title: The Birth of a Nation

text: Dixon, a racist and white supremacist, clearly was rattled and upset by criticism by African Americans that the movie encouraged hatred against them, and he wanted the endorsement of as many powerful men as possible to offset such criticism. Dixon always vehemently denied having anti-black prejudices—despite the way his books promoted white supremacy—and stated: "My books are hard reading for a Negro, and yet the Negroes, in denouncing them, are unwittingly denouncing one of their greatest friends".


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: In a letter sent on May 1, 1915, to Joseph P. Tumulty, Wilson's secretary, Dixon wrote: "The real purpose of my film was to revolutionize Northern sentiments by a presentation of history that would transform every man in the audience into a good Democrat...Every man who comes out of the theater is a Southern partisan for life!" In a letter to President Wilson sent on September 5, 1915, Dixon boasted: "This play is transforming the entire population of the North and the West into sympathetic Southern voters. There will never be an issue of your segregation policy". Dixon was alluding to the fact that Wilson, upon becoming president in 1913, had allowed cabinet members to impose segregation on federal workplaces in Washington, D.C. by reducing the number of black employees through demotion or dismissal.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: One famous part of the film was added by Griffith only on the second run of the film and is missing from most online versions of the film (presumably taken from first run prints).


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: These are the second and third of three opening title cards that defend the film. The added titles read:


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: We do not fear censorship, for we have no wish to offend with improprieties or obscenities, but we do demand, as a right, the liberty to show the dark side of wrong, that we may illuminate the bright side of virtue—the same liberty that is conceded to the art of the written word—that art to which we owe the Bible and the works of Shakespeare and If in this work we have conveyed to the mind the ravages of war to the end that war may be held in abhorrence, this effort will not have been in vain.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: Various film historians have expressed a range of views about these titles. To Nicholas Andrew Miller, this shows that "Griffith's greatest achievement in "The Birth of a Nation" was that he brought the cinema's capacity for spectacle... under the rein of an outdated, but comfortably literary form of historical narrative. Griffith's models... are not the pioneers of film spectacle... but the giants of literary narrative". On the other hand, S. Kittrell Rushing complains about Griffith's "didactic" title-cards, while Stanley Corkin complains that Griffith "masks his idea of fact in the rhetoric of high art and free expression" and creates a film that "erodes the very ideal" of liberty that he asserts.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: "The New York Times" gave it a quite brief review, calling it "melodramatic" and "inflammatory", adding that: "A great deal might be said concerning the spirit revealed in Mr. Dixon's review of the unhappy chapter of Reconstruction and concerning the sorry service rendered by its plucking at old wounds." "Variety" praised Griffith's direction, claiming he "set such a pace it will take a long time before one will come along that can top it in point of production, acting, photography and direction. Every bit of the film was laid, played and made in America. One may find some flaws in the general running of the picture, but they are so small and insignificant that the bigness and greatness of the entire film production itself completely crowds out any little defects that might be singled out."


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: The box office gross of "The Birth of a Nation" is not known and has been the subject of exaggeration. When the film opened, the tickets were sold at premium prices. The film played at the Liberty Theater at Times Square in New York City for 44 weeks with tickets priced at $2.20 (). By the end of 1917, Epoch reported to its shareholders cumulative receipts of $4.8 million, and Griffith's own records put Epoch's worldwide earnings from the film at $5.2 million as of 1919, although the distributor's share of the revenue at this time was much lower than the exhibition gross. In the biggest cities, Epoch negotiated with individual theater owners for a percentage of the box office; elsewhere, the producer sold all rights in a particular state to a single distributor (an arrangement known as "state's rights" distribution). The film historian Richard Schickel says that under the state's rights contracts, Epoch typically received about 10% of the box office gross—which theater owners often underreported—and concludes that ""Birth" certainly generated more than $60 million in box-office business in its first run".


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: The film held the mantle of the highest-grossing film until it was overtaken by "Gone with the Wind" (1939), another film about the Civil War and Reconstruction era. By 1940 "Time" magazine estimated the film's cumulative gross rental (the distributor's earnings) at approximately $15 million. For years "Variety" had the gross rental listed as $50 million, but in 1977 repudiated the claim and revised its estimate down to $5 million. It is not known for sure how much the film has earned in total, but producer Harry Aitken put its estimated earnings at $15–18 million in a letter to a prospective investor in a proposed sound version. It is likely the film earned over $20 million for its backers and generated $50–100 million in box office receipts. In a 2015 "Time" article, Richard Corliss estimated the film had earned the equivalent of $1.8 billion adjusted for inflation, a milestone that at the time had only been surpassed by "Titanic" (1997) and "Avatar" (2009) in nominal earnings.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: Like Dixon's novels and play, "Birth of a Nation" received considerable criticism, both before and after its premiere. Dixon, who believed the film to be entirely truthful and historically accurate, attributed this to "Sectionalists", i.e. non-Southerners who in Dixon's opinion were hostile to the "truth" about the South. It was to counter these "sinister forces" and the "dangerous...menace" that Dixon and Griffiths sought "the backing" of President Wilson and the Supreme Court.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) protested at premieres of the film in numerous cities. According to the historian David Copeland, "by the time of the movie's March 3 [1915] premiere in New York City, its subject matter had embroiled the film in charges of racism, protests, and calls for censorship, which began after the Los Angeles branch of the NAACP requested the city's film board ban the movie. Since film boards were composed almost entirely of whites, few review boards initially banned Griffith's picture". The NAACP also conducted a public education campaign, publishing articles protesting the film's fabrications and inaccuracies, organizing petitions against it, and conducting education on the facts of the war and Reconstruction. Because of the lack of success in NAACP's actions to ban the film, on April 17, 1915, NAACP secretary Mary Childs Nerney wrote to NAACP Executive Committee member George Packard: "I am utterly disgusted with the situation in regard to "The Birth of a Nation" ... kindly remember that we have put six weeks of constant effort of this thing and have gotten nowhere." W. E. B. Du Bois's biographer David Levering Lewis opined that "..."The Birth of a Nation" and the NAACP helped make each other", in that the NAACP campaign in one sense served as advertising for the film, but that it also "...mobilized thousands of black and white men and women in large cities across the country... ...who had been unaware of the existence of the [NAACP] or indifferent to it."


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: Jane Addams, an American social worker and social reformer, and the founder of Hull House, voiced her reaction to the film in an interview published by the "New York Post" on March 13, 1915, just ten days after the film was released. She stated that "One of the most unfortunate things about this film is that it appeals to race prejudice upon the basis of conditions of half a century ago, which have nothing to do with the facts we have to consider to-day. Even then it does not tell the whole truth. It is claimed that the play is historical: but history is easy to misuse." In New York, Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise told the press after seeing "The Birth of a Nation" that the film was "an indescribable foul and loathsome libel on a race of human beings". In Boston, Booker T. Washington wrote a newspaper column asking readers to boycott the film, while the civil rights activist William Monroe Trotter organized demonstrations against the film, which he predicted was going to worsen race relations. On Saturday, April 10, and again on April 17, Trotter and a group of other blacks tried to buy tickets for the show's premiere at the Tremont Theater and were refused. They stormed the box office in protest, 260 police on standby rushed in, and a general melee ensued. Trotter and ten others were arrested. The following day a huge demonstration was staged at Faneuil Hall. In Washington D.C, the Reverend Francis James Grimké published a pamphlet entitled "Fighting a Vicious Film" that challenged the historical accuracy of "The Birth of a Nation" on a scene-by-scene basis.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: When the film was released, riots also broke out in Philadelphia and other major cities in the United States. The film's inflammatory nature was a catalyst for gangs of whites to attack blacks. On April 24, 1916, the "Chicago American" reported that a white man murdered a black teenager in Lafayette, Indiana, after seeing the film, although there has been some controversy as to whether the murderer had actually seen "The Birth of a Nation". Over a century later, a Harvard University research paper found that "[o]n average, lynchings in a county rose fivefold in the month after [the film] arrived." The mayor of Cedar Rapids, Iowa was the first of twelve mayors to ban the film in 1915 out of concern that it would promote race prejudice, after meeting with a delegation of black citizens. The NAACP set up a precedent-setting national boycott of the film, likely seen as the most successful effort. Additionally, they organized a mass demonstration when the film was screened in Boston, and it was banned in three states and several cities.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: Both Griffith and Dixon in letters to the press dismissed African-American protests against "The Birth of a Nation". In a letter to "The New York Globe", Griffith wrote that his film was "an influence against the intermarriage of blacks and whites". Dixon likewise called the NAACP "the Negro Intermarriage Society" and said it was against "The Birth of a Nation" "for one reason only—because it opposes the marriage of blacks to whites". Griffith—indignant at the film's negative critical reception—wrote letters to newspapers and published a pamphlet in which he accused his critics of censoring unpopular opinions.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: When Sherwin Lewis of "The New York Globe" wrote a piece that expressed criticism of the film's distorted portrayal of history and said that it was not worthy of constitutional protection because its purpose was to make a few "dirty dollars", Griffith responded that "the public should not be afraid to accept the truth, even though it might not like it". He also added that the man who wrote the editorial was "damaging my reputation as a producer" and "a liar and a coward".


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: "The Birth of a Nation" was very popular, despite the film's controversy; it was unlike anything that American audiences had ever seen before. The "Los Angeles Times" called it "the greatest picture ever made and the greatest drama ever filmed". Mary Pickford said: ""Birth of a Nation" was the first picture that really made people take the motion picture industry seriously". Glorifying the Klan to approving white audiences, it became a national cultural phenomenon: merchandisers made Ku Klux hats and kitchen aprons, and ushers dressed in white Klan robes for openings. In New York there were Klan-themed balls and, in Chicago that Halloween, thousands of college students dressed in robes for a massive Klan-themed party. The producers had 15 "detectives" at the Liberty Theater in New York City "to prevent disorder on the part of those who resent the 'reconstruction period' episodes depicted."


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: The Reverend Charles Henry Parkhurst argued that the film was not racist, saying that it "was exactly true to history" by depicting freedmen as they were and, therefore, it was a "compliment to the black man" by showing how far black people had "advanced" since Reconstruction. Critic Dolly Dalrymple wrote that, "when I saw it, it was far from silent ... incessant murmurs of approval, roars of laughter, gasps of anxiety, and outbursts of applause greeted every new picture on the screen". One man viewing the film was so moved by the scene where Flora Cameron flees Gus to avoid being raped that he took out his handgun and began firing at the screen in an effort to help her. Katharine DuPre Lumpkin recalled watching the film as an 18-year-old in 1915 in her 1947 autobiography "The Making of a Southerner": "Here was the black figure—and the fear of the white girl—though the scene blanked out just in time. Here were the sinister men the South scorned and the noble men the South revered. And through it all the Klan rode. All around me people sighed and shivered, and now and then shouted or wept, in their intensity."


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: D. W. Griffith made a film in 1916, called "Intolerance", partly in response to the criticism that "The Birth of a Nation" received. Griffith made clear within numerous interviews that the film's title and main themes were chosen in response to those who he felt had been intolerant to "The Birth of a Nation". A sequel called "The Fall of a Nation" was released in 1916, depicting the invasion of the United States by a German-led confederation of European monarchies and criticizing pacifism in the context of the First World War. It was the first feature-length sequel in film history. The film was directed by Thomas Dixon Jr., who adapted it from his novel of the same name. Despite its success in the foreign market, the film was not a success among American audiences, and is now a lost film.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: In 1918, an American silent drama film directed by John W. Noble called "The Birth of a Race" was released as a direct response to "The Birth of a Nation". The film was an ambitious project by producer Emmett Jay Scott to challenge Griffith's film and tell another side of the story, but was ultimately unsuccessful. In 1920, African-American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux released "Within Our Gates", a response to "The Birth of a Nation". "Within Our Gates" depicts the hardships faced by African Americans during the era of Jim Crow laws. Griffith's film was remixed in 2004 as "Rebirth of a Nation" by DJ Spooky. Quentin Tarantino has said that he made his film "Django Unchained" (2012) to counter the falsehoods of "The Birth of a Nation".


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: In November 1915, William Joseph Simmons revived the Klan in Atlanta, Georgia, holding a cross burning at Stone Mountain. The historian John Hope Franklin observed that, had it not been for "The Birth of a Nation", the Klan might not have been reborn.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: Franklin wrote in 1979 that "The influence of "Birth of a Nation" on the current view of Reconstruction has been greater than any other single force", but that "It is not at all difficult to find inaccuracies and distortions" in the movie.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: Released in 1915, "The Birth of a Nation" has been credited as groundbreaking among its contemporaries for its innovative application of the medium of film. According to the film historian Kevin Brownlow, the film was "astounding in its time" and initiated "so many advances in film-making technique that it was rendered obsolete within a few years". The content of the work, however, has received widespread criticism for its blatant racism. Film critic Roger Ebert wrote:


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: Certainly "The Birth of a Nation" (1915) presents a challenge for modern audiences. Unaccustomed to silent films and uninterested in film history, they find it quaint and not to their taste. Those evolved enough to understand what they are looking at find the early and wartime scenes brilliant, but cringe during the postwar and Reconstruction scenes, which are racist in the ham-handed way of an old minstrel show or a vile comic pamphlet.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: Despite its controversial story, the film has been praised by film critics, with Ebert mentioning its use as a historical tool: ""The Birth of a Nation" is not a bad film because it argues for evil. Like Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will", it is a great film that argues for evil. To understand how it does so is to learn a great deal about film, and even something about evil."


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: According to a 2002 article in the "Los Angeles Times", the film facilitated the refounding of the Ku Klux Klan in 1915. History.com states that "There is no doubt that "Birth of a Nation" played no small part in winning wide public acceptance" for the KKK, and that throughout the film "African Americans are portrayed as brutish, lazy, morally degenerate, and dangerous." David Duke used the film to recruit Klansmen in the 1970s.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: ...a seminal commercial spectacle but also a decisively original work of art—in effect, the founding work of cinematic realism, albeit a work that was developed to pass lies off as reality. It's tempting to think of the film's influence as evidence of the inherent corruption of realism as a cinematic mode—but it's even more revealing to acknowledge the disjunction between its beauty, on the one hand, and, on the other, its injustice and falsehood. The movie's fabricated events shouldn't lead any viewer to deny the historical facts of slavery and Reconstruction. But they also shouldn't lead to a denial of the peculiar, disturbingly exalted beauty of "Birth of a Nation", even in its depiction of immoral actions and its realization of blatant propaganda. The worst thing about "The Birth of a Nation" is how good it is. The merits of its grand and enduring aesthetic make it impossible to ignore and, despite its disgusting content, also make it hard not to love. And it's that very conflict that renders the film all the more despicable, the experience of the film more of a torment—together with the acknowledgment that Griffith, whose short films for Biograph were already among the treasures of world cinema, yoked his mighty talent to the cause of hatred (which, still worse, he sincerely depicted as virtuous).


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: Brody also argued that Griffith unintentionally undercut his own thesis in the film, citing the scene before the Civil War when the Cameron family offers up lavish hospitality to the Stoneman family who travel past mile after mile of slaves working the cotton fields of South Carolina to reach the Cameron home. Brody maintained that a modern audience can see that the wealth of the Camerons comes from the slaves, forced to do back-breaking work picking the cotton. Likewise, Brody argued that the scene where people in South Carolina celebrate the Confederate victory at the Battle of Bull Run by dancing around the "eerie flare of a bonfire" implies "a dance of death", foreshadowing the destruction of Sherman's March that was to come. In the same way, Brody wrote that the scene where the Klan dumps Gus's body off at the doorstep of Lynch is meant to have the audience cheering, but modern audiences find the scene "obscene and horrifying". Finally, Brody argued that the end of the film, where the Klan prevents defenseless African Americans from exercising their right to vote by pointing guns at them, today seems "unjust and cruel".


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: In an article for "The Atlantic", film critic Ty Burr deemed "The Birth of a Nation" the most influential film in history while criticizing its portrayal of black men as savage. Richard Corliss of "Time" wrote that Griffith "established in the hundreds of one- and two-reelers he directed a cinematic textbook, a fully formed visual language, for the generations that followed. More than anyone else—more than all others combined—he invented the film art. He brought it to fruition in "The Birth of a Nation"." Corliss praised the film's "brilliant storytelling technique" and noted that ""The Birth of a Nation" is nearly as antiwar as it is antiblack. The Civil War scenes, which consume only 30 minutes of the extravaganza, emphasize not the national glory but the human cost of combat. ... Griffith may have been a racist politically, but his refusal to find uplift in the South's war against the Union—and, implicitly, in any war at all—reveals him as a cinematic humanist."


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: In 1992, the U.S. Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. The American Film Institute recognized the film by ranking it #44 within the AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies list in 1998.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: The film remains controversial due to its interpretation of American history. University of Houston historian Steven Mintz summarizes its message as follows: "Reconstruction was an unmitigated disaster, African-Americans could never be integrated into white society as equals, and the violent actions of the Ku Klux Klan were justified to reestablish honest government". The South is portrayed as a victim. The first overt mentioning of the war is the scene in which Abraham Lincoln signs the call for the first 75,000 volunteers. However, the first aggression in the Civil War, made when the Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in 1861, is not mentioned in the film. The film suggested that the Ku Klux Klan restored order to the postwar South, which was depicted as endangered by abolitionists, freedmen, and carpetbagging Republican politicians from the North. This is similar to the Dunning School of historiography which was current in academe at the time. The film is slightly less extreme than the books upon which it is based, in which Dixon misrepresented Reconstruction as a nightmarish time when black men ran amok, storming into weddings to rape white women with impunity.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: The film portrayed President Abraham Lincoln as a friend of the South and refers to him as "the Great Heart". The two romances depicted in the film, Phil Stoneman with Margaret Cameron and Ben Cameron with Elsie Stoneman, reflect Griffith's retelling of history. The couples are used as a metaphor, representing the film's broader message of the need for the reconciliation of the North and South to defend white supremacy. Among both couples, there is an attraction that forms before the war, stemming from the friendship between their families. With the war, however, both families are split apart, and their losses culminate in the end of the war with the defense of white supremacy. One of the intertitles clearly sums up the message of unity: "The former enemies of North and South are united again in defense of their Aryan birthright."


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: The film further reinforced the popular belief held by whites, especially in the South, of Reconstruction as a disaster. In his 1929 book "The Tragic Era: The Revolution After Lincoln", Claude Bowers treated "The Birth of a Nation" as a factually accurate account of Reconstruction. In "The Tragic Era", Bowers presented every black politician in the South as corrupt, portrayed Republican Representative Thaddeus Stevens as a vicious "race traitor" intent upon making blacks the equal of whites, and praised the Klan for "saving civilization" in the South. Bowers wrote about black empowerment that the worst sort of "scum" from the North like Stevens "inflamed the Negro's egoism and soon the lustful assaults began. Rape was the foul daughter of Reconstruction!"


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: The American historian John Hope Franklin wrote that not only did Claude Bowers treat "The Birth of a Nation" as accurate history, but his version of history seemed to be drawn from "The Birth of a Nation". Historian E. Merton Coulter treated "The Birth of a Nation" as historically correct and painted a vivid picture of "black beasts" running amok, encouraged by alcohol-sodden, corrupt and vengeful black Republican politicians. Franklin wrote as recently as the 1970s that the popular journalist Alistair Cooke in his books and TV shows was still essentially following the version of history set out by "The Birth of a Nation", noting that Cooke had much sympathy with the suffering of whites in Reconstruction while having almost nothing to say about the suffering of blacks or about how blacks were stripped of almost all their rights after 1877.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: ... stung by criticisms that the second half of his masterpiece was racist in its glorification of the Ku Klux Klan and its brutal images of blacks, Griffith tried to make amends in "Intolerance" (1916), which criticized prejudice. And in "Broken Blossoms" he told perhaps the first interracial love story in the movies—even though, to be sure, it's an idealized love with no touching.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: Despite some similarities between the Congressman Stoneman character and Rep. Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, Rep. Stevens did not have the family members described and did not move to South Carolina during Reconstruction. He died in Washington, D.C. in 1868. However, Stevens's biracial housekeeper, Lydia Hamilton Smith, was considered his common-law wife, and was generously provided for in his will.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: In the film, Abraham Lincoln is portrayed in a positive light due to his belief in conciliatory postwar policies toward Southern whites. The president's views are opposite those of Austin Stoneman, a character presented in a negative light, who acts as an antagonist. The assassination of Lincoln marks the transition from war to Reconstruction, each of which periods has one of the two "acts" of the film. In including the assassination, the film also establishes to the audience that the plot of the movie has historical basis. Franklin wrote the film's depiction of Reconstruction as a hellish time when black freedmen ran amok, raping and killing whites with impunity until the Klan stepped in is not supported by the facts. Franklin wrote that most freed slaves continued to work for their former masters in Reconstruction for the want of a better alternative and, though relations between freedmen and their former masters were not friendly, very few freedmen sought revenge against the people who had enslaved them.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: The depictions of mass Klan paramilitary actions do not seem to have historical equivalents, although there were incidents in 1871 where Klan groups traveled from other areas in fairly large numbers to aid localities in disarming local companies of the all-black portion of the state militia under various justifications, prior to the eventual Federal troop intervention, and the organized Klan continued activities as small groups of "night riders".


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: The civil rights movement and other social movements created a new generation of historians, such as scholar Eric Foner, who led a reassessment of Reconstruction. Building on W. E. B. DuBois' work, but also adding new sources, they focused on achievements of the African American and white Republican coalitions, such as establishment of universal public education and charitable institutions in the South and extension of suffrage to black men. In response, the Southern-dominated Democratic Party and its affiliated white militias had used extensive terrorism, intimidation and even assassinations to suppress African-American leaders and voting in the 1870s and to regain power.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: In his review of "The Birth of a Nation" in "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", Jonathan Kline writes that "with countless artistic innovations, Griffith essentially created contemporary film language ... virtually every film is beholden to ["The Birth of a Nation"] in one way, shape or form. Griffith introduced the use of dramatic close-ups, tracking shots, and other expressive camera movements; parallel action sequences, crosscutting, and other editing techniques". He added that "the fact that "The Birth of a Nation" remains respected and studied to this day—despite its subject matter—reveals its lasting importance."


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: Griffith pioneered such camera techniques as close-ups, fade-outs, and a carefully staged battle sequence with hundreds of extras made to look like thousands. "The Birth of a Nation" also contained many new artistic techniques, such as color tinting for dramatic purposes, building up the plot to an exciting climax, dramatizing history alongside fiction, and featuring its own musical score written for an orchestra.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: For many years, "The Birth of a Nation" was poorly represented in home media and restorations. This stemmed from several factors, one of which was the fact that Griffith and others had frequently reworked the film, leaving no definitive version. According to the silent film website "Brenton Film", many home media releases of the film consisted of "poor quality DVDs with different edits, scores, running speeds and usually in "definitely unoriginal" black and white".


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: One of the earliest high-quality home versions was film preservationist David Shepard's 1992 transfer of a 16mm print for VHS and LaserDisc release via Image Entertainment. A short documentary, "The Making of The Birth of a Nation", newly produced and narrated by Shepard, was also included. Both were released on DVD by Image in 1998 and the United Kingdom's Eureka Entertainment in 2000.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: In the UK, Photoplay Productions restored the Museum of Modern Art's 35mm print that was the source of Shepard's 16 mm print, though they also augmented it with extra material from the British Film Institute. It was also given a full orchestral recording of the original Breil score. Though broadcast on Channel 4 television and theatrically screened many times, Photoplay's 1993 version was never released on home video.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: Shepard's transfer and documentary were reissued in the US by Kino Video in 2002, this time in a 2-DVD set with added extras on the second disc. These included several Civil War shorts also directed by D. W. Griffith. In 2011, Kino prepared a HD transfer of a 35 mm negative from the Paul Killiam Collection. They added some material from the Library of Congress and gave it a new compilation score. This version was released on Blu-ray by Kino in the US, Eureka in the UK (as part of their "Masters of Cinema" collection) and Divisa Home Video in Spain.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: In 2015, the year of the film's centenary, Photoplay Productions' Patrick Stanbury, in conjunction with the British Film Institute, carried out the first full restoration. It mostly used new 4K scans of the LoC's original camera negative, along with other early generation material. It, too, was given the original Breil score and featured the film's original tinting for the first time since its 1915 release. The restoration was released on a 2-Blu-ray set in the UK and US by the BFI and Twilight Time, alongside a host of extras, including many other newly restored Civil War-related films from the period.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: I've reclaimed this title and re-purposed it as a tool to challenge racism and white supremacy in America, to inspire a riotous disposition toward any and all injustice in this country (and abroad) and to promote the kind of honest confrontation that will galvanize our society toward healing and sustained systemic change.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: Sonia Gandhi ("née" Maino; born 9 December 1946) is an Indian politician. She is the longest serving president of the Indian National Congress, a social democratic political party, which has governed India for most of its post-independence history. She took over as the party leader in 1998, seven years after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, her husband and a former Prime Minister of India, and remained in office until 2017 after serving for twenty-two years. She returned to the post in 2019 and remained the President for another three years.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: Born in a small village near Vicenza, Italy, Gandhi was raised in a Roman Catholic family. After completing her primary education at local schools, she moved for language classes to Cambridge, England, where she met Rajiv Gandhi, and later married him in 1968. She then moved to India and started living with her mother-in-law, the then-Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, at the latter's New Delhi residence. Sonia Gandhi, however, kept away from the public sphere, even during the years of her husband's premiership.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: Following her husband's assassination, Gandhi was invited by Congress leaders to lead the party, but she declined. She agreed to join politics in 1997 after much pleading from the party; the following year, she was nominated for party president, and elected over Jitendra Prasada. Under her leadership, the Congress went on to form the government post the 2004 elections in coalition with other centre-left political parties. Gandhi has since been credited for being instrumental in formulating the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), which was re-elected to power in 2009. Gandhi declined the premiership following the 2004 victory; she instead led the ruling alliance and the National Advisory Council.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: Over the course of her career, Gandhi presided over the advisory councils credited for the formation and subsequent implementation of such rights-based development and welfare schemes as the right to information, Food Security Bill, and MGNREGA, as she drew criticism related to the Bofors scandal and the "National Herald" case. Her foreign birth has also been a subject of much debate and controversy. Gandhi's active participation in politics began to reduce during the latter half of the UPA government's second term owing to health concerns. She stepped down as the Congress president in December 2017, but returned to lead the party in August 2019. Although she has not held any public office in the government of India, Gandhi has been widely described as one of the most powerful politicians in the country, and is often listed among the most powerful women in the world.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: Sonia Maino was born on 9 December 1946 to Stefano and Paola Maino in Lusiana (in Maini street), a historically Cimbrian-speaking village about 35 km from Vicenza in Veneto, Italy. She was one of three siblings: Sonia, Nadia and Anoushka, raised in a traditional Roman Catholic Christian family. Sonia spent her adolescence in Orbassano, a town near Turin. She attained primary education attending the local Catholic schools; one of her early teachers described her as "a diligent little girl, [who] studied as much as was necessary".


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: Stefano, who was a building mason, established a small construction business in Orbassano. He had fought against the Soviet military alongside Hitler's Wehrmacht on the eastern front in World War II, was a loyal supporter of Benito Mussolini and Italy's National Fascist Party. The family house had leather bound books on writings and speeches of Mussolini. Stefano had named Sonia and her elder sister Nadia in the memory of the Italian participation in the Eastern Front. He died in 1983. Gandhi has two sisters who still reside in Orbassano along with their mother.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: Gandhi completed her schooling at the age of 13; her final report card read: "intelligent, diligent, committed [...] would succeed well at the high school for teachers". She aspired to become a flight attendant. In 1964, she went to study English at the Bell Educational Trust's language school in the city of Cambridge. The following year, she met Rajiv Gandhi at the Varsity Restaurant, where she was working as a part-time waitress, while he was enrolled for an engineering degree in the Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. In this context, the "Times", London reported, "Mrs Gandhi was an 18-year-old student at a small language college in Cambridge in 1965, [...] when she met a handsome young engineering student". The couple married in 1968, in a Hindu ceremony, following which she moved into the house of her mother-in-law and then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: The couple had two children, Rahul Gandhi (born 1970) and Priyanka Vadra (born 1972). Despite belonging to the influential Nehru family, Sonia and Rajiv avoided all involvement in politics. Rajiv worked as an airline pilot while Sonia took care of her family.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: She spent considerable amount of time with her mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi; she recalled her experience in a 1985 interview with the Hindi-language magazine "Dharmyug", "She [Indira] showered me with all her affection and love". Soon after the latter's ousting from office in 1977 in the aftermath of the Indian Emergency, the Rajiv family contemplated moving abroad for a short time. When Rajiv entered politics in 1982 after the death of his younger brother Sanjay Gandhi in a plane crash on 23 June 1980, Sonia continued to focus on her family and avoided all contact with the public.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: Sonia Gandhi's mother, Mrs. Paola Maino, died due to an illness at her home in Italy on Saturday, August 27, 2022, at the age of about 90.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: Sonia Gandhi's involvement with Indian public life began after the assassination of her mother-in-law and her husband's election as prime minister. As the prime minister's wife she acted as his official hostess and also accompanied him on a number of state visits.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: In 1984, she actively campaigned against her husband's sister-in-law Maneka Gandhi who was running against Rajiv in Amethi. At the end of Rajiv Gandhi's five years in office, the Bofors scandal broke out. Ottavio Quattrocchi, an Italian businessman believed to be involved, was said to be a friend of Sonia Gandhi, having access to the Prime Minister's official residence. The BJP has alleged that she appeared on the voters' list in New Delhi prior to obtaining Indian citizenship in April 1983, in contravention of Indian law.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: Former senior Congress leader and former President of India Pranab Mukherjee said that she surrendered her Italian passport to the Italian Embassy on 27 April 1983. Italian nationality law did not permit dual nationality until 1992. So, by acquiring Indian citizenship in 1983, she would automatically have lost Italian citizenship.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: After Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in 1991 and Sonia Gandhi refused to succeed him as the Congress president and prime minister, the party settled on the choice of P. V. Narasimha Rao who subsequently became Prime Minister after winning elections that year. Over the next few years, however, the Congress fortunes continued to dwindle and it lost the 1996 elections. Several senior leaders such as Madhavrao Sindhia, Rajesh Pilot, Narayan Dutt Tiwari, Arjun Singh, Mamata Banerjee, G. K. Moopanar, P. Chidambaram and Jayanthi Natarajan were in open revolt against incumbent President Sitaram Kesri and many of whom quit the party, splitting the Congress into many factions.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: In an effort to revive the party's sagging fortunes, she joined the Congress Party as a primary member in the Calcutta Plenary Session in 1997 and became party leader in 1998.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: In May 1999, three senior leaders of the party (Sharad Pawar, P. A. Sangma, and Tariq Anwar) challenged her right to try to become India's Prime Minister because of her foreign origins. In response, she offered to resign as party leader, resulting in an outpouring of support and the expulsion from the party of the three rebels who went on to form the Nationalist Congress Party.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: Within 62 days of joining as a primary member, she was offered the party President post which she accepted.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: She contested Lok Sabha elections from Bellary, Karnataka and Amethi, Uttar Pradesh in 1999. She won both seats but chose to represent Amethi. In Bellary, she had defeated veteran BJP leader, Sushma Swaraj.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: When the BJP-led NDA formed a government under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, she took the office of the Leader of Opposition. In 2000,She defeated Jitendra Prasada by a huge margin of 97% in Congress President Election. She had been repeatedly selected for the position without any election being held. As Leader of Opposition, she called a no-confidence motion against the NDA government led by Vajpayee in 2003.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: In the 2004 general elections, Gandhi launched a nationwide campaign, crisscrossing the country on the "Aam Aadmi" (ordinary man) slogan in contrast to the 'India Shining' slogan of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) alliance. She countered the BJP asking "Who is India Shining for?". In the election, she was re-elected by a 200,000-vote margin over nearest rival, in the Rae Bareli. Following the unexpected defeat of the NDA, she was widely expected to be the next Prime Minister of India. On 16 May, she was unanimously chosen to lead a 15-party coalition government with the support of the left, which was subsequently named the United Progressive Alliance (UPA).


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: The defeated NDA protested once again her 'foreign origin' and senior NDA leader Sushma Swaraj threatened to shave her head and "sleep on the ground", among other things, should Sonia become prime minister.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: They pointed, in particular, to Section 5 of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1955, which they claimed implied 'reciprocity'. This was contested by others and eventually the suits were dismissed by the Supreme Court of India.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: A few days after the election, Gandhi recommended Manmohan Singh as her choice as prime minister, that the party leaders accepted. Her supporters compared it to the old Indian tradition of renunciation, while her opponents attacked it as a political stunt.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: On 23 March 2006, Gandhi announced her resignation from the Lok Sabha and also as chairperson of the National Advisory Council under the office-of-profit controversy and the speculation that the government was planning to bring an ordinance to exempt the post of chairperson of National Advisory Council from the purview of office of profit. She was re-elected from her constituency Rae Bareli in May 2006 by a margin of over 400,000 votes.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: As chairperson of the National Advisory Committee and the UPA, she played an important role in making the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and the Right to Information Act into law.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: She addressed the United Nations on 2 October 2007, Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary which is observed as the international day of non-violence after a UN resolution passed on 15 July 2007.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: Under her leadership, the Congress-led UPA won a decisive majority in the 2009 general elections with Manmohan Singh as the Prime Minister. The Congress itself won 206 Lok Sabha seats, which was then the highest total by any party since 1991. She was re-elected to a third term as a member of parliament representing Rae Bareli.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: In 2013, Gandhi became the first person to serve as Congress President for 15 years consecutively. In the same year, Gandhi condemned the Supreme Court judgement supporting Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code and backed LGBT rights.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: In the 2014 general election, she held her seat in Rae Bareli. However, the Indian National Congress and the Congress-led UPA electoral alliance suffered their worst result in a general election ever, winning only 44 and 59 seats respectively.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: When Rahul Gandhi was expected to take over as Congress president, Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Sitaram Yechury picked Sonia over Rahul, calling her the "glue that binds the opposition" during an interview November 2017 . Rahul took over as the 49th Congress president on 16 December 2017.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: Gandhi returned to active politics for Indian National Congress' campaign for the 2018 Karnataka Legislative Assembly election. Having stayed away from campaigning for elections since 2016, Gandhi addressed a rally at Bijapur, which comprised five legislative assembly constituencies; while Congress emerged as the second largest party in the election with 78 seats behind the BJP, the former won four or the five assembly seats from Bijapur. Gandhi also played an active role in orchestrating a post-poll alliance with the Janata Dal (Secular).


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: Rahul Gandhi, taking responsibility of Congress party's second consecutive loss in general elections held in 2019, resigned from the post of President on May, 25. Following the resignation, party leaders began deliberations for a suitable candidate to replace him. The Congress Working Committee met on August, 10 to take a final call on the matter and passed a resolution asking Sonia Gandhi to take over as interim president until a consensus candidate could be picked.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: Following her appointment, Gandhi undertook restructuring of the Congress' state units and appointed Kumari Selja and Eknath Gaikwad as the presidents of the party's Haryana and Mumbai units. Several other changes were also made in the party's organisational units in states slated for elections including Haryana, Maharashtra, and Jharkhand.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: In February 2020, Gandhi held a press conference where she demanded that Home Minister Amit Shah should resign for failing to stop the North East Delhi riots. She asked for the deployment of an adequate number of security forces.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: In 2022, it was reported that Sonia Gandhi supports Ashok Gehlot leading Congress as Congress president in the next Indian general election.But, Gehlot not content on that election and Mallikarjun Kharge elected as a new Congress president.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: Sonia is the widow of Rajiv Gandhi, elder son of Indira Gandhi. She has two children, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: In August 2011, she underwent successful surgery for cervical cancer in the United States at Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center in New York. She returned to India on 9 September after her treatment. Speaking on 18 July 2012, about her son taking a larger role in the party, she said that it is for Rahul to decide.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: She follows the style quote "Simple is Stylish" and looks no further than mother-in-law Indira Gandhi's "innate sense of fashion".


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: According to an affidavit filed during the 2014 Indian general election, Sonia had declared assets worth , with in movable and in immovable properties. This was an almost six-fold increase since her declaration in the last election in 2009; party officials attributed this to a switch from book value to market value for asset valuation.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: Gandhi was seen as the most powerful politician of India from 2004 to 2014, and variously listed among the most powerful people and women listings by magazines.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: In 2013, Sonia Gandhi was ranked 21st among world's most powerful and 9th most powerful woman by "Forbes Magazine".


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: In 2007, she had been named the third most powerful woman in the world by the same magazine and was ranked 6th in exclusive list in 2007.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: In 2010, Gandhi ranked as the ninth most powerful person on the planet by "Forbes" magazine. She was ranked 12 in 2012 in Forbes' powerful people list.


title: Sonia Gandhi

text: Sonia was also named among the "Time 100 most influential" people in the world for 2007 and 2008. "New Statesman" listed Sonia Gandhi at number 29 in their annual survey of "The World's 50 Most Influential Figures" in 2010.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: The Lockheed AC-130 gunship is a heavily armed, long-endurance, ground-attack variant of the C-130 Hercules transport, fixed-wing aircraft. It carries a wide array of ground-attack weapons that are integrated with sophisticated sensors, navigation, and fire-control systems. Unlike other modern military fixed-wing aircraft, the AC-130 relies on visual targeting. Because its large profile and low operating altitudes around 7,000 feet (2,100 m) make it an easy target, its close air support missions are usually flown at night.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: The airframe is manufactured by Lockheed Martin, while Boeing is responsible for the conversion into a gunship and for aircraft support. Developed during the Vietnam War as "Project Gunship II", the AC-130 replaced the Douglas AC-47 Spooky, or "Gunship I". The sole operator is the United States Air Force, which uses the AC-130U Spooky and AC-130W Stinger II variants for close air support, air interdiction, and force protection, with the upgraded AC-130J Ghostrider entering service. Close air support roles include supporting ground troops, escorting convoys, and urban operations. Air-interdiction missions are conducted against planned targets and targets of opportunity. Force-protection missions include defending air bases and other facilities. AC-130Us are based at Hurlburt Field, Florida, while AC-130Ws are based at Cannon AFB, New Mexico; gunships can be deployed worldwide. The squadrons are part of the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC), a component of the United States Special Operations Command.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: The AC-130 has an unpressurized cabin, with the weaponry mounted to fire from the port side of the fuselage. During an attack, the gunship performs a pylon turn, flying in a large circle around the target, therefore being able to fire at it for far longer than in a conventional strafing attack. The AC-130H Spectre was armed with two M61 Vulcan cannons, one L/60 Bofors 40 mm cannon, and M137 cannon and M37 recoil mechanism from the M102 howitzer; after 1994, the cannons were removed. The upgraded AC-130U Spooky has a single GAU-12 Equalizer cannon in place of the Spectre's two cannons, an improved fire-control system, and increased ammunition capacity. The new AC-130J was based on the MC-130J Commando II special-operations tanker. The AC-130W Stinger II is a modified C-130H with upgrades including a precision strike package.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: During the Vietnam War, the C-130 Hercules was selected to replace the Douglas AC-47 Spooky gunship (Project Gunship I) to improve mission endurance and increase capacity to carry munitions. Capable of flying faster than helicopters and at high altitudes with excellent loiter time, the use of the pylon turn allowed the AC-47 to deliver continuous, accurate fire to a single point on the ground.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: In 1967, JC-130A 54-1626 was selected for conversion into the prototype AC-130A gunship (Project Gunship II). The modifications were done at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base by the Aeronautical Systems Division. A direct-view night-vision telescope was installed in the forward door, an early forward-looking infrared device was placed in the forward part of the left wheel well, with miniguns and rotary cannons fixed facing down and aft along the left side. The analog fire-control computer prototype was handcrafted by RAF Wing Commander Tom Pinkerton at the USAF Avionics Laboratory at Wright-Patterson AFB. Flight testing of the prototype was performed primarily at Eglin Air Force Base, followed by further testing and modifications. By September 1967, the aircraft was certified ready for combat testing and was flown to Nha Trang Air Base, South Vietnam for a 90-day test program. The AC-130 was later supplemented by the AC-119 Shadow (Project Gunship III), which later proved to be underpowered.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: Seven more warplanes were converted to the "Plain Jane" configuration like the AC-130 prototype in 1968, and one aircraft received the "Surprise Package" refit in 1969. The Surprise Package upgrade included the latest 20 mm rotary autocannons and 40 mm Bofors cannon, but no 7.62 mm close-support armament. The Surprise Package configuration served as a test bed for the avionic systems and armament for the AC-130E. In 1970, 10 more AC-130As were acquired under the "Pave Pronto" project. In the summer of 1971, Surprise Package AC-130s were converted to the Pave Pronto configuration and assumed the new nickname of "Thor". Conversion of C-130Es into AC-130Es for the "PAVE Spectre" project followed. Regardless of their project names, the aircraft were more commonly referred to by the squadron's call sign, Spectre.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: In 2007, AFSOC initiated a program to upgrade the armament of AC-130s. The test program planned for the 25 mm GAU-12/U and 40 mm Bofors cannon on the AC-130U gunships to be replaced with two 30 mm Mk 44 Bushmaster II cannons. In 2007, the Air Force modified four AC-130U gunships as test platforms for the Bushmasters. These were referred to as AC-130U Plus 4 or AC-130U+4. AFSOC, however, cancelled its plans to install the new cannons on its fleet of AC-130Us. It has since removed the guns and reinstalled the original 40 mm and 25 mm cannons and returned the planes to combat duty. Brigadier General Bradley A. Heithold, AFSOC's director of plans, programs, requirements, and assessments, said on 11 August 2008 that the effort was canceled because of problems with the Bushmaster's accuracy in tests "at the altitude we were employing it". Also, schedule considerations drove the decision, he said.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: Plans were made for possible replacement of the 105 mm cannon with a breech-loading 120 mm M120 mortar, and to give the AC-130 a standoff capability using either the AGM-114 Hellfire missile, the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (based on the Hydra 70 rocket), or the Viper Strike glide bomb.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: In 2010, the Air Force awarded L-3 Communications a $61 million contract to add precision strike packages to eight MC-130W Combat Spear special-mission aircraft to give them a gunship-like attack capability; such-equipped MC-130Ws are known as Dragon Spears. AFSOC is arming these aircraft to relieve the high operational demands on AC-130 gunships until new AC-130Js enter service. The MC-130W Dragon Spear was renamed AC-130W Stinger II in 2011. The precision strike packages consist of a 30 mm gun and several precision guided munitions. Rails are mounted on the outboard pylon of the wing for four Hellfire missiles, SDBs, or SDB IIs under each. Ten Common Launch Tubes (CLTs) are mounted on the rear ramp to fire Griffin A missiles; additional missiles are stored in the aircraft that can be reloaded in flight. CLTs are able to fire other small munitions able to fit inside the -diameter, -long tubes.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: The AC-130J Ghostrider came from a 2011 initiative which sought to acquire 16 new gunships based on newly built MC-130J Combat Shadow II special-operations tankers outfitted with a "precision strike package" to give them an attack capability, requesting $1.6 billion from fiscal years 2011 through 2015. This was to increase the size of the gunship fleet to 33 aircraft, a net increase of eight after the planned retirement of eight aging AC-130Hs. The first aircraft would be bought in fiscal 2012, followed by two in fiscal 2013, five in fiscal 2014, and the final eight in fiscal 2015. The decision to retain the C-130 came after funding for 16 C-27Js was removed from the fiscal 2010 budget.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: The AC-130J will follow the path of the Dragon Spear program. On 9 January 2013, the Air Force began converting the first MC-130J Combat Shadow II into an AC-130J Ghostrider. The first AC-130J Ghostrider was delivered to AFSOC on 29 July 2015. The first AC-130J gunships achieved initial operational capability (IOC) on 30 September 2017. The AC-130J has two planned increments: the Block 10 configuration includes an internal 30 mm gun, small diameter bombs, and laser-guided missiles launched from the rear cargo door; and Block 20 configuration adds a 105 mm cannon, large aircraft infrared countermeasures, wing-mounted Hellfire missiles, and radio-frequency countermeasures.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: The Air Force decided to add a 105 mm cannon to the AC-130J in addition to the 30 mm cannon and smart bombs, the shells being more accurate and cheaper than dropping SDBs. AFSOC is actively pursuing a directed-energy weapon on board the AC-130J in place of the 30 mm gun by 2022, similar to the previous Advanced Tactical Laser program. It is to produce a beam of up to 120 kW, or potentially even 180–200 kW, weigh about , defensively destroy antiaircraft missiles, and offensively engage communications towers, boats, cars, and aircraft. However, laser armament may only be installed on a few aircraft rather than the entire AC-130J fleet; the laser will be mounted on the side in place of the 30 mm cannon. Other potential additions include an active denial system to perform airborne crowd control, and small unmanned aerial vehicles from the common launch tubes to provide remote video feed and coordinates to weapons operators through cloud cover. Called the Tactical Off-board Sensor (TOBS), the drones would be expendable and fly along a programmed orbit to verify targets the aircraft cannot see itself because of bad weather or standing off from air defenses. AFSOC will initially use the Raytheon Coyote small UAV for the TOBS mission, as it is an off-the-shelf design with a one-hour endurance, but plans to fulfill the role with a new drone capable of a four-hour endurance by 2019.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: The Air Force was also interested in acquiring a glide bomb that can be launched from the common launch tubes capable of hitting ground vehicles traveling as fast as 120 km/h (70 mph) while above . In June 2016, Dynetics was awarded a contract by SOCOM to integrate its tactical munition onto the AC-130. Designated the GBU-69/B Small Glide Munition, the weapon weighs and is armed with a blast-fragmentation warhead that can detonate by direct impact or at a selected height; despite being smaller, being unpowered allows for its warhead to be heavier than those on the Hellfire and Griffin A missiles, and , respectively. Guidance is provided by a GPS receiver with antispoofing software and four Distributed Aperture Semiactive Laser Seeker apertures adapted from the WGU-59/B APKWS for terminal guidance. Approval for fielding occurred in early 2017. Dynetics was awarded a contract to deliver an initial batch of 70 SGMs in June 2017, with plans to buy up to 1,000. The SGM can travel .


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: , AC-130 gunships have been providing close air support for special operators for 50 years. Although the aircraft have been kept relevant through constant upgrades to their weaponry, sensor packages, and countermeasures, they are not expected to be survivable in future nonpermissive environments due to their high signatures and low airspeeds. Military analysts, such as the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, have suggested that AFSOC invest in more advanced technologies to fill the role to operate in future contested combat zones, including a mix of low-cost disposable unmanned and stealthy strike aircraft.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: The AC-130 is a heavily armed, long-endurance aircraft carrying an array of antiground-oriented weapons that are integrated with sophisticated sensors, navigation, and fire-control systems. It is capable of delivering precision firepower or area-saturation fire over a target area over a long period of time, at night, or in adverse weather. The sensor suite consists of an electro-optical image sensor, infrared sensor, and radar. These sensors allow the gunship to visually or electronically identify friendly ground forces and targets in most weather conditions.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: The AC-130U is equipped with the AN/APQ-180, a synthetic aperture radar, for long-range target detection and identification. The gunship's navigational devices include inertial navigation systems and a global positioning system. The AC-130U employs technologies developed in the 1990s, which allow it to attack two targets simultaneously. It has twice the munitions capacity of the AC-130H. Although the AC-130U conducts some operations in daylight, most of its combat missions are conducted at night. The AC-130H's unit cost is US$132.4 million, and the AC-130U's cost is $190 million (fiscal 2001 dollars).


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: During the Vietnam War era, the various AC-130 versions following the Pave Pronto modifications were equipped with a magnetic anomaly detector system called Black Crow (designated AN/ASD-5), a highly sensitive passive device with a phased-array antenna located in the left-front nose radome that could pick up localized deviations in the Earth's magnetic field normally used to detect submerged submarines. The Black Crow system was slaved into the targeting computers of the AC-130A/E/H, enabling the detection of the unshielded ignition coils of North Vietnamese trucks hidden under dense jungle foliage along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. It could also detect hand-held transmitter signals of air controllers on the ground to identify and locate targets.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: The PGM-38/U enhanced 25 mm high-explosive incendiary round was created to expand the AC-130U gunships' mission in standoff range and survivability for its 25 mm GAU-12/U gun. This round is a combination of the existing PGU-25 HEI and a M758 fuze designated as FMU-151/B to meet the MIL-STD-1316. The FMU-151 has an improved arming delay with multisensitive range.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: The AC-130 gunship first arrived in South Vietnam on 21 September 1967 under the Gunship II program and began combat operations over Laos and South Vietnam that year. In June 1968, AC-130s were deployed to Tan Son Nhut AB near Saigon for support against the Tet Offensive. By 30 October 1968, enough AC-130 Gunship IIs arrived to form a squadron, the 16th Special Operations Squadron of the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing, at Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base, Thailand. At this time, the C-130A gunship was designated the AC-130A.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: On 18 August 1968, an AC-130 gunship flying an armed reconnaissance mission in Vietnam's III Corps was diverted to support the Katum Special Forces Camp. The ground commander quickly assessed the accurate fire and capabilities of this weapons system and called for fire on his own perimeter when the Viet Cong attempted to bridge the wire on the west side of his position.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: By December 1968, most AC-130s flew under F-4 Phantom II escort (to protect the gunship against heavy and concentrated antiaircraft fire) from the 497th Tactical Fighter Squadron, normally three Phantoms per gunship. On 24 May 1969, the first Spectre gunship was lost to enemy fire.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: In late 1969, under code name "Surprise Package", 56-0490 arrived with solid-state, laser-illuminated, low light-level TV with a companion YAG laser designator, an improved forward-looking infrared (FLIR) sensor, video recording for TV and FLIR, an inertial navigation system, and a prototype digital fire-control computer. The remaining AC-130s were refitted with upgraded similar equipment in the summer of 1970, and then redeployed to Ubon RTAFB. On 25 October 1971, the first "Cadillac" gunship, the AC-130E, arrived in Vietnam. On 17 February 1972, the first 105 mm cannon arrived for service with Spectre and was installed on Gunship 570. It was used from mid-February until the aircraft received battle damage to its right flap. The cannon was switched to Gunship 571 and was used until 30 March when the aircraft was shot down.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: On 28 January 1973, the Vietnam peace accord went into effect, marking the end of Spectre operations in Vietnam. Spectre was still needed and active in the region, supporting operations in Laos and Cambodia. On 22 February 1973, American offensive operations in Laos ended and the gunships became totally committed to operations in the Cambodian conflict.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: On 12 April 1975, the Khmer Rouge was threatening the capital of Phnom Penh and AC-130s were called on to help in Operation Eagle Pull, the final evacuation of American and allied officials from Phnom Penh before it was conquered by the communists. The AC-130 was also over Saigon on 30 April 1975 to protect the final evacuation in Operation Frequent Wind. Spectres were also called in when the USS "Mayaguez" was seized, on the open sea, by Khmer Rouge soldiers and sailors on 15 May 1975.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: Six AC-130s and 52 air crew members were lost during the war. AC-130s reportedly destroyed more than 10,000 trucks and participated in many crucial close-air-support missions in Vietnam.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: With the conclusion of hostilities in Southeast Asia in the mid-1970s, the AC-130H became the sole gunship in the regular Air Force, home based at Hurlburt Field, Florida, while the AC-130A fleet was transferred to the Air Force Reserve's 919th Tactical Airlift Group (919 TAG) at Eglin AFB Auxiliary Field #3/Duke Field, Florida. With the transition to the AC-130A, the 919 TAG was then redesignated as the 919th Special Operations Group.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: In the late 1970s, when the AC-130H fleet was first being modified for in-flight refueling capability, a demonstration mission was planned and flown from Hurlburt Field, Florida, nonstop, to conduct a 2-hour live-fire mission over Empire Firing Range in the Republic of Panama, then return home. This 13-hour mission with two in-flight refuelings from KC-135 tankers proved the validity of flying long-range missions outside the contiguous United States to attack targets then return to home base without intermediate stops.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: AC-130s from both the 4th and 16th Special Operations Squadrons have been deployed in nearly every conflict in which the United States has been involved, officially and unofficially, since the end of the Vietnam War.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: In July 1979, AC-130H crews deployed to Howard Air Force Base, Panama, as a precaution against possible hostile actions against American personnel during the Nicaraguan Revolution. New time aloft and nonstop distance records were subsequently set by a 16th SOS two-ship AC-130H formation flight that departed Hurlburt Field on 13 November 1979 and landed on 15 November at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, a distance of and 29 hours 43 minutes nonstop, refueling four times in-flight. Refueling support for the Guam deployment was provided by KC-135 crews from the 305th Air Refueling Wing from Grissom AFB, Indiana.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: In November 1979, four AC-130H gunships flew nonstop from Hurlburt Field to Anderson AFB, Guam, because of the hostage situation at the US Embassy in Iran. At Guam, AC-130H crews developed communications-out/lights-out refueling procedures for later employment by trial-and-error. This deployment with the 1 SOW/CC as task force commander was directed from the office of the CJCS for fear that Iranian militants could begin executing American Embassy personnel who had been taken hostage on 4 November. One early option considered AC-130H retaliatory punitive strikes deep within Iran. Later gunship flights exceeded the 1979 Hurlburt-to-Guam flight. Upon return in March 1980, the four planes soon found themselves in Egypt to support the ill-fated hostage rescue attempt.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: During Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada in 1983, AC-130s suppressed enemy air-defense systems and attacked ground forces enabling the assault of the Point Salines Airfield via airdrop and air-land of friendly forces. The AC-130 aircrew earned the Lieutenant General William H. Tunner Award for the mission.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: The AC-130Hs of the 16th Special Operations Squadron unit maintained an ongoing rotation to Howard AB, Panama, monitoring activities in El Salvador and other Central American points of interest, with rules of engagement eventually permitting attacks on FMLN targets. This commitment of maintainers and crews started in 1983 and lasted until 1990. The AC-130 is considered to have hastened the end of the Salvadoran Civil War in the 1980s. Crews flew undercover missions from Honduras and attacked guerrilla camps and concentrations.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: AC-130s also had a primary role during the United States invasion of Panama (named Operation Just Cause) in 1989, when they destroyed Panama Defense Force headquarters and numerous command-and-control facilities, and provided close air support for US ground troops. Aircrews earned the Mackay Trophy for the most meritorious flight of the year, and the Tunner Award.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: During the Gulf War of 1990–91 (Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm), Regular Air Force and Air Force Reserve AC-130s provided close air support and force protection (air base defense) for ground forces, and battlefield interdiction. The primary interdiction targets were early-warning/ground-control intercept sites along the southern border of Iraq. At its standard altitude of 12,000 feet, the aircraft had a proven ability to engage moving ground targets. The first gunship to enter the Battle of Khafji helped stop a southbound Iraqi armored column on 29 January 1991. One day later, three more gunships provided further aid to Marines participating in the operation. The gunships attacked Iraqi positions and columns moving south to reinforce their positions north of the city.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: Despite the threat of SAMs and increasing visibility during the early morning hours of 31 January 1991, one AC-130H, AF Serial No. 69-6567, call-sign Spirit 03, opted to stay to continue to protect the Marines. A lone Iraqi with a Strela-2 MANPADS shot Spirit 03 down, and all 14 crew members were killed. The loss of Spirit 03 did however result in the US DoD joining the development of the AN/AAQ-24 Directed Infrared Countermeasures System which, in its updated laser-based form, is now a common fit across large US military aircraft.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: The military has used AC-130 gunships during the humanitarian operations in Somalia (Operation Restore Hope and Operation United Shield) in 1992–93 and Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti in 1994. AC-130s took part in Operation Assured Response in Liberia in 1996 and in Operation Silver Wake in 1997, the evacuation of American non-combatants from Albania.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: The AC-130U gunship set a new record for the longest sustained flight by any C-130 on 22 and 23 October 1997, when two AC-130U gunships flew 36 hours nonstop from Hurlburt Field to Taegu Air Base (Daegu), South Korea, being refueled seven times in the air by KC-135 tankers. The two gunships took on 410,000 lb (186,000 kg) of fuel. Gunships also were part of the buildup of US forces in 1998 to compel Iraq to allow UNSCOM weapons inspections.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: The US has used gunships with deployments to the War in Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Freedom's Sentinel) (2001–2021), and Iraq War (Operation Iraqi Freedom) (2003–2011). AC-130 strikes were directed by special forces on known Taliban locations during the early days of the war in Afghanistan. US Special Operations Forces used the AC-130 to support its operations. The day after arriving in Afghanistan, the AC-130s attacked Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces near the city of Konduz and were directly responsible for the city's surrender the next day. On 26 November 2001, Spectres were called in to put down a rebellion at the prison fort of Qala-I-Janghi. The 16 SOS flew missions over Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Kandahar, Shkin, Asadabad, Bagram, Baghran, Tora Bora, and virtually every other part of Afghanistan. The Spectre participated in countless operations within Afghanistan, performing on-call close air support and armed reconnaissance. In March 2002, three AC-130 Spectres provided 39 crucial combat missions in support of Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan. During the intense fighting, the planes fired more than 1,300 40 mm and 1,200 105 mm rounds.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: Close air support was the main mission of the AC-130 in Iraq. Night after night, at least one AC-130 was in the air to fulfill one or more air-support requests (ASRs). A typical mission had the AC–130 supporting a single brigade's ASRs followed by aerial refueling and another two hours with another brigade or SOF team. The use of AC-130s in places like Fallujah, urban settings where insurgents were among crowded populations of non-combatants, was criticized by human rights groups. AC-130s were also used for intelligence gathering with their sophisticated long-range video, infrared and radar sensors. In 2007, US Special Operations forces also used the AC-130 in attacks on suspected Al-Qaeda militants in Somalia.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: Eight AC-130H and 17 AC-130U aircraft were in active-duty service as of July 2010. In March 2011, the Air Force deployed two AC-130U gunships to take part in Operation Odyssey Dawn, the US military intervention in Libya, which eventually came under NATO as Operation Unified Protector.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: By September 2013, 14 MC-130W Dragon Spear aircraft have been converted to AC-130W Stinger II gunships. The Stinger gunships have been deployed to Afghanistan to replace the aging AC-130H aircraft and provide an example for the new AC-130J Ghostrider. Modifications began by cutting holes in the plane to make room for weapons and adding kits and bomb bases for laser-guided munitions. Crews added a 105 mm cannon, 20-inch infrared and electro-optical sensors, and the ability to carry 250-lb bombs on the wings.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: The final AC-130H Spectre gunship, tail number 69-6569 "Excalibur" was retired on 26 May 2015 at Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: On 15 November 2015, two days after the attacks in Paris by ISIL, AC-130s and A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft destroyed a convoy of over 100 ISIL-operated oil tanker trucks in Syria. The attacks were part of an intensification of the US-led military intervention against ISIL called Operation Tidal Wave II (named after the original Operation Tidal Wave during World War II, a failed attempt to raid German oil fields that resulted in heavy aircraft and aircrew loss) in an attempt to cut off oil smuggling as a source of funding for the group.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: On 3 October 2015, an AC-130 mistakenly attacked the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing 42 people and injuring over 30. In five separate runs, the gunship struck the hospital, that was erroneously identified as the source of attacks on coalition members. Subsequent inquiries led to punishment of 16 military personnel and cited "human error" as the root cause.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: On 30 September 2017, the Air Force declared the AC-130J Ghostrider had achieved initial operational capability, with six gunships having been delivered; the aircraft is planned to reach full operational capability by 2023 with 37 gunships delivered. The J-variant is lighter and more fuel efficient than previous versions, able to fly at with a range of and service ceiling of . The AC-130U returned from its final combat deployment on 8 July 2019; the final AC-130U was retired in June 2020. AFSOC started taking delivery of the AC-130J in spring 2019, and the aircraft began deploying to Afghanistan by the summer.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: One of the first seven AC-130A aircraft deployed to Vietnam was AF serial no. 53–3129, named "First Lady" in November 1970. This aircraft was a conversion of the first production C-130. On 25 March 1971, it took an anti-aircraft artillery hit in the belly just aft of the nose gear wheel well over the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos. The 37 mm shell destroyed everything below the crew deck and barely missed striking two crew members. The pilot was able to crash land the aircraft safely. In 1975, after the conclusion of US involvement in the Vietnam war, it was transferred to the Air Force Reserve, where it served with the 711th Special Operations Squadron of the 919th Special Operations Wing. In 1980, the aircraft was upgraded from the original three-bladed propellers to the quieter four-bladed propellers and was eventually retired in late 1995. The retirement also marked an end to the Air Force Reserve Command flying the AC-130A. The aircraft now sits on display in the final Air Force Reserve Command configuration with grey paint, black markings, and the four-bladed Hamilton Sunstrand 54H60-91 props at the Air Force Armament Museum at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, USA.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: A second aircraft, AF serial no. 56–0509, named the "Ultimate End", was originally accepted as a C-130A by the Air Force on 28 February 1957, and modified to the AC-130A configuration on 27 July 1970. The aircraft participated in the Vietnam War and the rescue of the SS Mayaguez. "Ultimate End" demonstrated the durability of the C-130 after surviving hits in five places by 37 mm anti-aircraft artillery on 12 December 1970, extensive left wing leading edge damage on 12 April 1971 and a 57 mm round damaging the belly and injuring one crewman on 4 March 1972. "Ultimate End" was reassigned to the Air Force Reserve's 919th Special Operations Wing at Eglin AFB Auxiliary Field No.3 / Duke Field on 17 June 1975, where it continued in service until retired in the fall 1994 and transferred to Air Force Special Operations Command's "Heritage Air Park" at Hurlburt Field, Florida. While assigned to the 711th Special Operations Squadron, "Ultimate End" served in Operations JUST CAUSE in Panama, DESERT STORM in Kuwait and Iraq, and UPHOLD DEMOCRACY in Haiti. After 36 years and seven months of service, 24 years as a gunship, "Ultimate End" retired from active service on 1 October 1994. It made its last flight from Duke Field to Hurlburt Field on 20 October 1994. The Spectre Association dedicated "Ultimate End" (which served with the 16 SOS in Vietnam) on 4 May 1995. Lt Col Michael Byers, then 16 SOS commander, represented the active-duty gunship force and Clyde Gowdy of the Spectre Association represented all Spectre personnel past and present for the unveiling of a monument at the aircraft and the dedication as a whole.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: A third AC-130A, AF serial no. 54–1630, is on display in the Cold War Gallery at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. Named "Azrael" for the angel of death in Islam who severs the soul from the body, this aircraft figured prominently in the closing hours of Operation Desert Storm. On 26 February 1991, Coalition ground forces were driving the Iraqi Army out of Kuwait. With an Air Force Reserve crew called to active duty, Azrael was sent to the Al Jahra highway (Highway 80) between Kuwait City and Basra, Iraq, to intercept the convoys of tanks, trucks, buses, and cars fleeing the battle. Facing SA-6 and SA-8 surface-to-air missiles and 37 mm and 57 mm radar-guided anti-aircraft artillery the crew attacked and destroyed or disabled most of the convoys. "Azrael" was also assigned to the 919th Special Operations Wing and retired to the museum in October 1995.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: Another AC-130A, AF serial no. 54–1626, the original prototype AC-130 named "Gunship II" is on display at the outdoor Air Park at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. This aircraft served in Southeast Asia from 1967 to 1972, then served in JC-130A test configuration. It was transferred to the National Museum of the United States Air Force in 1976, and converted back to AC-130A configuration in the late 1990s.


title: Lockheed AC-130

text: AC-130A serial no. 54–1623, c/n 3010, named "Ghost Rider" served in Southeast Asia and later conflicts until being retired in 1997 to Dobbins AFB, Georgia. Ghost Rider eventually was transferred and displayed at the Aviation Wing Museum at Marietta, Georgia.


title: Ship of Theseus

text: The Ship of Theseus is a thought experiment about whether an object that has had all of its original components replaced remains the same object. According to legend, Theseus, the mythical Greek founder-king of Athens, had rescued the children of Athens from King Minos after slaying the minotaur and then escaped on a ship to Delos. Every year, the Athenians commemorated this legend by taking the ship on a pilgrimage to Delos to honor Apollo. The question was raised by ancient philosophers: After several centuries of maintenance, if every part of the Ship of Theseus had been replaced, one at a time, was it still the same ship?


title: Ship of Theseus

text: In contemporary philosophy, this thought experiment has applications to the philosophical study of identity over time, and has inspired a variety of proposed solutions in contemporary philosophy of mind concerned with the persistence of personal identity.


title: Ship of Theseus

text: In its original formulation, the "Ship of Theseus" paradox concerns a debate over whether or not a ship that has had all of components replaced one by one would remain the same ship. The account of the problem has been preserved by Plutarch in his "Life of Theseus":


title: Ship of Theseus

text: Centuries later, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes extended the thought experiment by supposing that a custodian gathered up all of the decayed parts of the ship as they were disposed of and replaced by the Athenians, and used those decaying planks to build a second ship. Hobbes posed the question of which of the two resulting ships, the custodian's or the Athenians, was the same ship as the "original" ship.


title: Ship of Theseus

text: Hobbes considers the two resulting ships as illustrating two different definitions of "Identity" or sameness that are being compared to the original ship: 1) the ship that maintains the same "Form" as the original, that which persists through complete replacement of material, and 2) the ship made of the same "Matter", that which stops being 100% the same ship when the first part is replaced.


title: Ship of Theseus

text: The Ship of Theseus paradox can be thought of as an example of a puzzle of material constitution, that is, a problem with determining the relationship between an object and the material that it is made out of.


title: Ship of Theseus

text: According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the most popular solution is to accept the conclusion, that the material that the ship is made out of is not the same object as the ship, but that the two objects simply occupy the same space at the same time.


title: Ship of Theseus

text: Another common theory, put forth by David Lewis, is to divide up all objects into three dimensional time-slices which are temporally distinct; which avoids the issue that the two different ships exist in the same space at one time and a different space at another time by considering the objects to be distinct from each other at "all" points in time.


title: Ship of Theseus

text: According to Noam Chomsky, the thought puzzle arises because of extreme externalism: the assumption that what is true in our minds is true in the world. Chomsky says that this is not an unassailable assumption, from the perspective of the natural sciences, because human intuition is often mistaken. Cognitive science would treat this thought puzzle as the subject of an investigation of the human mind. Studying this human confusion can reveal much about the brain's operation, but little about the nature of the human-independent external world.


title: Ship of Theseus

text: Following on from this observation, a significant strand in cognitive science would consider The Ship not as a thing, nor even a collection of objectively existing thing-parts, but rather as an organisational structure that has perceptual continuity. When Theseus thinks of his ship, he has expectations about what parts can be found where, how they interact, and how they interact with the wider world. As long as there is a time/space continuity between this set of relationships, it is The Ship of Theseus.


title: Ship of Theseus

text: In Europe, several independent tales and stories feature knives that have had their blades and handles replaced several times, but are still used and represent the same knife. France has Jeannot's knife, Spain uses Jeannot's knife as a proverb, though it is referred to simply as "the family knife", and Hungary has "Lajos Kossuth's pocket knife". Several variants or alternative statements of the underlying problem are known, including the grandfather's axe and Trigger’s broom, where an old broom or axe has had both its head and its handle replaced, leaving no original components.


title: Ship of Theseus

text: In Japan, Shinto shrines are rebuilt every twenty years with entirely "new wood". The continuity over the centuries is spiritual and comes from the source of the wood in the case of Ise Jingu's Naiku shrine, which is harvested from an adjoining forest that is considered sacred.


title: Ship of Theseus

text: The ancient Buddhist text "Da zhidu lun" contains a similar philosophical puzzle: a story of a traveler who encountered two demons in the night. As one demon ripped off all parts of the traveler's body one by one, the other demon replaced them with those of a corpse, and the traveler was confused about who he was.


title: Ship of Theseus

text: In "The Three Basic Facts of Existence", Piyadassi Thera uses the teachings of Dharma to suggest that nothing in the universe is ever the same:


title: Ship of Theseus

text: The French critic and essayist Roland Barthes refers at least twice to a ship that is entirely rebuilt, in the preface to his "Essais Critiques" (1971) and later in his "Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes" (1975); in the latter the persistence of the form of the ship is seen as a key structuralist principle. He calls this ship the "Argo", on which Theseus was said to have sailed with Jason; he may have confused the "Argo" (referred to in passing in Plutarch's "Theseus" at 19.4) with the ship that sailed from Crete ("Theseus", 23.1).


title: Elizabeth Gillies

text: Elizabeth Egan Gillies (born July 26, 1993) is an American actress and singer. She gained prominence for her starring roles as Jade West in the Nickelodeon series "Victorious" (2010–2013), and as Fallon Carrington on The CW revival of "Dynasty" (2017–2022).


title: Elizabeth Gillies

text: Gillies made her Broadway debut at age 15 in the musical "13", playing the character of Lucy. She made her first television appearance in "The Black Donnellys" (2007), later starring as Jade West in the Nickelodeon series "Victorious" (2010–2013). From 2011 to 2014, she provided the voice of Daphne in Nickelodeon's "Winx Club", and she had a main role in the FX comedy series "Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll" (2015–2016). Since 2017, Gillies has starred as billionaire heiress and energy executive Fallon Carrington in The CW's series "Dynasty", a reboot of the 1980s series of the same name. She has also appeared in various feature and television films, including the horror film "Animal" (2014), the television film "Killing Daddy" (2014), the comedy film "Vacation" (2015), and the black comedy thriller film "Arizona" (2018).


title: Elizabeth Gillies

text: Gillies made her debut as a singer on "Victorious" with the song "Give It Up" in 2011, singing alongside Ariana Grande. She released other songs while on the show, including "You Don't Know Me" and "Take a Hint", singing alongside Victoria Justice, both songs being part of the . During the Covid-19 pandemic she collaborated with Seth MacFarlane releasing an album entitled, "Songs from Home" (2020) on Spotify.


title: Elizabeth Gillies

text: Elizabeth Egan Gillies was born in Haworth, New Jersey, on July 26, 1993, to Dave and Lorrie Gillies. She has one younger brother, born 1996. Gillies has stated that she has Irish ancestry, and an Italian grandmother and great-grandmother. She left high school in her freshman year to pursue acting and participated in an online high school program.


title: Elizabeth Gillies

text: Gillies' acting career began at age 12 when she started going to local open casting calls. She quickly began appearing in commercials for companies such as Virgin Mobile. Gillies' first television role was as a recurring character in three episodes of "The Black Donnellys". She has stated that she was not allowed to watch the finished show in its entirety because her parents felt it was not appropriate for her at the time.


title: Elizabeth Gillies

text: In 2008, she played small roles in "The Clique", "Harold", and "Locker 514". That year she was also cast as Lucy in a Goodspeed production of Jason Robert Brown's new musical "13", alongside her future "Victorious" co-star, Ariana Grande. Later that year, "13" moved to Broadway, which made it the first Broadway production to have a cast and band entirely made up of teenagers. Gillies remained with the production until its closure on January 4, 2009.


title: Elizabeth Gillies

text: In 2010, Gillies was cast as bad girl and occasional antagonist Jade West in the Nickelodeon television show "Victorious", a sitcom revolving around teenagers at a performing arts high school in Hollywood, which marked her second time working alongside "13" co-star Grande. Regarding her "Victorious" character, Gillies said "It's wonderful. I love playing Jade. I always say she's not so much the 'mean' girl, but the 'bad' girl in so many ways. She has a lot of human qualities to her – she's not just completely sociopathic. She's sweet with her boyfriend. It's nice to play a character with some depth." The show premiered on March 27, 2010. During her time on "Victorious", Gillies was featured in several songs on the soundtracks "Victorious" and "," including "Give It Up" (duet with Grande), and "Take a Hint" (duet with Victoria Justice). She also wrote and recorded the song "You Don't Know Me" for an episode of "Victorious", and it was later featured in "Victorious 3.0".


title: Elizabeth Gillies

text: She lent her talents to other Nick shows, voicing the character of Daphne on the Nickelodeon revival of "Winx Club" and recording Winx Club's official song, "We Are Believix." She also appeared in an episode of "Big Time Rush" and as a contestant on "BrainSurge" and "Figure It Out". Beginning in 2012, Gillies began playing small guest roles outside Nickelodeon. Notable appearances include "White Collar" and "The Exes". In July 2012, it was reported that Gillies was working on an alternative rock album. "Victorious" ended on February 2, 2013, after four seasons. Following the cancellation of the series, Gillies took some time off from acting.


title: Elizabeth Gillies

text: In 2013, she was cast as Courtney in the musical adaptation of "Jawbreaker" and participated in a reading of the show in Manhattan. The musical did not end up being taken to Broadway. On December 10, 2013, Gillies recorded a duet of "Santa Baby" with Grande for the latter's "Christmas Kisses" EP. In 2014, Gillies appeared in the horror film "Animal" as Mandy and the Lifetime movie "Killing Daddy", playing Callie Ross. "Animal" was filmed in the summer of 2013 in Manchester, Connecticut, and was produced by Drew Barrymore. The film also features Gillies' former "Winx Club" co-star Keke Palmer and was released on iTunes June 17, 2014.


title: Elizabeth Gillies

text: In 2015, Gillies was cast as Heather in the remake of "Vacation". The film received a wide release on July 29, 2015. She was then cast in the comedy series "Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll" as Gigi, an aspiring singer and daughter of a former rock star named Johnny Rock (portrayed by the show's creator, Denis Leary). The show premiered on July 16, 2015, to mixed reviews, but Gillies' performance as Gigi was well received. On September 9, 2016, FX declined to renew the show for a third season, effectively canceling the series.


title: Elizabeth Gillies

text: In 2017, Gillies was cast as Fallon Carrington in The CW television series "Dynasty", a reboot of the 1980s series of the same name. After Nicollette Sheridan left the role of Fallon's mother, Alexis Carrington, near the end of the second season, Gillies began playing the character temporarily, as well as continuing to portray Fallon. In 2018, Gillies starred in the dark-comedy thriller film "Arizona" as Kelsey. It was first premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, and later attained a theatrical release, as well as being released direct-to-video.


title: Elizabeth Gillies

text: In 2019, Gillies, alongside Matt Bennett, made a surprise appearance during the November 19 show of her "Victorious" co-star Grande's Sweetener World Tour in Atlanta, in which Grande and Bennett performed "I Think You're Swell", while Grande and Gillies performed "Give It Up", both songs from "Victorious". In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Gillies collaborated with Seth MacFarlane on a series of songs, eight in total, on a playlist entitled, "Songs from Home" on Spotify. In 2021, it was announced Gillies would voice the titular character in the upcoming superhero feature "".


title: Elizabeth Gillies

text: On August 8, 2020, Gillies married American music producer Michael Corcoran at a private ceremony in Chesterfield Township, New Jersey. They reside in Atlanta, Georgia.


title: Central America

text: Central America ( or ) is a subregion of The Americas. Its boundaries are defined as bordering Mexico to the north, Colombia to the south, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Central America consists of seven countries: Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama. Within Central America is the Mesoamerican biodiversity hotspot, which extends from northern Guatemala to central Panama. Due to the presence of several active geologic faults and the Central America Volcanic Arc, there is a high amount of seismic activity in the region, such as volcanic eruptions and earthquakes which has resulted in death, injury, and property damage.


title: Central America

text: In the Pre-Columbian era, Central America was inhabited by the indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica to the north and west and the Isthmo-Colombian peoples to the south and east. Following the Spanish expedition of Christopher Columbus' voyages to the Americas, Spain began to colonize the Americas. From 1609 to 1821, the majority of Central American territories (except for what would become Belize and Panama, and including the modern Mexican state of Chiapas) were governed by the viceroyalty of New Spain from Mexico City as the Captaincy General of Guatemala. On 24 August 1821, Spanish Viceroy Juan de O'Donojú signed the Treaty of Córdoba, which established New Spain's independence from Spain. On 15 September 1821, the Act of Independence of Central America was enacted to announce Central America's separation from the Spanish Empire and provide for the establishment of a new Central American state. Some of New Spain's provinces in the Central American region (i.e. what would become Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica) were annexed to the First Mexican Empire; however in 1823 they seceded from Mexico to form the Federal Republic of Central America until 1838.


title: Central America

text: In 1838, Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica and Guatemala became the first of Central America's seven states to become independent autonomous countries, followed by El Salvador in 1841, Panama in 1903 and Belize in 1981 Despite the dissolution of the Federal Republic of Central America, countries like El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua continue to maintain a Central American identity. Spanish speaking countries officially refer to both North and South America, as a single supercontinent, or simply a continent, called "América", which is split in three regions or subcontinents called Northern, Central, and Southern America, this is why many Central American countries include "América Central" in their countries official Coat of Arms and full name. Belizeans are usually identified as culturally West Indian rather than Central American, while Panamanians identify themselves more broadly with their South American neighbours.


title: Central America

text: Central America was formed more than 3 million years ago, as part of the Isthmus of Panama, when its portion of land connected each side of water.