title: Northern England

text: At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, Northern England had plentiful coal and water power while the poor agriculture in the uplands meant that labour in the area was cheap. Mining and milling, which had been practised on a small scale in the area for generations, began to grow and centralise. The boom in industrial textile manufacture is sometimes attributed to the damp climate and soft water making it easier to wash and work fibres, although the success of Northern fabric mills has no single clear source. Readily available coal and the discovery of large iron deposits in Cumbria and Cleveland allowed ironmaking and, with the invention of the Bessemer process, steelmaking to take root in the region. High quality steel in turn fed the shipyards that opened along the coasts, especially on Tyneside and at Barrow-in-Furness.


title: Northern England

text: The Great Famine in Ireland of the 1840s drove migrants across the Irish Sea, and many settled in the industrial cities of the North, especially Manchester and Liverpool – at the 1851 census, 13% of the population of Manchester and Salford were Irish-born, and in Liverpool the figure was 22%. In response there was a wave of anti-Catholic riots and Protestant Orange Orders proliferated across Northern England, chiefly in Lancashire, but also elsewhere in the North. By 1881 there were 374 Orange organisations in Lancashire, 71 in the North East, and 42 in Yorkshire. From further afield, Northern England saw immigration from European countries such as Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia and Scandinavia. Some immigrants were well-to-do industrialists seeking to do business in the booming industrial cities, some were escaping poverty, some were servants or slaves, some were sailors who chose to settle in the port towns, some were Jews fleeing pogroms on the continent, and some were migrants originally stranded at Liverpool after attempting to catch an onwards ship to the United States or to colonies of the British Empire. At the same time, hundreds of thousands from depressed rural areas of the North emigrated, chiefly to the US, Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.


title: Northern England

text: The First World War was the turning point for the economy of Northern England. In the interwar years, the Northern economy began to be eclipsed by the South – in 1913–1914, unemployment in "outer Britain" (the North, plus Scotland and Wales) was 2.6% while the rate in Southern England was more than double that at 5.5%, but in 1937 during the Great Depression the outer British unemployment rate was 16.1% and the Southern rate was less than half that at 7.1%. The weakening economy and interwar unemployment caused several episodes of social unrest in the region, including the 1926 general strike and the Jarrow March. The Great Depression highlighted the weakness of Northern England's specialised economy: as world trade declined, demand for ships, steel, coal and textiles all fell. For the most part, Northern factories were still using nineteenth-century technology, and were not able to keep up with advances in industries such as motors, chemicals and electricals, while the expansion of the electric grid removed the North's advantages in terms of power generation and meant it was now more economic to build new factories in the Midlands or South.


title: Northern England

text: The industrial concentration in Northern England made it a major target for Luftwaffe attacks during the Second World War. The Blitz of 1940–1941 saw major raids on Barrow-in-Furness, Hull, Leeds, Manchester, Merseyside, Newcastle and Sheffield with thousands killed and significant damage to the cities. Liverpool, a vital port for supplies from North America, was especially hard hit – the city was the most bombed in the UK outside London and Hull, with around 4,000 deaths across Merseyside and most of the city centre destroyed. Hull, the worst bombed city outside of London suffered damage to 98% of all buildings, the highest percentage of any town or city. The rebuilding that followed, and the simultaneous slum clearance that saw whole neighbourhoods demolished and rebuilt, transformed the faces of Northern cities. Immigration from the "New Commonwealth", especially Pakistan and Bangladesh, starting in the 1950s reshaped Northern England once more, and there are now significant populations from the Indian subcontinent in towns and cities such as Bradford, Leeds, Preston and Sheffield.


title: Northern England

text: Deindustrialisation continued and unemployment gradually increased during the 1970s, but accelerated during the government of Margaret Thatcher, who chose not to encourage growth in the North if it risked growth in the South. The era saw the 1984–85 miners' strike, which brought hardship for many Northern mining towns. Northern metropolitan county councils, which were Labour strongholds often with very left-wing leadership (such as Militant-dominated Liverpool and the so-called "People's Republic of South Yorkshire"), had high-profile conflicts with the national government. The increasing awareness of the North–South divide strengthened the distinct Northern English identity, which, despite regeneration in some of the major cities, remains to this day.


title: Northern England

text: The region saw several IRA attacks during the Troubles, including the M62 coach bombing, the Warrington bomb attacks and the 1992 and 1996 Manchester bombings. The latter was the largest bomb detonation in Great Britain since the end of the Second World War, and damaged or destroyed much of central Manchester. The attack led to Manchester's ageing infrastructure being rebuilt and modernised, sparking the regeneration of the city and making it a leading example of post-industrial redevelopment followed by other cities in the region and beyond.


title: Northern England

text: At the 2011 census, Northern England had a population of 14,933,000 – a growth of 5.1% since 2001 – in 6,364,000 households, meaning that Northerners comprise 28% of the English population and 24% of the UK population. Taken overall, 8% of the population of Northern England were born overseas (3% from the European Union including Ireland and 5% from elsewhere), substantially less than the England and Wales average of 13%, and 5% define their nationality as something other than a UK or Irish identity. 90.5% of the population described themselves as white, compared to an England and Wales average of 85.9%; other ethnicities represented include Pakistani (2.9%), Indian (1.3%), Black (1.3%), Chinese (0.6%) and Bangladeshi (0.5%). The broad averages hide significant variation within the region: Allerdale and Redcar and Cleveland had a greater percentage of the population identifying as White British (97.6% each) than any other district in England and Wales, while Manchester (66.5%), Bradford (67.4%) and Blackburn with Darwen (69.1%) had among the lowest proportions of White British outside London.


title: Northern England

text: 95% of the Northern population speak English as a first language – compared to an England and Wales average of 92% – and another 4% speak English as a second language well or very well. The 5% of the population who have another native language are chiefly speakers of European or South Asian languages. At the 2011 census, the largest languages apart from English were Polish (spoken by 0.7% of the population), Urdu (0.6%) and Punjabi (0.5%), and 0.4% of the population speak a variety of Chinese: a similar distribution to that in the whole of England. Redcar and Cleveland has the largest proportion of the population speaking English as a first language in England, with 99.3%.


title: Northern England

text: At the 2011 census, the North East and North West had the largest proportion of Christians in England and Wales; 67.5% and 67.3% respectively (the proportion in Yorkshire and the Humber was lower at 59.5%). Yorkshire and the Humber and the North West both had significant populations of Muslims – 6.2% and 5.1% respectively – while Muslims in the North East made up only 1.8% of the population. All other faiths combined comprised less than 2% of the population in all regions.


title: Northern England

text: The census question on religion has been criticised by the British Humanist Association as leading, and other surveys of religion tend to find very different results. The 2015 British Election Survey found 52% of Northerners identified as Christian (22% Anglican, 14% non-denominational Christian, 12% Roman Catholic, 2% Methodist, and 2% other Christian denominations), 40% as non-religious, 5% as Muslim, 1% as Hindu and 1% as Jewish.


title: Northern England

text: One major manifestation of the North–South divide is in health and life expectancy statistics. All three Northern England statistical regions have lower than average life expectancies and higher than average rates of cancer, circulatory disease, respiratory disease and obesity. Blackpool has the lowest life expectancy at birth in England – male life expectancy at birth between 2012 and 2014 was 74.7, against an England-wide average of 79.5 – and the majority of English districts in the bottom 50 were in the North East or the North West. However, regional differences do seem to be slowly narrowing: between 1991 and 1993 and 2012–2014, life expectancy in the North East increased by 6.0 years and in the North West by 5.8 years, the fastest increases in any region outside London, and the gap between life expectancy in the North East and South East is now 2.5 years, down from 2.9 in 1993.


title: Northern England

text: These health inequalities manifested during the COVID-19 pandemic in high infection rates, death rates and excess mortality in Northern England, and in severe job losses in the following Great Lockdown recession. By June 2020, the infection rate in Northern England was nearly double that in London, and a study by the Northern Health Science Alliance found that of the six worst affected areas in England during the pandemic in their study, five were located in the North.


title: Northern England

text: Before the 19th century, there were no universities in Northern England. The first was the University of Durham, founded in 1832 and sometimes counted with the ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge, although it post-dates them by many centuries. The next universities built in the North were part of the wave of redbrick universities of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today, there are seven Northern institutions in the Russell Group of leading research universities: Durham, the redbricks of Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield and the later plate glass university of York. These universities, together with plate-glass Lancaster, form the N8 Research Partnership.


title: Northern England

text: There is a significant attainment gap between Northern and Southern schools, and pupils in the three Northern regions are less likely than the national average to achieve five higher-tier GCSEs, although this may be down to economic disadvantages faced by Northern pupils rather than an actual difference in school quality. Northern students are under-represented at Oxbridge, where three times as many places go to Southerners as to Northerners, and other Southern universities while Southerners are under-represented at leading Northern universities such as Sheffield, Manchester and Leeds. Due to the educational attainment and university admission disparities between north and south, there are calls for the government to invest in education in disadvantaged parts of Northern England to redress this.


title: Northern England

text: Like the UK as a whole, the Northern English economy is now dominated by the service sector – in September 2016, 82.2% of workers in the Northern statistical regions were employed in services, compared to 83.7% for the UK as a whole. Manufacturing now employs 9.5%, compared to the national average of 7.6%. The unemployment rate in Northern England is 5.3% compared to an England-wide and UK-wide average of 4.8%, and the North East has the highest unemployment rate in the UK, at 7.0% in December 2016, more than one percentage point higher than any other region. In 2015, the gross value added (GVA) of the Northern English economy was £316 billion, and if it were an independent nation, it would be the tenth largest economy in Europe. The region does have poor growth and productivity rates compared to Southern England and to other EU countries.


title: Northern England

text: Growth, employment and household income have lagged behind the South, and the five most deprived districts in England are all in Northern England, as are ten of the twelve most declining major towns in the UK. The picture is not clear-cut, as the North has areas which are as wealthy as, if not wealthier than, fashionable Southern areas such as Surrey. Yorkshire's Golden Triangle which extends from north Leeds to Harrogate and across to York is an example, as is Cheshire's Golden Triangle, centred on Alderley Edge. There are major disparities even across individual cities: Sheffield Hallam is one of the wealthiest constituencies in the country, and is the richest outside London and the South East, while Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough, just on the other side of the city, is one of the most deprived. Housing in Northern England is more affordable than the UK average: the median house price in most Northern cities was below £200,000 in 2015 with typical increases of below 10% over the previous five years. However, some areas have seen house prices fall considerably, putting inhabitants at risk of negative equity.


title: Northern England

text: The decline of coal mining and manufacturing in Northern England has led to comparisons with the Rust Belt in the United States. To stimulate the Northern economy, the government has organised a series of programmes to invest in and develop the region, of which the latest as of 2017 is the Northern Powerhouse. The North has also been a significant recipient of European Union Structural Funds. Between 2007 and 2013, EU funds created around 70,000 jobs in the region, and the majority of Northern Powerhouse funding comes from the European Regional Development Fund and the European Investment Bank. The loss of these funds following Brexit, combined with potential reductions in exports to the EU, has been identified as a threat to Northern growth.


title: Northern England

text: The public sector is a major employer in Northern England. Between 2000 and 2008, the majority of new jobs created in Northern England were for the government and its suppliers and contractors. All three Northern regions have public sector employment above the national average, and North East has the highest level in England with 20.2% of the workforce in the public sector as of 2016 – down from 23.4% a decade earlier. The austerity programme under the government of David Cameron saw significant cuts to public services, and the reduction in public sector employment resulted in job losses for around 3% of the Northern England workforce with significant impact on the regional economy.


title: Northern England

text: There are of farmland in Northern England. The rough Pennine terrain means that most of Northern England is unsuited for growing crops; like Scotland, Northern farming was traditionally dominated by oats, which grow better than wheat in poor soil. Today, the mix of cereals and vegetables grown is similar to that of the UK as a whole, but only a minority of land is arable. Only 32% of Northern farmland is primarily used for growing crops, compared to 49% for England as a whole. Conversely, 57% of the land is given over to rearing livestock, and 33% of England's cattle, 43% of its pigs and 46% of its sheep and lambs are reared in the North.


title: Northern England

text: The only part of the region that is predominantly given over to crops is the land around the Humber estuary, where the well-drained fens result in excellent quality land. The lowland Cheshire Plain is mostly given over to dairy farming, while in the Pennines and Cheviots grazing sheep play an important role not just in agriculture but also in land management more generally. Heather moorland in the Pennine uplands is home to driven grouse shooting from 12 August (the Glorious Twelfth) until 10 December every year. The number of grouse moors in Northern England is a major threat to natural predators, which are often killed by gamekeepers to protect grouse, and as a result, the Cumbria Wildlife Trust describes the North's moors as a "black hole" for the endangered hen harrier.


title: Northern England

text: Sea fishing is an important industry for Northern coastal towns. Major fishing ports include Fleetwood, Grimsby, Hull and Whitby. At its height, Grimsby was the largest fishing port in the world, but the Northern fishing industry suffered greatly from a series of events in the second half of the twentieth century: the Cod Wars with Iceland and establishment of the exclusive economic zone ended British access to rich North Atlantic fishing grounds, while the North Sea was badly overfished and the European Common Fisheries Policy put strict quotas on catches to protect the almost depleted stocks. Grimsby is now transitioning to the processing of imported seafood and to offshore wind to replace its fishing fleet.


title: Northern England

text: Northern England has a strong export-based economy, with trade more balanced than the UK average, and the North East is the only region of England to regularly export more than it imports. Chemicals, vehicles, machinery and other manufactured goods make up the majority of Northern exports, just over half of which go to EU countries. Major manufacturing plants include car plants at Vauxhall Ellesmere Port, Jaguar Land Rover Halewood and Nissan Sunderland, the Leyland Trucks factory, the Hitachi Newton Aycliffe train plant, the Humber, Lindsey and Stanlow oil refineries, the NEPIC cluster of chemical works based around Teesside, and the nuclear processing facilities at Springfields and Sellafield.


title: Northern England

text: Offshore oil and gas from North Sea and Irish Sea, and more recently offshore wind power, are significant components in Northern England's energy mix. Although deep-pit coal mining in the UK ended in 2015 with the closure of Kellingley Colliery, North Yorkshire, there are still several open-pit mines in the area. Shale gas is especially prevalent across Northern England, although plans to extract it through hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") have proven to be controversial.


title: Northern England

text: Around 10% of the Northern England workforce is employed in retail. Of the Big Four supermarkets in the UK, two – Asda and Morrisons – are based in the North. Northern England was the birthplace of the modern cooperative movement, and the Manchester-based Co-operative Group has the highest revenue of any firm in the North West. The area is also home to many online retailers, with startups emerging around tech hubs in Northern cities.


title: Northern England

text: With urban regeneration, high-value service sector industries such as corporate services and financial services have taken root in Northern England, with major hubs around Leeds and Manchester. Call centres – attracted by low labour costs and a preference for Northern English accents among the public – have replaced heavy industry as major employers of unskilled workers, with more than 5% of workers in all Northern England regions working in one.


title: Northern England

text: Together, the N8 research universities have over 190,000 students and contribute more to the Northern economy in terms of GVA than agriculture, car manufacturing or media. Discoveries and inventions at these universities have resulted in spin-offs worth hundreds of millions to local economies: the discovery of graphene at the University of Manchester produced the National Graphene Institute and the Sir Henry Royce Institute for Advanced Materials, while robotics research at the University of Sheffield led to the development of the Advanced Manufacturing Park.


title: Northern England

text: Recent decades have seen the growth of high-tech companies based around Northern England's major cities. There are eleven high-tech firms worth over $1 billion based in the region, and digital industries support around 300,000 jobs. Game development, online retail, health technology and analytics are among the major high-tech sectors in the North.


title: Northern England

text: The expansion of the railway network in the second half of the nineteenth century meant most in the North lived within reach of the coast, and seaside towns saw a major tourism boom. By around 1870 Blackpool on the Lancashire coast had become overwhelmingly the most popular destination – not just for Northern families, but many from the Midlands and Scotland as well. Other resorts popular with Northerners included Morecambe in northern Lancashire, Whitley Bay near Newcastle, Whitby in North Yorkshire, and New Brighton on the Wirral Peninsula, as well as Rhyl over the border in North Wales.


title: Northern England

text: The same social forces that had built these resorts in the nineteenth century proved to be their undoing in the twentieth. Transport links continued to improve and it became possible to travel overseas quickly and affordably. The Belgian coast at Ostend became popular with Northern working-class tourists in the first half of the twentieth century, and the introduction of package holidays in the 1970s was the death of most Northern seaside resorts. Blackpool has maintained a focus on tourism, and remains one of the most visited towns in England, but visitor numbers are far below their peak and the town's economy has suffered – both employment rates and average earnings remain below the regional average.


title: Northern England

text: The wild landscapes of the North are a major draw for tourists, and many urban areas are looking for regeneration through industrial, heritage and cultural tourism: of the 24 national museums and galleries in England outside London, 14 are located in the North. In 2015, Northern England received around a quarter of all domestic tourism within the UK, with 28.7 million visitors in 2015, but only 8% of international tourists to the United Kingdom visit the region.


title: Northern England

text: As part of a drive to reduce media centralisation in London, the BBC and ITV have moved much of their programme production to MediaCityUK in Salford and Channel 4 has moved its headquarters to Leeds. Of the four national evening soap operas, three are set and filmed in Northern England ("Coronation Street" in Manchester, "Emmerdale" in the Yorkshire Dales and "Hollyoaks" in Liverpool but set in Chester) and these are important to the local TV industry – the commitment to "Emmerdale" saved ITV Yorkshire's Leeds Studios from closure. The region also has a reputation for drama serials and has produced some the most successful and acclaimed series of recent decades, including "Boys from the Blackstuff", "Our Friends in the North", "Clocking Off", "Shameless", "Waterloo Road" and "Last Tango in Halifax".


title: Northern England

text: Since "The Guardian" (formerly "The Manchester Guardian") moved to London in 1964, no major national paper is based in the North, and Northern news stories tend to be poorly covered in the national press. "The Yorkshire Post" promotes itself as "Yorkshire's national paper" and covers some national and international stories, but is primarily focused on news from Yorkshire and the North East. An attempt in 2016 to create a dedicated North-focused national newspaper, "24", failed after six weeks. Across Northern England as a whole, "The Sun" is the best selling newspaper, but the ongoing boycott around Merseyside following the newspaper's coverage of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster has seen the paper fall behind both the "Daily Mail" and the "Daily Mirror" in the North West. In general national readership in the North drags behind that of the South; the "Mirror" and the "Daily Star" are the only national papers with more readers in Northern England than in the South East and London. Local newspapers are the top-selling titles in both the North East and Yorkshire and the Humber, although Northern regional newspapers have seen steep declines in readership in recent years. Only seven daily Northern papers had circulation figures above 25,000 in June 2016: "Manchester Evening News", "Liverpool Echo", "Hull Daily Mail", "Newcastle Chronicle", "The Yorkshire Post" and "The Northern Echo".


title: Northern England

text: Manchester Network Access Point is the only internet exchange point in the UK outside London, and forms the main hub for the region. Household internet access in Northern England is at or above the UK average, but speeds and broadband penetration vary greatly. In 2013 the average speed in central Manchester was 60 Mbit/s, while in nearby Warrington the average speed was only 6.2 Mbit/s. Hull, which is unique in the UK in that its telephone network was never nationalised, has simultaneously some of the fastest and slowest internet speeds in the country: many households have "ultrafast" fibre optic broadband as standard, but it is also one of only two places in the UK where over 30% of businesses receive less than 10 Mbit/s. Speeds are especially poor in the rural parts of the North, with many small towns and villages completely without high speed access. Some areas have therefore formed their own community enterprises, such as Broadband 4 Rural North in Lancashire and Cybermoor in Cumbria, to install high-speed internet connections. Mobile broadband coverage is similarly patchy, with 3G and 4G almost universal in cities but unavailable in large parts of Yorkshire, the North East and Cumbria.


title: Northern England

text: The individual regions of the North have had their own identities and cultures for centuries, but with industrialisation, mass media and the opening of the North–South divide, a common Northern identity began to develop. This identity was initially a reactionary response to Southern prejudices—the North of the nineteenth century was largely depicted as a dirty, wild and uncultured place, even in sympathetic depictions such as Elizabeth Gaskell's 1855 novel "North and South"—but became an affirmation of what Northerners saw as their own personal strengths. Traits stereotypically associated with Northern England are straight-talking, grit and warmheartedness, as compared to the supposedly effete Southerners. Northern England—especially Lancashire, but also Yorkshire and the North East—has a tradition of matriarchal families, where the woman of the house runs the home and controls the family's finances. This too has its roots in industrialisation, when mills offered well-paid work for women: during depressions when demand for coal and steel were low, women were often the main breadwinners. Northern women are still stereotyped as strong-willed and independent, or affectionately as battle-axes.


title: Northern England

text: The phrase "it's grim up north" is associated with coal mining, industrial mills, weather and the way of life in the north of England during the Victorian and post World War I eras, when mills and coal mining, as well railways, child labour and slums were common. The phrase is often used by those who are not from the north of England, who paint the north as being different to the south of England. The current mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham has quoted the north as being grim, but not a bad thing. The phrase was quoted in 1991 when the band The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu a.k.a. The KLF used it in relation to a lot of places in the north of England including Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside and Yorkshire. As well as parts of the East Midlands Region and Cumbria and they use the phrase repeatedly in their song of the same name.


title: Northern England

text: The North of England is often stereotypically represented through the clothing worn by working-class men and women in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Working men would wear a heavy jacket and trousers held up by braces, an overcoat, and a hat, typically a flat cap, while women would wear a dress, or a skirt and blouse, with an apron on top as protection from dirt; in colder months they would often wear a shawl or headscarf. The maud, a woollen plaid woven in a pattern of small black and white checks, was also popular in Northern England until the early twentieth century.


title: Northern England

text: If not wearing leather lace-up shoes, some men and women would have worn English clogs, which were hardwearing and had replaceable soles and tips. Factory workers tapping their feet in time with the click of machinery developed a type of folk clog dance referred to as "clogging", which was intricately developed in the North.


title: Northern England

text: In the second half of the twentieth century, these traditional clothes fell out of fashion. Other styles such as "casual clobber" (mainland European designer clothing brought back by touring football fans) and sportswear became more popular, and the influence of Northern bands and football teams helped spread them across the country. In the twenty-first century, some traditional Northern items of clothing have begun to make a comeback – in particular, the flat cap.


title: Northern England

text: Impressions of Northern English cuisine are still shaped by the working-class diet of the early twentieth century, which was heavy on offal, high in calories and often not particularly healthy. Dishes such as black pudding, tripe, mushy peas and meat pie remain stereotypical Northern English foods in the national imagination. As a result, there is a concerted effort among Northern chefs to improve the region's image. Some Northern dishes such as Yorkshire pudding and Lancashire hotpot have spread across the UK, and only their names now hint at their origin. Among the Northern delicacies that have achieved Protected Geographical Status are traditional Cumberland sausage, traditional Grimsby smoked fish, Swaledale cheese, Yorkshire forced rhubarb and Yorkshire Wensleydale.


title: Northern England

text: The North is known for its often crumbly cheeses, of which Cheshire cheese is the earliest example. Unlike Southern cheeses like Cheddar, Northern cheeses typically use uncooked milk and a pre-salted curd pressed under enormous weights, resulting in a moist, sharp-tasting cheese. Wensleydale, another crumbly cheese, is unusual in that it is often served as a side to sweet cakes, which are themselves well represented in Northern England. Parkin, an oatmeal cake with black treacle and ginger, is a traditional treat across the North on Bonfire Night, and the fruity scone-like singing hinny and fat rascal are popular in the North East and Yorkshire respectively.


title: Northern England

text: While a variety of beers are popular across Northern England, the region is especially associated with brown ales such as Newcastle Brown Ale, Double Maxim and Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale. Beer in the North is usually served with a thick head which accentuates the nutty, malty flavours preferred in Northern beers. On the non-alcoholic side, the North – in particular, Lancashire – was the hub of the temperance bar movement which popularised soft drinks such as dandelion and burdock, Tizer and Vimto.


title: Northern England

text: According to "The Tab", the bakery chain Greggs is an integral part of Northern identity, using the number of people per Greggs as an indicator as to whether a town should be considered Northern.


title: Northern England

text: Immigration to Northern England has shaped its cuisine. The Teesside parmo is one example, derived from escalope Parmesan brought to the area by an Italian-American immigrant and adapted to the region's taste. There are large Chinatowns in Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle, and communities from the Indian subcontinent in all major towns. Bradford has won the Federation of Specialist Restaurant's "Curry Capital" title six years in a row as of 2016, while the Curry Mile in Manchester formerly had the largest concentration of curry restaurants in the UK and now offers a wide range of South Asian and Middle Eastern cuisine.


title: Northern England

text: Traditional folk music in Northern England is a combination of styles of England and Scotland – what is now called the Anglo-Scottish border ballad was once prevalent as far south as Lancashire. In the Middle Ages, much of Northern folk was accompanied by bagpipes, with styles including the Lancashire bagpipe, Yorkshire bagpipe and Northumbrian smallpipes. These disappeared in the early nineteenth century from the industrialising south of the region, but remain in the music of Northumbria. The British brass band tradition began in Northern England at around the same time: the dismissal of the Cheshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire military bands after the Napoleonic Wars, combined with the desire of industrial communities to better themselves, led to the founding of civilian bands. These bands provided entertainment at community events and led protest marches during the era of radical agitation. Although the style has since spread across much of Great Britain, brass bands remain a stereotype of the North, and the Whit Friday brass band contests draw hundreds of bands from across the UK and further afield.


title: Northern England

text: Northern England also has a thriving popular music scene. Influential movements include Merseybeat from the Liverpool area, which produced The Beatles, Northern soul, which brought Motown to England, and Madchester, the precursor to the rave scene. Across the Pennines, Sheffield is the birthplace of influential electronic pop bands from Cabaret Voltaire to Pulp, the New Yorkshire indie rock movement of the 2000s gave the country the Kaiser Chiefs and the Arctic Monkeys, and Teesside has a rock scene stretching from Chris Rea to Maxïmo Park. The press frequently frames music stories and reviews in terms of cultural and class differences between North and South, notably in the 1960s rivalry between the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and the 1990s Battle of Britpop between Oasis and Blur.


title: Northern England

text: Sport has been both one of the most unifying cultural forces in Northern England and, thanks to local rivalries such as the Lancashire–Yorkshire Roses rivalry, one of the most divisive. As huge numbers of people moved into recently built cities with little cultural heritage, local sports teams offered the population a sense of place and identity that was otherwise absent.


title: Northern England

text: Many early Northern sports players were working class and needed to miss work to play, with their teams compensating them for lost wages. By contrast, Southern teams, drawing from the traditions of public schools and Oxbridge, put great emphasis on amateurism and the Southern-dominated governing bodies forbade payments to players. This tension shaped the sports of association football and cricket, and led to the schism between the two main forms of rugby. The North is also associated with the animal sports of dog racing with whippets, pigeon racing and ferret legging, although these are now far more popular in stereotype than in reality.


title: Northern England

text: Manchester hosted the 2002 Commonwealth Games, which left it a legacy of sporting facilities including the City of Manchester Stadium, Manchester Aquatics Centre and the National Cycling Centre, headquarters of British Cycling. The Grand Départ for the 2014 Tour de France was in Leeds, and every year since Yorkshire has hosted the Tour de Yorkshire cycling event, part of the UCI Europe Tour. Tyneside meanwhile hosts the Great North Run, the UK's biggest mass-participation sporting event and the most popular half marathon in the world.


title: Northern England

text: The first football club in the UK was Sheffield F.C., founded in 1857. Early Northern football teams tended to adopt the Sheffield Rules rather than the Football Association Rules, but the two codes were merged in 1877. Many of the innovations of Sheffield Rules are now part of the global game, including corners, throw-ins, and free kicks for fouls.


title: Northern England

text: In 1883 Blackburn Olympic, a team composed mainly of factory workers, became the first Northern team to win the FA Cup, and the next year Preston North End won an FA Cup match against London-based Upton Park. Upton Park protested that Preston had broken FA rules by paying their players. In response, Preston withdrew from the competition and fellow Lancashire clubs Burnley and Great Lever followed suit. The protest gathered momentum to the point where more than 30 clubs, predominantly from the North, announced that they would set up a rival British Football Association if the FA did not permit professionalism. A schism was avoided in July 1885 when professionalism was formally legalised in English football. The Football League was founded in 1888, and marked its independence from the London-based Football Association (FA) by establishing headquarters in Preston – the League retained a Northern identity even after it accepted several Southern teams into its ranks. Organised women's football followed as the workforces of majority-female factories of Northern England in the First World War entered the 1917–18 Tyne, Wear & Tees Munition Girls Cup – the world's first women's football tournament. However, the FA did not support women's football and banned it altogether in 1921. Intense local derbies between neighbouring teams mean that there is less of a North–South rivalry than in some other sports.


title: Northern England

text: Many of the powerhouses of English football came from the North – as of the 2020–21 season, of the 123 top-flight league titles since 1888, 83 (67%) have been won by teams based north of Crewe. Everton, Liverpool, Manchester United and Manchester City are among the mainstays of the Premier League, while teams like Blackburn Rovers, Middlesbrough, Newcastle United and Sunderland have had more inconsistent runs in recent years, regularly being promoted and relegated from the top flight. Northern England is also the birthplace of the largest proportion the country's top players – as of Euro 2016, 537 Northerners had played for the England team, compared to 266 Midlanders and 367 Southerners, and 15 of the 23 man squad for the 2018 World Cup, as well as 14 of the 2019 Women's World Cup squad, were born in the region.


title: Northern England

text: The Rugby Football Union, which enforced amateurism, suspended teams who compensated their players for missed work and injury, leading teams from Lancashire, Yorkshire and surrounding areas to split away in 1895 and form the Rugby Football League. Over time, the RFU and RFL adopted different rules and the two forms of the game – rugby union and rugby league – diverged. Rugby league's stronghold remains Northern England along the "M62 corridor" between Liverpool and Hull. As of the 2021 season, 11 of the 12 teams in the Super League (the highest level of rugby league in the Northern Hemisphere) are from Northern England, with one team from France, and the 14-team Championship below it has 12 Northern teams, one London team and 1 French team.


title: Northern England

text: Rugby union was not entirely driven from Northern England, and in the 1970s the region was home to several strong teams. The high-water mark of rugby union in Northern England was the 1979 New Zealand tour during which the English Northern Division was the only team to defeat the All Blacks. In the 21st century the region's club sides have become less popular, with association football, cricket and rugby league attracting more spectators and talent. In the 2020–21 season, Sale Sharks and Newcastle Falcons play in the English Premiership, and Doncaster R.F.C. play in the RFU Championship.


title: Northern England

text: Cricket has a strong following in Northern England, and three counties are represented by first-class county cricket teams: Durham, Lancashire and Yorkshire. The Roses Match (named for the Red Rose of Lancaster and the White Rose of York) between Lancashire and Yorkshire is one of the hardest fought rivalries in the sport – the pride of both sides, and their determination not to lose, resulted in the teams developing a slow, stubborn and defensive style that proved unpopular elsewhere in the country. The London-based Marylebone Cricket Club, which controlled the game at the time, selected few Northern players for Test matches, and this was perceived as a snub to their playing style – the anger united Lancashire and Yorkshire against the South and helped cast a shared Northern identity that transcended the Roses rivalry. This divide was illustrated in the 1924 County Championship, when Yorkshire beat London-based Middlesex to claim the title. Surrey accused Yorkshire of scuffing the pitch and intimidating the bowlers, while the match with Middlesex was so vicious that the team threatened to never play in Yorkshire again. The Lancashire captain Jack Sharp on the other hand was quoted as saying "I'm real glad a rose won it. Red or white, it doesn't matter." Durham are a recent addition to top-flight cricket, having only achieved first-class status in 1992, but have won the County Championship three times.


title: Northern England

text: Although Yorkshire and Lancashire were traditionally more relaxed about professionalism than other counties, cricket did not see the same regional schisms on the topic that rugby and football did – there were debates over amateur status in first-class cricket, but these tensions were given release in the Gentlemen v Players fixture. Nevertheless, the annual North v South games were among the most popular and competitive in the sport, running annually from 1849 until 1900 and intermittently thereafter.


title: Northern England

text: Northern England, as the first area in the world to industrialise, was the birthplace of much modern political thought. Marxism and, more generally, socialism were shaped by reports into the lives of the Northern working class, from Friedrich Engels' "The Condition of the Working Class in England" to George Orwell's "The Road to Wigan Pier". Meanwhile, enterprise and trade at the North's ports influenced the birth of Manchester Liberalism, a "laissez-faire" free trade philosophy. Expounded by C. P. Scott and the "Manchester Guardian", the movement's greatest success was the repeal of the Corn Laws, protests against which had led to the 1819 Peterloo Massacre in Manchester.


title: Northern England

text: The first Trades Union Congress was held in Manchester in 1868, and as of 2015 trade union membership in Northern England remained higher than in Southern England, although it is lower than in the other Home Nations. Since the Thatcher era, the Conservative Party struggled to gain support in the area. Today, Northern England is generally described as a stronghold of the Labour Party – although the Conservatives hold some rural seats, they traditionally held almost no urban seats and as of the 2021 local elections there are no Conservative councillors on Liverpool City Council, Manchester City Council or Newcastle City Council, and only one on Sheffield City Council. During the 2019 general election, many traditionally Labour constituencies in Northern England swung heavily towards the Conservatives, and the collapse of the "red wall" of Northern Labour seats was a major factor in the Conservative victory. Historically the region was also a heartland for the Liberals, and between the 1980s and the 2010s their successors in the Liberal Democrats benefited from Conservative unpopularity by positioning themselves as the centrist alternative to Labour in the North.


title: Northern England

text: At the 2016 EU membership referendum, all three Northern England regions voted to leave, as did all English regions outside London. The largest Northern Remain vote was 60.4% in Manchester; the largest Leave vote was 69.9% in North East Lincolnshire. In total, the Leave vote in the Northern England regions was 55.9% – higher than in the Southern England regions and the other Home Nations, but lower than in the Midlands or the East of England. The Eurosceptic UK Independence Party (UKIP) positioned themselves as the main challenger to Labour in Northern constituencies, and came second in many at the 2015 general election. UKIP originally struggled in the region due to vote splitting with the far-right British National Party (BNP), who exploited racial tensions in the wake of the 2001 Bradford riots and other riots in Northern towns. In 2006, 40% of BNP voters lived in Northern England and both BNP MEPs elected at the 2009 European elections came from Northern constituencies. After 2013, BNP support in the region collapsed as most voters swung to UKIP. The Northern UKIP vote in turn collapsed following the EU referendum, with most UKIP voters returning to their former allegiances.


title: Northern England

text: Campaigns for Northern English devolution have seen little electoral support. Plans by Labour under Tony Blair to create devolved regional assemblies for the three Northern regions were abandoned after the government lost the 2004 North East England devolution referendum against a No vote of 78%. The regionalist Yorkshire Party and North East Party only hold seats at the local council level, and the Northern Party, which campaigned for a devolved Northern government with the power to make laws and full control of taxation and spending, was wound up in 2016.


title: Northern England

text: The Northern Independence Party was founded in October 2020, a secessionist and democratic socialist political party that seeks to make Northern England an independent nation, under the name of Northumbria.


title: Northern England

text: Christianity has been the largest religion in the region since the Early Middle Ages; its existence in Britain dates back to the late Roman era and the arrival of Celtic Christianity. The Holy Island of Lindisfarne played an essential role in the Christianisation of Northumbria, after Aidan from Connacht founded a monastery there as the first Bishop of Lindisfarne at the request of King Oswald. It is known for the creation of the Lindisfarne Gospels and remains a place of pilgrimage. Saint Cuthbert, a monk of Lindisfarne, was venerated from Nottinghamshire to Cumberland, and is today sometimes named the patron saint of Northern England. The Synod of Whitby saw Northumbria break from Celtic Christianity and return to the Roman Catholic church, as calculations of Easter and tonsure rules were brought into line with those of Rome.


title: Northern England

text: After the English Reformation Northern England became a centre of Catholicism, and Irish immigration increased its numbers further, especially in North West cities like Liverpool and Manchester. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the area underwent a religious revival that ultimately produced Primitive Methodism, and at its peak in the 19th century Methodism was the dominant faith in much of Northern England.


title: Northern England

text: As of 2016, the list of places of worship registered for marriage for Northern England included at least 1,960 that are Methodist or Independent Methodist, 1,200 Roman Catholic, 370 United Reformed, 310 Baptist or Particular Baptist, 250 Jehovah's Witness and 240 Salvation Army, as well as many hundreds of churches from smaller denominations.


title: Northern England

text: In the ecclesiastical administration of the Church of England the entire North is covered by the Province of York, which is represented by the Archbishop of York – the second-highest figure in the Church after the Archbishop of Canterbury. The unusual situation of having two archbishops at the top of Church hierarchy suggests that Northern England was seen as a "sui generis". Likewise, with the exception of parts of the Diocese of Shrewsbury and Diocese of Nottingham, the North is covered in Roman Catholic Church administration by the Province of Liverpool, represented by the Archbishop of Liverpool.


title: Northern England

text: Small Jewish communities arose in Beverley, Doncaster, Grimsby, Lancaster, Newcastle, and York in the wake of the Norman Conquest but suffered massacres and pogroms, of which the largest was the York Massacre in 1190. Jews were forcibly banished from England by the 1290 Edict of Expulsion until the Resettlement of the Jews in England in the seventeenth century, and the first synagogue in the North appeared in Liverpool in 1753. Manchester also has a long-standing Jewish community: the now-demolished 1857 Manchester Reform Synagogue was the second Reform synagogue in the country, and Greater Manchester has the only eruv in the United Kingdom outside London. Traditionally, there is also a large Jewish presence in Gateshead. In total, there are 84 synagogues in Northern England registered for marriages.


title: Northern England

text: Spiritualism flourished in Northern England in the nineteenth century, in part as a backlash to the fundamentalist Primitive Methodist movement and in part driven by the influence of Owenist socialism. There remain 220 Spiritualist churches registered in the North, of which 40 identify as Christian Spiritualist.


title: Northern England

text: The first mosque in the United Kingdom was founded by the convert Abdullah Quilliam in the Liverpool Muslim Institute in 1889. Today, there are around 500 mosques in Northern England. Indian religions are also represented: there are at least 45 gurdwaras, of which the largest is the Sikh Temple in Leeds, and 30 mandirs, of which the largest is Bradford Lakshmi Narayan Hindu Temple.


title: Northern England

text: Transport in the North has been shaped by the Pennines, creating strong north–south axes along each coast and an east–west axis across the moorland passes of the southern Pennines. Northern England is a centre of freight transport and handles around one third of all British cargo. Both passenger and freight links between Northern cities remain poor, which is a major weakness of the Northern economy.


title: Northern England

text: The passenger transport executive (PTE) has become a major player in the organisation of public transport within Northern city regions; of the six PTEs in England, five (Transport for Greater Manchester, Merseytravel, Travel South Yorkshire, Nexus Tyne and Wear and West Yorkshire Metro) are located in the North. These coordinate bus services, local trains and light rail in their regions. Following the passage of the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act 2016, Transport for the North became a statutory body in 2018 with powers to coordinate services and offer integrated ticketing throughout the region.


title: Northern England

text: The Preston By-pass, opened in 1958, was the first motorway in the UK, and today an extensive network connects the major cities of the North. The main western route through the North is the M6, part of a chain of motorways from London to Glasgow, while the main eastern motorway is the M1/A1(M), which runs as far north as Newcastle. The M62 links Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Hull across the Pennines. Other trans-Pennine roads are comparatively minor, and the lack of any dual-carriageway connection between the east and west coasts anywhere in England north of the M62 has been identified by the Department for Transport as a significant hindrance to the Northern economy. In many cases, modern roads still follow ancient routes: the M62 motorway effectively duplicates the Roman road between York and Chester, while the Great North Road, the stagecoach route from London to Scotland, became the modern A1 road.


title: Northern England

text: Buses are an important part of the Northern transport mix, with bus ridership above the England and Wales average in all three Northern regions. Many of the municipal bus companies were located in Northern England, and the region saw intense competition and bus wars following deregulation in the 1980s and 1990s. Increasing car ownership in the same era caused bus use to decline, although it remains higher than in most areas of the South.


title: Northern England

text: The North of England pioneered rail transport. Milestones include the 1758 Middleton Railway in Leeds, the first railway authorised by Act of Parliament and the oldest continually operating in the world; the 1825 Stockton and Darlington Railway, the first public railway to use steam locomotives; and the 1830 Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the first modern main line. Today the region retains many of its original railway lines, including the East Coast and West Coast main lines and the Cross Country Route. Passenger numbers on Northern routes increased over 50% between 2004 and 2016, and Northern England handles over half of total UK rail freight, but infrastructure is poorly funded compared to Southern railways: railways in London received £5426 per resident in 2015 while those in the North East received just £223 per resident, and journeys between major cities are slow and overcrowded. To combat this, the Department of Transport has devolved many of its powers to Rail North, an alliance of local authorities from the Scottish Borders down to Staffordshire which manages the Northern Rail and TransPennine Express franchises that operate many routes in Northern England. Meanwhile, new build such as the Northern Hub around Manchester, High Speed 2 from Manchester and Leeds to London and Northern Powerhouse Rail from Liverpool to Hull and Newcastle is planned to increase capacity on important Northern routes and decrease travel times.


title: Northern England

text: The first tram line in the United Kingdom was built in Birkenhead and opened on 30 August 1860 (partially open intermittently as a heritage tramway). Trams turned out to be especially well suited for Northern cities, with their growing working-class suburbs, and by the turn of the century, most Northern towns had an extensive interconnected electric tram network. At the network's height, it was possible to travel entirely by tram from Liverpool Pier Head to the village of Summit, outside Rochdale, a distance of , and a gap of only separated the North-Western network from the West Yorkshire network. Starting in the 1930s, these were largely replaced by motor buses and trolley buses. With the closure of Sheffield Tramway in 1960 and Glasgow Tramway in 1962, Blackpool Tramway – popular as a tourist attraction as much as a means of transport – was left as the only public tram system in the UK until the Manchester Metrolink opened in 1992. Today there are four light rail systems in the North – Blackpool Tramway, Manchester Metrolink, Sheffield Supertram and Tyne & Wear Metro.


title: Northern England

text: Manchester Airport serves as the main international hub for Northern England and is the busiest airport anywhere in the UK outside London, handling 27.8 million people in 2017. In total, there are eight international airports in the North; these are (in descending order of passenger traffic) Manchester, Newcastle, Liverpool John Lennon, Leeds Bradford, Doncaster Sheffield, Humberside, Teesside and Carlisle Lake District. Many of these airports were developed during the boom in low-cost air travel during the early 2000s, but have suffered since the Great Recession – Teesside is running at just 3% of its maximum capacity, and Blackpool Airport closed as an international airport in 2014. The devolution of Air Passenger Duty to Scotland represents a further possible threat to Northern English airports, allowing Scottish airports to offer cheaper flights than their English rivals. Few spoke flights operate between Northern airports and the national hubs at Heathrow and Gatwick, putting further strain on the smaller Northern airports and forcing connecting passengers to travel via continental European airports. The planned High Speed 2 station at Manchester Airport will offer direct high-speed services to London, allowing spare capacity at Manchester Airport to take some of the flights which currently serve busy London airports.


title: Northern England

text: The first modern canal in England was Sankey Brook, opened in 1757 to connect Liverpool's ports to the St Helens coalfields. By 1777, the Grand Trunk Canal had opened, linking the rivers Mersey and Trent and making it possible for boats to travel directly from Liverpool on the west coast to Hull on the east coast. Manchester, inland, was connected to the Irish Sea by the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894, although the canal never saw the success that was hoped for. The North retains many navigable canals, including the Cheshire, North Pennine and South Pennine canal rings, although they are now used mostly for pleasure rather than transport – the Aire and Calder Navigation, which carries over 2 million tons of oil, sand and gravel per year, is a rare exception.


title: Northern England

text: Many Northern coastal towns were built on trade, and retain large sea ports. The Humber ports of Grimsby and Immingham (counted as a single port for statistical purposes) are the busiest in the UK in terms of tonnage, serving 59.1 million tons as of 2015, and Teesport and the Port of Liverpool are also among the country's largest – in total, 35% of British freight was shipped through Northern ports. Roll-on/roll-off ferries offer passenger and freight connections to the Isle of Man and Ireland along the west coast, while east coast ports connect to Belgium and the Netherlands, although Northern ports handle only a small percentage of the UK's vehicle traffic. Liverpool Cruise Terminal opened in 2007, cruises also operate out of Port of Hull and Newcastle International Ferry Terminal.


title: The Amanda Show

text: The Amanda Show is an American live action sketch comedy and variety show television series created by Dan Schneider that aired on Nickelodeon from October 16, 1999 to September 21, 2002. It starred Amanda Bynes, Drake Bell, and Nancy Sullivan, and featured John Kassir, Raquel Lee, and Josh Peck. The show was a spin-off from "All That", in which Bynes had co-starred for several years. The show ended on September 21, 2002. Writers for the show included Schneider, John Hoberg, Steven Molaro, and Andrew Hill Newman.


title: The Amanda Show

text: In 2002, after the end of "The Amanda Show", Dan Schneider created a new series, called "Drake & Josh", featuring Drake Bell, Josh Peck, and Nancy Sullivan.


title: The Amanda Show

text: "The Amanda Show" is a sketch comedy television program set in a universe in which it is broadcast as a popular television comedy (a show-within-a-show). Recurring sketches include "Judge Trudy", a spoof of the courtroom reality "Judge Judy"; "So You Want to Win Five Dollars?", a spoof of the ABC game show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?"; and "Blockblister", a spoof of the now-defunct video rental store Blockbuster.


title: The Amanda Show

text: As of March 2021, the show is available to stream on Paramount+, without the four episodes excluded on DVD (1, 5, 8, and 12).


title: The Amanda Show

text: Nickelodeon carried reruns of "The Amanda Show" during its TEENick block until September 5, 2007. On October 13, 2007, reruns started airing as part of the "TEENick on The N" block on The N. Reruns were pulled in March 2008 before airing again from April 4, 2009 to August 3, 2009. The series' original TV rating was TV-Y7, but was changed to TV-G, like all of the other shows that aired on the former TEENick block on Nickelodeon.


title: The Amanda Show

text: On 11 July 2011, the British Nicktoons channel began airing the series; it showed weekdays at 9:00 p.m. Some episodes missing from broadcast included three episodes (episodes 3, 8, 11 and 12) from Season 1, three Season 2 episodes (episodes 3, 7 and 14), and four episodes from Season 3 (episodes 1, 2, 6 and 10). Reasons for these episodes not being shown are unknown.


title: The Amanda Show

text: Nickelodeon Canada began airing the series on September 5, 2011, with the exception of Season 1 episodes 8 and 12 (which featured musical guests), and Season 3 episode 11. The series was removed from the schedule in 2012.


title: The Amanda Show

text: Reruns of "The Amanda Show" started airing on TeenNick on October 11, 2011. Although it was originally announced as part of TeenNick's 1990s block "The '90s Are All That", the series instead aired as a standalone series during the daytime. The show was pulled in April 2012 following Bynes' arrest for a DUI.


title: The Amanda Show

text: The show would later return on September 17, 2012, and aired in two-hour blocks, until being removed again on March 17, 2013. The series later premiered on The Splat (later NickSplat and NickRewind) on June 10, 2016, and on August 27, 2017, as part of a SNICK 25th anniversary marathon, before briefly returning again in 2020.


title: The Amanda Show

text: 8. Weingarten, Christopher R., et al. "40 Greatest Sketch-Comedy TV Shows of All Time." "Rolling Stone", February 26, 2020, https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-lists/40-greatest-sketch-comedy-tv-shows-of-all-time-142581/the-amanda-show-1999-2002-186898/.


title: The Amanda Show

text: 9. McNally, Victoria. "9 Ways Amanda Bynes Changed Pop Culture For The Better." "MTV News", 3 Apr. 2015, https://www.mtv.com/news/2122746/amanda-bynes-birthday-pop-culture-contributions/.


title: Hell Let Loose

text: Hell Let Loose is a multiplayer tactical first-person shooter video game developed by Australian studio Black Matter and published by Team17. Players fight in iconic battles of the Western and Eastern Fronts of World War II at the platoon level.


title: Hell Let Loose

text: The game was announced via a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2017, where it raised US$220,000. It was initially released for Microsoft Windows as an early access title on 6 June 2019, with full release in July 2021. It was released for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on 5 October 2021.


title: Hell Let Loose

text: Matches are 50 vs. 50 combined arms battles between two teams of Germans and Americans, and, more recently since the full release of the game, Soviets. Each consists of multiple smaller rifle squads of six soldiers, armoured squads of three soldiers, or recon squads of two soldiers.


title: Hell Let Loose

text: , two game modes exist in the game: "Warfare" and "Offensive". In both modes, the map is divided into sectors that each team seeks to capture and control. In the "Warfare" mode, the game is won by either controlling all sectors at a given point in time, or by controlling a majority of them when the timer runs out, essentially functioning as capture the flag. In the "Offensive" mode, a defending team is in control of all sectors at the beginning of the match, and the objective for the opposing side is then to capture all of them before the timer runs out.


title: Hell Let Loose

text: Each unit may be led by a single officer, who can communicate with other officers and the commander through a "leadership" voice channel. Similarly, there are unit-only and proximity voice channels as well. As an alternative to voice communication, players also have access to team-wide and unit level text chat.


title: Hell Let Loose

text: Hell Let Loose also features a RTS-inspired resource-based strategic meta-game. Each of the two factions fighting will also be assigned a commander, and the commander is in charge of not only the team and squads, but tank deployments, air strikes, and orders, however these orders cost resources. Resource nodes can be built using supplies by engineers to bolster resource production, and be able to deploy more tanks, air strikes and orders in order to help the team fighting on the battlefield, however they can be taken down if found by the enemy team.


title: Hell Let Loose

text: Hell Let Loose is developed on Unreal Engine 4. After about two years of initial development and testing following the launch of its Kickstarter campaign,


title: Hell Let Loose

text: the game released on Steam as an early-access title on June 6, 2019 — the 75th anniversary of the Normandy landings.


title: Hell Let Loose

text: The playable maps in the game are designed based on historical WWII theaters of war by combining satellite imagery, archival aerial photography and street-level recreation. According to the developers, the map for Norman town Sainte-Marie-du-Mont is "a 1:1 scale battlefield" recreated through the aforementioned methods.


title: Hell Let Loose

text: "Hell Let Loose" received "generally favorable" reviews for Microsoft Windows and Xbox Series X and "mixed or average" reviews for PlayStation 5, according to review aggregator Metacritic.


title: Hell Let Loose

text: "PCGamesN" praised the use of teamwork in the game, writing that "A well-led assault on an enemy strongpoint involves covering the approach with a smokescreen... Taking part in such an assault is a uniquely exhilarating experience that’s like nothing else I’ve felt in a shooter". While enjoying the changes that made "Hell Let Loose" more lethal, "PC Gamer" felt the sound wasn't up to par, "My main nitpick is with sound... When everything is tuned correctly, a gun should be so loud that I can't hear my teammate over the radio. This is where Hell Let Loose kinda falls flat. No matter how much I mess with audio sliders, the game never gets loud enough for my liking".


title: Supernatural (season 1)

text: The first season of "Supernatural", an American dark fantasy television series created by Eric Kripke, premiered on September 13, 2005, and concluded on May 4, 2006, after 22 episodes. It focuses on brothers Sam and Dean Winchester as they track down their father, John, who is on the trail of the demon who killed their mother and Sam's girlfriend. During their travels, they use their father's journal to help them carry on the family business—saving people and hunting supernatural creatures. Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles star as Sam and Dean, with Jeffrey Dean Morgan recurring as their father, John, and Nicki Aycox as the demonic Meg Masters. This is the only season to air on The WB, with all subsequent seasons airing on The CW, a joint venture of The WB and UPN. As of 2019, "Supernatural" is also the only continuing series that originated on The WB, and by far the longest running show ever to have aired on that network with over 300 episodes produced.


title: Supernatural (season 1)

text: The first sixteen episodes of the season aired on Tuesdays at 9:00 pm ET in the United States, after which the series was rescheduled to Thursdays. Overall, the season averaged about 3.81 million American viewers. The season gained many award nominations, among them two Primetime Emmy Awards for work done on the pilot episode. While some critics did not like the mostly anthology-like format, others praised the show for the emotional moments and noted the brotherly chemistry between the lead actors.


title: Supernatural (season 1)

text: The season was internationally syndicated, airing in the United Kingdom on ITV, in Canada on Citytv, and in Australia on Network Ten. The first season was released on DVD as a six-disc box set on September 5, 2006, by Warner Home Video in Region 1. Although the season was split into two separate releases in Region 2, the complete set was released on October 2, 2006, and in Region 4 on October 2, 2007. The episodes are also available through digital retailers such as Apple's iTunes Store, Microsoft's Xbox Live Marketplace, and Amazon.com's on-demand TV service.


title: Supernatural (season 1)

text: In this table, the number in the first column refers to the episode's number within the entire series, whereas the number in the second column indicates the episode's number within this particular season. "U.S. viewers in millions" refers to how many Americans watched the episode live or on the day of broadcast.


title: Supernatural (season 1)

text: The first season's mythology mainly follows Sam and Dean's search for their missing father. Series creator Eric Kripke summarized this storyline as merely "find Dad", which he deemed "simple", "emotional", and "clean". However, he found the self-enclosed episodes—independent stories which attain closure at the end of each episode and add little to the overarching storylines—to be "hit and miss". Because the first ten episodes consist of self-enclosed stories, the series mythology does not begin until the eleventh episode, "Scarecrow". This episode introduces the demon Meg Masters, which executive producer Kim Manners felt was "desperately needed". Though uncertain at exactly what direction to take the character, the writers intended Meg to be an antagonist for the Winchesters throughout her story arc. The series mythology further expands with the addition of the demon-killing Colt handgun near the season's end, lending to the "modern American Western" theme the producers were going for.


title: Supernatural (season 1)

text: Although the weekly adversaries for the Winchesters were often based on urban legends, the writers tried to put their own spin on the stories for each of the episodes. For example, Kripke combined the well-known urban legend of the vanishing hitchhiker with the Mexican legend of La Llorona to give the spirit more motivation and characterization in the pilot. The episode "Hook Man", however, borrowed three or four elements from the numerous variations of the Hook Man legend. The figure is an escaped mental patient in the traditional myth, but the writers decided for the purposes of the show to make him the ghost of a hook-handed killer. They also added a poltergeist element by having him attached to the conflicting emotions of the guest star—she wears a cross made from his melted hook. Rather than focus on modern interpretations, Kripke and co-executive producer John Shiban decided that "Supernatural"s vampires would stem more from the original legends. The vampires were given retractable fangs—these were inspired by the rowed teeth of sharks—as well as no aversion to sunlight or the crucifix. Kripke personally added the fact that vampires would become weak if given the blood of a dead man.


title: Supernatural (season 1)

text: Other aspects grew out of basic concepts or ideas. For the episode "Skin", writer Shiban felt that the shapeshifting villain had to change into one of the lead characters. The character chosen was Dean, and the writers decided not to clear his name of attempted murder at the end of the episode. Though they at first feared that having one of the main characters be a wanted man would later ruin the show, the writers eventually felt it was "a great layer to add", opening up new potential storylines and characters. Dean's reputation is addressed again in "The Benders", and catches up to him in the second and third seasons. Another element that would influence future episodes came about in "Hook Man" when writers Milbauer and Burton realized that shotguns shoot salt, a weakness for spirits. Kripke deemed it the "perfect combination of occult element", as it brought together a "folkloric repellent of evil" with the "blue-collar aspect of shotguns". The episode "Asylum" later established iron as another weapon against ghosts. "Faith", on the other hand, stemmed from the question of whether it truly was wrong to heal good people of their illnesses at the cost of the lives of strangers. Kripke noted, "[Layla's] really a great girl and she deserves to live, and some stranger you don't even know will die... and maybe that's worth it." Reapers were not in the original script of the episode, but were added later to give the writers a chance to create "scary" sequences and to explain the faith healer's ability. Because the writers found the traditional look of the Reaper—hooded and carrying a sickle—to be cheesy, they ultimately made him appear as "the most shriveled old man you could ever imagine".


title: Supernatural (season 1)

text: Although the villain of the episode "Hell House" has supernatural origins, the basis of the story came from a situation writer Trey Callaway had as a child; he and his friends created a fake murder scene in an abandoned barn and then convinced their friends that killings occurred there. The children would often go there to scare each other, with one girl running away and breaking her leg after believing that she saw an attacking ghost. The human antagonists of "The Benders", however, were completely devoid of supernatural elements. Shiban made this decision not only to surprise the audience, but also to have the Winchesters face something they had never encountered before. For "Nightmare", Tucker tried to write the character Max as sympathetic, and thus had difficulties in deciding how to end the episode. The writers eventually decided to have him kill himself to prevent him from doing more harm.


title: Supernatural (season 1)

text: Starting off on the series, Kripke excluded vampires due to their affiliation to "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". He wanted "Supernatural" to have its own identity, but became more comfortable with it over time. The writers intended for the vampire-episode "Dead Man's Blood" to be a self-enclosed episode, but Kripke's introduction of the Colt tied it to the final two episodes of the season. This addition pleased the writers of the penultimate episode "Salvation" because the Colt gave the brothers a way to fight Meg and also provided a reason for her to kill the Winchesters' friends. Gamble and Tucker crafted the latter storyline because they felt Kripke would only allow their inclusion if they died. When the writers could not come up with something for the Winchesters to be doing while Meg is on the loose, they split the episode into two stories; John would go after Meg while the brothers protect another family from Azazel. Tucker felt that this opened "all this emotional stuff with the guys", as well as "brought back all the themes of the show and tied the season up into a nice big bow". Similarly, Kripke believed that the revelation of John being possessed by Azazel in "Devil's Trap" had to be, as it completed the two main storylines of the season—finding their father and tracking down the demon—at the same time, but had them find "both" characters in "one" body.


title: Supernatural (season 1)

text: While supernatural and urban legends inspired many episodes, some storyline aspects were influenced by popular culture. The inspiration for the wendigo's appearance in "Wendigo" came from the creature featured in the music video for the Aphex Twin song "Come to Daddy". Human features were added to the design due to the wendigo's human origins, and the creature was given the ability to mimic human voices to create a "creepy effect". However, Kripke was not pleased with the final appearance of the wendigo, deeming him as "Gollum's tall, gangly cousin". Because of this, the creature is not seen throughout most of the episode. For shapeshifting scenes in the episode "Skin", Kripke chose to base the transformation on that of "An American Werewolf in London", using prosthetics and makeup rather than computer-generated imagery. "The Ring"s Samara influenced the titular villain in "Bloody Mary", though Kripke felt that she ended up looking too similar to the character due to her grisly appearance and the use of speed ramping to create a time-manipulation effect. Visual effects supervisor Ivan Hayden, on the other hand, believes it was more of an homage.


title: Supernatural (season 1)

text: Though the pilot was shot in Los Angeles, principal filming for the rest of the season took place in Vancouver, British Columbia. Local sites often served as shooting locations, with much of "Dead in the Water" taking place at Buntzen Lake and the climax of "Wendigo" occurring in a Britannia Beach mine. Likewise, Riverview Hospital functioned as a mental institution in "Asylum". Though production has sometimes recycled sets from other television series—"The Benders" made use of a previously built Western town, while the warehouse-loft set of "Shadow" originated from the series "Tru Calling"—most episodes usually require the construction of new sets due to the constant change of setting. The production team, however, created reusable standing sets in the form of the motel rooms frequented by the Winchesters. Each episode presents a different theme to disguise the motel-room set's repeated use, with different colors, bedspreads, and curtains being used. The episode "Provenance", for instance, displayed a disco-themed motel room.


title: Supernatural (season 1)

text: The mostly synthesized orchestral score of the season was composed by Christopher Lennertz and Jay Gruska. The pair try to base the music on the visuals of each episode, with about a third of each episode's score being newly written for the supernatural legend. For example, off-angle shots in "Dead in the Water" are accompanied by repetitive and discordant notes. As well, spoken words such as "water" and "die" are followed by a lower pitch because Lennertz felt it created a "gurgly" water sound. An electric cello and woodwinds helped to create a big emotional tone in the episode "Home", with Lennertz feeling that the final cue "became a very cinematic musical moment". To fit in with the episode's ambiance in "Asylum", Gruska made the music very subtle; Lennertz felt that it was "creepy-crawly" like "a snake sneaking along the ground". Conversely, Lennertz matched the theme of traveling evangelists in "Faith" by using a small 76-key piano that was damaged and slightly out of tune. He attached small items such as coins and paper clips to the keys to create a rattling noise, making the piano seem "old and crappy". Lennertz then played "bluesy gospel music" during the sermon scenes involving the Reapers. Because he felt that there was also a "snake-oil salesman vibe" to the episode, he included an Armenian duduk due to its association with snake charming. The score of "Hell House", on the other hand, had a much lighter tone to coincide with the episode's humor. For example, music for the scenes involving the "professional" ghost hunters used percussion instruments to slightly mimic the "" theme.


title: Supernatural (season 1)

text: However, recurring characters often have certain musical themes attached to them. For the pilot episode, Lennertz used a piano solo with discordant notes and reverberations to create a "really nasty"-sounding echo effect for the scenes involving Mary and Jessica's deaths at the hands of the demon Azazel. Lennertz returns to this in "Nightmare", including it when Sam realizes the connection he shares with the demon and Max. The episode "Dead in the Water" was the first to use what Kripke feels is the "Winchester emotion", which involves sorrowful and reverberating piano notes on top of strings. It plays when the brothers make connections with other characters. As well, there are variants of a guitar line used as the "humorous brothers' theme" in many episodes, including "Pilot" and "Hell House", when the brothers are having fun. With Gruska writing Meg Masters' theme for "Scarecrow", Lennertz reused the music in "Shadow" but "took the scary up a notch" to imply to the viewers that she is both "more important and more devilish" than the other creatures in the episode. For the penultimate episode "Salvation", Lennertz incorporated musical elements used throughout the season.


title: Supernatural (season 1)

text: In addition to the score, the series makes use of rock songs, with most being selected from Kripke's private collection. Among the many bands featured in the first season are AC/DC, Blue Öyster Cult, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Bad Company. Rock songs are also usually featured in "The Road So Far" montages at the beginning of select episodes that recap previous events. This was first done with the episode "Salvation", in which the entire season was recapped to Kansas' "Carry On Wayward Son", with the subsequent episode—the season finale—using Triumph's "Fight the Good Fight".


title: Supernatural (season 1)

text: To depict the supernatural aspects of the show, the series makes use of visual, special, and make-up effects, as well as stuntwork. While various companies were contracted for the Los Angeles-based production of the pilot episode, subsequent episodes being filmed in Vancouver required a new crew to be hired. The company Entity FX performed the visual effects for the pilot episode, with Ivan Hayden taking over as visual effects supervisor for the rest of the season. The crew was required to design all of the external airplane shots in "Phantom Traveler" from scratch using computer-generated imagery (CGI). As well, they created a time-manipulation effect for the titular villain in "Bloody Mary" by altering the capture frame rate of the camera. Randy Shymkiw acted as special effects supervisor, and the department found the episode "Asylum" to be quite a challenge because one scene has the vengeful spirit collapse into dust. They made casts of the character's torso and hands, and had to find the perfect mixture in order to have the casts remain solid but disintegrate when needed.


title: Supernatural (season 1)

text: The visual and special effects departments often overlap, such as in Mary Winchester's death scene in the pilot episode. Because the character is pinned to the ceiling and burned to death, actress Samantha Smith was required to lie on a floor with two propane pipes spouting fire approximately five feet away from her on either side. For the actual burning of the character, a papier-mâché body was ignited on a fake ceiling. When the burning of the titular creature in the episode "Wendigo" was not sufficient using special effects, a wire-frame mannequin wrapped in steel wool was then burned, with the scene being composited into the original footage to draw out the wendigo's death. To make it appear that the Hook Man is invisible as he scrapes his hook along the wall for one of the scenes in "Hook Man", a wire was placed inside plaster walls and then pulled out; the wire later was digitally removed in post-production. In the episode "Bugs", the cast had to be sealed in a small area with hundreds of bees, and were stung despite wearing special costumes with cuffs sewn into their sleeves and pants. However, the bees did not show up well on camera, so most of them that appear in the final version were added with CGI.


title: Supernatural (season 1)

text: In addition to the digital effects, the series also features stuntwork. Lou Bollo took over as stunt coordinator after the pilot episode, and big scenes often involved the actors, though stunt doubles were used for certain moments. For the final lake scene in "Dead in the Water", in which Dean must save a boy after he is pulled underwater by a vengeful spirit, Jensen Ackles had to hold onto the young actor as they were pulled down ten feet into the water by divers. The actor portraying the vengeful spirit had to wear a wetsuit under his costume due to the extended period of time he was required to spend in the lake. Ackles and Jared Padalecki performed most of the fight scene featured in "Skin", and only took four hours to learn the fight choreography. However, stunt doubles were brought in for the scenes in which they are thrown into bookshelves and through a coffee table. For the episode "Shadow", rather than filming at the exterior location for the scene of Meg Masters being thrown out of a window to the street below, it was decided to not depict the impact, instead having the Winchesters look down at her body after the landing. Thus, filming of it was allowed to take place in the studio using a body double.


title: Supernatural (season 1)

text: Throughout filming, various scenes make use of all three effects departments. For scenes involving the floating, fiery spirit of Mary Winchester in "Home", a small and slim stuntman wearing a fire suit was lit on fire and raised into the air on wires. For the spirit's transition into Mary's normal form, Smith stood in front of a black background with wind blowing onto her, and the two scenes were later combined in post-production. Many aspects went into filming the crash scene in the season finale "Devil's Trap". For the interior scenes used in the first moments of the Impala being hit, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Padalecki, and Ackles were required to sit in the car, which was in front of a blue screen. A sheet of Lexan placed very close to the passenger-side window protected the actors as the window was shattered, and at the same time, cannons beneath the frame blew out pieces of rubber glass to give the appearance that the window exploded onto them. For scenes of the actual crash, the car and truck were cabled together by a winch, and driven toward one another. The intention was for a cannon to launch the Impala into the air at the collision point, causing the car to then barrel roll as the truck drives away. However, the car became stuck in the truck's bumper, forcing the cannon to fail and the truck to go out of control. The truck began to jackknife, but the stuntman driving it saved it from flipping. The mistake ended up being beneficial for the scene, as Kripke and director Manners found it to look "pretty real".


title: Supernatural (season 1)

text: After the first four episodes of "Supernatural" aired in 2005, the WB decided to pick up the series for a full season of 22 episodes. During those first episodes, the series was ranked third in males aged 18–34 and 12–34. It also posted an increase of 73% in males aged 18–49 from the year before, although it only gained 4% in total viewers, and retained 91% of viewers from its lead-in, "Gilmore Girls". "Supernatural"'s first season averaged about 3.81 million American viewers. According to Special Forces Soldier Master Sergeant Kevin Wise at a 2007 "Supernatural" convention, the DVDs most requested by armed forces personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan were the first two seasons of the series.


title: Supernatural (season 1)

text: On Metacritic, the season scored 59 out of 100 based on 22 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 87% approval rating with an average rating of 7.32/10 based on 31 reviews. The website's consensus reads, "Despite some too-hip dialogue and familiar thematic elements, "Supernatural"'s vigilante brothers manage to stir up some legitimate scares."


title: Supernatural (season 1)

text: Tanner Stransky of "Entertainment Weekly" gave the first season a B, saying the show "comes off as weekly installments of a horror movie series", but that "Adding to the show's cred are the '67 Chevy Impala the boys rumble around in and their kick-ass soundtrack". Tom Gliatto of "People Weekly" ranked the show at number five on his list of the Best TV Shows of 2005. Peter Schorn of "IGN" gave the season a score of 7 out of 10. While he found the self-enclosed episodes to be "passably entertaining", he enjoyed the story arcs introduced later in the season. Schorn also deemed the "stormy relationship between Sam and his father" to be "compelling", and noted that the lead stars have "good chemistry together". Rick Porter of "Zap2it" felt that while the season had its "share of emotional moments", it also "[scared] the pants off" of viewers "surprisingly well". He also believed that it did a good job at balancing mythology episodes with self-enclosed ones, comparing it to the early seasons of "The X-Files". However, Eric Neigher of "Slant Magazine" highly criticized the self-enclosed episodes for being "almost totally linear, without any B- or C-stories", and felt that the episodes were mainly "watered-down rehashes of classic weird fiction or popular urban legends".


title: Supernatural (season 1)

text: Work on the pilot episode garnered two Primetime Emmy Awards nominations in 2006, composer Christopher Lennertz being nominated in the category of "Outstanding Music Composition For A Series (Dramatic Underscore)" and the sound editors receiving a nomination for "Outstanding Sound Editing for a Series". The pilot episode also brought in a nomination for a Golden Reel Award in the category of "Best Sound Editing in Television: Short Form – Sound Effects and Foley", with work on the episode "Salvation" gaining the same nomination in 2007. Additionally, the season was nominated for a Saturn Award in the category of "Best Network Television Series". For the Teen Choice Awards, the series was nominated for "TV – Choice Breakout Show" and Jensen Ackles for "TV – Choice Breakout Star".


title: Supernatural (season 1)

text: The first season of "Supernatural" was released as a six-disc Region 1 DVD box set on September 5, 2006, three weeks before the premiere of the second season. The cover art incorporated a stylized shot of the Winchester brothers in front of their car. Including all 22 episodes of the first season, the set also featured DVD extras such as episode commentaries, deleted scenes, bloopers, featurettes, and a DVD-ROM sneak-peek at the second season. The season was ranked No. 14 in DVD sales for its week of release, and slipped to No. 28 the following week, with cumulative sales during those two weeks coming to 150,376 sets for $5,264,942. The set was later packaged with the first season of "Smallville" as a "Season One Starter Pack", which was released on September 18, 2007. For Region 2, the season was split into two parts, being released on May 22, 2006, and August 21, 2006; the complete set was released on October 2, 2006. The season was also released in Region 4 on September 6, 2006, though the special features were removed. A "Special Collector's Edition" was later released on October 2, 2007, with the extras restored. The first season was released on Region A Blu-ray Disc on June 15, 2010, including new special features–"The Devil's Road Map", an interactive guide featuring interviews about every episode and a Paley Festival panel discussion featuring the cast and crew.


title: Justin Chon

text: Justin Jitae Chon (born May 29, 1981) is an American actor and filmmaker. He has directed three films, "Gook" (2017), "Ms. Purple" (2019), & "Blue Bayou" (2021). He is also known for portraying Eric Yorkie in "The Twilight Saga" film series. He is a member of the K-pop parody group Boys Generally Asian.


title: Justin Chon

text: Chon was born in Garden Grove, California, and raised in Irvine, California, where he attended University High School. Chon is of Korean descent. His father, Sang Chon, was an actor in South Korea and later a shoe wholesales owner in Paramount, California. His mother is a pianist. He has a younger sister.


title: Justin Chon

text: Chon attended the University of Southern California (USC), where he majored in business. During college, he studied abroad at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea.


title: Justin Chon

text: Chon started acting in 2005 in shows such as "Jack & Bobby" and "Taki & Luci". He came to fame in 2006 when he played Peter Wu in the Disney Channel film "". He also played Tony Lee in the Nickelodeon sitcom "Just Jordan". In 2008, he played Eric Yorkie in the film "Twilight", based on the book by Stephenie Meyer. Chon reprised his role as Eric Yorkie in the "Twilight" sequel "New Moon". He starred as the central character Jeff Chang, in the film "21 & Over" in 2013. He also appeared in the independent film "Innocent Blood" that same year.


title: Justin Chon

text: In 2014, Chon appeared as a lead character in crime drama film "Revenge of the Green Dragons", which was executive produced by Martin Scorsese. In 2015, Chon starred as Sid Park, the trouble-making main character influenced by rocker culture in the independent film "Seoul Searching", directed by Benson Lee, which made its premiere at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.


title: Justin Chon

text: Chon trained for over two years in the Meisner technique at the Baron Brown Studio in Santa Monica and guest starred in the Studio web series "Joanne Brown Is Here" with Hana Mae Lee and Joanne Baron in 2016. Chon also held a role in the Korean American comedy drama "Dramaworld". In March 2017, he was cast as a series regular in the ABC crime drama "Deception".


title: Justin Chon

text: Chon starred in the 2018 movie "High Resolution" with Ellie Bamber, directed by Jason Lester. The movie was based on the acclaimed novel "Taipei" by author Tao Lin.


title: Justin Chon

text: Chon also co-wrote (with Kevin Wu), directed, executive produced, and starred in the 2015 feature film "Man Up". The film made its premiere at the 2015 CAAMFest. It was also screened at the 2015 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, making its West Coast premiere there. The film is set in Hawaii and also stars Kevin Wu, Amy Hill, Parvesh Cheena, Nichole Bloom, Dion Basco, Samantha Futerman and more. In March 2015, the film was acquired by "Off the Dock", a digital studio owned by Lakeshore Entertainment.


title: Justin Chon

text: Chon has also directed several digital short films that are viewable on his YouTube Channel, including "You're Stoopid" (2013), "Full Circle" (2013) and "90 Day Visa" (2015).


title: Justin Chon

text: In 2017, Chon wrote, directed, produced and starred in a film entitled "Gook", which premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the NEXT Audience Award and was picked up by Samuel Goldwyn Distribution. The film also won Grand Jury Award for Best Narrative Feature Film, Best Director (Justin Chon), Best Actress (Simone Baker), and an Audience Award at the 2017 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. The film further won Golden Space Needle Awards for Best Director (2nd Place or 1st Runner-Up) (Justin Chon) and Best Actress (5th Place) (Simone Baker) at the 2017 Seattle International Film Festival.


title: Justin Chon

text: In January 2015, he began uploading edited vlogs to his YouTube channel on a weekly basis. Since November 2015, he has uploaded edited vlogs to the channel on a daily basis. He also creates short comedy videos on YouTube with his friends, and has appeared in videos on Ryan Higa (nigahiga)'s YouTube channel. Chon is also a member of BgA (Boys Generally Asian), a parody K-Pop group formed by Higa. The five-member group has released two singles and has risen up many South Korean music charts as well as American music charts.


title: Justin Chon

text: After dating for over a year, he married Sasha Egorova in October 2014. Their first child was born in December 2017.


title: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

text: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (; lit. "Vengeance Is Mine") is a 2002 South Korean thriller film directed and co-written by Park Chan-wook. The film stars Shin Ha-kyun as Ryu, a young, deaf-mute factory worker trying to earn enough money for his sister's kidney transplant by holding the daughter of a wealthy man for ransom, and the path of vengeance that follows when the plan goes awry. Alongside Ha-kyun, the film's cast includes Song Kang-ho, Bae Doona, Han Bo-bae, and Im Ji-eun.


title: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

text: "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance" did not fare well commercially upon its initial release in South Korea, and has garnered mixed reviews. Despite this, it won several awards. It is the first installment in director Park's thematic "Vengeance Trilogy", and is followed by "Oldboy" (2003) and "Lady Vengeance" (2005).


title: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

text: Ryu is a deaf-mute man who works in a factory. His ailing sister is in desperate need of a kidney transplant, but Ryu's is not a match. After he loses his job, Ryu contacts a group of black market organ dealers to exchange one of his kidneys for one that his sister can use. However, the dealers disappear after taking Ryu's kidney and severance money. A legitimate kidney donor is found, but after having been conned by the organ dealers, Ryu is unable to afford the operation. To raise money, Yeong-mi, Ryu's radical anarchist girlfriend, suggests kidnapping the daughter of the executive that fired Ryu. They observe the executive with company president Park Dong-jin arriving at the latter's home one day, where one of Dong-jin's employees, Peng, attempts to commit "harakiri" in front of them. Ryu and Yeong-mi change their plan, deciding to kidnap Dong-jin's young daughter Yu-sun.


title: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

text: Yu-sun stays with Ryu's sister, who believes that Ryu is babysitting her. Ryu and Yeong-mi send a request for ransom to Dong-jin, and he obliges. Upon returning home with the ransom money, Ryu discovers that his sister learned that Yu-sun was kidnapped and not wanting to be a burden any longer, has committed suicide. Ryu takes Yu-sun and his sister's body to a riverbed they frequented as children to bury her. Distracted by the burial and unable to hear, Ryu is unaware when Yu-sun slips into the river, and she drowns. After Yu-sun's body is discovered by authorities, a deeply mournful Dong-jin hires an investigator to find her kidnappers. Dong-jin finds Ryu's sister's corpse by the riverbed, where he interacts with a mentally disabled man who witnessed Ryu burying his sister, and begins to piece together the identities of Ryu and Yeong-mi.


title: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

text: Ryu, armed with a baseball bat, locates the organ traffickers and murders them, receiving a stab wound in the process. Meanwhile, Dong-jin finds Yeong-mi and tortures her with electricity, also killing a deliveryman who comes to her apartment. She apologizes for Yu-sun's death but warns Dong-jin that her terrorist friends will kill him if she dies. Unfazed, Dong-jin electrocutes her. Ryu returns to Yeong-mi's apartment and sees the police removing her corpse. Dong-jin knocks Ryu unconscious with a booby trap. He takes Ryu to the riverbed where his daughter died and drags him into the water. Dong-jin slashes Ryu's achilles tendon and waits for him to drown. After Dong-jin dismembers Ryu's corpse, Yeong-mi's anarchist associates arrive and stab Dong-jin, where they pin a note to his chest with a knife, and leave him to die.


title: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

text: "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance" opened in South Korea on March 29, 2002 and had a worldwide box office gross of . The film received a low-profile North American theatrical release from Tartan Films beginning August 19, 2005, over three years after it debuted in South Korea. In its opening weekend, it collected ( per screen) from three New York City theaters. It played on six screens at its most widespread, and its total North American box office take was .