title: Charles Colson

text: As Colson was facing arrest, his close friend Thomas L. Phillips, chairman of the board of Raytheon Company, gave him a copy of "Mere Christianity" by C. S. Lewis; after reading it, Colson became an evangelical Christian. Colson then joined a prayer group led by Douglas Coe and including Democratic Senator Harold Hughes, Republican congressman Al Quie and Democratic congressman Graham B. Purcell, Jr. When news of the conversion emerged much later, several U.S. newspapers, as well as "Newsweek", "The Village Voice", and "Time", ridiculed the conversion, claiming that it was a ploy to reduce his sentence. In his 1975 memoir "Born Again", Colson noted that a few writers published sympathetic stories, as in the case of a widely reprinted UPI article, "From Watergate to Inner Peace."


title: Charles Colson

text: After taking the Fifth Amendment on the advice of his lawyers during early testimony, Colson found himself torn between his desire to be truthful and his desire to avoid conviction on charges of which he believed himself innocent. Following prayer and consultation with his fellowship group, Colson approached his lawyers and suggested a plea of guilty to a different criminal charge of which he did consider himself to be culpable.


title: Charles Colson

text: After days of negotiation with Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski and Watergate Trial Judge Gerhard Gesell, Colson pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice on the basis of having attempted to defame Ellsberg's character in the build-up to the trial in order to influence the jury against him. Journalist Carl Rowan commented in a column of June 10, 1974, that the guilty plea came "at a time when the judge was making noises about dismissing the charges against him", and speculated that Colson was preparing to reveal highly damaging information against Nixon, an expectation shared by columnist Clark Mollenhoff; Mollenhoff even went so far as to suggest that for Colson "not" to become a "devastating witness" would cast doubt on the sincerity of his conversion. On June 21, 1974, Colson was given a one-to- three-year sentence and fined $5,000. He was subsequently disbarred in the District of Columbia, with the expectation of his also being prohibited from using his licenses from Virginia and Massachusetts.


title: Charles Colson

text: Colson served seven months in Maxwell Correctional Facility in Alabama,—with brief stints at a facility on the Fort Holabird grounds when needed as a trial witness— entering prison on July 9, 1974, and being released early, on January 31, 1975, by the sentencing judge because of family problems. At the time that Gesell ordered his release, Colson was one of the last of the Watergate defendants still in jail: only Gordon Liddy was still incarcerated. Egil Krogh had served his sentence and been released before Colson entered jail, while John Dean, Jeb Magruder, and Herb Kalmbach had been released earlier in January 1975 by Judge John Sirica. Although Gesell declined to name the "family problems" prompting the release, Colson wrote in his 1976 memoir that his son Chris, angry over his father's imprisonment and looking to replace his broken car, had bought $150 worth of marijuana in hopes of selling it at a profit, and had been arrested in South Carolina, where he was in college. The state later dropped the charges.


title: Charles Colson

text: "Born Again", Colson's personal memoir reflecting on his religious conversion and prison term, was made into a 1978 dramatic film starring Dean Jones as Colson, Anne Francis as his wife Patty, and Harold Hughes as himself. Actor Kevin Dunn portrayed Colson in the 1995 movie "Nixon".


title: Charles Colson

text: During his time in prison, Colson had become increasingly aware of what he saw as injustices done to prisoners and incarcerates and shortcomings in their rehabilitation; he also had the opportunity, during a three-day furlough to attend his father's funeral, to pour over his father's papers and discover the two shared an interest in prison reform. He became convinced that he was being called by God to develop a ministry to prisoners with an emphasis in promoting changes in the justice system.


title: Charles Colson

text: After his release from prison, Colson founded Prison Fellowship in 1976, which today is "the nation's largest outreach to prisoners, ex-prisoners, and their families". Colson worked to promote prisoner rehabilitation and reform of the prison system in the United States, citing his disdain for what he called the "lock 'em and leave 'em" warehousing approach to criminal justice. He helped to create prisons whose populations come from inmates who choose to participate in faith-based programs.


title: Charles Colson

text: In 1979, Colson founded Prison Fellowship International to extend his prison outreach outside the United States. Now in 120 countries, Prison Fellowship International is the largest, most extensive association of national Christian ministries working within the criminal justice field, working to proclaim the Gospel worldwide and alleviate the suffering of prisoners and their families. In 1983, Prison Fellowship International received special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. During this time, Colson also founded Justice Fellowship, using his influence in conservative political circles to push for bipartisan, legislative reforms in the U.S. criminal justice system.


title: Charles Colson

text: On June 18, 2003, Colson was invited by President George W. Bush to the White House to present results of a scientific study on the faith-based initiative, InnerChange, at the Carol Vance Unit (originally named the Jester II Unit) prison facility of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in Fort Bend County, Texas. Colson led a small group that includes Dr. Byron Johnson of the University of Pennsylvania, who was the principal researcher of the InnerChange study, a few staff members of Prison Fellowship and three InnerChange graduates to the meeting. In the presentation, Johnson explained that 171 participants in the InnerChange program were compared to a matched group of 1,754 inmates from the prison's general population. The study found that only 8 percent of InnerChange graduates, as opposed to 20.3 percent of inmates in the matched comparison group, became offenders again in a two-year period. In other words, the recidivism rate was cut by almost two-thirds for those who complete the faith-based program. Those who are dismissed for disciplinary reasons or who drop out voluntarily, or those who are paroled before completion, have a comparable rate of rearrest and incarceration. The commonly-reported results from the study have been strongly criticized for selecting only participants who were unlikely to be rearrested (especially those who were successfully placed in post-prison jobs), and when considering all of the InnerChange study participants, their recidivism rate (24.3%) was worse than the control group (20.3%).


title: Charles Colson

text: Colson maintained a variety of media channels which discuss contemporary issues from an evangelical Christian worldview. In his "Christianity Today" columns, for example, Colson opposed same-sex marriage, and argued that Darwinism is used to attack Christianity. He also argued against evolution and in favor of intelligent design, and asserted that Darwinism led to forced sterilizations by eugenicists.


title: Charles Colson

text: Colson was an outspoken critic of postmodernism, believing that as a cultural worldview, it is incompatible with the Christian tradition. He debated prominent post-evangelicals, such as Brian McLaren, on the best response for the evangelical church in dealing with the postmodern cultural shift. Colson, however, came alongside the creation care movement when endorsing Christian environmentalist author Nancy Sleeth's "Go Green, Save Green: A Simple Guide to Saving Time, Money, and God's Green Earth". In the early 1980s, Colson was invited to New York by David Frost's variety program on NBC for an open debate with Madalyn Murray O'Hair, the atheist who, in 1963, brought the court case ("Murray v. Curlett") that eliminated official public school prayers.


title: Charles Colson

text: Colson was a member of the Family (also known as the Fellowship), described by prominent evangelical Christians as one of the most politically well-connected fundamentalist organizations in the US. On April 4, 1991, Colson was invited to deliver a speech as part of the Distinguished Lecturer series at Harvard Business School. The speech was titled "The Problem of Ethics", where he argued that a society without a foundation of moral absolutes cannot long survive.


title: Charles Colson

text: Colson was later a principal signer of the 1994 "Evangelicals and Catholics Together" ecumenical document signed by leading Evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholic leaders in the United States, part of a larger ecumenical rapprochement in the United States that had begun in the 1970s with Catholic-Evangelical collaboration during the Gerald R. Ford Administration and in later para-church organizations such as Moral Majority founded by Rev. Jerry Falwell at the urging of Francis Schaeffer and his son Frank Schaeffer during the Jimmy Carter administration.


title: Charles Colson

text: In November 2009, Colson was a principal writer and driving force behind an ecumenical statement known as the "" calling on evangelicals, Catholics and Orthodox Christians not to comply with rules and laws permitting abortion, same-sex marriage and other matters that go against their religious consciences. He previously had ignited controversy within Protestant circles for his mid-90s common-ground initiative with conservative Roman Catholics "Evangelicals and Catholics Together", which Colson wrote alongside prominent Roman Catholic Richard John Neuhaus. Colson was also a proponent of the Bible Literacy Project's curriculum "The Bible and Its Influence" for public high school literature courses. Colson has said that Protestants have a special duty to prevent anti-Catholic bigotry.


title: Charles Colson

text: In 1988, Colson became involved with the Elizabeth Morgan case, visiting Morgan in jail and lobbying to change federal law in order to free her.


title: Charles Colson

text: On October 3, 2002, Colson was one of the co-signers of the Land letter sent to President George W. Bush. The letter was written by Richard D. Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and co-signed by four prominent American evangelical Christian leaders with Colson among them. The letter outlined their theological support for a just war in the form of a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq.


title: Charles Colson

text: On June 1, 2005, Colson appeared in the national news commenting on the revelation that W. Mark Felt was Deep Throat. Colson expressed disapproval in Felt's role in the Watergate scandal, first in the context of Felt being an FBI employee who should have known better than to disclose the results of a government investigation to the press (violating a fundamental tenet of FBI culture), and second in the context of the trust placed in him (which demanded a more active response, such as a face-to-face confrontation with the FBI director or Nixon or, had that failed, public resignation). His criticism of Felt provoked a harsh response from Benjamin Bradlee, former executive editor of "The Washington Post", one of only three individuals to know who Deep Throat was prior to the public disclosure, who said he was "baffled" that Colson and Liddy were "lecturing the world about public morality" considering their role in the Watergate scandal. Bradlee stated that "as far as I'm concerned they have no standing in the morality debate."


title: Charles Colson

text: Colson also supported the passage of Proposition 8. He signed his name to a full-page ad in the December 5, 2008 "The New York Times" that objected to violence and intimidation against religious institutions and believers in the wake of the passage of Proposition 8. The ad stated that "violence and intimidation are always wrong, whether the victims are believers, gay people, or anyone else." A dozen other religious and human rights activists from several different faiths also signed the ad, noting that they "differ on important moral and legal questions", including Proposition 8.


title: Charles Colson

text: In 1990, The Salvation Army recognized Colson with its highest civic award, the Others Award. Previous recipients of the award include Barbara Bush, Paul Harvey, US Senator Bob Dole and the Meadows Foundation.


title: Charles Colson

text: In 1993, Colson was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, the world's largest cash gift (over $1 million), which is given each year to the one person in the world who has done the most to advance the cause of religion. He donated this prize, as he did all speaking fees and royalties, to further the work of Prison Fellowship.


title: Charles Colson

text: In 1994, Colson was quoted in contemporary Christian music artist Steven Curtis Chapman's song "Heaven in the Real World" as saying:


title: Charles Colson

text: In 1999, Colson co-authored "How Now Shall We Live?" with Nancy Pearcey and published by Tyndale House. The book was winner of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association 2000 Gold Medallion Book Award in the "Christianity and Society" category. Colson had previously won the 1993 Gold Medallion award in the "Theology/Doctrine" category for "The Body" co-authored with Ellen Santilli Vaughn, published by Word, Inc.


title: Charles Colson

text: On February 9, 2001, the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) presented Colson with the Mark O. Hatfield Leadership Award at the Forum on Christian Higher Education in Orlando, Florida. The award is presented to individuals who have demonstrated uncommon leadership that reflects the values of Christian higher education. The award was established in 1997 in honor of US Senator Mark Hatfield, a long-time supporter of the council.


title: Charles Colson

text: In 2000, Florida Governor Jeb Bush reinstated the rights taken away by Colson's felony conviction, including the right to vote.


title: Charles Colson

text: On March 31, 2012, Colson underwent surgery to remove a blood clot from his brain after he fell ill while speaking at a Christian worldview conference. CBN erroneously reported on April 18, 2012, that he died with his family at his side but Prison Fellowship later (12:30am on April 19 and again at 7:02am) pointed out that he was still alive as of that moment.


title: Charles Colson

text: On April 21, 2012, Colson died in the hospital "from complications resulting from a brain hemorrhage".


title: Charles Colson

text: Colson had a long list of publications and collaborations, including over 30 books which have sold more than 5 million copies. He also wrote forewords for several other books.


The Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center is a government command facility in the U.S. Commonwealth of Virginia, used as the center of operations for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Also known as the High Point Special Facility (HPSF), its preferred designation since 1991 is "SF."


title: Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center

text: The facility is a major relocation site for the highest level of civilian and military officials in case of national disaster, playing a major role in continuity of government (per the U.S. Continuity of Operations Plan).


text: Mount Weather is the location of a control station for the FEMA National Radio System (FNARS), a high frequency radio system connecting most federal public safety agencies and the U.S. military with most of the states. FNARS allows the president to access the Emergency Alert System.


text: The site was brought into the public eye by "The Washington Post", which mentioned the government facility in its coverage following the December 1, 1974 crash of TWA Flight 514, a Boeing 727 jetliner, into Mount Weather.


text: Located in the Blue Ridge Mountains, access to the operations center is available via State Route 601 (also called Blueridge Mountain Road) in Bluemont, Virginia. The facility is located near Purcellville, Virginia, west of Washington, D.C.


text: The site was originally opened as a weather station in the late 1800s. William Jackson Humphreys was selected as the supervising director for the Mount Weather Research Observatory, which was operational from 1904 to 1914. In 1928 the observatory building was the summer White House for Calvin Coolidge. The site was used as a Civilian Public Service facility (Camp #114) during World War II. At that time there were just two permanent buildings on the site: the administration/dormitory building, and the laboratory. Those buildings still stand, supplemented by many more modern buildings.


text: The underground facility within Mount Weather, designated "Area B", was completed in 1959. FEMA established training facilities on the mountain's surface ("Area A") in 1979.


text: The above-ground portion of the FEMA complex (Area A) is at least . This measurement includes a training area of unspecified size. Area B, the underground component, contains .


text: According to a letter to the editor of "The Washington Post", after the September 11 attacks, most of the congressional leadership were evacuated to Mount Weather by helicopter.


text: Between 1979 and 1981, the National Gallery of Art developed a program to transport valuable paintings in its collection to Mount Weather via helicopter. The success of the relocation would depend upon how far in advance warning of an attack was received.


text: The first video of Mount Weather shot from the air to be broadcast on national TV was filmed by ABC News producer Bill Lichtenstein, and was included in the 1983 "20/20" segment "Nuclear Preparation: Can We Survive", featuring "20/20" correspondent Tom Jarriel. Lichtenstein flew over the Mount Weather facility with an ABC camera crew. The news magazine report also included House Majority Leader Tip O'Neill and Representative Ed Markey, confirming that there were contingency plans for the relocation of the United States government in the event of a nuclear war or major disaster.


text: Both Mount Weather and the now deactivated bunker at The Greenbrier were featured in the A&E documentary "Bunkers". The documentary, first broadcast on October 23, 2001, features extensive interviews with engineers and political and intelligence analysts, providing rare insights into the secret installations. The documentary compared The Greenbrier and Mount Weather to Saddam Hussein's control bunker buried beneath Baghdad. The documentary features interior video of The Greenbrier as well as the Baghdad bunker, which survived direct hits from seven Joint Direct Attack Munition bombs during the Battle of Baghdad in 2003.


text: While the novel "Seven Days in May" mentions a facility called Mount Thunder, a reference to Mount Weather, the road descriptions in the book make it quite clear that it is the same facility. It is also referred to in the movie based on the book, filmed during the Kennedy Administration and released in 1964.


text: Mount Weather has been the setting for several apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fictional works. These include the 2002 series finale of "The X-Files", the 2008 film "The Day the Earth Stood Still", the novel series "The 100", CW’s TV series "The 100" and Syfy’s TV series "Z Nation". Mount Weather is also mentioned in the novel "Memorial Day" by Vince Flynn, and in the novels "One Year After" and "The Final Day", both by William R. Forstchen. It is also mentioned in the movie "Thirteen Days", as well as CW's TV series "Arrow"; Season 4 Episode 22 "Lost in the Flood". It was the opening scenes of 2002 spy film, "The Sum of All Fears" based on the Tom Clancy novel of the same name. It is the setting for the 21st Season 2 episode of "" titled "Message in a Bottle." It was mentioned in Martin Mahle's espionage thriller "GENESIS" in 2016, and the last known mentioning of Mount Weather is in Season 4 episode 22 of "Madam Secretary", "Night Watch." It’s also mentioned in William Cooper's book, "Behold a Pale Horse".


title: James Joseph Dresnok

text: James Joseph Dresnok (, November 24, 1941 – November 2016) was an American defector to North Korea, one of six U.S. soldiers to defect after the Korean War.


title: James Joseph Dresnok

text: After defecting, Dresnok worked as an actor in propaganda films, some directed by Kim Jong-il, and as an English teacher in Pyongyang. He was featured on the CBS magazine program "60 Minutes" on January 28, 2007, as the last U.S. defector alive in North Korea. He was also the subject of a documentary film, "Crossing the Line", by British filmmakers Daniel Gordon and Nicholas Bonner, which was shown at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.


title: James Joseph Dresnok

text: Dresnok most often called himself Joe Dresnok but was also referred to as "James" or "Jim" Dresnok in media reports. He was known by most North Koreans as "Arthur", from his starring role in the miniseries "Unsung Heroes" (1978).


title: James Joseph Dresnok

text: Dresnok was born in Norfolk, Virginia, to Joseph Dresnok and Margaret Lucille Dresnok (maiden name Mizelle), who were married in South Mills, Camden County, North Carolina, on May 3, 1941. Joseph Dresnok senior (1917–1978) was born on February 3, 1917 in Greensburg, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, and died on March 16, 1978 in Wyckoff, Bergen County, New Jersey. Joseph Dresnok senior served in the United States Army from November 23, 1937, until May 29, 1940. Joseph and Margaret Dresnok divorced on July 10, 1951, in Richmond, Virginia. Dresnok’s father initiated the divorce action, claiming that Dresnok’s mother was “legally married to another.” Dresnok was briefly raised by his father in Pennsylvania; his mother and younger brother Joseph Dresnok junior never again came into contact with them. Dresnok was placed in a foster home, dropped out of high school, and joined the Army the day after his 17th birthday.


title: James Joseph Dresnok

text: Dresnok's first military service was two years spent in West Germany. After returning to the United States and finding out that his wife had left him for another man, he re-enlisted and was sent to South Korea. He was a private first class with the 1st Cavalry Division along the Korean Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea in the early 1960s. Soon after his arrival, he found himself facing a court martial for forging signatures on paperwork that gave him permission to leave the base which, ultimately, led to his going AWOL (Absent Without Leave).


title: James Joseph Dresnok

text: Unwilling to face punishment, on August 15, 1962, while his fellow soldiers were eating lunch, he ran across a minefield in broad daylight into North Korean territory, where he was quickly apprehended by North Korean soldiers. Dresnok was taken by train to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, and interrogated.


title: James Joseph Dresnok

text: "I was fed up with my childhood, my marriage, my military life, everything. I was finished. There's only one place to go," Dresnok said in an interview. "On August 15th, at noon in broad daylight when everybody was eating lunch, I hit the road. Yes, I was afraid. Am I gonna live or die? And when I stepped into the minefield and I seen it with my own eyes, I started sweating. I crossed over, looking for my new life."Dresnok met Larry Allen Abshier, another U.S. defector, soon after his arrival. Eventually there were four of them: Dresnok, Abshier, Jerry Parrish, and Charles Robert Jenkins. The men lived together and participated in several propaganda efforts on behalf of the North Korean government. They appeared on magazine covers and used loudspeakers to try to persuade more U.S. soldiers at the border to defect. They did not wish to remain in North Korea indefinitely at first. In 1966, the four men tried to leave North Korea by seeking asylum at the Soviet embassy in Pyongyang, but the embassy immediately turned them over to North Korean authorities. After that, Dresnok decided to settle in North Korea.


title: James Joseph Dresnok

text: Beginning in 1978, he was cast in several North Korean films, including one episode of the series "Unsung Heroes" (as an American villain called "Arthur Cockstud"), and he became a celebrity in the country as a result. He was called "Arthur" by his North Korean friends, after the name of his character in "Unsung Heroes". He also translated some of North Korean leader Kim Il-sung's writings into English.


title: James Joseph Dresnok

text: In his book "The Reluctant Communist", Jenkins claims that Dresnok was a bully, betraying the other Americans' confidences to the North Koreans, and beating up Jenkins on 30 or more occasions on the orders of their Korean handlers. In the documentary "Crossing the Line", Dresnok vehemently denies these allegations.


title: James Joseph Dresnok

text: Dresnok asserts that "because of the sanctions of the U.S. Government and Japanese", during the North Korean famine of the 1990s, he was always given his full food ration by the government. "Why? Why do they let their own people starve to death to feed an American?" he asked. "The Great Leader has given us a special solicitude. The government is going to take care of me until my dying day."


title: James Joseph Dresnok

text: In December 1959, Dresnok married Kathleen Ringwood, a 19-year-old from New York City. In "Crossing the Line", Dresnok explains that after getting married at a young age, he was deployed in West Germany for two years while she remained in the U.S. He prided himself on "truly loving her and being loyal to her", but when he returned, he found out that she was already in another relationship. He was quoted as saying, "The good thing was that she did not get pregnant by me because I had promised that I would never abandon my children." However, they remained married until after his defection in 1962. She filed for divorce the next year, citing "wilful desertion" on his part as grounds.


title: James Joseph Dresnok

text: Dresnok was married twice more after defecting to North Korea. His first marriage was to a Romanian woman, Doina Bumbea (referred to as "Dona" in Jenkins' autobiography), with whom he had two sons, Theodore "Ted" Ricardo Dresnok (born 1980) and James Gabriel Dresnok (born 1982). Bumbea supposedly worked at the Romanian Embassy, but some accounts say that she never worked there and was in fact an abductee who had been taken by the North Korean secret service. According to Bumbea's family, she was living in Italy as an art student when she vanished, after telling people that she had met a man who promised to help arrange exhibitions of her art in Asia. After viewing "Crossing the Line" and seeing one of Dresnok's sons, Bumbea's brother stated he bore a startling resemblance to his missing sister. According to Jenkins' book, Bumbea was abducted in order to be the wife of one of the American deserters. The Romanian Foreign Affairs Ministry's website says that in 2007 the Romanian Government had requested an explanation for Bumbea's abduction from the North Korean government. However, no response was provided to Romania. Bumbea reportedly died of lung cancer in 1997.


title: James Joseph Dresnok

text: After Bumbea's death, Dresnok married his third wife, identified by Jenkins as "Dada", the daughter of a North Korean woman and a Togolese diplomat. They had a son, Tony, in 2001. The family lived in a small apartment in Pyongyang, provided to them along with a monthly stipend by the North Korean government. Dresnok was in failing health, with a bad heart and liver (Dresnok described his liver as "full of fat"), which he attributed to smoking and drinking too much.


title: James Joseph Dresnok

text: His younger son from his second marriage, James Dresnok, was a student at the Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies, where his father taught English in the 1980s. James speaks English with a Korean accent and considers himself Korean but he reportedly did not wish to marry a Korean woman. James joined the North Korean military in 2014, and in 2016 he reportedly held the rank of "taewi", a rank that is equivalent to the rank of captain in the US Army. Both the younger James and the older Ted Dresnok are now married and they also have children of their own in North Korea. Like their father, they have also appeared as villainous American soldiers in North Korean films.


title: James Joseph Dresnok

text: Dresnok stated that he intended to spend the rest of his life in North Korea, and no amount of money could have enticed him to move back to the West. Dresnok retired and occasionally gave lectures in North Korea and went fishing "just to pass the time."


title: James Joseph Dresnok

text: In April 2017, the Western news organization NK News reported that Dresnok had died the previous year. In August 2017, Dresnok's sons confirmed that he had died of a stroke in November 2016. They released a statement saying that their father told them to remain loyal to Kim Jong-un and they also stated that they would "destroy" the US if it launched a preemptive strike against North Korea.


title: Haywire (2011 film)

text: Haywire is a 2011 action thriller film directed by Steven Soderbergh, starring Gina Carano, Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor, Bill Paxton, Channing Tatum, Antonio Banderas, and Michael Douglas. Carano, a mixed martial arts fighter, performs her own stunts in the film. The score is by DJ and composer David Holmes.


title: Haywire (2011 film)

text: The plot centers on Mallory Kane (Carano), a black ops operative who is betrayed by her employers and targeted for assassination in a conspiracy that she is forced to unravel. The film premiered on November 6, 2011 at the American Film Institute's AFI Fest and received a wide release on January 20, 2012 by Relativity Media. It had generally positive critical reception, with critics praising its action, choreography, performances and Soderbergh's direction, but with some criticism levied at newcomer Carano's performance. The film grossed $34.5 million.


title: Haywire (2011 film)

text: At an Upstate New York diner, a woman named Mallory Kane meets an associate of hers named Aaron. The two have a seemingly affable conversation, before Aaron demands she get in a car outside. When she refuses, he attacks her and pulls a gun, but she disarms and pistol whips him. Meanwhile Scott, a customer, had intervened to help Mallory, who proceeds to demand his car keys and that he get in his car to go away with her. As they flee, she explains who she is and what has happened to her.


title: Haywire (2011 film)

text: Mallory explains that she and Aaron are operatives of a secretive private intelligence firm that handles highly sensitive black operations covertly so that their employers can maintain plausible deniability. One week earlier, the firm's director and Mallory's ex-boyfriend Kenneth gave her an assignment offered by CIA agent Coblenz; to rescue Jiang, a Chinese national being held hostage in a Barcelona apartment. Mallory and her team, including Aaron, successfully pull off the job and deliver the mark to a local contact named Rodrigo.


title: Haywire (2011 film)

text: Upon returning to the United States, Mallory is approached by Kenneth with what he claims is a simple assignment: pose as the wife of MI6 agent Paul during a mission in Dublin. Mallory agrees and accompanies Paul to a party at Russborough House, where they meet with his contact, Studer. As Mallory watches from afar, she sees Paul go into a barn. Upon entering, she finds Jiang dead, clutching in his hand a brooch which Kenneth had insisted she wear as a recognition signal for her initial contact with Paul. Mallory realizes she has been set up.


title: Haywire (2011 film)

text: On returning to their hotel room, Paul attacks Mallory and tries to kill her, but she manages to fend him off and shoot him dead. Checking Paul's phone, she redials a missed call only for Kenneth to pick up, asking if "the divorce was final". Kenneth realizes he's been made, and sends his agents after her. She narrowly avoids both of them and the police, escaping onto a ferry to England.


title: Haywire (2011 film)

text: Mallory calls Rodrigo and demands to know if it was he or Kenneth who set her up. Rodrigo calls Coblenz, who then calls Mallory, telling her that he has had suspicions about Kenneth before claiming to arrange a meeting between the two in an Upstate New York diner. Coblenz then contacts Kenneth and tells him to inform Mallory's father, John, of her purported crimes.


title: Haywire (2011 film)

text: In the present, Mallory and Scott are captured by police. Both are taken into custody but the police are ambushed and killed by Kenneth's men. Mallory manages to kill one of them and flees with Scott in one of the police cars. She releases Scott and leaves to meet with her father. She reaches his house in New Mexico before Kenneth, Aaron and two other men arrive to interrogate him about his daughter's whereabouts. Aaron receives a photograph on his phone of Jiang lying dead, and it dawns on him that Mallory might have been set up. He tries to press Kenneth for the truth, but Kenneth shoots him and escapes, as Mallory takes out Kenneth's other men. Aaron apologizes to Mallory as he dies in her arms.


title: Haywire (2011 film)

text: Mallory meets Coblenz, who reveals that he told Kenneth to contact Mallory's father, expecting that Kenneth would go to her father's house and that she would kill him there. Coblenz also gives her Kenneth's present location. Before they part, he offers her a job with the CIA, but she says she will respond after she has found Kenneth.


title: Haywire (2011 film)

text: In Mexico, Mallory confronts Kenneth on a beach and they fight. Kenneth's foot becomes jammed between rocks. Unable to escape, he reveals that Jiang was a journalist who was being protected in a safe house after having exposed Studer's ties to a human trafficking ring. Knowing that Mallory planned to leave his firm, Kenneth arranged for her to kidnap Jiang and deliver him to Rodrigo, who delivered him to Studer, who killed him. Kenneth then framed Mallory, planning to cut all ties that could lead to him, telling Paul the cover story he would have in place after Paul had killed her in alleged self-defense. Ignoring Kenneth's pleas, Mallory leaves Kenneth to drown in the incoming tide.


title: Haywire (2011 film)

text: A few days later, Mallory locates Rodrigo, who is on vacation in Majorca. She approaches him to confront him.


title: Haywire (2011 film)

text: Film development was announced in September 2009 with the title "Knockout", later changed to "Haywire". The screenplay was written to be shot in Dublin. The film was shot mostly in Ireland, with principal photography spanning from February 2, 2010 to March 25, 2010 with a budget of approximately $25 million.


title: Haywire (2011 film)

text: In preparation for her role, Gina Carano underwent a six-week intensive tactical training course with former Duvdevan Unit officer Aaron Cohen, who has a cameo appearance in the finished film. She spent three hours a day in stunts and three hours a day with Cohen. During a particularly harrowing two-week period when Cohen was teaching Carano the art of surveillance and counter-surveillance, he and his team tracked her via a GPS system installed in her car.


title: Haywire (2011 film)

text: Two locations included the former homes of Ireland’s Leeson family who as the Earls of Milltown were once described as “Arch Rebels” of the ascendancy. These included the interior of palatial Russborough House, where Paul and Mallory attend a party, and exterior of the Kildare Street and University Club, which Mallory passes while being tailed at St. Stephen’s Green.


title: Haywire (2011 film)

text: The film was originally set to be released in late 2010, but re-shoots and a change in distributor from Lionsgate to Relativity Media delayed it for more than a year. During the intervening period, Soderbergh filmed and edited "Contagion", which was ultimately released over a month in advance. Soderbergh reportedly clashed with Lionsgate, which wanted a more action-centric film in the vein of the "Bourne" series, while Soderbergh had intended a spy thriller interspersed with lengthy, realistic fight scenes. Following the change in distributor, Soderbergh's re-shoots and re-edits focused on reshaping the film to be more in line with his original vision.


title: Haywire (2011 film)

text: David Holmes composed the score for the film and had worked with Steven Soderbergh on various other projects such as "Out of Sight" and the "Ocean's" trilogy.


title: Haywire (2011 film)

text: The film received generally positive reviews from critics. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of based on reviews. The site's critical consensus is ""Haywire" is a fast and spare thriller, with cleanly staged set pieces that immerse you in the action." The site's critical consensus reads, "MMA star and first-time actress Gina Carano displays ample action-movie chops in "Haywire", a fast-paced thriller with a top-notch cast and outstanding direction from Steven Soderbergh." Metacritic gives it a weighted average score of 67/100 based on reviews from 40 critics. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "D+" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Haywire (2011 film)

text: Claudia Puig of "USA Today" stated that the film was "a vigorous spy thriller that consistently beckons the viewer to catch up with its narrative twists and turns. Bordering on convoluted, it works best when in combat mode." Andrew O'Hehir of "Salon.com" shared a similar view, saying ""Haywire" is a lean, clean production, shot and edited by Soderbergh himself and utterly free of the incoherent action sequences and overcooked special effects that plague similarly scaled Hollywood pictures."


title: Haywire (2011 film)

text: Richard Corliss of "Time" said "Carano is her own best stuntwoman, but in the dialogue scenes she's all kick and no charisma. The MMA battler lacks the conviction she so forcefully displayed in the ring. She is not "Haywire"s heroine but its hostage." Keith Uhlich of "Time Out New York" wrote, "There's shockingly little thrill in watching Carano bounce off walls and pummel antagonists."


title: Haywire (2011 film)

text: "Haywire" was released on January 20, 2012 with an opening weekend gross of $8.4 million, and has earned $18.9 million in the United States and $34.5 million worldwide.


title: Tiberias

text: Tiberias ( ; , ; ) is an Israeli city on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. A major Jewish center during Late Antiquity, it has been considered since the 16th century one of Judaism's Four Holy Cities, along with Jerusalem, Hebron, and Safed. In , it had a population of .


title: Tiberias

text: Tiberias was founded circa 20 CE by Herod Antipas and was named after Roman emperor Tiberius. It became a major political and religious hub of the Jews in the Land of Israel after the destruction of Jerusalem and the desolation of Judea during the Jewish–Roman wars. From the time of the second through the tenth centuries CE, Tiberias was the largest Jewish city in the Galilee, and much of the Mishna and the Jerusalem Talmud were compiled there. Tiberias flourished during the early Islamic period, when it served as the capital of Jund al-Urdunn and became a multi-cultural trading center. The city slipped in importance following several earthquakes, foreign incursions, and after the Mamluks turned Safed into the capital of Galilee. The city was greatly damaged by an earthquake in 1837, after which it was rebuilt, and it grew steadily following the Zionist Aliyah in the 1880s.


title: Tiberias

text: In early modern times, Tiberias was a mixed city; under British rule it had a majority Jewish population, but with a significant Arab community. During the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, Palestinian Arab residents of Tiberias besieged its Jewish quarter. The city was then captured by the Haganah, and British troops evacuated the entire Palestinian Arab population. After the war ended, the new Israeli authorities destroyed the Old City of Tiberias. A large number of Jewish immigrants to Israel subsequently settled in Tiberias, such that today the city has an almost exclusively Jewish population.


title: Tiberias

text: Today, Tiberias is an important tourist center due to its proximity to the Sea of Galilee and religious sanctity to Judaism and Christianity. The city also serves as a regional industrial and commercial center. Its immediate neighbour to the south, Hammat Tiberias, which is now part of modern Tiberias, has been known for its hot springs, believed to cure skin and other ailments, for some two thousand years.


title: Tiberias

text: Jewish tradition holds that Tiberias was built on the site of the ancient Israelite village of "Rakkath" or "Rakkat", first mentioned in the Book of Joshua. In Talmudic times, the Jews still referred to it by this name.


title: Tiberias

text: Tiberias was founded sometime around 20 CE in the Herodian Tetrarchy of Galilee and Peraea by the Roman client king Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great. Herod Antipas made it the capital of his realm in the Galilee and named it after the Roman Emperor Tiberius. The city was built in immediate proximity to a spa which had developed around 17 natural mineral hot springs, Hammat Tiberias. Tiberias was at first a strictly pagan city, but later became populated mainly by Jews, with its growing spiritual and religious status exerting a strong influence on balneological practices. Conversely, in "The Antiquities of the Jews", the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus calls the village with hot springs Emmaus, today's Hammat Tiberias, located near Tiberias. This name also appears in his work "The Wars of the Jews".


title: Tiberias

text: Under the Roman Empire, the city was known by its Greek name Τιβεριάς ("Tiberiás", Modern Greek Τιβεριάδα "Tiveriáda").


title: Tiberias

text: In the days of Herod Antipas, some of the most religiously orthodox Jews, who were struggling against the process of Hellenisation, which had affected even some priestly groups, refused to settle there: the presence of a cemetery rendered the site ritually unclean for the Jews and particularly for the priestly caste. Antipas settled many non-Jews there from rural Galilee and other parts of his domains in order to populate his new capital, and built a palace on the acropolis. The prestige of Tiberias was so great that the Sea of Galilee soon came to be named the Sea of Tiberias; however, the Jewish population continued to call it 'Yam Ha-Kineret', its traditional name. The city was governed by a city council of 600 with a committee of 10 until 44 CE when a Roman procurator was set over the city after the death of Herod Agrippa I.


title: Tiberias

text: Tiberias is mentioned in as the location from which boats had sailed to the opposite, eastern side of the Sea of Galilee. The crowd seeking Jesus after the miraculous feeding of the 5000 used these boats to travel back to Capernaum on the north-western part of the lake.


title: Tiberias

text: During the First Jewish–Roman War, the Jewish rebels took control of the city and destroyed Herod's palace, and were able to prevent the city from being pillaged by the army of Agrippa II, the Jewish ruler who had remained loyal to Rome. Eventually, the rebels were expelled from Tiberias, and while most other cities in the provinces of Judaea, Galilee and Idumea were razed, Tiberias was spared this fate because its inhabitants had decided not to fight against Rome. It became a mixed city after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE; with Judea subdued, the surviving southern Jewish population migrated to the Galilee.


title: Tiberias

text: There is no direct indication that Tiberias, as well as the rest of Galilee, took part in the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132–136 CE, thus allowing it to exist, despite a heavy economic decline due to the war. Following the expulsion of Jews from Judea after 135 CE, Tiberias and its neighbour Sepphoris (Hebrew name: Tzippori) became the major Jewish cultural centres.


title: Tiberias

text: According to the Talmud, in 145 CE, Rabbi Simeon bar Yochai, who was very familiar with the Galilee, hiding there for over a decade, "cleansed the city of ritual impurity", allowing the Jewish leadership to resettle there from the Judea, which they were forced to leave as fugitives. The Sanhedrin, the Jewish court, also fled from Jerusalem during the Great Jewish Revolt against Rome, and after several attempted moves, in search of stability, eventually settled in Tiberias in about 220 CE. It was to be its final meeting place before its disbanding in 425 CE. When Johanan bar Nappaha (d. 279) settled in Tiberias, the city became the focus of Jewish religious scholarship in the land and the so-named Jerusalem Talmud was compiled by his school in Tiberias between 230–270 CE. Tiberias' 13 synagogues served the spiritual needs of a growing Jewish population. Tombs of famous rabbis Yohanan ben Zakkai, Akiva and Maimonides are also located in the city.


title: Tiberias

text: In the 6th century Tiberias was still the seat of Jewish religious learning. In light of this, a letter of Syriac bishop Simeon of Beth Arsham urged the Christians of Palaestina to seize the leaders of Judaism in Tiberias, to put them to the rack, and to compel them to command the Jewish king, Dhu Nuwas, to desist from persecuting the Christians in Najran.


title: Tiberias

text: In 614, Tiberias was the site where, during the final Jewish revolt against the Byzantine Empire, parts of the Jewish population supported the Persian invaders; the Jewish rebels were financed by Benjamin of Tiberias, a man of immense wealth; according to Christian sources, during the revolt Christians were massacred and churches destroyed. In 628, the Byzantine army returned to Tiberias upon the surrender of Jewish rebels and the end of the Persian occupation after they were defeated in the battle of Nineveh. A year later, influenced by radical Christian monks, Emperor Heraclius instigated a wide-scale slaughter of the Jews, which practically emptied Galilee of most its Jewish population, with survivors fleeing to Egypt.


title: Tiberias

text: Tiberias, or Tabariyyah in Arab transcription, was "conquered by (the Arab commander) Shurahbil in the year 634/15 [CE/AH] by capitulation; one half of the houses and churches were to belong to the Muslims, the other half to the Christians." Since 636 CE, Tiberias served as the regional capital, until Beit She'an took its place, following the Rashidun conquest. The Caliphate allowed 70 Jewish families from Tiberias to form the core of a renewed Jewish presence in Jerusalem and the importance of Tiberias to Jewish life declined. The caliphs of the Umayyad Dynasty built one of its square-plan palaces on the waterfront to the north of Tiberias, at Khirbat al-Minya. Tiberias was revitalised in 749, after Bet Shean was destroyed in an earthquake. An imposing mosque, long by wide, resembling the Great Mosque of Damascus, was raised at the foot of Mount Berenice next to a Byzantine church, to the south of the city, as the eighth century ushered in Tiberias's golden age, when the multicultural city may have been the most tolerant of the Middle East. Jewish scholarship flourished from the beginning of the 8th century to the end of the 10th, when the oral traditions of ancient Hebrew, still in use today, were codified. One of the leading members of the Tiberian Masoretic community was Aaron ben Moses ben Asher, who refined the oral tradition now known as Tiberian Hebrew. Both the Codex Cairensis and the Aleppo Codex were written in Tiberias as well as the Tiberian vocalization was devised here.


title: Tiberias

text: The Arab geographer al-Muqaddasi writing in 985, describes Tiberias as a hedonistic city afflicted by heat:-'For two months they dance; for two months they gobble; for two months they swat; for two months they go about naked; for two months they play the reed flute; and for two months they wallow in the mud. As "the capital of Jordan Province, and a city in the Valley of Canaan. ... The town is narrow, hot in summer and unhealthy...There are here eight natural hot baths, where no fuel need be used, and numberless basins besides of boiling water. The mosque is large and fine, and stands in the market-place. Its floor is laid in pebbles, set on stone drums, placed close one to another." According to Muqaddasi, those who suffered from scab or ulcers, and other such diseases came to Tiberias to bathe in the hot springs for three days. "Afterwards they dip in another spring which is cold, whereupon ... they become cured."


title: Tiberias

text: Tiberias was plagued by incursions by the radical Shi'ite Qarmatians at the beginning of the tenth century. During that period, the Academy of Eretz Israel left Tiberias for Jerusalem. Later in the same century, the region came under the control by the Fatimid Caliphate. By this time, Tiberias had experienced its last period of prosperity; dried fruit, oil, and wine had been exported to Cairo via the Via Maris, and the city was also known for its mat industry.


title: Tiberias

text: In 1033 Tiberias was again destroyed by an earthquake. A further earthquake in 1066 toppled the great mosque. Nasir-i Khusrou visited Tiberias in 1047, and describes a city with a "strong wall" which begins at the border of the lake and goes all around the town except on the water-side. Furthermore, he describes


title: Tiberias

text: During the First Crusade Tiberias was occupied by the Franks soon after the capture of Jerusalem. The city was given in fief to Tancred, who made it his capital of the Principality of Galilee in the Kingdom of Jerusalem; the region was sometimes called the Principality of Tiberias, or the Tiberiad. In 1099 the original site of the city was abandoned, and settlement shifted north to the present location. St. Peter's Church, originally built by the Crusaders, is still standing today, although the building has been altered and reconstructed over the years.


title: Tiberias

text: In the late 12th century Tiberias' Jewish community numbered 50 Jewish families, headed by rabbis, and at that time the best manuscripts of the Torah were said to be found there. In the 12th-century, the city was the subject of negative undertones in Islamic tradition. A "hadith" recorded by Ibn Asakir of Damascus (d. 1176) names Tiberias as one of the "four cities of hell." This could have been reflecting the fact that at the time, the town had a notable non-Muslim population.


title: Tiberias

text: In 1187, Saladin ordered his son al-Afdal to send an envoy to Count Raymond of Tripoli requesting safe passage through his fiefdom of Galilee and Tiberias. Raymond was obliged to grant the request under the terms of his treaty with Saladin. Saladin's force left Caesarea Philippi to engage the fighting force of the Knights Templar. The Templar force was destroyed in the encounter. Saladin then besieged Tiberias; after six days the town fell. On July 4, 1187 Saladin defeated the Crusaders coming to relieve Tiberias at the Battle of Hattin, outside the city. However, during the Third Crusade, the Crusaders drove the Muslims out of the city and reoccupied it.


title: Tiberias

text: Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, (Maimonides) also known as Rambam, a leading Jewish legal scholar, philosopher and physician of his period, died in 1204 in Egypt and was later buried in Tiberias. His tomb is one of the city's important pilgrimage sites. Yakut, writing in the 1220s, described Tiberias as a small town, long and narrow. He also describes the "hot salt springs, over which they have built Hammams which use no fuel."


title: Tiberias

text: In 1265 the Crusaders were driven from the city by the Egyptian Mamluks, who ruled Tiberias until the Ottoman conquest in 1516.


title: Tiberias

text: During the 16th century, Tiberias was a small village. Italian Rabbi Moses Bassola visited Tiberias during his trip to Palestine in 1522. He said on Tiberias that "it was a big city ... and now it is ruined and desolate". He described the village there, in which he said there were "ten or twelve" Muslim households. The area, according to Bassola, was dangerous "because of the Arabs", and in order to stay there, he had to pay the local governor for his protection.


title: Tiberias

text: As the Ottoman Empire expanded along the southern Mediterranean coast under Sultan Selim I, the "Reyes Católicos" (Catholic Monarchs) began establishing Inquisition commissions. Many "Conversos", ("Marranos" and "Moriscos") and Sephardi Jews fled in fear to the Ottoman provinces, settling at first in Constantinople, Salonika, Sarajevo, Sofia and Anatolia. The Sultan encouraged them to settle in Palestine. In 1558, a Portuguese-born marrano, Doña Gracia, was granted tax collecting rights in Tiberias and its surrounding villages by Suleiman the Magnificent. She envisaged the town becoming a refuge for Jews and obtained a permit to establish Jewish autonomy there. In 1561 her nephew Joseph Nasi, Lord of Tiberias, encouraged Jews to settle in Tiberias. Securing a "firman" from the Sultan, he and Joseph ben Adruth rebuilt the city walls and lay the groundwork for a textile (silk) industry, planting mulberry trees and urging craftsmen to move there. Plans were made for Jews to move from the Papal States, but when the Ottomans and the Republic of Venice went to war, the plan was abandoned.


title: Tiberias

text: At the end of the century (1596), the village of Tiberias had 54 households: 50 families and 4 bachelors. All were Muslims. The main product of the village at that time was wheat, while other products included barley, fruit, fish, goats and bee hives; the total revenue was 3,360 akçe.


title: Tiberias

text: In 1624, when the Sultan recognized Fakhr-al-Din II as Lord of Arabistan (from Aleppo to the borders of Egypt), The 1660 destruction of Tiberias by the Druze resulted in abandonment of the city by its Jewish community, Unlike Tiberias, the nearby city of Safed recovered from its destruction, and wasn't entirely abandoned, remaining an important Jewish center in the Galilee.


title: Tiberias

text: In the 1720s, the Arab ruler Zahir al-Umar, of the Zaydani clan, fortified the town and made an agreement with the neighboring Bedouin tribes to prevent looting. Accounts from that time tell of the great admiration people had for Zahir, especially his war against bandits on the roads. Richard Pococke, who visited Tiberias in 1727, witnessed the building of a fort to the north of the city, and the strengthening of the old walls, attributing it to a dispute with the Pasha of Damascus. Under instructions from the Ottoman Porte, Sulayman Pasha al-Azm of Damascus besieged Tiberias in 1742, with the intention of eliminating Zahir, but his siege was unsuccessful. In the following year, Sulayman set out to repeat the attempt with even greater reinforcements, but he died en route.


title: Tiberias

text: Under Zahir's patronage, Jewish families were encouraged to settle in Tiberias. He invited Rabbi Chaim Abulafia of Smyrna to rebuild the Jewish community. The synagogue he built still stands today, located in the Court of the Jews.


title: Tiberias

text: In 1775, Ahmed el-Jazzar "the Butcher" brought peace to the region with an iron fist. In 1780, many Polish Jews settled in the town. During the 18th and 19th centuries it received an influx of rabbis who re-established it as a center for Jewish learning. An essay written by Rabbi Joseph Schwarz in 1850 noted that "Tiberias Jews suffered the least" during an Arab rebellion which took place in 1834. Around 600 people, including nearly 500 Jews, died when the town was devastated by the 1837 Galilee earthquake. An American expedition reported that Tiberias was still in a state of disrepair in 1847/1848. Rabbi Haim Shmuel Hacohen Konorti, born in Spain in 1792, settled in Tiberias at the age of 45 and was a driving force in the restoration of the city.


title: Tiberias

text: In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Tiberias had a population of 6,950 inhabitants, consisting of 4,427 Jews, 2,096 Muslims, 422 Christians, and five others. Initially the relationship between Arabs and Jews in Tiberias was good, with few incidents occurring in the Nebi Musa riots and the disturbances throughout Palestine in 1929. The first modern spa was built in 1929.


title: Tiberias

text: The landscape of the modern town was shaped by the great flood of November 11, 1934. Deforestation on the slopes above the town combined with the fact that the city had been built as a series of closely packed houses and buildings – usually sharing walls – built in narrow roads paralleling and closely hugging the shore of the lake. Flood waters carrying mud, stones, and boulders rushed down the slopes and filled the streets and buildings with water so rapidly that many people did not have time to escape; the loss of life and property was great. The city rebuilt on the slopes and the British Mandatory government planted the Swiss Forest on the slopes above the town to hold the soil and prevent similar disasters from recurring. A new seawall was constructed, moving the shoreline several yards out from the former shore. In October 1938, Arab militants murdered 19 Jews in Tiberias during the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine. Between the April 8–9, 1948, sporadic shooting broke out between the Jewish and Arab neighborhoods of Tiberias. The Arab population of Tiberias cut the main road linking the Jewish settlements of Upper Galilee with those of the Jordan Valley and besieged the ancient Jewish quarter on the lakeshore within the walled city On April 10, the Haganah launched a mortar barrage, killing some Arab residents. The local National Committee refused the offer of the Arab Liberation Army to take over defense of the city, but a small contingent of outside irregulars moved in.


title: Tiberias

text: During April 10–17, the Haganah attacked the city and refused to negotiate a truce, while the British refused to intervene. Newly arrived Arab refugees from Nasir ad-Din told of the civilians there being killed, news which brought panic to the residents of Tiberias. The Arab population of Tiberias (6,000 residents or 47.5% of the population) was evacuated under British military protection on 18 April 1948.


title: Tiberias

text: The Jewish population looted the Arab areas and had to be suppressed by force by the Haganah and Jewish police, who killed or injured several looters. On 30 December 1948, when David Ben-Gurion was staying in Tiberias, James Grover McDonald, the United States ambassador to Israel, requested to meet with him. McDonald presented a British ultimatum for Israeli troops to leave the Sinai peninsula, Egyptian territory. Israel rejected the ultimatum, but Tiberias became famous.


title: Tiberias

text: The city of Tiberias has been almost entirely Jewish since 1948. Many Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews settled in the city, following the Jewish exodus from Arab countries in late 1940s and the early 1950s. Over time, government housing was built to accommodate much of the new population, like in many other development towns.


title: Tiberias

text: In 1959, during Wadi Salib riots, the ""Union des Nords-africains" led by David Ben Haroush, organised a large-scale procession walking towards the nice suburbs of Haifa creating little damage but a great fear within the population. This small incident was taken as an occasion to express the social malaise of the different Oriental communities in Israel and riots spread quickly to other parts of the country; mostly in towns with a high percentage of the population having North African origins like in Tiberias, in Beer-Sheva, in Migdal-Haemek".


title: Tiberias

text: Over time, the city came to rely on tourism, becoming a major Galilean center for Christian pilgrims and internal Israeli tourism. The ancient cemetery of Tiberias and its old synagogues are also drawing religious Jewish pilgrims during religious holidays.


title: Tiberias

text: Tiberias consists of a small port on the shores of the Galilee lake for both fishing and tourist activities. Since the 1990s, the importance of the port for fishing was gradually decreasing, with the decline of the Tiberias lake level, due to continuing droughts and increased pumping of fresh water from the lake. It is expected that the lake of Tiberias will regain its original level (almost higher than today), with the full operational capacity of Israeli desalination facilities by 2014.


title: Tiberias

text: In 2012, plans were announced for a new ultra-Orthodox neighborhood, Kiryat Sanz, on a slope on the western side of the Kinneret.


title: Tiberias

text: According to the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), as of December 2011, 41,700 inhabitants lived in Tiberias. According to CBS, as of December 2010 the city was rated 5 out of 10 on the socio-economic scale. The average monthly salary of an employee for the year 2009 was 4,845 NIS. Among today's population of Jews, many are Mizrahi and Sephardic.


title: Tiberias

text: Following Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 many ex-South Lebanon Army soldiers and officers who fled from Lebanon settled in Tiberias with their families.


title: Tiberias

text: In the Ottoman registers of 1525, 1533, 1548, 1553, and 1572 all the residents were Muslims. The registers in 1596 recorded the population to consist of 50 families and 4 bachelors; all Muslim. In 1780, there were about 4,000 inhabitants, two thirds being Jews. In 1842, there were about 3,900 inhabitants, around a third of whom were Jews, the rest being Muslims and a few Christians. In 1850, Tiberias contained three synagogues which served the Sephardi community, which consisted of 80 families, and the Ashkenazim, numbering about 100 families. It was reported that the Jewish inhabitants of Tiberias enjoyed more peace and security than those of Safed to the north. In 1863, it was recorded that the Christian and Muslim elements made up three-quarters of the population (2,000 to 4,000). A population list from about 1887 showed that Tiberias had a population of about 3,640; 2,025 Jews, 30 Latins, 215 Catholics, 15 Greek Catholics, and 1,355 Muslims. In 1901, the Jews of Tiberias numbered about 2,000 in a total population of 3,600. By 1912, the population reached 6,500. This included 4,500 Jews, 1,600 Muslims and 400 Christians.


title: Tiberias

text: In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Tiberias had a population of 6,950 inhabitants, consisting of 4,427 Jews, 2,096 Muslims, 422 Christians, and five others. There were 5,381 Jews, 2,645 Muslims, 565 Christians and ten others in the 1931 census. By 1945, the population had increased to 6,000 Jews, 4,540 Muslims, 760 Christians with ten others.


title: Tiberias

text: During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Palestinian Arab residents of Tiberias besieged its Jewish quarter. Haganah troops then successfully attacked the Arab section of the city, and British troops evacuated the Arab residents upon their request. Some fled in the wake of news of the Deir Yassin massacre. The entire Arab population of the city was removed in 1948 by the British and partly because of Haganah decision. After the war had ended, a large number of Jewish immigrants to Israel settled in Tiberias. Today almost all of the population is Jewish.


title: Tiberias

text: Ancient and medieval Tiberias was destroyed by a series of devastating earthquakes, and much of what was built after the major earthquake of 1837 was destroyed or badly damaged in the great flood of 1934. Houses in the newer parts of town, uphill from the waterfront, survived. In 1949, 606 houses, comprising almost all of the built-up area of the old quarter other than religious buildings, were demolished over the objections of local Jews who owned about half the houses. Wide-scale development began after the Six-Day War, with the construction of a waterfront promenade, open parkland, shopping streets, restaurants and modern hotels. Carefully preserved were several churches, including one with foundations dating from the Crusader period, the city's two Ottoman-era mosques, and several ancient synagogues. The city's old masonry buildings constructed of local black basalt with white limestone windows and trim have been designated historic landmarks. Also preserved are parts of the ancient wall, the Ottoman-era citadel, historic hotels, Christian pilgrim hostels, convents and schools.


title: Tiberias

text: A 2,000 year-old Roman theatre was discovered under layers of debris and refuse at the foot of Mount Bernike south of modern Tiberias. It once seated over 7,000 people.


title: Tiberias

text: In 2004, excavations in Tiberias conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority uncovered a structure dating to the 3rd century CE that may have been the seat of the Sanhedrin. At the time it was called Beit Hava'ad.


title: Tiberias

text: In June 2018, an underground Jewish mausoleum has been discovered. Archaeologist said that the mausoleum is between 1,900 to 2,000 years old as of 2018. The names of the dead, carved onto the ossuaries in Greek.


title: Tiberias

text: In January 2021, the foundations of a mosque dating to the earliest years of Muslim rule have been excavated just south of the Sea of Galilee by archaeologists led by Katia Cytryn-Silverman from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Built around 670 CE, it is considered to have been the first purpose-built mosque in the city.


title: Tiberias

text: Tiberias is located on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and the western slopes of the Jordan Rift Valley overlooking the lake, in the elevation range of . Tiberias has a climate that borders a Hot-summer Mediterranean climate (koppen Csa) and a Hot Semi-arid climate (koppen BSh), with an annual precipitation of about . Summers in Tiberias average a maximum temperature of and a minimum temperature of in July and August. The winters are mild, with temperatures ranging from . Extremes have ranged from to .


title: Tiberias

text: Tiberias has been severely damaged by earthquakes since antiquity. Earthquakes are known to have occurred in 30, 33, 115, 306, 363, 419, 447, 631–32 (aftershocks continued for a month), 1033, 1182, 1202, 1546, 1759, 1837, 1927 and 1943.


title: Tiberias

text: The city is located above the Dead Sea Transform and is one of the cities in Israel that is most at risk to earthquakes (along with Safed, Beit She'an, Kiryat Shmona, and Eilat).


title: Tiberias

text: In 1885, a Scottish doctor and minister, David Watt Torrance, opened a mission hospital in Tiberias that accepted patients of all races and religions. In 1894, it moved to larger premises at Beit abu Shamnel abu Hannah. In 1923 his son, Dr. Herbert Watt Torrance, was appointed head of the hospital. After the establishment of the State of Israel, it became a maternity hospital supervised by the Israeli Department of Health. After its closure in 1959, the building became a guesthouse until 1999, when it was renovated and reopened as the Scots Hotel.


title: Tiberias

text: Its first football club established in 1925 was Maccabi Tiberias, but folded in the 1990s after financial difficulties.


title: Tiberias

text: Hapoel Tiberias represented the city in the top division of football for several seasons in the 1960s and 1980s, but eventually dropped into the regional leagues and folded due to financial difficulties.


title: Tiberias

text: Following Hapoel's demise, a new club, Ironi Tiberias, was established, which currently plays in Liga Alef.


title: Tiberias

text: The Tiberias Marathon is an annual road race held along the Sea of Galilee in Israel with a field in recent years of approximately 1000 competitors. The course follows an out-and-back format around the southern tip of the sea, and was run concurrently with a 10k race along an abbreviated version of the same route. In 2010 the 10k race was moved to the afternoon before the marathon. At approximately below sea level, this is the lowest course in the world.


title: Kevin Morby

text: Kevin Robert Morby (born April 2, 1988) is an American musician, singer, and songwriter. A former member of Woods and the Babies, Morby has released seven solo studio albums: "Harlem River" (2013), "Still Life" (2014), "Singing Saw" (2016), "City Music" (2017), "Oh My God" (2019), "Sundowner" (2020), and "This Is a Photograph" (2022).


title: Kevin Morby

text: Kevin Morby was born in Lubbock, Texas on April 2, 1988; his family relocated around the U.S. due to his father's employment with General Motors before settling in Kansas City, Missouri. Morby learned to play guitar when he was 10. In his teens he formed the band Creepy Aliens.


title: Kevin Morby

text: 17-year-old Morby dropped out of Blue Valley Northwest High School, got his GED, and moved from his native Kansas City to Brooklyn in the mid-2000s, supporting himself by working bike delivery and café jobs. Morby has stated he had "loved New York from the movies" he'd seen, "I just wanted to experience it". He later joined the noise-folk group Woods on bass. While living in Brooklyn, he became close friends and roommates with Cassie Ramone of the punk trio Vivian Girls, and the two formed a side project together called The Babies, who released albums in 2011 and 2012.


title: Kevin Morby

text: Following his move to Los Angeles, Morby recorded a collection of songs with Babies producer Rob Barbato that were intended to be an homage to New York City. Released in 2013 by Woodsist Records, the eight-song collection was called "Harlem River" and became Morby's debut as a solo artist. The album also features drummer Justin Sullivan (The Babies) as well as contributions from Will Canzoneri, Tim Presley (White Fence), Dan Iead, and Cate Le Bon.


title: Kevin Morby

text: While on tour, Morby wrote songs that were later featured on his second album, "Still Life". The album was once again produced by Barbato and released on October 14, 2014.


title: Kevin Morby

text: Morby worked with Sam Cohen (Apollo Sunshine, Yellowbirds) on his third album, titled "Singing Saw", which was released on April 15, 2016.


title: Kevin Morby

text: In 2016, Morby wrote "Beautiful Strangers", a protest song in remembrance of Paris 2015 attacks, Orlando 2016 shooting, and death of Freddie Gray. After various live performance that year, it was released as a single in October 2016, with the proceeds benefitting Everytown for Gun Safety.


title: Kevin Morby

text: Morby's fourth studio album was recorded with his live band, with guitarist Meg Duffy noting: "We all worked on the next record together, pretty collaboratively in terms of arranging and playing. We spent a week in a beautiful studio, up near Stinson Beach." The album, "City Music", was released in June 2017.


title: Kevin Morby

text: Apart from "City Music" he also released in 2017 a cover version of “After Hours,” from the Velvet Underground’s 1969 self-titled album, in duo with Waxahatchee. As a tribute to Jason Molina, the duo covered in January 2018 two Jason Molina tracks for MusiCares, an American charity supporting musicians’ health. The digital single, also available as 7” vinyl through Dead Oceans, contained the two songs, “Farewell Transmission” and “The Dark Don’t Hide It”. The longtime private and musical relationship later led to touring and shows together, among others SXSW shows and a successful Australia tour (Sydney, Melbourne) in November 2018.


title: Kevin Morby

text: Morby's fifth studio album, "Oh My God", was announced on February 27, 2019. The first single off the album, "No Halo" was released on the same day. The album was released April 26, 2019 via Dead Oceans and was met with wide critical acclaim (19 of 20 published reviews aggregated on Metacritic were scored positive). It was featured in the April 24, 2019 The Wall Street Journal print edition headlined “Devine Intervention” and called Morby’s best. The album reached number 2 on Billboard charts Heatseekers albums. In September 2019, Morby reunited with Woods for a special performance at their Woodsist festival.


title: Kevin Morby

text: Morby's sixth studio album, "Sundowner", was announced on September 1, 2020. The first single off the album, "Campfire", was released on the same day. The album was released on October 16, 2020 via Dead Oceans.


title: Kevin Morby

text: On May 1, 2020, Morby released a live version of "Beautiful Strangers & Harlem River" on an album titled "On Mon Dieu: Live à Paris". The recording came from Morby's sold-out performance at the Cabaret Sauvage in 2019. The album was released on Morby's Bandcamp through Dead Oceans. In October 2020, Morby released a standalone single, "US Mail", with an accompanying music video as well as sharing his own P.O. box number as a way to promote the USPS.


title: Kevin Morby

text: In February 2021, Marc Maron mentioned several times on Instagram Live that he doesn't know who Morby is, which Morby responded to on his own Instagram page, eventually leading to Maron posting an interview with Morby on Instagram Live.


title: Kevin Morby

text: On October 12, 2021, Morby and Hamilton Leithauser, who toured together in the fall of 2021, released the single "Virginia Beach". On October 8, 2021, Morby released "A Night at the Little Los Angeles", an album of 4-track demo versions of songs that were originally on his 2020 album "Sundowner". On December 13, 2021, Morby released "I Hear You Calling", a cover of the Bill Fay song, as a part of Dead Oceans' Bill Fay tribute 7" series.


title: Kevin Morby

text: On March 3, 2022, Morby announced that his seventh studio album, "This Is a Photograph", will be released on Dead Oceans on May 13, 2022. The lead single of the same name was released on March 3, 2022.


title: Kevin Morby

text: In June 2017, Morby officially launched his new label imprint, Mare Records, with the signing of Shannon Lay and announcement of her new LP, "Living Water." Mare will operate as an imprint of the Woodsist label, which also released Morby's first two solo albums.


title: Kevin Morby

text: Anna St Louis' debut album, "If Only There Was a River," was scheduled to be released in December 2018 on Woodsist / Mare.


title: Kevin Morby

text: In 2017, Morby moved from Los Angeles to Overland Park, Kansas, near where he grew up. He is in a relationship with Katie Crutchfield (of the band Waxahatchee). Together they have covered songs by Jason Molina, Bob Dylan, The Velvet Underground and Everclear.


title: Daniela Bianchi

text: Daniela Bianchi (born 31 January 1942) is an Italian actress, best known for her role of Bond girl Tatiana Romanova in the 1963 movie "From Russia with Love". She played a Soviet cipher clerk sent to entrap agent 007, James Bond. Bianchi's father was an Italian Army colonel. She studied ballet for eight years, and later worked as a fashion model.


title: Daniela Bianchi

text: Born in Rome to parents from Sirolo, Marche in Central Italy, Bianchi was the first runner-up in the 1960 Miss Universe contest, where she was also voted Miss Photogenic by the press. Her film career began in 1958. In "From Russia with Love" her voice was dubbed by Barbara Jefford owing to Bianchi's heavy accent.


title: Daniela Bianchi

text: Bianchi starred in a number of French and Italian movies after "From Russia with Love", the last being "Scacco internazionale" in 1968. One of her later films was "Operation Kid Brother" (also known as "OK Connery" and "Operation Double 007"), which was a James Bond spoof filmed in English (though Bianchi was again dubbed) and starring Sean Connery's brother, Neil Connery. Her only role in an American production was in the "Dr. Kildare" three-part story "Rome Will Never Leave You."


title: Daniela Bianchi

text: In 1970, Bianchi retired from acting to marry a Genoan shipping magnate, Alberto Cameli, with whom she has one son (Filippo Cameli). Her husband died in 2018.


title: Tiki culture

text: Tiki culture is an American-originated art, music, and entertainment movement inspired by Polynesian, Melanesian and Micronesian cultures. Inspired by Oceanian art, influential cultures to Tiki culture include Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, the Caribbean Islands, and Hawaii. The name comes from Tiki, the Māori name for the first human, often represented in the form of hei-tiki, a pendant and important taonga. The hei-tiki was often appropriated by Europeans as a commercialised good luck charm, hence the name of Tiki culture. Despite spanning over 10,000 miles and including many different unrelated cultures, religions, and languages, Tiki aesthetic is considered by some to be amalgamated into one "fantasia of trans-Pacific cultures" and "colonial nostalgia". Because of this, and the simplistic view of the Pacific taken by the aesthetic, Tiki culture has often proved controversial.


title: Tiki culture

text: Tiki culture initially extended to decorate themed bars and restaurants, catering to Americans' views of the South Pacific. Featuring tiki carvings and complex, alluringly named alcoholic drinks, it eventually influenced residential recreation. It became one of the primary ways, although indirectly, that New Zealand culture influenced that of the United States. Beginning in California in the 1930s and then spreading around the world, Tiki culture was inspired by the sentimental appeal of an idealized South Pacific, particularly Hawaii, Polynesia and Oceania, as viewed through the experiences of tourists and Hollywood movies, incorporating beautiful scenery, forbidden love, and the potential for danger. Over time, it selectively incorporated more cultural elements (and imagined aspects) of other regions such as Southeast Asia. While the decor and ambiance at these establishments largely draws from Polynesian influences, the cocktails are inspired by the tropical drinks and ingredients of the Caribbean.


title: Tiki culture

text: Tiki culture changed over time, influenced by World War II and the firsthand exposure hundreds of thousands of American servicemen gained during that conflict. In time its appeal wore off, and both the culture and the hospitality industry theme saw a decline. The early decades of the 21st century have seen a renaissance of interest in Tiki culture, including a limited commercial revival. In addition, it has attracted people interested in cocktails, history, urban archeology, and retroism. However, the appropriation of indigenous Pacific cultures has become increasingly challenged as culturally insensitive or racist.


title: Tiki culture

text: The word "tiki" was used to describe the style of the tropical islands of the South Pacific starting in the late 1930s, a usage that is "unknown to the languages of the Pacific". It was applied early on to "tiki punch", "tiki rooms", "tiki torches", and so on. By the 1950s, restaurants often used the word to describe Polynesian-themed bars "tiki bars" and "tiki rooms".


title: Tiki culture

text: Tiki culture began at the end of Prohibition in 1933 with the opening of Don's Beachcomber, a Polynesian-themed bar and restaurant in Hollywood, California. The proprietor was Ernest Raymond Beaumont-Gantt, a young man from Texas and New Orleans who had done some rum-running with his father and claimed to have sailed throughout much of the Pacific Ocean. The restaurant's name was later changed to Don the Beachcomber, and Beaumont-Gantt legally changed his name to Donn Beach. His restaurant featured Cantonese cuisine and exotic rum cocktails and punch drinks, with a décor of flaming torches, rattan furniture, flower leis, and brightly colored fabrics that looked like imagery out of the popular movies that were helping to fuel the desires of the average American to travel the Pacific.


title: Tiki culture

text: In 1936, a restaurant owner from Oakland, California, Victor Bergeron, ate at the Don the Beachcomber restaurant. Bergeron said: "We went to a place called the South Seas...and even visited Don the Beachcomber in Hollywood. In fact, I even bought some stuff from Don the Beachcomber. When I got back to Oakland I told my wife what I had seen, we agreed to change the name of our restaurant and our décor." The renamed restaurant, as well as his new nickname, became Trader Vic's. Bergeron adopted the new persona in a manner to imitate Beach's theatrics and further perpetuate the illusions of Hollywood, telling people that the leg he had lost to tuberculosis had been the result of being attacked by a shark.


title: Tiki culture

text: Other restaurants such as Clifton's Cafeteria also had begun introducing grand decorations based on non-traditional and "kitschy" themes. Clifton's was heavily remodeled in 1939 to become Clifton's South Seas. The exterior and interior were decorated with 12 waterfalls, volcanic rock, and tropical foliage. It supposedly even featured a "sherbet-gushing volcano".


title: Tiki culture

text: The décor of both the inside and the outside of the restaurants was often painstakingly created with decorations from around the world. Joseph Stephen Crane, the owner of the later The Luau restaurant, began his menu with a list of the places of origin of his building materials. It included not just Hawaii but virtually all areas of Oceania, as well as furniture from Hong Kong and "man eating clam shells" from the Indian Ocean.


title: Tiki culture

text: Early tiki restaurants, although not called that at the time, attempted to walk a fine line between the reality and myth of what they were creating, acknowledging that much of it was Hollywood hocus-pocus but also trying to create an atmosphere of authenticity. Crane's later restaurant menus stated: "You have just passed the gangplank into another world – into a segment of Paradise – or such is the illusion we of THE LUAU hope to create. And truly it is more than an illusion for there is authenticity in the adventure you are about to experience... Both food and drink are prepared under the matchless guidance of the one and only Dr. Foo Fong... Our drink specialties, Island Symphonies of rare and distinguished rums, irresistibly claim your fullest respect which is best shown by drinking slowly and reverently".


title: Tiki culture

text: South Seas genre movies leading up to this period included "White Shadows in the South Seas" (1928), "The Love Trader" (1928), and "Bird of Paradise" (1932). Beach frequently interacted with movie stars, inviting them to his home for luau-like dinners and becoming friends with actors such as Clark Gable.


title: Tiki culture

text: "Hei Tiki" was released in 1935, with a "New York Times" review describing the plot as being about "a chieftain's daughter who is declared tabu and destined to be the bride of the war god". It attributed the title to mean "love charm", in reference to Hei-tiki pendants sometimes associated with fertility. "Waikiki Wedding", starring Bing Crosby and Martha Raye, was released in 1937 with the popular song "Blue Hawaii", as was "Her Jungle Love" in 1938, starring Dorothy Lamour.


title: Tiki culture

text: During a time when overseas civilian China Clipper air travel was still uncommon, the Hawaiian Steamship Company's Matson Line also continued its aggressive advertising campaigns promoting a leisurely but still exotic island lifestyle, led by famous photographers such as Edward Steichen and Anton Bruehl and featuring actresses such as Jinx Falkenburg (later in "Sweetheart of the Fleet" and "Tahiti Nights"). Matson commissioned artists to design memorable keepsake menus for the voyages.


title: Tiki culture

text: Between the Matson Line's advertising, new restaurants and continual cinematic exposure, the theme began to take on a life of its own. California's World's Fair in 1939 – the Golden Gate International Exposition – celebrated for the first time Polynesian culture in the United States. The feature of the fair was "Pageant of the Pacific", primarily showcasing the goods of nations bordering the Pacific Ocean. At its opening ceremonies President Franklin Roosevelt spoke of friendship and the co-mingled destinies between the United States and Pacific countries, a sentiment physically symbolized in part with the incorporation of a giant, 80-foot statue of Pacifica, goddess of the Pacific Ocean. World War II would greatly test those ambitions.


title: Tiki culture

text: When American servicemen returned home after the end of World War II in 1945, they brought with them stories and souvenirs from their time in the South Pacific that helped to reinforce the popularity of what Hollywood had set the stage for Donn Beach to create. Beach was himself a WWII veteran, and he had invented the Three Dots & A Dash cocktail, which is Morse code for "V" (for victory). Women wore "victory roll" hairstyles and people were in the mood to celebrate.


title: Tiki culture

text: The excitement surrounding Thor Heyerdahl's 1947 Kon-Tiki expedition, followed by in 1948 and a movie in 1950, helped promote tropical exploration. Importantly within the context of tiki culture, it successfully injected the word "tiki" into the popular American lexicon on a large scale (Hawaiians had not used the word "tiki", but rather "ki‘i"). Heyerdahl's work also expanded the theme's mythology to include the west coast of South America in what became an ever increasing mix of cultural motifs, both real and imagined. Easter Island statues (moai) also became iconic with the publication of his book Aku-Aku.


title: Tiki culture

text: Steven Crane of The Luau restaurant took advantage of the public's fascination with Heyerdahl and further followed in the footsteps of Beach and Bergeron by building a chain of tiki restaurants in partnership with Sheraton Hotels called Kon-Tiki Ports. Crane is generally credited with also bringing tiki to the forefront of decorations at such restaurants and bars, prominently placing their image on his menu covers, matchbooks, entry ways, and other signage. Southern Pacific themes continued to stray more into the even further imagined realm of the mysterious "tiki".


title: Tiki culture

text: James Michener won the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for his collection of short stories, "Tales of the South Pacific", which in turn was the basis for "South Pacific", the 1949 musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein that included the song "Bali Ha'i" about a mystical tropical island. The Bali Hai restaurant opened a few years later on San Diego's Shelter Island, introducing its faux-tiki mascot and signature cocktail, the Mr. Bali Hai.


title: Tiki culture

text: In addition to the returning World War II veterans, several other factors contributed to the mid-century American explosion in tiki culture. Post-war America saw the rise of the middle class as an economic force. This coupled with ever-increasing affordability of travel, particularly newly established civilian air travel to Hawaii (which had been halted during the war), helped to propel the nation's disposable income into all things tropical. Just as the Matson Line had done with their boats, the airlines aggressively marketed flights to consumers.


title: Tiki culture

text: Donn Beach moved to Hawaii, where he later lived on a houseboat and was a driving force behind the 1956 creation of the International Market Place in Waikiki. He opened a Don the Beachcomber there, along with the Dagger Bar and created a treehouse office in the top of a giant banyan tree that oversaw a complex of multiple thatch-roofed buildings and huts that sold a variety of goods from around the tropical world. Other tiki bars opened in Hawaii as well, staffed at first by native bartenders who didn't know what the alleged Hawaiian drinks were that the American tourists were asking for. Hawaiian bartender Harry Yee created the iconic Blue Hawaii cocktail in 1957. Ultimately, Beach and his ex-wife had at least 25 restaurants in the Beachcomber chain. Bergeron and his Trader Vic's had even more, beginning with his first franchise in Seattle (the Outrigger) in 1949 and going on to have locations all over the world. Steven Crane's franchise also expanded, and "mom and pop" tiki bars flourished in the 1950s well into the 1960s across the country in various forms of shapes and sizes.


title: Tiki culture

text: Over the 1950s Polynesian design began to infuse many aspects of the country's visual aesthetic, from home accessories to architecture. The Trader Vic's in Palo Alto eventually even spawned architectural choices, such as the concept behind the odd-looking Tiki Inn Motel, which still exists as the Stanford Terrace Inn. Single family homes, apartment complexes, bowling alleys and other business were heavily influenced by assumed Polynesian aesthetics, in some cases incorporating the motif into entire residential areas and shopping districts. Much of it was accomplished by purchasing material from the company Oceanic Arts, which opened in 1956 by both importing materials and doing original wood carvings in California.


title: Tiki culture

text: In 1963, Disneyland opened the Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room attraction, feature Polynesian-style decor, fashion, and music. In 1971, a similar attraction was opened in Walt Disney World.


title: Tiki culture

text: If Tiki culture began as a restaurant theme made to look like a Hollywood set, alcoholic drinks dressed up in elaborate barware are its cornerstones and main actors. Just as the Don the Beachcomber restaurant is largely credited as being the first "tiki bar" from which all other such establishments "liberally borrowed", Beach himself is also credited as having almost single-handedly created the entire "tiki drink" genre. He was the first restaurateur to focus an entire drink menu on the mixing of flavored syrups and fresh fruit juices with rum, which he called "Rhum Rhapsodies" and were served in fancy glasses, hollowed out pineapples, and drilled coconuts. A social extrovert good at gaining attention, Beach's early success was noted by tiki historian Jeff Berry, who said that "Donn was good with names, good with drinks, and good with drink names".


title: Tiki culture

text: These "exotic" drinks, such as his first, the Sumatra Kula, quickly made Beach's restaurant the hot spot for the elite and movie stars from the 1940s well into the 1960s. Howard Hughes was a regular at the Hollywood Don the Beachcomber, as were Charlie Chaplin and Frank Sinatra. Over time many restaurateurs had begun to copy, and in some cases steal, Beach's cocktail recipes and template for immersive island decorations coupled with "newly discovered" Southeast Asian/Polynesian food (rumaki, crab rangoon, etc.). Many eventually created their own signature drink and food dishes, but Beach remains regarded as the originator and is credited for having invented many of the most memorable drinks such as the Cobra's Fang, Pearl Diver, Pi Yi, Shark's Tooth, Test Pilot, and Zombie. Many drink names were meant to sound as having a foreign origin or being tongue in cheek dangerous.


title: Tiki culture

text: Bergeron was viewed as a Beach contemporary with his founding of Trader Vic's, and although Bergeron had started by copying the "tiki template" that Beach had created he eventually provided significant additions to the tiki canon. He also ultimately had longer staying power than Beach and over time created nearly as many additional cocktails. He is especially known for creating the Fog Cutter cocktail and Scorpion bowl, as well as the quintessential Mai Tai. Many were strong drinks and noted on menus as having a "limit of two" per person.


title: Tiki culture

text: A protracted feud between Beach and Bergeron erupted when both claimed to have invented the Mai Tai, which Beach said was a knock-off of his Q.B. Cooler. Bergeron eventually won the exclusive rights to distribute a commercial Mai Tai mix for people to use at home.


title: Tiki culture

text: Some drinks served at tiki bars include co-opting previous cocktails with exotic sounding names or foreign backstories, such as the Bloody Nelson, Blow My Skull, Boomerang, Corpse Reviver, Diki-Diki, Doctor Funk, Planter's Punch, and Singapore Sling. New inventions by Beach, Bergeron, and others included the Coffee Grog, Navy Grog, Lapu Lapu, Outrigger, Pago Pago, Rum Barrel, Shrunken Head, and Tropical Itch. While many were created expressly as "tiki drinks" (although such a term was not used at the time), others were simply new World War II era cocktails made overseas that could quickly be assimilated into the formula, such as the case with the Suffering Bastard.


title: Tiki culture

text: Beach was very secretive with his drink recipe ingredients, with only a select few of his bartenders knowing them. Some drinks Beach would only make himself, and he frequently placed alcohol into generic bottles labeled with only letters or numbers, or premixed "secret" ingredients in a similar fashion so that employees only needed to "mix X, Y, & Z with lime juice" to make a certain drink.


title: Tiki culture

text: Bergeron was less secretive with his ingredients over time, releasing two drink guides that carried his recipes, one in 1947 and the other in 1972. Despite this, many original cocktail recipes were lost to time, either because the recipes themselves were altered to reflect changing tastes (or restaurant budgets), or simply because memories faded and people died. The disagreement between Beach and Bergeron over who created the Mai Tai was not an isolated incident, and who "invented" what drink and when was frequently obscured by establishments that served cocktails with the same name but in sometimes remarkably different manners.


title: Tiki culture

text: Tiki drinks, as they are generically called, are typically heavily garnished, with ample fruit, swizzle sticks, cocktail umbrellas, or flowers. Establishments that were part of or influenced by tiki culture also eventually served at least some of their cocktails in decorative ceramic mugs, which came to be known in the 1950s as tiki mugs because the barware started to bear the shape of a tiki or "faux tiki" approximation. Styles and sizes vary widely, and are generically referred to as tiki mugs even if they are in the shape of a skull, hula girl, or other motif. The cocktails may also be served in hollowed out pineapples, or in large communal drink bowls with long straws that are meant to be shared. Some are set on fire with overproof rum for additional theatrics and flair.


title: Tiki culture

text: Many restaurants offer a signature drink in a tiki mug that the customer is able to take home or purchase. Both Beach and Bergeron offered in-restaurant "stores" where people could buy not only mugs but drink mixes and other kitsch items. Some mugs were simply stolen and brought home by diners. This led to a large number of 20th-century tiki mugs surviving as souvenirs. Vintage tiki mugs are highly prized finds and are considered to be as much of a symbol of the tiki culture as a tiki itself.


title: Tiki culture

text: The so-called burgeoning "tiki culture" influenced the clothing choices of mainstream Americans. This held true for both general wear and over time included how to get "dressed up" for going out to get a few drinks and fitting in with the exotic ambience of tiki restaurants.


title: Tiki culture

text: Sarong inspired dresses became more popular with women, and were also associated with actresses and pin-up models used in tourism advertising such as Dorothy Lamour (known as both the "Sarong Girl" and the "Sarong Queen" from her role in the 1937 film "The Hurricane"). Other movies such as Abbott and Costello's "Pardon My Sarong", as well as "Song of the Sarong" and "Sarong Girl" were later released over the course of the 1940s, and served to self reinforce the popularity of Beach's and Bergeron's tropical escape restaurant motifs during this time.


title: Tiki culture

text: An increasing emphasis on idealized "wahine" (island women) saw their depiction grow from menu cover placement to their use on tiki barware. The Fog Cutter mug and the Kava Bowl were two of the earliest ceramic tiki drinking vessels bearing the images of such women to be used in Trader Vic's restaurants. The Pago Pago Lounge also created a Sarong cocktail.


title: Tiki culture

text: For men, the "Hawaiian Shirt" would become an enduring symbol of leisure and were increasingly worn in public. US President Harry Truman was famously pictured wearing a Hawaiian shirt on the front cover of "Life Magazine's" 10 December 1951 issue.


title: Tiki culture

text: Called "aloha shirts" on the island, the book "Aloha Attire: Hawaiian Dress in the Twentieth Century" describes how the shirt's history is more than Hawaiian and can be traced to a confluence of cultural influences. As explained by author Linda Bradley, the shirt was actually made with a Western-style silhouette originally inspired by Western sailor shirts, was cut from Japanese crepe fabric (originally used for kimono), was sewn by Japanese and Chinese tailors who immigrated to Hawaii as plantation field workers, and was ultimately worn like a Filipino barong tagalog (always untucked and outside of the pants).


title: Tiki culture

text: Gardenia, hibiscus, and florals became a more popular fabric pattern in America, as did palm fronds and similar types of tropical plants or animals such as fish and birds. Beyond Polynesia, other more frequently worn patterns included Batik and fabrics from differing Oceanic regions. Leis became worn more frequently outside of Hawaii, not just at Tiki restaurants but also at backyard barbeques and "luau" pool parties.


title: Tiki culture

text: Official Hawaiian statehood in 1959 became another factor in the popularity of the tropical lifestyle, but also changed how tiki culture was perceived. Hawaii was no longer just a foreign country to the American people, in reality or as imagined, but now a formalized part of their country. Tourism continued ever bigger growth, with the years after statehood becoming a "jet rush" for vacationers snapping up $100 tickets for a now only five-hour flight from Los Angeles or San Francisco without the former restrictions of the former Territory of Hawaii. With statehood making travel easier than ever, for many average Americans for the first time the myth of what Hawaii was and what it was supposed to be came face to face as a booming economy and urbanization began to change the lifestyle of its countryside.