title: Reichstag (Nazi Germany)

text: In accordance with the provisions of the Weimar Republic electoral law of 1933, one seat was granted for each block of 60,000 votes. Because voter turnout was very high, and also because of new territories added to the Reich, and finally because the voting age was lowered (a compensatory measure adopted prior to the 1936 election to prevent the electorate from shrinking in size as a consequence of the Nuremberg Laws), the Reichstag grew to significantly greater and greater proportions. Finally, there were 855 deputies; Adolf Hitler was No. 433, elected to the Reichstag constituency 24 Upper Bavaria – Swabia.


title: Reichstag (Nazi Germany)

text: The Großdeutsche Reichstag convened for the last time in the Kroll Opera House on 26 April 1942. It unanimously passed a decree proclaiming Hitler "Supreme Judge of the German People", officially allowing him to override the judiciary and administration in all matters. Any last remnants of the privileges of the Reichstag's members were removed and the Führer became "de jure" the final decision-maker, with the power of life and death over every German citizen. In practice, this merely legitimized a situation that had been in place since 1933. For all intents and purposes, this extended the provisions of the Enabling Act indefinitely.


title: Reichstag (Nazi Germany)

text: On 25 January 1943, five days before the expiration of the current Reichstag's term of office, the inauguration of a new body was postponed for another electoral term until 30 January 1947. This was to avoid holding elections while the war was still under way. With the Nazis' defeat in the war, the 1938 elections were the last for the German Reichstag ever, and would be the last all-German elections until the first elections for a reunified Germany in 1990.


title: Oia, Greece

text: Oia or Ia (Greek: Οία, pronounced ) is a small village and former community in the South Aegean on the islands of Thira (Santorini) and Therasia, in the Cyclades, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it has been part of the municipality of Santorini, of which it is a municipal unit. It covers the whole island of Therasia and the northwesternmost part of Santorini, which it shares with the municipal unit of Santorini. The main street is named Nikolaou Nomikou. The population was 1,545 inhabitants at the 2011 census, and the land area is 19.449 km.


title: Oia, Greece

text: Oia was previously known as Apäno Meria (Απάνω Μεριά or Επάνω Μεριά, "upper side"), a name which still occurs locally as Pano Meria, and the inhabitants are still called Apanomerites (Απανωμερίτες). The Ancient Greek Oia was one of the two harbours of ancient Thera and was located in the southeast of the island, where Kamari is now.


title: Oia, Greece

text: Oia reached the peak of prosperity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its economic prosperity was based on its merchant fleet, which plied trade in the Eastern Mediterranean, especially from Alexandria to Russia. The two-story captains' houses built on the highest part of the village are a reminder of the village's former affluence. Part of the town was destroyed by the 1956 earthquake.


title: Oia, Greece

text: The settlement of Oia had been mentioned in various travel reports before the beginning of Venetian rule, when Marco Sanudo founded the Duchy of Naxos in 1207 and feudal rule was instituted on Santorini. Under the da Corogna family, Agios Nikolaos Kastell (Καστέλι του Αγίου Νικολάου), also called Apanomeria (Απανωμερία), was one of five local citadels. Its residential keep, "Goulas", is now in the oldest part of the town, on its southwestern edge.


title: Oia, Greece

text: In 1537, Hayreddin Barbarossa conquered the Aegean islands and placed them under Sultan Selim II. However, Santorini remained under the Crispo family until 1566, passing then to Joseph Nasi and after his death in 1579 to the Ottoman Empire.


title: Oia, Greece

text: From the 16th to the 19th century, the settlement was designated "Apanomeria" on maps. In the mid-17th century, Jean de Thévenot uses the name "Castelli San Nicolas". The name was changed to Oia in the second half of the 19th century.


title: Oia, Greece

text: In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the town was a mariners' town that flourished as a result of seaborne trade throughout the Mediterranean, particularly as part of the trade route between Russia and Alexandria. In 1890 Oia had approximately 2,500 residents and approximately 130 sailing ships. There was a wharf in the bay of Armeni. Excellent wine was produced in quantity in the hinterland and exported to France amongst other places. However, the arrival of steam and the concentration of shipping at Piraeus caused the town's seagoing trade to collapse, and agriculture also diminished as increasing emigration took place, especially to Piraeus and Laurium. The economy of the town declined in the early 20th century on account of wars, economic depression and over extraction of fish resources.


title: Oia, Greece

text: The 7.8 magnitude earthquake on 9 July 1956 caused considerable damage. The epicentre of the strongest aftershock (magnitude 7.2) was located off the northern coast of Santorini. The earthquake was followed by renewed emigration, and in 1977 Oia had only 306 inhabitants. After the earthquake, the village redeveloped into an attractive tourist town of the Cyclades, and is known as a "picture perfect" town which gets crowded with people during the summer season.


title: Oia, Greece

text: Oia is a scenic village on the north west edge of the Santorini island within the Cyclades. It extends for almost along the northern edge of the caldera that forms the island of Santorini, at a height of between above sea level. Immediately to the east is Phinikia (Φοινικιά; Finikia), and about to the north is Tholos (Θόλος). Amoudi Bay lies below the town. The small fishing village of Ormos Armeni (Όρμος Αρμένης) lies below Oia to the south and is reached via steps. There is a ferry connection to Therasia from the harbour village of Ormos Ammoudi (Όρμος Αμμουδιού; also spelled Amoudi) to the west. There are 300 steps down to the port from Oia. The small island of Agios Nikolaos lies to the southwest.


title: Oia, Greece

text: It is built on the steep slope of the caldera and the houses and restaurants are built into niches carved into the caldera on the seaward side. There are narrow passageways and a central square.


title: Oia, Greece

text: The sun light hours in this village are much longer than in the Fira town. Its paths are very narrow and hence get congested during the tourist season. The idyllic surroundings of the town have a complex of white washed, blue domed churches and charming, traditional Cycladic houses and cave houses that are carved into the rock face on top of the cliff. It is set in a location which provides excellent views of the sunset over the caldera. To the southwest, the Bay of Armeni, reachable from the town on foot or by mule, was once an important boat-building centre. Small repairs are now done on a single wharf. Excursion boats for trips around the island and ferries to Therasia leave from here. The harbour of Ammoudi on the western side of the town is reached by steep stairs north of Fort Londsa; there are a few tavernas and a pebble beach.


title: Oia, Greece

text: The village is located on top of a hill, at about elevation, and known as the "Eagles nest" from where Palia and Nea Kameni volcanoes are seen and also the island of Therasia. It is situated to the north of the island and Fira is at distance of . The main street in the town, in the central square, is the main trekking path which is cobbled, called the "Nikalaou Namikaou", which goes up the hill winding round the caldera. The island is reached from Fira which is the transport terminus of the island. Caldera boat cruise options are available from either Oia or Fira.


title: Oia, Greece

text: In Oia the climate is generally temperate and mild. Winter is the wet season and summers are hot and dry. The absolute maximum temperature on record is in June and the absolute minimum in December is . Wind speed varies between in August and in October and February.


title: Oia, Greece

text: Excepting from 1840 to 1851, Oia was an independent community, "Dimos Oias" (Δήμος Οίας) from 1 October 1834 (ΦΕΚ 4/1835). Under the Kapodistrias plan of 1997, it was combined with Therasia to form the rural community of Oia, "Kinotita Ias" (Κοινότητα Οίας). Under the 2010 Kallikratis plan for administrative reform which took effect on 1 January 2011, this was folded into the newly created municipality of Santorini, Dimos Thiras (Δήμος Θήρας), as the district of Oia (Δημοτική Κοινότητα Οιας).


title: Oia, Greece

text: Oia typifies the white-painted houses of the Cyclades, in many cases built directly into niches which are cave houses used by crew of the ships, on the lip of the volcanic crater, between which are narrow alleys and blue-roofed churches with cupolas. The wealthy ship captains of the late 19th century built neo-classical mansions. These houses are seen built in succession one above the other.


title: Oia, Greece

text: In 1976 the town was included in the programme for preservation and development of traditional settlements of the Greek National Tourism Organisation under Aris Konstantinidis. Over 15 years, the programme sought to preserve, restore and find new uses for selected houses and architectural ensembles representative of traditional Greek architecture. Many of the "yposkafa spitia" (υπόσκαφα σπίτια), simple seamen's houses on the edge of the caldera, became guest-houses, hotels and restaurants.


title: Oia, Greece

text: For their work in Oia, the Greek National Tourism Organisation received the Europa Nostra Prize in 1979 and the Prize of the Architecture Biennale in Sofia in 1986.


title: Oia, Greece

text: Oia Community is working with geologists at the University of Athens and the University of Thessaloniki to map the geology of the area and evaluate ground stability, and the President of the Community has restricted construction to minimise risk from future earthquakes.


title: Oia, Greece

text: The town is noted for its white and blue domed houses. The houses are painted in white lime water so that the rainwater which falls over it runs down and can be collected. The other reason for painting the houses white is for aesthetic purposes. The other explanation given is that during the Ottoman rule of Greece, which lasted for over 400 years, Greeks were not allowed to fly their white flag. In defiance, in Oia they painted their entire housing complex in white with domes giving the village an effective white perspective and elegance. Impressive houses in the town are those "cliff houses" built in the niches carved into the caldera slopes with provision of air-filled pumice which provides insulation benefits to the building, keeping it warm in winter and cool in summer.


title: Oia, Greece

text: At the pinnacle point of Oia is the ruined castle which was the seat of the Argyri family under the Venetians and serves as a lookout point with a complete 360-degree view. It is also called Fort Londsa. One of the most recognisable buildings in the town is an old windmill, which often appears on postcards. There are many kiosks offering a range of ethnic goods, handicrafts, jewellery and souvenirs, and several small art galleries, including Art Gallery Oia and The Art Gallery. The town also has numerous restored churches, including Panagia church; some were built in memory of sailors.


title: Oia, Greece

text: Other infrastructure and cultural facilities available in the town are a cultural centre, a bank, ATMS cash services, an internet café, a bus station, a post office, a health clinic and pharmacy, apart from the cafes, bars, restaurants and taverns on the coastal path. The Weaving Mill near the Maritime Museum has many looms and produce fine textiles which are on sale. Also traded in the town are agricultural products like honey, wine, capers and fava beans.


title: Oia, Greece

text: One of the most popular attractions in the town is sunset viewing. It is a special event every evening in Oia from the Sunset Seranade point. At this time the town is crowded with people to watch the spectacle, when the white houses and the caldera catch all the colours of the setting sun for a few seconds.


title: Oia, Greece

text: Another 19th-century mansion in Oia, a block away from the cliff-top, has been restored and converted into the municipal museum of the maritime history of Thira. It displays rare figureheads, ancient nautical charts with English labels, seamen's chests, old maritime equipment such as mastheads, drawings and patterns, models of old and new Thiran ships and historic photographs and has a library containing many letters and documents.


title: Oia, Greece

text: Oia was the centre of the story in the 1982 film "Summer Lovers". Michael and Cathy, two characters in the film, lived a villa in Oia. This villa was bought by a couple in 1987 and has been converted into a gift shop named "Summer Lovers".


title: Oia, Greece

text: In 2004, Oia was used for the location of a few scenes in the movie "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" and again for "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2". Oia was also featured in the opening sequences of the film "", starring Angelina Jolie. The jet ski chase scenes were shot in and around Ammoudi, the old fishing port below Oia. The film was nominated for a "Teen Choice Award" in 2009.


title: Oia, Greece

text: In the 2008 video game "Sonic Unleashed", the level Apotos is based on Oia. The flag for Apotos also resembles the flag of Greece. Also, in the 2016 video game "Overwatch" the level "Ilios" is closely based on Oia.


title: Leo Szilard

text: Leo Szilard (; , pronounced ; born Leó Spitz; February 11, 1898 – May 30, 1964) was a Hungarian-German-American physicist and inventor. He conceived the nuclear chain reaction in 1933, patented the idea of a nuclear fission reactor in 1934, and in late 1939 wrote the letter for Albert Einstein's signature that resulted in the Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb. According to György Marx, he was one of the Hungarian scientists known as The Martians.


title: Leo Szilard

text: Szilard initially attended Palatine Joseph Technical University in Budapest, but his engineering studies were interrupted by service in the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I. He left Hungary for Germany in 1919, enrolling at Technische Hochschule (Institute of Technology) in Berlin-Charlottenburg, but became bored with engineering and transferred to Friedrich Wilhelm University, where he studied physics. He wrote his doctoral thesis on Maxwell's demon, a long-standing puzzle in the philosophy of thermal and statistical physics. Szilard was the first scientist of note to recognize the connection between thermodynamics and information theory.


title: Leo Szilard

text: In addition to the nuclear reactor, Szilard coined and submitted the earliest known patent applications and the first publications for the concepts of electron microscope (1928), the linear accelerator (1928), and the cyclotron (1929) in Germany, proving him as the originator of the idea of these devices. Between 1926 and 1930, he worked with Einstein on the development of the Einstein refrigerator. After Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933, Szilard urged his family and friends to flee Europe while they still could. He moved to England, where he helped found the Academic Assistance Council, an organization dedicated to helping refugee scholars find new jobs. While in England he discovered a means of isotope separation known as the Szilard–Chalmers effect.


title: Leo Szilard

text: Foreseeing another war in Europe, Szilard moved to the United States in 1938, where he worked with Enrico Fermi and Walter Zinn on means of creating a nuclear chain reaction. He was present when this was achieved within the Chicago Pile-1 on December 2, 1942. He worked for the Manhattan Project's Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago on aspects of nuclear reactor design. He drafted the Szilard petition advocating a demonstration of the atomic bomb, but the Interim Committee chose to use them against cities without warning.


title: Leo Szilard

text: After the war, Szilard switched to biology. He invented the chemostat, discovered feedback inhibition, and was involved in the first cloning of a human cell. He publicly sounded the alarm against the possible development of salted thermonuclear bombs, a new kind of nuclear weapon that might annihilate mankind. Diagnosed with bladder cancer in 1960, he underwent a cobalt-60 treatment that he had designed. He helped found the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, where he became a resident fellow. Szilard founded Council for a Livable World in 1962 to deliver "the sweet voice of reason" about nuclear weapons to Congress, the White House, and the American public. He died in his sleep of a heart attack in 1964.


title: Leo Szilard

text: He was born as Leó Spitz in Budapest, Kingdom of Hungary, on February 11, 1898. His middle-class Jewish parents, Lajos (Louis) Spitz, a civil engineer, and Tekla Vidor, raised Leó on the Városligeti Fasor in Pest. He had two younger siblings, a brother, Béla, born in 1900, and a sister, Rózsi, born in 1901. On October 4, 1900, the family changed its surname from the German "Spitz" to the Hungarian "Szilárd", a name that means "solid" in Hungarian. Despite having a religious background, Szilard became an agnostic. From 1908 to 1916 he attended "Reáliskola" high school in his home town. Showing an early interest in physics and a proficiency in mathematics, in 1916 he won the Eötvös Prize, a national prize for mathematics.


title: Leo Szilard

text: With World War I raging in Europe, Szilard received notice on January 22, 1916, that he had been drafted into the 5th Fortress Regiment, but he was able to continue his studies. He enrolled as an engineering student at the Palatine Joseph Technical University, which he entered in September 1916. The following year he joined the Austro-Hungarian Army's 4th Mountain Artillery Regiment, but immediately was sent to Budapest as an officer candidate. He rejoined his regiment in May 1918 but in September, before being sent to the front, he fell ill with Spanish Influenza and was returned home for hospitalization. Later he was informed that his regiment had been nearly annihilated in battle, so the illness probably saved his life. He was discharged honorably in November 1918, after the Armistice.


title: Leo Szilard

text: In January 1919, Szilard resumed his engineering studies, but Hungary was in a chaotic political situation with the rise of the Hungarian Soviet Republic under Béla Kun. Szilard and his brother Béla founded their own political group, the Hungarian Association of Socialist Students, with a platform based on a scheme of Szilard's for taxation reform. He was convinced that socialism was the answer to Hungary's post-war problems, but not that of Kun's Hungarian Socialist Party, which had close ties to the Soviet Union. When Kun's government tottered, the brothers officially changed their religion from "Israelite" to "Calvinist", but when they attempted to re-enroll in what was now the Budapest University of Technology, they were prevented from doing so by nationalist students because they were Jews.


title: Leo Szilard

text: Convinced that there was no future for him in Hungary, Szilard left for Berlin via Austria on December 25, 1919, and enrolled at the Technische Hochschule (Institute of Technology) in Berlin-Charlottenburg. He was soon joined by his brother Béla. Szilard became bored with engineering, and his attention turned to physics. This was not taught at the Technische Hochschule, so he transferred to Friedrich Wilhelm University, where he attended lectures given by Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Walter Nernst, James Franck and Max von Laue. He also met fellow Hungarian students Eugene Wigner, John von Neumann and Dennis Gabor.


title: Leo Szilard

text: Szilard's doctoral dissertation on thermodynamics "Über die thermodynamischen Schwankungserscheinungen" (On The Manifestation of Thermodynamic Fluctuations), praised by Einstein, won top honors in 1922. It involved a long-standing puzzle in the philosophy of thermal and statistical physics known as Maxwell's demon, a thought experiment originated by the physicist James Clerk Maxwell. The problem was thought to be insoluble, but in tackling it Szilard recognized the connection between thermodynamics and information theory.


title: Leo Szilard

text: Szilard was appointed as assistant to von Laue at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in 1924. In 1927 he finished his habilitation and became a "Privatdozent" (private lecturer) in physics. For his habilitation lecture, he produced a second paper on Maxwell's Demon, "Über die Entropieverminderung in einem thermodynamischen System bei Eingriffen intelligenter Wesen" (On the reduction of entropy in a thermodynamic system by the intervention of intelligent beings), that had actually been written soon after the first. This introduced the thought experiment now called the Szilard engine and became important in the history of attempts to understand Maxwell's demon. The paper is also the first equation of negative entropy and information. As such, it established Szilard as one of the founders of information theory, but he did not publish it until 1929, and did not pursue it further. Cybernetics, via the work of Norbert Wiener and Claude E. Shannon, would later develop the concept into a general theory in the 1940s and 1950s—though, during the time of the Cybernetics Meetings, John Von Neumann pointed out that Szilard first equated information with entropy in his review of Wiener's .


title: Leo Szilard

text: Throughout his time in Berlin, Szilard worked on numerous technical inventions. In 1928 he submitted a patent application for the linear accelerator, not knowing of Gustav Ising's prior 1924 journal article and Rolf Widerøe's operational device, and in 1929 applied for one for the cyclotron. He was also the first person to conceive the idea of the electron microscope, and submitted the earliest patent for one in 1928. Between 1926 and 1930, he worked with Einstein to develop the Einstein refrigerator, notable because it had no moving parts. He did not build all of these devices, or publish these ideas in scientific journals, and so credit for them often went to others. As a result, Szilard never received the Nobel Prize, but Ernest Lawrence was awarded it for the cyclotron in 1939, and Ernst Ruska for the electron microscope in 1986.


title: Leo Szilard

text: Szilard received German citizenship in 1930, but was already uneasy about the political situation in Europe. When Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, Szilard urged his family and friends to flee Europe while they still could. He moved to England, and transferred his savings of £1,595 (£ today) from his bank in Zurich to one in London. He lived in hotels where lodging and meals cost about £5.5 a week. For those less fortunate, he helped found the Academic Assistance Council, an organization dedicated to helping refugee scholars find new jobs, and persuaded the Royal Society to provide accommodation for it at Burlington House. He enlisted the help of academics such as Harald Bohr, G. H. Hardy, Archibald Hill and Frederick G. Donnan. By the outbreak of World War II in 1939, it had helped to find places for over 2,500 refugee scholars.


title: Leo Szilard

text: On the morning of September 12, 1933, Szilard read an article in "The Times" summarizing a speech given by Lord Rutherford in which Rutherford rejected the feasibility of using atomic energy for practical purposes. The speech remarked specifically on the recent 1932 work of his students, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, in "splitting" lithium into alpha particles, by bombardment with protons from a particle accelerator they had constructed. Rutherford went on to say:


title: Leo Szilard

text: Szilard was so annoyed at Rutherford's dismissal that, on the same day, he conceived of the idea of nuclear chain reaction (analogous to a chemical chain reaction), using recently discovered neutrons. The idea did not use the mechanism of nuclear fission, which was not yet discovered, but Szilard realized that if neutrons could initiate any sort of energy-producing nuclear reaction, such as the one that had occurred in lithium, and could be produced themselves by the same reaction, energy might be obtained with little input, since the reaction would be self-sustaining. Szilard filed for a patent on the concept of the neutron-induced nuclear chain reaction in 1933, which was granted in 1936. Under section 30 of the "Patents and Designs Act" (1907, UK), Szilard was able to assign the patent to the British Admiralty to ensure its secrecy, which he did. Consequently, his patent was not published until 1949 when the relevant parts of the "Patents and Designs Act" (1907, UK) were repealed by the "Patents Act" (1949, UK). Richard Rhodes described Szilard's moment of inspiration:


title: Leo Szilard

text: Prior to conceiving the nuclear chain reaction, in 1932 Szilard had read H. G. Wells' "The World Set Free", a book describing continuing explosives which Wells termed "atomic bombs"; Szilard wrote in his memoirs the book had made "a very great impression on me." When Szilard assigned his patent to the Admiralty to keep the news from reaching the notice of the wider scientific community, he wrote, "Knowing what this [a chain reaction] would mean—and I knew it because I had read H. G. Wells—I did not want this patent to become public."


title: Leo Szilard

text: In early 1934, Szilard began working at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London. Working with a young physicist on the hospital staff, Thomas A. Chalmers, he began studying radioactive isotopes for medical purposes. It was known that bombarding elements with neutrons could produce either heavier isotopes of an element, or a heavier element, a phenomenon known as the Fermi Effect after its discoverer, the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi. When they bombarded ethyl iodide with neutrons produced by a radon–beryllium source, they found that the heavier radioactive isotopes of iodine separated from the compound. Thus, they had discovered a means of isotope separation. This method became known as the Szilard–Chalmers effect, and was widely used in the preparation of medical isotopes. He also attempted unsuccessfully to create a nuclear chain reaction using beryllium by bombarding it with X-rays.


title: Leo Szilard

text: Szilard visited Béla and Rose and her husband Roland (Lorand) Detre, in Switzerland in September 1937. After a rainstorm, he and his siblings spent an afternoon in an unsuccessful attempt to build a prototype collapsible umbrella. One reason for the visit was that he had decided to emigrate to the United States, as he believed that another war in Europe was inevitable and imminent. He reached New York on the liner on January 2, 1938. Over the next few months he moved from place to place, conducting research with Maurice Goldhaber at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and then the University of Chicago, University of Michigan and the University of Rochester, where he undertook experiments with indium but again failed to initiate a chain reaction.


title: Leo Szilard

text: In November 1938, Szilard moved to New York City, taking a room at the King's Crown Hotel near Columbia University. He encountered John R. Dunning, who invited him to speak about his research at an afternoon seminar in January 1939. That month, Niels Bohr brought news to New York of the discovery of nuclear fission in Germany by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, and its theoretical explanation by Lise Meitner, and Otto Frisch. When Szilard found out about it on a visit to Wigner at Princeton University, he immediately realized that uranium might be the element capable of sustaining a chain reaction.


title: Leo Szilard

text: Unable to convince Fermi that this was the case, Szilard set out on his own. He obtained permission from the head of the Physics Department at Columbia, George B. Pegram, to use a laboratory for three months. To fund his experiment, he borrowed $2,000 from a fellow inventor, Benjamin Liebowitz. He wired Frederick Lindemann at Oxford and asked him to send a beryllium cylinder. He persuaded Walter Zinn to become his collaborator, and hired Semyon Krewer to investigate processes for manufacturing pure uranium and graphite.


title: Leo Szilard

text: Szilard and Zinn conducted a simple experiment on the seventh floor of Pupin Hall at Columbia, using a radium–beryllium source to bombard uranium with neutrons. Initially nothing registered on the oscilloscope, but then Zinn realized that it was not plugged in. On doing so, they discovered significant neutron multiplication in natural uranium, proving that a chain reaction might be possible. Szilard later described the event: "We turned the switch and saw the flashes. We watched them for a little while and then we switched everything off and went home." He understood the implications and consequences of this discovery, though. "That night, there was very little doubt in my mind that the world was headed for grief".


title: Leo Szilard

text: While they had demonstrated that the fission of uranium produced more neutrons than it consumed, this was still not a chain reaction. Szilard persuaded Fermi and Herbert L. Anderson to try a larger experiment using of uranium. To maximize the chance of fission, they needed a neutron moderator to slow the neutrons down. Hydrogen was a known moderator, so they used water. The results were disappointing. It became apparent that hydrogen slowed neutrons down, but also absorbed them, leaving fewer for the chain reaction. Szilard then suggested Fermi use carbon, in the form of graphite. He felt he would need about (50.8 metric ton) of graphite and of uranium. As a back-up plan, Szilard also considered where he might find a few tons of heavy water; deuterium would not absorb neutrons like ordinary hydrogen, but would have the similar value as a moderator. Such quantities of material would require a lot of money.


title: Leo Szilard

text: Szilard drafted a confidential letter to the President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, explaining the possibility of nuclear weapons, warning of the German nuclear weapon project, and encouraging the development of a program that could result in their creation. With the help of Wigner and Edward Teller, he approached his old friend and collaborator Einstein in August 1939, and persuaded him to sign the letter, lending his fame to the proposal. The Einstein–Szilárd letter resulted in the establishment of research into nuclear fission by the U.S. government, and ultimately to the creation of the Manhattan Project. Roosevelt gave the letter to his aide, Brigadier General Edwin M. "Pa" Watson with the instruction: "Pa, this requires action!"


title: Leo Szilard

text: An Advisory Committee on Uranium was formed under Lyman J. Briggs, a scientist and the director of the National Bureau of Standards. Its first meeting on October 21, 1939, was attended by Szilard, Teller, and Wigner, who persuaded the Army and Navy to provide $6,000 for Szilard to purchase supplies for experiments—in particular, more graphite. A 1940 Army intelligence report on Fermi and Szilard, prepared when the United States had not yet entered World War II, expressed reservations about both. While it contained some errors of fact about Szilard, it correctly noted his dire prediction that Germany would win the war.


title: Leo Szilard

text: Fermi and Szilard met with representatives of National Carbon Company, who manufactured graphite, and Szilard made another important discovery. He asked about impurities in graphite, and learned that it usually contained boron, a neutron absorber. He then had special boron-free graphite produced. Had he not done so, they might have concluded, as the German nuclear researchers did, that graphite was unsuitable for use as a neutron moderator. Like the German researchers, Fermi and Szilard still believed that enormous quantities of uranium would be required for an atomic bomb, and therefore concentrated on producing a controlled chain reaction. Fermi determined that a fissioning uranium atom produced 1.73 neutrons on average. It was enough, but a careful design was called for to minimize losses. Szilard worked up various designs for a nuclear reactor. "If the uranium project could have been run on ideas alone," Wigner later remarked, "no one but Leo Szilard would have been needed."


title: Leo Szilard

text: At its December 6, 1941, meeting, the National Defense Research Committee resolved to proceed with an all-out effort to produce atomic bombs. This decision was given urgency by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the following day that brought the United States into World War II. It was formally approved by Roosevelt in January 1942. Arthur H. Compton from the University of Chicago was appointed head of research and development. Against Szilard's wishes, Compton concentrated all the groups working on reactors and plutonium at the Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago. Compton laid out an ambitious plan to achieve a chain reaction by January 1943, start manufacturing plutonium in nuclear reactors by January 1944, and produce an atomic bomb by January 1945.


title: Leo Szilard

text: In January 1942, Szilard joined the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago as a research associate, and later the chief physicist. Alvin Weinberg noted that Szilard served as the project "gadfly", asking all the embarrassing questions. Szilard provided important insights. While uranium-238 did not fission readily with slow, moderated neutrons, it might still fission with the fast neutrons produced by fission. This effect was small but crucial. Szilard made suggestions that improved the uranium canning process, and worked with David Gurinsky and Ed Creutz on a method for recovering uranium from its salts.


title: Leo Szilard

text: A vexing question at the time was how a production reactor should be cooled. Taking a conservative view that every possible neutron must be preserved, the majority opinion initially favored cooling with helium, which would absorb very few neutrons. Szilard argued that if this was a concern, then liquid bismuth would be a better choice. He supervised experiments with it, but the practical difficulties turned out to be too great. In the end, Wigner's plan to use ordinary water as a coolant won out. When the coolant issue became too heated, Compton and the director of the Manhattan Project, Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves, Jr., moved to dismiss Szilard, who was still a German citizen, but the Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, refused to do so. Szilard was therefore present on December 2, 1942, when the first man-made self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was achieved in the first nuclear reactor under viewing stands of Stagg Field, and shook Fermi's hand.


title: Leo Szilard

text: Szilard became a naturalized citizen of the United States in March 1943. The Army offered Szilard $25,000 for his inventions before November 1940, when he officially joined the project. He refused. He was the co-holder, with Fermi, of the patent on the nuclear reactor. In the end he sold his patent to the government for reimbursement of his expenses, some $15,416, plus the standard $1 fee. He continued to work with Fermi and Wigner on nuclear reactor design, and is credited with coining the term "breeder reactor".


title: Leo Szilard

text: With an enduring passion for the preservation of human life and political freedom, Szilard hoped that the U.S. government would not use nuclear weapons, but that the mere threat of such weapons would force Germany and Japan to surrender. He also worried about the long-term implications of nuclear weapons, predicting that their use by the United States would start a nuclear arms race with the USSR. He drafted the Szilárd petition advocating that the atomic bomb be demonstrated to the enemy, and used only if the enemy did not then surrender. The Interim Committee instead chose to use atomic bombs against cities over the protests of Szilard and other scientists. Afterwards, he lobbied for amendments to the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 that placed nuclear energy under civilian control.


title: Leo Szilard

text: In 1946, Szilard secured a research professorship at the University of Chicago that allowed him to research in biology and the social sciences. He teamed up with Aaron Novick, a chemist who had worked at the Metallurgical Laboratory during the war. The two men saw biology as a field that had not been explored as much as physics, and was ready for scientific breakthroughs. It was a field that Szilard had been working on in 1933 before he had become subsumed in the quest for a nuclear chain reaction. The duo made considerable advances. They invented the chemostat, a device for regulating the growth rate of the microorganisms in a bioreactor, and developed methods for measuring the growth rate of bacteria. They discovered feedback inhibition, an important factor in processes such as growth and metabolism. Szilard gave essential advice to Theodore Puck and Philip I. Marcus for their first cloning of a human cell in 1955.


title: Leo Szilard

text: Before his relationship with his later wife Gertrud "Trude" Weiss, Leo Szilard's life partner in the period 1927–1934 was the kindergarten teacher and opera singer Gerda Philipsborn, who also worked as a volunteer in a Berlin asylum organization for refugee children and in 1932 moved to India to continue this work. Szilard married Trude Weiss, a physician, in a civil ceremony in New York on October 13, 1951. They had known each other since 1929 and had frequently corresponded and visited each other ever since. Weiss took up a teaching position at the University of Colorado in April 1950, and Szilard began staying with her in Denver for weeks at a time when they had never been together for more than a few days before. Single people living together was frowned upon in the conservative United States at the time and, after they were discovered by one of her students, Szilard began to worry that she might lose her job. Their relationship remained a long-distance one, and they kept news of their marriage quiet. Many of his friends were shocked, having considered Szilard a born bachelor.


title: Leo Szilard

text: In 1949 Szilard wrote a short story titled "My Trial as a War Criminal" in which he imagined himself on trial for crimes against humanity after the United States lost a war with the Soviet Union. He publicly sounded the alarm against the possible development of salted thermonuclear bombs, explaining in a University of Chicago Round Table radio program on February 26, 1950, that sufficiently big thermonuclear bomb rigged with specific but common materials, might annihilate mankind. His comments, as well as those of Hans Bethe, Harrison Brown, and Frederick Seitz (the three other scientists who participated in the program), were attacked by the Atomic Energy Commission's former Chairman David Lilienthal, and the criticisms plus a response from Szilard were published. "Time" compared Szilard to Chicken Little while the AEC dismissed his ideas, but scientists debated whether it was feasible or not. The "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" commissioned a study by James R. Arnold, who concluded that it was. Physicist W. H. Clark suggested that a 50,000 megaton cobalt bomb did have the potential to produce sufficient long-lasting radiation to be a doomsday weapon, in theory, but was of the view that, even then, "enough people might find refuge to wait out the radioactivity and emerge to begin again."


title: Leo Szilard

text: Szilard published a book of short stories, "The Voice of the Dolphins" (1961), in which he dealt with the moral and ethical issues raised by the Cold War and his own role in the development of atomic weapons. The title story described an international biology research laboratory in Central Europe. This became reality after a meeting in 1962 with Victor F. Weisskopf, James Watson and John Kendrew. When the European Molecular Biology Laboratory was established, the library was named The Szilard Library and the library stamp features dolphins. Other honors that he received included the Atoms for Peace Award in 1959, and the Humanist of the Year in 1960. A lunar crater on the far side of the Moon was named after him in 1970. The Leo Szilard Lectureship Award, established in 1974, is given in his honor by the American Physical Society.


title: Leo Szilard

text: In 1960, Szilard was diagnosed with bladder cancer. He underwent cobalt therapy at New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital using a cobalt 60 treatment regimen that his doctors gave him a high degree of control over. A second round of treatment with an increased dose followed in 1962. The higher dose did its job and his cancer never returned.


title: Leo Szilard

text: Szilard spent his last years as a fellow of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in the La Jolla community of San Diego, California, which he had helped to create. Szilard founded Council for a Livable World in 1962 to deliver "the sweet voice of reason" about nuclear weapons to Congress, the White House, and the American public. He was appointed a non-resident fellow there in July 1963, and became a resident fellow on April 1, 1964, after moving to San Diego in February. With Trude, he lived in a bungalow on the property of the Hotel del Charro. On May 30, 1964, he died there in his sleep of a heart attack; when Trude awoke, she was unable to revive him. His remains were cremated.


title: Leo Szilard

text: His papers are in the library at the University of California, San Diego. In February 2014, the library announced that they received funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to digitize its collection of his papers, extending from 1938 to 1998.


title: Maria Altmann

text: Maria Altmann (née Maria Victoria Bloch, later Bloch-Bauer; February 18, 1916 – February 7, 2011) was an Austrian-American Jewish refugee from Austria, who fled her home country after it was annexed to the Third Reich. She is noted for her ultimately successful legal campaign to reclaim from the Government of Austria five family-owned paintings by the artist Gustav Klimt that were stolen by the Nazis during World War II.


title: Maria Altmann

text: Maria Altmann was born Maria Victoria Bloch on February 18, 1916, in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, the daughter of Marie Therese (née Bauer 1874–1961) and Gustav Bloch (1862–1938). The family name was changed to Bloch-Bauer the following year.


title: Maria Altmann

text: She was a niece of Adele Bloch-Bauer, a wealthy Jewish patron of the arts who served as the model for some of Klimt's best-known paintings and who hosted a Viennese salon that regularly attracted the most prominent artists of the day, including Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Arthur Schnitzler, Johannes Brahms, Franz Werfel, Alma Mahler, Leo Slezak, Otto Wagner, George Minne, Karl Renner, Julius Tandler, and Klimt. Maria was close friends in the 1930s with Viennese actor and soon Hollywood-transplant Walter Slezak. Her nephew was Canadian businessman and arts patron Peter Bentley.


title: Maria Altmann

text: In 1937, Maria married Fredrick "Fritz" Altmann. Not long after their Paris honeymoon, the 1938 Anschluss incorporated Austria into Nazi Germany. Under the Nazis, Fredrick was arrested in Austria and held hostage at the Dachau concentration camp to force his brother Bernhard Altmann, by then safely in England, to transfer his successful Bernhard Altmann textile factory into German hands. Fredrick was released and the couple fled. They made a harrowing escape, leaving behind their home, loved ones, and property, including jewelry that later found its way into the collection of Hermann Göring. Many of their friends and relatives were either killed by the Nazis or committed suicide. Traveling by way of Liverpool, England, they reached the United States and settled first in Fall River, Massachusetts, and finally in the wealthy Los Angeles neighborhood of Cheviot Hills. Maria Altmann's cousin, Ruth Rogers-Altmann, made it out of Vienna around the same time and settled in New York.


title: Maria Altmann

text: Shortly after Maria arrived in Los Angeles, Bernhard Altmann mailed her a sweater made of cashmere wool – a luxury fabric not yet widely available in the United States – accompanied with the note: "See what you can do with this." Maria took the sweater to Kerr's Department Store in Beverly Hills and attracted a multitude of buyers in California and across the United States for Bernhard Altmann's cashmere sweaters. Maria became the face of cashmere in California and eventually started her own clothing business. Among her clients was Caroline Brown Tracy, the mother of actor Spencer Tracy.


title: Maria Altmann

text: Altmann's uncle, Czech sugar magnate Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, owned a small collection of artwork by Gustav Klimt, including two portraits of his wife, Adele Bloch-Bauer. In her will, Adele, who died in 1925, had asked her husband to leave the Klimts to the Austrian State Gallery upon his death; a much-debated point later was whether this request should be considered legally binding upon her husband, who was himself the owner of the paintings. Following the Anschluss of 1938 and Ferdinand's flight from Austria, the paintings were looted, initially falling into the hands of a Nazi lawyer. Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer died on November 13, 1945, leaving his estate to a nephew and two nieces, one of whom was Maria Altmann. By this time, six of the paintings, "Buchenwald" (1903), "Adele Bloch-Bauer I" (1907), "Schloss Kammer am Attersee III" (1910), "Adele Bloch-Bauer II" (1912), "Apfelbaum I" (1912) and "Häuser in Unterach am Attersee" (1916), had made their way into the possession of the Austrian government.


title: Maria Altmann

text: With Austria under pressure in the 1990s to re-examine its Nazi past, the Austrian Green Party helped pass a new law in 1998 introducing greater transparency into the murky process of dealing with the issue of restitution of artworks looted during the Nazi period. By opening the archives of the Ministry of Culture for the first time, the new law enabled Austrian investigative journalist Hubertus Czernin to discover that, contrary to what had been generally assumed, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer had never donated the paintings to the state museum.


title: Maria Altmann

text: On learning of Czernin's findings, Altmann at first sought to negotiate with the Austrian government about retrieving some of the paintings. At this stage, she asked only for the Klimt landscapes belonging to her family, and was willing to allow Austria to keep the portraits. Her proposal was not, however, treated seriously by the Austrian authorities. In 1999, she sought to sue the government of Austria in an Austrian court. Under Austrian law, however, the filing fee for such a lawsuit was determined as a percentage of the recoverable amount. At the time, the five paintings were estimated to be worth approximately US$135 million, making the filing fee over $1.5 million. Although the Austrian courts later reduced this amount to $350,000, this was still too much for Altmann, and she dropped her case in the Austrian court system.


title: Maria Altmann

text: In 2000, Altmann filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Central District of California under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. The case, "Republic of Austria v. Altmann", ended up in the Supreme Court of the United States, which ruled in 2004 that Austria was not immune from such a lawsuit. After this decision, Altmann and Austria agreed to binding arbitration by a panel of three Austrians. On January 16, 2006, the arbitration panel ruled that Austria was legally required to return the art to Altmann and the other family heirs, and in March of the same year Austria returned the paintings.


title: Maria Altmann

text: The paintings were estimated to be collectively worth at least $150 million when returned. In monetary terms this represented the largest single return of Nazi-looted art in Austria. The paintings left Austria in March 2006 and were on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art until June 30, 2006. Months after the Austrian government returned Altmann's family's belongings, she consigned the Klimt paintings to the auction house Christie's to be sold on behalf of her family. The painting "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I" (1907) was sold to cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder for $135 million, at the time the highest sum ever paid for a painting. Since July 13, 2006, the painting has been on public display in the Neue Galerie in New York City, which was established by Lauder in 2001. The four additional works by Klimt were also exhibited at the Neue Gallerie for several weeks in 2006.


title: Maria Altmann

text: In November 2006, "Adele Bloch-Bauer II" was sold at auction at Christie's in New York fetching almost $88 million. In total, the four remaining paintings sold at auction for $192.7 million; coupled with the Lauder-bought painting the sum total was approximately $325 million. The proceeds were divided up among several heirs.


title: Maria Altmann

text: A share of the money earned through the sale of the paintings was used to found the Maria Altmann Family Foundation, which supports the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust and other public and philanthropic institutions.


title: Maria Altmann

text: Altmann died on February 7, 2011, at her home in the Cheviot Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, shortly before her 95th birthday. Obituaries appeared in "The New York Times", "The Guardian", and many other publications internationally.


title: Maria Altmann

text: Altmann's story has been recounted in three documentary films. "Stealing Klimt", released in 2007, features interviews with Altmann and others who were closely involved with the case from E. Randol Schoenberg to Hubertus Czernin. "Adele's Wish", released in 2008 by filmmaker Terrence Turner, features interviews with Altmann, Schoenberg, and leading experts from around the world. "The Rape of Europa", a documentary about the Nazi plunder, also included material about Altmann. Her life story and battle to reclaim the family Klimt collection is recounted in the book "The Lady in Gold, the Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer", by Anne-Marie O'Connor.


title: Maria Altmann

text: Altmann is also portrayed in a memoir by her caregiver Gregor Collins, called "The Accidental Caregiver: How I Met, Loved, and Lost Legendary Holocaust Refugee Maria Altmann". It was published on August 15, 2012, and documents Collins's and Altmann's chance meeting and three years together, ending at her death in 2011. Collins travels around the world speaking at various venues about their unusual relationship.


title: Maria Altmann

text: Altmann is portrayed by Helen Mirren and Tatiana Maslany in the 2015 film "Woman in Gold", chronicling Altmann's nearly decade-long struggle to recover the Klimt paintings. The film also stars Ryan Reynolds as E. Randol Schoenberg.


title: Maria Altmann

text: Similarly to "Woman in Gold", Laurie Lico Albanese's 2017 historical fiction novel, "Stolen Beauty", tells the story of Maria Altmann and her aunt Adele Bloch-Bauer.


title: Eric Holcomb

text: Eric Joseph Holcomb (born May 2, 1968) is an American politician who is the 51st and current governor of Indiana, serving since 2017. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 51st lieutenant governor of Indiana from 2016 to 2017 under Governor Mike Pence, who left the governorship in 2017 to become the vice president of the United States. Holcomb was nominated to fill the remainder of Lieutenant Governor Sue Ellspermann's term after she resigned on March 2, 2016, to become president of Ivy Tech Community College. He won the 2016 election for governor of Indiana over Democratic nominee John R. Gregg. Holcomb was reelected in 2020 over Democratic nominee Woody Myers and Libertarian nominee Donald Rainwater.


title: Eric Holcomb

text: Holcomb was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. He graduated from Pike High School in Indianapolis, and in 1990 from Hanover College in Hanover, Indiana. At Hanover, he joined the fraternity Phi Gamma Delta and served as chapter president. Holcomb served in the United States Navy for six years as an intelligence officer, stationed in Jacksonville, Florida, and in Lisbon, Portugal. He received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters Degree from Trine University on October 5, 2018, and an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from Anderson University on May 11, 2019.


title: Eric Holcomb

text: Holcomb began working for John Hostettler, a member of the United States House of Representatives, in 1997. In 2000, Holcomb ran for the Indiana House of Representatives against John Frenz, but was defeated.


title: Eric Holcomb

text: From 2003 to 2011, Holcomb served as an advisor to Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, eventually rising to the role of Deputy Chief of Staff, and served as campaign manager for Daniels's 2008 gubernatorial campaign. He became Chairman of the Indiana Republican Party in 2011. In 2013, he resigned to become the state chief of staff to U.S. Senator Dan Coats. In March 2015 Coats announced that he would not run for reelection to the Senate in the 2016 election, and Holcomb announced his intention to run. In February 2016, Holcomb withdrew from the Senate race.


title: Eric Holcomb

text: After Lieutenant Governor Sue Ellspermann announced her resignation, Governor Mike Pence chose Holcomb to succeed her and to be his running mate in the 2016 gubernatorial election. Holcomb was sworn in as lieutenant governor on March 3, 2016.


title: Eric Holcomb

text: Governor Mike Pence was running for reelection with Holcomb as his running mate in the spring and summer of 2016. By late June, rumors that Pence would be the Republican Party's nominee for vice president under presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump began to gain traction. In early July, Trump officially selected Pence as his running mate. Pence then withdrew from Indiana's gubernatorial election and Holcomb withdrew as the nominee for lieutenant governor. Holcomb decided to pursue the nomination for governor and was selected on the second ballot by the Indiana State Republican Central Committee, defeating Rep. Susan Brooks, Rep. Todd Rokita, and State Senator Jim Tomes.


title: Eric Holcomb

text: Holcomb chose Indiana State Auditor Suzanne Crouch as his running mate. They faced 2012 Democratic nominee and former Indiana House Speaker John R. Gregg and his running mate, State Representative Christina Hale. After an unprecedented 106-day campaign, Holcomb defeated Gregg, 51.4% to 45.4%. He ran slightly behind the Trump-Pence ticket, which carried Indiana with 56 percent of the vote.


title: Eric Holcomb

text: Holcomb was reelected governor in 2020, defeating former state health commissioner Woody Myers with 57% of the vote. He received the most votes for governor in Indiana history.


title: Eric Holcomb

text: After winning the election, Holcomb announced his agenda for the upcoming Indiana General Assembly legislative session. What Holcomb calls his “Next Level Agenda” is based on five “pillars”: strengthening and diversifying Indiana's economy, strengthening Indiana's infrastructure, strengthening education and workforce training, strengthening public health and attacking addiction and providing great government service at an exceptional value to taxpayers. He has said that civility is the foundation on which the other pillars are based.


title: Eric Holcomb

text: Holcomb's first act as governor was creating the office of drug prevention, treatment and enforcement and tasking that office with tackling the opioid crisis and other addiction issues in Indiana. Additionally, early in his first term, Holcomb pardoned Keith Cooper, who served eight years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of an armed robbery; declared a disaster emergency at the East Chicago Superfund Site; and ended contract discussions between the Indiana Finance Authority and Agile Networks to manage Indiana's communications infrastructure, including cell towers.


title: Eric Holcomb

text: Holcomb has made attracting international investment and opening more overseas markets for Hoosier-produced goods a priority. Since taking office, he has led 11 international economic development trips visiting with government, business, education, military and nonprofit leaders in the United Kingdom (as governor-elect), France, Hungary, Japan, India, Canada, Israel, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, South Korea and China. He has also visited Hoosier servicemen and women and members of the United States Diplomatic Corps serving overseas.


title: Eric Holcomb

text: Holcomb's international engagement strategy has resulted in foreign direct investment (FDI) into Indiana increasing 300% since 2017. In recognition of his efforts, the Indianapolis-based International Center named Holcomb its 2018 International Citizen of the Year.


title: Eric Holcomb

text: In April 2017, the Indiana legislature approved Holcomb's request for higher fuel taxes and BMV registration fees to fund infrastructure spending, primarily on road maintenance and construction. The law went into effect on July 1, 2017, and is projected to raise on average $1.2 billion per year through 2024.


title: Eric Holcomb

text: In the first quarter of 2019, the "National Journal" reported that Holcomb's reelection faced serious challenges. It ranked him number 10 on its endangered list, writing, "Holcomb is facing potential match-ups with former state health commissioner Woody Myers and state Senator Eddie Melton." By the end of the second quarter, his approval rating had risen to 50%.


title: Eric Holcomb

text: In November 2019, the Center for Investigative Reporting reported that Holcomb had personally pressured an Indiana OSHA investigator to drop a worker fatality case against Amazon so that Indianapolis could have a better chance at being the home of Amazon's HQ2 (a major new office). His office denied the allegations, saying that he had not attended the meeting with the OSHA commissioner and investigator. Holcomb also said the accusations against him would pose a threat to Indiana's "positive business climate" and demanded they be retracted. Regardless of whether Holcomb was directly involved, OSHA eventually dropped the citations against Amazon's fulfillment center and the case was reclassified as one of "employee misconduct" rather than a shortfall in training and safety procedures.


title: Eric Holcomb

text: In July 2020, Attorney General Curtis Hill accused Holcomb of overstepping his authority by issuing a statewide face mask mandate with criminal penalties. Hill said that only the legislature has the power under the Indiana constitution to create laws. Holcomb vetoed the laws passed in the special session, and the legislature overrode his vetoes. But on June 2, 2022, the Indiana Supreme Court sided with Holcomb. Citing the state constitution, the court found it was the legislature, not Holcomb, that had overstepped its authority. Chief Justice Loretta Rush wrote in the unanimous opinion, "Simply put, absent a constitutional amendment ... the General Assembly cannot do what HEA-1123 permits, ... our Constitution authorizes only the Governor to call a special session, the General Assembly can set additional sessions—but only by fixing their length and frequency in a law passed during a legislative session and presented to the Governor."


title: Eric Holcomb

text: In March 2022, Holcomb vetoed H.E.A. 1041, a bill passed by the Indiana General Assembly that would prohibit transgender women from participating in state-sanctioned girls' sports. He cited the bill's low probability of surviving judicial scrutiny and the lack of pressing concern as his reasons for vetoing it. On May 24 the General Assembly overrode Holcomb's veto, passing the bill into law.


title: Eric Holcomb

text: In August 2022, Holcomb led a trade delegation to Taiwan in an effort to strengthen economic ties between Taiwan and Indiana. The delegation will also visit South Korea. The visit comes following several high profile visits by U.S. officials to Taiwan, leading to increased tension between the United States and the People's Republic of China.


title: Eric Holcomb

text: Holcomb's wife, Janet, runs a family business in Madison County, Indiana. They have no children, and own a miniature schnauzer, Henry Holcomb, who is known as the "First Dog of Indiana".


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: The World Mission Society Church of God is a new religious movement that is influenced by the Church of God (Seventh-Day) and originated in South Korea in 1964. After Ahn Sahng-hong died in 1985, Kim Joo-cheol and Zahng Gil-jah changed the church's name to "Witnesses of Ahn Sahng-hong Church of God". Thereafter, the Church expanded its activities to other parts of the world, and began using the name "World Mission Society Church of God". Its headquarters as well as its main church are located in the southeast of the Seoul metropolitan area (see end of infobox).


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: The church believes in Christ Ahn Sahng-hong, as well as "God the Mother", Zahng Gil-jah, as God. The church also believes it is restoring the truth of the early church.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: "World Mission Society Church of God", or short "Church of God", is the name used identically in affiliated churches distributed in Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, North America and South America.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: Ahn Sahng-hong founded "Church of God Jesus Witnesses" in South Korea on 28 April 1964. After Ahn Sahng-hong died in February 1985, a group of people in the Church of God Jesus Witnesses including the man Kim Joo-cheol and the woman Zahng Gil-jah wanted to re-introduce the concept of a “spiritual mother”, and on 22 March 1985 moved from Busan to Seoul. On a meeting in Seoul on 2 June 1985, they discussed how to call Zahng Gil-jah, and established a church called "Witnesses of Ahn Sahng-hong Church of God" which is led by Kim Joo-cheol and Zahng Gil-jah. Two major new doctrines were codified


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: A change in religious practice, as reflected in the change of name from “Jesus Witnesses” to “Witnesses of Ahn Sahng-hong”, was, that prayers were no longer conducted in the name of Jesus Christ but in the name of "Christ Ahn Sahng-hong".


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: Around 1997, Witnesses of Ahn Sahng-hong Church of God had established a non-profit organization titled the World Mission Society Church of God for the purpose of registering and managing the organization's assets.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: In 1970, the church grew to four churches. In 1980, the church grew to 13 locations and increased to 30 in 1990. There was sharp increase of the growth in 2000 where it recorded 300 established churches and 400,000 registered members in South Korea. The church currently claims “more than 400 branches were established in Korea alone, within a half century after its establishment.”


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: The Church of God started to spread abroad in 1997 starting in Los Angeles, Lahore, and Essen. In 2007 it recorded over 100 churches abroad and in 2008 it recorded over one million registered members. By 2013 the church claims to have expanded to 2,500 churches in “about 175 countries.”


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: A media outlet owned by the Church of God reports to have more than 7,500 churches, 3.3 million registered members in the world 175 countries.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: An external account mentions that the number of church members is estimated to have only been around 100,000 in 2013, contrary to Kim Joo-cheol's claims.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: The church believes in God the Father and God the Mother, claiming to be restoring the truth and practices of the early Church. The church also believes that co-founder Zahng Gil-jah is God the Mother, as taught by the founder Ahn Sahng-hong.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: The World Mission Society Church of God believes that all of its teachings are based on the Bible, as explained in the numerous books written by Ahn Sahng-hong.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: The Church believes that Ahn Sahng-hong is the Second Coming of Jesus, who came with a new name, the name of the Holy Spirit and it states that he fulfilled biblical prophecies that only Jesus could have fulfilled.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: In addition, the church believes that the "Elohim" (meaning “Gods”) created all things in heaven and earth, created men and women in accordance with Gods' image, proving the existence of God in male images and God in female images, and claimed that the bride and Jerusalem represented Mother God Zahng Gil-jah.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: The church celebrates the seven feasts described in Leviticus 23: Passover, Unleavened Bread, First Fruits, Feast of Weeks, Feast of Trumpets, Day of Atonement, and Feast of Tabernacles. The church believes that they observe these feasts according to the New Covenant established by Jesus, by distinguishing from the feasts kept in the Old Testament.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: It believes in the Saturday Sabbath according to Genesis 2:1-3 but celebrates it not from sunset to sunset but from sunrise to sunset. It considers the Sabbath to be a sign between God and God's people according to and , and it must be kept as a service according to .


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: Members are encouraged to keep the three services on the Sabbath day. Between services, members participate in various church-related activities such as Bible studies, watching church produced videos, or preaching in the local community.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: According to the church's interpretation of , items such as crosses and statues are considered a form of idolatry and are not erected on or in their churches. The Church has likewise removed stained glass windows from existing churches, as images made of light are seen as being connected to sun worship.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: The Church believes that all human beings were originally created as angels in Heaven. They sinned against God and were sent to Earth as a second chance to return to God. The only way for humans to return to heaven is by keeping the Passover with bread and wine (Jesus' flesh and blood) and following the teachings of the Bible, as taught by Ahn Sahng-hong. They include believing in God the Mother, who is the Bride to give them life in the last days.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: The World Mission Society Church of God holds that baptism is the first step towards salvation and must be done in the name of the Father (Jehovah), of the Son (Jesus), and the name of the Holy Spirit, believed to be "Ahn Sahng-hong".


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: The Church believes that prayer must be done in the name of the Holy Spirit Ahn Sahng-hong in the last days and that women must wear veils, according to while they pray.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: Members travel from house to house and in shopping malls, hospitals and college campuses to share their beliefs in the bible.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: Critics note that the group's recruiting efforts can be very aggressive, and target vulnerable people, especially those going through a major life transition or with a void in their lives. Some have alleged that the group targets those with greater access to money. College students and returning veterans have been particularly targeted.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: Some aggressive WMSCOG recruiters have created concern on college campuses, where young women seem to be their primary target, proselytized emphatically with the church's “Mother God” doctrine. Some of these recruiters have been banned from some college campuses in the U.S. for “trespassing” or proselytizing without permission.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: The World Mission Society Church of God holds many views differing from mainstream Christianity. The church says it observes holy days according to the dates of the sacred calendar in the Old Testament as the early church did in the time of Jesus. They also believe that God the Father and God the Mother have come in the flesh in South Korea, according to Bible prophesies. These beliefs have attracted some criticism of the church. The church teaches that this is the same persecution that the early Christians received for believing in Jesus in the flesh at his first coming.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: Responding to an inquiry, the WMSCOG issued a statement that “the biggest difference between our Church and other churches” is that “we believe in God the Mother as well as God the Father. (…) According to the prophecies of the Bible, God the Mother is to appear in the last age of redemption.”


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: The deification of Ahn Sahng-hong and Zahng Gil-jah has been “harshly criticized,” and has led to the church being officially condemned by the National Council of Churches in Korea as an interdenominationally combatted, blasphemous, heretical cult. The Christian Council of Korea, which represents Protestant churches in South Korea, has denounced the WMSCOG as “heretical.”


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: UK ZION, a World Mission Society Church of God chapter, was awarded The Queen's Award for Voluntary Service in 2016.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: The World Mission Society Church of God is one of many controversial grassroots religious movements that have rapidly emerged in South Korea the latter half of the 20th century. Other groups include the Good News Mission (also known as Guwonpa) and the Shincheonji Church. These groups have been criticized for their recruitment strategies where women, university students, and ethnic minorities are targeted.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: The group has been publicly criticized, by some former members and cult researchers, as acting like a cult, exercising unusual control over its members, separating them from family and friends, and exploiting them excessively, while violating laws and avoiding transparency and accountability.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: Witnesses of Ahn Sahng-hong Church of God announced that “1988 is the end of the world” citing , as Ahn had done in his 1980 book "The Mystery of God and the Spring of the Water of Life". A few thousand members of Witnesses of Ahn Sahng-hong Church of God gathered on a mountain in , Yeongi County, South Chungcheong Province awaiting the coming of Christ Ahn Sahng-hong, preparing for the rapture and the salvation of 144,000 souls. When Ahn failed to appear and nothing happened the church updated their apocalyptic forecast and scheduled it to the opening of the 1988 Olympics in Seoul later that year where the members gathered and preached the end of the world would come by the end of 1988 and that Ahn Sahng Hong would come again. The WMSCOG later claimed it was a fulfillment of the preaching of Jonah.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: At least two former members in South Korea accused Zahng Gil-jah and Kim Joo-cheol who declared 1988, 1999 and 2012 as the end of the world in order to defraud members for more wealth.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: "The Mystery of God and the Spring of the Water of Life" (1980) is 38 chapters in total. The WMSCOG removed three chapters from “The Mystery of God and the Spring of the Water of Life”, namely Chapter 1: Restoration of Jerusalem and the Prophecy of 40 Years, Chapter 11: Let Us Reveal the Truth from the History Books About the Church, and Chapter 36: Elijah Will Be Sent


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: The "“New Covenant Passover Church of God” (NCPCOG)" which is the group that has split with the WMSCOG, claimed that the WMSCOG had changed the first edition dates of “The Mystery of God and the Spring of the Water of Life”, “The Last Plagues and the Seal of God” and “Visitors from the Angelic World” to 1967 once upon a time. The NCPCOG also refuted the claim by the WMSCOG that Ahn Sahng-hong had the book “The Law of Moses and the Law of Christ”, and said that Ahn Sahng-hong has never published this book, but it seems to have been compiled with reference to Ahn Sahng-hong's book “The New Testament and the Old Testament”.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: In December 2015, "People" magazine published an interview with former member Michele Colon, who had attended the WMSCOG church in Ridgewood, New Jersey for two years, and later sued the organization. Colon, who was generally contradicted by the church but generally corroborated in interviews with six other former WMSCOG members, described the WMSCOG as a “doomsday cult” that is “opportunistic.” She said they try to recruit people who are going through a life transition period, or have a void in their lives “and they will fill it.” She said WMSCOG manipulated members with “fear and guilt,” and constant repetitions. She reported that the church “micromanaged” her life, and expected that all her time be spent there, controlling her music-listening and forbidding her from using the internet.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: Colon said church leaders do not tell members, until they seem fully committed, that their “God the Mother” is actually a living South Korean woman in her 70s, known by multiple names and various spiritual titles, who is apparently the widow of the deceased founder, Ahn Sahng-hong.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: At least one former member has sued them for urging her to have an abortion, and others have accused the church of discouraging pregnancy in anticipation that the world would end in 2012.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: Michele Colon, a nurse from New Jersey, claimed, in a civil suit filed against WMSCOG in New Jersey, in 2013, that the group is a “profit-making” cult, and claimed it “uses a number of psychological control tactics … to prevent its members from exposing its criminal and tortious behavior.”


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: However, Colon's lawsuit was almost entirely rejected by the district and appellate state courts. Colon's claims, the court ruled, depended upon her claim that the WMSCOG is a “cult”, not a “church” — a determination that the courts ruled they were not allowed to make, by law. The courts, largely citing the “religious freedom” element of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, particularly the judicial church autonomy doctrine (forbidding courts to inquire into “the facts and circumstances which intrude into church doctrine, affairs, and management”), the appellate court ruled that:


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: The WMSCOG originally planned to purchase an LH office building in the city of Wonju in Gangwon, Korea planning to make it a religious place. Upon learning of this, the local residents formed the “Church of God residents emergency response committee” to oppose the church's actions. After that, the Wonju municipal government refused to allow the building to be used as a religious institution. As a result, from May 30 to June 1, 2016, the Wonju municipal government received more than 30,000 calls from members of the WMSCOG, which led to interference in the work of the municipal government. Following this, the Wonju municipal government issued a press release on June 2 stating: “This will be a phone paralysis operation of a religious organization.” Finally, two administrative proceedings were initiated by the WMSCOG, but all the appeals were rejected. “The reason why the administrative court refused the WMSCOG's request is because of traffic congestion and residents' complaints,” said Wonju municipal government official. Church of God residents emergency response committee said: “It is normal for the plaintiff to be rejected. We will never stop unless the true face of the WMSCOG is revealed.”


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: Rick Alan Ross, cult researcher and deprogrammer describes the WMSCOG as “a very intense group... similar to the Unification Church [of] Sun Myung Moon — the Moonies”, comparing WMSCOG indoctrination methods to those of the Unification Church.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: Ross claims that the WMSCOG has driven members into “bankruptcies because of excessive donations”, and claims that some have lost their jobs to “excessive demands” of the group and associated “sleep deprivation”. He says that members often are sent to group housing and shared apartments, becoming isolated and alienated from family and friends, even spouses and adult children. Ross notes the group, which recruits members on university campuses, at malls and other shopping sites, has no meaningful accountability for leadership — a “dictatorship in Korea” — nor for the millions in revenue it receives.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: In Vietnam, the Committee for Religious Affairs urged vigilance about the group and cautioned that it should not be equated with other Protestant groups using similar names. Claiming the organization as cult-like, the government gratuitously cited the group as engaging in deceptive recruitment, with questionable and manipulative indoctrination, doomsday predictions, and urging the donation of cash and members' abandonment of their own families.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: In May 2018, Vietnamese authorities seized the Church's assets in Hanoi, Saigon and in other provinces, and interrogated hundreds of its members. The Church leaders were accused of brainwashing its members and micromanaging their lives by urging students to abandon their studies and their workers to abandon their jobs in order to recruit more followers.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: WMSCOG has been investigated for — and subsequently cleared of — human trafficking on multiple American university campuses. Police investigations into possible human sex trafficking connections ensued in January 2018 at the University of Mississippi, in September 2019 at the University of South Carolina, and in March 2020 at the University of Utah. Similar reports also occurred at the University of Louisville, Vanderbilt University, the University of Georgia, Oberlin College, Texas State University, and Arizona State University, among others. All investigations were closed after failing to find a link between the church and illicit activity.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: Many students, across multiple campuses, reported unknown persons asking if they knew about “God the Mother.” Recruiters have been known to approach female students and ask if they believe in a female god, which often will lead to invitations to study groups. Recruiters will also approach students and ask if they would like to join a Bible study group.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: This style of recruitment has come under fire from former church members, who have said that the church tends to target those who appear “psychologically vulnerable” and specifically young white people who appear wealthy.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: In August 2017, the Otago University Students' Association in Dunedin disaffiliated the Elohim World Academy following complaints from students about deceptive and coercive recruitment methods. The University of Otago's Proctor Dave Scott had considered trespassing members of the group but ruled it out since that would have violated the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990's provisions on religious freedom and freedom of expression. In 2020, the University of Auckland student magazine "Craccum" reported that members of the Elohim Academy had targeted students at the University of Auckland and the University of Waikato in Hamilton.


title: World Mission Society Church of God

text: In September 2021, "Craccum" reported that the Elohim Academy was also conducting door-knocking evangelism campaigns in Wellington and Auckland, with an emphasis on recruiting young women. Members were expected to follow strict rules separating themselves from social media and non-church friends, attend masses and recruitment sessions, tithing ten percent of their income, avoid wearing jeans, reject music and masturbation, and losing weight to fit Korean beauty standards. Former members alleged that members including minors were shamed for not meeting the church's rules and standards and that members were ranked based on their recruitment rates. Church members were also reportedly shown graphic videos of Hell. In addition, pastors also arranged marriages between congregants.


title: Rachel Korine

text: Rachel Anna Korine (née Simon) is an American former actress. Married to director Harmony Korine, she is best known for starring as Cotty in the 2013 crime film "Spring Breakers" and Betsy in "Men Go to Battle" (2015), Junia in "The Knick" (2014–2015).


title: Rachel Korine

text: Korine was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee. She has starred in the films "Septien", as well as "Mister Lonely," "Trash Humpers," and "Spring Breakers", the latter three of which were written and directed by her husband, Harmony Korine. From 2014–2015, she played Junia on the Cinemax drama series "The Knick".


title: Rachel Korine

text: Rachel and Harmony Korine met in their hometown of Nashville, and wed in 2007. They share a daughter, Lefty Bell Korine, and a son, Hank.


title: Zvartnots International Airport

text: Zvartnots International Airport () is located near Zvartnots, west of Yerevan, the capital city of Armenia. It acts as the main international airport of Armenia and is Yerevan's main international transport hub. It is the busiest airport in the country.


title: Zvartnots International Airport

text: The airport was opened in 1961, and following a design competition held in 1970, M. Khachikyan, A. Tarkhanyan, S. Qalashyan, L. Cherkezyan and M. Baghdasaryan won the right to design the first terminal building. The airport was renovated in the 1980s with the development of a new terminal area, in order to meet domestic traffic demands within the Soviet Union.


title: Zvartnots International Airport

text: When Armenia declared its independence from the Soviet Union in the 1990s, the growth of cargo shipments resulted in the construction of a new cargo terminal in 1998 that can handle about 100,000 tonnes of cargo annually. In 2001, a 30-year concession agreement for the management of operations at the airport was signed with Armenia International Airports CJSC, owned by Argentine company Corporación America, which is in turn owned by Armenian Argentine businessman Eduardo Eurnekian. As part of that agreement, Armenia International Airports CJSC renovated the runway, main taxiways and ramp. In 2006, a new gate area and arrivals hall opened, followed by an overall improvement of the airport's fire services, including replacing the entire fire-fighting fleet with new vehicles. A new departures and arrivals terminal, car-parking facility with a capacity of 600 vehicles and a government delegation terminal all opened in 2011. On 30 January 2013, Zvartnots airport was named "Best Airport In the CIS" during the Emerging Markets Airports Award (EMAA) ceremonies held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.


title: Zvartnots International Airport

text: The airport is able to accept aircraft up to and including the Antonov An-225, Boeing 747-400 and Airbus A380. Runway 09 is equipped with an ILS CAT II, which enables aircraft operations in low ceiling (30 meters) and visibility (350 metres).


title: Zvartnots International Airport

text: Zvartnots International Airport recently implemented a new flight information display system (FIDS), a new automated and biometric-identification system for baggage check-in and passenger control, as well as the installation of 150 surveillance cameras across airport premises.


title: Zvartnots International Airport

text: The access to the boarding area is highly secured with three steps, a pre-control, a passport control, and X-ray control. The airport features a Dufry duty-free shop after security, as well as the Converse Bank business class lounge, with a view overlooking the gate area and apron. In addition, the airport features a HayPost office, a pharmacy, several dining options and cafes, a Europcar, Beeline, VivaCell MTS, Ardshinbank, as well as, HSBC, VTB Bank and Ameriabank ATMs.


title: Zvartnots International Airport

text: In December 2019, yearly passenger flow at Zvartnots International Airport exceeded 3 million passengers for the first time in Armenia's history.


title: Zvartnots International Airport

text: The following airlines operate regular scheduled and charter services to and from Zvartnots as of 29 July 2022:


title: Zvartnots International Airport

text: In 2017, a new express bus service began operation, with regular round-trips between Zvartnots Airport and downtown Yerevan. The number 201 bus leaves the airport every half hour between 7 AM and 11 PM, and every hour between 12 AM and 6 AM. The travel time is approximately 30 minutes, depending on traffic. Operated by Elitebus, a one-way fare costs 300 AMD. The bus terminus is on Amiryan Street, but the bus also makes stops along Mashtots Avenue, at the Yeritasardakan station (where passengers can connect to the Yerevan Metro system), and at the Republic Square.


title: Zvartnots International Airport

text: The airport is accessed from the M5 highway, which connects Yerevan with the west of the country and other major highways. By car, the distance from Zvartnots Airport to the centre of Yerevan is 12 kilometers, taking approximately 20 minutes to get to.


title: Zvartnots International Airport

text: At Zvartnots Airport, cars from car rental companies are available. The airport offers various official parking options, from premium to low cost. In addition, alternative parking options are within the reach of the airport.


title: Zvartnots International Airport

text: In 2019, Zvartnots Airport partnered with Yandex.Taxi to provide passengers with taxi services from the airport.


title: Dragonslayer (1981 film)

text: Dragonslayer is a 1981 American dark fantasy film directed by Matthew Robbins, from a screenplay he co-wrote with Hal Barwood. It stars Peter MacNicol, Ralph Richardson, John Hallam, and Caitlin Clarke. It is a co-production between Paramount Pictures and Walt Disney Productions, where Paramount handled North American distribution and Disney's Buena Vista International handled international distribution. The story is set in a fictional medieval kingdom, where a young wizard experiences danger and opposition as he hunts the dragon, Vermithrax Pejorative.


title: Dragonslayer (1981 film)

text: It was the second joint production between Paramount and Disney, after "Popeye" (1980), and is more mature than most contemporary Disney films. Because the audience expected the Disney name to be solely children's entertainment, the film's violence, adult themes, and brief nudity were somewhat controversial though Disney did not hold the US distribution rights. The film was rated PG in the U.S.


title: Dragonslayer (1981 film)

text: The special effects were created at Industrial Light and Magic, the first use of ILM outside of a Lucasfilm production. Phil Tippett had co-developed an animation technique there for "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980) called go motion, a variation on stop motion. This led to the film's nomination for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, but it lost to "Raiders of the Lost Ark", the only other Visual Effects nominee that year, whose special effects were also provided by ILM. Including the hydraulic model, the dragon consists of 16 puppets dedicated to flying, crawling, or fire breathing.


title: Dragonslayer (1981 film)

text: The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score, which went to "Chariots of Fire". It was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, again given to "Raiders of the Lost Ark". On October 21, 2003, "Dragonslayer" was released on DVD in the U.S. by Paramount Home Entertainment.


title: Dragonslayer (1981 film)

text: Urland, a sixth-century post-Roman kingdom situated near the River Ur, is being terrorized by Vermithrax Pejorative, a 400-year-old dragon. To appease the creature, King Casiodorus offers it virgin girls selected by lottery twice a year. An expedition led by a young man called Valerian seeks help from the last sorcerer, Ulrich of Cragganmore.


title: Dragonslayer (1981 film)

text: The expedition is followed by Tyrian, the brutal and cynical Captain of Casiodorus's Royal Guard. He and his lieutenant Jerbul openly intimidate the wizard, doubtful of his abilities. Ulrich invites Tyrian to stab him to prove his magical powers. Tyrian does so and Ulrich dies instantly, to the horror of his young apprentice Galen Bradwarden and his elderly servant Hodge, who cremates Ulrich's body and places the ashes in a leather pouch. Hodge informs Galen that Ulrich wanted his ashes spread over a lake of burning water.


title: Dragonslayer (1981 film)

text: Galen is selected by the wizard's magical amulet as its next owner; encouraged, he journeys to Urland. On the way, he discovers Valerian is a young woman, who is disguised to avoid being selected in the lottery. In an effort to discourage the expedition, Tyrian kills Hodge. Just before dying, he hands Galen the pouch of ashes.


title: Dragonslayer (1981 film)

text: Arriving in Urland, Galen inspects the dragon's lair and magically seals – he thinks – its entrance with a rock slide. Tyrian apprehends Galen and takes him to Castle Morgenthorme, from which King Casiodorus governs Urland. Casiodorus guesses that Galen is not a real wizard and complains that his attack may have angered the dragon instead of killing it, as his brother and predecessor once did. The king confiscates the amulet and imprisons Galen. His daughter, Princess Elspeth, visits Galen and is shocked when he informs her of rumors that the lottery is rigged; it excludes her name and those who are rich enough to bribe the king into disqualifying their children. Her father is unable to lie convincingly when she confronts him over this.


title: Dragonslayer (1981 film)

text: Meanwhile, the dragon frees itself from its prison and causes an earthquake. Galen narrowly escapes from his prison, but without the amulet. The village priest, Brother Jacopus, leads his congregation to confront the dragon, denouncing it as the Devil, but the dragon incinerates him and then heads for the village of Swanscombe, burning all in its path.


title: Dragonslayer (1981 film)

text: When the lottery begins anew, Elspeth rigs the draw so that only her name can be chosen. Consequently, King Casiodorus returns the amulet to Galen so that he might save Elspeth. Galen uses the amulet to enchant a heavy spear that had been forged by Valerian's father (which he had dubbed "Sicarius Dracorum", or "Dragonslayer") with the ability to pierce the dragon's armored hide. Valerian gathers some molted dragon scales to create a shield for Galen. Valerian laments now that her cross-dressing disguise is blown, she'll be eligible for the lottery since she is still a virgin, and that Galen has fallen in love with Princess Elspeth. Galen admits he has fallen in love, but it's Valerian, not Elspeth, he's in love with. The couple kisses, thus realizing their romantic feelings for each other.


title: Dragonslayer (1981 film)

text: Attempting to rescue Elspeth, Galen fights Tyrian and kills him emerging victorious. The Princess, however, is determined to make amends for all the girls whose names have been chosen in the past; she descends into the dragon's cave and to her death. Galen follows her and finds a brood of young dragons feasting on her corpse. He kills them and finds Vermithrax resting by an underground lake of fire. He manages to wound the dragon, but the spear is broken. Only Valerian's shield saves him from incineration.


title: Dragonslayer (1981 film)

text: After his failure to kill Vermithrax, Valerian convinces Galen to leave Swanscombe with her. As both prepare to depart, the amulet gives Galen a vision explaining his teacher's final wish to use Galen to deliver him to Urland. Ulrich had asked that his ashes be spread over "burning water", which is in the dragon's cave. Galen realizes that the wizard had planned his own death and cremation, realizing he was too old and frail to make the journey.


title: Dragonslayer (1981 film)

text: Galen returns to the cave. When he spreads the ashes over the fiery lake, the wizard is resurrected within the flames. Ulrich reveals that his time is short, and that Galen must destroy the amulet "when the time is right". The wizard then transports himself to a mountaintop, where he summons a storm and confronts Vermithrax. After a brief battle, the monster snatches the old man and flies away with him. Cued by Ulrich, Galen crushes the amulet with a rock. The wizard's body explodes and kills the dragon, whose corpse falls out of the sky.


title: Dragonslayer (1981 film)

text: In the aftermath, villagers inspecting the wreckage credit God with the victory. The king arrives and drives a sword into the dragon's broken carcass to claim the glory for himself. As Galen and Valerian leave Urland together, he confesses that he misses both Ulrich and the amulet. He says, "I just wish we had a horse." Suddenly, a white horse appears, insinuating that the power of the amulet is now within Galen himself. The couple mounts the horse and rides away.


title: Dragonslayer (1981 film)

text: According to Hal Barwood, he and Matthew Robbins got the inspiration for "Dragonslayer" from "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" sequence in "Fantasia". They later came up with a story after researching St. George and the Dragon. Barwood and Robbins rejected the traditional conceptions of the medieval world in order to give the film more realism: "our film has no knights in shining armor, no pennants streaming in the breeze, no delicate ladies with diaphanous veils waving from turreted castles, no courtly love, no holy grail. Instead, they set out to create a very strange world with a lot of weird values and customs, steeped in superstition, where the clothes and manners of the people were rough, their homes and villages primitive and their countryside almost primeval, so that the idea of magic would be a natural part of their existence." For this reason, they chose to set the film after the end of Roman rule in Britain, prior to the arrival of Christianity. Barwood and Robins began to hastily work on the story outline on June 25, 1979 and completed in early August. They received numerous refusals from various film studios, due to their inexperience in budget negotiations. The screenplay was eventually accepted by Paramount Pictures and Walt Disney Productions, becoming the two studios' second joint effort after "Popeye" (1980).


title: Dragonslayer (1981 film)

text: Twenty-five percent of the film's budget went into the dragon's special effects. Graphic artist David Bunnett was assigned to design the look, and was fed ideas on the movement mechanics, and then rendered the concepts on paper. It was decided early to emphasize flying, because the most important sequence is the final battle. Bunnett gave it a degree of personality, deliberately trying to avoid the creature from "Alien", which he believed was "too hideous to look at".


title: Dragonslayer (1981 film)

text: After Bunnett handed his storyboard panels to the film crew, the dragon design used a wide variety of techniques. The final creature is a composite of several different models. Phil Tippett of ILM finalized the design, and sculpted a reference model which Danny Lee of Disney Studios closely followed in constructing the larger dragon props for close-up shots. Two months later, Lee's team finished a sixteen-foot head and neck assembly, a twenty-foot tail, thighs, legs, claws capable of grabbing a man, and a wing section. The parts were flown to Pinewood Studios outside London in the cargo hold of a Boeing 747.


title: Dragonslayer (1981 film)

text: Brian Johnson was hired to supervise the special effects, and began planning on- and off-set effects with various specialists. Dennis Muren, the effects cameraman, stated, "We knew the dragon had a lot more importance to this film than some of the incidental things that appeared in only a few shots in "Star Wars" or "The Empire Strikes Back". The dragon had to be presented in a way that the audience would be absolutely stunned."


title: Dragonslayer (1981 film)

text: After the completion of principal shooting, a special effects team of eighty people at ILM studios in northern California worked eight months in producing 160 composite shots of the dragon. Chris Walas sculpted and operated the dragon head used for close-up shots. The head measured eight feet in length. The model was animated by a combination of radio controls, cable controls, air bladders, levers, and by handthus giving the illusion of a fully coordinated face with a wide range of expression. Real World War II era flamethrowers were used for the dragon's fire breathing effects. The animals used for the dragon's vocalizations included lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, alligators, pigs, camels, and elephants.


title: Dragonslayer (1981 film)

text: Phil Tippett built a model for the dragon's walking scenes. He did not want to use standard stop motion animation techniques, and had his team build a dragon model which would move during each exposure, rather than in between, as was once the standard. This process, named "go motion" by Tippett, recorded the creature's movements in motion as a real animal would move, and removed the jerkiness common in prior stop motion films.