title: Hurricane Irma

text: Irma set multiple records for intensity, especially at easterly longitudes, time spent at such an intensity, and its intensity at landfall. When Irma reached Category 5 intensity with winds of 175 mph (280 km/h) at 11:45 UTC on September 5 at 57.7°W, it became the easternmost Atlantic hurricane of this strength on record, surpassing Hurricane David of 1979, later beaten by Hurricane Lorenzo 2 years later. By 00:15 UTC on September 6, Irma reached peak intensity with () winds and a minimum pressure of . This ties it with Hurricane Mitch of 1998 and Hurricane Rita of 2005 as the sixth-strongest Atlantic hurricane by wind speed. Only five other Atlantic hurricanes have been recorded with wind speeds higher than Irma: Hurricane Allen of 1980, which had maximum sustained winds of 190 mph (305 km/h), and the 1935 Labor Day hurricane, Hurricane Gilbert of 1988, Hurricane Wilma of 2005, and Hurricane Dorian of 2019, all of which had peak winds of 185 mph (295 km/h). At the time, Irma was also the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean outside the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico; later surpassed by Hurricane Dorian, and was the strongest Atlantic hurricane since Wilma in terms of maximum sustained winds, and the most intense in terms of pressure since Dean in 2007. In addition, Irma achieved one of the longest durations of Category 5 strength winds, and the third-highest accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) index for a tropical cyclone in the Atlantic basin, with a value of 64.9 units. Only the 1899 San Ciriaco hurricane and Hurricane Ivan in 2004 achieved higher values.


title: Hurricane Irma

text: On September 6, Irma made landfall on the islands of Barbuda, Saint Martin, and Virgin Gorda at peak strength. This ties Irma with cyclones Monica of 2006 and Winston of 2016, and typhoons Zeb of 1998, Megi of 2010, and Yutu of 2018 as the sixth-strongest tropical cyclone to make landfall globally – in terms of sustained winds – trailing only Typhoon Goni of 2020 which bore winds of 195 mph (315 km/h) at landfall, Typhoon Haiyan of 2013 and Typhoon Meranti of 2016, which bore winds of 190 mph (305 km/h) at landfall, and the 1935 Labor Day hurricane, Typhoon Joan of 1959, and Hurricane Dorian of 2019, which bore winds of 185 mph (295 km/h) at landfall. Irma is second to the 1935 Labor Day hurricane and Hurricane Dorian of 2019 as the strongest landfalling cyclone on record in the Atlantic basin, and is the first hurricane to make landfall anywhere in the Atlantic at Category 5 status since Felix in 2007. Irma is the first recorded Category 5 hurricane to affect the northern Leeward Islands, and was one of the worst storms to hit the region on record, along with Hurricane Donna in 1960 and Hurricane Luis in 1995. In addition, Irma is only the second hurricane on record to make landfall in Cuba at Category 5 intensity, with the other being a hurricane in 1924. Furthermore, when Irma made landfall on Barbuda, Saint Martin, Virgin Gorda, and Cuba as a Category 5 hurricane, it became one of only two recorded Atlantic storms to make landfall in multiple nations at this strength; the other was Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which struck both Eleuthera and the United States as a Category 5 hurricane.


title: Hurricane Irma

text: Irma made landfall in the Florida Keys with winds of 130 mph (215 km/h) and a pressure of 931 mbar (hPa; 27.49 inHg), making it the strongest hurricane to strike Florida in terms of wind speed since Charley in 2004, and the most intense to strike the state in terms of barometric pressure since Andrew in 1992. In the span of two weeks, two Category 4 hurricanes—Harvey and Irma—struck the continental United States, the first time on record two Atlantic tropical cyclones of such strength made landfall on the country in the same hurricane season. This also marked only the third occurrence of two consecutive Atlantic storms making landfall in the United States as major hurricanes. The other two instances were the Great Charleston and Cheniere Caminada hurricanes in 1893, and hurricanes Ivan and Jeanne in 2004.


title: Hurricane Irma

text: On April 11, 2018, at the 40th session of the RA IV hurricane committee, the World Meteorological Organization retired the name "Irma" from its rotating naming lists, due to the extensive amount of damage and loss of life it caused in the northeastern Caribbean and the United States, particularly in Florida, and it will never again be used for another Atlantic hurricane. It will be replaced with "Idalia" for the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season.


title: Ralph Waite

text: Ralph Waite (June 22, 1928 – February 13, 2014) was an American actor, best known for his lead role as John Walton Sr. on "The Waltons" (1972–1981), which he occasionally directed. He also had recurring roles in "NCIS" as Jackson Gibbs, the father of Leroy Jethro Gibbs, and "Bones", as Seeley Booth's grandfather. Waite had supporting roles in movies such as "Cool Hand Luke" (1967), "Five Easy Pieces" (1970), "The Grissom Gang" (1971), "The Bodyguard" (1992), and "Cliffhanger" (1993).


title: Ralph Waite

text: Waite, the eldest of five children, was born in White Plains, New York, on June 22, 1928, to Ralph H. Waite, a construction engineer, and Esther (née Mitchell) Waite. He graduated from White Plains Senior High School in 1946. Too young for World War II, Waite served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1946 to 1948, then graduated from Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. He worked briefly as a social worker. Waite earned a master's degree from Yale University's Divinity School and was an ordained Presbyterian minister and religious editor at Harper & Row, New York, before deciding on an acting career. He was a member of the Peninsula Players summer theater program during the 1963 season.


title: Ralph Waite

text: In 1963, Waite made his Broadway debut as the Minister in "Marathon '33", written and directed by June Havoc. He next appeared in "Blues for Mister Charlie", and worked on- and off-Broadway steadily throughout the 1960s.


title: Ralph Waite

text: His film work included roles in "Cool Hand Luke", "Five Easy Pieces", "Lawman", "Kid Blue", "The Grissom Gang", "Chato's Land", and "The Stone Killer". His later films included "The Bodyguard", the part of Frank the helicopter pilot in the 1993 film "Cliffhanger", and as the mysterious time traveler in "Timequest" (2002). He also voiced Shadow in "Homeward Bound II".


title: Ralph Waite

text: Waite scored a personal triumph when he created the role of Will Kidder in the Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Young Man from Atlanta", by playwright Horton Foote, in 1995.


title: Ralph Waite

text: Waite was married three times, two marriages ending in divorce. He had three daughters from his first marriage. His eldest daughter, Sharon Waite, died of leukemia when she was 9 years old in 1964. Liam Waite, one of Waite's stepsons, is also an actor. After 50 years away from organized religion, Waite returned in 2010 and became an active member of Spirit of the Desert Presbyterian Fellowship in Palm Desert, California.


title: Ralph Waite

text: Waite ran unsuccessfully for Congress in California as a Democrat on three occasions: In 1990, he challenged veteran GOP incumbent Al McCandless in the Riverside County-based 37th district, losing by 5%. In 1998, Waite ran in the special election for the then-Palm Springs-based 44th district left vacant by the death of incumbent Sonny Bono. He was defeated in that election by Mary Bono, Sonny's widow, and lost to her again that November.


title: Ralph Waite

text: On October 21, 1991, Waite introduced former California Governor Jerry Brown prior to the latter's speech announcing his candidacy for the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination.


title: Ralph Waite

text: On February 13, 2014, Waite died in Palm Desert, California, of age-related illnesses at age 85. He is buried in White Plains Rural Cemetery in New York.


title: Meenakshi Chaudhary

text: Meenakshii Chaudhary is an Indian actress, model and beauty pageant titleholder who primarily works in Telugu films. She represented the state of Haryana at the Femina Miss India 2018 pageant, where she was crowned as Miss Grand India. Chaudhary represented India at and was crowned as 1st runner up. She made her film debut with the Telugu film "Ichata Vahanamulu Niluparadu" in 2021.


title: Meenakshi Chaudhary

text: Chaudhary was born in Panchkula, Haryana. Her late father B.R Chaudhary was a colonel in the Indian Army. She completed her schooling from the St. Soldier International Convent School in Chandigarh. She is also a state level swimmer and badminton player. Chaudhary completed her bachelor's degree in dental surgery from the National Dental College and Hospital in Dera Bassi, Punjab.


title: Meenakshi Chaudhary

text: In 2017, Chaudhary was adjudged as Miss IMA during the Indian Military Academy Autumn Ball Night, which is held towards the end of each term, in order to mark the culmination of the training schedule of military cadets.


title: Meenakshi Chaudhary

text: Chaudhary auditioned for the Fashion Big Bazaar sponsored Campus Princess 2018 where she was crowned as one of the winners from Patiala auditions. She then auditioned for the title Femina Miss Haryana 2018, which she eventually won. She represented the state of Haryana in the annual Femina Miss India competition.


title: Meenakshi Chaudhary

text: During the final question and answer round of Femina Miss India 2018, all the Top 5 finalists were asked a common question “Who is a better teacher in life – success or failure?” Chaudhary responded by expressing:


title: Meenakshi Chaudhary

text: She was crowned 1st runner up at the grand finale venued in Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Indoor Stadium, Mumbai, on 19 June 2018. She also won the sub-title 'Miss Photogenic' at the competition.


title: Meenakshi Chaudhary

text: Later, it was revealed by the Miss India Organization that Chaudhary had been considered as Miss Grand India, and would represent India at Miss Grand International 2018 pageant. She was officially crowned as Miss Grand India 2018 by the then reigning Miss Grand International 2017, María José Lora of Peru.


title: Meenakshi Chaudhary

text: Chaudhary represented India at pageant in Yangon, Myanmar, where she made it to the top 5 of the Miss Popular sub-contest. Her national costume's theme was "Prayer of Peace", which was a tribute to her father, Late Col. B.R Chaudhary.


title: Meenakshi Chaudhary

text: During the grand final event held on 25 October 2018, Chaudhary was asked, “If you were crowned as Miss Grand International 2018 tonight, which country would you choose to visit for your ‘Stop the war and violence’ campaign, and what would be your first message to them?” She replied by saying:


title: Meenakshi Chaudhary

text: At the end of the event, she won the first runner-up title to the eventual winner, Clara Sosa of Paraguay. She is the first Indian woman to reach the said placement at the pageant.


title: Meenakshi Chaudhary

text: Chaudhary won the title of 'Miss Grand Slam 2018' by , besting 440 national representatives who represented their countries in the five Grand Slam beauty pageants. She is India's first Global Beauties' Miss Grand Slam winner since Lara Dutta, Miss Universe 2000.


title: Meenakshi Chaudhary

text: In May 2019, Chaudhary was voted to the 2nd place in the list of "Times 50 Most Desirable Women of India 2018", in an internet survey conducted by The Times of India.


title: Meenakshi Chaudhary

text: Chaudhary made her acting debut with the web series titled Out of Love, which is an official adaptation of BBC drama series Doctor Foster. She played the role of Alia Kashyap, a 22 year old who faces adversity, stress and the repercussions for having a relationship with a married person.


title: Meenakshi Chaudhary

text: In 2020, she was cast as a lead, opposite Sushanth Anumolu in a Telugu movie, titled "Ichata Vahanamulu Niluparadu" (). Apart from pursuing her dental degree and modelling assignments, Chaudhary had enrolled in workshops. It was here that she initially met the actor Sushanth Akkineni. In connection with her debut film alongside the actor, she expressed - “Funnily, neither of us knew who the other was. I did not know he was an actor and he did not know I was a pageant winner”. A month after the workshop, she was called by Sushanth to share a film script, which she accepted. She stated - “In other words, it was my workshop that became my audition trials.” She was later signed up in Ramesh Varma Penmetsa's film titled "Khiladi".


title: Meenakshi Chaudhary

text: She has also been signed up as one of the female lead in the upcoming mystery-thriller film in Telugu language, titled , which is a sequel to the 2020 film .


title: Lana Wood

text: Lana Wood (born Svetlana Lisa Gurdin; March 1, 1946) is an American actress and producer. She made her film debut in "The Searchers" as a child actress and later achieved notability for playing Sandy Webber on the TV series "Peyton Place" and Plenty O'Toole in the James Bond film "Diamonds Are Forever". Her sister was Natalie Wood.


title: Lana Wood

text: Wood was born Svetlana Lisa Gurdin to Russian immigrant parents, Maria Zudilova (1908–1998) and Nicholas Zacharenko (1912–1980). They had each left Russia as child refugees with their parents following the Russian Civil War, and they grew up far from their homeland. Her father's family left Vladivostok after her grandfather, a chocolate-factory worker who joined the anti-Bolshevik civilian forces, was killed in a street fight in 1922; they settled in Vancouver, British Columbia, with their relatives, then moved to San Francisco. Lana's maternal grandfather owned soap and candle factories in Barnaul; he left Russia with his family in 1918 after his eldest son was killed by the Red Army, and settled in a Russian community in Harbin, China. Maria married Alexander Tatuloff there in 1925, and they had a daughter, Olga Viripaeff (1928–2015), before divorcing in 1936.


title: Lana Wood

text: When Nicholas and Maria married in February 1938, she brought her daughter Olga, then known as Ovsanna, to the household, sharing joint custody with her ex-husband in El Cerrito, California. The couple had two daughters together; the first was Natalie, known as "Natasha", the Russian diminutive. The family settled in Santa Monica, near Hollywood, and changed their surname to Gurdin. Svetlana, known as "Lana", was born there. Her parents changed the surname of her elder sister, making her Natalie Wood, after she started her acting career as a child. She was named after her director Irving Pichel's friend Sam Wood. When Lana made her film debut in "The Searchers" (1956), her mother was asked under what last name Lana should be credited. Maria agreed to use "Wood" for Lana, building on Natalie's recognized work.


title: Lana Wood

text: In her early career, Wood usually played in films in which Natalie appeared. Starting in the 1960s, her own career took off. After appearing on the short-lived drama series "The Long, Hot Summer", she landed the role of Sandy Webber on the soap series "Peyton Place". She played the role from 1966 to 1967. She turned down the Karen Black role in "Easy Rider" (1969), a decision she now cites as the worst mistake she has made in her career. She was cast as a Bond girl, Plenty O'Toole, in the James Bond film "Diamonds Are Forever" (1971). In 1970, Wood was approached by Hugh Hefner and she agreed to pose for "Playboy". The "Playboy" pictures appeared in the April 1971 issue, along with Wood's poetry.


title: Lana Wood

text: Wood has more than 20 other films and over 300 television series to her credit, including "The Fugitive", "Bonanza", "", "Wild, Wild West", "Police Story", "Starsky & Hutch", "Nero Wolfe", "Fantasy Island", and "Capitol". After appearing in the horror film "Satan's Mistress" (1982), she retired from acting, concentrating on her career as a producer, but since 2008 she has returned to acting in a number of low-budget films. Wood is a character in the Steve Alten book "Meg: Hell's Aquarium" (2009).


title: Lana Wood

text: She wrote a memoir, "Natalie, A Memoir by Her Sister" (1984), and another, "Little Sister" (2021), in which she claimed veteran actor Kirk Douglas sexually assaulted her sister Natalie when she was just 16.


title: Lana Wood

text: Between marriages, Wood dated actors Dean Stockwell, Adam West, Eddie Fisher, Warren Beatty, Sean Connery, Alain Delon and Ryan O'Neal, as well as talent agent Guy McElwaine, producer Jerome Hellman and composer Leslie Bricusse. For most of the 1980s she was in a relationship with Alan Feinstein. Feinstein was at Natalie's funeral with her.


title: Lana Wood

text: Wood's sister Natalie was married to actor Robert Wagner until her drowning death on November 29, 1981. She has long been at odds with both Wagner and his third wife Jill St. John, who coincidentally also appeared in "Diamonds Are Forever".


title: RMS Carpathia

text: RMS "Carpathia" was a Cunard Line transatlantic passenger steamship built by Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson in their shipyard in Wallsend, England.


title: RMS Carpathia

text: The "Carpathia" made her maiden voyage in 1903 from Liverpool to Boston, and continued on this route before being transferred to Mediterranean service in 1904. In April 1912, she became famous for rescuing survivors of the rival White Star Line's after the latter struck an iceberg and sank with the loss of between 1,490 and 1,635 people in the North Atlantic Ocean. The "Carpathia" navigated the ice fields to arrive two hours after the "Titanic" had sunk, and the crew rescued 705 survivors from the ship's lifeboats.


title: RMS Carpathia

text: The "Carpathia" was sunk during World War I on 17 July 1918 after being torpedoed three times by the German submarine off the southern Irish coast, with a loss of five crew members.


title: RMS Carpathia

text: Around 1900, the Cunard Line faced tight competition from the British White Star Line and the German lines Norddeutscher Lloyd (North German Lloyd) and Hamburg America Line (HAPAG). Cunards largest liners as of 1898, the and , had a reputation for size and speed, both being of 12,950 gross register tons (GRT) and having held the "Blue Riband" for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. However, Norddeutscher Lloyds new liner had taken the Blue Riband from them in 1897, while the White Star Line was planning to place a new 17,000-GRT liner, the , into service. Cunard also updated its fleet during this time, ordering the construction of three new liners, the , , and the "Carpathia".


title: RMS Carpathia

text: Rather than attempting to fully regain prestige by spending the additional money necessary to order liners that were fast enough to win back the Blue Riband from the German "Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse" or large enough to rival the "Oceanic" in size, Cunard tried to maximize their profitability in order to remain solvent enough to fend off any takeover attempts by the competing shipping conglomerate by the name of International Mercantile Marine Co.


title: RMS Carpathia

text: The three new ships were not particularly fast, as they were designed for immigrant travellers, but provided significant cost savings in fuel economy. The three ships became both instruments and models through which Cunard was able to successfully compete with its larger rivals, most notably IMM's lead company, the White Star Line.


title: RMS Carpathia

text: The "Carpathia" was a modified design of the "Ivernia"-class ships, being approximately shorter than her "half-sisters." Like her predecessors, her design was based on a long hull, a low, well-balanced superstructure, and four masts fitted with cranes, allowing for effective handling of larger amounts of cargo than was customary on an ocean liner. The "Carpathia" was designed with a single tall smokestack funnel to carry soot and smoke well clear of passenger areas.


title: RMS Carpathia

text: The RMS "Carpathia" was constructed by C. S. Swan & Hunter at their shipyard in Wallsend, England for the Cunard Steamship Company, to operate between Liverpool and Boston alongside the "Ivernia" and "Saxonia". Her keel was laid down on 10 September 1901, and she was launched on 6 August 1902, when she was christened by Miss Watson, daughter of the vice-chairman of the Cunard line. She underwent her sea trials on a voyage from the River Tyne to the River Mersey between 22 and 25 April 1903.


title: RMS Carpathia

text: At the time of her launch, she was described as being long, breadth, with a gross register tonnage of 12,900 tons. When the RMS Carpathia was finally completed, her gross register tonnage had increased to more than 13,500 tons. She was designed with four complete steel decks, a steel orlop deck inholds No. 1 and 2, and a bridge deck 290 ft. long for passengers, the saloon, and cabins, with a boat deck located right above the bridge deck. At the time she was launched, it was said that she was to be fitted for carrying 200 first-class and 600 third-class passengers and large quantities of frozen meat. When she was finally completed, her capacity had increased to about 1,700 passengers.


title: RMS Carpathia

text: Despite being an intermediate liner designed mainly for second and third-class travellers, the "Carpathia"s interior accommodations were still quite comfortable and set a standard for the era. The dining saloon was described as decorated in cream and gold, which "combine effectively with the rich upholstery and mahogany of the furniture, and old gold curtains screening the ports", and was capped by a stained-glass dome underneath an electrical fan for ventilation. The second-class accommodation also included a walnut-panelled smoking room located in the aft deckhouse and a handsome library at the forward end of the bridge (A) deck. After the 1905 renovation, these spaces would be converted to first-class accommodations. Third-class accommodations on the "Carpathia" were extraordinarily generous for the time. The third-class dining saloon extended the full width of the ship and seated 300 passengers, with walls panelled in polished oak and teak dado. Third-class also included a smoking room and ladies' room located immediately forward of the dining saloon on the upper (C) deck, adjacent to the enclosed promenade (or open space) similar to the design on the "Ivernia" and "Saxonia". Officers were berthed in the forward deckhouse on the bridge (A) deck, above the second-class dining saloon, while the captain's quarters was located on the boat deck immediately below the ship's bridge.


title: RMS Carpathia

text: The "Carpathia"s lower decks were well-ventilated by means of deck ventilators, supplemented by electric fans. The ventilation systems were designed to force fresh air over coiled thermotanks, which could be fed with cool water during the summer or steam during the winter, thus heating and cooling the ship as conditions warranted. Although the ship was fully electrified with over 2,000 lamps, the ship still had backup oil lamps in the cabins when she entered service, in the event that an electrical outage were to occur.


title: RMS Carpathia

text: The "Carpathia" had seven single-ended boilers, fitted with the Howden forced draught system, working at , which fed two independent sets of four-cylinder, four-crank, quadruple expansion engines, built by the Wallsend Slipway and Engineering Company, Ltd. of Wallsend, England with cylinders of: , , , and , with a stroke of . The engine power available allowed for an intended trial speed of .


title: RMS Carpathia

text: The "Carpathia" made her maiden voyage on 5 May 1903 from Liverpool, England, to Boston, Massachusetts in the US, and ran services between New York City and Mediterranean ports, such as Gibraltar, Algiers, Genoa, Naples, Trieste and Fiume.


title: RMS Carpathia

text: Although lacking the speed and grand luxury of express liners, and having no first-class accommodations until 1905, the "Carpathia" quickly developed a reputation as a comfortable ship, particularly in rough weather, due to her relatively wide breadth to length ratio, the use of bilge keels, and the lack of vibration typically found in powerful engines. The ship became popular with both tourists and emigrants. During the summer season, the "Carpathia" operated mainly between Liverpool and New York City, and in the winter, the Carpathia travelled from New York City to the Mediterranean Basin.


title: RMS Carpathia

text: After Cunard partnered with the Royal Hungarian Sea Navigation Company "Adria" in 1904, the "Carpathia" was designated with the duty of transporting Hungarian emigrants. As a result, the "Carpathia" was renovated in 1905, increasing its capacity from 1,700 passengers to 2,550 passengers. Mainly third-class small cabins were converted to large shared dormitory rooms while adding first-class accommodation to areas that were previously second-class. By 1912, her tonnage has grown to 13,600 and she had a capacity of 2,450 passengers, with 250 being first and second-class passengers, and 2,200 being third-class passengers. She had a crew in 1912 of about 300 members, including 6 officers. She carried 20 lifeboats.


title: RMS Carpathia

text: The "Carpathia" departed from New York City on 11 April 1912 bound for Fiume, Austria-Hungary (now Rijeka, Croatia). Among its passengers were the American painters Colin Campbell Cooper and his wife Emma, author Philip Mauro, journalists Lewis Palmer Skidmore and Carlos Fayette Hurd, with their wives Emily Vinton Skidmore and Katherine Cordell Hurd, photographer Dr. Francis H. Blackmarr, and Charles H. Marshall, whose three nieces were travelling onboard the "Titanic". Also on board were Hope Brown Chapin, honeymooning youngest daughter of the former Governor of Rhode Island, Russell Brown, Pittsburgh architect Charles M. Hutchison and his wife, Sue Eva Rule, the sister of Judge Virgil Rule of the St. Louis Court of Appeals, as well as Louis Mansfield Ogden with his wife Augusta Davies Ogden, a granddaughter of Alexander H. Rice.


title: RMS Carpathia

text: On the night of 14 April, the "Carpathia"s wireless operator, Harold Cottam, had missed previous messages from the "Titanic", as he was on the bridge at the time. After his shift ended at midnight, he continued listening to the transmitter before bed, and received messages from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, stating they had private traffic for the "Titanic". He thought he would be helpful, and at 12:11 a.m. on the night of 15 April, sent a message to the "Titanic", stating that Cape Cod had traffic for them. In reply he received the "Titanic"s distress signal, stating that they had struck an iceberg and were in need of immediate and urgent assistance.


title: RMS Carpathia

text: Cottam took the message and coordinates to the bridge, where the officers on watch were initially sceptical about the seriousness of the "Titanic"s distress call. Agitated, Cottam rushed down the ladder to the Captain's cabin and awakened Captain Arthur Henry Rostron, who immediately sprang into action and gave the order to turn the ship around, and then asked Harold Cottam if he was absolutely certain it was a distress signal from the "Titanic". Cottam said that he had indeed received a distress signal from the "Titanic", which required immediate assistance, and Cottam gave the "Titanic" position, saying that he was absolutely certain of the seriousness of the message. Whilst dressing, Rostron set a course for the "Titanic", and sent for the chief engineer and told him to "call another watch of stokers and make all possible speed to the "Titanic", as she was in trouble." Rostron later testified that the distance to the "Titanic" was , and it took the "Carpathia" three and a half hours to arrive at the "Titanic" location, by which time she had already sunk.


title: RMS Carpathia

text: Rostron ordered the ship's heating and hot water cut off in order to make as much steam as possible available for the engines, and had extra lookouts on watch to spot icebergs. Cottam, meanwhile, messaged the "Titanic" that the "Carpathia" was coming as quickly as possible and that they expected to reach their location within four hours. Cottam refrained from sending more signals after this, trying to keep the network clear for the "Titanic"s distress signals. The "Carpathia" reached the edge of the ice field by 2:45 a.m., and for the next two hours dodged icebergs as small growlers of ice ground along the hull plates. The "Carpathia" arrived at the distress call's position at 4:00 a.m., approximately an hour and a half after the "Titanic" went down, claiming more than 1,500 lives. For the next four and a half hours, the ship took on the 705 survivors of the disaster from "Titanic"s 20 lifeboats. Survivors were given blankets and coffee, and then escorted by stewards to the dining rooms. Others went on deck to survey the ocean for any sign of their loved ones. Throughout the rescue, the "Carpathia"s own passengers assisted in any way that they could, offering warm food, beverages, blankets, accommodations, and words of comfort. By 9:00 a.m., the last survivor had been picked up from the lifeboats, and Rostron gave the order to sail away from the area. was nearby and offered "Carpathia" supplies but was told to "shut up" by their wireless operators due to "Birma" not using a Marconi wireless set.


title: RMS Carpathia

text: After considering options for where to disembark the passengers, including the Azores (the destination with the least cost to the Cunard Line) and Halifax (the closest port, although along an ice-laden route), Rostron consulted with Bruce Ismay, and ultimately decided to disembark the survivors in New York City, the original destination of the RMS "Titanic". News of the disaster rapidly spread on shore, and the humble "Carpathia" became the centre of intense media attention as she steamed westward towards New York at an average speed of 14 knots. Hundreds of wireless messages were being sent from Cape Race and other shore stations addressed to Captain Rostron from relatives of "Titanic" passengers and journalists demanding details in exchange for money. Rostron ordered that no news stories would be transmitted directly to the press, deferring such responsibilities to the White Star offices as Cottam provided details to the "Titanic"s sister ship, the . On Wednesday, 17 April, the scout cruiser began escorting the "Carpathia" to New York. Cottam, by then assisted by the "Titanic"s junior wireless operator Harold Bride, transmitted the names of third-class survivors to the "Chester". Slowed by heavy thunderstorms and fog since the early morning of Tuesday 16 April, "Carpathia" finally arrived in New York on the evening of Thursday 18 April 1912 under heavy rain.


title: RMS Carpathia

text: For their rescue work, the crew of the "Carpathia" were awarded multiple medals by the survivors. Crew members were awarded bronze medals, officers silver, and Captain Rostron a silver cup and a gold medal, presented by Margaret Molly Brown. Rostron was knighted by King George V, and was later a guest of President William Howard Taft at the White House, where he was presented with a Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honour the United States Congress could confer upon an individual.


title: RMS Carpathia

text: Josip Car, from Crikvenica, present-day Croatia, was an 18-year-old waiter onboard "Carpathia". After participating in the rescue, he kept a Titanic life jacket as a souvenir and donated it in 1938 to the Maritime and History Museum of the Croatian Littoral in Rijeka. It is one of five known and confirmed original life jackets from the "Titanic" and the only one preserved and permanently displayed in Europe.


title: RMS Carpathia

text: Carpathia Seamount, one of the Fogo Seamounts southeast of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic Ocean, is named after "Carpathia" for her involvement in the "Titanic" disaster.


title: RMS Carpathia

text: During the First World War, the "Carpathia" was used to transfer Canadian and American Expeditionary Forces to Europe. At least some of her voyages were in convoy, sailing from New York through Halifax to Liverpool and Glasgow. Among her passengers during the war years was Frank Buckles, who went on to become the last surviving American veteran of the Great War. Apparently some point during her enlistment, her long-faded red funnel, custom of the Cunard Line, was painted in battle grey.


title: RMS Carpathia

text: On 15 July 1918, the "Carpathia" departed from Liverpool in a convoy bound for Boston, carrying 57 passengers (36 saloon class and 21 steerage) and 166 crew. The convoy travelled on a zig-zag course along with an escort in accordance with procedures against submarine attacks. The escort left the convoy early in the morning of 17 July, and the convoy was cut in half. The "Carpathia" continued west along with six other ships, and as the largest ship in the convoy, she assumed the role of the commodore ship. Three and a half hours later, at 9:15 a.m., while sailing in the Southwest Approaches, a torpedo was sighted approaching on her port side. The engines were thrown in full-astern and the helm was turned hard-a-starboard, but it was too late to avoid the torpedo. The "Carpathia" was torpedoed near the No. 3 hatch on the port side by the Imperial German Navy submarine , followed by a second which penetrated the engine room, killing three firemen and two trimmers, and effectively disabling her ability to escape, as the engines were rendered inoperable by the second torpedo impact. The explosion severely damaged the "Carpathia"s electrical gear, including the wireless radio apparatus, as well as two of the ship's lifeboats. As a result, Captain William Prothero, in command of the "Carpathia" since 1916, signalled the other ships in the convoy to send out wireless messages by use of flags. He then had rockets fired to attract the attention of nearby patrol boats. The remaining convoy steamed away at full speed to elude the submarine.


title: RMS Carpathia

text: As the "Carpathia" began to settle by the head and list to port, Prothero gave the order to abandon ship. All passengers and the surviving crew members boarded the 11 lifeboats as the "Carpathia" sank. There were 218 survivors of the 223 aboard. As the passengers and crew disembarked, Prothero, the chief officer, first and second officers and the gunners remained on the sinking ship, seeing to it that all the confidential books and documents were thrown overboard. The captain then signalled one of the lifeboats to come alongside, and he and the remaining crew members abandoned their ship. "U-55" surfaced and fired a third torpedo into the ship near the gunner's rooms, resulting in a massive explosion that doomed the "Carpathia". "U-55" started approaching the lifeboats when the sloop arrived on the scene and drove away the submarine with gunfire before picking up the survivors from the "Carpathia" around 1:00 p.m. The "Snowdrop" arrived back in Liverpool with the survivors on the evening of 18 July.


title: RMS Carpathia

text: The "Carpathia" sank at 11:00 a.m. at a position recorded by the "Snowdrop" as , about 1 hour and 45 minutes after the torpedo strike, and approximately west of Fastnet. At the time of her sinking, the "Carpathia" was the fifth Cunard steamship sunk in as many weeks, the others being the "Ascania", the "Ausonia", the and the "Valentia", leaving only five Cunarders afloat from the large pre-war fleet.


title: RMS Carpathia

text: On 9 September 1999, the Reuters and AP wire services reported that Argosy International Ltd., headed by Graham Jessop, son of the undersea explorer Keith Jessop, and sponsored by the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA), had discovered the RMS "Carpathia"s wreck in of water, west of Land's End. Adverse weather conditions forced his ship to abandon the position before Jessop could verify the discovery using underwater cameras. However, when he returned to the location, the wreck was determined to be the Hamburg-America Line's "Isis", sunk on 8 November 1936.


title: RMS Carpathia

text: In 2000, the American author and diver Clive Cussler announced that his organisation, NUMA, had found the true wreck of the "Carpathia" in the spring of that year, at a depth of . It was found that the "Carpathia" landed upright on the seabed. NUMA gave the approximate location of the wreck as west of Fastnet, Ireland.


title: RMS Carpathia

text: The wreck of the "Carpathia" is owned by Premier Exhibitions Inc., formerly RMS "Titanic" Inc., which plans to recover objects from the wreck.


title: Tarot card reading

text: Tarot card reading is a form of cartomancy whereby practitioners use tarot cards to purportedly gain insight into the past, present or future. They formulate a question, then draw cards to interpret them for this end. A traditional tarot deck consists of 78 cards, which can be split into two groups, the Major Arcana and Minor Arcana. French-suited playing cards can also be used; as can any card system with suits assigned to identifiable elements (e.g., air, earth, fire, water).


title: Tarot card reading

text: One of the earliest references to tarot triumphs is given c. 1450–1470 by a Dominican preacher in a sermon against dice, playing cards and 'triumphs'. References to the tarot as a social plague or indeed as exempt from the bans that affected other games, continue throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, but there are no indications that the cards were used for anything but games. As philosopher and tarot historian Michael Dummett noted, "it was only in the 1780s, when the practice of fortune-telling with regular playing cards had been well established for at least two decades, that anyone began to use the tarot pack for cartomancy."


title: Tarot card reading

text: The belief in the divinatory meaning of the cards is closely associated with a belief in their occult properties, a commonly held belief in early modern Europe propagated by prominent Protestant Christian clerics and Freemasons. One of them was Court de Gébelin (see below).


title: Tarot card reading

text: From its uptake as an instrument of divination in 18th-century France, the tarot went on to be used in hermeneutic, magical, mystical, semiotic, and psychological practices. It was used by Romani people when telling fortunes, as a Jungian psychological apparatus capable of tapping into "absolute knowledge in the unconscious", a tool for archetypal analysis, and even a tool for facilitating the Jungian process of individuation.


title: Tarot card reading

text: Many involved in occult and divinatory practices attempt to trace the tarot to ancient Egypt, divine hermetic wisdom, and the mysteries of Isis.


title: Tarot card reading

text: Possibly the first of those was Antoine Court de Gébelin, a French clergyman, who wrote that after seeing a group of women playing cards he had the idea that tarot was not merely a game of cards but was in fact of ancient Egyptian origin, of mystical Qabalistic import, and of deep divine significance. Court de Gébelin published a dissertation on the origins of the symbolism in the tarot in volume VIII of work "Le Monde primitif" in 1781. He thought the tarot represented ancient Egyptian Theology, including Isis, Osiris and Typhon. For example, he thought the card he knew as the Papesse and known in occult circles today as the High Priestess represented Isis. He also related four tarot cards to the four Christian Cardinal virtues: Temperance, Justice, Strength and Prudence. He relates The Tower to a Greek fable about avarice.


title: Tarot card reading

text: Although the ancient Egyptian language had not yet been deciphered, Court de Gébelin asserted the name "Tarot" came from the Egyptian words "Tar", "path" or "road", and the word "Ro", "Ros" or "Rog", meaning "King" or "royal", and that the tarot literally translated to the Royal Road of Life. Subsequent research by Egyptologists found nothing in the Egyptian language to support Court de Gébelin's etymologies. Despite this lack of any evidence, the belief that the tarot cards are linked to the Egyptian Book of Thoth continues to the present day.


title: Tarot card reading

text: The actual source of the occult tarot can be traced to two articles in volume eight, one written by himself, and one written by M. le C. de M.***, who has been identified as Major General Louis-Raphaël-Lucrèce de Fayolle, Comte de Mellet. This second essay is "considerably more impressive" than de Gébelin's, albeit "as full of assertions with no basis in truth", being noted to have been even more influential than Court de Gébelin's. The author makes no acknowledgement of de Gébelin and, although he agrees with all his main conclusions, he also contradicts de Gébelin over such details as the meaning of the word "Tarot" and in how the cards spread across Europe. Morever, he takes de Gébelin's speculations even further, agreeing with him about the mystical origins of the tarot in ancient Egypt, but making several additional, and influential, statements that continue to influence mass understanding of the occult tarot even to this day. He made the first statements proposing that the tarot was "The Book of Thoth" and made the first association of tarot with cartomancy. Meanwhile Court de Gébelin was the first to imply the existence of a connection between the Tarot and "Gypsies", although this connection did not become well established in the public consciousness until other French authors such as Boiteau d'Ambly and Jean-Alexandre Vaillant began in the 1850s to promote the theory that tarot cards had been brought to Europe by the Romani. In fact, there is "virtually no evidence" that Gypsies used any form of playing card for telling fortunes until the 20th century.


title: Tarot card reading

text: The first to assign divinatory meanings to the tarot cards was cartomancer Jean-Baptiste Alliette (also known as Etteilla) in 1783.


title: Tarot card reading

text: In his 1980 book, "The Game of Tarot", Michael Dummett suggested that Etteilla was attempting to supplant Court de Gébelin as the author of the occult tarot. Etteilla in fact claimed to have been involved with tarot longer than Court de Gébelin.


title: Tarot card reading

text: Mlle Marie-Anne Adelaide Lenormand outshone even Etteilla and was the first cartomancer to people in high places, through her claims to be the personal confidant of Empress Josephine, Napoleon and other notables. Lenormand used both regular playing cards, in particular the Piquet pack, as well as tarot cards likely derived from the Tarot de Marseille. Following her death in 1843, several different cartomantic decks were published in her name, including the "Grand Jeu de Mlle Lenormand", based on the standard 52-card deck, first published in 1845, and the "Petit Lenormand", a 36-card deck derived from the German game "Das Spiel der Hofnung", first published around 1850.


title: Tarot card reading

text: The concept of the cards as a mystical key was extended by Éliphas Lévi. Lévi (whose actual name was Alphonse-Louis Constant) was educated in the seminary of Saint-Sulpice, was ordained as a deacon, but never became a priest. Michael Dummett noted that it is from Lévi's book "Dogme et rituel" that the "whole of the modern occultist movement stems." Lévi's magical theory was based on a concept he called the Astral Light and according to Dummett, he claimed to be the first to:


title: Tarot card reading

text: Lévi accepted Court de Gébelin's claims that the deck had an Egyptian origin, but rejected Etteilla's interpretation and rectification of the cards in favor of a reinterpretation of the Tarot de Marseille. He called it "The Book of Hermes" and claimed that the tarot was antique, existed before Moses, and was in fact a universal key of erudition, philosophy, and magic that could unlock Hermetic and Qabalistic concepts. According to Lévi, "An imprisoned person with no other book than the Tarot, if he knew how to use it, could in a few years acquire universal knowledge, and would be able to speak on all subjects with unequaled learning and inexhaustible eloquence."


title: Tarot card reading

text: Occultists, magicians, and magi all the way down to the 21st century have cited Lévi as a defining influence. Among the first to seemingly adopt Lévi's ideas was Jean-Baptiste Pitois. Pitois wrote two books under the name Paul Christian that referenced the tarot, "L'Homme rouge des Tuileries" (1863), and later "Histoire de la magie, du monde surnaturel et de la fatalité à travers les temps et les peuples" (1870). In them, Pitois repeated and extended the mythology of the tarot and changed the names for the trumps and the suits (see table below for a list of Pitois's modifications to the trumps). Batons (wands) become Scepters, Swords become Blades, and Coins become Shekels.


title: Tarot card reading

text: However, it wasn't until the late 1880s that Lévi's vision of the occult tarot truly began to bear fruit, as his ideas on the occult began to be propounded by various French and English occultists. In France, secret societies such as the French Theosophical Society (1884) and the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Cross (1888) served as the seeds for further developments in the occult tarot in France.


title: Tarot card reading

text: The French occultist Papus was one of the most prominent members of these societies, joining the Isis lodge of the French Theosophical Society in 1887 and becoming a founding member of the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Cross the next year. Among his 260 publications are two treatises on the use of tarot cards, "Le Tarot des Bohémiens" (1889), which attempted to formalize the method of using tarot cards in ceremonial magic first proposed by Lévi in his "Clef des grands mysteries" (1861), and "Le Tarot divinatoire" (1909), which focused on simpler divinatory uses of the cards.


title: Tarot card reading

text: Another founding member of the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Cross, the Marquis Stanislas de Guaita, met the amateur artist Oswald Wirth in 1887 and subsequently sponsored a production of Lévi's intended deck. Guided entirely by de Guaita, Wirth designed the first neo-occultist cartomantic deck (and first cartomantic deck not derived from Etteilla's Egyptian deck). Released in 1889 as "Les 22 Arcanes du Tarot kabbalistique", it consisted of only the twenty-two major arcana and was revised under the title of "Le Tarot des imagers du moyen âge" in 1926. Wirth also released a book about his revised cards which contained his own theories of the occult tarot under the same title the year following.


title: Tarot card reading

text: Outside of the Kabbalistic Order, in 1888, French magus Ély Star published "Les mystères de l'horoscope" which mostly repeats Christian's modifications. Its primary contribution was the introduction of the terms 'Major Arcana' and 'Minor Arcana', and the numbering of the Crocodile (the Fool) XXII instead of 0.


title: Tarot card reading

text: The late 1880s not only saw the spread of the occult tarot in France, but also its initial adoption in the English-speaking world. In 1886, Arthur Edward Waite published "The Mysteries of Magic", a selection of Lévi's writings translated by Waite and the first significant treatment of the occult tarot to be published in England. However, it was only through the establishment of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1888 that the occult tarot was to become established as a tool in the English-speaking world.


title: Tarot card reading

text: Of the three founding members of the Golden Dawn, two, Samuel Liddell Mathers and William Wynn Westcott, published texts relating to the occult tarot prior to the founding of the order. Westcott is known to have made ink sketches of tarot trumps in or around 1886 and discussed the tarot in his treatise "Tabula Bembina, sive Mensa Isiaca", published in 1887, while Mathers had published the first British work primarily focused on the tarot in his 1888 booklet entitled "The Tarot: Its Occult Signification, Use in Fortune-Telling and Method of Play".


title: Tarot card reading

text: The tarot was also mentioned explicitly in the Cipher Manuscripts that served as the founding document of the Hermetic Order, both implicitly and in the form of a separate essay accompanying the manuscript. This essay was to serve as the basis for most of tarot interpretations by the Golden Dawn and its immediate successors, including such features as:


title: Tarot card reading

text: The Hermetic Order never released its own tarot deck for public use, preferring instead for members to create their own copies of a deck designed by Mathers with art by his wife, Moina Mathers. However, many of these innovations would make their first public appearance in two influential tarot decks designed by members of the order: the Rider–Waite–Smith deck and the Thoth deck. In addition, occultist Israel Regardie involved himself in two separate recreations of the original Golden Dawn deck, the "Golden Dawn Tarot" of 1978 with art by Robert Wang, and the "New Golden Dawn Ritual Tarot" by Chic and Sandra Cicero, released, after Regardie's death, in 1991. The central document containing the Golden Dawn's Tarot interpretations, "Book T", was first published openly, if not under that title, by Aleister Crowley in his occult periodical "The Equinox" in 1912. The volume was later republished independently in 1967.


title: Tarot card reading

text: The Rider–Waite–Smith deck, released in 1909, was the first complete cartomantic tarot deck other than those derived from Etteilla's Egyptian tarot. (Oswald Wirth's 1889 deck had only depicted the major arcana.) The deck, designed by Arthur Edward Waite, was executed by Pamela Colman Smith, a fellow Golden Dawn member, and was the first tarot deck to feature complete scenes for each of the 36 suit cards between 2 and 10 since the Sola Busca tarot of the 15th century, with designs very probably based in part on a number of photographs of them held by the British Museum. The deck followed the Golden Dawn in its choice of suit names and in swapping the order of the trumps of Justice and Strength, but essentially preserved the traditional designations of the court cards. The deck was followed by the release of "The Key to the Tarot", also by Waite, in 1910.


title: Tarot card reading

text: The Thoth deck, first released as part of Aleister Crowley's "The Book of Thoth" in 1944, represent a somewhat different evolution of the original Golden Dawn designs. The deck, executed by Lady Frieda Harris as a series of paintings between 1938 and 1942, owes much to Crowley's development of Thelema in the years following the dissolution of the Hermetic Order. While the deck follows Golden Dawn teachings with respect to the zodiacal associations of the major arcana and the associations of the minor arcana with the various astrological decans, it also:


title: Tarot card reading

text: While Crowley managed to print a partial test run of the standalone deck using seven color plates included in "The Book of Thoth", it was not until the 1960s, after Crowley and Harris's deaths, that the deck was first printed in its entirety.


title: Tarot card reading

text: Two of the earliest publications on tarot in the English language were published in the United States, including a book by Madame Camille Le Normand entitled "Fortune-Telling by Cards; or, Cartomancy Made Easy", published in 1872, and an anonymous American essay on the tarot published in "The Platonist" in 1885 entitled "The Taro". The latter essay is implied by Decker and Dummett to have been written by an individual with a connection to the occult order known as the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor. While it is not clear to what extent the Hermetic Brotherhood used tarot cards in its practices, it was to influence later occult societies such as Elbert Benjamine's Church of Light, which had tarot practices (and an accompanying deck) of its own.


title: Tarot card reading

text: Adoption of the esoteric tarot practices of the Golden Dawn in the United States was driven in part by the American occultist Paul Foster Case, whose 1920 book "An Introduction to the Study of the Tarot" made use of the Rider–Waite–Smith deck and assorted esoteric associations first adopted by the Golden Dawn. By the 1930s, however, Case had formed his own occult order, the Builders of the Adytum, and began to promote the Revised New Art Tarot, by Manly P. Hall with art by J. Augustus Knapp, as well as Case's own deck. Executed by Jessie Burns Parke, the artwork of Case's deck, the B.O.T.A. Tarot, generally resembles that of the Rider–Waite–Smith deck, but the deck also shows influences from Oswald Wirth and the original design of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn tarot. Case promoted the deck in his 1947 book "The Tarot: A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages", which also marked one of the first references to the work of Carl Jung by a tarotist.


title: Tarot card reading

text: Esoteric use of the Rider–Waite–Smith Tarot was also promoted in the works of Eden Gray, whose three books on the tarot made extensive use of the deck. Gray's books were adopted by members of the 1960s counter-culture as standard reference works on divinatory use of tarot cards, and her 1970 book "A Complete Guide to the Tarot" was the first work to use the metaphor of the "Fool's Journey" to explain the meanings of the major arcana.


title: Tarot card reading

text: The work of Eden Gray and others in the 1960s led to an explosion of popularity in tarot card reading beginning in 1969. Stuart R. Kaplan's U.S. Games Systems, which had been founded in 1968 to import copies of the Swiss 1JJ Tarot, was well positioned to take advantage of this explosion and reissued the then out-of-print Rider–Waite–Smith Tarot in 1970, which has not gone out of print since. Tarot card reading quickly became associated with New Age thought, signaled in part by the popularity of David Palladini's Rider–Waite–Smith-inspired Aquarian Tarot, first issued in 1968. Artists soon began to create their own interpretations of the tarot for artistic purposes rather than purely esoteric ones, such as the Mountain Dream Tarot of Bea Nettles, the first photographic tarot deck, released in 1975.


title: Tarot card reading

text: The 1980s and 1990s saw the rise of a new generation of tarotists, influenced by the writings of Eden Gray and the work of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell on psychological archetypes. These tarotists sought to apply tarot card reading to personal introspection and growth, and included Mary K. Greer, the author of "Tarot for Your Self: A Wookbook for the Inward Journey" (1984), and Rachel Pollack, the author of "Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom" (1980/1983). Tarot cards also began to gain popularity as a divinatory tool in countries like Japan, where hundreds of new decks have been designed in recent years. The democratization of digital publishing in the 2000s and 2010s led to a new explosion of tarot decks as artists became increasingly able to self-publish their own, with the contemporaneous empowerment of feminist, LGBTQ+ and other marginalized communities providing a ready market for such work.


title: Tarot card reading

text: Tarot is often used in conjunction with the study of the Hermetic Qabalah. In these decks all the cards are illustrated in accordance with Qabalistic principles, most being influenced by the "Rider–Waite" deck. Its images were drawn by artist Pamela Colman Smith, to the instructions of Christian mystic and occultist Arthur Edward Waite and published in 1911.


title: Tarot card reading

text: A difference from Marseilles style decks is that Waite and Smith use scenes with esoteric meanings on the suit cards. These esoteric, or divinatory meanings were derived in great part from the writings of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn group, of which Waite had been a member. The meanings and many of the illustrations showed the influence of astrology as well as Qabalistic principles.


title: Tarot card reading

text: The following is a comparison of the order and names of the Major Trumps up to and including the Rider–Waite–Smith and Crowley (Thoth) decks:


title: Tarot card reading

text: Next to the usage of tarot cards to divine for others by professional cartomancers, tarot is also used widely as a device for seeking personal guidance and spiritual growth. Practitioners often believe tarot cards can help the individual explore one's spiritual path.


title: Tarot card reading

text: People who use the tarot for personal divination may seek insight on topics ranging widely from health or economic issues to what they believe would be best for them spiritually. Thus, the way practitioners use the cards in regard to such personal inquiries is subject to a variety of personal beliefs. For example, some tarot users may believe the cards themselves are magically providing answers, while others may believe a supernatural force or a mystical energy is guiding the cards into a layout.


title: Tarot card reading

text: Alternatively, some practitioners believe tarot cards may be utilized as a psychology tool based on their archetypal imagery, an idea often attributed to Carl Jung. Jung wrote, "It also seems as if the set of pictures in the Tarot cards were distantly descended from the archetypes of transformation, a view that has been confirmed for me in a very enlightening lecture by Professor Bernoulli." During a 1933 seminar on active imagination, Jung described the symbolism he saw in the imagery:The original cards of the Tarot consist of the ordinary cards, the king, the queen, the knight, the ace, etc., only the figures are somewhat different, and besides, there are twenty-one [additional] cards upon which are symbols, or pictures of symbolical situations. For example, the symbol of the sun, or the symbol of the man hung up by the feet, or the tower struck by lightning, or the wheel of fortune, and so on. Those are sort of archetypal ideas, of a differentiated nature, which mingle with the ordinary constituents of the flow of the unconscious, and therefore it is applicable for an intuitive method that has the purpose of understanding the flow of life, possibly even predicting future events, at all events lending itself to the reading of the conditions of the present moment.


title: Tarot card reading

text: Skeptic James Randi once said that:For use as a divinatory device, the tarot deck is dealt out in various patterns and interpreted by a gifted "reader." The fact that the deck is not dealt out into the same pattern fifteen minutes later is rationalized by the occultists by claiming that in that short span of time, a person's fortune can change, too. That would seem to call for rather frequent readings if the system is to be of any use whatsoever.Tarot historian Michael Dummett similarly critiqued occultist uses throughout his various works, remarking that "the history of the esoteric use of Tarot cards is an oscillation between the two poles of vulgar fortune telling and high magic; though the fence between them may have collapsed in places, the story cannot be understood if we fail to discern the difference between the regions it demarcates." As a historian, Dummett held particular disdain for what he called "the most successful propaganda campaign ever launched", noting that "an entire false history, and false interpretation, of the Tarot pack was concocted by the occultists; and it is all but universally believed."


title: Tarot card reading

text: Some religious groups discourage divination, including tarot card reading. Leviticus 19:26 and Deuteronomy 18:9–12 have been cited as proof texts on this subject by Christian writers. Other groups may be accepting of at least some forms of tarot reading.


title: 8½

text: "" was critically acclaimed and won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Costume Design (black-and-white). It is acknowledged as an avant-garde film and a highly influential classic. It was ranked 10th on the British Film Institute's The "Sight & Sound" Greatest Films of All Time 2012 critics' poll and 4th by directors. It is listed on the Vatican's compilation of the 45 best films made before 1995, the 100th anniversary of cinema. The film ranked 7th in BBC's 2018 list of "The 100 Greatest Foreign Language Films" voted by 209 film critics from 43 countries around the world.


title: 8½

text: The film was also included on the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage's "100 films to be saved", a list of 100 films that "have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978". It is considered to be one of the greatest and most influential films of all time.


title: 8½

text: Guido Anselmi, a famous Italian film director, is suffering from "director's block". Stalled on his new science fiction film that includes thinly veiled autobiographical references, he has lost interest amidst artistic and marital difficulties. While attempting to recover from his anxieties at a luxurious spa, Guido hires a well-known critic to review his ideas for his film, but the critic blasts them. Guido has recurring visions of an Ideal Woman, which he sees as key to his story. His mistress Carla comes to visit him, but Guido puts her in a separate hotel. The film production crew relocates to Guido's hotel in an unsuccessful attempt to get him to work on the film.


title: 8½

text: Guido admits to a Cardinal that he is not happy. The Cardinal offers little insight. Guido invites his estranged wife Luisa and her friends to join him. They dance, but Guido abandons her for his production crew. Guido confesses to his wife's best friend Rosella that he wanted to make a film that was pure and honest, but he is struggling with something honest to say. Carla surprises Guido, Luisa, and Rosella outside the hotel, and Guido claims that he and Carla ended their affair years ago. Luisa and Rosella call him on the lie, and Guido slips into a fantasy world where he lords over a harem of women from his life, but a rejected showgirl starts a rebellion. The fantasy women attack Guido with harsh truths about himself and his sex life.


title: 8½

text: When Luisa sees how bitterly Guido represents her in the film, she declares that their marriage is over. Guido's Ideal Woman arrives in the form of an actress named Claudia. Guido explains that his film is about a burned-out man who finds salvation in this Ideal Woman. Claudia concludes that the protagonist is unsympathetic because he is incapable of love. Broken, Guido calls off the film, but the producer and the film's staff announce a press conference. Guido attempts to escape from the journalists and eventually imagines shooting himself in the head. Guido realizes he was attempting to solve his personal confusion by creating a film to help others, when instead he needs to accept his life for what it is. He asks Luisa for her assistance in doing so. Carla tells him that she figured out what he was trying to say: that Guido can't do without the people in his life. The men and women hold hands and run around the circle, Guido and Luisa joining them last.


title: 8½

text: ' is about the struggles involved in the creative process, both technical and personal, and the problems artists face when expected to deliver something personal and profound with intense public scrutiny, on a constricted schedule, while simultaneously having to deal with their own personal relationships. It is, in a larger sense, about finding true personal happiness within a difficult, fragmented life. Like several Italian films of the period (most evident in the films of Fellini's contemporary, Michelangelo Antonioni), ' also is about the alienating effects of modernization.


title: 8½

text: The title is in keeping with Fellini's self-reflexive theme: the making of his eighth-and-a-half film. His previous six feature films included "Lo sceicco bianco" (1952), "I Vitelloni" (1953), "La Strada" (1954), "Il bidone" (1955), "Le notti di Cabiria" (1957), and "La Dolce Vita" (1960). With Alberto Lattuada, he co-directed "Luci del varietà" ("Variety Lights") (1950). His two short segments included "Un'Agenzia Matrimoniale" ("A Marriage Agency") in the omnibus film "L'amore in città" ("Love in the City") (1953) and "Le Tentazioni del Dottor Antonio" from the omnibus film "Boccaccio '70" (1962). The working title for "" was "La bella confusione" ("The Beautiful Confusion") proposed by co-screenwriter, Ennio Flaiano, but Fellini then "had the simpler idea (which proved entirely wrong) to call it "Comedy"".


title: 8½

text: According to Italian writer Alberto Arbasino, Fellini's film used similar artistic procedures and had parallels with Musil's novel "The Man Without Qualities" (1930).


title: 8½

text: The film is unusual in that it is a film about making a film, and the film that is being made is the film that the audience is viewing. An example is the dream sequence of "Guido's Harem" where Guido is bathed and carried in white linen by all the women from the film, only to have the women protest for being sent to live upstairs in the house when they turn 30, and "Jacquilene Bonbon" does her last dance. The Guido's Harem scene is immediately followed by the "Screen Test" depicting the same actors in a theater, each taking the stage for a screen test, being chosen to act for the very scene the audience just watched. This mirror of mirrors is further emphasized at the end where the director Guido sits at the table of the press conference, where the entire table is a mirror reflecting the director in it.


title: 8½

text: In an October 1960 letter to his colleague Brunello Rondi, Fellini first outlined his film ideas about a man suffering from a creative block: "Well then—a guy (a writer? any kind of professional man? a theatrical producer?) has to interrupt the usual rhythm of his life for two weeks because of a not-too-serious disease. It's a warning bell: something is blocking up his system." Unclear about the script, its title, and his protagonist's profession, he scouted locations throughout Italy "looking for the film" in the hope of resolving his confusion. Flaiano suggested "La bella confusione" (literally "The Beautiful Confusion") as the film's title. Under pressure from his producers, Fellini finally settled on ", a self-referential title referring principally (but not exclusively) to the number of films he had directed up to that time.


title: 8½

text: Giving the order to start production in spring 1962, Fellini signed deals with his producer Rizzoli, fixed dates, had sets constructed, cast Mastroianni, Anouk Aimée, and Sandra Milo in lead roles, and did screen tests at the Scalera Studios in Rome. He hired cinematographer Gianni Di Venanzo, among key personnel. But apart from naming his hero Guido Anselmi, he still couldn't decide what his character did for a living. The crisis came to a head in April when, sitting in his Cinecittà office, he began a letter to Rizzoli confessing he had "lost his film" and had to abandon the project. Interrupted by the chief machinist requesting he celebrate the launch of ", Fellini put aside the letter and went on the set. Raising a toast to the crew, he "felt overwhelmed by shame… I was in a no exit situation. I was a director who wanted to make a film he no longer remembers. And lo and behold, at that very moment everything fell into place. I got straight to the heart of the film. I would narrate everything that had been happening to me. I would make a film telling the story of a director who no longer knows what film he wanted to make".


title: 8½

text: When shooting began on 9 May 1962, Eugene Walter recalled Fellini taking "a little piece of brown paper tape" and sticking it near the viewfinder of the camera. Written on it was "Ricordati che è un film comico" ("Remember that this is a comic film"). Perplexed by the seemingly chaotic, incessant improvisation on the set, Deena Boyer, the director's American press officer at the time, asked for a rationale. Fellini told her that he hoped to convey the three levels "on which our minds live: the past, the present, and the conditional - the realm of fantasy".


title: 8½

text: ' was filmed in the spherical cinematographic process, using 35-millimeter film, and exhibited with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1. As with most Italian films of this period, the sound was entirely dubbed in afterwards; following a technique dear to Fellini, many lines of the dialogue were written only during post production, while the actors on the set mouthed random lines. "Otto e mezzo" marks the first time that actress Claudia Cardinale was allowed to dub her own dialogue; previously her voice was thought to be too throaty and, coupled with her Tunisian accent, was considered undesirable. This is Fellini's last black-and-white film.


title: 8½

text: In September 1962, Fellini shot the end of the film as initially written: Guido and his wife sit together in the restaurant car of a train bound for Rome. Lost in thought, Guido looks up to see all the characters of his film smiling ambiguously at him as the train enters a tunnel. Fellini then shot an alternative ending set around the spaceship on the beach at dusk but with the intention of using the scenes as a trailer for promotional purposes only. In the 2002 documentary "", co-scriptwriter Tullio Pinelli explains how he warned Fellini to abandon the train sequence with its implicit theme of suicide for an upbeat ending. Fellini accepted the advice, using the alternative beach sequence as a more harmonious and exuberant finale.


title: 8½

text: After shooting wrapped on 14 October, Nino Rota composed various circus marches and fanfares that would later become signature tunes of the maestro's cinema.


title: 8½

text: First released in Italy on 14 February 1963, "Otto e mezzo" received universal acclaim, with reviewers hailing Fellini as "a genius possessed of a magic touch, a prodigious style". Italian novelist and critic Alberto Moravia described the film's protagonist, Guido Anselmi, as "obsessed by eroticism, a sadist, a masochist, a self-mythologizer, an adulterer, a clown, a liar and a cheat. He's afraid of life and wants to return to his mother's womb ... In some respects, he resembles Leopold Bloom, the hero of James Joyce's "Ulysses", and we have the impression that Fellini has read and contemplated this book. The film is introverted, a sort of private monologue interspersed with glimpses of reality ... Fellini's dreams are always surprising and, in a figurative sense, original, but his memories are pervaded by a deeper, more delicate sentiment. This is why the two episodes concerning the hero's childhood at the old country house in Romagna and his meeting with the woman on the beach in Rimini are the best of the film, and among the best of all Fellini's works to date".


title: 8½

text: Reviewing for "Corriere della Sera", Giovanni Grazzini underlined that "the beauty of the film lies in its 'confusion'... a mixture of error and truth, reality and dream, stylistic and human values, and in the complete harmony between Fellini's cinematographic language and Guido's rambling imagination. It is impossible to distinguish Fellini from his fictional director and so Fellini's faults coincide with Guido's spiritual doubts. The osmosis between art and life is amazing. It will be difficult to repeat this achievement. Fellini's genius shines in everything here, as it has rarely shone in the movies. There isn't a set, a character or a situation that doesn't have a precise meaning on the great stage that is """. Mario Verdone of "Bianco e Nero" insisted the film was "like a brilliant improvisation ... The film became the most difficult feat the director ever tried to pull off. It is like a series of acrobats [sic] that a tightrope walker tries to execute high above the crowd, ... always on the verge of falling and being smashed on the ground. But at just the right moment, the acrobat knows how to perform the right somersault: with a push he straightens up, saves himself and wins".


title: 8½

text: ' screened at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival in April to "almost universal acclaim" and was Italy's official entry in the later 3rd Moscow International Film Festival where it won the Grand Prize. French film director François Truffaut wrote: "Fellini's film is complete, simple, beautiful, honest, like the one Guido wants to make in '". "Premier Plan" critics André Bouissy and Raymond Borde argued that the film "has the importance, magnitude, and technical mastery of "Citizen Kane". It has aged twenty years of the avant-garde in one fell swoop because it both integrates and surpasses all the discoveries of experimental cinema". Pierre Kast of "Les Cahiers du cinéma" explained that "my admiration for Fellini is not without limits. For instance, I did not enjoy "La Strada" but I did "I Vitelloni". But I think we must all admit that "", leaving aside for the moment all prejudice and reserve, is prodigious. Fantastic liberality, a total absence of precaution and hypocrisy, absolute dispassionate sincerity, artistic and financial courage these are the characteristics of this incredible undertaking". The film ranked 10th on Cahiers du Cinéma's Top 10 Films of the Year List in 1963.


title: 8½

text: Released in the United States on 25 June 1963 by Joseph E. Levine, who had bought the rights sight unseen, the film was screened at the Festival Theatre in New York City in the presence of Fellini and Marcello Mastroianni. The acclaim was unanimous with the exception of reviews by Judith Crist, Pauline Kael, and John Simon. Crist "didn't think the film touched the heart or moved the spirit". Kael derided the film as a "structural disaster" while Simon considered it "a disheartening fiasco". "Newsweek" defended the film as "beyond doubt, a work of art of the first magnitude". Bosley Crowther praised it in "The New York Times" as "a piece of entertainment that will really make you sit up straight and think, a movie endowed with the challenge of a fascinating intellectual game ... If Mr. Fellini has not produced another masterpieceanother all-powerful exposure of Italy's ironic sweet lifehe has made a stimulating contemplation of what might be called, with equal irony, a sweet guy". Archer Winsten of the "New York Post" interpreted the film as "a kind of review and summary of Fellini's picture-making" but doubted that it would appeal as directly to the American public as "La Dolce Vita" had three years earlier: "This is a subtler, more imaginative, less sensational piece of work. There will be more people here who consider it confused and confusing. And when they do understand what it is aboutthe simultaneous creation of a work of art, a philosophy of living together in happiness, and the imposition of each upon the other, they will not be as pleased as if they had attended the exposition of an international scandal". Audiences, however, loved it to such an extent that a company attempted to obtain the rights to mass-produce Guido Anselmi's black director's hat.


title: 8½

text: Fellini biographer Hollis Alpert noted that in the months following its release, critical commentary on ' proliferated as the film "became an intellectual cud to chew on". Philosopher and social critic Dwight Macdonald, for example, insisted it was "the most brilliant, varied, and entertaining movie since "Citizen Kane"". In 1987, a group of thirty European intellectuals and filmmakers voted "Otto e mezzo" the most important European film ever made. In 1993, "Chicago Sun-Times" film reviewer Roger Ebert wrote that "despite the efforts of several other filmmakers to make their own versions of the same story, it remains the definitive film about director's block". "8½" was voted the best foreign (i.e. non-Swedish) sound film with 21 votes in a 1964 poll of 50 Swedish film professionals organized by Swedish film magazine '. "The Village Voice" ranked the film at number 112 in its Top 250 "Best Films of the Century" list in 1999, based on a poll of critics. "Entertainment Weekly" voted it at No. 36 on their list of "100 Greatest Movies of All Time". In 2000, Ebert added the film to his "Great Movies" list, praising the memorable performances, psychological depths of the themes, the striking visuals and inventive camera work, describing ' as "the best film ever made about filmmaking." ' is a fixture on the British Film Institute's "Sight & Sound" critics' and directors' polls of the top 10 films ever made. The film ranked 4th and 5th on critics' poll in 1972 and 1982 respectively. It ranked 2nd on the magazine's 1992 and 2002 "Directors' Top Ten Poll" and 8th on the 2002 "Critics' Top Ten Poll". It was slightly lower in the 2012 directors' poll, 4th and 10th on the 2012 critics' poll. The film was included in "Time"s All-Time 100 best movies list in 2005. The film was voted at No. 46 on the list of "100 Greatest Films" by the prominent French magazine "Cahiers du cinéma" in 2008. In 2010, the film was ranked #62 in "Empire" magazine's "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema". Director Martin Scorsese listed it as one of his favourite films. It was also ranked number 1 when the asked 279 Polish film professionals (filmmakers, critics, and professors) to vote for the best films in 2015.


title: 8½

text: On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, "8 1/2" has an approval rating of 98% based on 55 reviews, with an average score of 8.50/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Inventive, thought-provoking, and funny, 8 1/2 represents the arguable peak of Federico Fellini's many towering feats of cinema." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 91 out of 100 based on 23 critic's reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: 8½

text: ' won two Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Costume Design (black-and-white) while garnering three other nominations for Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Art Direction (black-and-white). The New York Film Critics Circle also named ' best foreign language film in 1964. The Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists awarded the film all seven prizes for director, producer, original story, screenplay, music, cinematography, and best supporting actress (Sandra Milo). It also garnered nominations for Best Actor, Best Costume Design, and Best Production Design.


title: 8½

text: At the Saint Vincent Film Festival, it was awarded Grand Prize over Luchino Visconti's "Il gattopardo" ("The Leopard"). The film screened in April at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival to "almost universal acclaim but no prize was awarded because it was shown outside the competition. Cannes rules demanded exclusivity in competition entries, and ' was already earmarked as Italy's official entry in the later Moscow festival". Presented on 18 July 1963 to an audience of 8,000 in the Kremlin's conference hall, ' won the prestigious Grand Prize at the 3rd Moscow International Film Festival to acclaim that, according to Fellini biographer Tullio Kezich, worried the Soviet festival authorities: the applause was "a cry for freedom". Jury members included Stanley Kramer, Jean Marais, Satyajit Ray, and screenwriter Sergio Amidei. The film was nominated for a BAFTA Award in Best Film from any Source category in 1964. It won the Best European Film Award at Bodil Awards in 1964. The film also won National Board of Review Award for Best Foreign Language Film.


title: 8½

text: Later in the year of the film's 1963 release, a group of young Italian writers founded Gruppo '63, a literary collective of the neoavanguardia composed of novelists, reviewers, critics, and poets inspired by "" and Umberto Eco's seminal essay, "Opera aperta" ("Open Work").


title: 8½

text: "Imitations of "" pile up by directors all over the world", wrote Fellini biographer Tullio Kezich. The following is Kezich's short-list of the films it has inspired: "Mickey One" (Arthur Penn, 1965), "Alex in Wonderland" (Paul Mazursky, 1970), "Beware of a Holy Whore" (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1971), "La Nuit américaine ("Day for Night")" (François Truffaut, 1974), "All That Jazz" (Bob Fosse, 1979), "Stardust Memories" (Woody Allen, 1980), "Sogni d'oro" (Nanni Moretti, 1981), "Planet Parade" (Vadim Abdrashitov, 1984), "La Pelicula del rey" (Carlos Sorín, 1986), 1993), "Living in Oblivion" (Tom DiCillo, 1995), "Women" (Peter Greenaway, 1999) and' "$" (Grigori Konstantinopolsky, 1999).


title: 8½

text: The Tony-winning 1982 Broadway musical, "Nine" (score by Maury Yeston, book by Arthur Kopit) is based on the film, underscoring Guido's obsession with women by making him the only male character. The original production, directed by Tommy Tune, starred Raúl Juliá as Guido, Anita Morris as Carla, Liliane Montevecchi as Liliane LaFleur, Guido's producer and Karen Akers as Luisa. A 2003 Broadway revival starred Antonio Banderas, Jane Krakowski, Mary Stuart Masterson and Chita Rivera. It was made into a film in 2009, directed by Rob Marshall and starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Guido alongside Nicole Kidman, Marion Cotillard, Judi Dench, Kate Hudson, Penélope Cruz and Sophia Loren.


title: Tar

text: Tar is a dark brown or black viscous liquid of hydrocarbons and free carbon, obtained from a wide variety of organic materials through destructive distillation. Tar can be produced from coal, wood, petroleum, or peat.


title: Tar

text: Mineral products resembling tar can be produced from fossil hydrocarbons, such as petroleum. Coal tar is produced from coal as a byproduct of coke production.


title: Tar

text: "Tar" and "pitch" can be used interchangeably; asphalt (naturally occurring pitch) may also be called either "mineral tar" or "mineral pitch". There is a tendency to use "tar" for more liquid substances and "pitch" for more solid (viscoelastic) substances. Both "tar" and "pitch" are applied to viscous forms of asphalt, such as the asphalt found in naturally occurring tar pits (e.g., the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles). "Rangoon tar", also known as "Burmese oil" or "Burmese naphtha", is also a form of petroleum. Oil sands, almost exclusively produced in Alberta, Canada, are colloquially referred to as "tar sands" but are in fact composed of asphalt, also called bitumen.


title: Tar

text: For at least 600 years, wood tar has been used as a water repellent coating for boats, ships, and roofs. In Scandinavia, it was produced as a cash crop. "Peasant Tar" might be named for the district of its production.


title: Tar

text: Wood tar is still used as an additive in the flavoring of candy, alcohol, and other foods. Wood tar is microbicidal. Producing tar from wood was known in ancient Greece and has probably been used in Scandinavia since the Iron Age. Production and trade in pine-derived tar was a major contributor in the economies of Northern Europe and Colonial America. Its main use was in preserving wooden sailing vessels against rot. For centuries, dating back at least to the 14th century, tar was among Sweden's most important exports. Sweden exported 13,000 barrels of tar in 1615 and 227,000 barrels in the peak year of 1863. The largest user was the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom. Demand for tar declined with the advent of iron and steel ships. Production nearly stopped in the early 20th century, when other chemicals replaced tar, and wooden ships were replaced by steel ships. Traditional wooden boats are still sometimes tarred.


title: Tar

text: The heating (dry distilling) of pine wood causes tar and pitch to drip away from the wood and leave behind charcoal. Birch bark is used to make particularly fine tar, known as "Russian oil", suitable for leather protection. The by-products of wood tar are turpentine and charcoal. When deciduous tree woods are subjected to destructive distillation, the products are methanol (wood alcohol) and charcoal.


title: Tar

text: Tar kilns (, , , ) are dry distillation ovens, historically used in Scandinavia for producing tar from wood. They were built close to the forest, from limestone or from more primitive holes in the ground. The bottom is sloped into an outlet hole to allow the tar to pour out. The wood is split into dimensions of a finger, stacked densely, and finally covered tight with earth and moss. If oxygen can enter, the wood might catch fire, and the production would be ruined. On top of this, a fire is stacked and lit. After a few hours, the tar starts to pour out and continues to do so for a few days.


title: Tar

text: Tar was used as seal for roofing shingles and tar paper and to seal the hulls of ships and boats. For millennia, wood tar was used to waterproof sails and boats, but today, sails made from inherently waterproof synthetic substances have reduced the demand for tar. Wood tar is still used to seal traditional wooden boats and the roofs of historic, shingle-roofed churches, as well as painting exterior walls of log buildings. Tar is also a general disinfectant. Pine tar oil, or wood tar oil, is used for the surface treatment of wooden shingle roofs, boats, buckets, and tubs and in the medicine, soap, and rubber industries. Pine tar has good penetration on the rough wood. An old wood tar oil recipe for the treatment of wood is one-third each genuine wood tar, balsam turpentine, and boiled or raw linseed oil or Chinese tung oil.


title: Tar

text: In Finland, wood tar was once considered a panacea reputed to heal "even those cut in twain through their midriff". A Finnish proverb states that "if sauna, vodka and tar won't help, the disease is fatal." Wood tar is used in traditional Finnish medicine because of its microbicidal properties.


title: Tar

text: Mixing tar with linseed oil varnish produces tar paint. Tar paint has a translucent brownish hue and can be used to saturate and tone wood and protect it from weather. Tar paint can also be toned with various pigments, producing translucent colors and preserving the wood texture.


title: Tar

text: Tar was once used for public humiliation, known as tarring and feathering. By pouring hot wood tar onto somebody's bare skin and waiting for it to cool, they would remain stuck in one position. From there, people would attach feathers to the tar, which would remain stuck on the tarred person for the duration of the punishment. That person would then become a public example for the rest of the day.


title: Tar

text: Tar was used in 9th-century Baghdad, which had streets paved with tar, derived from petroleum that became accessible from natural fields in the region.


title: Tar

text: Coal tar was formerly one of the products of gasworks. Tar made from coal or petroleum is considered toxic and carcinogenic because of its high benzene content, though coal tar in low concentrations is used as a topical medicine. Coal and petroleum tar has a pungent odour.


title: Burn After Reading

text: Burn After Reading is a 2008 black comedy spy film written, produced, edited and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. It follows a recently jobless CIA analyst, Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) whose misplaced memoirs are found by a pair of dimwitted gym employees (Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt). When they mistake the memoirs for classified government documents, they undergo a series of misadventures in an attempt to profit from their find. The film also stars George Clooney as a womanizing U.S. Marshal; Tilda Swinton as Katie Cox, the wife of Osbourne Cox; Richard Jenkins as the gym manager; and J. K. Simmons as a CIA supervisor.


title: Burn After Reading

text: The film premiered on August 27, 2008, at the Venice Film Festival. It was released in the United States on September 12, 2008, and in the United Kingdom on October 17, 2008. It performed well at the box office, grossing over $163 million from its $37 million budget. Critical response was mostly positive, and the film received nominations at both the Golden Globes and British Academy Film Awards.


title: Burn After Reading

text: Faced with a demotion due to a drinking problem, Osbourne Cox angrily quits his job as a CIA analyst and decides to write a memoir. When his pediatrician wife Katie finds out, she sees it as an opportunity to file for divorce and to continue an affair with Harry Pfarrer, a married U.S. Marshal with paranoid tendencies. At the instruction of her lawyer, Katie delivers a copy of her husband's digital financial records and other files, unknowingly including the draft of Ozzie's memoir. The lawyer's assistant copies the files onto a CD, which she accidentally leaves on the locker room floor of Hardbodies, a local gym. The disc falls into the hands of personal trainer Chad Feldheimer and his coworker Linda Litzke, who mistakenly believe it contains sensitive government information.


title: Burn After Reading

text: Chad and Linda devise a plan to return the disc to Osbourne for a reward; Linda is eager to raise money for cosmetic surgery. However, their efforts only enrage him. Chad and Linda try to sell the disc to the Russian embassy, meeting with an official who is actually a spy for the CIA. Osbourne's erratic behavior prompts Katie to change the locks on their house and to invite Harry to move in. Harry is a womanizer and routinely dates women he meets online; he starts seeing Linda after meeting her on a dating site.


title: Burn After Reading

text: Having promised the Russians more files, Linda persuades Chad to sneak into the Osbourne house to steal files from Osbourne's computer. Chad is discovered by Harry, who shoots him dead. Harry searches the body for clues, but finds an empty wallet and missing suit tags; he surmises that Chad was working for the CIA. At the CIA headquarters, Osbourne's former superior and a director learn that information from Osbourne has been given to the Russian embassy. They are perplexed because the information is of no importance and the perpetrators' motive is unknown. The director orders that Chad's death be covered up.


title: Burn After Reading

text: Harry realizes that he is being tailed by a divorce lawyer hired by his wife. Depressed, Harry meets with Linda, who is distressed over Chad's disappearance. Harry agrees to help find him, unaware that Chad is the man he killed. Linda returns to the embassy, believing that the Russians have abducted Chad, but they deny this. After they inform her the contents of the CD she has given them are worthless, she convinces the manager of Hardbodies, Ted (who has unrequited feelings for Linda), to help her by sneaking into the Osbourne household to gather more files.


title: Burn After Reading

text: Harry and Linda meet in a park, where Linda reveals the address where Chad went before he disappeared. Harry realizes that Chad is the man he shot and flees, convinced Linda is a spy. When Osbourne breaks into Katie's house to retrieve personal belongings, he finds Ted in the basement; Osbourne shoots him, chases him into the street, and kills him with a hatchet.


title: Burn After Reading

text: At the CIA headquarters, Osbourne's former superior informs the director of the events. A surveilling CIA officer who saw Osbourne's attack shot him, leaving him in a coma. Harry has been detained while trying to flee to Venezuela, a country with no extradition treaty with the U.S.; the director orders to let Harry continue to Venezuela rather than deal with the consequences of bringing him into custody. Linda has been captured but has agreed to keep quiet if they will pay for her plastic surgery. The director, bewildered, approves the payment and closes the file.


title: Burn After Reading

text: Working Title Films produced the film for Focus Features, which also has worldwide distribution rights. "Burn After Reading" was the first Coen brothers film not to use Roger Deakins as cinematographer since "Miller's Crossing". Emmanuel Lubezki, four-time Academy Award-nominated cinematographer of "Sleepy Hollow" and "Children of Men", took over for Deakins, who had already committed to shooting Sam Mendes' "Revolutionary Road". Mary Zophres served as costume designer, marking her eighth consecutive movie with the Coen brothers. Carter Burwell, a composer who worked with the Coens in 11 previous films, created the score. Early in the production, Burwell and the Coens decided that the score should be emphatically percussive to match the deluded self-importance of the characters, and they noted the all-drum score for the political thriller "Seven Days in May." Joel Coen wanted the score to be "big and bombastic... important sounding but absolutely meaningless." Burwell wrote that a percussive score would help "avoid any emotional comment" and "would lend an air of sobriety, gravity, and bombast to the general silliness". The "Burn" score ultimately made frequent use of Japanese Taiko drums.


title: Burn After Reading

text: "Burn After Reading" was the first original screenplay penned by Joel and Ethan Coen since their 2001 film, "The Man Who Wasn't There". Ethan Coen compared "Burn After Reading" to the Allen Drury political novel "Advise and Consent" and called it "our version of a Tony Scott/Jason Bourne kind of movie, without the explosions." Joel Coen said that they intended to create a spy film because "we hadn't done one before", but feels that the final result was more of a character-driven film than a spy story. Joel also said that "Burn After Reading" was not meant to be a comment or satire on Washington.


title: Burn After Reading

text: Parts of the "Burn" screenplay were written while the Coens were also writing their adaptation of "No Country for Old Men". The Coens created characters with actors George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich and Richard Jenkins in mind for the parts, and the script derived from the brothers' desire to include them in a "fun story." Ethan Coen said that Pitt's character was partially inspired by a botched hair-coloring job from a commercial that Pitt had made. Tilda Swinton, who was cast later than were the other actors, was the only major actor whose character was not written specifically for her. The Coens struggled to develop a common filming schedule to accommodate the A-list cast.


title: Burn After Reading

text: "Production Weekly", an online entertainment-industry magazine, falsely reported in October 2006 that "Burn After Reading" was a loose adaptation of "Burn Before Reading: Presidents, CIA Directors, and Secret Intelligence", a memoir by former U.S. Director of Central Intelligence Stansfield Turner. The Coen brothers script had nothing to do with the Turner book; nevertheless, the rumor was not clarified until a "Los Angeles Times" article more than one year later.


title: Burn After Reading

text: Principal photography took place around Brooklyn Heights, as the Coens wanted to stay in New York City to be with their families. Other scenes were filmed in Paramus, New Jersey, Westchester County, New York and Washington, D.C., particularly in the Georgetown neighborhood. Filming began on August 27, 2007, and was completed on October 30, 2007. John Malkovich, appearing in his first Coen brothers film, said of the shooting, "The Coens are very delightful: smart, funny, very specific about what they want but not overly controlling, as some people can be."


title: Burn After Reading

text: The Coen brothers said idiocy was a major central theme of "Burn After Reading"; Joel said he and his brother have "a long history of writing parts for idiotic characters" and described Clooney and Pitt's characters as "dueling idiots." "Burn After Reading" is the third of four Coen brothers films with Clooney ("O Brother, Where Art Thou?", "Intolerable Cruelty" and, later, "Hail, Caesar!"), who acknowledged that he usually plays a fool in their movies: "I've done three films with them and they call it my trilogy of idiots." Joel said after the last scene was shot, "George said: 'OK, I've played my last idiot!' So I guess he won't be working with us again."


title: Burn After Reading

text: Pitt, who plays a particularly unintelligent character, said of his role, "After reading the part, which they said was hand-written for myself, I was not sure if I should be flattered or insulted." Pitt also said when he was shown the script, he told the Coens he did not know how to play the part because the character was such an idiot: "There was a pause, and then Joel goes...'You'll be fine'."


title: Burn After Reading

text: During a fall movie preview, "Entertainment Weekly" wrote that Malkovich "easily racks up the most laughs" among the cast as the foul-mouthed and short-tempered ex-CIA man. The first scene Malkovich performed was a phone call in which he shouts several obscenities at Pitt and McDormand. But Malkovich could not be on the sound stage for the call because he was rehearsing a play, so he called in the lines from his apartment in Paris. Regarding the scene, Malkovich said, "It was really late at night and I was screaming at the top of my lungs. God knows what the neighbors thought." Swinton plays Malkovich's wife who engages in an affair with Clooney, although the two characters do not get along well. Clooney's and Swinton's characters also had a poor relationship in their previous film together, "Michael Clayton", prompting Clooney to say to Swinton at the end of a shoot, "Well, maybe one day we'll get to make a film together when we say one nice thing to each other." Swinton said of the dynamic, "I'm very happy to shout at him on screen. It's great fun."


title: Burn After Reading

text: Swinton described "Burn After Reading" as "a kind of monster caper movie" and said of the characters, "All of us are monsters – like, true monsters. It's ridiculous." She also said, "I think there is something random at the heart of this one. On the one hand, it really is bleak and scary. On the other, it is really funny. ... It's the whatever-ness of it. You feel that at any minute of any day in any town, this could happen." Malkovich said of the characters, "No one in this film is very good. They're either slightly emotional or mentally defective. Quirky, self-aggrandizing, scheming." Pitt said the cast did little ad-libbing because the script was so tightly written and wove so many overlapping stories together. Veteran actor Richard Jenkins said the Coen brothers asked him if he could lose weight for his role as the gym manager, to which Jenkins jokingly replied, "I'm a 60-year-old man, not Brad Pitt. My body isn't going to change."


title: Burn After Reading

text: Joel Coen said the sex machine built by Clooney's character was inspired by a machine he once saw a key grip build, and by another machine he saw in the Museum of Sex in New York City.


title: Burn After Reading

text: In its opening weekend, the film grossed $19,128,001 in 2,651 theaters in the United States and Canada, ranking number one at the box office. As of July 2009, it has grossed $60,355,347 in the United States and Canada and $103,364,722 overseas adding up to $163,720,069 worldwide gross.