title: 007 Legends

text: Built on the engine used for Eurocom's previous title, 2011's "", "007 Legends" shares much of the same gameplay, though there are some notable additions and modifications. The most significant change is the greater focus on stealth-based play, with enemy AI being more suspicious and investigative. Throughout the campaign, players will frequently be presented with situations that require stealth to get past, though often running-and-gunning will also be an option. To complement such stealth scenarios, players will have access to three gadgets from the start of the campaign: the returning smartphone, which has new vision modes and binocular capabilities; a new dart pen that can fire three different types of darts, including distraction, shock, and tranquilizer darts; and a wristwatch that can track enemies, fire a laser, and map nearby enemies and cameras.


title: 007 Legends

text: Another notable addition is the incorporation of an XP (experience points) progression system. Players can use XP to unlock and/or upgrade gadgets, weapons (and attachments), and Bond's physical abilities. Other notable points include there being at least one vehicle-based level in each of the missions, new weapons, and a new free-form melee function that enables players to control punches with the analogue sticks. As with the MI6 Ops Missions mode from "GoldenEye 007: Reloaded", the Challenges mode will present extra missions based on assault, elimination, stealth, and defence-based objectives, with adjustable difficulty. New to this mode will be the option to play special missions for some of the villains and companions from the single player. Players' scores will be uploaded onto online leaderboards.


title: 007 Legends

text: Multiplayer is supported across all platforms. Four-player split-screen is available for local offline play, while online play will have capacity for up to 12 players in a match. Players' multiplayer experience are indicated by their level, such as Level 50 (00 Agent Grade 0). There is also a 00 Specialization mode, similar to "Call of Duty"s Prestige system. Character skins and maps from the single player are available to players. Players can also equip gadgets to enhance their abilities, such as the Fast Switch gadget, which halves the time it takes to switch weapons. Scenarios revealed are Conflict, Golden Gun, You Only Live Twice, Escalation, Data Miner, Team Conflict, Icarus, and Black Box.


title: 007 Legends

text: The game begins with the opening chase sequence in "Skyfall", in which MI6 agent James Bond (likeness of Daniel Craig, voice of Timothy Watson) pursues the mercenary Patrice in Istanbul, only to be accidentally shot and wounded aboard a train by his partner Eve Moneypenny (Naomie Harris). Plunging into the river below, Bond begins to flash back to several of his previous missions that took place in-between "Quantum of Solace" and "Skyfall". However, with the release of "Spectre", the game has been rendered as non-canon.


title: 007 Legends

text: In Miami, Bond awakens in a hotel room to find Jill Masterson dead from skin suffocation, coated in gold paint. Days later in Switzerland, Bond infiltrates the facility of Auric Goldfinger (Timothy Watson, likeness of Gert Frobe), the man responsible for Masterson's death. He discovers Goldfinger's plan to irradiate the United States Gold Depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky in Operation Grand Slam. Bond manages to convince Goldfinger's personal pilot, Pussy Galore (likeness of Honor Blackman, voice of Natasha Little), to inform the CIA, and he and the United States Army manage to thwart Goldfinger's scheme in the nick of time.


title: 007 Legends

text: In the Swiss Alps, Bond and his lover Contessa Teresa "Tracy" di Vicenzo (likeness of Diana Rigg, voice of Nicola Walker), daughter of Italian Unione Corse boss Marc-Ange Draco, escape via skis after an attack by soldiers of Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Glenn Wrage), a terrorist mastermind residing in his mountaintop lair, Piz Gloria. Bond is injured by a helicopter gunship during the gunfire, and Tracy is in turn captured by Blofeld's men. Sometime later, Bond and Draco lead an aerial attack on Piz Gloria in order to rescue Tracy. They succeed. However, on their honeymoon, Bond and Tracy are attacked by Blofield and the latter is killed.


title: 007 Legends

text: Bond finds his CIA agent friend Felix Leiter (Demetri Goritsas) maimed in his house alongside his dead wife. The man responsible is Franz Sanchez (likeness of Robert Davi, voice of Rob David), a Mexican drug lord whom Bond and Leiter had unsuccessfully attempted to take down weeks earlier. On a quest for vengeance, Bond and DEA agent Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell) infiltrate Sanchez's facility inside an old Otomi temple, intent on killing him. A car chase ensues, and Bond kills Sanchez with the lighter given to him by Felix when Bond found him on the floor.


title: 007 Legends

text: In Iceland, Bond and NSA agent Giacinta "Jinx" Johnson (Madalena Alberto) arrive at a party held by billionaire philanthropist Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens), who is believed to be involved in the theft of military satellite components. Jinx spots Zao (Jason Wong), a rogue Korean People's Army operative who killed two of Jinx's colleagues, and believes he may be involved. They learn that Graves plans to weaponize ICARUS, a satellite used to reflect sunlight, in order to destroy South Korean forces on the DMZ, opening the way for a North Korean invasion of the South. Bond and Jinx manage to board Graves' plane after a lengthy car chase with their Aston Martin DBS V12, killing Zao in the process. The ensuing firefight causes the plane to head downwards in a tailspin, but Bond manages to kill Graves and escape with Jinx.


title: 007 Legends

text: In Brazil, Bond and Holly Goodhead (Jane Perry), a NASA scientist moonlighting as a CIA agent, infiltrate the rocket launch facility of Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale), a billionaire industrialist who has started his own private space exploration program. They quickly learn that Drax, a twisted social Darwinist, intends to wipe out the human race while creating his own new "master race" from personally-selected specimens, spared from the destruction of Earth via biological weapons onboard Drax's personal space station. Bond and Goodhead manage to get on board the station via a shuttlecraft and proceed to destroy it, killing Drax in the process by blowing him out of an airlock.


title: 007 Legends

text: Back in the present, Bond regains consciousness on the riverbank, injured, but alive. A few days later, he is seen in Shanghai, following Patrice to prevent the assassination of an unknown figure. Bond succeeds, but kicks Patrice off a building to his death before learning of his employer's identity. After finishing his report to M (Judi Dench) via phone, he is informed by Bill Tanner (Rory Kinnear) that another mission awaits him.


title: 007 Legends

text: "007 Legends" was developed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the "James Bond" film franchise. The game was released to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the James Bond film series. It incorporates the stories of six Bond films, one film chosen from each Bond actor's series of films, and retells them with an overarching narrative that ties them together, that of the progression of James Bond, from a newly christened agent on through becoming experienced as 007. The player goes through the classic Bond missions in the game playing as the Daniel Craig incarnation of Bond, as along the lines of the 2010 remake of "GoldenEye 007" for the Nintendo Wii, and the PlayStation 3/Xbox 360 port called "". At the announcement of the game on 18 April 2012, publisher Activision did not comment on which films would be remade in the game, but said that the upcoming "Skyfall" would serve as the final portion of the game.


title: 007 Legends

text: The game was first released in North America on 16 October 2012 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A Microsoft Windows release followed on 2 November 2012. The Wii U received the final platform release in December 2012. The game is available as physical optical disc media, as well as a digital release download via PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Marketplace on date of release, though it was removed off all other digital stores without warning in January 2013. A released was planned in Australia but later cancelled. and in the United Kingdom on 21 December 2012. The single player campaign includes one mission from each of the six actors' eras, being "Goldfinger" (Sean Connery), "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" (George Lazenby), "Moonraker" (Roger Moore), "Licence to Kill" (Timothy Dalton) and "Die Another Day" (Pierce Brosnan), with "Skyfall" (Daniel Craig) released as downloadable content for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC and included on disc for the Wii U version. It remained the final James Bond video game for 8 years until November 2020, when it was announced a new Bond game, developed by IO Interactive, had entered development.


title: 007 Legends

text: "Moonraker" was the first mission of the game to be revealed, while the second mission is based on the film "On Her Majesty's Secret Service". "Goldfinger" is the opening mission of the game, while "Licence to Kill", and "Die Another Day" also feature in the story. The only mission that is not on the game disc itself is the "Skyfall" mission, which was released on 20 November 2012 as free downloadable content (DLC), since "007 Legends" was released one week before "Skyfall" was first released in theaters. The "Skyfall" DLC is available for PlayStation 3, PC and the Xbox 360 and is included on the disc on the Wii U. Bruce Feirstein, who wrote three films and four games in the "James Bond" universe, wrote the screenplay along with Robin Matthews, who works for Eurocom. The composers from a previous release in the series, "GoldenEye 007", returned to do the music score for "007 Legends". Kevin Kiner wrote and composed the soundtrack, while David Arnold wrote his own instrumental arrangement of "Goldfinger" for the main title sequence.


title: 007 Legends

text: Some additional actors from the films reprise their roles in the game, whether through new voice lines or archival audio. Two "Moonraker" actors return to their original roles. Richard Keil returns as the silent antagonist Jaws, while Michael Lonsdale returns as villain Hugo Drax. Rory Kinnear returns in the role of MI6 chief of staff Bill Tanner, who first portrayed the role in "Quantum of Solace". Eve Moneypenny is again played by Naomie Harris, who began portraying the character in 2012's "Skyfall". "Die Another Day" antagonist Gustav Graves is again played by Toby Stephens. From "License to Kill" actress Carey Lowell again lends her voice to Pam Bouvier. Other characters have their likenesses retained, but their voices are provided by different actors. Timothy Watson provides the voice of Craig's James Bond, and also voices Auric Goldfinger, the titular villain from the film "Goldfinger". /> Recurring Bond villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld is voiced by Glenn Wrage.


title: 007 Legends

text: "007 Legends" received generally unfavorable reviews from critics, according to aggregating review websites GameRankings and Metacritic. Reviewers often commented that the game felt like a missed opportunity, and that it played like a "Call of Duty" clone. Some reviewers noted that the game had small moments that engaged the player as Bond, but that generally gameplay was bland and uninspired. Commentary on the game's multiplayer was mixed. While most lambasted the online play, some appreciated the inclusion of split-screen multiplayer.


title: 007 Legends

text: Tristan Ogilvie of IGN accused the game of drowning out the Bond series' iconic moments by shoehorning them into a cheap and poorly made "Call of Duty" clone, further adding that the gameplay was boring and repetitive and that production had only made a half-hearted attempt to bind the chosen recreation of films together, and that the lack of overarching story offered little incentive to keep playing. Dan Ryckert of "Game Informer" was similarly critical of the game, describing it as "a mess of a title that's uninspired at best and nearly broken at worst", and while the review applauded the concept of remaking films in video game form, it also attacked the gameplay mechanics as overly-simplistic with the player following on-screen prompts to perform certain actions, which was broken up by "truly awful" stealth gameplay. Eurogamer's Will Porter was critical of its by-the-numbers gameplay and stated "every inch of 007 Legends has been covered in a camo-coloured Call of Duty paint." Gameplay elements often game under critical review. Leif Johnson of GameSpot felt that it was an "unfulfilling slog".


title: 007 Legends

text: "The Globe and Mail" questioned the choice of missions in the game, claiming that fans considered them to be among the worst installments in the Bond film franchise, and that the game threw players into the middle of missions with little explanation or context to them, concluding that the game "feels like a low-budget knockoff of [...] "Call of Duty"". IT News Africa's Frederick Charles Fripp thought that "it could have been a better game if Eurocom focused more on improving the graphics and changing the game dynamic from a fairly linear shooter to something a bit more complex and through-provoking. " He added that "it does become a bit repetitive after a while, especially if the player does not feel challenged". Will Porter of Eurogamer felt that the heart of the films had been lost. In his review he stated "any personality the movies had is erased by the modern Daniel Craig update."


title: 007 Legends

text: Some praise was given to the game's split-screen multiplayer modes, with IGN's Tristan Ogilvie pointing out that localized split-screen was a feature that had been frequently overlooked in first-person shooter games, before adding that there was little to separate the multiplayer of "007 Legends" from that of the "GoldenEye 007" remake. GameSpot's Leif Johnson also praised the split-screen multiplayer, but cited that it was more welcome due to a sparse population for online play. In Nintendo Life's review of the Wii U version, Jon Wahlgren cited that the game's multiplayer was not good enough to entice players away from their favorite online games.


title: 007 Legends

text: Due to the reception and lowering sales of console games, Eurocom in 4Q/2012 fired 150 people from a total of 200 staff and decided to focus on mobile games. On 4 January 2013, Activision and Steam's online stores pulled the PC versions of "Quantum of Solace", "Blood Stone" and "007 Legends", initially without explanation or warning, but which was later revealed as Activision choosing to cease their license agreement to the franchise early, which required them to take down the games. Similar actions followed shortly on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions, also affecting "". "007 Legends" was nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Video Game Writing in the Writers Guild of America Awards.


title: Siege of Boston

text: The siege of Boston (April 19, 1775 – March 17, 1776) was the opening phase of the American Revolutionary War. New England militiamen prevented the movement by land of the British Army, which was garrisoned in what was then the peninsular town of Boston, Massachusetts Bay. Both sides had to deal with resource, supply, and personnel issues over the course of the siege. British resupply and reinforcement was limited to sea access, which was impeded by American vessels. The British abandoned Boston after eleven months and transferred their troops and equipment to Nova Scotia.


title: Siege of Boston

text: The siege began on April 19 after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, when Massachusetts militias blocked land access to Boston. The Continental Congress formed the Continental Army from the militias involved in the fighting and appointed George Washington as Commander in Chief. In June 1775, the British seized Bunker and Breed's Hills, from which the Continentals were preparing to bombard the city, but their casualties were heavy and their gains insufficient to break the Continental Army's control over land access to Boston. After this the Americans laid siege to the city; no major battles were fought during this time and the conflict was limited to occasional raids, minor skirmishes, and sniper fire. British efforts to supply their troops were significantly impacted by the smaller but more agile American forces operating on both land and sea and the British consequently suffered from a continual lack of food, fuel, and supplies during the siege.


title: Siege of Boston

text: In November 1775, George Washington sent Henry Knox on a mission to bring to Boston the heavy artillery that had recently been captured at Fort Ticonderoga. In a technically complex and demanding operation, Knox was able to bring the cannons to Boston in January 1776 and by March this artillery had fortified Dorchester Heights which overlooked Boston harbor. This development threatened to cut off the British supply lifeline from the sea. British commander William Howe saw his position as indefensible and on March 17 he withdrew his forces from Boston to Halifax, Nova Scotia.


title: Siege of Boston

text: Before 1775, the British imposed taxes and import duties on the American colonies, to which the inhabitants objected since they lacked British Parliamentary representation. In response to the Boston Tea Party and other acts of protest, 4,000 British troops under the command of General Thomas Gage were sent to occupy Boston and to pacify the restive Province of Massachusetts Bay. Parliament authorized Gage, among other actions, to disband the local provincial government (led by John Hancock and Samuel Adams). It was reformed into the Provincial Congress, and continued to meet. The Provincial Congress called for the organization of local militias and coordinated the accumulation of weapons and other military supplies. Under the terms of the Boston Port Act, Gage closed the Boston port, which caused much unemployment and discontent.


title: Siege of Boston

text: When British forces were sent to seize military supplies from the town of Concord on April 19, 1775, militia companies from surrounding towns opposed them at the Battles of Lexington and Concord. At Concord, some of the British forces were routed in a confrontation at the North Bridge. The British troops, on their march back to Boston, were then engaged in a running battle, suffering heavy casualties. All of the New England colonies (and later colonies farther south) raised militias in response to this alarm, and sent them to Boston.


title: Siege of Boston

text: Immediately after the battles of April 19, the Massachusetts militia, under the loose leadership of William Heath, who was superseded by General Artemas Ward late on the 20th, formed a siege line extending from Chelsea, around the peninsulas of Boston and Charlestown, to Roxbury, effectively surrounding Boston on three sides. They particularly blocked the Charlestown Neck (the only land access to Charlestown), and the Boston Neck (the only land access to Boston, which was then a peninsula), leaving only the harbor and sea access under British control.


title: Siege of Boston

text: In the days immediately following the creation of the siege line, the size of the colonial forces grew, as militias from New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut arrived on the scene. General Gage wrote of his surprise of the number of rebels surrounding the city: "The rebels are not the despicable rabble too many have supposed them to be...In all their wars against the French they never showed such conduct, attention, and perseverance as they do now."


title: Siege of Boston

text: General Gage turned his attention to fortifying easily defensible positions. In the south, at Roxbury, Gage ordered lines of defenses with 10 twenty-four pound guns. In Boston proper, four hills were quickly fortified. They were to be the main defense of the city. Over time, each of these hills was strengthened. Gage also decided to abandon Charlestown, removing the beleaguered forces (that had retreated from Concord) to Boston. The town of Charlestown itself was entirely vacant, and the high lands of Charlestown (Bunker Hill and Breed's Hill) were left undefended, as were the heights of Dorchester, which had a commanding view of the harbor and the city.


title: Siege of Boston

text: The British at first greatly restricted movement in and out of the city, fearing infiltration of weapons. Besieged and besiegers eventually reached an informal agreement allowing traffic on the Boston Neck, provided no firearms were carried. Residents of Boston turned in almost 2,000 muskets, and most of the Patriot residents left the city. Many Loyalists who lived outside the city of Boston left their homes and fled into the city. Most of them felt that it was not safe to live outside of the city, because the Patriots were now in control of the countryside. Some of the men, after arriving in Boston, joined Loyalist regiments attached to the British army.


title: Siege of Boston

text: Because the siege did not blockade the harbor, the city remained open for the Royal Navy, under Vice Admiral Samuel Graves, to bring in supplies from Nova Scotia and other places. Colonial forces could do little to stop these shipments due to the naval supremacy of the British fleet. Nevertheless, American privateers were able to harass supply ships, and food prices rose quickly. Soon the shortages meant the British forces were on short rations. Generally, the American forces were able to gather information about what was happening in the city from people escaping the privations of Boston, but General Gage had no effective intelligence of rebel activities.


title: Siege of Boston

text: On May 3, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress authorized Benedict Arnold to raise forces for taking Fort Ticonderoga near the southern end of Lake Champlain in the Province of New York, which was known to have heavy weapons, but to be only lightly defended. Arnold arrived in Castleton (in what is now Vermont, but was then disputed territory between New York and New Hampshire) on the 9th, where he joined with Ethan Allen and a militia company from Connecticut, all of whom had independently arrived at the idea of taking Ticonderoga. This company, under the joint leadership of Arnold and Allen, captured Fort Ticonderoga and Fort Crown Point. They also captured the one large military vessel on Lake Champlain in a raid on Fort Saint-Jean. They recovered over 180 cannons, as well as other weaponry and supplies that the nascent Continental Army would find useful in tightening their grip on Boston.


title: Siege of Boston

text: Boston lacked a regular supply of fresh meat, and many horses needed hay. On May 21, Gage ordered a party to go to Grape Island, in the outer harbor, and bring hay to Boston. When the Continentals on the mainland noticed this, they took alarm, and the militia were called out. As the British party arrived, they came under fire from the militia. The militia set fire to a barn on the island, destroying 80 tons of hay, and prevented the British from taking more than 3 tons.


title: Siege of Boston

text: Continental forces, partly in response to the Grape Island incident, worked to clear the harbor islands of livestock and supplies useful to the British. On May 27, in the Battle of Chelsea Creek, the British Marines attempted to stop removal of livestock from some of the islands. The Americans resisted, and, in the course of the action, the British schooner "Diana" ran aground and was destroyed, but not before the Continentals recovered its weaponry. In an attempt to help quell the rebellion, Gage issued a proclamation on June 12 offering to pardon all of those who would lay down their arms, with the exception of John Hancock and Samuel Adams. Instead of quelling the rebellion, it ignited anger among the Patriots, and more people began to take up arms.


title: Siege of Boston

text: Throughout May, the British had been receiving reinforcements, until they reached a strength of about 6,000 men. On May 25, three Generals arrived on : William Howe, John Burgoyne, and Henry Clinton. Gage began planning to break out of the city.


title: Siege of Boston

text: The plan decided on by the British command was to fortify both Bunker Hill and Dorchester Heights. They fixed the date for taking Dorchester Heights at June 18. On June 15, the colonists' Committee of Safety learned of the British plans. In response, they sent instructions to General Ward to fortify Bunker Hill and the heights of Charlestown; he ordered Colonel William Prescott to do so. On the night of June 16, Prescott led 1,200 men over the Charlestown Neck, and constructed fortifications on Bunker Hill and Breed's Hill.


title: Siege of Boston

text: On June 17, in the Battle of Bunker Hill, British forces under General Howe took the Charlestown peninsula. The British succeeded in their tactical objective of taking the high ground on the Charlestown peninsula, but they suffered significant losses. With some 1,000 men killed or wounded, including 92 officers killed, the British losses were so heavy that there were no further direct attacks on American forces. The Americans, while losing the battle, had again stood against the British regulars with some success, as they had successfully repelled two assaults on Breed's Hill during the engagement. From this point, the siege essentially became a stalemate.


title: Siege of Boston

text: General George Washington arrived at Cambridge on July 2. He set up his headquarters at the Benjamin Wadsworth House at Harvard College. He took command of the newly formed Continental Army the following day. By this time forces and supplies were arriving, including companies of riflemen from as far away as Maryland and Virginia. Washington began the work of molding the militias into something more closely resembling an army, appointing senior officers (where the militias had typically elected their leaders), and introducing more organization and disciplinary measures to the encamped militias.


title: Siege of Boston

text: Washington required officers of different ranks to wear differentiating apparel, so that they might be distinguished from their underlings and superiors. On July 16, he moved his headquarters to the John Vassall House, also in Cambridge, that would later become well known as the home of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Toward the end of July, about 2,000 riflemen arrived in units raised in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. The accuracy of the rifle was previously unknown in New England, and these forces were used to harass the besieged forces.


title: Siege of Boston

text: Washington also ordered the defenses to be improved. Trenches were dug on the Boston Neck, and then extended toward Boston. However, these activities had little effect on the British occupation. The working parties were fired on from time to time, as were sentries guarding the works. On July 30, in retaliation for an American attack, the British pushed back an American advanced guard, and burned a few houses in Roxbury. Four days later, on August 2, an American rifleman was killed, and his body hung up by the neck. In retaliation, other American riflemen marched to the lines and began to attack the British troops. They continued their sharpshooting all day, killing or wounding many of the British, and losing only one man.


title: Siege of Boston

text: On August 30, the British made a surprise breakout from the Boston Neck, set fire to a tavern, and withdrew to their defenses. On the same night, 300 Americans attacked Lighthouse Island and burned the lighthouse, killing several British soldiers and capturing 23 at the loss of one life. On another August night, Washington sent 1,200 men to dig entrenchments on a hill near the Charlestown Neck. Despite a British bombardment, the Americans successfully dug the trenches.


title: Siege of Boston

text: In early September, Washington began drawing up plans for two moves: first, to dispatch 1,000 men from Boston and invade Quebec, and second, to launch an attack on Boston. Washington felt that he could afford to send some troops to Quebec, as he had received intelligence from British deserters and American spies that the British had no intention of launching an attack from Boston until they were reinforced. On September 11, about 1,100 troops under the command of Benedict Arnold left for Quebec. Washington summoned a council of war, and made a case for an all out amphibious assault on Boston, by sending troops across Back Bay in flat-bottomed boats which could hold 50 men each. Washington believed it would be extremely difficult to keep the men together when winter came. In a war council, the plan was unanimously rejected, and the decision was not to attack "for the present at least."


title: Siege of Boston

text: In early September Washington authorized the appropriation and outfitting of local fishing vessels for intelligence-gathering and interdiction of supplies to the British. This activity was a precursor to the Continental Navy, which was established in the aftermath of the British Burning of Falmouth (present-day Portland, Maine). The provincial assemblies of Connecticut and Rhode Island had by then also begun arming ships and authorized privateering.


title: Siege of Boston

text: In early November, 400 British soldiers went to Lechmere's Point on a raiding expedition to acquire some livestock. They made off with 10 head of cattle, but lost two lives in the skirmish with colonial troops sent to defend the point. On November 29, colonial Captain John Manley, commanding the schooner "Lee", captured one of the most valuable prizes of the siege, the British brigantine "Nancy", just outside Boston Harbor. She was carrying a large supply of ordnance and military stores intended for the British troops in Boston.


title: Siege of Boston

text: As winter approached, both sides faced their own problems. The Americans were so short of gunpowder that some of the soldiers were given spears instead of guns to fight with in the event of a British attack. Many of the American troops remained unpaid and many of their enlistments were set to expire at the end of the year. On the British side Howe, who had replaced Gage as commander in October, was faced with different problems. Wood was so scarce that British soldiers resorted to cutting down trees and tearing down wooden buildings, including the Old North Meeting House.


title: Siege of Boston

text: To add to this, supplying the city had become increasingly difficult because of winter storms and the rise in rebel privateers. An improvised American war fleet of about 12 converted merchant ships captured 55 British ships over the course of the winter. Many of the captured ships had been carrying food supplies to the British troops. The British troops were so hungry that many were ready to desert as soon as they could. Worse, scurvy and smallpox had broken out in the city. Washington's army faced similar problems with smallpox, as soldiers from rural communities were exposed to the disease. Washington moved infected troops to a separate hospital, the only option then available given the public stigma against inoculation.


title: Siege of Boston

text: Washington again proposed to assault Boston in October, but his officers thought it best to wait until the harbor had frozen over. In February, when the water had frozen between Roxbury and Boston Common, Washington thought that in spite of his shortage in powder he would try an assault by rushing across the ice; but his officers again advised against it. Washington's desire to launch an attack on Boston arose from his fear that his army would desert in the winter, and how easily he knew that Howe could break the lines of his army in its present condition. He had not yet learned how completely he could trust in Howe's inactivity; he abandoned an attack across the ice with great reluctance in exchange for a more cautious plan, to fortify Dorchester Heights using cannon arrived from Fort Ticonderoga.


title: Siege of Boston

text: In mid-January, on orders from London, British Major General Henry Clinton and a small fleet set sail for the Carolinas with 1,500 men. Their objective was to join forces with additional troops arriving from Europe, and to take a port in the southern colonies for further military operations. In early February a British raiding party crossed the ice and burned several farmhouses in Dorchester.


title: Siege of Boston

text: Between November 1775 and February 1776, Colonel Henry Knox and a team of engineers used sledges to retrieve 60 tons of heavy artillery that had been captured at Fort Ticonderoga. Bringing them across the frozen Hudson and Connecticut rivers in a difficult, complex operation, they arrived back at Cambridge on January 24, 1776.


title: Siege of Boston

text: Some of the Ticonderoga cannons, which were of a size and range not previously available to the Americans, were emplaced in fortifications around the city, and on the night of March 2, 1776, the Americans began to bombard the city with those cannon, to which the British responded with cannonades of their own. The American guns, under the direction of Colonel Knox, continued to exchange fire with the British until March 4. The exchange of fire did little damage to either side, although it did damage houses and kill some British soldiers in Boston.


title: Siege of Boston

text: On March 5, Washington moved more of the Ticonderoga cannon and several thousand men overnight to occupy Dorchester Heights, overlooking Boston. Since it was winter, the ground was frozen, which made the digging of trenches impractical. Rufus Putnam, who had been a millwright, developed a plan to fortify the heights using defenses made of heavy timbers and fascines. These were prefabricated out of sight of the British, and brought in overnight. General Howe is said to have exclaimed, "My God, these fellows have done more work in one night than I could make my army do in three months." The British fleet was within range of the American guns on Dorchester Heights, putting it and the troops in the city at risk.


title: Siege of Boston

text: The immediate response of the British was a two-hour cannon barrage at the heights, which had no effect because the British guns could not reach the American guns at such height. After the failure of the barrage, Howe and his officers agreed that the colonists must be removed from the heights if they were to hold Boston. They planned an assault on the heights; however, due to a storm the attack never took place, and the British elected instead to withdraw.


title: Siege of Boston

text: On March 8, some prominent Bostonians sent a letter to Washington, stating that the British would not destroy the town if they were allowed to depart unmolested. Washington was given the letter, but formally rejected it, as it was not addressed to him by either name or title. However, the letter had the intended effect: when the evacuation began, there was no American fire to hinder the British departure. On March 9, after seeing movement on Nook's Hill on Dorchester, the British opened a massive artillery barrage that lasted all night. It killed four men with one cannonball, but that was all the damage that was done. The next day, the colonists went out and collected the 700 cannonballs that had been fired at them.


title: Siege of Boston

text: On March 10, 1776, General Howe issued a proclamation ordering the inhabitants to give up all linen and woolen goods that could be used by the colonists to continue the war. A Loyalist, Crean Brush, was authorized to receive these goods, in return for which he gave certificates that were effectively worthless. Over the next week, the British fleet sat in Boston harbor waiting for favorable winds, while Loyalists and British soldiers were loaded onto the ships. During this time, American naval activities outside the harbor successfully captured and diverted to ports under colonial control several British supply ships.


title: Siege of Boston

text: On March 15, the wind became favorable, but before they could leave, it turned against them. On March 17, the wind once again turned favorable. The troops, who were authorized to burn the town if there were any disturbances while they were marching to their ships, began to move out at 4:00 a.m. By 9:00 a.m., all ships were underway. The fleet departing from Boston included 120 ships, with more than 11,000 people aboard. Of those, 9,906 were British troops, 667 were women, and 553 were children.


title: Siege of Boston

text: Once the British fleet sailed away, the Americans moved to reclaim Boston and Charlestown. At first, they thought that the British were still on Bunker Hill, but it turned out that the British had left dummies in place. Due to the risk of smallpox, at first only men picked for their prior exposure to the disease entered Boston under the command of Artemas Ward. More of the colonial army entered on March 20, 1776, once the risk of disease was judged low. While Washington had essentially acceded to the British threat to burn Boston, and had not hindered their departure from the city, he did not make their escape from the outer harbor entirely easy. He directed Captain Manley to harass the departing British fleet, in which he had some success, capturing among other prizes the ship carrying Crean Brush and his plunder.


title: Siege of Boston

text: General Howe, when his fleet finally left the outer harbor, left in his wake a small contingent of vessels whose primary purpose was to intercept any arriving British vessels. While they successfully redirected to Halifax numerous ships carrying British troops originally destined for Boston, some unsuspecting British troop ships landed in Boston, only to fall into American hands.


title: Siege of Boston

text: The British departure ended major military activities in the New England colonies. Washington, fearing that the British were going to attack New York City, departed on April 4 with his army for Manhattan, beginning the New York and New Jersey campaign.


title: Siege of Boston

text: There are six units of the Army National Guard (101st Eng Bn, 125th MP Co, 181st Inf, 182nd Inf, 197th FA, and 201st FA) derived from American units that participated in the siege of Boston. There are thirty currently existing units in the U.S. Army with lineages that go back to the colonial era.


title: Siege of Boston

text: "Had Sir William Howe fortified the hills round Boston, he could not have been disgracefully driven from it," wrote his replacement Sir Henry Clinton. General Howe was severely criticized in the British press and Parliament for his failures in the Boston campaign. Nevertheless he remained in command for another two years: for the New York and New Jersey campaign and the Philadelphia campaign. General Gage never received another combat command. General Burgoyne would see action in the Saratoga campaign, a disaster that saw his capture, as well as that of 7,500 troops under his command. General Clinton would command the British forces in America for four years (1778–1782).


title: Siege of Boston

text: Many Massachusetts Loyalists left with the British when they evacuated Boston. Some went to England to rebuild lives there, and some returned to America after the war. Many went to Canada, settling in places like Saint John, New Brunswick, and often became active in the development of New Brunswick.


title: Siege of Boston

text: Following the siege, Boston effectively ceased to be a military target, but continued to be a focal point for revolutionary activities, with its port acting as an important point for fitting ships of war and privateers. Its leading citizens would have important roles in the development of the future United States. Boston and other area communities mark the March 17 end of the siege as Evacuation Day.


title: Stakhanovite movement

text: The term Stakhanovite () originated in the Soviet Union and referred to workers who modeled themselves after Alexey Stakhanov. These workers took pride in their ability to produce more than was required, by working harder and more efficiently, thus strengthening the socialist state. The Stakhanovite Movement was encouraged due to the idea of socialist emulation. It began in the coal industry but later spread to many other industries in the Soviet Union. The movement eventually encountered resistance as the increased productivity led to increased demands on workers.


title: Stakhanovite movement

text: The Stakhanovite movement began during the Soviet second 5-year plan in 1935 as a new stage of socialist competition, emerging as a continuation of the rapid industrialization and forced collectivization that had transpired seven years prior. The movement took its name from Aleksei Grigorievich Stakhanov, who reportedly mined 102 tons of coal in less than 6 hours (14 times his quota) on 31 August 1935. However, Stakhanovite followers would soon "break" his record. On February 1, 1936, it was reported that Nikita Izotov had mined 640 tons of coal in a single shift.


title: Stakhanovite movement

text: The Stakhanovite movement, supported and led by the Communist Party, soon spread over other industries of the Soviet Union. Pioneers of the movement included Alexander Busygin (automobile industry), Nikolai Smetanin (shoe industry), Yevdokiya and Maria Vinogradov (textile industry), I.I. Gudov (machine tool industry), V.S. Musinsky (timber industry), Pyotr Krivonos (railroad), Pasha Angelina (honored as the first Soviet woman to operate a tractor), Konstantin Borin and Maria Demchenko (agriculture) and many others.


title: Stakhanovite movement

text: On November 14–17, 1935, the 1st All-Union Stakhanovite Conference took place at the Kremlin. The conference emphasized the outstanding role of the Stakhanovite movement in the socialist reconstruction of the national economy. In December 1935 the plenum of the Communist Party's Central Committee specifically discussed aspects of developing industry and transport systems in light of the Stakhanovite movement.


title: Stakhanovite movement

text: In accordance with the decisions of the plenum, the Soviets organized a wide network of industrial training and created special courses for foremen of socialist labor. In 1936 a number of industrial and technical conferences revised the projected production capacities of different industries and increased their outputs. They also introduced Stakhanovite contests in many industries to find the best workers and encourage competition between them.


title: Stakhanovite movement

text: Female Stakhanovites emerged more seldom than male ones, but a quarter of all trade-union women were designated as "norm-breaking". A preponderance of rural Stakhanovites were women, working as milkmaids, calf tenders, and fieldworkers.


title: Stakhanovite movement

text: The Soviet authorities claimed that the Stakhanovite movement had caused a significant increase in labor productivity. It was reported that during the first five-year plan (1928–32) industrial labor productivity increased by 41%. During the second five-year plan (1933–1937) it reportedly increased by 82%. The discussion of the draft constitution in the 1930s was used to encourage a second wind for the movement.


title: Stakhanovite movement

text: During World War II the Stakhanovites used different methods to increase productivity, such as working several machine-tools at a time and combining professions. The Stakhanovites organized the (, or dvukhsotniki; 200% or more of quota in a single shift).


title: Stakhanovite movement

text: Opposition to the movement merited the label of "wrecker". Not all workers were excited about the Stakhanovites and the demand for increased productivity. Some groups held Stakhanov responsible for making their lives harder and even threatened him for it.


title: Stakhanovite movement

text: In the de-Stalinization era, which sought to undo much of what was done during Stalin's régime, the Stakhanovite movement was declared a Stalinist propaganda maneuver; workers would receive the best equipment and most favorable conditions so that the best results could be achieved. After Stalin's death in March 1953 ""brigades of socialist labor"" replaced "Stakhanovism". In 1988 the Soviet newspaper "Komsomolskaya Pravda" stated that the widely propagandized personal achievements of Stakhanov were puffery. The paper insisted that Stakhanov had used a number of helpers on support work, while the output was tallied for him alone. Stakhanov's approach had eventually led to the increased productivity by means of a better organization of the work, including specialization and task sequencing, according to the Soviet state media.


title: 2022–23 in English football

text: The 2022–23 season is the 143rd competitive association football season in England. The season began in July 2022 due to the 2022 FIFA World Cup taking place from 20 November to 18 December 2022, the first time that an entire football season commenced a month earlier than normal since the 1945–46 season.


title: War bride

text: War brides are women who married military personnel from other countries in times of war or during military occupations, a practice that occurred in great frequency during World War I and World War II.


title: War bride

text: Among the largest and best documented examples of this were the marriages between American servicemen and German women which took place after World War II. By 1949, over 20,000 German war brides had emigrated to the United States.


title: War bride

text: Furthermore, it is estimated that there are "15,000 Australian women who married American servicemen based in Australia during World War II and moved to the US to be with their husbands". Allied servicemen also married many women in other countries where they were stationed at the end of the war, including France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Philippines, Japan and China. This also occurred in Korea and Vietnam with the later wars in those countries involving US troops and other anticommunist soldiers. As many as 100,000 GI war brides left the United Kingdom, 150,000 to 200,000 hailed from continental Europe, 15,500 from Australia and 1,500 from New Zealand, between the years 1942 and 1952.


title: War bride

text: The reasons for women marrying foreign soldiers and leaving their homelands vary. Particularly after World War II, many women in war-torn Europe and Asia saw marriage as a means of escaping their devastated countries.


title: War bride

text: Due to the Philippine Insurrection, a few US servicemen would take Filipinas as their wives, with documentation as early as 1902 of one immigrating with their servicemember husband to the US. Those Filipinas were already US nationals and so when they immigrated to the United States, their legal status was made significantly different from that of previous Asian immigrants to the US.


title: War bride

text: During and immediately after World War II, more than 60,000 US servicemen married women overseas and they were promised that their wives and children would receive free passage to the US. The US Army's "Operation War Bride", which eventually transported an estimated 70,000 women and children, began in Britain in early 1946. The press dubbed it "Operation Diaper Run". The first group of war brides (452 British women and their 173 children, and one bridegroom) left Southampton harbor on SS Argentina on January 26, 1946, and arrived in the US on February 4, 1946. According to "British Post-War Migration", the Immigration and Naturalization Service reported 37,553 war brides from the "British Isles" took advantage of the War Brides Act of 1945 to emigrate to the United States, along with 59 "war bridegrooms". Over the years, an estimated 300,000 foreign war brides moved to the United States following the passage of the War Brides Act and its subsequent amendments, of which 51,747 were Filipinos. According to journalist Craft Young, a daughter of a Japanese war bride, there are an estimated 50,000 Japanese war brides.


title: War bride

text: Robyn Arrowsmith, a historian who spent nine years researching Australia's war brides, said that between 12,000 and 15,000 Australian women had married visiting US servicemen and moved to the US with their husbands. Significantly, an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 Newfoundland women married American servicemen during the time of Ernest Harmon Air Force Base's existence (1941–1966), in which tens of thousands of US servicemen arrived to defend the island and North America from Nazi Germany during World War II and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. So many of those war brides settled in the US that in 1966, the Newfoundland government created a tourism campaign specifically tailored to provide opportunities for them and their families to reunite.


title: War bride

text: In 1945 and 1946 several bride trains were run in Australia to transport war brides and their children travelling to or from ships.


title: War bride

text: In 1948, Immigration Minister Arthur Calwell announced that no Japanese war brides would be allowed to settle in Australia, stating "it would be the grossest act of public indecency to permit any Japanese of either sex to pollute Australia" while relatives of deceased Australian soldiers were alive.


title: War bride

text: About 650 Japanese war brides migrated to Australia after the ban was lifted in 1952 when the San Francisco Peace Treaty came into force. They had married Australian soldiers involved in the occupation of Japan.


title: War bride

text: 47,783 British war brides arrived in Canada accompanied by some 21,950 children. Since 1939, most Canadian soldiers were stationed in Britain. As such, about 90% of all war brides arriving in Canada were British. 3,000 war brides came from the Netherlands, Belgium, Newfoundland, France, Italy, Ireland and Scotland. The first marriage between a Canadian serviceman and a British bride was registered at "Farnborough" Church in the Aldershot area in December 1939, just 43 days after the first Canadian soldiers arrived. Many of those war brides emigrated to Canada beginning in 1944 and peaking in 1946. A special Canadian agency, the Canadian Wives' Bureau was set up by the Canadian Department of Defence to arrange transport and assist war brides in the transition to Canadian life. The majority of Canadian war brides landed at Pier 21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, most commonly on the following troop and hospital ships: "Queen Mary", "Lady Nelson", "Letitia", "Mauretania", RMS Scythia and "Île de France".


title: War bride

text: The Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 has exhibits and collections dedicated to war brides. There is a National Historic Site marker located at Pier 21, as well.


title: War bride

text: During the campaign of 1943–1945, there were more than 10,000 marriages between Italian women and American soldiers.


title: War bride

text: From relationships between Italian women and African-American soldiers, ""mulattini"" were born; many of those children were abandoned in orphanages, because interracial marriage was then not legal in many US states.


title: War bride

text: Several thousand Japanese who were sent as colonizers to Manchukuo and Inner Mongolia were left behind in China. Most of the Japanese left behind in China were women, most of whom married Chinese men and became known as "stranded war wives" (zanryu fujin). Because they had children fathered by Chinese men, the Japanese women were not allowed to bring their Chinese families back with them to Japan and so most of them stayed. Japanese law allowed only children fathered by Japanese fathers to become Japanese citizens. It was not until 1972 that Sino-Japanese diplomacy was restored, which allowed those survivors the opportunity to visit or emigrate to Japan. Even then, they faced difficulties; many had been missing so long that they had been declared dead at home.


title: War bride

text: Some Japanese soldiers married Vietnamese women like Nguyen Thi Xuan and Nguyen Thi Thu and fathered multiple children with the Vietnamese women who remained behind in Vietnam, andthe Japanese soldiers themselves returned to Japan in 1955. The official Vietnamese historical narrative view them as children of rape and prostitution. The Japanese forced Vietnamese women to become comfort women and with Burmese, Indonesia, Thai and Filipino women they made up a notable portion of Asian comfort women in general. Japanese use of Malaysian and Vietnamese women as comfort women was corroborated by testimonies. There were comfort women stations in Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, North Korea and South Korea. A Korean comfort woman named Kim Ch'un-hui stayed behind in Vietnam and died there when she was 44 in 1963, owning a dairy farm, cafe, US cash and diamonds worth 200,000 US dollars.


title: War bride

text: A number of Japanese soldiers stayed behind immediately after the war to stay with their war brides, but in 1954 they were ordered to return to Japan by the Vietnamese government and were "encouraged" to abandon their wives and children.


title: War bride

text: The now abandoned Vietnamese war brides who had mothered children would be forced to raise them by themselves and often faced harsh criticism for having relations with members of an enemy army that had occupied Vietnam.


title: War bride

text: 6,423 Korean women married US military personnel as war brides during and immediately after the Korean War.


title: War bride

text: War brides from wars subsequent to Vietnam became less common due to differences in religion and culture, shorter durations of wars, and direct orders. As of 2006, about 1,500 visa requests had been made by US military personnel for Iraqi spouses and fiancées. There have been several well-publicized cases of American soldiers marrying Iraqi women.


title: Brooke Astor

text: Roberta Brooke Astor (née Russell; March 30, 1902 – August 13, 2007) was an American philanthropist, socialite, and writer who was the chairwoman of the Vincent Astor Foundation, established by her third husband, Vincent Astor, son of John Jacob Astor IV and great-great grandson of America's first multi-millionaire John Jacob Astor. Brooke Astor was the author of two novels and two volumes of personal memoirs.


title: Brooke Astor

text: Brooke Astor was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the only child of John Henry Russell Jr., the 16th Commandant of the Marine Corps, and his wife, Mabel Cecile Hornby Howard. Her paternal grandfather John Henry Russell Sr. was a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy. She was named for her maternal grandmother (Roberta) and was known as Bobby to close friends and family.


title: Brooke Astor

text: Due to her father's career she spent much of her childhood abroad living in China, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and other places. She briefly attended The Madeira School in 1919, but graduated from the Holton-Arms School. As a child she kept diaries, letters and drawings from her travels, which were published in an illustrated edition of her memoir "Patchwork Child: Early Memories" in 1993.


title: Brooke Astor

text: She married her first husband, John Dryden Kuser (1897–1964), shortly after her 17th birthday, on April 26, 1919, in Washington, D.C. "I certainly wouldn't advise getting married that young to anyone," she said later in life. "At the age of sixteen, you're not jelled yet. The first thing you look at, you fall in love with."


title: Brooke Astor

text: John was the son of the financier and conservationist Anthony Rudolph Kuser and Susie Fairfield Drydan. Susie's father was U.S. Senator John Fairfield Dryden. John Kuser later became a New Jersey Republican councilman, assemblyman, and state senator. They also lived in Bernardsville, New Jersey.


title: Brooke Astor

text: Brooke described her tumultuous first marriage as the "worst years of [her] life", which was punctuated by her husband's alleged physical abuse, alcoholism and adultery. According to Frances Kiernan's 2007 biography of Astor, when Brooke was six months pregnant with the couple's only child, her husband broke her jaw during a marital fight. "I learned about terrible manners from the family of my first husband," she told "The New York Times". "They didn't know how to treat people". A year after the marriage, according to a published account of the divorce proceedings, John "began to embarrass her in social activities" and "told her that he no longer loved her and that their marriage was a failure".


title: Brooke Astor

text: Brooke and John had one son, Anthony Dryden "Tony" Kuser, May 30, 1924. She filed for divorce February 15, 1930 in Reno, Nevada. It was finalized later that year.


title: Brooke Astor

text: Her second husband, whom she married in 1932, was Charles Henry "Buddy" Marshall (1891–1952), the only son of Charles Henry Marshall. Buddy was the senior partner of the investment firm Butler, Herrick & Marshall, a brother-in-law of the mercantile heir Marshall Field III, and a descendant of James Lenox, the founder of the Lenox Library.


title: Brooke Astor

text: She had two stepchildren by the marriage, Peter Marshall and Helen Huntington Marshall. Helen's first marriage was to composer Ernest Schelling and her second to cellist János Scholz.


title: Brooke Astor

text: In 1942, Brooke's then-18-year-old son Tony changed his name to Anthony Dryden Marshall out of admiration for his stepfather. Buddy's financial fortunes turned in the mid-1940s when Brooke went to work as a features editor at "House & Garden" magazine for eight years. She also briefly worked for Ruby Ross Wood, a prominent New York interior decorator who, with her associate Billy Baldwin, decorated the Marshalls' apartment at 1 Gracie Square in New York City.


title: Brooke Astor

text: In October 1953, 11 months after Charles Marshall's death, she married her third and final husband, William Vincent Astor, the chairman of the board of "Newsweek" magazine and the last rich American member of the famous Astor family. Vincent was the son of "RMS Titanic" victim John Jacob "Jack" Astor IV and socialite Ava Lowle Willing. He had been married and divorced twice before, had no children and was known to have a difficult personality.


title: Brooke Astor

text: "He had a dreadful childhood and as a result had moments of deep melancholy", Brooke recalled. "But I think I made him happy. That's what I set out to do. I'd literally dance with the dogs, sing and play the piano, and I would make him laugh, something no one had ever done before. Because of his money, Vincent was very suspicious of people. That's what I tried to cure him of".


title: Brooke Astor

text: Not wanting to die alone, Astor agreed to divorce his second wife Mary Benedict "Minnie" Cushing only after she had found him a replacement spouse. Minnie had first suggested Janet Newbold Rhinelander-Stewart who turned down Astor's proposal with startling candor stating "I don't even like you". Minnie then suggested the recently widowed Brooke. Few people believed that the Astor-Marshall union was anything more than a financial transaction. According to Brooke's friend Louis Auchincloss "she married Vincent for the money", adding "I wouldn't respect her if she hadn't. Only a twisted person would have married him for love".


title: Brooke Astor

text: During her brief marriage to Vincent, whom she called "Captain", Brooke participated in his real-estate and hotel empire and his philanthropic endeavors. Between 1954 and 1958, she redecorated one of his properties, the Hotel St. Regis, which had been built by his father. Vincent died leaving all his money to Brooke. His younger half-brother socialite John Jacob "Jakey" Astor VI was left with nothing since Vincent's hatred for Jakey's mother Madeleine (Jack's second wife and widow) led him to believe he was not even a biological Astor. Vincent had nothing but contempt for him. Jakey felt cheated and resentfully stated Vincent "had the legal, not the moral right to keep all the money". He was certain that Vincent was "mentally incompetent" when signing his last will in June 1958 due to alcoholism though Brooke insisted otherwise. While Vincent was hospitalized, Brooke would often bring him liquor. Jakey accused her of using the liquor to influence the will in her favor. Jakey ended up settling for $250,000. The rest of the money remained with the Vincent Astor foundation and Brooke. Before Vincent's death, Brooke once privately admitted to her daughter-in-law Elizabeth Cynthia "Liz" Cryan: "I don't think I can stand being married to him anymore. I don't think I can take it. He never wants to go anywhere — he's so antisocial".


title: Brooke Astor

text: Though she received several proposals after Astor's death, she chose not to remarry. In a 1980 interview, she stated: "I'd have to marry a man of a suitable age and somebody who was a somebody and that's not easy. Frankly, I think I'm unmarriageable now". She also said, "I'm too used to having things my way. But I still enjoy a flirt now and then".


title: Brooke Astor

text: Though she was appointed a member of the board of the Astor Foundation soon after her marriage, upon Vincent Astor's death in 1959, she took charge of all the philanthropies to which he left his fortune. She served as a Trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and chaired the Visiting Committee of the Metropolitan's Department of Far Eastern Art; she is credited with the idea for a Chinese garden courtyard, the Astor Court, in the Metropolitan. In addition, Astor served as a member of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's 100th Anniversary Committee and hosted the Metropolitan's Centennial Ball. She was also a benefactress to the New York Zoological Society for which Astor the baby Asian elephant was named in her honor.


title: Brooke Astor

text: Despite liquidating the Vincent Astor Foundation in 1997, she continued to be active in charities and in New York's social life. The New York Public Library was always one of Astor's favorite charities as was The Animal Medical Center. In 1988 she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992. As a result of her charity work, Astor was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998. Her life's motto summed up her prodigious generosity: "Money is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around".


title: Brooke Astor

text: Among numerous other organizations, she was involved with Lighthouse for the Blind, the Maternity Center Association, the Astor Home for emotionally disturbed children, the International Rescue Committee, the Fresh Air Fund, and the Women's Auxiliary Board of the Society of New York Hospital.


title: Brooke Astor

text: The "Daily News" ran a cover story on July 26, 2006, describing the family feud between Brooke's son Tony and his son Philip Cryan Marshall regarding Brooke's welfare. The story detailed how her grandson, a historic preservationist and associate professor at Roger Williams University, had filed a lawsuit seeking the removal of his father as the socialite's guardian and the appointment of Annette de la Renta, the wife of designer Oscar de la Renta, instead.


title: Brooke Astor

text: According to accounts published in "The New York Times" and the "Daily News", Astor was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and suffered from anemia, among other ailments. The lawsuit alleged that Marshall had not provided for his elderly mother and instead had allowed her to live in squalor and reduced necessary medication and doctor's visits while enriching himself with income from her estate. Philip Marshall further charged that his father sold his grandmother's favorite Childe Hassam painting in 2002 without her knowledge and with no record as to the whereabouts of the funds received from the sale. In addition to Annette de la Renta, Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller provided affidavits supporting Philip Marshall's requests for a change in guardianship.


title: Brooke Astor

text: The day the story appeared, New York Supreme Court Justice John Stackhouse sealed the documents pertaining to the lawsuit and granted an order appointing Annette de la Renta guardian and JPMorgan Chase & Co. to be in charge of Brooke's finances. Several news organizations including the Associated Press and "The New York Times" sued to have the records of the Astor case unsealed in the public interest; their request was granted September 1, 2006. Astor was moved to Lenox Hill Hospital where an unidentified nurse called her appearance "deplorable" according to the "Daily News". Brooke's son Tony unsuccessfully attempted to have his mother transferred to another hospital.


title: Brooke Astor

text: Brooke was released from Lenox Hill Hospital July 29, 2006, and moved to Holly Hill, her estate in the village of Briarcliff Manor, New York, where she died August 13, 2007.


title: Brooke Astor

text: Meryl Gordon's book "Mrs. Astor Regrets: The Hidden Betrayals of a Family Beyond Reproach" (2008) makes use of diaries kept by the nurses who cared for Brooke during the last years of her life. The diaries were compiled over the four years Astor received care and detail the abuse that she reportedly received from her son.


title: Brooke Astor

text: Philip C. Marshall was a tenured professor and director of historic preservation at Roger Williams University until 2017 when he left to dedicate his efforts full-time to elder justice as the founder of Beyond Brooke.


title: Brooke Astor

text: "The New York Times" reported on August 1, 2006 that Anthony Marshall was accused by Alice Perdue, an employee in his mother's business office, of diverting nearly $1 million from his ailing mother's personal checking accounts into theatrical productions. Marshall through a spokesman said that his mother knew of the investments and approved of them. Perdue countered that Marshall had advised her never to send to his mother any documents of a financial nature because "she didn't understand it".


title: Brooke Astor

text: The claims made by Philip Marshall regarding his father's handling of the estate prompted interest in the matter. The New York District Attorney announced indictments on criminal charges against Tony and attorney Francis X Morrissey Jr. on November 27, 2007. The charges stemmed from the district attorney's office and subsequent grand jury investigation into the mishandling of Astor's money and a questionable signature on the third amendment to her 2002 will which was made in March 2004. That amendment called for Astor's real estate to be sold and the proceeds added to her residuary estate. An earlier amendment, also made in 2004, which designated Marshall as the executor of his mother's estate and left him the entirety of the residuary estate, was also under investigation.


title: Brooke Astor

text: The specific charges included grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property, forgery, scheming to defraud, falsifying business records, offering a false instrument for filing and conspiracy in plundering her $198 million estate. The most severe charge grand larceny carries a sentence of up to a 25 in prison.


title: Brooke Astor

text: The trial of Marshall and Morrissey started March 30, 2009 with the jury selection. The judge Justice A. Kirke Bartley Jr. had originally indicated that the trial could last up to three months. After deliberations that stretched over 12 days and were reportedly marked by bitter disagreements that left one female juror claiming to feel personally threatened, the jury convicted Anthony D. Marshall of one of two charges of grand larceny, the most serious of a number of charges brought against him on October 8, 2009. The same jury convicted Francis X. Morrissey Jr. of forgery. In December 2009, Marshall and Morrisey were both sentenced to 1–3 years in prison. Philip C. Marshall, Astor's grandson, said that now that his father has been convicted in the Brooke Astor will case, he expects the will to be contested by various charities.


title: Brooke Astor

text: On November 30, 2011, Sotheby's announced plans for an April 19, 2012 auction of jewelry as well as fine and decorative arts from her Park Avenue apartment and Holly Hill, her Westchester estate.


title: Brooke Astor

text: Brooke died August 13, 2007 aged 105 from pneumonia at her home in Briarcliff Manor, New York. A funeral service was held at Saint Thomas Church (Manhattan) on August 17. Among the guests were Henry Kissinger, Oscar de la Renta, Whoopi Goldberg, Jessye Norman and Michael Bloomberg. She is interred in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery next to Vincent. The epitaph on her gravestone chosen by her reads: "I had a wonderful life".


title: Brooke Astor

text: One of Astor's death notices in "The New York Times", a paid notice from The Rockefeller University, ended with these lines:


title: Brooke Astor

text: Among the organizations who lamented Brooke's death are The Animal Medical Center of New York, Brooklyn Stained Glass Conservation Center, Carnegie Hall, the Citizens' Committee for New York City, Historic Hudson Valley, The Juilliard School, Lenox Hill Neighborhood House, Library of America, Lotos Club, Merchant's House Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Morris-Juemel Mansion Museum, New York Botanical Garden, New York Landmarks Conservancy, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, New York Public Library, New York Regional Association of Grantmakers, New York University, Pierpont Morgan Library, Rockefeller University, Wildlife Conservation Society, New York Zoological Society and WNET-TV.


title: Brooke Astor

text: Brooke Astor is portrayed as the heroine Jane Merle in the romantic comedy "Night and Silence: Who is Here?" by British novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson.


title: Brooke Astor

text: In an episode of the American comedy "30 Rock", Liz Lemon compliments Angie Jordan's ring, which Lemon states is "ghetto fabulous". Jordan retorts, "This belonged to Brooke Astor".


title: Brooke Astor

text: Astor's biography was adapted into the musical "Brooke Astor's Last Affair", with book and lyrics by Rachael Migler and music by Eric Grunin. The play premiered at the 2019 Chicago Musical Theatre Festival.


title: Cold Chisel

text: Cold Chisel are an Australian pub rock band, which formed in Adelaide in 1973 by mainstay members Ian Moss on guitar and vocals, Steve Prestwich on drums and Don Walker on piano and keyboards. They were soon joined by Jimmy Barnes (at the time known as Jim Barnes) on lead vocals and, in 1975, Phil Small became their bass guitarist. The group disbanded in late 1983 but subsequently reformed several times. Musicologist Ian McFarlane wrote that they became "one of Australia's best-loved groups" as well as "one of the best live bands", fusing "a combination of rockabilly, hard rock and rough-house soul'n'blues that was defiantly Australian in outlook."


title: Cold Chisel

text: Eight of their studio albums have reached the Australian top five, "Breakfast at Sweethearts" (February 1979), "East" (June 1980), "Circus Animals" (March 1982, No. 1), "Twentieth Century" (April 1984, No. 1), "The Last Wave of Summer" (October 1998, No. 1), "No Plans" (April 2012), "The Perfect Crime" (October 2015) and "Blood Moon" (December 2019, No. 1). Their top 10 singles are "Forever Now" (1982), "Hands Out of My Pocket" (1994) and "The Things I Love in You" (1998).


title: Cold Chisel

text: At the ARIA Music Awards of 1993 they were inducted into the Hall of Fame. In 2001 Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA), listed their single, "Khe Sanh" (May 1978), at No. 8 of the all-time best Australian songs. "Circus Animals" was listed at No. 4 in the book, "100 Best Australian Albums" (October 2010), while "East" appeared at No. 53. They won The Ted Albert Award for Outstanding Services to Australian Music at the APRA Music Awards of 2016. Cold Chisel's popularity is largely restricted to Australia and New Zealand, with their songs and musicianship highlighting working class life. Their early bass guitarist (1973–75), Les Kaczmarek, died in December 2008; Steve Prestwich died of a brain tumour in January 2011.


title: Cold Chisel

text: Cold Chisel originally formed as Orange in Adelaide in 1973 as a heavy metal band by Ted Broniecki on keyboards, Les Kaczmarek on bass guitar, Ian Moss on guitar and vocals, Steve Prestwich on drums and Don Walker on piano. Their early material included cover versions of Free and Deep Purple material. Broniecki left by September 1973 and seventeen-year-old singer, Jimmy Barnes – called Jim Barnes during their initial career – joined in December.


title: Cold Chisel

text: The group changed its name several times before settling on Cold Chisel in 1974 after Walker's song of that title. Barnes' relationship with the others was volatile: he often came to blows with Prestwich and left the band several times. During these periods Moss would handle vocals until Barnes returned. Walker emerged as the group's primary songwriter and spent 1974 in Armidale, completing his studies in quantum mechanics. Barnes' older brother, John Swan, was a member of Cold Chisel around this time, providing backing vocals and percussion. After several violent incidents, including beating up a roadie, he was fired. In mid-1975 Barnes left to join Fraternity as Bon Scott's replacement on lead vocals, alongside Swan on drums and vocals.


title: Cold Chisel

text: Kaczmarek left Cold Chisel during 1975 and was replaced by Phil Small on bass guitar. In November of that year, without Barnes, they recorded their early demos.


title: Cold Chisel

text: In May 1976 Cold Chisel relocated to Melbourne, but "frustrated by their lack of progress," they moved on to Sydney in early 1977. In May 1977, Barnes told his fellow members that he would leave again. From July he joined Feather for a few weeks, on co-lead vocals with Swan – they were a Sydney-based hard rock group, which had evolved from Blackfeather. A farewell performance for Cold Chisel, with Barnes aboard, went so well that the singer changed his mind and returned. In the following month the Warner Music Group signed the group.


title: Cold Chisel

text: In the early months of 1978 Cold Chisel recorded their self-titled debut album with their manager and producer, Peter Walker (ex-Bakery). All tracks were written by Don Walker, except "Juliet", where Barnes composed its melody and Walker the lyrics. "Cold Chisel" was released in April and included guest studio musicians: Dave Blight on harmonica (who became a regular on-stage guest) and saxophonists Joe Camilleri and Wilbur Wilde (from Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons). Australian musicologist, Ian McFarlane, described how, "[it] failed to capture the band's renowned live firepower, despite the presence of such crowd favourites as 'Khe Sanh', 'Home and Broken Hearted' and 'One Long Day'." It reached the top 40 on the Kent Music Report and was certified gold.


title: Cold Chisel

text: In May 1978, "Khe Sanh", was released as their debut single but it was declared too offensive for commercial radio due to the sexual implication of the lyrics, "Their legs were often open/But their minds were always closed." However, it was played regularly on Sydney youth radio station, Double J, which was not subject to the restrictions as it was part of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Another ABC program, "Countdown"s producers asked them to change the lyric but they refused. Despite such setbacks, "Khe Sanh" reached No. 41 on the Kent Music Report singles chart. It became Cold Chisel's signature tune and was popular among their fans. They later remixed the track, with re-recorded vocals, for inclusion on the international version of their third album, "East" (June 1980).


title: Cold Chisel

text: The band's next release was a live five-track extended play, "You're Thirteen, You're Beautiful, and You're Mine", in November 1978. McFarlane observed, "It captured the band in its favoured element, fired by raucous versions of Walker's 'Merry-Go-Round' and Chip Taylor's 'Wild Thing'." It was recorded at Sydney's Regent Theatre in 1977, when they had Midnight Oil as one of the support acts. Australian writer, Ed Nimmervoll, described a typical performance by Cold Chisel, "Everybody was talking about them anyway, drawn by the songs, and Jim Barnes' presence on stage, crouched, sweating, as he roared his vocals into the microphone at the top of his lungs." The EP peaked at No. 35 on the Kent Music Report Singles Chart.


title: Cold Chisel

text: "Merry Go Round" was re-recorded for their second studio album, "Breakfast at Sweethearts" (February 1979). This was recorded between July 1978 and January 1979 with producer, Richard Batchens, who had previously worked with Richard Clapton, Sherbet and Blackfeather. Batchens smoothed out the band's rough edges and attempted to give their songs a sophisticated sound. With regards to this approach, the band were unsatisfied with the finished product. It peaked at No. 4 and was the top selling album in Australia by a locally based artist for that year; it was certified platinum. The majority of its tracks were written by Walker, with Barnes and Walker on the lead single, "Goodbye (Astrid, Goodbye)" (September 1978), and Moss contributed to "Dresden". "Goodbye (Astrid, Goodbye)" became a live favourite, and was covered by U2 during Australian tours in the 1980s.


title: Cold Chisel

text: Cold Chisel had gained national chart success and increased popularity of their fans without significant commercial radio airplay. The members developed reputations for wild behaviour, particularly Barnes who claimed to have had sex with over 1000 women and who consumed more than a bottle of vodka each night while performing. In late 1979, severing their relationship with Batchens, Cold Chisel chose Mark Opitz to produce the next single, "Choirgirl" (November). It is a Walker composition dealing with a young woman's experience with abortion. Despite the subject matter it reached No. 14.


title: Cold Chisel

text: "Choirgirl" paved the way for the group's third studio album, "East" (June 1980), with Opitz producing. Recorded over two months in early 1980, "East", reached No. 2 and is the second highest selling album by an Australian artist for that year. "The Australian Women's Weekly"s Gregg Flynn noticed, "[they are] one of the few Australian bands in which each member is capable of writing hit songs." Despite the continued dominance of Walker, the other members contributed more tracks to their play list, and this was their first album to have songs written by each one. McFarlane described it as, "a confident, fully realised work of tremendous scope." Nimmervoll explained how, "This time everything fell into place, the sound, the songs, the playing... "East" was a triumph. [The group] were now the undisputed No. 1 rock band in Australia."


title: Cold Chisel

text: The album varied from straight ahead rock tracks, "Standing on the Outside" and "My Turn to Cry", to rockabilly-flavoured work-outs ("Rising Sun", written about Barnes' relationship with his then-girlfriend Jane Mahoney) and pop-laced love songs ("My Baby", featuring Joe Camilleri on saxophone) to a poignant piano ballad about prison life, "Four Walls". The cover art showed Barnes reclined in a bathtub wearing a kamikaze bandanna in a room littered with junk and was inspired by Jacques-Louis David's 1793 painting, "The Death of Marat". The Ian Moss-penned "Never Before" was chosen as the first song to air on the ABC's youth radio station, Triple J, when it switched to the FM band that year. Supporting the release of "East", Cold Chisel embarked on the Youth in Asia Tour from May 1980, which took its name from a lyric in "Star Hotel".


title: Cold Chisel

text: In late 1980, the Aboriginal rock reggae band No Fixed Address supported the band on its "Summer Offensive" tour to the east coast, with the final concert on 20 December at the University of Adelaide.


title: Cold Chisel

text: The Youth in Asia Tour performances were used for Cold Chisel's double live album, "Swingshift" (March 1981). Nimmervoll declared, "[the group] rammed what they were all about with [this album]." In March 1981 the band won seven categories: Best Australian Album, Most Outstanding Achievement, Best Recorded Song Writer, Best Australian Producer, Best Australian Record Cover Design, Most Popular Group and Most Popular Record, at the "Countdown"/"TV Week" pop music awards for 1980. They attended the ceremony at the Sydney Entertainment Centre and were due to perform: however, as a protest against a TV magazine's involvement, they refused to accept any trophy and finished the night with, "My Turn to Cry". After one verse and chorus, they smashed up the set and left the stage.


title: Cold Chisel

text: "Swingshift" debuted at No 1, which demonstrated their status as the highest selling local act. With a slightly different track-listing, "East", was issued in the United States and they undertook their first US tour in mid-1981. Ahead of the tour they had issued, "My Baby", for the North America market and it reached the top 40 on "Billboard"s chart, Mainstream Rock. They were generally popular as a live act there, but the US branch of their label did little to promote the album. According to Barnes' biographer, Toby Creswell, at one point they were ushered into an office to listen to the US master tape to find it had substantial hiss and other ambient noise, which made it almost unable to be released. Notwithstanding, the album reached the lower region of the "Billboard" 200 in July. The group were booed off stage after a lacklustre performance in Dayton, Ohio in May 1981 opening for Ted Nugent. Other support slots they took were for Cheap Trick, Joe Walsh, Heart and the Marshall Tucker Band. European audiences were more accepting of the Australian band and they developed a fan base in Germany.


title: Cold Chisel

text: In August 1981 Cold Chisel began work on a fourth studio album, "Circus Animals" (March 1982), again with Opitz producing. To launch the album, the band performed under a circus tent at Wentworth Park in Sydney and toured heavily once more, including a show in Darwin that attracted more than 10 percent of the city's population. It peaked at No. 1 in both Australia and on the Official New Zealand Music Chart. In October 2010 it was listed at No. 4 in the book, "100 Best Australian Albums", by music journalists, Creswell, Craig Mathieson and John O'Donnell.


title: Cold Chisel

text: Its lead single, "You Got Nothing I Want" (November 1981), is an aggressive Barnes-penned hard rock track, which attacked the US industry for its handling of the band on their recent tour. The song caused problems for Barnes when he later attempted to break into the US market as a solo performer; senior music executives there continued to hold it against him. Like its predecessor, "Circus Animals", contained songs of contrasting styles, with harder-edged tracks like "Bow River" and "Hound Dog" in place beside more expansive ballads such as the next two singles, "Forever Now" (March 1982) and "When the War Is Over" (August), both are written by Prestwich. "Forever Now" is their highest charting single in two Australasian markets: No. 4 on the Kent Music Report Singles Chart and No. 2 on the Official New Zealand Music Chart.


title: Cold Chisel

text: "When the War Is Over" is the most covered Cold Chisel track – Uriah Heep included a version on their 1989 album, "Raging Silence"; John Farnham recorded it while he and Prestwich were members of Little River Band in the mid-1980s and again for his 1990 solo album, "Age of Reason". The song was also a No. 1 hit for former "Australian Idol" contestant, Cosima De Vito, in 2004 and was performed by Bobby Flynn during that show's 2006 season. "Forever Now" was covered, as a country waltz, by Australian band, the Reels.


title: Cold Chisel

text: Success outside Australasia continued to elude Cold Chisel and friction occurred between the members. According to McFarlane, "[the] failed attempts to break into the American market represented a major blow... [their] earthy, high-energy rock was overlooked." In early 1983 they toured Germany but the shows went so badly that in the middle of the tour Walker up-ended his keyboard and stormed off stage during one show. After returning to Australia, Prestwich was fired and replaced by Ray Arnott, formerly of the 1970s progressive rockers, Spectrum, and country rockers, the Dingoes.


title: Cold Chisel

text: After this, Barnes requested a large advance from management. Now married with a young child, reckless spending had left him almost broke. His request was refused as there was a standing arrangement that any advance to one band member had to be paid to all the others. After a meeting on 17 August during which Barnes quit the band it was decided that the group would split up. A farewell concert series, The Last Stand, was planned and a final studio album, "Twentieth Century" (February 1984), was recorded. Prestwich returned for that tour, which began in October. Before the last four scheduled shows in Sydney, Barnes lost his voice and those dates were postponed to mid-December.


title: Cold Chisel

text: The band's final performances were at the Sydney Entertainment Centre from 12 to 15 December 1983 – ten years since their first live appearance as Cold Chisel in Adelaide – and the group then disbanded. The Sydney shows formed the basis of a concert film, "The Last Stand" (July 1984), which became the biggest-selling cinema-released concert documentary by an Australian band to that time. Other recordings from the tour were used on a live album, "" (1984), the title is a reference to the pseudonym the group occasionally used when playing warm-up shows before tours. Some were also used as b-sides for a three-CD singles package, "Three Big XXX Hits", issued ahead of the release of their 1994 compilation album, "Teenage Love".


title: Cold Chisel

text: During breaks in the tour, "Twentieth Century" was recorded. It was a fragmentary process, spread across various studios and sessions as the individual members often refused to work together – both Arnott (on ten tracks) and Prestwich (on three tracks) are recorded as drummers. The album reached No. 1 and provided the singles "Saturday Night" (March 1984) and "Flame Trees" (August), both of which remain radio staples. "Flame Trees", co-written by Prestwich and Walker, took its title from the BBC series "The Flame Trees of Thika", although it was lyrically inspired by Walker's hometown of Grafton. Barnes later recorded an acoustic version for his 1993 solo album, "Flesh and Wood", and it was also covered by Sarah Blasko in 2006.


title: Cold Chisel

text: Barnes launched his solo career in January 1984, which has provided nine Australian number-one studio albums and an array of hit singles, including "Too Much Ain't Enough Love", which peaked at No. 1. He has recorded with INXS, Tina Turner, Joe Cocker and John Farnham to become one of the country's most popular male rock singers. Prestwich joined Little River Band in 1984 and appeared on the albums "Playing to Win" and "No Reins", before departing in 1986 to join Farnham's touring band. Moss, Small and Walker took extended breaks from music.


title: Cold Chisel

text: Small maintained a low profile as a member in a variety of minor groups Pound, the Earls of Duke and the Outsiders. Walker formed Catfish in 1988, ostensibly a solo band with a variable membership, which included Moss, Charlie Owen and Dave Blight at times. Catfish's recordings during this phase attracted little commercial success. During 1988 and 1989 Walker wrote several tracks for Moss including the singles "Tucker's Daughter" (November 1988) and "Telephone Booth" (June 1989), which appeared on Moss' debut solo album, "Matchbook" (August 1989). Both the album and "Tucker's Daughter" peaked at No. 1. Moss won five trophies at the ARIA Music Awards of 1990. His other solo albums met with less chart or award success.


title: Cold Chisel

text: Throughout the 1980s and most of the 1990s, Cold Chisel were courted to re-form but refused, at one point reportedly turning down a $5 million offer to play a sole show in each of the major Australian state capitals. Moss and Walker often collaborated on projects; neither worked with Barnes until Walker wrote "Stone Cold" for the singer's sixth studio album, "Heat" (October 1993). The pair recorded an acoustic version for "Flesh and Wood" (December). Thanks primarily to continued radio airplay and Barnes' solo success, Cold Chisel's legacy remained solidly intact. By the early 1990s the group had surpassed 3 million album sales, most sold since 1983. The 1991 compilation album, "Chisel", was re-issued and re-packaged several times, once with the long-deleted 1978 EP as a bonus disc and a second time in 2001 as a double album. The "Last Stand" soundtrack album was finally released in 1992. In 1994 a complete album of previously unreleased demo and rare live recordings, "Teenage Love", was released, which provided three singles.


title: Cold Chisel

text: Cold Chisel reunited in October 1997, with the line-up of Barnes, Moss, Prestwich, Small and Walker. They recorded their sixth studio album, "The Last Wave of Summer" (October 1998), from February to July with the band members co-producing. They supported it with a national tour. The album debuted at No. 1 on the ARIA Albums Chart. In 2003 they re-grouped for the Ringside Tour and in 2005 again to perform at a benefit for the victims of the Boxing Day tsunami at the Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne. Founding bass guitarist, Les Kaczmarek, died of liver failure on 5 December 2008, aged 53. Walker described him as "a wonderful and beguiling man in every respect."


title: Cold Chisel

text: On 10 September 2009 Cold Chisel announced they would reform for a one-off performance at the Sydney 500 V8 Supercars event on 5 December. The band performed at Stadium Australia to the largest crowd of its career, with more than 45,000 fans in attendance. They played a single live show in 2010: at the Deniliquin ute muster in October. In December Moss confirmed that Cold Chisel were working on new material for an album.


title: Cold Chisel

text: In January 2011 Steve Prestwich was diagnosed with a brain tumour; he underwent surgery on 14 January but never regained consciousness and died two days later, aged 56. All six of Cold Chisel's studio albums were re-released in digital and CD formats in mid-2011. Three digital-only albums were released – "Never Before", "Besides" and "Covered –" as well as a new compilation album, "The Best of Cold Chisel: All for You", which peaked at No. 2 on the ARIA Charts. The thirty-date Light the Nitro Tour was announced in July along with the news that former Divinyls and Catfish drummer, Charley Drayton, had replaced Prestwich. Most shows on the tour sold out within days and new dates were later announced for early 2012.


title: Cold Chisel

text: "No Plans", their seventh studio album, was released in April 2012, with Kevin Shirley producing, which peaked at No. 2. "The Australian"s Stephen Fitzpatrick rated it as four-and-a-half out of five and found its lead track, "All for You", "speaks of redemption; of a man's ability to make something of himself through love." The track "I Got Things to Do" was written and sung by Prestwich, which Fitzpatrick described as "the bittersweet finale", a song that had "a vocal track the other band members did not know existed until after [Prestwich's] death." Midway through 2012 they embarked on a short UK tour and played with Soundgarden and Mars Volta at Hard Rock Calling at London's Hyde Park.


title: Cold Chisel

text: The group's eighth studio album, "The Perfect Crime", appeared in October 2015, again with Shirley producing, which peaked at No. 2. Martin Boulton of "The Sydney Morning Herald" rated it at four out of five stars and explained that the album does what Cold Chisel always does: "work incredibly hard, not take any shortcuts and play the hell out of the songs." The album, Boulton writes, "delves further back to their rock'n'roll roots with chief songwriter [Walker] carving up the keys, guitarist [Moss] both gritty and sublime and the [Small/Drayton] engine room firing on every cylinder. Barnes' voice sounds worn, wonderful and better than ever."


title: Cold Chisel

text: The band's latest album, "Blood Moon", was released in December 2019. The album debuted at No. 1 on the ARIA Album Chart, the band's fifth to reach the top. Half of the songs had lyrics written by Barnes and music by Walker, a new combination for Cold Chisel, with Barnes noting his increased confidence after writing two autobiographies.


title: Cold Chisel

text: McFarlane described Cold Chisel's early career in his "Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop" (1999), "after ten years on the road, [they] called it a day. Not that the band split up for want of success; by that stage [they] had built up a reputation previously uncharted in Australian rock history. By virtue of the profound effect the band's music had on the many thousands of fans who witnessed its awesome power, Cold Chisel remains one of Australia's best-loved groups. As one of the best live bands of its day, [they] fused a combination of rockabilly, hard rock and rough-house soul'n'blues that was defiantly Australian in outlook." "The Canberra Times" Luis Feliu, in July 1978, observed how, "This is not just another Australian rock band, no mediocrity here, and their honest, hard-working approach looks like paying off." While "the range of styles tackled and done convincingly, from hard rock to blues, boogie, rhythm and blues, is where the appeal lies."


title: Cold Chisel

text: Influences from blues and early rock n' roll was broadly apparent, fostered by the love of those styles by Moss, Barnes and Walker. Small and Prestwich contributed strong pop sensibilities. This allowed volatile rock songs like "You Got Nothing I Want" and "Merry-Go-Round" to stand beside thoughtful ballads like "Choirgirl", pop-flavoured love songs like "My Baby" and caustic political statements like "Star Hotel", an attack on the late 1970s government of Malcolm Fraser, inspired by the Star Hotel riot in Newcastle.


title: Cold Chisel

text: The songs were not overtly political but rather observations of everyday life within Australian society and culture, in which the members with their various backgrounds (Moss was from Alice Springs, Walker grew up in rural New South Wales, Barnes and Prestwich were working-class immigrants from the UK) were quite well able to provide.


title: Cold Chisel

text: Cold Chisel's songs were about distinctly Australian experiences, a factor often cited as a major reason for the band's lack of international appeal. "Saturday Night" and "Breakfast at Sweethearts" were observations of the urban experience of Sydney's Kings Cross district where Walker lived for many years. "Misfits", which featured on the b-side to "My Baby", was about homeless kids in the suburbs surrounding Sydney. Songs like "Shipping Steel" and "Standing on The Outside" were working class anthems and many others featured characters trapped in mundane, everyday existences, yearning for the good times of the past ("Flame Trees") or for something better from life ("Bow River").


title: Cold Chisel

text: Alongside contemporaries like The Angels and Midnight Oil, Cold Chisel was renowned as one of the most dynamic live acts of their day and from early in their career concerts routinely became sell-out events. But the band was also famous for its wild lifestyle, particularly the hard-drinking Barnes, who played his role as one of the wild men of Australian rock to the hilt, never seen on stage without at least one bottle of vodka and often so drunk he could barely stand upright. Despite this, by 1982 he was a devoted family man who refused to tour without his wife and daughter. All the other band members were also settled or married; Ian Moss had a long-term relationship with the actress, Megan Williams, (she even sang on "Twentieth Century") whose own public persona could have hardly been more different.


title: Cold Chisel

text: It was the band's public image that often had them compared less favourably with other important acts like Midnight Oil, whose music and politics (while rather more overt) were often similar but whose image and reputation was more clean-cut. Cold Chisel remained hugely popular however and by the mid-1990s they continued to sell records at such a consistent rate they became the first Australian band to achieve higher sales after their split than during their active years.


title: Cold Chisel

text: At the ARIA Music Awards of 1993 they were inducted into the Hall of Fame. While repackages and compilations accounted for much of these sales, 1994's "Teenage Love" provided two of its singles, which were top ten hits. When the group finally reformed in 1998 the resultant album was also a major hit and the follow-up tour sold out almost immediately. In 2001 Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA), listed their single, "Khe Sanh" (May 1978), at No. 8 of the all-time best Australian songs.


title: Cold Chisel

text: Cold Chisel were one of the first Australian acts to have become the subject of a major tribute album. In 2007, "Standing on the Outside: The Songs of Cold Chisel" was released, featuring a collection of the band's songs as performed by artists including The Living End, Evermore, Something for Kate, Pete Murray, Katie Noonan, You Am I, Paul Kelly, Alex Lloyd, Thirsty Merc and Ben Lee, many of whom were children when Cold Chisel first disbanded and some, like the members of Evermore, had not even been born. "Circus Animals" was listed at No. 4 in the book, "100 Best Australian Albums" (October 2010), while "East" appeared at No. 53. They won The Ted Albert Award for Outstanding Services to Australian Music at the APRA Music Awards of 2016.


title: Cold Chisel

text: In March 2021, a previously unnamed lane off Burnett Street (off Currie Street) in Adelaide CBD, near where the band had its first residency in the 1970s, was officially named Cold Chisel Lane. On one of its walls, there is a mural by Adelaide artist James Dodd, inspired by the band.


title: Cold Chisel

text: The APRA Awards are presented annually from 1982 by the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA), "honouring composers and songwriters". They commenced in 1982.


title: Cold Chisel

text: The ARIA Music Awards is an annual awards ceremony that recognises excellence, innovation, and achievement across all genres of Australian music. They commenced in 1987. Cold Chisel was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1993.