title: Mercer (consulting firm)

text: In September, the Mercer Human Resource Consulting became simply "Mercer". In December, Mercer acquired Höfer Vorsorge-Management, a German actuarial and retirement consulting firm. At the time, the acquisition reportedly gave Mercer the top market position in Germany.


title: Mercer (consulting firm)

text: In 2008, Mercer's Italian human capital consulting business merged with Tesi, an Italian competitor. The combined business, Mercer Tesi was noted at the time to be the largest HR consultancy in Italy.


title: Mercer (consulting firm)

text: In 2010, Mercer acquired ORC Worldwide, an expert in international work assignments. Also in 2010, Mercer acquired Brecksville, Ohio-based Innovative Process Administration LLC (IPA), a health benefits and technology provider.


title: Mercer (consulting firm)

text: In 2011, Mercer acquired Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based Mahoney & Associates, a defined contribution plan provider. Also in 2011, Mercer acquired Alicia Smith & Associates, a Washington DC-based Medicaid policy consulting firm.


title: Mercer (consulting firm)

text: In 2013, Mercer acquired British Columbia-based Hall Consulting Limited (HCL), an HR consultant and salary surveyor focusing on the mining and energy business. Also in 2013, Mercer acquired PricewaterhouseCoopers' pension windup (termination) administration business in Canada, and Global Remuneration Solutions (GRS), a South African compensation and benefits survey data and rewards information provider.


title: Mercer (consulting firm)

text: In 2014, Mercer acquired Norwell, Massachusetts-based Transition Assist, a private health care exchange specializing in coverage for Medicare-eligible retirees. Also in 2014, Mercer acquired Jeitosa Group International, a business and technology consultancy, and a 34% stake in South Africa-based employee benefits specialist Alexander Forbes. Later that year, Mercer acquired Swiss private markets manager and consultant SCM, and Denarius, a Santiago, Chile-based consulting firm focused on compensation and benefits survey and information products.


title: Mercer (consulting firm)

text: In 2015, Mercer made two acquisitions. It acquired Hopkinton, Massachusetts-based Comptryx, a workforce metrics company offering surveying, modeling and analytics services, and also acquired HRBS, a provider of career and talent consulting and information services to clients across Asia, particularly Hong Kong, Singapore and mainland China. In that same year, Mercer sold its US defined contribution administration business to Transamerica.


title: Mercer (consulting firm)

text: In 2016, Mercer acquired Pillar Administration, Australia from the New South Wales State Government. Pillar was Australia's fourth largest superannuation administration provider, with more than $100 billion in funds under administration across 1.1 million member accounts.


title: Mercer (consulting firm)

text: In 2017, Mercer combined its investment and retirement consulting practices into a new Wealth consulting division. In December 2019, Mercer's investment assets under management reached above $300 billion.


title: Mercer (consulting firm)

text: After Marsh McLennan's 2018 purchase of London-based Jardine Lloyd Thompson (JLT), operating in employee benefits and other financial services, the JLT business was integrated into Mercer.


title: Roberto Calvi

text: Roberto Calvi (13 April 1920 – 17 June 1982) was an Italian banker, dubbed "God's Banker" () by the press because of his close association with the Holy See. He was a native of Milan and was chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, which collapsed in one of Italy's biggest political scandals.


title: Roberto Calvi

text: Calvi's death in London in June 1982 is a source of enduring controversy and was ruled a murder after two coroners' inquests and an independent investigation. Five people were acquitted in Rome in June 2007 of murdering Calvi. Popular speculation has linked the Vatican Bank, the Mafia, and the clandestine Propaganda Due to his death.


title: Roberto Calvi

text: Roberto Calvi's father was the manager of the Banca Commerciale Italiana. Calvi joined the bank after World War II, but he moved to Banco Ambrosiano, then Italy's second largest bank, in 1947. He married in 1952 and had two children. Soon he became the personal assistant of Carlo Alessandro Canesi, a leading figure and later president of Banco Ambrosiano. Calvi was the bank's general manager in 1971 and chairman in 1975.


title: Roberto Calvi

text: In 1978, the Bank of Italy produced a report on Banco Ambrosiano which found that several billion lire had been exported illegally, leading to criminal investigations. Calvi was tried in 1981, given a four-year suspended sentence, and fined US$19.8 million for transferring US$27 million out of the country in violation of Italian currency laws. He was released on bail pending appeal and kept his position at the bank. During his short spell in jail, Calvi attempted suicide. His family maintains that he was manipulated by others and was innocent of the crimes attributed to him.


title: Roberto Calvi

text: The controversy surrounding Calvi's dealings at Banco Ambrosiano echoed a scandal in 1974, when the Holy See lost an estimated US$30 million upon the collapse of the Franklin National Bank owned by financier Michele Sindona. Bad loans and foreign currency transactions led to the collapse of the bank. Sindona died in prison after drinking coffee laced with cyanide.


title: Roberto Calvi

text: Calvi wrote a letter of warning to Pope John Paul II on 5 June 1982, two weeks before the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, stating that such an event would "provoke a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions in which the Church will suffer the gravest damage." The correspondence confirmed that illegal transactions were common knowledge among the top affiliates of the bank and the Vatican. Banco Ambrosiano collapsed in June 1982 following the discovery of debts between US$700 million and 1.5 billion. Much of the money had been siphoned off through the Vatican Bank, which owned shares of Banco Ambrosiano.


title: Roberto Calvi

text: In 1984, the Vatican Bank agreed to pay US$224 million to 120 of Banco Ambrosiano's creditors as a "recognition of moral involvement" in the bank's collapse. It has never been confirmed whether the Vatican Bank was directly involved in the scandal due to a lack of evidence in the subpoenaed correspondence, which only revealed that Calvi consistently supported the Vatican's religious agenda. Calvi committed the crime of fiscal misconduct, and there was no evidence of church involvement otherwise, so the Vatican was granted immunity.


title: Roberto Calvi

text: Calvi went missing from his Rome apartment on 10 June 1982, having fled the country on a false passport under the name Gian Roberto Calvini, fleeing initially to Venice. From there, he apparently hired a private plane to London via Zurich. A postal clerk was crossing London's Blackfriars Bridge at 7:30 am on Friday, 18 June and noticed Calvi's body hanging from the scaffolding beneath. Calvi had five bricks in his pockets and had in his possession about US$14,000 in three different currencies.


title: Roberto Calvi

text: Calvi was a member of Licio Gelli's illegal masonic lodge Propaganda Due (P2), who referred to themselves as "frati neri" or "black friars". This led to a suggestion in some quarters that Calvi was murdered as a masonic warning because of the symbolism associated with the word "Blackfriars".


title: Roberto Calvi

text: The day before his body was found, Calvi was stripped of his post at Banco Ambrosiano by the Bank of Italy, and his private secretary Graziella Corrocher jumped to her death from a fifth floor window at the bank's headquarters. Corrocher left behind an angry note condemning the damage that Calvi had done to the bank and its employees. Her death was ruled a suicide.


title: Roberto Calvi

text: Calvi's death was the subject of two coroners' inquests in London. The first recorded a verdict of suicide in July 1982. The Calvi family then secured the services of George Carman, QC. The second inquest was held in July 1983, and the jury recorded an open verdict, indicating that the court had been unable to determine the exact cause of death. Calvi's family maintained that his death had been a murder.


title: Roberto Calvi

text: In 1991, the Calvi family commissioned the New York-based investigation company Kroll Associates to investigate the circumstances of Calvi's death. The case was assigned to Jeff Katz, who was a senior case manager for the company in London. As part of his two-year investigation, Katz hired a former Home Office forensic scientist, Angela Gallop, to undertake forensic tests. She found that Calvi could not have hanged himself from the scaffolding because the lack of paint and rust on his shoes proved that he had not walked on the scaffolding. In October 1992, the forensic report was submitted to the home secretary and the City of London Police, who dismissed it at the time.


title: Roberto Calvi

text: Calvi's body was exhumed in December 1998, and an Italian court commissioned a German forensic scientist to repeat the work produced by Katz and his forensic team. That report was published in October 2002, ten years after the original, and confirmed the first report. In addition, it said that the injuries to Calvi's neck were inconsistent with hanging and that he had not touched the bricks found in his pockets. When his body was found, the River Thames had receded with the tide, but the scaffolding could have been reached by a person standing in a boat at the time of the hanging. That had also been the conclusion of a separate report by Katz in 1992, which also detailed a reconstruction based on Calvi's last known movements in London and theorized that he had been taken by boat from a point of access to the Thames in West London.


title: Roberto Calvi

text: This aspect of Calvi's death was the focus of the theory that he was murdered, and is the version of events depicted in Giuseppe Ferrara's film reconstruction of the event. In September 2003, the City of London Police re-opened their investigation as a murder inquiry. More evidence arose, revealing that Calvi stayed in a flat in Chelsea Cloisters just prior to his death. Sergio Vaccari was a small-time drug dealer who had stayed in the same flat, and he was found dead in possession of masonic papers displaying member names of P2. The murders of both Calvi and Vaccari involved bricks stuffed in clothing, correlating the two deaths and confirming Calvi's ties to the lodge.


title: Roberto Calvi

text: Calvi's life was insured for US$10 million with Unione Italiana. His family's attempts to obtain a payout resulted in litigation ("Fisher v Unione Italiana" [1998] CLC 682). The forensic report of 2002 established that Calvi had been murdered and the policy was finally settled, although around half of the sum was paid to creditors of the Calvi family who incurred considerable costs during their attempts to establish the cause of his death.


title: Roberto Calvi

text: In July 1991, Sicilian Mafia "pentito" Francesco Marino Mannoia claimed that Calvi had been killed because he had lost Mafia funds when Banco Ambrosiano collapsed. According to Mannoia, the killer was Francesco Di Carlo, a "mafioso" living in London at the time, on the orders of Giuseppe Calò and Licio Gelli. Di Carlo became an informer in June 1996 and denied that he was the killer, but he admitted that Calò had approached him to commit the murder.


title: Roberto Calvi

text: According to Di Carlo, the killers were Vaccari and Vincenzo Casillo, who belonged to the Camorra from Naples; they were later murdered. In 1997, Italian prosecutors in Rome implicated Calò in Calvi's murder, along with Flavio Carboni, a Sardinian businessman with wide-ranging interests. Di Carlo and Ernesto Diotallevi, a member of the Banda della Magliana, were also alleged to be involved in the killing. In July 2003, Italian prosecutors concluded that the Mafia acted in its own interests and to ensure that Calvi could not blackmail them.


title: Roberto Calvi

text: Gelli was the master of the P2 lodge, and he received a notification on 19 July 2005 informing him that he was formally under investigation on charges of ordering Calvi's murder, along with Calò, Diotallevi, Flavio Carboni, and Carboni's Austrian girlfriend Manuela Kleinszig. The other four suspects had been indicted on murder charges in April. According to the indictment, the five ordered the murder to prevent Calvi "from using blackmail power against his political and institutional sponsors from the world of Masonry, belonging to the P2 lodge, or to the Institute for Religious Works (the Vatican Bank) with whom he had managed investments and financing with conspicuous sums of money, some of it coming from Cosa Nostra and public agencies".


title: Roberto Calvi

text: Gelli was accused of provoking Calvi's death to punish him for embezzling money from Banco Ambrosiano that was owed to him and the Mafia. The Mafia allegedly wanted to prevent Calvi from revealing that the bank was used for money laundering. Gelli denied involvement, but acknowledged that the financier was murdered. In his statement before the court, he said that the killing was commissioned in Poland. This is thought to be a reference to Calvi's alleged involvement in financing the Solidarity trade union movement at the request of Pope John Paul II, allegedly on behalf of the Vatican. However, Gelli's name was not in the final indictment at the trial which started in October 2005.


title: Roberto Calvi

text: In 2005, the Italian magistrates investigating Calvi's death took their inquiries to London in order to question witnesses. They had been cooperating with Chief Superintendent Trevor Smith who built his case partly on evidence provided by Katz. Smith had been able to make the first arrest of a UK witness who had allegedly committed perjury during the Calvi inquest.


title: Roberto Calvi

text: On 5 October 2005, the trial began in Rome of the five individuals charged with Calvi's murder. The defendants were Calò, Carboni, Kleinszig, Ernesto Diotallevi, and Calvi's former driver and bodyguard Silvano Vittor. The trial took place in a specially fortified courtroom in Rome's Rebibbia prison. All five were cleared of murdering Calvi on 6 June 2007. Judge Mario Lucio d'Andria threw out the charges, citing "insufficient evidence" after hearing 20 months of evidence. The court ruled that Calvi's death was murder and not suicide. The defence suggested that there were plenty of people with a motive for Calvi's murder, including Vatican officials and Mafia figures who wanted to ensure his silence. Legal experts following the trial said that the prosecutors found it hard to present a convincing case due to the 25 years that had elapsed since Calvi's death. Additionally, key witnesses were unwilling to testify, untraceable, or dead. The prosecution called for Manuela Kleinszig to be cleared, stating that there was insufficient evidence against her, but they sought life sentences for the four men.


title: Roberto Calvi

text: Katz claimed that it was likely that senior figures in the Italian establishment escaped prosecution. "The problem is that the people who probably actually ordered the death of Calvi are not in the dock - but to get to those people might be very difficult indeed". Katz said that it was "probably true" that the Mafia carried out the killing, but that the gangsters suspected of the crime were either dead or missing. The verdict in the trial was not the end of the matter, since the prosecutor's office in Rome had opened a second investigation by June 2007 implicating Gelli and others.


title: Roberto Calvi

text: In May 2009, the prosecution dropped the case against Gelli. According to the magistrate, there was insufficient evidence to argue that Gelli had played a role in planning and executing the crime. On 7 May 2010, the Court of Appeals confirmed the acquittal of Calò, Carboni, and Diotallevi. Public prosecutor Luca Tescaroli commented that "Calvi has been murdered for the second time." On 18 November 2011, the Court of Cassation confirmed the acquittal. Calò is still serving a life sentence on unrelated Mafia charges.


title: Roberto Calvi

text: BBC One's programme "Panorama" chronicled Calvi's last days and uncovered new evidence which suggested that others had been involved in his death. The 1983 PBS "Frontline" documentary "God's Banker" investigated Calvi's links with the Vatican and P2, and questioned whether his death was really a suicide. The circumstances surrounding his death were made into the feature film "I Banchieri di Dio - Il Caso Calvi" (God's Bankers - The Calvi Case) in 2001. A heavily fictionalized version of Calvi appears in "The Godfather Part III" in the character of Frederick Keinszig.


title: Roberto Calvi

text: In 1990, "The Comic Strip Presents" produced a spoof version of Calvi's story under the title "Spaghetti Hoops", with Nigel Planer in the lead role, directed by Peter Richardson, and co-written by him and Pete Richens. "Variety" magazine described the comedy film "The Pope Must Die" (1991) as "loosely based on the Roberto Calvi banking scandal". In the 2009 film "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus," the character of Tony is found hanging alive under Blackfriars Bridge, which director Terry Gilliam described as "an homage to Roberto Calvi".


title: Yahoo! Search

text: Yahoo! Search is a Yahoo! internet search provider that uses Microsoft's Bing search engine to power results, since 2009, apart from four years with Google until 2019.


title: Yahoo! Search

text: Originally, "Yahoo! Search" referred to a Yahoo!-provided interface that sent queries to a searchable index of pages supplemented with its directory of websites. The results were presented to the user under the Yahoo! brand. Originally, none of the actual web crawling and data housing was done by Yahoo! itself. In 2001, the searchable index was powered by Inktomi and later by Google until 2004, when Yahoo! Search became independent. On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced a deal in which Bing would henceforth power Yahoo! Search.


title: Yahoo! Search

text: As of July 2018, Microsoft Sites handled 24.2 percent of all search queries in the United States. During the same period of time, Oath (the then-owner of the Yahoo brand) had a search market share of 11.5 percent. Market leader Google generated 63.2 percent of all core search queries in the United States.


title: Yahoo! Search

text: Yahoo! Search was criticized for favoring websites owned by Yahoo!'s then-parent company, Verizon Media, in its search results.


title: Yahoo! Search

text: In September 2021, investment funds managed by the private equity firm Apollo Global Management acquired 90% of Yahoo.


title: Yahoo! Search

text: The roots of Search date back to Yahoo! Directory, which was launched in 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo, then students at Stanford University. In 1995, they introduced a search engine function, called Yahoo! Search, that allowed users to search Yahoo! Directory. it was the first popular search engine on the Web, despite not being a true Web crawler search engine. They later licensed Web search engines from other companies. Seeking to provide its own Web search engine results, Yahoo! acquired their own Web search technology. In 2002, they bought Inktomi, a "behind the scenes" or OEM search engine provider, whose results are shown on other companies' websites and powered Yahoo! in its earlier days.


title: Yahoo! Search

text: In 2003, they purchased Overture Services, Inc., which included their owned the AlltheWeb and AltaVista search engines. Initially, even though Yahoo! owned multiple search engines, they didn't use them on the main yahoo.com website, but kept using Google's search engine for its results.


title: Yahoo! Search

text: Starting on April 7, 2003, Yahoo! Search became its own web crawler-based search engine. They combined the capabilities of search engine companies they had acquired and their prior research into a reinvented crawler called "Yahoo!". The new search engine results were included in all of Yahoo's websites that had a web search function. Yahoo! also started to sell the search engine results to other companies, to show on their own websites. Their relationship with Google was terminated at that time, with the former partners becoming each other's main competitors.


title: Yahoo! Search

text: In October 2007, Yahoo! Search was updated with a more modern appearance in line with the redesigned Yahoo! home page. In addition, "Search Assist" was added; which provides real-time query suggestions and related concepts as they are typed.


title: Yahoo! Search

text: In July 2008, Yahoo! Search announced the introduction of a new service called Yahoo! Search BOSS ("Build your Own Search Engine"). This service opens the doors for developers to use Yahoo!'s system for indexing information and images and create their own custom search engine.


title: Yahoo! Search

text: In January 2010, Microsoft announced a deal in which it would take over the functional operation of Yahoo! Search, and set up a joint venture to sell advertising on both Yahoo! Search and Bing known as the Microsoft Search Alliance. A complete transition of all Yahoo! sponsored ad clients to Microsoft adCenter (now Bing Ads) occurred in October 2010.


title: Yahoo! Search

text: On March 12, 2014, Yahoo! announced a partnership with Yelp to integrate its reviews and user-contributed photos into Yahoo! Search (as Bing had previously done).


title: Yahoo! Search

text: In November 2014, Mozilla signed a five-year partnership with Yahoo, making Yahoo Search the default search engine for Firefox browsers in the US.


title: Yahoo! Search

text: In April 2015, the Microsoft partnership was modified, now only requiring Bing results on the "majority" of desktop traffic, opening the ability for Yahoo to enter into non-exclusive deals for search services on mobile platforms and the remainder of desktop traffic. The amendment also gives either company the ability to terminate the contract with four months' notice. In October 2015, Yahoo subsequently reached an agreement with Google to provide services to Yahoo Search through the end of 2018, including advertising, search, and image search services. As of October 2019, Yahoo! Search is once again powered by Bing.


title: Yahoo! Search

text: Yahoo! Search also provided their search interface in at least 38 international markets and a variety of available languages. Yahoo! has a presence in Europe, Asia and across the Emerging Markets.


title: Yahoo! Search

text: Yahoo Search indexed and cached the common HTML page formats, as well as several of the more popular file-types, such as PDF, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, RSS/XML and plain text files. For some of these supported file-types, Yahoo! Search provided cached links on their search results allowing for viewing of these file-types in standard HTML. Using the Advanced Search interface or Preferences settings, Yahoo Search allowed the customization of search results and enabling of certain settings such as: SafeSearch, Language Selection, Number of results, Domain restrictions, etc. For a Basic and starter guide to Yahoo Search, they also provided a "Search Basics" tutorial. In 2005, Yahoo began to provide links to previous versions of pages archived on the Wayback Machine. In the first week of May 2008, Yahoo launched a new search paradigm called "Yahoo Glue".


title: Yahoo! Search

text: On June 20, 2007, Yahoo introduced a selection-based search feature called Yahoo Shortcuts. When activated this selection-based search feature enabled users to invoke search using only their mouse and receive search suggestions in floating windows while remaining on Yahoo properties such as Yahoo Mail. This feature was only active on Yahoo web pages or pages within the Yahoo Publisher Network. Yahoo Shortcuts required the content-owner to modify the underlying HTML of his or her webpage to call out the specific keywords to be enhanced. The technology for context-aware selection-based search on Yahoo pages was first developed by Reiner Kraft.


title: Yahoo! Search

text: On May 11, 2008, Yahoo introduced SearchScan. If enabled this add-on/feature enhanced Yahoo Search by automatically alerting users of viruses, spyware and spam websites.


title: Yahoo! Search

text: Yahoo Search provided the ability to search across numerous vertical properties outside just the Web at large. These included Images, Videos, Local, Shopping, Yahoo! Answers, Audio, Directory, Jobs, News, Mobile, Travel and various other services as listed on their "About Yahoo Search" page.


title: Fernando Henrique Cardoso

text: Fernando Henrique Cardoso (; born 18 June 1931), also known by his initials FHC (), is a Brazilian sociologist, professor and politician who served as the 34th president of Brazil from 1 January 1995 to 31 December 2002. He was the first Brazilian president to be reelected for a subsequent term. An accomplished scholar of dependency theory noted for his research on slavery and political theory, Cardoso has earned many honors including the Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation (2000) and the Kluge Prize from the US Library of Congress (2012).


title: Fernando Henrique Cardoso

text: Cardoso descends from wealthy Portuguese immigrants. Some were politicians during the Empire of Brazil. He is also of black African descent, through a black great-great-grandmother and a mulatto great-grandmother. Cardoso described himself as "slightly mulatto" and allegedly said he has ""a foot in the kitchen"" (a nod to historical Brazilian domestic slavery).


title: Fernando Henrique Cardoso

text: Born in Rio de Janeiro, he lived in São Paulo for most of his life. Cardoso is a widower who was married to Ruth Vilaça Correia Leite Cardoso, an anthropologist, from 1953 until her death on 24 June 2008; they had three children. Educated as a sociologist, he was a professor of political science and sociology at the Universidade de São Paulo. and president of the International Sociological Association (ISA), from 1982 to 1986. He is a member of the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), an honorary foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has written several books.


title: Fernando Henrique Cardoso

text: He was also Associate Director of Studies in the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, then visiting professor at the Collège de France and later Paris-Nanterre University. He later gave lectures at British and US universities including Cambridge University, Stanford University, Brown University and the University of California, Berkeley. He is fluent in Portuguese, English, French, and Spanish, he can express himself in Italian and German.


title: Fernando Henrique Cardoso

text: After his presidency, he was appointed to a five-year term (2003–2008) as professor-at-large at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies, where he is now on the board of overseers. Cardoso is a founding member of the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy's Advisory Board. In February 2005, he gave the fourth annual Kissinger Lecture on Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress, Washington DC on ""Dependency and Development in Latin America".


title: Fernando Henrique Cardoso

text: In 2005, Cardoso was selected by the British magazine "Prospect" as being one of the world's top one hundred living public intellectuals.


title: Fernando Henrique Cardoso

text: Cardoso earned a bachelor's degree in Social Sciences from Universidade de São Paulo in 1952, from where he also earned a Master's and a Doctorate in Sociology. His doctoral thesis, under the supervision of Florestan Fernandes, examined the institution of slavery in Southern Brazil, critiquing, from a Marxist perspective, the dominant approach of Gilberto Freyre to the topic. It has since become a classic on the subject. Cardoso has also received the Livre-Docência degree in 1963, the most senior level of academic recognition in Brazil, also from Universidade de São Paulo. In 1968, he received the title of Cathedratic Professor, holding the chair of Political Science at Universidade de São Paulo.


title: Fernando Henrique Cardoso

text: As he continued his academic career abroad in Chile and France after the tightening of Brazilian military dictatorship, Cardoso published several books and papers on state bureaucracy, industrial elites and, particularly, dependency theory. His work on dependency would be his most acclaimed contribution to sociology and development studies, especially in the United States. After presiding the International Sociological Association from 1982 to 1986 Cardoso was selected as a Fulbright Program 40th anniversary distinguished fellow and in that capacity was a visiting scholar and lectured at Columbia University on democracy in Brazil. Cardoso currently gives speeches and classes abroad. In June 2013 he was elected as a member of Academia Brasileira de Letras. He said his election was due to recognition for his academic achievements, rather than his political career.


title: Fernando Henrique Cardoso

text: After his return to Brazil, Fernando Henrique engaged with the burgeoning democratic opposition to the military-dominated regime both as an intellectual and as a political activist. He became Senator from São Paulo for the former Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB) in 1982, replacing Franco Montoro, the newly-elected governor of São Paulo. In 1985, he ran unsuccessfully for mayor of São Paulo against former President Jânio Quadros. Ahead in the polls, he let himself be photographed in the mayor's chair before the elections. Some attribute his loss to this episode.


title: Fernando Henrique Cardoso

text: Elected to the Senate in 1986 for the Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB), which MDB became after re-democratization, he joined a group of PMDB parliamentarians who left that party to found the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) after previously-held PMDB positions shifted to the right when the party filled with politicians who had collaborated with the dictatorship. As senator, Cardoso took part in the 1987–1988 National Constituent Assembly that drafted and approved Brazil's current Constitution in the wake of the country's re-democratization. In the early stages of the Constituent Assembly's work (from February to March 1987), Cardoso led the committee that drafted the internal rules of procedure, including the procedural rules governing the drafting of the Constitution itself. These rules of procedure were adopted by the Assembly and published on 25 March 1987. Until 1992, Cardoso served as Leader of the PSDB in the Senate. From October 1992 to May 1993, he served as Minister of Foreign Affairs under President Itamar Franco (PMDB).


title: Fernando Henrique Cardoso

text: From May 1993 to April 1994, he was Minister of Finance and resigned in April 1994 to launch a presidential campaign. In the 3 October election, he won the presidency in the first round of voting with 54% of the vote, more than twice that of his nearest opponent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. This is still the largest margin of victory ever recorded in a free election in Brazilian history. After the constitution was amended to allow a president to succeed himself, he won a second term almost as easily in 1998, taking 53% to Lula's 31.7% to win in a single round. To date, he is the only president to win an outright majority of the popular vote, and the only one to win the presidency in a single round since the institution of the two-round system in 1989.


title: Fernando Henrique Cardoso

text: Cardoso was succeeded in 2003 by Lula da Silva, who ran for the fourth time and had come in second on prior attempts. Lula won in the runoff election against the Cardoso-supported candidate, José Serra. Lula's election has been interpreted as resulting from Cardoso's low approval ratings in his second term.


title: Fernando Henrique Cardoso

text: Cardoso, often nicknamed "FHC", was elected with the support of a heterodox alliance of his own Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) and two right-wing parties, the Liberal Front Party (PFL) and the Brazilian Labour Party (PTB). Brazil's largest party, the centrist Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB), joined Cardoso's governing coalition after the election, as did the right-wing Brazilian Progressive Party (PPB) in 1996.


title: Fernando Henrique Cardoso

text: Party loyalty was not always strong, and coalition members did not always vote with the government. Cardoso had difficulty at times gaining support for some of his legislative priorities, even though his coalition held an overwhelming majority of the congressional seats. Nevertheless, many constitutional amendments were passed during his presidency.


title: Fernando Henrique Cardoso

text: His presidency saw institutional advancements in human rights, beginning with a national secretariat and a new government program, discussed with the civil society, to address the issue. On 8 January 1996, he issued the controversial Decree 1775, which created a framework for the clear demarcation of indigenous territories, but which, as part of the process, opened indigenous territories to counterclaims by adjacent landowners. In 2000, Cardoso demanded the disclosure of some classified military files concerning Operation Condor, a network of South American military dictatorships that kidnapped and assassinated political opponents.


title: Fernando Henrique Cardoso

text: FHC was the first Brazilian President to address the inequality and the enormous gap between rich and poor. He started the following programs: , the , the Bolsa Alimentação, and the Cartão Alimentação.


title: Fernando Henrique Cardoso

text: His wife, Ruth Cardoso, focused on unifying transfer programs aimed at helping people suffering from poverty and hunger., by means of a program based on the idea that educating the poor could help raise them out of poverty.


title: Fernando Henrique Cardoso

text: Cardoso's administration deepened the privatization program launched by president Fernando Collor de Mello. During his first term, several government-owned enterprises in areas such as steel milling, telecommunications and mining, such as "Telebras" and "Companhia Vale do Rio Doce" were sold to the private sector, the deepest denationalisation in Brazilian history, amidst a polarized political debate between "neoliberals" and "developmentalists". Ironically, this time Cardoso was against the latter group, generating uproar among former academic colleagues and political allies who accused him of reneging his previous intellectual work. Economists still contend over its long-term effects; some research suggests that companies sold by the government achieved better profitability as a result of their disengagement from the state.


title: Fernando Henrique Cardoso

text: Despite the sale of public assets, the years 1995 to 2002 saw a rise of the total public debt from 30% to 55.5% of GDP. Economists aligned with his government argued that this was due to external factors outside the control of the administration at the time, such as the devaluation of the Brazilian real and the growth of the share of the debt denominated in US dollars. Nevertheless, devaluation of the currency was an instrument of monetary policy used right after his reelection, when the real pegged to the dollar led to a financial crisis that saw the country lose much of its foreign reserve fund and raise its interest rates on government bonds to very high levels as he tried to stabilize the currency under a new free-floating regime. With this economic shift, the greatest achievement of Cardoso – his landmark lowering of inflation – was maintained, but his popularity plummeted.


title: Fernando Henrique Cardoso

text: Given his previous experience as Minister of Foreign Affairs and his prestige as an internationally famous sociologist, he was respected on the world scene, building friendships with such leaders as Bill Clinton and Ernesto Zedillo. Although he was respected abroad, in Brazil he had problems gaining support in Congress for government priorities and among people in general. As a result, major reforms planned by the executive branch, such as changes in the tax system and to social security, were only partially approved and only after long discussion. Although claiming to still support social democracy, his economic policies led people on the left to identify him with neoliberalism and right-wing politics, terms that often carry a very negative connotation in Latin American political debate and academic circles.


title: Fernando Henrique Cardoso

text: He also experienced personal problems with former ally Itamar Franco, his predecessor and later became Governor of Minas Gerais, a fierce opponent of his administrative reforms that saw the state lose its capacity to contract debt and forced a reduction of local government spending. Cardoso was also criticized for amending the constitution to his own benefit, allowing him to stay eight years in office. His popularity in his first four years, gained with the success of Plano Real, decreased during his last four years as the currency crisis was followed by lower economic growth and employment rates, greater public debt, growing political dissent, low levels of investment in appropriate infrastructure, and, finally, an energy crisis caused by an unexpected drought, as over 80% of Brazil's electricity is hydroelectric. He publicly admitted that he could have done more for public security and for the creation of new jobs, but defended his policies in areas such as health and education.


title: Fernando Henrique Cardoso

text: Cardoso's administration was accused of bribing congressmen to pass a constitutional amendment that secured FHC the right to seek a reelection, which he eventually won.


title: Fernando Henrique Cardoso

text: After stepping down from office, he assumed a position as a senior leader of his party and leading public voice in the opposition to the incumbent Workers' Party, writing extensively on Brazilian politics for newspapers and giving lectures and interviews. Nevertheless, his relatively low popularity rates among the general population have made his legacy a mixed blessing to his political allies, who are somewhat reluctant to embrace it wholeheartedly during elections, especially on topics regarding privatization and social policy. In 2006, he helped the campaign of the PSDB candidate for the Presidency, Geraldo Alckmin, and has reiterated that he does not wish to run for office again.


title: Fernando Henrique Cardoso

text: He dedicates his time to a personal institute which he founded in São Paulo, based on the model of bodies created by former presidents of the United States, has written two books about his experience as president of Brazil and advocates for relaxation of criminal laws relating to drugs, generating both criticism and praise. He lectures at Brown University about Brazilian economic policy, urban development, and deforestation and has taught as a guest lecturer at Sciences Po in Paris. Also, in 2007 he became a member of the editorial board of the Latin American policy publication "Americas Quarterly", for which he is an occasional contributor.


title: Fernando Henrique Cardoso

text: Since leaving the Brazilian presidency, Cardoso has been involved in a number of international organisations and initiatives. He is a member of the Club of Madrid and was its president from 2003 to 2006. He has been a member of the Fondation Chirac's honour committee, ever since the Foundation was launched in 2008 by former French president Jacques Chirac to promote world peace. Cardoso is a founding member of Washington D.C.-based think tank The Inter-American Dialogue as well as former chair of the organization's board. He is also a former director of World Resources Institute.


title: Fernando Henrique Cardoso

text: Cardoso has a particular interest in drug policy. He served on the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy and later chaired the Global Commission on Drug Policy. He appeared as an interviewee in 2011 documentary Breaking the Taboo, which explores the conclusion reached by the Global Commission on Drug Policy in 2011 that drug liberalization is the best approach in dealing with drug policy.


title: Fernando Henrique Cardoso

text: Cardoso is also a member of The Elders, a group of independent global leaders who work together on peace and human rights issues. In August 2009, he travelled to Israel and the West Bank as the head of an Elders delegation that also included Ela Bhatt, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Jimmy Carter, Mary Robinson and Desmond Tutu.


title: Fernando Henrique Cardoso

text: In 2017, Cardoso received the Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award from the Inter-American Dialogue.


title: PFT Commenter

text: PFT Commenter (alternatively spelled PFTCommenter or Pro Football Talk Commenter) is a fictional character portrayed by Eric Sollenberger. Sollenberger, in the persona of PFT Commenter, is a sportswriter who covers the National Football League and US politics for online publication Barstool Sports. He has previously been published on other sports sites including Kissing Suzy Kolber, "SBNation", Football Savages, as well as his own site, StrongTakes.com. PFT Commenter, whose name references Profootballtalk.com, is currently the co-host of the Barstool Sports podcast "Pardon My Take".


title: PFT Commenter

text: Sollenberger began to use the PFT Commenter alias as a commenter on ProFootballTalk.com before starting the @PFTCommenter Twitter account in 2012 and eventually becoming a contributor for "SBNation", Kissing Suzy Kolber and Football Savages.


title: PFT Commenter

text: In September 2015, PFT Commenter made an appearance on Mike Florio's "PFT Live" radio program. Also in 2015, PFT Commenter began commenting on the 2016 United States presidential election and appeared on camera several times, albeit in the background, during the television coverage of the Republican Party presidential debates. PFT Commenter also asked then-Presidential candidate Ben Carson if he would travel back in time to abort an unborn Adolf Hitler, an exchange covered by the national media, leading to an article headlined "Ben Carson would not abort Baby Hitler" appearing on CNN.com.


title: PFT Commenter

text: PFT Commenter moved to Barstool Sports in March 2016 and started the podcast "Pardon My Take" along with co-host Dan Katz. The podcast, which is often satirical in nature, has grown to a top ranking on iTunes' "Sports and Recreation" list. In May 2016, PFT Commenter accompanied three other co-workers on a so-called "Grit Week," starting in Buffalo and ending in Indianapolis for the Indianapolis 500. He and Katz also made an appearance on "SportsCenter" with Scott Van Pelt on February 8, 2017.


title: PFT Commenter

text: Despite the National Football League removing press credentials for Barstool Sports, PFT Commenter sneaked into "Opening Night" for Super Bowl LI in Houston and was able to ask questions to players and coaches.


title: PFT Commenter

text: In January 2020, in advance of the XFL's 2020 revival season, PFT Commenter tried-out as a placekicker for the XFL's DC Defenders, after being trained by Jeff Fisher and Morten Andersen, in response to former NFL wide receiver Chad Johnson announcing that he was trying out for the XFL as a kicker (before quickly cancelling). During his tryout, PFT Commenter's signature sunglasses were replaced tinted goggles and his helmet bore a single bar face mask, which has long been disallowed for use in professional and college football. He was ultimately not selected by the Defenders; instead, Tyler Rausa, who was at the same tryout, won the kicking position.


title: PFT Commenter

text: Despite his popularity, PFT did not originally publicly reveal his identity. He told "Awful Announcing" in 2017 that he wore sunglasses on camera to avoid identification and the staff at Barstool Sports referred to him as "PFT", as only half knew his real name. He later said that his identity had become an "open secret" and that it would be found out eventually.


title: PFT Commenter

text: As PFT Commenter, Sollenberger wrote the self-published e-book, "Goodell vs. Obama: The Battle for the Future of the NFL", which imagines a dystopian future in which President Barack Obama attempts to turn the Dallas Cowboys into a soccer team in Kenya, and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell fights him in a boxing match to stop him.


title: Becca Tobin

text: Rebecca Grace Tobin (born January 18, 1986) is an American actress, singer, and dancer. She is known for her role as Kitty Wilde on the Fox musical comedy-drama series "Glee".


title: Becca Tobin

text: Tobin grew up in Marietta, Georgia, the younger of two daughters. Both of her parents were attorneys. Her father is Jewish. Tobin's first acting performance was at age four, when she played a Christmas tree in her school's holiday pageant. For high school, Tobin was predominantly educated at Pebblebrook High School, but she transferred to Joseph Wheeler High School halfway through her senior year and was a victim of bullying as a result. Because of the bullying, Tobin did not walk at her graduation. She is an alumna of the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York City, from which she graduated in 2007.


title: Becca Tobin

text: Tobin began her professional career on the stage in Houston, Texas, in a Theatre Under the Stars production of the musical "Cats". She performed as Etcetera in the ensemble cast. The following year, she starred in the ensemble of the Theater Under the Stars' production of "West Side Story", also in Houston. In 2008, Tobin performed in the ensemble of Paper Mill Playhouse's production of "High School Musical on Stage!" in New Jersey. From 2008 to 2009, she performed in the ensemble of "Oklahoma!" in Atlanta with the Theater of the Stars company. Tobin made her Broadway debut as a replacement for the role of Sherrie Christian and a swing for the musical "Rock of Ages". In 2011, she toured with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.


title: Becca Tobin

text: From 2012 until its ending in 2015, Tobin portrayed cheerleader and glee club member Kitty Wilde in the Fox musical comedy-drama television series "Glee". She made her first appearance as the character in the fourth season premiere episode "The New Rachel", and was a regular recurring cast member for throughout that season. She was upgraded to a main cast member for the series' fifth season. Kitty's debut received a mixed reception from critics, but opinions on the character soon changed. Several songs performed by Tobin as Kitty on the series have been released as singles available for digital download, and have also featured on the soundtrack albums.


title: Becca Tobin

text: In 2014, Tobin guest starred in Lifetime's legal comedy-drama series "Drop Dead Diva" as Empress Katia in the episode "Afterlife". That same year, she appeared as Kimmee Kittson in the episode "Passing the Torch" of ABC Family's sitcom "Mystery Girls". In 2015, Tobin guest starred as Blaze Talcott, a computer coder, in an episode of CBS' procedural action-drama series "" titled "Blaze of Glory". Since December 2015, Tobin has co-hosted the female-centric podcast series "The Lady Gang" with Keltie Knight and Jac Vanek. In October 2018, "Ladygang" premiered as a talk show on the E! network.


title: Becca Tobin

text: Tobin was in a relationship with nightclub entrepreneur Matt Bendik until his death on July 10, 2014. She became engaged to entrepreneur Zach Martin in May 2016. They married in a private ceremony, officiated by Tobin's "Glee" co-star Jane Lynch, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming on December 3, 2016.


title: Becca Tobin

text: On February 22, 2022, Tobin announced on Instagram that she and her husband welcomed a son via surrogacy. Tobin and Martin were open about their fertility struggles and IVF journey prior to the arrival of their son.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: Mary Theresa Eleanor Higgins Clark (December 24, 1927 – January 31, 2020) was an American author of suspense novels. Each of her 51 books was a bestseller in the United States and various European countries, and all of her novels remained in print , with her debut suspense novel, "Where Are the Children?", in its seventy-fifth printing.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: Higgins Clark began writing at an early age. After several years working as a secretary and copy editor, she spent a year as a stewardess for Pan-American Airlines before leaving her job to marry and start a family. She supplemented the family's income by writing short stories. After her husband died in 1964, Higgins Clark worked for many years writing four-minute radio scripts until her agent persuaded her to try writing novels. Her debut novel, a fictionalized account of the life of George Washington, did not sell well, and she decided to exploit her love of mystery/suspense novels. Her suspense novels became very popular, and have sold more than 100 million copies in the United States alone. Her daughter Carol Higgins Clark and former daughter-in-law Mary Jane Clark, are also writers.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: Mary Theresa Eleanor Higgins was born on Christmas Eve 1927, although some sources mistakenly cite 1929 as the year, the second child and only daughter of Nora C. (Durkin) and Luke Joseph Higgins. Her father was an Irish immigrant and her mother was American-born, also of Irish descent. The United States census gives her age in April 1940 as 12, which indicates her year of birth is 1927, as that was her age at her "last birthday", the question asked by census enumerators.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: She was born about a year and a half after the birth of her older brother, Joseph. Her younger brother John, followed three years later. Even as a small child, she was interested in writing, composing her first poem at age seven and often crafting short plays for her friends to enact. She began keeping a journal when she was seven years old, noting in her first entry, "Nothing much happened today."


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: The family lived off the earnings from their Irish pub and were fairly well-off, owning a home in the Bronx and a summer cottage on Long Island Sound. Although the Great Depression began when Higgins Clark was still a baby, her family was initially not affected, and even insisted on feeding the men who knocked on their door looking for work. By the time Higgins Clark was ten, however, the family began to experience financial trouble, as many of their customers were unable to pay the bar tabs they had run up. Higgins Clark's father was forced to lay off several employees and work longer hours, spending no more than a few hours at home each day. The family was thrown into further turmoil in 1939, when young Mary returned home from an early Mass to discover that her father had died in his sleep.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: Nora Higgins, now a widow with three young children to support, soon discovered that few employers were willing to hire a 52-year-old woman who had not held a job in over fourteen years. To pay the bills, Higgins Clark was forced to move out of her bedroom so that her mother could rent it out to paying boarders. Six months after their father's death, Higgins Clark's older brother cut his foot on a piece of metal and contracted severe osteomyelitis. Higgins Clark and her mother prayed constantly for him, and their neighbors came en masse to give blood for the many transfusions the young boy needed. Despite the dire predictions of the doctors, Joseph Higgins survived. Higgins Clark credits his recovery to the power of their prayers.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: When Higgins Clark graduated from Saint Francis Xavier Grammar School, she received a scholarship to continue her education at the Villa Maria Academy, a school run by the nuns of the Congregation de Notre Dame de Montreal. There, the principal and other teachers encouraged Higgins Clark to develop her writing, although they were somewhat less than pleased when she began spending her class time writing stories instead of paying attention to the lesson. At sixteen, Higgins Clark made her first attempt at publishing her work, sending an entry to "True Confessions," which was rejected.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: To help pay the bills, she worked as a switchboard operator at the Shelton Hotel, where she often listened in to the residents' conversations. In her memoir she recalls spending much time eavesdropping on Tennessee Williams but complained that he never said anything interesting. On her days off, Higgins Clark would window shop, mentally choosing the clothes she would wear when she finally became a famous writer.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: Despite Higgins Clark's contribution to the family finances, the money her mother earned babysitting was not enough, and the family lost their house and moved into a small three-room apartment. When Joseph graduated from high school in 1944, he immediately enlisted in the Navy, both to serve his country during war and to help his mother pay her bills. Six months after his enlistment he contracted spinal meningitis and died. Although the family mourned Joseph's death deeply, as his dependent, Nora was guaranteed a life pension and no longer needed her daughter's help to pay the bills.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: Soon after Joseph died, Higgins Clark graduated from high school and attended Wood Secretarial School on a partial scholarship. After completing her coursework the following year, she accepted a job as the secretary to the head of the creative department in the internal advertising division at Remington Rand. She soon enrolled in evening classes to learn more about advertising and promotion. Her growing skills, as well as her natural beauty, were noticed by her boss and others in the company, and her job was expanded to include writing catalog copy (alongside future novelist Joseph Heller) and to model for the company brochures with a then unknown Grace Kelly.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: Although she enjoyed her job, Higgins Clark's imagination was sparked by an acquaintance's casual comment, "God, it was beastly hot in Calcutta." Inspired to become a flight attendant like her acquaintance, Higgins Clark underwent rigorous interviews to earn a position as a flight attendant (then known as stewardess) for Pan American Airlines, making five dollars fewer a week than her secretarial job. Her supervisor at Remington Rand hosted a goodbye dinner for her, and Higgins Clark invited her neighbor, Warren Clark, whom she had admired for years, to be her date. By the end of the evening Warren Clark had informed her that he thought she should work as a stewardess for a year, and then they should be married the following Christmas. Higgins Clark accepted the somewhat unorthodox proposal.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: For most of 1949, she worked the Pan Am international flights, traveling through Europe, Africa, and Asia. One of her flights became the last flight allowed into Czechoslovakia before the Iron Curtain fell. On another of her flights, Higgins Clark escorted a four-year-old orphan down the steps of the airplane into the waiting arms of her adoptive mother, a scene that was heavily televised.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: At the end of her year of flying, on December 26, 1949, Higgins Clark happily gave up her career to marry Warren Clark. To occupy herself, she began taking writing courses at NYU and, with some of her classmates, formed a writing workshop in which the members would critique each other's works-in-progress. The workshop, which persisted for almost forty years, met weekly. At each meeting two members would have twenty minutes each to present their latest work. The other members would then have three minutes each to offer constructive criticism.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: One of her professors at NYU told the class they should develop plot ideas by reading newspapers and asking themselves prompts such as, "Suppose...?" and "What if...?" She has said that she still gets many of her ideas by utilizing said prompts, along with "Why?". For her first NYU writing assignment she used this method to expand her own experiences into a short story called "Stowaway" about a stewardess who finds a stowaway from Czechoslovakia on her plane. Although her professor offered high praise for the story, Higgins Clark was continually frustrated in her attempts to find a publisher. Finally, in 1956, after six years and forty rejections, "Extension Magazine" agreed to purchase the story for $100.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: While those six years were devoid of professional milestones, on a personal level Higgins Clark and her husband were very busy. Their first child, Marilyn, was born nine months after their wedding, with Warren Jr. arriving thirteen months later. A third child, David, was born two years after his brother. Two months after Higgins Clark's short story sold, the fourth baby made her appearance and was promptly named Carol, after the heroine in her mother's story. After selling that first short story, Higgins Clark began regularly finding homes for her works. Through the writer's workshop she met an agent, Patricia Schartle Myrer, who represented Higgins Clark for twenty years until her retirement. They became such good friends that Higgins Clark named her fifth and last child for her. While Warren worked and Higgins Clark wrote, they encouraged their children to find ways to earn money as well, with all five children eventually taking professional acting and modeling jobs. Young Patty served as a Gerber Baby, while David was featured in a national United Way ad. Higgins Clark herself filmed a television commercial for Fab laundry detergent. The commercial, which aired during the "I Love Lucy" show, earned her enough money that she and Warren were able to take a trip to Hawaii.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: In 1959, Warren Clark was diagnosed with severe angina, and, although he curtailed his activities on his doctor's order, he suffered within the next five years, each time returning from the hospital in poorer health. After the last heart attack in 1964, they felt that Warren would be unable to work again, so Higgins Clark called a friend who wrote scripts for radio shows to see if there were any job openings. The day that she accepted a job writing the radio segment "Portrait of a Patriot," Warren suffered a fatal heart attack. His mother, who was visiting at the time, collapsed at his bedside upon discovering that he was dead. In one night, Higgins Clark lost both her husband and her mother-in-law.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: Higgins Clark's initial contract to be a radio scriptwriter obligated her to write 65 four-minute programs for the "Portrait of a Patriot" series. Her work was good enough that she was soon asked to write two other radio series. This experience of fitting an entire sketch into four minutes taught Higgins Clark how to write cleanly and succinctly, traits that are incredibly important to a suspense novel, which must advance the plot with every paragraph. Despite the security offered by her new job, money was tight in the beginning as she strove to raise five children aged five to thirteen alone. For their first Christmas without Warren, Higgins Clark's only gifts to her children were personalized poems describing the things she wished she could have purchased for them.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: By the late 1960s, the short story market had collapsed. "The Saturday Evening Post", which in 1960 named Higgins Clark's short story "Beauty Contest at Buckingham" one of their ten best of the year, was in serious financial straits and had decided to stop publishing fiction, and many of the popular women's magazines were also dropping or cutting back on fiction, focusing on self-help articles instead. Because her short stories were no longer able to find a publisher, Higgins Clark's agent suggested that she try writing a full-length novel. Using her research and experience with the "Portraits of a Patriot" series, Higgins Clark spent the next three years writing a fictionalized account of the relationship between George and Martha Washington, "Aspire to the Heavens". It is about George Washington and the love for his house. Although it was sold for only a small advance, its acceptance gave Higgins Clark confidence that she could indeed finish a full-length book and find a publisher. The novel "was remaindered as it came off the press," and, to make matters worse, four months after the publication of the novel, Mary's mother, Nora, died.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: To ensure that her children would not have to struggle financially, Higgins Clark was determined that they should have good educations. To provide a good example she entered Fordham University at Lincoln Center in 1971, graduating summa cum laude in 1979, with a BA in philosophy. Her children followed her example. The two eldest, Marilyn and Warren, have become judges, and Patty works at the Mercantile Exchange in New York City. David is the president and CEO of Talk Marketing Enterprises, Inc, and Carol has authored many popular suspense novels.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: During this time Higgins Clark became increasingly frustrated with her employer, and, although two of her children were partially dependent on her for their college tuition, she quit her job and joined two of her former colleagues in forming their own company to write and market radio scripts. To scrape up the $5000 she needed to start the business, Higgins Clark was forced to pawn her engagement ring, and, for the eight months it took the company to become profitable, she did not receive a salary, further straining the family finances.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: Encouraged by her agent to try writing another book, Higgins Clark returned to the suspense stories that she loved as a child and which had provided her first success as a short story writer. While she was in the midst of writing the story, her younger brother Johnny died, leaving her the sole surviving member of her family. To temporarily forget her heartache, Higgins Clark threw herself into her writing, and soon finished the novel. Very quickly after the novel, "Where are the Children?" was completed, Simon & Schuster agreed to purchase it for the relatively small sum of $3000. Three months later, in July 1974, Higgins Clark received word that the paperback rights for the novel had sold for one hundred thousand dollars. For the first time in many years, she had no immediate financial worries. "Where Are the Children?" became a bestseller and was favorably reviewed. Two years after its publication Higgins Clark sold her second suspense novel for $1.5 million.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: Since 2010, Paris-based La Sabotière have been producing a series of her crime novel as television films. Mary Higgins Clark crime novel anthology series was placed into development in October 2019 under a partnership between Montreal-based Reel One Entertainment, U.S. producer Element 8 Entertainment and La Sabotière. The first season is slated to be based on "I’ll Be Seeing You" and, attached as writer and executive producer is Ilene Rosenzweig.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: Higgins Clark's debut novel about George Washington, "Aspire to the Heavens" was retitled "Mount Vernon Love Story" and rereleased in 2002, the same year as her autobiography, "Kitchen Privileges", which relied heavily on the journals she has kept all of her life. In 2006, she announced that she would be fulfilling one of her dreams by publishing her first children's book. "Ghost Ship" was published by Simon & Schuster, who have published her suspense novels.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: She has written several Christmas-themed mystery novels with her daughter, Carol. Although popular with readers, some critics have complained that the books are of lesser quality because the tone is much lighter than her solo output.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: Higgins Clark dated throughout her widowhood. She described her second marriage (1978–1986) to Raymond Ploetz as "disastrous," and had it annulled.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: In 1996, she married John J. Conheeney after they were introduced by her daughter, Patty. John J Conheeney died at age 89 on October 8, 2018. He was the retired CEO of Merrill Lynch Futures, The couple lived in Saddle River, New Jersey, (Mary having first moved to New Jersey in 1956 when she and her first husband bought a home in Washington Township, Bergen County, New Jersey). They had other homes in Manhattan; Spring Lake, New Jersey; and Dennis, Massachusetts.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: In 1981, Higgins Clark happened to be in Washington, D.C., the day President Ronald Reagan was shot. Because she had a press pass she was able to join the media waiting to hear the President's prognosis. When the doctor finally arrived to start the press conference, Higgins Clark was one of the few people chosen to ask a question.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: Higgins Clark has had over 50 novels published, with millions of copies sold throughout the United States.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: In 2001, the hardcover edition of Higgins Clark's "On the Street Where You Live" was Number One on the "New York Times" Hardcover Bestseller list at the same time that the paperback version of her novel "" reached Number One on the "New York Times" Paperback Bestseller list.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: Her books have been bestsellers in France, and have earned her the distinction of being named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in France in 2000. She has been honored in France with the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière (1980) and the Deauville Film Festival Literary Award (1999). She was awarded the AIHS Gold Medal from the American Irish Historical Society, which is awarded to an Irish-American or Irish-national of significant accomplishment.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: While Higgins Clark was aware that many people claiming to be psychics are behaving fraudulently, she believed that she had met people with genuine ESP powers. Nora Higgins, on looking at a photo of her eighteen-year-old son in his brand new Navy dress blues told Mary that "He has death in his eyes", and the young man died shortly after. A psychic Higgins Clark visited just as her second novel, "Where Are the Children", was being published in paperback told her that she would become very famous and make a great deal of money. Although at the time she laughed off the prediction, the following week her novel reached the bestseller lists and she sold the movie rights shortly after, truly launching her career.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: Higgins Clark won numerous awards for her writing. In addition to those previously referenced, she won the Horatio Alger Award (1997) and the Passionists' Ethics in Literature Award (2002), as well as the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University Spirit of Achievement Award (1994) and the National Arts Club's Gold Medal in Education (1994). She was awarded eighteen honorary doctorates, including one from her alma mater, Fordham University. Her success was also recognized by groups representing her heritage. The American Irish Historical Society granted her the Gold Medal of Honor in 1993, and in 2001 she won the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. She was named a Bronx Legend (1999).


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: Mary Higgins Clark served as the Chairman of the International Crime Congress in 1988 and was the 1987 president of the Mystery Writers of America. For many years she served on the board of directors of the Mystery Writers of America. Simon & Schuster, which have published all of Higgins Clark's novels and in the late 1990s signed her to a $64-million, four-book contract, have funded the Mary Higgins Clark Award, given by the Mystery Writers of America to authors of suspense fiction. The announcement that an award would be given in her honor was made at the 55th Annual Edgar Allan Poe Awards, where Higgins Clark was inducted as a Grand Master.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: Higgins Clark was made a Dame of the Order of St. Gregory the Great, and was honored as a Dame of Malta and a Dame of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre. The Franciscan Friars gave her a Graymoor Award (1999) and she was awarded a Christopher Life Achievement Award. She served as a board member for the Catholic Communal Fund and as a member of the Board of Governors at Hackensack Hospital.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: <br>Focuses on Alvirah Meehan, a lottery winner, and her husband Willy, a plumber, as they solve many crimes and murders.


title: Mary Higgins Clark

text: <br>Focuses on Laurie Moran, producer on the television series "Under Suspicion", a documentary program which investigates unsolved cold cases.


title: Jang Wooyoung

text: Jang Woo-young (Hangul: 장우영; Hanja: 張祐榮; born on April 30, 1989), better known mononymously as Wooyoung, is a South Korean singer, songwriter, dancer and actor. In 2008, he debuted as a member of 2PM, a boy band currently managed by JYP Entertainment. He is mainly known for his work in 2PM and his role as Jason in the South Korean drama "Dream High".


title: Jang Wooyoung

text: Aside from his work in 2PM, he has hosted SBS' music show "Inkigayo" from July 2009 to July 2010 as well as the KBS talk show "Win Win" from February to August 2010. He debuted as a solo artist with his first extended play, "23, Male, Single," in July 2012. He has also composed several songs for 2PM, his solo music, and other artists.


title: Jang Wooyoung

text: On 4 September 2008, Wooyoung debuted as part of 2PM in their first single "10 Points out of 10 Points" (Korean: "10점 만점에 10점") from their single album "Hottest Time of the Day". They have released six studio albums in Korea and four studio albums in Japan.


title: Jang Wooyoung

text: On May 24, 2012, it was revealed that Wooyoung would have released a solo album in early July. On June 28, he performed the title track "Sexy Lady" at the Mnet 20's Choice awards. His first solo mini-album "23, Male, Single" was released on July 8 and included two self-composed songs by fellow 2PM members, Junho and Jun.K. In September 2012, Wooyoung, along with JY Park, Taecyeon and miss A's Suzy, promoted the clothing line Reebok's Classic Campaign with a collaboration song named "Classic". On June 9, 2014, Wooyoung released two duets: "Two Hands Clasped" with Park Se-young, and "Fireflies' Glow" with lel.


title: Jang Wooyoung

text: On March 4, 2015, he made his solo debut in Japan with the single "R.O.S.E", preceded by a tour of concerts in Tokyo, Osaka, and Aichi in February. He released music videos for tracks "R.O.S.E" and "Happy Birthday", and, in April, the music video for the Korean version of "R.O.S.E". In 2017, he released two extended plays in Japan: "Party Shots" in April and "Mada boku wa..." in October.


title: Jang Wooyoung

text: Wooyoung, along with fellow 2PM member Taecyeon, hosted SBS's music show "Inkigayo" from July 2009 to July 2010. On February 2, 2010, he was named a sub-MC for Kim Seung-woo's KBS talk show "Win Win" alongside Girls' Generation's Taeyeon, Kim Shin-young, and Choi Hwa-jung. He received praise as a genius in the making for his natural MC style and quick wit. He left the show on August 3, along with Taeyeon, to focus on 2PM's first concert.


title: Jang Wooyoung

text: Wooyoung debuted as an actor in the 2011 KBS drama series "Dream High", in which he played the role of Jason, a Korean-American. His performance in the drama made him famous for the English line "Is it my turn already?"; he had help from fellow 2PM members Taecyeon and Nichkhun with his English due to their both being experienced in the language. After his drama debut in "Dream High", Wooyoung expressed a desire to continue acting while maintaining a musical career. A representative for JYP Entertainment noted the future opportunities, saying "We're planning to continue Wooyoung's acting career when he receives another great project. He was worried before "Dream High" began filming, and often wondered whether he'd be able to act, but we believe that he's gained a lot of confidence since then. He's gotten very interested in the acting field, so we plan to continue his acting career, along with fellow member Taecyeon's."


title: Jang Wooyoung

text: In September 2011, Wooyoung and "Dream High" co-star Suzy made a cameo appearance in the KBS Drama Special "Human Casino". The two idols played the role of a couple caught up in gambling scandals. Their scene wasn't a part of the actual drama, but were rather featured towards the end with the rolling credits. The producer stated "I told these two that I was starting a new project and they told me they wanted to visit, so I thought of giving them a small cameo role."


title: Jang Wooyoung

text: Wooyoung trained actress Kim Gyu-ri for her performance on MBC's "Dancing With the Stars" in July 2011. Netizens praised his talents as a dancer for having the chance to teach others about it.


title: Jang Wooyoung

text: For 2PM's tours in 2011 (Hands Up Asia Tour and Republic of 2PM), Junho and Wooyoung performed a duet that Junho wrote, while Wooyoung choreographed and designed their outfits.


title: Jang Wooyoung

text: In 2011, Taecyeon and Wooyoung modeled for the fall collection of the clothing brand Evisu, and in 2012 for the spring-summer collection. In September he modeled for Reebok's Classic Campaign. In August 2014, Wooyoung was announced as new face of Recipe Cosmetics.


title: Jang Wooyoung

text: Wooyoung enlisted in the Army for his mandatory military service on July 9, 2018. He was supposed to be discharged on February 28, 2020. However, on February 25, a representative from JYP Entertainment confirmed that Wooyoung was already discharged, a few days earlier than his scheduled discharge date, due to the COVID-19 pandemic in South Korea.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: Wells Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral in Wells, Somerset, England, dedicated to St Andrew the Apostle. It is the seat of the Bishop of Bath and Wells, whose cathedra it holds as mother church of the Diocese of Bath and Wells. Built as a Roman Catholic cathedral from around 1175 to replace an earlier church on the site since 705, it became an Anglican cathedral when King Henry VIII split from Rome. It is moderately sized for an English cathedral. Its broad west front and large central tower are dominant features. It has been called "unquestionably one of the most beautiful" and "most poetic" of English cathedrals.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: Its Gothic architecture is mostly inspired from Early English style of the late 12th to early 13th centuries, lacking the Romanesque work that survives in many other cathedrals. Building began about 1175 at the east end with the choir. Historian John Harvey sees it as Europe's first truly Gothic structure, breaking the last constraints of Romanesque. The stonework of its pointed arcades and fluted piers bears pronounced mouldings and carved capitals in a foliate, "stiff-leaf" style. Its Early English front with 300 sculpted figures is seen as a "supreme triumph of the combined plastic arts in England". The east end retains much ancient stained glass. Unlike many cathedrals of monastic foundation, Wells has many surviving secular buildings linked to its chapter of secular canons, including the Bishop's Palace and the 15th-century residential Vicars' Close. It is a Grade I listed building.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: The earliest remains of a building on the site are of a late-Roman mausoleum, identified during excavations in 1980. An abbey church was built in Wells in 705 by Aldhelm, first bishop of the newly established Diocese of Sherborne during the reign of King Ine of Wessex. It was dedicated to St Andrew and stood at the site of the cathedral's cloisters, where some excavated remains can be seen. The font in the cathedral's south transept is from this church and is the oldest part of the present building. In 766 Cynewulf, King of Wessex, signed a charter endowing the church with eleven hides of land. In 909 the seat of the diocese was moved from Sherborne to Wells.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: The first bishop of Wells was Athelm (909), who crowned King Æthelstan. Athelm and his nephew Dunstan both became Archbishops of Canterbury. During this period a choir of boys was established to sing the liturgy. Wells Cathedral School, which was established to educate these choirboys, dates its foundation to this point. There is, however, some controversy over this. Following the Norman Conquest, John de Villula moved the seat of the bishop from Wells to Bath in 1090. The church at Wells, no longer a cathedral, had a college of secular clergy.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: The cathedral is thought to have been conceived and commenced in about 1175 by Reginald Fitz Jocelin, who died in 1191. Although it is clear from its size that from the outset, the church was planned to be the cathedral of the diocese, the seat of the bishop moved between Wells and the abbeys of Glastonbury and Bath, before settling at Wells. In 1197 Reginald's successor, Savaric FitzGeldewin, with the approval of Pope Celestine III, officially moved his seat to Glastonbury Abbey. The title of Bishop of Bath and Glastonbury was used until the Glastonbury claim was abandoned in 1219.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: Savaric's successor, Jocelin of Wells, again moved the bishop's seat to Bath Abbey, with the title Bishop of Bath. Jocelin was a brother of Hugh (II) of Lincoln and was present at the signing of the Magna Carta. Jocelin continued the building campaign begun by Reginald and was responsible for the Bishop's Palace, the choristers' school, a grammar school, a hospital for travellers and a chapel. He also had a manor house built at Wookey, near Wells. Jocelin saw the church dedicated in 1239 but, despite much lobbying of the Pope by Jocelin's representatives in Rome, did not live to see cathedral status granted. The delay may have been a result of inaction by Pandulf Verraccio, a Roman ecclesiastical politician, papal legate to England and Bishop of Norwich, who was asked by the Pope to investigate the situation but did not respond. Jocelin died at Wells on 19 November 1242 and was buried in the choir of the cathedral; the memorial brass on his tomb is one of the earliest brasses in England. Following his death the monks of Bath unsuccessfully attempted to regain authority over Wells.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: In 1245 the ongoing dispute over the title of the bishop was resolved by a ruling of Pope Innocent IV, who established the title as the "Bishop of Bath and Wells", which it has remained until this day, with Wells as the principal seat of the bishop. Since the 11th century the church has had a chapter of secular clergy, like the cathedrals of Chichester, Hereford, Lincoln and York. The chapter was endowed with 22 prebends (lands from which finance was drawn) and a provost to manage them. On acquiring cathedral status, in common with other such cathedrals, it had four chief clergy, the dean, precentor, chancellor and sacristan, who were responsible for the spiritual and material care of the cathedral.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: The building programme, begun by Reginald Fitz Jocelin, Bishop in the 12th century, continued under Jocelin of Wells, who was a canon from 1200, then bishop from 1206. Adam Locke was master mason from about 1192 until 1230. It was designed in the new style with pointed arches, later known as Gothic, which was introduced at about the same time at Canterbury Cathedral. Work was halted between 1209 and 1213 when King John was excommunicated and Jocelin was in exile, but the main parts of the church were complete by the time of the dedication by Jocelin in 1239.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: By the time the cathedral, including the chapter house, was finished in 1306, it was already too small for the developing liturgy, and unable to accommodate increasingly grand processions of clergy. John Droxford initiated another phase of building under master mason Thomas of Whitney, during which the central tower was heightened and an eight-sided Lady chapel was added at the east end by 1326. Ralph of Shrewsbury followed, continuing the eastward extension of the choir and retrochoir beyond. He oversaw the building of Vicars' Close and the Vicars' Hall, to give the men who were employed to sing in the choir a secure place to live and dine, away from the town and its temptations. He had an uneasy relationship with the citizens of Wells, partly because of his imposition of taxes, and he surrounded his palace with crenellated walls, a moat and a drawbridge.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: John Harewell raised money for the completion of the west front by William Wynford, who was appointed as master mason in 1365. One of the foremost architects of his time, Wynford worked for the king at Windsor, Winchester Cathedral and New College, Oxford. At Wells, he designed the western towers of which north-west was not built until the following century. In the 14th century, the central piers of the crossing were found to be sinking under the weight of the crossing tower which had been damaged by an earthquake in the previous century. Strainer arches, sometimes described as scissor arches, were inserted by master mason William Joy to brace and stabilise the piers as a unit.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: By the reign of Henry VII the cathedral was complete, appearing much as it does today (though the fittings have changed). From 1508 to 1546, the eminent Italian humanist scholar Polydore Vergil was active as the chapter's representative in London. He donated a set of hangings for the choir of the cathedral. While Wells survived the Dissolution of the Monasteries better than the cathedrals of monastic foundation, the abolition of chantries in 1547 resulted in a reduction in its income. Medieval brasses were sold, and a pulpit was placed in the nave for the first time. Between 1551 and 1568, in two periods as dean, William Turner established a herb garden, which was recreated between 2003 and 2010.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: Elizabeth I gave the chapter and the Vicars Choral a new charter in 1591, creating a new governing body, consisting of a dean and eight residentiary canons with control over the church estates and authority over its affairs, but no longer entitled to elect the dean (that entitlement thenceforward belonged ultimately to the Crown). The stability brought by the new charter ended with the onset of the Civil War and the execution of Charles I. Local fighting damaged the cathedral's stonework, furniture and windows. The dean, Walter Raleigh, a nephew of the explorer Walter Raleigh, was placed under house arrest after the fall of Bridgwater to the Parliamentarians in 1645, first in the rectory at Chedzoy and then in the deanery at Wells. His jailor, the shoe maker and city constable, David Barrett, caught him writing a letter to his wife. When he refused to surrender it, Barrett ran him through with a sword and he died six weeks later, on 10 October 1646. He was buried in an unmarked grave in the choir before the dean's stall. During the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell no dean was appointed and the cathedral fell into disrepair. The bishop went into retirement and some of the clerics were reduced to performing menial tasks.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: In 1661, after Charles II was restored to the throne, Robert Creighton, the king's chaplain in exile, was appointed dean and was bishop for two years before his death in 1672. His brass lectern, given in thanksgiving, can be seen in the cathedral. He donated the nave's great west window at a cost of £140. Following Creighton's appointment as bishop, the post of dean went to Ralph Bathurst, who had been chaplain to the king, president of Trinity College, Oxford and fellow of the Royal Society. During Bathurst's long tenure the cathedral was restored, but in the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685, Puritan soldiers damaged the west front, tore lead from the roof to make bullets, broke the windows, smashed the organ and furnishings, and for a time stabled their horses in the nave.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: Restoration began again under Thomas Ken who was appointed by the Crown in 1685 and served until 1691. He was one of seven bishops imprisoned for refusing to sign King James II's "Declaration of Indulgence", which would have enabled Catholics to resume positions of political power, but popular support led to their acquittal. Ken refused to take the oath of allegiance to William III and Mary II because James II had not abdicated and with others, known as the Nonjurors, was put out of office. His successor, Richard Kidder, was killed in the Great Storm of 1703 when two chimney stacks on the palace fell on him and his wife, while they were asleep in bed.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: By the middle of the 19th century, a major restoration programme was needed. Under Dean Goodenough, the monuments were moved to the cloisters and the remaining medieval paint and whitewash removed in an operation known as "the great scrape". Anthony Salvin took charge of the extensive restoration of the choir. Wooden galleries installed in the 16th century were removed and the stalls were given stone canopies and placed further back within the line of the arcade. The medieval stone pulpitum screen was extended in the centre to support a new organ.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: In 1933 the Friends of Wells Cathedral were formed to support the cathedral's chapter in the maintenance of the fabric, life and work of the cathedral.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: The late 20th century saw an extensive restoration programme, particularly of the west front. The stained glass is currently under restoration, with a programme underway to conserve the large 14th-century Jesse Tree window at the eastern terminal of the choir.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: In January 2014, as part of the Bath film festival, the cathedral hosted a special screening of Martin Scorsese's "The Last Temptation of Christ". This provoked some controversy, but the church defended its decision to allow the screening.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: In 2021, a contemporary sculpture by Anthony Gormley was unveiled on a temporary plinth outside the cathedral.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: Since the 13th century, Wells Cathedral has been the seat of the Bishop of Bath and Wells. Its governing body, the chapter, is made up of five clerical canons (the dean, the precentor, the canon chancellor, the canon treasurer, and the archdeacon of Wells) and four lay members: the administrator (chief executive), Keeper of the Fabric, Overseer of the Estate and the chairman of the cathedral shop and catering boards. The current bishop of Bath and Wells is Peter Hancock, who was installed in a service in the cathedral on 7 June 2014. John Davies has been Dean of Wells since 2016.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: Employed staff include the organist and master of choristers, head Verger archivist, librarian and the staff of the shop, café and restaurant. The chapter is advised by specialists such as architects, archaeologists and financial analysts.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: More than a thousand services are held every year. There are daily services of Matins, Holy Communion and Choral Evensong, as well as major celebrations of Christian festivals such as Christmas, Easter, Pentecost and saints' days. The cathedral is also used for the baptisms, weddings and funerals of those with close connections to it. In July 2009 the cathedral undertook the funeral of Harry Patch, the last British Army veteran of World War I, who died at the age of 111.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: Three Sunday services are led by the resident choir in school terms and choral services are sung on weekdays. The cathedral hosts visiting choirs and does outreach work with local schools as part of its Chorister Outreach Project. It is also a venue for musical events such as an annual concert by the Somerset Chamber Choir.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: Each year about 150,000 people attend services and another 300,000 visit as tourists. Entry is free, but visitors are encouraged to make a donation towards the annual running costs of around £1.5 million in 2015.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: Construction of the cathedral began in about 1175, to the design of an unknown architect. Wells is the first cathedral in England to be built, from its foundation, in Gothic style. According to art historian John Harvey, it is the first truly Gothic cathedral in the world, its architects having entirely dispensed with all features that bound the contemporary east end of Canterbury Cathedral and the earlier buildings of France, such as the east end of the Abbey of Saint Denis, to the Romanesque. Unlike these churches, Wells has clustered piers rather than columns and has a gallery of identical pointed arches rather than the typically Romanesque form of paired openings. The style, with its simple lancet arches without tracery and convoluted mouldings, is known as Early English Gothic.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: From about 1192 to 1230, Adam Lock, the earliest architect at Wells for whom a name is known, continued the transept and nave in the same manner as his predecessor. Lock was also the builder of the north porch, to his own design.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: The Early English west front was commenced around 1230 by Thomas Norreys, with building and sculpture continuing for thirty years. Its south-west tower was begun 100 years later and constructed between 1365 and 1395, and the north-west tower between 1425 and 1435, both in the Perpendicular Gothic style to the design of William Wynford, who also filled many of the cathedral's early English lancet windows with delicate tracery.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: The undercroft and chapter house were built by unknown architects between 1275 and 1310, the undercroft in the Early English and the chapter house in the Geometric style of Decorated Gothic architecture. In about 1310 work commenced on the Lady Chapel, to the design of Thomas Witney, who also built the central tower from 1315 to 1322 in the Decorated Gothic style. The tower was later braced internally with arches by William Joy. Concurrent with this work, in 1329–45 Joy made alterations and extensions to the choir, joining it to the Lady Chapel with the retrochoir, the latter in the Flowing Decorated style.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: Later changes include the Perpendicular vault of the tower and construction of Sugar's Chapel, 1475–1490 by William Smyth. Also, Gothic Revival renovations were made to the choir and pulpitum by Benjamin Ferrey and Anthony Salvin, 1842–1857.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: Wells has a total length of . Like Canterbury, Lincoln and Salisbury cathedrals, it has the distinctly English arrangement of two transepts, with the body of the church divided into distinct parts: nave, choir, and retro-choir, beyond which extends the Lady Chapel. The façade is wide, with its towers extending beyond the transepts on either side. There is a large projecting porch on the north side of the nave forming an entry into the cathedral. To the north-east is the large octagonal chapter house, entered from the north choir aisle by a passage and staircase. To the south of the nave is a large cloister, unusual in that the northern range, that adjacent the cathedral, was never built.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: In section, the cathedral has the usual arrangement of a large church: a central nave with an aisle on each side, separated by two arcades. The elevation is in three stages, arcade, triforium gallery and clerestory. The nave is in height, very low compared to the Gothic cathedrals of France. It has a markedly horizontal emphasis, caused by the triforium having a unique form, a series of identical narrow openings, lacking the usual definition of the bays. The triforium is separated from the arcade by a single horizontal string course that runs unbroken the length of the nave. There are no vertical lines linking the three stages, as the shafts supporting the vault rise above the triforium.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: The exterior of Wells Cathedral presents a relatively tidy and harmonious appearance since the greater part of the building was executed in a single style, Early English Gothic. This is uncommon among English cathedrals where the exterior usually exhibits a plethora of styles. At Wells, later changes in the Perpendicular style were universally applied, such as filling the Early English lancet windows with simple tracery, the construction of a parapet that encircles the roof, and the addition of pinnacles framing each gable, similar to those around the chapter house and on the west front. At the eastern end there is a proliferation of tracery with repeated motifs in the Reticulated style, a stage between Geometric and Flowing Decorated tracery.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: The west front is high and wide, and built of Inferior Oolite of the Middle Jurassic period, which came from the Doulting Stone Quarry, about to the east. According to the architectural historian Alec Clifton-Taylor, it is "one of the great sights of England".


title: Wells Cathedral

text: West fronts in general take three distinct forms: those that follow the elevation of the nave and aisles, those that have paired towers at the end of each aisle, framing the nave, and those that screen the form of the building. The west front at Wells has the paired-tower form, unusual in that the towers do not indicate the location of the aisles, but extend well beyond them, screening the dimensions and profile of the building.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: The west front rises in three distinct stages, each clearly defined by a horizontal course. This horizontal emphasis is counteracted by six strongly projecting buttresses defining the cross-sectional divisions of nave, aisles and towers, and are highly decorated, each having canopied niches containing the largest statues on the façade.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: At the lowest level of the façade is a plain base, contrasting with and stabilising the ornate arcades that rise above it. The base is penetrated by three doors, which are in stark contrast to the often imposing portals of French Gothic cathedrals. The outer two are of domestic proportion and the central door is ornamented only by a central post, quatrefoil and the fine mouldings of the arch.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: Above the basement rise two storeys, ornamented with quatrefoils and niches originally holding about four hundred statues, with three hundred surviving until the mid-20th century. Since then, some have been restored or replaced, including the ruined figure of Christ in the gable.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: The third stages of the flanking towers were both built in the Perpendicular style of the late 14th century, to the design of William Wynford; that on the north-west was not begun until about 1425. The design maintains the general proportions, and continues the strong projection of the buttresses.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: The finished product has been criticised for its lack of pinnacles, and it is probable that the towers were intended to carry spires which were never built. Despite its lack of spires or pinnacles, the architectural historian Banister Fletcher describes it as "the highest development in English Gothic of this type of façade."


title: Wells Cathedral

text: The sculptures on the west front at Wells include standing figures, seated figures, half-length angels and narratives in high relief. Many of the figures are life-sized or larger. Together they constitute the finest display of medieval carving in England. The figures and many of the architectural details were painted in bright colours, and the colouring scheme has been deduced from flakes of paint still adhering to some surfaces. The sculptures occupy nine architectural zones stretching horizontally across the entire west front and around the sides and the eastern returns of the towers which extend beyond the aisles. The strongly projecting buttresses have tiers of niches which contain many of the largest figures. Other large figures, including that of Christ, occupy the gable. A single figure stands in one of two later niches high on the northern tower.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: In 1851 the archaeologist Charles Robert Cockerell published his analysis of the iconography, numbering the nine sculptural divisions from the lowest to the highest. He defined the theme as "a calendar for unlearned men" illustrating the doctrines and history of the Christian faith, its introduction to Britain and its protection by princes and bishops. He likens the arrangement and iconography to the Te Deum.


title: Wells Cathedral

text: According to Cockerell, the side of the façade that is to the south of the central door is the more sacred and the scheme is divided accordingly. The lowest range of niches each contained a standing figure, of which all but four figures on the west front, two on each side, have been destroyed. More have survived on the northern and eastern sides of the north tower. Cockerell speculates that those to the south of the portal represented prophets and patriarchs of the Old Testament while those to the north represented early missionaries to Britain, of which Augustine of Canterbury, St Birinus, and Benedict Biscop are identifiable by their attributes. In the second zone, above each pair of standing figures, is a quatrefoil containing a half-length angel in relief, some of which have survived. Between the gables of the niches are quatrefoils that contain a series of narratives from the Bible, with the Old Testament stories to the south, above the prophets and patriarchs, and those from the New Testament to the north. A horizontal course runs around the west front dividing the architectural storeys at this point.