Time and What Must Be Done", which began during January 2013, he prophesied the downfall of the United States soon and said the country faced divine punishment if his warnings were rejected.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: In March 2015, Farrakhan accused "Israelis and Zionist Jews" of being involved in the September 11 attacks. (In 2012 and 2017 speeches, he said the American government were behind 9/11.) In his Saviours' Day speech in February 2018, Farrakhan described "the powerful Jews" as his enemy and approvingly cited President Richard Nixon and the Reverend Billy Graham's derogatory comments about Jews "grip on the media", and claimed they are responsible for "all of this filth and degenerate behavior that Hollywood is putting out turning men into women and women into men".


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: A three-hour speech by Farrakhan on July 4, 2020 was carried by Revolt TV's YouTube channel, He claimed Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the anti-bigotry nonprofit Anti-Defamation League, is Satan, and described Alan Dershowitz as "a skillful deceiver" and "Satan masquerading as a lawyer". Greenblatt responded in a tweet: "This is routine for Farrakhan—give him a platform, he never fails to espouse hatred." Farrakhan made the factually inaccurate claim that Jews are required by their religion to poison prophets and claimed Jews had "broken their covenant relationship with God" and were the "enemy of God". However, in his speech, Farrakhan also said: “If you really think I hate the Jewish people, you don’t know me at all,” adding “[I’ve never] uttered the words of death to the Jewish people.” As of July 15, 2020, Farrakhan's speech had been viewed more than 1.2 million times on YouTube.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: In comments in 2005, Farrakhan stated that there was a hole under one of the key levees that failed in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. He implied that the levee's destruction was a deliberate attempt to wipe out the population of the largely black sections within the city. Farrakhan later said that New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin told him of the crater during a meeting in Dallas, Texas.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: Farrakhan further claimed that the fact the levee broke the day after Hurricane Katrina is proof that the destruction of the levee was not a natural occurrence. Farrakhan has raised additional questions and has called for federal investigations into the source of the levee break. He also asserted that the hurricane was "God's way of punishing America for its warmongering and racism".


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: Experts including the Independent Levee Investigation Team (ILIT) from the University of California, Berkeley have countered his accusations. The report from the ILIT said "The findings of this panel are that the over-topping of the levees by flood waters, the often sub-standard materials used to shore up the levees, and the age of the levees contributed to these scour holes found at many of the sites of levee breaks after the hurricane."


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: In 2008, Farrakhan publicly criticized the United States and supported then-Senator Barack Obama who was campaigning at the time to become the president of the United States of America. Farrakhan and Obama had met at least once before that time.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: The Obama campaign quickly responded to convey his distance from the minister. "Senator Obama has been clear in his objections to Farrakhan's past pronouncements and has not solicited the minister's support," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton. Obama "rejected and denounced" Farrakhan's support during an NBC presidential candidate debate.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: Following the 2008 presidential election, Farrakhan explained, during a BET television interview, that he was "careful" never to endorse Obama during his campaign. "I talked about him—but, in very beautiful and glowing terms, stopping short of endorsing him. And unfortunately, or fortunately, however we look at it, the media said I 'endorsed' him, so he renounced my so-called endorsement and support. But that didn't stop me from supporting him."


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: On May 28, 2011, Farrakhan, speaking at the American Clergy Leadership Conference, lambasted Obama over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the intervention in Libya, calling him an "assassin" and a "murderer." "We voted for our brother Barack, a beautiful human being with a sweet heart," Farrakhan said, in a video that was widely shared on the Internet. "But he has turned into someone else," Farrakhan told the crowd. "Now he's an assassin."


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: A connection between the Church of Scientology and the Nation of Islam is reported to date from the late 1990s when Farrakhan was introduced to its teachings by the musician Isaac Hayes, who was the Church of Scientology's International spokesman for its World Literacy Crusade.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: On May 8, 2010, Farrakhan publicly announced his embrace of Dianetics and has actively encouraged Nation of Islam members to undergo auditing from the Church. Although he has stressed that he is not a Scientologist, but only a believer in Dianetics and the theories related to it, the Church honored Farrakhan previously during its 2006 Ebony Awakening awards ceremony (which he did not attend). Farrakhan has also urged European Americans to join the Church of Scientology, stating in his 2011 Saviour's Day speech, "All white people should flock to [Scientology founder] L. Ron Hubbard." Reportedly, according to the SPLC, Hubbard was a racist who supported the apartheid regime in South Africa.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: Since the announcement in 2010, the Nation of Islam has been hosting its own Dianetic courses and its own graduation ceremonies. At the third such ceremony, which was held on Saviours Day 2013, it was announced that nearly 8,500 members of the organisation had undergone Dianetic auditing. The Organisation announced it had graduated 1,055 auditors and had delivered 82,424 hours of auditing. The graduation ceremony was certified by the Church of Scientology, and the Nation of Islam members received official certification. The ceremony was attended by Shane Woodruff, vice-president of the Church of Scientology's Celebrity Centre International. He stated that "The unfolding story of the Nation of Islam and Dianetics is bold, it is determined and it is absolutely committed to restoring freedom and wiping hell from the face of this planet."


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: During the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries, Farrakhan praised Republican candidate Donald Trump as the only candidate "who has stood in front of the Jewish community and said 'I don’t want your money.'" While he declined to endorse Trump outright, he said of Trump "I like what I'm looking at." In 2018, Farrakhan again praised Trump for "destroying every enemy that was an enemy of our rise". He included the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in this group.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: Conservative pundits Candace Owens and Glenn Beck both took note of Farrakhan's position, with Owens saying, while she did not "endorse Farrakhan’s views," it remained a "really big deal" that Farrakhan had "aligned himself with Trump's administration" and Beck declaring that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" and urged "reconciliation" between conservatives and Farrakhan.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: Farrakhan has been the center of much controversy with critics saying that his political views and comments are antisemitic or racist. Farrakhan has categorically denied these charges and stated that much of America's perception of him has been shaped by the media.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: Many, including Malcolm X's family, have accused Farrakhan of being involved in the plot to assassinate Malcolm X. For many years, Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X, harbored resentment toward the Nation of Islam—and Farrakhan in particular—for what she felt was their role in the assassination of her husband. In a 1993 speech, Farrakhan seemed to confirm that the Nation of Islam was responsible for the assassination:


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: We don't give a damn about no white man law if you attack what we love. And frankly, it ain't none of your business. What do you got to say about it? Did you teach Malcolm? Did you make Malcolm? Did you clean up Malcolm? Did you put Malcolm out before the world? Was Malcolm your traitor or ours? And if we dealt with him like a nation deals with a traitor, what the "hell" business is it of yours? You just shut your mouth, and stay out of it. Because in the future, we gonna become a nation. And a nation gotta be able to deal with traitors and cutthroats and turncoats. The white man deals with his. The Jews deal with theirs.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: During a 1994 interview, Gabe Pressman asked Shabazz whether Farrakhan "had anything to do" with Malcolm X's death. She replied: "Of course, yes. Nobody kept it a secret. It was a badge of honor. Everybody talked about it, yes."


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: In a "60 Minutes" interview that aired during May 2000, Farrakhan stated that some of the things he said may have led to the assassination of Malcolm X. "I may have been complicit in words that I spoke", he said. "I acknowledge that and regret that any word that I have said caused the loss of life of a human being." A few days later Farrakhan denied that he "ordered the assassination" of Malcolm X, although he again acknowledged that he "created the atmosphere that ultimately led to Malcolm X's assassination."


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: Farrakhan received sexual discrimination complaints filed with a New York state agency when he banned women from attending a speech he gave in a city-owned theater in 1993. The next year he gave a speech only women could attend. In his speech for women, as "The New York Times" reported,


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: Mr. Farrakhan urged the women to embrace his formula for a successful family. He encouraged them to put husbands and children ahead of their careers, shun tight, short skirts, stay off welfare and reject abortion. He also stressed the importance of cooking and cleaning and urged women not to abandon homemaking for careers. 'You're just not going to be happy unless there is happiness in the home,' Mr. Farrakhan said at the Mason Cathedral Church of God in Christ in the Dorchester section, not far from the Roxbury neighborhood where he was raised by a single mother. 'Your professional lives can't satisfy your soul like a good, loving man.'


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: In 1985, Farrakhan obtained working capital in the amount of $5 million, in the form of an interest-free loan from Libya's Islamic Call Society to be repaid within 18 months which was to be used to create a toiletries firm with black employees. Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi had also offered Farrahkan guns to begin a black nation. Farrakhan said that he told Gaddafi that he preferred an economic investment in black America.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: In January 1996, when Farrakhan visited Libya, Gaddafi pledged giving him a gift of $1 billion and a personal award of $250,000. As economic activity between the two countries had been restricted by the US government since 1986 following allegations of Libya's connection to terrorism, the financial transfer was blocked. It was unclear if Gaddafi would have been in a position to finance the money transfer.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: At the time of the wider uprisings in the Arab world and the Tsunami in Japan in a Chicago press conference on March 31, 2011, Farrakhan said President Obama's action in supporting the rebels in Libya were going to advance the arrival of UFOs, or divine spaceships, as punishments for black sufferings. Depicting Obama as engulfed by the people surrounding him, he said: "The stupid mistake that we make is to think that the president is the supreme power. Never was. Money is the power in America. … All of you know what I’m talking about, Zionist control of the government of the United States of America." When Gaddafi was killed in October 2011, Farrakhan blamed Obama's advisors whom he called "wicked demons".


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: Farrakhan lost his verified status on his Twitter posts in June 2018, denying him full verification, after asserting the Harvey Weinstein scandal was about "Jewish power". A contributor to the "Tablet" website, Yair Rosenberg, objected to a potential suspension as "erasing hate from social media doesn’t make it go away, it just makes it easier to ignore" making them more difficult to dismiss as "inconsequential". The following October, Twitter said that it would not suspend Farrakhan's account after a tweet he posted compared Jews to termites as he had not broken the site's rules. After a Twitter rule change on hateful conduct in July 2019, the tweet ("I’m not an anti-Semite. I’m anti-Termite") was removed.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: At the beginning of May 2019, Farrakhan was banned from Facebook, along with other prominent individuals considered by the company to be extremists, with antisemitism believed to be the reason for Farrakhan's removal.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: During a speech at Saint Sabina Catholic Church in Chicago a week later, Farrakhan stated he had "never been arrested" for "drunken driving" and asked: "What have I done that you would hate me like that?" The Nation of Islam said his speech was Farrakhan's response to the "public outrage over the unprecedented and unwarranted lifetime ban" from Facebook. He insisted he was neither a misogynist nor a homophobe and that: "I do not hate Jewish people". Archbishop of Chicago Cardinal Blase J. Cupich condemned the decision of the church in allowing Farrakhan to speak there.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: When Farrakhan first joined the NOI, he was asked by Elijah Muhammad to put aside his musical career as a calypso singer. After 42 years, Farrakhan decided to take up the violin once more primarily due to the urging of prominent classical musician Sylvia Olden Lee.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: On April 17, 1993, Farrakhan made his return concert debut with performances of the "Violin Concerto in E Minor" by Felix Mendelssohn. Farrakhan intimated that his performance of a concerto by a Jewish composer was, in part, an effort to heal a rift between him and the Jewish community. (Mendelssohn's family converted to Christianity). "The New York Times" music critic Bernard Holland reported that Farrakhan's performance was somewhat flawed due to years of neglect, but "nonetheless Mr. Farrakhan's sound is that of the authentic player. It is wide, deep and full of the energy that makes the violin gleam."


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: Farrakhan announced that he was seriously ill in a letter on September 11, 2006, that was directed to his staff, Nation of Islam members, and supporters. The letter, published in "The Final Call" newspaper, said that doctors in Cuba had discovered a peptic ulcer. According to the letter subsequent infections caused Farrakhan to lose , and he urged the Nation of Islam leadership to carry on while he recovered.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: Farrakhan was released from his five-week hospital stay on January 28, 2007, after major abdominal surgery. The operation was performed to correct damage caused by side effects of a radioactive "seed" implantation procedure that he received years earlier to successfully treat prostate cancer.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: Following his hospital stay, Farrakhan released a "Message of Appreciation" to supporters and well-wishers and weeks later delivered the keynote address at the Nation of Islam's annual convention in Detroit.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: In December 2013, Farrakhan announced that he had not appeared publicly for two months because he had suffered a heart attack in October.


title: Louis Farrakhan

text: It is unknown who will lead the Nation of Islam after Farrakhan's death. Ishmael Muhammad has been speculated to be a potential successor. Social media personality "Brother Ben X" has informally positioned himself as an heir to Farrakhan. Before 1993, Khallid Muhammad was "the most likely heir apparent".


title: The Originals (TV series)

text: The Originals is an American fantasy supernatural drama television series that began airing on The CW on October 3, 2013. It is a spin-off of "The Vampire Diaries" and the first television series expansion of the franchise based on its parent series. The series follows vampire-werewolf hybrid Klaus Mikaelson as he and his family become embroiled in the supernatural politics of the French Quarter of New Orleans.


title: The Originals (TV series)

text: On May 10, 2017, The CW renewed the series for a fifth season. On July 20, 2017, it was announced by series creator Julie Plec ahead of Comic Con that the series' fifth season would be its last. The final season began airing on April 18, 2018, and finished on August 1, 2018.


title: The Originals (TV series)

text: "The Originals," a spin-off of "The Vampire Diaries," centers on three of the Mikaelson siblings: Klaus (Joseph Morgan), Elijah (Daniel Gillies), and Rebekah (Claire Holt). The Mikaelson family are also commonly known as "the Originals" due to the fact that they are the first vampires ever to exist. Klaus is the son of a witch and a werewolf, and his quest to unleash his hybrid nature was detailed in "The Vampire Diaries". The backdoor pilot, "The Originals", which aired on April 25, 2013, also revealed that the werewolf Hayley (Phoebe Tonkin), with whom Klaus had a drunken one-night stand in season 4 of The Vampire Diaries, is pregnant with his child the first ever Hybrid. Klaus, Elijah, Hayley and Rebekah are all introduced in The Vampire Diaries as part of main or recurring cast from season 3 or 4 unlike the other cast of The Originals who are not introduced until the backdoor pilot or later on in the series.


title: The Originals (TV series)

text: The series begins with the Mikaelson siblings returning to the city of New Orleans for the first time since 1919, where a pregnant Hayley has also settled and is under capture by the witches who use her to manipulate Klaus into helping them against Marcel's iron fist. Having originally built the French Quarter, they had been forced to abandon it when fleeing from their vengeful father, Mikael who wished to kill them all and end the vampire species which he viewed as unnatural and evil(Sebastian Roché). In their absence, Klaus's former protégé and adoptive son and Rebekah's former lover, Marcel (Charles Michael Davis), took charge of the French Quarter as self-proclaimed king. Klaus resolves that they must take down Marcel and get back the city that once belonged to them while protecting their city from a war brewing between vampires, werewolves, and witches.


title: The Originals (TV series)

text: The first season describes how Klaus's mystical child is going to be born and speaks of the threats that the Originals together must keep her safe from. It also details the war between vampires, witches and werewolves. The series ends with the child being born - a baby girl named Hope and being given to Rebekah to hide and protect after Klaus and Hayley fake her death to ensure her safety. Hayley is turned into a hybrid through Hope's blood after being murdered when giving birth.


title: The Originals (TV series)

text: The second season deals with the return of Mikael and Esther (Alice Evans), the Mikaelson siblings' parents, the arrival of Dahlia (Claudia Black), sister of Esther who threatens Hope's life as she wishes to take her and train her in her image as she did with Freya the supposedly-dead (Riley Voelkel), first-born daughter of Mikael and Esther who was said to die due to the cold winter, who shows up to help the Mikaelsons against Dahlia, having been kidnapped by her a few years after her birth after Esther promised Freya to her after birth but did not deliver.


title: The Originals (TV series)

text: The third season begins with the return of Lucien Castle (Andrew Lees), the first vampire sired by Klaus. Lucien tells Klaus about a prophecy that speaks of the Mikaelsons' downfall through friend, foe and family. In an effort to battle the Mikaelsons, Lucien works with Tristan de Martel (Oliver Ackland) and his sister Aurora - Klaus' first love (Rebecca Breeds), the first vampires sired by Elijah and Rebekah respectively. This season sees the death of Hayley's husband werewolf Jackson by Tristan and the death of Camille by Lucien. This season is also the first one to have a crossover episode with The Vampire Diaries with Stefan Salvatore coming to New Orleans seeking aid.


title: The Originals (TV series)

text: The fourth season takes place five years after the third season. Marcel, now an Upgraded Original Vampire due to Luciens creation, is ruling the city with an iron fist once more, while Hayley cures Freya, Elijah, Rebekah, and Kol (Nathaniel Buzolic). Meanwhile, Klaus suffers at Marcel's hand as the other Mikaelson siblings strive to save him. But the appearance of an evil ancient mystical menace called the Hollow (Blu Hunt) puts them all at risk, especially Hope who is targeted for her magical abilities and tribrid nature. It is later revealed in the season that the Hollow created the first werewolves which Hayley descends from. Hope is seven years old here and starting to develop magical abilities which Freya helps her control and use.


title: The Originals (TV series)

text: The fifth and final season of the series takes place seven years after the fourth season. Hope (Danielle Rose Russell), now a teenager, is studying at the Salvatore School for the Young and Gifted. The other Mikaelsons are living their own lives separately, trying to keep the Hollow at bay through their distance. But when Klaus and an amnesiac Elijah meet, Hayley goes missing and Nazi vampires emerge the family all return to New Orleans to fight these new brewing threats. This season also acts as a soft backdoor pilot through small incoorprations of the Salvatore School and future Legacies characters Alaric, Landon Kirby and the Saltzman twins as younger versions - Legacies is set 2 years later to the end of The Originals.


title: The Originals (TV series)

text: The Originals was created following much fan support for Klaus and the Mikaelson family, which fans did not want to see end. As a result The Originals was created by Julie Plec to follow the Mikaelson family whilst allowing The Vampire Diaries to continue it's storyline. Klaus was originally supposed to die at the end of season 4 of The Vampire Diaries but fans and cast did not want this to happen.


title: The Originals (TV series)

text: Klaus, Elijah, Rebekah, Hayley, Kol, Finn, Mikael, Esther, Freya is mentioned as a long-lost dead sibling but the name is not given.


title: The Originals (TV series)

text: On January 11, 2013, it was announced that a backdoor pilot focused on the Originals, starring Joseph Morgan as Klaus and titled "The Originals" would air sometime in April for a potential series pick-up for the 2013–2014 season. On April 26, 2013, "The Originals" was confirmed for a full series. This second spin-off attempt will be overseen by Julie Plec, with no involvement by Kevin Williamson. "The Originals" was officially picked up by The CW on April 26, 2013, for the 2013–14 season. Season one of "The Originals" was set to premiere on Tuesday, October 15. However, on July 29, 2013, The CW announced that the series premiere would instead air on October 3, 2013, following the fifth-season premiere of "The Vampire Diaries" in order to attract fans of the series. On October 10, 2013, the CW ordered three additional scripts for the series. On November 11, 2013, the CW decided to order a full season for "The Originals".


title: The Originals (TV series)

text: Following her March 11 episode Claire Holt left the main cast. Holt confirmed that she would be returning to the show, but that she needed to spend time with her family first.


title: The Originals (TV series)

text: In November 2014, a web series titled "The Originals: The Awakening" was released as the fourth show in the franchise. The series explores the character Kol Mikaelson and his relationships with his siblings. Flashing back to 1914, Kol is on a quest to form an alliance with the witches of the French Quarter. Awakening gives answers to some questions about Kol's past, including the origins of his rivalry with his family and the unique backstory he has with the New Orleans witches. Each webisode is approximately two minutes long. The series concluded on December 8, 2014. To date, "The Originals: The Awakening" is the only web series in "The Vampire Diaries" franchise.


title: The Originals (TV series)

text: On January 27, 2015, the first book in a series of novels based on the show was released. "The Rise", "The Loss", and "The Resurrection" make up the three novels in The Originals series written by Julie Plec.


title: The Originals (TV series)

text: In August 2017, it was announced that a spin-off focusing on Hope Mikaelson (Danielle Rose Russell), the daughter of Klaus and Hayley, was in development. Julie Plec, co-creator of "The Vampire Diaries" and creator of "The Originals", wrote the script and is credited with creating the series. It was the third series in "The Vampire Diaries" universe. In January 2018, it was revealed that filming for the pilot would go into production in the second quarter of 2018. It was announced in March 2018 that the spin-off was in fact ordered to pilot, but instead of a traditional pilot, Plec would be delivering a fifteen-minute pilot presentation of the series to The CW. It was also announced that "The Vampire Diaries" veteran Matt Davis would star in the project along with Aria Shahghasemi, Quincy Fouse, Jenny Boyd, and Kaylee Bryant. Shahghasemi debuted in the fifth season of "The Originals" as Hope's human friend and romantic interest Landon who lives in Mystic Falls and works in the grill (he is later revealed to not be human but a phoenix in Legacies).


title: The Originals (TV series)

text: On May 11, 2018, it was announced that the spin-off, titled "Legacies", had been ordered to series for the 2018–19 season. The show centers around "a 17-year-old Hope, along with Alaric's twin daughters, and other young witches, vampires, and werewolves" as they come of age at the Salvatore Boarding School for the Young and Gifted. The show featured appearances from many characters from "The Originals", including Freya, Klaus, Kol, Marcel, and Rebekah along with characters from "The Vampire Diaries", including Caroline Forbes and Matt Donavan, and a few mentions of Elena Gilbert and Damon Salvatore. On May 12, 2022, it was reported that the fourth season would be its last.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: Robert Anthony Rodriguez (; born June 20, 1968) is an American filmmaker, composer, and visual effects supervisor. He shoots, edits, produces, and scores many of his films in Mexico and in his home state of Texas. Rodriguez directed the 1992 action film "El Mariachi", which was a commercial success after grossing $2.6 million ($4.9 million in 2021 dollars) against a budget of $7,000 ($13,153 in 2021 dollars). The film spawned two sequels known collectively as the "Mexico Trilogy": "Desperado" and "Once Upon a Time in Mexico".


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: He directed "From Dusk till Dawn" in 1996 and developed its (2014–2016). Rodriguez co-directed the 2005 neo-noir crime thriller anthology "Sin City" (adapted from the graphic novel of the same name) and the 2014 sequel, "".


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: Rodriguez is also the creator of the "Spy Kids" franchise, as well as "The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl", "Planet Terror", "Machete", "We Can Be Heroes", and also directed "The Faculty" and "".


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: He is the best friend and frequent collaborator of filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, who founded the production company A Band Apart, of which Rodriguez was a member. In December 2013, Rodriguez launched his own cable television channel, El Rey.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: Rodriguez was born in San Antonio, Texas, the son of Mexican-American parents Rebecca ("née" Villegas), a nurse, and Cecilio G. Rodríguez, a salesman. He began his interest in film at age eleven, when his father bought one of the first VCRs, which came with a camera.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: While attending St. Anthony High School Seminary in San Antonio, Rodriguez was commissioned to videotape the school's football games. According to his sister, he was fired soon afterward as he had shot footage in a cinematic style, getting shots of parents' reactions and the ball traveling through the air instead of shooting the whole play. In high school, he met Carlos Gallardo; they both shot films on video throughout high school and college.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: Rodriguez went to the College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin, where he also developed a love of cartooning. Not having grades high enough to be accepted into the school's film program, he created a daily comic strip entitled "Los Hooligans." Many of the characters were based on his siblings – in particular, one of his sisters, Maricarmen. The comic ran for three years in the student newspaper "The Daily Texan", while Rodriguez continued to make short films.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: Rodriguez shot action and horror short films on video and edited on two VCRs. In late 1990, his entry in a local film contest earned him a spot in the university's film program. There he made the award-winning 16 mm short "Bedhead" (1991). The film chronicles the amusing misadventures of a young girl whose older brother sports an incredibly tangled mess of hair which she detests. Even at this early stage, Rodriguez's trademark style began to emerge: quick cuts, intense zooms, and fast camera movements deployed with a sense of humor.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: "Bedhead" was recognized for excellence in the Black Maria Film Festival. It was selected by Film/Video Curator Sally Berger for the Black Maria 20th-anniversary retrospective at MoMA in 2006.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: The short film "Bedhead" attracted enough attention to encourage him to seriously attempt a career as a filmmaker. He went on to shoot the action flick "El Mariachi" (1992) in Spanish; he shot it for around $7,000 with money raised by his friend Adrian Kano and from payments for his own participation in medical testing studies. Rodriguez won the Audience Award for this film at the Sundance Film Festival in 1993. Intended for the Spanish-language low-budget home-video market, the film was "cleaned up" by Columbia Pictures with post-production work costing several hundred thousand dollars before it was distributed in the United States. Its promotion still advertised it as "the movie made for $7,000". Rodriguez described his experiences making the film in his book "Rebel Without a Crew" (1995).


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: "Desperado" was a sequel to "El Mariachi" that starred Antonio Banderas and introduced Salma Hayek to international audiences as her English-language breakthrough role. Rodriguez went on to collaborate with Quentin Tarantino on the vampire thriller "From Dusk till Dawn" (also both co-producing its two sequels), and he wrote, directed, and produced the for his own cable network, El Rey. Rodriguez has also worked with Kevin Williamson, on the sci-fi thriller film "The Faculty".


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: In 2001, Rodriguez enjoyed his first Hollywood hit with "Spy Kids", which went on to become a movie franchise. A third "mariachi" film also appeared in late 2003, "Once Upon a Time in Mexico", which completed the Mexico Trilogy (also called the Mariachi Trilogy). He operates a production company called Troublemaker Studios, formerly Los Hooligans Productions.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: Rodriguez co-directed "Sin City" (2005), an adaptation of the comic books by Frank Miller; Quentin Tarantino guest-directed a scene. During production in 2004, Rodriguez insisted Miller be credited as co-director, because he considered the visual style of Miller's comic art to be just as important as his own in the film. However, the Directors Guild of America would not allow it, citing that only "legitimate teams", "e.g.", the Wachowskis, could share the director's credit. Rodriguez chose to resign from the DGA, stating, "It was easier for me to quietly resign before shooting because otherwise I'd be forced to make compromises I was unwilling to make or set a precedent that might hurt the guild later on." By resigning from the DGA, Rodriguez was forced to relinquish his director's seat on the film "John Carter of Mars" for Paramount Pictures. Rodriguez had already signed on and had been announced as director of that film, planning to begin filming soon after completing "Sin City".


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: "Sin City" was a critical hit in 2005 as well as a box office success, particularly for a hyperviolent comic book adaptation that did not have name recognition comparable to the "X-Men" or "Spider-Man". He has an interest in adapting all of Miller's "Sin City" comic books.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: Rodriguez released "The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl" in 2005, a superhero-kid movie intended for the same younger audiences as his "Spy Kids" series. "Sharkboy and Lavagirl" was based on a story conceived by Rodriguez's 7-year-old son, Racer, who was given credit for the screenplay. The film grossed $39 million at the box office.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: Rodriguez wrote and directed the film "Planet Terror" as part of the double-bill release "Grindhouse" (2007). Quentin Tarantino directed "Grindhouse"'s other film.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: He has a series of "Ten Minute Film School" segments on several of his DVD releases, showing aspiring filmmakers how to make good, profitable movies using inexpensive tactics. Starting with the "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" DVD, Rodriguez began creating a series called "Ten Minute Cooking School" in which he revealed his recipe for "Puerco Pibil" (based on Cochinita pibil, an old dish from Yucatán), the same food Johnny Depp's character, Agent Sands, ate in the film. The popularity of this series led to the inclusion of another "Cooking School" on the two-disc version of the "Sin City" DVD where Rodriguez teaches the viewer how to make "Sin City Breakfast Tacos", a dish (made for his cast and crew during late-night shoots and editing sessions) utilizing his grandmother's tortilla recipe and different egg mixes for the filling. He had initially planned to release a third "Cooking School" with the DVD release of "Planet Terror" but then announced on the "Film School" segment of the DVD that he would put it on the "Grindhouse" DVD set instead. The Cooking School, titled "Texas Barbecue...from the GRAVE!", is a dish based on the "secret barbecue recipe" of JT Hague, Jeff Fahey's character in the film. His new movie "We Can Be Heroes" was released on December 25, 2020, by Netflix and was a success.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: Rodriguez is a strong supporter of digital filmmaking, having been introduced to the practice by director George Lucas, who personally invited Rodriguez to use the digital cameras at Lucas's headquarters. He was presented with the Extraordinary Contribution to Filmmaking Award at the 2010 Austin Film Festival.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: On February 7, 2010, it was announced that Rodriguez would produce a new Predator sequel, entitled "Predators". This film's script was based on early drafts he had written after seeing the original. Rodriguez's ideas included a planet-sized game preserve and various creatures used by the Predators to hunt a group of abducted yet skilled humans. Opening to mostly positive reviews, the film fared reasonably well at the box office.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: "Machete" is a feature film directed by Rodriguez and released in September 2010. It is an expansion of a fake trailer Rodriguez directed for the 2007 film "Grindhouse". It starred Danny Trejo as the title character. Trejo, Rodriguez's 2nd cousin, has worked with him in some of his other movies such as "Desperado", "From Dusk Till Dawn", "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" and "Spy Kids", where Trejo first appeared as Machete. Although originally announced to be released direct-to-DVD as an extra on the "Planet Terror" DVD, the film was produced as a theatrical release.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: According to Rodriguez, the origins of the film go back to "Desperado". He says, "When I met Danny, I said, 'This guy should be like the Mexican Jean-Claude Van Damme or Charles Bronson, putting out a movie every year and his name should be Machete.' So I decided to do that way back when, never got around to it until finally now. So now, of course, I want to keep going and do a feature." In an interview with "Rolling Stone" magazine, Rodriguez said that he wrote the screenplay back in 1993 when he cast Trejo in "Desperado". "So I wrote him this idea of a federale from Mexico who gets hired to do hatchet jobs in the U.S. I had heard sometimes FBI or DEA have a really tough job that they don't want to get their own agents killed on, they'll hire an agent from Mexico to come do the job for $25,000. I thought, "That's "Machete". He would come and do a really dangerous job for a lot of money to him but for everyone else over here it's peanuts." But I never got around to making it."


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: Rodriguez hoped to film "Machete" at the same time as "". Additionally, during Comic-Con International 2008, he took the time to speak about Machete, including such topics as: status, possible sequels after the release of Machete, and production priorities. It was also revealed that he has regularly pulled sequences from it for his other productions, including "Once Upon a Time in Mexico". "Machete" was released in theaters September 3, 2010, in the U.S.A.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: On May 5, 2010, Rodriguez responded to Arizona's controversial immigration law by releasing an "illegal" trailer on Ain't It Cool News. The fake trailer combined elements of the "Machete" trailer that appeared in "Grindhouse" with footage from the actual film, and implied that the film would be about Machete leading a revolt against anti-immigration politicians and border vigilantes. Several movie websites, including Internet Movie Database, reported that it was the official teaser for the film. However, Rodriguez later revealed the trailer to be a joke, explaining "it was Cinco de Mayo and I had too much tequila."


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: In May 2020, Rodriguez confirmed he would direct an episode from the second season of the Disney+ series "The Mandalorian", part of the "Star Wars" franchise. Rodriguez made the announcement in an Instagram post in which he posed with a puppet of Grogu, a major character in "The Mandalorian"s first two seasons. He also tweeted a video of himself on the set of the episode playing a guitar next to Grogu.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: In December 2020, it was also revealed that Rodriguez executive produced "The Book of Boba Fett", a spin-off of "The Mandalorian" released in December 2021, where he also voiced Dokk Strassi and Mok Shaiz.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: Since 1998, Rodriguez has owned the film rights to Mike Allred's off-beat comic "Madman". The two have hinted at the project being close to beginning on several occasions without anything coming of it. However, other projects have been completed first. (Allred was instrumental in connecting Rodriguez with Frank Miller, leading to the production of "Sin City".) In 2004, Allred, while promoting his comic book "The Golden Plates", announced that a screenplay by George Huang was near completion. Allred announced at the 2006 WonderCon that production would likely commence on "Madman the Movie" in 2006. Huang is friends with Rodriguez, who advised him to pursue filmmaking as a career when Rodriguez landed a deal with Columbia Pictures where Huang was an employee.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: In May 2007, it was announced that Rodriguez had signed on to direct a remake of "Barbarella" for a 2008 release. At the 2007 Comic-Con convention, actress Rosario Dawson announced that because of "Barbarella", production of "Sin City: A Dame to Kill For" would be put on hold. She also announced that she would be playing an amazon in the Barbarella film. As of June 2008, plans to remake the film Barbarella with Rose McGowan as the lead have been delayed; the actress and director were instead remaking the film "Red Sonja".


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: In May 2008, Rodriguez was said to be shopping around a prison drama television series called "Woman in Chains!", with Rose McGowan being a possibility for a lead role. In May 2009, Rodriguez planned to produce a live-action remake of "Fire and Ice", a 1983 film collaboration between painter Frank Frazetta and animator Ralph Bakshi. The deal was closed shortly after Frazetta's death.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: In 2011, Rodriguez announced at Comic-Con that he had purchased the film rights to "Heavy Metal" and planned to develop a new animated film at the new Quick Draw Studios.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: In November 2015, it was announced that Rodriguez directed the film "100 Years", which would not be released until 2115.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: In March 2017, it was announced that Rodriguez would direct a remake of the dystopian sci-fi action film "Escape from New York", with original director John Carpenter producing.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: Rodriguez announced in April 2006 that he and his wife Elizabeth Avellán, with whom he had five children with, had separated after 16 years of marriage.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: He reportedly had a "dalliance" with actress Rose McGowan during the shooting of "Grindhouse". In October 2007, "Elle Magazine" revealed that Rodriguez had cast McGowan in the title role in his remake of "Barbarella". After some reports of their breaking up and being together again, they split up in October 2009.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: In October 2010, he walked Alexa Vega (Carmen Cortez in "Spy Kids" series) down the aisle at her wedding to producer Sean Covel.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: In March 2014, Rodriguez showed his collection of Frank Frazetta original paintings in Austin, Texas, during the SXSW festival.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: Rodriguez not only has the credits of producing, directing and writing his films, he also frequently serves as editor, director of photography, camera operator, steadicam operator, composer, production designer, visual effects supervisor, and sound editor on his films. This has earned him the nickname of "the one-man film crew". He abbreviates his numerous roles in his film credits; "Once Upon a Time in Mexico", for instance, is "shot, chopped, and scored by Robert Rodriguez", and "Sin City" is "shot and cut by Robert Rodriguez".


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: He calls his style of making movies "Mariachi-style" (in reference to his first feature film "El Mariachi") in which (according to the back cover of his book "Rebel Without a Crew") "Creativity, not money, is used to solve problems." He prefers to work at night, spending his day-time hours with his kids, when they're home, and says that he believes many creative people are "night people".


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: In his book "The DV Rebel's Guide", Stu Maschwitz coined the term "Robert Rodriguez list", i.e. the filmmaker compiling a list of things they have access to like cool cars, apartments, horses, samurai swords and so on, and then writing the screenplay based on that list.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: I'd been wanting to write a book for the new breed of digital filmmakers, but now I don't have to. My pal and fellow movie maker Stu Maschwitz has compressed years of experience into this thorough guide. Don't make a movie without reading this book!


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: Robert Rodriguez has brought a number of his favorite and most influential directors on his television show, "The Directors Chair". Some of these directors included John Carpenter, Quentin Tarantino, and George Miller. He was also influenced by the spectacle of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in his youth, which he later went on to produce the theatrical version of said television show, as reflected his action scenes and attempts to create "edge of the seat" thrill in his work.


title: Robert Rodriguez

text: Rodriguez has cast certain actors in more than one of his projects. Danny Trejo has appeared in ten of his projects, while Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, and Cheech Marin have all appeared in seven; Alexa PenaVega has appeared in six, and Jessica Alba, Daryl Sabara, Tom Savini, and Patricia Vonne have all appeared in five.


title: Scott Weiland

text: Scott Richard Weiland (; né Kline, October 27, 1967 – December 3, 2015) was an American singer and songwriter. During a career spanning three decades, Weiland was best known as the lead singer of the rock band Stone Temple Pilots from 1989 to 2002 and 2008 to 2013, making six records with them. He was also lead vocalist of supergroup Velvet Revolver from 2003 to 2008, recording two albums, and recorded one album with another supergroup, Art of Anarchy. Weiland established himself as a solo artist as well and collaborated with several other musicians throughout his career.


title: Scott Weiland

text: Weiland was known for his flamboyant and chaotic onstage persona; he was also known for constantly changing his appearance and vocal style, for his use of a megaphone in concerts for vocal effect, and for his battles with substance abuse. Now widely viewed as a talented and versatile vocalist, Weiland has been ranked No. 57 in the "Top 100 Heavy Metal Vocalists" by "Hit Parader".


title: Scott Weiland

text: In 2012, Weiland formed the backing band the Wildabouts. The band received mixed reviews, and some critics and fans noted Weiland's failing health. In December 2015, Weiland died of an accidental drug overdose on his tour bus in Minnesota at the age of 48. Upon his death, many critics and peers offered re-evaluations of Weiland's life and career; those critics included David Fricke of "Rolling Stone" and Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins, who identified Weiland as one of the "voices of the generation" alongside Kurt Cobain, Layne Staley, and Chris Cornell.


title: Scott Weiland

text: Weiland was born at Kaiser Hospital in San Jose, California, the son of Sharon (née Williams) and Kent Kline. From his father's side, he was of German descent. At age five, his stepfather David Weiland legally adopted him and Scott took his surname. Around that time, Weiland moved to Bainbridge Township, Ohio, where he later attended Kenston High School. He moved back to California as a teenager and attended Edison High School in Huntington Beach and Orange Coast College. Before devoting himself to music full-time, he worked as a paste up artist for the "Los Angeles Daily Journal" legal newspaper.


title: Scott Weiland

text: At the age of 12, Weiland was allegedly raped by an older male who had invited him to his house. He wrote in his autobiography "Not Dead & Not For Sale" that he repressed the memory until it returned to him in therapy decades later.


title: Scott Weiland

text: In 1985, Weiland met bassist Robert DeLeo at a Black Flag concert in Long Beach, California. The two of them were discussing their love interests, when they realized they were both dating the same girl. They developed a bond over the incident, and ended up moving into her vacated apartment. Weiland's childhood friends Corey Hicock and David Allin rounded out the group, both of whom would soon be replaced by Eric Kretz and DeLeo's brother Dean. They took the name Stone Temple Pilots because of their fondness for the initials "STP". In one of the band's first opening performances as Mighty Joe Young, they opened for Electric Love Hogs, whose guitarist Dave Kushner would one day co-found Weiland's later band Velvet Revolver. In 1992, they released their first album, "Core", spawning four hits ("Sex Type Thing", "Wicked Garden", "Creep", and "Plush".)


title: Scott Weiland

text: In 1994, STP released their second record, "Purple", which saw the development of a more distinctive identity for the band. Like "Core", "Purple" was a big success for the band, spawning three hit singles ("Big Empty", "Vasoline" and "Interstate Love Song") and selling more than six million copies. The critical response to "Purple" was more favorable, with "Spin" calling it a "quantum leap" from the band's previous album.


title: Scott Weiland

text: In 1995, Weiland formed the alternative rock band the Magnificent Bastards with session drummer Victor Indrizzo in San Diego. The band included Zander Schloss and Jeff Nolan on guitars and Bob Thompson on bass. Only two songs were recorded by the Magnificent Bastards, "Mockingbird Girl", composed by Nolan, Schloss, and Weiland, appeared in the film "Tank Girl" and on its soundtrack, and a cover of John Lennon's "How Do You Sleep?" was recorded for the tribute album, "". Weiland rejoined Stone Temple Pilots in the fall of 1995, but STP was forced to cancel most of their 1996–1997 tour in support of their third release, "Tiny Music... Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop", which sold about two million albums. Weiland encountered problems with drug addiction at this time as well, which inspired some of his songs in the late-1990s and resulted in prison time.


title: Scott Weiland

text: In 1999, STP regrouped once again and released "No. 4." The album contained the hit single "Sour Girl", promoted by a surreal music video with Sarah Michelle Gellar. That same year, Weiland also recorded two songs with the short-lived supergroup the Wondergirls. During this time period Weiland spent five months in jail for drug possession.


title: Scott Weiland

text: In November 2000, Weiland was invited to perform on the show VH1 "Storytellers" with the surviving members of the Doors. Weiland performed vocals on two Doors songs, "Break On Through (To the Other Side)" and "Five to One". That same month Stone Temple Pilots appeared on the Doors tribute CD, "" with their own rendition of "Break on Through" as the lead track. On June 19, 2001, STP released its fifth album, "Shangri-La Dee Da." That same year the band headlined the Family Values Tour along with Linkin Park, Staind and Static-X. In late 2002, significant backstage altercations between the DeLeo brothers and Weiland precipitated the band's break-up.


title: Scott Weiland

text: In 2008, Stone Temple Pilots announced a 73-date U.S. tour on April 7 and performed together for the first time since 2002. The reunion tour kicked off at the Rock on the Range festival on May 17, 2008. According to Dean DeLeo, steps toward a Stone Temple Pilots reunion started with a simple phone call from Weiland's wife. She invited the DeLeo brothers to play at a private beach party, which led to the reconciliation of Weiland and the DeLeo brothers.


title: Scott Weiland

text: STP's reunion tour was a success, and the band continued to tour throughout 2009 and began recording its sixth studio album. STP's first album since 2001, "Stone Temple Pilots", was released on May 25, 2010.


title: Scott Weiland

text: STP toured Southeast Asia for the first time in 2011, playing in Philippines (Manila), Singapore and Indonesia (Jakarta). Following this, the band played successful shows in Australia, including sell-out performances in Sydney and Melbourne.


title: Scott Weiland

text: The band expressed interest in a 20th anniversary tour to celebrate the release of "Core" with Scott commenting on January 2, 2012, "Well, we're doing a lot of special things. [There's] a lot of archival footage that we're putting together, a coffee table book, hopefully a brand new album – so many ideas. A box set and then a tour, of course."


title: Scott Weiland

text: STP began to experience problems in 2012 that were said to have been caused by tensions between Weiland and the rest of the band. Despite the band's claims that their fall tour would be celebrating the 20th anniversary of "Core", this did not happen. On February 27, 2013, shortly before his solo tour was set to commence, Stone Temple Pilots announced on their website that "...they [had] officially terminated Scott Weiland."


title: Scott Weiland

text: Weiland criticized the band after they hired Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington as his replacement, claiming he was still a member and they shouldn't be calling themselves Stone Temple Pilots without him.


title: Scott Weiland

text: In 2002, former Guns N' Roses members – guitarist Slash, bassist Duff McKagan and drummer Matt Sorum – as well as former Wasted Youth guitarist Dave Kushner were looking for a singer to help form a new band. Throughout his career Weiland had become acquainted with the four musicians; he became friends with McKagan after attending the same gym, was in rehab at the same time as Sorum and once played on the same bill as Kushner. Weiland was sent two discs of material to work with but felt that the first disc "sounded like Bad Company gone wrong". Weiland was more positive when he was sent the second disc, comparing it to "Core"-era Stone Temple Pilots, though he turned them down because Stone Temple Pilots had not yet separated.


title: Scott Weiland

text: When Stone Temple Pilots disbanded in 2003, the band sent Weiland new music, which he took into his studio and added vocals. This music eventually became the song "Set Me Free". Although he delivered the music to the band himself, Weiland was still unsure whether or not he wanted to join them, despite performing at an industry showcase at Mates. They recorded two songs with producer Nick Raskulinecz, a recorded version of "Set Me Free" and a cover of Pink Floyd's "Money", for the soundtracks to the movies "The Hulk" and "The Italian Job", respectively. Weiland joined the band soon after, and "Set Me Free" managed to peak at number 17 on the Mainstream Rock chart without any radio promotion or a record label. It was prior to a screening of "The Hulk" at Universal Studios that the band chose a name. After seeing a movie by Revolution Studios, Slash liked the beginning of the word, eventually thinking of Revolver because of its multiple meanings: the name of a gun, subtext of a revolving door, which suited the band, as well as the name of a Beatles album. When he suggested Revolver to the band, Weiland suggested 'Black Velvet' Revolver, liking the idea of "something intimate like velvet juxtaposed with something deadly like a gun." They eventually arrived at Velvet Revolver, announcing it at a press conference and performance showcase at the El Rey Theatre while also performing the songs "Set Me Free" and "Slither" as well as covers of Nirvana's "Negative Creep", Sex Pistols' "Bodies", and Guns N' Roses' "It's So Easy".


title: Scott Weiland

text: Velvet Revolver's debut album "Contraband" was released in June 2004 to much success. It debuted at number one on the "Billboard" 200 and has sold over three million copies worldwide to date. Two of the album's songs, "Slither" and "Fall to Pieces", reached number one on the "Billboard" Modern Rock Tracks chart. The song "Slither" also won a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance with Vocal in 2005, an award Weiland had won previously with STP for the song "Plush" in 1994. At the 2005 Grammy Awards, Weiland (along with the rest of Velvet Revolver) performed the Beatles song "Across the Universe", along with Bono, Brian Wilson, Norah Jones, Stevie Wonder, Steven Tyler, Billie Joe Armstrong, Alison Krauss, and Alicia Keys. On July 2, 2005, Weiland and Velvet Revolver performed at Live 8 in London, in which Weiland was condemned for using strong language before the UK watershed during the performance.


title: Scott Weiland

text: Velvet Revolver released their second album, "Libertad", on July 3, 2007, peaking at number five on the "Billboard" 200. The album's first single "She Builds Quick Machines" peaked at 74 on the Hot Canadian Digital Singles. The second and third singles, "The Last Fight" and "Get Out the Door", both peaked at number 16 and 34 on the Mainstream Rock Chart, respectively. Critical reception to the album was mixed. Though some critics praised the album and felt that "Libertad" gave the band an identity of their own, outside of the Guns N' Roses and Stone Temple Pilots comparisons, others described the album as "bland" and noted that the band seem to be "play[ing] to their strengths instead of finding a collective sound."


title: Scott Weiland

text: After several flares on their personal blogs and in interviews, it was announced on April 1, 2008 that Weiland would no longer be a member of Velvet Revolver.


title: Scott Weiland

text: Velvet Revolver reunited for a one-off performance with Weiland at a benefit concert for the late John O'Brien, on January 12, 2012.


title: Scott Weiland

text: The project started in 2011, with guitarist Bumblefoot recording parts for the debut album in between touring with Guns N' Roses. Weiland wrote and recorded the vocals after sharing the song files back and forth with Bumblefoot from 2012 to 2013. Weiland also took part in promotional photo shoots and music videos in October 2014.


title: Scott Weiland

text: Their self-titled debut album was released in June 2015. On January 21, 2015, they released a 2:06 teaser of the new album. Bumblefoot is the producer and engineer on the album. The first single to be released from the album was "'Til the Dust Is Gone". The album contains 11 tracks. However, Weiland distanced himself from the project, stating "It was a project I did where I was just supposed to have written the lyrics and melodies, and I was paid to do it. I did some production work on it, and the next thing I knew there were press releases that I was in the band. ... I'm not in the band." Weiland later added "It's just something I kinda got into when I wasn't doing anything else. ... I sang over these stereo tracks and then sent it back. But it's not something I'm a part of." In a January 2015 "Rolling Stone" interview, both Weiland and the Votta brothers from Anarchy stated it was a studio project that Weiland was never meant to tour with and that Anarchy would have to find a lead singer outside of the tracks Weiland had already contributed. Following Weiland's death, the lead vocalist position in Art of Anarchy was filled by former Creed vocalist Scott Stapp.


title: Scott Weiland

text: While STP went on hiatus after the release of "Tiny Music ...", Weiland released a solo album called "12 Bar Blues" (1998). Weiland wrote most of the songs on the album and collaborated with several artists, notably Daniel Lanois, Sheryl Crow, Brad Mehldau, and Jeff Nolan.


title: Scott Weiland

text: On November 25, 2008, Weiland released his second solo album, ""Happy" in Galoshes", produced by Weiland and songwriting-producing partner Doug Grean. Weiland went on tour in early 2009 to promote the album.


title: Scott Weiland

text: On August 30, 2011, Weiland released a covers album, "A Compilation of Scott Weiland Cover Songs", exclusively through his website. The album was originally to be released along with Weiland's autobiography until he decided to release it separately, stating, "[It] actually turned out so well that we're going to release a single and put it out on its own, 'cause I think it's ... it's sort of my "Pin Ups", I guess you'd say."


title: Scott Weiland

text: On October 4, 2011, Weiland released "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year", an album consisting entirely of Christmas music. Weiland supported the album with a US club tour. Two promotional recordings were taken from the album, cover versions of "Winter Wonderland" and "I'll Be Home for Christmas" with their respective music videos.


title: Scott Weiland

text: Scott Weiland and the Wildabouts' Purple at the Core tour commenced in March 2013 with pop/rock band MIGGS as the opening act.


title: Scott Weiland

text: In an interview with San Diego radio station KBZT in June 2014, Weiland stated that his debut album with the Wildabouts, titled "Blaster", would be released in November that year. However, it was pushed back and eventually released on March 31, 2015. Guitarist Jeremy Brown died the day before the album's release. The cause of death was determined to be multiple drug intoxication, with coronary atherosclerosis and cardiomegaly being significant contributing factors. Nick Maybury replaced Brown in April 2015.


title: Scott Weiland

text: In 2006, Weiland launched his own record label, Softdrive Records, with his songwriting partner Doug Grean. Later, Weiland announced that his label signed the up-and-coming rock band Something to Burn. On December 19, 2008, Weiland signed a publishing deal with Bug Music, allowing Weiland to "receive funding to pursue the development of creative projects and writers for Bug Music through his co-founded label, Softdrive Records." The deal includes Weiland's share of the Stone Temple Pilots catalog and future solo projects. On January 21, 2009, Weiland announced the launch of his clothing line, Weiland for English Laundry, in partnership with designer Christopher Wicks.


title: Scott Weiland

text: Weiland's vocal and musical style proved to be versatile, evolving constantly throughout his career. At the peak of Stone Temple Pilots' success in the early to mid-1990s, Weiland displayed a deep, baritone vocal style that was compared to that of Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder. However, as STP continued to branch out throughout its career, so did Weiland's vocal style. The band's third album, "Tiny Music... Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop", had Weiland singing in a much higher, raspier tone to complement the band's more 60's rock-influenced sound. Later albums showcased Weiland's influences ranging from bossa nova on "Shangri-La Dee Da" to blues rock and classic rock on the band's 2010 self-titled album.


title: Scott Weiland

text: Weiland's first solo record, "12 Bar Blues" (1998), represented a huge shift in Weiland's style, as the album featured a sound "rooted in glam rock, filtered through psychedelia and trip-hop". With Velvet Revolver, Weiland's vocals ranged from his classic baritone to a rawer style to complement the band's hard rock sound. A "New York Post" review of Velvet Revolver's 2007 album "Libertad" commented that "Weiland's vocals are crisp and controlled, yet passionate."


title: Scott Weiland

text: Weiland's second solo album, 2008's ""Happy" in Galoshes", featured a wide variety of musical genres, such as bossa nova, country, neo-psychedelia and indie rock. Weiland's 2011 solo effort, the Christmas album "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" consisted entirely of Christmas music in a crooning style similar to that of David Bowie and Frank Sinatra, as well as some reggae and bossa nova.


title: Scott Weiland

text: Weiland married Janina Castaneda on September 17, 1994; the couple divorced in 2000. He married Mary Forsberg on May 20, 2000. They had two children, Noah (born 2000) and Lucy (born 2002). Weiland and Forsberg divorced in 2007.