title: Catherine Tate

text: She has been nominated for four BAFTA Awards for her work on "The Catherine Tate Show", including Best Comedy Performance. Despite speculation that the third series of the show would be the last, Tate and the BBC have not ruled out further episodes. She later filmed a one-off special episode which aired on Christmas Day 2007. The episode was subject to criticism when 42 viewers complained about the amount of swearing, and accused Tate of bigotry over the depiction of a family from Northern Ireland as terrorists, whose Christmas presents included a balaclava and a pair of knuckle dusters, in reference to the Troubles. After the complaints were made, an Ofcom report later concluded that the show was not offensive and did not violate broadcasting regulations. An extract from the Ofcom report read: "Overall this episode was typical of "The Catherine Tate Show" and would not have gone beyond the expectations of its usual audience. For those not familiar with the show, the information given at the start was adequate."


title: Catherine Tate

text: In summer 2008, Tate starred as Michelle, a promiscuous mathematics teacher, in David Eldridge's "Under the Blue Sky" at the Duke of York's Theatre, alongside Francesca Annis and Nigel Lindsay. The first preview performance was canceled after she injured her ankle during the final dress rehearsal. Tate, however, returned to the stage the next day and performed preview shows with the aid of a crutch. Earlier that year, she returned to "Doctor Who" to reprise the role of the Doctor's companion throughout the fourth series, which was shown on BBC One starting on 5 April for a 13-week run. Producer Russell T Davies said, "We are delighted that one of Britain's greatest talents has agreed to join us for the fourth series." Tate added, "I am delighted to be returning to "Doctor Who". I had a blast last Christmas and look forward to travelling again through time and space with that nice man from Gallifrey."


title: Catherine Tate

text: At the 2008 TV Quick Awards and SFX Awards, Tate was voted best actress for her dramatic "Doctor Who" performance. She also earned a nomination at the 14th National Television Awards. A year and a half after the heartbreaking finale of the fourth series, she returned as Donna in the first part of the show's festive special "The End of Time", which was broadcast on Christmas Day 2009 and became the final story for both David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor and Russell T Davies as showrunner. Later that day, "Nan's Christmas Carol" premiered, a one-off special spin-off to "The Catherine Tate Show" focused on Nan, who gets visited by three ghosts (played by David Tennant, Ben Miller and Roger Lloyd-Pack) in her council flat. The next day, Tate and Tennant guest hosted Jonathan Ross's BBC Radio 2 show, having already done so on 11 April and later appearing on the show once again on 30 January 2010.


title: Catherine Tate

text: In March 2010, Tate took part in "Channel 4's Comedy Gala", a benefit show held in aid of Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, filmed live at the O2 Arena in London. She went on to make her directorial debut in Sky One's series of short comedy films called "Little Crackers". The autobiographical short film "My First Nativity" (2010), also written by and starring Tate as her mother Josephine, showed the young Catherine performing an impression of Gary Glitter in her school nativity play. It received a nomination for the Best Comedy Programme at the 2011 British Academy Television Awards.


title: Catherine Tate

text: On Christmas Day 2010 Tate appeared as Queen Isabelle of Lilliput in the film adaptation of "Gulliver's Travels" starring Jack Black in the title role. She then starred opposite Selena Gomez in another American comedy film, "Monte Carlo" (2011).


title: Catherine Tate

text: In March 2011, the video for Take That's new single "Happy Now" was debuted on Comic Relief. The video showed Tate alongside comedians Alan Carr, James Corden, John Bishop and David Walliams, all auditioning to become Take That's ultimate tribute band, Fake That. In December, she presented Channel 4's two-hour documentary "Catherine Tate: Laughing at the Noughties", in which she met Carr, Walliams, Noel Fielding, Rob Brydon and her "Doctor Who" co-star David Tennant to discuss the comedy highlights of the 2000s. It was soon after she served as a guest host on the comedy shows "The Sunday Night Project" (2009) and "Never Mind the Buzzcocks" (2010).


title: Catherine Tate

text: From May to September 2011, Tate appeared alongside Tennant in the Shakespeare comedy "Much Ado About Nothing" at the Wyndham's Theatre. The production was recorded by Digital Theatre and is available to watch on their website. For her performance as Beatrice, Tate won the BroadwayWorld UK Award for Best Leading Actress in a Play, while her reunion with Tennant won the WhatsOnStage Award for the Theatre Event of the Year. At the same ceremony, she received an award in the Best Supporting Actress category for the Royal National Theatre production of Alan Ayckbourn's "Season's Greetings" (2010–2011), in which she played Belinda.


title: Catherine Tate

text: Tate guest starred in the two-part seventh season finale of the American mockumentary sitcom "The Office", which aired on 19 May 2011. She portrayed Nellie Bertram, who was interviewed for the Regional Manager position of the Dunder Mifflin Scranton branch, the position that Michael Scott (played by Steve Carell) held for the majority of the series. She was reportedly the top choice to replace Carell, but was unable to join the filming, due to her commitment to "Much Ado About Nothing". However, in January 2012 Tate returned to "The Office" as a series regular for the second half of season eight, reprising her role as Nellie, who was hired as a "misguided special projects manager". She continued in the role for the ninth and final season.


title: Catherine Tate

text: In May 2013, she starred alongside Lee Mack in the unaired BBC One pilot for "Everybody Loves Raymond" remake, titled "The Smiths". Two promotional photos were released in August but the project was eventually scrapped, with Mack concentrating more on his sitcom "Not Going Out". Coincidentally, Tate played Kate in the original 2005 pilot of the show, which was also never broadcast. Around the same time in 2013, she joined David Walliams and Philip Glenister in the BBC One sitcom "Big School" (2013–2014), playing the main role of French teacher Sarah Postern in both series of the show. Tate later appeared as a nun alongside Walliams as Lou Todd in a Red Nose Day 2015 sketch, featuring Stephen Hawking in the Andy Pipkin role.


title: Catherine Tate

text: In 2013, she accepted the role in the low-budget superhero comedy film "SuperBob" (2015) written by and starring Brett Goldstein as the title character, which led to a number of collaborations with Goldstein. Three episodes of her sitcom "Catherine Tate's Nan", co-written with Goldstein, aired in January 2014 and December 2015 on BBC One. The role of Joanie Taylor earned her a nomination at the 2015 British Academy Television Awards for Best Female Comedy Performance. Tate calls Nan "the one [character] that's got the legs to carry on" and her favourite to play: "It's the one character I can look at on screen and not find myself in. It's a very good transformation. In lots of the others it's clear that it's me. I just enjoy playing that character mainly because you get the privilege of age where you can swear and people laugh. Old people swearing is funny." She reprised the role several times between 2009 and 2018 on Graham Norton, Michael McIntyre, Paul O'Grady and Alan Carr's television shows and performed Bonnie Tyler's song "Holding Out for a Hero" in character for "Let's Sing and Dance for Comic Relief" (2017).


title: Catherine Tate

text: Tate portrayed both Eva Braun and Édith Piaf in the pilot episode of the Sky Arts sketch show "Psychobitches" (2012). In autumn 2014, she was cast as another real-life person in her first musical production, the Menier Chocolate Factory revival of Stephen Sondheim's "Assassins" (2014–2015). Her character was Sara Jane Moore, a woman who attempted to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford. She went on to play alongside Mark Gatiss and Judi Dench in "The Vote", a James Graham play set in a fictitious London polling station, which was broadcast live on More4 on election night 2015. In spring 2016, Tate appeared as fashion designer Myrna in another musical comedy, "Miss Atomic Bomb", at the St. James Theatre. Benjamin McDonald, writing in "Gay Times", praised Tate's performance, saying she "proves she has the strong vocal ability to match her impeccable comic timing". The show itself received much poorer reviews, including a one-star review from "The Stage".On New Year's Day 2016, Tate played the role of hand model Sapphire Diamond in the television adaptation of David Walliams's children's book "Billionaire Boy". She appeared in "Bruce's Hall of Fame with Alexander Armstrong" the following day with a musical tribute to her childhood hero Victoria Wood, calling her the first woman she had seen being funny on television. She then chose Wood as her inspirational female figure when promoting "Leading Lady Parts" (2018), a short film inspired by the Time's Up movement and starring Tate as a casting director auditioning several A-list actresses for a leading lady role.


title: Catherine Tate

text: In October 2016, Tate began touring British theatres with "The Catherine Tate Show Live", guest starring Brett Goldstein (who also co-wrote the show with Tate) and her long-time collaborators Mathew Horne and Niky Wardley. Most of the main characters from the original television show, such as Nan, Lauren, nurse Bernie, Geordie Georgie and Derek Faye, all featured in the show. Some pre-recorded sketches, including cameos by Nick Grimshaw and Billy Connolly, were shown during each of the many changes of Tate's costumes and wigs. In late 2018, she brought the show to Australia and New Zealand with the help of two new cast members, David O'Reilly and Alex Carter, before finishing her tour at London's Wyndham's Theatre in January 2019. Around the same time, she hosted the 2018 Laurence Olivier Awards. An edited version of the ceremony was broadcast on ITV. It was also covered live on Magic Radio, where listeners heard Tate hilariously going back on fluffed lines multiple times, occasionally swearing. She later apologised after it was pointed out the event was going out live.


title: Catherine Tate

text: In 2016 and 2019, Tate and David Tennant reprised their "Doctor Who" roles in two volumes of the full-cast audio series "" from Big Finish Productions. Talking about his frequent colleague during the recording session, Tennant said: "I love working with Catherine because of the life that she brings to something and the way that she can turn the most mundane line into something glorious and sparkling. I love Catherine for what she is most famous for, and that's being funny and brilliant and witty and quick, but I love the fact that she's a great and proper actress." In October 2017, Tate was revealed to be part of the cast of Disney XD's "DuckTales" reboot, providing the voice of the villainous sorceress Magica De Spell following the death of the character's long-time voice actor, June Foray, in July of the same year. Tennant provided the voice of the show's protagonist, Scrooge McDuck.


title: Catherine Tate

text: In April 2020, Tate revived her popular character Lauren Cooper for "The Big Night In", a telethon held during the COVID-19 pandemic, in a skit that had her being schooled remotely by a teacher played again by Tennant. Another popular character from "The Catherine Tate Show", Nan, made a return the next year in a Comic Relief sketch starring Daniel Craig as James Bond, followed by the feature film "The Nan Movie" (2022).


title: Catherine Tate

text: In April 2022, she starred as six different characters in "Hard Cell", a Netflix original mockumentary sitcom set in a women's prison. She co-wrote the series with Niky Wardley and Alex Carter and co-directed all six episodes with James Kayler. In May, it was announced Tate would re-reprise her role as Donna Temple-Noble alongside David Tennant as the 14th Doctor for the 60th anniversary of "Doctor Who". In August, the BBC commissioned "Queen of Oz" (2023), a sitcom written by and starring Tate as a disgraced member of a fictional British Royal Family sent to rule Australia.


title: Catherine Tate

text: Tate's former boyfriend is stage manager Twig Clark. They have a daughter Erin, who was born at London's Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in January 2003 and was delivered following an emergency surgery.


title: Catherine Tate

text: Tate suffered from post-natal depression, from which she only recovered after the filming of the second series of "The Catherine Tate Show". She also suffers from occasional panic attacks. Regarding her personal outlook, Tate has said, "I'm an incredibly negative person, so any form of success is only ever going to be a relief to me and set my default position back to neutral."


title: Catherine Tate

text: Tate is a patron of the Laura Crane Youth Cancer Trust, supporting the charity since 2006. Since then, she has hosted a fundraising auction, filmed a five-minute film featuring herself and David Tennant on the set of "Doctor Who" for the charity's annual ball and taken part in its 2011 calendar with the Huddersfield Giants. She is also the current patron of the Addie Brady Foundation, raising funds for research into high-grade paediatric brain tumours and supporting families with Li–Fraumeni Syndrome, and was a patron of the children's cancer charity the Joe Glover Trust for a number of years since its launching in 2007.


title: Catherine Tate

text: Since 2005, Tate has been a frequent supporter of two BBC telethon charities, Children in Need and Comic Relief. For the latter, she so far has starred in eleven sketches and a music video. She also appeared as Lauren Cooper from "The Catherine Tate Show" live on stage during the Red Nose Day 2005 and 2017 events, and as Nan in 2009.


title: Catherine Tate

text: In August 2017, after being asked at the Wizard World Chicago convention about what her career would look like if she hadn't become an actress and comedian, Tate said: "I'd definitely work with animals. In fact, sometimes I do feel, 'Oh, am I sort of wasting my time doing [acting] when I should be doing sort of like stuff with animals in need?' because I'm a big animal welfare kind of person, animal rights person." She has supported the animal rescue centre Battersea Dogs & Cats Home on multiple occasions and adopted cats from there. In 2018, she presented the BBC One hour-long documentary "Saving the British Bulldog" about the health issues affecting one of the most popular dog breeds in the UK. In 2020, she featured in a video aimed to raise funds for the Zoological Society of London after it was badly impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: The Bridge on the River Kwai is a 1957 epic war film directed by David Lean and based on the 1952 novel written by Pierre Boulle. Although the film uses the historical setting of the construction of the Burma Railway in 1942–1943, the plot and characters of Boulle's novel and the screenplay are almost entirely fictional. The cast includes William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, and Sessue Hayakawa.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: It was initially scripted by screenwriter Carl Foreman, who was later replaced by Michael Wilson. Both writers had to work in secret, as they were on the Hollywood blacklist and had fled to the UK in order to continue working. As a result, Boulle, who did not speak English, was credited and received the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay; many years later, Foreman and Wilson posthumously received the Academy Award.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: "The Bridge on the River Kwai" is now widely recognized as one of the greatest films ever made. It was the highest-grossing film of 1957 and received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics. The film won seven Academy Awards (including Best Picture) at the 30th Academy Awards. In 1997, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress. It has been included on the American Film Institute's list of best American films ever made. In 1999, the British Film Institute voted "The Bridge on the River Kwai" the 11th greatest British film of the 20th century.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: In early 1943, a contingent of British prisoners of war, led by Lt. Colonel Nicholson, arrive at a Japanese prison camp in Thailand. US Navy Commander Shears tells of the horrific conditions. Nicholson forbids any escape attempts because they were ordered by headquarters to surrender, and escapes could be seen as defiance of orders. Also, the dense surrounding jungle renders escape virtually impossible.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: Colonel Saito, the camp commandant, informs the new prisoners they will all work, even officers, on the construction of a railway bridge over the River Kwai that will connect Bangkok and Rangoon. Nicholson objects, informing Saito the Geneva Convention exempts officers from manual labour. After the enlisted men are marched to the bridge site, Saito threatens to have the officers shot, until Major Clipton, the British medical officer, warns Saito there are too many witnesses for him to get away with murder. Saito leaves the officers standing all day in the intense heat. That evening, the officers are placed in a punishment hut, while Nicholson is beaten and locked in an iron box.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: Shears and two others escape. Only he survives, though he is wounded. He wanders into a Burmese village, is nursed back to health, and eventually reaches the British colony of Ceylon.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: Work on the bridge proceeds badly, due to both the faulty Japanese engineering plans and the prisoners' slow pace and deliberate sabotage. Saito is expected to commit ritual suicide if he fails to meet the rapidly approaching deadline. Desperate, he uses the anniversary of Japan's 1905 victory in the Russo-Japanese War as an excuse to save face; he announces a general amnesty, releasing Nicholson and his officers and exempting them from manual labour. Nicholson is shocked by the poor job being done by his men and orders the building of a proper bridge, intending it to stand as a tribute to the British Army's ingenuity for centuries to come. Clipton objects, believing this to be collaboration with the enemy. Nicholson's obsession with the bridge eventually drives him to order his officers to engage in manual labor.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: Shears is enjoying his hospital stay in Ceylon unwittingly within a commando school referred to as "Force 316" (likely based on the real world Force 136 of the Special Operations Executive (SOE)). Major Warden of SOE invites Shears to join a commando mission to destroy the bridge just as it is completed. Shears tries to get out of the mission by confessing that he impersonated an officer, hoping for better treatment from the Japanese. Warden responds that he already knew and that the US Navy had agreed to transfer him to the British SOE with the simulated rank of Major to avoid embarrassment. Realising he has no choice, Shears volunteers.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: Warden, Shears, and two other commandos parachute into Thailand; one, Chapman, dies after falling into a tree, and Warden is wounded in an encounter with a Japanese patrol and must be carried on a litter. He, Shears, and Joyce reach the river in time with the assistance of Siamese women bearers and their village chief, Khun Yai. Under cover of darkness, Shears and Joyce plant explosives on the bridge towers. A train carrying important dignitaries and soldiers is scheduled to be the first to cross the bridge the following day, and Warden wants to destroy both. By daybreak, however, the river level has dropped, exposing the wire connecting the explosives to the detonator. Nicholson spots the wire and brings it to Saito's attention. As the train approaches, they hurry down to the riverbank to investigate. Joyce, manning the detonator, breaks cover and stabs Saito to death. Nicholson yells for help, while attempting to stop Joyce from reaching the detonator. When Joyce is wounded by Japanese fire, Shears swims across, but is himself shot. Recognising Shears, Nicholson exclaims, "What have I done?"


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: Warden fires a mortar, killing Shears and Joyce and fatally wounding Nicholson. Dying, Nicholson stumbles toward the detonator and falls on the plunger, blowing up the bridge and sending the train hurtling into the river. Warden tells the Siamese women that he had to prevent anyone from falling into enemy hands, and leaves with them. Witnessing the carnage, Clipton shakes his head and mutters, "Madness! ... Madness!"


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: The screenwriters, Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, were on the Hollywood blacklist and, even though living in exile in England, could only work on the film in secret. The two did not collaborate on the script; Wilson took over after Lean was dissatisfied with Foreman's work. The official credit was given to Pierre Boulle (who did not speak English), and the resulting Oscar for Best Screenplay (Adaptation) was awarded to him. Only in 1984 did the Academy rectify the situation by retroactively awarding the Oscar to Foreman and Wilson, posthumously in both cases. Subsequent releases of the film finally gave them proper screen credit. David Lean himself also claimed that producer Sam Spiegel cheated him out of his rightful part in the credits since he had had a major hand in the script.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: The film was relatively faithful to the novel, with two major exceptions. Shears, who is a British commando officer like Warden in the novel, became an American sailor who escapes from the POW camp. Also, in the novel, the bridge is not destroyed: the train plummets into the river from a secondary charge placed by Warden, but Nicholson (never realising "what have I done?") does not fall onto the plunger, and the bridge suffers only minor damage. Boulle nonetheless enjoyed the film version though he disagreed with its climax.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: Although Lean later denied it, Charles Laughton was his first choice for the role of Nicholson. Laughton was in his habitually overweight state, and was either denied insurance coverage, or was simply not keen on filming in a tropical location. Guinness admitted that Lean "didn't particularly want me" for the role, and thought about immediately returning to England when he arrived in Ceylon and Lean reminded him that he wasn't the first choice.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: William Holden's deal was considered one of the best ever for an actor at the time, with him receiving $300,000 plus 10% of the film's gross receipts.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: Many directors were considered for the project, among them John Ford, William Wyler, Howard Hawks, Fred Zinnemann, and Orson Welles (who was also offered a starring role).


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: Director David Lean clashed with his cast members on multiple occasions, particularly Guinness and James Donald, who thought the novel was anti-British. Lean had a lengthy row with Guinness over how to play the role of Nicholson; the actor wanted to play the part with a sense of humour and sympathy, while Lean thought Nicholson should be "a bore." On another occasion, they argued over the scene where Nicholson reflects on his career in the army. Lean filmed the scene from behind Guinness and exploded in anger when Guinness asked him why he was doing this. After Guinness was done with the scene, Lean said, "Now you can all fuck off and go home, you English actors. Thank God that I'm starting work tomorrow with an American actor (William Holden)."


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: The film was made in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The bridge in the film was near Kitulgala. The Mount Lavinia Hotel was used as a location for the hospital.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: Guinness later said that he subconsciously based his walk while emerging from "the Oven" on that of his eleven-year-old son Matthew, who was recovering from polio at the time, a disease that left him temporarily paralyzed from the waist down. Guinness later reflected on the scene, calling it the "finest piece of work" he had ever done.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: In a 1988 interview with Barry Norman, Lean confirmed that Columbia almost stopped filming after three weeks because there was no white woman in the film, forcing him to add what he called "a very terrible scene" between Holden and a nurse on the beach.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: The filming of the bridge explosion was to be done on 10 March 1957, in the presence of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, then Prime Minister of Ceylon, and a team of government dignitaries. However, cameraman Freddy Ford was unable to get out of the way of the explosion in time, and Lean had to stop filming. The train crashed into a generator on the other side of the bridge and was wrecked. It was repaired in time to be blown up the next morning, with Bandaranaike and his entourage present.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: British composer Malcolm Arnold recalled that he had "ten days to write around forty-five minutes worth of music" – much less time than he was used to. He described the music for "The Bridge on the River Kwai" as the "worst job I ever had in my life" from the point of view of time. Despite this, he won an Oscar and a Grammy.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: A memorable feature of the film is the tune that is whistled by the POWs—the first strain of the march "Colonel Bogey"—when they enter the camp. Gavin Young recounts meeting Donald Wise, a former prisoner of the Japanese who had worked on the Burma Railway. Young: "Donald, did anyone whistle "Colonel Bogey" ... as they did in the film?" Wise: "I never heard it in Thailand. We hadn't much breath left for whistling. But in Bangkok I was told that David Lean, the film's director, became mad at the extras who played the prisoners—us—because they couldn't march in time. Lean shouted at them, 'For God's sake, whistle a march to keep time to.' And a bloke called George Siegatz ... —an expert whistler—began to whistle "Colonel Bogey", and a hit was born."


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: The march was written in 1914 by Kenneth J. Alford, a pseudonym of British Bandmaster Frederick J. Ricketts. The Colonel Bogey strain was accompanied by a counter-melody using the same chord progressions, then continued with film composer Malcolm Arnold's own composition, "The River Kwai March", played by the off-screen orchestra taking over from the whistlers, though Arnold's march was not heard in completion on the soundtrack. Mitch Miller had a hit with a recording of both marches.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: In many tense, dramatic scenes, only the sounds of nature are used. An example of this is when commandos Warden and Joyce hunt a fleeing Japanese soldier through the jungle, desperate to prevent him from alerting other troops.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: The plot and characters of Boulle's novel and the screenplay were almost entirely fictional. Since it was not a documentary, there are many historical inaccuracies in the film, as noted by eyewitnesses to the building of the real Burma Railway by historians.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: The conditions to which POW and civilian labourers were subjected were far worse than the film depicted. According to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission:


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: Lieutenant Colonel Philip Toosey of the British Army was the real senior Allied officer at the bridge in question. Toosey was very different from Nicholson and was certainly not a collaborator who felt obliged to work with the Japanese. Toosey in fact did as much as possible to delay the building of the bridge. While Nicholson disapproves of acts of sabotage and other deliberate attempts to delay progress, Toosey encouraged this: termites were collected in large numbers to eat the wooden structures, and the concrete was badly mixed. Some consider the film to be an insulting parody of Toosey.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: On a BBC "Timewatch" programme, a former prisoner at the camp states that it is unlikely that a man like the fictional Nicholson could have risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel, and, if he had, due to his collaboration he would have been "quietly eliminated" by the other prisoners.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: Julie Summers, in her book "The Colonel of Tamarkan", writes that Boulle, who had been a prisoner of war in Thailand, created the fictional Nicholson character as an amalgam of his memories of collaborating French officers. He strongly denied the claim that the book was anti-British, although many involved in the film itself (including Alec Guinness) felt otherwise.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: Ernest Gordon, a survivor of the railway construction and POW camps described in the novel/film, stated in his 1962 book, "Through the Valley of the Kwai":


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: A 1969 BBC television documentary, "Return to the River Kwai", made by former POW John Coast, sought to highlight the real history behind the film (partly through getting ex-POWs to question its factual basis, for example Dr Hugh de Wardener and Lt-Col Alfred Knights), which angered many former POWs. The documentary itself was described by one newspaper reviewer when it was shown on Boxing Day 1974 ("The Bridge on the River Kwai" had been shown on BBC1 on Christmas Day 1974) as "Following the movie, this is a rerun of the antidote."


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: Some of the characters in the film use the names of real people who were involved in the Burma Railway. Their roles and characters, however, are fictionalised. For example, a Sergeant-Major Risaburo Saito was in real life second in command at the camp. In the film, a Colonel Saito is camp commandant. In reality, Risaburo Saito was respected by his prisoners for being comparatively merciful and fair towards them. Toosey later defended him in his war crimes trial after the war, and the two became friends.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: Some Japanese viewers resented the movie's depiction of their engineers' capabilities as inferior and less advanced than they were in reality. Japanese engineers had been surveying and planning the route of the railway since 1937, and they had demonstrated considerable skill during their construction efforts across South-East Asia. Some Japanese viewers also disliked the film for portraying the Allied prisoners of war as more capable of constructing the bridge than the Japanese engineers themselves were, accusing the filmmakers of being unfairly biased and unfamiliar of realities of the bridge construction, a sentiment echoed by surviving prisoners of war who saw the film in cinemas.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: The major railway bridge described in the novel and film did not actually cross the river known at the time as the Kwai. However, in 1943 a railway bridge was built by Allied POWs over the Mae Klong river – renamed Khwae Yai in the 1960s as a result of the film – at Tha Ma Kham, five kilometres from Kanchanaburi, Thailand. Boulle had never been to the bridge. He knew that the railway ran parallel to the Kwae for many miles, and he therefore assumed that it was the Kwae which it crossed just north of Kanchanaburi. This was an incorrect assumption. The destruction of the bridge as depicted in the film is also entirely fictional. In fact, two bridges were built: a temporary wooden bridge and a permanent steel/concrete bridge a few months later. Both bridges were used for two years, until they were destroyed by Allied bombing. The steel bridge was repaired and is still in use today.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: "The Bridge on the River Kwai" was a massive commercial success. It was the highest-grossing film of 1957 in the United States and Canada and was also the most popular film at the British box office that year. According to "Variety", the film earned estimated domestic box office revenues of $18,000,000 although this was revised downwards the following year to $15,000,000, which was still the biggest for 1958 and Columbia's highest-grossing film at the time. By October 1960, the film had earned worldwide box office revenues of $30 million.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: The film was re-released in 1964 and earned a further estimated $2.6 million at the box office in the United States and Canada but the following year its revised total US and Canadian revenues were reported by "Variety" as $17,195,000.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film received an approval rating of 96% based on 93 reviews, with an average rating of 9.4/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "This complex war epic asks hard questions, resists easy answers, and boasts career-defining work from star Alec Guinness and director David Lean." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 87 out of 100 based on 14 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: Bosley Crowther of "The New York Times" praised the film as "a towering entertainment of rich variety and revelation of the ways of men". Mike Kaplan, reviewing for "Variety", described it as "a gripping drama, expertly put together and handled with skill in all departments." Kaplan further praised the actors, especially Alec Guinness, later writing "the film is unquestionably" his. William Holden was also credited for his acting for giving a solid characterization that was "easy, credible and always likeable in a role that is the pivot point of the story". Edwin Schallert of the "Los Angeles Times" claimed the film's strongest points were for being "excellently produced in virtually all respects and that it also offers an especially outstanding and different performance by Alec Guinness. Highly competent work is also done by William Holden, Jack Hawkins and Sessue Hayakawa". "Time" magazine praised Lean's directing, noting he demonstrates "a dazzlingly musical sense and control of the many and involving rhythms of a vast composition. He shows a rare sense of humor and a feeling for the poetry of situation; and he shows the even rarer ability to express these things, not in lines but in lives." "Harrison's Reports" described the film as an "excellent World War II adventure melodrama" in which the "production values are first-rate and so is the photography."


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: Among retrospective reviews, Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars, noting that it is one of the few war movies that "focuses not on larger rights and wrongs but on individuals", but commented that the viewer is not certain what is intended by the final dialogue due to the film's shifting points of view. "Slant" magazine gave the film four out of five stars. "Slant" stated that "the 1957 epic subtly develops its themes about the irrationality of honor and the hypocrisy of Britain's class system without ever compromising its thrilling war narrative", and in comparing to other films of the time said that "Bridge on the River Kwai" "carefully builds its psychological tension until it erupts in a blinding flash of sulfur and flame."


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: Balu Mahendra, the Tamil film director, observed the shooting of this film at Kitulgala, Sri Lanka during his school trip and was inspired to become a film director. Warren Buffett said it was his favorite movie. In an interview, he said that "[t]here were a lot of lessons in that... The ending of that was sort of the story of life. He created the railroad. Did he really want the enemy to come in across it?"


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: Some Japanese viewers have disliked the film's depiction of the Japanese characters and the historical background presented as being inaccurate, particularly in the interactions between Saito and Nicholson. In particular, they objected to the implication presented in the film that Japanese military engineers were generally unskilled at their profession and lacked proficiency. In reality, Japanese engineers proved to be just as capable at construction efforts as their Allied counterparts.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: ABC, sponsored by Ford, paid a record $1.8 million for the television rights for two screenings in the United States. The 167-minute film was first telecast, uncut, in colour, on the evening of 25 September 1966, as a three hours-plus ABC Movie Special. The telecast of the film lasted more than three hours because of the commercial breaks. It was still highly unusual at that time for a television network to show such a long film in one evening; most films of that length were still generally split into two parts and shown over two evenings. But the unusual move paid off for ABC—the telecast drew huge ratings with a record audience of 72 million and a Nielsen rating of 38.3 and an audience share of 61%.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: In 1972, the movie was among the first selection of films released on the early Cartrivision video format, alongside classics such as "The Jazz Singer" and "Sands of Iwo Jima".


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: The film was restored in 1985 by Columbia Pictures. The separate dialogue, music and effects were located and remixed with newly recorded "atmospheric" sound effects. The image was restored by OCS, Freeze Frame, and Pixel Magic with George Hively editing.


title: The Bridge on the River Kwai

text: On 2 November 2010 Columbia Pictures released a newly restored "The Bridge on the River Kwai" for the first time on Blu-ray. According to Columbia Pictures, they followed an all-new 4K digital restoration from the original negative with newly restored 5.1 audio. The original negative for the feature was scanned at 4k (four times the resolution in High Definition), and the colour correction and digital restoration were also completed at 4k. The negative itself manifested many of the kinds of issues one would expect from a film of this vintage: torn frames, embedded emulsion dirt, scratches through every reel, colour fading. Unique to this film, in some ways, were other issues related to poorly made optical dissolves, the original camera lens and a malfunctioning camera. These problems resulted in a number of anomalies that were very difficult to correct, like a ghosting effect in many scenes that resembles colour mis-registration, and a tick-like effect with the image jumping or jerking side-to-side. These issues, running throughout the film, were addressed to a lesser extent on various previous DVD releases of the film and might not have been so obvious in standard definition.


title: Sally Ride

text: Sally Kristen Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012) was an American astronaut and physicist. Born in Los Angeles, she joined NASA in 1978, and in 1983 became the first American woman and the third woman to fly in space, after cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 and Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982. She was the youngest American astronaut to have flown in space, having done so at the age of 32.


title: Sally Ride

text: Ride was a graduate of Stanford University, where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in physics and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature in 1973, a Master of Science degree in physics in 1975, and a Doctor of Philosophy in physics in 1978 for research on the interaction of X-rays with the interstellar medium. She was selected as a mission specialist astronaut with NASA Astronaut Group 8, the first class of NASA astronauts to include women. After completing her training in 1979, she served as the ground-based capsule communicator (CapCom) for the second and third Space Shuttle flights, and helped develop the Space Shuttle's robotic arm. In June 1983, she flew in space on the on the STS-7 mission. The mission deployed two communications satellites and the first Shuttle pallet satellite (SPAS-1). Ride operated the robotic arm to deploy and retrieve SPAS-1. Her second space flight was the STS-41-G mission in 1984, also on board "Challenger". She spent a total of more than 343 hours in space. She left NASA in 1987.


title: Sally Ride

text: Ride worked for two years at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Arms Control, then at the University of California, San Diego, primarily researching nonlinear optics and Thomson scattering. She served on the committees that investigated the "Challenger" and "Columbia" Space Shuttle disasters, the only person to participate in both. Having been married to astronaut Steven Hawley during her spaceflight years and in a private, long-term relationship with former Women's Tennis Association player Tam O'Shaughnessy, she is the first astronaut known to have been LGBT. She died of pancreatic cancer on July 23, 2012.


title: Sally Ride

text: Sally Kristen Ride was born on May 26, 1951, in the Encino neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, the elder child of Dale Burdell Ride and Carol Joyce Ride . She had one sibling, Karen, known as "Bear". Both parents were elders in the Presbyterian Church. Her mother, who was of Norwegian descent, had worked as a volunteer counselor at a women's correctional facility. Her father served with the U.S. Army in Europe with the 103rd Infantry Division during World War II. After the war he went to Haverford College on the G.I. Bill, earned a master's degree in education at the University of California, Los Angeles, and became a political science professor at Santa Monica College.


title: Sally Ride

text: Ride grew up in the Van Nuys and Encino neighborhoods of Los Angeles. In 1960, when she was nine years old, the family spent a year traveling in Europe. In Spain, Ride played tennis for the first time. She enjoyed sports, but tennis most of all, and at age 10 was coached by Alice Marble, a former world number one player. By 1963 Ride was ranked number 20 in Southern California for girls aged 12 and under. She attended Encino Elementary School, Portola Junior High (now Portola Middle School), Birmingham High School and then, as a sophomore on a tennis scholarship, Westlake School for Girls, an exclusive all-girls private school in Los Angeles. Elizabeth Mommaerts, who taught human physiology, became a mentor. Ride resolved to become an astrophysicist. She graduated in June 1968, and then took a class in advanced math at Santa Monica College during the summer break.


title: Sally Ride

text: Her friend Sue Okie was interested in going to Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, so Ride applied too. She was interviewed by Fred Hargadon, the dean of admissions, who was impressed by both her mental and her tennis ability. She was admitted on a full scholarship. She commenced classes at Swarthmore on September 18, 1968. She played golf, and made Swarthmore's field hockey varsity team. She won all six of her intercollegiate tennis matches, and became the Eastern Intercollegiate Women's Singles champion. She defended her title in May 1969, winning in straight sets. But Ride was homesick for California, and in those days before Title IX women's tennis was not well-supported at the college level; Swarthmore had four tennis courts but no indoor courts and she could not practice when it snowed. After three semesters at Swarthmore, she returned to California in January 1970, with the aim of becoming a professional tennis player.


title: Sally Ride

text: Ride entered the University of California, Los Angeles, where she enrolled in courses in Shakespeare and quantum mechanics, earning A's in both subjects. She was the only woman majoring in physics. She was romantically involved with the teaching assistant, John Tompkins, but the relationship ended in September when he went to Moscow to conduct research at the Institute for High Energy Physics. Her foray into professional tennis was unsuccessful; after playing three matches in a single August morning her whole body ached the following day. She realized that far more effort would be necessary in order to reach the required level of fitness: she needed to practice for eight hours a day. She concluded that she did not have what it took to be a professional tennis player.


title: Sally Ride

text: Ride applied for a transfer to Stanford University as a junior. The tennis coach was eager to have her on the team, and by coincidence, Fred Hargadon was now the dean of admissions there. He was once again instrumental in approving her admission. She graduated in 1973 with a Bachelor of Science degree in physics and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature. She then earned a Master of Science degree in physics in 1975 and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1978. Astrophysics and free-electron lasers were her areas of study. She wrote her doctoral dissertation on "the interaction of X-rays with the interstellar medium", under the supervision of Arthur B. C. Walker Jr.


title: Sally Ride

text: At Stanford, Ride renewed her acquaintance with Molly Tyson, who was a year younger than her. The two had met on the tennis circuit as junior tennis players. Although Ride was rated number one at Stanford and Tyson was number six, the two played doubles together. Ride later quit the Stanford tennis team in protest against the university's refusal to join the Pac-8 Conference in women's tennis. Ride and Tyson began a relationship. To earn money they gave tennis lessons, and in 1971 and 1972 they were counselors at Dennis Van der Meer's TennisAmerica summer camp at Lake Tahoe, Nevada. In August 1972, Ride played in a doubles match with Van der Meer against Billie Jean King, the world number 1 ranked female tennis player, and Dick Peters, the camp director; Martin Luther King III and Dexter King served as ball boys. Billie Jean King became a mentor and a friend. Ride watched her win the Battle of the Sexes match against Bobby Riggs in 1973. Tyson ended their relationship in 1975, and Ride moved in with Bill Colson, a fellow graduate physics student who was recently divorced.


title: Sally Ride

text: In January 1977, Ride spotted an article on the front page of "The Stanford Daily" that told how the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was recruiting a new group of astronauts for the Space Shuttle program and wanted to recruit women. No women had previously been NASA astronauts, although the Soviet Union's cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova had flown in space in 1963. Ride mailed a request for, and received the application forms. When asked for three persons with knowledge of her qualifications, she gave the names of three with whom she had been in relationships: Colson, Tompkins and Tyson.


title: Sally Ride

text: Ride's was one of 8,079 applications NASA received by the June 30, 1977, deadline. She then became one of 208 finalists. She was the only woman among the twenty applicants in the sixth group, all applicants for mission specialist positions, who reported to NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, on October 3, for a week of interviews and medical examinations. Her physical fitness impressed the doctors. They also placed her in a Personal Rescue Enclosure to see if she suffered from claustrophobia. She was asked to write a one-page essay on why she wanted to become an astronaut. Finally, she was interviewed by the selection committee. On January 16, 1978, she received a phone call from George Abbey, NASA's director of flight operations, who informed her that she had been selected as part of NASA Astronaut Group 8. She was one of 35 astronaut candidates in the group, of whom six were women.


title: Sally Ride

text: Group 8's name for itself was "TFNG". The abbreviation was deliberately ambiguous; for public purposes, it stood for "Thirty-Five New Guys", but within the group itself, it was known to stand for the military phrase, "the fucking new guy", used to denote newcomers to a military unit. Officially, they were astronaut candidates; they would not become fully-fledged astronauts until they had completed their training. Ride was graded a civil service GS-12, with a salary of US$21,883 (). She bought a unit in the Nassau Bay, Texas, area, and moved in with Colson, who secured a research grant at Rice University so they could move to Houston together. He became the only unmarried astronaut candidate's partner. Ride and Colson split up in January 1979, and she briefly dated fellow astronaut candidate Robert "Hoot" Gibson.


title: Sally Ride

text: Astronaut candidate training included learning to fly NASA's T-38 Talon jet aircraft. Officially, mission specialists did not have to qualify as pilots, only ride in the back seat and handle an emergency if the pilot became incapacitated. They were never to control the aircraft below , but many of the astronaut pilots and pilot candidates, eager to share their love of flying, ignored the rules, and let the more proficient mission specialist candidates fly the jets lower. John Fabian even had her fly "under the hood", with the windows blacked out and using instruments only. Ride enjoyed flying so much she took private flying lessons to earn a private pilot's license. She bought a part interest in a Grumman Tiger aircraft, which she would fly on weekends. On August 31, 1979, NASA announced that the 35 astronaut candidates had completed their training and evaluation, and were now officially astronauts, qualified for selection on space flight crews.


title: Sally Ride

text: In 1981, Ride began dating Steven Hawley, another one of the TFNGs. They moved in together, and considered themselves engaged. Unlike Colson, he was not aware of her earlier relationship with Tyson. They were married on July 26, 1982, in the backyard of Hawley's parents' house in Salina, Kansas. Ride flew up from Houston for the occasion in her Grumman Tiger, and wore white jeans. The ceremony was jointly conducted by Hawley's father Bernard, the pastor at the local Presbyterian church, and Ride's sister Bear. It was deliberately kept low-key, with only parents and siblings in attendance. They became the third NASA astronaut couple, after Rhea Seddon and Hoot Gibson, who had married a few months before, and Anna Fisher and her husband Bill Fisher, who became an astronaut couple when the latter was selected with NASA Astronaut Group 9 in 1980. Ride did not take her husband's name.


title: Sally Ride

text: Ride served as a ground-based capsule communicator (CapCom) for the second and third Space Shuttle flights, and helped develop the Shuttle Remote Manipulator System (RMS), also known as the "Canadarm" or robot arm. She was the first woman to serve as a CapCom. By early 1982, George Abbey and the Chief of the Astronaut Office, John Young, wanted to begin scheduling missions with the TFNGs, starting with the seventh Space Shuttle mission. To command it, they chose Robert Crippen, who had flown with Young on the first Space Shuttle mission. They wanted a woman to fly on the mission, and since the mission involved the use of the RMS, the choice narrowed to Ride, Judy Resnik and Anna Fisher, who had specialized on it. Factors in Ride's favor included her agreeable personality and ability to work with others, her performance as CapCom, and her skill with the robot arm. However, JSC director Chris Kraft preferred Fisher, and Abbey had to defend their decision. NASA Headquarters ultimately approved Ride's selection, which was officially announced in April 1982.


title: Sally Ride

text: As the first American woman to fly in space, Ride was subjected to media attention. There were over five hundred requests for private interviews, all of which were declined. Instead, NASA hosted the usual pre-launch press conference on May 24, 1983. Ride was asked questions such as, "Will the flight affect your reproductive organs?" and "Do you weep when things go wrong on the job?" She insisted that she saw herself in only one way—as an astronaut. NASA was still adjusting to female astronauts, and engineers had asked Ride to assist them in developing a "space makeup kit", assuming it would be something a woman would want on board. They also infamously suggested providing Ride with a supply of 100 tampons for the six-day mission.


title: Sally Ride

text: When the lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) on June 18, 1983, Ride became the first American woman to fly in space, and the third woman overall. She also became the youngest American astronaut in space, although there had been younger cosmonauts. Many of the people attending the launch wore T-shirts bearing the words "Ride, Sally Ride", lyrics from Wilson Pickett's song "Mustang Sally". The purpose of the mission was to deploy two communications satellites: Anik C2 for Telesat of Canada and Palapa B1 for Indonesia. Both were deployed during the first two days of the mission.


title: Sally Ride

text: The mission also carried the first Shuttle pallet satellite (SPAS-1), which carried ten experiments to study formation of metal alloys in microgravity. Part of Ride's job was to operate the robot arm to deploy and later retrieve SPAS-1, which was brought back to Earth. The orbiter's small Reaction control system rockets were fired while SPAS-1 was held by the remote manipulator system to test the movement on an extended arm. STS-7 was also the first occasion on which a photograph was taken of the Space Shuttle in orbit. This was done using the camera on SPAS-1. Ride manipulated the robot arm into the shape of a "7", as it appeared on the mission patch. The mission also studied Space adaptation syndrome, a bout of nausea frequently experienced by astronauts during the early phase of a space flight. Ride was not affected and did not require medication for the syndrome. Bad weather forced "Challenger" to land at Edwards Air Force Base in California instead of the Shuttle Landing Facility at the KSC. The mission lasted 6 days, 2 hours, 23 minutes and 59 seconds.


title: Sally Ride

text: Now a celebrity, Ride, along with her STS-7 crewmates, spent the next few months after her flight on tour. She met with the Governor of California, George Deukmejian, and the Mayor of New York, Ed Koch. She testified before the Congressional Space Caucus on the efficacy of the robot arm, and addressed the National Press Club, but declined to appear with Bob Hope, whom she regarded as sexist. The crew presented President Ronald Reagan with jelly beans that had been flown on the flight. In September 1983, on her own initiative, she met with Svetlana Savitskaya, the second woman to fly in space, in Budapest. The two found an instant camaraderie, and they were able to converse for six hours, thanks to Savitskaya's command of English. They exchanged gifts: Savitskaya presented Ride with Russian dolls, books and a scarf, and Ride gave Savitskaya an STS-7 charm that had flown on the mission and a TFNG shirt. They also signed autographs for each other on Russian first day covers.


title: Sally Ride

text: While she was still engaged on the publicity tour, Abbey assigned Ride to the crew of STS-41-G. This was on Crippen's request; he had been assigned to another mission, STS-41-C, that would fly beforehand as part of a test to see how quickly crews could be turned around, and wanted Ride as his flight engineer again so that she could sit in for him during crew training for STS-41-G in the meantime. During mission simulations, she sat in the commander's left hand seat. Ride would become the first American woman to fly twice, and her TFNG crewmate Kathryn Sullivan would become the first American woman to perform an extravehicular activity (EVA); Savitskaya had already become the first woman to do both when she flew in space on Soyuz T-12 in July 1984. However, it would be the first time that two women were in space together.


title: Sally Ride

text: The mission lifted off from the KSC in "Challenger" on October 5, 1984. The rookie astronauts on the flight were cautious about moving about too soon, lest they suffer from space adaptation syndrome, but Ride was now a veteran astronaut, one who knew that she would not be affected. Once in orbit she immediately and gracefully began moving about. The crew deployed the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite, conducted scientific observations of the Earth with the OSTA-3 pallet (including the SIR-B radar, FILE, and MAPS experiments) and large format camera (LFC), and conducted numerous in-cabin experiments as well as activating eight Getaway Special canisters containing experiments devised by outside groups.


title: Sally Ride

text: When the SIR-B antenna failed to unfold correctly, Ride used the robot arm to shake it loose, manipulating the robot arm much faster than she had been trained. She also repaired a broken antenna on the middeck. During the second day of the mission, the SIR-B antenna had to be stowed so "Challenger"s orbit could be altered but its latches failed to clamp and close the antenna. Ride then used the RMS to nudge the antenna panel closed. Sullivan performed an EVA with fellow TFNG mission specialist David Leestma, during in which they showed that a satellite could be refueled in orbit. On this mission "Challenger" completed 132 orbits of the Earth in 197.5 hours, landing back at the KSC on October 13, 1984. During the mission, Ride carried a white silk scarf that had been worn by Amelia Earhart. On her two flights Ride had spent over 343 hours in space.


title: Sally Ride

text: Ride was soon back in the rotation, training for her third flight, STS-61-I. This mission was scheduled to be flown no later than July 15, 1986, and was to deploy the Intelsat VI-1 and INSAT 1-C communications satellites and carry the Materials Science Lab-4. The crew was subsequently switched to STS-61-M, a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TRDS) deployment mission scheduled to be flown in July 1986. She also served on two more missions as CapCom. On January 7, 1986, Ride provided a glowing reference for her friend Lynn Sherr for NASA's Journalist in Space Project. Sherr became one of the finalists. During 1985, Ride began an affair with Tam O'Shaughnessy. The two knew each other from the junior tennis circuit, and from when Ride was at Stanford. O'Shaughnessy was now living in Atlanta, and had recently broken up with her female partner. Ride visited when she went to Atlanta on speaking engagements. Hawley was aware that his marriage was in trouble, but not that O'Shaughnessy was more than a friend. Ride still performed her astronaut spouse duties for Hawley when he flew in space for the second time on STS-61-C in January 1986. Astronauts and their spouses were quarantined for a few days before launch, and they stayed at the astronaut beach house at the KSC. Spouses were expected to attend events before and after launches, including the post-mission publicity tour. This could be agonizing for a couple whose marriage was breaking up.


title: Sally Ride

text: STS-61-M was cancelled after the Space Shuttle "Challenger" disaster later that month. Ride was appointed to the Rogers Commission, the presidential commission investigating the disaster, and headed its subcommittee on operations. She was the only Space Shuttle astronaut and the only current NASA employee on the commission. After her death in 2012, Major General Donald J. Kutyna revealed that she had discreetly provided him with key information about O-rings, namely, that they become stiff at low temperatures, that eventually led to identification of the cause of the explosion. To protect her source, they then fed this information to Richard Feynman. Ride was even more disturbed by revelations of NASA dysfunctional management decision-making and risk-assessment processes. According to Roger Boisjoly, who was one of the engineers that warned of the technical problems that led to the "Challenger" disaster, after the entire workforce of Morton-Thiokol shunned him, Ride was the only public figure to show support for him when he went public with his pre-disaster warnings. Ride hugged him publicly to show her support for his efforts. The Rogers Commission submitted its report on June 6, 1986.


title: Sally Ride

text: Following the "Challenger" investigation, Ride was assigned to NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., where she led NASA's first strategic planning effort. She authored a report titled "NASA Leadership and America's Future in Space". NASA management was unhappy with its prioritization of Earth exploration over a mission to Mars. She founded NASA's Office of Exploration, which she headed for two months. On weekends she flew to Atlanta to be with O'Shaughnessy. In October 1986, she published a children's book, "To Space and Back", which she co-wrote with Sue Okie, her high school and Swarthmore friend.


title: Sally Ride

text: In May 1987, Ride announced that she was leaving NASA to take up a two-year fellowship at the Stanford University Center for International Security and Arms Control (CISAC), commencing on August 15, 1987. She divorced Hawley in June. At Stanford, her colleagues included Condoleezza Rice, a specialist on the Soviet Union. Ride researched means by which nuclear warheads could be counted and verified from space, but the impending end of the Cold War made this a much less pressing issue. As the end of her fellowship approached, Ride hoped to secure a permanent position at Stanford. Sidney Drell, who had recruited her, attempted to get a department to appoint her as a professor, but none would. Drell resigned from CISAC in protest.


title: Sally Ride

text: On July 1, 1989, Ride became a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and director of the California Space Institute (Cal Space), part of the university's Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She was paid a professor's salary of $64,000 () plus a $6,000 stipend as director of Cal Space, which employed 28 full- and part-time staff and had a budget of $3.3 million. (equivalent to $ million in ). Her research primarily involved the study of nonlinear optics and Thomson scattering. She remained director of Cal Space until 1996. She retired from UCSD in 2007 and became a professor emeritus.


title: Sally Ride

text: From the mid-1990s until her death, Ride led two public-outreach programs for NASA—the ISS EarthKAM and GRAIL MoonKAM projects, in cooperation with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and UCSD. The programs allowed middle school students to request images of the Earth and the Moon. Ride bought a house in La Jolla, California, and O'Shaughnessy moved in after taking up a teaching position at San Diego Mesa College. She turned down offers from President Bill Clinton to become NASA Administrator, not wanting to leave California, but did agree to serve on the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). This involved flying to Washington, D.C., every few months for studies and presentations. Due to the experience at CISAC, Clinton appointed her to a PCAST panel chaired by John Holdren to assess the risk of fissile materials being stolen in Russia and ending up in the hands of terrorists.


title: Sally Ride

text: From September 1999 to July 2000, Ride was the president of the space news website, Space.com, a company that aggregated news about science and space on its website. She then became the president and CEO of Sally Ride Science, a company she co-founded with O'Shaughnessy, who served as the chief executive officer and chair of the board. Sally Ride Science created entertaining science programs and publications for upper elementary and middle school students, with a particular focus on girls. Ride and O'Shaughnessy co-wrote six books on space aimed at children, with the goal of encouraging children to study science.


title: Sally Ride

text: In 2003, Ride served on the "Columbia" Accident Investigation Board, and was the only person to serve on both the panel that investigated the "Challenger" disaster and the one that investigated the "Columbia" disaster. She endorsed Barack Obama for president in 2008, and was contacted by Lori Garver, the head of Barack Obama's transition team for NASA in 2008, but once again made it clear that she was not interested in the post of NASA administrator. She served on the board of the National Math and Science Initiative in 2007 and the Educate to Innovate initiative in 2009, and was a member of the Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans Committee, which conducted an independent review of American space policy requested by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) on May 7, 2009.


title: Sally Ride

text: When Ride delivered a speech at the National Science Teachers Association Conference in San Francisco on March 10, 2011, O'Shaughnessy and a friend noted that she looked ill. Alarmed, O'Shaughnessy had her book a doctor's appointment for the following day. A medical ultrasound revealed a tumor the size of a golf ball in her abdomen. A follow-up CT scan at UCSD confirmed a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. She underwent chemotherapy and radiation therapy to reduce the size of the tumor. Ride had ensured that O'Shaughnessy would inherit her estate when she drew up her will in 1992, but now they registered their domestic partnership on August 15. On October 27, surgeons removed part of Ride's pancreas, bile duct, stomach and intestine, along with her gall bladder.


title: Sally Ride

text: Ride died on July 23, 2012, at the age of 61, at her home in La Jolla. Following cremation, her ashes were interred next to those of her father at Woodlawn Memorial Cemetery, Santa Monica. Her papers are in the National Air and Space Museum Archives of the Smithsonian Institution. Ride's obituary publicly revealed for the first time that O'Shaughnessy had been her partner of 27 years. This made Ride the first LGBT astronaut. The relationship was confirmed by Ride's sister Bear, who said Ride chose to keep her personal life private, including her sickness and treatments.


title: Sally Ride

text: Ride received numerous awards throughout her lifetime and after. She received the National Space Society's von Braun Award, the Lindbergh Eagle by the Charles A. Lindbergh Fund, and the NCAA's Theodore Roosevelt Award. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame and the Astronaut Hall of Fame and was awarded the NASA Space Flight Medal twice. Elementary schools in the United States were named after her, including Sally Ride Elementary School in The Woodlands, Texas, and Sally Ride Elementary School in Germantown, Maryland. In 1984, she received the Samuel S. Beard Award for Greatest Public Service by an Individual 35 Years or Under, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Ride into the California Hall of Fame at the California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts on December 6, 2006. The following year she was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio.


title: Sally Ride

text: Ride directed public outreach and educational programs for NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, which sent twin satellites to map the moon's gravity. On December 17, 2012, the two GRAIL probes, Ebb and Flow, were directed to complete their mission by crashing on an unnamed lunar mountain near the crater Goldschmidt. NASA announced that it was naming the landing site in her honor. Also in December 2012, the Space Foundation bestowed upon Ride its highest honor, the General James E. Hill Lifetime Space Achievement Award.


title: Sally Ride

text: In April 2013, the United States Navy announced that a research ship would be named in honor of Ride. The was christened by O'Shaughnessy on August 9, 2014, and delivered to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 2016. It was the first vessel in the research fleet to be named after a female scientist.


title: Sally Ride

text: A "National Tribute to Sally Ride" was held at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., on May 20, 2013. That day, President Barack Obama announced that Ride would receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. The medal was presented to O'Shaughnessy in a ceremony at the White House on November 20, 2013. In July 2013, "Flying" magazine ranked Ride at number 50 on their list of the "51 Heroes of Aviation". For their first match of March 2019, the women of the United States women's national soccer team each wore a jersey with the name of a woman they were honoring on the back; Tierna Davidson chose the name of Sally Ride.


title: Sally Ride

text: Ride was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display in Chicago that celebrates LGBT history and people, in 2014. She was honored with a Google Doodle on what would have been her 64th birthday in 2015. It was reused on International Women's Day in 2017. Stanford University's Serra House located in Lucie Stern Hall was renamed the Sally Ride House in 2019. The U.S. Postal Service issued a first-class postage stamp honoring her in 2018, and Ride appeared as one of the first two honorees of the American Women quarters series in March 2022. She was the first known LGBT person to appear on U.S. currency.


title: Sally Ride

text: On 1 April 2022, a satellite named after Ride (ÑuSat 27 or "Sally", COSPAR 2022-033R) was launched into space as part of the Satellogic Aleph-1 constellation.


title: Sally Ride

text: The Cygnus spacecraft used for the NG-18 mission was named the S.S. "Sally Ride" in her honor. It launched successfully on November 7, 2022.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines () is an island country in the Caribbean. It is located in the southeast Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles, which lie in the West Indies at the southern end of the eastern border of the Caribbean Sea where the latter meets the Atlantic Ocean.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: Its territory consists of the main island of Saint Vincent and, south of that, two-thirds of the northern part of the Grenadines, a chain of 32 smaller islands. Some of the Grenadines are inhabited—Bequia, Mustique, Union Island, Canouan, Petit Saint Vincent, Palm Island, Mayreau, Young Island—while others are not: Tobago Cays, Baliceaux, Battowia, Quatre, Petite Mustique, Savan and Petit Nevis. Most of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines lies within the Hurricane Alley.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: To the north of Saint Vincent lies Saint Lucia, to the east is Barbados, and Grenada lies to the south. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines has a population density of over 300 inhabitants/km (700 per sq. mi.), with approximately total inhabitants.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: Kingstown is the capital and main port. Saint Vincent has a British colonial history, and is now part of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, CARICOM, the Commonwealth of Nations, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas and the Community of Latin American and the Caribbean States (CELAC).


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: In April 2021, the La Soufrière volcano erupted several times with "explosive events" continuing. By 12 April, 16,000 residents had evacuated the areas of their homes. Assistance and emergency financial support was being provided by several nearby islands, the United Kingdom and agencies such as the United Nations. The first significant offer of long-term funding, of US$20 million, was announced on 13 April 2021 by the World Bank.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: Christopher Columbus, the first European to reach the island, named it after St. Vincent of Saragossa ("San Vicente de Zaragoza") whose feast day was on the day Columbus first saw it (22 January 1498). The name of the Grenadines refers to the Spanish city of Granada, but to differentiate it from the island of the same name, the diminutive was used. Before the arrival of the Spaniards, the Kalinago natives who inhabited the island of St. Vincent called it Youloumain, in honour of Youlouca, the spirit of the rainbows, who they believed inhabited the island.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: Before the arrival of Europeans and Africans in the 16th century, various Amerindian groups passed through or settled on St. Vincent and the Grenadines, including the Ciboney, Arawak, and Kalinago people. The island now known as Saint Vincent was originally named Youloumain by the native Island Caribs who called themselves Kalina/Carina ("l" and "r" being pronounced the same in their language).


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: It is thought that Christopher Columbus sighted the island in 1498, giving it the name St Vincent. The indigenous Garifuna people, who became known as the "Black Caribs", aggressively prevented European settlement on Saint Vincent.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: Various attempts by the English and Dutch to claim the island proved unsuccessful, and it was the French who were first able to colonise the island, settling in the town of Barrouallie on the leeward side of St Vincent in 1719. The French brought with them enslaved Africans prisoners of war to work the plantations of sugar, coffee, indigo, tobacco, cotton and cocoa.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: The British captured the island and drove out the French from Barrouallie during the Seven Years' War, a claim confirmed by the Treaty of Paris (1763). On taking control of the island in 1763, the British laid the foundations of Fort Charlotte and also brought with them enslaved African prisoners of war to work on the island plantations. The Black Caribs however, opposed to the British presence, entered into open conflict against the British, starting the First Carib War, which lasted from 1772 to 1773.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: During the Anglo-French War (1778–1783), the French recaptured St Vincent in 1779. However, the British regained control under the Treaty of Versailles (1783).


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: The uneasy peace between the British and the Black Caribs led to the Second Carib War, which lasted from 1795 to 1796. The Black Caribs were led by Garifuna Paramount Chief Joseph Chatoyer and supported by the French, notably the radical Victor Hugues from the island of Martinique. Their revolt and the uprising was eventually put down in 1797 by British General Sir Ralph Abercromby; a peace treaty agreement was made which resulted in almost 5,000 Black Caribs being exiled to Roatán, an island off the coast of Honduras, and to Belize and Baliceaux in the Grenadines.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: The British abolished slavery in Saint Vincent (as well as in all other British West Indies colonies) in 1834, and an apprenticeship period followed which ended in 1838. After its end, labour shortages on the plantations resulted, and were initially addressed by the immigration of indentured servants; in the late 1840s, many Portuguese immigrants arrived from Madeira, and between 1861 and 1888 shiploads of Indian labourers arrived.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: In 1902, the La Soufrière volcano erupted again, killing 1,500–2,000 people; much farmland was damaged, and the economy deteriorated.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines passed through various stages of colonial status under the British. A representative assembly was authorised in 1776, Crown Colony government was installed in 1877, a legislative council was created in 1925 with a limited franchise, and universal adult suffrage was granted in 1951. During the period of its control of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Britain made several attempts to unify the island with the other Windward Islands as a single entity, to simplify British control in the sub-region through a single unified administration. In the 1960s, the British again tried to unify all of its regional islands, including Saint Vincent, into a single politically unified entity under British control. The unification was to be called the West Indies Federation and was driven by a desire to gain independence from the British government. However, the attempt collapsed in 1962.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: Saint Vincent was granted "associate statehood" status by Britain on 27 October 1969. This gave Saint Vincent complete control over its internal affairs but fell short of full independence in law.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: In April 1979, La Soufrière erupted once more. Although no one was killed, thousands were evacuated and extensive agricultural damage occurred.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: On 27 October 1979, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines gained full independence; the date is now the country's Independence Day, a public holiday. The country opted to remain within the Commonwealth of Nations, retaining the then-Queen Elizabeth II as Monarch, represented locally by a Governor-General.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: Milton Cato of the centre-left Saint Vincent Labour Party (SVLP) was the country's first Prime Minister (he had been Premier since 1974), ruling until his defeat in the 1984 Vincentian general election by James Fitz-Allen Mitchell of the centre-right New Democratic Party (NDP). During Cato's time in office, there was a brief rebellion on Union Island in December 1979 led by Lennox 'Bumba' Charles. Inspired by the recent revolution on Grenada, Charles alleged neglect of the Union by the central government. However, the revolt was swiftly put down and Charles was arrested. There were also a series of strikes in the early 1980s. James Mitchell remained Prime Minister for 16 years until 2000, winning three consecutive elections. Mitchell was at the forefront of attempts to improve regional integration. In 1980 and 1987, hurricanes damaged many banana and coconut plantations. Hurricane seasons were also very active in 1998 and 1999, with Hurricane Lenny in 1999 causing extensive damage to the west coast of the island.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: In 2000, Arnhim Eustace became Prime Minister after taking over the leadership of the NDP following Mitchell's retirement; he was defeated a year later by Ralph Gonsalves of the Unity Labour Party (successor party to the SVLP). Gonsalves—a left-winger known in the country as "Comrade Ralph"—argued that European nations owe Caribbean nations reparations for their role in the Atlantic slave trade. Gonsalves won a second term in 2005, a third in 2010, and a fourth in 2015.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: In 2009, a referendum was held on a proposal to adopt a new constitution that would make the country a republic, replacing Queen Elizabeth II as head of state with a non-executive President, a proposal supported by Prime Minister Gonsalves. A two-thirds majority was required, but the referendum was defeated 29,019 votes (55.64 per cent) to 22,493 (43.13 per cent).


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: In November 2020, Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines since 2001, made history by securing the fifth consecutive victory of his Unity Labour Party (ULP) in general election.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: In 2021, on 9 April, the La Soufrière volcano erupted, sending ash several miles into the atmosphere. Approximately 16,000 people were evacuated in the days leading up to the eruption.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines lies to the west of Barbados, south of Saint Lucia and north of Grenada in the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles, an island arc of the Caribbean Sea. The islands of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines include the main island of Saint Vincent and the northern two-thirds of the Grenadines , which are a chain of smaller islands stretching south from Saint Vincent to Grenada. There are 32 islands and cays that make up St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG). Nine are inhabited, including the mainland St Vincent and the Grenadines islands: Young Island, Bequia, Mustique, Canouan, Union Island, Mayreau, Petit St Vincent and Palm Island. Prominent uninhabited islands of the Grenadines include Petit Nevis, used by whalers, and Petit Mustique, which was the centre of a prominent real-estate scam in the early 2000s.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: The capital of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is Kingstown, Saint Vincent. The main island of Saint Vincent measures long, in width and in area. From the most northern to the most southern points, the Grenadine islands belonging to Saint Vincent span , with a combined area of .


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: The island of Saint Vincent is volcanic and heavily forested and includes little level ground. The windward side of the island is very rocky and steep, while the leeward side has more sandy beaches and bays. Saint Vincent's highest peak is La Soufrière volcano at . Other major mountains on St Vincent are (from north to south) Richmond Peak, Mount Brisbane, Colonarie Mountain, Grand Bonhomme, Petit Bonhomme and Mount St Andrew.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: The country is home to three terrestrial ecoregions: Windward Islands moist forests, Leeward Islands dry forests, and Windward Islands dry forests. It had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 6.95/10, ranking it 61st globally out of 172 countries.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy, with Charles III as King of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. He does not reside in the islands and is represented as head of state in the country by the Governor-General of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, currently Susan Dougan (since 1 August 2019).


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: The office of Governor-General has mostly ceremonial functions including the opening of the islands' House of Assembly and the appointment of various government officials. Control of the government rests with the elected Prime Minister and their cabinet. The current Prime Minister is Ralph Gonsalves, elected in 2001 as head of the Unity Labour Party.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: The legislative branch of government is the unicameral House of Assembly of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, seating 15 elected members representing single-member constituencies and six appointed members known as Senators. The parliamentary term of office is five years, although the Prime Minister may call elections at any time.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: The judicial branch of government is divided into district courts, the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court and the Privy Council of the United Kingdom in London being the court of last resort.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: The two political parties with parliamentary representation are the New Democratic Party (NDP) and the Unity Labour Party (ULP). The parliamentary opposition is made up of the largest minority stakeholder in the general elections, headed by the Leader of the Opposition. The current opposition leader is Godwin Friday.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: Saint Vincent has no formal armed forces, although the Royal Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Police Force includes a Special Service Unit as well as a militia that has a supporting role on the island.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: Administratively, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is divided into six parishes. Five parishes are on Saint Vincent, while the sixth is made up of the Grenadine islands. Kingstown is located in the Parish of Saint George and is the capital city and central administrative centre of the country.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: Acts of gross indecency, which may be defined to include homosexual activity, are illegal in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Section 148 of the Criminal Code states:


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: Any person, who in public or private, commits an act of gross indecency with another person of the same sex, or procures or attempts to procure another person of the same sex to commit an act of gross indecency with him or her, is guilty of an offence and liable to imprisonment for five years.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines maintains close ties to Canada, the United Kingdom and the US, and cooperates with regional political and economic organisations such as the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and CARICOM. The island nation's sixth embassy overseas was opened on 8 August 2019 in Taipei, Taiwan, after Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves' official visit to the Republic of China (Taiwan); the other five are located in London (a High Commission as Commonwealth countries have high commissions rather than embassies in each other's countries), Washington D.C., Havana, Caracas and Brussels.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: On 6 July 1994 at Sherbourne Conference Centre, St Michael, Barbados, as a representative of the Government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, then (James Mitchell, who was subsequently knighted) signed the Double Taxation Relief (CARICOM) Treaties. There were seven other signatories to the agreement on that day. The countries which were represented were Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: This treaty covered taxes, residence, tax jurisdictions, capital gains, business profits, interest, dividends, royalties and other areas.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: On 30 June 2014, St. Vincent and the Grenadines signed a Model 1 agreement with the United States of America with respect to Foreign Account Tax Compliance (Act) or FATCA.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: According to the updated site as of 16 January 2017, on 13 May 2016 the agreement went to "In Force" status.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: St Vincent and the Grenadines is a member of the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations, the Organization of American States, and the Association of Caribbean States (ACS).


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: In September 2017, at the 72nd Session of the UN General Assembly, the Prime Ministers of the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines called for UN action on alleged human rights abuses committed on Western New Guinea's indigenous Papuans. Western New Guinea has been occupied by Indonesia since 1963. More than 100,000 Papuans have died during a 50-year Papua conflict.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: In 2019, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines became the smallest country to ever be elected to the UN Security Council.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: St Vincent and the Grenadines joined the Organisation of American States on 27 October 1981. It participates in the Summits of the Americas and the Indigenous Leaders Summits of Americas.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: Saint Vincent protests against Venezuela's claim to give full effect to Aves (Bird) Island, which creates a Venezuelan EEZ/continental shelf extending over a large portion of the Caribbean Sea.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: Agriculture, dominated by banana production, is the most important sector of this lower-middle-income economy. The services sector, based mostly on a growing tourist industry, is also important. The government has been relatively unsuccessful at introducing new industries, and the unemployment rate remains high at 19.8% in the 1991 census to 15% in 2001. The continuing dependence on a single crop represents the biggest obstacle to the islands' development as tropical storms wiped out substantial portions of bananas in many years.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: There is a small manufacturing sector and a small offshore financial sector serving international businesses; its secrecy laws have caused some international concern. There are increasing demands for international financial services like stock exchange and financial intermediaries financial activities in the country. In addition, the natives of Bequia are permitted to hunt up to four humpback whales per year under IWC subsistence quotas.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: The tourism sector has considerable potential for development. The filming of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies on the island has helped to expose the country to more potential visitors and investors. Recent growth has been stimulated by strong activity in the construction sector and an improvement in tourism.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: Argyle International Airport is the country's new international airport. The new facility opened on 14 February 2017, replacing the existing E.T. Joshua Airport. The airport is on the island's east coast about 8.3 km (5.17 miles) from Kingstown.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: In 2010, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines had 21,700 telephone land lines. Its land telephone system is fully automatic, covering the entire island and all of the inhabited Grenadine islands. In 2002, there were 10,000 mobile phones. By 2010, this number had increased to 131,800. Mobile phone service is available in most areas of Saint Vincent as well as the Grenadines.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: The population as estimated in was . The ethnic composition was 66% African descent, 19% of mixed descent, 6% East Indian, 4% Europeans (mainly Portuguese), 2% Kalinago and 3% others. Most Vincentians are the descendants of African people brought to the island to work on plantations. There are other ethnic groups such as Portuguese (from Madeira) and East Indians, both brought in to work on the plantations after the abolishing of slavery by the British living on the island. There is also a growing Chinese population.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: English is the official language. Most Vincentians speak Vincentian Creole. English is used in education, government, religion, and other formal domains, while Creole (or 'dialect' as it is referred to locally) is used in informal situations such as in the home and among friends.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: According to the 2001 census, 81.5% of the population of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines identified themselves as Christian, 6.7% has another religion and 8.8% has no religion or did not state a religion (1.5%).


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: Anglicanism constitutes the largest religious category, with 17.8% of the population. Pentecostals are the second largest group (17.6%). The next largest group are Methodists (10.9% of the population), followed by Seventh-day Adventists (10.2%) and Baptists (10.0%). Other Christians include Roman Catholics (7.5%), Evangelicals (2.8%), Church of God (2.5%), Brethren Christian (1.3%), Jehovah's Witnesses (0.6%) and the Salvation Army (0.3%).


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: Between 1991 and 2001 the number of Anglicans, Brethren, Methodists and Roman Catholics decreased, while the number of Pentecostals, Evangelicals and Seventh-day Adventists increased.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: The number of non-Christians is small. These religious groups include the Rastafari (1.5% of the population), Hindus and Muslims (1.5%).


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: Cricket, rugby and association football are most popular among men whereas netball is most popular among women. Basketball, volleyball and tennis are also very popular.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: The country's prime football league is the NLA Premier League, which provides its national (association) football team with most players. A notable Vincentian footballer is Ezra Hendrickson, former national team captain who played at several Major League Soccer clubs in the United States and is now a head coach with the Chicago Fire FC.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: The country regularly participates at the Caribbean Basketball Championship where a men's team and a women's team compete. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines also has its own national rugby union team which is ranked 84th in the world. Other notable sports played at the regional level include track and field. Natasha Mayers won a gold medal in the 100m at the 2010 Commonwealth Games. Kineke Alexander won a bronze medal in the women's [400m] at the 2015 Pan American Games. Eswort Coombs got a bronze medal in the 400m at the 1995 Pan American Games.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: Music popular in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines includes big drum, calypso, soca, steelpan and reggae. String band music, quadrille and traditional storytelling are also popular. One of the most successful St Vincent natives is Kevin Lyttle. He was named Cultural Ambassador for the Island 19 September 2013.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: The national anthem of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is "Saint Vincent, Land so beautiful", adopted upon independence in 1979.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: Saint Vincent has twelve FM radio stations: 88.9 Adoration Fm, 89.1 Jem Radio, 89.7 NBC Radio, 95.7 and 105.7 Praise FM, 96.7 Nice Radio, 97.1 Hot 97, 98.3 Star FM, 99.9 We FM, 103.7 Hitz, 102.7 EZee radio, 104.3 Xtreme FM and 106.9 Boom FM. There are several Internet radio stations including Chronicles Christian Radio. It has one television broadcast station ZBG-TV (SVGTV) and one cable television provider.


title: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

text: St Vincent and the Grenadines Broadcasting Co-operation is the parent company for SVGTV, Magic 103.7.


title: Battle of Leyte Gulf

text: The Battle of Leyte Gulf (; ) was the largest naval battle of World War II and by some criteria the largest naval battle in history, with over 200,000 naval personnel involved. It was fought in waters near the Philippine islands of Leyte, Samar, and Luzon from 23 to 26 October 1944 between combined American and Australian forces and the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), as part of the invasion of Leyte, which aimed to isolate Japan from the countries that it had occupied in Southeast Asia, a vital source of industrial and oil supplies.


title: Battle of Leyte Gulf

text: By the time of the battle, Japan had fewer capital ships (aircraft carriers and battleships) left than the Allied forces had total aircraft carriers in the Pacific, which underscored the disparity in force strength at that point in the war. Regardless, the IJN mobilized nearly all of its remaining major naval vessels in an attempt to defeat the Allied invasion, but it was repulsed by the US Navy's Third and Seventh Fleets.


title: Battle of Leyte Gulf

text: The battle consisted of four main separate engagements (the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea, the Battle of Surigao Strait, the Battle off Cape Engaño, and the Battle off Samar), as well as lesser actions.


title: Battle of Leyte Gulf

text: It was the first battle in which Japanese aircraft carried out organized "kamikaze" attacks, and it was the last naval battle between battleships in history. The Japanese Navy suffered heavy losses and never sailed in comparable force thereafter since it was stranded for lack of fuel in their bases for the rest of the war and so it could not affect the successful Allied invasion of Leyte.


title: Battle of Leyte Gulf

text: The Allied campaigns of August 1942 to early 1944 had driven Japanese forces from many of their island bases in the south and the central Pacific Ocean, while isolating many of their other bases (most notably in the Solomon Islands, Bismarck Archipelago, Admiralty Islands, New Guinea, Marshall Islands, and Wake Island), and in June 1944, a series of American amphibious landings supported by Fifth Fleet's Fast Carrier Task Force captured most of the Mariana Islands (bypassing Rota). This offensive breached Japan's strategic inner defense ring and gave the Americans a base from which long-range Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers could attack the Japanese home islands.


title: Battle of Leyte Gulf

text: The Japanese counterattacked in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. The U.S. Navy destroyed three Japanese aircraft carriers, damaged other ships, and shot down approximately 600 Japanese aircraft, leaving the Japanese Navy with very little carrier-borne air power and few experienced pilots. However, the considerable land-based air power the Japanese had amassed in the Philippines was thought too dangerous to bypass by many high-ranking officers outside the Joint Chiefs of Staff, including Admiral Chester Nimitz.


title: Battle of Leyte Gulf

text: The next logical step was to cut Japan's supply lines to Southeast Asia, depriving them of fuel and other necessities of war, but there were two different plans for doing so. Admiral Ernest J. King, other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Admiral Nimitz favored blockading Japanese forces in the Philippines and invading Formosa (Taiwan), while U.S. Army General Douglas MacArthur, wanting to fulfill the 1942 promise "I shall return", championed an invasion of the Philippines.


title: Battle of Leyte Gulf

text: While Formosa could also serve as a base for an invasion of mainland China, which MacArthur felt was unnecessary, it was also estimated that it would require about 12 divisions from the Army and Marines. Meanwhile, the Australian Army, spread thin by engagements in the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, the Dutch East Indies and various other Pacific islands, would not have been able to spare any troops for such an operation. As a result, an invasion of Formosa, or any operation requiring much larger ground forces than were available in the Pacific in late 1944, would be delayed until the defeat of Germany freed the necessary manpower.