title: Don Bradman

text: Commenting on Australia's victory, the team's vice-captain Vic Richardson said, "...we could have played any team without Bradman, but we could not have played the blind school without Clarrie Grimmett". A modest Bradman can be heard in a 1930 recording saying, "I have always endeavoured to do my best for the side, and the few centuries that have come my way have been achieved in the hope of winning matches. My one idea when going into bat was to make runs for Australia."


title: Don Bradman

text: In 1930–31, against the first West Indian side to visit Australia, Bradman's scoring was more sedate than in England—although he did make 223 in 297 minutes in the Third Test at Brisbane and 152 in 154 minutes in the following Test at Melbourne. However, he scored quickly in a very successful sequence of innings against South Africa in the Australian summer of 1931–32. For NSW against the tourists, he made 30, 135 and 219. In the Test matches, he scored , , 2 and ; his 299 not out in the Fourth Test, at Adelaide, set a new record for the highest score in a Test in Australia. Australia won nine of the ten Tests played over the two series.


title: Don Bradman

text: At this point, Bradman had played fifteen Test matches since the beginning of 1930, scoring 2,227 runs at an average of 131. He had played eighteen innings, scoring ten centuries, six of which had extended beyond 200. His overall scoring rate was 42 runs per hour, with 856 (or 38.5% of his tally) scored in boundaries. Significantly, he had not hit a six, which typified Bradman's attitude: if he hit the ball along the ground, then it could not be caught. During this phase of his career, his youth and natural fitness allowed him to adopt a "machine-like" approach to batting. The South African fast bowler Sandy Bell described bowling to him as, "heart-breaking ... with his sort of cynical grin, which rather reminds one of the Sphinx ... he never seems to perspire".


title: Don Bradman

text: Between these two seasons, Bradman seriously contemplated playing professional cricket in England with the Lancashire League club Accrington, a move that, according to the rules of the day, would have ended his Test career. A consortium of three Sydney businesses offered an alternative. They devised a two-year contract whereby Bradman wrote for Associated Newspapers, broadcast on Radio 2UE and promoted the menswear retailing chain FJ Palmer and Son. However, the contract increased Bradman's dependence on his public profile, making it more difficult to maintain the privacy that he ardently desired.


title: Don Bradman

text: Bradman's chaotic wedding to Jessie Menzies in April 1932 epitomised these new and unwelcome intrusions into his private life. The church "was under siege all throughout the day... uninvited guests stood on chairs and pews to get a better view"; police erected barriers that were broken down and many of those invited could not get a seat. Just weeks later, Bradman joined a private team organised by Arthur Mailey to tour the United States and Canada. He travelled with his wife, and the couple treated the trip as a honeymoon. Playing 51 games in 75 days, Bradman scored 3,779 runs at 102.1, with eighteen centuries. Although the standard of play was not high, the effects of the amount of cricket Bradman had played in the three previous years, together with the strains of his celebrity status, began to show on his return home.


title: Don Bradman

text: Within the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), which administered English cricket at the time, few voices were more influential than "Plum" Warner's, who, when considering England's response to Bradman, wrote that it "must evolve a new type of bowler and develop fresh ideas and strange tactics to curb his almost uncanny skill". To that end, Warner orchestrated the appointment of Douglas Jardine as England captain in 1931, as a prelude to Jardine leading the 1932–33 tour to Australia, with Warner as team manager. Remembering that Bradman had struggled against bouncers during his 232 at The Oval in 1930, Jardine decided to combine traditional leg theory with short-pitched bowling to combat Bradman. He settled on the Nottinghamshire fast bowlers Harold Larwood and Bill Voce as the spearheads for his tactics. In support, the England selectors chose another three pacemen for the squad. The unusually high number of fast bowlers caused a lot of comment in both countries and roused Bradman's own suspicions.


title: Don Bradman

text: Bradman had other problems to deal with at this time; among these were bouts of illness from an undiagnosed malaise which had begun during the tour of North America, and that the Australian Board of Control had initially refused permission for him to write a column for the Sydney "Sun" newspaper. Bradman, who had signed a two-year contract with the "Sun", threatened to withdraw from cricket to honour his contract when the board denied him permission to write; eventually, the paper released Bradman from the contract, in a victory for the board. In three first-class games against England before the Tests, Bradman averaged just 17.16 in six innings. Jardine decided to give the new tactics a trial in only one game, a fixture against an Australian XI at Melbourne. In this match, Bradman faced the leg theory and later warned local administrators that trouble was brewing if it continued. He withdrew from the First Test at the SCG amid rumours that he had suffered a nervous breakdown. Despite his absence, England employed what were already becoming known as the Bodyline tactics against the Australian batsmen and won an ill-tempered match.


title: Don Bradman

text: The public clamoured for the return of Bradman to defeat Bodyline: "he was the batsman who could conquer this cankerous bowling... 'Bradmania', amounting almost to religious fervour, demanded his return". Recovered from his indisposition, Bradman returned to the side in Kippax's position. A world record crowd of 63,993 at the MCG saw Bradman come to the crease on the first day of the Second Test with the score at 2/67. A standing ovation ensued that delayed play for several minutes. Bradman anticipated receiving a bouncer as his first ball and, as the bowler delivered, he moved across his stumps to play the hook shot. The ball failed to rise and Bradman dragged it onto his stumps; the first-ball duck was his first in a Test. The crowd fell into stunned silence as he walked off. However, Australia took a first innings lead in the match, and another record crowd on 2 January 1933 watched Bradman hit a counter-attacking second innings century. His unbeaten 103 (from 146 balls) in a team total of 191 helped set England a target of 251 to win. Bill O'Reilly and Bert Ironmonger bowled Australia to a series-levelling victory amid hopes that Bodyline was beaten.


title: Don Bradman

text: The Third Test at the Adelaide Oval proved pivotal. There were angry crowd scenes after the Australian captain Bill Woodfull and wicket-keeper Bert Oldfield were hit by bouncers. An apologetic Warner entered the Australian dressing room and was rebuked by Woodfull. Woodfull's remarks (that "...there are two teams out there and only one of them is playing cricket") were leaked to the press, and Warner and others attributed this to Australian opening batsman Jack Fingleton; however, for many years (even after Fingleton's death) a bitter war of accusation passed between Fingleton and Bradman as to who was the real source of the leak. In a cable to the MCC, the Australian Board of Control repeated the allegation of poor sportsmanship directed at Warner by Woodfull.


title: Don Bradman

text: With the support of the MCC, England continued with Bodyline despite Australian protests. The tourists won the last three Tests convincingly and regained the Ashes. Bradman caused controversy with his own tactics. Always seeking to score, and with the leg side packed with fielders, he often backed away and hit the ball into the vacant half of the outfield with unorthodox shots reminiscent of tennis or golf. This brought him 396 runs (at 56.57) for the series and plaudits for attempting to find a solution to Bodyline, although his series average was just 57% of his career mean. Fingleton was in no doubt that Bradman's game altered irrevocably as a consequence of Bodyline, writing:


title: Don Bradman

text: The constant glare of celebrity and the tribulations of the season forced Bradman to reappraise his life outside the game and to seek a career away from his cricketing fame. Harry Hodgetts, a South Australian delegate to the Board of Control, offered Bradman work as a stockbroker if he would relocate to Adelaide and captain the South Australia team (SA). Unknown to the public, the SA Cricket Association (SACA) instigated Hodgetts' approach and subsidised Bradman's wage. Although his wife was hesitant about moving, Bradman eventually agreed to the deal in February 1934.


title: Don Bradman

text: In his farewell season for NSW, Bradman averaged 132.44, his best yet. He was appointed vice-captain for the 1934 tour of England. However, "he was unwell for much of the [English] summer, and reports in newspapers hinted that he was suffering from heart trouble". Although he again started with a double century at Worcester, his famed concentration soon deserted him. "Wisden" wrote:


title: Don Bradman

text: At one stage, Bradman went thirteen first-class innings without a century, the longest such spell of his career, prompting suggestions that Bodyline had eroded his confidence and altered his technique. After three Tests, the series was locked up 1–1, and Bradman had scored 133 runs in five innings. The Australians travelled to Sheffield and played a warm-up game before the Fourth Test. Bradman started slowly and then, "...the old Bradman [was] back with us, in the twinkling of an eye, almost". He went on to make 140, with the last 90 runs coming in just 45 minutes. On the opening day of the Fourth Test at Headingley (Leeds), England were out for 200, but Australia slumped to 3/39, losing the third wicket from the last ball of the day. Listed to bat at number five, Bradman would start his innings the next day.


title: Don Bradman

text: That evening, Bradman declined an invitation to dinner from Neville Cardus, telling the journalist that he wanted an early night because the team needed him to make a double century the next day. Cardus pointed out that his previous innings on the ground was 334, and the law of averages was against another such score. Bradman told Cardus, "I don't believe in the law of averages". In the event, Bradman batted all of the second day and into the third, putting on a then world record partnership of 388 with Bill Ponsford. When he was finally out for 304 (473 balls, 43 fours and two sixes), Australia had a lead of 350 runs, but rain prevented them from forcing a victory. The effort of the lengthy innings stretched Bradman's reserves of energy, and he did not play again until the Fifth Test at The Oval, the match that would decide the Ashes.


title: Don Bradman

text: In the first innings at The Oval, Bradman and Ponsford recorded an even more massive partnership, this time 451 runs. It had taken them less than a month to break the record they had set at Headingley; this new world record was to last 57 years. Bradman's share of the stand was 244 from 271 balls, and the Australian total of 701 set up victory by 562 runs. For the fourth time in five series, the Ashes changed hands. England would not recover them again until after Bradman's retirement.


title: Don Bradman

text: Seemingly restored to full health, Bradman blazed two centuries in the last two games of the tour. However, when he returned to London to prepare for the trip home, he experienced severe abdominal pain. It took a doctor more than 24 hours to diagnose acute appendicitis and a surgeon operated immediately. Bradman lost a lot of blood during the four-hour procedure and peritonitis set in. Penicillin and sulphonamides were still experimental treatments at this time; peritonitis was usually a fatal condition. On 25 September, the hospital issued a statement that Bradman was struggling for his life and that blood donors were needed urgently.


title: Don Bradman

text: "The effect of the announcement was little short of spectacular". The hospital could not deal with the number of donors and closed its switchboard in the face of the avalanche of telephone calls generated by the news. Journalists were asked by their editors to prepare obituaries. O'Reilly took a call from King George V's secretary asking that the King be kept informed of the situation. Bradman's wife started the month-long journey to London as soon as she received the news. En route, she heard a rumour that her husband had died. A telephone call clarified the situation and by the time she reached London, Bradman had begun a slow recovery. He followed medical advice to convalesce, taking several months to return to Australia and missing the 1934–35 Australian season.


title: Don Bradman

text: There was off-field intrigue in Australian cricket during the antipodean winter of 1935. Australia, scheduled to make a tour of South Africa at the end of the year, needed to replace the retired Woodfull as captain. The Board of Control wanted Bradman to lead the team, yet, on 8 August, the board announced his withdrawal from the team due to a lack of fitness. Surprisingly, in the light of this announcement, Bradman led the South Australian team in a full programme of matches that season.


title: Don Bradman

text: The captaincy was given to Vic Richardson, Bradman's predecessor as South Australian captain. Cricket author Chris Harte's analysis of the situation is that a prior (unspecified) commercial agreement forced Bradman to remain in Australia. Harte attributed an ulterior motive to his relocation: the off-field behaviour of Richardson and other South Australian players had displeased the SACA, which was looking for new leadership. To help improve discipline, Bradman became a committeeman of the SACA, and a selector of the South Australian and Australian teams. He took his adopted state to its first Sheffield Shield title for ten years, Bradman weighing in with personal contributions of 233 against Queensland and 357 against Victoria. He finished the season with 369 (in 233 minutes), a South Australian record, made against Tasmania. The bowler who dismissed him, Reginald Townley, would later become leader of the Tasmanian Liberal Party.


title: Don Bradman

text: Australia defeated South Africa 4–0 and senior players such as O'Reilly were pointed in their comments about the enjoyment of playing under Richardson's captaincy. A group of players who were openly hostile toward Bradman formed during the tour. For some, the prospect of playing under Bradman was daunting, as was the knowledge that he would additionally be sitting in judgement of their abilities in his role as a selector.


title: Don Bradman

text: To start the new season, the Test side played a "Rest of Australia" team, captained by Bradman, at Sydney in early October 1936. The Test XI suffered a big defeat, due to Bradman's 212 and a haul of 12 wickets taken by leg-spinner Frank Ward. Bradman let the members of the Test team know that despite their recent success, the team still required improvement. Shortly afterwards, his first child was born on 28 October, but died the next day. He took time out of cricket for two weeks and on his return made 192 in three hours against Victoria in the last match before the beginning of the Ashes series.


title: Don Bradman

text: The Test selectors made five changes to the team who had played in the previous Test match. Significantly, Australia's most successful bowler, Clarrie Grimmett, was replaced by Ward, one of four players making their debut. Bradman's role in Grimmett's omission from the team was controversial and it became a theme that dogged Bradman as Grimmett continued to be prolific in domestic cricket while his successors were ineffective—he was regarded as having finished the veteran bowler's Test career in a political purge.


title: Don Bradman

text: Australia fell to successive defeats in the opening two Tests, Bradman making two ducks in his four innings, and it seemed that the captaincy was affecting his form. The selectors made another four changes to the team for the Third Test at Melbourne.


title: Don Bradman

text: Bradman won the toss on New Year's Day 1937, but again failed with the bat, scoring just 13. The Australians could not take advantage of a pitch that favoured batting, and finished the day at 6/181. On the second day, rain dramatically altered the course of the game. With the sun drying the pitch (in those days, covers could not be used during matches) Bradman declared to get England in to bat while the pitch was "sticky"; England also declared to get Australia back in, conceding a lead of 124. Bradman countered by reversing his batting order to protect his run-makers while conditions improved. The ploy worked and Bradman went in at number seven. In an innings spread over three days, he battled influenza while scoring 270 off 375 balls, sharing a record partnership of 346 with Jack Fingleton, and Australia went on to victory. In 2001, "Wisden" rated this performance as the best Test match innings of all time.


title: Don Bradman

text: The next Test, at the Adelaide Oval, was fairly even until Bradman played another patient second innings, making 212 from 395 balls. Australia levelled the series when the erratic left-arm spinner "Chuck" Fleetwood-Smith bowled Australia to victory. In the series-deciding Fifth Test, Bradman returned to a more aggressive style in top-scoring with 169 (off 191 balls) in Australia's 604 and Australia won by an innings. Australia's achievement of winning a Test series after outright losses in the first two matches has never been repeated in Test cricket.


title: Don Bradman

text: He needed to score heavily as England had a strengthened batting line-up, while the Australian bowling was over-reliant on O'Reilly. Grimmett was overlooked, but Jack Fingleton made the team, so the clique of anti-Bradman players remained. Playing 26 innings on tour, Bradman recorded 13 centuries (a new Australian record) and again made 1,000 first-class runs before the end of May, becoming the only player to do so twice. In scoring 2,429 runs, Bradman achieved the highest average ever recorded in an English season: 115.66.


title: Don Bradman

text: In the First Test, England amassed a big first innings score and looked likely to win, but Stan McCabe made 232 for Australia, a performance Bradman rated as the best he had ever seen. With Australia forced to follow-on, Bradman fought hard to ensure McCabe's effort was not in vain, and he secured the draw with 144 not out. It was the slowest Test hundred of his career and he played a similar innings of 102 not out in the next Test as Australia struggled to another draw. Rain completely washed out the Third Test at Old Trafford.


title: Don Bradman

text: Australia's opportunity came at Headingley, a Test described by Bradman as the best he ever played in. England batted first and made 223. During the Australian innings, Bradman backed himself by opting to bat on in poor light conditions, reasoning that Australia could score more runs in bad light on a good pitch than on a rain affected pitch in good light, when he had the option to go off. He scored 103 out of a total of 242 and the gamble paid off, as it meant there was sufficient time to push for victory when an England collapse left them a target of only 107 to win. Australia slumped to 4/61, with Bradman out for 16. An approaching storm threatened to wash the game out, but the poor weather held off and Australia managed to secure the win, a victory that retained the Ashes. For the only time in his life, the tension of the occasion got to Bradman and he could not watch the closing stages of play, a reflection of the pressure that he felt all tour: he described the captaincy as "exhausting" and said he "found it difficult to keep going".


title: Don Bradman

text: The euphoria of securing the Ashes preceded Australia's heaviest defeat. At The Oval, England amassed a world record of 7/903 and their opening batsman Len Hutton scored an individual world record, by making 364. In an attempt to relieve the burden on his bowlers, Bradman took a rare turn at bowling. During his third over, he fractured his ankle and teammates carried him from the ground. With Bradman injured and Fingleton unable to bat because of a leg muscle strain, Australia were thrashed by an innings and 579 runs, which remains the largest margin in Test cricket history. Unfit to complete the tour, Bradman left the team in the hands of vice-captain Stan McCabe. At this point, Bradman felt that the burden of captaincy would prevent him from touring England again, although he did not make his doubts public.


title: Don Bradman

text: Despite the pressure of captaincy, Bradman's batting form remained supreme. An experienced, mature player now commonly called "The Don" had replaced the blitzing style of his early days as the "Boy from Bowral". In 1938–39, he led South Australia to the Sheffield Shield and made a century in six consecutive innings to equal CB Fry's world record. Bradman totalled 21 first-class centuries in 34 innings, from the beginning of the 1938 tour of England (including preliminary games in Australia) until early 1939.


title: Don Bradman

text: The next season, Bradman made an abortive bid to join the Victoria state side. The Melbourne Cricket Club advertised the position of club secretary and he was led to believe that if he applied, he would get the job. The position, which had been held by Hugh Trumble until his death in August 1938, was one of the most prestigious jobs in Australian cricket. The annual salary of £1,000 would make Bradman financially secure while allowing him to retain a connection with the game. On 18 January 1939, the club's committee, on the casting vote of the chairman, chose former Test batsman Vernon Ransford over Bradman.


title: Don Bradman

text: The 1939–40 season was Bradman's most productive ever for SA: 1,448 runs at an average of 144.8. He made three double centuries, including 251 not out against NSW, the innings that he rated the best he ever played in the Sheffield Shield, as he tamed Bill O'Reilly at the height of his form. However, it was the end of an era. The outbreak of World War II led to the indefinite postponement of all cricket tours, and the suspension of the Sheffield Shield competition.


title: Don Bradman

text: Bradman joined the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) on 28 June 1940 and was passed fit for air crew duty. The RAAF had more recruits than it could equip and train and Bradman spent four months in Adelaide before the Governor-General of Australia, Lord Gowrie, persuaded Bradman to transfer to the army, a move that was criticised as a safer option for him. Given the rank of lieutenant, he was posted to the Army School of Physical Training at Frankston, Victoria, to act as a divisional supervisor of physical training. The exertion of the job aggravated his chronic muscular problems, diagnosed as fibrositis. Surprisingly, in light of his batting prowess, a routine army test revealed that Bradman had poor eyesight.


title: Don Bradman

text: Invalided out of service in June 1941, Bradman spent months recuperating, unable even to shave himself or comb his hair due to the extent of the muscular pain he suffered. He resumed stockbroking during 1942. In his biography of Bradman, Charles Williams expounded the theory that the physical problems were psychosomatic, induced by stress and possibly depression; Bradman read the book's manuscript and did not disagree. Had any cricket been played at this time, he would not have been available. Although he found some relief in 1945 when referred to the Melbourne masseur Ern Saunders, Bradman permanently lost the feeling in the thumb and index finger of his (dominant) right hand.


title: Don Bradman

text: In June 1945, Bradman faced a financial crisis when the firm of Harry Hodgetts collapsed due to fraud and embezzlement. Bradman moved quickly to set up his own business, utilising Hodgetts' client list and his old office in Grenfell Street, Adelaide. The fallout led to a prison term for Hodgetts, and left a stigma attached to Bradman's name in the city's business community for many years.


title: Don Bradman

text: However, the SA Cricket Association had no hesitation in appointing Bradman as their delegate to the Board of Control in place of Hodgetts. Now working alongside some of the men he had battled in the 1930s, Bradman quickly became a leading light in the administration of the game. With the resumption of international cricket, he was once more appointed a Test selector, and played a major role in planning for post-war cricket.


title: Don Bradman

text: In 1945–46, Bradman suffered regular bouts of fibrositis while coming to terms with increased administrative duties and the establishment of his business. He played for South Australia in two matches to help with the re-establishment of first-class cricket and later described his batting as "painstaking". Batting against the Australian Services cricket team, Bradman scored 112 in less than two hours, yet Dick Whitington (playing for the Services) wrote, "I have seen today the ghost of a once-great cricketer". Bradman declined a tour of New Zealand and spent the winter of 1946 wondering whether he had played his last match. "With the English team due to arrive for the 1946–47 Ashes series, the media and the public were anxious to know if Bradman would lead Australia." His doctor recommended against a return to the game.


title: Don Bradman

text: Encouraged by his wife, Bradman agreed to play in lead-up fixtures to the Test series. After hitting two centuries, Bradman made himself available for the First Test at The Gabba.


title: Don Bradman

text: Controversy emerged on the first day of the First Test at Brisbane. After compiling an uneasy 28 runs, Bradman hit a ball to the gully fieldsman, Jack Ikin. "An appeal for a catch was denied in the umpire's contentious ruling that it was a bump ball". At the end of the over, England captain Wally Hammond spoke with Bradman and criticised him for not "walking"; "from then on the series was a cricketing war just when most people desired peace", Whitington wrote. Bradman regained his finest pre-war form in making 187, followed by 234 during the Second Test at Sydney (Sid Barnes also scored 234 during the innings, many in a still-standing record 405-run 5th-wicket partnership with Bradman. Barnes later recalled that he purposely got out on 234 because "it wouldn't be right for someone to make more runs than Bradman"). Australia won both matches by an innings. Jack Fingleton speculated that had the decision at Brisbane gone against him, Bradman would have retired, such were his fitness problems. In the remainder of the series, Bradman made three half-centuries in six innings, but he was unable to make another century; nevertheless, his team won handsomely, scoring 3–0. He was the leading batsman on either side, with an average of 97.14. Nearly 850,000 spectators watched the Tests, which helped lift public spirits after the war.


title: Don Bradman

text: India made its first tour of Australia in the 1947–48 season. On 15 November, Bradman made 172 against them for an Australian XI at Sydney, his 100th first-class century. The first non-Englishman to achieve the milestone, Bradman remains the only Australian to have done so. In five Tests, he scored 715 runs (at 178.75 average). His last double century (201) came at Adelaide, and he scored a century in each innings of the Melbourne Test. On the eve of the Fifth Test, he announced that the match would be his last in Australia, although he would tour England as a farewell.


title: Don Bradman

text: Australia had assembled one of the great teams of cricket history. Bradman made it known that he wanted to go through the tour unbeaten, a feat never before accomplished. English spectators were drawn to the matches knowing that it would be their last opportunity to see Bradman in action. RC Robertson-Glasgow observed of Bradman that:


title: Don Bradman

text: Despite his waning powers, Bradman compiled 11 centuries on the tour, amassing 2,428 runs (average 89.92). His highest score of the tour (187) came against Essex, when Australia compiled a world record of 721 runs in a day. In the Tests, he scored a century at Trent Bridge, but the performance most like his pre-war exploits came in the Fourth Test at Headingley. England declared on the last morning of the game, setting Australia a world record 404 runs to win in only 345 minutes on a heavily worn pitch. In partnership with Arthur Morris (182), Bradman reeled off 173 not out and the match was won with 15 minutes to spare. The journalist Ray Robinson called the victory "the 'finest ever' in its conquest of seemingly insuperable odds".


title: Don Bradman

text: In the final Test at The Oval, Bradman walked out to bat in Australia's first innings. He received a standing ovation from the crowd and three cheers from the opposition. His Test batting average stood at 101.39. Facing the wrist-spin of Eric Hollies, Bradman pushed forward to the second ball that he faced, was deceived by a googly, and was bowled between bat and pad for a duck. An England batting collapse resulted in an innings defeat, denying Bradman the opportunity to bat again and so his career average finished at 99.94; if he had scored just four runs in his last innings, it would have been 100. A story developed over the years that claimed Bradman missed the ball because of tears in his eyes, a claim Bradman denied for the rest of his life.


title: Don Bradman

text: The Australian team won the Ashes 4–0, completed the tour unbeaten, and entered history as "The Invincibles". Just as Bradman's legend grew, rather than diminished, over the years, so too has the reputation of the 1948 team. For Bradman, it was the most personally fulfilling period of his playing days, as the divisiveness of the 1930s had passed. He wrote:


title: Don Bradman

text: With Bradman now retired from professional cricket, RC Robertson-Glasgow wrote of the English reaction "... a miracle has been removed from among us. So must ancient Italy have felt when she heard of the death of Hannibal".


title: Don Bradman

text: Bradman's Test batting average of 99.94 has become one of cricket's most famous, iconic statistics. No other player who has played more than 20 Test match innings has finished their career with a Test average of more than 62. Bradman scored centuries at a rate better than one every three innings—in 80 Test innings, Bradman scored 29 centuries. Only 11 players have since surpassed his total, all at a much slower rate: the next fastest player to reach 29 centuries, Sachin Tendulkar, required nearly twice as long (148 innings) to do so.


title: Don Bradman

text: In addition, Bradman's total of 12 Test double hundreds—comprising 15% of his innings—remains the most achieved by any Test batsman and was accumulated faster than any other total.


title: Don Bradman

text: For comparison, the next-highest totals of Test double hundreds are Kumar Sangakkara's 11 in 223 innings (4.9%), Brian Lara's 9 in 232 innings (3.9%), and Wally Hammond's 7 in 140 innings (5%); the next-highest rate of scoring Test double centuries was achieved by Vinod Kambli, whose 21 innings included 2 double centuries (9.5%).


title: Don Bradman

text: "Wisden" hailed Bradman as "the greatest phenomenon in the history of cricket, indeed in the history of all ball games". Statistician Charles Davis analysed the statistics for several prominent sportsmen by comparing the number of standard deviations that they stand above the mean for their sport. The top performers in his selected sports are:


title: Don Bradman

text: The statistics show that "no other athlete dominates an international sport to the extent that Bradman does cricket". In order to post a similarly dominant career statistic as Bradman, a baseball batter would need a career batting average of .392, while a basketball player would need to score an average of 43.0 points per game over their career. The respective records are .366 and 30.1.


title: Don Bradman

text: Bradman's early development was shaped by the high bounce of the ball on matting-over-concrete pitches. He favoured "horizontal-bat" shots (such as the hook, pull and cut) to deal with the bounce and devised a unique grip on the bat handle that would accommodate these strokes without compromising his ability to defend. Employing a side-on stance at the wicket, Bradman kept perfectly still as the bowler ran in. His backswing had a "crooked" look that troubled his early critics, but he resisted entreaties to change. His backswing kept his hands in close to the body, leaving him perfectly balanced and able to change his stroke mid-swing, if need be. Another telling factor was the decisiveness of Bradman's footwork. He "used the crease" by either coming metres down the pitch to drive, or playing so far back that his feet ended up level with the stumps when playing the cut, hook or pull.


title: Don Bradman

text: Bradman's game evolved with experience. He temporarily adapted his technique during the Bodyline series, deliberately moving around the crease in an attempt to score from the short-pitched deliveries. At his peak, in the mid-1930s, he had the ability to switch between a defensive and attacking approach as the occasion demanded. After the Second World War, he adjusted to bat within the limitations set by his age, becoming a steady "accumulator" of runs. However, Bradman never truly mastered batting on sticky wickets. "Wisden" commented, "[i]f there really is a blemish on his amazing record it is ... the absence of a significant innings on one of those 'sticky dogs' of old".


title: Don Bradman

text: After his return to Australia, Bradman played in his own Testimonial match at Melbourne, scoring his 117th and last century, and receiving £9,342 in proceeds (~$A606,489 in 2021 terms). In the 1949 New Year Honours, he was appointed Knight Bachelor for his services to the game, becoming the only Australian cricketer ever to be knighted. He commented that he "would have preferred to remain just Mister". The following year he published a memoir, "Farewell to Cricket". Bradman accepted offers from the "Daily Mail" to travel with, and write about, the 1953 and 1956 Australian teams in England. "The Art of Cricket", his final book published in 1958, is an instructional manual.


title: Don Bradman

text: Bradman retired from his stockbroking business in June 1954, depending on the "comfortable" income earned as a board member of 16 publicly listed companies. His highest profile affiliation was with Argo Investments Limited, where he was chairman for a number of years. Charles Williams commented that, "[b]usiness was excluded on medical grounds, [so] the only sensible alternative was a career in the administration of the game which he loved and to which he had given most of his active life".


title: Don Bradman

text: Bradman was honoured at a number of cricket grounds, notably when his portrait was hung in the Long Room at Lord's; until Shane Warne's portrait was added in 2005, Bradman was one of just three Australians to be honoured in this way. Bradman inaugurated a "Bradman Stand" at the Sydney Cricket Ground in January 1974; the Adelaide Oval also opened a Bradman Stand in 1990, which housed new media and corporate facilities. The Oval's Bradman Stand was demolished in 2013 as the stadium underwent an extensive re-development. Later in 1974, he attended a Lord's Taverners function in London where he experienced heart problems, which forced him to limit his public appearances to select occasions only. With his wife, Bradman returned to Bowral in 1976, where the new cricket ground was named in his honour. He gave the keynote speech at the historic Centenary Test at Melbourne in 1977.


title: Don Bradman

text: On 16 June 1979, the Australian government awarded Bradman the nation's second-highest civilian honour at that time, Companion of the Order of Australia (AC), "in recognition of service to the sport of cricket and cricket administration". In 1980, he resigned from the ACB, to lead a more secluded life.


title: Don Bradman

text: In addition to acting as one of South Australia's delegates to the Board of Control from 1945 to 1980, Bradman was a committee member of the SACA between 1935 and 1986. It is estimated that he attended 1,713 SACA meetings during this half century of service. Aside from two years in the early 1950s, he filled a selector's berth for the Test team between 1936 and 1971.


title: Don Bradman

text: Cricket saw an increase in defensive play during the 1950s. As a selector, Bradman favoured attacking, positive cricketers who entertained the paying public. He formed an alliance with Australian captain Richie Benaud, seeking more attractive play, with some success. He served two high-profile periods as chairman of the board of Control, in 1960–63 and 1969–72. During the first, he dealt with the growing prevalence of illegal bowling actions in the game, a problem that he adjudged "the most complex I have known in cricket, because it is not a matter of fact but of opinion". The major controversy of his second stint was a proposed tour of Australia by South Africa in 1971–72. On Bradman's recommendation, the series was cancelled. Cricket journalist Michael Coward said of Bradman as an administrator:


title: Don Bradman

text: In the late 1970s, Bradman played an important role during the World Series Cricket schism as a member of a special Australian Cricket Board committee formed to handle the crisis. He was criticised for not airing an opinion, but he dealt with World Series Cricket far more pragmatically than other administrators. Richie Benaud described Bradman as "a brilliant administrator and businessman", warning that he was not to be underestimated. As Australian captain, Ian Chappell fought with Bradman over the issue of player remuneration in the early 1970s and has suggested that Bradman was parsimonious:


title: Don Bradman

text: After his wife's death in 1997, Bradman suffered "a discernible and not unexpected wilting of spirit". The next year, on his 90th birthday, he hosted a meeting with his two favourite modern players, Shane Warne and Sachin Tendulkar, but he was not seen in his familiar place at the Adelaide Oval again.


title: Don Bradman

text: Hospitalised with pneumonia in December 2000, he returned home in the New Year and died there on 25 February 2001, aged 92.


title: Don Bradman

text: A memorial service to mark Bradman's life was held on 25 March 2001 at St Peter's Anglican Cathedral, Adelaide. The service was attended by a host of former and current Test cricketers, as well as Australia's then prime minister, John Howard, leader of the opposition Kim Beazley and former prime minister Bob Hawke. Eulogies were given by Richie Benaud and Governor-General Sir William Deane. The service was broadcast live on ABC Television to a viewing audience of 1.45 million. A private service for family and friends was earlier held at the Centennial Park Cemetery in the suburb of Pasadena, with many people lining both Greenhill and Goodwood Roads to pay their respects as his funeral motorcade passed by.


title: Don Bradman

text: As early as 1939, Bradman had a Royal Navy ship named after him. Built as a fishing trawler in 1936, was taken over by the Admiralty in 1939, but was sunk by German aircraft the following year.


title: Don Bradman

text: In the 1963 edition of "Wisden Cricketers' Almanack", Bradman was selected by Neville Cardus as one of the Six Giants of the Wisden Century. This was a special commemorative selection requested by Wisden for its 100th edition. The other five players chosen were: Sydney Barnes, W. G. Grace, Jack Hobbs, Tom Richardson and Victor Trumper.


title: Don Bradman

text: On 10 December 1985, Bradman was the first of 120 inaugural inductees into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame. He spoke of his philosophy for considering the stature of athletes:


title: Don Bradman

text: Although modest about his own abilities and generous in his praise of other cricketers, Bradman was fully aware of the talents he possessed as a player; there is some evidence that he sought to influence his legacy. During the 1980s and 1990s, Bradman carefully selected the people to whom he gave interviews, assisting Michael Page, Roland Perry and Charles Williams, who all produced biographical works about him. Bradman also agreed to an extensive interview for ABC radio, broadcast as "Bradman: The Don Declares" in eight 55-minute episodes during 1988.


title: Don Bradman

text: The most significant of these legacy projects was the Bradman Museum, opened in 1989 at the Bradman Oval in Bowral. This organisation was reformed in 1993 as a non-profit charitable Trust, called the Bradman Foundation. In 2010, it was expanded and rebranded as the International Cricket Hall of Fame.


title: Don Bradman

text: When the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame was created in Melbourne in 1996, Bradman was made one of its 10 inaugural members. In 2000, Bradman was selected by cricket experts as one of five "Wisden Cricketers of the Century". Each of the 100 members of the panel were able to select five cricketers: all 100 voted for Bradman. The ICC Cricket Hall of Fame inducted him on 19 November 2009.


title: Don Bradman

text: Bradman's life and achievements were recognised in Australia with two notable issues. Three years before he died, he became the first living Australian to be featured on an Australian postage stamp. After his death, the Australian Government produced a 20-cent coin to commemorate his life. On 27 August 2018, to celebrate 110 years since his birth, Bradman was commemorated with a Google Doodle. To mark 150 years of the Cricketers' Almanack, Wisden named him as captain of an all-time Test World XI.


title: Don Bradman

text: In 1999, Bradman was named in the six-man shortlist for BBC Sports Personality of the Century. Asteroid 2472 Bradman, discovered by Luboš Kohoutek, is named in his honour.


title: Don Bradman

text: Bradman first met Jessie Martha Menzies in 1920 when she boarded with the Bradman family, to be closer to school in Bowral. The couple married at St Paul's Anglican Church at Burwood, Sydney on 30 April 1932. The two had an impeccable marriage and were devoted to each other. During their 65-year marriage, Jessie was "shrewd, reliable, selfless, and above all, uncomplicated...she was the perfect foil to his concentrated, and occasionally mercurial character". Bradman paid tribute to his wife numerous times, once saying succinctly, "I would never have achieved what I achieved without Jessie".


title: Don Bradman

text: The Bradmans lived in the same modest, suburban house in Holden Street, Kensington Park, Adelaide, for all but the first three years of their married life. They experienced personal tragedy in raising their children: their first-born son died as an infant in 1936; their second son, John (born in 1939), contracted polio; and their daughter, Shirley, born in 1941, had cerebral palsy from birth. His family name proved a burden for John Bradman; he legally changed his last name to Bradsen in 1972. Although claims were made that he became estranged from his father, it was more a matter of "the pair inhabit[ing] different worlds", and the two remained in contact through the years. After the cricketer's death, a collection of personal letters written by Bradman to his close friend Rohan Rivett between 1953 and 1977 was released and gave researchers new insights into Bradman's family life, including the strain between father and son.


title: Don Bradman

text: Bradman's reclusiveness in later life is partly attributable to the ongoing health problems of his wife, particularly following the open-heart surgery Jessie underwent in her 60s. Lady Bradman died in 1997, aged 88, from cancer. This had a dispiriting effect on Bradman, but the relationship with his son improved, to the extent that John resolved to change his name back to Bradman. Since his father's death, John Bradman has become the spokesperson for the family and has been involved in defending the Bradman legacy in a number of disputes. The relationship between Bradman and his wider family is less clear, although nine months after Bradman's death, his nephew Paul Bradman criticised him as a "snob" and a "loner" who forgot his connections in Bowral and who failed to attend the funerals of Paul's mother and father.


title: Don Bradman

text: Bradman's name has become an archetypal name for outstanding excellence, both within cricket and in the wider world. The term "Bradmanesque" has been coined and is used both within and outside cricketing circles. Steve Waugh described Sri Lankan Muttiah Muralitharan as "the Don Bradman of bowling".


title: Don Bradman

text: Bradman has been the subject of the second-most biographies of any Australian, behind only the bushranger Ned Kelly. Bradman himself wrote four books: "Don Bradman's Book–The Story of My Cricketing Life with Hints on Batting, Bowling and Fielding" (1930), "My Cricketing Life" (1938), "Farewell to Cricket" (1950) and "The Art of Cricket" (1958). The story of the Bodyline series was retold in a 1984 television mini-series, with Gary Sweet portraying Bradman.


title: Don Bradman

text: Bradman has been immortalised in various popular songs of very different styles and eras. Here are some of the more well-known songs about him:


title: Don Bradman

text: Bradman recorded several songs accompanying himself and others on piano in the early 1930s, including "Every Day Is A Rainbow Day For Me" with Jack Lumsdaine. In 2000, the Australian Government made it illegal for the names of corporations to suggest a link to "Sir Donald Bradman" if such a link does not, in fact, exist. Other entities with similar protection include the Australian and foreign governments, Saint Mary MacKillop, the Royal Family, and the Returned and Services League of Australia.


title: Don Bradman

text: In 2014, the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra premiered a "multimedia musical portrait" called "Our Don" that had been nearly three years in the making. Greta Bradman performed during the event.


title: Andrea Jeremiah

text: Andrea Maria Jeremiah is an Indian actress, playback singer, and a musician, who works predominantly in Tamil and Malayalam language films. She made her acting debut in Tamil film "Pachaikili Muthucharam" (2007), and Malayalam debut with "Annayum Rasoolum" (2013).


title: Andrea Jeremiah

text: She has appeared in many commercially successful films like "Annayum Rasoolum" (2013), "Vishwaroopam" (2013), "Tadakha" (2013), "Endrendrum Punnagai" (2013), "Aranmanai" (2014), "Loham" (2015), "Thoppil Jopaan" (2016), "Taramani" (2017), "Aval" (2017), "Vada Chennai" (2018) and "Aranmanai 3" (2021).


title: Andrea Jeremiah

text: Andrea's father is a lawyer at the Madras High Court. She has one younger sister who lives and works at Leuven, Belgium as a research assistant. Jeremiah was raised near Chennai and went to National Public School and graduated from Women's Christian College. She has said that she was quite a geek and wanted to be a psychiatrist until she completed her 12th board exams.


title: Andrea Jeremiah

text: Andrea learned classical piano when she was eight. At age 10, she was a part of a Jackson Five-style troupe called Young Stars which formed the base of her early singing and music composing career. She was also a theatre artist in her college and appeared in several stage plays organised by The Madras Players and EVAM. She was the President of the Student Senate at Women's Christian College. She also organised a company, The Show Must Go On (TSMGO Productions), to promote live art and artistes. Andrea said that as a college student, she turned down every film offer she got as she had no intention of becoming a film actor.


title: Andrea Jeremiah

text: She began her theatre career with Girish Karnad's "Nagamandala". She acted in new leo coffee advertisement with actor Shiva in 2006. She also acted in a serial which relayed In Podhigai channel. She has performed all over India. She played a brief role during the climax of "Kanda Naal Mudhal" (2005). After she rendered a song in Gautham Vasudev Menon's "Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu", he asked her to play as one of the lead female character in his next venture, "Pachaikili Muthucharam". This film was a film adaptation of James Siegel's novel "Derailed", with Andrea portraying Kalyani, a homemaker, whose husband engages in an affair and is blackmailed. Andrea was selected for the role after actresses Simran, Shobana and Tabu were approached.


title: Andrea Jeremiah

text: She signed for Selvaraghavan's fantasy-adventure film "Aayirathil Oruvan", which released in early 2010. In 2011, she agreed to play a minor supporting role in Venkat Prabhu's multi-starrer "Mankatha", which was released in August 2011. In 2013, she made her debut in Malayalam cinema with Rajeev Ravi's romance film "Annayum Rasoolum". She has rated this film as the best in her career. She played a role in Kamal Haasan's "Vishwaroopam" and reprised the role in its sequel, which released in 2018.


title: Andrea Jeremiah

text: Andrea has completed filming for "Puthiya Thiruppangal", in which she plays a journalist. In "Endrendrum Punnagai", she played a model and she also acted in the Malayalam film "London Bridge". And her next film as female lead is "Aranmanai" (2014)"," directed by Sundar C., It was a major commercial success and, as well as being a breakthrough film in her career.


title: Andrea Jeremiah

text: In 2015, Andrea was cast alongside Mohanlal in "Loham", directed by Ranjith. This was her third Malayalam film, and the first with Mohanlal.


title: Andrea Jeremiah

text: In 2021, her first release was "Master", which she played an Extended cameo role, then she appeared as lead in Arya's "Aranmanai 3", directed by Sundar C. The film received mixed reviews but became a hit film.


title: Andrea Jeremiah

text: She has also completed shootings for Tamil movies like "Maaligai" and Myskkin's "Pisaasu 2" , and she is currently filming "Kaa", in which she plays the lead role. She reportedly plays a wildlife photographer. She also completed her another Malayalam film Prakasham Parathunna Penkutty with Sudev Nair directed By R.Unni.


title: Andrea Jeremiah

text: Andrea has stated that her focus was always on music, that she chose to be a professional singer and that acting happened by chance. In 2005, she ventured into playback singing in feature films. She has sung several popular songs for composers Harris Jayaraj, Yuvan Shankar Raja, Anirudh Ravichander, Thaman, Devi Sri Prasad and G. V. Prakash Kumar and has also received nominations at Filmfare and Vijay Awards for a few of them. She considers the song "Maalai Neram" as the most challenging she has sung.


title: Andrea Jeremiah

text: Apart from singing under other composers' direction, Andrea also produces her own music. She composed, wrote and sang a single, "Soul of Taramani", as a promo for her Tamil romantic-drama "Taramani". She has composed several music themes, songs and albums.


title: Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

text: "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" () is a folk tale from the "One Thousand and One Nights". It was added to the collection in the 18th century by its French translator Antoine Galland, who heard it from Syrian storyteller Hanna Diyab. As one of the most popular "Arabian Nights" tales, it has been widely retold and performed in many media across the world, especially for children (for whom the more violent aspects of the story are often suppressed).


title: Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

text: In the original version, Ali Baba ( "") is a poor woodcutter and an honest person who discovers the secret of a thieves' den, and enters with the magic phrase "open sesame". The thieves try to kill Ali Baba, but Ali Baba's faithful slave-girl foils their plots. Ali Baba's son marries her and Ali Baba keeps the secret of the treasure.


title: Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

text: The tale was added to the story collection "One Thousand and One Nights" by one of its European translators, Antoine Galland, who called his volumes "Les Mille et Une Nuits" (1704–1717). Galland was an 18th-century French Orientalist who heard it in oral form from a Syrian Maronite story-teller, called Hanna Diyab, who came from Aleppo in modern-day Syria and told the story in Paris. In any case, the earliest known text of the story is Galland's French version. Richard F. Burton included it in the supplemental volumes (rather than the main collection of stories) of his translation (published as "The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night").


title: Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

text: The American Orientalist Duncan Black MacDonald discovered an Arabic-language manuscript of the story at the Bodleian Library; however, this was later found to be a counterfeit.


title: Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

text: Ali Baba and his older brother, ( ") Cassim (sometimes spelled Kasim), are the sons of a merchant. After their father's death, the greedy Cassim marries a wealthy woman and becomes well-to-do, building on their father's business. Ali Baba marries a poor woman and settles into the trade of a woodcutter.


title: Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

text: One day, Ali Baba is at work collecting and cutting firewood in the forest, when he happens to overhear a group of 40 thieves visiting their stored treasure. Their treasure is in a cave, the mouth of which is sealed by a huge rock. It opens on the magic words "open sesame" and seals itself on the words "close sesame". When the thieves are gone, Ali Baba enters the cave himself and takes a single bag of gold coins home.


title: Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

text: Ali Baba and his wife borrow his sister-in-law's scales to weigh their new wealth. Unbeknownst to them, Cassim's wife puts a blob of wax in the scales to find out what Ali Baba is using them for, as she is curious to know what kind of grain her impoverished brother-in-law needs to measure. To her shock, she finds a gold coin sticking to the scales and tells her husband. Under pressure from his brother, Ali Baba is forced to reveal the secret of the cave. Cassim goes to the cave, taking a donkey with him to take as much treasure as possible. He enters the cave with the magic words. However, in his greed and excitement over the treasure, he forgets the words to get out again and ends up trapped. The thieves find him there and kill him. When his brother does not come back, Ali Baba goes to the cave to look for him, and finds the body quartered and with each piece displayed just inside the cave's entrance, as a warning to anyone else who might try to enter.


title: Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

text: Ali Baba brings the body home where he entrusts Morgiana ( "), a clever slave-girl from Cassim's household, with the task of making others believe that Cassim has died a natural death. First, Morgiana purchases medicines from an apothecary, telling him that Cassim is gravely ill. Then, she finds an old tailor known as Baba Mustafa whom she pays, blindfolds, and leads to Cassim's house. There, overnight, the tailor stitches the pieces of Cassim's body back together. Ali Baba and his family are able to give Cassim a proper burial without anyone suspecting anything.


title: Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

text: The thieves, finding the body gone, realize that another person must know their secret, and they set out to track him down. One of the thieves goes down to the town and comes across Baba Mustafa, who mentions that he has just sewn the pieces of a corpse back together. Realizing the dead man must have been the thieves' victim, the thief asks Baba Mustafa to lead the way to the house where the deed was performed. The tailor is blindfolded again, and in this state he is able to retrace his steps and find the house. The thief marks the door with a symbol so the other thieves can come back that night and kill everyone in the house. However, the thief has been seen by Morgiana who, loyal to her master, foils the thief's plan by marking all the houses in the neighborhood similarly. When the 40 thieves return that night, they cannot identify the correct house, and their leader kills the unsuccessful thief in a furious rage. The next day, another thief revisits Baba Mustafa and tries again. Only this time, a chunk is chipped out of the stone step at Ali Baba's front door. Again, Morgiana foils the plan by making similar chips in all the other doorsteps, and the second thief is killed for his failure as well. At last, the leader of the thieves goes and looks himself. This time, he memorizes every detail he can of the exterior of Ali Baba's house.


title: Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

text: The leader of the thieves pretends to be an oil merchant in need of Ali Baba's hospitality, bringing with him mules loaded with 38 oil jars, one filled with oil, the other 37 hiding the other remaining thieves. Once Ali Baba is asleep, the thieves plan to kill him. Again, Morgiana discovers and foils the plan, killing the 37 thieves in their oil jars by pouring boiling oil on them. When their leader comes to rouse his men, he discovers they are all dead and escapes. The next morning, Morgiana tells Ali Baba about the thieves in the jars. They bury them, and Ali Baba shows his gratitude by giving Morgiana her freedom.


title: Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

text: To exact revenge, the leader of the thieves establishes himself as a merchant, befriends Ali Baba's son (who is now in charge of the late Cassim's business), and is invited to dinner at Ali Baba's house. However, the thief is recognized by Morgiana, who performs a sword dance with a dagger for the diners and plunges it into the thief's heart, when he is off his guard. Ali Baba is at first angry with Morgiana, but when he finds out the thief wanted to kill him, he is extremely grateful and rewards Morgiana by marrying her to his son. Ali Baba is then left as the only one knowing the secret of the treasure in the cave and how to access it.


title: Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

text: The story has been classified in the Aarne–Thompson-Uther classification system as ATU 954, "The Forty Thieves". The tale type enjoys "almost universal ... diffusion".


title: Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

text: Percy Amaury Talbot located a Nigerian variant, called "The Treasure House in the Bush", from Ojong Akpan of Mfamosing.


title: Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

text: At the United States Air Force Academy, Cadet Squadron 40 was originally nicknamed "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" before eventually changing its name to the "P-40 Warhawks".


title: Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

text: The name "Ali Baba" was often used as derogatory slang by American and Iraqi soldiers and their allies in the Iraq War, to describe individuals suspected of a variety of offenses related to theft and looting. Additionally, British soldiers routinely used the term to refer to Iraqi civilians. In the subsequent occupation, it is used as a general term for the insurgents.


title: Semitic people

text: Semites, Semitic peoples or Semitic cultures is an obsolete term for an ethnic, cultural or racial group. The terminology is now largely unused outside the grouping "Semitic languages" in linguistics.


title: Semitic people

text: First used in the 1770s by members of the Göttingen School of History, this biblical terminology for race was derived from Shem (), one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis, together with the parallel terms Hamites and Japhetites.


title: Semitic people

text: In archaeology, the term is sometimes used informally as "a kind of shorthand" for ancient Semitic-speaking peoples.


title: Semitic people

text: The term Semitic in a racial sense was coined by members of the Göttingen School of History in the early 1770s. Other members of the Göttingen School of History coined the separate term Caucasian in the 1780s. These terms were used and developed by numerous other scholars over the next century. In the early 20th century, the racialist classifications of Carleton S. Coon included the Semitic peoples in the Caucasian race, as similar in appearance to the Indo-European, Northwest Caucasian, and Kartvelian-speaking peoples. Due to the interweaving of language studies and cultural studies, the term also came to be applied to the religions (ancient Semitic and Abrahamic) and ethnicities of various cultures associated by geographic and linguistic distribution.


title: Semitic people

text: The terms "anti-Semite" or "antisemitism" came by a circuitous route to refer more narrowly to anyone who was hostile or discriminatory towards Jews in particular.


title: Semitic people

text: Anthropologists of the 19th century such as Ernest Renan readily aligned linguistic groupings with ethnicity and culture, appealing to anecdote, science and folklore in their efforts to define racial character. Moritz Steinschneider, in his periodical of Jewish letters "Hamaskir" (3 (Berlin 1860), 16), discusses an article by Heymann Steinthal criticising Renan's article "New Considerations on the General Character of the Semitic Peoples, In Particular Their Tendency to Monotheism". Renan had acknowledged the importance of the ancient civilisations of Mesopotamia, Israel etc. but called the Semitic races inferior to the Aryan for their monotheism, which he held to arise from their supposed lustful, violent, unscrupulous and selfish racial instincts. Steinthal summed up these predispositions as "Semitism", and so Steinschneider characterised Renan's ideas as "anti-Semitic prejudice".


title: Semitic people

text: In 1879 the German journalist Wilhelm Marr began the politicisation of the term by speaking of a struggle between Jews and Germans in a pamphlet called "Der Weg zum Siege des Germanenthums über das Judenthum" ("The Way to Victory of Germanism over Judaism"). He accused the Jews of being liberals, a people without roots who had Judaized Germans beyond salvation. In 1879 Marr's adherents founded the "League for Anti-Semitism", which concerned itself entirely with anti-Jewish political action.


title: Semitic people

text: Objections to the usage of the term, such as the obsolete nature of the term "Semitic" as a racial term, have been raised since at least the 1930s.


title: Suicidal ideation

text: Suicidal ideation, or suicidal thoughts, means having thoughts, ideas, or ruminations about the possibility of ending one's own life. It is not a diagnosis but is a symptom of some mental disorders and can also occur in response to adverse events without the presence of a mental disorder.


title: Suicidal ideation

text: On suicide risk scales, the range of suicidal ideation varies from fleeting thoughts to detailed planning. Passive suicidal ideation is thinking about not wanting to live or imagining being dead. Active suicidal ideation is thinking about different ways to die or forming a plan to die.


title: Suicidal ideation

text: Most people who have suicidal thoughts do not go on to make suicide attempts, but suicidal thoughts are considered a risk factor. During 2008–09, an estimated 8.3 million adults aged 18 and over in the United States, or 3.7% of the adult U.S. population, reported having suicidal thoughts in the previous year, while an estimated 2.2 million reported having made suicide plans in the previous year. In 2019, 12 million U.S. adults seriously thought about suicide, 3.5 million planned a suicide attempt, 1.4 million attempted suicide, and more than 47,500 died by suicide. Suicidal thoughts are also common among teenagers.


title: Suicidal ideation

text: Suicidal ideation is associated with depression and other mood disorders; however, many other mental disorders, life events, and family events, can increase the risk of suicidal ideation. Mental health researchers indicate that healthcare systems should provide treatment for individuals with suicidal ideation, regardless of diagnosis, because of the risk for suicidal acts and repeated problems associated with suicidal thoughts. There are a number of treatment options for people who experience suicidal ideation.


title: Suicidal ideation

text: The ICD-11 describes suicidal ideation as "thoughts, ideas, or ruminations about the possibility of ending one's life, ranging from thinking that one would be better off dead to formulation of elaborate plans".


title: Suicidal ideation

text: The DSM-5 defines it as "thoughts about self-harm, with deliberate consideration or planning of possible techniques of causing one's own death".


title: Suicidal ideation

text: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines suicidal ideation "as thinking about, considering, or planning suicide".


title: Suicidal ideation

text: When someone who has not shown a history of suicidal ideation experiences a sudden and pronounced thought of performing an act which would necessarily lead to their own death, psychologists call this an intrusive thought. A commonly experienced example of this is the "high place phenomenon", also referred to as "the call of the void".


title: Suicidal ideation

text: Euphemisms related to mortal contemplation include "internal struggle", "voluntary death", and "eating one's gun".


title: Suicidal ideation

text: The risk factors for suicidal ideation can be divided into three categories: psychiatric disorders, life events, and family history.


title: Suicidal ideation

text: Suicidal ideation is a symptom for many mental disorders and can occur in response to adverse life events without the presence of a mental disorder.


title: Suicidal ideation

text: There are several psychiatric disorders that appear to be comorbid with suicidal ideation or considerably increase the risk of suicidal ideation. For example, many individuals with borderline personality disorder exhibit recurrent suicidal behavior and suicidal thoughts. One study found that 73% of patients with borderline personality disorder have attempted suicide, with the average patient having 3.4 attempts. The following list includes the disorders that have been shown to be the strongest predictors of suicidal ideation. These are not the only disorders that can increase risk of suicidal ideation. The disorders in which risk is increased the greatest include:


title: Suicidal ideation

text: Antidepressant medications are commonly used to decrease the symptoms in patients with moderate to severe clinical depression, and some studies indicate a connection between suicidal thoughts and tendencies and taking antidepressants, increasing the risk of suicidal thoughts in some patients.


title: Suicidal ideation

text: Some medications, such as selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs), can have suicidal ideation as a side effect. Moreover, these drugs' intended effects, can themselves have unintended consequence of an increased individual risk and collective rate of suicidal behavior: Among the set of persons taking the medication, a subset feel bad enough to want to attempt suicide (or to desire the perceived results of suicide) but are inhibited by depression-induced symptoms, such as lack of energy and motivation, from following through with an attempt. Among this subset, a "sub-subset" may find that the medication alleviates their physiological symptoms (such as lack of energy) and secondary psychological symptoms (e.g., lack of motivation) before or at lower doses than it alleviates their primary psychological symptom of depressed mood. Among this group of persons, the desire for suicide or its effects persists even as major obstacles to suicidal action are removed, with the effect that the incidences of suicide and suicide attempts increase.


title: Suicidal ideation

text: In 2003, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued the agency's strictest warning for manufacturers of all antidepressants (including tricyclic antidepressants [TCAs] and monoamine oxidase inhibitors) due to their association with suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Further studies disagree with the warning, especially when prescribed for adults, claiming more recent studies are inconclusive in the connection between the drugs and suicidal ideation.


title: Suicidal ideation

text: Individuals with anxiety disorders who self-medicate with drugs or alcohol may also have an increased likelihood of suicidal ideation.


title: Suicidal ideation

text: Life events are strong predictors of increased risk for suicidal ideation. Furthermore, life events can also lead to or be comorbid with the previous listed psychiatric disorders and predict suicidal ideation through those means. Life events that adults and children face can be dissimilar and for this reason, the list of events that increase risk can vary in adults and children. The life events that have been shown to increase risk most significantly are


title: Suicidal ideation

text: According to a study conducted by Ruth X. Liu of San Diego State University, a significant connection was found between the parent–child relationships of adolescents in early, middle and late adolescence and their likelihood of suicidal ideation. The study consisted of measuring relationships between mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, mothers and sons, and fathers and daughters. The relationships between fathers and sons during early and middle adolescence show an inverse relationship to suicidal ideation. Closeness with the father in late adolescence is "significantly related to suicidal ideation". Liu goes on to explain the relationship found between closeness with the opposite sex parent and the child's risk of suicidal thoughts. It was found that boys are better protected from suicidal ideation if they are close to their mothers through early and late adolescence; whereas girls are better protected by having a close relationship with their father during middle adolescence.


title: Suicidal ideation

text: An article published in 2010 by Zappulla and Pace found that suicidal ideation in adolescent boys is exacerbated by detachment from the parents when depression is already present in the child. Lifetime prevalence estimates of suicidal ideation among nonclinical populations of adolescents generally range from 60% to 75% and in many cases its severity increases the risk of suicide.


title: Suicidal ideation

text: Early detection and treatment are the best ways to prevent suicidal ideation and suicide attempts. If signs, symptoms, or risk factors are detected early then the individual might seek treatment and help before attempting to take their own life. In a study of individuals who did commit suicide, 91% of them likely had one or more mental illnesses. However, only 35% of those individuals were treated or being treated for a mental illness. This emphasizes the importance of early detection; if a mental illness is detected, it can be treated and controlled to help prevent suicide attempts. Another study investigated strictly suicidal ideation in adolescents. This study found that depression symptoms in adolescents early as 9th grade is a predictor of suicidal ideation. Most people with long-term suicidal ideation do not seek professional help.


title: Suicidal ideation

text: The previously mentioned studies point out the difficulty that mental health professionals have in motivating individuals to seek and continue treatment. Ways to increase the number of individuals who seek treatment may include:


title: Suicidal ideation

text: A study conducted by researchers in Australia set out to determine a course of early detection for suicidal ideation in teens stating that "risks associated with suicidality require an immediate focus on diminishing self-harming cognitions so as to ensure safety before attending to the underlying etiology of the behavior". A Psychological Distress scale known as the K10 was administered monthly to a random sample of individuals. According to the results among the 9.9% of individuals who reported "psychological distress (all categories)" 5.1% of the same participants reported suicidal ideation. Participants who scored "very high" on the Psychological Distress scale "were 77 times more likely to report suicidal ideation than those in the low category".


title: Suicidal ideation

text: In a one-year study conducted in Finland, 41% of the patients who later committed suicide saw a health care professional, most seeing a psychiatrist. Of those, only 22% discussed suicidal intent on their last office visit. In most of the cases, the office visit took place within a week of the suicide, and most of the victims had a diagnosed depressive disorder.


title: Suicidal ideation

text: There are many centers where one can receive aid in the fight against suicidal ideation and suicide. Hemelrijk et al. (2012) found evidence that assisting people with suicidal ideation via the internet versus more direct forms such as phone conversations has a greater effect. In a 2021 research study, Nguyen et al. (2021) propose that maybe the premise that suicidal ideation is a kind of illness has been an obstacle to dealing with suicidal ideation. They use a Bayesian statistical investigation, in conjunction with the mindsponge theory, to explore the processes where mental disorders have played a very minor role and conclude that there are many cases where the suicidal ideation represents a type of cost-benefit analysis for a life/death consideration, and these people may not be called "patients".


title: Suicidal ideation

text: Assessment seeks to understand an individual by integrating information from multiple sources such as clinical interviews; medical exams and physiological measures; standardized psychometric tests and questionnaires; structured diagnostic interviews; review of records; and collateral interviews.


title: Suicidal ideation

text: Psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals conduct clinical interviews to ascertain the nature of a patient or client's difficulties, including any signs or symptoms of illness the person might exhibit. Clinical interviews are "unstructured" in the sense that each clinician develops a particular approach to asking questions, without necessarily following a predefined format. Structured (or semi-structured) interviews prescribe the questions, their order of presentation, "probes" (queries) if a patient's response is not clear or specific enough, and a method to rate the frequency and intensity of symptoms.


title: Suicidal ideation

text: Treatment of suicidal ideation can be problematic due to the fact that several medications have actually been linked to increasing or causing suicidal ideation in patients. Therefore, several alternative means of treating suicidal ideation are often used. The main treatments include: therapy, hospitalization, outpatient treatment, and medication or other modalities.


title: Suicidal ideation

text: In psychotherapy a person explores the issues that make them feel suicidal and learns skills to help manage emotions more effectively.


title: Suicidal ideation

text: Hospitalization allows the patient to be in a secure, supervised environment to prevent the suicidal ideation from turning into suicide attempts. In most cases, individuals have the freedom to choose which treatment they see fit for themselves. However, there are several circumstances in which individuals can be hospitalized involuntarily. These circumstances are:


title: Suicidal ideation

text: Outpatient treatment allows individuals to remain at their place of residence and receive treatment when needed or on a scheduled basis. Being at home may improve quality of life for some patients, because they will have access to their personal belongings, and be able to come and go freely. Before allowing patients the freedom that comes with outpatient treatment, physicians evaluate several factors of the patient. These factors include the patient's level of social support, impulse control and quality of judgment. After the patient passes the evaluation, they are often asked to consent to a "no-harm contract". This is a contract formulated by the physician and the family of the patient. Within the contract, the patient agrees not to harm themself, to continue their visits with the physician, and to contact the physician in times of need. There is some debate as to whether "no-harm" contracts are effective. These patients are then checked on routinely to assure they are maintaining their contract and avoiding dangerous activities (drinking alcohol, driving fast and not wearing a seat belt, etc.).


title: Suicidal ideation

text: Prescribing medication to treat suicidal ideation can be difficult. One reason for this is that many medications lift patients' energy levels before lifting their mood. This puts them at greater risk of following through with attempting suicide. Additionally, if a person has a comorbid psychiatric disorder, it may be difficult to find a medication that addresses both the psychiatric disorder and suicidal ideation.


title: Suicidal ideation

text: Antidepressants may be effective. Often, SSRIs are used instead of TCAs as the latter typically have greater harm in overdose.


title: Suicidal ideation

text: Antidepressants have been shown to be a very effective means of treating suicidal ideation. One correlational study compared mortality rates due to suicide to the use of SSRI antidepressants in certain counties. The counties which had higher SSRI use had a significantly lower number of deaths caused by suicide. Additionally, an experimental study followed depressed patients for one year. During the first six months of that year, the patients were examined for suicidal behavior including suicidal ideation. The patients were then prescribed antidepressants for the six months following the first six observatory months. During the six months of treatment, experimenters found suicide ideation reduced from 47% of patients down to 14% of patients. Thus, it appears from current research that antidepressants have a helpful effect on the reduction of suicidal ideation.


title: Suicidal ideation

text: Although research is largely in favor of the use of antidepressants for the treatment of suicidal ideation, in some cases antidepressants are claimed to be the cause of suicidal ideation. Upon the start of using antidepressants, many clinicians will note that sometimes the sudden onset of suicidal ideation may accompany treatment. This has caused the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to issue a warning stating that sometimes the use of antidepressants may actually increase suicidal ideation. Medical studies have found antidepressants help treat cases of suicidal ideation and work especially well with psychological therapy. Lithium reduces the risk of suicide in people with mood disorders. Tentative evidence finds clozapine in people with schizophrenia reduces the risk of suicide.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: The WannaCry ransomware attack was a worldwide cyberattack in May 2017 by the WannaCry ransomware cryptoworm, which targeted computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system by encrypting data and demanding ransom payments in the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. It propagated by using EternalBlue, an exploit developed by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) for Windows systems. EternalBlue was stolen and leaked by a group called The Shadow Brokers a month prior to the attack. While Microsoft had released patches previously to close the exploit, much of WannaCry's spread was from organizations that had not applied these, or were using older Windows systems that were past their end-of-life. These patches were imperative to organizations' cyber security but many were not implemented due to ignorance of their importance. Some have claimed a need for 24/7 operation, aversion to risking having formerly working applications breaking because of patch changes, lack of personnel or time to install them, or other reasons.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: The attack began at 07:44 UTC on 12 May 2017 and was halted a few hours later at 15:03 UTC by the registration of a kill switch discovered by Marcus Hutchins. The kill switch prevented already infected computers from being encrypted or further spreading WannaCry. The attack was estimated to have affected more than 300,000 computers across 150 countries, with total damages ranging from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars. Security experts believed from preliminary evaluation of the worm that the attack originated from North Korea or agencies working for the country.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: In December 2017, the United States and United Kingdom formally asserted that North Korea was behind the attack.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: A new variant of WannaCry forced Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to temporarily shut down several of its chip-fabrication factories in August 2018. The virus spread onto 10,000 machines in TSMC's most advanced facilities.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: WannaCry is a ransomware cryptoworm, which targeted computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system by encrypting (locking) data and demanding ransom payments in the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. The worm is also known as WannaCrypt, Wana Decrypt0r 2.0, WanaCrypt0r 2.0, and Wanna Decryptor. It is considered a network worm because it also includes a transport mechanism to automatically spread itself. This transport code scans for vulnerable systems, then uses the EternalBlue exploit to gain access, and the DoublePulsar tool to install and execute a copy of itself. WannaCry versions 0, 1, and 2 were created using Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: EternalBlue is an exploit of Microsoft's implementation of their Server Message Block (SMB) protocol released by The Shadow Brokers. Much of the attention and comment around the event was occasioned by the fact that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) (from whom the exploit was likely stolen) had already discovered the vulnerability, but used it to create an exploit for its own offensive work, rather than report it to Microsoft. Microsoft eventually discovered the vulnerability, and on Tuesday, 14 March 2017, they issued security bulletin MS17-010, which detailed the flaw and announced that patches had been released for all Windows versions that were currently supported at that time, these being Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Server 2016.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: DoublePulsar is a backdoor tool, also released by The Shadow Brokers on 14 April 2017. Starting from 21 April 2017, security researchers reported that there were tens of thousands of computers with the DoublePulsar backdoor installed. By 25 April, reports estimated that the number of infected computers could be up to several hundred thousand, with numbers increasing every day. The WannaCry code can take advantage of any existing DoublePulsar infection, or installs it itself. On 9 May 2017, private cybersecurity company RiskSense released code on GitHub with the stated purpose of allowing legal white hat penetration testers to test the CVE-2017-0144 exploit on unpatched systems.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: When executed, the WannaCry malware first checks the kill switch domain name; if it is not found, then the ransomware encrypts the computer's data, then attempts to exploit the SMB vulnerability to spread out to random computers on the Internet, and laterally to computers on the same network. As with other modern ransomware, the payload displays a message informing the user that their files have been encrypted, and demands a payment of around US$300 in bitcoin within three days, or US$600 within seven days, warning that "you have not so enough time. [sic]" Three hardcoded bitcoin addresses, or wallets, are used to receive the payments of victims. As with all such wallets, their transactions and balances are publicly accessible even though the cryptocurrency wallet owners remain unknown.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: Several organizations released detailed technical write-ups of the malware, including a senior security analyst at RiskSense, Microsoft, Cisco, Malwarebytes, Symantec and McAfee.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: The attack began on Friday, 12 May 2017, with evidence pointing to an initial infection in Asia at 07:44 UTC. The initial infection was likely through an exposed vulnerable SMB port, rather than email phishing as initially assumed. Within a day the code was reported to have infected more than 230,000 computers in over 150 countries.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: Organizations that had not installed Microsoft's security update from March were affected by the attack. Those still running unsupported versions of Microsoft Windows, such as Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 were at particularly high risk because no security patches had been released since May 2014 for Windows XP and July 2015 for Windows Server 2003. A Kaspersky Lab study reported, however, that less than 0.1 percent of the affected computers were running Windows XP, and that 98 percent of the affected computers were running Windows 7. In a controlled testing environment, the cybersecurity firm Kryptos Logic found that it was unable to infect a Windows XP system with WannaCry using just the exploits, as the payload failed to load, or caused the operating system to crash rather than actually execute and encrypt files. However, when executed manually, WannaCry could still operate on Windows XP.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: Experts quickly advised affected users against paying the ransom due to no reports of people getting their data back after payment and as high revenues would encourage more of such campaigns. As of 14 June 2017, after the attack had subsided, a total of 327 payments totaling US$130,634.77 (51.62396539 BTC) had been transferred.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: The day after the initial attack in May, Microsoft released out-of-band security updates for end-of-life products Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows 8; these patches had been created in February of that year following a tip-off about the vulnerability in January of that year. Organizations were advised to patch Windows and plug the vulnerability in order to protect themselves from the cyber attack. The head of Microsoft's Cyber Defense Operations Center, Adrienne Hall, said that "Due to the elevated risk for destructive cyber-attacks at this time, we made the decision to take this action because applying these updates provides further protection against potential attacks with characteristics similar to WannaCrypt [alternative name to WannaCry]".


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: Researcher Marcus Hutchins discovered the kill switch domain hardcoded in the malware. Registering a domain name for a DNS sinkhole stopped the attack spreading as a worm, because the ransomware only encrypted the computer's files if it was unable to connect to that domain, which all computers infected with WannaCry before the website's registration had been unable to do. While this did not help already infected systems, it severely slowed the spread of the initial infection and gave time for defensive measures to be deployed worldwide, particularly in North America and Asia, which had not been attacked to the same extent as elsewhere. On 14 May, a first variant of WannaCry appeared with a new and second kill-switch registered by Matt Suiche on the same day. This was followed by a second variant with the third and last kill-switch on 15 May, which was registered by Check Point threat intelligence analysts. A few days later, a new version of WannaCry was detected that lacked the kill switch altogether.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: On 19 May, it was reported that hackers were trying to use a Mirai botnet variant to effect a distributed denial-of-service attack on WannaCry's kill-switch domain with the intention of knocking it offline. On 22 May, Hutchins protected the domain by switching to a cached version of the site, capable of dealing with much higher traffic loads than the live site.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: Separately, researchers from University College London and Boston University reported that their "PayBreak" system could defeat WannaCry and several other families of ransomware by recovering the keys used to encrypt the user's data.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: It was discovered that Windows encryption APIs used by WannaCry may not completely clear the prime numbers used to generate the payload's private keys from the memory, making it potentially possible to retrieve the required key if they had not yet been overwritten or cleared from resident memory. The key is kept in the memory if the WannaCry process has not been killed and the computer has not been rebooted after being infected. This behaviour was used by a French researcher to develop a tool known as WannaKey, which automates this process on Windows XP systems. This approach was iterated upon by a second tool known as Wanakiwi, which was tested to work on Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 as well.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: Within four days of the initial outbreak, new infections had slowed to a trickle due to these responses.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: Linguistic analysis of the ransom notes indicated the authors were likely fluent in Chinese and proficient in English, as the versions of the notes in those languages were probably human-written while the rest seemed to be machine-translated. According to an analysis by the FBI's Cyber Behavioral Analysis Center, the computer that created the ransomware language files had Hangul language fonts installed, as evidenced by the presence of the "\fcharset129" Rich Text Format tag. Metadata in the language files also indicated that the computers that created the ransomware were set to , which is used in Korea.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: A security researcher initially posted a tweet referencing code similarities between WannaCry and previous malware. The cybersecurity companies Kaspersky Lab and Symantec have both said the code has some similarities with that previously used by the Lazarus Group (believed to have carried out the cyberattack on Sony Pictures in 2014 and a Bangladesh bank heist in 2016—and linked to North Korea). This could also be either simple re-use of code by another group or an attempt to shift blame—as in a cyber false flag operation; but a leaked internal NSA memo is alleged to have also linked the creation of the worm to North Korea. Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft, said he believed North Korea was the originator of the WannaCry attack, and the UK's National Cyber Security Centre reached the same conclusion.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: On 18 December 2017, the United States Government formally announced that it publicly considers North Korea to be the main culprit behind the WannaCry attack. Then-President Trump's Homeland Security Advisor, Tom Bossert, wrote an op-ed in "The Wall Street Journal" about this charge, saying "We do not make this allegation lightly. It is based on evidence." In a press conference the following day, Bossert said that the evidence indicates that Kim Jong-un had given the order to launch the malware attack. Bossert said that Canada, New Zealand and Japan agree with the United States' assessment of the evidence that links the attack to North Korea, while the United Kingdom's Foreign and Commonwealth Office says it also stands behind the United States' assertion.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: On 6 September 2018, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) announced formal charges against Park Jin-hyok for involvement in the Sony Pictures hack of 2014. The DoJ contended that Park was a North Korean hacker working as part of a team of experts for the North Korean Reconnaissance General Bureau. The Department of Justice asserted this team also had been involved in the WannaCry attack, among other activities.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: The ransomware campaign was unprecedented in scale according to Europol, which estimates that around 200,000 computers were infected across 150 countries. According to Kaspersky Lab, the four most affected countries were Russia, Ukraine, India and Taiwan.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: One of the largest agencies struck by the attack was the National Health Service hospitals in England and Scotland, and up to 70,000 devices – including computers, MRI scanners, blood-storage refrigerators and theatre equipment – may have been affected. On 12 May, some NHS services had to turn away non-critical emergencies, and some ambulances were diverted. In 2016, thousands of computers in 42 separate NHS trusts in England were reported to be still running Windows XP. In 2018 a report by Members of Parliament concluded that all 200 NHS hospitals or other organizations checked in the wake of the WannaCry attack still failed cybersecurity checks. NHS hospitals in Wales and Northern Ireland were unaffected by the attack.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK in Tyne and Wear, England, halted production after the ransomware infected some of their systems. Renault also stopped production at several sites in an attempt to stop the spread of the ransomware. Spain's Telefónica, FedEx and Deutsche Bahn were hit, along with many other countries and companies worldwide.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: The attack's impact is said to be relatively low compared to other potential attacks of the same type and could have been much worse had Hutchins not discovered that a kill switch had been built in by its creators or if it had been specifically targeted on highly critical infrastructure, like nuclear power plants, dams or railway systems.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: According to cyber-risk-modeling firm Cyence, economic losses from the cyber attack could reach up to US $4 billion, with other groups estimating the losses to be in the hundreds of millions.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: A number of experts highlighted the NSA's non-disclosure of the underlying vulnerability, and their loss of control over the EternalBlue attack tool that exploited it. Edward Snowden said that if the NSA had "privately disclosed the flaw used to attack hospitals when they found it, not when they lost it, the attack may not have happened". British cybersecurity expert Graham Cluley also sees "some culpability on the part of the U.S. intelligence services". According to him and others "they could have done something ages ago to get this problem fixed, and they didn't do it". He also said that despite obvious uses for such tools to spy on people of interest, they have a duty to protect their countries' citizens. Others have also commented that this attack shows that the practice of intelligence agencies to stockpile exploits for offensive purposes rather than disclosing them for defensive purposes may be problematic. Microsoft president and chief legal officer Brad Smith wrote, "Repeatedly, exploits in the hands of governments have leaked into the public domain and caused widespread damage. An equivalent scenario with conventional weapons would be the U.S. military having some of its Tomahawk missiles stolen." Russian President Vladimir Putin placed the responsibility of the attack on U.S. intelligence services, for having created EternalBlue.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: On 17 May 2017, United States bipartisan lawmakers introduced the PATCH Act that aims to have exploits reviewed by an independent board to "balance the need to disclose vulnerabilities with other national security interests while increasing transparency and accountability to maintain public trust in the process".


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: On 15 June 2017, the United States Congress was to hold a hearing on the attack. Two subpanels of the House Science Committee were to hear the testimonies from various individuals working in the government and non-governmental sector about how the US can improve its protection mechanisms for its systems against similar attacks in the future.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: Marcus Hutchins, a cybersecurity researcher, working in loose collaboration with UK's National Cyber Security Centre, researched the malware and discovered a "kill switch". Later globally dispersed security researchers collaborated online to develop open source tools that allow for decryption without payment under some circumstances. Snowden states that when "NSA-enabled ransomware eats the Internet, help comes from researchers, not spy agencies" and asks why this is the case.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: Adam Segal, director of the digital and cyberspace policy program at the Council on Foreign Relations, stated that "the patching and updating systems are broken, basically, in the private sector and in government agencies". In addition, Segal said that governments' apparent inability to secure vulnerabilities "opens a lot of questions about backdoors and access to encryption that the government argues it needs from the private sector for security". Arne Schönbohm, president of Germany's Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), stated that "the current attacks show how vulnerable our digital society is. It's a wake-up call for companies to finally take IT security [seriously]".


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: The effects of the attack also had political implications; in the United Kingdom, the impact on the National Health Service quickly became political, with claims that the effects were exacerbated by Government underfunding of the NHS; in particular, the NHS ceased its paid Custom Support arrangement to continue receiving support for unsupported Microsoft software used within the organization, including Windows XP. Home Secretary Amber Rudd refused to say whether patient data had been backed up, and Shadow Health Secretary Jon Ashworth accused Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt of refusing to act on a critical note from Microsoft, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the National Crime Agency that had been received two months previously.


title: WannaCry ransomware attack

text: Others argued that hardware and software vendors often fail to account for future security flaws, selling systems that − due to their technical design and market incentives − eventually won't be able to properly receive and apply patches.