title: Sondra Locke

text: Late in the 1970s, Locke became pregnant by Eastwood twice; she terminated both pregnancies. "I'd feel sorry for any child that had me for a mother," she previously told columnist Dick Kleiner in 1969. In 1979, at the age of 35, Locke underwent a tubal ligation at UCLA Medical Center, citing Eastwood's adamancy that parenthood would not fit into their lifestyle. When this became public knowledge a decade after the fact, Eastwood issued a statement:


title: Sondra Locke

text: Locke professed mixed feelings on the matter, stating in one chapter of her autobiography that she was grateful she hadn't had Eastwood's children, while writing in another, "I couldn't help but think that that baby, with both Clint's and my best qualities, would be extraordinary." Eastwood claimed Locke told him on multiple occasions that she never wanted to have children.


title: Sondra Locke

text: Eastwood and Locke were still cohabiting when, in the latter half of the 1980s, he secretly fathered another woman's two children – a fact that did not come to light for almost 20 years. Despite her affirmed ignorance, Locke sensed growing tension in the relationship around 1985, recollecting that "although I definitely still loved Clint, I didn't very much "like" him." In retrospect, she gathered "either he changed from white to black, or I had been living with somebody I didn't even know."


title: Sondra Locke

text: According to court testimony, Locke confronted Eastwood over his passive-aggressive behavior on December 29, 1988, eliciting estrangement between the couple. Locke testified that after she and Eastwood made their final joint appearance on January 6 at the American Cinema Awards, they spent exactly two nights together, without intimate contact. Eastwood then effectively vacated their Bel-Air mansion, sleeping in the adjacent caretakers' quarters or at his apartment in Burbank. Locke thought Eastwood was acting out "because he wasn't number one at the box office anymore, or because he was facing his mortality" (Eastwood was 58 at the time). As far as she was concerned their relationship was still salvageable. At any rate, she called divorce lawyer Norman Oberstein to explore her options should the separation be permanent. Unbeknownst to Locke, Eastwood eavesdropped on those consultations by means of a wiretap that he placed on their home phone in early March.


title: Sondra Locke

text: On the morning of April 3 or 4, Eastwood complained in the kitchen that Locke was "sitting on [his] only real estate in Los Angeles" and bolted. Locke later defensively declared: "Clint is not good at direct communication. He really is a man of few words. You might just as well have a direct confrontation with a wall." On April 10, 1989, Malpaso employees changed the locks on the family residence, moved Locke's possessions into storage, and posted security guards at the front gate per Eastwood's order. Locke was shooting "Impulse" (1990) at the time of the lockout. She filed a $70 million palimony suit on April 26, charging Eastwood with breach of contract, emotional distress, forcible entry and possession of stolen goods. Forced abortions and compulsory sterilization were also cited, though Locke would later recategorize those operations as a "mutual decision".


title: Sondra Locke

text: During their 14 years as "de facto" husband and wife, Locke and Eastwood had lived in seven homes and acquired four, including a retreat in Sun Valley, Idaho, and the Rising River Ranch near Cassel. Locke sought half of Eastwood's earnings and an equal division of property, requesting title to the house in Bel-Air and to the Gothic-style West Hollywood place Eastwood had leased to Gordon Anderson since 1982. She also asked Judge Dana Senit Henry to bar Eastwood from the Bel-Air house "because I know him to have a terrible temper ... and he has frequently been abusive to me."


title: Sondra Locke

text: Locke battled Eastwood in court for 19 months; she developed breast cancer during proceedings and said the treatments sapped her will to fight. In November 1990, the parties reached a private settlement wherein Eastwood set up a $1.5 million multiyear film development/directing pact for Locke at Warner Bros. in exchange for dropping the suit. She was awarded the West Hollywood property (valued at $2.2 million), $450,000 cash and unspecified monthly support payments as well.


title: Sondra Locke

text: The breakup affected Locke's social life. Her closest friends had been the wives of Eastwood's colleagues: Maria Shriver, Cynthia Sikes Yorkin and Lili Fini Zanuck, all 10–11 years younger than Locke and married to film industry heavyweights Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bud Yorkin and Richard D. Zanuck respectively. Locke's friendships with those women gradually faded as their husbands ghosted her. The female comrades Locke credited with loyalty and support were those she had known pre-Eastwood: art director Elayne Barbara Ceder, whom she met on "The Second Coming of Suzanne", and realtor Denise Fraker, wife of "A Reflection of Fear" director William A. Fraker.


title: Sondra Locke

text: Between 1990 and 1993, Warner Bros. rejected more than 30 scripts that Locke pitched to the studio – including those for "Junior" (1994) and "Addicted to Love" (1997) – and refused to let her direct any of their in-house projects. When her contract had yielded zero directing assignments three years in, Locke became convinced the deal was a sham. She began to seek corroboration and came across incriminating printouts from WB's bookkeeping records. Locke contended that the money WB pretended they were paying her came from Eastwood's pocket and was laundered through the operating budget of "Unforgiven" (1992). In June 1995 she sued him again, for fraud and breach of fiduciary duty. According to Locke's attorney Peggy Garrity, Eastwood committed "the ultimate betrayal" by arranging the "bogus" deal as a way to keep her out of work. Garrity added that Eastwood had held out the allegedly counterfeit deal "like a dangled carrot" to persuade Locke to drop the earlier palimony suit. Locke said that she "was stunned and outraged at the way I had been tricked and cheated a second time."


title: Sondra Locke

text: The case went to trial in September 1996. One juror disclosed that the panel sided with Locke by a 10-to-2 vote (nine votes are needed for a verdict) and were only debating the amount. Before any court decision could be made, Locke settled the case with Eastwood for an undisclosed amount of money. The outcome, Locke said, sent a "loud and clear" message to Hollywood, "that people cannot get away with whatever they want to just because they're powerful." According to Locke, "in this business, people get so accustomed to being abused, they just accept the abuse and say, 'Well, that's just the way it is.' Well, it isn't."


title: Sondra Locke

text: For his part, Eastwood waved the lawsuit off as a "dime-novel plot," continuing, "it's all about money ... about getting something for nothing." He accused Locke of using her cancer to gain the jury's sympathy: "She plays the victim very well. Unfortunately she had cancer and so she plays that card."


title: Sondra Locke

text: Locke brought a separate action against Warner Bros. for allegedly conspiring with Eastwood to sabotage her directorial career. As had happened with the previous lawsuit, this ended in an out-of-court settlement, in May 1999. By then, Locke had fired Garrity and hired Neil Papiano to represent her. The agreement with Warner Bros., Locke said, was "a happy ending." "I feel elated. This has been the best day in a long, long time," she told reporters on court house steps. The case is used in some modern law-school contract textbooks to illustrate the legal concept of good faith.


title: Sondra Locke

text: A lifelong nonsmoker (save for a few film roles), Locke practiced Transcendental Meditation and worked out with weights, though she hated running. In September 1990, she confirmed reports that she had breast cancer.<ref name="Philadelphia Enquirer 9/20/90">"Sick-bay report". "The Philadelphia Inquirer", September 20, 1990</ref> "Due to factors in my personal life, I have sustained two years of extreme and unnecessary stress, which my doctors tell me has been my enemy," Locke said at the time. She added that Eastwood never communicated with her after her diagnosis: "He doesn't care if I live or die."


title: Sondra Locke

text: Locke underwent a double mastectomy at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, followed by chemotherapy. During treatment, she began dating Scott Cunneen (born September 10, 1961, Long Beach, California), an intern assigned to perform the post-surgical checkup. Unfazed by their 17-year age difference – and that Locke was only three years younger than his mother – they soon went public with the romance, dining at paparazzi hotspot Spago on one of their early dates in November 1990. Cunneen moved in with her in the spring of 1991. She called it a "real, supportive, and equal relationship."


title: Sondra Locke

text: In February 2001, Locke purchased a six-bedroom gated mansion in the Hollywood Hills, where she resided for the remainder of her life. Built in 1925, the home's interior was redesigned to look like Locke's old house on Stradella Road. She and Cunneen eventually broke up, albeit without publicity, since she had faded from public view.


title: Sondra Locke

text: In 2015, after a 25-year period of apparent remission, Locke's cancer returned and metastasized to her bones.


title: Sondra Locke

text: Locke died at age 74 on November 3, 2018, at her Los Angeles home from cardiac arrest related to breast and bone cancer. Her remains were cremated on November 9 at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary and the ashes were given to her widower, Gordon Anderson. Locke bequeathed Anderson an estimated fortune of $20 million, and seemed to have always supported him financially.


title: Sondra Locke

text: Locke's death was kept secret until December 13, when Radar Online broke the news the day before Eastwood's latest blockbuster "The Mule" (2018) opened in theaters nationwide, citing the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. The Associated Press said "it is not clear why it took nearly six weeks to come to light." Anderson, according to the scant AP report, was unreachable, and a representative for Locke ignored "People"'s request for comment. So hidden had basic facts been kept, that "The New York Times" oxymoronically noted 41 days after she died: "A list of survivors was not immediately [sic] available."


title: Sondra Locke

text: Locke's death received no television coverage except for a 15-second spot on ABC World News Tonight. Eastwood did not comment on the death, nor did any of Locke's other living exes, nor any of her friends or relatives. Co-stars such as Cicely Tyson, Louie Anderson, Sally Kellerman, Stacy Keach and Ted Neeley – all active on social media – were equally silent. On the 91st Academy Awards telecast, broadcast nearly four months after Locke died, she was omitted from the In Memoriam segment. In absence of any explanation, many surmised that Locke had to have requested the blackout in her final wishes, perhaps to keep her true age from being exposed.


title: Sondra Locke

text: Locke is remembered as an early pioneer for women in Hollywood. She was one of 11 female filmmakers in 1990, the year WB released her sophomore feature, "Impulse". By the time of "Trading Favors" (1997), her fourth effort, still only eight percent of all films were made by women, per the Directors Guild of America.


title: Sondra Locke

text: Locke's influence as a feminist icon was duly acknowledged by the mainstream press. In 1989, Claudia Puig of the "Los Angeles Times" described her lawsuit against Clint Eastwood as a "precedent-setting legal case, as it raises the question of whether a woman, who is legally married to one man, can claim palimony rights from another." Childfree by choice – unusual for a person of her generation – Locke was among the first celebrities to publicly discuss her abortion experiences. The avowal made Locke "a talking-point in America's sexual politics debate," according to "The Guardian"'s Peter Bradshaw. Locke's subsequent relationship with a doctor young enough to be her son added to her notoriety.


title: Sondra Locke

text: Cinematographer David Worth credits Locke with his big break. She is admired by such actresses as Frances Fisher and Rosanna Arquette, who applauded the strength of her directorial accomplishments, however short-lived.


title: Sondra Locke

text: During the last third of her life, Locke maintained she was blacklisted from the film industry as a result of her acrimonious split from Eastwood; his career went forward unscathed. Peggy Garrity, Locke's former counsel, recalled the courtroom drama in her book "In the Game: The Highs and Lows of a Trailblazing Trial Lawyer" (2016). Garrity revealed that Locke's 1999 confidential settlement from WB "was for many millions more than the settlement with Clint had been." "Locke v. Warner Bros. Inc" also catalyzed changes within the legal system. In a landmark decision, California's Supreme Court ruled that access to civil trials could no longer be closed off to the public.


title: Sondra Locke

text: Numerous outlets faced pushback over their chosen headlines for Locke's obituary. Several major publications prefaced news of her death by tagging Eastwood's name atop the article, which received criticism by some who deemed it a sexist epitaph, with fans online pointing out that Locke was an Oscar nominee prior to meeting Eastwood. Women's blog "Jezebel" criticized "The Hollywood Reporter" for ostensibly regarding Locke as a nonentity; "THR" subsequently changed its headline. News organization "TheWrap" – whose editor, Sharon Waxman, reviewed Locke's memoir for "The Washington Post" in 1997 – opined that her story "should stir resonance in this age of the #MeToo movement." In a tribute to the late actress, author Sarah Weinman wrote: "Sondra Locke, like Barbara Loden, deserves to be known for her work, not for the famous man she was disastrously involved with."


title: Sondra Locke

text: Among those voicing an unfavorable opinion of Locke was film critic Rex Reed, who had interviewed her for a 1967 profile in "The New York Times". "[She] lied so much during her brief but colorful career that when she lost her battle with cancer at age 74, I wondered if it was a publicity stunt," Reed wrote in an essay for "Observer".


title: Sondra Locke

text: In 1971, fifth-graders at Eastside Elementary in Locke's hometown of Shelbyville, Tennessee, were left star-struck when Locke made a visit and held pretend "auditions" in the class to show them what it was like in Hollywood. One student, Cameron Watson, was inspired by Locke and is now an actor/director. Watson's period drama "Our Very Own" (2005) takes place in Shelbyville in 1978 and concerns a group of teenagers who want to meet Locke when she returns to town for the local premiere of "Every Which Way but Loose". Watson decided to do the movie after performing a standup routine about Locke and about how people in Shelbyville were obsessed with her. Locke attended one of those performances in 2004 at the Tiffany Theater in West Hollywood. "The minute she heard the first reference to her or to her family, she threw up her arms: 'What the hell is this?'" Watson said. "By the end of the reading, she was doubled over." Locke gave the script her blessing and accepted an invitation to be special guest at the film's premiere. The movie was a "special gift" to Locke, according to Deborah Obenchain, another Eastside student who said she did not think Locke really understood her impact on the small town she once called home. "I think it meant just as much to her. … In our own way … we got to live out a little bit of our dreams by making the movie and meeting her."


title: Flag of Germany

text: The national flag of Germany is a tricolour consisting of three equal horizontal bands displaying the national colours of Germany: black, red, and gold (). The flag was first sighted in 1848 in the German Confederation. It was officially adopted as the national flag of the Weimar Republic from 1919 to 1933, and has been in use since its reintroduction in West Germany in 1949.


title: Flag of Germany

text: Since the mid-19th century, Germany has two competing traditions of national colours, black-red-gold and black-white-red. Black-red-gold were the colours of the 1848 Revolutions, the Weimar Republic of 1919–1933 and the Federal Republic (since 1949). They were also adopted by the German Democratic Republic (1949–1990).


title: Flag of Germany

text: The colours black-white-red appeared for the first time in 1867, in the constitution of the North German Confederation. This nation state for Prussia and other north and central German states was expanded to the south German states in 1870–71, under the name German Empire. It kept these colours until the revolution of 1918–19. Thereafter, black-white-red became a symbol of the political right. The Nazis (National Socialist German Worker's Party) re-established these colours along with the party's own swastika flag in 1933. After World War II, black-white-red was still used by some conservative groups or by groups of the far right, as it is not forbidden, unlike proper Nazi symbols.


title: Flag of Germany

text: Black-red-gold is the official flag of the Federal Republic of Germany. As an official symbol of the constitutional order, it is protected against defamation. According to §90 of the German penal code, the consequences are a fine or imprisonment up to five years.


title: Flag of Germany

text: The German association with the colours black, red, and gold surfaced in the radical 1840s, when the black-red-gold flag was used to symbolise the movement against the Conservative Order, which was established in Europe after Napoleon's defeat.


title: Flag of Germany

text: There are many theories in circulation regarding the origins of the colour scheme used in the 1848 flag. It has been proposed that the colours were those of the Jena Students' League (), one of the radically minded banned by in the Carlsbad Decrees. The colours are mentioned in their canonical order in the seventh verse of August Daniel von Binzer's student song ("On the Dissolution of the Jena Students' League") quoted by in his "Academic Festival Overture". Another claim goes back to the uniforms (mainly black with red facings and gold buttons) of the Lützow Free Corps, which had mostly university students and was formed during the struggle against the occupying forces of Napoleon. Whatever the true explanation, those colours soon came to be regarded as the national colours of Germany during that brief period. Especially after their reintroduction during the Weimar period, they have become synonymous with liberalism in general. The colours also appear in the mediaeval .


title: Flag of Germany

text: The German national flag or (), containing only the black-red-gold tricolour, was introduced as part of the (West) German constitution in 1949. Following the creation of separate government and military flags in later years, the plain tricolour is now used as the German civil flag and civil ensign. This flag is also used by non-federal authorities to show their connection to the federal government, e.g. the authorities of the German states use the German national flag together with their own flag.


title: Flag of Germany

text: The government flag of Germany is officially known as the (state flag of the federal authorities) or for short. Introduced in 1950, the government flag is the civil flag defaced with the ("Federal Shield"), which overlaps with up to one fifth of the black and gold bands. The is a variant of the coat of arms of Germany, whose main differences are the illustration of the eagle and the shape of the shield: the is rounded at the base, whereas the standard coat of arms is pointed.


title: Flag of Germany

text: The government flag may only be used by federal government authorities and its use by others is an offence, punishable with a fine. However, public use of flags similar to the (e.g. using the actual coat of arms instead of the ) is tolerated, and such flags are sometimes seen at international sporting events.


title: Flag of Germany

text: In addition to the normal horizontal format, many public buildings in Germany use vertical flags. Most town halls fly their town flag together with the national flag in this way; many town flags in Germany exist only in vertical form. The proportions of these vertical flags are not specified. In 1996, a layout for the vertical version of the government flag was established, that coincidentally matched the pattern of the "conventional" black-red-gold flag of the Principality of Reuss-Gera () from 1806 to 1918: the is displayed in the centre of the flag, overlapping with up to one fifth of the black and gold bands. When hung like a banner or draped, the black band should be on the left, as illustrated. When flown from a vertical flagpole, the black band must face the staff. The only type of vertical flag that can be flown under the Federal Government Decree is a banner. Flags in vertical format, vertical flags with outrigger and hanging flags are not permitted.


title: Flag of Germany

text: Since the German armed forces () are a federal authority, the is also used as the German war flag on land. In 1956, the (Flag of the German Navy) was introduced: the government flag ending in swallowtail. This naval flag is also used as a navy jack.


title: Flag of Germany

text: Following specifications set by the West German government in 1950, the flag displays three bars of equal width and has a width–length ratio of 3:5; the tricolour used during the Weimar Republic had a ratio of 2:3.


title: Flag of Germany

text: At the time of the adoption of the flag there were no exact colour specifications other than ""Black-Red-Gold"". However on 2 June 1999, the federal cabinet introduced a corporate design for the German government which defined the specifications of the official colours as:


title: Flag of Germany

text: Vexillology rarely distinguishes between gold and yellow; in heraldry, they are both "Or". For the German flag, such a distinction is made: the colour used in the flag is called gold, not yellow.


title: Flag of Germany

text: When the black–red–gold tricolour was adopted by the Weimar Republic as its flag, it was attacked by conservatives, monarchists, and the far right, who referred to the colours with spiteful nicknames such as (black–red–yellow) or even (black–red–mustard). When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the black–white–red colours of pre-1918 Imperial Germany were swiftly reintroduced, and their propaganda machine continued to discredit the , using the same derogatory terms as previously used by the monarchists.


title: Flag of Germany

text: On 24 December 1951, the Federal Court of Justice () stated that the usage of "black–red–yellow" and the like had "through years of Nazi agitation, attained the significance of a malicious slander against the democratic symbols of the state" and was now an offence. As summarised by heraldist Arnold Rabbow in 1968, "the German colours are black–red–yellow but they are called black–red–gold."


title: Flag of Germany

text: There are a number of flag flying days in Germany. Following federal decree on 22 March 2005, the flag must be flown from public buildings on the following dates. Only 1 May and 3 October are public holidays.


title: Flag of Germany

text: Election days for the Bundestag and the European Parliament are also flag days in some states, in addition to other state-specific flag days. The public display of flags to mark other events, such as the election of the president or the death of a prominent politician (whereupon flags would be at half-staff), can be declared at the discretion of the Federal Ministry of the Interior. When flags are required to be flown at half-staff, vertical flags are not lowered. A black mourning ribbon is instead attached, either atop the staff (if hung from a pole) or to each end of the flag's supporting cross-beams (if flown like a banner).


title: Flag of Germany

text: The Holy Roman Empire (800/962 – 1806, known as the "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation" after 1512) did not have a national flag, but black and gold were used as colours of the Holy Roman Emperor and featured in the imperial banner: a black eagle on a golden background. After the late 13th or early 14th century, the claws and beak of the eagle were coloured red. From the early 15th century, a double-headed eagle was used.


title: Flag of Germany

text: When Heinrich XI, Prince Reuss of Greiz was appointed by Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor to rule the then-new Principality of Reuss-Greiz on 12 May 1778, the flag adopted by the "Fürstentum Reuß-Greiz" was the first-ever appearance of the black-red-gold tricolour in its modern arrangement in any sovereign state within what today comprises Germany – the Reuss elder line that ruled the principality used a flag whose proportions were close to a "nearly square"-shape 4:5 hoist/fly ratio, instead of the modern German flag's 3:5 figure.


title: Flag of Germany

text: In 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte declared the First French Empire. In response to this, Holy Roman Emperor Francis II of the Habsburg dynasty declared his personal domain to be the Austrian Empire and became Francis I of Austria. Taking the colours of the banner of the Holy Roman Emperor, the flag of the Austrian Empire was black and gold. Francis II was the last Holy Roman Emperor, with Napoleon forcing the empire's dissolution in 1806. After this point, these colours continued to be used as the flag of Austria until 1918.


title: Flag of Germany

text: The colours red and white were also significant during this period. When the Holy Roman Empire took part in the Crusades, a war flag was flown alongside the black-gold imperial banner. This flag, known as the "Saint George Flag", was a white cross on a red background: the reverse of the St George's Cross used as the flag of England, and similar to the flag of Denmark. Red and white were also colours of the Hanseatic League (13th–17th century). Hanseatic trading ships were identifiable by their red-white pennants, and most Hanseatic cities adopted red and white as their city colours (see Hanseatic flags). Red and white still feature as the colours of many former Hanseatic cities such as Hamburg or Bremen.


title: Flag of Germany

text: With the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, many of its dukes and princes joined the Confederation of the Rhine, a confederation of Napoleonic client states. These states preferred to use their own flags. The confederation had no flag of its own; instead it used the blue-white-red flag of France and the Imperial Standard of its protector, Napoleon.


title: Flag of Germany

text: During the Napoleonic Wars, the German struggle against the occupying French forces was significantly symbolised by the colours of black, red, and gold, which became popular after their use in the uniforms of the Lützow Free Corps, a volunteer unit of the Prussian Army. This unit had uniforms in black with red facings and gold buttons. The colour choice had pragmatic origins, even though black-red-gold were the former colours used by the Holy Roman Empire. At the time, the colours represented:


title: Flag of Germany

text: Members of the corps were required to supply their own clothing: in order to present a uniform appearance it was easiest to dye all clothes black. Gold-coloured buttons were widely available, and pennons used by the lancers in the unit were red and black. As the members of this unit came from all over Germany and included a modest but well known number of university students and academics, the Lützow Free Corps and their colours gained considerable exposure among the German people.


title: Flag of Germany

text: The 1815–16 Congress of Vienna led to the creation of the German Confederation, a loose union of all remaining German states after the Napoleonic Wars. The Confederation was created as a replacement for the now-extinct Holy Roman Empire, with Francis I of Austria—the last Holy Roman Emperor—as its president. The confederation did not have a flag of its own, although the black-red-gold tricolour is sometimes mistakenly attributed to it.


title: Flag of Germany

text: Upon returning from the war, veterans of the Lützow Free Corps founded the fraternity in Jena in June 1815. The Jena eventually adopted a flag with three equal horizontal bands of red, black, and red, with gold trim and a golden oak branch across the black band, following the colours of the uniforms of the Free Corps. The famous gymnast and student union ("") founder Friedrich Ludwig Jahn proposed a black-red-gold banner for the Burschen. Some members interpreted the colours as a rebirth of the Imperial black-yellow colours embellished with the red of liberty or the blood of war. More radical students exclaimed that the colours stood for the black night of slavery, the bloody struggle for liberty, and the golden dawn of freedom. In a memoir, Anton Probsthan of Mecklenburg, who served in the Lützow Free Corps, claimed his relative Fraulein Nitschke of Jena presented the Burschenschaft with a flag at the time of its foundation, and for this purpose chose the black-red-and-gold colours of the defunct secret society "Vandalia".


title: Flag of Germany

text: Since the students who served in the Lützow Free Corps came from various German states, the idea of a unified German state began to gain momentum within the and similar Burschenschaft that were subsequently formed throughout the Confederation. On 18 October 1817, the fourth anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig, hundreds of fraternity members and academics from across the Confederation states met in Wartburg in Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (in modern Thuringia), calling for a free and unified German nation.


title: Flag of Germany

text: The gold-red-black flag of the Jena featured prominently at this Wartburg festival. Therefore, the colours black, red, and gold eventually became symbolic of this desire for a unified German state. The Ministerial Council of the German Confederation, in its determination to maintain the status quo, enacted the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819 that banned all student organisations, officially putting an end to the .


title: Flag of Germany

text: In May 1832, around 30,000 people demonstrated at the Hambach Festival for freedom, unity, and civil rights. The colours black, red, and gold had become a well established symbol for the liberal, democratic and republican movement within the German states since the Wartburg Festival, and flags in these colours were flown en masse at the Hambach Festival. While contemporary illustrations showed prominent use of a gold-red-black tricolour (an upside-down version of the modern German flag), surviving flags from the event were in black-red-gold. Such an example is the , the flag flown from Hambach Castle during the festival: a black-red-gold tricolour where the red band contains the inscription (Germany's rebirth). This flag is now on permanent display at the castle.


title: Flag of Germany

text: In the Springtime of the Peoples during the Revolutions of 1848, revolutionaries took to the streets, many flying the tricolour. The Confederation's Bundestag, alarmed by the events, hasted to adopt the tricolour (9 March 1848). Liberals took power and made the Bundestag call for general elections for a German parliament, the national assembly. This Frankfurt Parliament declared the black-red-gold as the official colours of Germany and passed a law stating its civil ensign was the black-red-yellow tricolour. Also, a naval war ensign used these colours.


title: Flag of Germany

text: In May 1849, the larger states actively fought the revolution and the Frankfurt parliament. In late 1850, the German Confederation was definitely restored under Austrian-Prussian leadership. The tricolour remained official but was no longer used before 1863 at a conference of the German governments. Afterwards, the most pressing issue was whether or not to include Austria in any future German nation, as Austria's status as a multi-ethnic empire complicated the dream of a united Greater Germany—the solution. Alternatively, there was the (Lesser German) solution for a Germany that encompassed only German lands and excluded Austria. The Prussian–Austrian duality within the Confederation eventually led to the Austro-Prussian War in 1866. During the war, the southern states allied with Austria adopted the black-red-gold tricolour as their flag, and the 8th German Army Corps also wore black-red-gold armbands. The Kingdom of Prussia and its predominately north German allies defeated Austria and made way for the realisation of the Lesser German solution a few years later.


title: Flag of Germany

text: Following the dissolution of the German Confederation, Prussia formed its unofficial successor, the North German Confederation, in 1866 with the signing of the Confederation Treaty in August 1866 and then the ratification of the Constitution of 1867. This national state consisted of Prussia, the largest member state, and 21 other north German states.


title: Flag of Germany

text: The question regarding what flag should be adopted by the new confederation was first raised by the shipping sector and its desire to have an internationally recognisable identity. Virtually all international shipping that belonged to the confederation originated from either Prussia or the three Hanseatic city-states of Bremen, Hamburg, and Lübeck. Based on this, Adolf Soetbeer, secretary of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce, suggested in the on 22 September 1866 that any planned flag should combine the colours of Prussia (black and white) with the Hanseatic colours (red and white). In the following year, the constitution of the North German Confederation was enacted, where a horizontal black-white-red tricolour was declared to be both the civil and war ensign.


title: Flag of Germany

text: King Wilhelm I of Prussia was satisfied with the colour choice: the red and white were also taken to represent the Margraviate of Brandenburg, the Imperial elector state that was a predecessor of the Kingdom of Prussia. The absence of gold from the flag also made it clear that this German state did not include the "black and gold" monarchy of Austria. In the Franco-Prussian War, the remaining southern German states allied with the North German Confederation, leading to the unification of Germany. A new constitution of 1871 gave the federal state the new name of German Empire and the Prussian king the title of Emperor. The German Empire retained black, white, and red as its national colours. An ordinance of 1892 dealt with the official use of the colours.


title: Flag of Germany

text: The black-white-red tricolour remained the flag of Germany until the end of the German Empire in 1918, in the final days of World War I.


title: Flag of Germany

text: Following the declaration of the German republic in 1918 and the ensuing revolutionary period, the so-called Weimar Republic was founded in August 1919. To form a continuity between the anti-autocratic movement of the 19th century and the new democratic republic, the old black-red-gold tricolour was designated as the national German flag in the Weimar Constitution in 1919. Only the tiny German principalities of Reuss-Greiz – where the use and layout of the "schwarz-rot-gold" design had originated some 140 years earlier –, Reuss-Gera, Waldeck-Pyrmont and its republican successor had upheld the 1778-established tradition, and had always continued to use the German colours of black, red, and or (gold) in their flag. As a civil ensign, the black-white-red tricolour was retained, albeit with the new tricolour in the top left corner.


title: Flag of Germany

text: This change was not welcomed by many people in Germany, who saw this new flag as a symbol of humiliation following Germany's defeat in the First World War. In the , the old colours continued to be used in various forms. Many conservatives wanted the old colours to return, while monarchists and the far right were far more vocal with their objections, referring to the new flag with various derogatory names ("see Colour above"). As a compromise, the old black-white-red flag was reintroduced in 1922 to represent German diplomatic missions abroad.


title: Flag of Germany

text: The symbols of Imperial Germany became symbols of monarchist and nationalist protest and were often used by monarchist and nationalist organisations (e.g. "Der Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten"). This included the (war flag of the Reich), which has been revived in the present for similar use. Many nationalist political parties during the Weimar period—such as the German National People's Party (see poster) and the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party)—used the imperial colours, a practice that has continued today with the National Democratic Party of Germany.


title: Flag of Germany

text: On 24 February 1924, the organisation was founded in Magdeburg by the member parties of the Weimar Coalition (Centre, DDP, SPD) and the trade unions. This organisation was formed to protect the fragile democracy of the Weimar Republic, which was under constant pressure by both the far right and far left. Through this organisation, the black-red-gold flag became not only a symbol of German democracy, but also of resistance to political extremism. This was summarised by the organisation's first chairman, Otto Hörsing, who described their task as a "struggle against the swastika and the Soviet star".


title: Flag of Germany

text: In the face of the increasingly violent conflicts between the communists and Nazis, the growing polarisation of the German population and a multitude of other factors, mainly the drastic economic sinking, extreme hyperinflation and corruption of the republic, the Weimar Republic collapsed in 1933 with the Nazi seizure of power () and the appointment of Adolf Hitler as German chancellor.


title: Flag of Germany

text: After the Nazi Party came to power on 30 January 1933, the black-red-gold flag was banned; a ruling on 12 March established two legal national flags: the reintroduced black-white-red imperial tricolour and the flag of the Nazi Party.


title: Flag of Germany

text: On 15 September 1935, one year after the death of Reich President Paul von Hindenburg and Hitler's elevation to the position of "Führer", the dual flag arrangement was ended, with the exclusive use of the Nazi flag as the national flag of Germany. One reason may have been the ""Bremen" incident" of 26 July 1935, in which a group of demonstrators in New York City boarded the ocean liner SS "Bremen", tore the Nazi Party flag from the jackstaff, and tossed it into the Hudson River. When the German ambassador protested, US officials responded that the German national flag had not been harmed, only a political party symbol. The new flag law was announced at the annual party rally in Nuremberg, where Hermann Göring claimed the old black-white-red flag, while honoured, was the symbol of a bygone era and under threat of being used by "reactionaries".


title: Flag of Germany

text: The design of the Nazi flag was introduced by Hitler as the party flag in mid-1920, roughly a year before (29 July 1921) he became his political party's leader: a flag with a red background, a white disk and a black swastika in the middle. In "Mein Kampf", Hitler explained the process by which the Nazi flag design was created: It was necessary to use the same colours as Imperial Germany, because in Hitler's opinion they were "revered colours expressive of our homage to the glorious past and which once brought so much honour to the German nation." The most important requirement was that "the new flag ... should prove effective as a large poster" because "in hundreds of thousands of cases a really striking emblem may be the first cause of awakening interest in a movement." Nazi propaganda clarified the symbolism of the flag: the red colour stood for the social, white for the movement's national thinking and the swastika for the victory of Aryan humanity and the victory of productive humanity.


title: Flag of Germany

text: An off-centred disk version of the swastika flag was used as the civil ensign on German-registered civilian ships and was used as the jack on (the name of the German Navy, 1933–1945) warships. The flags for use on sea had a through and through image, so the reverse side had a "left-facing" swastika; the national flag was right-facing on both sides.


title: Flag of Germany

text: From 1933 to at least 1938, the Nazis sometimes "sanctified" swastika flags by touching them with the (blood flag), the swastika flag used by Nazi paramilitaries during the failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. This ceremony took place at every Nuremberg Rally. It is unknown whether this tradition was continued after the last Nuremberg rally in 1938.


title: Flag of Germany

text: At the end of World War II, the first law enacted by the Allied Control Council abolished all Nazi symbols and repealed all relevant laws. The possession of swastika flags is forbidden in several countries since then, with the importation or display of them forbidden particularly in Germany.


title: Flag of Germany

text: After the defeat of Germany in World War II, the country was placed under Allied administration. Although there was neither a national German government nor a German flag, German ships were required by international law to have a national ensign of some kind. As a provisional civil ensign of Germany, the Council designated the international signal pennant Charlie representing the letter C ending in a swallowtail, known as the C-Pennant (). The Council ruled that "no ceremony shall be accorded this flag which shall not be dipped in salute to warships or merchant ships of any nationality". Similarly, the Japanese civil ensign used immediately following World War II was the signal pennant for the letter E ending in a swallowtail, and the Ryūkyūan civil ensign was a swallowtailed letter D signal pennant.


title: Flag of Germany

text: West of the Oder–Neisse line, the German states were reorganised along the lines of the zones of occupation, and new state governments were established. Within the American zone, the northern halves of the former states of Württemberg and Baden were merged to form Württemberg-Baden in 1946. As its flag, Württemberg-Baden adopted the black-red-gold tricolour. The choice of these colours was not based on the historical use of the tricolour, but the simple addition of gold to Württemberg's colours of red and black. Coincidentally, Baden's colours were red and yellow, so the colour choice could be mistaken for a combination of the two flags. In 1952, Württemberg-Baden became part of the modern German state of Baden-Württemberg, whose flag is black and gold.


title: Flag of Germany

text: Two other states that were created after the war, Rhineland-Palatinate (French zone) and Lower Saxony (British zone), chose to use the black-red-gold tricolour as their flag, defaced with the state's coat of arms. These two states were formed from parts of other states, and no colour combinations from these previous states were accepted as a new state flag. This led to the use of the black-red-gold for two reasons: the colours did not relate particularly to any one of the previous states, and using the old flag from the Weimar Republic was intended to be a symbol of the new democracy.


title: Flag of Germany

text: With relations deteriorating between the Soviet Union and the United States, the three western Allies met in March 1948 to merge their zones of occupation and allow the formation of what became the Federal Republic of Germany, commonly known as West Germany. Meanwhile, the eastern Soviet zone became the German Democratic Republic, commonly known as East Germany.


title: Flag of Germany

text: During the preparation of the new constitution for West Germany, discussions regarding its national symbols took place in August 1948 during a meeting at Herrenchiemsee. Although there were objections to the creation of a national flag before reunification with the east, it was decided to proceed. This decision was primarily motivated by the proposed constitution by the eastern SED in November 1946, where black-red-gold were suggested as the colours for a future German republic.


title: Flag of Germany

text: While there were other suggestions for the new flag for West Germany, the final choice was between two designs, both using black-red-gold. The Social Democrats proposed the re-introduction of the old Weimar flag, while the conservative parties such as the CDU/CSU and the German Party proposed a suggestion by Josef Wirmer, a member of the (parliamentary council) and future advisor of chancellor Konrad Adenauer. Wirmer suggested a variant of the 1944 "Resistance" flag (using the black-red-gold scheme in a Nordic Cross pattern) designed by his brother and 20 July co-conspirator Josef. The tricolour was ultimately selected, largely to illustrate the continuity between the Weimar Republic and this new German state. With the enactment of the (West) German constitution on 23 May 1949, the black-red-gold tricolour was readopted as the flag for the Federal Republic of Germany.


title: Flag of Germany

text: In 1955, the inhabitants of the French-administered Saar Protectorate voted to join West Germany. Since its establishment as a separate French protectorate in 1947, the Saar had a white Nordic cross on a blue and red background as its flag. To demonstrate the commitment of the Saar to be a part of West Germany, a new flag was selected on 9 July 1956: the black-red-gold tricolour defaced with the new coat of arms, also proposed on this day. This flag came into force on 1 January 1957, upon the establishment of the Saarland as a state of West Germany.


title: Flag of Germany

text: While the use of black-red-gold had been suggested in the Soviet zone in 1946, the Second People's Congress in 1948 decided to adopt the old black-white-red tricolour as a national flag for East Germany. This choice was based on the use of these colours by the National Committee for a Free Germany, a German anti-Nazi organisation that operated in the Soviet Union in the last two years of the war. In 1949, following a suggestion from Friedrich Ebert, Jr., the black-red-gold tricolour was instead selected as the flag of the German Democratic Republic upon the formation of this state on 7 October 1949. From 1949 to 1959, the flags of both West and East Germany were identical. On 1 October 1959, the East German government changed its flag with the addition of its coat of arms. In West Germany, these changes were seen as a deliberate attempt to divide the two Germanies. Displaying this flag in West Germany and West Berlin—where it became known as the (divider-flag)—was seen as a breach of the constitution and subsequently banned until the late 1960s.


title: Flag of Germany

text: From 1956 to 1964, West and East Germany attended the Winter and Summer Olympic Games as a single team, known as the United Team of Germany. After the East German national flag was changed in 1959, neither country accepted the flag of the other. As a compromise, a new flag was used by the United Team of Germany from 1960 to 1964, featuring the black-red-gold tricolour defaced with white Olympic rings in the red stripe. In 1968 the teams from the two German states entered separately, but both used the same German Olympic flag. From 1972 to 1988, the separate West and East German teams used their respective national flags.


title: Flag of Germany

text: After the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, many East Germans cut the coat of arms out of their flags, as Hungarians had done in 1956 and as Romanians would soon do during the fall of Ceaușescu. The widespread act of removing the coat of arms from the East German flag implied the plain black-red-gold tricolour as symbol for a united and democratic Germany. Finally, on 3 October 1990, as the area of the German Democratic Republic was absorbed into the Federal Republic of Germany, the black-red-gold tricolour became the flag of a reunified Germany. In 1998, the Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship was formed. The duty of this organisation, directly responsible to the federal government, is to examine the consequences of the former East German regime. As its logo, the foundation used an East German flag with the Communist coat of arms cut out.


title: Flag of Germany

text: The old black-white-red tricolour of the German Empire is still used by monarchists and those members of German royalty who long for the peaceful reintroduction of a German democratic monarchy. This use of the old flag is almost completely overshadowed by its prevalent use by the far right; since the aforementioned ban on all Nazi symbolism (e. g. the swastika), the "Schutzstaffel's" (SS) double sig rune, etc.) is still in effect within today's Germany, the far right have been forced to forego any Nazi flags and instead use the old imperial flag, which the Nazis themselves banned in 1935.


title: Flag of Germany

text: In Germany, the use of the flag and other national symbols has been relatively low for most of the time since World War II – a reaction against the widespread use of flags by the Nazi Party and against nationalistic fervour in general. During the 2006 FIFA World Cup, which took place in Germany, public use of the national flag increased drastically. This explosion in the flag's occurrence in day-to-day life was initially greeted by many Germans with a mixture of surprise and apprehension. The decades-old fear that German flag-waving and national pride was inextricably associated with its Nazi past was dismissed by the end of the tournament by Germans and non-Germans alike. As many Germans regarded showing their flag as part of support for their own team in the tournament, most flags disappeared after the end of a tournament, sometimes due to administrative decisions.


title: Flag of Germany

text: By the time of Germany's World Cup victory in 2014, usage of the German flag increased periodically. In the following, the display of German flag colours, even outside stadiums, was regularly limited to the period of major sporting events.


title: Flag of Germany

text: With the rise of nationalist currents (Pegida, AfD, etc.) and their showing of the German flag as a symbol of their nationalism, the flag again became more widespread but also more contentious in everyday life. Mainstream society remains hesitant to use the colours.


title: Ajax (programming)

text: Ajax (also AJAX ; short for "Asynchronous JavaScript and XML") is a set of web development techniques that uses various web technologies on the client-side to create asynchronous web applications. With Ajax, web applications can send and retrieve data from a server asynchronously (in the background) without interfering with the display and behaviour of the existing page. By decoupling the data interchange layer from the presentation layer, Ajax allows web pages and, by extension, web applications, to change content dynamically without the need to reload the entire page. In practice, modern implementations commonly utilize JSON instead of XML.


title: Ajax (programming)

text: Ajax is not a technology, but rather a programming concept. HTML and CSS can be used in combination to mark up and style information. The webpage can be modified by JavaScript to dynamically display—and allow the user to interact with the new information. The built-in XMLHttpRequest object is used to execute Ajax on webpages, allowing websites to load content onto the screen without refreshing the page. Ajax is not a new technology, nor is it a new language. Instead, it is existing technologies used in a new way.


title: Ajax (programming)

text: In the early-to-mid 1990s, most Websites were based on complete HTML pages. Each user action required a complete new page to be loaded from the server. This process was inefficient, as reflected by the user experience: all page content disappeared, then the new page appeared. Each time the browser reloaded a page because of a partial change, all the content had to be re-sent, even though only some of the information had changed. This placed additional load on the server and made bandwidth a limiting factor in performance.


title: Ajax (programming)

text: In 1996, the iframe tag was introduced by Internet Explorer; like the object element, it can load or fetch content asynchronously. In 1998, the Microsoft Outlook Web Access team developed the concept behind the XMLHttpRequest scripting object. It appeared as XMLHTTP in the second version of the MSXML library, which shipped with Internet Explorer 5.0 in March 1999.


title: Ajax (programming)

text: The functionality of the Windows XMLHTTP ActiveX control in IE 5 was later implemented by Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Opera, Google Chrome, and other browsers as the XMLHttpRequest JavaScript object. Microsoft adopted the native XMLHttpRequest model as of Internet Explorer 7. The ActiveX version is still supported in Internet Explorer, but not in Microsoft Edge. The utility of these background HTTP requests and asynchronous Web technologies remained fairly obscure until it started appearing in large scale online applications such as Outlook Web Access (2000) and Oddpost (2002).


title: Ajax (programming)

text: Google made a wide deployment of standards-compliant, cross browser Ajax with Gmail (2004) and Google Maps (2005). In October 2004 Kayak.com's public beta release was among the first large-scale e-commerce uses of what their developers at that time called "the xml http thing". This increased interest in Ajax among web program developers.


title: Ajax (programming)

text: The term "AJAX" was publicly used on 18 February 2005 by Jesse James Garrett in an article titled "Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications", based on techniques used on Google pages.


title: Ajax (programming)

text: On 5 April 2006, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) released the first draft specification for the XMLHttpRequest object in an attempt to create an official Web standard.


title: Ajax (programming)

text: The latest draft of the XMLHttpRequest object was published on 6 October 2016, and the XMLHttpRequest specification is now a living standard.


title: Ajax (programming)

text: The term "Ajax" has come to represent a broad group of Web technologies that can be used to implement a Web application that communicates with a server in the background, without interfering with the current state of the page. In the article that coined the term Ajax, Jesse James Garrett explained that the following technologies are incorporated:


title: Ajax (programming)

text: Since then, however, there have been a number of developments in the technologies used in an Ajax application, and in the definition of the term Ajax itself. XML is no longer required for data interchange and, therefore, XSLT is no longer required for the manipulation of data. JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is often used as an alternative format for data interchange, although other formats such as preformatted HTML or plain text can also be used. A variety of popular JavaScript libraries, including JQuery, include abstractions to assist in executing Ajax requests.


title: Ajax (programming)

text: Fetch is a new native JavaScript API. According to Google Developers Documentation, "Fetch makes it easier to make web requests and handle responses than with the older XMLHttpRequest."


title: Chaz Bono

text: Chaz Salvatore Bono (born Chastity Sun Bono; March 4, 1969) is an American writer, musician and actor. His parents are entertainers Sonny Bono and Cher, and he became widely known in appearances as a child on their television show, "The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour".


title: Chaz Bono

text: Bono is a trans man. In 1995, while then identifying as a woman, and several years after being outed as lesbian by the tabloid press, Bono publicly self-identified as a lesbian in a cover story in a leading American gay monthly magazine, "The Advocate". Bono eventually went on to discuss the process of coming out to oneself and others in two books. "Family Outing: A Guide to the Coming Out Process for Gays, Lesbians, and Their Families" (1998) includes his coming-out account. The memoir "The End of Innocence" (2003) discusses his outing, music career, and partner Joan's death from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.


title: Chaz Bono

text: Between 2008 and 2010, Bono underwent female-to-male gender transition. A two-part "Entertainment Tonight" feature in June 2009 explained that his transition had started a year before. In May 2010, he legally changed his gender and name. A documentary on Bono's experience, "Becoming Chaz", was screened at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and later made its television debut on the Oprah Winfrey Network.


title: Chaz Bono

text: Bono was born in Los Angeles, California, the only child of Cher and Sonny Bono of the pop duo Sonny & Cher, stars of a TV variety show on which the young child often appeared. Bono was named after the film "Chastity", which was produced by Sonny and in which Cher (in her first solo role in a feature film) played a bisexual woman.


title: Chaz Bono

text: Bono was enrolled at the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in New York City. Bono came out to both parents as a lesbian at age 18. In "Family Outing", Bono wrote that, "as a child, I always felt there was something different about me. I'd look at other girls my age and feel perplexed by their obvious interest in the latest fashion, which boy in class was the cutest, and who looked the most like cover girl Christie Brinkley. When I was 13, I finally found a name for exactly how I was different. I realized I was gay."


title: Chaz Bono

text: Bono began a short music career in 1988 with the band Ceremony, which released one album, "Hang Out Your Poetry", in 1993. The band featured Bono on vocals, acoustic guitar, and percussion. Other members were Steve March Tormé (backup vocals), Heidi Shink a.k.a. Chance, Pete McRae, Steve Bauman, Louis Ruiz, and Bryn Mathieu. All but one of the band's songs were written or co-written by Bono, Shink, and Mark Hudson. They used no synthesizers or digital effects on the album; Shink noted, "We turned our back on technology. [ ... ] It's reminiscent of the 60s, but more a tip of the hat than emulating it. We took the music we love and rejuvenated it, made it 90s." Critical reception of the album was lukewarm, with Roch Parisien of Allmusic describing "Hang Out Your Poetry" as a mildly psychedelic take on early 1990s pop, "pleasant, accessible, well-produced ear-candy that's ultimately toothless".


title: Chaz Bono

text: The songs "Could've Been Love" and "Ready for Love" were released as singles from the album. Sonny and Cher also recorded backing vocals for the track "Livin' It Up" on the album.


title: Chaz Bono

text: In April 1995, Bono came out as a lesbian in an interview with "The Advocate", a national gay and lesbian magazine. The 1998 book "Family Outing" detailed how Bono's coming out "catapulted me into a political role that has transformed my life, providing me with affirmation as a lesbian, as a woman, and as an individual." In the same book, Bono reported that Cher, who was both a gay icon and an ally of LGBT communities, was quite uncomfortable with the news at first and "went ballistic" before coming to terms with it: "By August 1996, one year after I came out publicly, my mother had progressed so far that she agreed to 'come out' herself on the cover of "The Advocate" as the proud mother of a lesbian daughter." Cher has since become an outspoken LGBT rights activist.


title: Chaz Bono

text: Bono's paternal relationship became strained after Sonny became a Republican Congressman from California. The differences in their political views separated them, and the two had not spoken for more than a year at the time of Sonny's fatal skiing accident in January 1998.


title: Chaz Bono

text: Bono worked as a writer at large for "The Advocate". As a social activist, Bono became a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, promoted National Coming Out Day, campaigned for the reelection of Bill Clinton for US president, campaigned against the Defense of Marriage Act, and served as Entertainment Media Director for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). Bono was a team captain for "Celebrity Fit Club 3" (2006) and was supported by girlfriend Jennifer Elia, who orchestrated exercise and training sessions.


title: Chaz Bono

text: In June 2016, the Human Rights Campaign released a video in tribute to the victims of the Orlando nightclub shooting; in the video, Bono and others told the stories of the people killed there.


title: Chaz Bono

text: In mid-2008, Bono began undergoing a physical and social transition from female to male. This was confirmed in June 2009 by his publicist, who identified Bono's name as "Chaz Bono" and said, "It is Chaz's hope that his choice to transition will open the hearts and minds of the public regarding this issue, just as his coming out did." GLAAD and the Empowering Spirits Foundation were quick to offer praise and support for the announcement. Bono's legal transition was completed on May 6, 2010, when a California court granted his request for a gender and name change. Bono made "Becoming Chaz", a documentary film about his transition that premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. The Oprah Winfrey Network acquired the rights to the documentary and debuted it on May 10, 2011.


title: Chaz Bono

text: In September 2011, he became a competitor on the 13th season of the U.S. version of "Dancing with the Stars", paired with professional ballroom dancer Lacey Schwimmer. The duo was eliminated on October 25, 2011. This was the first time an openly transgender man starred on a major network television show for something unrelated to being transgender.


title: BlacKkKlansman

text: BlacKkKlansman is a 2018 American biographical black comedy crime thriller film directed by Spike Lee and written by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott and Lee, based on the 2014 memoir "Black Klansman" by Ron Stallworth. The film stars John David Washington as Stallworth, along with Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, and Topher Grace. Set in the 1970s in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the plot follows the first African-American detective in the city's police department as he sets out to infiltrate and expose the local Ku Klux Klan chapter.


title: BlacKkKlansman

text: The film was produced by Spike Lee, Raymond Mansfield, Shaun Redick, Sean McKittrick, Jason Blum, and Jordan Peele. QC Entertainment purchased the film rights to the book in 2015. Lee signed on as director in September 2017. Much of the cast joined the following month, and filming began in New York State.


title: BlacKkKlansman

text: "BlacKkKlansman" premiered on May 14, 2018, at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prix. It was theatrically released in the United States on August 10, 2018, a day before the first anniversary of the Unite the Right rally. The film received acclaim from critics, who praised Lee's direction, the performances (particularly of Washington and Driver) and timely themes, as well as noting it as a return to form for Lee. It received six nominations at the 91st Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director (Lee's first directing nomination), and Best Supporting Actor for Driver, and won for Best Adapted Screenplay, making it Lee's first competitive Academy Award. The American Film Institute also selected it as one of the top 10 films of 2018, and at the 76th Golden Globe Awards it earned four nominations, including Best Motion Picture – Drama.


title: BlacKkKlansman

text: In 1972, Ron Stallworth is hired as the first black officer in the Colorado Springs Police Department. Assigned to work in the records room, he tires of being bullied and applies to be an undercover officer. He is assigned to infiltrate a local rally where national civil rights leader Kwame Ture (a.k.a. Stokely Carmichael) is speaking. At the rally, Stallworth meets Patrice Dumas, president of the Black Student Union at Colorado College. While taking Ture to his hotel, Patrice is stopped by patrolman Andy Landers, a racist officer in Stallworth's precinct, who threatens Ture and gropes Patrice.


title: BlacKkKlansman

text: Following the rally, Stallworth is reassigned to the intelligence division. After reading about a local division of the Ku Klux Klan in the newspaper, he calls posing as white. He speaks with Walter Breachway, the president of the Colorado Springs chapter, but soon realizes that not only did he use his real name, but he must also meet the Klan members. Stallworth recruits his Jewish coworker, Flip Zimmerman, to impersonate him and meet the KKK members while he continues posing as white on the phone. Under Stallworth's identity, Zimmerman meets Walter, the slightly more reckless and unstable Felix Kendrickson (and later his wife Connie), and Ivanhoe, who cryptically refers to an upcoming terrorist attack.


title: BlacKkKlansman

text: Calling Ku Klux Klan headquarters in Louisiana to expedite his membership, Stallworth begins regular phone conversations with Grand Wizard David Duke. Kendrickson suspects Zimmerman of being Jewish and tries to force him to take a polygraph test at gunpoint, but Stallworth, overhearing everything on the wire Zimmerman is wearing, breaks the Kendricksons' kitchen window as a distraction. Stallworth begins dating Patrice without telling her that he is a police officer. After passing information to the Army CID about active-duty members, he learns from an FBI agent that two members are personnel stationed at NORAD.


title: BlacKkKlansman

text: Duke visits Colorado Springs for Stallworth's induction into the Klan. Over the real Stallworth's protests, he is assigned to a protection detail for David Duke. Once Zimmerman, masquerading as Stallworth, is initiated, Connie leaves the ceremony to place an explosive device at a local civil rights rally. The real Stallworth realizes her intentions and alerts local police officers. When Connie notices a heavy police presence at the rally, she puts Felix's backup plan into action and plants the device at Patrice's house, leaving it under her car when it will not fit into the mailbox. Stallworth tackles her as she tries to flee, but uniformed officers detain and beat him despite his protests that he is working undercover.


title: BlacKkKlansman

text: The bombmaker, Walker, recognizes Zimmerman from a prior arrest and informs Felix. He, Felix, and Ivanhoe drive to the house and park next to Patrice's car without realizing that the device is hidden underneath. When they detonate it, the explosion kills all three. Zimmerman arrives, frees Stallworth, and arrests Connie. While Stallworth is celebrating the closed case that night with Patrice, Landers arrives and harasses the two, remorselessly admitting to his assault on Patrice; Stallworth then reveals he is wearing a wire, and Police Chief Bridges arrives and arrests Landers for police brutality.


title: BlacKkKlansman

text: Bridges congratulates the team for their success but orders them to end their investigation and destroy the records. Stallworth receives a call from Duke, and he insultingly tells Duke he is black before hanging up. While Patrice and Stallworth discuss their future, they are interrupted by a knock on the door. Through the window in the hallway, they see a flaming cross on a hillside surrounded by KKK members. The film then cuts to actual footage of the 2017 Unite the Right rally, the hit and run that followed, and where a still-respected David Duke is a speaker, and ends with a dedication to Heather Heyer (the only person killed in the attack), and an upside-down American flag that fades to black and white.


title: BlacKkKlansman

text: In July 2015, screenwriters/co-producers Charlie Wachtel and David Rabinowitz discovered the book "Black Klansman" by Ron Stallworth. They interviewed Stallworth and wrote a spec screenplay, then pitched the script to producers Shaun Redick and Ray Mansfield. They brought the property to QC Entertainment, which had co-produced the successful 2017 film "Get Out". QC again teamed up with Jason Blum's company Blumhouse Productions, and Jordan Peele's company Monkeypaw Productions, to produce the project.


title: BlacKkKlansman

text: In September of that year, Spike Lee signed on as director and John David Washington was in negotiations to star. The following month, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, Topher Grace, and Corey Hawkins had joined the cast. In November, Paul Walter Hauser, Jasper Pääkkönen, and Ryan Eggold joined the cast, with Ashlie Atkinson joining a month later.


title: BlacKkKlansman

text: Filming began in October 2017. Ossining, New York, was one location used in October. Filming locations also included the Rockland County hamlet of Garnerville, New York, where exterior shots of one of the Colorado Springs police stations were filmed.


title: BlacKkKlansman

text: Harry Belafonte appears in the film recounting the lynching of Jesse Washington; according to Lee, he commanded his crew on the day of filming Belafonte's scene to dress for the occasion in suits and dresses to honor Belafonte.


title: BlacKkKlansman

text: Lee ends the film with a tribute to anti-fascist counter-protester Heather Heyer, who was killed on August 12, 2017, in the Charlottesville car attack during the Unite the Right rally.


title: BlacKkKlansman

text: On April 12, 2018, the film was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, where it premiered on May 14. It opened in the United States on August 10, 2018, which was chosen to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the Charlottesville rally.


title: BlacKkKlansman

text: "BlacKkKlansman" grossed $49.3 million in the United States and Canada, and $44.1 million in other territories, for a total worldwide gross of $93.4 million, against a production budget of $15 million.


title: BlacKkKlansman

text: In the United States and Canada, "BlacKkKlansman" was released, and was projected to gross around $10 million from 1,512 theaters in its opening weekend. It made $3.6 million on its first day (including $670,000 from Thursday night previews). It went on to debut to $10.8 million, finishing fifth at the box office and marking Lee's best opening weekend since "Inside Man" ($29 million) in 2006. It made $7.4 million in its second weekend and $5.3 million in its third, finishing seventh and eighth, respectively.


title: BlacKkKlansman

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads, ""BlacKkKlansman" uses history to offer bitingly trenchant commentary on current events—and brings out some of Spike Lee's hardest-hitting work in decades along the way." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 83 out of 100, based on 56 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it an 85% positive score and a 67% "definite recommend".


title: BlacKkKlansman

text: Peter Bradshaw of "The Guardian" gave the film three out of five stars, writing: "It's an entertaining spectacle but the brilliant tonal balance in something like Jordan Peele's satire "Get Out" leaves this looking a little exposed. Yet it responds fiercely, contemptuously to the crassness at the heart of the Trump regime and gleefully pays it back in its own coin". For "IndieWire", David Ehrlich gave the film a grade of "B+" and wrote that it is "far more frightening than it is funny", and "packages such weighty and ultra-relevant subjects into the form of a wildly uneven but consistently entertaining night at the movies".


title: BlacKkKlansman

text: A. O. Scott, writing for "The New York Times", saw the film as both political and provocative in opening up discussion on timely subject matter following Charlottesville. He stated, "Committed anti-racists can sit quietly or laugh politely when hateful things are said. Epithets uttered in irony can be repeated in earnest. The most shocking thing about Flip's (Adam Driver's undercover detective role) imposture is how easy it seems, how natural he looks and sounds. This unnerving authenticity is partly testament to Mr. Driver's ability to tuck one performance inside another, but it also testifies to a stark and discomforting truth. Maybe not everyone who is white is a racist, but racism is what makes us white. Don't sleep on this movie."


title: BlacKkKlansman

text: In his review of the film for "Vulture", David Edelstein found the film to be a potent antidote for previous films that Lee sees as unduly supportive of the racist viewpoint in the past, such as Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation". Edelstein stated: "Lee himself has a propagandist streak, and he knows nothing ever sold the message of white emasculation and the existential necessity of keeping blacks down as well as Griffith's 1915 film. It revived the Klan and—insult to injury—is still reckoned a landmark of narrative filmmaking. If there were no other reason to make "BlackkKlansman", this one would be good enough."


title: BlacKkKlansman

text: Filmmaker Boots Riley, whose feature film debut "Sorry to Bother You" also premiered in 2018, criticized the film for its political perspective. While Riley called the craft of the film "masterful" and cited Lee as a major influence on his own work, he felt that the film was dishonestly marketed as a true story and criticized its attempts to "make a cop the protagonist in the fight against racist oppression", when Black Americans face structural racism "from the police on a day-to-day basis". In particular, Riley alleged that the film glossed over Stallworth's time spent working for COINTELPRO to "sabotage a Black radical organization" and objected to the film's choices to portray Stallworth's partner as Jewish and to fictionalize a bombing "to make the police seem like heroes". Lee responded in an interview with "The Times" on August 24, stating that while his films "have been very critical of the police ... I'm never going to say that all police are corrupt, that all police hate people of color."


title: BlacKkKlansman

text: "BlacKkKlansman" won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival. It was subsequently nominated for four Golden Globes, including Best Motion Picture – Drama. Lee was nominated for Outstanding Feature Film by the Directors Guild of America and the producers were nominated for the Producers Guild of America Award for Best Theatrical Motion Picture.


title: BlacKkKlansman

text: The film was also nominated for four Critics Choice Awards, including Best Picture, seven Satellite Awards, including Best Director for Lee, and is nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male for Driver, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards, including Outstanding Male Actor for Washington. The American Film Institute also included it in its Top 10 Films of the Year.


title: BlacKkKlansman

text: "BlacKkKlansman" was nominated for six Academy Awards and won Best Adapted Screenplay. Nominations included Best Picture, Lee for Best Director, and Driver for Best Supporting Actor. The film was also nominated for Best Film Editing and composer Terence Blanchard was nominated for Best Original Score.


title: Bret Hart

text: Bret Hart (born July 2, 1957) is a Canadian-American retired professional wrestler, currently signed to WWE under a legend's contract. A member of the Hart wrestling family and a second-generation wrestler, he has an amateur wrestling background, wrestling at Ernest Manning High School and Mount Royal College. A major international draw within professional wrestling, he has been credited with changing the perception of mainstream North-American professional wrestling in the early 1990s by bringing technical in-ring performance to the fore. Hart is widely regarded as one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time; Sky Sports noted that his legacy is that of "one of, if not the greatest, to have ever graced the squared circle". For the majority of his career, Hart used the nickname "Hitman".


title: Bret Hart

text: Hart joined his father Stu Hart's promotion Stampede Wrestling in 1976 as a referee and made his in-ring debut in 1978. He gained championship success during the 1980s and 1990s in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE), where he helmed The Hart Foundation stable. He left for World Championship Wrestling (WCW) following the controversial "Montreal Screwjob" in November 1997, where he remained until October 2000. Having been inactive from in-ring competition since January 2000, owing to a December 1999 concussion, Hart officially retired in October 2000, shortly after his departure from the company. He returned to sporadic in-ring competition from 2010 to 2011 with WWE, where he won his final championship, headlined the 2010 SummerSlam event, and served as the general manager of Raw. Throughout his career, Hart headlined WrestleMania IX, X, and XII, and participated in the main event of Starrcade 1997 and 1999 – as a special enforcer and referee in the former. Hart was inducted into the "Wrestling Observer Newsletter" Hall of Fame upon its inception in 1996, while still an active performer.


title: Bret Hart

text: Hart has held championships in five decades from the 1970s to the 2010s, with a total of 32 held throughout his career, and 17 held between the WWF/WWE and WCW. Among other accolades, he is a five-time WWF Champion and a two-time WCW World Heavyweight Champion. Hart has most combined days as WWF Champion during the 1990s (654) and was the first WCW World Heavyweight Champion born outside the United States. He is the second WWF Triple Crown Champion and fifth (with Goldberg) WCW Triple Crown Champion, and the first man to win both the WWF and WCW Triple Crown Championships. Hart is also the 1994 Royal Rumble match winner (with Lex Luger), and the only two-time King of the Ring, winning the 1991 tournament and the first King of the Ring pay-per-view in 1993. Stone Cold Steve Austin, with whom Hart headlined multiple pay-per-view events as part of an acclaimed rivalry from 1996 to 1997, inducted him into the WWE Hall of Fame class of 2006. In 2019, Hart became one of seven people to enter the WWE Hall of Fame twice, when he was inducted again as a member of The Hart Foundation, with brother-in-law Jim Neidhart.


title: Bret Hart

text: Outside of wrestling, Hart has appeared in numerous films and television shows such as "The Simpsons" as well as featuring in several documentaries, both about himself specifically and others about his family or the wrestling industry in general. Hart also helped found and lent his name to the major junior ice hockey team the Calgary Hitmen and has written two biographies along with a weekly column for the "Calgary Sun" for over a decade. After his retirement, Hart has spent much of his time on charitable efforts concerning stroke recovery and cancer awareness, due to his personal experiences with the two. Hart chronicled his wrestling life and the Montreal Screwjob in his best-selling autobiography.


title: Bret Hart

text: The eighth child of wrestling patriarch Stu Hart and his wife Helen, Bret Hart was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada into the Hart wrestling family. He is of Greek descent through his maternal grandmother and of Irish descent through his maternal grandfather. His father was mainly of Ulster Scot descent but also had Scottish and English ancestry. Hart is a dual citizen of Canada and the United States since his mother Helen was born in New York. Hart has stated that he considers himself to be North American and that he is equally proud of his U.S. and Canadian nationality. His maternal grandfather was long-distance runner Harry Smith.


title: Bret Hart

text: Hart grew up in a household with eleven siblings, seven brothers Smith, Bruce, Keith, Wayne, Dean, Ross and Owen, as well as four sisters, Ellie, Georgia, Alison and Diana. As a child he was the closest with his older brother Dean who was the nearest to him in age of all his older brothers, being three years his senior. Together they would often fight with Bret's two older sisters, Ellie, who was two years older, and Georgia, who was one year older. Hart's family were non-denominational Christians, but he and all of his siblings were baptized by a local Catholic priest.


title: Bret Hart

text: Hart spent the vast majority of his childhood in the Hart family mansion which was owned by his father. During one period his father was housing a bear known as Terrible Ted chained under the building, the bear had had all of its teeth removed and Hart would sometimes as a very young child let the bear lick ice cream off his toes since he thought it was a good way to keep them clean.


title: Bret Hart

text: His introduction to professional wrestling came at an early age. As a child, he witnessed his father training future wrestlers like Superstar Billy Graham in the Dungeon, his household basement which served as a training room. Before school, Hart's father, also a wrestling promoter, had him hand out fliers to local wrestling shows. In the 1998 documentary "", Hart reflected on his father's discipline, describing how Stu uttered morbid words while inflicting excruciating submission holds that left broken blood vessels in Bret's eyes. Hart claimed his father had an otherwise pleasant demeanour.


title: Bret Hart

text: Hart's first work in wrestling involved pulling out lucky numbers out of a metal box during intermission at the Stampede Wrestling shows when he was four years old. When he got slightly older, he would sell programs to the shows, something all Hart's seven brothers would do. He would often compete for customers with his little brother Ross since the fans would often want to buy from the youngest Hart child.


title: Bret Hart

text: Like his father, Hart was an excellent amateur wrestler since an early age, having begun training as a nine-year-old. At Ernest Manning High School, Hart became a standout student in the amateur wrestling division. Hart has stated that he joined the wrestling team "for the sole reason that my dad expected me to... no-one asked me to." He won significant championships in tournaments throughout Alberta, including the 1974 city championships in Calgary. He scored a victory over competitor Bob Eklund – who would go on to become a Canadian Interuniversity Sport national champion, winning "Outstanding Wrestler of the Year 1980–1981" – en route to the championship. Hart describes the moment where he displayed the medal to his father, Stu, as a "powerful moment", and that the relationship with his father "took a different direction from that point on." Hart considered the medals to be one of his most prized possessions.


title: Bret Hart

text: By 1977, Hart was collegiate champion at Mount Royal College, where he was studying filmmaking; his coaches and other people around him felt that he had shown sufficient promise to compete at the following year's Commonwealth Games and encouraged him to begin training for the event. Hart, however, was beginning to find amateur wrestling unrewarding amid injuries and fluctuating weight. Stu still believed his son capable of making it to the Olympic or Commonwealth Games if he put forth the effort. Hart has expressed that he believed that even if he became an exceptionally successful sports wrestler it would not have led to a career afterwards which he was interested in, stating that he thought that he would end up as a wrestling coach or phys-ed teacher at a high-school if he pursued the olympic route. Hart felt that the only way to give up amateur wrestling without disappointing his father was to become a professional wrestler. His college grades became poorer as his interest in filmmaking waned; he dedicated himself to professional wrestling and began training with his father's Stampede Wrestling promotion. Hart has spoken of how helpful his amateur background was in his professional wrestling career, and also of what a positive effect amateur wrestling has on junior high school and high school-aged boys in terms of building self-confidence.


title: Bret Hart

text: In 1976, Hart began working for his father's Stampede Wrestling promotion in Calgary. Hart first began helping the promotion by refereeing matches. At a 1978 event in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, a wrestler was unable to perform his match, forcing Stu to ask his son to stand in as a replacement. Before long, he became a regular contender, eventually partnering with brother Keith to win the Stampede International Tag Team Championship four times.


title: Bret Hart

text: Hart gained some of his most prominent experience with Japanese combatants and real-life trainers Mr. Hito and Mr. Sakurada. Hart also had high-impact matches against Tom Billington, who was better known by his in-ring name as the Dynamite Kid. In the midst of wrestling alongside his family, Hart made a point not to ride on the shoulders of his elders. Hart faithfully jobbed as requested of him, taking pride in the believability of his performances. As he said himself, "No one could take a shit-kicking like Bret Hart". Although he dreaded partaking in interviews and speaking in front of a crowd, Hart went on to win the promotion's top titles, including two British Commonwealth Mid-Heavyweight Championships, five International Tag Team Championships, and six North American Heavyweight Championships. Hart also wrestled Tiger Mask in New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW), a promotion for whom he often wrestled during the early to mid-1980s. He remained one of Stampede's most successful performers until the promotion, along with several wrestlers, was acquired by the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in August 1984.


title: Bret Hart

text: Hart was asked to start out in the WWF as a singles wrestler with a cowboy gimmick but refused, stating that where he comes from "if you called yourself a cowboy, you'd better be one." He made his televised WWF debut on August 29, 1984, in a tag team match where he teamed with the Dynamite Kid. On September 11, in Poughkeepsie, New York, Hart defeated Aldo Marino in his televised debut singles match, which aired on the September 29 episode of "Superstars of Wrestling". In 1985, after acquiring the nickname of "Hit Man", he requested to join Jimmy Hart's heel stable, The Hart Foundation, which included brother-in-law Jim Neidhart. Bret began to increasingly team with Neidhart, in order to build the promotion's tag team division. The "Hart Foundation" name then became exclusive to Bret, Neidhart and manager Jimmy Hart, due to the similar family names of both team members and their manager. Bret's agile, technical style – which earned him the moniker "The Excellence of Execution" (coined by Gorilla Monsoon) – created a contrast with his partner Neidhart's strength and brawling skills. During this time, Hart began wearing his signature sunglasses, initially to conceal his nervousness during promos. Hart considers his microphone work to have been a weakness throughout his early career.


title: Bret Hart

text: In 1986, Hart began his first singles program with Ricky Steamboat, and in a singles match originally planned for WrestleMania 2, he lost to Steamboat at the Boston Garden on March 8, 1986, which would be included on Hart's 2005 DVD as one of his all-time favourite matches. At WrestleMania 2, Hart instead participated in a 20-man battle royal which was eventually won by André the Giant. He lost to Steamboat again on the July 28, 1986 episode of "Prime Time Wrestling". Hart headlined his first televised WWF card when he beat Ray Rougeau, of The Fabulous Rougeau Brothers, in the main event of the November 3, 1986 episode of "Prime Time Wrestling".


title: Bret Hart

text: The Hart Foundation won their first of two WWF Tag Team Championship on the February 7, 1987 episode of "Superstars of Wrestling" when they defeated The British Bulldogs. They then teamed with Danny Davis to face The British Bulldogs and Tito Santana at WrestleMania III. They won the match when Davis pinned Davey Boy Smith after hitting him with Jimmy Hart's megaphone.


title: Bret Hart

text: The Hart Foundation adopted the nickname, "The Pink and Black Attack", which Hart continued to use after the tag team's disbandment. This was in reference to the team's ring attire, as well as Hart's signature mirrored sunglasses, which he would routinely give away to a young audience member before matches, following his face turn in 1988. As Hart's WWF career progressed, he increasingly described himself as "The best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be" (derived from the 1984 film "The Natural"), which he would later justify through three claims: he never injured an opponent through any fault of his own; through the entire course of his career, he missed only one show (as a result of flight difficulties); and that he only once refused to lose a match – his final WWF match with long-time adversary Shawn Michaels at the Survivor Series event in 1997, which culminated in the Montreal Screwjob.


title: Bret Hart

text: The Hart Foundation lost the WWF Tag Team Championship titles to Strike Force on the October 27 episode of "Superstars of Wrestling". Hart subsequently competed in his most high-profile singles contest to date on the November 28, 1987, episode of "Saturday Night's Main Event XIII", when he faced "Macho Man" Randy Savage in a losing effort. He began 1988 with a decisive victory over Paul Roma of The Young Stallions (who had scored an upset victory over The Hart Foundation the previous year) on the January 11 episode of "Prime Time Wrestling", and, at the Royal Rumble in January 1988, was the first man to enter the Royal Rumble match. He lasted 25 minutes and 42 seconds before being eliminated by Don Muraco.


title: Bret Hart

text: Entered into another battle royal at WrestleMania IV, Hart was again one of the final two combatants as he was enlisted by former frequent Stampede opponent Bad News Brown to eliminate Junkyard Dog before Brown turned on Hart, eliminating him to win the event. This turned Hart back into a fan favourite and triggered a feud between the two. Neidhart soon came to Hart's side in the feud, but manager Jimmy Hart discouraged the feud, leading to a fallout between the team and manager. This led to matches pitting Hart against Davis and also his first singles championship opportunity, in which he challenged The Honky Tonk Man for the WWF Intercontinental Heavyweight Championship in the main event of the July 18 episode of "Prime Time Wrestling", with the match ending in a double countout. As relations between the Harts and their former mentor further deteriorated, Jimmy Hart assisted tag team champions Demolition in a successful defence of their belts against the Harts at SummerSlam in August 1988, before enlisting old enemies The Fabulous Rougeau Brothers, who had recently turned heel, to resume their feud with the Harts.


title: Bret Hart

text: At the Royal Rumble in January 1989, The Hart Foundation teamed with Jim Duggan to defeat the Rougeaus and Dino Bravo. They also defeated Greg Valentine and The Honky Tonk Man, who were also managed by Jimmy Hart, at WrestleMania V. At an event in Milan on April 8, 1989, broadcast live on Tele+2, André the Giant requested to work a singles match with Hart, who lost the match, which was later released on his 2013 DVD set, "The Dungeon Collection", but considered André's praise and encouragement after the match to be of key importance in his singles career. He wrestled his first pay-per-view singles match on October 10, losing to Dino Bravo in the first British WWF pay-per-view, which was held at the London Arena and broadcast on Sky Television (Hart was in fact booked to win the match, but incurred a broken sternum, causing an unplanned countout loss).


title: Bret Hart

text: At SummerSlam in August 1989, The Hart Foundation lost a non-title match against then WWF Tag Team Champions The Brain Busters. In the first televised contest of a rivalry that would span Hart's WWF and WCW careers, he lost to Mr. Perfect on the November 6, 1989 episode of "Prime Time Wrestling", when Perfect pulled Hart's tights during a roll-up. In their first ever singles meeting, Shawn Michaels and Hart wrestled to a double countout on the February 11, 1990 episode of the "Wrestling Challenge".


title: Bret Hart

text: After participating at the Royal Rumble in January 1990, The Hart Foundation defeated The Bolsheviks in 19 seconds at WrestleMania VI and began feuding with Demolition, who had just won the WWF Tag Team Championship against The Colossal Connection at WrestleMania VI. At SummerSlam in 1990, The Hart Foundation began their second, and final, WWF Tag Team Championship reign by defeating Demolition members Crush and Smash in a two out of three falls match with some help from Legion of Doom. On October 30, the Hart Foundation lost the title to The Rockers (Marty Jannetty and Shawn Michaels), but a few days later, President Jack Tunney reversed the decision and the win was never acknowledged on television. The Hart Foundation's reign lasted until WrestleMania VII, where they lost to The Nasty Boys, after which the team split.


title: Bret Hart

text: Hart won his first WWF Intercontinental Championship by defeating Mr. Perfect with the Sharpshooter at SummerSlam in 1991, and subsequently won the 1991 King of the Ring tournament on September 7, 1991, at the Providence Civic Center in Providence, Rhode Island. Hart's first pay-per-view title defense occurred at This Tuesday in Texas, where he beat the undefeated Skinner.


title: Bret Hart

text: In January 1992, Hart was placed in a feud with Jacques Rougeau, who by now was wrestling as "The Mountie" and using the gimmick of a power-hungry, corrupt member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. This feud, the first for Hart and Rougeau as singles competitors, came about when the Mountie's manager, Jimmy Hart, threw water on Hart, and The Mountie proceeded to shock Hart with a cattle prod. On January 17, 1992, Hart dropped the Intercontinental Championship to The Mountie. Following the loss, Roddy Piper defeated Mountie with a sleeper hold two days later at the 1992 Royal Rumble, and Bret later pinned Piper for his second Intercontinental Championship at WrestleMania VIII later that year, making him the first wrestler in the WWF – and one of few wrestlers ever – to pin Piper's shoulders to the mat. At a "Wrestling Challenge" taping on July 21, 1992, Hart defeated Shawn Michaels, with the Intercontinental Championship belt suspended above the ring, in the WWF's first ever ladder match. Hart dropped the Intercontinental Championship to his brother-in-law, Davey Boy Smith, in Hart's first WWF pay-per-view main event at SummerSlam in August 1992, held before over 80,000 fans at Wembley Stadium. "Pro Wrestling Illustrated" readers voted it the "Match of the Year", and WWE named the match as the greatest in the history of SummerSlam. Upon induction into the WWE Hall of Fame class of 2006, Hart cited the contest as his favourite match of his career.


title: Bret Hart

text: Hart won the WWF Championship from Ric Flair at a "Superstars" taping at Saskatchewan Place in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan on October 12 of that year, in a match not originally broadcast on WWF television – the match was instead made available on a series of Coliseum/WWE Home Video releases. Hart dislocated one of the fingers on his left hand during the match and popped it back in himself so it would not affect the rest of the match. He made his first successful title defense against Papa Shango on "Saturday Night's Main Event XXXI". He would headline his first pay-per-view as champion with a successful title defense against Shawn Michaels at the 1992 Survivor Series, and defeated Razor Ramon at the 1993 Royal Rumble. He would also defend the title against contenders such as Papa Shango and former champion Ric Flair before losing the title to Yokozuna in his first WrestleMania main event at WrestleMania IX, after interference from Mr. Fuji. Fuji then challenged Hulk Hogan, who had come out to help Hart, to compete for the title; Hogan then won his fifth WWF Championship from Yokozuna. In June, Hart won the first pay-per-view King of the Ring tournament, defeating Razor Ramon, Mr. Perfect, and Bam Bam Bigelow, thus becoming the only two-time King of the Ring. According to Hart, he was scheduled to regain the WWF Championship from Hulk Hogan at SummerSlam, but Hogan chose to drop the title to Yokozuna instead at King of the Ring. Hart instead entered a feud with Jerry "The King" Lawler, who interrupted Hart's coronation, claimed he was the only king, attacked Hart and began a barrage against Hart and his family. The two met at SummerSlam in 1993, to determine the "Undisputed King of the World Wrestling Federation". Hart originally won the match by submission, via the Sharpshooter, but as he would not let go of the hold, the decision was reversed to a Lawler victory by disqualification. Hart and his younger brother, Owen Hart, would also feud with Lawler during 1993 in the United States Wrestling Association (USWA), with Lawler notably defeating Owen for Owen's USWA Unified World Heavyweight Championship. Hart's feud with Lawler was named "Feud of the Year" by "Wrestling Observer Newsletter", and voted "Feud of the Year" by readers of "Pro Wrestling Illustrated".