title: Howard Wolowitz

text: In "The Herb Garden Germination", Howard once again proposes to Bernadette, this time in front of his friends. To the horrific dismay of Raj, who had developed feelings for Bernadette, she accepts. During their engagement, Bernadette is awarded her doctorate degree and reveals that she has gotten a job at a pharmaceutical company which promises a "buttload of money". Although he claims to have supported her new career, Howard's friends mock him for not having a doctorate, with Penny calling the others doctors then remarking that Howard knows a lot of doctors. The situation reaches its breaking point when he and Bernadette have an argument after she buys him a Rolex, which he interprets as a sign that she will be the main breadwinner; more recently, he appears to be more accepting of that situation, since (after falling out over the idea of starting a family) they have discussed that if they have children, he will probably become a stay-at-home dad while she continues to work (a possibility they revisit in season 11 prior to and immediately after the birth of their son). The souring of relations grows worse when he learns that in addition to almost having sex with Penny, Raj was writing love poems and fantasizing about Bernadette and him, which leads to Howard distrusting Bernadette and believing that she may cheat on him with Raj.


title: Howard Wolowitz

text: At his bachelor party, an inebriated Raj describes Howard losing his virginity to his second cousin, his Las Vegas prostitute experience, and their threesome with an overweight Sailor Moon woman at Comic-Con. Wil Wheaton films the whole speech and posts it online. Bernadette picks them up and is furious after seeing the video and is wondering how she can marry a man that she doesn't seem to know, though she does forgive him after he gives an enrapturing apology for Penny to transfer, which sends her into tears. Bernadette later tells Howard that she wants to be married to him before he is launched into space. After an aborted attempt to be married at city hall before it closed, they agree to be married on the roof of the apartment building. Bernadette is escorted down the aisle by her father and is married by Raj, Leonard, Penny, Sheldon and Amy who all became ministers for the occasion. The ceremony is photographed by an orbiting satellite for the Google Earth website.


title: Howard Wolowitz

text: In season 6, the newlyweds do have some bumps including Howard readjusting to being back on earth, moving out of his mother's house, and spending too much on his collectibles hobby, but they continued to grow a steady relationship together, until season 7's "The Discovery Dissipation", when Raj briefly moves in with them. During this time, Raj's kindness and helpful nature inadvertently reveal that Howard and Bernadette's relationship has deteriorated to the extent that they no longer pay attention to each other, but they insist that they are content with merely "half-assing" their way through their marriage. However, during season 9, when the two were expecting their first baby, they appeared to have repaired their relationship till Howard started being worried about his parenting capacity.


title: Howard Wolowitz

text: In season 7, Howard and Bernadette have a double date with Raj and his girlfriend Emily (Laura Spencer). Howard instantly recognizes her and it is revealed that he and Emily previously went on a blind date. Due to an upset stomach caused by gas station sushi, Howard used and subsequently clogged Emily's toilet. Because the toilet overflowed all over Emily’s bathroom floor and Howard was unsuccessful in cleaning it up, he was extremely embarrassed and climbed out the bathroom window. Howard apologized to Emily, to which she responds that it’s ok and she and her friends refer to him as "Clogzilla".


title: Howard Wolowitz

text: Amy Farrah Fowler is shown to be one of the few women that Howard has had a platonic relationship with. Prior to the events the "The Scavenger Vortex", Howard and Amy are said to have little one-on-one interaction with each other, partly because Penny warned her about Howard's previously perverted nature. During the episode, Howard and Amy are randomly paired-up to take part in a scavenger hunt organised by Raj, much to the former's relief due to Bernadette's competitiveness, and subsequently bond over their mutual love of Neil Diamond's music, even agreeing to attend one of his concerts together and performing his songs at the Cheesecake Factory. However, in "The Fermentation Bifurcation", when they both arrive early for a wine tasting session, they make awkward small talk and are relieved when the rest of their party arrives.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: Nancy Nabil Ajram (, born May 16, 1983) is a Lebanese singer, television personality and businesswoman. Dubbed by Spotify as the "Queen of Arab Pop". With the support of her father, she began performing as a child and appeared on several television shows in her early years. By the age of 15, Ajram signed a recording contract with EMI and released her debut studio album "Mihtagalak" (1998). In spite of being under the legal age, Ajram was exceptionally accepted to the Syndicate of Professional Artists in Lebanon. The following year, she released her second album "Sheel Oyoonak Anni" (2001).


title: Nancy Ajram

text: Her breakthrough occurred with the start of her collaboration with well-known Lebanese producer Jiji Lamara, when she released her controversial smash hit single "Akhasmak Ah"; created by Egyptian composer Mohamed Saad, and third studio album "Ya Salam" (2003) in which she adopted a public image as a sex symbol while reinventing her music. Ajram's fourth album "Ah W Noss" (2004) was another commercial success, spawning the chart-topping singles "Ah W Noss", "Lawn Ouyounak", "Oul Tani Keda" and "Inta Eyh", at which point she had established pop icon status in the Middle East. In 2007, Ajram released her first children's album, "Shakhbat Shakhabit", which was the most notable and successful work for children at the time. "Betfakkar Fi Eih" (2008), her sixth album produced seven singles including the commercially successful Egyptian hits, "Betfakkar Fi Eih", "Min Dally Nseek" and the Lebanese single "Mashi Haddi", won Ajram's first World Music Award as world's best-selling Middle Eastern artist, the youngest Arab WMA winner to date.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: Having sold over 30 million records worldwide as of 2007, Ajram is one of the best-selling Middle Eastern music artists. By 2010 she was announced the best-selling Middle Eastern female singer of the decade (2000–2009). Throughout her career, Ajram has released eleven studio albums to date (including two dedicated for children) and numerous chart toppers such as "Yay", "Ya Tabtab", "Moegaba", "Ehsas Jdeed", "Ibn El Giran", "Fi Hagat", "Ya Kether", "Ma Tegi Hena" and "Badna Nwalee El Jaw". Ajram is the first and only female spokesperson of Coca-Cola in the Arab world, releasing several promotional Coke anthems that became instant smash-hits, such as "Oul Tani Keda", "El Dounya Helwa", "Noss El Kawn" and "Shaggaa Bi Alamak". Ajram has made the list of Most Powerful Arabs on "Arabian Business" several times, and was similarly listed by "Newsweek" as one of the most influential Arab singers.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: She has also featured in patriotic songs for her country Lebanon, and has also dedicated seven patriotic songs to Egypt; a country she's widely popular in thanks to her Egyptian hits such as "Akhasmak Ah" and "Ah we Nos".


title: Nancy Ajram

text: Between 2013 and 2017, Ajram served as a judge on MBC's reality talent show "Arab Idol". She also began serving as a coach on "The Voice Kids Arabia" in 2016. In 2020, Nancy was the most-streamed Arab female artist on Spotify, achieving more than 100 million plays of her songs, followed by Lebanese icon Fairuz with 67 million plays.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: Nancy Ajram was born into a Lebanese Christian family on May 16, 1983, in Achrafieh, a district in Beirut, Lebanon. She is the eldest child of Nabil Ajram and Raymonda Aoun. She has one sister, Nadine, and one brother, Nabil Jr. Ajram was only eight when she started her journey singing the good oldies with her grandmother. She carried on with successful participation in children's contests in two local television stations, TL and LBC. In 1995, at the age of twelve, Ajram took part in a variety show, Noujoum Al-Moustakbal (English: "Stars of the Future") on Future TV, a Lebanese reality television competition, which finds new solo musical talent. Ajram won a gold medal in the Tarab category after singing a song by Umm Kulthum. Ajram studied music with renowned Lebanese musicians and although she was less than 18 years old, the syndicate of professional artists in Lebanon accepted her as a member. At the age of 13, Ajram released her debut single "Kel Ma B'ello B Albi El Gheere" in 1996, followed by "Oulha Kelma" one year later. In 1998, she signed a recording contract with EMI and released her debut studio album "Mihtagalak", followed by"Sheel Oyoonak Anni" (2001).


title: Nancy Ajram

text: In early 2002, Ajram signed a contract with renowned Lebanese producer and artist manager Jiji Lamara, four months after his splitting with Aline Khalaf. They started working together in preparation for the third studio album shifting her musical style and image away from the decent girl. Ajram's breakthrough single, "Akhasmak Ah", was released in December. The music video caused a controversy; reminiscent of older Arabic films, she appeared as a café manager who dances and flirts with its customers. It received criticism from various news publications, and it was meant to be banned on several Arabic televisions due to its sexually suggestive content. However, in early 2003, Ajram rose to fame, propelled by the success of the single, and the release of her third studio album, "Ya Salam" which was a best-seller.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: Her fourth album, "Ah W Noss", was released on April 14, 2004, and it was also an important marking point in Ajram's career. The tremendous success that "Ah W Noss" achieved, stabilized Ajram's position as an A-List star in the Arab music industry. Ajram then filmed "Lawn Ouyounak" (Color of Your Eyes), which portrayed Ajram as a bride in a traditional Lebanese wedding. After the release of the album, Ajram signed-up with Coca-Cola to be their official celebrity spokesperson for the Middle East and North Africa region. Her first Coke commercial featured her hit, "Oul Tani Keda?" (Say That Again?), which was filmed with the international Italian director Luca Tomassini. The commercial's success led to it being filmed as a music video behind the scenes of the commercial. The 4th hit single from the album, "Inta Eyh?" (What Are You?), was a slow composed by Samir Sfeir. Nadine Labaki directed another clip that featured Ajram as a wife who sees her husband cheating on her yet she hides it in torment to save their relationship. The music video received tremendous positive reviews and Ajram was greatly praised. Leading Egyptian actors and directors, like Faten Hamama praised Ajram's acting abilities and movie offers doubled for Ajram.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: Her fifth album, "Ya Tabtab...Wa Dallaa" was released on February 21, 2006. "Ya Tabtab" was considered Ajram's best album back then, with six music videos released, eight radio hits, and five songs used for commercials.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: The title track's music video was Ajram's last collaboration with Nadine Labaki, as she then started working on her movie Caramel. Ajram then released the video of her Coca-Cola hit "Moegaba" (Admirer), as well as a video and commercial for her newly signed Damas Jewellery contract advertising their "Farfasha" set. The song used was "Ana Yalli" (I'm the One) which was promoted before the album's release. Ajram then cooperated for the first time with prominent Lebanese director Said El Marouk, filming "Ehsas Jdeed" (A New Sentiment) which is widely considered to be the most successful song of the album. The video, which was a salute from Said to his deaf and mute parents, depicted the story of a rich woman who falls in love with a deaf and mute man. In December 2006, Ajram performed alongside Lionel Richie in Egypt at a launching event. Later in 2007, Ajram released all together the video of "Elli Kan" (What Used to Be) for Damas's second campaign, her Coca-Cola Side of Life commercial featuring a new single "El Donia Helwa" (Life is Beautiful), and a video and album directed towards children, titled "Shakhbat Shakhabit" (Scribbled Doodles). "El Donia Helwa", Ajram's seventh commercial, is considered one of her most successful commercials representing her style and Coca-Cola's with colors, happiness, and music, and it led her to release a Live album featuring the single.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: Ajram's first album which was fully dedicated to children included a variety of songs aimed towards teaching children good values and morals, something she has wanted to do for a long time. The music video was her second cooperation with Said El Marouk and featured four songs from her album, the most successful of which were "Shakhbat Shakhabit" & "Shater Shater". Ajram performed these songs at several fund-raising events for children and other children's events, such as the children's TV channel MBC3, and the children's entertainment TV Show "Star Zghar". She then filmed with Fadi Haddad, the director of photography of her previous works with El Marouk, a video for the song "Risala Lil Aalam" (A Message to the World) which talks about world peace. The video was released on May 25, 2008, the day the Lebanese president General Michel Suleiman was elected ending a deadlock that lasted since November. It was the first video for Ajram that had an entirely graphical world that implied the suffering of children worldwide and the need to bring out a more colorful and happy world for them. Old rumors claimed that the video was presented to the UNICEF.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: In February and March 2008, Ajram released three Coca-Cola commercials that featured a brand new hit from her long-awaited album. The song, "Meen Ghairy Ana (Noss El Kawn)" (Who Else But Me?) was made by the successful "Yay" and "Ana Yalli" trio, Nizar Francis, Samir Sfeir, and Tarek Madkour. The single was an instant hit and served as a highly successful promotion 5 months before the release of the album. Ajram released her sixth studio album after several delays on July 30, 2008. This long-awaited comeback album held many surprises for her fans with a huge change in her style that presented her matured vocal abilities like never before. Ajram's sixth album, "Betfakkar Fi Eih", is considered to be one of her most successful albums so far as it won her first World Music Award in her career.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: The album included her first "Tarab" song called "Biteegy Sirtak" since 1998's Mihtagalak album, and in general had a wide mix of several different styles ranging from dance, beat, pop, to drama, romance, Tarab and oldies.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: Even though "Betfakkar Fi Eih" music video had mixed opinions, the second single video, "Min Dally Nseek" was much more accepted, peaking at No. 1 for seven consecutive weeks in Melody Hits. On November 9, 2008, about two months after her marriage, Ajram won her first World Music Award for her best-selling album "Betfakkar Fi Eih". In her short speech, Ajram thanked her parents, Jiji Lamara, her fans and album makers, and husband, saying "2008 has been a fantastic year – a successful album, my wedding, and now a World Music Award, what can I ask for more?". The same musical trio who created "Ehsas Jdeed" did one of the instant radio-hits of the album, "Lamset Eed" (Touch of a Hand), which was filmed with Leila Kanaan with a high budget, and the song and music video peaked charts for months. With this album Ajram signed a celebrity endorsement deal with Sony Ericsson, as a special w595 phone was released holding Ajram's signature, and "Wana Ben Ideik" was chosen as the commercial song.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: On September 28, 2009, "The Oprah Winfrey Show" aired an episode titled "Fame Around the World" that talked about the most famous celebrities around the globe in brief reports. Representing the Middle East region and Arab world, Ajram appeared in a report featured on the show and was described by Oprah as "the Britney Spears of the Middle East". Ajram is the first and only Middle-Eastern artist ever mentioned on the show.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: In the summer of 2010, Ajram was nominated by Coca-Cola the Middle East to sing, along with K'naan, his international hit and song for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, "Wavin' Flag". The Arabic version, titled "Shaggaa Be Alamak" and directed to the Middle East region, had its Arabic parts written by Ayman Bahgat Amar (who previously wrote Ah W Noss, Ya Tabtab and Eftah Albak for Ajram) and the music remastered by Tarek Madkour. The original music video was used for K'naan's parts while Ajram's parts were filmed separately in Lebanon on the same protocol under Leila Kanaan's co-direction. Both the video and song were aired heavily during the FIFA season and part of the song was particularly played during commercial breaks on Al Jazeera channel, which exclusively aired the games to the Arab world. One month later, Ajram filmed a commercial for her newly signed contract with Lactalis advertising their Lactel yoghurt.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: On August 30, Ajram's official Facebook page posted a 16-second preview of the music video for Ajram's next single, "Fi Hagat". Later, it was announced that Nadine Labaki directed the video, thus making her comeback to music video direction after her 4-year break. The video is also the first collaboration between Ajram and Labaki since 2006's "Ya Tabtab". The full music video premiered on September 6, 2010, at 8:00 pm on Arabica TV and MTV Lebanon, the same day of her seventh full-length studio album release entitled "Nancy 7". As of January 2011, Ajram became the first and most viewed Arabic music video owner on the Internet.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: In August 2011, Nissan chose Ajram to be the official ambassador in the Middle East and North Africa. On September 7, Ajram officially launched the all-new 2012 Nissan Micra at a special press conference in Lebanon.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: On January 6, 2012, it was officially announced that Ajram won her second World Music Award as the World's Best-Selling Middle Eastern Artist for "Nancy 7" album sales in 2011.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: On September 13, 2012, Ajram released her second album dedicated to children, entitled "Super Nancy" with the lead single "Ya Banat". By the end of the moth, Anlene named Ajram their new regional Ambassador for the fortified adult milk brand. The commercial was filmed in August with Lebanese born American director Oliver Ojeil in Beirut. In a press conference held in Dubai on October 20, Ajram stated that she will help raise awareness of osteoporosis and bone health amongst women in the Middle East. A month later, it was officially announced in that Ajram joined the second season of the popular talent show "Arab Idol", joining fellow judges Lebanese singer Ragheb Alama, Emirati singer Ahlam and Egyptian record producer Hassan El Shafei. After many delays, Ajram finally released her eighth full-length studio album entitled "Nancy 8" on March 21, 2014, which has been highly anticipated by fans for almost four years. The album's lead single, "Ma Tegi Hena", was well received by music critics who compared it to "Akhasmak Ah," Ajram's breakthrough hit single. Two months later, Ajram received her third World Music Award as the best-selling Middle Eastern artist on May 27, 2014, in Monte Carlo, Monaco.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: In September 2014, Ajram returned as a judge on the third season of "Arab Idol". Three of the four judges, including her, returned with Ragheb Alama being replaced, after two consecutive seasons, by another well-known Lebanese singer, Wael Kfoury. A month later, October 2, 2014, Huawei announced Ajram as its Middle East and North Africa Brand Ambassador at the launch of the Ascend Mate 7 smartphone in Dubai. A day before, the TV commercial came out on Ajram's official Facebook page featured her hit "Nam Bi Albi" from "Nancy 8" album, which was filmed with Lebanese director Said El Marouk and produced by Oliver Ojeil under the label of his production company Chiaroscuro Films. 48 hours later, the TVC reached 1 Million views.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: In July 2015, Ajram was officially confirmed as a judge in the first season of the highly acclaimed TV show "The Voice Kids" alongside Kathem Al-Saher and Tamer Hosny. The show premiered on MBC1 on January 2, 2016. As of 2020, Nancy was still a judge on the show's 3rd and most recent season wherein her contestant won.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: On its 20th anniversary, Home Centre announced Ajram as brand ambassador. During the launching event that took place on October 13, 2015, in Dubai, Ajram said: "I'm delighted to be part of the Home Centre family. Homes are an extension of one's personality through which they are able to express themselves and Home Centre very well gives you the kind of products that help you create that space. As someone who takes pride in my home, Home Centre is certainly a brand I can connect to. I look forward to our association in the months to come."


title: Nancy Ajram

text: A year after Ajram began working on her ninth studio album, the single "Maakoul El Gharam" was released on November 15, 2015, which reached the No. 1 spot on Anghami, setting a new record in 12 hours; it was ultimately removed from the final track listing for her ninth studio album. Ajram returned as a judge on "Arab Idol" for its fourth season alongside fellow judges Wael Kfoury, Ahlam and Hassan El Shafei; the fourth season premiered on November 4, 2016.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: On April 21, 2017, Ajram released her ninth studio album, "Nancy 9 (Hassa Beek)", through In2Musica. The album peaked at number one on the "Hit Sorter"'s Best-Selling Albums Chart and remained atop for 16 continuous weeks since its release. The record topped Virgin Megastores sales in Lebanon for 4 continuous months, while in Egypt it remained atop for 15 continuous weeks, as well as in KSA, UAE and Bahrain for continuous weeks. The album was supported by the release of two singles, including the lead single "Aam Betaala' Feek", which broke a new record as the fastest song to reach one million streams on Anghami. The song also received commercial success, topping several Arabic music charts and radio stations for consecutive weeks.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: In the Arabic dub of "Power of Four," a one-hour special episode of "The Powerpuff Girls", Ajram voices the fourth Powerpuff Girl, Bliss, who appears in the episode. "Power of Four" premiered on Cartoon Network MENA on November 9, 2017.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: In 2018, Ajram became the first Lebanese singer to surpass 100 million views on YouTube with her song "Ya Banat" on an unofficial YouTube channel. In September 2018, she released the single "Badna Nwalee El Jaw" first on Anghami and then on her official YouTube channel. It was followed by another single "Albi Ya Albi" in January 2020. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Ajram performed in an exclusive live concert on YouTube in May 2020, titled "Hope Beyond Borders". It was followed by another live concert on TikTok in September 2020, titled "The 2020 Live Show". The event was scheduled to take place in August but was delayed due to the 2020 Beirut explosion.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: Ajram marked Mother's Day by releasing the song "Emmi" in March 2021. Between May and July 2021, she released four promotional singles from her upcoming tenth album. The album titled "Nancy 10" was released on July 10, 2021.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: Through her frequent visits to his clinic, Ajram started a relationship with Lebanese well-known dentist Fadi El Hachem in 2005 and had managed to maintain their privacy until being photographed together during a trip to Tunisia. After a three-year relationship, the couple married in an intimate ceremony by immediate family and friends in Cyprus on September 1, 2008. On her 26th birthday, May 16, 2009, she gave birth to her first child, a daughter named Mila. Ajram released a song for her daughter, "Ya Rabi Tekbar Mila" (I Pray For Mila To Grow Up) on the same day. In a survey done by Rotana Magazine, Ajram was voted as the "Most Beautiful Mom" of 2009. Ajram decided not to reveal her daughter Mila until they both appeared on the cover of Prestige Magazine in an exclusive photoshoot. Mila later appeared in the set of Ajram's "Ya Kether" music video in the presence of the media who publicized her pictures. On April 23, 2011, she gave birth to her second daughter, Ella, and released a song for her "Hadri Laabek" on the same day. On January 30, 2019, she gave birth to her third daughter, Lya. Four days later, Ajram released a song titled "Lya" for her.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: Ajram has participated in numerous charity events and concerts that she considers a priority in her music career. Ajram also released a song about peace, "Risala Lil Aalam" (A Message to the World), in her first children's album Shakhbat Shakhabit as a music video, which was rumored to be presented to the UNICEF. Ajram also participated amongst over 100 other prominent Arab artists in a huge operate called "Al Dhameer Al Arabi" (released on February 27, 2008), a 10-year sequel to "El Helm El Arabi" that outlines the major political events in the Arab world in the past ten years.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: In June 2008, Ajram participated in The Big Ball, a charity event in Dubai which raised over Dhs 940,000 for helping underprivileged children by auctioning one of her favourite dresses and encouraging children's fund-raising events; she announced, "The Big Ball is doing a wonderful thing and I'm happy to support it. I'm coming for my love of children and because I want to help underprivileged children find a happy place in this world. Children inspired my latest album "Shakhbat Shakhabit" and especially the song "Risala lil Aalam" (A Message to the World)."


title: Nancy Ajram

text: On October 22, 2009, the UNICEF chose Ajram to be the first female regional ambassador for the Middle East and North Africa, as was announced in a press conference held in Beirut. Ajram announced that she will be starting her charity projects in 2010. In late 2009 she appeared in the UNICEF's commercial marking the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, joining other influential Middle Eastern celebrities such as Kathem Al-Saher, Saber El Rebai, Mahmoud Kabil, Khaled Abol Naga, Djamel Laroussi, Caresse Bashar, Fayez Al Malki and Iranian actress Mahtab Keramati.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: In 2013, Ajram performed the theme song for "Worth 100 Men" ("Bmeet Ragel" in Arabic) – a radio fiction series produced by The Womanity Foundation, which focuses on women's education, training and development.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: In August 2011, on her official Facebook page, Ajram apologized for anti-Iranian remarks which were falsely attributed to her, as her official website was hacked in 2006.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: Ajram caused controversy in 2018 when her management team arrived during the Pride festival in Gothenburg and asked for all of the rainbow flags to be removed for her to perform. The Lebanese singer, Hamed Sinno criticized her on a Facebook post and said that they <nowiki>[</nowiki>Mashrou' Leila<nowiki>]</nowiki> played the festival opening while all the pride flags were up. Ajram later clarified through a tweet that it was neither her decision nor her management's to remove the pride flags, but rather the organizer's.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: In the early hours of January 5, 2020, an armed trespasser named Mohamed Hassan Moussa broke into Ajram and her husband Fadi El Hachem's villa in Sehaileh, Keserwan District. However, Moussa was shot dead by El Hachem. Lebanese prosecutor Ghada Aoun later issued an arrest warrant for El Hachem and investigations into the incident began. Ajram herself sustained a minor injury on her right leg. On January 7, El Hachem was released from prison with prevention from travelling abroad until investigations are concluded. Ajram noted that her husband's "reaction to the killer was after intense threatening that took place for almost 6 to 7 minutes".


title: Nancy Ajram

text: Other sources reported that the murdered trespasser was born in 1989 in Basqala, Idlib Governorate, Syria, who was married with kids, and used to work as a gardener for El Hachem, hence he broke in with a fake unloaded gun, asking for his unpaid financial dues. Meanwhile, Ajram denied that they knew him nor he worked for them.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: The trespasser was seen masked via CCTV, who waited outside for a couple of hours before entering the villa, despite the existence of bodyguards. Later on, he pointed a gun at El Hachem before he entered the children's room, when El Hachem claimed that he acted in self-defense and shot and killed the trespasser. According to the forensic pathology report, Al-Moussa was shot 17 times with a Glock 17 pistol: once in the right forearm, twice in the left shoulder, once under the left armpit, three shots in the chest, two shots in the abdomen, seven shots in the back, and one shot in the left thigh. In the meantime, Ajram was hiding in the bathroom shaking while calling her father. The family of the burglar initially refused to take his corpse from hospital, since El Hachem was released from custody before burial, which contradicts their traditions; however, they took the corpse to be buried in Damascus as investigations should continue.


title: Nancy Ajram

text: On November 24, 2020, El Hachem was charged with intentional murder; however, it was considered as a legitimate act of self-defense.


title: My Girl 2

text: My Girl 2 is a 1994 American comedy-drama film starring Dan Aykroyd, Jamie Lee Curtis, Anna Chlumsky and Austin O'Brien. A sequel to "My Girl" (1991), its plot follows a now-teenaged Vada Sultenfuss, who travels from her home in suburban Pennsylvania to Los Angeles to find more information about her deceased mother.


title: My Girl 2

text: Vada Sultenfuss has matured from the spunky 11-year-old hypochondriac in 1972 to a more serious teenager in early 1974. Her father Harry and his new wife Shelly DeVoto, whom he dated in the first film, are expecting a baby, and they all still live in the Sultenfuss funeral parlor in Madison, Pennsylvania. To accommodate the new baby, Vada moves into her late Gramoo's old bedroom. She struggles with these adjustments, along with figuring boys out. One of them from school, Kevin, seems to like her friend Judy, but Vada wonders if he likes her, too. Both her father and Shelly try to give Vada some boy advice, but it backfires.


title: My Girl 2

text: Vada receives a school assignment to write an essay on someone she admires but has never met. She decides to write about her late mother, Margaret Ann Muldovan (Maggie), but has few sources to go on, all confined to a small box. Among its contents are programs of plays her mother acted in, a passport, and a mystery paper bag with a date scribbled on it. Vada expresses her desire to travel someday, so Shelly concocts a plan for her to go to Los Angeles during her spring break, where she can stay with her uncle Phil and do research on her mother, who lived in L.A. growing up. Initially against the idea, believing Vada is too young to be traveling by herself, and fearing what might happen to her in L.A., Harry lets Vada take the five-day trip.


title: My Girl 2

text: On arriving in L.A., Vada confronts a boy her age named Nick, who shows up at the airport instead of Phil. Nick is the son of Phil's new companion Rose, who runs a car repair shop where Phil is now a mechanic. Vada notices that her uncle has trouble with commitment, and that he and Rose live together. While annoyed at first about sacrificing his own spring break, Nick helps Vada with the difficult search of learning more about her mother by showing her around the city.


title: My Girl 2

text: First planning to visit her mother's school, Vada discovers that it was destroyed in a fire. While a setback in her quest, she and Nick eventually track down a yearbook and meet several people who knew Maggie, including a police officer, photographer and film director. Vada also sees her favorite poet, Alfred Beidermeyer, who also lives in L.A., but after hearing his advice on not becoming a writer, she takes it hard. Later in the trip, Nick and Vada sneak out one evening to catch some Hollywood attractions, during which time Vada also gets her ears pierced, despite Nick's opposition to the custom.


title: My Girl 2

text: Vada learns some shocking things about her mother, such as being suspended from school for smoking, and having another husband before her father named Jeffrey Pommeroy. Emotionally crushed by the latter, Vada worries that Jeffrey may actually be her father instead. Realizing he holds the key to more about her mother, but needing help from the police to locate him first, Vada goes to see Jeffrey, who instantly remembers Maggie. He provides Vada with valuable information for her essay, including a home movie and the answer behind the date written on the paper bag. Viewing the home movie touches Vada, as she watches her mother. Jeffrey also assures Vada that he is not her father.


title: My Girl 2

text: Meanwhile, Phil tries to prove his love to Rose, after a man owning a fancy car repeatedly stops by the repair shop and tries to sweep her away by continuously flattering her. When Phil finally gets the courage to show how much she means to him, he proposes to her.


title: My Girl 2

text: As Vada is ready to head home, she and Nick share a goodbye kiss at the airport before she boards the plane. Also, she notices a gift in her backpack from Nick—earrings. When she returns home, she finds out that Shelly just had the baby and heads to the hospital to see her new brother. To calm his crying, Vada, while holding him, sings "Smile", a song she heard her mother singing in the home movie. Vada receives an A+ on her essay, and hopes to share what she learned during her trip with her brother someday.


title: My Girl 2

text: The film debuted at number 4 at the U.S. box office, earning approximately $5 million during its opening weekend. It went on to gross $17,359,799 domestically and $11 million internationally for a worldwide gross of $28 million.


title: My Girl 2

text: Peter Rainer of the "Los Angeles Times" was critical of the film, writing that its "dubious scenario is made even more so by the treacly approach of director Howard Zieff and screenwriter Janet Kovalcik. Everything in this film is sugared with sermons about the importance of Being Yourself. Vada doesn't experience any twinges of rage at the loss of her mother or any misgivings about her quest. She's preternaturally mature."


title: My Girl 2

text: Stephen Holden of "The New York Times", however, commended it as "appealingly sentimental," adding: "Where the first movie forced Vada to face some jarring realities (a best friend's death, a grandmother's senility) and was heavily salted with mortuary humor, the atmosphere of the sequel is softer and more golden. Among other things, the film is a nostalgic valentine to Los Angeles in palmier days when the city still wore the mystique of a laid-back, post-hippie lotus land."


title: My Girl 2

text: Roger Ebert awarded the film two out of four stars, noting that it "seems inspired mostly by the opportunity to recycle the title of a successful film. Scrutinizing the popularity of the first film, perhaps the producers thought it depended on gentle sentimentality, in which a likable young girl deals with the loss of loved ones. As an idea for a series, this is fairly dangerous...  I think it's time to give Vada a break, before she becomes a necrophile, and starts spending all of her time upstairs like Emily Dickinson, writing bleak little poems." Joe Leydon of "Variety" deemed the film a "pleasant, painless and, as sequels go, genuinely ambitious," but conceded that it "may not be enough...  to broaden its appeal beyond its obvious target audience of preteen and young adolescent girls (and, of course, tag-along parents and boyfriends)."


title: My Girl 2

text: Columbia-TriStar Home Entertainment released the film on VHS on June 11, 1996. It was released for the first time on DVD in the United States on December 3, 2002.


title: My Girl 2

text: For her performance, Chlumsky won a Young Artist Award for "Best Performance by a Young Actress Starring in a Motion Picture"; Thomson and O'Brien were also nominated for Young Artist Awards for their roles.


title: My Girl 2

text: For several years "Still My Girl" was proposed as the third motion picture in the "My Girl" movie franchise and it was in development at Columbia Pictures. In his 2003 United Kingdom talk show interview with host Michael Parkinson, Dan Aykroyd stated that Columbia had an interest in getting this off the ground and strong interest in Anna Chlumsky returning to her role as Vada. In 2009, both Chlumsky and Aykroyd were still attached to the project but as the time passed it was becoming less and less likely that it would ever go into production. In April 2012, Chlumsky "put to rest" any rumors that such a film was in development.


title: Michael Douglas on stage and screen

text: American actor and producer Michael Douglas began his film career with a brief uncredited role in "Cast a Giant Shadow" (1966). In the same year he played a small role in the play "Bedford Forrest". His performance in "Hail, Hero!" (1969) earned him a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Male Newcomer. He won the 1971 Theatre World Award for "Pinkville". During 1972–76, he played the lead role in the TV series "The Streets of San Francisco". In 1975, Douglas produced "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, Golden Globe for Best Picture and BAFTA Award for Best Film.


title: Michael Douglas on stage and screen

text: Douglas' role of Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" (1987) won him the Academy Award for Best Actor. For his portrayal of a fictional American president in the 1995 comedy "The American President", he was nominated for Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. His performance in "Wonder Boys" (2000) earned him nominations for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role and Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama.


title: Michael Douglas on stage and screen

text: He shared the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture with his co-actors in "Traffic" (2000). He reprised the role of Gekko in "" (2010) and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture for the same. Douglas' portrayal of Liberace in "Behind the Candelabra" (2013) earned him the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie.


title: Michael Douglas on stage and screen

text: For his contributions to the film industry, Douglas won the 2004 Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award and the 2009 AFI Life Achievement Award.


title: House of Capet

text: The House of Capet () or the Direct Capetians ("Capétiens directs"), also called the House of France ("la maison de France"), or simply the Capets, ruled the Kingdom of France from 987 to 1328. It was the most senior line of the Capetian dynasty – itself a derivative dynasty from the Robertians. Historians in the 19th century came to apply the name "Capetian" to both the ruling house of France and to the wider-spread male-line descendants of Hugh Capet ( 939 – 996). Contemporaries did not use the name "Capetian" (see House of France). The Capets were sometimes called "the third race of kings" (following the Merovingians and the Carolingians). The name "Capet" derives from the nickname (of uncertain meaning) given to Hugh, the first Capetian king.


title: House of Capet

text: The direct line of the House of Capet came to an end in 1328, when the three sons of Philip IV (reigned 1285–1314) all failed to produce surviving male heirs to the French throne. With the death of Charles IV (reigned 1322–1328), the throne passed to the House of Valois, descended from a younger brother of Philip IV. Royal power would later pass (1589) to another Capetian branch, the House of Bourbon, descended from the youngest son of Louis IX (reigned 1226–1270), and (from 1830) to a Bourbon cadet branch, the House of Orléans, always remaining in the hands of agnatic descendants of Hugh Capet, except for the 10-year reign of Emperor Napoleon.


title: House of Capet

text: The first Capetian monarch was Hugh Capet (c.939–996), a Frankish nobleman from the Île-de-France, who, following the death of Louis V (c.967–987) – the last Carolingian king – secured the throne of France by election. He then proceeded to make it hereditary in his family, by securing the election and coronation of his son, Robert II (972–1031), as co-King. The throne thus passed securely to Robert on his father's death, who followed the same custom – as did many of his early successors.


title: House of Capet

text: The Capetian kings were initially weak rulers of the kingdom – they directly ruled only small holdings in the Île-de-France and the Orléanais, all of which were plagued with disorder; the rest of France was controlled by potentates such as the duke of Normandy, the count of Blois, the duke of Burgundy (himself a Capetian after 1032) and the duke of Aquitaine (all of whom faced to a greater or lesser extent the same problems of controlling their subordinates). The House of Capet was, however, fortunate enough to have the support of the Church, and – with the exception of Philip I, Louis IX and the short-lived John I – were able to avoid the problems of underaged kingship.


title: House of Capet

text: Briefly, under Louis VII (1120–1180), the House of Capet rose in their power in France. Louis married Duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122–1204) and so became duke – an advantage which had been eagerly grasped by his father, Louis VI (1081–1137), when Eleanor's father, William X, had asked of the king in his will to secure a good marriage for the young duchess. However, the marriage – and thus one avenue of Capetian aggrandisement – failed. The couple produced only two daughters, and suffered marital discord. Driven to secure the future of the house, Louis divorced Eleanor, who went on to marry Henry II of England (1133–1189). Louis married twice more before finally having a son, Philip II (1165–1223). Philip II started to break the power of the Plantagenets – the family of Eleanor and Henry II – in France.


title: House of Capet

text: Louis VIII (1187–1226) – the eldest son and heir of Philip Augustus – married Blanche of Castile (1188–1252), a granddaughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II of England. In her name, he claimed the crown of England, invading at the invitation of the English barons, and briefly being acclaimed – though, it would later be stressed, not crowned – as king of England. However, the Capetians failed to establish themselves in England – Louis was forced to sign the Treaty of Lambeth, which legally decreed that he had never been king of England, and the prince reluctantly returned to his wife and father in France. More importantly for his dynasty, he would during his brief reign (1223–1226) conquer Poitou, and some of the lands of the Pays d'Oc, declared forfeit from their former owners by the pope as part of the Albigensian Crusade. These lands were added to the French crown, further empowering the Capetian family.


title: House of Capet

text: Louis IX (1214–1270) – "Saint Louis" – succeeded Louis VIII as a child; unable to rule for several years, the government of the realm was undertaken by his mother, the formidable Queen Blanche. She had originally been chosen by her grandmother, Eleanor, to marry the French heir, considered a more suitable queen than her sister Urraca; as regent, she proved this to be so, being associated in the kingship not only during her son's minority, but even after he came into his own. Louis, too, proved a largely acclaimed King – though he expended much money and effort on the Crusades, only for it to go to waste, as a French king he was admired for his austerity, strength, bravery, justice, and his devotion to France. Dynastically, he established two notable Capetian houses: the House of Anjou (which he created by bestowing the County of Anjou upon his brother, Charles I (1227–1285)), and the House of Bourbon (which he established by bestowing Clermont on his son Robert (1256–1317) in 1268, before marrying the young man to the heiress of Bourbon, Beatrice (1257–1310)); the first house would go on to rule Sicily, Naples, and Hungary; the second would eventually succeed to the French throne, collecting Navarre along the way.


title: House of Capet

text: At the death of Louis IX (who shortly after was set upon the road to beatification), France under the Capetians stood as the pre-eminent power in Western Europe. This stance was largely continued, if not furthered, by his son Philip III (1245–1285), and "his" son Philip IV (1268–1314), both of whom ruled with the aid of advisors committed to the future of the House of Capet and of France, and both of whom made notable – for different reasons – dynastic marriages. Philip III married as his first wife Isabel (1247–1271), a daughter of King James I of Aragon (1208–1276); long after her death, he claimed the throne of Aragon for his second son, Charles (1270–1325), by virtue of Charles' descent via Isabel from the kings of Aragon. Unfortunately for the Capetians, the endeavour proved a failure, and the King himself died of dysentery at Perpignan, succeeded by his son, Philip IV.


title: House of Capet

text: Philip IV had married Joan I (1271–1305), the queen of Navarre and countess of Champagne. By this marriage, he added these domains to the French crown. He engaged in conflicts with the Papacy, eventually kidnapping Pope Boniface VIII (–1303), and securing the appointment of the more sympathetic Frenchman, Bertrand de Goth (1264–1314), as Pope Clement V; and he boosted the power and wealth of the crown by abolishing the Order of the Temple, seizing its assets in 1307. More importantly to French history, he summoned the first Estates General – in 1302 – and in 1295 established the so-called "Auld Alliance" with the Scots, at the time resisting English domination. He died in 1314, less than a year after the execution of the Templar leaders – it was said that he had been summoned to appear before God by Jacques de Molay (died 1314), the Grand Master of the Templars, as the latter was burnt at the stake as a heretic; it was also said that de Molay had cursed the King and his family.


title: House of Capet

text: Philip IV presided over the beginning of his House's end. The first quarter of the century saw each of Philip's sons reign in rapid succession: Louis X (1314–1316), Philip V (1316–1322) and Charles IV (1322–1328).


title: House of Capet

text: Having been informed that his daughters-in-law were engaging in adultery with two knights – according to some sources, he was told this by his own daughter, Isabella – he allegedly caught two of them in the act in 1313, and had all three shut up in royal prisons. Margaret (1290–1315), the wife of his eldest son and heir apparent, Louis X and I (1289–1316), had borne her husband only a daughter at this time, and the paternity of this girl, Joan, was with her mother's adultery now suspect. Accordingly, Louis – unwilling to release his wife and return to their marriage – needed to remarry. He arranged a marriage with his cousin, Clementia of Hungary (1293–1328), and after Queen Margaret conveniently died in 1315 (strangled by order of the King, some claimed), he swiftly remarried to Clementia. She was pregnant when he died a year later, after an unremarkable reign; uncertain of how to arrange the succession (the two main claimants being Louis' daughter Joan – the suspected bastard – and Louis' younger brother Philip (1293–1322), Count of Poitiers), the French set up a regency under the Count of Poitiers, and hoped that the child would be a boy. This proved the case, but the boy – King John I (1316), known as "the Posthumous" – died after only 5 days, leaving a succession crisis. Eventually, it was decided based on several legal reasons (later reinterpreted as Salic Law) that Joan was ineligible to inherit the throne, which passed to the Count of Poitiers, who became Philip V. He, however, produced no surviving sons with his wife, Countess Joan II of Burgundy (1291–1330), who had been cleared of her charges of adultery; thus, when he died in 1322, the crown passed to his brother, Charles (1294–1328), Count of La Marche, who became Charles IV; the County of Burgundy, brought to the Capetians by the marriage of Joan and Philip V, remained with Joan, and ceased to be part of the royal domains.


title: House of Capet

text: Charles IV swiftly divorced his adulterous wife, Blanche of Burgundy (–1326) (sister of Countess Joan), who had given him no surviving children, and who had been locked up since 1313; in her place, he married Marie of Luxembourg (1304–1324), a daughter of Emperor Henry VII (–1313). Marie died in 1324, giving birth to a stillborn son. He then remarried to his cousin, Joan of Évreux (1310–1371), who however bore him only daughters; when he died in 1328, his only child was Marie, a daughter by Joan, and the unborn child his wife was pregnant with. Philip of Valois (1293–1350), Count of Anjou and Valois, Charles' cousin, was set up as regent; when the Queen produced a daughter, Blanche, Philip by assent of the great magnates became Philip VI, of the House of Valois, cadet branch of the Capetian Dynasty.


title: House of Capet

text: The last of the direct Capetians were the daughters of Philip IV's three sons, and Philip IV's daughter, Isabella. The wife of Edward II of England (1284–1327), Isabella (–1358) overthrew her husband in favour of her son (Edward III, 1312–1377) ruling as regent with her cohort and lover (Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March, 1287–1330). On the death of her brother, Charles IV, in 1328 she claimed to be her father's heiress, and demanded the throne pass to her son (who as a male, an heir to Philip IV, and of adult age, was considered to have a good claim to the throne); however, her claim was refused, eventually providing a cause for the Hundred Years' War.


title: House of Capet

text: Joan (1312–1349), the daughter of Louis X, succeeded on the death of Charles IV to the throne of Navarre, she now being – questions of paternity aside – the unquestioned heiress. She was the last direct Capetian ruler of that kingdom, being succeeded by her son, Charles II of Navarre (1332–1387); his father, Philip of Évreux (1306–1343) had been a member of the Capetian House of Évreux. Mother and son both claimed on several occasions the throne of France, and later the Duchy of Burgundy.


title: House of Capet

text: Of the daughters of Philip V and Joan II of Burgundy, the elder two had surviving issue. Joan III, Countess of Burgundy (1308–1349), married Odo IV, Duke of Burgundy (1295–1350), uniting the Duchy and County of Burgundy. Her line became extinct with the death of her sole grandchild, Philip I, Duke of Burgundy (1346–1361), whose death also served to break the union between the Burgundys once more. Her sister, Margaret (1310–1382), married Louis I, Count of Flanders (1304–1346), and inherited the County of Burgundy after the death of Philip I; their granddaughter and heiress, Margaret III, Countess of Flanders (1350–1405), married the son of John II of France (1319–1364), Philip II, Duke of Burgundy (1342–1404), uniting the two domains once more.


title: House of Capet

text: Of Charles IV's children, only Blanche (1328–1382) – the youngest, the baby whose birth marked the end of the House of Capet – survived childhood. She married Philip of Valois, Duke of Orléans (1336–1376), the son of Philip VI, but they produced no children. With her death in 1382, the House of Capet finally came to an end.


title: Watercolor painting

text: Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (British English; see spelling differences), also aquarelle (; from Italian diminutive of Latin "aqua" "water"), is a painting method in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-based solution. "Watercolor" refers to both the medium and the resulting artwork. Aquarelles painted with water-soluble colored ink instead of modern water colors are called "aquarellum atramento" (Latin for "aquarelle made with ink") by experts. However, this term has now tended to pass out of use.


title: Watercolor painting

text: The conventional and most common "support"—material to which the paint is applied—for watercolor paintings is watercolor paper. Other supports or substrates include stone, ivory, silk, reed, papyrus, bark papers, plastics, vellum, leather, fabric, wood, and watercolor canvas (coated with a gesso that is specially formulated for use with watercolors). Watercolor paper is often made entirely or partially with cotton. This gives the surface the appropriate texture and minimizes distortion when wet. Watercolor papers are usually cold-pressed papers that provide better texture and appearance with a weight at least 300 gsm. Under 300 gsm is commonly not recommended for anything but sketching. Transparency is the main characteristic of watercolors. Watercolors can also be made opaque by adding Chinese white. This is not a method to be used in true watercolor.


title: Watercolor painting

text: Watercolor paint is an ancient form of painting, if not the most ancient form of art itself. In East Asia, watercolor painting with inks is referred to as brush painting or scroll painting. In Chinese, Korean and Japanese painting it has been the dominant medium, often in monochrome black or browns, often using inkstick or other pigments. India, Ethiopia and other countries have long watercolor painting traditions as well.


title: Watercolor painting

text: Many Western artists, especially in the early 19th century, used watercolor primarily as a sketching tool in preparation for the "finished" work in oil or engraving. Until the end of the eighteenth century, traditional watercolors were known as ‘tinted drawings’.


title: Watercolor painting

text: Watercolor painting is extremely old, dating perhaps to the cave paintings of paleolithic Europe, and has been used for manuscript illustration since at least Egyptian times, with particular prominence in the European Middle Ages. However, its "continuous" history as an art medium begins with the Renaissance. The German Northern Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), who painted several fine botanical, wildlife, and landscape watercolors, is generally considered among the earliest examples of watercolor. An important school of watercolor painting in Germany was led by Hans Bol (1534–1593) as part of the Dürer Renaissance.


title: Watercolor painting

text: Despite this early start, watercolors were generally used by Baroque easel painters only for sketches, copies or cartoons (full-scale design drawings) Notable early practitioners of watercolor painting were Van Dyck (during his stay in England), Claude Lorrain, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, and many Dutch and Flemish artists. However, botanical illustration and wildlife illustration perhaps form the oldest and most important traditions in watercolor painting. Botanical illustrations became popular during the Renaissance, both as hand-tinted woodblock illustrations in books or broadsheets and as tinted ink drawings on vellum or paper. Botanical artists have traditionally been some of the most exacting and accomplished watercolor painters, and even today, watercolors—with their unique ability to summarize, clarify, and idealize in full color—are used to illustrate scientific and museum publications. Wildlife illustration reached its peak in the 19th century with artists such as John James Audubon, and today many naturalist field guides are still illustrated with watercolor paintings.


title: Watercolor painting

text: Several factors contributed to the spread of watercolor painting during the 18th century, particularly in England. Among the elite and aristocratic classes, watercolor painting was one of the incidental adornments of a good education; mapmakers, military officers, and engineers valued it for its usefulness in depicting properties, terrain, fortifications, field geology, and for illustrating public works or commissioned projects. Watercolor artists were commonly taken on geological or archaeological expeditions, funded by the Society of Dilettanti (founded in 1733), to document discoveries in the Mediterranean, Asia, and the New World. These expeditions stimulated the demand for topographical painters, who churned out memento paintings of famous sites (and sights) along the Grand Tour to Italy that was undertaken by every fashionable young man of the time.


title: Watercolor painting

text: In the late 18th century, the English cleric William Gilpin wrote a series of hugely popular books describing his picturesque journeys throughout rural England, and illustrated them with self-made sentimentalized monochrome watercolors of river valleys, ancient castles, and abandoned churches. This example popularized watercolors as a form of personal tourist journal. The confluence of these cultural, engineering, scientific, tourist, and amateur interests culminated in the celebration and promotion of watercolor as a distinctly English "national art". William Blake published several books of hand-tinted engraved poetry, provided illustrations to Dante's "Inferno", and he also experimented with large monotype works in watercolor. Among the many other significant watercolorists of this period were Thomas Gainsborough, John Robert Cozens, Francis Towne, Michael Angelo Rooker, William Pars, Thomas Hearne, and John Warwick Smith.


title: Watercolor painting

text: From the late 18th century through the 19th century, the market for printed books and domestic art contributed substantially to the growth of the medium. Watercolors were used as the basic document from which collectible landscape or tourist engravings were developed, and hand-painted watercolor originals or copies of famous paintings contributed to many upper class art portfolios. Satirical broadsides by Thomas Rowlandson, many published by Rudolph Ackermann, were also extremely popular.


title: Watercolor painting

text: The three English artists credited with establishing watercolor as an independent, mature painting medium are Paul Sandby (1730–1809), often called the "father of the English watercolor"; Thomas Girtin (1775–1802), who pioneered its use for large format, romantic or picturesque landscape painting; and Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), who brought watercolor painting to the highest pitch of power and refinement, and created hundreds of superb historical, topographical, architectural, and mythological watercolor paintings. His method of developing the watercolor painting in stages, starting with large, vague color areas established on wet paper, then refining the image through a sequence of washes and glazes, permitted him to produce large numbers of paintings with "workshop efficiency" and made him a multimillionaire, partly by sales from his personal art gallery, the first of its kind. Among the important and highly talented contemporaries of Turner and Girtin were John Varley, John Sell Cotman, Anthony Copley Fielding, Samuel Palmer, William Havell, and Samuel Prout. The Swiss painter Abraham-Louis-Rodolphe Ducros was also widely known for his large format, romantic paintings in watercolor.


title: Watercolor painting

text: The confluence of amateur activity, publishing markets, middle class art collecting, and 19th-century technique led to the formation of English watercolor painting societies: the "Society of Painters in Water Colours" (1804, now known as the Royal Watercolour Society) and the "New Water Colour Society" (1832, now known as the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours). (A "Scottish Society of Painters in Water Colour" was founded in 1878, now known as the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour.) These societies provided annual exhibitions and buyer referrals for many artists. They also engaged in petty status rivalries and aesthetic debates, particularly between advocates of traditional ("transparent") watercolor and the early adopters of the denser color possible with body color or gouache ("opaque" watercolor). The late Georgian and Victorian periods produced the zenith of the British watercolor, among the most impressive 19th-century works on paper, due to artists Turner, Varley, Cotman, David Cox, Peter de Wint William Henry Hunt, John Frederick Lewis, Myles Birket Foster, Frederick Walker, Thomas Collier, Arthur Melville and many others. In particular, the graceful, lapidary, and atmospheric watercolors ("genre paintings") by Richard Parkes Bonington created an international fad for watercolor painting, especially in England and France in the 1820s.


title: Watercolor painting

text: The popularity of watercolors stimulated many innovations, including heavier and more sized wove papers, and brushes (called "pencils") manufactured expressly for watercolor. Watercolor tutorials were first published in this period by Varley, Cox, and others, establishing the step-by-step painting instructions that still characterize the genre today; "The Elements of Drawing", a watercolor tutorial by English art critic John Ruskin, has been out of print only once since it was first published in 1857. Commercial brands of watercolor were marketed and paints were packaged in metal tubes or as dry cakes that could be "rubbed out" (dissolved) in studio porcelain or used in portable metal paint boxes in the field. Breakthroughs in chemistry made many new pigments available, including synthetic ultramarine blue, cobalt blue, viridian, cobalt violet, cadmium yellow, aureolin (potassium cobaltinitrite), zinc white, and a wide range of carmine and madder lakes. These pigments, in turn, stimulated a greater use of color with all painting media, but in English watercolors, particularly by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.


title: Watercolor painting

text: Watercolor painting also became popular in the United States during the 19th century; outstanding early practitioners included John James Audubon, as well as early Hudson River School painters such as William H. Bartlett and George Harvey. By mid-century, the influence of John Ruskin led to increasing interest in watercolors, particularly the use of a detailed "Ruskinian" style by such artists as John W. Hill Henry, William Trost Richards, Roderick Newman, and Fidelia Bridges. The "American Society of Painters in Watercolor" (now the American Watercolor Society) was founded in 1866. Late-19th-century American exponents of the medium included Thomas Moran, Thomas Eakins, John LaFarge, John Singer Sargent, Childe Hassam, and, preeminently, Winslow Homer.


title: Watercolor painting

text: Watercolor was less popular in Continental Europe. In the 18th century, gouache was an important medium for the Italian artists Marco Ricci and Francesco Zuccarelli, whose landscape paintings were widely collected. Gouache was used by a number of artists in France as well. In the 19th century, the influence of the English school helped popularize "transparent" watercolor in France, and it became an important medium for Eugène Delacroix, François Marius Granet, Henri-Joseph Harpignies, and the satirist Honoré Daumier. Other European painters who worked frequently in watercolor were Adolph Menzel in Germany and Stanisław Masłowski in Poland.


title: Watercolor painting

text: The adoption of brightly colored, petroleum-derived aniline dyes (and pigments compounded from them), which all fade rapidly on exposure to light, and the efforts to properly conserve the twenty thousand J. M. W. Turner paintings inherited by the British Museum in 1857, led to a negative reevaluation of the permanence of pigments in watercolor. This caused a sharp decline in their status and market value. Nevertheless, isolated practitioners continued to prefer and develop the medium into the 20th century. Paul Signac created landscape and maritime watercolors, and Paul Cézanne developed a watercolor painting style consisting entirely of overlapping small glazes of pure color.


title: Watercolor painting

text: Among the many 20th-century artists who produced important works in watercolor were Wassily Kandinsky, Emil Nolde, Paul Klee, Egon Schiele, and Raoul Dufy. In America, the major exponents included Charles Burchfield, Edward Hopper, Georgia O'Keeffe, Charles Demuth, and John Marin (80% of his total work is watercolor). In this period, American watercolor painting often emulated European Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, but significant individualism flourished in "regional" styles of watercolor painting from the 1920s to 1940s. In particular, the "Cleveland School" or "Ohio School" of painters centered around the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the California Scene painters were often associated with Hollywood animation studios or the Chouinard Art Institute (now California Institute of the Arts). The California painters exploited their state's varied geography, Mediterranean climate, and "automobility" to reinvigorate the outdoor or "plein air" tradition. The most influential among them were Phil Dike, Millard Sheets, Rex Brandt, Dong Kingman, and Milford Zornes. The California Water Color Society, founded in 1921 and later renamed the National Watercolor Society, sponsored important exhibitions of their work. The largest watercolor in the world at the moment (at tall and wide) is "Building 6 Portrait: Interior." Produced by American artist Barbara Prey on commission for MASS MoCA, the work can be seen at MASS MoCA's Robert W. Wilson Building.


title: Watercolor painting

text: Although the rise of abstract expressionism, and the trivializing influence of amateur painters and advertising- or workshop-influenced painting styles, led to a temporary decline in the popularity of watercolor painting after c. 1950, watercolors continue to be utilized by artists like Martha Burchfield, Joseph Raffael, Andrew Wyeth, Philip Pearlstein, Eric Fischl, Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer, and Francesco Clemente. In Spain, Ceferí Olivé created an innovative style followed by his students, such as Rafael Alonso López-Montero and Francesc Torné Gavaldà. In Mexico, the major exponents are Ignacio Barrios, Edgardo Coghlan, Ángel Mauro, Vicente Mendiola, and Pastor Velázquez. In the Canary Islands, where this pictorial technique has many followers, there are stand-out artists such as Francisco Bonnín Guerín, José Comas Quesada, and Alberto Manrique.


title: Watercolor painting

text: Watercolor paint consists of four principal ingredients: a pigment; gum arabic as a binder to hold the pigment in suspension; additives like glycerin, ox gall, honey, and preservatives to alter the viscosity, hiding, durability or color of the pigment and vehicle mixture; and, evaporating water, as a solvent used to thin or dilute the paint for application.


title: Watercolor painting

text: The more general term "watermedia" refers to any painting medium that uses water as a solvent and that can be applied with a brush, pen, or sprayer. This includes most inks, watercolors, temperas, caseins, gouaches, and modern acrylic paints.


title: Watercolor painting

text: The term "watercolor" refers to paints that use water-soluble, complex carbohydrates as a binder. Originally (in the 16th to 18th centuries), watercolor binders were sugars and/or hide glues, but since the 19th century, the preferred binder is natural gum arabic, with glycerin and/or honey as additives to improve plasticity and solubility of the binder, and with other chemicals added to improve product shelf life.


title: Watercolor painting

text: The term "bodycolor" refers to paint that is opaque rather than transparent. It usually refers to opaque watercolor, known as gouache. Modern acrylic paints use an acrylic resin dispersion as a binder.


title: Watercolor painting

text: Watercolor painters before the turn of the 18th century had to make paints themselves using pigments purchased from an apothecary or specialized "colorman", and mixing them with gum arabic or some other binder. The earliest commercial paints were small, resinous blocks that had to be wetted and laboriously "rubbed out" in water to obtain a usable color intensity. William Reeves started his business as a colorman around 1766. In 1781, he and his brother, Thomas Reeves, were awarded the Silver Palette of the Society of Arts, for the invention of the moist watercolor "paint-cake", a time-saving convenience, introduced in the "golden age" of English watercolor painting. The "cake" was immediately soluble when touched by a wet brush.


title: Watercolor painting

text: Modern commercial watercolor paints are available in tubes, pans and liquids. The majority of paints sold today are in collapsible small metal tubes in standard sizes and formulated to a consistency similar to toothpaste by being already mixed with a certain water component. For use, this paste has to be further diluted with water. Pan paints (actually small dried cakes or bars of paint in an open plastic container) are usually sold in two sizes, full pans and half pans.


title: Watercolor painting

text: Owing to modern industrial organic chemistry, the variety, saturation, and permanence of artists' colors available today has been vastly improved. Since 2014, Golden Artist Colors makes a heavily pigmented line called "QoR watercolors" ('Quality of Results') that uses Aquazol as a binder. Correct and non-toxic primary colors are now present through the introduction of hansa yellow, phthalo blue and quinacridone (PV 122). From such a set of three colors, in principle all others can be mixed, as in a classical technique no white is used. The modern development of pigments was not driven by artistic demand. The art materials industry is too small to exert any market leverage on global dye or pigment manufacture. With rare exceptions such as aureolin, all modern watercolor paints utilize pigments that have a wider industrial use. Paint manufacturers buy, by industrial standards very small, supplies of these pigments, mill them with the vehicle, solvent, and additives, and package them. The milling process with inorganic pigments, in more expensive brands, reduces the particle size to improve the color flow when the paint is applied with water.


title: Watercolor painting

text: In the partisan debates of the 19th-century English art world, gouache was emphatically contrasted to traditional watercolors and denigrated for its high hiding power or lack of "transparency"; "transparent" watercolors were exalted. The aversion to opaque paint had its origin in the fact that well into the 19th century lead white was used to increase the covering quality. That pigment tended to soon discolor into black under the influence of sulphurous air pollution, totally ruining the artwork. The traditional claim that "transparent" watercolors gain "luminosity" because they function like a pane of stained glass laid on paper—the color intensified because the light passes through the pigment, reflects from the paper, and passes a second time through the pigment on its way to the viewer—is false. Watercolor paints typically do not form a cohesive paint layer, as do acrylic or oil paints, but simply scatter pigment particles randomly across the paper surface; the transparency is caused by the paper being visible between the particles. Watercolors may appear more vivid than acrylics or oils because the pigments are laid down in a purer form, with few or no fillers (such as kaolin) obscuring the pigment colors. Typically, most or all of the gum binder will be absorbed by the paper, preventing the binder from changing the visibility of the pigment. The gum being absorbed does not decrease but increase the adhesion of the pigment to the paper, as its particles will then penetrate the fibres more easily. In fact, an important function of the gum is to facilitate the "lifting" (removal) of color, should the artist want to create a lighter spot in a painted area. Furthermore, the gum prevents flocculation of the pigment particles.


title: Korean Americans

text: Korean Americans are Americans of Korean ancestry (mostly from South Korea). In 2015, the Korean-American community constituted about 0.56% of the United States population, or about 1.82 million people, and was the fifth-largest Asian Americans subgroup, after the Chinese Americans, Filipino Americans, Indian Americans, and Vietnamese Americans communities. The U.S. is home to the largest Korean diaspora community in the world.


title: Korean Americans

text: According to the 2010 Census, there were approximately 1.7 million people of Korean descent residing in the United States, making it the country with the second-largest Korean population living outside Korea (after the People's Republic of China). The ten states with the largest estimated Korean American populations were California (452,000; 1.2%), New York (141,000, 0.7%), New Jersey (94,000, 1.1%), Virginia (71,000, 0.9%), Texas (68,000, 0.3%), Washington (62,400, 0.9%), Illinois (61,500, 0.5%), Georgia (52,500, 0.5%), Maryland (49,000, 0.8%), Pennsylvania (41,000, 0.3%), and Colorado (31,000, 0.4%). Hawaii was the state with the highest concentration of Korean Americans, at 1.8%, or 23,200 people.


title: Korean Americans

text: The two metropolitan areas with the highest Korean American populations as per the 2010 Census were the Greater Los Angeles area Combined Statistical Area (334,329) and the Greater New York Combined Statistical Area (218,764). The Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area ranks third, with approximately 93,000 Korean Americans clustered in Howard and Montgomery Counties in Maryland and Fairfax County in Virginia. Southern California and the New York City metropolitan area have the largest populations of Koreans outside of the Korean Peninsula. Among Korean Americans "born in Korea", the Los Angeles metropolitan area had 226,000 as of 2012; New York (including Northern New Jersey) had 153,000 Korean-born Korean Americans; and Washington had 60,000.


title: Korean Americans

text: The percentage of Korean Americans in Bergen County, New Jersey, in the New York City Metropolitan Area, 6.3% by the 2010 United States Census (increased to 6.9% by the 2011 American Community Survey), is the highest of any county in the United States. All of the nation's top ten municipalities by percentage of Korean population as per the 2010 Census are located within Bergen County, while the concentration of Korean Americans in Palisades Park, New Jersey, in Bergen County, is the highest of any municipality in the United States, at 52% of the population. Between 1990 and 2000, Georgia was home to the fastest-growing Korean community in the U.S., growing at a rate of 88.2% over that decade. There is a significant Korean American population in the Atlanta metropolitan area, mainly in Gwinnett County (2.7% Korean) and Fulton County (1.0% Korean).


title: Korean Americans

text: According to the statistics of the Overseas Korean Foundation and the Republic of Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 107,145 South Korean children were adopted into the United States between 1953 and 2007.


title: Korean Americans

text: In a 2005 United States Census Bureau survey, an estimated 432,907 ethnic Koreans in the U.S. were native-born Americans, and 973,780 were foreign-born. Korean Americans that were naturalized citizens numbered at 530,100, while 443,680 Koreans in the U.S. were not American citizens.


title: Korean Americans

text: While people living in North Korea cannot—except under rare circumstances—leave their country, there are many people of North Korean origin living in the U.S., a substantial portion who fled to the south during the Korean War and later emigrated to the United States. Since the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004 allowed North Korean defectors to be admitted as refugees, about 130 have settled in the U.S. under that status.


title: Korean Americans

text: One of the first Korean Americans was Seo Jae-pil, or Philip Jaisohn, who came to America shortly after participating in an abortive coup with other progressives to institute political reform in 1884. He became a citizen in 1890 and earned a medical degree in 1892 from what is now George Washington University. Throughout his life, he strove to educate Koreans in the ideals of freedom and democracy, and pressed the U.S. government for Korean independence. He died during the Korean War. His home is now a museum, cared for by a social services organization founded in his name in 1975.


title: Korean Americans

text: A prominent figure among the Korean immigrant community is Ahn Chang Ho, pen name Dosan, a Protestant social activist. He came to the United States in 1902 for education. He founded the Friendship Society in 1903 and the Mutual Assistance Society. He was also a political activist during the Japanese occupation of Korea.


title: Korean Americans

text: Another prominent figure among the Korean immigrant community was Syngman Rhee (이승만), a Methodist. He came to the United States in 1904 and earned a bachelor's degree at George Washington University in 1907, a master's degree at Harvard University, and a PhD from Princeton University in 1910. In 1910, he returned to Korea and became a political activist. He later became the first president of the Republic of Korea.


title: Korean Americans

text: In 1903, the first group of Korean laborers came to Hawaii on January 13, now known annually as "Korean-American Day", to fill in gaps created by problems with Chinese and Japanese laborers. Between 1904 and 1907, about 1,000 Koreans entered the mainland from Hawaii through San Francisco. Many Koreans dispersed along the Pacific Coast as farm workers or as wage laborers in mining companies and as section hands on the railroads. Picture brides became a common practice for marriage to Korean men.


title: Korean Americans

text: Between 1905 and 1910, political activities in Korean American communities surged in opposition towards Japanese aggression towards Korea. Organizations formed throughout the US, much of which was concentrated in Hawaii and California. In 1909, two of the largest Korean-American organizations would merge to form the Korean National Association, the largest Korean immigrant organization in North America. Leaders included An Changho, Syngman Rhee and Park Yong-man. This organization along with others would play key roles in the Korean independence movement between 1910 and 1945.


title: Korean Americans

text: After the annexation of Korea by Japan in 1910, Korean migration to the United States was virtually halted. The Immigration Act of 1924 or sometimes referred to as the "Oriental Exclusion Act" was part of a measured system excluding Korean immigrants into the US. In 1952 with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, opportunities were more open to Asian Americans, enabling Korean Americans to move out of enclaves into middle-class neighborhoods. When the Korean War ended in 1953, small numbers of students and professionals entered the United States. A larger group of immigrants included women married with U.S. servicemen. In 1953, South Korea had allowed international adoption. This had stemmed from the result of the Korean war as it left many children displaced. As a result of allowing external adoption in South Korea, a majority of the children have been adopted from families across the United States. With the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, Koreans became one of the fastest growing Asian groups in the United States, surpassed only by Filipinos.


title: Korean Americans

text: The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolished the quota system that had restricted the numbers of Asians allowed to enter the United States. Large numbers of Koreans, including some from North Korea who had come via South Korea, have been immigrating ever since, putting Korea in the top six countries of origin of immigrants to the United States since 1975. The reasons for immigration are many including the desire for increased freedom and the hope for better economic opportunities.


title: Korean Americans

text: In the 1980s and 1990s Koreans became noted not only for starting small businesses such as dry cleaners or convenience stores, but also for diligently planting churches. They would venture into abandoned cities and start up businesses which happened to be predominantly African American in demographics. This would sometimes lead to publicized tensions with customers as dramatized in movies such as Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing" and the Los Angeles riots of April 1992.


title: Korean Americans

text: Their children, along with those of other Asian Americans, would also be noted in headlines and magazine covers in the 1980s for their numbers in prestigious universities and highly skilled white collar professions. Favorable socioeconomic status and education have led to the painting of Asian Americans, including Korean Americans, as a "model minority". However, this label is a controversial one: many individuals claim that the "model minority" label derides other communities of color and dismisses the challenges that the Korean Americans, and other Asian American ethnic groups, face. For instance, 12.8% of all Korean Americans live at or below the poverty line.


title: Korean Americans

text: A large number of Korean Americans do not have health insurance due to language access barriers. Furthermore, older Korean Americans, who are at significant risk of developing mental health conditions, are less likely to access mental health services even when exhibiting symptoms. This is due to stigma and cultural misconceptions regarding mental health conditions.


title: Korean Americans

text: Los Angeles has emerged as a major center of the Korean American community. It experienced rapid transition in the 1990s, with heavy investment by Korean banks and corporations, and the arrival of tens of thousands of Koreans, as well as even larger numbers of Hispanics. Many entrepreneurs opened small businesses, and were hard hit by the 1992 Los Angeles riots. More recently, L.A.'s Koreatown has been perceived to have experienced declining political power secondary to re-districting and an increased crime rate, prompting an exodus of Koreans from the area. Furthermore, the aftermath of the 1992 riots witnessed a large number of Koreans from Southern California moving to the San Francisco Bay Area and opening businesses and buying property near downtown Oakland, furthering the growth of that city's Koreatown until the early 2000s.


title: Korean Americans

text: According to Park (1998) the violence against Korean Americans in 1992 stimulated a new wave of political activism among Korean Americans, but it also split them into two main camps. The "liberals" sought to unite with other minorities in Los Angeles to fight against racial oppression and scapegoating. The "conservatives," emphasized law and order and generally favored the economic and social policies of the Republican Party. The conservatives tended to emphasize the political differences between Koreans and other minorities, specifically blacks and Hispanics. Abelmann and Lie, (1997) report that the most profound result was the politicization of Korean Americans, all across the U.S. The younger generation especially realized they had been too uninvolved in American politics, and the riot shifted their political attention from South Korea to conditions in the United States.


title: Korean Americans

text: Also accelerated by the 1992 riots, Orange County's Korean population grew from its starting point in Koreatown, Garden Grove. As of 2020, Orange County had the second largest number of Korean Americans of any county in America, neighboring Los Angeles County has the most, numbering over 100,000. Koreans originally moved into Garden Grove after Olympic gold medalist Sammy Lee (diver) bought a home in the 1950s signaling to other ethnic minorities that they could move into Orange County. Since then, Koreans have spread throughout northern Orange County, mainly concentrating in Buena Park, Fullerton, Cerritos, Palma, Cypress, and Irvine. Garden Grove is now home to more than 1,500 Korean businesses, and has held a Korean festival, night market, and parade every year since 1983. Mostly older and more traditional Korean businesses and food are found in Garden Grove, while newer and trendier Seoul based chains often locate in Buena Park and Irvine. The Source OC is a multi-level Korean themed mall in Buena Park that houses over 100 restaurants, as well as korean themed bars, a school, K-pop stores, and a PC gaming cafe.


title: Korean Americans

text: A substantial number of affluent Korean American professionals have settled in Bergen County, New Jersey since the early 2000s (decade) and have founded various academically and communally supportive organizations, including the Korean Parent Partnership Organization at the Bergen County Academies magnet high school and The Korean-American Association of New Jersey. Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck, New Jersey, within Bergen County, has undertaken an effort to provide comprehensive health care services to underinsured and uninsured Korean patients from a wide area with its "Korean Medical Program", drawing over 1,500 Korean American patients to its annual health festival. Bergen County's Broad Avenue Koreatown in Palisades Park has emerged as a dominant nexus of Korean American culture, and its Senior Citizens Center provides a popular gathering place where even Korean grandmothers were noted to follow the dance trend of the worldwide viral hit "Gangnam Style" by South Korean "K-pop" rapper Psy in September 2012; while the nearby Fort Lee Koreatown is also emerging as such. The Chusok Korean Thanksgiving harvest festival has become an annual tradition in Bergen County, attended by several tens of thousands.


title: Korean Americans

text: Bergen County's growing Korean community was cited by county executive Kathleen Donovan in the context of Hackensack, New Jersey attorney Jae Y. Kim's appointment to Central Municipal Court judgeship in January 2011. Subsequently, in January 2012, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie nominated attorney Phillip Kwon of Bergen County for New Jersey Supreme Court justice, although this nomination was rejected by the state's Senate Judiciary Committee, and in July 2012, Kwon was appointed instead as deputy general counsel of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. According to "The Record" of Bergen County, the U.S. Census Bureau has determined the county's Korean American population—2010 census figures put it at 56,773 (increasing to 63,247 by the 2011 American Community Survey)—grew enough to warrant language assistance during elections, and Bergen County's Koreans have earned significant political respect. As of May 2014, Korean Americans had garnered at least four borough council seats in Bergen County.


title: Korean Americans

text: In 1990, Korean-American owned shops were boycotted in the Flatbush section of the borough of Brooklyn in New York City. The boycott started by Black Nationalist, Sonny Carson, lasted for six months and became known as the Flatbush boycott.


title: Korean Americans

text: In May 2012, officials in Bergen County's borough of Palisades Park, New Jersey rejected requests by two diplomatic delegations from Japan to remove a small monument from a public park, a brass plaque on a block of stone, dedicated in 2010 to the memory of comfort women, thousands of women, many Koreans, who were forced into sexual slavery by Japanese soldiers during World War II. Days later, a South Korean delegation endorsed the borough's decision. However, in neighboring Fort Lee, various Korean American groups could not reach consensus on the design and wording for such a monument as of early April 2013. In October 2012, a similar memorial was announced in nearby Hackensack, to be raised behind the Bergen County Courthouse, alongside memorials to the Holocaust, the Great Irish Famine, the Armenian genocide, and Slavery in the United States and was unveiled in March 2013. An apology and monetary compensation of roughly $8,000,000 by Japan to South Korea in December 2015 for these crimes largely fell flat in Bergen County, where the first U.S. monument to pay respects to comfort women was erected.


title: Korean Americans

text: According to "The Record", the Korean-American Association of New Jersey petitioned Bergen County school officials in 2013 to use textbooks that refer to the Sea of Japan as the "East Sea" as well. In February 2014, Bergen County lawmakers announced legislative efforts to include the name East Sea in future New Jersey school textbooks. In April 2014, a bill to recognize references to the Sea of Japan also as the East Sea in Virginia textbooks was signed into law.


title: Korean Americans

text: In May 2014, the Palisades Park Public Library in New Jersey created a memorial dedicated to the victims of the tragic sinking of the "Sewol" ferry off the South Korean coast on April 16, 2014.


title: Korean Americans

text: According to a 2015 investigation by "The New York Times", abuse by Korean nail salon owners in New York City and Long Island was rampant, with 70 to 80% of nail salon owners in New York being Korean, per the Korean American Nail Salon Association; with the growth and concentration in the number of salons in New York City far outstripping the remainder of the United States since 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Abuses routinely included underpayment and non-payment to employees for services rendered, exacting poor working conditions, and stratifying pay scales and working conditions for Korean employees above non-Koreans.


title: Korean Americans

text: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea estimates the number of Koreans to be 224,600 as of 2013. However, it's hard to determine the accuracy of this reporting due to the figures being sourced from the Korean Consulate in Korea, and the channels of various Korean-affiliated organizations. For example, tens of thousands of immigrant women who have been married to USFK since the 1950s and who have been adopted since the liberation of the United States have not been identified in the Korean consulate statistics.


title: Korean Americans

text: Korean Americans can speak a combination of English and Korean depending on where they were born and when they immigrated to the United States. New immigrants often use a mixture of Korean and English (Konglish), a practice also known as code-switching.


title: Korean Americans

text: A number of U.S. states have declared January 13 as Korean American Day in order to recognize Korean Americans' impact and contributions. In 1903, the first group of Korean laborers came to Hawaii on January 13, to fill in gaps created by problems with Chinese and Japanese laborers.


title: Korean Americans

text: In a poll from the Asia Times before the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election, Korean Americans narrowly favored Republican candidate George W. Bush by a 41% to 38% margin over Democrat John Kerry, with the remaining 19% undecided or voting for other candidates. However, according to a poll done by the AALDEF the majority of Korean Americans that voted in the 2004 Presidential Election favored Democrat John Kerry by a 66% to 33% margin over Republican candidate George W. Bush.


title: Korean Americans

text: According to a multilingual exit poll from the 2012 election, 77% of Korean Americans voted for Democrat Barack Obama, while only 20% voted for Republican Mitt Romney. The poll also showed that 60% of Korean Americans identify themselves as being Democrats, while only 14% of Korean Americans identify themselves as being Republican.


title: Korean Americans

text: Elected in 1992, Jay Kim was the first Korean American person elected to Congress. He represented portions of Orange County, California. He was defeated for re-election in the Republican primary in 1998.


title: Korean Americans

text: In 2018, Andy Kim was elected to Congress from central New Jersey, becoming the first Democratic and second overall Korean American to serve in Congress.


title: Korean Americans

text: The 2020 elections saw the first three Korean American women elected to Congress, Republicans Young Kim and Michelle Steel of California and Democrat Marilyn Strickland of Washington.


title: Korean Americans

text: Out of the five Korean Americans elected to the U.S. Congress, only Andy Kim was born in the United States: Jay Kim, Young Kim, Michelle Steel, and Marilyn Strickland were all born in Korea and immigrated, with Strickland having a father in the American military.


title: Korean Americans

text: Korean Americans have historically had a very strong Christian—particularly Protestant—heritage. Between 60% and 65% identify as Christian; 40% of those consist of immigrants who were not Christians at the time of their arrival in the United States. There are about 4,000 Korean Christian churches in the United States. According to a 2016 survey, Presbyterian churches accounted for 42%, followed by Baptists (17%) and Methodists (12%). However, according to a recent study by UC Riverside, 64% of Korean American Christians identify as Presbyterians, followed by Methodists (11%) and Baptists (7%).


title: Korean Americans

text: There are only 89 Korean Buddhist temples in the United States; the largest such temple, Los Angeles' Sa Chal Temple, was established in 1974. A small minority, about 2 to 10% of Korean Americans are Buddhist. Reasons given for the conversion of immigrant Korean families to Christianity include the responsiveness of Christian churches to immigrant needs as well as their communal nature, whereas Buddhist temples foster individual spirituality and practice and provide fewer social networking and business opportunities, as well as social pressure from other Koreans to convert. Most Korean American Christians do not practice traditional Confucian ancestral rites practiced in Korea (in Korea, most Catholics, Buddhists, and nonbelievers practice these rites).


title: Korean Americans

text: "Korean American cuisine" can be described as a fusion of traditional Korean cuisine with American culture and tastes. Dishes such as "Korean tacos" have emerged from the contacts between Korean bodega owners and their Mexican workers in the Los Angeles area, spreading from one food truck (Kogi Korean BBQ) in November 2008 to the national stage eighteen months later.


title: Korean Americans

text: According to Chef Roy Choi (of Kogi Korean BBQ fame), sundubu-jjigae was a dish developed by Korean immigrants in Los Angeles. In 2021, "Thrillist" named Bergen County, New Jersey as America’s best Korean barbecue destination.


title: Korean Americans

text: Often, chefs borrow from Korean flavors and preparation techniques that they will integrate into the style they are most comfortable with (whether it be Tex-Mex, Chinese or purely American). Even a classic staple of the American diet, the hamburger, is available with a Korean twist—bulgogi (Korean BBQ) burgers.


title: Korean Americans

text: With the popularity of cooking and culinary sampling, chefs, housewives, food junkies and culinary aficionados have been bolder in their choices, favoring more inventive, specialty and ethnic dishes. Already popular in its subset populations peppered throughout the United States, Korean food debuted in the many Koreatowns found in metropolitan areas including in Los Angeles; Garden Grove and Bunea Park in Orange County, California; Queens and Manhattan in New York City; Palisades Park and Fort Lee in Bergen County, New Jersey; Annandale, Virginia; Philadelphia; Atlanta; Dallas; and Chicago. Korean cuisine has unique and bold flavors, colors and styles; these include kimchi, an often spicy dish made of salted and fermented vegetables (baechu-kimchi, kkaktugi), long-fermented pastes (gochujang, doenjang), rice cake or noodle dishes and stews (tteok-bokki, naengmyun), marinated and grilled meats (bulgogi, galbi), and many seafood dishes using fish cakes, octopus, squid, shellfish and fish.


title: Korean Americans

text: The Korean dining scene was noted to have grown sharply in New Jersey during 2018. Broad Avenue in Bergen County's Palisades Park Koreatown in New Jersey has evolved into a Korean dessert destination as well; while a five-mile long "Kimchi Belt" has emerged in the Long Island Koreatown in New York.


title: Korean Americans

text: Korean coffeehouse chain Caffe Bene, also serving misugaru, has attracted Korean American entrepreneurs as franchisees to launch its initial expansion into the United States, starting with Bergen County, New Jersey and the New York City Metropolitan Area.


title: Korean Americans

text: In 2012, the Department of Homeland Security estimated that there were 230,000 "unauthorized immigrants" born in South Korea; they are the seventh-largest nationality of undocumented immigrants behind those from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, the Philippines and India.


title: Agneepath (1990 film)

text: Agneepath (, ) is a 1990 Indian Hindi-language action crime film directed by Mukul Anand and written jointly by Santosh Saroj and Kader Khan. It stars Amitabh Bachchan as Vijay, a man who sets out to avenge the death of his father and injustices done to his family by joining the Mumbai underworld.


title: Agneepath (1990 film)

text: The film was inspired by the life of a Mumbai gangster Manya Surve. The title was taken from a poem of the same name called "Agneepath" which was penned by Harivansh Rai Bachchan, Amitabh's father, and which is recited at the beginning of the movie and creates a thematic link that continues through the movie, both literally and metaphorically.