title: Sidney Reilly

text: In fact, before the First World War, he is alleged to have operated in Russia (from September 1905 to April 1914, assistant naval attaché of Great Britain), then in Europe. By April 1912 Reilly returned to St. Petersburg where he assumed the role of a wealthy businessman and helped to form the Wings Aviation Club. In the reference book "All Petersburg" he was listed as "antique dealer, collector". Here he took a new wife, Nadezhda, without dissolving his marriage to Margaret. He resumed his friendship with Alexander Grammatikov who was an Okhrana agent and a fellow member of the club. Writers Richard Deacon and Edward Van Der Rhoer assert that Reilly actually was an Ochrana double agent at this point. Deacon claims he was tasked with befriending and profiling Sir Basil Zaharoff, the international arms salesman and representative of Vickers-Armstrong Munitions Ltd. Another Reilly biographer, Richard B. Spence, claims that during this assignment Reilly learned ""le systeme"" from Zaharoff — the strategy of playing all sides against each other to maximise financial profit. However, biographer Andrew Cook asserts there is scant evidence of any relationship between Reilly and Zaharoff.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: In earlier biographies by Winfried Lüdecke and Pepita Bobadilla, Reilly is described as living as a spy in Wilhelmine Germany from 1917 to 1918. Drawing upon the latter sources, Richard Deacon likewise asserted that Reilly had operated behind German lines on a number of occasions and once spent weeks inside the German Empire gathering information about the next planned thrust against the Allies. (In one version by Lockhart Reilly he is alleged to have been a part of a German War meeting involving Kaiser Wilhelm II). However, most later biographies concur that Reilly's activities in the United States between 1915 and 1918 precluded any such escapades on the European Front. Later biographers believe that Reilly, while lucratively engaged in the munitions business in New York City, was covertly employed in British intelligence in which role he may well have participated in several acts of so-called "German sabotage" deliberately calculated to provoke the United States to enter the war against the Central Powers.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: Historian Christopher Andrew notes that "Reilly spent most of the first two and a half years of the war in the United States". Likewise, author Richard B. Spence states that Reilly lived in New York City for at least a year, 1914–15, where he engaged in arranging munitions sales to the Imperial German Army and its enemy the Imperial Russian Army. However, when the United States entered the war in April 1917, Reilly's business became less profitable since his company was now prohibited from selling ammunition to the Germans and, after the Russian revolution occurred in October 1917, the Russians were no longer buying munitions. Faced with unexpected financial hardship, Reilly sought to resume his paid intelligence work for the British government while in New York City.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: This is confirmed by papers of Norman Thwaites, MI1(c) Head of Station in New York, which contain evidence that Reilly approached Thwaites seeking espionage-related work in 1917–1918. Formerly a private secretary to newspaper magnate Joseph Pulitzer and a police reporter for Pulitzer's "The New York World", Thwaites was keen on obtaining information concerning radical activities in the United States; in particular, any connections between American socialists with Soviet Russia. Consequently, under Thwaites' direction, Reilly presumably worked alongside a dozen other British intelligence operatives attached to the British mission at 44 Whitehall Street in New York City. Although their ostensible mission was to coordinate with the U.S. government in regards to intelligence about the German Empire and Soviet Russia, the British agents also focused upon obtaining trade secrets and other commercial information related to American industrial companies for their British rivals.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: Thwaites was sufficiently impressed with Reilly's intelligence work in New York that he wrote a letter of recommendation to Mansfield Cumming, head of MI1(c). It was also Thwaites who recommended that Reilly first visit Toronto to obtain a military commission which is why Reilly enlisted in the Royal Flying Corps Canada. On 19 October 1917, Reilly received a commission as a temporary second lieutenant on probation. After receiving this commission, Reilly voyaged to London in 1918 where Cumming formally swore Lieutenant Reilly into service as a staff Case Officer in His Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), prior to dispatching Reilly on counter-Bolshevik operations in Germany and Russia. According to Reilly's wife Pepita Bobadilla, Reilly was sent to Russia to "counter the work being done there by German agents" who were supporting radical factions and "to discover and report on the general feeling".


title: Sidney Reilly

text: Thus Reilly arrived on Russian soil via Murmansk prior to 5 April 1918 where he contacted the former Okhrana agent Alexander Grammatikov, who believed the Soviet government "was in the hands of the criminal classes and of lunatics released from the asylums". Grammatikov arranged for Reilly to receive a private interview with either Reilly's longtime friend General Mikhail Bonch-Bruyevich or Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich, secretary of the Council of People's Commissars. With the clandestine aid of Bonch-Bruyevich, he assumed the role of a Bolshevik sympathizer. Grammatikov further instructed his niece Dagmara Karozus—a dancer in the Moscow Art Theatre—to allow Reilly to use her apartment as a "safe house", and through , a former Okhrana associate turned Cheka official, Reilly obtained travel permits as a Cheka agent.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: The attempt to assassinate Vladimir Lenin and to depose the Bolshevik government is considered by biographers to be Reilly's most daring exploit. The Ambassadors' Plot, later misnamed in the press as the Lockhart-Reilly Plot, has sparked considerable debate over the years: did the Allies launch a clandestine operation to overthrow the Bolsheviks in the later summer of 1918 and, if so, did Felix Dzerzhinsky's Cheka uncover the plot at the eleventh hour or did they know of the conspiracy from the outset? At the time, the dissembling American Consul-General DeWitt Clinton Poole publicly insisted the Cheka orchestrated the conspiracy from beginning to end and that Reilly was a Bolshevik agent provocateur. Later, Robert Bruce Lockhart would state that he was "not to this day sure of the extent of Reilly's responsibility for the disastrous turn of events."


title: Sidney Reilly

text: In January 1918, the youthful Lockhart—a mere junior member of the British Foreign office—had been personally handpicked by British Prime Minister David Lloyd George to undertake a sensitive diplomatic mission to Soviet Russia. Lockhart's assigned objectives were: to liaise with the Soviet authorities, to subvert Soviet-German relations, to bolster Soviet resistance to German peace overtures, and to push Soviet authorities into recreating the Eastern Theater. By April, however, Lockhart had hopelessly failed to achieve any of these objectives. He began to agitate in diplomatic cables for an immediate full-scale Allied military intervention in Russia. Concurrently, Lockhart ordered Reilly to pursue contacts within anti-Bolshevik circles to sow the seeds for an armed uprising in Moscow.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: In May 1918, Lockhart, Reilly, and various agents of the Allied Powers repeatedly met with Boris Savinkov, head of the counter-revolutionary Union for the Defence of the Motherland and Freedom (UDMF). Savinkov had been Deputy War Minister in the Provisional Government of Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky, and a key opponent of the Bolsheviks. A former Socialist Revolutionary Party member, Savinkov had formed the UDMF consisting of several thousand Russian fighters, and he was receptive to Allied overtures to depose the Soviet government. Lockhart, Reilly, and others then contacted anti-Bolshevik groups linked to Savinkov and Socialist Revolutionary Party cells affiliated with Savinkov's friend Maximilian Filonenko. Lockhart and Reilly supported these factions with SIS funds. They also liaised with DeWitt Clinton Poole and Fernand Grenard, the Consuls-General of the United States and France respectively. They also coordinated their activities with intelligence operatives affiliated with the French and U.S. consuls in Moscow.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: In June, disillusioned elements of Colonel Eduard Berzin's Latvian Rifle Division ("Latdiviziya") began appearing in anti-Bolshevik circles in Petrograd and were eventually directed to a British naval attaché Captain Francis Cromie and his assistant Mr. Constantine, a Turkish merchant who was actually Reilly. In contrast to his previous espionage operations which had been independent of other agents, Reilly worked closely while in Petrograd with Cromie in joint efforts to recruit Berzin's Latvians and to equip anti-Bolshevik armed forces. At the time, Cromie purportedly represented the British Naval Intelligence Division and oversaw its operations in northern Russia. Cromie operated in loose coordination with the ineffectual Commander Ernest Boyce, the MI1(c) station chief in Petrograd.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: As Berzin's Latvians were deemed the Praetorian Guard of the Bolsheviks and entrusted with the security of both Lenin and the Kremlin, the Allied plotters believed their participation in the pending coup to be vital. With the aid of the Latvian Riflemen, the Allied agents hoped to "seize both Lenin and Trotsky at a meeting to take place in the first week of September".


title: Sidney Reilly

text: Reilly arranged a meeting between Lockhart and the Latvians at the British mission in Moscow while purportedly expending "over a million rubles" to bribe the Red Army troops guarding the Kremlin. At this stage, Cromie, Boyce, Reilly, Lockhart, and other Allied agents allegedly planned a full-scale coup against the Bolshevik government and drew up a list of Soviet military leaders ready to assume responsibilities on its demise. Their objective was to capture or kill Lenin and Trotsky, to establish a provisional government, and to extinguish Bolshevism. Lenin and Trotsky, they reasoned, ""were" Bolshevism", and nothing else in their movement had "substance or permanence". Consequently, "if he could get them into [their] hands there would be nothing of consequence left of Sovietism".


title: Sidney Reilly

text: As Lockhart's diplomatic status hindered his open engagement in clandestine activities, he chose to supervise such activities from afar and to delegate the actual direction of the coup to Reilly. To facilitate this work, Reilly allegedly obtained a position as a sinecure within the criminal branch of the Petrograd Cheka. It was during this chaotic time of plots and counter-plots that Reilly and Lockhart became further acquainted. Lockhart later posthumously described him as "a man of great energy and personal charm, very attractive to women and very ambitious. I had not a very high opinion of his intelligence. His knowledge covered many subjects, from politics to art, but it was superficial. On the other hand, his courage and indifference to danger were superb." Throughout their backroom intrigues in Moscow, Lockhart never openly questioned Reilly's loyalty to the Allies, although he privately wondered if Reilly had made a secret bargain with Colonel Berzin and his Latvian Riflemen to later seize power for themselves.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: In Lockhart's estimation, Reilly was a limitless "man cast in the Napoleonic mold" and, if their counter-revolutionary coup had succeeded, "the prospect of playing a lone hand [using Berzin's Latvian Riflemen] may have inspired him with a Napoleonic design" to become the head of any new government. However, unbeknownst to the Allied conspirators, Berzin was "an honest commander" and "devoted to the Soviet government". Although not a Chekist, he nonetheless informed Dzerzhinsky's Cheka that he had been approached by Reilly and that Allied agents had attempted to recruit him into a possible coup. This information did not surprise Dzerzhinsky as the Cheka had gained access to the British diplomatic codes in May and were closely monitoring the anti-Bolshevik activities. Dzerzhinsky instructed Berzin and other Latvian officers to pretend to be receptive to the Allied plotters and to meticuously report on every detail of their pending operation.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: While Allied agents militated against the Soviet regime in Petrograd and Moscow, persistent rumors swirled of an impending Allied military intervention in Russia which would overthrow the fledgling Soviet government in favor of a new regime willing to rejoin the ongoing war against the Central Powers. On 4 August 1918, an Allied force landed at Arkhangelsk, Russia, beginning a famous military expedition dubbed Operation Archangel. Its professed objective was to prevent the German Empire from obtaining Allied military supplies stored in the region. In retaliation for this incursion, the Bolsheviks raided the British diplomatic mission on 5 August, disrupting a meeting Reilly had arranged between the anti-Bolshevik Latvians, UDMF officials, and Lockhart. Unperturbed by these raids, Reilly conducted meetings on 17 August 1918 between Latvian regimental leaders and liaised with Captain George Alexander Hill, a multilingual British agent operating in Russia on behalf of the Military Intelligence Directorate.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: Hill later described Reilly as "a dark, well-groomed, very foreign-looking man" who had "an amazing grasp of the actualities of the situation" and was "a man of action". They agreed the coup would occur in the first week of September during a meeting of the Council of People's Commissars and the Moscow Soviet at the Bolshoi Theatre. On 25 August, yet another meeting of Allied conspirators allegedly occurred at DeWitt C. Poole's American Consulate in Moscow. By this time, the Allied conspirators had organized a broad network of agents and saboteurs throughout Soviet Russia whose overarching ambition was to disrupt the nation's food supplies. Coupled with the planned military uprising in Moscow, they believed a chronic food shortage would trigger popular unrest and further undermine the Soviet authorities. In turn, the Soviets would be overthrown by a new government friendly to the Allied Powers which would renew hostilities against Kaiser Wilhelm II's German Reich. On 28 August, Reilly informed Hill that he was immediately leaving Moscow for Petrograd where he would discuss final details related to the coup with Commander Francis Cromie at the British consulate. That night, Reilly had no difficulty in traveling through picket lines between Moscow and Petrograd due to his identification as a member of the Petrograd Cheka and his possession of Cheka travel permits.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: On 30 August, Boris Savinkov and Maximilian Filonenko ordered a military cadet named Leonid Kannegisser—Filonenko's cousin—to shoot and kill Moisei Uritsky, head of the Petrograd Cheka. Uritsky had been the second most powerful man in the city after Grigory Zinoviev, the leader of the Petrograd Soviet, and his murder was seen as a blow to both the Cheka and the entire Bolshevik leadership. After killing Uritsky, a panicked Kannegisser sought refuge either at the English Club or at the British mission where Cromie resided and where Savinkov and Filonenko may have been temporarily in hiding. Regardless of whether he fled to the English Club or to the British consulate, Kannegisser was compelled to leave the premises. After donning a long overcoat, he fled into the city streets where he was apprehended by Red Guards after a violent shootout.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: On the same day, Fanya Kaplan—a former anarchist who was now a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party—shot and wounded Lenin as he departed the Michelson arms factory in Moscow. As Lenin exited the building and before he entered his motor car, Kaplan called out to him. When Lenin turned towards her, she fired three shots with a Browning pistol. One bullet narrowly missed Lenin's heart and penetrated his lung, while the other bullet lodged in his neck near the jugular vein. Due to the severity of these wounds, Lenin was not expected to survive. The attack was widely covered in the Russian press, generating much sympathy for Lenin and boosting his popularity. As a consequence of this assassination attempt, however, the meeting between Lenin and Trotsky—where the bribed soldiery would seize them on behalf of the Allies—was postponed. At this point, Reilly was notified by fellow conspirator Alexander Grammatikov that "the [Socialist Revolutionary Party] fools have struck too early".


title: Sidney Reilly

text: Although it is unknown if Kaplan either was part of the Ambassadors' Plot or was even responsible for the assassination attempt on Lenin, the murder of Uritsky and the failed assassination of Lenin were used by Dzerzhinsky's Cheka to implicate any malcontents and foreigners in a grand conspiracy that warranted a full-scale reprisal campaign: the "Red Terror". Thousands of political opponents were seized and "mass executions took place across the city, at Khodynskoe field, Petrovsky Park and the Butyrki prison, all in the north of the city, as well as in the Cheka headquarters at Lubyanka". The extent of the Chekist reprisal likely foiled much of the inchoate plans by Cromie, Boyce, Lockhart, Reilly, Savinkov, Filonenko, and other conspirators.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: Using lists supplied by undercover agents, the Cheka proceeded to clear out the "nests of conspirators" in the foreign embassies and, in doing so, they arrested key figures vital to the impending coup. On 31 August 1918, believing Savinkov and Filonenko were hiding in the British consulate, a Cheka detachment raided the British consulate in Petrograd and killed Cromie who put up an armed resistance. Immediately prior to his death, it is possible that Cromie may have been trying to communicate with other conspirators and to give instructions to accelerate their planned coup. Before the Cheka detachment stormed the consulate, Cromie burned key correspondence pertaining to the coup.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: According to press reports, he made a valiant last stand on the first floor of the consulate armed only with a revolver. In close quarters combat, he dispatched three Chekist soldiers before he was in turn killed and his corpse mutilated. Eyewitnesses, such as the sister-in-law of Red Cross nurse Mary Britnieva, asserted that Cromie was shot by the Cheka while retreating down the consulate's grand staircase. The Cheka detachment searched the building and, with their rifle butts, repelled the diplomatic staff from getting close to the corpse of Captain Cromie which the Chekist soldiers had looted and trampled. The Cheka detachment then arrested over forty persons who had sought refuge within the British consulate, as well as seizing weapon caches and compromising documents which they claimed implicated the consular staff in the forthcoming coup attempt. Cromie's death was publicly "depicted as a measure of self-defence by the Bolshevik agents, who had been forced to return his fire".


title: Sidney Reilly

text: Meanwhile, Lockhart was arrested by Dzerzhinsky's Cheka and transported under guard to Lubyanka Prison. During a tense interview with a pistol-wielding Cheka officer, he was asked "Do you know the Kaplan woman?" and "Where is Reilly?" When queried about the coup, Lockhart and other British nationals dismissed the mere idea as nonsense. Afterwards, Lockhart was placed in the same holding cell as Fanya Kaplan whom their watchful Chekist jailers hoped might betray some sign of recognizing Lockhart or other British agents. However, while confined together, Kaplan showed no sign of recognition towards Lockhart or anyone else. When it became clear that Kaplan would not implicate any accomplices, she was executed in the Kremlin's Alexander Garden on 3 September 1918, with a bullet to the back of the head. Her corpse was bundled into a rusted iron barrel and set alight. Lockhart was later released and deported in exchange for Maxim Litvinov, an unofficial Soviet attaché in London who had been arrested by the British government as a form of diplomatic reprisal. In stark contrast to Lockhart's good fortune, "imprisonment, torture to compel confession, [and] death were the swift rewards of many who had been implicated" in the prospective coup against Lenin's government. Yelizaveta Otten, Reilly's chief courier "with whom he was romantically involved," was arrested as well as his other mistress Olga Starzheskaya. After interrogation, Starzheskaya was imprisoned for five years. Yet another courier, Mariya Fride, likewise was arrested at Otten's flat with an intelligence communiqué that she was carrying for Reilly.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: On 3 September 1918 the "Pravda" and "Izvestiya" newspapers sensationalised the aborted coup on their front pages. Outraged headlines denounced the Allied representatives and other foreigners in Moscow as "Anglo-French Bandits". The papers arrogated credit for the coup to Reilly and, when he was identified as a key suspect, a dragnet ensued. Reilly "was hunted through days and nights as he had never been hunted before," and "his photograph with a full description and a reward was placarded" throughout the area. The Cheka raided his assumed refuge, but the elusive Reilly avoided capture and met Captain Hill while in hiding. Hill later wrote that Reilly, despite narrowly escaping his pursuers in both Moscow and Petrograd, "was absolutely cool, calm and collected, not in the least downhearted and only concerned in gathering together the broken threads and starting afresh".


title: Sidney Reilly

text: Hill proposed that Reilly escape from Russia via Ukraine to Baku using their network of British agents for safe houses and assistance. However, Reilly instead chose a shorter, more dangerous route north through Petrograd and the Baltic Provinces to Finland to get their reports to London as early as possible. With the Cheka closing in, Reilly, carrying a Baltic German passport supplied by Hill, posed as a legation secretary and departed the region in a railway car reserved for the German Embassy. In Kronstadt, Reilly sailed by ship to Helsinki and reached Stockholm with the aid of local Baltic smugglers. He arrived unscathed in London on 8 November.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: While safely in England, Reilly, Lockhart and other agents were tried "in absentia" before the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal in a proceeding which opened 25 November 1918. Approximately twenty defendants faced charges in the trial, most of whom had worked for the Americans or the British in Moscow. The case was prosecuted by Nikolai Krylenko, an exponent of the theory that political considerations rather than criminal guilt should decide a case's outcome.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: Krylenko's case concluded on 3 December 1918, with two defendants sentenced to be shot and various others sentenced to terms of prison or forced labour for terms up to five years. Thus, the day before Reilly met Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming ("C") in London for debriefing, the Russian "Izvestia" newspaper reported that both Reilly and Lockhart had been sentenced to death "in absentia" by a Revolutionary Tribunal for their roles in the attempted coup of the Bolshevik government. The sentence was to be carried out immediately should either of them be apprehended on Soviet soil. This sentence would later be served on Reilly when he was caught by Dzerzhinsky's OGPU in 1925.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: Within a week of their return debriefing, the British Secret Intelligence Service and the Foreign Office again sent Reilly and Hill to South Russia under the cover of British trade delegates. Their assignment was to uncover information about the Black Sea coast needed for the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. At that time the region was home to a variety of anti-Bolsheviks. They travelled in the guise of British merchants, with appropriate credentials provided by the Department of Overseas Trade. Over the next six weeks or so Reilly prepared twelve dispatches which reported on various aspects of the situation in South Russia and were delivered personally by Hill to the Foreign Office in London.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: Reilly identified four principal factors in the affairs of South Russia at this time: the Volunteer Army; the territorial or provincial governments in the Kuban, Don, and Crimea; the Petlyura movement in Ukraine; and the economic situation. In his opinion, the future course of events in this region would depend not only on the interaction of these factors with each other, but "above all upon Allied attitude towards them". Reilly advocated Allied assistance to organise South Russia into a suitable "place d'armes" for decisive advance against Petlurism and Bolshevism. In his opinion: "The military Allied assistance required for this would be comparatively small as proved by recent events in Odessa. Landing parties in the ports and detachments assisting Volunteer Army on lines of communication would probably be sufficient."


title: Sidney Reilly

text: Reilly's reference to events in Odessa concerned the successful landing there on 18 December 1918 of troops from the French 156th Division commanded by General Borius, who managed to wrest control of the city from the Petlyurists with the assistance of a small contingent of Volunteers.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: Urgent as the need for Allied military assistance to the Volunteer Army was in Reilly's estimation, he regarded economic assistance for South Russia as "even more pressing". Manufactured goods were so scarce in this region that he considered any moderate contribution from the Allies would have a most beneficial effect. Otherwise, apart from echoing a certain General Poole's suggestion for a British or Anglo-French Commission to control merchant shipping engaged in trading activities in the Black Sea, Reilly did not offer any solutions to what he called a state of "general economic chaos" in South Russia. Reilly found White officials, who had been given the job of helping the Russian economy get better, "helpless" in coming to terms with "the colossal disaster which has overtaken Russia's finances, ... and unable to frame anything, approaching even an outline, of a financial policy". But he supported their request for the Allies to print "500 Million roubles of Nicholas money of all denominations" for the Special Council as a matter of urgency, with the justification that "although one realises the fundamental futility of this remedy, one must agree with them that for the moment this is the only remedy". Lack of funds was one reason offered by Reilly to explain the Whites' blatant inactivity in the propaganda field. They were also said to be lacking paper and printing presses needed for the preparation of propaganda material. Reilly claimed that the Special Council had come to appreciate fully the benefits of propaganda.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: While on a visit to postwar Berlin in December 1922, Reilly met a charming young actress named Pepita Bobadilla in the Hotel Adlon. Bobadilla was an attractive blonde who falsely claimed to be from South America. Her real name was Nelly Burton, and she was the widow of Charles Haddon Chambers, a well-known British playwright. For the past several years Bobadilla had gained notoriety both as Chambers' wife and for her stage career as a dancer. On 18 May 1923, after a whirlwind romance, Bobadilla married Reilly at a civil Registry Office on Henrietta Street, in Covent Garden, Central London, with Captain Hill acting as a witness. As Reilly was already married at the time, their union was bigamous. Bobadilla later described Reilly as a sombre individual and found it strange that he never entertained guests at their home. Except for two or three acquaintances, hardly anyone could boast of being his friend. Nevertheless, their marriage was reportedly happy as Bobadilla believed Reilly to be "romantic", "a good companion", "a man of infinite courage", and "the ideal husband". Their union would last merely 30 months before Reilly's disappearance in Russia and his execution by the Soviet OGPU.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: One year later Reilly was involved—possibly alongside Sir Stewart Graham Menzies—in the Zinoviev Letter scandal. Four days before the British general election on 8 October 1924, a Tory newspaper printed a letter purporting to originate from Grigory Zinoviev, head of the Third Communist International. The letter claimed that the planned resumption of diplomatic and trade relations by the Labour party with Soviet Russia would indirectly hasten the overthrow of the British government. Hours later, the British Foreign Office responded to the letter with a note of protest to the Soviet government. Soviet Russia and British Communists denounced the letter as a forgery by British intelligence agents, while Conservative politicians and newspapers maintained that it was genuine. Recent scholarship argues that the letter was indeed a forgery.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: Amid the uproar following the printing of the letter and the Foreign Office protest, Ramsay MacDonald's Labour Government lost the general election. According to Samuel T. Williamson, writing in "The New York Times" in 1926, Reilly may have served as a courier to transport the forged Zinoviev letter into the United Kingdom. Reflecting upon these events, the journalist Winfried Lüdecke posited in 1929 that Reilly's role in "the famous Zinoviev letter assumed a world-wide political importance, for its publication in the British press brought about the fall of the [Ramsay] Macdonald ministry, frustrated the realization of the proposed Anglo-Russian commercial treaty, and, as a final result, led to the signing of the treaties of Locarno, in virtue of which the other states of Europe presented, under the leadership of Britain, a united front against Soviet Russia".


title: Sidney Reilly

text: Throughout his life, Reilly maintained a close yet tempestuous relationship with the British intelligence community. In 1896, he was recruited by Superintendent William Melville for the émigré intelligence network of Scotland Yard's Special Branch. Through his close relationship with Melville, Reilly would be employed as a secret agent for the Secret Service Bureau, which the Foreign Office created in October 1909. In 1918, Reilly began to work for MI1(c), an early designation for the British Secret Intelligence Service, under Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming. He was allegedly trained by the latter organization and sent to Moscow in March 1918 to assassinate Vladimir Ilyich Lenin or attempt to overthrow the Bolsheviks. He had to escape after the Cheka unraveled the so-called Lockhart Plot against the Bolshevik government. Later biographies contain numerous tales about his espionage deeds. It has been claimed that:


title: Sidney Reilly

text: British intelligence adhered to its policy of publicly saying nothing about anything. Yet Reilly's espionage successes did garner indirect recognition. After a formal recommendation by Sir Mansfield "C" Smith-Cumming, Reilly, who had received a military commission in 1917, was awarded the Military Cross on 22 January 1919, "for distinguished services rendered in connection with military operations in the field". This vaguely-worded citation misled later biographers such as Richard Deacon to wrongly conclude that Reilly's medal was bestowed for valorous military feats against the Imperial German Army during the Great War of 1914–1918 however most later biographers agree the medal was bestowed due to Reilly's anti-Bolshevik operations in southern Russia.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: Reilly's most skeptical biographer, Andrew Cook, asserts that Reilly's SIS-specific career has been greatly embellished as he wasn't accepted as an agent until 15 March 1918. He was then discharged in 1921 because of his tendency to be a rogue operative. Nevertheless, Cook concedes that Reilly previously had been a renowned operative for Scotland Yard's Special Branch and the Secret Service Bureau which were the early forerunners of the British intelligence community. Historian Christopher Andrew, a professor at the University of Cambridge with a focus on the history of the intelligence services, described Reilly's secret service career overall as "remarkable, though largely ineffective".


title: Sidney Reilly

text: According to Reilly's wife Pepita Bobadilla, Reilly was perpetually determined "to return to Russia to see if he could not find and succor some of his friends whom he believed to be still alive. This he did in 1925—and never came back." In September 1925 in Paris, Reilly met Alexander Grammatikov, White Russian General Alexander Kutepov, counter-espionage expert Vladimir Burtsev, and Commander Ernest Boyce from British Intelligence. This assembly discussed how they could make contact with a supposedly pro-Monarchist, anti-Bolshevik organisation known as "The Trust" in Moscow. The assembly agreed that Reilly should journey to Finland to explore the feasibility of yet another uprising in Russia using The Trust apparatus. However, in reality The Trust was an elaborate counter-espionage deception created by the OGPU, the intelligence successor of the Cheka.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: Thus, undercover agents of the OGPU lured Reilly into Bolshevik Russia, ostensibly to meet with supposed anti-Communist revolutionaries. At the Soviet-Finnish border Reilly was introduced to undercover OGPU agents posing as senior Trust representatives from Moscow. One of these undercover Soviet agents, Alexander Alexandrovich Yakushev, later recalled the meeting:


title: Sidney Reilly

text: Reilly was brought across the border by Toivo Vähä, a former Finnish Red Guard fighter who now served the OGPU. Vähä took Reilly over the Sestra River to the Soviet side and handed him to the OGPU officers. (In the 1973 book "The Gulag Archipelago", Russian novelist and historian Alexandr Solzhenitsyn states that Richard Ohola, a Finnish Red Guard, was "a participant in the capture of British agent Sidney Reilly". In the biographical glossary appended to the latter work, Solzhenitsyn incorrectly speculates that Reilly was "killed while crossing the Soviet-Finnish border.")


title: Sidney Reilly

text: After Reilly crossed the Finnish border, the Soviets captured, transported and interrogated him at Lubyanka Prison. On arrival Reilly was taken to the office of Roman Pilar, a Soviet official who had arrested and ordered the execution of a close friend of Reilly, Boris Savinkov, the previous year; Reilly was reminded of his own death sentence by a 1918 Soviet tribunal for participation in a counter-revolutionary plot against the Bolshevik government. While Reilly was being interrogated, the Soviets publicly claimed that he had been shot trying to cross the Finnish border. Whether Reilly was tortured while in OGPU custody is a matter of debate by historians; Cook contends that Reilly was not tortured other than psychologically, through mock executions designed to shake the resolve of prisoners.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: During OGPU interrogation Reilly prevaricated about his personal background and maintained his charade of being a British subject born in Clonmel, Ireland. Although he did not abjure his allegiance to the United Kingdom, he also did not reveal any intelligence matters. While facing such daily interrogation, Reilly kept a diary in his cell of tiny handwritten notes on cigarette papers which he hid in the plasterwork of a cell wall. While his Soviet captors were interrogating Reilly he in turn was analysing and documenting their techniques. The diary was a detailed record of OGPU , and Reilly was understandably confident that such unique documentation would, if he escaped, be of interest to the British SIS. After Reilly's death, Soviet guards discovered the diary in Reilly's cell, and photographic enhancements were made by OGPU technicians.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: Reilly was executed in a forest near Moscow on Thursday, 5 November 1925. Eyewitness Boris Gudz claimed the execution was supervised by an OGPU officer, Grigory Feduleev, while another OGPU officer, Grigory Syroezhkin, fired the final shot into Reilly's chest. Gudz also confirmed that the order to kill Reilly came from Stalin directly. Within months after his execution, various outlets of the British and American press carried an obituary notice: "REILLY—On the 28th of September, killed near the village of Allekul, Russia, by S. R. U. Troops. Captain Sidney George Reilly, M. C., beloved husband of Pepita Reilly." Two months later, on 17 January 1926, "The New York Times" reprinted this obituary notice and, citing unnamed sources in the intelligence community, the paper asserted that Reilly had been somehow involved in the still ongoing scandal of the "Zinoviev Letter", a fraudulent document published by the British "Daily Mail" newspaper a year prior during the general election in 1924.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: After Reilly's death there were various rumours about his survival; Reilly's wife Pepita Bobadilla claimed to possess evidence indicating that Reilly was still alive as late as 1932. Others speculated that the unscrupulous Reilly had defected to the opposition, becoming an adviser to Soviet intelligence. Despite such unfavourable rumours the international press quickly turned Reilly into a household name, lauding him as a masterful spy and chronicling his many espionage adventures with numerous embellishments. Contemporary newspapers dubbed him "the greatest spy in history" and "the Scarlet Pimpernel of Red Russia". In May 1931, The "London Evening Standard" published an illustrated serial headlined "Master Spy" which sensationalised his many exploits as well as outright invented others.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: As one of the principal suspects in the Ambassador's Plot and a key figure in the counter-revolutionary activities of White Russian émigrés, Reilly accordingly became a recurring villain in Soviet cinema. In the latter half of the 20th century, he frequently appeared as a historical character in films and television shows produced by the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries. He was portrayed by many different actors of various nationalities including: Vadim Medvedev in "The Conspiracy of Ambassadors" ("Zagovor Poslov") (1966); Vsevolod Yakut in "Operation Trust" ("Operatsiya Trest") (1968); Aleksandr Shirvindt in "Crash" ("Krakh") (1969); Vladimir Tatosov in "Trust" (1976), Sergei Yursky in "Coasts in the Mist" ("Mglistye Berega") (1986), and Harijs Liepins in "Syndicate II" ("Sindikat-2") (1981).


title: Sidney Reilly

text: In 1983, a Thames Television miniseries, "Reilly, Ace of Spies", dramatised the historical adventures of Reilly. Directed by Martin Campbell and Jim Goddard, the series was based on Robin Bruce Lockhart's book, "Ace of Spies", which was adapted by Troy Kennedy Martin. The programme won the 1984 BAFTA TV Award. Reilly was portrayed by actor Sam Neill who was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for his performance. Leo McKern portrayed Sir Basil Zaharoff.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: In a review of the programme, Michael Billington of "The New York Times" noted that "pinning Reilly down in 12 hours of television is difficult precisely because he was such an enigma: an alleged radical, yet one who helped to bring down Britain's first Labour government in 1924 by means of a forged letter, supposedly from the Bolshevik leader Grigory Zinoviev, instructing the British Communists to form cells in the armed forces; a Lothario and two-time bigamist who was yet never betrayed by any of the women he was involved with; an avid collector of Napoleona who wanted to be the power behind the throne rather than to rule himself."


title: Sidney Reilly

text: In "Ian Fleming, The Man Behind James Bond" by Andrew Lycett, Reilly is listed as an inspiration for James Bond. Reilly's friend, former diplomat and journalist Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, was a close acquaintance of Ian Fleming for many years and recounted to Fleming many of Reilly's espionage adventures. Lockhart had worked with Reilly in Russia in 1918, where they became embroiled in an SIS-backed plot to overthrow Lenin's Bolshevik government.


title: Sidney Reilly

text: Within five years of his disappearance in Soviet Russia in 1925, the press had turned Reilly into a household name, lauding him as a master spy and recounting his many espionage adventures. Fleming had therefore long been aware of Reilly's mythical reputation and had listened to Lockhart's recollections. Like Fleming's fictional creation, Reilly was multi-lingual, fascinated by the Far East, fond of fine living, and a compulsive gambler. When queried on whether Reilly's colourful life had directly inspired Bond, Ian Fleming replied: "James Bond is just a piece of nonsense I dreamed up. He's not a Sidney Reilly, you know."


title: Sidney Reilly

text: In 1895, Reilly encountered author Ethel Lilian Voynich, née Boole. Boole was a well-known figure in the late Victorian literary scene and later married to Polish revolutionary Wilfrid Voynich. She and Reilly had a sexual liaison in Italy together. During their affair, Reilly supposedly "bared his soul" to Ethel and revealed to her the peculiar story of his revolutionary past in the Russian Empire. After their affair had concluded, Voynich published in 1897 "The Gadfly", a critically acclaimed historical novel set in Italy under Austrian rule in the 1840s, whose central character is allegedly based on Reilly's early life. Alternatively, Reilly modelled himself on the revolutionary hero of Voynich's novel, although historian Mark Mazower observed "separating fact from fantasy in the case of Reilly is difficult". For years, the existence of this purported relationship was doubted by sceptical historians until confirmed by new evidence in 2016. Archived communication between Anne Fremantle—who attempted a biography of Ethel Voynich—and a relative of Ethel's on the Hinton side demonstrates that a liaison did occur. The theme music for the 1983 television mini-series is based on the “Romance” movement of "The Gadfly Suite" (Op. 97a), Levon Atovmian’s arrangement of Dmitri Shostakovich's music for the 1955 Soviet film adaptation of the novel.


title: Rich Porter

text: Richard Porter (July 26, 1965January 3, 1990), better known as Rich Porter, was an Afro-American drug dealer who rose to prominence in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City during the crack era in the mid–1980s. Porter was described by the police as being a "mid-level crack dealer" who "sold about $50 thousand worth of crack a week". The 2002 film "Paid in Full" was based on Rich and his partners Azie Faison and Alpo Martinez.


title: Rich Porter

text: Born Richard Porter in the Harlem section of New York City, Porter was the oldest of three children born to Velma Porter. Porter began selling drugs at the age of 12, rising through the ranks of the drug trade in Harlem. He became known for his flamboyant and high-profile lifestyle. He was rumored to have never worn the same outfit twice and that he owned over a dozen luxury vehicles that he kept in a garage in Manhattan during the height of his career as a drug dealer.


title: Rich Porter

text: He was murdered on January 3, 1990. His body was found the next day in the vicinity of Orchard Beach, Bronx. He had been shot several times in the head and chest. Police found $2,239 in his pocket. His friend and former drug dealing partner Alpo Martinez was charged and convicted of his murder.


title: Rich Porter

text: On December 5, 1989 his 12-year-old brother Donnell Porter was kidnapped in Harlem on his way to school and then had his finger cut off in order to extort $500,000 in ransom money from Rich, later lowered to $350,000. He was eventually killed and his body was found on January 28, 1990, a mile away from where Rich's body was found and less than a month after Rich's murder. His brother Donnell was kidnapped and killed by their maternal uncle and his gang, who were known as the Preachers Crew.


title: Rich Porter

text: The 2002 film "Paid in Full" was based on the life and death of Rich, and his involvement in drug dealing along with Azie Faison and Alpo Martinez. His character was portrayed by fellow Harlem native Mekhi Phifer. Richard Porter and the kidnapping and murder of his 12-year-old brother are also the subject of an episode of the FBI Files (Season 03, Episode 18) "The C-11 Squad".


title: Rob Yang

text: Rob Yang is a Korean American actor known for his role as Lawrence Yee on "Succession" and as Logan Kim on "The Resident". Yang has also appeared in numerous television shows and films, including "The Americans", "Living with Yourself", and "Twisted".


title: Suresh Gopi filmography

text: Suresh Gopi is an Indian actor who has predominantly acted in Malayalam films, besides occasional appearances in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Hindi films.


title: Bridgerton (novel series)

text: Bridgerton is a series of eight Regency romance novels written by Julia Quinn. Released from 2000 to 2006, it follows the eight siblings of the noble Bridgerton family as they navigate London high society in search of love, adventure and happiness.


title: Bridgerton (novel series)

text: The novels have been adapted by Shondaland into a television series titled "Bridgerton" which premiered in 2020 on Netflix.


title: Bridgerton (novel series)

text: Set between 1813 and 1827, each novel features one of the eight children of the late Viscount Bridgerton and his widow Violet: Anthony, who is the current Viscount Bridgerton, Benedict, Colin, Daphne, Eloise, Francesca, Gregory, and Hyacinth. The Bridgerton family are part of British nobility and are a well respected, immensely loving, and tight-knit clan favored among high society.


title: Bridgerton (novel series)

text: "People" ranked "The Viscount Who Loved Me", a perennial fan favorite, as the best book of the "Bridgerton" series for its enemies-to-lovers trope "full of banter and chemistry" with character development for the central couple, "both as a pair and on their own."


title: Bridgerton (novel series)

text: "The Duke and I" was criticized for the inclusion of non-consensual sex between Simon and Daphne which amounted to marital rape. Critics pointed out that it failed to acknowledge the difficulties of male victims of rape, especially since Simon was traumatized after the event.


title: Bridgerton (novel series)

text: "On the Way to the Wedding" won the Romance Writers of America RITA Award in 2007. In 2002, "To Sir Phillip, With Love" was named one of the six best mass market original novels of the year by "Publishers Weekly".


title: Bridgerton (novel series)

text: Well-received when they were first published, the novels received a surge on book sales when the Netflix series "Bridgerton" premiered its first season in December 2020, and again, for its second season in March 2022. Several titles in the series have been on "The New York Times" bestseller list, including at several weeks #1 with "The Duke and I" and "The Viscount Who Loved Me".


title: Bridgerton (novel series)

text: The book series has been adapted by Shondaland, for Netflix, into a television series titled "Bridgerton" which premiered on the platform in 2020. It follows the format of the novels, with each season focusing on a different Bridgerton sibling, and their quest for marriage.


title: Park Sung-woong

text: Park Sung-woong (born January 9, 1973) is a South Korean actor. Following his acting debut in "No. 3" in 1997, Park has starred in several movies and television series, notably as a gangster in "New World" (2013) and a serial killer in "The Deal" (2015).


title: Park Sung-woong

text: Park married actress Shin Eun-jung on October 18, 2008. They met while filming "The Legend" (2007), in which the characters they played were lovers.


title: Universal Animation Studios

text: Universal Animation Studios (formerly known as Universal Cartoon Studios) is an American animation studio and a division of Universal Pictures, a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, which is owned by Comcast. It has produced direct-to-video sequels to Universal-released feature films, such as "The Land Before Time", "An American Tail", "Balto", as well as other films and television series.


title: Universal Animation Studios

text: The actual animation production is done overseas, usually by either Wang Film Productions or Rough Draft Studios, while pre-production and post-production is United States-based.


title: Universal Animation Studios

text: The television animation divisions of Universal and DreamWorks merged on August 23, 2016 after Universal completed its acquisition of DreamWorks Animation, who began producing a majority of Universal Pictures' family friendly TV shows.


title: Universal Animation Studios

text: Universal Animation Studios was established in 1990 as Universal Cartoon Studios, the animation division of MCA Inc. Its debut work was "Back to the Future: The Animated Series", which was announced on March 22, 1991, and premiered on CBS on September 14 the same year.


title: Universal Animation Studios

text: This is not including the original films of "Charlotte's Web", "An American Tail", "The Land Before Time" and "Balto" made by either Hanna-Barbera Productions, Sullivan Bluth Studios or Amblimation.


title: Universal Animation Studios

text: The date reflects the first appearance of Woody Woodpecker in a production from Universal Animation Studio rather than the date when the character was originally created in 1940 by Walter Lantz.


title: Japanese war fan

text: The Japanese war fan, or tessen (), is a weaponized Japanese hand fan designed for use in warfare. Several types of war fans were used by the samurai class of feudal Japan and each had a different look and purpose.


title: Japanese war fan

text: War fans varied in size, materials, shape, and use. One of the most significant uses was as a signalling device. Signalling fans came in two varieties:


title: Japanese war fan

text: The commander would raise or lower his fan and point in different ways to issue commands to the soldiers, which would then be passed on by other forms of visible and audible signalling.


title: Japanese war fan

text: One particularly famous legend involving war fans concerns a direct confrontation between [[Takeda Shingen]] and [[Uesugi Kenshin]] at the [[battles of Kawanakajima#Fourth battle|fourth battle of Kawanakajima]]. Kenshin burst into Shingen's command tent on horseback, having broken through his entire army, and attacked; his sword was deflected by Shingen's war fan. It is not clear whether Shingen parried with a tessen, a dansen uchiwa, or some other form of fan. Nevertheless, it was quite rare for commanders to fight directly, and especially for a general to defend himself so effectively when taken so off-guard.


title: Japanese war fan

text: [[Minamoto no Yoshitsune]] is said to have defeated the great warrior monk [[Saitō Musashibō Benkei]] with a tessen.


title: Japanese war fan

text: [[Araki Murashige]] is said to have used a tessen to save his life when the great warlord [[Oda Nobunaga]] sought to assassinate him. Araki was invited before Nobunaga, and was stripped of his swords at the entrance to the mansion, as was customary. When he performed the customary bowing at the threshold, Nobunaga intended to have the room's sliding doors slammed shut onto Araki's neck, killing him. However, Araki supposedly placed his tessen in the grooves in the floor, blocking the doors from closing. His tessen saved his life that day.


title: Japanese war fan

text: The [[Yagyū clan]], sword instructors to the [[Tokugawa shogunate|Tokugawa shōguns]], included tessenjutsu in their martial arts school, the [[Yagyū Shinkage-ryū]].


title: Thaman S

text: Ghantasala Sai Srinivas Thaman (born 16 November 1983), known professionally as Thaman S, earlier as S S Thaman, is an Indian music composer, professional drummer, and playback singer who predominantly works in Telugu films and Tamil films along with Kannada films. Thaman entered the film industry as a supporting musician with the Telugu film "Bhairava Dweepam" in 1994, and later became a film music composer. His debut films as music director were "Malli Malli" (2009) in Telugu and "Sindhanai Sei" (2009) in Tamil. He made his acting debut in "Boys" (2003).


title: Thaman S

text: His breakout film as a music director was "Kick" (2009). His notable compositions include films such as "Eeram" (2009), "Brindavanam" (2010), "Mirapakay" (2011), "Dookudu" (2011), "Businessman" (2012), "Naayak" (2013), "Baadshah" (2013), "Greeku Veerudu" (2013), "Race Gurram" (2014), "Aagadu" (2014)"," "" (2015), "Sarrainodu" (2016), "Tholi Prema" (2018),Simmba (2018),"Ala Vaikuntapuramulo" (2020), "Krack" (2021), Vakeel Saab (2021)",Akhanda" (2021), and "Bheemla Nayak" (2022). He won the National Film Award for Best Music Direction for "Ala Vaikuntapuramulo" and Filmfare Award for Best Music Director – Telugu for "Dookudu".


title: Thaman S

text: Thaman was born as Ghantasala Sai Srinivas in Madras, Tamil Nadu into a Telugu-speaking family of musicians from Pottepalem in Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh. He is the grandson of veteran director and producer Ghantasala Balaramayya. His father Ghantasala Siva Kumar was a drummer, who worked for seven hundred films, under the composer, K. Chakravarthy. His mother, Ghantasala Savitri, his sister Yamini Ghantasala, and his aunt B. Vasantha are all playback singers. Sai Srinivas adopted the stage name Thaman and suffixed it with an S, the initial of his father's name Sivakumar.


title: Thaman S

text: Thaman studied at Don Bosco School in Chennai. He joined a music team consisting of S. P. Balasubrahmanyam and G. Anand as a rhythm pads player when he was nine years old, and discontinued studies when he lost his father at the age of 13. He was compelled to make his hobby into a profession to overcome the crisis in his family. He then joined the Raj–Koti team and worked for three years on sixty films. He also worked with M. M. Keeravani for three years on thirty films.


title: Thaman S

text: Thaman considered Mani Sharma to be his guru and spent eight years under his tutelage while working on 94 films with him. On the whole he put in fourteen years of rhythm and keyboard programming with the veterans before branching out on his own.


title: Thaman S

text: Thaman made his debut as a composer in through the Telugu feature film "Malli Malli" (2009), although the soundtrack album was released in 2008. Jeevi of "Idlebrain" credited Thaman's work in the film is credited as "good". The same year his second soundtrack, of the film "Sindhanai Sei", marked his debut in the Tamil cinema. He has also made his playback singing debut by recording "Uchimeedhu" song from the soundtrack. A critic rated the album 2 out of 5 and stated, "The music itself is rather dramatic, and sometimes strident. Almost all the songs, barring one seem to be pitched on the 6-kattai scale, which does not afford much variety in terms of listening". A Telugu version of the album was released for the film's dubbed Telugu version. Background score in the Tamil film "Eeram" (2009) received good reviews from the critics. Although he started composing the music of the film in 2007, the soundtrack was released in 2008 and eventually the film was released in 2009.


title: Thaman S

text: Although Thaman got his major success with the album of the film "Kick" (2009), critics gave mixed reviews citing it as "mediocre". In the same year, he has four more soundtrack album releases–three in Telugu and one in Tamil. Composition of "Mahalakshmi" and "Dhakku Dhakku" songs from the film "Sankham" were praised. In 2010, he has composed score and soundtrack album for nine films, with majority of them being Tamil. "Brindavanam" was the most successful composition of all. Released on 12 September 2010, the album received positive reviews. "123Telugu" gave a review stating "Overall the songs of Brindaavanam are fast, most of them soulful, enjoyable and a touch catering to the lovers of mass numbers. Most Telugu music directors have been going the Rahman way focusing on a fast beat while the song is slow. This album is an exception, where the songs are as fast as they can get. Thaman manages to keep everyone interested with his tunes, in spite of the pressure to cater to dance needs of Jr.NTR."


title: Thaman S

text: In May 2017, Thaman made his Hindi debut when he was one of the six composers who featured in the soundtrack album of Rohit Shetty's "Golmaal Again", a comedy franchise in Hindi cinema. In 2018, he composed a theme song for Rohit Shetty's successful venture "Simmba".


title: Thaman S

text: Thaman is married to playback singer Sri Vardhini and they have a son. He owns a music band named Thakkali.


title: Maria Grazia Cucinotta

text: Maria Grazia Cucinotta (; born 27 July 1968) is an Italian actress who has featured in films and television series since 1990. She has also worked as a film producer, screenwriter and model. Internationally she is best known for her roles in "Il Postino" and as the Bond girl, credited as "Cigar Girl", in the James Bond film "The World Is Not Enough".


title: Maria Grazia Cucinotta

text: Cucinotta was born in Messina in Sicily, Italy. She is well known in Italy as a movie and television actress. She guest starred in "The Sopranos" episode "Isabella" as the titular character. She also appeared on "The Simpsons" episode "The Italian Bob" voicing Sideshow Bob's wife, Francesca.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: The Whole Earth Catalog (WEC) was an American counterculture magazine and product catalog published by Stewart Brand several times a year between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998. The magazine featured essays and articles, but was primarily focused on product reviews. The editorial focus was on self-sufficiency, ecology, alternative education, "do it yourself" (DIY), and holism, and featured the slogan "access to tools". While WEC listed and reviewed a wide range of products (clothing, books, tools, machines, seeds, etc.), it did not sell any of the products directly. Instead, the vendor's contact information was listed alongside the item and its review. This is why, while not a regularly published periodical, numerous editions and updates were required to keep price and availability information up to date.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: Steve Jobs compared "The Whole Earth Catalog" to Internet search engine Google in his June 2005 Stanford University commencement speech.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: When I was young, there was an amazing publication called "The Whole Earth Catalog", which was one of the bibles of my generation ... It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along. It was idealistic and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: Then at the very end of this commencement speech Jobs quotes explicitly the farewell message placed on the back cover of the last 1974 edition of the "Catalog" (#1180 October 1974 titled "Whole Earth Epilog") and makes it his own final recommendation : "Stay hungry. Stay foolish."


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: The title "Whole Earth Catalog" came from a previous project by Stewart Brand. In 1966, he initiated a public campaign to have NASA release the then-rumored satellite photo of the sphere of Earth as seen from space, one of the first images of the "Whole Earth". He thought the image might be a powerful symbol, evoking a sense of shared destiny and adaptive strategies from people. The Stanford-educated Brand, a biologist with strong artistic and social interests, believed that there was a groundswell of commitment to thoroughly renovating American industrial society along ecologically and socially just lines, whatever they might prove to be.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: Andrew Kirk in "Counterculture Green" notes that the "Whole Earth Catalog" was preceded by the "Whole Earth Truck Store". The WETS was a 1963 Dodge truck: in 1968, Brand, who was then 29, and his wife Lois embarked "on a commune road trip" with the truck, hoping to tour the country doing educational fairs. The truck was not only a store, but also an alternative lending library and a mobile microeducation service.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: Kevin Kelly, who would edit later editions of the catalog, summarizes the very early history this way:


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: The "Truck Store" finally settled into its permanent location in Menlo Park, California. Instead of bringing the store to the people, Brand decided to create "accumulatively larger versions of his tool catalog" and sell it by mail so the people could contact the vendors directly.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: Using the most basic typesetting and page-layout tools, Brand and his colleagues created the first issue of "The Whole Earth Catalog" in 1968. In subsequent issues, its production values gradually improved. Its outsize pages measured 11×14 inches (28×36 cm). Later editions were more than an inch thick. The early editions were published by the Portola Institute, headed by Richard Raymond. The so-called "Last Whole Earth Catalog" (June 1971) won the first U.S. National Book Award in category Contemporary Affairs.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: Brand's intent with the catalog was to provide education and "access to tools" so a reader could "find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested."


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: J. Baldwin was a young designer and instructor of design at colleges around the San Francisco Bay (San Francisco State University [then San Francisco State College], the San Francisco Art Institute, and the California College of the Arts [then California College of Arts and Crafts]). As he recalled in the film "Ecological Design" (1994), "Stewart Brand came to me because he heard that I read catalogs. He said, 'I want to make this thing called a "whole Earth" catalog so that anyone on Earth can pick up a telephone and find out the complete information on anything. ... That's my goal.'" Baldwin served as the chief editor of subjects in the areas of technology and design, both in the catalog itself and in other publications which arose from it.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: True to his 1966 vision, Brand's publishing efforts were suffused with an awareness of the importance of ecology, both as a field of study and as an influence upon the future of humankind and emerging human awareness.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: Within each section, the best tools and books the editors could find were collected and listed, along with images, reviews and uses, prices, and suppliers. The reader was also able to order some items directly through the catalog.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: The "Catalog" used a broad definition of "tools". There were informative tools, such as books, maps, professional journals, courses, and classes. There were well-designed special-purpose utensils, including garden tools, carpenters' and masons' tools, welding equipment, chainsaws, fiberglass materials, tents, hiking shoes, and potters' wheels. There were even early synthesizers and personal computers.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: The "Catalog"'s publication coincided with a great wave of convention-challenging experimentalism and a do-it-yourself attitude associated with "the counterculture," and tended to appeal not only to the intelligentsia of the movement, but to creative, hands-on, and outdoorsy people of many stripes. Some of the ideas in the "Catalog" were developed during Brand's visits to Drop City.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: With the "Catalog" opened flat, the reader might find the large page on the left full of text and intriguing illustrations from a volume of Joseph Needham's "Science and Civilization in China", showing and explaining an astronomical clock tower or a chain-pump windmill, while on the right-hand page are a review of a beginners' guide to modern technology ("The Way Things Work") and a review of "The Engineers' Illustrated Thesaurus". On another spread, the verso reviews books on accounting and moonlighting jobs, while the recto bears an article in which people tell the story of a community credit union they founded. Another pair of pages depict and discuss different kayaks, inflatable dinghies, and houseboats.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: After 1972, the catalog was published sporadically. An important shift in philosophy in the "Catalogs" occurred in the early 1970s, when Brand decided that the early stance of emphasizing individualism should be replaced with one favoring "community". He had originally written that "a realm of intimate, personal power is developing"; regarding this as important in some respects (to wit, the soon-emerging potentials of personal computing), Brand felt that the overarching project of humankind had more to do with living within natural systems, and this is something we do in common, interactively.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: The broad interpretation of "tool" coincided with that given by the designer, philosopher, and engineer Buckminster Fuller, though another thinker admired by Brand and some of his cohorts was Lewis Mumford, who had written about words as tools. Early editions reflected the considerable influence of Fuller, particularly his teachings about "whole systems," "synergetics," and efficiency or reducing waste. By 1971, Brand and his co-workers were already questioning whether Fuller's sense of direction might be too anthropocentric. New information arising in fields like ecology and biospherics was persuasive.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: By the mid-1970s, much of the Buddhist economics viewpoint of E. F. Schumacher, as well as the activist interests of the biological species preservationists, had tempered the overall enthusiasm for Fuller's ideas in the catalog. Still later, the amiable-architecture ideas of people like Christopher Alexander and similar community-planning ideas of people like Peter Calthorpe further tempered the engineering-efficiency tone of Fuller's ideas.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: In 1974, the "Whole Earth Epilog" was published, which was intended as a "volume 2" to the "Last Whole Earth Catalog". An updated edition of "The Last Whole Earth Catalog" appeared in 1975. In 1980, "The Next Whole Earth Catalog" () was published; it was so well received that an updated second edition was published in 1981.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: In the 1980s there were two editions of the "Whole Earth Software Catalog", a compendium for which Doubleday had bid $1.4 million for the trade paperback rights.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: In 1986, "The Essential Whole Earth Catalog" () was published, and in 1988 the "WEC" was published on CD-ROM using an early form of hypertext developed by Apple Computer called "HyperCard". In 1988, there was a "WEC" dedicated to Communications Tools. A "Whole Earth Ecolog" was published in 1990, devoted exclusively to environmental topics. Around this time there were special "WEC"s on other topics (e.g., "The Fringes of Reason" in 1989).


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: A slender, but still on A3 paper "30th Anniversary Celebration WEC" was published in 1998 as part of Issue 95 of the "Whole Earth" magazine (); it reprinted the original "WEC" along with new material. An important aspect of this copy of the first "WEC" was a limitation placed on it by book publishers who "begged ["Whole Earth"] not to reprint the Catalog with their names anywhere near books they no longer carry". As a result, all such information was placed at the back of the catalog. This placement hampered a valuable function of the "WEC": nudging publishers to keep featured seminal works in print.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: Three books were serialized in the pages of the WEC, printing a couple of paragraphs per page. This made reading the catalog a page-by-page experience.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: For this new countercultural movement, information was a precious commodity. In the '60s, there was no Internet; no 500 cable channels. ... [The "WEC"] was a great example of user-generated content, without advertising, before the Internet. Basically, Brand invented the blogosphere long before there was any such thing as a blog. ... No topic was too esoteric, no degree of enthusiasm too ardent, no amateur expertise too uncertified to be included. ... This I am sure about: it is no coincidence that the "Whole Earth Catalogs" disappeared as soon as the web and blogs arrived. Everything the "Whole Earth Catalogs" did, the web does better.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: Looking back and discussing attitudes evident in the early editions of the catalog, Brand wrote, "At a time when the New Left was calling for grassroots "political" (i.e., referred) power, "Whole Earth" eschewed politics and pushed grass-roots "direct" power—tools and skills."


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: As an early indicator of the general Zeitgeist, the catalog's first edition preceded the original Earth Day by nearly two years. The idea of Earth Day occurred to Senator Gaylord Nelson, its instigator, "in the summer of 1969 while on a conservation speaking tour out west," where the Sierra Club was active, and where young minds had been broadened and stimulated by such influences as the catalog.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: Despite this popular and critical success, particularly among a generation of young hippies and survivalists, the catalog was not intended to continue in publication for long, just long enough for the editors to complete a good overview of the available tools and resources, and for the word, and copies, to get out to everyone who needed them.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: From 1974 to 2003, the Whole Earth principals published a magazine, known originally as "CoEvolution Quarterly". When the short-lived "Whole Earth Software Review" (a supplement to "The Whole Earth Software Catalog") failed, it was merged in 1985 with "CoEvolution Quarterly" to form the "Whole Earth Review" (edited at different points by Jay Kinney,


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: Kevin Kelly, and Howard Rheingold), later called "Whole Earth Magazine" and finally just "Whole Earth". The last issue, number 111 (edited by Alex Steffen), was meant to be published in Spring 2003, but funds ran out. The Point Foundation, which owned "Whole Earth", closed its doors later that year.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: The Whole Earth website continues the "WEC" legacy of concepts in popular discourse, medical self-care, community building, bioregionalism, environmental restoration, nanotechnology, and cyberspace. As of January 2022, the website appears to be offline.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: Recognizing the "developed country" focus of the original WEC, groups in several developing countries have created "catalogs" of their own to be more relevant to their countries. One such effort was an adaptation of the WEC (called the "Liklik Buk") written and published in the late 1970s in Papua New Guinea; by 1982 this had been enlarged, updated, and translated (as "Save Na Mekem") into the Pidgin language used throughout Melanesia, and updates of the English "Liklik Buk" were published in 1986 and 2003.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: In the United States, the book "Domebook One" was a direct spin-off of the WEC. Lloyd Kahn, Shelter editor of the WEC, borrowed WEC production equipment for a week in 1970 and produced the first book on building geodesic domes. A year later, in 1971, Kahn again borrowed WEC equipment (an IBM Selectric Composer typesetting machine and a Polaroid MP-5 camera on an easel), and spent a month in the Santa Barbara Mountains producing "Domebook 2", which went on to sell 165,000 copies. With production of DB 2, Kahn and his company Shelter Publications followed Stewart Brand's move to nationwide distribution by Random House.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: In 1973, Kirsten Grimstad and Susan Rennie are part of a research project at Berkeley University and publish a feminist catalog inspired by the Whole Earth Catalog, the New Woman's Survival Catalog, which gathers feminist initiatives in different domains (art, communication, work, money, self-help, self-defense...) in the USA.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: In 1969, a store which was inspired by (but not financially connected with) "The Whole Earth Catalog," called the Whole Earth Access opened in Berkeley, California. It closed in 1998. In 1970 a store called the "Whole Earth Provision Co.", inspired by the catalogue, opened in Austin, Texas. It has six stores in Austin, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: In late 2006, Worldchanging released their 600-page compendium of solutions, "Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century", which Bill McKibben, in an article in the "New York Review of Books" called "The Whole Earth Catalog retooled for the iPod generation." The editor of Worldchanging has since acknowledged the Catalog as a prime inspiration.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: "Whole Arctic Catalog" was written by Pamela Richot and Published in "Backet 3: At Extremes" in 2015 to draw attention to threats to the arctic region specifically, similarly to how "The Whole Earth Catalog" drew attention to global environmental threats.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds publishes a "Whole Seed Catalog," with a title and cover image inspired by the "Whole Earth Catalog".


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: Kevin Kelly, mentioned above for his role in editing later editions of the "Whole Earth Catalog", maintains a web site—Cool-Tools.org—that publishes reviews of "the best/cheapest tools available. Tools are defined broadly as anything that can be useful. This includes hand tools, machines, books, software, gadgets, websites, maps, and even ideas." He also published a large format book in 2013—"Cool Tools A Catalog of Possibilities"—which draws on the many reviews published over the years on that web site. The format, size, and style of the book reflect and pay homage to the original "Whole Earth Catalog".


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: In 1970, on April Fool's Day, the Whole Earth Restaurant opened at UC Santa Cruz. It was an early source of "whole foods" in Northern California until it closed in 2002.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: In 1972 Warner Bros. Records release a 2 disc sample album The Whole Burbank Catalog. The cover parodied the publication's artwork.


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: A 2010 issue of the political art magazine made by the Adbusters Media Foundation was titled "The Whole Brain Catalog", which features a parody cover with a small human brain in place of the earth, and many references to the 1960s counter culture movement. The tagline read "Access to Therapies" rather than "Access to Tools".


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: On April 17, 2018, My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James announced the release of his third solo album "Uniform Distortion", which he stated was inspired by "The" "Whole Earth Catalog."


title: Whole Earth Catalog

text: Stewart Brand and "The Whole Earth Catalog" are both subjects of interest to scholars. Notable examples include works by Theodore Roszak, Howard Rheingold, Fred Turner, John Markoff, Andrew Kirk, Sam Binkley and Felicity Scott. The Stanford University Library System has a "Whole Earth" archive in its Department of Special Collections.


title: Rachel Daly

text: Rachel Ann Daly (born 6 December 1991) is an English professional footballer who plays for Aston Villa in the FA Women's Super League and the England national team. Since 2019 she has played in defence, midfield, and attack. Previously, she played for Houston Dash.


title: Rachel Daly

text: Despite playing just three years for the St. John's University Red Storm, Daly set the school's career records for both goals (50) and points (111). As a freshman, she did not see game action due to NCAA compliance regulations. During her second year, she played and started in all 21 games and set St. John's single-season records in goals (23) and points (50), becoming the program's first-ever player to be named a NSCAA All-American, after earning Second Team honours.


title: Rachel Daly

text: As a junior, she was the team's leading player in points with 18, including eight goals and two assists. As a senior, she appeared in 20 games, making 19 starts, and finished as the leading scorer on the team with 19 goals and five assists for a total of 18 points. She became the first player in program history to be selected to the NSCAA All-America First Team and the first to be named a semifinalist for the Hermann Trophy.


title: Rachel Daly

text: Daly was selected by NWSL club Houston Dash as the sixth overall pick of the 2016 NWSL College Draft. The NWSL Media Association voted Daly Player of the Week for the first week of the season after she contributed a goal and an assist in the Dash's 3–1 win against the Chicago Red Stars. She appeared in 16 games in the 2016 season, tallying four goals and four assists.


title: Rachel Daly

text: Daly returned to the Dash for the 2017 season, appearing in 23 games and scoring five goals. On 20 November 2017, the Houston Dash announced that Daly had signed a new contract with the club.


title: Rachel Daly

text: In the 2018 season, Daly was named Player of the Week for week nine, as well as Player of the Month for the month of May. Daly started all 24 games for the Dash and scored a career high 10 goals. She was voted team MVP and named to the NWSL Second XI for the 2018 season.


title: Rachel Daly

text: Daly was named captain of the Dash ahead of the 2020 NWSL Challenge Cup. The Dash won the Cup, their first trophy, after a 2–0 win over the Chicago Red Stars in the final. Daly won the tournament Golden Boot and on 25 July 2020 was named tournament MVP.


title: Rachel Daly

text: On 9 August 2022, it was announced that Daly had signed a three-year deal with Aston Villa. She made her competitive debut for the club on 18 September that year, scoring 2 goals in a 4–3 win over Manchester City.


title: Rachel Daly

text: Daly has represented England at the U-15, U-17, U-19, and U-23 levels. She was a member of England's U-17 FIFA Women's World Cup team that finished fourth in New Zealand in 2008.


title: Rachel Daly

text: When Mark Sampson replaced Hope Powell as England coach, he named Daly in his first squad in December 2013. She won her first senior cap in June 2016, scoring in England's 7–0 UEFA Women's Euro 2017 qualifying win over Serbia. Daly was left off Sampson's squad for Euro 2017.


title: Rachel Daly

text: After not being called up for nearly a year, Daly was included in England's squad for the 2018 SheBelieves Cup by new head coach Phil Neville. Daly featured in four of England's World Cup qualifying games in 2018, as England won their group and qualified for the 2019 World Cup. She won the 2019 SheBelieves Cup with England, where she appeared in two games and played all 90 minutes in a 2–2 draw against the United States.


title: Rachel Daly

text: In July 2022 Daly was included, and started every game at left back, with the England squad which won UEFA Women's Euro 2022. In November 2022, she started her first international match as a forward during a series of friendlies in which manager Sarina Wiegman was trying out options to replace the perennial but recently-retired number 9 Ellen White, with Daly saying "she will play wherever Wiegman needs her".


title: Rachel Daly

text: In May 2021, Daly was named to the Team GB squad as one of six defenders in the squad. She appeared in all four games for Team GB, starting in three of the games.


title: Fyre (film)

text: Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened is a 2019 American documentary film about Billy McFarland and the failed Fyre Festival of 2017. It was directed by Chris Smith, and produced by Danny Gabai and Mick Purzycki and was released on Netflix on January 18, 2019.


title: Fyre (film)

text: The film was co-produced by Jerry Media, the social media agency responsible for promoting the Fyre Festival and covering up the fraud, and MATTE Projects, the production company that directed the Fyre Festival's promotional shoot. Jerry Media approached VICE with the idea of a documentary three months after the events. According to Netflix, the documentary was Smith's idea.


title: Fyre (film)

text: On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds approval rating with an average rating of , based on reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, ""Fyre" smolders with agonizing tension when a party in paradise goes awry, but this slickly assembled documentary reserves its greatest horror for damning observations about the dangers of wealth." Metacritic, which uses a normalized average, assigned the film a score of 75 out of 100, based on 26 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Fyre (film)

text: In reviewing "Fyre" and "Fyre Fraud", a similar documentary that premiered on Hulu, "The A.V. Club" stated that ""Fyre" is the stronger, more worthwhile documentary, but its counterpart is a helpful reminder that, like so many stories, one account can't contain the whole truth."


title: Fyre (film)

text: In April 2019, Netflix reported that 20 million households had watched the film during its first month of release.


title: Fyre (film)

text: On the 71st Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards, "Fyre" earned four nominations, Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special, Outstanding Directing for a Documentary/Nonfiction Program, Outstanding Sound Editing for a Nonfiction Program (Single or Multi-Camera), and Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Nonfiction Program (Single or Multi-Camera).


title: Cruel and unusual punishment

text: Cruel and unusual punishment is a phrase in common law describing punishment that is considered unacceptable due to the suffering, pain, or humiliation it inflicts on the person subjected to the sanction. The precise definition varies by jurisdiction, but typically includes punishments that are arbitrary, unnecessary, overly severe compared to the crime, or not generally accepted in society.


title: Cruel and unusual punishment

text: The words cruel and unusual punishment were first used in the English Bill of Rights 1689. They were later also adopted in the United States by the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution (ratified 1791) and in the British Leeward Islands (1798). Very similar words, "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment", appear in Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948. The right under a different formulation is also found in Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (1950) and in Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966). The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982) also contains this fundamental right in section 12 and it is to be found in Article 4 (quoting the European Convention verbatim) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (2000). It is also found in Article 16 of the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984), and in Article 40 of the Constitution of Poland (1997). The Constitution of the Marshall Islands, in the sixth section of its Bill of Rights (Article 2), prohibits "cruel and unusual punishment", which it defines as: the death penalty; torture; "inhuman and degrading treatment"; and "excessive fines or deprivations".


title: Cruel and unusual punishment

text: The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution states that "cruel and unusual punishments [shall not be] inflicted." The general principles that the United States Supreme Court relied on to decide whether or not a particular punishment was cruel and unusual were determined by Justice William Brennan. In "Furman v. Georgia", , Justice Brennan concurring wrote, "There are, then, four principles by which we may determine whether a particular punishment is 'cruel and unusual'."


title: Cruel and unusual punishment

text: And he added: "The function of these principles, after all, is simply to provide [the] means by which a court can determine whether [the] challenged punishment comports with human dignity. They are, therefore, interrelated, and, in most cases, it will be their convergence that will justify the conclusion that a punishment is 'cruel and unusual.' The test, then, will ordinarily be a cumulative one: if a punishment is unusually severe, if there is a strong probability that it is inflicted arbitrarily, if it is substantially rejected by contemporary society, and if there is no reason to believe that it serves any penal purpose more effectively than some less severe punishment, then the continued infliction of that punishment violates the command of the Clause that the State may not inflict inhuman and uncivilized punishments upon those convicted of crimes."


title: Cruel and unusual punishment

text: Continuing, he wrote that he expected that no state would pass a law obviously violating any one of these principles, so court decisions regarding the Eighth Amendment would involve a "cumulative" analysis of the implication of each of the four principles. In this way, the United States Supreme Court "set the standard that a punishment would be cruel and unusual [if] it was too severe for the crime, [if] it was arbitrary, if it offended society's sense of justice, or if it was not more effective than a less severe penalty."


title: Cruel and unusual punishment

text: There is much discussion as to whether capital punishment is considered cruel and unusual. Common arguments are that capital punishment is more expensive when factoring in appeals versus life in prison, and that the government has been wrong before on death penalty cases (therefore, the government could be wrong again, and the government ought not have the authority to end a life). These two arguments alone may or may not qualify under the tests the government puts forth, which could also be considered arbitrary itself, especially if society is not informed enough on these considerable facts. For most of recorded history, capital punishments were often deliberately cruel, painful, and/or degrading. Severe historical execution methods include the breaking wheel, hanged, drawn and quartered, mazzatello, boiling to death, death by burning, execution by drowning, death by starvation, immurement, flaying, disembowelment, crucifixion, impalement, crushing, execution by elephant, keelhauling, stoning, dismemberment, sawing, slow slicing, blood eagle, bamboo torture and necklacing.


title: Cruel and unusual punishment

text: In 2008, Michael Portillo on the show "Horizon" argued that in ensuring an execution is not of a cruel and unusual nature, the following criteria must be met:


title: Cruel and unusual punishment

text: The show argued that hypoxia appears to meet the criteria, by way of applying a combination of the gases argon and nitrogen, as the person being executed would not feel any physical pain but would experience a euphoric state. It was further argued that these gases could be applied cheaply and efficiently by restraining the prisoner by way of physical restraints and mask.


title: Gary Chapman (author)

text: Gary Demonte Chapman (born January 10, 1938) is an American author and radio talk show host. Chapman is most noted for his "The Five Love Languages" series regarding human relationships.


title: Gary Chapman (author)

text: Chapman is a graduate of the Moody Bible Institute and holds a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) and Master of Arts (M.A.) degree in anthropology from Wheaton College and from Wake Forest University. He also received Master of Religious Education (M.R.E.) and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degrees in adult education from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.


title: Gary Chapman (author)

text: Chapman joined the staff of Calvary Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 1971 and shares the responsibilities of teaching and family care.


title: Gary Chapman (author)

text: Chapman is perhaps best known for his concept of "Five Love Languages", helping people express and receive love as expressed through one of five languages: words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, or physical touch. Chapman argues that while each of these languages is enjoyed to some degree by all people, a person will usually speak one primary language, but all are important and can be ranked after taking the love language profile.


title: Gary Chapman (author)

text: The first of many books promoting the above concept was "The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate", first published in 1992. The book has sold over 11 million copies in English; having been translated into 49 other languages and the 2015 edition consistently ranks in the top 100 sellers on Amazon.com, ranking in the top 50 as of February, 2007. It also consistently ranks in the top five books on the "New York Times" bestsellers list, claiming the #1 spot at times.


title: Gary Chapman (author)

text: He has also authored the Five Love Language concept books for parents of children and teenagers, single adults, and a special version for men. He has co-authored "The Five Languages of Apology" with Dr. Jennifer Thomas, which focuses on giving and receiving apologies. Additionally, Chapman co-authored "The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace" with Dr. Paul White, applying the concepts to work-based relationships.


title: Gary Chapman (author)

text: Chapman travels the world presenting seminars on marriage, family, and relationships, and his radio programs air on more than 400 stations.


title: Go to market

text: Go-to-market or go-to-market strategy is the plan of an organization, utilizing their outside resources (e.g. sales force and distributors), to deliver their unique value proposition to customers and achieve competitive advantage.


title: Go to market

text: The end goal is to enhance the overall customer experience by offering a superior product and/or more competitive pricing.


title: Go to market

text: In the earliest stages of developing a go-to-market strategy for a new product or a service, the company has to initially conduct an accurate definition of the target market. The company has to decide whether they already have prospective customers within their customer base but using different services.


title: Go to market

text: After defining the market, the product or service is researched until a final decision has been made on what the value proposition will be. Then the company determines its pricing strategy. It is very challenging to decide what pricing strategy to follow as it differs from one product or service to another, or even when the product or service remains the same but the strategy changes, such as switching to subscription-based pricing (an example for this is Adobe's major shift from selling its Creative Suite software which included all Adobe's products such as Photoshop and Illustrator, to a $50-per-month Creative Cloud and various other subscription plans).


title: Go to market

text: Moreover, choosing the right distribution and marketing channels followed by promotion are very vital steps in a go-to-market strategy. A company has to decide which distribution model to choose, what kind of support and services are required and addressing the possibility of creating a competitive advantage. Afterwards, the company decides how it is going to promote its product or services and what kind of marketing campaigns are the most influential to follow.


title: Go to market

text: Delivering exceptional customer experiences leads to loyalty and advocacy of the customer. Consequently, that triggers increase in product purchase, customer retention and low cost of service.


title: Go to market

text: These are people that may or may not even know you exist, that you'd like to do business with. You have to figure out from a marketing standpoint, how to attract these people and get them to engage with your brand in some way such as visiting your website, attending a webinar, responding to an email and more.


title: Go to market

text: The first conversion point is MQL which is a marketing qualified lead. This is a human being that has in some way expressed interest in engaging with you, it doesn't mean they're ready to buy but it means they are willing to engage. It could be a Contact Us form, it could be a demo request, it could be they just want to learn more, these can all be considered marketing qualified leads. The MQL is a qualification metric for the performance of your marketing.


title: Go to market

text: If this rate grows over time, it means you are doing a better job at targeting your customer base, and a better job of converting them to be interested to engage. If you have 1000 people on your email list, and every month 10-30 of them become leads, you now can measure how good you are at engaging them via email.


title: Go to market

text: Taking company's mission and vision into account is a key determining factor when performing a go-to-market strategy. Motivating employees to perform well is a decisive factor to include. Thus, defining company's vision and what kind of impact it is trying to create is essential in the earliest stages of a go-to-market strategy.


title: Go to market

text: Understanding the competition is crucial in deciding what product or service to offer. Gathering information about how competitors are performing in the market, what customers think of the different products available and what is missing in the market through conducting research using different methods such as SWOT and PEST analyses.


title: Go to market

text: Market segmentation is the process by which one divides prospective customers into different groups (segments) that have common needs and the same expected reaction to a marketing action. This approach enables companies to offer customers full value proposition of their products or services.


title: Go to market

text: There are common factors considered when performing a market segmentation in a go-to-market strategy:


title: Go to market

text: Marketing strategy includes every marketing activity which helps an organization to target the market after conducting market research.


title: Go to market

text: Go-to-market strategy usually develops during the introduction of new products or services. Marketing strategy covers:


title: Go to market

text: An example of using a go-to-market strategy could be observed in the automobile insurance industry. Initially, the company has to choose the right segment of the market (market segmentation). If the customers are considered individual households, then the company works on creating interest in their prospective customers using different forms of media such as TV advertisements, social media, and billboards. Once the customers are persuaded to proceed, they are offered to purchase the service through different channels such as the internet (company's website) or agents, both of which act as entities responsible for customer service.


title: Go to market

text: In the case of customers being corporate accounts during the market segmentation process, interest creation and purchase are done through direct sales, agents, or the internet. Tele-service and direct-service representatives serve as contacts after the purchase.


title: The Undisputed Era

text: The Undisputed Era was a professional wrestling stable from WWE's NXT brand. It formed on August 19, 2017 at shortly after Adam Cole, Bobby Fish, and Kyle O'Reilly signed with WWE, although Fish and O'Reilly had already been a tag team since 2012 under the name reDRagon. After, Fish suffered an injury in March 2018, April 7 at marked a turning point for The Undisputed Era: during the event, Cole became the inaugural NXT North American Champion, he and O'Reilly won the 2018 Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic, and Roderick Strong joined the stable at the end of a lengthy feud against it; both Cole and Strong were subsequently recognized as co-Tag Team Champions under the Freebird Rule. O'Reilly later had two more additional reigns as NXT Tag Team Champion, one with Strong and one with Fish, while Cole became NXT Champion at , becoming NXT's second Triple Crown winner. On September 18, Strong won the NXT North American Championship, making The Undisputed Era the first stable to simultaneously hold all the male titles on NXT. All four stayed champions until January 22, 2020, when Strong lost his title to Keith Lee.


title: The Undisputed Era

text: The group's tenure in WWE ended after the conclusion and aftermath of in early 2021, after Cole attacked O'Reilly. Strong is the only member of the stable who is still currently employed by the promotion, as Fish was released in August 2021, while Cole's contract expired in the same month. O'Reilly's contract would later expire in December and the three would separately join AEW, reuniting upon O'Reilly's debut on December 22, 2021, as a sub-group of The Elite.