title: International law

text: Many scholars agree that the fact that the sources are arranged sequentially suggests an implicit hierarchy of sources. However, the language of Article 38 does not explicitly hold such a hierarchy, and the decisions of the international courts and tribunals do not support such a strict hierarchy. By contrast, Article 21 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court clearly defines a hierarchy of applicable law (or sources of international law).


title: International law

text: International treaty law comprises obligations expressly and voluntarily accepted by states between themselves in treaties. The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties defines a treaty as follows:


title: International law

text: "treaty" means an international agreement concluded between States in written form and governed by international law, whether embodied in a single instrument or in two or more related instruments and whatever its particular designation


title: International law

text: This definition has led case-law to define a treaty as an international agreement that meets the following criteria:


title: International law

text: Where there are disputes about the exact meaning and application of national laws, it is the responsibility of the courts to decide what the law means. In international law, interpretation is within the domain of the states concerned, but may also be conferred on judicial bodies such as the International Court of Justice, by the terms of the treaties or by consent of the parties. Thus, while it is generally the responsibility of states to interpret the law for themselves, the processes of diplomacy and availability of supra-national judicial organs routinely provide assistance to that end.


title: International law

text: The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which codifies several bedrock principles of treaty interpretation, holds that a treaty "shall be interpreted in good faith in accordance with the ordinary meaning to be given to the terms of the treaty in their context and in the light of its object and purpose." This represents a compromise between three different theories of interpretation:


title: International law

text: The foregoing are general rules of interpretation, and do no preclude the application of specific rules for particular areas of international law.


title: International law

text: Customary international law is derived from the consistent practice of States accompanied by "opinio juris", i.e. the conviction of states that the consistent practice is required by a legal obligation. Judgments of international tribunals as well as scholarly works have traditionally been looked to as persuasive sources for custom in addition to direct evidence of state behavior. Attempts to codify customary international law picked up momentum after the Second World War with the formation of the International Law Commission (ILC) under the aegis of the UN. Codified customary law is made the binding interpretation of the underlying custom by agreement through treaty. For states not party to such treaties, the work of the ILC may still be accepted as custom applying to those states. General principles of law are those commonly recognized by the major legal systems of the world. Certain norms of international law achieve the binding force of peremptory norms ("jus cogens") as to include all states with no permissible derogations.


title: International law

text: International law establishes the framework and the criteria for identifying states as the fundamental actors in the international legal system. As the existence of a state presupposes control and jurisdiction over territory, international law deals with the acquisition of territory, state immunity and the legal responsibility of states in their conduct with each other. International law is similarly concerned with the treatment of individuals within state boundaries. There is thus a comprehensive regime dealing with group rights, the treatment of aliens, the rights of refugees, international crimes, nationality problems, and human rights generally. It further includes the important functions of the maintenance of international peace and security, arms control, the pacific settlement of disputes and the regulation of the use of force in international relations. Even when the law is not able to stop the outbreak of war, it has developed principles to govern the conduct of hostilities and the treatment of prisoners. International law is also used to govern issues relating to the global environment, the global commons such as international waters and outer space, global communications, and world trade.


title: International law

text: In theory, all states are sovereign and equal. As a result of the notion of sovereignty, the value and authority of international law is dependent upon the voluntary participation of states in its formulation, observance, and enforcement. Although there may be exceptions, it is thought by many international academics that most states enter into legal commitments with other states out of enlightened self-interest rather than adherence to a body of law that is higher than their own. As D. W. Greig notes, "international law cannot exist in isolation from the political factors operating in the sphere of international relations".


title: International law

text: Traditionally, sovereign states and the Holy See were the sole subjects of international law. With the proliferation of international organizations over the last century, they have in some cases been recognized as relevant parties as well. Recent interpretations of international human rights law, international humanitarian law, and international trade law (e.g., North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Chapter 11 actions) have been inclusive of corporations, and even of certain individuals.


title: International law

text: The conflict between international law and national sovereignty is subject to vigorous debate and dispute in academia, diplomacy, and politics. Indeed, there is a growing trend toward judging a state's domestic actions in the light of international law and standards. Numerous people now view the nation-state as the primary unit of international affairs and believe that only states may choose to enter into commitments under international law voluntarily and that they have the right to follow their own counsel when it comes to the interpretation of their commitments. Certain scholars and political leaders feel that these modern developments endanger nation-states by taking power away from state governments and ceding it to international bodies such as the U.N. and the World Bank, argue that international law has evolved to a point where it exists separately from the mere consent of states, and discern a legislative and judicial process to international law that parallels such processes within domestic law. This especially occurs when states violate or deviate from the expected standards of conduct adhered to by all civilized nations.


title: International law

text: A number of states place emphasis on the principle of territorial sovereignty, thus seeing states as having free rein over their internal affairs. Other states oppose this view. One group of opponents of this point of view, including many Europe nations, maintain that all civilized nations have certain norms of conduct expected of them, including the prohibition of genocide, slavery and the slave trade, wars of aggression, torture, and piracy, and that violation of these universal norms represents a crime, not only against the individual victims, but against humanity as a whole. States and individuals who subscribe to this view opine that, in the case of the individual responsible for violation of international law, he "is become, like the pirate and the slave trader before him, "hostis humani generis", an enemy of all mankind", and thus subject to prosecution in a fair trial before any fundamentally just tribunal, through the exercise of universal jurisdiction.


title: International law

text: Though European democracies tend to support broad, universalistic interpretations of international law, many other democracies have differing views on international law. Several democracies, including India, Israel and the United States, take a flexible, eclectic approach, recognizing aspects of international law such as territorial rights as universal, regarding other aspects as arising from treaty or custom, and viewing certain aspects as not being subjects of international law at all. Democracies in the developing world, due to their past colonial histories, often insist on non-interference in their internal affairs, particularly regarding human rights standards or their peculiar institutions, but often strongly support international law at the bilateral and multilateral levels, such as in the United Nations, and especially regarding the use of force, disarmament obligations, and the terms of the UN Charter.


title: International law

text: The law of the sea is the area of international law concerning the principles and rules by which states and other entities interact in maritime matters. It encompasses areas and issues such as navigational rights, sea mineral rights, and coastal waters jurisdiction. The law of the sea is distinct from admiralty law (also known as maritime law), which concerns relations and conduct at sea by private entities.


title: International law

text: The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), concluded in 1982 and coming into force in 1994, is generally accepted as a codification of customary international law of the sea.


title: International law

text: Since international law has no established compulsory judicial system for the settlement of disputes or a coercive penal system, it is not as straightforward as managing breaches within a domestic legal system. However, there are means by which breaches are brought to the attention of the international community and some means for resolution. For example, there are judicial or quasi-judicial tribunals in international law in certain areas such as trade and human rights. The formation of the United Nations, for example, created a means for the world community to enforce international law upon members that violate its charter through the Security Council.


title: International law

text: Since international law exists in a legal environment without an overarching "sovereign" (i.e., an external power able and willing to compel compliance with international norms), "enforcement" of international law is very different from in the domestic context. In many cases, enforcement takes on Coasian characteristics, where the norm is self-enforcing. In other cases, defection from the norm can pose a real risk, particularly if the international environment is changing. When this happens, and if enough states (or enough powerful states) continually ignore a particular aspect of international law, the norm may actually change according to concepts of customary international law. For example, prior to World War I, unrestricted submarine warfare was considered a violation of international law and ostensibly the casus belli for the United States' declaration of war against Germany. By World War II, however, the practice was so widespread that during the Nuremberg trials, the charges against German Admiral Karl Dönitz for ordering unrestricted submarine warfare were dropped, notwithstanding that the activity constituted a clear violation of the Second London Naval Treaty of 1936.


title: International law

text: Apart from a state's natural inclination to uphold certain norms, the force of international law comes from the pressure that states put upon one another to behave consistently and to honor their obligations. As with any system of law, many violations of international law obligations are overlooked. If addressed, it may be through diplomacy and the consequences upon an offending state's reputation, submission to international judicial determination, arbitration, sanctions or force including war. Though violations may be common in fact, states try to avoid the appearance of having disregarded international obligations. States may also unilaterally adopt sanctions against one another such as the severance of economic or diplomatic ties, or through reciprocal action. In some cases, domestic courts may render judgment against a foreign state (the realm of private international law) for an injury, though this is a complicated area of law where international law intersects with domestic law.


title: International law

text: It is implicit in the Westphalian system of nation-states, and explicitly recognized under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, that all states have the inherent right to individual and collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against them. Article 51 of the UN Charter guarantees the right of states to defend themselves until (and unless) the Security Council takes measures to keep the peace.


title: International law

text: As a "deliberative, policymaking and representative organ", the United Nations General Assembly "is empowered to make recommendations"; it can neither codify international law nor make binding resolutions. Merely internal resolutions, such as budgetary matters, may be binding on the operation of the General Assembly itself. Violations of the UN Charter by members of the United Nations may be raised by the aggrieved state in the General Assembly for debate.


title: International law

text: General Assembly resolutions are generally non-binding towards member states, but through its adoption of the "Uniting for Peace" resolution (A/RES/377 A), of 3 November 1950, the Assembly declared that it had the power to authorize the use of force, under the terms of the UN Charter, in cases of breaches of the peace or acts of aggression, provided that the Security Council, owing to the negative vote of a permanent member, fails to act to address the situation. The Assembly also declared, by its adoption of resolution 377 A, that it could call for other collective measures—such as economic and diplomatic sanctions—in situations constituting the milder "threat to the Peace".


title: International law

text: The Uniting for Peace resolution was initiated by the United States in 1950, shortly after the outbreak of the Korean War, as a means of circumventing possible future Soviet vetoes in the Security Council. The legal role of the resolution is clear, given that the General Assembly can neither issue binding resolutions nor codify law. It was never argued by the "Joint Seven-Powers" that put forward the draft resolution, during the corresponding discussions, that it in any way afforded the Assembly new powers. Instead, they argued that the resolution simply declared what the Assembly's powers already were, according to the UN Charter, in the case of a dead-locked Security Council. The Soviet Union was the only permanent member of the Security Council to vote against the Charter interpretations that were made recommendation by the Assembly's adoption of resolution 377 A.


title: International law

text: Alleged violations of the Charter can also be raised by states in the Security Council. The Security Council could subsequently pass resolutions under Chapter VI of the UN Charter to recommend the "Pacific Resolution of Disputes." Such resolutions are not binding under international law, though they usually are expressive of the council's convictions. In rare cases, the Security Council can adopt resolutions under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, related to "threats to Peace, Breaches of the Peace and Acts of Aggression," which are legally binding under international law, and can be followed up with economic sanctions, military action, and similar uses of force through the auspices of the United Nations.


title: International law

text: It has been argued that resolutions passed outside of Chapter VII can also be binding; the legal basis for that is the council's broad powers under Article 24(2), which states that "in discharging these duties (exercise of primary responsibility in international peace and security), it shall act in accordance with the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations". The mandatory nature of such resolutions was upheld by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its advisory opinion on Namibia. The binding nature of such resolutions can be deduced from an interpretation of their language and intent.


title: International law

text: States can also, upon mutual consent, submit disputes for arbitration by the International Court of Justice, located in The Hague, Netherlands. The judgments given by the court in these cases are binding, although it possesses no means to enforce its rulings.


title: International law

text: The Court may give an advisory opinion on any legal question at the request of whatever body may be authorized by or in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations to make such a request. Some of the advisory cases brought before the court have been controversial with respect to the court's competence and jurisdiction.


title: International law

text: Often enormously complicated matters, ICJ cases (of which there have been less than 150 since the court was created from the Permanent Court of International Justice in 1945) can stretch on for years and generally involve thousands of pages of pleadings, evidence, and the world's leading specialist international lawyers. As of November 2019, there are 16 cases pending at the ICJ. Decisions made through other means of arbitration may be binding or non-binding depending on the nature of the arbitration agreement, whereas decisions resulting from contentious cases argued before the ICJ are always binding on the involved states.


title: International law

text: Though states (or increasingly, international organizations) are usually the only ones with standing to address a violation of international law, some treaties, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights have an optional protocol that allows individuals who have had their rights violated by member states to petition the international Human Rights Committee. Investment treaties commonly and routinely provide for enforcement by individuals or investing entities. and commercial agreements of foreigners with sovereign governments may be enforced on the international plane.


title: International law

text: There are numerous international bodies created by treaties adjudicating on legal issues where they may have jurisdiction. The only one claiming universal jurisdiction is the United Nations Security Council. Others are: the United Nations International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court (when national systems have totally failed and the Treaty of Rome is applicable) and the Court of Arbitration for Sport.


title: International law

text: There were ambitions to make the East African Community, consisting of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda, a political federation with its own form of binding supranational law, but this effort has not materialized.


title: International law

text: The Union of South American Nations serves the South American continent. It intends to establish a framework akin to the European Union by the end of 2019. It is envisaged to have its own passport and currency, and limit barriers to trade.


title: International law

text: The Andean Community of Nations is the first attempt to integrate the countries of the Andes Mountains in South America. It started with the Cartagena Agreement of 26 May 1969, and consists of four countries: Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. The Andean Community follows supranational laws, called Agreements, which are mandatory for these countries.


title: International law

text: International legal theory comprises a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches used to explain and analyse the content, formation and effectiveness of international law and institutions and to suggest improvements. Some approaches center on the question of compliance: why states follow international norms in the absence of a coercive power that ensures compliance. Other approaches focus on the problem of the formation of international rules: why states voluntarily adopt international law norms, that limit their freedom of action, in the absence of a world legislature; while other perspectives are policy oriented: they elaborate theoretical frameworks and instruments to criticize the existing norms and to make suggestions on how to improve them. Some of these approaches are based on domestic legal theory, some are interdisciplinary, and others have been developed expressly to analyse international law. Classical approaches to International legal theory are the Natural law, the Eclectic and the Legal positivism schools of thought.


title: International law

text: The natural law approach argues that international norms should be based on axiomatic truths. The 16th-century natural law writer, Francisco de Vitoria, a professor of theology at the University of Salamanca, examined the questions of the just war, the Spanish authority in the Americas, and the rights of the Native American peoples.


title: International law

text: In 1625 Hugo Grotius argued that nations as well as persons ought to be governed by universal principle based on morality and divine justice while the relations among polities ought to be governed by the law of peoples, the "jus gentium", established by the consent of the community of nations on the basis of the principle of "pacta sunt servanda", that is, on the basis of the observance of commitments. On his part, Emmerich de Vattel argued instead for the equality of states as articulated by 18th-century natural law and suggested that the law of nations was composed of custom and law on the one hand, and natural law on the other. During the 17th century, the basic tenets of the Grotian or eclectic school, especially the doctrines of legal equality, territorial sovereignty, and independence of states, became the fundamental principles of the European political and legal system and were enshrined in the 1648 Peace of Westphalia.


title: International law

text: The early positivist school emphasized the importance of custom and treaties as sources of international law. In the 16th-century, Alberico Gentili used historical examples to posit that positive law ("jus voluntarium") was determined by general consent. Cornelius van Bynkershoek asserted that the bases of international law were customs and treaties commonly consented to by various states, while John Jacob Moser emphasized the importance of state practice in international law. The positivism school narrowed the range of international practice that might qualify as law, favouring rationality over morality and ethics. The 1815 Congress of Vienna marked the formal recognition of the political and international legal system based on the conditions of Europe.


title: International law

text: Modern legal positivists consider international law as a unified system of rules that emanates from the states' will. International law, as it is, is an "objective" reality that needs to be distinguished from law "as it should be". Classic positivism demands rigorous tests for legal validity and it deems irrelevant all extralegal arguments.


title: International law

text: Nation-states observe the principle of . This is affirmed in Article 2 (1) of the UN Charter, which holds that no state is in subjection to any other state. John Austin therefore asserted that "so-called" international law, lacking a sovereign power and so unenforceable, was not really law at all, but "positive morality", consisting of "opinions and sentiments...more ethical than legal in nature."


title: International law

text: Because the bulk of international law comes from treaties, which are binding only on the parties that ratify or accede to them,


title: International law

text: If legislation is the making of laws by a person or assembly binding on the whole community, there is no such thing as international law. For treaties bind only those who sign them.


title: International law

text: On the subject of treaty law, Charles de Gaulle stated that "Treaties are like pretty girls, or roses; they last only as long as they last".


title: International law

text: Since states are few in number, diverse and atypical in character, unindictable, lacking a centralised sovereign power, and their agreements unpoliced and decentralised, then, says Wight, 'international society is not a society at all. The condition of international relations is best described as international anarchy;'


title: International law

text: While in domestic politics the struggle for power is governed and circumscribed by law, in international politics, law is governed and circumscribed by the struggle for power. (This is why) international politics is called power politics... War is the only means by which states can in the last resort defend vital interests...the causes of war are inherent in power politics.


title: International law

text: Hans Morgenthau believed international law to be the weakest and most primitive system of law enforcement; he likened its decentralised nature to the law that prevails in preliterate tribal societies. Monopoly on violence is what makes domestic law enforceable; but between nations, there are multiple competing sources of force. The confusion created by treaty laws, which resemble private contracts between persons, is mitigated only by the relatively small number of states. For example, it is unclear whether the Nuremberg trials created new law, or applied the existing law of the Kellogg-Briand pact.


title: International law

text: Morgenthau asserts that no state may be compelled to submit a dispute to an international tribunal, making laws unenforceable and voluntary. International law is also unpoliced, lacking agencies for enforcement. He cites a 1947 US opinion poll in which 75% of respondents wanted "an international police to maintain world peace", but only 13% wanted that force to exceed the US armed forces. Later surveys have produced similar contradictory results.


title: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990 film)

text: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a 1990 American superhero film directed by Steve Barron from a screenplay by Todd W. Langen and Bobby Herbeck. It is the first film adaptation of the comic book characters created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. It stars Judith Hoag and Elias Koteas with the voices of Brian Tochi, Robbie Rist, Corey Feldman, and Josh Pais.


text: "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" follows the turtles on a quest to save their master, Splinter, with their new allies, April O'Neil and Casey Jones, from the Shredder and his Foot Clan. It adapts the early "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" comics, with several elements taken from the animated series airing at the time. The turtle costumes were developed by Jim Henson's Creature Shop, one of Jim Henson's last projects before his death shortly after the premiere.


text: "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" was released theatrically in the United States on March 30, 1990, by New Line Cinema. It received mixed reviews, but was a box-office success, grossing $202 million on a budget of $13.5 million; it was the highest-grossing independent film up to that time and the ninth highest-grossing film worldwide of 1990. It was followed by "" (1991) and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III" (1993).


text: In New York City, television reporter April O'Neil reports on a silent crime wave quickly enveloping the city. That night, April is attacked by a group of thieves, and is saved by an unseen group of vigilantes. April's rescuers, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles—Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael—return to their hidden lair in the sewer, where their master, a rat named Splinter, advises them to continue practicing the art of ninjutsu. Raphael visits the surface and ends up in a fight with the brutal vigilante Casey Jones, who ultimately escapes.


text: April continues investigating the crime wave, correctly theorizing it to be the work of the ninja Foot Clan; the Foot's leader, The Shredder, orders her to be silenced. A group of Foot attack April in the subway, although Raphael defeats them and carries the unconscious April back to the turtles' lair, unaware that one of the Foot is following him. Once April awakens, Splinter introduces himself and the turtles, explaining that they were once normal animals, before being mutated into intelligent, anthropomorphic creatures by a mysterious chemical and trained by Splinter in ninjitsu. After the turtles escort April home, they find their hideout ransacked and Splinter kidnapped. They return to April's apartment and spend the night there.


text: April's supervisor, Charles Pennington, visits April's apartment with his delinquent son, Danny. Danny glimpses the turtles hiding, and later runs away from home following an argument with his father. At the Foot's hideout, Shredder informs his followers of the turtles' threat, and Danny reports his findings.


text: Raphael argues with Leonardo over his leadership, and retreats to the roof of the apartment. The Foot arrive and beat Raphael unconscious, laying siege to the apartment. The apartment catches fire, and the turtles and April escape with help from Casey. Guilt-stricken, Danny seeks counsel from the imprisoned Splinter, and runs away from the Foot. The turtles retreat to an abandoned farm belonging to April's family, where Raphael recovers and April and Casey bond. Leonardo receives a vision of Splinter, and joins the other turtles to contact him through astral projection. Splinter delivers his final lesson, inspiring the turtles to return to the city.


text: The turtles return to their lair, finding Danny hiding there. While the turtles are sleeping, Danny returns to the Foot's hideout and meets with Splinter, followed by Casey. Splinter tells Danny the story of how, when he was still an ordinary rat, he learned ninjutsu from his former master, the ninja Hamato Yoshi. Fellow ninja Oroku Saki rivalled with Yoshi over the love of a woman, Tang Shen, who fled with Yoshi to New York to avoid conflict with Saki; however, Saki pursued and killed them. Shredder discovers Danny and realizes that the turtles have returned, ordering Splinter to be killed. Casey and Danny free Splinter and defeat Shredder's lieutenant Tatsu, before convincing the remaining Foot members of Shredder's manipulations.


text: The turtles battle the Foot in their lair, repelling them onto the streets. Shredder arrives and confronts the turtles on a rooftop, overpowering them. As Shredder prepares to kill Leonardo, Splinter appears, identifying Shredder as Oroku Saki; in turn, he recognizes Splinter as Yoshi's pet rat. Shredder attempts to kill Splinter, only to be thrown off the roof by Michelangelo's nunchaku, landing in a garbage truck, which Casey uses to crush him. The police arrive to arrest the remaining Foot, and Danny reunites with his father. April and Casey share a kiss, while the turtles begin to celebrate their victory with Splinter.


text: All four actors who played the in-suit turtles also appeared in cameos, with David Forman (Leonardo) as a gang member, Michelan Sisti (Michaelangelo) as a pizza delivery man, Leif Tilden (Donatello) as a messenger of The Foot and Josh Pais (Raphael) as a passenger in a taxi. Pais was the only actor to portray a Turtle on screen and also provide his voice.


text: The script is based mainly on the early "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" comics, including the stories of the turtles' origins, rooftop battle, sojourn to the farmhouse, and battle with Shredder. Elements were taken from the 1980s animated series, such as the Turtles' colored bandanas and love of pizza, elements of Michelangelo's character, and April O'Neil as a television reporter instead of a lab assistant.


text: The film's budget was $13.5 million. Much of the production took place in North Carolina, with a couple of location shoots in New York City during the summer of 1989 to capture famous landmark areas, such as Times Square, the Empire State Building, and the Hudson River. Filming in North Carolina took place at the North Carolina Film Studios, where New York rooftop sets were created. Production designer Roy Forge Smith and his art director, Gary Wissner, went to New York City four months prior to filming and took still photographs of rooftops and other various locations. While in NYC, Smith and Wissner were allowed to explore an abandoned Brooklyn subway line, as they could not gain access to a city sewer, but the structure of the subway had the same principle as a sewer. They also went to a water tunnel which had large pipes running through it.


text: After design sketches were created, the construction team used the studios' backlot to create some of the sets. There were problems with the manholes that led to the turtles' home, in that an eight-foot square room had to be constructed beneath them, but found water at about five-feet, and thus had to pour concrete into the underground rooms to keep the water out. In order to make the sewer authentic, a tide-mark was given, and it was covered with brick, plaster and stucco paint to give the walls a realistic look.


text: The turtle costumes were created by Jim Henson's Creature Shop in London. Jim Henson said that the creatures were the most advanced that he had ever worked with. The creatures were first made out of fiberglass, and then remolded out of clay. They were produced as molds to cast the whole body in foam rubber latex. The work at the Creature Shop was completed within 18 weeks.


text: Many major studios, such as Walt Disney Pictures, Columbia Pictures, MGM/UA, Orion Pictures, Paramount (whose parent company Viacom would acquire the "TMNT" property in 2009), and Warner Bros. turned down the film for distribution; they were worried that despite the popularity of the cartoon and the toy line, the film could potentially be a box office disappointment, like "Masters of the Universe" was just a couple years prior. The film found distribution roughly halfway through the initial production, via the then small and independent production company New Line Cinema, which had been known for distributing low-budget B movies and arthouse fare.


text: According to Brian Henson, the film was finished in post-production largely without Barron. Editor Sally Menke, who later edited many films by Quentin Tarantino, was removed as production company Golden Harvest did not like her work.


text: Live Entertainment Inc. announced that the film would go to VHS via its Family Home Entertainment label on October 4, 1990. The suggested price was $24.99 per cassette. Pizza Hut engaged in a $20 million marketing campaign tied into the film (despite the fact that Domino's Pizza was used as product placement in the film itself). Items included advertising in print, radio and television, and several rebate coupons.


text: The UK version removed Eastern fighting weapons like the nunchaku, using alternate shots of Michaelangelo in order to conceal his nunchaku weapon, or omitting the show-off duel between Michaelangelo and a member of the Foot clan. Also, the scene of Shredder in the garbage shred was heavily edited and the Turtle Power song was edited to change the word 'ninja' to 'hero' as per the UK television series. The unedited version was released on DVD in 2004 in the UK.


text: The German theatrical voice-dubbed version is identical to the UK version, i.e. it omits the usage of the nunchaku. Furthermore, the German dubbing audio track contains several "cartoon-like" sounds in order to soften the violence of the fight scenes. Although the German dub of the film was released with unedited pictures on DVD, the German dub audio version with the cartoonish sounds were still kept, because they were permanently merged into the German voice-dubbing audio.


text: In 1990, the film was released to VHS and reached No. 4 in the home video market. The film was released to DVD in Region 1 on September 3, 2002; it includes only minor special features, such as a trailer and interactive menus. The film was also released in the MiniDVD format.


text: On August 11, 2009, the film was included in a special 25th anniversary box set (commemorating the original comic book), released to both DVD and Blu-ray formats. It also contained "", "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III", and the animated release, "TMNT" (2007). No additional features, other than theatrical trailers, were included. In Germany, a "Special Edition" was released on March 12, 2010, with additional features, including an audio commentary by director Steve Barron, an alternate ending, and alternate takes from the original German release, where Michelangelo's nunchaku had been edited out. Warner Home Video released the film along with "Secret of the Ooze" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III" as part of a "Triple Feature" on Blu-ray in June 2012, minus the fourth film "TMNT". Warner Home Video released the film separately on Blu-ray on December 18. In the UK, Medium Rare released the film along with its sequels in a 3 DVD set on 28 October 2013. Bonus features included a 30-minute documentary entitled “Making of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and trailers.


text: The film opened in the United States on March 30, 1990, and was number one at the box office over the weekend, grossing more than $25 million, the biggest opening weekend an independent film had ever had up to that time. It went on to gross in its opening week, making it the second biggest US opening ever up until then (after 1989's "Batman").


text: The film turned out to be a huge success at the box office, eventually making over $135 million in North America, and over $66 million outside North America, for a worldwide total of over $200 million, making it the ninth highest-grossing film of 1990 worldwide. The film was also nominated for awards by The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films.


text: On the film's initial release, Roger Ebert gave 2.5 out of 4 stars and concluded it to be "nowhere near as bad as it might have been, and probably is the best possible Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie. It supplies, in other words, more or less what Turtle fans will expect". Ebert singled out the production design, which he described as a "low-rent version of "Batman" or "Metropolis"." "Variety" praised the film's tongue-in-cheek humor and "amusingly outlandish" martial arts sequences, but thought it was "visually rough around the edges" and "sometimes sluggish in its plotting". Janet Maslin of "The New York Times" criticized the cinematography, stating that it was so "poorly photographed that the red-masked turtle looks almost exactly like the orange-masked one". Kim Newman wrote in the "Monthly Film Bulletin" that he found the characters reminiscent of the early 1970s Godzilla film series, describing the turtles as "loveable monsters in baggy foam rubber suits" who "befriended lost children and smashed things up in orgies of destruction that somehow never hurt anyone" and "drop the occasional teenage buzzword but are never remotely convincing as teenagers, mutants, ninjas or turtles".


text: "Variety", the "New York Times", and the "Monthly Film Bulletin" all noted the Asian villains of the film; "Variety" described "overtones of racism in its use of Oriental villains", while Maslin stated "the story's villainous types are Asian, and the film plays the yellow-peril aspects of this to the hilt". Newman noted a racist joke in April O'Neil's response to the Foot Clan, "What's the matter, did I fall behind on my Sony payments?", finding that the film expressed a "resentment of Japan's economic strength even while the film is plundering Japan's popular culture". Ebert felt there was "no racism" in the film.


text: Lloyd Bradley of "Empire Magazine" gave the film four out of five stars, stating: "A well-rounded, unpretentious, very funny, knockabout adventure – subtly blended so that it's fun for all the family". Owen Gleiberman, writing for "Entertainment Weekly", gave an F rating, finding that none of the four turtles or Splinter had any personality, but felt that a young audience might enjoy the film, noting he might have "gone for it too had I been raised on Nintendo games and the robotic animation that passes for entertainment on today's Saturday-morning TV".


text: "Entertainment Weekly" and "The New York Times" praised the work of Jim Henson's Creature Shop, with Maslin stating "without which there would have been no film at all".


text: As of 2022, the film has an approval rating of 41% on Rotten Tomatoes based on reviews from 54 critics and an average rating of 5.10/10. The website's consensus states, ""Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" is exactly as advertised: one-liners, brawls, and general silliness. Good for the young at heart, irritating for everyone else". It is the highest rated live action film in the franchise, and third overall, behind the Netflix original film "," and the direct-to-video crossover "Batman vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". On Metacritic, it has a score of 51 based on reviews from 21 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


text: Following the huge success of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" at the box office, several films were created. A year later, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze" was released in theaters, and was a commercial success. In 1993, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III" was released in theaters, to a smaller box office take.


text: After a 14-year absence from theaters, a fourth film, "TMNT", was released in 2007, though unlike the trilogy, this was a CGI animated film.


title: Ricardo López (stalker)

text: Ricardo López (January 14, 1975 – September 12, 1996), also known as the "Björk stalker", was an American man who attempted to murder the Icelandic singer Björk.


title: Ricardo López (stalker)

text: López was born in Uruguay and moved to Lawrenceville, Georgia with his family, and began working as a pest exterminator. He had poor self-esteem, was socially reclusive, and he eventually developed an obsession with Björk in 1993, hoping to be engaged with her; he was particularly angry over her brief relationship with the English musician Goldie. Over the course of nearly nine months in 1996, he made video diaries about her and other topics at his apartment in Hollywood, Florida.


title: Ricardo López (stalker)

text: On September 12, 1996, López mailed a letter bomb rigged with sulfuric acid to Björk's residence in London, then returned home, recorded a final video diary explaining his motivations, and ended it filming his suicide by gunshot. Hollywood police found his body and the videos four days after his death; they contacted the London Metropolitan Police about the package, who intercepted its delivery, and Björk was unharmed.


title: Ricardo López (stalker)

text: Ricardo López was born in Uruguay on January 14, 1975, into a middle-class family who moved to the United States and settled in Lawrenceville, Georgia. He had a good relationship with his family, and was described as easygoing but introverted. He had a few male friends, but never made female friends, nor had a girlfriend, because he had feelings of inadequacy and had social awkwardness around women. López had Klinefelter syndrome.


title: Ricardo López (stalker)

text: With aspirations to become a famous artist, López dropped out of high school. However, he did not seriously pursue an artistic career due to his feelings of inferiority, and fear of being rejected entry into art school. He intermittently worked for his brother's pest control business to support himself. By the age of 17, López had become reclusive and, as a means of escape, retreated into a world of fantasies and became enthralled by celebrities.


title: Ricardo López (stalker)

text: In 1993, López became fixated on the Icelandic singer Björk. He began gathering information about her life, followed her career, and wrote her numerous fan letters. Initially, López cited her as his muse and said that his infatuation gave him a "euphoric feeling". As time passed, his fixation became all-consuming and he grew more disconnected from reality. In his diary, López wrote of longing to be accepted by Björk and to be a person who had "an effect on her life". He fantasized about inventing a time machine to travel to the 1970s and befriending her as a child. His fantasies about Björk were not sexual; in his diary, he wrote, "I couldn't have sex with Björk because I love her."


title: Ricardo López (stalker)

text: López's diary grew to 803 pages, with passages about his thoughts on Björk and his feelings of inadequacy due to being overweight, his disgust and embarrassment about his gynecomastia, and his inability to get a girlfriend. He wrote that he considered himself "a loser who never even learned to drive" and complained about his menial job as an exterminator that earned little money. The diary contained 168 references to López's feelings of failure, 34 references to suicide, and 14 references to murder. He made 408 references to Björk and 52 references to other celebrities.


title: Ricardo López (stalker)

text: In 1996, López was living alone in an apartment in Hollywood, Florida. Around this time he read in "Entertainment Weekly" that Björk was in a romantic relationship with the English musician Goldie. López was angered by this perceived betrayal and the fact that she was involved with a black man, writing in his diary: "I wasted eight months and she has a fucking lover." He began fantasizing about how he could "punish" Björk.


title: Ricardo López (stalker)

text: López stopped writing his diary and began filming a video diary in his apartment. According to López, the diary's purpose was to document "my life, my art and my plan. Comfort is what I seek in speaking to you ... I am being my own psychologist. You are a camera. I am Ricardo." He recorded eleven video tapes containing approximately two hours of footage each. The tapes contain footage of López preparing his "revenge" and discussing his "crush [that] ended up as an obsession". López's anger over Björk's relationship with Goldie intensified and he decided to kill her. In one entry, he said: "I'm just going to have to kill her. I'm going to send a package. I'm going to be sending her to hell."


title: Ricardo López (stalker)

text: López initially intended to construct a bomb filled with hypodermic needles containing HIV-tainted blood, which satisfied his desire to have a lasting effect on Björk's life. When he realized it would not be feasible to build such a device, López began constructing a letter bomb using sulfuric acid in a hollowed-out book, which he planned to have sent to Björk's home in London, England. The device was designed to explode and kill or disfigure Björk as she opened the book. He would commit suicide after mailing the bomb, hoping that he and Björk would be united in heaven.


title: Ricardo López (stalker)

text: On the morning of September 12, 1996, López began filming his final video diary entry. The final tape, titled "Last Day – Ricardo López", begins with López preparing to go to the post office to mail the letter bomb. He said that he was "very, very nervous", but that he would kill himself rather than be arrested if he aroused suspicion. After returning from the post office, he resumed filming. As Björk's music plays in the background, a naked López shaves his head and eyebrows and paints his face red and green. He examines himself in a mirror and tells the camera that he is "a little nervous now". He then states, "I'm definitely not drunk. I am not depressed. I know exactly what I am doing. [The gun] is cocked back. It's ready to roll." As Björk's song "I Remember You" finishes playing, López shouts "This is for you" and shoots himself in the mouth with a revolver. He groans and his body falls out of view; shortly after he begins to bleed out on the floor, which is audible. At this point, the camera then stopped filming. A hand-painted sign bearing the handwritten words "The best of me. Sept. 12" hung on the wall behind him. Police theorized that López intended to cover the sign with his blood and brain matter with the gunshot.


title: Ricardo López (stalker)

text: On September 16, a foul odor and blood were noticed coming from López's apartment. The Hollywood Police Department entered and discovered López's decomposing corpse. Written on the wall was a message: "The 8mm videos are documentation of a crime, terrorist matter, they are for the FBI." The Broward County Sheriff's Office evacuated the building while the bomb squad searched for further explosives, and found none. After viewing López's final tape, police contacted Scotland Yard to warn them that the potentially explosive package was en route to Björk's residence in London. The package had yet to be delivered; the Metropolitan Police intercepted it from a south London post office and it was safely detonated. There had been little danger of Björk receiving the bomb, as her mail was vetted through her management's office. Unbeknownst to López, Björk and Goldie had ended their relationship a few days before he killed himself.


title: Ricardo López (stalker)

text: Björk said in a statement that she was distressed by the incident. She described it as "terrible" and "very sad", and said that people should not "take me too literally and get involved in my personal life". She sent a card and flowers to López's family. She left for Spain, where she recorded the remainder of her third album, "Homogenic", away from media attention. She also hired security for her son, Sindri, who was escorted to school with a minder. A year after López's death, Björk discussed the incident in an interview: "I was very upset that somebody had died. I couldn't sleep for a week. And I'd be lying if I said it didn't scare the fuck out of me. That I could get hurt and, most of all, that my son could get hurt."


title: Ricardo López (stalker)

text: López's family and friends were aware of his obsession with Björk. They maintained that they had no idea that he harbored violent thoughts or was capable of violence. At one point, his brother had told him to "get a real woman, you're obsessed". A psychiatrist who treated López for anxiety shortly before his death also stated that he did not appear dangerous. López's videotapes, including his suicide, were confiscated by the FBI and released to journalists.


title: Ricardo López (stalker)

text: In 2000, Sami Saif released a 70-minute documentary, "The Video Diary of Ricardo López", comprising a condensed version of López's 22-hour video diary. Saif decided to limit its availability as "I want to be there when people see the film, because there are all sorts of things about Ricardo López on the internet. I like to be able to talk to people about what it is they've actually seen."


title: Ricardo López (stalker)

text: In 2019, independent Italian director Domiziano Cristopharo released an 87-minute erotic horror film titled "The Obsessed", with the working title of "Last Day: The Best of Me". López's video diary was adapted as the subject material of "The Obsessed" in what Cristopharo described as "Albania's first horror film" and "a body horror freely inspired to the real story of Ricardo López, Bjork’s stalker." The film included the appearance of a mouthed penis with a tongue and teeth.


title: Ricardo López (stalker)

text: In 2022, López's letter bomb plot was referenced by the Adult Swim animated television series "Smiling Friends" in the episode "Enchanted Forest". Main characters Pim and Charlie agreed to help a hobbit-esque forest dweller named Mip deliver a handmade gift to the Princess of the Enchanted Forest, who they've been tasked to make smile again for a portrait. After reaching the castle following the accidental death of Mip, it is discovered that the Princess had been unable to smile as Mip had been stalking her, and the gift was in fact a bomb meant to kill the Princess. Previously in 2015, the Björk stalker was a topic of discussion on "SleepyCast", a podcast involving "Smiling Friends" co-creator and voice actor Zach Hadel.


title: Arctic fox

text: The Arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus), also known as the white fox, polar fox, or snow fox, is a small fox native to the Arctic regions of the Northern Hemisphere and common throughout the Arctic tundra biome. It is well adapted to living in cold environments, and is best known for its thick, warm fur that is also used as camouflage. It has a large and very fluffy tail. In the wild, most individuals do not live past their first year but some exceptional ones survive up to 11 years. Its body length ranges from , with a generally rounded body shape to minimize the escape of body heat.


title: Arctic fox

text: The Arctic fox preys on many small creatures such as lemmings, voles, ringed seal pups, fish, waterfowl, and seabirds. It also eats carrion, berries, seaweed, and insects and other small invertebrates. Arctic foxes form monogamous pairs during the breeding season and they stay together to raise their young in complex underground dens. Occasionally, other family members may assist in raising their young. Natural predators of the Arctic fox are golden eagles, Arctic wolves, polar bears, wolverines, red foxes, and grizzly bears.


title: Arctic fox

text: Arctic foxes must endure a temperature difference of up to between the external environment and their internal core temperature. To prevent heat loss, the Arctic fox curls up tightly tucking its legs and head under its body and behind its furry tail. This position gives the fox the smallest surface area to volume ratio and protects the least insulated areas. Arctic foxes also stay warm by getting out of the wind and residing in their dens. Although the Arctic foxes are active year-round and do not hibernate, they attempt to preserve fat by reducing their locomotor activity. They build up their fat reserves in the autumn, sometimes increasing their body weight by more than 50%. This provides greater insulation during the winter and a source of energy when food is scarce.


title: Arctic fox

text: In the spring, the Arctic fox's attention switches to reproduction and a home for their potential offspring. They live in large dens in frost-free, slightly raised ground. These are complex systems of tunnels covering as much as and are often in eskers, long ridges of sedimentary material deposited in formerly glaciated regions. These dens may be in existence for many decades and are used by many generations of foxes.


title: Arctic fox

text: Arctic foxes tend to select dens that are easily accessible with many entrances, and that are clear from snow and ice making it easier to burrow in. The Arctic fox builds and chooses dens that face southward towards the sun, which makes the den warmer. Arctic foxes prefer large, maze-like dens for predator evasion and a quick escape especially when red foxes are in the area. Natal dens are typically found in rugged terrain, which may provide more protection for the pups. But, the parents will also relocate litters to nearby dens to avoid predators. When red foxes are not in the region, Arctic foxes will use dens that the red fox previously occupied. Shelter quality is more important to the Arctic fox than the proximity of spring prey to a den.


title: Arctic fox

text: The main prey in the tundra are lemmings, which is why the white fox is often called the "lemming fox". The white fox's reproduction rates reflect the lemming population density, which cyclically fluctuates every 3–5 years. When lemmings are abundant, the white fox can give birth to 18 pups, but they often do not reproduce when food is scarce. The "coastal fox" or blue fox lives in an environment where food availability is relatively consistent, and they will have up to 5 pups every year.


title: Arctic fox

text: Breeding usually takes place in April and May, and the gestation period is about 52 days. Litters may contain as many as 25 (the largest litter size in the order Carnivora). The young emerge from the den when 3 to 4 weeks old and are weaned by 9 weeks of age.


title: Arctic fox

text: Arctic foxes are primarily monogamous and both parents will care for the offspring. When predators and prey are abundant, Arctic foxes are more likely to be promiscuous (exhibited in both males and females) and display more complex social structures. Larger packs of foxes consisting of breeding or non-breeding males or females can guard a single territory more proficiently to increase pup survival. When resources are scarce, competition increases and the number of foxes in a territory decreases. On the coasts of Svalbard, the frequency of complex social structures is larger than inland foxes that remain monogamous due to food availability. In Scandinavia, there are more complex social structures compared to other populations due to the presence of the red fox. Also, conservationists are supplying the declining population with supplemental food. One unique case, however, is Iceland where monogamy is the most prevalent. The older offspring (1-year-olds) often remain within their parent's territory even though predators are absent and there are fewer resources, which may indicate kin selection in the fox.


title: Arctic fox

text: Arctic foxes generally eat any small animal they can find, including lemmings, voles, other rodents, hares, birds, eggs, fish, and carrion. They scavenge on carcasses left by larger predators such as wolves and polar bears, and in times of scarcity also eat their feces. In areas where they are present, lemmings are their most common prey, and a family of foxes can eat dozens of lemmings each day. In some locations in northern Canada, a high seasonal abundance of migrating birds that breed in the area may provide an important food source. On the coast of Iceland and other islands, their diet consists predominantly of birds. During April and May, the Arctic fox also preys on ringed seal pups when the young animals are confined to a snow den and are relatively helpless. They also consume berries and seaweed, so they may be considered omnivores. This fox is a significant bird-egg predator, consuming eggs of all except the largest tundra bird species.


title: Arctic fox

text: Arctic foxes survive harsh winters and food scarcity by either hoarding food or storing body fat subcutaneously and viscerally. At the beginning of winter, one Arctic fox has approximately 14740 kJ of energy storage from fat alone. Using the lowest BMR value measured in Arctic foxes, an average sized fox of would need 471 kJ/day during the winter to survive. In Canada, Arctic foxes acquire from snow goose eggs at a rate of 2.7–7.3 eggs/h and store 80–97% of them. Scats provide evidence that they eat the eggs during the winter after caching. Isotope analysis shows that eggs can still be eaten after a year, and the metabolizable energy of a stored goose egg only decreases by 11% after 60 days; a fresh egg has about 816 kJ. Eggs stored in the summer are accessed the following spring prior to reproduction.


title: Arctic fox

text: The Arctic fox lives in some of the most frigid extremes on the planet, but they do not start to shiver until the temperature drops to . Among its adaptations for survival in the cold is its dense, multilayered pelage, which provides excellent insulation. Additionally, the Arctic fox is the only canid whose foot pads are covered in fur. There are two genetically distinct coat color morphs: white and blue. The white morph has seasonal camouflage, white in winter and brown along the back with light grey around the abdomen in summer. The blue morph is often a dark blue, brown, or grey color year-round. Although the blue allele is dominant over the white allele, 99% of the Arctic fox population is the white morph. Two similar mutations to MC1R cause the blue color and the lack of seasonal color change. The fur of the Arctic fox provides the best insulation of any mammal.


title: Arctic fox

text: The fox has a low surface area to volume ratio, as evidenced by its generally compact body shape, short muzzle and legs, and short, thick ears. Since less of its surface area is exposed to the Arctic cold, less heat escapes from its body.


title: Arctic fox

text: The Arctic fox has a functional hearing range between 125 Hz–16 kHz with a sensitivity that is ≤ 60 dB in air, and an average peak sensitivity of 24 dB at 4 kHz. Overall, the Arctic foxes hearing is less sensitive than the dog and the kit fox. The Arctic fox and the kit fox have a low upper-frequency limit compared to the domestic dog and other carnivores. The Arctic fox can easily hear lemmings burrowing under 4-5 inches of snow. When it has located its prey, it pounces and punches through the snow to catch its prey.


title: Arctic fox

text: The Arctic fox also has a keen sense of smell. They can smell carcasses that are often left by polar bears anywhere from . It is possible that they use their sense of smell to also track down polar bears. Additionally, Arctic foxes can smell and find frozen lemmings under of snow, and can detect a subnivean seal lair under of snow.


title: Arctic fox

text: The Arctic fox contains advantageous genes to overcome extreme cold and starvation periods. Transcriptome sequencing has identified two genes that are under positive selection: Glycolipid transfer protein domain containing 1 (GLTPD1) and V-akt murine thymoma viral oncogene homolog 2 (AKT2). GLTPD1 is involved in the fatty acid metabolism, while AKT2 pertains to the glucose metabolism and insulin signaling.


title: Arctic fox

text: The average mass specific BMR and total BMR are 37% and 27% lower in the winter than the summer. The Arctic fox decreases its BMR via metabolic depression in the winter to conserve fat storage and minimize energy requirements. According to the most recent data, the lower critical temperature of the Arctic fox is at in the winter and in the summer. It was commonly believed that the Arctic fox had a lower critical temperature below . However, some scientists have concluded that this statistic is not accurate since it was never tested using the proper equipment.


title: Arctic fox

text: About 22% of the total body surface area of the Arctic fox dissipates heat readily compared to red foxes at 33%. The regions that have the greatest heat loss are the nose, ears, legs, and feet, which is useful in the summer for thermal heat regulation. Also, the Arctic fox has a beneficial mechanism in their nose for evaporative cooling like dogs, which keeps the brain cool during the summer and exercise. The thermal conductivity of Arctic fox fur in the summer and winter is the same; however, the thermal conductance of the Arctic fox in the winter is lower than the summer since fur thickness increases by 140%. In the summer, the thermal conductance of the Arctic foxes body is 114% higher than the winter, but their body core temperature is constant year-round.


title: Arctic fox

text: One way that Arctic foxes regulate their body temperature is by utilizing a countercurrent heat exchange in the blood of their legs. Arctic foxes can constantly keep their feet above the tissue freezing point () when standing on cold substrates without losing mobility or feeling pain. They do this by increasing vasodilation and blood flow to a capillary rete in the pad surface, which is in direct contact with the snow rather than the entire foot. They selectively vasoconstrict blood vessels in the center of the foot pad, which conserves energy and minimizes heat loss. Arctic foxes maintain the temperature in their paws independently from the core temperature. If the core temperature drops, the pad of the foot will remain constantly above the tissue freezing point.


title: Arctic fox

text: The average head-and-body length of the male is , with a range of , while the female averages with a range of . In some regions, no difference in size is seen between males and females. The tail is about long in both sexes. The height at the shoulder is . On average males weigh , with a range of , while females average , with a range of .


title: Arctic fox

text: "Vulpes lagopus" is a 'true fox' belonging to the genus "Vulpes" of the fox tribe Vulpini, which consists of 12 extant species. It is classified under the subfamily Caninae of the canid family Canidae. Although it has previously been assigned to its own monotypic genus "Alopex", recent genetic evidence now places it in the genus "Vulpes" along with the majority of other foxes.


title: Arctic fox

text: It was originally described by Carl Linnaeus in the 10th edition of "Systema Naturae" in 1758 as "Canis lagopus". The type specimen was recovered from Lapland, Sweden. The generic name "vulpes" is Latin for "fox". The specific name "lagopus" is derived from Ancient Greek λαγώς ("lagōs", "hare") and πούς ("pous", "foot"), referring to the hair on its feet similar to those found in cold-climate species of hares.


title: Arctic fox

text: Looking at the most recent phylogeny, the Arctic fox and the red fox ("Vulpes vulpes") diverged approximately 3.17MYA. Additionally, the Arctic fox diverged from its sister group, the kit fox ("Vulpes macrotis"), at about 0.9MYA.


title: Arctic fox

text: The origins of the Arctic fox have been described by the "out of Tibet" hypothesis. On the Tibetan Plateau, fossils of the extinct ancestral Arctic fox ("Vulpes qiuzhudingi") from the early Pliocene (5.08–3.6 MYA) were found along with many other precursors of modern mammals that evolved during the Pliocene (5.3–2.6 MYA). It is believed that this ancient fox is the ancestor of the modern Arctic fox. Globally, the Pliocene was about 2–3 °C warmer than today, and the Arctic during the summer in the mid-Pliocene was 8 °C warmer. By using stable carbon and oxygen isotope analysis of fossils, researchers claim that the Tibetan Plateau experienced tundra-like conditions during the Pliocene and harbored cold-adapted mammals that later spread to North America and Eurasia during the Pleistocene Epoch (2.6 million-11,700 years ago).


title: Arctic fox

text: Besides the nominate subspecies, the common Arctic fox, "V. l. lagopus", four other subspecies of this fox have been described:


title: Arctic fox

text: The Arctic fox has a circumpolar distribution and occurs in Arctic tundra habitats in northern Europe, northern Asia, and North America. Its range includes Greenland, Iceland, Fennoscandia, Svalbard, Jan Mayen (where it was hunted to extinction) and other islands in the Barents Sea, northern Russia, islands in the Bering Sea, Alaska, and Canada as far south as Hudson Bay. In the late 19th century, it was introduced into the Aleutian Islands southwest of Alaska. However, the population on the Aleutian Islands is currently being eradicated in conservation efforts to preserve the local bird population. It mostly inhabits tundra and pack ice, but is also present in Canadian boreal forests (northeastern Alberta, northern Saskatchewan, northern Manitoba, Northern Ontario, Northern Quebec, and Newfoundland and Labrador) and the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. They are found at elevations up to above sea level and have been seen on sea ice close to the North Pole.


title: Arctic fox

text: The Arctic fox is the only land mammal native to Iceland. It came to the isolated North Atlantic island at the end of the last ice age, walking over the frozen sea. The Arctic Fox Center in Súðavík contains an exhibition on the Arctic fox and conducts studies on the influence of tourism on the population. Its range during the last ice age was much more extensive than it is now, and fossil remains of the Arctic fox have been found over much of northern Europe and Siberia.


title: Arctic fox

text: The color of the fox's coat also determines where they are most likely to be found. The white morph mainly lives inland and blends in with the snowy tundra, while the blue morph occupies the coasts because its dark color blends in with the cliffs and rocks.


title: Arctic fox

text: During the winter, 95.5% of Arctic foxes utilize commuting trips, which remain within the fox's home range. Commuting trips in Arctic foxes last less than 3 days and occur between 0–2.9 times a month. Nomadism is found in 3.4% of the foxes, and loop migrations (where the fox travels to a new range, then returns to its home range) are the least common at 1.1%. Arctic foxes in Canada that undergo nomadism and migrations voyage from the Canadian archipelago to Greenland and northwestern Canada. The duration and distance traveled between males and females is not significantly different.


title: Arctic fox

text: Arctic foxes closer to goose colonies (located at the coasts) are less likely to migrate. Meanwhile, foxes experiencing low-density lemming populations are more likely to make sea ice trips. Residency is common in the Arctic fox population so that they can maintain their territories. Migratory foxes have a mortality rate >3 times higher than resident foxes. Nomadic behavior becomes more common as the foxes age.


title: Arctic fox

text: In July 2019, the Norwegian Polar Institute reported the story of a yearling female which was fitted with a GPS tracking device and then released by their researchers on the east coast of Spitsbergen in the Svalbard group of islands. The young fox crossed the polar ice from the islands to Greenland in 21 days, a distance of . She then moved on to Ellesmere Island in northern Canada, covering a total recorded distance of in 76 days, before her GPS tracker stopped working. She averaged just over a day, and managed as much as in a single day.


title: Arctic fox

text: The Arctic fox has been assessed as least concern on the IUCN Red List since 2004. However, the Scandinavian mainland population is acutely endangered, despite being legally protected from hunting and persecution for several decades. The estimate of the adult population in all of Norway, Sweden, and Finland is fewer than 200 individuals. Of these, especially in Finland, the Arctic fox is even classified as critically endangered, because even though the animal was pacified in Finland since 1940, the population has not recovered despite that. As a result, the populations of Arctic fox have been carefully studied and inventoried in places such as the Vindelfjällens Nature Reserve (Sweden), which has the Arctic fox as its symbol.


title: Arctic fox

text: The abundance of the Arctic fox tends to fluctuate in a cycle along with the population of lemmings and voles (a 3- to 4-year cycle). The populations are especially vulnerable during the years when the prey population crashes, and uncontrolled trapping has almost eradicated two subpopulations.


title: Arctic fox

text: The pelts of Arctic foxes with a slate-blue coloration were especially valuable. They were transported to various previously fox-free Aleutian Islands during the 1920s. The program was successful in terms of increasing the population of blue foxes, but their predation of Aleutian Canada geese conflicted with the goal of preserving that species.


title: Arctic fox

text: The Arctic fox is losing ground to the larger red fox. This has been attributed to climate change—the camouflage value of its lighter coat decreases with less snow cover. Red foxes dominate where their ranges begin to overlap by killing Arctic foxes and their kits. An alternative explanation of the red fox's gains involves the gray wolf. Historically, it has kept red fox numbers down, but as the wolf has been hunted to near extinction in much of its former range, the red fox population has grown larger, and it has taken over the niche of top predator. In areas of northern Europe, programs are in place that allow the hunting of red foxes in the Arctic fox's previous range.


title: Arctic fox

text: As with many other game species, the best sources of historical and large-scale population data are hunting bag records and questionnaires. Several potential sources of error occur in such data collections. In addition, numbers vary widely between years due to the large population fluctuations. However, the total population of the Arctic fox must be in the order of several hundred thousand animals.


title: Arctic fox

text: The world population of Arctic foxes is thus not endangered, but two Arctic fox subpopulations are. One is on Medny Island (Commander Islands, Russia), which was reduced by some 85–90%, to around 90 animals, as a result of mange caused by an ear tick introduced by dogs in the 1970s. The population is currently under treatment with antiparasitic drugs, but the result is still uncertain.


title: Arctic fox

text: The other threatened population is the one in Fennoscandia (Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Kola Peninsula). This population decreased drastically around the start of the 20th century as a result of extreme fur prices, which caused severe hunting also during population lows. The population has remained at a low density for more than 90 years, with additional reductions during the last decade. The total population estimate for 1997 is around 60 adults in Sweden, 11 adults in Finland, and 50 in Norway. From Kola, there are indications of a similar situation, suggesting a population of around 20 adults. The Fennoscandian population thus numbers around 140 breeding adults. Even after local lemming peaks, the Arctic fox population tends to collapse back to levels dangerously close to nonviability.


title: Arctic fox

text: The Arctic fox is classed as a "prohibited new organism" under New Zealand's Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996, preventing it from being imported into the country.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: A pyramid scheme is a business model that recruits members via a promise of payments or services for enrolling others into the scheme, rather than supplying investments or sale of products. As recruiting multiplies, recruiting becomes quickly impossible, and most members are unable to profit; as such, pyramid schemes are unsustainable and often illegal.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: Pyramid schemes have existed for at least a century in different guises. Some multi-level marketing plans have been classified as pyramid schemes.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: In a pyramid scheme, an organization compels individuals who wish to join to make a payment. In exchange, the organization promises its new members a share of the money taken from every additional member that they recruit. The directors of the organization (those at the top of the pyramid) also receive a share of these payments. For the directors, the scheme is potentially lucrative—whether or not they do any work, the organization's membership has a strong incentive to continue recruiting and funneling money to the top of the pyramid.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: Such organizations seldom involve sales of products or services with value. Without creating any goods or services, the only revenue streams for the scheme are recruiting more members or soliciting more money from current members. The behavior of pyramid schemes follows the mathematics concerning exponential growth quite closely. Each level of the pyramid is much larger than the one before it. For a pyramid scheme to make money for everyone who enrolls in it, it would have to expand indefinitely. When the scheme inevitably runs out of new recruits, lacking other sources of revenue, it collapses. Since the biggest terms in this geometric sequence are at the end, most people will be in the lower levels of the pyramid; accordingly, the bottom layer of the pyramid contains the most people. The people working for pyramid schemes try to promote the actual company instead of the product they are selling. Eventually, all of the people at the lower levels of the pyramid do not make any money; only the people at the top turn a profit.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: People in the upper layers of the pyramid typically profit, while those in the lower layers typically lose money. Since most of the members in the scheme are at the bottom, most participants will not make any money. In particular, when the scheme collapses, most members will be in the bottom layers and thus will not have any opportunity to profit from the scheme; still, they will have already paid to join. Therefore, a pyramid scheme is characterized by a few people (including the creators of the scheme) making large amounts of money, while subsequent members lose money. For this reason, they are considered scams.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: Many pyramids are more sophisticated than the simple model. These recognize that recruiting a large number of others into a scheme can be difficult, so a seemingly simpler model is used. In this model each person must recruit two others, but the ease of achieving this is offset because the depth required to recoup any money also increases. The scheme requires a person to recruit two others, who must each recruit two others, and so on.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: Prior instances of this scheme have been called the "Airplane Game" and the four tiers labelled as "captain", "co-pilot", "crew", and "passenger" to denote a person's level. Another instance was called the "Original Dinner Party" which labeled the tiers as "dessert", "main course", "side salad", and "appetizer". A person on the "dessert" course is the one at the top of the tree. Another variant, "Treasure Traders", variously used gemology terms such as "polishers", "stone cutters", etc. One version called the Abundance Fractal uses the four elements as the names of tiers: "Fire", "Air", "Earth", and "Water". A more recent variation known as the Living Workshop takes the names of plants, calling the tiers "seed", "sapling", "blossom", and "lotus".


title: Pyramid scheme

text: Such schemes may try to downplay their pyramid nature by referring to themselves as "gifting circles" with money being "gifted". Others focus on sharing circles or educational themes around "abundance" to divert attention away from the unsustainable structure. Popular schemes such as "Women Empowering Women" do exactly this.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: Whichever euphemism is used, there are 15 total people in four tiers (1 + 2 + 4 + 8) in the scheme—with the Airplane Game as the example, the person at the top of this tree is the "captain", the two below are "co-pilots", the four below are "crew", and the bottom eight joiners are the "passengers".


title: Pyramid scheme

text: The eight passengers must each pay (or "gift") a sum (e.g., $5,000) to join the scheme. This sum (e.g., $40,000) goes to the captain, who leaves, with everyone remaining moving up one tier. There are now two new captains so the group splits in two with each group requiring eight new passengers. A person who joins the scheme as a passenger will not see a return until they advance through the crew and co-pilot tiers and exit the scheme as a captain. Therefore, the participants in the bottom three tiers of the pyramid lose their money if the scheme collapses.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: If a person is using this model as a scam, the confidence trickster would take the majority of the money. They would do this by filling in the first three tiers (with one, two, and four people) with phony names, ensuring they get the first seven payouts, at eight times the buy-in sum, without paying anything themselves. So if the buy-in were $5,000, they would receive $40,000, paid for by the first eight investors. They would continue to buy in underneath the real investors, and promote and prolong the scheme for as long as possible to allow them to skim even more from it before it collapses.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: Although the "captain" is the person at the top of the tree, having received the payment from the eight paying passengers, once they leave the scheme they are able to re-enter the pyramid as a "passenger" and hopefully recruit enough to reach captain again, thereby earning a second payout.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: Similar to the eight ball model, the Blessing Loom tricks potential investors by claiming to turn $100 into $800. This scheme has a circular structure, as increases in new recruits pushes individuals closer to the centre of the circle, hence the "Loom" in the name. Each participant needs to recruit two people without providing them with any service or product. The scam often resurfaces online across the globe, under different aliases such as 'loom circle' or 'fractal mandala'. The Blessing Loom scheme has been ruled as illegal in multiple US cities.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: Franchise fraud is defined by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation as a pyramid scheme. The FBI website states:


title: Pyramid scheme

text: Pyramid schemes—also referred to as franchise fraud or chain referral schemes—are marketing and investment frauds in which an individual is offered a distributorship or franchise to market a particular product. The real profit is earned, not by the sale of the product, but by the sale of new distributorships. Emphasis on selling franchises rather than the product eventually leads to a point where the supply of potential investors is exhausted and the pyramid collapses.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: Matrix schemes use the same fraudulent, unsustainable system as a pyramid; here, the participants pay to join a waiting list for a desirable product, which only a fraction of them can ever receive. Since matrix schemes follow the same laws of geometric progression as pyramids, they are subsequently as doomed to collapse. Such schemes operate as a queue, where the person at head of the queue receives an item such as a television, games console, digital camcorder, etc. when a certain number of new people join the end of the queue. For example, ten joiners may be required for the person at the front to receive their item and leave the queue. Each joiner is required to buy an expensive but potentially worthless item, such as an e-book, for their position in the queue. The scheme organizer profits because the income from joiners far exceeds the cost of sending out the item to the person at the front. Organizers can further profit by starting a scheme with a queue with "shill" names that must be cleared out before genuine people get to the front. The scheme collapses when no more people are willing to join the queue. Schemes may not reveal, or may attempt to exaggerate, a prospective joiner's queue position, a condition that essentially means the scheme is a lottery. Some countries have ruled that matrix schemes are illegal on that basis.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: While often confused with each other, pyramid schemes and Ponzi schemes are different. Pyramid schemes are based on network marketing, where each person in the pyramid is tasked with bringing in their own subordinates and in turn profiting from their sales or recruitments. This fails because it essentially requires an infinite number of people to join the company. In a Ponzi scheme, however, participants are promised returns on "investments", supposedly into stocks or goods, but which are actually paid for by new investors, while a central leading figure takes a portion as profit.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: Some Multi-level marketing (MLM) companies operate as pyramid schemes and consumers often confuse legitimate multi-level marketing with pyramid schemes.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: According to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission legitimate MLM businesses are distinguished from pyramid schemes by participants making money primarily from product sales, rather than recruitment:


title: Pyramid scheme

text: Not all multi-level marketing plans are legitimate. If the money you make is based on your sales to the public, it may be a legitimate multilevel marketing plan. If the money you make is based on the number of people you recruit and your sales to them, it's probably not. It could be a pyramid scheme.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: In contrast, pyramid schemes "may purport to sell a product", but often "simply use the product to hide their pyramid structure". While some people call MLMs in general "pyramid selling", others use the term to denote an illegal pyramid scheme masquerading as an MLM.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: The U.S. Federal Trade Commission warns against becoming involved "in plans where the money you make is based primarily on the number of distributors you recruit and your sales to them, rather than on your sales to people outside the plan who intend to use the products."


title: Pyramid scheme

text: Some commentators contend that MLMs in general are nothing more than legalized pyramid schemes. There are different laws in every state, and they take different actions toward pyramid schemes, but multi-level-marketing is legal. Multi-level marketing lobbying groups have pressured US government regulators to maintain the legal status of such schemes.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: Pyramid schemes are illegal in many countries or regions including Albania, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, the Republic of Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Maldives, Mexico, Nepal, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Oman,


title: Pyramid scheme

text: Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, Serbia, South Africa, Singapore, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: The Albanian Civil War was partially motivated by the collapse of Ponzi schemes; however, they were widely referred to as pyramid schemes due to their prevalence in Albanian society.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: In 2003, the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) disclosed what it called an Internet-based "pyramid scam." Its complaint states that customers would pay a registration fee to join a program that called itself an "internet mall" and purchase a package of goods and services such as internet mail, and that the company offered "significant commissions" to consumers who purchased and resold the package. The FTC alleged that the company's program was instead and in reality a pyramid scheme that did not disclose that most consumers' money would be kept, and that it gave affiliates material that allowed them to scam others.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: WinCapita was a scheme run by Finnish criminals that involved about €100 million. The scheme started in 2005.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: In early 2006, Ireland was hit by a wave of schemes with major activity in Cork and Galway. Participants were asked to contribute €20,000 each to a "Liberty" scheme which followed the classic eight-ball model. Payments were made in Munich, Germany, to skirt Irish tax laws concerning gifts. Spin-off schemes called "Speedball" and "People in Profit" prompted a number of violent incidents and calls were made by politicians to tighten existing legislation. Ireland has launched a website to better educate consumers to pyramid schemes and other scams.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: On 12 November 2008, riots broke out in the municipalities of Pasto, Tumaco, Popayán and Santander de Quilichao, Colombia, after the collapse of several pyramid schemes. Thousands of victims had invested their money in pyramids that promised them extraordinary interest rates. The lack of regulatory laws allowed those pyramids to grow excessively for several years. Finally, after the riots, the Colombian government was forced to declare the country in a state of economic emergency to seize and stop those schemes. Several of the pyramid's managers were arrested, and are being prosecuted for the crime of "illegal massive money reception."


title: Pyramid scheme

text: The "Kyiv Post" reported on 26 November 2008 that American citizen Robert Fletcher (Robert T. Fletcher III; aka "Rob") was arrested by the SBU (Ukraine State Police) after being accused by Ukrainian investors of running a Ponzi scheme and associated pyramid scam netting US$20 million. (The "Kyiv Post" also reports that some estimates are as high as US$150 million.)


title: Pyramid scheme

text: In the United Kingdom in 2008 and 2009, a £21 million pyramid scheme named 'Give and Take' involved at least 10,000 victims in the south-west of England and South Wales. Leaders of the scheme were prosecuted and served time in jail before being ordered to pay £500,000 in compensation and costs in 2015. The cost of bringing the prosecution was in excess of £1.4 million.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: A number of authorities around the world declared TVI Express to be a pyramid scheme in 2010 and 2011, including the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, the Bank of Namibia, and the Central Bank of Lesotho. TVI Express, operated by Tarun Trikha from India, has apparently recruited hundreds of thousands of "investors", very few of whom, it is reported, have recouped any of their investment.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: BurnLounge, Inc. was a multi-level marketing online music store founded in 2004 and based in New York City. By 2006 the company reported 30,000 members using the site to sell music through its network. In 2007, the Federal Trade Commission sued the company for being an illegal pyramid scheme. The company lost the suit in 2012, and lost appeal in June 2014. In June 2015, the FTC began returning $1.9 million to people who had lost money in the scheme.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: In August 2015, the United States FTC filed a lawsuit against Vemma Nutrition Company, an Arizona-based dietary supplement Multi-Level Marketing firm, accused of operating an illegal pyramid scheme. In December 2016, Vemma agreed to a $238 million settlement with the FTC, which banned the company from "pyramid scheme practices" including recruitment-focused business ventures, deceptive income claims, and unsubstantiated health claims.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: In March 2017, Ufun Store registered as an online business for its members as a direct-sales company was declared operating a pyramid scheme in Thailand. The Criminal Court handed down prison terms totaling 12,265 to 12,267 years to 22 people convicted over the scheme, which conned about 120,000 people out of more than 20 billion baht.


title: Pyramid scheme

text: The Airplane Game scheme resurfaced in 2020 as a savings club by the name of the Blessing Loom, Blessing Circle, Sending Flower, Gifting Flower, and so on. It is also misrepresented as a Sou-Sou, a legitimate savings club model where the number of people paying into the pot is fixed and each person gets a payout on regular basis. This is distinct from the pyramid scheme variation making use of the hierarchical flower model, where new members are continually recruited into the group by people at the edges of the flower. This re-imagining of the old Airplane/8-ball model is making a resurgence on social media platforms such as Instagram and Zoom.


title: Hartford, Connecticut

text: Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It was the seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford metropolitan area. Census estimates since the 2010 United States census have indicated that Hartford is the fourth-largest city in Connecticut with a 2020 population of 121,054, behind the coastal cities of Bridgeport, New Haven, and Stamford.


title: Hartford, Connecticut

text: Hartford was founded in 1635 and is among the oldest cities in the United States. It is home to the country's oldest public art museum (Wadsworth Atheneum), the oldest publicly funded park (Bushnell Park), the oldest continuously published newspaper (the "Hartford Courant"), and the second-oldest secondary school (Hartford Public High School). It is also home to the Mark Twain House, where the author wrote his most famous works and raised his family, among other historically significant sites. Mark Twain wrote in 1868, "Of all the beautiful towns it has been my fortune to see this is the chief."


title: Hartford, Connecticut

text: Hartford was the richest city in the United States for several decades following the American Civil War. Today, it is one of the poorest cities in the U.S., with 3 out of every 10 families living below the poverty threshold. In sharp contrast, the Greater Hartford metropolitan statistical area was ranked 32nd of 318 metropolitan areas in total economic production and 8th out of 280 metropolitan statistical areas in per capita income in 2015.


title: Hartford, Connecticut

text: Nicknamed the "Insurance Capital of the World", Hartford holds high sufficiency as a global city, as home to the headquarters of many insurance companies, the region's major industry. Other prominent industries include the services, education and healthcare industries. Hartford coordinates certain Hartford-Springfield regional development matters through the Knowledge Corridor Economic Partnership.


title: Hartford, Connecticut

text: Various tribes lived in or around Hartford, all Algonquian peoples. These included the Podunks, mostly east of the Connecticut River; the Poquonocks north and west of Hartford; the Massacoes in the Simsbury area; the Tunxis tribe in West Hartford and Farmington; the Wangunks to the south; and the Saukiog in Hartford itself.


title: Hartford, Connecticut

text: The first Europeans known to have explored the area were the Dutch under Adriaen Block, who sailed up the Connecticut in 1614. Dutch fur traders from New Amsterdam returned in 1623 with a mission to establish a trading post and fortify the area for the Dutch West India Company. The original site was located on the south bank of the Park River in the present-day Sheldon/Charter Oak neighborhood. This fort was called Fort Hoop or the "House of Hope." In 1633, Jacob Van Curler formally bought the land around Fort Hoop from the Pequot chief for a small sum. It was home to perhaps a couple families and a few dozen soldiers. The fort was abandoned by 1654, but the area is known today as Dutch Point; the name of the Dutch fort "House of Hope" is reflected in the name of Huyshope Avenue. A significant reason for establishment of the Dutch trading post was to better control the flow of wampum, the de facto currency of New Netherlands and portions of New England, to and from valuable Native American fur traders.


title: Hartford, Connecticut

text: The Dutch outpost and the tiny contingent of Dutch soldiers who were stationed there did little to check the English migration, and the Dutch soon realized that they were vastly outnumbered. The House of Hope remained an outpost, but it was steadily swallowed up by waves of English settlers. In 1650, Peter Stuyvesant met with English representatives to negotiate a permanent boundary between the Dutch and English colonies; the line that they agreed on was more than west of the original settlement.


title: Hartford, Connecticut

text: The English began to arrive in 1636, settling upstream from Fort Hoop near the present-day Downtown and Sheldon/Charter Oak neighborhoods. Puritan pastors Thomas Hooker and Samuel Stone, along with Governor John Haynes, led 100 settlers with 130 head of cattle in a trek from Newtown in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (now Cambridge) and started their settlement just north of the Dutch fort. The settlement was originally called Newtown, but it was changed to Hartford in 1637 in honor of Stone's hometown of Hertford, England. Hooker also created the nearby town of Windsor in 1633. The etymology of "Hartford" is the ford where "harts" cross, or "deer crossing."


title: Hartford, Connecticut

text: As the Puritan minister in Hartford, Thomas Hooker wielded a great deal of power; in 1638, he delivered a sermon that inspired the writing of the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, which provided a framework for Connecticut's separation for Massachusetts Bay Colony and the formation of a civil government. The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut were the legal basis for Connecticut Colony until the 1662 royal charter granted to Connecticut by Charles II.


title: Hartford, Connecticut

text: The original settlement area contained the site of the Charter Oak, an old white oak tree in which colonists hid Connecticut's Royal Charter of 1662 to protect it from confiscation by an English governor-general. The state adopted the oak tree as the emblem on the Connecticut state quarter. The Charter Oak Monument is located at the corner of Charter Oak Place, a historic street, and Charter Oak Avenue.


title: Hartford, Connecticut

text: On December 15, 1814, delegates from the five New England states (Maine was still part of Massachusetts at that time) gathered at the Hartford Convention to discuss New England's possible secession from the United States. During the early 19th century, the Hartford area was a center of abolitionist activity, and the most famous abolitionist family was the Beechers. The Reverend Lyman Beecher was an important Congregational minister known for his anti-slavery sermons. His daughter Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin"; her brother Henry Ward Beecher was a noted clergyman who vehemently opposed slavery and supported the temperance movement and women's suffrage. The Stowes' sister Isabella Beecher Hooker was a leading member of the women's rights movement.


title: Hartford, Connecticut

text: In 1860, Hartford was the site of the first "Wide Awakes", abolitionist supporters of Abraham Lincoln. These supporters organized torch-light parades that were both political and social events, often including fireworks and music, in celebration of Lincoln's visit to the city. This type of event caught on and eventually became a staple of mid-to-late 19th-century campaigning.


title: Hartford, Connecticut

text: Hartford was a major manufacturing city from the 19th century until the mid-20th century. During the Industrial Revolution into the mid-20th century, the Connecticut River Valley cities produced many major precision manufacturing innovations. Among these was Hartford's pioneer bicycle and automobile maker Pope. Many factories have been closed or relocated, or have reduced operations, as in nearly all former Northern manufacturing cities.