title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: Elizabeth's response to the lack of marriage prospects was to take Alexander Shubin, a handsome sergeant in the Semyonovsky Life Guards Regiment, as her lover. When Empress Anna found out about this, she banished him to Siberia. After consoling herself, Elizabeth turned to handsome coachmen and footmen for her sexual pleasure. She eventually found a long-term companion in Alexei Razumovsky, a kind-hearted and handsome Ukrainian peasant serf with a good bass voice. Razumovsky had been brought from his village to Saint Petersburg by a nobleman to sing for a church choir, but the Grand Duchess purchased the talented serf from the nobleman for her own choir. A simple-minded man, Razumovsky never showed interest in affairs of state during all the years of his relationship with Elizabeth, which spanned from the days of her obscurity to the height of her power. As the couple was devoted to each other, there is reason to believe that they might even have married in a secret ceremony. In 1742, the Holy Roman Emperor made Razumovsky a count of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1756, Elizabeth made him a prince and field marshal.


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: While Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov remained in power (until September 1727), the government of Elizabeth's adolescent nephew Peter II (reigned 1727–1730) treated her with liberality and distinction. However, the Dolgorukovs, an ancient boyar family, deeply resented Menshikov. With Peter II's attachment to Prince Ivan Dolgorukov and two of their family members on the Supreme State Council, they had the leverage for a successful . Menshikov was arrested, stripped of all his honours and properties, and exiled to northern Siberia, where he died in November 1729. The Dolgorukovs hated the memory of Peter the Great and practically banished his daughter from Court.


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: During the reign of her cousin Anna (1730–1740), Elizabeth was gathering support in the background. Being the daughter of Peter the Great, she enjoyed much support from the Russian Guards regiments. She often visited the elite Guards regiments, marking special events with the officers and acting as godmother to their children. After the death of Empress Anna, the regency of Anna Leopoldovna for the infant Ivan VI was marked by high taxes and economic problems. The French ambassador in Saint Petersburg, the Marquis de La Chétardie was deeply involved in planning a coup to depose the regent, whose foreign policy was opposed to the interests of France, and bribed numerous officers in the Imperial Guard to support Elizabeth's coup. The French adventurer Jean Armand de Lestocq helped her actions according to the advice of the marquis de La Chétardie and the Swedish ambassador, who were particularly interested in toppling the regime of Anna Leopoldovna.


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: On the night of 25 November 1741 (O.S.), Elizabeth seized power with the help of the Preobrazhensky Life Guards Regiment. Arriving at the regimental headquarters wearing a warrior's metal breastplate over her dress and grasping a silver cross, she challenged them: "Whom do you want to serve: me, your natural sovereign, or those who have stolen my inheritance?" Won over, the regiment marched to the Winter Palace and arrested the infant Emperor, his parents, and their own lieutenant-colonel, Count Burkhard Christoph von Munnich. It was a daring coup and, amazingly, succeeded without bloodshed. Elizabeth had vowed that if she became Empress, she would not sign a single death sentence, an extraordinary promise at the time but one that she kept throughout her life.


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: Despite Elizabeth's promise, there was still cruelty in her regime. Although she initially thought of allowing the young tsar and his mother to leave Russia, she imprisoned them later in a Shlisselburg Fortress, worried that they would stir up trouble for her in other parts of Europe. Fearing a coup on Ivan's favour, Elizabeth set about destroying all papers, coins or anything else depicting or mentioning Ivan. She had issued an order that if any attempt were made for the adult Ivan to escape, he was to be eliminated. Catherine the Great upheld the order, and when an attempt was made, he was killed and secretly buried within the fortress.


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: Another case was Countess Natalia Lopukhina. The circumstances of Elizabeth's birth would later be used by her political opponents to challenge her right to the throne on grounds of illegitimacy. When Countess Lopukhina's son, Ivan Lopukhin, complained of Elizabeth in a tavern, he implicated his mother, himself and others in a plot to reinstate Ivan VI as tsar. Ivan Lopukhin was overheard and tortured for information. All male conspirators were sentenced to death while the female conspirators had their tongues removed and were publicly flogged.


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: Elizabeth crowned herself Empress in the Dormition Cathedral on 25 April 1742 (O.S.), which would become standard for all emperors of Russia until 1896. At the age of thirty-three, with relatively little political experience, she found herself at the head of a great empire at one of the most critical periods of its existence. Her proclamation explained that the preceding reigns had led Russia to ruin: "The Russian people have been groaning under the enemies of the Christian faith, but she has delivered them from the degrading foreign oppression."


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: Russia had been under the domination of German advisers, so its Empress exiled the most unpopular of them, including Andrey Osterman and Burkhard Christoph von Münnich. She passed down several pieces of legislation that undid much of the work her father had done to limit the power of the church.


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: With all her shortcomings (documents often waited months for her signature), Elizabeth had inherited her father's genius for government. Her usually keen judgment and her diplomatic tact again and again recalled Peter the Great. What sometimes appeared as irresolution and procrastination was most often a wise suspension of judgment under exceptionally difficult circumstances. From the Russian point of view, her greatness as a stateswoman consisted of her steady appreciation of national interests and her determination to promote them against all obstacles.


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: Despite the substantial changes made by Peter the Great, he had not exercised a really formative influence on the intellectual attitudes of the ruling classes as a whole. Although Elizabeth lacked the early education necessary to flourish as an intellectual (once finding the reading of secular literature to be "injurious to health"), she was clever enough to know its benefits and made considerable groundwork for her eventual successor, Catherine the Great. She made education freely available to all social classes (except for serfs), encouraged establishment of the very first university in Russia founded in Moscow by Mikhail Lomonosov, and helped to finance the establishment of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts.


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: A gifted diplomat, Elizabeth hated bloodshed and conflict and went to great lengths to alter the Russian system of punishment, even outlawing capital punishment. According to historian Robert Nisbet Bain, it was one of her "chief glories that, so far as she was able, she put a stop to that mischievous contention of rival ambitions at Court, which had disgraced the reigns of Peter II, Anna, and Ivan VI, and enabled foreign powers to freely interfere in the domestic affairs of Russia."


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: Elizabeth enjoyed and excelled in architecture, overseeing and financing many construction projects during her reign. One of the many projects from the Italian architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli was the reconstruction of Peterhof Palace, adding several wings between 1745 and 1755. Her most famous creations were the Winter Palace, though she died before its completion, and the Smolny Convent. The Palace is said to contain 1,500 rooms, 1,786 doors, and 1,945 windows, including bureaucratic offices and the Imperial Family's living quarters arranged in two enfilades, from the top of the Jordan Staircase. Regarding the latter building, historian Robert Nisbet Bain stated that "No other Russian sovereign ever erected so many churches."


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: The expedited completion of buildings became a matter of importance to the Empress and work continued throughout the year, even in winter's severest months. 859,555 rubles had been allocated to the project, a sum raised by a tax on state-owned taverns, but work temporarily ceased due to lack of resources. Ultimately, taxes were increased on salt and alcohol to completely fund the extra costs. However, Elizabeth's incredible extravagance ended up greatly benefiting the country's infrastructure. Needing goods shipped from all over the world, numerous roads in all Russia were modernized at her orders.


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: As an unmarried and childless empress, it was imperative for Elizabeth to find a legitimate heir to secure the Romanov dynasty. She chose her nephew, Peter of Holstein-Gottorp. The young Peter had lost his mother shortly after he was born, and his father at the age of eleven. Elizabeth invited her young nephew to Saint Petersburg, where he was received into the Russian Orthodox Church and proclaimed the heir to the throne on 7 November 1742. Keen to see the dynasty secured, Elizabeth immediately gave Peter the best Russian tutors and settled on Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst as a bride for her heir. Incidentally, Sophie's mother, Joanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp, was a sister of Elizabeth's own fiancé, who had died before the wedding. On her conversion to the Russian Orthodox Church, Sophie was given the name Catherine in memory of Elizabeth's mother. The marriage took place on 21 August 1745. Nine years later a son, the future Paul I, was born on 20 September 1754.


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: There is considerable speculation as to the actual paternity of Paul. It is suggested that he was not Peter's son at all but that his mother had engaged in an affair, to which Elizabeth had consented, with a young officer, Sergei Vasilievich Saltykov, who would have been Paul's biological father. Peter never gave any indication that he believed Paul to have been fathered by anyone but himself but took no interest in parenthood. Elizabeth most certainly took an active interest and acted as if she were his mother, instead of Catherine. Shortly after Paul’s birth the Empress ordered the midwife to take the baby and to follow her, and Catherine did not see her child for another month, for a short churching ceremony. Six months later, Elizabeth let Catherine see the child again. The child had, in effect, become a ward of the state and, in a larger sense, the property of the state.


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: Elizabeth abolished the cabinet council system that had been used under Anna, and reconstituted the Senate as it had been under Peter the Great, with the chiefs of the departments of state (none of them German) attending. Her first task after this was to address the war with Sweden. On 23 January 1743, direct negotiations between the two powers were opened at Åbo. In the Treaty of Åbo, on 7 August 1743 (O.S.), Sweden ceded to Russia all of southern Finland east of the Kymmene River, which became the boundary between the two states. The treaty also gave Russia the fortresses of Villmanstrand and Fredrikshamn.


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: This triumphant result can be credited to the diplomatic ability of the new vice chancellor, Aleksey Bestuzhev-Ryumin, whose policies would have been impossible to implement without Elizabeth's support. Elizabeth had wisely placed Bestuzhev at the head of foreign affairs immediately after her accession. He represented the anti-Franco-Prussian portion of her council, and his object was to bring about an Anglo-Austro-Russian alliance which, at that time, was undoubtedly the most advantageous to Russia. Both the Lopukhina affair and other attempts of Frederick the Great and Louis XV to get rid of Bestuzhev failed, but instead put the Russian court into the centre of a tangle of intrigue during the earlier years of Elizabeth's reign.


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: Ultimately, the minister's strong support from Elizabeth prevailed. His faultless diplomacy, and an auxiliary Russian corps of 30,000 men sent to the Rhine, greatly accelerated the peace negotiations leading to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (18 October 1748). By sheer tenacity of purpose, Bestuzhev had extricated his country from the Swedish imbroglio; reconciled his imperial mistress with the courts of Vienna and London; enabled Russia to assert herself effectually in Poland, the Ottoman Empire, and Sweden; and isolated the King of Prussia by forcing him into hostile alliances. All this would have been impossible without the steady support of Elizabeth who trusted him completely in spite of the Chancellor's many enemies, most of whom were her personal friends.


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: However, on 14 February 1758, Bestuzhev was removed from office. The future Catherine II recorded, "He was relieved of all his decorations and rank, without a soul being able to reveal for what crimes or transgressions the first gentleman of the Empire was so despoiled, and sent back to his house as a prisoner." No specific crime was ever pinned on Bestuzhev. Instead, it was inferred that he had attempted to sow discord between the Empress and her heir and his consort. Enemies of the pro-Austrian Bestuzhev were his rivals; the Shuvalov family, Vice-Chancellor Mikhail Vorontsov, and the French ambassador.


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: The great event of Elizabeth's later years was the Seven Years' War. Elizabeth regarded the Convention of Westminster (16 January 1756) in which Great Britain and Prussia agreed to unite their forces to oppose the entry of or the passage through Germany of troops of every foreign power, as utterly subversive of the previous conventions between Great Britain and Russia. Elizabeth sided against Prussia over a personal dislike of Frederick the Great. She wanted him reduced within proper limits so that he might no longer be a danger to the empire. Elizabeth acceded to the Second Treaty of Versailles, thus entering into an alliance with France and Austria against Prussia. On 17 May 1757 the Russian army, 85,000 strong, advanced against Königsberg.


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: The serious illness of the Empress, which began with a fainting-fit at Tsarskoe Selo (19 September 1757), the fall of Bestuzhev (21 February 1758) and the cabals and intrigues of the various foreign powers at Saint Petersburg, did not interfere with the progress of the war. The crushing defeat of Kunersdorf (12 August 1759) at last brought Frederick to the verge of ruin. From that day, he despaired of success, but he was saved for the moment by the jealousies of the Russian and Austrian commanders, which ruined the military plans of the allies.


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: From the end of 1759 to the end of 1761, the firmness of the Russian Empress was the one constraining political force that held together the heterogeneous, incessantly jarring elements of the anti-Prussian combination. From the Russian point of view, her greatness as a stateswoman consisted of her steady appreciation of Russian interests and her determination to promote them against all obstacles. She insisted throughout that the King of Prussia must be rendered harmless to his neighbours for the future and that the only way to do so was to reduce him to the rank of a Prince-Elector.


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: Frederick himself was quite aware of his danger. "I'm at the end of my resources," he wrote at the beginning of 1760. "The continuance of this war means for me utter ruin. Things may drag on perhaps till July, but then a catastrophe must come." On 21 May 1760, a fresh convention was signed between Russia and Austria, a secret clause of which, never communicated to the court of Versailles, guaranteed East Prussia to Russia as an indemnity for war expenses. The failure of the campaign of 1760, wielded by the inept Count Buturlin, induced the court of Versailles on the evening of 22 January 1761 to present to the court of Saint Petersburg a dispatch to the effect that the king of France, by reason of the condition of his dominions, absolutely desired peace. The Russian empress' reply was delivered to the two ambassadors on 12 February. It was inspired by the most uncompromising hostility towards the king of Prussia. Elizabeth would not consent to any pacific overtures until the original object of the league had been accomplished.


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: Simultaneously, Elizabeth had conveyed to Louis XV a confidential letter in which she proposed the signature of a new treaty of alliance of a more comprehensive and explicit nature than the preceding treaties between the two powers without the knowledge of Austria. Elizabeth's object in the mysterious negotiation seems to have been to reconcile France and Great Britain, in return for which signal service France was to throw all her forces into the German war. This project, which lacked neither ability nor audacity, foundered upon Louis XV's invincible jealousy of the growth of Russian influence in Eastern Europe and his fear of offending the Porte. It was finally arranged by the allies that their envoys at Paris should fix the date for the assembling of a peace congress and that in the meantime, the war against Prussia should be vigorously prosecuted. In 1760 a Russian flying column briefly occupied Berlin. Russian victories placed Prussia in serious danger.


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: The campaign of 1761 was almost as abortive as the campaign of 1760. Frederick acted on the defensive with consummate skill, and the capture of the Prussian fortress of Kolberg on Christmas Day 1761, by Rumyantsev, was the sole Russian success. Frederick, however, was now at the last gasp. On 6 January 1762, he wrote to Count Karl-Wilhelm Finck von Finckenstein, "We ought now to think of preserving for my nephew, by way of negotiation, whatever fragments of my territory we can save from the avidity of my enemies." A fortnight later, he wrote to Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, "The sky begins to clear. Courage, my dear fellow. I have received the news of a great event." The Miracle of the House of Brandenburg that snatched him from destruction was the death of the Russian empress, on 5 January 1762 (N.S.).


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: In 1742, the imperial government at Saint Petersburg ordered a Russian military expedition to conquer the Chukchi and Koryaks, but the expedition failed and its commander, Major Dmitry Pavlutsky, was killed in 1747. On 12 March 1747, a party of 500 Chukchi warriors raided the Russian stockade of Anadyrsk. By 1750, it had become clear the Chukchi would be difficult to conquer. The Empress then changed her tactical approach and established a formal peace with them.


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: Elizabeth's court was one of the most splendid in all Europe. As historian Mikhail Shcherbatov stated, the court was "arrayed in cloth of gold, her nobles satisfied with only the most luxurious garments, the most expensive foods, the rarest drinks, that largest number of servants and they applied this standard of lavishness to their dress as well". A great number of silver and gold objects were produced, the most the country had seen thus far in its history. It was common to order over a thousand bottles of French champagnes and wines to be served at one event and to serve pineapples at all receptions, despite the difficulty of procuring the fruit in such quantities.


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: French plays quickly became the most popular and often were performed twice a week. In tandem, music became very important. Many attribute its popularity to Elizabeth's supposed husband, the "Emperor of the Night", Alexei Razumovsky, who reportedly relished music. Elizabeth spared no expense in importing leading musical talents from Germany, France, and Italy. She reportedly owned 15,000 dresses, several thousand pairs of shoes and a seemingly unlimited number of stockings.


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: Attractive in her youth and vain as an adult, Elizabeth passed various decrees intended to make herself stand out: she issued an edict against anyone wearing the same hairstyle, dress, or accessory as the Empress. One woman accidentally wore the same item as the Empress and was lashed across the face for it. Another law required French fabric salesmen to sell to the Empress first, and those who disregarded that law were arrested. One famous story exemplifying her vanity is that once Elizabeth got a bit of powder in her hair and was unable to remove it except by cutting a patch of her hair. She made all of the court ladies cut patches out of their hair too, which they did "with tears in their eyes". This aggressive vanity became a tenet of the court throughout her reign, particularly as she grew older. According to historian Tamara Talbot Rice, "Later in life her outbursts of anger were directed either against people who were thought to have endangered Russia's security or against women whose beauty rivaled her own".


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: Despite her volatile and often violent reactions to others regarding her appearance, Elizabeth was ebullient in most other matters, particularly when it came to court entertainment. It was reported that she threw two balls a week; one would be a large event with an average of 800 guests in attendance, most of whom were the nation's leading merchants, members of the lower nobility and guards stationed in and around the city of the event. The other ball was a much smaller affair reserved for her closest friends and members of the highest echelons of nobility. The smaller gatherings began as masked balls, but evolved into the famous metamorphoses balls by 1744. At these metamorphoses balls, guests were expected to dress as the opposite sex, with Elizabeth often dressing up as Cossack or carpenter in honour of her father. Costumes not permitted at the event were those of pilgrims and harlequins, which she considered profane and indecent respectively. Most courtiers thoroughly disliked the balls, as most guests by decree looked ridiculous, but Elizabeth adored them; as Catherine the Great's advisor Potemkin posited, this was because she was "the only woman who looked truly fine and completely a man... As she was tall and possessed a powerful body, male attire suited her". Kazimierz Waliszewski noted that Elizabeth had beautiful legs, and loved to wear male attire because of the tight trousers.


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: Though the balls were by far her most personally beloved and lavish events, Elizabeth often threw children's birthday parties and wedding receptions for those affiliated with her Court, going so far as to provide dowries for each of her ladies-in-waiting.


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: In the late 1750s, Elizabeth's health started to decline. She suffered a series of dizzy spells and refused to take the


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: medication she had been prescribed. The Empress forbade the word "death" in her presence until she suffered a stroke on 24 December 1761 (O.S.). Knowing that she was dying, Elizabeth used her last remaining strength to make her confession, to recite with her confessor the prayer for the dying, and to say farewell to the few people who wished to be with her, including Peter and Catherine and Counts Alexei and Kirill Razumovsky.


title: Elizabeth of Russia

text: The Empress died the next day, Orthodox Christmas, 1761. For her lying in state, she was dressed in a shimmering silver dress. It was said that she was beautiful in death as she had been in life. She was buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg on 3 February 1762 (O.S.) six weeks after her lying in state.


title: Lord of War

text: Lord of War is a 2005 American crime drama film written, produced, and directed by Andrew Niccol, and co-produced by and starring Nicolas Cage.


title: Lord of War

text: The film was released in the United States on September 16, 2005, to positive reviews and grossed $72.6 million at the box office.


title: Lord of War

text: Cage plays a fictional illegal arms dealer, inspired by the stories of several real-life arms dealers and smugglers, primarily Viktor Bout. The film was officially endorsed by the human rights group Amnesty International for highlighting the issue of illicit arms trafficking by the international arms industry.


title: Lord of War

text: In the early 1980s, Yuri Orlov, the eldest son of a family of Ukrainian refugees, is visiting a Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, New York, restaurant where he witnesses a Russian mobster kill two would-be assassins holding Kalashnikov rifles. The incident inspires him to go into the arms trade. Yuri muses that the constant need for weapons is similar to the human need for food and drink, thus he can make a fortune. After successfully completing his first sale of an Uzi sub machine gun to a local mobster, Yuri convinces his younger brother Vitaly to become his partner.


title: Lord of War

text: The two brothers get their first big break during the 1982 Lebanon War, where they sell weapons to both Israeli and Lebanese troops despite witnessing the same weapons being used to commit war crimes and other atrocities. As Yuri begins to prosper by exploiting his growing network of business connections, he comes to the attention of Interpol, in particular an idealistic agent named Jack Valentine, with whom he crosses paths on multiple occasions. Valentine represents a unique threat to Yuri because he is after glory, not money, and thus cannot be bought off.


title: Lord of War

text: Vitaly becomes addicted to cocaine after a Colombian drug lord forces the brothers to accept several kilos of cocaine to pay for an arms sale of numerous Glock 17 pistols. Yuri quietly checks Vitaly into a drug rehabilitation clinic and continues his business alone. He lures childhood crush Ava Fontaine to a false photo shoot, and they subsequently get married and have a son.


title: Lord of War

text: Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Yuri flies to Ukraine and illegally buys Russian tanks, guns, and munitions through his uncle, a former Soviet general who is overseeing the distribution of weapons to the newly-formed Ukrainian Army. However, his uncle is killed in a car bombing attack planted by Yuri's rival, arms dealer Simeon Weisz. Yuri then expands his business to Africa, where he begins a business relationship with Andre Baptiste Sr., a ruthless dictator engaged in a brutal civil war in Liberia.


title: Lord of War

text: During one flight into Africa in 2001, Yuri's plane is intercepted by Valentine and forced to land. Yuri escapes arrest by landing in a remote area and giving away all of his cargo to the locals. Yuri makes it back to his hotel and is surprised by Baptiste who coerces him into killing Simeon to avenge his uncle and eliminate his competition. Yuri gives in and shoots Simeon dead.


title: Lord of War

text: Valentine then tells Ava her husband is an arms dealer, prompting her to confront him. To please his wife, Yuri tries to legitimize his business in trading timbers, but soon becomes frustrated with the difficulties and lower earnings of honest work. When Baptiste visits him in person and offers him the largest payday of his career, a stash of valuable blood diamonds, Yuri goes back to crime.


title: Lord of War

text: Yuri picks up Vitaly to assist him with a major deal in Sierra Leone, where a militia force allied with Baptiste is visibly preparing to destroy a refugee camp. Unable to stomach his guilt, Vitaly pleads with Yuri to abandon the deal, but his brother refuses knowing that Baptiste's men will kill them for refusing to hand over the guns. Vitaly then steals a pair of grenades and uses them to destroy a truck full of weapons, accidentally killing Baptiste's son. He is gunned down by the militia, and while Yuri is spared for his relationship with Baptiste Sr., he only receives half of the diamonds he was promised because half of the shipment is destroyed. He then watches helplessly as the militia massacres the refugees.


title: Lord of War

text: Yuri ships his brother's remains back to the United States. He pays a doctor to forge a phony death certificate and remove the bullets from Vitaly's body, but one bullet remains, and Yuri is apprehended by federal agents. Meanwhile, while being followed by Valentine, Ava finds a security container belonging to her husband, establishing definitive proof of Yuri's guilt. Ava finds the container full of her paintings, which Yuri secretly bought to prop up her career as an artist. Ava takes their son and leaves him for good. When Yuri tries to reconcile with his parents, his mother angrily disowns him for getting Vitaly killed.


title: Lord of War

text: Valentine detains Yuri in anticipation of his trial and conviction, but Yuri is unfazed. He then tells Valentine that, in a matter of minutes, a high-ranking American army officer will arrive and release him without any charges being filed. He explains that while he may be a criminal, his crime sometimes serves the interests of the U.S. government. Valentine then hears a knock at the door, considers what Yuri has said, and rebukes him.


title: Lord of War

text: Yuri is released and soon returns to the arms trade, claiming that it's what he does best. The film concludes with a statement on how the five largest arms producers in the world are also the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.


title: Lord of War

text: Andrew Niccol largely financed his production of the film with funding from outside the U.S. He claimed this was due to the highlighting of U.S. involvement in the international arms trade.


title: Lord of War

text: Some of the Russian language dialogues in the film (mostly those by Eugene Lazarev as Gen. Volkov) contain obscene Russian mat wording translated to softer expressions in the original English subtitles.


title: Lord of War

text: A scene in the film featured 50 tanks, which were provided by a Czech source. The tanks were only available until December of the year of filming, as the dealer needed them to sell in Libya. The production team bought 3,000 real SA Vz. 58 rifles to stand in for AK-47s because they were cheaper than mass-producing prop guns.


title: Lord of War

text: On Rotten Tomatoes the film has a 61% rating based on 147 reviews. The site's consensus states: "While "Lord of War" is an intelligent examination of the gun trade, it is too scattershot in its plotting to connect." On Metacritic it has a score of 62% based on reviews from 31 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Lord of War

text: Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times", gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars, writing "After movies like "Hotel Rwanda", "Before the Rain" and "Welcome to Sarajevo," the cold cynicism of "Lord of War" plays like a deadly footnote."


title: Lord of War

text: The film grossed $9,390,144 on its opening weekend, ranking number three at the North American box office behind "Just Like Heaven" and "The Exorcism of Emily Rose". After the film's 7 weeks of release, it grossed a total of $24,149,632 on the domestic market (US and Canada), and $48,467,436 internationally, for a worldwide total of $72,617,068.


title: Lord of War

text: "Lord of War" was released on Blu-ray, DVD, and VHS on January 18, 2006. A 4K UHD Blu-ray transfer of "Lord of War" was released on March 19, 2019.


title: Lord of War

text: The UK DVD release of "Lord of War" includes, prior to the film, an advertisement for Amnesty International, showing the AK-47 being sold on a shopping channel of the style popular on cable networks. The American DVD release includes a bonus feature that shows the various weapons used in the film, allowing viewers to click on each weapon to get statistics about their physical dimensions and histories. The DVD bonus section also contains a public service announcement from Nicolas Cage that addresses the issue of illicit arms sales.


title: Tesseract

text: In geometry, a tesseract is the four-dimensional analogue of the cube; the tesseract is to the cube as the cube is to the square. Just as the surface of the cube consists of six square faces, the hypersurface of the tesseract consists of eight cubical cells. The tesseract is one of the six convex regular 4-polytopes.


title: Tesseract

text: The tesseract is also called an 8-cell, C, (regular) octachoron, octahedroid, cubic prism, and tetracube. It is the four-dimensional hypercube, or 4-cube as a member of the dimensional family of hypercubes or measure polytopes. Coxeter labels it the formula_1 polytope. The term "hypercube" without a dimension reference is frequently treated as a synonym for this specific polytope.


title: Tesseract

text: The "Oxford English Dictionary" traces the word "tesseract" to Charles Howard Hinton's 1888 book "A New Era of Thought". The term derives from the Greek ( 'four') and from ( 'ray'), referring to the four edges from each vertex to other vertices. Hinton originally spelled the word as "tessaract".


title: Tesseract

text: As a regular polytope with three cubes folded together around every edge, it has Schläfli symbol {4,3,3} with hyperoctahedral symmetry of order 384. Constructed as a 4D hyperprism made of two parallel cubes, it can be named as a composite Schläfli symbol {4,3} × { }, with symmetry order 96. As a 4-4 duoprism, a Cartesian product of two squares, it can be named by a composite Schläfli symbol {4}×{4}, with symmetry order 64. As an orthotope it can be represented by composite Schläfli symbol { } × { } × { } × { } or { }, with symmetry order 16.


title: Tesseract

text: Since each vertex of a tesseract is adjacent to four edges, the vertex figure of the tesseract is a regular tetrahedron. The dual polytope of the tesseract is the 16-cell with Schläfli symbol {3,3,4}, with which it can be combined to form the compound of tesseract and 16-cell.


title: Tesseract

text: Each edge of a regular tesseract is of the same length. This is of interest when using tesseracts as the basis for a network topology to link multiple processors in parallel computing: the distance between two nodes is at most 4 and there are many different paths to allow weight balancing.


title: Tesseract

text: The standard tesseract in Euclidean 4-space is given as the convex hull of the points (±1, ±1, ±1, ±1). That is, it consists of the points:


title: Tesseract

text: In this Cartesian frame of reference, the tesseract has radius 2 and is bounded by eight hyperplanes ("x" = ±1). Each pair of non-parallel hyperplanes intersects to form 24 square faces in a tesseract. Three cubes and three squares intersect at each edge. There are four cubes, six squares, and four edges meeting at every vertex. All in all, it consists of 8 cubes, 24 squares, 32 edges, and 16 vertices.


title: Tesseract

text: An unfolding of a polytope is called a net. There are 261 distinct nets of the tesseract. The unfoldings of the tesseract can be counted by mapping the nets to "paired trees" (a tree together with a perfect matching in its complement).


title: Tesseract

text: The tesseract can be decomposed into smaller 4-polytopes. It is the convex hull of the compound of two demitesseracts (16-cells). It can also be triangulated into 4-dimensional simplices (irregular 5-cells) that share their vertices with the tesseract. It is known that there are 92487256 such triangulations and that the fewest 4-dimensional simplices in any of them is 16.


title: Tesseract

text: The dissection of the tesseract into instances of its characteristic simplex (a particular orthoscheme with Coxeter diagram ) is the most basic direct construction of the tesseract possible. The characteristic 5-cell of the 4-cube is a fundamental region of the tesseract's defining symmetry group, the group which generates the B polytopes. The tesseract's characteristic simplex directly "generates" the tesseract through the actions of the group, by reflecting itself in its own bounding facets (its "mirror walls").


title: Tesseract

text: The long radius (center to vertex) of the tesseract is equal to its edge length; thus its diagonal through the center (vertex to opposite vertex) is 2 edge lengths. Only a few uniform polytopes have this property, including the four-dimensional tesseract and 24-cell, the three-dimensional cuboctahedron, and the two-dimensional hexagon. In particular, the tesseract is the only hypercube (other than a 0-dimensional point) that is "radially equilateral". The longest vertex-to-vertex diameter of an "n"-dimensional hypercube of unit edge length is , so for the square it is , for the cube it is , and only for the tesseract it is , exactly 2 edge lengths.


title: Tesseract

text: This configuration matrix represents the tesseract. The rows and columns correspond to vertices, edges, faces, and cells. The diagonal numbers say how many of each element occur in the whole tesseract. The nondiagonal numbers say how many of the column's element occur in or at the row's element. For example, the 2 in the first column of the second row indicates that there are 2 vertices in (i.e., at the extremes of) each edge; the 4 in the second column of the first row indicates that 4 edges meet at each vertex.


title: Tesseract

text: It is possible to project tesseracts into three- and two-dimensional spaces, similarly to projecting a cube into two-dimensional space.


title: Tesseract

text: The "cell-first" parallel projection of the tesseract into three-dimensional space has a cubical envelope. The nearest and farthest cells are projected onto the cube, and the remaining six cells are projected onto the six square faces of the cube.


title: Tesseract

text: The "face-first" parallel projection of the tesseract into three-dimensional space has a cuboidal envelope. Two pairs of cells project to the upper and lower halves of this envelope, and the four remaining cells project to the side faces.


title: Tesseract

text: The "edge-first" parallel projection of the tesseract into three-dimensional space has an envelope in the shape of a hexagonal prism. Six cells project onto rhombic prisms, which are laid out in the hexagonal prism in a way analogous to how the faces of the 3D cube project onto six rhombs in a hexagonal envelope under vertex-first projection. The two remaining cells project onto the prism bases.


title: Tesseract

text: The "vertex-first" parallel projection of the tesseract into three-dimensional space has a rhombic dodecahedral envelope. Two vertices of the tesseract are projected to the origin. There are exactly two ways of dissecting a rhombic dodecahedron into four congruent rhombohedra, giving a total of eight possible rhombohedra, each a projected cube of the tesseract. This projection is also the one with maximal volume. One set of projection vectors are "u"=(1,1,-1,-1), "v"=(-1,1,-1,1), "w"=(1,-1,-1,1).


title: Tesseract

text: The tesseract, like all hypercubes, tessellates Euclidean space. The self-dual tesseractic honeycomb consisting of 4 tesseracts around each face has Schläfli symbol {4,3,3,4}. Hence, the tesseract has a dihedral angle of 90°.


title: Tesseract

text: The tesseract's radial equilateral symmetry makes its tessellation the unique regular body-centered cubic lattice of equal-sized spheres, in any number of dimensions.


title: Tesseract

text: The tesseract (8-cell) is the third in the sequence of 6 convex regular 4-polytopes (in order of size and complexity).


title: Tesseract

text: The regular tesseract, along with the 16-cell, exists in a set of 15 uniform 4-polytopes with the same symmetry. The tesseract {4,3,3} exists in a sequence of regular 4-polytopes and honeycombs, {"p",3,3} with tetrahedral vertex figures, {3,3}. The tesseract is also in a sequence of regular 4-polytope and honeycombs, {4,3,"p"} with cubic cells.


title: Tesseract

text: The regular complex polytope {4}, , in formula_9 has a real representation as a tesseract or 4-4 duoprism in 4-dimensional space. {4} has 16 vertices, and 8 4-edges. Its symmetry is [4], order 32. It also has a lower symmetry construction, , or {}×{}, with symmetry [2], order 16. This is the symmetry if the red and blue 4-edges are considered distinct.


title: Tesseract

text: Since their discovery, four-dimensional hypercubes have been a popular theme in art, architecture, and science fiction. Notable examples include:


title: Tesseract

text: The word "tesseract" was later adopted for numerous other uses in popular culture, including as a plot device in works of science fiction, often with little or no connection to the four-dimensional hypercube of this article. See Tesseract (disambiguation).


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Seung-Hui Cho (, properly Cho Seung-hui; January 18, 1984 – April 16, 2007) was a Korean-born mass murderer responsible for the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007. Cho killed 32 people and wounded 17 others with two semi-automatic pistols on April 16, 2007, at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. This killing is the deadliest school shooting in US history, and was at the time the deadliest one-man shooting rampage in modern US history and deadliest mass shooting in US history. A senior-level undergraduate student at the university, Cho died by suicide after police breached the doors of Virginia Tech's Norris Hall which Cho had locked with heavy chains, where most of the shooting had taken place.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Born in South Korea, Cho was eight years old when he immigrated to the United States with his family. He became a U.S. permanent resident as a South Korean national. At the time of the shooting, Cho had the legal status of resident alien. In middle school, he was diagnosed with a severe anxiety disorder with selective mutism, as well as major depressive disorder. After his diagnosis, he began receiving treatment and continued to receive therapy and special education support until his junior year of high school. Cho was bullied throughout high school. During Cho's last two years at Virginia Tech, several instances of his abnormal behavior, as well as plays and other writings he submitted containing references to violence, caused concern among teachers and classmates.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: In the aftermath of the shootings, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine convened a panel consisting of various officials and experts to investigate and examine the response and handling of issues related to the shootings. The panel released its final report in August 2007, devoting more than 20 pages to detailing Cho's troubled history. In the report, the panel criticized the failure of the educators and mental health professionals who came into contact with Cho during his college years to notice his deteriorating condition and help him. The panel also criticized misinterpretations of privacy laws and gaps in Virginia's mental health system and gun laws. In addition, the panel faulted Virginia Tech administrators in particular for failing to take immediate action after the first two deaths of Emily J. Hilscher and Ryan C. "Stack" Clark. Nevertheless, the report did acknowledge that Cho must still be held primarily responsible for the killing, despite his "emotional and psychological disabilities [having] undoubtedly clouded his own situation".


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Cho was born on January 18, 1984, in the city of Asan, in South Korea's South Chungcheong Province. Cho and his family lived in a basement apartment in the city of Seoul for a couple of years before immigrating to the United States. Cho's father was self-employed as a bookstore owner, but made minimal profits from the venture. Seeking better education and opportunities for his son and daughter, Cho's father immigrated to the United States with his family in 1992, when Cho was eight years old. The family lived in Detroit, then moved to the Washington metropolitan area after learning that it had one of the largest South Korean expatriate communities in the U.S. Cho's family settled in Centreville, an unincorporated community in western Fairfax County, Virginia, west of Washington, D.C. Cho's father and mother opened a dry-cleaning business. After they moved to Centreville, Cho and his family became permanent residents of the United States as South Korean nationals. His parents became members of a local Christian church, and Cho himself was raised as a member of the religion, although in a note Cho "railed against his parents' strong Christian faith."


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Some members of Cho's family who had remained in South Korea had concerns about his behavior during his early childhood. Cho's relatives thought that he was selectively mute or mentally ill and have stated in interviews that he rarely spoke or showed affection. During an ABC News "Nightline" interview on August 30, 2007, Cho's grandfather reported his concerns about Cho's behavior during childhood. According to Cho's grandfather, Cho never made eye contact, never called him grandfather, and never moved to embrace him.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Cho attended the Poplar Tree Elementary School in Chantilly, an unincorporated, small community in Fairfax County. An anonymous family acquaintance claimed that "Every time he came home from school he would cry and throw tantrums saying he never wanted to return to school" when Cho first came to the U.S.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: According to a former fifth grade classmate of Cho's, Cho finished the three-year program at Poplar Tree Elementary School in one and a half years and was pointed to as a good example by teachers, and was not disliked by other students.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Cho attended two secondary schools in Fairfax County: Ormond Stone Middle School in Centreville and Westfield High School in Chantilly.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: By the eighth grade, Cho had been diagnosed with selective mutism, a social anxiety disorder that inhibited him from speaking in specific instances and/or to specific individuals. He was reportedly bullied for his shyness and unusual speech mannerisms throughout high school, and at least once for his ethnicity. Other former classmates stated he was a loner who did not seem interested in interacting when teachers or other students tried to include him.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: During Cho's ninth-grade year in 1999, the Columbine High School massacre made international news. Cho was reportedly transfixed by the news and idolized Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Cho wrote in a school assignment about wanting to "repeat Columbine". The school contacted Cho's sister, who reported the incident to their parents. Cho was sent to a psychiatrist.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Cho was diagnosed with selective mutism. The Virginia Tech Review Panel report, released in August 2007, placed this diagnosis in the spring of Cho's eighth-grade year; his parents sought treatment for him through medication and therapy. In high school, Cho was placed in special education under the "emotional disturbance" classification. He was excused from oral presentations and class conversation and received speech therapy. He continued receiving mental health therapy as well until the end of his junior year.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: According to two of Cho's family members and one family friend, the Cho family had been told that Cho's mutism was due to autism; however, no known record exists of Cho ever being diagnosed with autism. The Virginia Tech Review Panel report states Cho's high school had ruled out an autism diagnosis. A clinical psychologist and expert in selective mutism said that based on Cho's videos, Cho "was not autistic. He clearly had the capability of talking to people." A 2017 paper from "The Journal of Psychology" states there are "[s]trong evidence suggesting Asperger's syndrome" for Cho.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: To address his problems, Cho's parents also took him to church. According to a pastor at the Centreville Korean Presbyterian Church, Cho was a smart student who understood the Bible, but the pastor added that he had never heard Cho say a complete sentence. The pastor also recalled telling Cho's mother that he speculated Cho was autistic.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Federal law prohibited Westfield officials from disclosing any record of disability or treatment without Cho's permission; the officials disclosed none of Cho's speech and anxiety-related problems to Virginia Tech.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: In his freshman year at Virginia Tech in 2003, Cho enrolled as an undergraduate major in business information technology. By his senior year, Cho was majoring in English, intending to become a writer. At the time of the attacks, Cho lived with five roommates in a three-bedroom suite in Harper Hall.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Nikki Giovanni says she taught Cho in a poetry class in the fall of 2005; she says she had him removed from her class because she found his behavior "menacing." She recalled that Cho had a "mean streak" and described his writing as "intimidating." Giovanni reports that Cho wore sunglasses in class and that when she tried to get him to participate in class discussion, Cho remained silent. In Giovanni's class, Cho had intimidated female classmates by photographing their legs under their desks and by writing violent and obscene poetry. In the fall of 2005, Giovanni told the then-department head Lucinda Roy she "was willing to resign before [she] was going to continue with [Cho]." After this, Roy removed Cho from the class.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Roy says that since she found Cho's writings to be very disturbing, she asked for help from the police and the university administration; however, Roy states that the police had "difficulty" since Cho did not make any explicit threat. After Giovanni was informed of the massacre, she remarked that she "knew when it happened that that's probably who it was", and "would have been shocked if it wasn't." Roy had taught Cho in Introduction to Poetry the previous year. She described him as "actually quite arrogant and could be quite obnoxious, and was also deeply, it seemed, insecure" and that she told him numerous times to go to counseling. She said that Cho resisted speaking in class and took cell phone pictures of her. After Roy became concerned with Cho's behavior and the themes in his writings, she started meeting with Cho to work with him one-on-one. However, she soon became concerned for her safety, and told her assistant that she would use the name of a dead professor as a duress code, in order to alert the assistant to call security. After Roy notified authorities of Cho's behavior, she urged Cho to seek counseling. Roy described Cho as seeming "extraordinarily lonely", and said that Cho "said to me once he was lonely and didn't have friends."


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Other professors were familiar with Cho's disturbing demeanor and recommended that Cho seek counseling. Some professors were not aware until informed by others that Cho had mental health problems and had been reported to the police, afterward speculating that "the information was not accessible" or was "privileged and could not be released."


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: It is reported that in his first year at Virginia Tech, Cho tried to fit in, but had become very isolated in his last year. During one party, he sat in the corner and repeatedly stabbed the carpet in a girl's room while his roommates were present.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Fellow students described Cho as a "quiet" person who "would not respond if someone greeted him." Student Julie Poole recalled that on the first day of a literature class the previous year, the professor found that Cho had written only a question mark instead of his name on a sign-in sheet, so "we just really knew him as the question mark kid."


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Karan Grewal and Joseph Aust, who shared a dormitory suite with Cho, reported that Cho was reclusive and they mutually avoided interacting with him. Both roommates claim Cho had an imaginary girlfriend named "Jelly." Aust notes that during "the last couple weeks" he noticed that Cho's sleep schedule became unusual. Andy Koch and John Eide, who once shared a room with Cho at Cochrane Hall during 2005 and 2006, state that they were aware of the imaginary girlfriend as well. Koch claimed that Cho, under the influence of alcohol at a party, described "Jelly" as a supermodel living in space.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Koch described other incidents of disturbing behavior. Once, Cho stood in the doorway of his room late at night taking photographs of Koch. Cho repeatedly placed harassing cell phone calls to Koch as "Cho's brother, 'Question Mark'," a name Cho also used when introducing himself to girls. Koch and Eide searched Cho's belongings and found a pocket knife, but they did not find any items that they deemed threatening. Koch also described a telephone call that he received from Cho during the Thanksgiving holiday break from school, during which Cho claimed to be "vacationing with Vladimir Putin" in North Carolina. Koch and Eide, who had earlier tried to befriend him, gradually stopped talking to him and told their friends, especially female classmates, not to visit their room. On one instance, Cho told his roommates he had frightened a girl when he went to her dorm to look her in the eyes; Cho remarked he only found "promiscuity" in her eyes.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Koch and Eide stated that Cho had been involved in two incidents involving two different female students, which resulted in verbal warnings by the Virginia Tech campus police. The two students felt Cho was stalking them, but did not press charges. According to Koch, "Question Mark" was Cho's persona online to talk to girls. Koch stated that Cho used to call him on the phone using the alias Question Mark. Koch and Eide state that on at least two occasions, police came to their room to investigate a girl's complaint due to Cho's behavior online. According to Koch, one of these visits, during which the police came at night at Cho and Koch's dorm and banged at the door, was due to Cho's harassment of a female student and talking about suicide online.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: The first such alleged incident occurred on November 27, 2005. The female student called the campus police, stating that Cho had sent her annoying messages and made an unannounced visit to her room. Two uniformed members of the campus police visited Cho's room at the dormitory later that evening and warned him not to contact the student again; Cho complied.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: The second alleged incident came to light on December 13, 2005. In the preceding days, Cho had contacted a friend of Koch via AIM and wrote on her door board a line from the Shakespeare play "Romeo and Juliet". The young woman was initially unconcerned by the AIM messages and the quotation until she was contacted by Koch via AIM, who informed her of Cho's previous earlier stalking incident and speculated that Cho had schizophrenia. The young woman contacted the campus police, who again warned Cho against further unwanted contact.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Later the same day, Cho sent an e-mail to Koch stating, "I might as well kill myself now." Worried that Cho was suicidal, Koch contacted his father for advice. Both contacted campus authorities. The campus police returned to the dormitory and escorted Cho to New River Valley Community Services Board, the Virginia mental health agency serving Blacksburg.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: On December 13, 2005, Cho was taken by police to the psychiatric hospital of New River Valley Community Services Board. There, Crouse, the physician who examined Cho the same day, declared Cho was found "mentally ill and in need of hospitalization." He noted that Cho had a flat affect and depressed mood, and that Cho "denies suicidal ideation" and "does not acknowledge symptoms of a thought disorder." The physician also noted: "His insight and judgment are normal." Cho, suspected of being "an imminent danger to himself or others", was detained temporarily at Carilion St. Albans Behavioral Health Center in Radford, Virginia, pending a commitment hearing before the Montgomery County, Virginia district court. On December 14, 2005, Cho was released from the mental health facility; after Cho's release, on the same day Virginia Special Justice Paul Barnett certified in an order that Cho "presented an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness," and ordered treatment for Cho as an outpatient. However, Cho did not receive the treatment which had been ordered, as due to Virginia's health system "[n]either the court, the university nor community services officials followed up on the judge's order".


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Because Cho was not involuntarily committed to a mental health facility as an inpatient, he was still legally eligible to buy guns under Virginia law. However, according to Virginia law, "[a] magistrate has the authority to issue a detention order upon a finding that a person is mentally ill and in need of hospitalization or treatment." The magistrate also must find that the person is an imminent danger to himself or others. Virginia officials and other law experts have argued that, under United States federal law, Barnett's order meant that Cho had been "adjudicated as a mental defective" and was thus ineligible to purchase firearms under federal law; and that the state of Virginia erred in not enforcing the requirements of the federal law.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: The Virginia Tech Review Panel report shed light on numerous efforts by Cho's family to secure help for him as early as adolescence. However, when Cho reached 18 and left for college, the family lost its legal authority over him, and their influence on him waned. Cho's mother, increasingly concerned about his inattention to classwork, his classroom absences and his asocial behavior, sought help for him during summer 2006 from various churches in Northern Virginia. According to Dong Cheol Lee, minister of One Mind Presbyterian Church of Washington (located in Woodbridge), Cho's mother sought help from the church for Cho's problems. Lee added that "[Cho's] problem needed to be solved by spiritual power ... that's why she came to our church – because we were helping several people like him." Members of Lee's church even told Cho's mother that he had "demonic power" and needed deliverance. Before the church could meet with the family, however, Cho returned to school to start his senior year at Virginia Tech.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Around 7:15 a.m. EDT (11:15 UTC) on April 16, 2007, Cho killed two students, Emily J. Hilscher and Ryan C. "Stack" Clark, on the fourth floor of West Ambler Johnston Hall, a high-rise co-educational dormitory. Investigators later determined that Cho's shoes matched a blood-stained print found in the hallway outside Hilscher's room. The shoes and bloody jeans were found in Cho's dormitory room where he had stashed them after the attack.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Within the next two and a half hours, Cho returned to his room to rearm himself; he mailed a package to NBC News that contained pictures, digital video files, and documents. At approximately 9:45 a.m. EDT (13:45 UTC), he then crossed the campus to Norris Hall, a classroom building on the campus where, in a span of nine minutes, Cho shot dozens of people, killing 30 of them. As police breached the area of the building where Cho attacked the faculty and students, Cho committed suicide in Norris 211 with a gunshot to his temple. Cho's gunshot wound destroyed his face, delaying identification of his body for several hours. The police identified Cho by matching immigration records with the fingerprints on the guns that were used in the shootings. Before the shootings, Cho's only known connection to Norris Hall was as a student in the sociology class, which he attended in a classroom on the second floor of the building. Although police had not stated positively at the time of the initial investigation that Cho was the perpetrator of the Norris Hall shootings and the earlier one at West Ambler Johnston Hall, forensic evidence confirmed that the same gun was used in both shooting incidents.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Trey Perkins, a student who saw Cho during the killing, reported that during his killing, Cho was "just without even the slightest emotion on [his] face".


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: In his manifesto, Cho says he had postponed the attack several times. Cho trained at a gun range up to 3 times before the shooting.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: During February and March 2007, Cho began purchasing the weapons that he later used during the killings. On February 9, Cho purchased his first handgun, a .22 caliber Walther P22 semi-automatic pistol, from TGSCOM Inc., a federally licensed firearms dealer based in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and the operator of the website through which Cho ordered the gun. TGSCOM Inc. shipped the Walther P22 to JND Pawnbrokers in Blacksburg, Virginia, where Cho completed the legally required background check for the purchase transaction and took possession of the handgun. On March 13, Cho bought his second handgun, a 9mm Glock 19 semi-automatic pistol, from Roanoke Firearms, a licensed gun dealer located in Roanoke, Virginia.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Cho was able to pass both background checks and successfully complete both handgun purchases after he presented to the gun dealers his U.S. permanent residency card, his Virginia driver's permit to prove legal age and length of Virginia residence and a checkbook showing his Virginia address, in addition to waiting the required 30-day period between each gun purchase. He was successful at completing both handgun purchases because he did not disclose on the background questionnaire that a Virginia court had ordered him to undergo outpatient treatment at a mental health facility.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: On March 22, 2007, Cho purchased two 10-round magazines for the Walther P22 pistol through eBay from Elk Ridge Shooting Supplies in Idaho. Based on a preliminary computer forensics examination of Cho's eBay purchase records, investigators suspected that Cho may have purchased an additional 10-round magazine on March 23, 2007, from another eBay seller who sold gun accessories.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Cho also bought jacketed hollow-point bullets, which result in more tissue damage than full metal jacket bullets against unarmored targets by expanding upon entering soft tissue. Along with a manifesto, Cho later sent a photograph of the hollow point bullets to NBC News with the caption "All the shit you've given me, right back at you with hollow points."


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: During the investigation, the police found a note in Cho's room in which he criticized "rich kids", "debauchery" and "deceitful charlatans". In the note, Cho continued by saying that "you caused me to do this." Early media reports also speculated that he was obsessed with fellow student Emily Hilscher and became enraged after she rejected his romantic overtures. Law enforcement investigators could not find evidence that Hilscher knew Cho.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: The Virginia Tech panel said that by sending the package to "NBC", Cho "wanted his motivation to be known, though it comes across as largely incoherent, and it is unclear as to exactly why he felt such strong animosity."


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Law enforcement investigators used ballistics tests to determine that Cho fired the Glock 19 pistol during the attacks at the West Ambler Johnston dormitory and at Norris Hall on the Virginia Tech campus. Police investigators found that Cho fired more than 170 shots during the killing spree, evidenced by technicians finding at least 17 empty magazines at the scene. During the investigation, federal law enforcement investigators found that the serial numbers were illegally filed off on both the Walther P22 and the Glock 19 handguns used by Cho during the rampage. "Investigators also said that in mid-March, Cho practiced shooting at a firing range in Roanoke, about 40 miles from the campus." According to a former FBI agent and ABC consultant, "This was no spur-of-the-moment crime. He's been thinking about this for several months prior to the shooting."


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: The FBI tracked Cho's credit card transactions and found out he had paid an escort girl one month before the shooting. The escort stated that she and Cho met at a motel in Roanoke. She said she danced for Cho and decided to leave after 15 minutes, but Cho told her he had paid for a full hour. She stated that she then started dancing again and that thereafter Cho touched her and tried "to get on" her, at which point she pushed him away and Cho respected her wishes. The escort described Cho as "dorky," "timid" and a "little pushy."


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: During the investigation, the matter of Cho's court-ordered mental health treatment was also examined to determine its outcome. Virginia investigators learned after a review of Cho's medical records that he never complied with the order for the mandated mental health treatment as an outpatient. The investigators also found that neither the court nor New River Valley Community Services exercised oversight of his case to determine his compliance with the order. In response to questions about Cho's case, New River Valley Community Services maintained that its facility was never named in the court order as the provider for his mental health treatment, and its responsibility ended once he was discharged from its care after the court order. In addition, Christopher Flynn, director of the Cook Counseling Center at Virginia Tech, mentioned that the court did not notify his office that Cho was required to seek outpatient mental health treatment. Flynn added that, "When a court gives a mandatory order that someone get outpatient treatment, that order is to the individual, not an agency ... The one responsible for ensuring that the mentally ill person receives help in these sort of cases ... is the mentally ill person."


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: As a result, Cho escaped compliance with the court order for mandatory mental health treatment as an outpatient, even though Virginia law required community services boards to "recommend a specific course of treatment and programs" for mental health patients and "monitor the person's compliance." As for the court, Virginia law also mandated that, if a person fails to comply with a court order to seek mental health treatment as an outpatient, that person can be brought back before the court "and if found still in crisis, can be committed to a psychiatric institution for up to 180 days." Cho was never summoned to court to explain why he had not complied with the December 14, 2005, order for mandatory mental health treatment as an outpatient.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: The investigation panel had sought Cho's medical records for several weeks, but due to privacy laws, Virginia Tech was prohibited from releasing them without permission from Cho's family, even after his death. The panel had considered using subpoenas to obtain his records. On June 12, 2007, Cho's family released his medical records to the panel, although the panel said that the records were not enough. The panel obtained additional information by court order. Cho had been prescribed paroxetine years before the shooting but had been taken off it after one year. The toxicology test from the official autopsy later showed that neither psychiatric nor any kind of illegal drugs were in his system during the time of the shooting.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: In August 2009, Virginia Tech released its medical records of Cho, along with those found in July 2009, to the public.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: In the aftermath of the killing spree, Virginia Governor Timothy Kaine appointed a panel to investigate the campus shootings, with plans for the panel to submit a report of its findings in approximately two to three months. Kaine also invited former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to join the panel to "review Cho's mental health history and how police responded to the tragedy." To help investigate and analyze the emergency response surrounding the Virginia Tech shooting, Kaine hired TriData Corporation, the same company that investigated the Columbine High School massacre.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: The panel's final report devoted more than 20 pages to detailing Cho's mental health history. The report criticized Virginia Tech educators, administrators and mental health staff in failing to "connect the dots" from numerous incidents that were warning signs of Cho's mental instability beginning in his junior year. The report concluded that the school's mental health systems "failed for lack of resources, incorrect interpretation of privacy laws, and passivity." The report called Virginia's mental health laws "flawed" and its mental health services "inadequate". The report also confirmed that Cho was able to purchase two guns in violation of federal law because of Virginia's inadequate background check requirements.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: An addendum to the report was published in November 2009; an updated version of the addendum was published in December of the same year.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Cho's older sister prepared a statement on her family's behalf to apologize publicly for her brother's actions, in addition to lending prayers to the victims and the families of the wounded and killed victims. "This is someone that I grew up with and loved. Now I feel like I didn't know this person," she said in the statement issued through a North Carolinian attorney. "We never could have envisioned that he was capable of so much violence." Cho's grandfather stated, "My grandson Seung-Hui was very shy. I can't believe he did such a thing."


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: In a 2008 article marking the anniversary of the massacre, the "Washington Post" did a follow-up on the family, reporting that they had gone into hiding for months following the massacre and, after eventually returning home, had "virtually cut themselves off from the world." Several windows in their home have been papered over and drawn blinds cover the rest. The only real outside contact they have maintained is with an FBI agent assigned to their care and their lawyer, refusing even to contact their own relatives in South Korea.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: During the time period between the two shooting events on April 16, Cho visited a local post office near the Virginia Tech campus where he mailed a parcel with a DVD inside to the New York headquarters of NBC News, which contained video clips, photographs and a manifesto explaining the reasons for his actions. The package was apparently intended to be received on April 17, but was delayed by one day because of an incorrect ZIP code and street address.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: The name of the sender on the package according to NBC News was "A. Ishmael" (or "Ismael" according to "The New York Times"). According to NBC News, the words "Ismail Ax" (or "Ismail-Ax" in red ink according to "ABC News", "Ismail Ax" in red ink according to "The Times") were scrawled on one of Cho's arms. It was reported a few days after the package was received that "the Internet is abuzz with speculation about the meaning of the phrase 'Ismail Ax' on Cho's arm, 'A. Ishmael' on the package and 'axishmiel' on [a] file [contained in the package sent to NBC]".


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: One hypothesis is that "Ismail Ax" represents divine retribution in reference to the Islamic belief that Abraham, the father of Ishmael, broke some idols with his axe to abolish idol worship, or to the Islamic belief that God asked Abraham to sacrifice the innocent Ishmael; no one reported Cho was Muslim, and he refers to himself in Christian terms and refers to Jesus being hung on a cross which is not part of Islamic beliefs.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: One hypothesis for the name "Ismail-Ax" is that it could be a reference to Drum Hadley's poem "The Goat Ranchers" which talk about "Ishmael's Ax". Other hypothesis are that "Ishmael", "Ishmael Ax" and "axishmiel" was a reference to Ishmael the narrator of Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick", or to a set of books by Daniel Quinn that features a gorilla named Ishmael that examines humankind. It has also been suggested Ismail Ax refers to Ishmael Bush, the hero of James Fenimore Cooper's novel "The Prairie".


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: It was also suggested "Ishmael", "Ishmael Ax" and "axishmiel" could refer to Ismail Ak, a professor of psychiatry at a Turkish university whose studies include psychiatry of anti-social and suicidal behavior. "Among the other suggestions were anagrams that referred to the ancient punishment of pouring salt on fields that made them incapable growing crops, a Bob Marley song called 'Small Axe,' and a technology called 'AxisMail' that lets users have e-mail messages sent to their cell phones." It was also theorized that "Ismail-Ax" was a reference to the meaning of "Ishmael" which is "exile" or "outcast" according to Webster's dictionary. Another theory is that "Ismail Ax" referred to a XboxLive (XBL) handle, but an XBL search made at the time did not find any such handle.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: In his PDF mailed to NBC, Cho states: "Children of Ishmael, Crusaders of Anti-Terrorism, my Jesus Christ Brothers and Sisters - you're in my heart. ... I saw we take up the cross, Children of Ishmael, take up our guns, and knives and any sharp object, and spare no lives until our last breath and last ounce of energy. ... I am Ax Ishmael. I am the Anti-Terrorist of America".


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Upon receiving the package on April 18, 2007, NBC News contacted authorities and made the controversial decision to publicize Cho's communications by releasing a small fraction of what it received. After pictures and images from the videos were broadcast in numerous news reports, students and faculty from Virginia Tech, along with relatives of victims of the campus shooting, expressed concerns that glorifying Cho's rampage could lead to copycat killings. The airing of the manifesto and its video images and pictures was upsetting to many who were more closely affected by the shootings: Peter Read, the father of Mary Read, one of the students who were killed by Cho during the rampage, asked the media to stop airing Cho's manifesto.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Police officials, who reviewed the video, pictures and manifesto, concluded that the contents of the media package had marginal value in helping them learn and understand why Cho committed the killings. Michael Welner, who also reviewed the materials, believed that Cho's rantings offer little insight into the mental illness that may have triggered his rampage. Welner stated that "[t]hese videos do not help us understand Cho. They distort him. He was meek. He was quiet. This is a PR tape of him trying to turn himself into a Quentin Tarantino character."


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: During the April 24, 2007, edition of "The Oprah Winfrey Show", NBC News president Steve Capus stated NBC decided to air 2 minutes and 20 seconds of the 25 minutes of videos it received and just 37 sentences of the 23 pages of writings.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Cho's package contained what the NBC called a "multimedia manifesto": a DVD, along with "a printout of a .pdf file". This printout's PDF file was contained in the DVD with the file name 'axishmiel' - Cho's 1,800-word, 23-page manifesto which also contained 43 photographs of Cho; along with this file, the DVD also contained two Microsoft Word files, a six-minute audio .avi file, and 27 QuickTime video clips.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: The PDF had been last modified on April 16 at 7:24 a.m., "minutes after he had shot and killed his first two victims, and nearly two hours before he went on his second rampage." The Microsoft Word files "were drafts of the two sections of the manifesto, which he had written earlier, one being last modified on April 13 at 3:45 p.m. and on April 15 at 8:22 a.m. The sole .avi file of him reading the manifesto, titled 'letter1' was recorded even earlier, at 9:40 a.m. on April 10, a full six days before the massacre." The 27 QuickTime videos together total 24 minutes and are "ranging in length from 16 seconds to six minutes". The titles of those other video clips "are varied and hard to match with their content: 'all of You,' 'am al qaeda,' 'anti terror,' 'as time appr,' 'blood of inno,' 'congrad,' 'could b victim.' The rambling comments are those of an angry young man who felt persecuted, who felt that the world is against him, who felt he was a victim of personal terrorism." Five of the videos are titled "end," "end 1," "end 2," "end car" and "end some life." Those five seem "to be among the last recorded, perhaps between the shootings." In those five videos, Cho "addresses no one by name ..., although he does seemingly address Virginia Tech students in two as 'brats' and 'snobs' with 'Mercedes' and 'trust funds.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: In his manifesto, Cho mentioned the Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, and also makes references to hedonism and Christianity while expressing anger about unspecified wrongs that were done to him.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Pete Williams, an MSNBC justice correspondent, said that Cho lacked logical governance, suggesting that Cho was under severe emotional distress. In the video, Cho also railed against deceitful charlatans on campus, "rich kids," materialism, and hedonism, saying: "Did you want to inject as much misery in our lives as you can just because you can?"


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: In one of his videos, "[Cho] repeatedly suggests he was picked on or otherwise hurt", saying: "You have vandalised my heart, raped my soul and tortured my conscience. You thought it was one pathetic more life you were extinguishing. Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenseless people." On another instance, Cho mentions "martyrs like Eric and Dylan". Cho also stated in the videos: "You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option."


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: One of Cho's roommates, Karan Grewall, stated the place where Cho's videos were taken "looks exactly like our common areas where we hang out every day. I can't be sure, but the walls look exactly like our suite."


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: According to the Virginia Tech report, Cho "seemed to enjoy the idea of writing, especially poetry," and he attempted to get a book published while in college. After the mass shooting, a former classmate of Cho's provided AOL with two plays written by Cho. An AOL official said the authenticity of the plays was verified by AOL before they were posted online. The plays included "Richard McBeef" and "Mr. Brownstone", both written in 2006.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Approximately one year before the incident at Virginia Tech, Cho wrote a paper for an assignment in an "Intro to Short Fiction" class. In that paper, Cho wrote about a mass school murder that was planned by the protagonist of the story. In the story, the protagonist did not follow through with the killings. During the proceedings of the Virginia Tech panel, the panel was unaware of the existence of the paper written by Cho.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Additionally, in March 2006 at Virginia Tech's 22nd Annual Research Symposium and Exposition, Cho submitted a poem titled "Spear me down, Heaven" to the Advanced Undergraduate category. The poem included violent lines including a "wish to annihilate my self" and "tear me to shrivels, eat me to help me".


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: When information surfaced about the paper, the Virginia Tech panel learned at that time that only the Virginia State Police and Virginia Tech had copies of the unreleased paper in their possession. The Virginia State Police reported that, although it had a copy of the paper, Virginia law prevented them from releasing the paper to the panel because it was part of the investigative file in an ongoing investigation. Virginia Tech, on the other hand, had known about the paper, and officials at the school discussed the contents of the paper among themselves in the aftermath of the shootings. According to Governor Kaine, "[Virginia Tech] was expected to turn over all of Cho's writings to the panel" during the proceedings of the Virginia Tech panel. After some members of the Virginia Tech panel complained about the missing paper, Virginia Tech decided to release a copy of the paper to the panel during the latter part of the week of August 25, 2007.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: Edward Falco, a playwriting professor at Virginia Tech, has acknowledged that Cho wrote both the released plays in his class. Falco said of the plays: "They're not good writing. But they are at least a form of communication. And in his responses to the other students' plays, he could be quite articulate." Another professor who taught Cho characterized his work as "very adolescent" and "silly", with attempts at "slapstick comedy" and "elements of violence". Classmates believed "the plays were really morbid and grotesque."


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: According to CBS News, "Cho Seung-Hui's violent writing [and] loner status fit the Secret Service shooter profile," referring to a 2002 U.S. Secret Service study that was conducted after the Columbine massacre, with violent writing cited as one of the most typical behavioral attributes of school shooters. The U.S. Secret Service concluded the study by saying that "[t]he largest group of [school shooters] exhibited an interest in violence in their own writings, such as poems, essays or journal entries," while school shooters' interest in other violent media was generally low.


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: A teenager who in 2015 willingly set fire to a classroom (no deaths) in South Korea, said he "wanted to leave behind a record like Cho Seung-hui."


title: Seung-Hui Cho

text: It was reported in 2015 that some South Korean internet users glorified the Virginia Tech killing and affectuously called Cho "General Cho". In 2017, after the United Express Flight 3411 incident was reported, numerous people on the South Korean internet commemorated Cho, saying for example "I miss General Cho Seung-Hui". It is from the DC Inside forum in 2014 that came the idea of calling Cho a "general" of the "battle of Virginia" (the name given by the forum to the Virginia Tech killings); the forum hailed Cho as a hero against White racism toward Koreans. The surname "general" stemmed from the idea that Cho killed numerous people while being only one, thus making him a genius tactician. Over the years, Cho had become a symbol of resistance against what Korean internet users perceived as anti-Korean racism, on any subject.


title: Blythe Danner

text: Blythe Katherine Danner (born February 3, 1943) is an American actress. Accolades she has received include two Primetime Emmy Awards for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her role as Izzy Huffstodt on "Huff" (2004–2006), and a Tony Award for Best Actress for her performance in "Butterflies Are Free" on Broadway (1969–1972). Danner was twice nominated for the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for portraying Marilyn Truman on "Will & Grace" (2001–06; 2018–20), and the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie for her roles in "We Were the Mulvaneys" (2002) and "Back When We Were Grownups" (2004). For the latter, she also received a Golden Globe Award nomination.


title: Blythe Danner

text: Danner played Dina Byrnes in "Meet the Parents" (2000) and its sequels "Meet the Fockers" (2004) and "Little Fockers" (2010). She has collaborated on several occasions with Woody Allen, appearing in three of his films: "Another Woman" (1988), "Alice" (1990), and "Husbands and Wives" (1992). Her other notable film credits include "1776" (1972), "Hearts of the West" (1975), "The Great Santini" (1979), "Mr. and Mrs. Bridge" (1990), "The Prince of Tides" (1991), "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar" (1995), "The Myth of Fingerprints" (1997), "The X-Files" (1998), "Forces of Nature" (1999), "The Love Letter" (1999), "The Last Kiss" (2006), "Paul" (2011), "Hello I Must Be Going" (2012), "I'll See You in My Dreams" (2015), and "What They Had" (2018).


title: Blythe Danner

text: Danner is the sister of Harry Danner and the widow of Bruce Paltrow. She is the mother of actress Gwyneth Paltrow and director Jake Paltrow.


title: Blythe Danner

text: Danner was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Katharine (née Kile) and Harry Earl Danner, a bank executive. She has a brother, opera singer and actor Harry Danner; a sister, performer-turned-director Dorothy "Dottie" Danner; and a maternal half-brother, violin maker William Moennig III. Danner has Pennsylvania Dutch (German), and some English and Irish ancestry; her maternal grandmother was a German immigrant, and one of her paternal great-grandmothers was born in Barbados (to a family of European descent).


title: Blythe Danner

text: Danner graduated from George School, a Quaker high school located near Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in 1960.


title: Blythe Danner

text: A graduate of Bard College, Danner's first roles included the 1967 musical "Mata Hari" and the 1968 Off-Broadway production of "Summertree". Her early Broadway appearances included "Cyrano de Bergerac" (1968) and her Theatre World Award-winning performance in "The Miser" (1969). She won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for portraying a free-spirited divorcée in "Butterflies Are Free" (1970).


title: Blythe Danner

text: In 1972, Danner portrayed Martha Jefferson in the film version of "1776". That same year, she played the unknowing wife of a husband who committed murder, opposite Peter Falk and John Cassavetes, in the "Columbo" episode "Etude in Black".


title: Blythe Danner

text: Her earliest starring film role was opposite Alan Alda in "To Kill a Clown" (1972). Danner appeared in the episode of "M*A*S*H" entitled "The More I See You", playing the love interest of Alda's character Hawkeye Pierce. She played lawyer Amanda Bonner in television's "Adam's Rib", opposite Ken Howard as Adam Bonner. She played Zelda Fitzgerald in "F. Scott Fitzgerald and 'The Last of the Belles'" (1974). She was the eponymous heroine in the film "Lovin' Molly" (1974) (directed by Sidney Lumet). She appeared in "Futureworld", playing Tracy Ballard with co-star Peter Fonda (1976). In the 1982 TV movie "Inside the Third Reich", she played the wife of Albert Speer. In the film version of Neil Simon's semi-autobiographical play "Brighton Beach Memoirs" (1986), she portrayed a middle-aged Jewish mother. She has appeared in two films based on the novels of Pat Conroy, "The Great Santini" (1979) and "The Prince of Tides" (1991), as well as two television movies adapted from books by Anne Tyler, "Saint Maybe" and "Back When We Were Grownups", both for the Hallmark Hall of Fame.


title: Blythe Danner

text: Danner appeared opposite Robert De Niro in the 2000 comedy hit "Meet the Parents", and its sequels, "Meet the Fockers" (2004) and "Little Fockers" (2010).


title: Blythe Danner

text: From 2001 to 2006, she regularly appeared on NBC's sitcom "Will & Grace" as Will Truman's mother Marilyn. From 2004 to 2006, she starred in the main cast of the comedy-drama series "Huff". In 2005, she was nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards for her work on "Will & Grace", "Huff", and the television film "Back When We Were Grownups", winning for her role in "Huff". The following year, she won a second consecutive Emmy Award for "Huff". For 25 years, she has been a regular performer at the Williamstown Summer Theater Festival, where she also serves on the board of directors.


title: Blythe Danner

text: In 2006, Danner was awarded an inaugural Katharine Hepburn Medal by Bryn Mawr College's Katharine Houghton Hepburn Center. In 2015, Danner was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.


title: Blythe Danner

text: Danner has been involved in environmental issues such as recycling and conservation for over 30 years. She has been active with INFORM, Inc., is on the Board of Environmental Advocates of New York and the Board of Directors of the Environmental Media Association, and won the 2002 EMA Board of Directors Ongoing Commitment Award. In 2011, Danner joined Moms Clean Air Force, to help call on parents to join in the fight against toxic air pollution.


title: Blythe Danner

text: After the death of her husband Bruce Paltrow from oral cancer, she became involved with the nonprofit Oral Cancer Foundation. In 2005, she filmed a public service announcement to raise public awareness of the disease and the need for early detection. She has since appeared on morning talk shows and given interviews in such magazines as "People". The Bruce Paltrow Oral Cancer Fund, administered by the Oral Cancer Foundation, raises funding for oral cancer research and treatment, with a particular focus on those communities in which healthcare disparities exist.


title: Blythe Danner

text: She has also appeared in commercials for Prolia, a brand of denosumab used in the treatment of osteoporosis.


title: Blythe Danner

text: Danner was married to producer and director Bruce Paltrow, who died of oral cancer in 2002. She and Paltrow had two children together, actress Gwyneth Paltrow and director Jake Paltrow.


title: Blythe Danner

text: Danner co-starred with her daughter in the 1992 television film "Cruel Doubt" and again in the 2003 film "Sylvia", in which she portrayed Aurelia Plath, mother to Gwyneth's title role of Sylvia Plath.


title: Blythe Danner

text: Danner is a practitioner of transcendental meditation, which she has described as "very helpful and comforting".


title: Gluten

text: Gluten is a structural protein naturally found in certain cereal grains. Although, strictly speaking, "gluten" only refers to wheat proteins, in medical literature it refers to the combination of prolamin and glutelin proteins naturally occurring in all grains that have been proved capable of triggering celiac disease. These include any species of wheat (such as common wheat, durum, spelt, khorasan, emmer and einkorn), barley, rye and some oat cultivars, as well as any cross hybrids of these grains (such as triticale). Gluten makes up 75–85% of the total protein in bread wheat.


title: Gluten

text: Glutens, especially Triticeae glutens, have unique viscoelastic and adhesive properties, which give dough its elasticity, helping it rise and keep its shape and often leaving the final product with a chewy texture. These properties, and its relatively low cost, make gluten valuable to both food and non-food industries.


title: Gluten

text: Wheat gluten is composed of mainly two types of proteins: the glutenins and the gliadins, which in turn can be divided into high molecular and low molecular glutenins and α/β, γ and Ω gliadins. Its homologous seed storage proteins, in barley, are referred to as hordeins, in rye, secalins, and in oats, avenins. These protein classes are collectively referred to as "gluten". The storage proteins in other grains, such as maize (zeins) and rice (rice protein), are sometimes called gluten, but they do not cause harmful effects in people with celiac disease.


title: Gluten

text: Gluten can trigger adverse, inflammatory, immunological, and autoimmune reactions in some people. The spectrum of gluten related disorders includes celiac disease in 1–2% of the general population, non-celiac gluten sensitivity in 0.5–13% of the general population, as well as dermatitis herpetiformis, gluten ataxia and other neurological disorders. These disorders are treated by a gluten-free diet.


title: Gluten

text: Gluten forms when glutenin molecules cross-link via disulfide bonds to form a submicroscopic network attached to gliadin, which contributes viscosity (thickness) and extensibility to the mix. If this dough is leavened with yeast, fermentation produces carbon dioxide bubbles, which, trapped by the gluten network, cause the dough to rise. Baking coagulates the gluten, which, along with starch, stabilizes the shape of the final product. Gluten content has been implicated as a factor in the staling of bread, possibly because it binds water through hydration.


title: Gluten

text: The formation of gluten affects the texture of the baked goods. Gluten's attainable elasticity is proportional to its content of glutenins with low molecular weights, as this portion contains the preponderance of the sulfur atoms responsible for the cross-linking in the gluten network.


title: Gluten

text: Using flour with higher gluten content leads to chewier doughs such as those found in pizza and bagels, while using flour with less gluten content yields tender baked goods such as pastry products.


title: Gluten

text: Generally, bread flours are high in gluten (hard wheat); pastry flours have a lower gluten content. Kneading promotes the formation of gluten strands and cross-links, creating baked products that are chewier (as opposed to more brittle or crumbly). The "chewiness" increases as the dough is kneaded for longer times. An increased moisture content in the dough enhances gluten development, and very wet doughs left to rise for a long time require no kneading (see no-knead bread). Shortening inhibits formation of cross-links and is used, along with diminished water and less kneading, when a tender and flaky product, such as a pie crust, is desired.


title: Gluten

text: The strength and elasticity of gluten in flour is measured in the baking industry using a farinograph. This gives the baker a measurement of quality for different varieties of flours when developing recipes for various baked goods.


title: Gluten

text: In industrial production, a slurry of wheat flour is kneaded vigorously by machinery until the gluten agglomerates into a mass. This mass is collected by centrifugation, then transported through several stages integrated in a continuous process. About 65% of the water in the wet gluten is removed by means of a screw press; the remainder is sprayed through an atomizer nozzle into a drying chamber, where it remains at an elevated temperature for a short time to allow the water to evaporate without denaturing the gluten. The process yields a flour-like powder with a 7% moisture content, which is air cooled and pneumatically transported to a receiving vessel. In the final step, the processed gluten is sifted and milled to produce a uniform product.


title: Gluten

text: This flour-like powder, when added to ordinary flour dough, may help improve the dough's ability to increase in volume. The resulting mixture also increases the bread's structural stability and chewiness. Gluten-added dough must be worked vigorously to induce it to rise to its full capacity; an automatic bread machine or food processor may be required for high-gluten kneading. Generally, higher gluten levels are associated with higher overall protein content.


title: Gluten

text: Gluten, especially wheat gluten, is often the basis for imitation meats resembling beef, chicken, duck (see mock duck), fish and pork. When cooked in broth, gluten absorbs some of the surrounding liquid (including the flavor) and becomes firm to the bite. This use of gluten is a popular means of adding supplemental protein to many vegetarian diets. In home or restaurant cooking, wheat gluten is prepared from flour by kneading the flour under water, agglomerating the gluten into an elastic network known as a dough, and then washing out the starch.


title: Gluten

text: Gluten is often present in beer and soy sauce, and can be used as a stabilizing agent in more unexpected food products, such as ice cream and ketchup. Foods of this kind may therefore present problems for a small number of consumers because the hidden gluten constitutes a hazard for people with coeliac disease and gluten sensitivities. The protein content of some pet foods may also be enhanced by adding gluten.


title: Gluten

text: "Gluten-related disorders" is the umbrella term for all diseases triggered by gluten, which include celiac disease (CD), non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS), wheat allergy, gluten ataxia and dermatitis herpetiformis (DH).


title: Gluten

text: The gluten peptides are responsible for triggering gluten-related disorders. In people who have celiac disease, the peptides cause injury of the intestines, ranging from inflammation to partial or total destruction of the intestinal villi. To study mechanisms of this damage, laboratory experiments are done "in vitro" and "in vivo". Among the gluten peptides, gliadin has been studied extensively.


title: Gluten

text: In the context of celiac disease, gliadin peptides are classified in basic and clinical research as toxic or immunogenic, depending on their mechanism of action:


title: Gluten

text: At least 50 epitopes of gluten may produce cytotoxic, immunomodulatory, and gut-permeating activities.


title: Gluten

text: The effect of oat peptides (avenins) in celiac people depends on the oat cultivar consumed because of prolamin genes, protein amino acid sequences, and the immunotoxicity of prolamins which vary among oat varieties. In addition, oat products may be cross-contaminated with the other gluten-containing cereals.


title: Gluten

text: , gluten-related disorders were increasing in frequency in different geographic areas. Some suggested explanations for this increase include the following: the growing westernization of diets, the increasing use of wheat-based foods included in the Mediterranean diet, the progressive replacement of rice by wheat in many countries in Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, the development in recent years of new types of wheat with a higher amount of cytotoxic gluten peptides, and the higher content of gluten in bread and bakery products due to the reduction of dough fermentation time.