title: Countdown (game show)

text: The set design has changed over the years, but the centrepiece has always been the Countdown clock. The original set was used from its launch in 1982 until Series 17 in early 1989. A new brown set was introduced in Series 18 in July 1989 but remained in use for less than two years. Series 22 from July 1991 saw the introduction of the familiar and long-lived "Wings" set, which was used in its original form until 1995. Series 31 in January 1996 saw its colour scheme change to purple and changed again to tangerine at the end of 1999 alongside updated score displays. January 2003 saw the set updated to a new pink and purple striped theme with the letters and numbers boards now on separate islands rather than being integrated into the set. Six years later, in January 2009, the set received another redesign with a numerical blue theme and the letters and numbers boards mounted on opposite sides of a single display stand. New modern displays for the scores and the numbers round came in January 2013 while the set received a slight redesign in July 2017 while retaining the blue background which has been used to up to the most recent season.


title: Countdown (game show)

text: Until the end of Series 21, if the two contestants had equal scores after the first conundrum, the match was declared a draw and they both returned for the next show. A significant change in the format occurred in September 2001, when the show was expanded from nine rounds and 30 minutes to the current fifteen rounds and 45 minutes. The older format was split into two halves, each with three letters and one numbers game, plus the conundrum at the end of the second half. When the format was expanded to fifteen rounds, Richard Whiteley continued to refer jokingly to the three segments of the show as "halves". Under the old format, Grand Finals were specially extended shows of fourteen rounds, but now all shows use a fifteen-round format.


title: Countdown (game show)

text: The rules regarding which words are permitted have changed with time. American spelling was allowed until 2002, and more unspecified inflections were assumed to be valid.


title: Countdown (game show)

text: In September 2007, an "Origin of Words" feature was added to the show, in which Susie Dent explains the origin of a word or phrase she has been researching. This feature follows the eighth letters round, partway through the third section of each episode. The feature was omitted during the time that Dent was absent for maternity leave, and was reinstated upon her return.


title: Countdown (game show)

text: When the 15-round format was first introduced in September 2001, the composition of the rounds was different from that used by the programme today. The three sections each had five rounds, four letters rounds and one numbers round in each of the first two sections, with three letters rounds, one numbers round and the conundrum in the third section. This meant that there was a slight imbalance, whereby one contestant made the letters sections for six rounds, but had the choice of the numbers selection just once, whereas the other contestant chose letters five times and numbers twice. The Dictionary Corner guest's spot was immediately before the first advertising break, and Susie Dent's Origin of Words spot preceded the second numbers game shortly before the second break. The change to the present format was made on 25 March 2013, three weeks into the second section of Series 68, to comply with Channel 4's decision to increase the amount of advertising and to alter the times when they occur during the programme, therefore reducing "Countdown"s actual show length from 36 to 35 minutes.


title: Countdown (game show)

text: Since "Countdown"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s debut in 1982, there have been nearly 7,500 televised games and 82 complete series. There have also been fifteen "Champion of Champions" tournaments, the most recent in January 2019.


title: Countdown (game show)

text: Several of "Countdown"s most successful contestants have received national media coverage. Teenager Julian Fell set a record score of 146 in December 2002. In 2006, 14-year-old Conor Travers became the youngest series champion in the show's history, and 11-year-old Kai Laddiman became the youngest octochamp for 20 years. Conor Travers went on to win the 30th Anniversary Champion of Champions series in March 2013 with a record-equalling top score of 146. On 17 January 2019, in the quarter-final of the 15th "Champion of Champions" tournament, Zarte Siempre, who eventually won that tournament, set a new record score of 150. This record was beaten in May 2019 by Elliott Mellor's score of 152. A new record was set on 29 September 2022 when contestant Tom Stevenson scored 154.


title: Countdown (game show)

text: At eight years old, Tanmay Dixit was the youngest player ever to appear on the show, achieving two wins in March 2005. He also received press attention for his offerings in the letters round, which included "fannies" and "farted".


title: Countdown (game show)

text: On Christmas Day 1987, Nic Brown set the highest score difference ever achieved in a standard 14-round game, beating Joel Salkin 108–36, a margin of 72 points. Brown also went on to become one of the only two contestants ever to achieve an undefeated 'grand slam' – becoming an Octochamp, winning a series, and winning a Championship of Champions.


title: Countdown (game show)

text: In April 2013, Giles Hutchings, a student at Royal Grammar School, Guildford, broke the record for the highest octochamp score, amassing 965 points over 8 games. He went on to win series 68. The record was beaten by Dylan Taylor, who achieved an octochamp score of 974 in August 2013, but he lost the Grand Final of that series. In 2019 the record was beaten by 87 points by teenager Elliott Mellor, who became the first octochamp to break the 1,000-point barrier, scoring a total of 1,061 over his eight preliminary games. Echoing Dylan's appearance, Mellor was pipped to the series title, finishing as runner up. Three former contestants have returned to "Countdown" as part of the production team: Michael Wylie, Mark Nyman (as producer, and occasional lexicographer in Dictionary Corner) and Damian Eadie (the current series producer).


title: Countdown (game show)

text: In 1998, sixteen celebrities were invited to play "Celebrity Countdown", a series of eight games broadcast every Thursday evening over the course of eight weeks. The celebrities included Whiteley's successor Des Lynam, who beat Siân Lloyd. The highest and lowest scores were posted in the same game when TV's Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall beat wine critic Jilly Goolden 47–9.


title: Countdown (game show)

text: Richard Whiteley and Carol Vorderman competed in another special episode on Christmas Day 1997. For this game, the presenter's chair was taken by William G. Stewart, the host of fellow Channel 4 game show "Fifteen to One". Susie Dent took over Vorderman's duties, and Mark Nyman occupied Dictionary Corner, accompanied by Magnus Magnusson. The game was close-fought, and decided only by the crucial Countdown conundrum "mistletoe" which Vorderman solved in two seconds, after Whiteley had inadvertently buzzed after one second, because when he regularly hosted the show, he hit the button to reveal the conundrum and kept his old habit up.


title: Countdown (game show)

text: Contestants who have or had become notable for other reasons include "Nuts" magazine editor-at-large Pete Cashmore, rugby player Ayoola Erinle, footballers Neil MacKenzie, Clarke Carlisle and Matt Le Tissier, musicians Jon Marsh and Nick Saloman, comedian Alex Horne, noted Irish playwright Peter Sheridan and professional darts referee Kirk Bevins, who won Series 60 and was a quarter-finalist in the 30th Birthday Championship.


title: Countdown (game show)

text: In 1992, Saint Etienne used a sample of the host's lead-in for "today's Countdown Conundrum" as the opening for the track "Stoned to Say the Least".


title: Countdown (game show)

text: The "Doctor Who" episode "Bad Wolf" (2005) mentions a futuristic version of "Countdown", in which the goal is to stop a bomb from exploding in 30 seconds. "Countdown" was referenced again in a later series in "Last of the Time Lords" (2007), where Professor Docherty expresses a keen fondness for the show and how it "hasn't been the same since Des took over—both Deses".


title: Countdown (game show)

text: Fairport Convention guitarist Simon Nicol titled one of his solo albums "Consonant Please Carol", echoing one of the show's catchphrases.


title: Countdown (game show)

text: A "Countdown" videogame was released for the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii in 2009. There have also been mobile apps of the game released.


title: Countdown (game show)

text: "Countdown" has also generated a number of widely viewed outtakes, with the letters occasionally producing a word that was deemed unsuitable for the original broadcast. A round in which Dictionary Corner offered the word "gobshite" featured in "TV's Finest Failures" in 2001 (the actual episode aired on 10 January 2000), and in one episode from 1991, contestants Gino Corr and Lawrence Pearse both declared the word "wankers". This was edited out of the programme but has since appeared on many outtakes shows. When contestant Charlie Reams declared "wankers" on 21 October 2008 edition, the declaration was kept in but the word itself was bleeped. Other incidents with only marginally rude words (including "wanker", singular) have made it into the programme as they appeared, such as those with Tanmay Dixit referenced above, a clip from a 2001 episode in which the word "fart" appeared as the first four letters on the board (which also featured on "100 Greatest TV Moments from Hell"), and a round where an anagram of the word "fucked" appeared on the board in the string "A U O D F C K E G", although neither player chose to use the word, and Dictionary Corner was able to find two seven-letter words that could have been made from the board's offerings. On 2 February 2017, the board for the letters round was "M T H I A E D H S", and with both players offering sevens, Dictionary Corner found the word "shithead", which was bleeped out in the audio and censored on-screen with the poo emoji.


title: Countdown (game show)

text: The programme is mentioned in an episode of Irish sitcom "Father Ted" entitled "The Old Grey Whistle Theft,” "Still Game" (in the episode "Wireless") and is also referenced in the very first episode of "Little Britain" from 2003. BBC impression sketch show "Dead Ringers" parodies "Countdown" numerous times, and another television programme, "The Big Breakfast", parodied "Countdown" in a feature called "Countdown Under". In a sketch "Countdown to Hell" from the comedy show "A Bit of Fry and Laurie", Stephen Fry lampooned Richard Whiteley's punning style and Hugh Laurie played one of the contestants, while Gyles Brandreth (played by Steve Steen), presented with the letters ",” got the (non-)word "sloblock" (supposedly meaning exactly the same as "bollocks"). The show also has a fleeting reference in British sitcom "The Office" when Chris 'Finchy' Finch attempts to insult temporary worker Ricky when he explains he had a job to pay for his studies. Finchy states that it probably was 'professor in charge of watching "Countdown" every day', commenting on its student audience, and referring to the fact anyone watching "Countdown" during its 'hometime' time slot cannot be out at work.


title: Countdown (game show)

text: The format of the show has been parodied on "Have I Got News for You". In 1999, when Whiteley was a guest, the numbers game was copied along with the clock music and at the end of the show was a conundrum, "PHANIOILS", to which the answer was Ian Hislop. In 2004, when Vorderman was a guest, one of the usual rounds was replaced with a conundrum round based on the week's news. When Vorderman hosted "Have I Got News" in 2006, one of the rounds was the "Spinning Conundrum Numbers Round", altering the "Spinning Headlines" round by adding a number to a picture relating to the week's news; at the end of the round, the six numbers from the picture were used for a numbers game.


title: Countdown (game show)

text: Richard Whiteley was the victim of a practical joke while presenting the show in 1998. The contestants and rounds had been planted as part of a "Gotcha!", a regular prank feature on the light entertainment show "Noel's House Party". In the prank, both the two contestants and Dictionary Corner missed the word "something" from the letters OMETHINGS, and from another selection, both of the contestants declared "I've got diarrhoea" referring to the selection. In the numbers round that followed, the male contestant "answered" the puzzle by concatenating 6, 2, and 3 to make the target of 623. Whiteley did not uncover the joke until "House Party" presenter Noel Edmonds appeared on the set, having revealed the unusually short conundrum of HOGCAT to be "gotcha" at the end of the programme.


title: Countdown (game show)

text: In a 2003 episode of "Top Gear", Richard Whiteley participated in the "Star in a Reasonably Priced Car" segment. Before Whiteley's lap was shown, presenter Jeremy Clarkson played a game of "Countdown" with Whiteley, using words such as "imin" (Mini), "sexul" (Lexus), "nevor lard" (Land Rover), "mushi bits"(Mitsubishi) and "pianos shiazu (Hispano-Suiza).


title: Countdown (game show)

text: It was also referred to on "Harry Hill's TV Burp" twice. The first time it was referred to was when "Dev" ("Coronation Street") made a sound like "Countdown" end of thirty seconds time. The second time was when the competition "Where Has The Knitted Character Been This Week?" had the answer "on Rachel Riley's chair".


title: Countdown (game show)

text: On 2 July 2010, the game was featured in the episode "The Final Countdown" of "The IT Crowd". Moss stuns everyone by declaring that the 9 letter string TNETENNBA is in fact a word. Later, Moss becomes an octochamp and is consequently invited into an underground club named "8+,” where he competes in a game of "Street Countdown" as part of a spoof of "Boogie Town". The episode featured a cameo from Gyles Brandreth, a regular contributor to Dictionary Corner.


title: Countdown (game show)

text: In an episode from spring 2011, the Blackpool-supporting producer of the show arranged the conundrum "PNECRISIS" ("priciness"), poking fun at their local rivals Preston North End's relegation from the Championship in the 2010–11 season.


title: Countdown (game show)

text: The game has also been played on a number of different programs, notably as the first challenge in "What's Next" on "Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway", featuring the pair versus one of the duo's old head teachers. In 2010, it was played as a shopping task on the final Channel 4 series of "Celebrity Big Brother", with a team of housemates competing in the house against the then current champion, Chris Davies, in the "Countdown" studio via satellite. The housemates failed this task.


title: Hitler Youth

text: The Hitler Youth ( , often abbreviated as HJ, ) was the youth organisation of the Nazi Party in Germany. Its origins date back to 1922 and it received the name ("Hitler Youth, League of German Worker Youth") in July 1926. From 1936 until 1945, it was the sole official boys' youth organisation in Germany and it was partially a paramilitary organisation. It was composed of the Hitler Youth proper for male youths aged 14 to 18, and the German Youngsters in the Hitler Youth ( or "DJ", also "DJV") for younger boys aged 10 to 14.


title: Hitler Youth

text: With the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945, the organisation "de facto" ceased to exist. On 10 October 1945, the Hitler Youth and its subordinate units were outlawed by the Allied Control Council along with other Nazi Party organisations. Under Section 86 of the Criminal Code of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Hitler Youth is an "unconstitutional organisation" and the distribution or public use of its symbols, except for educational or research purposes, is illegal.


title: Hitler Youth

text: In 1922, the Munich-based Nazi Party established its official youth organisation called . It was announced on 8 March 1922 in the , and its inaugural meeting took place on 13 May the same year. Another youth group was established in 1922 as the . Based in Munich, Bavaria, it served to train and recruit future members of the (SA), the main paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party at that time.


title: Hitler Youth

text: One reason the Hitler Youth so easily developed was that regimented organisations, often focused on politics, for young people and particularly adolescent boys were a familiar concept to German society in the Weimar Republic. Numerous youth movements existed across Germany prior to and especially after World War I. They were created for various purposes. Some were religious and others were ideological, but the more prominent ones were formed for political reasons, like the Young Conservatives and the Young Protestants. Once Hitler came onto the revolutionary scene, the transition from seemingly innocuous youth movements to political entities focused on Hitler was swift.


title: Hitler Youth

text: Following the abortive Beer Hall Putsch (in November 1923), Nazi youth groups ostensibly disbanded, but many elements simply went underground, operating clandestinely in small units under assumed names. In April 1924, the was renamed (Greater German Youth Movement). On 4 July 1926, the was officially renamed (Hitler Youth League of German Worker Youth). This event took place a year after the Nazi Party was reorganised. The architect of the re-organisation was Kurt Gruber, a law student from Plauen in Saxony.


title: Hitler Youth

text: After a short power struggle with a rival organisation—Gerhard Roßbach's —Gruber prevailed and his "Greater German Youth Movement" became the Nazi Party's official youth organisation. In July 1926, it was renamed ("Hitler Youth, League of German Worker Youth") and, for the first time, it officially became an integral part of the SA. The name was taken up on the suggestion of Hans Severus Ziegler. By 1930, the (HJ) had enlisted over 25,000 boys aged 14 and upward. They also set up a junior branch, the (DJ), for boys aged 10 to 14. Girls from 10 to 18 were given their own parallel organisation, the League of German Girls (BDM).


title: Hitler Youth

text: In April 1932, Chancellor Heinrich Brüning banned the Hitler Youth movement in an attempt to stop widespread political violence. However, in June, Brüning's successor as Chancellor, Franz von Papen, lifted the ban as a way of appeasing Hitler, the rapidly ascending political star. A further significant expansion drive started in 1933, after Baldur von Schirach was appointed by Hitler as the first (Reich Youth Leader). All youth organizations were brought under Schirach's control.


title: Hitler Youth

text: The members of the Hitler Youth were viewed as ensuring the future of Nazi Germany and they were indoctrinated in Nazi ideology, including racism. The Hitler Youth appropriated many of the activities of the Boy Scout movement (which was banned in 1935), including camping and hiking. However, over time it changed in content and intention. For example, many activities closely resembled military training, with weapons training, assault course circuits and basic tactics. The aim was to turn the HJ into motivated soldiers. There was greater emphasis on physical ability and military training than on academic study. Sacrifice for the cause was instilled into their training. Former Hitler Youth Franz Jagemann said that the notion "Germany must live" even if the members of the HJ had to die was "hammered" into them.


title: Hitler Youth

text: More than just a way to keep the German nation healthy, sports became a means of indoctrinating and training its youth for combat; this was in keeping with tenets outlined in Hitler's notorious work, . Typical school days for the Hitler Youth included many more hours of sports and physical training than academic pursuits, imbued with drill, physical tests, and trials; all "with the ultimate goal of warfare." An article in a 1936 edition of "Foreign Affairs" discusses the appropriation of sports by dictatorial regimes like the Nazis in no uncertain terms:


title: Hitler Youth

text: The Hitler Youth were used to break up church youth groups, spy on religious classes and Bible studies, and interfere with church attendance. Education and training programs for the Hitler Youth were designed to undermine the values of traditional structures of German society. Their training also aimed to remove social and intellectual distinctions between classes, to be replaced and dominated by the political goals of Hitler's totalitarian dictatorship. Besides promoting a doctrine of classlessness, additional training was provided that linked state-identified enemies such as Jews with Germany's previous defeat in the First World War, and societal decline. The Hitler Youth were indoctrinated with the myths of Aryan racial superiority and to view Jews and Slavs as subhumans. As historian Richard Evans observes, "The songs they sang were Nazi songs. The books they read were Nazi books."


title: Hitler Youth

text: The Hitler Youth was organised into corps under adult leaders, and the general membership of the HJ consisted of boys aged 14 to 18. The Hitler Youth was organised into local cells on a community level. Such cells had weekly meetings at which various Nazi doctrines were taught by adult leaders. Regional leaders typically organised rallies and field exercises in which several dozen Hitler Youth cells would participate. The largest gathering usually took place annually at Nuremberg, where members from all over Germany would converge for the annual Nazi Party rally. Since the HJ and BDM were considered fully Aryan organizations by Nazi officials, premarital sex was encouraged in their ranks. This did not conform to the general beliefs of the Nazi Party, which viewed premarital sex as undesirable and a potential public health hazard.


title: Hitler Youth

text: The Hitler Youth maintained training academies comparable to preparatory schools, which were designed to nurture future Nazi Party leaders. The Hitler Youth also maintained several corps designed to develop future officers for the Wehrmacht (Armed Forces). The corps offered specialised foundational training for each of the specific arms for which the member was ultimately destined. The Marine Hitler Youth (Marine-HJ), for example, served as an auxiliary to the . Another branch of the Hitler Youth was the (German Worker Youth – HY). This organisation within the Hitler Youth was a training ground for future labour leaders and technicians. Its symbol was a rising sun with a swastika. A program entitled (Country Service Camp) was designed to teach specifically chosen girls of the BDM high moral character standards within a rural educational setting.


title: Hitler Youth

text: The Hitler Youth had a number of monthly and weekly publications: among them were the (Hitler Youth Newspaper), the (Storm Youth), (Young Front), (News for German Youth), and (Will and Power). Other publications included (Young Germany), (a paper for girls in the BdM), and (Young Villager).


title: Hitler Youth

text: In 1923, the youth organisation of the Nazi Party had a little over 1,200 members. In 1925, when the Nazi Party was refounded, the membership grew to over 5,000. Five years later, national membership stood at 26,000. By the end of 1932, it was at 107,956. The Nazis came to power in 1933, and the membership of Hitler Youth organisations increased dramatically to 2,300,000 members by the end of that year. Much of this increase came from the forcible takeover of other youth organisations. The sizeable (Evangelical Youth), a Lutheran youth organisation of 600,000 members, was integrated on 18 February 1934. In December 1936, a law declared the Hitler Youth to be the only legally permitted youth organisation in Germany, and stated that "all of the German youth in the Reich is organised within the Hitler Youth".


title: Hitler Youth

text: By December 1936, Hitler Youth membership had reached over five million. That same month, membership became mandatory for Aryans under the (Hitler Youth Law). This legal obligation was reaffirmed in March 1939 with the (Youth Service Duty), which conscripted all German youths into the Hitler Youth—even if the parents objected. Parents who refused to allow their children to join were subject to investigation by the authorities. From then on, the vast majority of Germany's teenagers belonged to the Hitler Youth. By 1940, it had eight million members.


title: Hitler Youth

text: Even before membership was made mandatory in 1939, German youth faced strong pressure to join. Students who held out were frequently assigned essays with titles such as "Why am I not in the Hitler Youth?" They were also the subject of frequent taunts from teachers and fellow students, and could even be refused their diploma—which made it impossible to be admitted to university. A number of employers refused to offer apprenticeships to anyone who was not a member of the Hitler Youth. By 1936, the Hitler Youth had a monopoly on all youth sports facilities in Germany, effectively locking out non-members. Hitler spoke of the regime's ability to make Nazis out of these German youth, exclaiming in 1938:


title: Hitler Youth

text: Over time, a number of boys dropped out due to the regimented nature of the organization. Some of these boys later rejoined after they learned that they could not get a job or enter university without being a member. There were a few members of the Hitler Youth who privately disagreed with Nazi ideologies. For instance, Hans Scholl—the brother of Sophie Scholl and one of the leading figures of the anti-Nazi resistance movement (White Rose)—was also a member of the Hitler Youth.


title: Hitler Youth

text: Despite rare instances of disaffection, overall, the Hitler Youth constituted the single most successful of all the mass movements in the Third Reich.


title: Hitler Youth

text: On 1 May 1940, Artur Axmann was appointed deputy to Schirach, whom he succeeded as of the Hitler Youth on 8 August 1940. Axmann began to reform the group into an auxiliary force which could perform war duties. The Hitler Youth became active in German fire brigades and assisted with recovery efforts to German cities affected by Allied bombing. The Hitler Youth also assisted in such organisations as the Reich postal service, the Reich railway services, and other government offices; members of the HJ also aided the army and served with anti-aircraft defence crews.


title: Hitler Youth

text: By 1943, Nazi leaders began turning the Hitler Youth into a military reserve to replace manpower which had been depleted due to tremendous military losses. The idea for a Waffen-SS division made up of Hitler Youth members was first proposed by Axmann to Heinrich Himmler in early 1943. The plan for a combat division made up of Hitler Youth members born in 1926 was passed on to Hitler for his approval. Hitler approved the plan in February and Gottlob Berger was tasked with recruiting. Fritz Witt of SS Division Leibstandarte (LSSAH) was appointed divisional commander.


title: Hitler Youth

text: In 1944, the 12th SS-Panzer-Division "Hitlerjugend" was deployed during the Battle of Normandy against the British and Canadian forces to the north of Caen. Over 20,000 German youths participated in the attempt to repulse the D-Day invasion; while they knocked out 28 Canadian tanks during their first effort, they ultimately lost 3,000 lives before the Normandy assault was complete. During the following months, the division earned a reputation for ferocity and fanaticism. When Witt was killed by Allied naval gunfire, SS- Kurt Meyer assumed command and became the divisional commander at age 33.


title: Hitler Youth

text: As German casualties escalated with the combination of Operation Bagration and the Lvov-Sandomierz Operation in the east, and Operation Cobra in the west, members of the Hitlerjugend were recruited at ever younger ages. By 1945, the was commonly drafting 12-year-old Hitler Youth members into its ranks. During the Battle of Berlin, Axmann's Hitler Youth formed a major part of the last line of German defence, and they were reportedly among the fiercest fighters. Although the city commander, General Helmuth Weidling, ordered Axmann to disband the Hitler Youth combat formations, in the confusion this order was never carried out. The remnants of the youth brigade took heavy casualties from the advancing Russian forces. Only two survived.


title: Hitler Youth

text: The Hitler Youth was disbanded by Allied authorities as part of the denazification process. Some Hitler Youth members were suspected of war crimes but, because they were children, no serious efforts were made to prosecute these claims. While the Hitler Youth was never declared a criminal organisation, its adult leadership was considered tainted for corrupting the minds of young Germans. Many adult leaders of the Hitler Youth were put on trial by Allied authorities, and Baldur von Schirach was sentenced to 20 years in prison. However, he was convicted of crimes against humanity for his actions as of Vienna, not for his leadership of the Hitler Youth, because Artur Axmann had been serving as the functioning leader of the Hitler Youth from 1940 onward. Axmann only received a 39-month prison sentence in May 1949, but he was not found guilty of war crimes. Later, in 1958, a West Berlin court fined Axman 35,000 marks (approximately £3,000, or US$8,300), about half the value of his property in Berlin. The court found him guilty of indoctrinating German youth with National Socialism until the end of the war, but concluded that he was not guilty of war crimes.


title: Hitler Youth

text: German children born in the 1920s and 1930s became adults during the Cold War years. Since membership was compulsory after 1936, it was neither surprising nor uncommon that many senior leaders of both West and East Germany had been members of the Hitler Youth. Little effort was made to blacklist political figures who had been members, since many had little choice in the matter. These German post-war leaders were nonetheless once part of an important institutional element of Nazi Germany. Historian Gerhard Rempel opined that Nazi Germany itself was impossible to conceive without the Hitler Youth, as their members constituted the "social, political, and military resiliency of the Third Reich" and were part of "the incubator that maintained the political system by replenishing the ranks of the dominant party and preventing the growth of mass opposition." Rempel also reports that a large percentage of the boys who served in the HJ slowly came to the realization that "they had worked and slaved for a criminal cause", which they carried for a lifetime. Some of them recalled a "loss of freedom" and claimed that their time in the HJ "had robbed them of a normal childhood." Historian Michael Kater relates how many who once served in the HJ were silent until older age when they became grandparents. While they were eventually able to look back at their place in "a dictatorship which oppressed, maimed, and killed millions", he maintains that an honest appraisal should lead them to conclude that their past contributions to the regime had "damaged their own souls."


title: Hitler Youth

text: Once Nazi Germany was defeated by the Allied Powers, the Hitler Youth—like all NSDAP organisations—was officially abolished by the Allied Control Council on 10 October 1945 and later banned by the German Criminal Code.


title: Hitler Youth

text: (Reich Youth Leader) was the highest rank of the Hitler Youth and was held by the Nazi Party official in command of the entire organization. The rank of was only held by two people during its existence, first by Baldur von Schirach and later by Artur Axmann.


title: Hitler Youth

text: Members' summer uniform consisted of black shorts and a tan shirt with pockets, worn with a rolled black neckerchief secured with a woggle, usually tucked under the collar. Headgear originally consisted of a beret, but this was discarded by the HJ in 1934. One flag/symbol used by the HJ was the same as the DJ, a white "Sowilo" rune on a black background, which symbolised "victory". Another flag used was a red–white–red striped flag with a black swastika in the middle, inside a white shaped diamond. Full members would also receive a knife upon enrolment, with the motto "Blood and Honour" engraved upon it.


title: Jack McKinney (basketball)

text: John Paul McKinney (July 13, 1935 – September 25, 2018) was an American college and professional basketball coach. As a head coach in the National Basketball Association (NBA) with the Los Angeles Lakers, he introduced an up-tempo style of play that became known as Showtime. However, his only season with the Lakers ended prematurely after a bicycle accident. McKinney joined the Indiana Pacers, where he was named NBA Coach of the Year in 1981. He also coached the Kansas City Kings (now known as the Sacramento Kings). In addition, he served as an assistant for the Milwaukee Bucks and the Portland Trail Blazers.


title: Jack McKinney (basketball)

text: McKinney was born in Chester, Pennsylvania, to Paul McKinney, a police detective, and Jen McMahon, a homemaker. He attended St. James High in Chester, where he played basketball under coach Jack Ramsay. He graduated in 1953.


title: Jack McKinney (basketball)

text: McKinney went to college at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia. He played three seasons for the Hawks, who were also coached by Dr. Jack Ramsay, and led the team to the Big 5's inaugural title and the school's first ever postseason in the 1956 National Invitation Tournament (NIT). He was also a member of their track and field team.


title: Jack McKinney (basketball)

text: McKinney coached one season at St. James in 1959–60, leading them to a 17–11 record. After five years at his alma mater St. Joseph's as an assistant under Ramsay, McKinney was the head coach at Philadelphia Textile for one season in 1965–66. He returned to St. Joe's in 1966, replacing the departed Ramsay as head coach. McKinney is a member of the Saint Joseph's and the Big 5 Halls of Fame. He was also named the Eastern Coach of the Year by Philadelphia sportswriters for his 1973–74 season when the Hawks, predicted to have a poor year after graduating Mike Bantom to the NBA and Pat McFarland to the American Basketball Association (ABA), had a stellar season again winning their conference and qualifying for postseason play. However, he was fired after a first-round loss in the 1974 NCAA Division I basketball tournament, and his dismissal prompted a demonstration by over 500 students.


title: Jack McKinney (basketball)

text: McKinney was an NBA assistant coach with Milwaukee and Portland, and won an NBA championship with the Trail Blazers under Ramsay in 1976–77. Ramsay called McKinney the architect of the offense and his wife


title: Jack McKinney (basketball)

text: Claire said McKinney considered his tenure with the Blazers the highlight of his career. He received his first NBA head coaching job in 1979–80 with the Lakers. Owner Jerry Buss, who had recently acquired the team, wanted games to be entertaining, and hired the coach to install a running offense. McKinney had rookie Magic Johnson, who some thought should play forward, be a point guard, even though incumbent Norm Nixon was already one of the best in the league.


title: Jack McKinney (basketball)

text: On November 8, 1979, the Lakers were 9–4 after 13 games, when McKinney suffered a near fatal head injury after falling while bicycling. Assistant coach Paul Westhead, who also worked under McKinney at St. Joseph's, was named the interim head coach. However, the length of the recovery and lingering doubts about the complete return of McKinney's mental faculties, combined with the team's level of success under Westhead, ultimately meant that McKinney would never get the chance to return to the job. Westhead continued to use McKinney's offense, a creative and spontaneous offense that came to be known as Showtime, and the team finished the season with a record of 60–22. The Lakers advanced to that year's NBA Finals, when McKinney was fired mid-series on May 13, 1980. The Lakers won the series for their first of five NBA titles in nine seasons, and hired Westhead to permanently replace McKinney.


title: Jack McKinney (basketball)

text: Pat Riley, who replaced Westhead as Lakers coach, won four titles with the team and became the coach most synonymous with the Showtime Lakers. However, Norm Nixon credited McKinney with creating Showtime. "That should never be forgotten," said Nixon. According to Riley, McKinney "might have won five or six titles for the Lakers in the '80s" were it not for his accident. McKinney was deferential. "I just put in some ideas that were accepted, and the rest was up to Paul and Pat and some great players," he said.


title: Jack McKinney (basketball)

text: McKinney joined the Indiana Pacers the following season in 1980–81. He was hired at the recommendation of a guilt-ridden Buss, who was a business partner with Pacers owner Frank Mariani. In his first season, McKinney was named the NBA Coach of the Year after leading the Pacers to their first playoff appearance since the former American Basketball Association (ABA) team joined the NBA during the ABA–NBA merger of 1976. Over the next three seasons, however, the team's performance regressed, and McKinney was fired after the Pacers posted the league's worst record in the 1983–84 season. He was soon hired as the head coach of the Kansas City Kings, but resigned from the position on November 18, 1984, after the team started with a 1–8 record in the 1984-85 season. He left coaching for good afterwards, citing ongoing issues with his memory, plus no longer feeling passionate about the profession.


title: Jack McKinney (basketball)

text: After he left coaching, McKinney relocated back to his native Pennsylvania with his family. He worked as a sales representative for a major sporting goods company, while also filling in at times as a color analyst for the Philadelphia 76ers broadcasts. He said he got offers to come back to coaching, but never took any of them. Eventually, he and his wife would retire to Florida.


title: Jack McKinney (basketball)

text: In 2005, McKinney co-authored a book about his experiences at Saint Joseph's, and donated 10 percent of its proceeds to the school.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: Roots is an American television miniseries based on Alex Haley's 1976 novel "". The series first aired on ABC in January 1977. "Roots" received 37 Primetime Emmy Award nominations and won nine. It also won a Golden Globe and a Peabody Award. It received unprecedented Nielsen ratings for the finale, which holds the record as the third-highest-rated episode for any type of television series, and the second-most-watched overall series finale in U.S. television history. It was produced on a budget of $6.6 million.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: A sequel, "", first aired in 1979, and a second sequel, "", a Christmas television film, starring Burton and Louis Gossett Jr., first aired in 1988. A related film, "Alex Haley's Queen", is based on the life of Queen Jackson Haley, who was Alex Haley's paternal grandmother.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: In 2016, a remake of the original miniseries, with the same name, was commissioned by the History channel and screened by the channel on Memorial Day.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: In the Gambia, West Africa, in 1750, Kunta Kinte is born to Omoro Kinte (Thalmus Rasulala), a Mandinka warrior, and his wife, Binta (Cicely Tyson). He is raised in a Muslim family. When Kunta (LeVar Burton) reaches the age of 15, he and other boys undergo a semi-secretive tribal rite of passage, under the kintango (Moses Gunn), which includes wrestling, circumcision, philosophy, war-craft and hunting skills; while tasked to catch a bird unharmed, Kunta crosses paths with Gardener's small party of European slave hunters and their captives.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: Shortly after his ceremonial return, while fetching wood outside his village to make a drum for his younger brother, Kunta is captured by Gardener and four black collaborators. He is then sold to a slave trader and placed aboard the slave ship "Lord Ligonier" under the command of Capt. Thomas Davies (Edward Asner) for a three-month journey to Colonial America. During the voyage, Kunta bonds with a Mandinka wrestler (Ji-Tu Cumbuka) who was part of his manhood training, as well as a Mandinka girl named Fanta whom he met shortly before his kidnapping. An insurrection among the human cargo fails to take over the ship, but results in the death of the cruel overseer Mr. Slater (Ralph Waite), several crew members and several Africans, including the wrestler.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: The ship eventually arrives in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1767, where the captured Africans are sold at auction as slaves. John Reynolds (Lorne Greene), a plantation owner from Spotsylvania County, Virginia, near Fredericksburg, buys Kunta and gives him the Christian name Toby. Reynolds assigns an older slave, Fiddler (Louis Gossett Jr.), to teach Kunta English and train him in the ways of servitude. Although Kunta gradually warms up to Fiddler, he wants to preserve his Mandinka (and Islamic) heritage, and he defiantly refuses to eat pork.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: Kunta makes several unsuccessful attempts to escape, first breaking his leg chain with a broken tool blade he finds half buried in a field. After this attempt the overseer, Ames (Vic Morrow), gathers the slaves and directs "James" to whip Kunta until he acknowledges his new name "Toby". Fiddler comforts the bloody-backed Kunta and uses his Mandinka name for the first time, assuring him "there will be another day". For events that occur in 1775, between the above period and the post-Revolutionary War, where the next section begins, see "".


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: In 1776, the adult Kunta Kinte (John Amos), still haunted by his Mandinka roots and desire for freedom, tries again to escape. He makes it to a nearby plantation where his boyhood friend Fanta is enslaved, though he discovers after spending the night with her that she has turned away from her African name and heritage in the name of survival. A pair of slave-catchers track him there and hobble him by chopping off almost half his right foot with a hatchet. Exasperated, John Reynolds decides to sell Kunta, which will also settle a debt with his brother Dr. William Reynolds (Robert Reed), the local physician. John transfers several of his slaves, including Fiddler, to William.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: Bell (Madge Sinclair), the cook for William's family, successfully treats both Kunta's mangled foot and wounded spirit. A trusted member of the Reynolds household, she arranges for Kunta to become Dr. Reynolds's driver. Eventually Kunta submits to a life of servitude, though he never entirely renounces Africa (declaring to Bell, "I ain't never gonna be no Christian man...I ain't never gonna eat no pig meat"), nor his hope of returning there. He marries Bell, in a ceremony which includes jumping across a broom, though his talk of Africa frustrates her. Bell bears a daughter in 1790, to whom Kunta gives the name Kizzy, which means "stay put" in the Mandinka language (in hopes of ensuring that she will never be sold away). Fiddler continues to mentor Kunta, and dies an old man shortly after Kizzy's birth.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: An adulterous relationship between Dr. William Reynolds and John Reynolds's wife (Lynda Day George) produces a daughter, Missy Anne (Sandy Duncan), whom John believes is his own. Missy Anne and Kizzy become playmates and best friends despite the social confines of Southern plantation culture. Missy Anne secretly teaches Kizzy to read and write, a skill forbidden to human chattel. In 1806, Kizzy (Leslie Uggams), falls in love with Noah (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs), a spirited slave who attempts to flee North with a "traveling pass" forged by Kizzy from a pass given to her by Missy Anne.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: Dr. Reynolds, although amiable and compassionate towards his chattel, regards the pass and escape to be such an egregious breach of trust that he separately sells both Noah and Kizzy, much to the horror of Bell and Kunta. Missy Anne, who had offered Kizzy a place as her companion and maid, instead renounces their friendship and watches dispassionately as Kizzy is dragged away. Tom Moore (Chuck Connors), a planter in Caswell County, North Carolina, with a sexual appetite for young female slaves, becomes Kizzy's new owner, and violently rapes her the night of her arrival. Kizzy becomes pregnant from the assault and gives birth to their son, George, nine months after her arrival.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: In 1824, an adult Kizzy is wooed by Sam Bennett (Richard Roundtree), a fancy carriage driver whose master is visiting the Moores. Seeking to impress Kizzy, he takes her for a short visit to her former home on Dr. Reynolds's plantation, in the hope that she can see her parents. Kizzy learns that Bell has been sold away and that Kunta died two years earlier. Kizzy sees her father's grave and his wooden marker; using a small stone, she scratches over the name Toby and writes below it "Kunta Kinte," and promises him that his descendants will be free one day.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: The cheerful and confident George (Ben Vereen), under the tutelage of an older slave named Mingo (Scatman Crothers), learns much about cockfighting. By direction of Moore, George takes over as the chief trainer, the "cock of the walk". George befriends Marcellus, a free black man, and fellow cockfighter, who informs him about the possibility of buying his own freedom. At the same time, he believes Moore to be a close friend. However, in 1831 (not 1841 as erroneously listed in the TV captions), George realizes his master's true feelings when he and his family are threatened at gunpoint by Moore and his wife, as a result of the Nat Turner rebellion. Although none of Moore's slaves are personally involved in the rebellion, they become victims of the paranoid suspicions of their master, so they start planning to buy their freedom—though Moore tells George he will never allow it. In an emotional scene, Kizzy finally tells George that Moore is his father.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: George becomes an expert in cockfighting, thus earning for himself the moniker "Chicken George". Squire James (Macdonald Carey), Moore's main adversary in the pit, arranges for a British owner, Sir Eric Russell (Ian McShane), and twenty of his cocks to visit and to participate in the local fights. Moore eventually bets a huge sum on his best bird, which George has trained, but he loses, and he cannot pay.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: Under the terms of a settlement between Moore and Russell, George goes to England to train cocks for Russell and to train more trainers and is forced to leave behind Kizzy (his mother), Tildy (Matilda, his wife) (Olivia Cole) and his sons, Tom and Lewis (Georg Stanford Brown and Hilly Hicks). Moore promises to set George free on the latter's return and to keep the family together in his absence. However, a now-broke Moore then sells all of his remaining slaves except Kizzy.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: In one brief scene, Kizzy and Missy Anne Reynolds, both elderly, meet by chance one last time. Missy Anne denies that she "recollects" a "darkie by the name of Kizzy". Kizzy then spits into Anne's cup of water without Anne's realizing.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: George returns in 1861, shortly before the start of the Civil War. He proudly announces that Moore, after some reluctance on Moore's part and some persuasion on George's part, has kept his word by granting George his freedom. He learns that Kizzy has died two months before, and that Tildy, Tom and Lewis now belong to Sam Harvey (Richard McKenzie). Tom (Georg Stanford Brown) has become a blacksmith on the Harvey plantation and has a wife, Irene (Lynne Moody), and two sons.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: George is welcomed warmly and learns that his relatives have spoken well of him during his absence. He further learns that according to a law in North Carolina, if he stays 60 days in that state as a freed slave, he will lose his freedom, so he heads northward, seeking the next stage in his career as a cockfighter and awaiting the end of the war, the emancipation of the slaves, and another reunion of his family.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: While the war continues to its inevitable end, a hungry and destitute young white couple from South Carolina, George and Martha Johnson (Brad Davis and Lane Binkley), arrive and ask for help, and the slave family take them in. George Johnson is given a job as overseer of the plantation, but has no experience with slaves and balks at the expectation that he mistreat them. Martha soon gives birth, but the child is stillborn. The white couple stays on with Tom and his wife, becoming a part of their community. Tom Harvey meets harassment at the hands of two brothers, Evan and Jemmy Brent (Lloyd Bridges and Doug McClure).


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: Eventually, a month before the surrender by the South, Jemmy deserts the Confederate Army during the final desperate days of the war, and he shows up at Tom's blacksmith shop. Tom reluctantly runs an errand for him but, on returning, he finds Jemmy trying to rape Irene, and in the resulting fight Tom drowns him in the quenching tub. Later Evan, now an officer in the Confederate cavalry, arrives at the shop, demands to know about Jemmy, gets no answer, and angrily tells Tom that he has not yet finished with him.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: After the war several local white men, led by Evan Brent and wearing white hoods (made from fabric sacks from Evan's store) begin to harass and terrorize Tom, his family, and other members of his community. Tom emerges as the leader among his group, while tensions arise between the white Johnsons and Tom's brother Lewis. As the local blacksmith, Tom devises a horseshoeing method to identify the horses involved in the raids by the hooded men. But when Tom reports his suspicions and his evidence to the sheriff (John Quade), who is in sympathy with Evan and knows every member of the white mob, the sheriff tips off Evan.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: Meanwhile, the former owner of the farm, Sam Harvey, is forced to surrender all of his property to Senator Arthur Justin (Burl Ives), a local politician intent on acquiring as much land as possible. Under the terms of the surrender, his former slaves are allowed to stay on as sharecroppers, with eventual rights to own a part of the land. However, because no written deed has been filed, the senator deems the agreement void and imposes heavy debts on the black farmers as a legal pretext to keep them from leaving the county. He gives oversight of the farm to Evan, who reinstates George Johnson as overseer, believing whites should not farm alongside blacks otherwise.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: Evan's mob leads another raid against Tom, during which Tom is whipped savagely. George Johnson intervenes and is forced to whip Tom, to his own horror and disgust, in order to save his friend's life. Lewis emotionally reconciles with the Johnsons as the family treats Tom's injuries, unsure of their future.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: On the night Tom was whipped, George unexpectedly returns, raises the spirits of his relatives and friends, and begins to plot their next step. He reports that he has bought some land in Tennessee. Using some cunning and deception of their own, the black farmers make preparations for their move away. The group eventually lures Evan and his gang to the farm and overpowers them, jubilantly departing for Tennessee as they watch helplessly. In the last scene George and his group arrive on his land in Henning, Lauderdale County, Tennessee, to start their new life.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: George retells part of the story from Kunta Kinte in Africa to himself in Tennessee. Then Alex Haley briefly narrates a montage of photographs of family members connecting Tom's daughter, Cynthia, a great-great-granddaughter of Kunta Kinte, to Haley himself. For the continuation of the story from the late 19th century into the 20th century, see "."


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: The miniseries was directed by Marvin J. Chomsky, John Erman, David Greene and Gilbert Moses. It was produced by Stan Margulies. David L. Wolper was executive producer. The score was composed by Gerald Fried, and Quincy Jones for only the first episode. Many familiar white TV actors, like Ed Asner (from "The Mary Tyler Moore Show"), Chuck Connors ("The Rifleman"), Lorne Greene ("Bonanza" and later "Battlestar Galactica"), Robert Reed ("The Brady Bunch") and Ralph Waite ("The Waltons"), were cast against type as slave holders and traders. ABC television executives "got cold feet" after seeing the brutality depicted in the series and attempted to cut the network's predicted losses by airing the series over eight consecutive nights in January in one fell swoop. The Museum of Broadcast Communications recounts the apprehensions that "Roots" would flop, and how this made ABC prepare the format:


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: The film score was composed, arranged and conducted by Quincy Jones, and the soundtrack album was released on the A&M label in 1977.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: AllMusic's Richard S. Ginell said "Quincy Jones has been threatening to write a long tone poem sketching the history of black music for decades now, and he has yet to do it. This project, rushed out in the wake of the 1977 TV miniseries "Roots", is about as close as he has come. A brief (28 minutes) immaculately produced and segued suite, "Roots" quickly traces a timeline from Africa to the Civil War, incorporating ancient and modern African influences (with Letta Mbulu as the featured vocalist), a sea shanty, field hollers and fiddle tunes, snippets of dialogue from "Roots" actor Lou Gossett, and some Hollywood-style movie cues. ... Though some prominent jazzers turn up in the orchestra, there is not a trace of jazz to be heard. This is a timely souvenir of a cultural phenomenon, but merely a curiosity for jazz fans".


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: The series received positive reviews. Review aggregator website, "Rotten Tomatoes" rated it 88% "fresh" based on 8 reviews. "Variety" reviewed it positively, summarizing, "The production and performances are strong, with newcomer LeVar Burton effective as the African youngster trapped into slavery. Edward Asner, as he did in Rich Man, Poor Man a year ago, dominates the screen in his opening scenes."


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: Following the success of the original novel and the miniseries, Haley was sued by author Harold Courlander, who asserted that "Roots" was plagiarized from his own novel "The African", published nine years prior to "Roots" in 1967. The resulting trial ended with an out-of-court settlement and an admission from Haley that certain passages within "Roots" had been copied from Courlander's work. Separately, researchers refuted Haley's claims that, as the basis for "Roots", Haley had traced his own ancestry back through slavery to a very specific individual and village in Africa.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: After a five-week trial in federal district court, Courlander and Haley settled the case with a financial settlement and a statement that "Alex Haley acknowledges and regrets that various materials from "The African" by Harold Courlander found their way into his book, "Roots"." During the trial, presiding U.S. District Court Judge Robert J. Ward stated, "Copying there is, period." In a later interview with BBC Television, Judge Ward stated, "Alex Haley perpetrated a hoax on the public." During the trial, Alex Haley had maintained that he had not read "The African" before writing "Roots". Shortly after the trial, however, a minority studies teacher at Skidmore College, Joseph Bruchac, came forward and swore in an affidavit that he had discussed "The African" with Haley in 1970 or 1971 and had given his own personal copy of "The African" to Haley, events that took place well before publication of "Roots".


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: "Roots" originally aired on ABC for eight consecutive nights from January 23 to 30, 1977. In the United Kingdom, BBC One aired the series in six parts, starting with parts 1 to 3 over the weekend of April 8 to 11, 1977. The concluding three parts were broadcast on Sunday nights, from April 15 to May 1. The six-part version screened by the BBC is the version released on home video.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: The miniseries was watched by an estimated 130 million and 140 million viewers total (more than half of the U.S. 1977 population of 221 million—the largest viewership ever attracted by any type of television series in US history as tallied by Nielsen Media Research) and averaged a 44.9 rating and 66% to 80% viewer share of the audience. The final episode was watched by 100 million viewers and an average of 80 million viewers watched each of the last seven episodes. Eighty-five percent of all television homes saw all or part of the miniseries. All episodes rank within the top-100-rated TV shows of all time.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: On February 16–18, 2013, in honor of Black History Month and the 36th anniversary of "Roots", cable network BET aired both "Roots" and its sequel miniseries, "". Celebrating the 35th anniversary of "Roots", BET premiered the miniseries on a three-day-weekend showing in December 2012, which resulted in its being seen by a total of 10.8 million viewers, according to Nielsen ratings, and became the number-one "Roots" telecast in cable-television history. As for the BET network, its 35th-anniversary airing of "Roots" became its best "non-tentpole" weekend in the network's history. On Sunday, October 18, 2015, TV One rebroadcast "Roots" in high definition.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: Warner Home Video, which released a three-disc 25th-anniversary DVD edition of the series in 2002, released a four-disc (three double-sided, one single-sided) 30th-anniversary set on May 22, 2007. Bonus features include a new audio commentary by LeVar Burton, Cicely Tyson and Ed Asner, among other key cast members, "Remembering Roots" behind-the-scenes documentary, "Crossing Over: How Roots Captivated an Entire Nation" featurette, new interviews with key cast members and the DVD-ROM "Roots Family Tree" feature.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: In 2016, Warner released the 40th-anniversary Blu-ray, which restored the program to its original eight-episode format and was completely remastered from the original elements. Along with that it carried over previous bonus material and added some new material.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: The miniseries has also been released in the digital format for streaming. Though these versions have the edited six-episode format.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: The History channel produced a remake of the miniseries after acquiring rights from David L. Wolper's son, Mark Wolper, and Alex Haley's estate. The new eight-hour miniseries, with Mark Wolper as executive producer, drew on Haley's novel and the original miniseries albeit from a contemporary perspective. Lifetime and A&E also simulcast it. Will Packer, Marc Toberoff and Mark Wolper executive produced it, alongside Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal. LeVar Burton and Korin Huggins co-executive produced it.


title: Roots (1977 miniseries)

text: The four-night, eight-hour event series premiered on Memorial Day, May 30, 2016. The ensemble cast includes Forest Whitaker as Fiddler, Anna Paquin as Nancy Holt, Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Tom Lea, Anika Noni Rose as Kizzy, Tip "T.I." Harris as Cyrus, Emayatzy Corinealdi as Bell, Matthew Goode as Dr. William Waller, Mekhi Phifer as Jerusalem, James Purefoy as John Waller, introduces Regé-Jean Page as Chicken George and Malachi Kirby as Kunta Kinte, and Laurence Fishburne as Alex Haley.


title: Potemkin village

text: In politics and economics, a Potemkin village () is any construction (literal or figurative) whose sole purpose is to provide an external façade to a country that is faring poorly, making people believe that the country is faring better. The term comes from stories of a fake portable village built by Grigory Potemkin, former lover of Empress Catherine II, solely to impress the Empress during her journey to Crimea in 1787. Modern historians agree that accounts of this portable village are exaggerated. The original story was that Potemkin erected phony portable settlements along the banks of the Dnipro River in order to impress the Russian Empress and foreign guests. The structures would be disassembled after she passed, and re-assembled farther along her route to be viewed again as if another example.


title: Potemkin village

text: Grigory Potemkin was a minister and lover of the Russian Empress Catherine II. After the 1783 Russian annexation of Crimea from the Ottoman Empire and liquidation of the Cossack Zaporozhian Sich (see New Russia), Potemkin became governor of the region. Crimea had been devastated by the war, and the Muslim Tatar inhabitants of Crimea were viewed as a potential fifth column of the Ottoman Empire. Potemkin's major tasks were to pacify and rebuild by bringing in Russian settlers. In 1787, as a new war was about to break out between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, Catherine II, with her court and several ambassadors, made an unprecedented six-month trip to New Russia. One purpose of this trip was to impress Russia's allies prior to the war. Another purpose was to familiarize herself, supposedly directly, with her new possessions. To help accomplish this, Potemkin set up "mobile villages" on the banks of the Dnipro River. As soon as the barge carrying the Empress and ambassadors arrived, Potemkin's men, dressed as peasants, would populate the village. Once the barge left, the village was disassembled, then rebuilt downstream overnight.


title: Potemkin village

text: Modern historians are divided on the degree of truth behind the Potemkin village story, and some writers argue that the story is an exaggeration. According to Simon Sebag-Montefiore, Potemkin's most comprehensive English-language biographer, the tale of elaborate, fake settlements, with glowing fires designed to comfort the monarch and her entourage as they surveyed the barren territory at night, is largely fictional. Aleksandr Panchenko, an established specialist on 19th-century Russia, used original correspondence and memoirs to conclude that the Potemkin villages are a myth. He writes: "Based on the above said we must conclude that the myth of 'Potemkin villages' is exactly a myth, and not an established fact." He writes that "Potyomkin indeed decorated existing cities and villages, but made no secret that this was a decoration".


title: Potemkin village

text: The close relationship between Potemkin and the empress could have made it difficult for him to deceive her. Thus, if there were deception, it would have been mainly directed towards the foreign ambassadors accompanying the imperial party.


title: Potemkin village

text: Although "Potemkin village" has come to mean, especially in a political context, any hollow or false construct, physical or figurative, meant to hide an undesirable or potentially damaging situation, it is possible that the phrase cannot be applied accurately to its own original historical inspiration. According to some historians, some of the buildings were real, and others were constructed to show what the region would look like in the near future, and at least Catherine and possibly also her foreign visitors knew which were which. According to these historians, the claims of deception were part of a defamation campaign against Potemkin.


title: Potemkin village

text: According to a legend, in 1787, when Catherine passed through Tula on her way back from the trip, the local governor Mikhail Krechetnikov attempted a deception of that kind in order to hide the effects of a bad harvest.


title: Potemkin village

text: "Potemkin village" is a phrase that has been used by American judges, especially members of a multiple-judge panel who dissent from the majority's opinion on a particular matter, to refer to an inaccurate or tortured interpretation and/or application of a particular legal doctrine to the specific facts at issue. Use of the phrase is meant to imply that the reasons espoused by the panel's majority in support of its decision are not based on accurate or sound law, and their restrictive application is merely a masquerade for the court's desire to avoid a difficult decision. For example, in "Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey" (1992), chief justice of the United States William Rehnquist wrote that "Roe v. Wade" "stands as a sort of judicial Potemkin Village, which may be pointed out to passers-by as a monument to the importance of adhering to precedent". Similarly, Judge William G. Young of the District of Massachusetts described the use of affidavits in U.S. litigation as "the Potemkin Village of today’s litigation landscape" because "adjudication by affidavit is like walking down a street between two movie sets, all lawyer-painted façade and no interior architecture."


title: Potemkin village

text: Sometimes, instead of the full phrase, just "Potemkin" is used, as an adjective. For example, the use of a row of trees to screen a clearcut area from motorists has been called a "Potemkin forest". For example, the glossary entry for "clearcut" in "We Have The Right To Exist: A Translation of Aboriginal Indigenous Thought" states that "Much of the extensive clearcut in northern Minnesota is insulated from scrutiny by the urbanized public by a Potemkin forest, or, as the D.N.R. terms it, an aesthetic strip – a thin illusion of forest about six trees deep, along most highways and fronting waters frequented by tourists." Another example is the phrase "Potemkin court", which implies that the court's reason to exist is being called into question (differing from the phrase "kangaroo court" with which the court's standard of justice is being impugned).


title: Potemkin village

text: In the Old West of the United States, Western false front architecture was often used to create the illusion of affluence and stability in a new frontier town. The style included a tall vertical facade with a square top in front of a wood-framed building, often hiding a gable roof. The goal for the architecture was to project an image of stability and success for the town, while the business owners did not invest much in buildings that might be temporary. These towns often did not last long before becoming ghost towns, so businessmen wanted to get started quickly but did not want to spend a lot on their stores. Many Western movies feature this kind of architecture because, just like the original buildings, it is quick and cheap to create.


title: Potemkin village

text: Many of the newly constructed base areas at ski resorts are referred to as Potemkin villages. These create the illusion of a quaint mountain town, but are actually carefully planned theme shopping centers, hotels and restaurants designed for maximum revenue. Similarly, in "The Geography of Nowhere", American writer James Howard Kunstler refers to contemporary suburban shopping centers as "Potemkin village shopping plazas".


title: Potemkin village

text: Hardcore punk band Propagandhi released an album in 2005 called "Potemkin City Limits". The cover depicts children playing in a city that is drawn on the ground, a façade city. Their 2009 album "Supporting Caste" has a song called "Potemkin City Limits", about the statue of Francis the Pig in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada.


title: Potemkin village

text: Donald Trump's business councils have been described as Potemkin Villages after several high-profile CEO participants resigned in August 2017. Trump's "" describes a stunt in which he lured Holiday Inn executives into investing in an Atlantic City, New Jersey, casino by directing his construction manager to rent dozens of pieces of heavy equipment, in advance of a visit by the executives, to move dirt around on the proposed casino site, creating the illusion that construction was under way.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: The Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed (), commonly known as Saint Basil's Cathedral, is an Orthodox church in Red Square of Moscow, and is one of the most popular cultural symbols of Russia. The building, now a museum, is officially known as the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat, or Pokrovsky Cathedral. It was built from 1555 to 1561 on orders from Ivan the Terrible and commemorates the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan. It was the city's tallest building until the completion of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in 1600.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: The original building, known as "Trinity Church" and later "Trinity Cathedral", contained eight chapels arranged around a ninth, central chapel dedicated to the Intercession; a tenth chapel was erected in 1588 over the grave of the venerated local saint Vasily (Basil). In the 16th and 17th centuries, the church, perceived (as with all churches in Byzantine Christianity) as the earthly symbol of the Heavenly City, was popularly known as the "Jerusalem" and served as an allegory of the Jerusalem Temple in the annual Palm Sunday parade attended by the Patriarch of Moscow and the Tsar.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: The cathedral has nine domes (each one corresponding to a different church) and is shaped like the flame of a bonfire rising into the sky. Dmitry Shvidkovsky, in his book "Russian Architecture and the West", states that "it is like no other Russian building. Nothing similar can be found in the entire millennium of Byzantine tradition from the fifth to the fifteenth century ... a strangeness that astonishes by its unexpectedness, complexity and dazzling interleaving of the manifold details of its design." The cathedral foreshadowed the climax of Russian national architecture in the 17th century.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: As part of the program of state atheism, the church was confiscated from the Russian Orthodox community as part of the Soviet Union's antireligious campaigns and has operated as a division of the State Historical Museum since 1928. It was completely secularized in 1929, and remains a federal property of the Russian Federation. The church has been part of the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, weekly Orthodox Christian services with prayer to St. Basil have been restored since 1997.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: The site of the church had been, historically, a busy marketplace between the St. Fool's (later Saviour's) Gate of the Moscow Kremlin and the outlying posad. The centre of the marketplace was marked by the Trinity Church, built of the same white stone as the Kremlin of Dmitry Donskoy (1366–68) and its cathedrals. Tsar Ivan IV marked every victory of the Russo-Kazan War by erecting a wooden memorial church next to the walls of Trinity Church; by the end of his Astrakhan campaign, it was shrouded within a cluster of seven wooden churches. According to the report in Nikon's Chronicle, in the autumn of 1554 Ivan ordered the construction of the wooden Church of Intercession on the same site, "on the moat". One year later, Ivan ordered the construction of a new stone cathedral on the site of Trinity Church to commemorate his campaigns. Dedication of a church to a military victory was "a major innovation" for Muscovy. The placement of the church outside the Kremlin walls was a political statement in favour of posad commoners and against hereditary boyars.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: Contemporary commentators clearly identified the new building as Trinity Church, after its easternmost sanctuary; the status of "katholikon" (, "", large assembly church) had not been bestowed on it yet:


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: The identity of the architect is unknown. Tradition held that the church was built by two architects, Barma and Postnik: the official Russian cultural heritage register lists "Barma and Postnik Yakovlev". Researchers proposed that both names refer to the same person, Postnik Yakovlev or, alternatively, Ivan Yakovlevich Barma (Varfolomey). Legend held that Ivan blinded the architect so that he could not re-create the masterpiece elsewhere. Many historians are convinced that it is a myth, as the architect later participated in the construction of the Cathedral of the Annunciation in Moscow as well as in building the walls and towers of the Kazan Kremlin. Postnik Yakovlev remained active at least throughout the 1560s.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: Because the church has no analog—in the preceding, contemporary, or later architecture of Muscovy and Byzantine cultural tradition, in general,—the sources that inspired Barma and Postnik are disputed. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc rejected European roots for the cathedral, opining that its corbel arches were Byzantine and ultimately Asian. A modern "Asian" hypothesis considers the cathedral a recreation of Qolşärif Mosque, which was destroyed by Russian troops after the Siege of Kazan.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: Nineteenth-century Russian writers, starting with Ivan Zabelin, emphasized the influence of the vernacular wooden churches of the Russian North; their motifs made their ways into masonry, particularly the votive churches that did not need to house substantial congregations. David Watkin also wrote of a blend of Russian and Byzantine roots, calling the cathedral "the climax" of Russian vernacular wooden architecture.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: The church combines the staggered layered design of the earliest (1505–1508) part of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower, the central tent of the Church of Ascension in Kolomenskoye (1530s), and the cylindric shape of the Church of Beheading of John the Baptist in Dyakovo (1547); but the origin of these unique buildings is equally debated. The Church in Kolomenskoye, according to Sergei Podyapolsky, was built by Italian Petrok Maly, although mainstream history has not yet accepted his opinion. Andrey Batalov revised the year of completion of Dyakovo church from 1547 to the 1560s–70s, and noted that Trinity Church could have had no tangible predecessors at all.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: Andrey Batalov wrote that judging by the number of novel elements introduced with Trinity Church, it was most likely built by German craftsmen. Batalov and Shvidkovsky noted that during Ivan's reign, Germans and Englishmen replaced Italians, although German influence peaked later during the reign of Mikhail Romanov. German influence is indirectly supported by the rusticated pilasters of the central church, a feature more common in contemporary Northern Europe than in Italy.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: The 1983 academic edition of "Monuments of Architecture in Moscow" takes the middle ground: the church is, most likely, a product of the complex interaction of distinct Russian traditions of wooden and stone architecture, with some elements borrowed from the works of Italians in Moscow. Specifically, the style of brickwork in the vaults is Italian.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: Instead of following the original ad hoc layout (seven churches around the central core), Ivan's architects opted for a more symmetrical floor plan with "eight" side churches around the core, producing "a thoroughly coherent, logical plan" despite the erroneous latter "notion of a structure devoid of restraint or reason" influenced by the memory of Ivan's irrational atrocities. The central core and the four larger churches placed on the four major compass points are octagonal; the four diagonally placed smaller churches are cuboid, although their shape is hardly visible through later additions. The larger churches stand on massive foundations, while the smaller ones were each placed on a raised platform as if hovering above ground.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: Although the side churches are arranged in perfect symmetry, the cathedral as a whole is not. The larger central church was deliberately offset to the west from the geometric centre of the side churches, to accommodate its larger apse on the eastern side. As a result of this subtle calculated asymmetry, viewing from the north and the south presents a complex multi-axial shape, while the western façade, facing the Kremlin, appears properly symmetrical and monolithic. The latter perception is reinforced by the fortress-style machicolation and corbeled cornice of the western Church of Entry into Jerusalem, mirroring the real fortifications of the Kremlin.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: Inside the composite church is a labyrinth of narrow vaulted corridors and vertical cylinders of the churches. Today the cathedral consists of nine individual chapels. The largest, central one, the Church of the Intercession, is tall internally but has a floor area of only . Nevertheless, it is wider and airier than the church in Kolomenskoye with its exceptionally thick walls. The corridors functioned as internal parvises; the western corridor, adorned with a unique flat caissoned ceiling, doubled as the narthex.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: The detached belfry of the original Trinity Church stood southwest or south of the main structure. Late 16th- and early 17th-century plans depict a simple structure with three roof tents, most likely covered with sheet metal. No buildings of this type survive to date, although it was then common and used in all of the pass-through towers of Skorodom. August von Meyenberg's panorama (1661) presents a different building, with a cluster of small onion domes.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: The foundations, as was traditional in medieval Moscow, were built of white stone, while the churches themselves were built of red brick (), then a relatively new material (the first attested brick building in Moscow, the new Kremlin Wall, was started in 1485). Surveys of the structure show that the basement level is perfectly aligned, indicating use of professional drawing and measurement, but each subsequent level becomes less and less regular. Restorers who replaced parts of the brickwork in 1954–1955 discovered that the massive brick walls conceal an internal wooden frame running the entire height of the church. This frame, made of elaborately tied thin studs, was erected as a life-size spatial model of the future cathedral and was then gradually enclosed in solid masonry.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: The builders, fascinated by the flexibility of the new technology, used red bricks as a decorative medium both inside and out, leaving as much brickwork open as possible; when location required the use of stone walls, it was decorated with a brickwork pattern painted over stucco. A major novelty introduced by the church was the use of strictly "architectural" means of exterior decoration. Sculpture and sacred symbols employed by earlier Russian architecture are completely missing; floral ornaments are a later addition. Instead, the church boasts a diversity of three-dimensional architectural elements executed in brick.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: The church acquired its present-day vivid colours in several stages from the 1680s to 1848. Russian attitude towards colour in the 17th century changed in favour of bright colours; iconographic and mural art experienced an explosive growth in the number of available paints, dyes and their combinations. The original colour scheme, missing these innovations, was far less challenging. It followed the depiction of the Heavenly City in the Book of Revelation:


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: The 25 seats from the biblical reference are alluded to in the building's structure, with the addition of eight small onion domes around the central tent, four around the western side church and four elsewhere. This arrangement survived through most of the 17th century. The walls of the church mixed bare red brickwork or painted imitation of bricks with white ornaments, in roughly equal proportion. The domes, covered with tin, were uniformly gilded, creating an overall bright but fairly traditional combination of white, red and golden colours. Moderate use of green and blue ceramic inserts provided a touch of rainbow as prescribed by the Bible.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: While historians agree on the colour of the 16th-century domes, their shape is disputed. Boris Eding wrote that they most likely were of the same onion shape as the present-day domes. However, both Kolomenskoye and Dyakovo churches have flattened hemispherical domes, and the same type could have been used by Barma and Postnik.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: The original Trinity Church burnt down in 1583 and was refitted by 1593. The ninth sanctuary, dedicated to Basil Fool for Christ (the 1460s–1552), was added in 1588 next to the north-eastern sanctuary of the Three Patriarchs. Another local fool, Ivan the Blessed, was buried on the church grounds in 1589; a sanctuary in his memory was established in 1672 inside the south-eastern arcade.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: The vault of the Saint Basil Sanctuary serves as a reference point in evaluating the quality of Muscovite stonemasonry and engineering. As one of the first vaults of its type, it represents the average of engineering craft that peaked a decade later in the church of the Trinity in Khoroshovo (completed 1596). The craft was lost in the Time of Troubles; buildings from the first half of the 17th century lack the refinement of the late 16th century, compensating for poor construction skill with thicker walls and heavier vaults.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: The second, and most significant, round of refitting and expansion took place in 1680–1683. The nine churches themselves retained their appearance, but additions to the ground-floor arcade and the first-floor platform were so profound that Nikolay Brunov rebuilt a composite church from an "old" building and an independent work that incorporated the "new" Trinity Church. What once was a group of nine independent churches on a common platform became a monolithic temple.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: The formerly open ground-floor arcades were filled with brick walls; the new space housed altars from thirteen former wooden churches erected on the site of Ivan's executions in Red Square. Wooden shelters above the first-floor platform and stairs (the cause of frequent fires) were rebuilt in brick, creating the present-day wrap-around galleries with tented roofs above the porches and vestibules.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: The old detached belfry was demolished; its square basement was reused for a new belltower. The tall single tented roof of this belltower, built in the vernacular style of the reign of Alexis I, significantly changed the appearance of the cathedral, adding a strong asymmetrical counterweight to the church itself. The effect is most pronounced on the southern and eastern facades (as viewed from Zaryadye), although the belltower is large enough to be seen from the west.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: The first ornamental murals in the cathedral appeared in the same period, starting with floral ornaments inside the new galleries; the towers retained their original brickwork pattern. Finally, in 1683, the church was adorned with a tiled cornice in yellow and blue, featuring a written history of the church in Old Slavic typeface.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: In 1737 the church was damaged by a massive fire and later restored by Ivan Michurin. The inscriptions made in 1683 were removed during the repairs of 1761–1784. The church received its first figurative murals inside the churches; all exterior and interior walls of the first two floors were covered with floral ornamentation. The belltower was connected with the church through a ground-floor annex; the last remaining open arches of the former ground-floor arcade were filled during the same period, erasing the last hint of what was once an open platform carrying the nine churches of Ivan's Jerusalem.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: Paintings of Red Square by Fyodor Alekseyev, made in 1800–1802, show that by this time the church was enclosed in an apparently chaotic cluster of commercial buildings; rows of shops "transformed Red Square into an oblong and closed yard." In 1800 the space between the Kremlin wall and the church was still occupied by a moat that predated the church itself. The moat was filled in preparation for the coronation of Alexander I in 1801. The French troops who occupied Moscow in 1812 used the church for stables and looted anything worth taking. The church was spared by the Fire of Moscow (1812) that razed Kitai-gorod, and by the troops' failure to blow it up according to Napoleon's order. The interiors were repaired in 1813 and the exterior in 1816. Instead of replacing missing ceramic tiles of the main tent, the Church preferred to simply cover it with a tin roof.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: The fate of the immediate environment of the church has been a subject of dispute between city planners since 1813. Scotsman William Hastie proposed clearing the space around all sides of the church and all the way down to the Moskva River; the official commission led by Fyodor Rostopchin and Mikhail Tsitsianov agreed to clear only the space between the church and Lobnoye Mesto. Hastie's plan could have radically transformed the city, but he lost to the opposition, whose plans were finally endorsed by Alexander I in December 1817 (the specific decision on clearing the rubble around the church was issued in 1816).


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: Nevertheless, actual redevelopment by Joseph Bove resulted in clearing the rubble and creating Vasilyevskaya (St. Basil's) Square between the church and Kremlin wall by shaving off the crest of the Kremlin Hill between the church and the Moskva River. Red Square was opened to the river, and "St. Basil thus crowned the decapitated hillock." Bove built the stone terrace wall separating the church from the pavement of Moskvoretskaya Street; the southern side of the terrace was completed in 1834. Minor repairs continued until 1848, when the domes acquired their present-day colours.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: Preservationist societies monitored the state of the church and called for a proper restoration throughout the 1880s and 1890s, but it was regularly delayed for lack of funds. The church did not have a congregation of its own and could only rely on donations raised through public campaigning; national authorities in Saint Petersburg and local in Moscow prevented financing from state and municipal budgets. In 1899 Nicholas II reluctantly admitted that this expense was necessary, but again all the involved state and municipal offices, including the Holy Synod, denied financing. Restoration, headed by Andrey Pavlinov (died 1898) and Sergey Solovyov, dragged on from 1896 to 1909; in total, preservationists managed to raise around 100,000 roubles.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: Restoration began with replacing the roofing of the domes. Solovyov removed the tin roofing of the main tent installed in the 1810s and found many original tiles missing and others discoloured; after a protracted debate the whole set of tiles on the tented roof was replaced with new ones. Another dubious decision allowed the use of standard bricks that were smaller than the original 16th-century ones. Restorers agreed that the paintwork of the 19th century must be replaced with a "truthful recreation" of historic patterns, but these had to be reconstructed and deduced based on medieval miniatures. In the end, Solovyov and his advisers chose a combination of deep red with deep green that is retained to the present.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: In 1908 the church received its first warm air heating system, which did not work well because of heat losses in long air ducts, heating only the eastern and northern sanctuaries. In 1913 it was complemented with a pumped water heating system serving the rest of the church.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: During World War I, the church was headed by protoiereus Ioann Vostorgov, a nationalist preacher and a leader of the Black-Hundredist Union of the Russian People. Vostorgov was arrested by Bolsheviks in 1918 on a pretext of embezzling nationalized church properties and was executed in 1919. The church briefly enjoyed Vladimir Lenin's "personal interest"; in 1923 it became a public museum, though religious services continued until 1929.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: Bolshevik planners entertained ideas of demolishing the church after Lenin's funeral (January 1924). In the first half of the 1930s, the church became an obstacle for Joseph Stalin's urbanist plans, carried out by Moscow party boss Lazar Kaganovich, "the moving spirit behind the reconstruction of the capital". The conflict between preservationists, notably Pyotr Baranovsky, and the administration continued at least until 1936 and spawned urban legends. In particular, a frequently-told story is that Kaganovich picked up a model of the church in the process of envisioning Red Square without it, and Stalin sharply responded "Lazar, put it back!" Similarly, Stalin's master planner, architect Vladimir Semyonov, reputedly dared to "grab Stalin's elbow when the leader picked up a model of the church to see how Red Square would look without it" and was replaced by pure functionary Sergey Chernyshov.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: In the autumn of 1933, the church was struck from the heritage register. Baranovsky was summoned to perform a last-minute survey of the church slated for demolition, and was then arrested for his objections. While he served his term in the Gulag, attitudes changed and by 1937 even hard-line Bolshevik planners admitted that the church should be spared. In the spring of 1939, the church was locked, probably because demolition was again on the agenda; however, the 1941 publication of Dmitry Sukhov's detailed book on the survey of the church in 1939–1940 speaks against this assumption.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: In the first years after World War II renovators restored the historical ground-floor arcades and pillars that supported the first-floor platform, cleared up vaulted and caissoned ceilings in the galleries, and removed "unhistoric" 19th-century oil paint murals inside the churches. Another round of repairs, led by Nikolay Sobolev in 1954–1955, restored original paint imitating brickwork, and allowed restorers to dig inside old masonry, revealing the wooden frame inside it. In the 1960s, the tin roofing of the domes was replaced with copper.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: The last round of renovation was completed in September 2008 with the opening of the restored sanctuary of St. Alexander Svirsky. The building is still partly in use today as a museum and, since 1991, is occasionally used for services by the Russian Orthodox Church. Since 1997 Orthodox Christian services have been held regularly. Nowadays every Sunday at Saint Basil's church there is a divine liturgy at 10AM with an akathist to Saint Basil.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: The building, originally known as "Trinity Church", was consecrated on 12 July 1561, and was subsequently elevated to the status of a "sobor" (similar to an ecclesiastical basilica in the Catholic Church, but usually and incorrectly translated as "cathedral"). "Trinity", according to tradition, refers to the easternmost sanctuary of the Holy Trinity, while the central sanctuary of the church is dedicated to the Intercession of Mary. Together with the westernmost sanctuary of the Entry into Jerusalem, these sanctuaries form the main east–west axis (Christ, Mary, Holy Trinity), while other sanctuaries are dedicated to individual saints.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: The name "Intercession Church" came into use later, coexisting with Trinity Church. From the end of the 16th century to the end of the 17th century the cathedral was also popularly called Jerusalem, with reference to its church of Entry into Jerusalem as well as to its sacral role in religious rituals. Finally, the name of Vasily (Basil) the Blessed, who died during construction and was buried on-site, was attached to the church at the beginning of the 17th century.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: Current Russian tradition accepts two coexisting names of the church: the official "Church of Intercession on the Moat" (in full, the "Church of Intercession of Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat"), and the "Temple of Basil the Blessed". When these names are listed together the latter name, being informal, is always mentioned second.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: The common Western translations "Cathedral of Basil the Blessed" and "Saint Basil's Cathedral" incorrectly bestow the status of cathedral on the church of Basil, but are nevertheless widely used even in academic literature. Especially during the 19. century, in English and other languages the Saint Basil's Cathedral was also called (Cathedral or Church of) Vassili Blagennoi.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: On the day of its consecration the church itself became part of Orthodox thaumaturgy. According to the legend, its "missing" ninth church (more precisely a sanctuary) was "miraculously found" during a ceremony attended by Tsar Ivan IV, Metropolitan Makarius with the divine intervention of Saint Tikhon. Piskaryov's Chronist wrote in the second quarter of the 17th century:


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: Construction of wrap-around ground-floor arcades in the 1680s visually united the nine churches of the original cathedral into a single building. Earlier, the clergy and the public perceived it as nine distinct churches on a common base, a generalized allegory of the Orthodox Heavenly City similar to fantastic cities of medieval miniatures. At a distance, separate churches towering over their base resembled the towers and churches of a distant citadel rising above the defensive wall. The abstract allegory was reinforced by real-life religious rituals where the church played the role of the biblical Temple in Jerusalem:


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: The last donkey walk () took place in 1693. noted that "all" cross processions of the period began, as described by Petreius, from the Dormition Church, passed through St. Frol's (Saviour's) Gate and ended at Trinity Cathedral. For these processions the Kremlin itself became an open-air temple, properly oriented from its "narthex" (Cathedral Square) in the west, through the "royal doors" (Saviour's Gate), to the "sanctuary" (Trinity Cathedral) in the east.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: Tradition calls the Kremlin the centre of Moscow, but the geometric centre of the Garden Ring, first established as the Skorodom defensive wall in the 1590s, lies outside the Kremlin wall, coincident with the cathedral. Pyotr Goldenberg (1902–71), who popularized this notion in 1947, still regarded the Kremlin as the starting seed of Moscow's radial-concentric system, despite Alexander Chayanov's earlier suggestion that the system was not strictly concentric at all.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: In the 1960s Gennady Mokeev (born 1932) formulated a different concept of the historical growth of Moscow. According to Mokeev, medieval Moscow, constrained by the natural boundaries of the Moskva and Neglinnaya Rivers, grew primarily in a north-easterly direction into the posad of Kitai-gorod and beyond. The main road connecting the Kremlin to Kitai-gorod passed through St. Frol's (Saviour's) Gate and immediately afterwards fanned out into at least two radial streets (present-day Ilyinka and Varvarka), forming the central market square. In the 14th century the city was largely contained within two balancing halves, Kremlin and Kitai-gorod, separated by a marketplace, but by the end of the century it extended further along the north-eastern axis. Two secondary hubs in the west and south spawned their own street networks, but their development lagged behind until the Time of Troubles.


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: Tsar Ivan's decision to build the church next to St. Frol's Gate established the dominance of the eastern hub with a major vertical accent, and inserted a pivot point between the nearly equal Kremlin and Kitai-gorod into the once amorphous marketplace. The cathedral was the main church of the posad, and at the same time it was perceived as a part of the Kremlin thrust into the posad, a personal messenger of the Tsar reaching the masses without the mediation of the boyars and clergy. It was complemented by the nearby Lobnoye mesto, a rostrum for the Tsar's public announcements first mentioned in chronicles in 1547 and rebuilt in stone in 1597–1598. Conrad Bussow, describing the triumph of False Dmitriy I, wrote that on 3 June 1606 "a few thousand men hastily assembled and followed the boyarin with [the impostor's] letter through the whole Moscow to the main church they call Jerusalem that stands right next to the Kremlin gates, raised him on Lobnoye Mesto, called out for the Muscovites, read the letter and listened to the boyarin's oral explanation."


title: Saint Basil's Cathedral

text: A scale model of Saint Basil's Cathedral has been built in Jalainur in Inner Mongolia, near China's border with Russia. The building houses a science museum.