title: Simón Bolívar

text: Simón Bolívar was born on 24 July 1783 in Caracas, capital of the Captaincy General of Venezuela, the fourth and youngest child of and . He was baptized as Simón José Antonio de la Santísma Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios on 30 July. Simón was born into the Bolívar family, one of the wealthiest and most prestigious criollo families in the Spanish Americas. The first Bolívar to emigrate to the Americas was Simón de Bolívar, a Basque nobleman and notary official who arrived in Santo Domingo in the mid-16th century. In 1588–89, he joined the staff of Diego Osorio Villegas, Governor of Santo Domingo, when he was named Governor of the Venezuela Province and moved to Caracas. There, Simón de Bolívar's descendants would also serve in the colonial bureaucracy and marry into rich Caracas families. By the time Simón Bolívar was born, the Bolívars owned property throughout Venezuela.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: Simón Bolívar's childhood was described by British historian John Lynch as "at once privileged and deprived." Juan Vicente died of tuberculosis on 19 January 1786, and left María de la Concepción Palacios and her father, , as legal guardians over the Bolívar children's inheritances. Those children – (born 1777), (born 1779), (born 1781), and Simón – were raised separately from each other and their mother, and, following colonial custom, by African house slaves; Simón was raised by a slave named whom he viewed as both a motherly and fatherly figure. On 6 July 1792, María de la Concepción also died of tuberculosis. Believing that his family would inherit the Bolívars' wealth, Feliciano Palacios arranged marriages for María Antonia and Juana and, before dying on 5 December 1793, assigned custody of Juan Vicente and Simón to his sons, Juan Félix Palacios and , respectively.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: As a child, Bolívar was notoriously unruly. He came to loathe Carlos, who had no interest in Bolívar other than his inheritance, and neglected his studies. Even before Bolívar's mother died, he spent two years under the tutelage of the Venezuelan lawyer Miguel José Sanz at the direction of the , the Spanish court of appeals in Caracas. In 1793, Carlos Palacios enrolled Bolívar at run by Simón Rodríguez. In June 1795, Bolívar fled his uncle's custody for the house of Maria Antonia and her husband. The couple sought formal recognition of his change of residence, but the "Real Audiencia" decided the matter in favor of Palacios, who sent Simón to live with Rodríguez.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: After two months there, Bolívar was moved at the direction of the "Real Audiencia" back to the Palacios family home. Bolívar promised the "Real Audiencia" that he would focus on his education, and was subsequently taught full-time by Rodríguez and the Venezuelan intellectuals Andrés Bello and . In 1797, Rodríguez's connection to a pro-independence conspiracy forced him to go into exile, and Bolívar was enrolled in an honorary militia force. When he was commissioned as an officer after a year, his uncles Carlos and decided to send Bolívar to join the latter in Madrid. There, Esteban was friends with Queen Maria Luisa's favorite, Manuel Mallo.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: On 19 January 1799, Bolívar boarded the Spanish warship "San Ildefonso" at the port of La Guaira, bound for Cádiz. The ship sailed first to Veracruz to load Mexican silver for transit to Spain. The ship arrived on 2 February, but was prevented from leaving for seven weeks by a British blockade of Havana. The "San Ildefonso" docked in Santoña, on the northern coast of Spain, in May 1799. A little over a week later, Bolívar arrived in Madrid and joined Esteban, who found Bolívar to be "very ignorant". Esteban asked Gerónimo Enrique de Uztáriz y Tovar, a Caracas native and government official, to educate Bolívar. Uztáriz accepted and Bolívar, who moved into his residence in February 1800, was thoroughly educated.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: At the same time, Mallo fell out of the Queen's favor and Manuel Godoy, her previous favorite, returned to power. As members of Mallo's faction at court, Esteban was arrested on pretense, and Bolívar was banished from court following a public incident at the Puerta de Toledo over the wearing of diamonds without royal permission. Bolívar also at this time met María Teresa Rodríguez del Toro y Alaysa, the daughter of another wealthy Caracas creole. They were engaged in August 1800, but were separated when the del Toros left Madrid for a summer home in Bilbao. After Uztáriz left Madrid for a government assignment in Teruel in 1801, Bolívar himself left for Bilbao and remained there when the del Toros returned to the capital in August 1801. Early in 1802, Bolívar traveled to Paris while he awaited permission to return to Madrid, which was granted in April.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: Bolívar and del Toro, aged 18 and 21 respectively, were married in Madrid on 26 May 1802. The couple boarded the "San Ildefonso" in A Coruña on 15 June and sailed for La Guaira, where they arrived on 12 July, and settled in Caracas. There, del Toro fell ill and died of yellow fever on 22 January 1803 and was buried in the Bolívar family crypt at Caracas Cathedral. Bolívar was devastated by del Toro's death, and later told Louis Peru de Lacroix, one of his generals and biographers, that he swore to never remarry. By July 1803, Bolívar decided to leave Venezuela for Europe. He entrusted his estates to an agent and his brother and in October boarded a ship bound for Cádiz.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: Bolívar arrived in Spain in December 1803, then traveled to Madrid to console his father-in-law. In March 1804, Madrid ordered all non-residents in the city to leave to alleviate a bread shortage brought about by resumed hostilities with Britain. Over April, Bolívar and , a childhood friend and relative of his wife, made their way to Paris and arrived in time for Napoleon to be proclaimed Emperor of the French on 18 May 1804. They rented an apartment on the and met with other South Americans such as , Vicente Rocafuerte, and Simón Rodríguez, who joined Bolívar and del Toro in their apartment. While in Paris, Bolívar began a with the Countess Dervieu du Villars, at whose salon he likely met the naturalists Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland, who had traveled through much of Spanish America from 1799 to 1804. Bolívar allegedly discussed Spanish American independence with them.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: On 2 December 1804, Napoleon crowned himself Emperor in Notre Dame de Paris. Though he remained awed by Napoleon, Bolívar was disgusted and, in April 1805, left Paris with Rodríguez and del Toro on a Grand Tour to Italy. Beginning in Lyon, they traveled to Chambéry, where the philosopher Rousseau had once resided, through the Savoy Alps, and then to Milan. The trio arrived on 26 May 1805 and witnessed Napoleon's coronation as King of Italy. From Milan, they traveled down the Po Valley to Venice, then to Florence, and then finally Rome, where Bolívar met among others Pope Pius VII, the French writer Germaine de Staël, and Humboldt again. Rome's sites and history excited Bolívar. On 18 August 1805, he, del Toro, and Rodríguez traveled to the Mons Sacer, where the plebs had seceded from Rome, Bolívar swore to end Spanish rule in the Americas.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: By April 1806, Bolívar had returned to Paris and desired passage to Venezuela, where Venezuelan revolutionary Francisco de Miranda had just attempted an invasion with American volunteers. British control of the seas resulting from the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar, however, obliged Bolívar to board an American ship in Hamburg in October 1806. Bolívar arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, in January 1807, and from there traveled to Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston. After six months in the United States, Bolívar returned to Philadelphia and sailed for Venezuela, where he arrived in June 1807. He began to meet with other creole elites to discuss independence from Spain. Finding himself to be far more radical than the rest of Caracas high society, however, Bolívar occupied himself with a property dispute with a neighbor, .


title: Simón Bolívar

text: In 1807–08, Napoleon invaded the Iberian peninsula and replaced the rulers of Spain with his brother. This news arrived in Venezuela in July 1808. Napoleonic rule was rejected and Venezuelan creoles, though still loyal to Ferdinand VII of Spain, sought to form their own local government in place of the existing Spanish government. On 24 November 1808, a group of creoles presented a petition demanding an independent government to , the Captain-General of Venezuela, and were arrested. Bolívar, who did not sign the petition, was not arrested but was warned to cease hosting or attending seditious meetings. In May 1809, Casas was replaced by Vicente Emparán and his staff, which included Fernando Rodríguez del Toro. Emparán's government, while friendlier to the creoles and connected to some of the opposition leaders, was also resisted by the creoles.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: By February 1810, French victories in Spain prompted the dissolution of the anti-French Spanish government in favor of a five-man regency council for Ferdinand VII. This news, and two delegates that included Carlos de Montúfar, arrived in Venezuela on 17 April 1810. Two days later, the creoles succeeded in deposing and then expelling Emparán, and created the Supreme Junta of Caracas, independent from the Spanish regency but not Ferdinand VII. Absent from Caracas for the coup, the Bolívar brothers returned to the city and offered their services to the Supreme Junta as diplomats. In May 1810, Juan Vicente was sent to the United States to buy weapons, while Simón secured a place in a diplomatic mission to Great Britain with the lawyer and Andrés Bello by paying for the mission. The trio boarded a British warship, HMS "Wellington", in June 1810 and arrived at Portsmouth on 10 July 1810.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: The three delegates first met Miranda at his London residence, despite instructions from the Supreme Junta to avoid him, and thereafter received the benefit of his connections and consultation. On 16 July 1810, the Venezuelan delegation met the British foreign secretary, Richard Wellesley, at his residence. Led by Bolívar, the Venezuelans argued in favor of Venezuelan independence. Wellesley stated that it was intolerable for Anglo-Spanish relations, and moreover was using his talks with the Venezuelans to secure access to Spanish American markets for British merchants from the Spanish regency. Subsequent meetings produced no recognition or concrete support from Britain. Finding that he had many shared beliefs with Miranda, however, Bolívar convinced him to come back to Venezuela. On 22 September 1810, Bolívar left for Venezuela aboard while López and Bello remained in London as diplomats, and arrived in La Guaira on 5 December. Miranda, whose return to Venezuela the British government did not desire but could not prevent, arrived in La Guaira later in December.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: While Bolívar was in England, the Supreme Junta passed liberal economic reforms and began to hold elections for representatives to a congress to be held in Caracas. It had also alienated Caracas from the Venezuelan provinces of Coro, Maracaibo, and Guayana, which professed loyalty to the regency council, and began hostilities with them. Helping to create the Patriotic Society, Bolívar and Miranda campaigned for and secured the latter's election to the congress. The congress first met on 2 March 1811 and declared its allegiance to Ferdinand VII. After it was discovered that one of the men leading the congress was a Spanish agent who had escaped with military documents, however, discourse – which Bolívar was prominent in – changed decidedly in favor of independence over 3 and 4 July. Finally, on 5 July, the congress declared Venezuela's independence.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: The declaration of independence created a republic with a weak base of support and enemies in conservative whites, disenfranchised people of color, and already hostile Venezuelan provinces, which received troops and supplies from the Captaincy-Generals of Puerto Rico and Cuba. On 13 July 1811, the republic raised militias to fight the pro-Spanish Royalists. , the was appointed to command the Republican forces, which opened a breach between Bolívar and Miranda as Bolívar and del Toro were friends. After he failed to suppress a Royalist uprising in the city of Valencia later in July, Miranda replaced del Toro and on 13 August. As a condition of assuming command of the Republican forces, Miranda had Bolívar removed from his command of a militia unit. Bolívar nonetheless fought in the Valencia campaign as part of del Toro's militia and was selected by Miranda to bring news of its recapture to Caracas, where he argued for more punitive and forceful campaigning against the Royalists.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: Beginning in November 1811, Royalist forces began pushing back the Republicans on from the north and east. Then, on 26 March 1812, a powerful earthquake devastated Republican Venezuela; Caracas itself was almost totally destroyed. Bolívar, who was still in the area of Caracas, rushed into the city to participate in the rescue of survivors and exhumation of the dead. The earthquake also destroyed public support for the republic, as it was believed to have been divine retribution for declaring independence from Spain. By April, a Royalist army under the Spanish naval officer Juan Domingo de Monteverde overran western Venezuela. Miranda, retreating east with a disintegrating army, ordered Bolívar to assume command of the coastal city of Puerto Cabello and its fortress, which contained Royalist prisoners and most of the republic's remaining arms and ammunition.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: Bolívar arrived at Puerto Cabello on 4 May 1812. On 30 June, a Royalist officer of the fort's garrison released its prisoners, armed them, and turned its cannons on Puerto Cabello. Weakened by further shelling, defections, and lack of supplies, Bolívar and his remaining troops fled for La Guaira on 6 July. Believing the republic to be doomed, Miranda decided to capitulate, shocking Bolívar and other Republican officers. After formally surrendering his command to Monteverde on 25 July, Miranda made his way to La Guaira, where a group of conspirators including Bolívar arrested Miranda on 30 July on charges of treason. La Guaira declared for the Royalists the next day and closed its port on Monteverde's orders. Miranda was taken into Spanish custody and moved to a prison in Cádiz, where he died on 16 July 1816.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: Bolívar escaped La Guaira early on 31 July 1812 and rode to Caracas, where he hid from arrest in the home of , the . Bolívar and Casa León convinced Francisco Iturbe, a friend of the Bolívar family and of Monteverde, to intercede on Bolívar's behalf and secure escape from Venezuela for him. Iturbe persuaded Monteverde to issue Bolívar a passport for his role in Miranda's arrest, and on 27 August he sailed for Curaçao. He and his uncles Francisco and José Félix Ribas arrived on 1 September. Late in October, the exiles arranged for passage to the city of Cartagena in New Granada to offer their services to the United Provinces of New Granada. They arrived in November and were welcomed by Manuel Rodríguez Torices, president of the , who instructed his commanding general, Pierre Labatut, to give Bolívar a military command. Labatut, a former partisan of Miranda, begrudgingly obliged and on 1 December 1812 placed Bolívar in command of the 70-man garrison of a town on the lower Magdalena River.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: While en route to his posting, Bolívar issued the Cartagena Manifesto, outlining what he believed to be the causes of the Venezuelan republic's defeat and his political program. In particular, Bolívar called for the disparate New Granadan republics to help him invade Venezuela to prevent a Royalist invasion of New Granada. Bolívar arrived on the Magdalena River on 21 December and, in spite of orders from Labatut to not act without his direction, launched an offensive that secured control of the Magdalena River by 8 January 1813. In February, he joined forces with Republican colonel , who requested Bolívar's assistance with stopping a Royalist advance into New Granada from Venezuela, and captured the city of Cúcuta.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: In early March 1813, Bolívar set up his headquarters in Cúcuta and sent José Félix Ribas to request permission to invade Venezuela. Though rewarded with honorary citizenship in New Granada and a promotion to the rank of brigadier general, that permission did not come until 7 May because of del Castillo's opposition to the invasion. When a limited invasion was permitted, Castillo resigned his command and was succeeded by Francisco de Paula Santander. On 14 May, Bolívar launched the Admirable Campaign, in which he issued the Decree of War to the Death, ordering the death of all Spaniards in South America not actively aiding his forces. Within six months, Bolívar pushed all the way to Caracas, which he entered on 6 August, and then drove Monteverde out of Venezuela in October. Bolívar returned to Caracas on 14 October and was named "The Liberator" ("El Libertador") by its town council, a title first given to him by the citizens of the Venezuelan town of Mérida on 23 May.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: On 2 January 1814, Bolívar was made the dictator of a Second Republic of Venezuela, which retained the weaknesses of the first republic. Though all of Venezuela but Maracaibo, Coro, and Guayana was controlled by Republicans, Bolívar only governed western Venezuela. The east was controlled by Santiago Mariño, a Venezuelan Republican who had fought Monteverde in the east throughout 1813 and was unwilling to recognize Bolívar. Venezuela was economically devastated and could not support the republic's armies, and people of color remained disenfranchised and thus unsupportive of the republic. The republic was assailed from all sides by slave revolts and Royalist forces, especially the Legion of Hell, an army of "llaneros" – the colored cowboys of the Llanos, to the south – led by the Spanish warlord José Tomás Boves. Beginning in February 1814, Boves surged out of the Llanos and overwhelmed the republic, occupying Caracas on 16 July and then destroying Mariño's powerbase on 5 December at the Battle of Urica, where he died.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: As Boves approached Caracas, Bolívar ordered the city stripped of its gold and silver, which was moved through La Guaira to Barcelona, Venezuela, and from there to Cumaná. Bolívar then led 20,000 of its citizens east. He arrived in Barcelona on 2 August, but following at Aragua de Barcelona on 17 August 1814, he moved to Cumaná. On 26 August, he sailed with Mariño to Margarita Island with the treasure. The officer in control of the island, Manuel Piar, declared Bolívar and Mariño to be traitors and forced them to return to the mainland. There, Ribas also accused Bolívar and Mariño of treachery, confiscated the treasure, and then exiled the two on 8 September. Bolívar arrived in Cartagena on 19 September and then met with the New Granadan congress in Tunja, which tasked him with subduing the rival Free and Independent State of Cundinamarca. On 12 December, Bolívar captured Cundinamarca's capital, Bogotá, and was given command of New Granada's armies in January 1815. Bolívar next grappled with del Castillo, who had taken control of Cartagena. Bolívar began that allowed the Royalists to regain control of the Magdalena. On 8 May, Bolívar made a truce with del Castillo, resigned his command, and sailed for exile on Jamaica. In July, 8,000 Spanish soldiers commanded by Spanish general Pablo Morillo landed at Santa Marta and then , which capitulated on 6 December; del Castillo was executed.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: Bolívar arrived in Kingston, Jamaica, on 14 May 1815 and, like his earlier exile on Curaçao, ruminated on the fall of the Venezuelan and New Granadan republics. He wrote extensively, requesting assistance from Britain and corresponding with merchants based in the Caribbean. This culminated in September 1815 with the Letter from Jamaica, in which Bolívar again laid out his ideology and vision of the future of the Americas. On 9 December, the Venezuelan pirate Renato Beluche brought Bolívar news from New Granada and asked him to join the Republican community in exile in Haiti. Bolívar tentatively accepted and that night escaped assassination when his manservant mistakenly killed his paymaster as part of a Spanish plot. He left Jamaica eight days later, arrived in Les Cayes on 24 December, and on 2 January 1816 was introduced to Alexandre Pétion, President of the Republic of Haiti by a mutual friend. Bolívar and Pétion impressed and befriended each other and, after Bolívar pledged to free every slave in the areas he occupied, Pétion gave him money and military supplies.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: Returning to Les Cayes, Bolívar held a conference with the Republican leaders in Haiti and was made supreme leader with Mariño as his chief of staff. The Republicans departed Les Cayes for Venezuela on 31 March 1816 and followed the Antilles eastward. After a delay to allow a lover of Bolívar's to join the fleet, it arrived on 2 May at Margarita Island, controlled by Republican commander Juan Bautista Arismendi. Bolívar next moved to the mainland, where he declared the emancipation of all slaves and annulled of the Decree of War to the Death. He took Carúpano on 31 May and sent Mariño and Piar into Guayana to build their own army, and then Ocumare de la Costa on 6 July. There, by 14 July, his forces were defeated and scattered by a Royalist force that then captured Ocumare and the Haitian supplies. Bolívar fled by sea to Güiria where, on 22 August, he was deposed by Mariño and José Francisco Bermúdez, who tried to kill Bolívar with a sword.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: Bolívar returned to Haiti by early September, where Pétion again agreed to assist him. In his absence, the Republican leaders scattered across Venezuela, concentrating in the Llanos, and became disunited warlords. Unwilling to recognize Mariño's leadership, Arismendi wrote to Bolívar and dispatched New Granadan Republican Francisco Antonio Zea to convince him to return. Bolívar and Zea set sail for Venezuela on 21 December with Luis Brión, a Dutch merchant, and arrived ten days later at Barcelona. There, Bolívar announced his return and called for a congress for a new, third republic. He wrote to the Republican leaders, especially José Antonio Páez, who controlled most of the western Llanos, to unite under his leadership. On 8 January 1817, Bolívar marched towards Caracas but and then pursued to Barcelona by a larger Royalist force. At Bolívar's request, Mariño arrived on 8 February with Bermúdez, who then reconciled with Bolívar, and forced a Royalist withdrawal.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: Even with their combined forces, however, Bolívar, Mariño, and Bermúdez could not hold Barcelona. Instead, on 25 March 1817, Bolívar began moving south to join Piar in Guayana, Piar's power base, and establish his own economic and political base there. Bolívar met Piar on 4 April, promoted him to the rank of general of the army, and then joined a force of Piar's troops besieging the city of Angostura (now Ciudad Bolívar) on 2 May. Meanwhile, Mariño went east to reestablish his power base and on 8 May convened a congress of ten men, including Brión and Zea, that named Mariño as supreme commander of the Republican forces. This backfired and provoked the defection of 30 officers, including Rafael Urdaneta and Antonio José de Sucre, to Bolívar. On 30 June, Bolívar granted Piar leave of absence at his request, and then issued an arrest warrant for Piar on 23 July after he began fomenting rebellion, alleging that Bolívar had dismissed him because of his African heritage. Piar was captured on 27 September as he fled to join Mariño was brought to Angostura, where he was executed by firing squad on 16 October. Bolívar then sent Sucre to reconcile with Mariño, who pledged loyalty to Bolívar on 26 January 1818.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: On 17 July 1817, to Bolívar's forces, which then gained control of the Orinoco River in early August. Angostura became the provisional Republican capital and in September, Bolívar began creating formal political and military structures for the republic. Bolívar then gained recognition as supreme leader from Páez, whom he met at San Juan de Payara on 30 January 1818. In February 1818, the Republicans moved north and took Calabozo, where , who had returned to Venezuela a year earlier after conquering Republican New Granada. Bolívar next advanced towards Caracas and on 16 March was , and was almost assassinated by Spanish infiltrators in April. Illness and additional Republican defeats obliged Bolívar to return to Angostura in May. For the rest of the year, he focused on administrating the republic, rebuilding its armed forces, and organizing elections for a national congress that would meet in 1819.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: The congress met in Angostura on 15 February 1819. There, Bolívar gave a speech in which he presented his draft of for a centralized government modeled on the British government, advocated for racial equality, and relinquished civil authority to the congress. On 16 February, the congress elected Bolívar as president and Zea as vice president. On 27 February, Bolívar left Angostura to rejoin Páez in the west and , indecisively, against Morillo. In May, as the annual wet season was beginning in the Llanos, Bolívar met with his officers and revealed his intention to invade New Granada, which he had prepared for by sending Santander to build up Republican forces in Casanare Province in August 1818. On 27 May, Bolívar marched with more than 2,000 soldiers toward the Andes and left Páez, Mariño, Urdaneta, and Bermúdez to tie down Morillo's forces in Venezuela.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: Bolívar entered Casanare Province with his army on 4 June 1819, then met up with Santander at Tame, Arauca, on 11 June. The combined Republican force reached the Eastern Range of the Andes on 22 June and began a grueling crossing. On 6 July, the Republicans descended the Andes from the at Socha and into the plains of New Granada. After a brief convalescence, the Republicans made rapid progress against the forces of Spanish colonel until, on 7 August, the Royalists were routed at the Battle of Boyacá. On 10 August, Bolívar entered Bogotá, which the Spanish officials had hastily abandoned, and captured the viceregal treasury and armories. After sending forces to secure Republican control of central New Granada, Bolívar paraded through Bogotá on 18 September with Santander.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: Desiring to merge New Granada and Venezuela into a "greater republic of Colombia", Bolívar first established a provisional government in Bogotá with Santander, and then left to resume campaigning against the Royalists in Venezuela on 20 September 1819. En route, he learned that Santander had executed Barreiro and other Royalist prisoners on 11 October and that Zea had been replaced as vice president in September 1819 by Arismendi, who was conspiring with Mariño against Urdaneta and Bermúdez. Bolívar arrived in Angostura on 11 December and, by being conciliatory, restored order. He then proposed the merging of New Granada and Venezuela to the congress on 14 December, which was approved. On 17 December, the congress issued a decree creating the Republic of Colombia, including the regions of Venezuela, New Granada, and the still Spanish-controlled "Real Audiencia" of Quito, and elected Bolívar and Zea president and vice president respectively.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: After Christmas Day, 1819, Bolívar left Angostura to direct campaigns against Royalist forces along the Caribbean coasts of Venezuela and New Granada. He met with Santander in Bogotá in March 1820, then rode to Cúcuta and inspected Republican forces in northern Colombia over April and May 1820. Meanwhile, Morillo's military and political position was fatally undermined by , which forced Ferdinand VII to accept a liberal constitution in March. News of the mutiny and its consequences arrived in Colombia in March and was followed by orders from Spain to Morillo to publicize the constitution and negotiate a peace that would return Colombia to the Spanish Empire. Bolívar and Morillo, seeking to gain leverage over each other, delayed talks until 21 November, when Colombian and Royalist delegates met in Trujillo, Venezuela. The delegates completed on 25 November, establishing a six-month truce, a prisoner exchange, and basic rights for combatants. Bolívar and Morillo signed the treaties on 25 and 26 November, then met the next day at . After this meeting, Morillo turned his command over to Spanish general Miguel de la Torre and departed for Spain on 17 December.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: In February 1821, as Bolívar was traveling from Bogotá to Cúcuta in anticipation of the opening of a new congress there, he learned that Royalist-controlled Maracaibo had defected to Colombia and been occupied by Urdaneta. La Torre protested to Bolívar, who refused to return Maracaibo, leading to a renewal of hostilities on 28 April. Over May and June, Colombia's armies made rapid progress until, on 24 June, Bolívar and Páez decisively defeated La Torre at the Battle of Carabobo. All Royalist forces remaining in Venezuela were eliminated by August 1823. Bolívar entered Caracas in triumph on 29 June, and issued a decree on 16 July dividing Venezuela into three military zones governed by Páez, Bermúdez, and Mariño. Bolívar then met with the Congress of Cúcuta, which had ratified the formation of Gran Colombia and elected him as president and Santander as vice president in September. Bolívar accepted and was sworn in on 3 October, although he protested the establishment of a precedent of military leaders as head of the Colombian state.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: After the Battle of Carabobo, Bolívar turned his attention south, to Pasto, Colombia; Quito and the Free Province of Guayaquil, Ecuador; and the Viceroyalty of Peru. Pasto and Quito were Royalist strongholds, while Guayaquil had declared its independence on 9 October 1820 and had been garrisoned by Sucre on Bolívar's orders in January 1821. Panama declared its independence on 28 November 1821 and joined Colombia. Peru had been invaded by a Republican army led by Argentine general José de San Martín, who had liberated Chile and Peru, and Bolívar feared San Martín would absorb Ecuador into Peru. In October 1821, after congress empowered him to secure Ecuador for Colombia, Bolívar assembled an army in Bogotá that departed on 13 December 1821. His advance was halted by illness and in southern Colombia on 7 April 1822.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: To the south, Sucre, who had been trapped in Guayaquil by Royalist advances from Quito, now advanced, decisively defeated the Royalists at the Battle of Pichincha on 24 May 1822, and occupied Quito. On 6 June, Pasto surrendered, and ten days later Bolívar paraded through Quito with Sucre. He also met the Ecuadorian Republican Manuela Sáenz, the wife of a British merchant, with whom he began a lasting affair. From Quito, Bolívar traveled to Guayaquil in anticipation of a meeting with San Martín to discuss the city's status and rallied support for its annexation by Colombia. By the time San Martín arrived in Guayaquil on 26 July, Bolívar had already secured Guayaquil for Colombia, and the two-day Guayaquil Conference produced little. Ill, politically isolated, and disillusioned, San Martín subsequently resigned from his offices and went into exile.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: Over the rest of 1822, Bolívar traveled around Ecuador to complete its annexation while dispatching officers to suppress repeated rebellions in Pasto and resisting calls to return to Bogotá or Venezuela. Meanwhile, Royalist forces under general José de Canterac and briefly took Lima, Peru's capital, in June 1823. After initially refusing Colombian assistance, the Peruvian congress asked Bolívar several times in 1823 to assume command of their forces. Bolívar responded by sending an army under Sucre to assist, and requested permission from the Colombian congress to lead troops into Peru himself. On 3 August, Bolívar received that permission and set sail for Lima, where he arrived to much fanfare on 1 September. When Bolívar arrived, Peru was split between four Republican armies and two rival presidents, José de la Riva Agüero and José Bernardo de Tagle; the Royalists, based out of the region of Upper Peru; and Bolívar, whom the Peruvian congress invested with supreme military authority.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: In November 1823, a faction of officers serving Riva Agüero, who plotted with the Royalists against Bolívar, mutinied and handed him to Bolívar, who exiled Riva Agüero from Peru. Bolívar next struggled to build an army in Peru with few resources, and without support from Colombia or its allies. On 1 January 1824, Bolívar collapsed with a fever and was bedridden for two months. Meanwhile, Tagle and the garrison of the city of Callao defected to the Royalists, who then took Lima. In response, the Peruvian congress named Bolívar dictator of Peru on 10 February 1824. Bolívar moved to northern Peru in March and began assembling an army, for which he increasingly demanded additional men and money from Santander, straining their relationship. In May 1824, after learning of against the Viceroy, José de la Serna, by conservative Royalist Pedro Antonio Olañeta, Bolívar began advancing in Peru, and defeated Canterac at the Battle of Junín on 6 August.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: Choosing to ignore Olañeta, La Serna ordered his forces to concentrate at Cuzco to face Bolívar. Heavy rainfall in September halted Bolívar's advance, and on 6 October he gave command of the army to Sucre and moved to Huancayo to manage political affairs. On 24 October, Bolívar received a letter from Santander informing him that the Colombian congress had stripped him of his military and civil authority in favor of Sucre and Santander, respectively. Although indignant and resentful of Santander, Bolívar wrote to him on 10 November to communicate his acquiescence and reoccupied Lima on 5 December 1824. On 9 December, Sucre decisively defeated La Serna's Royalists at the Battle of Ayacucho and accepted of all Royalist forces in Peru. The garrison of Callao and Olañeta ignored the surrender. Shortly after arriving in Lima, Bolívar began a siege of Callao that lasted until January 1826, and sent Sucre into Upper Peru to eliminate Olañeta, which he accomplished in April 1825.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: In early 1825, Bolívar resigned from his offices in Colombia and Peru, but neither nation's congress accepted his resignation; on 10 February 1825, the Peruvian congress extended his dictatorship for another year. Accepting the extension, Bolívar settled into governing Peru and passing reforms that were largely not carried out, such as a school system based on the principles of English educator Joseph Lancaster that was managed by Simón Rodríguez. In April 1825, Bolívar began a tour of southern Peru that took him to the cities of Arequipa and Cuzco by August. As Bolívar approached Upper Peru, a congress gathered in the city of Chuquisaca (now Sucre); on 6 August, it declared the region to be the nation of Bolivia, named Bolívar President, and asked him to write a constitution for Bolivia. He accepted these appointments. Bolívar arrived in Potosí on 5 October and met with two Argentine agents, Carlos María de Alvear and José Miguel Díaz Vélez, who tried without success to convince him to intervene in the Cisplatine War against the Empire of Brazil.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: From Potosí, Bolívar traveled to Chuquisaca and appointed Sucre to govern Bolivia; he departed for Peru on 1 January 1826. Bolívar arrived in Lima on 10 February and dispatched his draft of the Bolivian constitution to Sucre on 12 May. was ratified with modification by the Bolivian congress in July 1826. Peru, whose elites chafed at Bolívar's rule and the presence of his soldiers, was also induced to accept of Bolívar's constitution on 16 August. In Venezuela, Páez revolted against Santander, and in Panama, a congress of American nations organized by Bolívar convened without his attendance and produced no change in the hemispheric "status quo". On 3 September, responding to pleas for his return to Colombia, Bolívar departed Peru and left it under a governing council led by Bolivian general Andrés de Santa Cruz.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: Bolívar arrived in Guayaquil on 13 September 1826 and heard complaints against Santander's governance from the people of Guayaquil and Quito, who declared him their dictator. From Ecuador, he continued north and heard more complaints, promoted civil and military officers, and commuted prison sentences. As he approached Bogotá, Bolívar was met by Santander, who hoped to persuade Bolívar to his cause in the conflict with Páez. Although Santander was annoyed at Bolívar for his desire to return to power and ratify a version of the Bolivian constitution in Colombia, they reconciled and agreed that Bolívar would resume the presidency of Colombia; congress had reelected them to a second four-year term beginning on 2 January 1827. Bolívar arrived in Bogotá on 14 November 1826 and found the city hostile to him for violations of Colombian law.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: On 25 November, Bolívar left Bogotá with an army supplied by Santander and arrived at Puerto Cabello on 31 December, where he issued a general amnesty to Páez and his allies if they submitted to his authority. Páez accepted and in January 1827, Bolívar confirmed Páez's military authority in Venezuela and entered Caracas with him to much jubilation; for two months, Bolívar attended balls celebrating his return and the amnesty. That amnesty, and clashes over Santander's handling of Colombia's finances, caused a break between Bolívar and Santander that became an open enmity in 1827. In February 1827, Bolívar submitted his resignation from the Presidency of Colombia, which its congress rejected. Meanwhile, the Colombian soldiers garrisoned in Lima mutinied, arrested their Venezuelan officers, and occupied Guayaquil until September 1827. Bolívar was deposed as President in Peru and his constitution was repealed.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: Bolívar departed Venezuela to return to Bogotá in July 1827. He arrived on 10 September with an army he had gathered at Cartagena and was again sworn in as President of Colombia, then secured the calling of a new congress to meet at the city of Ocaña in early 1828 to modify the Colombian constitution. The elections for this congress were held in November 1827 and, as Bolívar declined to campaign, were very favorable to his political opponents. In January 1828, Bolívar was joined in Bogotá by Sáenz, but on 16 March 1828 he left the capital after being informed of a Spanish-backed rebellion in Venezuela. As that revolt was crushed before he arrived, Bolívar turned his attention to the occupation of Cartagena by José Prudencio Padilla, a New Granadan admiral and Santander loyalist. Padilla's rebellion was also crushed before Bolívar arrived, however, and he was subsequently arrested and imprisoned in Bogotá. As the Convention of Ocaña opened on 9 April, Bolívar based himself at Bucaramanga to monitor its proceedings through his aides.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: The convention lasted until 11 June 1828, when Bolívar's allies staged a walkout that left Colombia without a constitution. Two days later, Pedro Alcántara Herrán, a Bolívar loyalist and the governor of New Granada, called a meeting of the city's bourgeoisie that denounced the Convention of Ocaña and called on Bolívar to assume absolute power in Colombia. Bolívar accepted. He returned to Bogotá on 24 June and on 27 August assumed supreme power as the "president-liberator" of Colombia, abolished the office of the vice president, and assigned Santander to a diplomatic posting in Washington, D.C. On 25 September 1828, a group of young liberals that included Santander's secretary made an attempt to assassinate Bolívar and overthrow his government. The attempt was thwarted by Sáenz, who bought time for Bolívar to escape as the assassins entered the Palacio de San Carlos. Bolívar spent the night hiding under a bridge until soldiers loyal to his regime rescued him.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: In the aftermath of the attempted coup, Santander and the conspirators were arrested. Bolívar, depressed and ill, considered resigning from politics and pardoning the conspirators, but was dissuaded from this by his officers. Padilla, though uninvolved with the attempted coup, was executed; Santander, whom Bolívar thought responsible for the plot, was pardoned but exiled from Colombia. In December 1828, Bolívar left Bogotá to respond to Peru's intervention in Bolivia and invasion of Ecuador and a revolt in Popayán and Pasto led by José María Obando. He left behind a council of ministers led by Urdaneta to govern Colombia and announced that a congress would convene in January 1830 to devise a new constitution. Over 1829, Obando was defeated by Colombian general José María Córdova at Bolívar's direction in January and then pardoned, while Sucre and Venezuelan general Juan José Flores defeated the Peruvians at the Battle of Tarqui in February, leading to an armistice in July and then the Treaty of Guayaquil in September.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: While Bolívar was away, Urdaneta and the council of ministers planned with French envoys to have a Bourbon succeed Bolívar on his death as King of Colombia. This plan was widely unpopular, and inspired Córdova to launch a revolt that was crushed in October 1829 by Daniel Florence O'Leary, Bolívar's aide-de-camp. In November, Bolívar ordered the council to cease its planning, which its members responded to by resigning, and Venezuelans, encouraged by a circular letter Bolívar had published in October, voted to secede from Colombia and exile him. On 15 January 1830, Bolívar arrived in Bogotá and on 20 January the convened in the city. Bolívar submitted his resignation from the presidency, which the congress did not accept as Colombia still lacked a constitution, and then denied his request to go to Venezuela and meet with Páez. In March, the congress permitted Bolívar to appoint New Granadan politician Domingo Caycedo as interim President, and then accepted Bolívar's resignation from office on 27 April.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: Determined to go into exile, Bolívar, who had given away or lost his fortune over his career, sold most of his remaining possessions and departed Bogotá on 8 May 1830. He traveled down the Magdalena to Cartagena, where he arrived by the end of June to wait for a ship to take him to England. On 1 July, Bolívar was informed that Sucre had been assassinated near Pasto while en route to Quito, and wrote to Flores asking him to avenge Sucre's murder. In September, Urdaneta installed a conservative government in Bogotá and asked Bolívar to return and was refused. With his health deteriorating and no ship forthcoming, Bolívar was moved by his staff to Barranquilla in October and then, at the invitation of a Spanish landowner in the area, to the Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino near Santa Marta. There, on 17 December 1830, at the age of 47, Bolívar died of tuberculosis.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: Bolívar's body, dressed in a borrowed shirt, was interred in the on 20 December 1830. In 1842, Páez secured the repatriation of Bolívar's remains, which were paraded through Caracas and then laid to rest in its cathedral in December; Bolívar's heart remained in Santa Marta. His remains were moved again in October 1876 into the National Pantheon of Venezuela in Caracas, created that year by President Antonio Guzmán Blanco. The Quinta near Santa Marta has been preserved as a museum to Bolívar and the house in which he was born was opened as a museum and archive of his papers on 5 July 1921.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: In January 2008, President Hugo Chávez set up a commission to investigate his claim that Bolívar had been poisoned by "New Granada traitors". The commission exhumed Bolívar's remains on 16 July 2010. Its findings, that Bolívar had died of histoplasmosis, a fungal infection that manifests symptoms similar to tuberculosis, which was aggravated by arsenic poisoning, were announced by Vice President Elías Jaua on 25 July 2012. Infectious disease specialist Paul Auwaerter suggested in a 2011 paper the fungal infection paracoccidioidomycosis, aggravated by arsenic poisoning.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: In Venezuela, Bolívar left behind a militarist legacy with multiple governments utilizing the memory, image and written legacy of Bolívar as important parts of their political messages and propaganda. Bolívar disapproved of the excesses of "party spirit" and "factions", which led to an anti-political environment in Venezuela. For much of the 1800s, Venezuela was ruled by "caudillos", with six rebellions occurring to take control of Venezuela between 1892 and 1900 alone. The militarist legacy was then used by the nationalist dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez and more recently the socialist political movement led by Hugo Chávez.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: The nations of Bolivia and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and their respective currencies (the Bolivian boliviano and the Venezuelan bolívar), are all named after Bolívar. Most cities and towns in Colombia and Venezuela are built around a main square known as Plaza Bolívar, as is Bogotá. His birthday is a public holiday in Venezuela and Bolivia. Several cities in Spain, especially in the Basque Country, have constructed monuments to Bolívar, including a large monument in Bilbao and a comprehensive Venezuelan government-funded museum in Cenarruza-Puebla de Bolívar, his ancestral hometown.


title: Simón Bolívar

text: Several Latin American countries commemorate Simón Bolíva's birthdate, with Venezuela having July 24 as a national holiday.


title: Six Sigma

text: Six Sigma (6σ) is a set of techniques and tools for process improvement. It was introduced by American engineer Bill Smith while working at Motorola in 1986.


title: Six Sigma

text: Six Sigma strategies seek to improve manufacturing quality by identifying and removing the causes of defects and minimizing variability in manufacturing and business processes. This is done by using empirical and statistical quality management methods and by hiring people who serve as Six Sigma experts. Each Six Sigma project follows a defined methodology and has specific value targets, such as reducing pollution or increasing customer satisfaction.


title: Six Sigma

text: The term "Six Sigma" originates from statistical modeling of manufacturing processes. The maturity of a manufacturing process can be described by a "sigma" rating indicating its yield or the percentage of defect-free products it creates—specifically, to within how many standard deviations of a normal distribution the fraction of defect-free outcomes corresponds.


title: Six Sigma

text: Motorola pioneered Six Sigma, setting a "six sigma" goal for its manufacturing business. It registered Six Sigma as a service mark on June 11, 1991 (); on December 28, 1993, it registered Six Sigma as a trademark. In 2005 Motorola attributed over $17 billion in savings to Six Sigma.


title: Six Sigma

text: Honeywell and General Electric were also early adopters of Six Sigma. As GE's CEO, in 1995 Jack Welch made it central to his business strategy. In 1998 GE announced $350 million in cost savings thanks to Six Sigma, which was an important factor in the spread of Six Sigma (this figure later grew to more than $1 billion). By the late 1990s, about two thirds of the Fortune 500 organizations had begun Six Sigma initiatives with the aim of reducing costs and improving quality.


title: Six Sigma

text: In , some practitioners have combined Six Sigma ideas with lean manufacturing to create a methodology named Lean Six Sigma. The Lean Six Sigma methodology views lean manufacturing, which addresses process flow and waste issues, and Six Sigma, with its focus on variation and design, as complementary disciplines aimed at promoting "business and operational excellence".


title: Six Sigma

text: In 2011, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has published the first standard "ISO 13053:2011" defining a Six Sigma process. Other standards have been created mostly by universities or companies with Six Sigma first-party certification programs.


title: Six Sigma

text: The term Six Sigma comes from statistics, specifically from the field of statistical quality control, which evaluates process capability. Originally, it referred to the ability of manufacturing processes to produce a very high proportion of output within specification. Processes that operate with "six sigma quality" over the short term are assumed to produce long-term defect levels below 3.4 defects per million opportunities (DPMO). The 3.4 dpmo is based on a "shift" of ± 1.5 sigma explained by Mikel Harry. This figure is based on the tolerance in the height of a stack of discs.


title: Six Sigma

text: Specifically, say that there are six standard deviations—represented by the Greek letter σ (sigma)—between the mean—represented by μ (mu)—and the nearest specification limit. As process standard deviation goes up, or the mean of the process moves away from the center of the tolerance, fewer standard deviations will fit between the mean and the nearest specification limit, decreasing the sigma number and increasing the likelihood of items outside specification. According to a calculation method employed in process capability studies, this means that practically no items will fail to meet specifications.


title: Six Sigma

text: One should also note that the calculation of sigma levels for a process data is independent of the data being normally distributed. In one of the criticisms of Six Sigma, practitioners using this approach spend a lot of time transforming data from non-normal to normal using transformation techniques. It must be said that sigma levels can be determined for process data that has evidence of non-normality.


title: Six Sigma

text: In fact, lean management and Six Sigma share similar methodologies and tools, including the fact that both were influenced by Japanese business culture. However, lean management primarily focuses on eliminating waste through tools that target organizational efficiencies while integrating a performance improvement system, while Six Sigma focuses on eliminating defects and reducing variation. Both systems are driven by data, though Six Sigma is much more dependent on accurate data.


title: Six Sigma

text: Six Sigma's implicit goal is to improve all processes but not necessarily to the 3.4 DPMO level. Organizations need to determine an appropriate sigma level for each of their most important processes and strive to achieve these. As a result of this goal, it is incumbent on management of the organization to prioritize areas of improvement.


title: Six Sigma

text: Six Sigma projects follow two project methodologies, inspired by W. Edwards Deming's Plan–Do–Study–Act Cycle, each with five phases.


title: Six Sigma

text: Some organizations add a "Recognize" step at the beginning, which is to recognize the right problem to work on, thus yielding an RDMAIC methodology.


title: Six Sigma

text: One key innovation of Six Sigma involves professionalizing quality management. Prior to Six Sigma, quality management was largely relegated to the production floor and to statisticians in a separate quality department. Formal Six Sigma programs adopt an elite ranking terminology similar to martial arts systems like judo to define a hierarchy (and career path) that spans business functions and levels.


title: Six Sigma

text: According to proponents, special training is needed for all of these practitioners to ensure that they follow the methodology and use the data-driven approach correctly.


title: Six Sigma

text: Some organizations use additional belt colors, such as "yellow belts", for employees that have basic training in Six Sigma tools and generally participate in projects, and "white belts" for those locally trained in the concepts but do not participate in the project team. "Orange belts" are also mentioned to be used for special cases.


title: Six Sigma

text: General Electric and Motorola developed certification programs as part of their Six Sigma implementation. Following this approach, many organizations in the 1990s started offering Six Sigma certifications to their employees. In 2008 Motorola University later co-developed with Vative and the Lean Six Sigma Society of Professionals a set of comparable certification standards for Lean Certification. Criteria for Green Belt and Black Belt certification vary; some companies simply require participation in a course and a Six Sigma project. There is no standard certification body, and different certifications are offered by various quality associations for a fee. The American Society for Quality, for example, requires Black Belt applicants to pass a written exam and to provide a signed affidavit stating that they have completed two projects or one project combined with three years' practical experience in the body of knowledge.


title: Six Sigma

text: Within the individual phases of a DMAIC or DMADV project, Six Sigma uses many established quality-management tools that are also used outside Six Sigma. The following table shows an overview of the main methods used.


title: Six Sigma

text: Experience has shown that processes usually do not perform as well in the long term as they do in the short term. As a result, the number of sigmas that will fit between the process mean and the nearest specification limit may well drop over time, compared to an initial short-term study. To account for this real-life increase in process variation over time, an empirically based 1.5 sigma shift is introduced into the calculation. Mikel Harry, the creator of Six Sigma, based the 1.5 sigma shift on the height of a stack of discs. He called this "Benderizing". He claimed that based on his stack, all processes shift 1.5 sigma every 50 samples. According to this idea, a process that fits 6 sigma between the process mean and the nearest specification limit in a short-term study will in the long term fit only 4.5 sigma – either because the process mean will move over time, or because the long-term standard deviation of the process will be greater than that observed in the short term, or both.


title: Six Sigma

text: Hence the widely accepted definition of a six sigma process is a process that produces 3.4 defective parts per million opportunities (DPMO). This is based on the fact that a process that is normally distributed will have 3.4 parts per million outside the limits, when the limits are six sigma from the "original" mean of zero and the process mean is then shifted by 1.5 sigma (and therefore, the six sigma limits are no longer symmetrical about the mean). The former six sigma distribution, when under the effect of the 1.5 sigma shift, is commonly referred to as a 4.5 sigma process. The failure rate of a six sigma distribution with the mean shifted 1.5 sigma is not equivalent to the failure rate of a 4.5 sigma process with the mean-centered on zero. This allows for the fact that special causes may result in a deterioration in process performance over time and is designed to prevent underestimation of the defect levels likely to be encountered in real-life operation.


title: Six Sigma

text: The role of the sigma shift is mainly academic. The purpose of six sigma is to generate organizational performance improvement. It is up to the organization to determine, based on customer expectations, what the appropriate sigma level of a process is. The purpose of the sigma value is as a comparative figure to determine whether a process is improving, deteriorating, stagnant or non-competitive with others in the same business. Six Sigma (3.4 DPMO) is not the goal of all processes.


title: Six Sigma

text: These figures assume that the process mean will shift by 1.5 sigma toward the side with the critical specification limit. In other words, they assume that after the initial study determining the short-term sigma level, the long-term C value will turn out to be 0.5 less than the short-term C value. So, now for example, the DPMO figure given for 1 sigma assumes that the long-term process mean will be 0.5 sigma beyond the specification limit (C = –0.17), rather than 1 sigma within it, as it was in the short-term study (C = 0.33). Note that the defect percentages indicate only defects exceeding the specification limit to which the process mean is nearest. Defects beyond the far specification limit are not included in the percentages.


title: Six Sigma

text: Six Sigma mostly finds application in large organizations. According to industry consultants like Thomas Pyzdek and John Kullmann, companies with fewer than 500 employees are less suited to Six Sigma or need to adapt the standard approach to making it work for them. Six Sigma, however, contains a large number of tools and techniques that work well in small to mid-size organizations. The fact that an organization is not big enough to be able to afford black belts does not diminish its ability to make improvements using this set of tools and techniques. The infrastructure described as necessary to support Six Sigma is a result of the size of the organization rather than a requirement of Six Sigma itself.


title: Six Sigma

text: After its first application at Motorola in the late 1980s, other internationally recognized firms currently recorded high number of savings after applying Six Sigma. Examples include Johnson & Johnson, with $600 million of reported savings, Texas Instruments, which saved over $500 million as well as Telefónica, which reported €30 million in savings in the first 10 months; Sony and Boeing also reported successfully reducing waste.


title: Six Sigma

text: Although companies have considered common quality control and process improvement strategies, there's still a need for more reasonable and effective methods as all the desired standards and client satisfaction have not always been reached. There is still a need for an essential analysis that can control the factors affecting concrete cracks and slippage between concrete and steel. After conducting a case study on Tinjin Xianyi Construction Technology, it was found that construction time and construction waste were reduced by 26.2% and 67% accordingly after adopting Six Sigma. Similarly, Six Sigma implementation was studied at one of the largest engineering and construction companies in the world: Bechtel Corporation, where after an initial investment of $30 million in a Six Sigma program that included identifying and preventing rework and defects, over $200 million were saved.


title: Six Sigma

text: Six Sigma has played an important role by improving the accuracy of allocation of cash to reduce bank charges, automatic payments, improving the accuracy of reporting, reducing documentary credit defects, reducing check collection defects, and reducing variation in collector performance.


title: Six Sigma

text: For example, Bank of America announced in 2004 that Six Sigma had helped it increase customer satisfaction by 10.4% and decrease customer issues by 24%; similarly, American Express eliminated non-received renewal credit cards. Other financial institutions that have adopted Six Sigma include GE Capital and JPMorgan Chase, where customer satisfaction was the main objective.


title: Six Sigma

text: In the supply-chain field, it is important to ensure that products are delivered to clients at the right time while preserving high-quality standards. By changing the schematic diagram for the supply chain, Six Sigma can ensure quality control on products (defect-free) and guarantee delivery deadlines, the two main issues in the supply chain.


title: Six Sigma

text: This is a sector that has been highly matched with this doctrine for many years because of the nature of zero tolerance for mistakes and potential for reducing medical errors involved in healthcare. The goal of Six Sigma in healthcare is broad and includes reducing the inventory of equipment that brings extra costs, altering the process of healthcare delivery in order to make it more efficient and refining reimbursements. A study at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, which recorded an increase in examinations with no additional machines of 45% and a reduction in patients' preparation time of 40 minutes; from 45 minutes to 5 minutes in multiple cases.


title: Six Sigma

text: Lean Six Sigma was adopted in 2003 at Stanford hospitals and was introduced at Red Cross hospitals in 2002.


title: Six Sigma

text: While there are many advocates for a Six Sigma approach for the reasons stated above, more than half of projects are unsuccessful: in 2010, the Wall Street Journal reported that more than 60% of projects fail. A review of academic literature found 34 common failure factors in 56 papers on Lean, Six Sigma, and LSS from 1995-2013. Among them are (summarized):


title: Six Sigma

text: Quality expert Joseph M. Juran described Six Sigma as "a basic version of quality improvement", stating that "there is nothing new there. It includes what we used to call facilitators. They've adopted more flamboyant terms, like belts with different colors. I think that concept has merit to set apart, to create specialists who can be very helpful. Again, that's not a new idea. The American Society for Quality long ago established certificates, such as for reliability engineers."


title: Six Sigma

text: Quality expert Philip B. Crosby pointed out that the Six Sigma standard does not go far enough—customers deserve defect-free products every time. For example, under the Six Sigma standard, semiconductors, which require the flawless etching of millions of tiny circuits onto a single chip, are all defective.


title: Six Sigma

text: The use of "Black Belts" as itinerant change agents has fostered an industry of training and certification. Critics have argued there is overselling of Six Sigma by too great a number of consulting firms, many of which claim expertise in Six Sigma when they have only a rudimentary understanding of the tools and techniques involved or the markets or industries in which they are acting.


title: Six Sigma

text: A "Fortune" article stated that "of 58 large companies that have announced Six Sigma programs, 91% have trailed the S&P 500 since". The statement was attributed to "an analysis by Charles Holland of consulting firm Qualpro (which espouses a competing quality-improvement process)". The summary of the article is that Six Sigma is effective at what it is intended to do, but that it is "narrowly designed to fix an existing process" and does not help in "coming up with new products or disruptive technologies."


title: Six Sigma

text: More direct criticism is the "rigid" nature of Six Sigma with its over-reliance on methods and tools. In most cases, more attention is paid to reducing variation and searching for any significant factors, and less attention is paid to developing robustness in the first place (which can altogether eliminate the need for reducing variation). The extensive reliance on significance testing and use of multiple regression techniques increase the risk of making commonly unknown types of statistical errors or mistakes. A possible consequence of Six Sigma's array of "p"-value misconceptions is the false belief that the probability of a conclusion being in error can be calculated from the data in a single experiment without reference to external evidence or the plausibility of the underlying mechanism. One of the most serious but all-too-common misuses of inferential statistics is to take a model that was developed through exploratory model building and subject it to the same sorts of statistical tests that are used to validate a model that was specified in advance.


title: Six Sigma

text: Another comment refers to the oft-mentioned Transfer Function, which seems to be a flawed theory if looked at in detail. Since significance tests were first popularized many objections have been voiced by prominent and respected statisticians. The volume of criticism and rebuttal has filled books with language seldom used in the scholarly debate of a dry subject. Much of the first criticism was already published more than 40 years ago (see ).


title: Six Sigma

text: In a 2006 issue "USA Army Logistician" an article critical of Six Sigma noted: "The dangers of a single paradigmatic orientation (in this case, that of technical rationality) can blind us to values associated with double-loop learning and the learning organization, organization adaptability, workforce creativity and development, humanizing the workplace, cultural awareness, and strategy making."


title: Six Sigma

text: Nassim Nicholas Taleb considers risk managers little more than "blind users" of statistical tools and methods. He states that statistics is fundamentally incomplete as a field as it cannot predict the risk of rare events—something Six Sigma is especially concerned with. Furthermore, errors in prediction are likely to occur as a result of ignorance of or distinction between epistemic and other uncertainties. These errors are the biggest in time variant (reliability) related failures.


title: Six Sigma

text: The statistician Donald J. Wheeler has dismissed the 1.5 sigma shift as "goofy" because of its arbitrary nature. Its universal applicability is seen as doubtful.


title: Six Sigma

text: The 1.5 sigma shift has also become contentious because it results in stated "sigma levels" that reflect short-term rather than long-term performance: a process that has long-term defect levels corresponding to 4.5 sigma performance is, by Six Sigma convention, described as a "six sigma process". The accepted Six Sigma scoring system thus cannot be equated to actual normal distribution probabilities for the stated number of standard deviations, and this has been a key bone of contention over how Six Sigma measures are defined. The fact that it is rarely explained that a "6 sigma" process will have long-term defect rates corresponding to 4.5 sigma performance rather than actual 6 sigma performance has led several commentators to express the opinion that Six Sigma is a confidence trick.


title: Six Sigma

text: According to John Dodge, editor in chief of "Design News", the use of Six Sigma is inappropriate in a research environment. Dodge states "excessive metrics, steps, measurements and Six Sigma's intense focus on reducing variability water down the discovery process. Under Six Sigma, the free-wheeling nature of brainstorming and the serendipitous side of discovery is stifled." He concludes "there's general agreement that freedom in basic or pure research is preferable while Six Sigma works best in incremental innovation when there's an expressed commercial goal."


title: Six Sigma

text: A "BusinessWeek" article says that James McNerney's introduction of Six Sigma at 3M had the effect of stifling creativity and reports its removal from the research function. It cites two Wharton School professors who say that Six Sigma leads to incremental innovation at the expense of blue skies research. This phenomenon is further explored in the book "Going Lean", which describes a related approach known as lean dynamics and provides data to show that Ford's 6 Sigma program did little to change its fortunes.


title: Six Sigma

text: One criticism voiced by Yasar Jarrar and Andy Neely from the Cranfield School of Management's Centre for Business Performance is that while Six Sigma is a powerful approach, it can also unduly dominate an organization's culture; and they add that much of the Six Sigma literature – in a remarkable way (six-sigma claims to be evidence, scientifically based) – lacks academic rigor:


title: Quantum Leap

text: Quantum Leap is an American science fiction television series, created by Donald P. Bellisario, that premiered on NBC and aired for five seasons, from March 26, 1989, to May 5, 1993. The series stars Scott Bakula as Dr. Sam Beckett, a physicist who involuntarily leaps through spacetime during experiments in time travel, by temporarily taking the place of other people to correct what he consistently discovers were historical mistakes.


title: Quantum Leap

text: Dean Stockwell co-stars as Admiral Al Calavicci, Sam's womanizing, cigar-smoking companion and best friend, who appears to him as a hologram and researches and shapes his opinions of the past.


title: Quantum Leap

text: The series features a mix of humor, drama, romance, social commentary, and science fiction. It was ranked number 19 on "TV Guide"s "Top Cult Shows Ever" in 2007.


title: Quantum Leap

text: In the near future, physicist Dr. Sam Beckett (Bakula) theorizes that time travel within one's own lifetime is possible, and obtains government support to build his project "Quantum Leap". Some years later, having already spent $43 billion, the government threatens to halt funding, as no progress has been made, and Sam decides to test the project accelerator by himself to save the project before anyone can stop him. He is thrown back in time, and on regaining consciousness, finds that while he physically exists in the past, he appears to everyone else as a person into whom he had "leapt", and further has partial amnesia related to his own identity.


title: Quantum Leap

text: A hologram of his friend Admiral Al Calavicci (Stockwell) appears, visible and audible only to Sam, and helps to explain to Sam that he must correct something that went wrong in the past, aided with the resources of the project's supercomputer Ziggy, the self-aware artificial intelligence "parallel hybrid computer with an ego." Despite successfully correcting the past, Sam continues to leap, seemingly "guided by an unknown force", to another place and time within his own lifetime, "putting right what once went wrong and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home".


title: Quantum Leap

text: Sam has six doctoral degrees, a black belt in "kung fu", a photographic memory, and near-virtuosic musical talent, allowing him to easily slip into the shoes of many different people. The bookish and naive Sam is a sharp contrast to his best friend Al, a womanizing, cigar-smoking five-time divorcé who grew up in an orphanage, was active in the civil rights movement, and was a prisoner of war in Vietnam.


title: Quantum Leap

text: Sam and Al are the only characters to appear in every episode. The supporting characters of each episode are the friends, family, and acquaintances of the person Sam has leapt into. With a few exceptions such as two-part or sequel episodes, these characters only appear once, though several actors have played multiple characters. Occasionally, Sam will also run into real-life historical figures such as Buddy Holly, Michael Jackson, Donald Trump, Marilyn Monroe, and Ruth Westheimer, the latter of which played herself.


title: Quantum Leap

text: The other members of the Quantum Leap team are mentioned often and each appear in a handful of episodes. They include Irving "Gooshie" Gushman (Dennis Wolfberg), the project's head programmer, Dr. Verbena Beeks (Candy Ann Brown), the project's psychiatrist, Tina Martinez (Gigi Rice), the project's medical technician and Al's lover, and Dr. Donna Eleese (Teri Hatcher/Mimi Kuzyk), Sam's wife and the project's director in his absence.


title: Quantum Leap

text: The main premise for "Quantum Leap" was inspired by such movies as "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" (1941) and "Heaven Can Wait", as well as the 1960s TV show "The Time Tunnel". Series creator Donald P. Bellisario saw its concept as a way of developing an original anthology series, as anthologies were unpopular with the networks.


title: Quantum Leap

text: The theme for the series was written by Mike Post. It was later rearranged for the fifth season, except for the series-finale episode, which featured the original theme music. Scores for the episodes were composed by Post and Velton Ray Bunch.


title: Quantum Leap

text: A soundtrack album was first released in 1993, titled "Music from the Television Series 'Quantum Leap' ", dedicated to John Anderson, who played Pat Knight in "The Last Gunfighter". It was released by GNP Crescendo on CD and cassette tape.


title: Quantum Leap

text: The "Quantum Leap" series was initially moved from Friday nights to Wednesdays. It was later moved twice away from Wednesdays to Fridays in late 1990, and to Tuesdays in late 1992. The series finale aired in its Wednesday slot in May 1993.


title: Quantum Leap

text: In the United Kingdom, the show began on BBC Two on February 13, 1990, airing Tuesday evenings at 9:00 pm. The final episode was scheduled to be aired on June 14, 1994, but altered schedules after the death of British dramatist Dennis Potter earlier that month delayed the airing until June 21, 1994. Repeat episodes continued on the channel at various times until December 28, 1999.


title: Quantum Leap

text: During the summer of 1990, NBC scheduled a "Quantum Leap Week". Over the course of five consecutive nights, repeat episodes of the show were broadcast in an effort to drum up interest in the fledging series. The "Quantum Leap Week" was repeated during the summer of 1991. Each of the weekly events was supported by a series of advertisements. In each were a series of "man-on-the-street" attempting to say "Quantum Leap Week" fast, with varied levels of success.


title: Quantum Leap

text: Universal Studios has released the entire, digitally remastered, "Quantum Leap" series on DVD. Some controversy arose when fans discovered that many songs had been replaced from the soundtrack due to music rights issues. For the fifth season, Universal included all of the original music.


title: Quantum Leap

text: On April 13, 2016, Mill Creek Entertainment announced that it had acquired the rights to the series and re-released the first two seasons on DVD on June 7, 2016.


title: Quantum Leap

text: On February 7, 2017, Mill Creek re-released "Quantum Leap - the Complete Series" on DVD and also released the complete series on Blu-ray for the first time. The 18-disc set contains all 97 episodes of the series, as well as most of the original music restored for all seasons.


title: Quantum Leap

text: At the end of season five, Bellisario was told to write an episode that could serve as a season finale or series finale, as it was unclear whether "Quantum Leap" would be renewed. The episode contained some answers to long-standing questions about the show, but contained enough ambiguity for a season six. When the show was not renewed, two title cards were tacked on to the end of the last episode; one read that Al's first wife Beth never remarried, so they were still married in the present day and had four daughters. The last title cards said "Sam Becket [sic] never returned home." The finale was met by viewers with mixed feelings.


title: Quantum Leap

text: A few years after the airing of the finale, a script for an alternate ending was leaked on the internet. It implied that Al, through encouragement of his wife Beth, would become a leaper to go after Sam and that they would be leaping into the future. Bellisario has said no script exists and that he does not know where this idea came from. In 2018, however, fan Allison Pregler purchased title cards taken from season five that contained some shots of Al and Beth together; this implies that part of the alternate ending was, in fact, shot and gives credibility to the alternate-ending scenario. In May 2019, a video of the lost footage was uploaded to Reddit by a contributor with the handle Leaper1953. How this person obtained the footage is not known publicly. Scott Bakula confirmed that several endings were shot and that the footage was authentic.


title: Quantum Leap

text: The series had a slow start in the ratings, and its timeslot was moved often, but it did well in the 18–49 demographic. The finale was viewed by 13 million American households. In 2004 and 2007, "Quantum Leap" was ranked number 15 and 19, respectively, on "TV Guide" "Top Cult Shows Ever".


title: Quantum Leap

text: Innovation Publishing produced a series of comic books that ran for 13 issues from September 1991 through August 1993. As with the television series, each issue ended with a teaser preview of the following issue and Sam's exclamation of "Oh, boy." Among the people into whom Sam found himself leaping in this series were:


title: Quantum Leap

text: Few of the comic stories referenced episodes of the television series, with the exception of the ninth issue, "Up Against a Stonewall".


title: Quantum Leap

text: In July 2002, the Sci-Fi Channel (which at the time was airing reruns of the show) announced development of a two-hour television film based on "Quantum Leap" that would have served as a backdoor pilot for a new series, with Bellisario as executive producer.


title: Quantum Leap

text: In July 2010 during the "TV Guide" panel at the San Diego Comic-Con International, Scott Bakula said that Bellisario was working on a script for a projected "Quantum Leap" feature film. Bellisario confirmed in October 2017 at the L.A. Comic Con that he had finished the script.


title: Quantum Leap

text: In January 2020, Jeff Bader, NBC's head of program planning and strategy, announced that the network was considering a reboot of "Quantum Leap" for the launch of its Peacock streaming service.


title: Quantum Leap

text: In January 2022, NBC greenlit a pilot episode of a "Quantum Leap" sixth season revival. Bellisario is involved, while the showrunners include Steven Lilien and Bryan Wynbrandt, with Deborah Pratt and Martin Gero as executive producers. The pilot will take place 30 years after the conclusion of the original series, with a new team reviving Project Quantum Leap to understand both it and the fate of Sam Beckett. Raymond Lee was signed to star in the pilot in the role of Dr. Ben Song, the person that ends up traveling back in time through the Quantum Leap project. Ernie Hudson was cast as Herbert "Magic" Williams, the lead of the new Quantum Leap program and a Vietnam War veteran whom Sam leaped into in the season three episode "The Leap Home (Part 2) – Vietnam". NBC gave the green light for a full season order in May 2022. In July 2022, it was announced that Dean Georgaris joined as showrunner. It premiered on September 19, 2022, airing on Monday nights.


title: Quantum Leap

text: In September 2022, original series star Scott Bakula confirmed that he had been asked by producers to reprise his role as Sam Beckett in the revival, but ultimately decided to not be involved with the new series, saying in a statement on Instagram, "As the show has always been near and dear to my heart, it was a very difficult decision to pass on the project".


title: Quantum Leap

text: In the 2019 film "," Scott Lang brings the show up as one of many examples of time travel in fiction allowing you to change your own past, contrasting Bruce Banner's explanation that time travel works differently in their universe.


title: Quantum Leap

text: "Source Code", a 2011 science-fiction action thriller film, was directed by Duncan Jones. Jones said in reading its script that he was reminded of "Quantum Leap" and as a reference to the show, cast Bakula in a voice cameo role, including giving him one line of "Oh, boy" in the script.


title: Quantum Leap

text: Special episodes of "" ("", 2002) and "" ("", 2014), both series that featured Bakula as lead, included Stockwell as a guest star to reunite the two actors from "Quantum Leap". Further, "Chasing Ghosts" was directed by James Whitmore Jr., who had directed 15 episodes, and acted in three episodes, of "Quantum Leap".


title: Quantum Leap

text: The 2017 episode "The Gang Turns Black" of the series "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" features numerous "Quantum Leap" references. When the gang finds themselves in different bodies, Sweet Dee suggests that they are "quantum leaping". Bakula has a guest appearance, as himself, researching an upcoming role.


title: American Pie (song)

text: "American Pie" is a song by American singer and songwriter Don McLean. Recorded and released in 1971 on the album of the same name, the single was the number-one US hit for four weeks in 1972 starting January 15 after just eight weeks on the US "Billboard" charts (where it entered at number 69). The song also topped the charts in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. In the UK, the single reached number 2, where it stayed for three weeks on its original 1971 release, and a reissue in 1991 reached No. 12. The song was listed as the No. 5 song on the RIAA project Songs of the Century. A truncated version of the song was covered by Madonna in 2000 and reached No. 1 in at least 15 countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. At 8 minutes and 42 seconds, McLean's combined version is the sixth longest song to enter the "Billboard" Hot 100 (at the time of release it was the longest). The song also held the record for almost 50 years for being the longest song to reach number one before Taylor Swift's "All Too Well (10 Minute Version)" broke the record in 2021. Due to its exceptional length, it was initially released as a two-sided 7-inch single. "American Pie" has been described as "one of the most successful and debated songs of the 20th century".


title: American Pie (song)

text: The repeated phrase "the day the music died" refers to a plane crash in 1959 that killed early rock and roll stars Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens, ending the era of early rock and roll; this became the popular nickname for that crash. The theme of the song goes beyond mourning McLean's childhood music heroes, reflecting the deep cultural changes and profound disillusion and loss of innocence of his generation – the early rock and roll generation – that took place between the 1959 plane crash and either late 1969 or late 1970. The meaning of the other lyrics, which cryptically allude to many of the jarring events and social changes experienced during that period, have been debated for decades. McLean repeatedly declined to explain the symbolism behind the many characters and events mentioned; he eventually released his songwriting notes to accompany the original manuscript when it was sold in 2015, explaining many of these, and further elaborated on the lyrical meaning in a 2022 interview/documentary celebrating the song's 50th anniversary, in which he stated the song was driven by impressionism and debunked some of the more widely speculated symbols.


title: American Pie (song)

text: In 2017, McLean's original recording was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or artistically significant". To mark the 50th anniversary of the song, McLean is scheduled to perform a 35-date tour through Europe, starting in Wales and ending in Austria, in 2022.


title: American Pie (song)

text: Don McLean reportedly wrote "American Pie" in Saratoga Springs, New York, at Caffè Lena, but a 2011 "New York Times" article quotes McLean as disputing this claim. Some employees at Caffè Lena claim that he started writing the song there, and then continued to write the song in both Cold Spring, New York, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. McLean claims that the song was only written in Cold Spring and Philadelphia. Tin & Lint, a bar on Caroline Street in Saratoga Springs, claims the song was written there, and a plaque marks the table. While some have claimed other places, such as Saint Joseph's University, as where the song was first performed, McLean insists that the song made its debut in Philadelphia at Temple University when he opened for Laura Nyro on March 14, 1971. However a 2022 documentary on the history of the song notes that particular concert actually occurred at the nearby Saint Joseph's University.


title: American Pie (song)

text: The song was produced by Ed Freeman and recorded with a few session musicians. Freeman did not want McLean to play rhythm guitar on the song but eventually relented. McLean and the session musicians rehearsed for two weeks but failed to get the song right. At the last minute, the pianist Paul Griffin was added, which is when the tune came together. McLean used a 1969 or 1970 Martin D-28 guitar to provide the basic chords throughout "American Pie".


title: American Pie (song)

text: The song debuted in the album "American Pie" in October 1971, and was released as a single in December. The song's eight-and-a-half-minute length meant that it could not fit entirely on one side of the 45 RPM record, so United Artists had the first taking up the A-side of the record and the final the B-side. Radio stations initially played the A-side of the song only, but soon switched to the full album version to satisfy their audiences.


title: American Pie (song)

text: The song has nostalgic themes, stretching from the late 1950s until late 1969 or 1970. Except to acknowledge that he first learned about Buddy Holly's death on February 3, 1959 – McLean was age 13 – when he was folding newspapers for his paper route on the morning of February 4, 1959 (hence the line "February made me shiver/with every paper I'd deliver"), McLean has generally avoided responding to direct questions about the song's lyrics; he has said: "They're beyond analysis. They're poetry." He also stated in an editorial published in 2009, on the 50th anniversary of the crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson (all of whom are alluded to in the final verse in a comparison with the Christian Holy Trinity), that writing the first verse of the song exorcised his long-running grief over Holly's death and that he considers the song to be "a big song… that summed up the world known as America". McLean dedicated the "American Pie" album to Holly.


title: American Pie (song)

text: Some commentators have identified the song as outlining the darkening of cultural mood, as over time the cultural vanguard passed from Pete Seeger and Joan Baez (the "King and Queen" of folk music), then from Elvis Presley (known as "the King" of Rock and Roll), to Bob Dylan ("the Jester") – who wore a jacket similar to that worn by cultural icon James Dean, was known as "the voice of his generation" ("a voice that came from you and me"), and whose motorcycle accident ("in a cast") left him in reclusion for many years, recording in studios rather than touring ("on the sidelines"), to The Beatles (John Lennon, punned with Lenin, and "the Quartet" – although McLean has stated the Quartet is a reference to other people), to The Byrds (who wrote one of the first psychedelic rock songs, "Eight Miles High", and then "fell fast" – the song was banned and one of the group entered rehabilitation, known colloquially as a "fallout shelter"), and shortly after, the group declined as it lost members, changed genres, and alienated fans), to The Rolling Stones (who released "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and "Their Satanic Majesties Request" ("Jack Flash", "Satan", "The Devil"), and used Hells Angels – "Angels born in Hell" – as event security, with fatal consequences, bringing the 1960s to a violent end), and to Janis Joplin (the "girl who sang the blues" but just "turned away" – she died of a heroin overdose the following year).


title: American Pie (song)

text: It has also been speculated that the song contains numerous references to post-World War II American political events, such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy (known casually as "Jack") and subsequent killing of his assassin (whose courtroom trial obviously ended as a result ("adjourned")), the Cuban Missile Crisis ("Jack be nimble, Jack be quick"), the murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, and elements of culture such as sock hops ("kicking off shoes" to dance, preventing damage to the varnished floor), cruising with a pickup truck, the rise of the political protest song ("a voice that came from you and me"), drugs and the counterculture, the Manson Family and the Tate–LaBianca murders in the "summer swelter" of 1969 (the Beatles' song "Helter Skelter") and much more.


title: American Pie (song)

text: For example, Bob Dylan's first performance in Great Britain was also at a pub called "The King and Queen", and he also appeared more literally "on the sidelines in a (the) cast" – as one of many stars at the back far right of the cover art of the Beatles' album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" ("the Sergeants played a marching tune").


title: American Pie (song)

text: The song title itself is a reference to apple pie, an unofficial symbol of the United States and one of its signature comfort foods, as seen in the popular expression ""As American as apple pie"". By the twentieth century, this had become a symbol of American prosperity and national pride.


title: American Pie (song)

text: The original United Artists Records inner sleeve featured a free verse poem written by McLean about William Boyd, also known as Hopalong Cassidy, along with a picture of Boyd in full Hopalong regalia. Its inclusion in the album was interpreted to represent a sense of loss of a type of American culture as symbolized by Hopalong Cassidy and by black and white television as a whole.


title: American Pie (song)

text: Mike Mills of R.E.M. reflected: "'American Pie' just made perfect sense to me as a song and that's what impressed me the most. I could say to people this is how to write songs. When you've written at least three songs that can be considered classic that is a very high batting average and if one of those songs happens to be something that a great many people think is one of the greatest songs ever written you've not only hit the top of the mountain but you've stayed high on the mountain for a long time."


title: American Pie (song)

text: When asked what "American Pie" meant, McLean jokingly replied, "It means I don't ever have to work again if I don't want to." Later, he stated, "You will find many interpretations of my lyrics but none of them by me… Sorry to leave you all on your own like this but long ago I realized that songwriters should make their statements and move on, maintaining a dignified silence." He also commented on the popularity of his music, "I didn't write songs that were just catchy, but with a point of view, or songs about the environment."


title: American Pie (song)

text: In February 2015, however, McLean announced he would reveal the meaning of the lyrics to the song when the original manuscript went for auction in New York City, in April 2015. The lyrics and notes were auctioned on April 7, 2015, and sold for $1.2 million. In the sale catalogue notes, McLean revealed the meaning in the song's lyrics: "Basically in 'American Pie' things are heading in the wrong direction. It [life] is becoming less idyllic. I don't know whether you consider that wrong or right but it is a morality song in a sense." The catalogue confirmed that the song climaxes with a description of the death of Meredith Hunter at the Altamont Free Concert, ten years after the plane crash that killed Holly, Valens, and Richardson, and did acknowledge that some of the more well-known symbols in the song were inspired by figures such as Elvis Presley ("the king") and Bob Dylan ("the jester"). In 2017, Bob Dylan was asked about how he was referenced in the song. "A jester? Sure, the jester writes songs like 'Masters of War', 'A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall', 'It's Alright, Ma' – some jester. I have to think he's talking about somebody else. Ask him." Dylan's predictions were later confirmed to be true, when McLean denied that Dylan was the jester and Presley the king in the song.


title: American Pie (song)

text: In 2022, the documentary "The Day the Music Died: The Story of Don McLean’s American Pie", produced by Spencer Proffer, was released on the Paramount+ video on-demand service. Proffer said that he told McLean: "It's time for you to reveal what 50 years of journalists have wanted to know." McLean answers some of the questions on the song lyrics in the documentary. He reveals that Elvis was not the king referenced in the song, the "girl who sang the blues" was not Janis Joplin, and Bob Dylan was not the jester, although he is open to other interpretations. He says that "marching band" means the military–industrial complex, "sweet perfume" refers to tear gas, and Los Angeles is the "coast" in "last train for the coast". He says that "This’ll be the day that I die" originated from the John Wayne film "The Searchers" (which inspired Buddy Holly's song "That'll Be the Day"), and "Bye Bye Miss American Pie" is a reference to a song by Pete Seeger, "Bye Bye, My Roseanna". McLean had originally intended to use "Miss American apple pie" but "apple" was dropped.


title: American Pie (song)

text: On the whole, McLean stated that the lyrics were meant to be impressionist, and that many of the lyrics, only a portion of which were included in the finished recording, were completely fictional with no basis in real-life events.


title: American Pie (song)

text: In 1999, "Weird Al" Yankovic wrote and recorded a parody of "American Pie". Titled "The Saga Begins", the song recounts the plot of "" from Obi-Wan Kenobi’s point of view. While McLean gave permission for the parody, he did not make a cameo appearance in its video, despite popular rumor. McLean himself praised the parody, even admitting to almost singing Yankovic's lyrics during his own live performances because his children played the song so often. An unrelated comedy film franchise by Universal Pictures, who secured the rights to McLean's title, also debuted in 1999.


title: American Pie (song)

text: "American Pie" was the last song to be played on Virgin Radio before it was rebranded as Absolute Radio in 2008. It was also the last song played on BFBS Malta in 1979.


title: American Pie (song)

text: In 2012, the City of Grand Rapids, Michigan, created a lip dub video to "American Pie" in response to a "Newsweek" article that stated the city was "dying". (Due to licensing issues, the version used in the video was not the original, but rather a later-recorded live version.) The video was hailed as a fantastic performance by many, including film critic Roger Ebert, who said it was "the greatest music video ever made".


title: American Pie (song)

text: On March 21, 2013, Harmonix announced that "American Pie" would be the final downloadable track made available for the "Rock Band" series of music video games. This was the case until "Rock Band 4" was released on October 6, 2015, reviving the series' weekly releases of DLC.


title: American Pie (song)

text: On March 14, 2015, the National Museum of Mathematics announced that one of two winners of its songwriting contest was "American Pi" by mathematics education professor Dr. Lawrence M. Lesser. The contest was in honor of "Pi Day of the Century" because "3/14/15" would be the only day in the 21st-century showing the first five digits of π (pi).


title: American Pie (song)

text: On April 20, 2015, John Mayer covered "American Pie" live on the "Late Show with David Letterman", at the request of the show's eponymous host.


title: American Pie (song)

text: On January 29, 2021, McLean released a re-recording of "American Pie" featuring lead vocals by country a cappella group Home Free.


title: American Pie (song)

text: The song is featured in Marvel’s "Black Widow" movie, directed by Cate Shortland and starring Scarlett Johansson, released on July 9, 2021. It is Black Widow (Yelena Belova)'s favorite song. The song was also sung by Red Guardian later in the film trying to comfort Yelena.


title: American Pie (song)

text: American singer Madonna released a cover version of the song in February 2000 to promote the soundtrack of her film "The Next Best Thing" (2000), with the song being serviced to radio on February 2. Her cover is much shorter than the original (it contains only the beginning of the first verse and all of the second and sixth verses) and was recorded as a dance-pop song. It was co-produced by Madonna and William Orbit and released on the singer's Maverick label, after Rupert Everett (Madonna's co-star in "The Next Best Thing") had convinced her to cover the song for the film's soundtrack. Madonna said of her choice to cover the song: "To me, it's a real millennium song. We're going through a big change in terms of the way we view pop culture, because of the Internet. In a way, it's like saying goodbye to music as we knew it - and to pop culture as we knew it." It is included as an international bonus track on her eighth studio album, "Music".


title: American Pie (song)

text: "American Pie" was not included in the 2001 greatest hits compilation "GHV2" (2001) because Madonna had regretted putting it on "Music". "It was something a certain record company executive twisted my arm into doing, but it didn't belong on the album so now it's being punished... My gut told me not to [put the song on "Music"], but I did it and then I regretted it so just for that reason it didn't deserve a place on "GHV2"." she said.


title: American Pie (song)

text: Released on February 28, 2000, the song was a worldwide hit, reaching No. 1 in many countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Iceland, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Finland. The song was the 19th-best-selling single of 2000 in the UK and the ninth best-selling single of 2000 in Sweden. The single was not released commercially in the United States, but it reached No. 29 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 due to strong radio airplay.


title: American Pie (song)

text: Chuck Taylor from "Billboard," was impressed by the recording and commented, "Applause to Madonna for not pandering to today's temporary trends and for challenging programmers to broaden their playlists. ... In all, a fine preview of the forthcoming soundtrack to "The Next Best Thing"." Peter Robinson of "The Guardian" called the cover as "brilliant". Don McLean himself praised the cover, saying it was "a gift from a goddess", and that her version is "mystical and sensual". "NME", on the other hand, gave it a negative review, saying that "Killdozer did it first and did it better", that it was "sub-karaoke fluff" and that "it's a blessing she didn't bother recording the whole thing."


title: American Pie (song)

text: In 2017, the Official Charts Company stated the song had sold 400,000 copies in the United Kingdom and was her 16th best selling single to date in the nation.