title: Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center

text: A further expansion of the collections center was approved in December 2016. The addition will be made up of three additional storage modules on the south side of the building.


title: Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center

text: The center was opened on December 15, 2003. The Udvar-Hazy Center displays historic aviation and space artifacts, especially items too large for the National Air and Space Museum's building on the National Mall, including:


title: Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center

text: The museum is still in the process of installing exhibits, and 169 aircraft and 152 large space artifacts were on display as of May 2012, and plans call for the eventual installation of over 200 aircraft. The current list is maintained at the Objects On Display page of the Smithsonian Institution NASM Collections site.


title: Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center

text: A number of events are held at the museum throughout the year. These include lectures, book signings, sleepovers, and events for children. Some of the museum's larger events include Air & Scare for Halloween, an open house, and Innovations in Flight: Family Day and Outdoor Aviation Display.


title: Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center

text: The center made its first media appearance in the 2009 film "". The center remained open while filming took place, although certain areas were closed. The SR-71 that is on display in the museum was used as Jetfire, a Decepticon who switches sides to become an Autobot, in the film. In the film, it is referred to simply as the National Air and Space Museum.


title: Maurizio Arrivabene

text: Maurizio Arrivabene (born 7 March 1957) is an Italian manager and sports director who is the CEO of Italian football club Juventus.


title: Maurizio Arrivabene

text: Arrivabene was team principal of Formula One team Scuderia Ferrari. He was appointed team principal in November 2014, replacing Marco Mattiacci, and was replaced by Mattia Binotto in January 2019.


title: Maurizio Arrivabene

text: Arrivabene comes from a marketing and sales background. In 1997, he joined Philip Morris International, rising to become Vice President of Marlboro Global Communication and Promotions in 2007, and Vice President of Consumer Channel Strategy and Event Marketing in 2011. Through his work with Philip Morris, he became involved with the company's sponsorship (through the Marlboro brand) of the Ferrari Formula One team, and sat on the Formula One Commission as a representative of the sport's sponsors from 2010.


title: Maurizio Arrivabene

text: On 23 November 2014, Ferrari announced that Arrivabene had been appointed as its team principal, replacing Marco Mattiacci, who had himself only been in the position since April that year. The decision to install Arrivabene was made by the new Ferrari chairman, Sergio Marchionne, who gave Arrivabene's "thorough understanding not just of Ferrari but also of the governance mechanisms and requirements of the sport" as part of the reason for his appointment. This appointment was part of a team rejuvenation process by Marchionne who deposed the ex long-time Ferrari Chairman, Luca di Montezemolo. Arrivabene was replaced as Ferrari team principal by former technical boss Mattia Binotto on 7 January 2019 after the 2018 season.


title: Maurizio Arrivabene

text: Arrivabene and Ulrika Eriksson Hjelm met in Madonna di Campiglio in 1986 and were married from 1990 until 1995. Their daughter was born in 1990. , Arrivabene was married to Stefania Bocchi.


title: Libyan National Army

text: The Libyan National Army (LNA; , "al-jaysh al-waṭaniyy al-Lībii") is a component of Libya's military forces which were nominally a unified national force under the command of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar when he was nominated to the role on 2 March 2015 by the House of Representatives, consisting at the time of a ground force, an air force and a navy.


title: Libyan National Army

text: In 2014, LNA launched Operation Dignity, a military campaign against the General National Congress and armed militias and Islamist militant organizations. When the internationally recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) was established in Tripoli, part of the Libyan military forces were named the Libyan Army to contrast with the other part that retained the LNA identity. In the ongoing Civil War, the LNA is loyal to that part of the Libyan House of Representatives that meets in Tobruk, internationally recognised until October 2015. It fights against the Shura Council of Benghazi Revolutionaries, as well as Islamic State in Libya which is a common enemy for both LNA and the Libyan Army.


title: Libyan National Army

text: About half of the LNA consists of militias including Madkhali (Salafist) militias and Sudanese, Chadian and Russian mercenaries, which together constitute part of the LNA's effective forces. The LNA possesses its own air force. Most of the Libyan Navy is loyal to the GNA.


title: Libyan National Army

text: Interventions in the political system by the LNA include the late 2016 replacement of nine elected municipal councils out of a total of 27, replacing elected mayors by mostly military individuals and, according to witnesses cited by "The Independent", the 17 July 2019 abduction of House of Representatives member Seham Sergiwa at her home in Benghazi by the 106th Brigade. The LNA stated that it was not responsible for the Sergiwa abduction.


title: Libyan National Army

text: In November 2019, the United Nations Panel of Experts on Libya established under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 started using the name "Haftar Armed Forces (HAF)" to replace the name "Libyan National Army" to refer to "all armed groups associated with Haftar". It also chose to use lower case regarding "brigades" and "battalions" in order to avoid giving them "the legitimacy of being a formed military unit of a government".


title: Libyan National Army

text: Haftar and the LNA is de facto backed by the governments of Egypt, Israel and the United Arab Emirates.France has also provided tacit backing for Haftars forces. France carried out unprecedented air strikes by its Airforce on Chadian opposition fighters, which are LNA's biggest opponents. This resulted in a public dispute with Italy, which is supporting the Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripolis.


title: Libyan National Army

text: Russia is Haftar's most committed ally. In May 2020 the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) stated that Russia had deployed at least 14 MiG Planes to the country. The plans where supported by private military contractors of Wagner Group and supporting the LNA.


title: Libyan National Army

text: Khalifa Haftar was made head of the armed forces of Libya on 2 March 2015, remaining as leader of the Libyan National Army after the split between the LNA and the Government of National Accord (GNA). , Major General Abdulrazek al-Nadoori was the chief of staff of the LNA. A lobbying firm was paid to lobby on his behalf for 12 months, starting 1 December 2017, in Washington, D.C. Mahmoud al-Werfalli, known internationally for his International Criminal Court arrest warrant under Article , was Axes Commander in the al-Saiqa unit of the LNA .


title: Libyan National Army

text: In April 2019, the 106th Brigade, also known as "Awlia Aldem" () was led by Khaled, son of Khalida Haftar. , the brigade's commander was Salem Rahil.


title: Libyan National Army

text: On 17 July 2019, according to witnesses cited by "The Independent" and a family member cited by "CNN", 25–30 masked, uniformed 106th Brigade members abducted member of the Libyan House of Representatives Seham Sergiwa in Benghazi. The LNA stated that it was not responsible for the abduction.


title: Libyan National Army

text: , after multiple calls by UNSMIL for the LNA to investigate the disappearance, Sergiwa remained missing.


title: Libyan National Army

text: Al-Saiqa is an elite army unit, formed from a mixture of paratroopers and commandos. It numbers a few thousand and reports to the Ministry of Defence. It is popular in Benghazi, particularly in light of its opposition to Islamist Ansar al-Sharia group and because it is seen as a symbol of the reborn Libyan armed forces.


title: Libyan National Army

text: Madkhali militias in the LNA include the Tawhid Battalion commanded by Izz al-Din al-Tarhuni; the Tariq Ibn Ziyad Brigade, the Subul al-Salam group and the al-Wadi Brigade. LNA groups from Sabratha, Sorman, Tiji and Badr, towns in which Madkhali preachers were active and supported Haftar, are mostly Madkhali Salafists.


title: Libyan National Army

text: During the 2019–20 Western Libya campaign, the LNA was allied with the al-Kaniyat militia in Tarhuna.


title: Libyan National Army

text: The number of auxiliary LNA forces (militias and mercenaries) was estimated in May 2019 as by Jason Pack of the Institute for International Political Studies.


title: Libyan National Army

text: Foreign mercenaries operating during 2019 Western Libya offensive on behalf of the LNA include Sudanese, Chadians and Russians.


title: Libyan National Army

text: Sudanese from the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (Minnawi) were present in Libya starting in March 2015 and fought on behalf of the LNA in 2016. SLM (Minnawi) planned on leaving Libya in early 2017. Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (al-Nur) fighters fought on behalf of the LNA, with personnel in Libya in mid-2016. Involvement of Sudanese mercenaries continued in 2018.


title: Libyan National Army

text: On 25 July 2019, 1000 members of the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces, widely attributed to be responsible for the 3 June 2019 Khartoum massacre, arrived in Libya and were expected to number 4000 in total.


title: Libyan National Army

text: Chadians from the Rally of Democratic Forces () were recruited by the LNA in late 2015, especially in the southern part of Libya.


title: Libyan National Army

text: On 1 January 2022, the "5+5 Libyan Joint Military Commission" announced the deportation of 300 Sudanese mercenaries linked to the LNA from the Eastern Region.


title: Libyan National Army

text: The Libyan National Army was founded in 2011 by the National Transitional Council, after forces aligned to it defeated the previous Libyan Army and overthrew Muammar Gaddafi's government. Supply depots and bases having been damaged during the civil war, the new army is faced with the challenge of having to rebuild much of the country's military infrastructure. Yousef Mangoush was named as its first Chief of Staff on 2 January 2012 and the force saw its first major deployment on 23 February, when it was deployed to Kufra to intervene in a tribal conflict.


title: Libyan National Army

text: In November 2011, the National Transitional Council began the difficult process of restructuring the army, with military personnel who defected from the Gaddafi government and former rebel fighters of the National Liberation Army forming the basis of the new Libyan Army. Major General Khalifa Belgacem Haftar was chosen as the overall commander of the new Libyan Army due to his military experience and loyalty to the revolution that overthrew Gaddafi.


title: Libyan National Army

text: The Libyan Army only numbered "a few thousand" trained soldiers in November 2011, and was rapidly trying to train up new fighters who could keep the peace nationwide and deter rogue militias from acting without NTC orders, and was responsible for brokering a ceasefire on at least one occasion in November between warring militas from Zawiya and Al Maya.


title: Libyan National Army

text: On 1 December 2011, it was reported that the National Liberation Army was to integrate up to 50,000 former rebel fighters into the new Libyan national army and police forces, with the aid of French training, with long-term aims to integrate as many as 200,000 fighters from the brigades that had fought against Gaddafi during the civil war.


title: Libyan National Army

text: In December 2011, Italy agreed to provide training to the Libyan Army as it attempted to reorganize in the aftermath of the Civil War.


title: Libyan National Army

text: Also in December, large numbers of former rebels were being given jobs in the new army, whilst the government also announced that they would be free to join the special forces and the Navy too. According to Osama al-Juwaili, the defence minister: "The idea is to inject new blood in the army which was marginalised by the tyrant (Gaddafi)"


title: Libyan National Army

text: General Yousef Mangoush said on 5 January 2012 that Libya's new army faces major obstacles such as rebuilding bases destroyed during the conflict, as well as disarming militias that were not part of the new army. National Army commander General Khalifa Haftar said later that it could take between three and five years for Libya to field a capable enough army to protect its borders.


title: Libyan National Army

text: On 7 May 2013, Libya's Defense Minister Mohammed al-Barghathi resigned due to a crisis caused by gunmen who have besieged two ministries for more than a week, a ministry official said. He later withdrew his resignation after Prime Minister Zeidan convinced him to stay.


title: Libyan National Army

text: Under an agreement reached at the Lough Erne G8 summit in June 2013, NATO countries the United Kingdom, Italy, Turkey, and the United States undertook to help train up to 15,000 personnel from Libyan National Army units over a two-year period. They were to take units from newly formed brigades for 10-week stints of intensive infantry training. The 27th Brigade was due to start at Bassingbourn in eastern England in January 2014. As a result of disorder and sexual assaults by some Libyan army cadets, the UK cancelled the programme in November 2014. The Libyan trainees were sent back to Libya, with the exception of five who were tried for sexual offenses.


title: Libyan National Army

text: In late 2016, Major-General Abdulrazek al-Nadoori of the LNA replaced several of the elected municipal mayors in eastern Libya by unelected people, mostly military. Altogether the LNA replaced nine elected councils, out of 27 in its area of control, by military administrators.


title: Libyan National Army

text: Whilst it is known to a degree what equipment the Libyan National Army uses, the exact numbers of the below equipment currently in use is not known. What is certain is that a reasonable quantity of their equipment probably came from ransacked stocks of the original Libyan Army and from defectors as well. A significant amount of arms and equipment possessed by the LNA were majorly shipped by the United Arab Emirates and Russia. Having an airbase in Libya (Al-Khadim), the UAE constantly breached the UN arms embargo to transfer arms to the Haftar forces. An Emirati firm, Lancaster-6 was involved in transferring three Super Pumas to the LNA in June 2019. The helicopters were believed to be incapable to operate. The three helicopters remained inside hangars until Haftar's military parade in May 2021 and were expected to take part in his air force.


title: Libyan National Army

text: A variety of pickup/utility vehicles, called technicals and gun trucks, often Toyota and other makers, armed with a variety of different weapons, including heavy machine guns, light MLRS' and anti-aircraft guns, most commonly used is the ZU-23-2 and the ZPU.


title: Arc lamp

text: An arc lamp or arc light is a lamp that produces light by an electric arc (also called a voltaic arc).


title: Arc lamp

text: The carbon arc light, which consists of an arc between carbon electrodes in air, invented by Humphry Davy in the first decade of the 1800s, was the first practical electric light. It was widely used starting in the 1870s for street and large building lighting until it was superseded by the incandescent light in the early 20th century. It continued in use in more specialized applications where a high intensity point light source was needed, such as searchlights and movie projectors until after World War II. The carbon arc lamp is now obsolete for most of these purposes, but it is still used as a source of high intensity ultraviolet light.


title: Arc lamp

text: The term is now used for gas discharge lamps, which produce light by an arc between metal electrodes through a gas in a glass bulb. The common fluorescent lamp is a low-pressure mercury arc lamp. The xenon arc lamp, which produces a high intensity white light, is now used in many of the applications which formerly used the carbon arc, such as movie projectors and searchlights.


title: Arc lamp

text: An "arc" is the discharge that occurs when a gas is ionized. A high voltage is pulsed across the lamp to "ignite" or "strike" the arc, after which the discharge can be maintained at a lower voltage. The "strike" requires an electrical circuit with an "igniter" and a ballast. The ballast is wired in series with the lamp and performs two functions.


title: Arc lamp

text: First, when the power is first switched on, the igniter/starter (which is wired in parallel across the lamp) sets up a small current through the ballast and starter. This creates a small magnetic field within the ballast windings. A moment later the starter interrupts the current flow from the ballast, which has a high inductance and therefore tries to maintain the current flow (the ballast opposes any change in current through it); it cannot, as there is no longer a 'circuit'. As a result, a high voltage appears across the ballast momentarily, to which the lamp is connected; therefore the lamp receives this high voltage across it which 'strikes' the arc within the tube/lamp. The circuit will repeat this action until the lamp is ionized enough to sustain the arc.


title: Arc lamp

text: When the lamp sustains the arc, the ballast performs its second function, to limit the current to that needed to operate the lamp. The lamp, ballast and igniter are rating-matched to each other; these parts must be replaced with the same rating as the failed component or the lamp will not work.


title: Arc lamp

text: The colour of the light emitted by the lamp changes as its electrical characteristics change with temperature and time. Lightning is a similar principle where the atmosphere is ionized by the high potential difference (voltage) between earth and storm clouds.


title: Arc lamp

text: The temperature of the arc in an arc lamp can reach several thousand degrees Celsius. The outer glass envelope can reach 500 degrees Celsius, therefore before servicing one must ensure the bulb has cooled sufficiently to handle. Often, if these types of lamps are turned off or lose their power supply, one cannot restrike the lamp again for several minutes (called cold restrike lamps). However, some lamps (mainly fluorescent tubes/energy saving lamps) can be restruck as soon as they are turned off (called hot restrike lamps).


title: Arc lamp

text: The Vortek water-wall plasma arc lamp, invented in 1975 by David Camm and Roy Nodwell at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, made the Guinness Book of World Records in 1986 and 1993 as the most powerful continuously burning light source at over 300 kW or 1.2 million candle power.


title: Arc lamp

text: In popular use, the term "arc lamp" means "carbon arc lamp" only. In a carbon arc lamp, the electrodes are carbon rods in free air. To ignite the lamp, the rods are touched together, thus allowing a relatively low voltage to strike the arc. The rods are then slowly drawn apart, and electric current heats and maintains an arc across the gap. The tips of the carbon rods are heated and the carbon vaporizes. The carbon vapor in the arc is highly luminous, which is what produces the bright light. The rods are slowly burnt away in use, and the distance between them needs to be regularly adjusted in order to maintain the arc.


title: Arc lamp

text: Many ingenious mechanisms were invented to control the distance automatically, mostly based on solenoids. In one of the simplest mechanically-regulated forms (which was soon superseded by more smoothly acting devices) the electrodes are mounted vertically. The current supplying the arc is passed in series through a solenoid attached to the top electrode. If the points of the electrodes are touching (as in start up) the resistance falls, the current increases and the increased pull from the solenoid draws the points apart. If the arc starts to fail the current drops and the points close up again.


title: Arc lamp

text: The Yablochkov candle is a simple arc lamp without a regulator, but it has the drawbacks that the arc cannot be restarted (single use) and a limited lifetime of only a few hours.


title: Arc lamp

text: The concept of carbon-arc lighting was first demonstrated by Humphry Davy in the early 19th century, but sources disagree about the year he first demonstrated it; 1802, 1805, 1807 and 1809 are all mentioned. Davy used charcoal sticks and a two-thousand-cell battery to create an arc across a gap. He mounted his electrodes horizontally and noted that, because of the strong convection flow of air, the arc formed the shape of an arch. He coined the term "arch lamp", which was contracted to "arc lamp" when the devices came into common usage.


title: Arc lamp

text: In the late nineteenth century, electric arc lighting was in wide use for public lighting. The tendency of electric arcs to flicker and hiss was a major problem. In 1895, Hertha Ayrton wrote a series of articles for "The Electrician", explaining that these phenomena were the result of oxygen coming into contact with the carbon rods used to create the arc. In 1899, she was the first woman ever to read her own paper before the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE). Her paper was "The Hissing of the Electric Arc".


title: Arc lamp

text: The arc lamp provided one of the first commercial uses for electricity, a phenomenon previously confined to experiment, the telegraph, and entertainment.


title: Arc lamp

text: In the United States, there were attempts to produce arc lamps commercially after 1850, but the lack of a constant electricity supply thwarted efforts. Thus electrical engineers began focusing on the problem of improving Faraday's dynamo. The concept was improved upon by a number of people including and Charles F. Brush. It was not until the 1870s that lamps such as the Yablochkov candle were more commonly seen. In 1877, the Franklin Institute conducted a comparative test of dynamo systems. The one developed by Brush performed best, and Brush immediately applied his improved dynamo to arc-lighting, an early application being Public Square in Cleveland, Ohio, on April 29, 1879. Despite this, Wabash, Indiana claims to be the first city ever to be lit with "Brush Lights". Four of these lights became active there on March 31, 1880. Wabash, IN Wabash was a small enough city to be lit entirely by 4 lights, whereas the installation at Cleveland's Public Square only lit a portion of that larger city. Brush Lights, Cleveland In 1880, Brush established the Brush Electric Company.


title: Arc lamp

text: The harsh and brilliant light was found most suitable for public areas, such as Cleveland's Public Square, being around 200 times more powerful than contemporary filament lamps.


title: Arc lamp

text: The usage of Brush electric arc lights spread quickly. "Scientific American" reported in 1881 that the system was being used in:


title: Arc lamp

text: 800 lights in rolling mills, steel works, shops, 1,240 lights in woolen, cotton, linen, silk, and other factories, 425 lights in large stores, hotels, churches, 250 lights in parks, docks, and summer resorts, 275 lights in railroad depots and shops, 130 lights in mines, smelting works, 380 lights in factories and establishments of various kinds, 1,500 lights in lighting stations, for city lighting, 1,200 lights in England and other foreign countries.


title: Arc lamp

text: There were three major advances in the 1880s: František Křižík invented in 1880 a mechanism to allow the automatic adjustment of the electrodes. The arcs were enclosed in a small tube to slow the carbon consumption (increasing the life span to around 100 hours). "Flame arc lamps" were introduced where the carbon rods had metal salts (usually magnesium, strontium, barium, or calcium fluorides) added to increase light output and produce different colours.


title: Arc lamp

text: In the U.S., patent protection of arc-lighting systems and improved dynamos proved difficult and as a result the arc-lighting industry became highly competitive. Brush's principal competition was from the team of Elihu Thomson and Edwin J. Houston. These two had formed the American Electric Corporation in 1880, but it was soon bought up by Charles A. Coffin, moved to Lynn, Massachusetts, and renamed the Thomson-Houston Electric Company. Thomson remained, though, the principal inventive genius behind the company patenting improvements to the lighting system. Under the leadership of Thomson-Houston's patent attorney, Frederick P. Fish, the company protected its new patent rights. Coffin's management also led the company towards an aggressive policy of buy-outs and mergers with competitors. Both strategies reduced competition in the electrical lighting manufacturing industry. By 1890, the Thomson-Houston company was the dominant electrical manufacturing company in the U.S. Nikola Tesla received U.S. Patent 447920, ""Method of Operating Arc-Lamps"" (March 10, 1891), that describes a 10,000 cycles per second alternator to suppress the disagreeable sound of power-frequency harmonics produced by arc lamps operating on frequencies within the range of human hearing.


title: Arc lamp

text: Around the turn of the century arc-lighting systems were in decline, but Thomson-Houston controlled key patents to urban lighting systems. This control slowed the expansion of incandescent lighting systems being developed by Thomas Edison's Edison General Electric Company. Conversely, Edison's control of direct current distribution and generating machinery patents blocked further expansion of Thomson-Houston. The roadblock to expansion was removed when the two companies merged in 1892 to form the General Electric Company.


title: Arc lamp

text: Arc lamps were used in some early motion-picture studios to illuminate interior shots. One problem was that they produce such a high level of ultra-violet light that many actors needed to wear sunglasses when off camera to relieve sore eyes resulting from the ultra-violet light. The problem was solved by adding a sheet of ordinary window glass in front of the lamp, blocking the ultra-violet. By the dawn of the "talkies", arc lamps had been replaced in film studios with other types of lights. In 1915, Elmer Ambrose Sperry began manufacturing his invention of a high-intensity carbon arc searchlight. These were used aboard warships of all navies during the 20th century for signaling and illuminating enemies. In the 1920s, carbon arc lamps were sold as family health products, a substitute for natural sunlight.


title: Arc lamp

text: Arc lamps were superseded by filament lamps in most roles, remaining in only certain niche applications such as cinema projection, spotlights, and searchlights. Even in these applications conventional carbon arc lamps are being pushed into obsolescence by xenon arc lamps, but were still being manufactured as spotlights at least as late as 1982 and are still manufactured for at least one purpose – simulating sunlight in "accelerated aging" machines intended to estimate how fast a material is likely to be degraded by environmental exposure.


title: Arc lamp

text: The practice of shipping and projecting motion pictures on 2,000-foot reels, and employing "changeovers" between two projectors, was due to the carbon rods used in projector lamphouses having a lifespan of roughly 22 minutes (which corresponds to the amount of film in said reels when projected at 24 frames/second). The projectionist would replace the carbon rod when changing film reels. The two-projector changeover setup largely disappeared in the 1970s with the advent of xenon projector lamps, being replaced with single-projector platter systems, though films would continue to be shipped to cinemas on 2,000-foot reels.


title: Ode

text: An ode (from ) is a type of lyric poetry. Odes are elaborately structured poems praising or glorifying an event or individual, describing nature intellectually as well as emotionally. A classic ode is structured in three major parts: the "strophe", the "antistrophe", and the "epode". Different forms such as the "homostrophic ode" and the "irregular ode" also enter.


title: Ode

text: Greek odes were originally poetic pieces performed with musical accompaniment. As time passed on, they gradually became known as personal lyrical compositions whether sung (with or without musical instruments) or merely recited (always with accompaniment). The primary instruments used were the aulos and the lyre (the latter was the most revered instrument to the ancient Greeks).


title: Ode

text: There are three typical forms of odes: the Pindaric, Horatian, and irregular. Pindaric odes follow the form and style of Pindar. Horatian odes follow conventions of Horace; the odes of Horace deliberately imitated the Greek lyricists such as Alcaeus and Anacreon. Irregular odes use rhyme, but not the three-part form of the Pindaric ode, nor the two- or four-line stanza of the Horatian ode. The ode is a lyric poem. It conveys exalted and inspired emotions. It is a lyric in an elaborate form, expressed in a language that is imaginative, dignified and sincere. Like the lyric, an ode is of Greek origin.


title: Ode

text: The lyrics can be on various themes. The earliest odes in the English language, using the word in its strict form, were the "Epithalamium" and "Prothalamium" of Edmund Spenser.


title: Ode

text: In the 17th century, the original odes in English were by Abraham Cowley. These were iambic, but had irregular line length patterns and rhyme schemes. Cowley based the principle of his Pindariques on an apparent misunderstanding of Pindar's metrical practice but, nonetheless, others widely imitated his style, with notable success by John Dryden.


title: Ode

text: With Pindar's metre being better understood in the 18th century, the fashion for Pindaric odes faded, though there are notable actual Pindaric odes by Thomas Gray, "The Progress of Poesy" and "The Bard".


title: Ode

text: Around 1800, William Wordsworth revived Cowley's Pindarick for one of his finest poems, the "" ode. Others also wrote odes: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, and Percy Bysshe Shelley who wrote odes with regular stanza patterns. Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind", written in fourteen line terza rima stanzas, is a major poem in the form. Perhaps the greatest odes of the 19th century, however, were Keats's "Five Great Odes of 1819", which included "Ode to a Nightingale", "Ode on Melancholy", "Ode on a Grecian Urn", "Ode to Psyche", and "To Autumn". After Keats, there have been comparatively few major odes in English. One major exception is the fourth verse of the poem "For the Fallen" by Laurence Binyon, which is often known as "The Ode to the Fallen", or simply as "The Ode".


title: Ode

text: W.H. Auden also wrote "Ode", one of the most popular poems from his earlier career when he lived in London, in opposition to people's ignorance over the reality of war. In an interview, Auden once stated that he had intended to title the poem "My Silver Age" in mockery of England's supposed imperial golden age, however chose "Ode" as it seemed to provide a more sensitive exploration of warfare.


title: Ode

text: "Ode on a Grecian Urn", while an ekphrasis, also functions as an ode to the artistic beauty the narrator observes. The English ode's most common rhyme scheme is ABABCDECDE.


title: Ode

text: Centuries were occasionally set to music. Composers such as Purcell, Händel and Boyce all set English odes to music.


title: 69th Academy Awards

text: The 69th Academy Awards ceremony, organized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) took place on March 24, 1997, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles beginning at 6:00 p.m. PST / 9:00 p.m. EST. During the ceremony, AMPAS presented the Academy Awards (commonly referred to as Oscars) in 24 categories honoring films released in 1996. The ceremony, televised in the United States by ABC, was produced by Gil Cates, and directed by Louis J. Horvitz. Actor Billy Crystal hosted the show for the fifth time. He first presided over the 62nd ceremony held in 1990 and had last hosted the 65th ceremony held in 1993. Three weeks earlier, in a ceremony held at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, on March 1, the Academy Awards for Technical Achievement were presented by host Helen Hunt. This also served as the launch event for DVD, with its U.S. launch being on the same day as the ceremony.


title: 69th Academy Awards

text: "The English Patient" won nine awards, including Best Picture. Other winners included "Fargo" with two awards and "", "Dear Diary", "Emma", "Evita", "The Ghost and the Darkness", "Independence Day", "Jerry Maguire", "Kolya", "The Nutty Professor", "Quest", "Shine", "Sling Blade", and "When We Were Kings" with one.


title: 69th Academy Awards

text: The nominees for the 69th Academy Awards were announced on February 11, 1997, at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills, California, by Arthur Hiller, president of the Academy, and actress Mira Sorvino. "The English Patient" received the most nominations with twelve; "Fargo" and "Shine" came in second with seven apiece.


title: 69th Academy Awards

text: The winners were announced during the awards ceremony on March 24, 1997. Saul Zaentz became the third person to produce three Best Picture winners, having previously produced "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Amadeus". He also became the seventh individual to receive an Oscar and the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in the same year. Best Actress winner Frances McDormand was the first person to win for a role in a film directed by his or her spouse. Best Original Musical or Comedy Score winner Rachel Portman became the first female winner for composing a musical score.


title: 69th Academy Awards

text: After taking a year off, Gil Cates was selected by AMPAS in November 1996 to oversee production of the ceremony for the seventh time. Immediately, he chose actor and comedian Billy Crystal to host the 1997 telecast, stating, "Billy is quick and agile and bright, and he plays the unexpected events of the live telecast like a Stradivarius. He's become the standard against which all other hosting performances are measured." Crystal expressed his excitement on hosting the ceremony for the fifth time joking, "Once Barry Scheck turned it down, I had a feeling they'd come to me." Furthermore, he set up a website with the address www.whyistheshowsolong.com asking the public to send in jokes that would eventually be used during the gala.


title: 69th Academy Awards

text: As with previous ceremonies he produced, Cates centered the show around a theme. This year, he christened the show with the theme "Togetherness of Moviegoing" commenting, "The thing that's kind of wonderful about movies is that you watch them with other people. The only other areas where you do that, when you think about it, are religion and sports." He concluded by noting that the movie theater is "a wonderful place where you come together to laugh, to cry." In tandem with the theme, actress Winona Ryder presented a montage featuring film clips from "Casablanca" (1942), "Matinee" (1993), and "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951) depicting audiences inside a movie theater.


title: 69th Academy Awards

text: Several other people and elements were also involved with the production of the ceremony. Documentary filmmaker Arnold Schwartzman designed the official ceremony poster featuring the titles of the previous 68 Best Picture winners superimposed in the shape of an Oscar statuette. Film composer and musician Bill Conti served as musical director of the ceremony. Choreographer Otis Sallid supervised the "That Thing You Do!" musical number. Michael Flatley and the cast of the musical "Lord of the Dance" performed a dance number during a montage saluting the art of Film Editors. Pianist David Helfgott, whom Best Actor winner Geoffrey Rush portrayed in the film "Shine", played a rendition of "Flight of the Bumblebee" by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov during the telecast.


title: 69th Academy Awards

text: Natalie Cole was initially scheduled to sing the nominated song "I Finally Found Someone" from "The Mirror Has Two Faces" on the show after its songwriter and original performer Barbra Streisand declined to do so. However, after Cole contracted the flu, she withdrew for her performance duties and was eventually replaced by Celine Dion who also sang "Because You Loved Me" later in the broadcast.


title: 69th Academy Awards

text: At the time of the nominations announcement on February 11, the combined gross of the five Best Picture nominees at the US box office was $209 million, with an average of $41.9 million per film. "Jerry Maguire" was the highest earner among the Best Picture nominees with $121.5 million in domestic box office receipts. The film was followed by "The English Patient" ($42.3 million), "Shine" ($16.1 million), "Fargo" ($24 million) and finally "Secrets & Lies" ($5.9 million).


title: 69th Academy Awards

text: Of the top 50 grossing movies of the year, 37 nominations went to 17 films on the list. Only "Jerry Maguire" (9th), "Primal Fear" (27th) and "The English Patient" (35th) were nominated for directing, acting, screenwriting or Best Picture. The other top 50 box office hits that earned nominations were "Independence Day" (1st), "Twister" (2nd), "The Rock" (4th), "The Nutty Professor" (7th), "The Birdcage" (8th), "Eraser" (13th), "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (14th), "Star Trek: First Contact" (15th), "Sleepers" (29th), "Dragonheart" (30th), "The Preacher's Wife" (32nd), "Evita" (36th), "The Ghost and the Darkness" (39th), and "Daylight" (48th).


title: 69th Academy Awards

text: The show received a mixed reception from media publications. Some media outlets were more critical of the show. Television critic Joanne Ostrow of "The Denver Post" commented "Billy Crystal had a smashing first 10 minutes at the Oscars last night," but she later went on to say that inevitable sweep by "The English Patient" created a dull atmosphere that even sucked the energy out of Crystal's performance. Columnist Brian Lowry wrote in "Los Angeles Times", "This year the mystery far outweighed the magic, in a telecast that proved less compelling--indeed, during stretches more downright dull--than recent predecessors." He also quipped that even though Crystal was mildly entertaining, some of his jokes "felt a bit forced and stale." "The Star-Ledger"s Alan Sepinwall noted, "Crystal was a bundle of energy, but his jokes had less zing than in the past." He also observed that the Film Editing dance number and "That Thing You Do" musical performance were hideously bloated.


title: 69th Academy Awards

text: Other media outlets received the broadcast more positively. Film critic Carrie Rickey of "The Philadelphia Inquirer" wrote, "Crystal sparkled as the host of the annual awards at the Shrine Auditorium." She also noted, "The mood of the evening was elegant and gracious." "Chicago Tribune" columnist Steve Johnson commented, "Billy Crystal returned as host of the Academy Awards on Monday night and proved that even if mainline Hollywood is nearly shut out in the trophy dispensing, one of its representatives can at least make a television broadcast entertaining." Television critic Kinney Littlefield of the "Orange County Register" quipped, "In his fifth stint as host, Crystal served up the sense of inclusive, insider movie community that had been missing during his three-year absence." In addition, she observed, "For most of the evening, Oscar seemed newly energized, upbeat and full of splashy fun."


title: 69th Academy Awards

text: The American telecast on ABC drew in an average of 40.08 million people over its length, which was a 9% decrease from the previous year's ceremony. An estimated 73.83 million total viewers watched all or part of the awards. The show also drew lower Nielsen ratings compared to the previous ceremony with 27.49% of households watching over a 46.31 share. In addition, it also drew a lower 18–49 demo rating with a 16.55 rating over a 34.32 share among viewers in that demographic. It was the least watched ceremony in a decade and the lowest rated telecast since the 58th awards gala held in 1986.


title: 69th Academy Awards

text: In July 1997, the ceremony presentation received seven nominations at the 49th Primetime Emmy Awards. Two months later, the ceremony won one of those nominations for Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Variety or Music Series or Special (Edward J. Greene, Tom Vicari, Robert Douglass).


title: 69th Academy Awards

text: The annual "In Memoriam" tribute, presented by actress Angela Bassett, honored the following people to the score of "Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde" (1995):


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: Sylvia Rivera (July 2, 1951 – February 19, 2002) was an American gay liberation and transgender rights activist who was also a noted community worker in New York. Rivera, who identified as a drag queen, participated in demonstrations with the Gay Liberation Front.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: With close friend Marsha P. Johnson, Rivera co-founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), a group dedicated to helping homeless young drag queens, gay youth, and trans women.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: Rivera was born and raised in New York City and lived most of her life in or near the city; she was born to a Puerto Rican father and a Venezuelan mother. She was abandoned by her birth father José Rivera early in life and became an orphan after her mother died by suicide when Rivera was three years old. Rivera was then raised by her Venezuelan grandmother, who disapproved of Rivera's effeminate behavior, particularly after Rivera began to wear makeup in fourth grade.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: As a result, Rivera began living on the streets in 1962, just shy of her 11th birthday and was forced to work as a child prostitute. She was taken in by the local community of drag queens, who gave her the name Sylvia.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: Rivera's activism began in 1970 after she participated in actions with the Gay Liberation Front's Drag Queen Caucus and later joined the Gay Activists Alliance at 18 years old, where she fought for not only the rights of gay people but also for the inclusion of drag queens like herself in the movement. Rivera sometimes exaggerated her importance, purporting to have been active during the civil rights movement, the movement against the Vietnam war, second-wave feminist movements, as well as Puerto Rican and African American youth activism, particularly with the Young Lords and the Black Panthers but she could not prove her claims.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: Rivera's older friend Marsha P. Johnson had been Rivera's protector and friend since Rivera arrived in the city, and the two were close friends from 1961 through 1973. In 1970, Rivera and Johnson co-founded Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR). STAR offered services and advocacy for homeless queer youth, and fought for the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act in New York. SONDA prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in employment, housing, public accommodations, education, credit, and the exercise of civil rights.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: While Johnson freely admitted to not being the one to start the Stonewall riots, Johnson is one of the few people whom multiple, independent witnesses all agree was instrumental in the week of rioting and "known to have been in the vanguard" of the pushback against police once the rioting peaked late the first night. After Johnson was being praised for being involved in the Stonewall uprising, Rivera began claiming that she (Rivera) was also instrumental in the riots, even going so far as to have claimed to have started the riots herself. Stonewall historian David Carter, however, questioned Rivera's claims of even being at the riots, based on contradictory statements that Rivera made, and on testimony relayed to him by early gay rights activists, such as Marsha P. Johnson, who denied in multiple interviews that Rivera had been there.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: When the Stonewall riots occurred, Rivera was only 17 years old, and according to Bob Kohler, who was there on the first two nights of the riots, Rivera "always hung out uptown at Bryant Park" and never came downtown. In 1987, Marsha P. Johnson told gay rights historian Eric Marcus that in the hours prior to Johnson arriving downtown to join the riots, Johnson had attended a party uptown and that "Sylvia Rivera and them were over in [Bryant] park having a cocktail." "There are several other statements Johnson made to highly credible witnesses — namely, Randy Wicker, Bob Kohler, and Doric Wilson, all with deep and enduring ties to the LGBTQ rights movement — about Rivera not having been at the Uprising."


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: Kohler told Carter that although Rivera had not been at the uprising, he hoped that Carter would still portray her as having been there. Another Stonewall veteran, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, claimed that he wanted to add her "so that young Puerto Rican transgender people on the street would have a role model." When Kohler and Rivera had a discussion over whether Kohler would back Rivera's claims to Carter for the book, Rivera asked Kohler to say that Rivera threw a Molotov cocktail. Kohler responded, "Sylvia, you didn't throw a Molotov cocktail!" Rivera continued to bargain with him, asking if he'd say she threw the first brick. He replied, "Sylvia, you didn't throw a brick." The first bottle? He still refused. Finally Kohler agreed to lie and say Rivera had been there and had at some point thrown "a" bottle.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: Randy Wicker, who was part of the Mattachine Society and a witness to the riots, said that Marsha Johnson had told him that Sylvia had not been at Stonewall "as she was asleep after taking heroin uptown". At the 1973 Christopher Street Liberation Day Rally in New York City, which was the four-year anniversary of the Stonewall riots, Rivera gave her famous "Gay Power!" speech. Rivera and fellow queen Lee Brewster jumped onstage during feminist activist Jean O'Leary's speech, which was critical in tone towards drag queens, and shouted in reply, "Y'all Better Quiet Down! You go to bars because of what drag queens did for you, and "these bitches" tell us to quit being ourselves!"(O'Leary later regretted her words and stance.) During this speech from the main stage, Rivera, representing STAR, called out the heterosexual males who were preying on vulnerable members of the community. Rivera espoused what could be seen as a third gender perspective, saying that LGBT prisoners seeking help "do not write women. They do not write men. They write to STAR." After the speech, Rivera was backstage talking to people about having been at the Stonewall uprising. Doric Wilson recalls that Marsha P. Johnson said to Rivera, “You know you weren't there.”


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: After Marsha Johnson confronted Rivera about lying about Stonewall at the 1973 rally, Rivera left Manhattan in the mid-1970s, relocating to Tarrytown, New York. In these years Rivera lived with her lover and together they ran a catering business. In the documentary "The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson", Rivera shares footage of the drag shows she hosted at the Music Hall in Tarrytown during this time.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: In early July 1992, shortly after the New York City Pride March, Marsha P. Johnson's body was found floating in the Hudson River off the West Village Piers. Police promptly ruled Johnson's death a suicide, despite the presence of a head wound. Johnson's friends and supporters, Rivera included, insisted Johnson had not been suicidal, and a people's postering campaign later declared that Johnson had earlier been harassed near the spot where Johnson's body was found.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: After receiving a telegram with the notification of her friend's death, Rivera returned to the city. Homeless now, she took up residence on the "Gay Piers" at the end of Christopher Street, and became an advocate for homeless members of the gay community.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: In May 1995, Rivera tried to end her life by walking into the Hudson River. That year she also appeared in the Arthur Dong documentary episode "Out Rage '69", part of the PBS series "The Question of Equality", and gave an extensive interview to gay journalist Randy Wicker in which she discussed her suicide attempts, Johnson's life and death, and her advocacy for poor and working-class gay people made homeless by the AIDS crisis.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: At various times in her life, Rivera battled substance abuse and lived on the streets, largely in the gay homeless community at the Christopher Street docks. Her experiences made her more focused on advocacy for those who, in her view, were left behind by the mainstream society and the assimilationist sectors of the gay community. Rivera fought partly for herself for those reasons but most importantly for the rights of people of color and low-income LGBT people. As someone who suffered from systematic poverty and racism, she used her voice for unity, sharing her stories, pain, and struggles to show her community they are not alone. She amplified the voices of the most vulnerable members of the gay community: drag queens, homeless youth, gay inmates in prison and jail, and transgender people.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: In the last five years of her life, Rivera gave a number of speeches about the Stonewall Uprising and the necessity for all transgender people (which Rivera, in this early definition, defined as including drag queens and butch dykes) to fight for their legacy at the forefront of the LGBT movement. She traveled to Italy for the Millennium March in 2000, where she was acclaimed as the "mother of all gay people". In early 2001, after a service at the Metropolitan Community Church of New York referring to the Star of Bethlehem announcing the birth of Jesus, she decided to resurrect STAR as an active political organization (now changing "Transvestite" to the more recently coined term "Transgender," which at that time was understood to include all gender-nonconforming people).


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: STAR fought for the New York City Transgender Rights Bill and for a trans-inclusive New York State Sexual Orientation Non Discrimination Act. STAR also sponsored street pressures for justice for Amanda Milan, a transgender woman murdered in 2000. Rivera attacked Human Rights Campaign and Empire State Pride Agenda as organizations that were standing in the way of transgender rights. On her deathbed she met with Matt Foreman and Joe Grabarz of ESPA to negotiate transgender inclusion in its political structure and agenda.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: Rivera was angered that in the late 1990s and early 2000s she perceived the significance of drag queens and drag culture being minimized by the ostensibly assimilationist gay rights agenda, particularly by new would-be "gay leaders" who were focusing on military service (Don't Ask Don't Tell) and marriage equality. Rivera's conflicts with these newer, more mainstream, LGBT groups were emblematic of the mainstream LGBT movement's strained relationship to the radical politics of many earlier gay liberation activists. After Rivera's death, Michael Bronski recalled her anger when she felt that she was being marginalized within the community, in "Hell hath no fury like a drag queen scorned":


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: After Gay Liberation Front folded and the more reformist Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) became New York's primary gay rights group, Sylvia Rivera worked hard within their ranks in 1971 to promote a citywide gay rights, anti-discrimination ordinance. But for all of her work, when it came time to make deals, GAA dropped the portions in the civil rights bill that dealt with transvestitism and drag — it just wasn't possible to pass it with such "extreme" elements included. As it turned out, it wasn't possible to pass the bill anyway until 1986. But not only was the language of the bill changed, GAA — which was becoming increasingly more conservative, several of its founders and officers had plans to run for public office — even changed its political agenda to exclude issues of transvestitism and drag. It was also not unusual for Sylvia to be urged to "front" possibly dangerous demonstrations, but when the press showed up, she would be pushed aside by the more middle-class, "straight-appearing" leadership. In 1995, Rivera was still hurt: "When things started getting more mainstream, it was like, 'We don't need you no more'". But, she added, "Hell hath no fury like a drag queen scorned".


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: According to Bronski, Rivera was banned from New York's Gay & Lesbian Community Center for several years in the mid-1990s, because, on a cold winter's night, she aggressively demanded that the Center take care of poor and homeless queer youth. A short time before her death, Bronski reports that she said:


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: One of our main goals now is to destroy the Human Rights Campaign, because I'm tired of sitting on the back of the bumper. It's not even the back of the bus anymore — it's the back of the bumper. The bitch on wheels is back.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: Rivera's struggles did not relate exclusively to gay and trans people, as they intersected with issues of poverty and discrimination faced by people of color, which caused friction in the GAA as it was mainly made up of white middle-class gay people. The transgender person-of-color activist and scholar Jessi Gan discusses how mainstream LGBT groups have routinely dismissed or not paid sufficient attention to Rivera's Latina identity, while Puerto Rican and Latino groups have often not fully acknowledged Rivera's contribution to their struggles for civil rights. Tim Retzloff has discussed this issue with respect to the omission of discussions about race and ethnicity in mainstream U.S. LGBT history, particularly with regard to Rivera's legacy.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: Rivera's gender identity was complex and varied throughout her life. In 1971, she spoke of herself as a "half sister". In her essay "Transvestites: Your Half Sisters and Half Brothers of the Revolution", she specifically claims her use of "transvestite" as applying to only the gay community: "Transvestites are homosexual men and women who dress in clothes of the opposite sex. Male transvestites dress and live as women. Half sisters like myself are women with the minds of women trapped in male bodies."


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: In interviews and writings in her later years, notably her 1995 interview with Randy Wicker and her 2002 essay, "Queens In Exile, The Forgotten Ones," she expressed a fluid take on gender and sexuality, referring to herself alternately as a gay man, a "gay girl", and a drag queen/street queen, embodying all of these experiences and seeing none of these identities as excluding the others. Rivera writes of having considered gender reassignment surgery much earlier in life, but of ultimately choosing to reject it, taking hormones only near the end of her life.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: I left home at age 10 in 1961. I hustled on 42nd Street. The early 60s was not a good time for drag queens, effeminate boys or boys that wore makeup like we did. Back then we were beat up by the police, by everybody. I didn't really come out as a drag queen until the late 60s when drag queens were arrested, what degradation there was. I remember the first time I got arrested, I wasn't even in full drag. I was walking down the street and the cops just snatched me.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: People now want to call me a lesbian because I'm with Julia, and I say, "No. I'm just me. I'm not a lesbian." I'm tired of being labeled. I don't even like the label "transgender". I'm tired of living with labels. I just want to be who I am. I am Sylvia Rivera. Ray Rivera left home at the age of 10 to become Sylvia. And that's who I am.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: Rivera died during the dawn hours of February 19, 2002, at St. Vincent's Hospital, of complications from liver cancer. Activist Riki Wilchins noted, "In many ways, Sylvia was the Rosa Parks of the modern transgender movement, a term that was not even coined until two decades after Stonewall".


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: As an active member of the Metropolitan Community Church of New York, Rivera ministered through the Church's food pantry, which provides food to hungry people. As well, recalling her life as a child on the streets, she remained a passionate advocate for queer youth. MCC New York has a food pantry called the Sylvia Rivera Food Pantry, and its queer youth shelter is called Sylvia's Place, both in her honor.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: Named in her honor (and established in 2002), the Sylvia Rivera Law Project is dedicated "to guarantee that all people are free to self-determine gender identity and expression, regardless of income or race, and without facing harassment, discrimination or violence".


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: In 2002, actor/comedian Jade Esteban Estrada portrayed Rivera in the well-received solo musical "ICONS: The Lesbian and Gay History of the World, Vol. 1" (directed by Aliza Washabaugh-Durand and produced by Aliza Washabaugh-Durand and Christopher Durand) winning Rivera renewed national attention.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: In 2005, the corner of Christopher and Hudson streets was renamed "Sylvia Rivera Way" in her honor. This intersection is in Greenwich Village, the neighborhood in New York City where Rivera started organizing, and is only two blocks from the Stonewall Inn.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: In January 2007, a new musical based upon Rivera's life, "Sylvia So Far", premiered in New York at La Mama in a production starring Bianca Leigh as Rivera and Peter Proctor as Marsha P. Johnson. The composer and lyricist is Timothy Mathis ("Wallflowers, Our Story Too, The Conjuring"), a friend of Rivera's in real life. The show moved off-Broadway in the winter of 2007/2008.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: The Spring 2007 issue of "CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies", which was dedicated to "Puerto Rican Queer Sexualities" and published at Hunter College, included a special dossier on Rivera, including a transcription of a talk by Rivera from 2001 as well as two academic essays exploring the intersections of Rivera's trans and Latina identities. The articles in this journal issue complement other essays by Puerto Rican scholars who have also emphasized Rivera's pioneering role.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: In 2014, The Social Justice Hub at The New School’s newly opened University Center was named the Baldwin Rivera Boggs Center after activists James Baldwin, Sylvia Rivera, and Grace Lee Boggs.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: In 2015, a portrait of Rivera was added to the National Portrait Gallery, making Rivera the first transgender activist to be featured in the gallery.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: In 2018, "Happy Birthday, Marsha!" a short film about Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, set in the hours before the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City, was released.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: A large, painted mural depicting Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson went on display in Dallas, Texas, in 2019 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. The painting of the "two pioneers of the gay rights movement" in front of a transgender flag claims to be the world's largest mural honoring the trans community.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: In May 2019, it was announced that LGBT rights activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera would be commemorated with a monument in New York's Greenwich Village, near the epicenter of the historic Stonewall riots. The monument was publicly announced on May 30, in honor of the 50th anniversary of Stonewall and just in time for Pride month.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: In June 2019, the Italian city of Livorno dedicated a green area to Rivera, called Parco Sylvia Rivera.


title: Sylvia Rivera

text: In June 2019, Rivera was one of the inaugural fifty American "pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes" inducted on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor within the Stonewall National Monument (SNM) in New York City’s Stonewall Inn. The SNM is the first U.S. national monument dedicated to LGBTQ rights and history, and the wall's unveiling was timed to take place during the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.


title: Bhagam Bhag

text: Bhagam Bhag () is a 2006 Indian Hindi-language comedy thriller film written and directed by Priyadarshan from the screenplay by Neeraj Vora. It was produced by Sunil Shetty and Dhilin Mehta. The film stars Akshay Kumar, Govinda and Paresh Rawal as leads alongside Lara Dutta, Rajpal Yadav, Jackie Shroff, Arbaaz Khan, Shakti Kapoor, Manoj Joshi, Razak Khan, Sharat Saxena and Asrani. The film is a remake of 1995 Malayalam film "Mannar Mathai Speaking" which itself was based on the 1958 movie "Vertigo".


title: Bhagam Bhag

text: The film released theatrically on 22 December 2006, during Christmas, received mixed reviews from the critics but it was commercially successful and became 9th highest grossing film of the year.


title: Bhagam Bhag

text: Champak Chaturvedi runs a theatrical troupe in India. He hires two men, Bunty – a graduate in arts, and Babla - who cannot read nor write English. One has to play the role of the play's hero, while one the villain. Both men end up squabbling with each other, as both want the hero's part. Champak finds out that Bunty has molested the play's heroine, Anjali, and punishes him.


title: Bhagam Bhag

text: The group gets a contract to stage 30 plays in Britain, however, on the day of the departure, Anjali opts out, leaving Champak no alternative but to travel without a heroine, but hoping to recruit one while in Britain. Upon arrival, Babla sets about to find a suitable heroine from the Indian population. In order to find one on the advice of Gullu, a cab driver, he goes to a garden where he has his suitcase accidentally switched by two men containing heroin, and as a result, both men, Bunty and Babla end up being considered suspects by the local Police, whose Commissioner is an Indian, J.D. Mehra.


title: Bhagam Bhag

text: The two men who switched the suitcase are revealed to be working under Manubhai Gandhi, a builder who is also a drug smuggler. Bunty, who wants to become the hero of the play, recruits a woman named Munni whom he first witnesses attempting suicide. Munni is accepted as the heroine of the play and through the course of time, both Munni and Bunty fall in love with each other. But Munni has an accident with a vehicle and ends up in a hospital.


title: Bhagam Bhag

text: When she regains her senses, she tells everyone that she is Nisha Chauhan, and is married to Vikram, who lives in Liverpool. The doctor tells Bunty that Munni/Nisha has suicidal tendencies and thus had attempted suicide by jumping in front of the vehicle. Vikram arrives, thanks to everyone, and takes his wife home. A few days later, Bunty receives a phone call from a frantic Nisha, who tells him to come over immediately. He, along with Champak and Babla, arrive there to find her body in flames. She is declared dead in hospital.


title: Bhagam Bhag

text: Now the troupe is on the hunt for another heroine for their play – when the unexplainable happens – as Bunty claims that he saw Nisha. No one believes him. They decide to enact the play in which there is no need of a heroine. On the play night, a frightened Champak also claims to have seen Nisha in the washroom of the theatre. But the more terrifying incident happens when a gun-holding Vikram bumps into Babla, Bunty and Champak and Bunty accidentally presses the trigger of the gun, killing him. They hide the body of Vikram and a blood stained kurta of Champak to avoid any suspicion. They go on to perform the play, but Vikram's body falls on the stage out of nowhere.


title: Bhagam Bhag

text: JD Mehra, who was present in the audience, investigates the case and find Champak's blood stained kurta and Babla's chain on the body of Vikram and has the trio arrested. When the trio is being taken in a police car, Gandhi's two men throw a bomb in the car out of revenge as they suspect the trio to be secret police, which compels them to escape.


title: Bhagam Bhag

text: Bunty suggests that they'll have to prove their innocence to get out of this trouble and for that, they need to find Nisha. They find out that Nisha has booked a ticket to Mumbai under the name of Aditi Desai. They call at the number she registered for booking and find out she has assumed the name of Sheetal and works at the bar.


title: Bhagam Bhag

text: Bunty, Babla and Champak go to find the girl working at a bar and go looking for her in the bar, only to find another girl named Sheetal working there. They decide to follow her as they suspect her to be a friend of Nisha. During this time, Champak is kidnapped by Gandhi's men and they torture him to get the info, that they suspect he knows about their drug smuggling business.


title: Bhagam Bhag

text: Babla and Bunty follow Sheetal to a train, where they witness her handing the ticket to Mumbai to Nisha and Bunty catches her and chases her to the top of a tower. Nisha reveals that her actual name is Aditi Desai, and she was hired by Vikram Chauhan to act as her real wife, Nisha Chauhan for some time in exchange of 20 lakh and a ticket to India. But, when her work was done and she had to go away, she witnessed Vikram killing her real wife to extort money from her. She tried to save Nisha, but failed to do so. It was the real Nisha who got burnt and died.


title: Bhagam Bhag

text: On the play night, Aditi had come to tell the truth to Bunty and others, but she was seen by Vikram who was also there and wanted to kill Aditi (fake Nisha), who was the only witness in his wife's murder. But before he could kill her, JD Mehra, the police officer shot him. He was already wounded when he encountered Bunty, Babla and Champak. JD also reaches there, and tells his side of the story, that he killed Vikram to avenge his sister, Nisha's death. He tries to kill Aditi, as she was also the only witness in Vikram's murder, but before this happens, Gandhi's two men, Champak, Gullu and some goons reach there.


title: Bhagam Bhag

text: All of them get stuck on the top floor of the tower and a fire brigade team tries to rescue them, but all of them get injured as they fall and land at different places.


title: Bhagam Bhag

text: All of them are admitted to the hospital. JD Mehra books a ticket for Champak's team and surrenders himself to the police.


title: Bhagam Bhag

text: Shooting took place in Oxford, United Kingdom in July–August 2006, filming at several University of Oxford landmarks. The film borrows core plot from the Malayalam film "Mannar Mathai Speaking" with comedy sub plots from another Malayalam film "Nadodikkattu". The plot twist in the climax was borrowed from the 1999 Marathi thriller "Bindhaast" which Priyadarshan had earlier remade in Tamil as "Snegithiye" abd Malayalam as "Raakilipattu". The climax comedy sequence was adapted from the 1963 classic "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World".


title: Bhagam Bhag

text: "The Times of India" gave the film 3 out of 5 stars and stated, "The actors try hard, but the script and the dialogues let them down. Even the situations aren't funny enough, except for a few. Case in point, watch Paresh trying to chew a grenade and Govinda asking for a bite too. Funny!" Taran Adarsh of "Bollywood Hungama" gave the film 3 out of 5 stars and stated, ""Bhagam Bhag" will be loved for its comedy in the first hour, but the whodunit in the second hour tapers the impact." Gullu Singh of "Rediff.com" gave the film 2 out of 5 stars and stated, "The real hero of the film is Kumar. He outshines everyone and has some of the best dialogues in the film. He is a treat to watch." Indu Mirani of "DNA India" gave the film 0.5 out of 5 stars and stated, "Ever since Priyadarshan made "Hera Pheri" in 2000, he has been continually repeating the formula. When he doesn't do so, as with "Kyon Ki" (2005), he fails miserably."


title: Bhagam Bhag

text: The film was worldwide released on 21 December 2006. The DVD of the movie was released by T-Series Home Entertainment. The film has been made streaming available on JioCinema , Zee5 , MX Player and Amazon Prime Video since 2020.


title: Superstition (song)

text: "Superstition" is a song by American singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder. It was released on October 24, 1972, as the lead single from his fifteenth studio album, "Talking Book" (1972), by Tamla. The lyrics describe popular superstitions and their negative effects.


title: Superstition (song)

text: "Superstition" reached number one in the U.S. "Billboard" Hot 100 in January 1973 and on the soul singles chart. It was Wonder's first number-one single since "Fingertips, Pt. 2" in 1963. It peaked at number eleven in the UK Singles Chart in February 1973. In November 2004, "Rolling Stone" ranked the song number 74 on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It was re-ranked number 73 on its 2010 list, and re-ranked number 12 on its 2021 list. At the 16th Grammy Awards, the song won Stevie Wonder two Grammys for writing (Best Rhythm & Blues Song) and performing (Best R&B Vocal Performance, Male).


title: Superstition (song)

text: Jeff Beck was an admirer of Wonder's music, and Wonder was informed of this prior to the "Talking Book" album sessions. Though at this point he was playing virtually all of the instruments on his songs by himself, Wonder preferred to let other guitarists play on his records, and he liked the idea of a collaboration with Beck. An agreement was quickly made for Beck to become involved in the sessions that became the "Talking Book" album, in return for Wonder writing him a song.


title: Superstition (song)

text: Between the album sessions, Beck came up with the opening drum beat. Wonder told Beck to keep playing while he improvised over the top of it. He improvised most of the song, including the riff, on the spot. Beck and Wonder created a rough demo for the song that day.


title: Superstition (song)

text: After finishing the song, Wonder decided that he would allow Beck to record "Superstition" as part of their agreement. Originally, the plan was for Beck to release his version of the song first, with his newly formed power trio Beck, Bogert & Appice. However, due to the combination of the trio's debut album getting delayed and Motown CEO Berry Gordy's prediction that "Superstition" would be a huge hit and greatly increase the sales of "Talking Book", Wonder released the song as the "Talking Book" lead single months ahead of Beck's version, the latter being issued in March 1973 on the "Beck, Bogert & Appice" album.


title: Superstition (song)

text: The funky clavinet riff played on a Hohner Clavinet model C, the Moog synthesizer bass and the vocals were also performed by Wonder. In addition, the song features trumpet and tenor saxophone, played respectively by Steve Madaio and Trevor Lawrence.


title: Superstition (song)

text: "Cash Box" described it as a "one of [Wonder's] most impressive releases to date" with an "accent...on funk."


title: Superstition (song)

text: Wonder appeared in Bud Light commercials that debuted during the Super Bowl in 2013. As part of the "It's only weird if it doesn't work" campaign, which showed superstitious fans acting compulsively in an effort to guide their teams to victory, Wonder appeared as a witch doctor in New Orleans (where the 2013 Super Bowl took place). These fans would perform numerous superstitious acts in order to receive good luck charms from him. The song "Superstition," specifically the beginning instrumental portion before Wonder's vocals kick in, plays throughout these commercials.


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: The Battle of Blenheim (; ; ) fought on , was a major battle of the War of the Spanish Succession. The overwhelming Allied victory ensured the safety of Vienna from the Franco-Bavarian army, thus preventing the collapse of the reconstituted Grand Alliance.


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: Louis XIV of France sought to knock the Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold, out of the war by seizing Vienna, the Habsburg capital, and gain a favourable peace settlement. The dangers to Vienna were considerable: Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria, and Marshal Ferdinand de Marsin's forces in Bavaria threatened from the west, and Marshal Louis Joseph de Bourbon, duc de Vendôme's large army in northern Italy posed a serious danger with a potential offensive through the Brenner Pass. Vienna was also under pressure from Rákóczi's Hungarian revolt from its eastern approaches. Realising the danger, the Duke of Marlborough resolved to alleviate the peril to Vienna by marching his forces south from Bedburg to help maintain Emperor Leopold within the Grand Alliance.


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: A combination of deception and skilled administration – designed to conceal his true destination from friend and foe alike – enabled Marlborough to march unhindered from the Low Countries to the River Danube in five weeks. After securing Donauwörth on the Danube, Marlborough sought to engage Maximilian's and Marsin's army before Marshal Camille d'Hostun, duc de Tallard, could bring reinforcements through the Black Forest. The Franco-Bavarian commanders proved reluctant to fight until their numbers were deemed sufficient, and Marlborough failed in his attempts to force an engagement. When Tallard arrived to bolster Maximilian's army, and Prince Eugene of Savoy arrived with reinforcements for the Allies, the two armies finally met on the banks of the Danube in and around the small village of Blindheim, from which the English "Blenheim" is derived.


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: Blenheim was one of the battles that altered the course of the war, which until then was favouring the French and Spanish Bourbons. Although the battle did not win the war, it prevented a potentially devastating loss for the Grand Alliance and shifted the war's momentum, ending French plans of knocking Emperor Leopold out of the war. The French suffered catastrophic casualties in the battle, including their commander-in-chief, Tallard, who was taken captive to England. Before the 1704 campaign ended, the Allies had taken Landau, and the towns of Trier and Trarbach on the Moselle in preparation for the following year's campaign into France itself. This offensive never materialised, for the Grand Alliance's army had to depart the Moselle to defend Liège from a French counter-offensive. The war continued for another decade before ending in 1714.


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: By 1704, the War of the Spanish Succession was in its fourth year. The previous year had been one of successes for France and her allies, most particularly on the Danube, where Marshal Claude-Louis-Hector de Villars and Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria, had created a direct threat to Vienna, the Habsburg capital. Vienna had been saved by dissension between the two commanders, leading to Villars being replaced by the less dynamic Marshal Ferdinand de Marsin. Nevertheless, the threat was still real: Rákóczi's Hungarian revolt was threatening the Empire's eastern approaches, and Marshal Louis Joseph, Duke of Vendôme's forces threatened an invasion from northern Italy. In the courts of Versailles and Madrid, Vienna's fall was confidently anticipated, an event which would almost certainly have led to the collapse of the reconstituted Grand Alliance.


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: To isolate the Danube from any Allied intervention, Marshal François de Neufville, duc de Villeroi's 46,000 troops were expected to pin the 70,000 Dutch and British troops around Maastricht in the Low Countries, while General Robert Jean Antoine de Franquetot de Coigny protected Alsace against surprise with a further corps. The only forces immediately available for Vienna's defence were Prince Louis of Baden's 36,000 men stationed in the Lines of Stollhofen to watch Marshal Camille d'Hostun, duc de Tallard, at Strasbourg; and 10,000 men under Prince Eugene of Savoy south of Ulm.


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: Both the Imperial Austrian Ambassador in London, Count Wratislaw, and the Duke of Marlborough realised the implications of the situation on the Danube. The Dutch were against any adventurous military operation as far south as the Danube and would not permit any major weakening of the forces in the Spanish Netherlands. Marlborough, realising the only way to reinforce the Austrians was by the use of secrecy and guile, set out to deceive his Dutch allies by pretending to move his troops to the Moselle – a plan approved of by The Hague – but once there, he would slip the Dutch leash and link up with Austrian forces in southern Germany.


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: This does not mean that he proceeded entirely without consultation with the Dutch. Intensive consultations preceded the campaign and some Dutchmen, such as Major-General Johan Wijnand van Goor, were in favour of helping the emperor and participated in the campaign. The Dutch diplomat Van Rechteren-Almelo also played an important role. He made sure that on their 450 kilometer long march, the allies would nowhere be denied passage by local rulers or had to look for provisions, horse feed or new boots themselves. He also saw to it that sufficient stopovers were arranged along the way to ensure that the allies arrived at their destination in good condition. This was of paramount importance, as the success of the operation depended on a quick elimination of the Bavarian elector. However, it was not possible to make the logistical arrangements in advance that would have been indispensable to supply the Allied army south of the Danube. For this, the Allies should have had access to Ulm and Augsburg, but the Bavarian elector had taken these two cities. This could become a problem for Marlborough if the elector avoided a battle and entrenched himself south of the Danube and validate the concerns of his Dutch opponents if Villeroy then managed to take advantage of the weakening of Allied forces in the Netherlands by recapturing Liège and lay siege to Maastricht.


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: Marlborough's march started on 19 May from Bedburg, northwest of Cologne. The army assembled by Marlborough's brother, General Charles Churchill, consisted of 66 squadrons of cavalry, 31 battalions of infantry and 38 guns and mortars, totalling 21,000 men, 16,000 of whom were British. This force was augmented en route, and by the time it reached the Danube it numbered 40,00047 battalions and 88 squadrons. While Marlborough led this army south, the Dutch general, Henry Overkirk, Count of Nassau, maintained a defensive position in the Dutch Republic against the possibility of Villeroi mounting an attack. Marlborough had assured the Dutch that if the French were to launch an offensive he would return in good time, but he calculated that as he marched south, the French army would be drawn after him. In this assumption Marlborough proved correct: Villeroi shadowed Marlborough with 30,000 men in 60 squadrons and 42 battalions. Marlborough wrote to Godolphin "I am very sensible that I take a great deal upon me, but should I act otherwise, the Empire would be undone ..."


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: While the Allies were making their preparations, the French were striving to maintain and re-supply Marsin. He had been operating with Maximilian II against Prince Louis, and was somewhat isolated from France: his only lines of communication lay through the rocky passes of the Black Forest. On 14 May, Tallard brought 8,000 reinforcements and vast supplies and munitions through the difficult terrain, whilst outmanoeuvring , the Imperial general who sought to block his path. Tallard then returned with his own force to the Rhine, once again side-stepping Thüngen's efforts to intercept him.


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: On 26 May, Marlborough reached Coblenz, where the Moselle meets the Rhine. If he intended an attack along the Moselle his army would now have to turn west; instead it crossed to the right bank of the Rhine, and was reinforced by 5,000 waiting Hanoverians and Prussians. The French realised that there would be no campaign on the Moselle. A second possible objective now occurred to theman Allied incursion into Alsace and an attack on Strasbourg. Marlborough furthered this apprehension by constructing bridges across the Rhine at Philippsburg, a ruse that not only encouraged Villeroi to come to Tallard's aid in the defence of Alsace, but one that ensured the French plan to march on Vienna was delayed while they waited to see what Marlborough's army would do.


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: Encouraged by Marlborough's promise to return to the Netherlands if a French attack developed there, transferring his troops up the Rhine on barges at a rate of a day, the Dutch States General agreed to release the Danish contingent of seven battalions and 22 squadrons as reinforcements. Marlborough reached Ladenburg, in the plain of the Neckar and the Rhine, and there halted for three days to rest his cavalry and allow the guns and infantry to close up. On 6 June he arrived at Wiesloch, south of Heidelberg. The following day, the Allied army swung away from the Rhine towards the hills of the Swabian Jura and the Danube beyond. At last Marlborough's destination was established without doubt.


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: On 10 June, Marlborough met for the first time the President of the Imperial War Council, Prince Eugene – accompanied by Count Wratislaw – at the village of Mundelsheim, halfway between the Danube and the Rhine. By 13 June, the Imperial Field Commander, Prince Louis, had joined them in Großheppach. The three generals commanded a force of nearly 110,000 men. At this conference, it was decided that Prince Eugene would return with 28,000 men to the Lines of Stollhofen on the Rhine to watch Villeroi and Tallard and prevent them going to the aid of the Franco-Bavarian army on the Danube. Meanwhile, Marlborough's and Prince Louis's forces would combine, totalling 80,000 men, and march on the Danube to seek out Maximilian II and Marsin before they could be reinforced.


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: Knowing Marlborough's destination, Tallard and Villeroi met at Landau in the Palatinate on 13 June to construct a plan to save Bavaria. The rigidity of the French command system was such that any variations from the original plan had to be sanctioned by Versailles. The Count of Mérode-Westerloo, commander of the Flemish troops in Tallard's army, wrote "One thing is certain: we delayed our march from Alsace for far too long and quite inexplicably." Approval from King Louis arrived on 27 June: Tallard was to reinforce Marsin and Maximilian II on the Danube via the Black Forest, with 40 battalions and 50 squadrons; Villeroi was to pin down the Allies defending the Lines of Stollhofen, or, if the Allies should move all their forces to the Danube, he was to join with Tallard; Coigny with 8,000 men would protect Alsace. On 1 July Tallard's army of 35,000 re-crossed the Rhine at Kehl and began its march.


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: On 22 June, Marlborough's forces linked up with Prince Louis' Imperial forces at Launsheim, having covered in five weeks. Thanks to a carefully planned timetable, the effects of wear and tear had been kept to a minimum. Captain Parker described the march discipline: "As we marched through the country of our Allies, commissars were appointed to furnish us with all manner of necessaries for man and horse ... the soldiers had nothing to do but pitch their tents, boil kettles and lie down to rest." In response to Marlborough's manoeuvres, Maximilian and Marsin, conscious of their numerical disadvantage with only 40,000 men, moved their forces to the entrenched camp at Dillingen on the north bank of the Danube. Marlborough could not attack Dillingen because of a lack of siege guns – he had been unable to bring any from the Low Countries, and Prince Louis had failed to supply any, despite prior assurances that he would.


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: The Allies needed a base for provisions and a good river crossing. Consequently, on 2 July Marlborough stormed the fortress of Schellenberg on the heights above the town of Donauwörth. Count Jean d'Arco had been sent with 12,000 men from the Franco-Bavarian camp to hold the town and grassy hill but after a fierce battle, with heavy casualties on both sides, Schellenberg fell. This forced Donauwörth to surrender shortly afterwards. Maximilian, knowing his position at Dillingen was now not tenable, took up a position behind the strong fortifications of Augsburg.


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: Tallard's march presented a dilemma for Prince Eugene. If the Allies were not to be outnumbered on the Danube, he realised that he had to either try to cut Tallard off before he could get there, or to reinforce Marlborough. If he withdrew from the Rhine to the Danube, Villeroi might also make a move south to link up with Maximilian and Marsin. Prince Eugene compromisedleaving 12,000 troops behind guarding the Lines of Stollhofenhe marched off with the rest of his army to forestall Tallard.


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: Lacking in numbers, Prince Eugene could not seriously disrupt Tallard's march but the French marshal's progress was proving slow. Tallard's force had suffered considerably more than Marlborough's troops on their march – many of his cavalry horses were suffering from glanders and the mountain passes were proving tough for the 2,000 wagonloads of provisions. Local German peasants, angry at French plundering, compounded Tallard's problems, leading Mérode-Westerloo to bemoan – "the enraged peasantry killed several thousand of our men before the army was clear of the Black Forest."


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: At Augsburg, Maximilian was informed on 14 July that Tallard was on his way through the Black Forest. This good news bolstered his policy of inaction, further encouraging him to wait for the reinforcements. This reticence to fight induced Marlborough to undertake a controversial policy of spoliation in Bavaria, burning buildings and crops throughout the rich lands south of the Danube. This had two aims: firstly to put pressure on Maximilian to fight or come to terms before Tallard arrived with reinforcements; and secondly, to ruin Bavaria as a base from which the French and Bavarian armies could attack Vienna, or pursue Marlborough into Franconia if, at some stage, he had to withdraw northwards. But this destruction, coupled with a protracted siege of Rain over 9 to 16 July, caused Prince Eugene to lament "... since the Donauwörth action I cannot admire their performances", and later to conclude "If he has to go home without having achieved his objective, he will certainly be ruined."


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: Tallard, with 34,000 men, reached Ulm, joining with Maximilian and Marsin at Augsburg on 5 August, although Maximilian had dispersed his army in response to Marlborough's campaign of ravaging the region. Also on 5 August, Prince Eugene reached Höchstädt, riding that same night to meet with Marlborough at Schrobenhausen. Marlborough knew that another crossing point over the Danube was required in case Donauwörth fell to the enemy. So on 7 August, the first of Prince Louis' 15,000 Imperial troops left Marlborough's main force to besiege the heavily defended city of Ingolstadt, farther down the Danube, with the remainder following two days later.


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: With Prince Eugene's forces at Höchstädt on the north bank of the Danube, and Marlborough's at Rain on the south bank, Tallard and Maximilian debated their next move. Tallard preferred to bide his time, replenish supplies and allow Marlborough's Danube campaign to flounder in the colder autumn weather; Maximilian and Marsin, newly reinforced, were keen to push ahead. The French and Bavarian commanders eventually agreed to attack Prince Eugene's smaller force. On 9 August, the Franco-Bavarian forces began to cross to the north bank of the Danube. On 10 August, Prince Eugene sent an urgent dispatch reporting that he was falling back to Donauwörth. By a series of swift marches Marlborough concentrated his forces on Donauwörth and, by noon 11 August, the link-up was complete.


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: During 11 August, Tallard pushed forward from the river crossings at Dillingen. By 12 August, the Franco-Bavarian forces were encamped behind the small River Nebel near the village of Blenheim on the plain of Höchstädt. The same day, Marlborough and Prince Eugene carried out a reconnaissance of the French position from the church spire at Tapfheim, and moved their combined forces to Münster – from the French camp. A French reconnaissance under Jacques Joseph Vipart, Marquis de Silly went forward to probe the enemy, but were driven off by Allied troops who had deployed to cover the pioneers of the advancing army, labouring to bridge the numerous streams in the area and improve the passage leading westwards to Höchstädt. Marlborough quickly moved forward two brigades under the command of Lieutenant General John Wilkes and Brigadier Archibald Rowe to secure the narrow strip of land between the Danube and the wooded Fuchsberg hill, at the Schwenningen defile. Tallard's army numbered 56,000 men and 90 guns; the army of the Grand Alliance, 52,000 men and 66 guns. Some Allied officers who were acquainted with the superior numbers of the enemy, and aware of their strong defensive position, remonstrated with Marlborough about the hazards of attacking; but he was resolute. Partly because the Dutch officer Willem Vleertman had scouted the marshy ground before them and reported that the land was perfectly suitable for the troops.


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: The battlefield stretched for nearly . The extreme right flank of the Franco-Bavarian army rested on the Danube, the undulating pine-covered hills of the Swabian Jura lay to their left. A small stream, the Nebel, fronted the French line; the ground either side of this was marshy and only fordable intermittently. The French right rested on the village of Blenheim near where the Nebel flows into the Danube; the village itself was surrounded by hedges, fences, enclosed gardens, and meadows. Between Blenheim and the village of Oberglauheim to the north west the fields of wheat had been cut to stubble and were now ideal for the deployment of troops. From Oberglauheim to the next hamlet of Lutzingen the terrain of ditches, thickets and brambles was potentially difficult ground for the attackers.


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: At 02:00 on 13 August, 40 Allied cavalry squadrons were sent forward, followed at 03:00, in eight columns, by the main Allied force pushing over the River Kessel. At about 06:00 they reached Schwenningen, from Blenheim. The British and German troops who had held Schwenningen through the night joined the march, making a ninth column on the left of the army. Marlborough and Prince Eugene made their final plans. The Allied commanders agreed that Marlborough would command 36,000 troops and attack Tallard's force of 33,000 on the left, including capturing the village of Blenheim, while Prince Eugene's 16,000 men would attack Maximilian and Marsin's combined forces of 23,000 troops on the right. If this attack was pressed hard, it was anticipated that Maximilian and Marsin would feel unable to send troops to aid Tallard on their right. Lieutenant-General John Cutts would attack Blenheim in concert with Prince Eugene's attack. With the French flanks busy, Marlborough could cross the Nebel and deliver the fatal blow to the French at their centre. The Allies would have to wait until Prince Eugene was in position before the general engagement could begin.


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: Tallard was not anticipating an Allied attack; he had been deceived by intelligence gathered from prisoners taken by de Silly the previous day, and his army's strong position. Tallard and his colleagues believed that Marlborough and Prince Eugene were about to retreat north-westwards towards Nördlingen. Tallard wrote a report to this effect to King Louis that morning. Signal guns were fired to bring in the foraging parties and pickets as the French and Bavarian troops drew into battle-order to face the unexpected threat.


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: About 08:00 the French artillery on their right wing opened fire, answered by Colonel Holcroft Blood's batteries. The guns were heard by Prince Louis in his camp before Ingolstadt. An hour later Tallard, Maximilian, and Marsin climbed Blenheim's church tower to finalise their plans. It was settled that Maximilian and Marsin would hold the front from the hills to Oberglauheim, whilst Tallard would defend the ground between Oberglauheim and the Danube. The French commanders were divided as to how to utilise the Nebel. Tallard's preferred tactic was to lure the Allies across before unleashing his cavalry upon them. This was opposed by Marsin and Maximilian who felt it better to close their infantry right up to the stream itself, so that while the enemy was struggling in the marshes, they would be caught in crossfire from Blenheim and Oberglauheim. Tallard's approach was sound if all its parts were implemented, but in the event it allowed Marlborough to cross the Nebel without serious interference and fight the battle he had planned.


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: The Franco-Bavarian commanders deployed their forces. In the village of Lutzingen, Count Alessandro de Maffei positioned five Bavarian battalions with a great battery of 16 guns at the village's edge. In the woods to the left of Lutzingen, seven French battalions under César Armand, Marquis de Rozel moved into place. Between Lutzingen and Oberglauheim Maximilian placed 27 squadrons of cavalry and 14 Bavarian squadrons commanded by d'Arco with 13 more in support nearby under Baron Veit Heinrich Moritz Freiherr von Wolframsdorf. To their right stood Marsin's 40 French squadrons and 12 battalions. The village of Oberglauheim was packed with 14 battalions commanded by , including the effective Irish Brigade known as the "Wild Geese". Six batteries of guns were ranged alongside the village. On the right of these French and Bavarian positions, between Oberglauheim and Blenheim, Tallard deployed 64 French and Walloon squadrons, 16 of which were from Marsin, supported by nine French battalions standing near the Höchstädt road. In the cornfield next to Blenheim stood three battalions from the Regiment de Roi. Nine battalions occupied the village itself, commanded by Philippe, Marquis de Clérambault. Four battalions stood to the rear and a further eleven were in reserve. These battalions were supported by Count Gabriel d'Hautefeuille's twelve squadrons of dismounted dragoons. By 11:00 Tallard, Maximilian, and Marsin were in place. Many of the Allied generals were hesitant to attack such a strong position. The Earl of Orkney later said that, "had I been asked to give my opinion, I had been against it."


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: Prince Eugene was expected to be in position by 11:00, but due to the difficult terrain and enemy fire, progress was slow. Cutts' column – which by 10:00 had expelled the enemy from two water mills on the Nebel – had already deployed by the river against Blenheim, enduring over the next three hours severe fire from a six-gun heavy battery posted near the village. The rest of Marlborough's army, waiting in their ranks on the forward slope, were also forced to bear the cannonade from the French artillery, suffering 2,000 casualties before the attack could even start. Meanwhile, engineers repaired a stone bridge across the Nebel, and constructed five additional bridges or causeways across the marsh between Blenheim and Oberglauheim. Marlborough's anxiety was finally allayed when, just past noon, Colonel William Cadogan reported that Prince Eugene's Prussian and Danish infantry were in place – the order for the general advance was given. At 13:00, Cutts was ordered to attack the village of Blenheim whilst Prince Eugene was requested to assault Lutzingen on the Allied right flank.


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: Cutts ordered Rowe's brigade to attack. The English infantry rose from the edge of the Nebel, and silently marched towards Blenheim, a distance of some . James Ferguson's Scottish brigade supported Rowe's left, and moved towards the barricades between the village and the river, defended by Hautefeuille's dragoons. As the range closed to within , the French fired a deadly volley. Rowe had ordered that there should be no firing from his men until he struck his sword upon the palisades, but as he stepped forward to give the signal, he fell mortally wounded. The survivors of the leading companies closed up the gaps in their ranks and rushed forward. Small parties penetrated the defences, but repeated French volleys forced the English back and inflicted heavy casualties. As the attack faltered, eight squadrons of elite Gens d'Armes, commanded by the veteran Swiss officer, , fell on the English troops, cutting at the exposed flank of Rowe's own regiment. Wilkes' Hessian brigade, nearby in the marshy grass at the water's edge, stood firm and repulsed the Gens d'Armes with steady fire, enabling the English and Hessians to re-order and launch another attack.


title: Battle of Blenheim

text: Although the Allies were again repulsed, these persistent attacks on Blenheim eventually bore fruit, panicking Clérambault into making the worst French error of the day. Without consulting Tallard, Clérambault ordered his reserve battalions into the village, upsetting the balance of the French position and nullifying the French numerical superiority. "The men were so crowded in upon one another", wrote Mérode-Westerloo, "that they couldn't even fire – let alone receive or carry out any orders". Marlborough, spotting this error, now countermanded Cutts' intention to launch a third attack, and ordered him simply to contain the enemy within Blenheim; no more than 5,000 Allied soldiers were able to pen in twice the number of French infantry and dragoons.