title: History of golf

text: In the 1261 Middle Dutch manuscript of the Flemish poet Jacob van Maerlant's "Boeck Merlijn" mention is made of a ball game "mit ener coluen" (with a colf/kolf [club]). This is the earliest known mention in the Dutch language of the game of colf/kolf as played in the Low Countries.


title: History of golf

text: In 1360, the council of Brussels banned the game of colf: "wie metlven tsolt es om twintich scell' oft op hare overste cleet" (he who plays at colf pays a fine of 20 shillings or his overcoat will be confiscated).


title: History of golf

text: In 1387, the regent of the county of Holland, Zeeland and Hainaut, Albrecht of Bavaria, sealed a charter for the city of Brielle, in which it was forbidden to play any game for money. One of the exceptions to this ordinance was "den bal mitter colven te slaen buten der veste" (to play the ball with a club outside the town walls). Two years later, in 1389, the regent Albrecht offered the citizens of Haarlem a field called "De Baen" (the course) to be used exclusively for playing games – especially colf – because these were too dangerous within the city walls.


title: History of golf

text: A game similar to modern day golf features in a book of hours from 1540, which has, on the basis of this association, acquired the name of the Golf Book. It was illustrated by a Flemish artist called Simon Bening.


title: History of golf

text: In 1571 the book, "Biblia dat is, de gantsche Heylighe Schrift, grondelic ende trouwclick verduydtschet", describes the game of "Kolf" played with a "bat" and "sach".


title: History of golf

text: In 1597 the crew of Willem Barentsz played "colf" during their stay at Nova Zembla, as recorded by Gerrit de Veer in his diary:


title: History of golf

text: In December 1650, the settlers of Fort Orange (near present-day Albany, New York) played the first recorded round of "kolf" (golf) in America. The Dutch settlers played kolf year round. During the spring, summer and fall it was played in fields. In the winter it was played on ice with the same rules. Then on December 10, 1659, the ruler passed an ordinance against playing golf in the streets of the same city.


title: History of golf

text: The modern game of golf is generally considered to be a Scottish invention. A spokesman for The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, one of the oldest Scottish golf organisations, said "Stick and ball games have been around for many centuries, but golf as we know it today, played over 18 holes, clearly originated in Scotland." The word "golf", or in Scots "gowf" [gʌuf], is usually thought to be a Scots alteration of Dutch ""colf"" or ""colve"" meaning ""stick", ""club"", ""bat"", itself related to the Proto-Germanic language "*kulth-" as found in Old Norse "kolfr" meaning "bell clapper", and the German "Kolben" meaning "mace or club". The Dutch term "Kolven" refers to a related sport where the lowest number of strokes needed to hit a ball with a mallet into a hole determines the winner; according to the "Le grand dictionnaire françois-flamen" printed 1643 is stated the Dutch term to Flemish: "Kolf, zest Kolve; Kolfdrager, Sergeant; Kolf, Kolp, Goulfe."


title: History of golf

text: The first documented mention of golf in Scotland appears in a 1457 Act of the Scottish Parliament, an edict issued by King James II of Scotland prohibiting the playing of the games of "gowf" and "futball" as these were a distraction from archery practice for military purposes. Bans were again imposed in Acts of 1471 and 1491, with golf being described as "an unprofitable sport". Golf was banned again by parliament under King James IV of Scotland, but golf clubs and balls were bought for him in 1502 when he was visiting Perth, and on subsequent occasions when he was in St Andrews and Edinburgh.


title: History of golf

text: Mary, Queen of Scots played, and she was accused of playing "pell-mell and golf" at Seton Palace after her husband Lord Darnley was murdered in 1567, when she ought to have been in solemn mourning. George Buchanan wrote that she had been following her "usual amusements in the adjoining fields that were plainly not adapted to women".


title: History of golf

text: An entry in the Town Council Minutes of Edinburgh for 19 April 1592 includes golf in a list of pursuits to be avoided on the Sabbath. On 13 February 1593 the Duke of Lennox and Sir James Sandilands decided to go down to Leith to play golf. On the way they met members of the Graham family who were feuding with Sandilands, and fought with pistols instead.


title: History of golf

text: The account book of lawyer Sir John Foulis of Ravelston records that he played golf at Musselburgh Links on 2 March 1672, and this has been accepted as proving that The Old Links, Musselburgh, is the oldest playing golf course in the world. There is also a story that Mary, Queen of Scots played there in 1567.


title: History of golf

text: James VII of Scotland, while still Duke of Albany, was said to have played the first international golf contest in 1681 when he participated in a game against two English courtiers as part of a bet over rights to claim the game for Scotland or England. His teammate was said to be one John Paterson, who received as payment, enough money to build a mansion on the area of Edinburgh now known as Golfers Land.


title: History of golf

text: The earliest known instructions for playing golf have been found in the diary of Thomas Kincaid, a medical student who played on the course at Bruntsfield Links, near Edinburgh University, and at Leith Links. His notes include his views on an early handicap system. In his entry for 20 January 1687 he noted how "After dinner I went out to the Golve", and described his Golf stroke:


title: History of golf

text: The oldest surviving rules of golf were written in 1744 for the Company of Gentlemen Golfers, later renamed The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, which played at Leith Links. Their ""Articles and Laws in Playing at Golf", now preserved in the National Library of Scotland, became known as the "Leith Rules" and the document supports the club's claim to be the oldest golf club, though an almanac published about a century later is the first record of a rival claim that The Royal Burgess Golfing Society had been set up in 1735. The instructions in the "Leith Rules" formed the basis for all subsequent codes, for example requiring that "Your Tee must be upon the ground" and "You are not to change the Ball which you strike off the Tee".


title: History of golf

text: The 1744 competition for the Gentlemen Golfers' Competition for the Silver Club, a trophy in the form of a silver golf club provided as sponsorship by Edinburgh Town Council, was won by surgeon John Rattray, who was required to attach to the trophy a silver ball engraved with his name, beginning a long tradition. Rattray joined the Jacobite Rising of 1745 and as a result was imprisoned in Inverness, but was saved from being hanged by the pleading of his fellow golfer Duncan Forbes of Culloden, Lord President of the Court of Session. Rattray was released in 1747, and won the Silver Club three times in total.


title: History of golf

text: In 1603 James VI of Scotland succeeded to the throne of England. His son, the Prince of Wales and his courtiers played golf at Blackheath, London, from which the Royal Blackheath Golf Club traces its origins. There is evidence that Scottish soldiers, expatriates and immigrants took the game to British colonies and elsewhere during the 18th and early 19th centuries. In the early 1770s, the first golf course in Africa was built on Bunce Island in Sierra Leone by British merchants. The Royal Calcutta Golf Club (1829), the Mauritius Gymkhana Club (1844) and the club at Pau (1856) in south western France are notable reminders of these excursions and are the oldest golf clubs outside of the British Isles. The Pau Golf Club is the oldest in continental Europe. However, it was not until the late 19th century that Golf became more widely popular outside of its Scottish home.


title: History of golf

text: The railways came to St Andrews in 1852. By the 1860s there were fast and regular services from London to Edinburgh. The royal enthusiasm for Scotland, the much improved transport links and the writings of Sir Walter Scott caused a boom for tourism in Scotland and a wider interest in Scottish history and culture outside of the country. This period also coincided with the development of the "Gutty"; a golf ball made of Gutta Percha which was cheaper to mass-produce, more durable and more consistent in quality and performance than the feather-filled leather balls used previously. Golf began to spread across the rest of the British Isles. In 1864 the golf course at the resort of Westward Ho! became the first new club in England since Blackheath, and the following year London Scottish Golf Club was founded on Wimbledon Common. In 1880 England had 12 courses, rising to 50 in 1887 and over 1000 by 1914. The game in England had progressed sufficiently by 1890 to produce its first English-born Open Champion, John Ball. The game also spread further across the empire. By the 1880s golf clubs had been established in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa. Singapore followed in 1891. Courses were also established in several continental European resorts for the benefit of British visitors.


title: History of golf

text: 17th-century America: In December 1650, near Fort Orange (modern city of Albany, New York), a group of four men were playing Kolf in pairs for points. On July 22, 1657, several men were cited and warned not to play Kolf on Sundays. On December 10, 1659, an ordinance was issued to prevent playing Kolf in the streets of Albany due to too many windows being broken.


title: History of golf

text: Evidence of early golf in what is now the United States includes a 1739 record for a shipment of golf equipment to a William Wallace in Charleston, South Carolina, an advertisement published in the "Royal Gazette" of New York City in 1779 for golf clubs and balls, and the establishment of the South Carolina Golf Club in 1787 in Charleston. However, as in England, it was not until the late 19th century that golf started to become firmly established.


title: History of golf

text: Several clubs established in the 1880s can make claim to be the oldest extant in the country, but what is not disputed is that as a result of two competing "National Amateur Championships" being played in 1894, delegates from the Newport Country Club, Saint Andrew's Golf Club, Yonkers, New York, The Country Club, Chicago Golf Club, and Shinnecock Hills Golf Club met in New York City to form what was to become the United States Golf Association (USGA). By 1910 there were 267 clubs.


title: History of golf

text: During the Roaring Twenties the game expanded greatly in popularity and by 1932 there were over 1,100 golf clubs affiliated to the USGA. In 1922 Walter Hagen became the first native born American to win the British Open Championship. The expansion of the game was halted by the Great Depression and World War II, but continued in the post war years. By 1980 there were over 5,908 USGA affiliated clubs. That figure grew to over 10,600 by 2013. Starting in the 1920s, and growing through the 1990s, many residential golf course communities have been built.


title: History of golf

text: After the Meiji restoration of 1868 Japan made a concerted effort to modernise its economy and industry on western lines. Japanese came to Europe and America to establish trade links and study and acquire the latest developments in business, science and technology, and westerners came to Japan to help establish schools, factories, shipyards and banks.


title: History of golf

text: In 1903 a group of British expatriates established the first golf club in Japan, at Kobe. In 1913 the Tokyo Golf club at Komazawa was established for and by native Japanese who had encountered golf in the United States, but it was moved to Asaka in Saitama prefecture in 1932. In 1924 the Japan Golf Association was established by the seven clubs then in existence. During the 1920s and early 1930s several new courses were built, however the great depression and increasing anti-Western sentiment limited the growth of the game. By the time of the Japanese attacks against the USA and British Empire in 1941 there were 23 courses. During the subsequent war most of the courses were requisitioned for military use or returned to agricultural production.


title: History of golf

text: In the postwar period, Japan's golf courses came under the control of the occupying forces. It was not until 1952 that courses started to be returned to Japanese control. By 1956 there were 72 courses and in 1957 Torakichi Nakamura and Koichi Ono won the Canada Cup (now World Cup) in Japan, an event that is often cited as igniting the post-war golf boom. Between 1960 and 1964 the number of golf courses in Japan increased from 195 to 424. By the early 1970s there were over 1,000 courses. The 1987 "Resort Law" that reduced protection on agricultural land and forest preserves created a further boom in course construction and by 2009 there were over 2,400 courses. The popularity of golf in Japan also caused many golf resorts to be created across the Pacific Rim. The environmental effect of these recent golf booms is seen as a cause for concern by many.


title: History of golf

text: Hugh Edward Richardson introduced golf to Tibet, although he noted that the ball "tended to travel 'rather too far in the thin air'."


title: History of golf

text: Golf courses have not always had eighteen holes. The St Andrews Links occupy a narrow strip of land along the sea. As early as the 15th century, golfers at St Andrews established a trench through the undulating terrain, playing to holes whose locations were dictated by topography. The course that emerged featured eleven holes, laid out end to end from the clubhouse to the far end of the property. One played the holes out, turned around, and played the holes in, for a total of 22 holes. In 1764, several of the holes were deemed too short, and were therefore combined. The number was thereby reduced from 11 to nine, so that a complete round of the links comprised 18 holes. Due to the status of St Andrews as the golfing capital, all other courses followed suit and the 18-hole course remains the standard to the present day.


title: History of golf

text: The evolution of golf can be explained by the development of the equipment used to play the game. Some of the most notable advancements in the game of golf have come from the development of the golf ball. The golf ball took on many different forms before the 1930s when the United States Golf Association (USGA) set standards for weight and size. These standards were later followed by a USGA regulation stating that the initial velocity of any golf ball cannot exceed . Since this time, the golf ball has continued to develop and impact the way the game is played.


title: History of golf

text: Another notable factor in the evolution of golf has been the development of golf clubs. The earliest golf clubs were made of wood that was readily available in the area. Over the years, hickory developed into the standard wood used for shafts and American persimmon became the choice of wood for the club head due to its hardness and strength. As the golf ball developed and became more durable with the introduction of the "gutty" around 1850, the club head was also allowed to develop, and a variety of iron headed clubs entered the game. The introduction of steel shafts began in the late 1890s, but their adoption by the governing bodies of golf was slow. In the early 1970s, shaft technology shifted again with the use of graphite for its lightweight and strength characteristics. The first metal "wood" was developed in the early 1980s, and metal eventually completely replaced wood due to its strength and versatility. The latest golf club technology employs the use of graphite shafts and lightweight titanium heads, which allows the club head to be made much larger than previously possible. The strength of these modern materials also allows the face of the club to be much thinner, which increases the spring-like effect of the club face on the ball, theoretically increasing the distance the ball travels. In 2003 the USGA and R&A began limiting the spring-like effect, also known as the coefficient of restitution (COR) to 0.83 and the maximum club head size to in an attempt to maintain the challenge of the game.


title: History of golf

text: The word "golf" was first mentioned in writing in 1457 on a Scottish statute on forbidden games as "gouf", possibly derived from the Scots word "goulf" (variously spelled) meaning "to strike or cuff". This word may, in turn, be derived from the Dutch word "kolf", meaning "bat" or "club", and the Dutch sport of the same name.


title: History of golf

text: The Dutch term "Kolf" and the Flemish term Kolven refers to a related sport where the lowest number of strokes needed to hit a ball with a mallet into a hole determines the winner; according to the "Le grand dictionnaire ftançois-flamen printed 1643 is stated the Dutch term to Flemish: "Kolf, zest Kolve; Kolfdrager, Sergeant; Kolf, Kolp, Goulfe."


title: History of golf

text: There is a persistent urban legend claiming that the term derives from an acronym "Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden". This is a false etymology, as acronyms being used as words is a fairly modern phenomenon, making the expression a backronym.


title: History of golf

text: J. R. R. Tolkien, a professional philologist, nodded to the derivation from the Dutch word for club in his 1937 fantasy novel "The Hobbit". There he mentions (tongue-in-cheek) that the game of golf was invented when a club-wielding hobbit knocked the head off a goblin named Golfimbul, and the head sailed through the air and landed in a rabbit hole.


title: History of golf

text: The history of golf is preserved and represented at several golf museums around the world, notably the British Golf Museum in the town of St Andrews in Fife, Scotland, which is the home of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, and the United States Golf Association Museum, located alongside the United States Golf Association headquarters in Far Hills, New Jersey.


title: History of golf

text: The World Golf Hall of Fame in St. Augustine, Florida, also presents a history of the sport, as does the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame in Oakville, Ontario, and the American Golf Hall of Fame in Foxburg, Pennsylvania, at the Foxburg Country Club.


title: History of golf

text: Museums for individual players include the Jack Nicklaus Museum in Columbus, Ohio, and rooms in the USGA Museum for Bobby Jones, Arnold Palmer, and Ben Hogan.


title: Demographics of Colombia

text: This is a demography of the population of Colombia including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population. It is the second-most populous country in South America after Brazil.


title: Demographics of Colombia

text: The Demography of Colombia is characterized by being the third-most populous country in Latin America, after Mexico and Brazil. Colombia experienced rapid population growth like most countries, but four decades of an armed conflict pushed millions of Colombians out of the country. However, a rebound economy in the 2000s in urban centres improved the situation of living standards for Colombians in a traditional class stratified economy.


title: Demographics of Colombia

text: According to the 2018 census, Colombia has 48,258,494 inhabitants within its territory. All the data below is available in the DANE Census results.


title: Demographics of Colombia

text: According to the total population was in , compared to only 12,342,000 in 1950. The proportion of children below the age of 15 in 2015 was 24.3%, 68.7% was between 15 and 65 years of age, while 7% was 65 years or older


title: Demographics of Colombia

text: Movement from rural to urban areas was very heavy in the middle of the twentieth century, but has since tapered off. The urban population increased from 31% of the total population in 1938, to 57% in 1951 and about 70% by 1990. Currently the figure is about 77%. The list of the most populated cities in the country only contains the population living in the urban area of the municipalities, according to the results of the 2018 population census.


title: Demographics of Colombia

text: Colombia is ethnically diverse, its original people descending from the original native inhabitants, Spanish and European colonists, Africans originally brought to the country as slaves, and 20th-century immigrants from Europe and the Middle East, all contributing to a diverse cultural heritage. The demographic distribution reflects a pattern that is influenced by colonial history. Whites tend to live mainly in urban centers, like Bogotá, Medellín or Cali, and the burgeoning highland cities. The populations of the major cities also include mestizos.. Mestizos include artisans and small tradesmen that have played a major part in the urban expansion of recent decades.


title: Demographics of Colombia

text: The 2005 census (outdated) reported that the "non-ethnic population", consisting of whites and mestizos (those of majority Indigenous American ancestry), constituted 86% of the national population. 10.6% is of black ancestry. Indigenous Colombians comprise 3.4% of the population. Less than 0.01% of the population is Roma. An extraofficial estimate considers that the 49% of the Colombian population is Mestizo or of mixed European and Amerindian ancestry, and that approximately 37% is White, mainly of Spanish lineage, but there is also a large population of Middle East descent; among the upper class there is a considerable input of Italian and German ancestry.


title: Demographics of Colombia

text: Many of the Indigenous peoples experienced a reduction in population during the Spanish rule and many others were absorbed into the mestizo population, but the remainder currently represents over eighty distinct cultures. Reserves ("resguardos") established for indigenous peoples occupy (27% of the country's total) and are inhabited by more than 800,000 people. Some of the largest indigenous groups are the Wayuu, the Paez, the Pastos, the Emberá and the Zenú. The departments of La Guajira, Cauca, Nariño, Córdoba and Sucre have the largest indigenous populations.


title: Demographics of Colombia

text: The Organización Nacional Indígena de Colombia (ONIC), founded at the first National Indigenous Congress in 1982, is an organization representing the indigenous peoples of Colombia. In 1991, Colombia signed and ratified the current international law concerning indigenous peoples, Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989.


title: Demographics of Colombia

text: Black Africans were brought as slaves, mostly to the coastal lowlands, beginning early in the 16th century and continuing into the 19th century. Large Afro-Colombian communities are found today on the Caribbean and Pacific coasts. The population of the department of Chocó, running along the northern portion of Colombia's Pacific coast, is over 70% black. Britons and Jamaicans migrated mainly to the islands of San Andres and Providencia Islands. A number of other Europeans and North Americans migrated to the country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including people from the former USSR during and after the Second World War.


title: Demographics of Colombia

text: Many immigrant communities have settled on the Caribbean coast, in particular recent immigrants from the Middle East. Barranquilla (the largest city of the Colombian Caribbean) and other Caribbean cities have the largest populations of Lebanese, Palestinian, Phoenician and other Middle Easterners. There are also important communities of Romanis and Jews. There is a major migration trend of Venezuelans, due to the political crisis and economic collapse in Venezuela.


title: Demographics of Colombia

text: Spanish (of which Colombia has the third-largest population of speakers in the world after Mexico and the United States) is the official language, and there are small communities in urban areas speaking other European languages such as German, French, English, Italian and Portuguese. There are 65 indigenous languages and two Creole languages, one creole in San Basilio de Palenque and one in San Andrés; and also San Andrés is the only place of Colombia where are three official languages: Spanish, English and a creole language.


title: Demographics of Colombia

text: The National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE) does not collect religious statistics, and accurate reports are difficult to obtain. However, based on various studies and a survey, about 90% of the population adheres to Christianity, the majority of which (70.9%) are Roman Catholic, while a significant minority (16.7%) adhere to Protestantism (primarily Evangelicalism). Some 4.7% of the population is atheist or agnostic, while 3.5% claim to believe in God but do not follow a specific religion. 1.8% of Colombians adhere to Jehovah's Witnesses and Adventism and less than 1% adhere to other religions, such as Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Mormonism, Hinduism, Indigenous religions, Hare Krishna movement, Rastafari movement, Eastern Orthodox Church, and spiritual studies. The remaining people either did not respond or replied that they did not know. In addition to the above statistics, 35.9% of Colombians reported that they did not practice their faith actively.


title: Demographics of Colombia

text: While Colombia remains a mostly Roman Catholic country by baptism numbers, the 1991 Colombian constitution guarantees freedom of religion and all religious faiths and churches are equally free before the law.


title: Demographics of Colombia

text: Historically, a sizable percentage of Colombian emigration has also been motivated by the need to escape from political persecution and bipartisan violence during the periods of "La Violencia" (1948–1958), and later due to the effects of the nation's current conflict (since 1964). This has resulted in numerous applications for political asylum abroad.


title: Demographics of Colombia

text: Colombians have emigrated in comparably high rates to the United States. Other Colombians migrated to Canada and Europe (most to Spain, but also to France, Italy, the United Kingdom and Sweden). Among other locations.


title: Starwood

text: Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, Inc. was one of the largest companies that owned, operated, franchised and managed hotels, resorts, spas, residences, and vacation ownership properties. It was acquired by Marriott International in 2016.


title: Starwood

text: Starwood had 11 brands and owned, managed, or franchised 1,297 properties comprising 370,000 hotel rooms in approximately 100 countries.


title: Starwood

text: Starwood was founded in 1969 as a real estate investment trust. In 1995, it was acquired and reorganized by Barry Sternlicht, who was its chairman until 2005 and founder of the Starwood Capital Group.


title: Starwood

text: Starwood Hotels and Resorts was originally formed by the real estate investment firm Starwood Capital to take advantage of a tax break; at the time the company was known as Starwood Lodging. Initially, Starwood Lodging owned a number of hotels throughout North America, all under different brand names. The Westin Hotel Company was purchased in 1994 from Aoki Corporation of Japan. Starwood acquired the Sheraton, Four Points by Sheraton, and The Luxury Collection brands from ITT Sheraton in 1998.


title: Starwood

text: In 1999, Starwood launched their "W" Hotels brand. In September 2005, Starwood announced the launch of Aloft, a new hotel brand based on W. Aloft Hotels catered toward business travelers. In 2005, Starwood purchased the Le Méridien brand.


title: Starwood

text: In 2004, Starwood's founder and CEO Barry Sternlicht stepped down as CEO to focus his attention on his other firm, Starwood Capital. He remained on the Board of Directors until 2005. He was succeeded as CEO by Steven J. Heyer, and Starwood began selling a number of its company-owned hotels, instead focusing on becoming a management company and franchiser for its current and future hotel brands. In April 2007, Steven J. Heyer left the company on the request of the Board of Directors because of an issue with Heyer's management style and after allegations of personal misconduct. Chairman of the Board Bruce Duncan served as interim CEO until September 2007, when the company announced Heyer's successor, Frits van Paasschen. Van Paasschen served as CEO until February 2015, when he announced that he was resigning in a mutual decision with the board of directors.


title: Starwood

text: Starwood has customer contact centers (CCC) in nine locations: Wichita, Kansas; Austin, Texas; Fall River, Massachusetts; St Thomas, Ontario; Cork, Ireland; Singapore; Tokyo, Japan; Guangzhou, China; and Gurgaon, India.


title: Starwood

text: In late May 2014 reports surfaced that the company had recently made a takeover bid for InterContinental Hotels Group worth $10 billion, which neither company confirmed or denied.


title: Starwood

text: In November 2015, it was announced that Starwood would be acquired by Marriott International for $12.2 billion.


title: Starwood

text: In December 2015, Thomas B. Mangas, former head of Armstrong World Industries' flooring business, became the CEO at Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide effective December 31, 2015.


title: Starwood

text: On November 30, 2018, Marriott International disclosed that its Starwood brand had been subject to a security breach. After the disclosure, New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood announced an investigation into the data breach.


title: Starwood

text: Westin Hotels & Resorts was Starwood's largest upscale hotel and resorts brand. It was the oldest brand within Starwood, founded as Western Hotels in 1930, renamed Western International Hotels in 1963, and then Westin Hotels in 1981. The chain was acquired by Starwood in 1997.


title: Starwood

text: Sheraton Hotels and Resorts was Starwood's flagship brand, providing luxury hotel and resort accommodation. It began operating in 1937 and was sold to Starwood in 1998 by ITT Inc. Also under the Sheraton brand are seven vacation ownership properties.


title: Starwood

text: The Luxury Collection brand began on January 13, 1992, when ITC Sheraton designated 28 of its premier hotels and 33 of the Sheraton Towers, the luxury "hotel-within-a-hotel" facilities located within Sheraton's largest and most exclusive hotels, as the ITT Sheraton Luxury Collection.


title: Starwood

text: In February 1994, ITT Sheraton acquired a controlling interest in CIGA (Compagnia Italiana Grandi Alberghi, or Italian Grand Hotels Company), an Italian international hotel chain which owned several luxury properties in Europe. The majority of the CIGA hotels were folded into The Luxury Collection. CIGA's original logo, the four horses of St. Mark, was kept for The Luxury Collection brand logo until 2010; each Luxury Collection hotel now uses its own logo. After Starwood acquired Sheraton, it established a separate brand identity for The Luxury Collection. Many hotels in The Luxury Collection are smaller establishments in converted palaces or other historically/culturally significant buildings; others are restored historic hotels, such as Hotel Kämp in Helsinki, Finland.


title: Starwood

text: The Royal Penthouse Suite at Hotel President Wilson in Geneva, part of The Luxury Collection, billed at per night, is listed at number 1 on the World's 15 Most Expensive Hotel Suites list compiled by CNN in 2012.


title: Starwood

text: Four Points by Sheraton was launched in April 1995 under the Sheraton Group's brand as a set of mid-range hotels that replaced the Sheraton Inn sub-brand of Sheraton.


title: Starwood

text: W Hotels was Starwood's luxury lifestyle brand, generally marketed towards a younger crowd. It was launched in 1998 with the W New York, a conversion of the old Doral Inn hotel at 541 Lexington Avenue in Manhattan and the brand has since expanded with over 50 hotels and resorts.


title: Starwood

text: Though the hotels vary from newly built flagship properties to more modest conversions of previous hotels, they have a common theme of spare, minimalist modern decor and hip, informal names for categories of rooms and public areas. For example, the lobbies of all the hotels are known as the "Living Room". W Hotels attempt to include the letter "W" wherever possible - the swimming pool is known as "Wet" and the laundry bag in every room is known as “Wash”. W Hotels are known for the trademarked “Whatever/Whenever” service philosophy and pioneered the now popular “lifestyle” hotels.


title: Starwood

text: St. Regis Hotels & Resorts was Starwood's main luxury brand, launched in 1899. It is named for St. Regis New York, which was built in 1904 in Manhattan at 5th Avenue and 55th Street by John Jacob Astor IV, who also founded the Astoria Hotel (which later became the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel) and who died in 1912 on the RMS Titanic. In the 1930s, head bartender Fernand Petiot introduced the Bloody Mary cocktail. The St. Regis was a Sheraton from 1966 on, and following a lavish restoration from 1985 to 1991, it was part of the ITT Sheraton Luxury division before it became the cornerstone and flagship of Starwood's new brand. The brand is represented on four continents, with a total pipeline of 57 operating and signed hotels as of April 2016.


title: Starwood

text: Le Méridien was founded by Air France in 1972 and was acquired by Starwood in November 2005, by which point it was based in the UK. It has a total of 137 properties operating or in the pipeline worldwide, with its first property being Le Méridien Etoile in Paris, France. Le Méridien is positioned as an upper-upscale brand in the Starwood hierarchy and offers properties with an edge towards art, design and local destination, with each hotel customized to its respective location with the intent of "unlocking destinations" for guests. Certain locations offer guests complimentary access to art galleries and museums through collaborations and partnerships. Le Méridien has a partnership with the Italian coffee roasting company Illy, serving and promoting Illy-branded coffee and products throughout its hotels around the world.


title: Starwood

text: Aloft Hotels was launched in 2005 as Aloft, a Vision of W Hotels, in a relationship with W similar to Four Points by Sheraton and its 'brand parent', Sheraton. Aloft is a mid-scale, urban-style business/boutique hotel brand.


title: Starwood

text: Announced in 2006, and originally known as Element by Westin, Element was Starwood's first brand of hotels intended to be environmentally friendly and LEED certified. The designs include energy and water efficient features. The first Element hotel opened in Lexington, Massachusetts in July 2008. Element hotels are built eco-friendly from the ground up, from the floors made of recycled materials to energy-efficient lighting and plumbing fixtures.


title: Starwood

text: In 2013, the first Canadian location opened in Vaughan, Ontario. In September 2014, the first German location opened in Frankfurt. In 2017, the first South East Asian location opened in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.


title: Starwood

text: Launched in April 2015, Tribute Portfolio is a collection of independent upscale to upper upscale hotels. As of May 2019, there were 33 Tribute Portfolio hotels operating globally with over 45 hotels in the pipeline.


title: Starwood

text: In April 2018, Marriott began a pilot program offering vacation rentals under the Tribute Portfolio brand. As part of the test, the company partnered with Hostmaker to add 200 homes in London to the service. This pilot ended when Marriott launched Homes & Villas by Marriott International in April 2019.


title: Starwood

text: Design Hotels, based in Berlin, provides hospitality services to a network of nearly 300 independently owned and operated hotels. Starwood was a majority investor in Design Hotels since 2011. In October 2015, Starwood announced that it would add Design Hotels to its brand portfolio. Member hotels of the Design Hotels collection had the option to join the Starwood Preferred Guest loyalty program and gain access to Starwood's sales platform.


title: Starwood

text: Starwood had a credit card partnership with American Express, which also took over Starwood's former partnership with MBNA Canada Bank in Canada in 2010.


title: Starwood

text: The Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) program was merged with Marriott's loyalty program on August 18, 2018.


title: Starwood

text: Starwood Preferred Guest also had a partnership with 32 airlines, allowing guests to redeem their points for flights under the "SPG Flights" program. SPG had a "crossover rewards" program with Delta Air Lines, offering Medallion elite members certain elite benefits at Starwood Group hotels and offering certain Medallion elite benefits to SPG Platinum Preferred Guest members. The SPG program had over 21 million members.


title: Sing (franchise)

text: Sing is an American CGI-animated musical franchise created by Garth Jennings and produced by Illumination. It features the voice talents of Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Scarlett Johansson, Nick Kroll, Taron Egerton, and Tori Kelly among others. The first film, "Sing", was released on December 21, 2016 and received positive reviews from critics. The second film, "Sing 2", was released on December 22, 2021. The series has grossed $1 billion worldwide.


title: Sing (franchise)

text: The franchise takes place in a world inhabited by talking, anthropomorphic animals. It follows a koala who, with the help of other animals, puts on live theater shows that largely encompass singing.


title: Sing (franchise)

text: In an attempt to save his theater, a koala named Buster Moon decides to hold a singing competition to get it out of debt.


title: Sing (franchise)

text: Buster Moon and his gang now have their sights set on debuting a new show at the Crystal Tower Theater in glamorous Redshore City. But without connections, he and his singers must convince the ruthless media mogul Jimmy Crystal and pitch the idea of casting the lion rock legend Clay Calloway in their show. Buster must embark on a quest to find the now-reclusive Clay and persuade him to return to the stage.


title: Sing (franchise)

text: Included as a mini-movie on "Sing"<nowiki>'s</nowiki> home media release, the short focuses around Gunter who offers to watch over Rosita and Norman's piglets while they are away, but quickly finds himself way in over his head.


title: Sing (franchise)

text: Included as a mini-movie on "Sing"<nowiki>'s</nowiki> home media release, the short focuses around Miss Crawly who is set up on an online dating website by Johnny in which she attempts to find love.


title: Sing (franchise)

text: Included as a mini-movie on "Sing"<nowiki>'s</nowiki> home media release, the short focuses around Eddie Noodleman, who partakes in a digital life-training seminar on behalf of his mother or else he will be kicked out.


title: Sing (franchise)

text: Included as a mini-movie on "Sing 2"<nowiki>'s</nowiki> home media release, the short focuses around Johnny and Gunter who attend a hypnotist show in Redshore City where Gunter is hypnotized and believes he is a secret agent.


title: Sing (franchise)

text: Included as a mini-movie on "Sing 2"<nowiki>'s</nowiki> home media release, the short focuses around Darius who is filming a commercial while awaiting confirmation on an audition, but is consistently getting things wrong.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Natalie Clifford Barney (October 31, 1876 – February 2, 1972) was an American writer who hosted a literary salon at her home in Paris that brought together French and international writers. She influenced other authors through her salon and also with her poetry, plays, and epigrams, often thematically tied to her lesbianism and feminism.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Barney was born into a wealthy family. She was partly educated in France, and expressed a desire from a young age to live openly as a lesbian. She moved to France with her first romantic partner, Eva Palmer. Inspired by the work of Sappho, Barney began publishing love poems to women under her own name as early as 1900. Writing in both French and English, she supported feminism and pacifism. She opposed monogamy and had many overlapping long and short-term relationships, including on-and-off romances with poet Renée Vivien and courtesan Liane de Pougy and longer relationships with writer Élisabeth de Gramont and painter Romaine Brooks.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Barney hosted a salon at her home in Paris for more than 60 years, bringing together writers and artists from around the world, including many leading figures in French, American, and British literature. Attendees of various sexualities expressed themselves and mingled comfortably at the weekly gatherings. She worked to promote writing by women and hosted a "Women's Academy" (L'Académie des Femmes) in her salon as a response to the all-male French Academy. The salon closed for the duration of World War II while Barney lived in Italy with Brooks. She initially espoused some pro-fascist views, but supported the Allies by the end of the war. After the war, she returned to Paris, resumed the salon, and continued influencing or inspiring writers such as Truman Capote.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Barney had a wide literary influence. Remy de Gourmont addressed public letters to her using the nickname "l'Amazon" (the Amazon), and Barney's association with both de Gourmont and the nickname lasted until her death. Her life and love affairs served as inspiration for many novels written by others, ranging from de Pougy's erotic French bestseller "Idylle Saphique" to Radclyffe Hall's "The Well of Loneliness", the most famous lesbian novel of the twentieth century.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Barney was born in 1876 in Dayton, Ohio, to Albert Clifford Barney and Alice Pike Barney. Alice learned to love the arts from her father, who owned Pike's Opera House in Cincinnati, Ohio. Albert Barney partially inherited his family's railroad car manufacturing company, Barney & Smith Car Works.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: When Barney was five years old, she encountered Oscar Wilde at a New York hotel. Wilde scooped her up as she ran past him fleeing a group of small boys and held her out of their reach. Then he sat her down on his knee and told her a story. The next day he joined Barney and her mother on the beach, and Wilde inspired Alice to pursue art seriously, which she did despite her husband's disapproval.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Like many girls of her time, Barney had a haphazard education. Her interest in the French language began with a governess who read Jules Verne stories aloud to her, so she would have to learn quickly to understand them. She and her younger sister Laura attended Les Ruches, a French boarding school in Fontainebleau, France, founded by feminist Marie Souvestre. As an adult, she spoke and wrote French fluently.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: When she was ten, her family moved from Ohio to the Scott Circle area of Washington D.C., spending summers at their large cottage in Bar Harbor, Maine. As the rebellious and unconventional daughter of one of the wealthiest families in town, she was often mentioned in Washington newspapers. In her early twenties she made headlines by galloping through Bar Harbor while driving a second horse on a lead ahead of her, riding astride instead of sidesaddle.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Barney later said she knew she was a lesbian by age twelve, and she was determined to "live openly, without hiding anything".


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Barney's earliest intimate relationship was with Eva Palmer. They became acquainted during summer vacations in Bar Harbor, Maine, and began a sexual relationship during one such trip in 1893. Barney likened Palmer's appearance to that of a medieval virgin. The two remained close for several years. As young adults in Paris they shared an apartment at 4 rue Chalgrin and eventually took their own residences in Neuilly. Barney frequently solicited Palmer's help in her romantic pursuits of other women, including Pauline Tarn. Palmer ultimately left Barney's side for Greece and eventually married Angelos Sikelianos. Their relationship did not survive this turn of events: Barney took a dim view of Angelos and heated letters were exchanged. Later in their lives the friendship was repaired through correspondence and reunions in New York.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: In 1899, after seeing the courtesan Liane de Pougy at a dance hall in Paris, Barney presented herself at de Pougy's residence in a page costume and announced she was a "page of love" sent by Sappho. Although de Pougy was one of the most famous women in France, constantly sought after by wealthy and titled men, Barney's audacity charmed her.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Barney stood to inherit some family wealth held in trust if she either married or waited for her father's death. While courting de Pougy, Barney was engaged to Robert Cassat, a member of another wealthy railroad family. Barney was open with Cassat about her love of women and relationship with de Pougy. In the hopes of securing the Barney trust money, the three briefly considered a rushed wedding between Barney and Cassat and an adoption of de Pougy. When Cassat ended the engagement, Barney attempted unsuccessfully to persuade her father to give her the money anyway.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: By the end of 1899, the two had broken up after quarreling repeatedly over Barney's desire to "rescue" de Pougy from her life as a courtesan. Despite the breakup, the two continued having liaisons for decades.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Their on-and-off affair became the subject of de Pougy's tell-all "roman à clef", "Idylle Saphique" ("Sapphic Idyll"). Published in 1901, the book and its sexually suggestive scenes became the talk of Paris, reprinted more than 70 times in its first year. Barney was soon well known as the model for one of the characters.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Barney herself contributed a chapter to "Idylle Saphique" in which she described reclining at de Pougy's feet in a screened box at the theater, watching Sarah Bernhardt's play "Hamlet". During intermission, Barney (as "Flossie") compares Hamlet's plight with that of women: "What is there for women who feel the passion for action when pitiless Destiny holds them in chains? Destiny made us women at a time when the law of men is the only law that is recognized." She also wrote "Lettres à une Connue" ("Letters to a Woman I Have Known"), her own epistolary novel about the affair. Although Barney failed to find a publisher for the book and later called it naïve and clumsy, it is notable for its discussion of homosexuality, which Barney regarded as natural and compared to albinism. "My queerness," she said, "is not a vice, is not deliberate, and harms no one."


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: In November 1899, Barney met the poet Pauline Tarn, better known by her pen name Renée Vivien. For Vivien it was love at first sight, while Barney became fascinated with Vivien after hearing her recite one of her poems, which Barney described as "haunted by the desire for death". Their romantic relationship was also a creative exchange that inspired both of them to write. Barney provided a feminist theoretical framework which Vivien explored in her poetry. They adapted the imagery of the Symbolist poets along with the conventions of courtly love to describe love between women, also finding examples of heroic women in history and myth. Sappho was an especially important influence and they studied Greek so as to read the surviving fragments of her poetry in the original. Both wrote plays about her life.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Vivien saw Barney as a muse and as Barney put it, "she had found new inspiration through me, almost without knowing me". Barney felt Vivien had cast her as a "femme fatale" and that she wanted "to lose herself... entirely in suffering" for the sake of her art. Vivien also believed in monogamy, which Barney was unwilling to agree to. While Barney was visiting her family in Washington, D.C. in 1901, Vivien stopped answering her letters. Barney tried to get her back for years, at one point persuading a friend, operatic mezzo-soprano Emma Calvé, to sing under Vivien's window so she could throw a poem (wrapped around a bouquet of flowers) up to Vivien on her balcony. Both flowers and poem were intercepted and returned by a governess.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: In 1904 she wrote "Je Me Souviens" ("I Remember"), an intensely personal prose poem about their relationship which was presented as a single handwritten copy to Vivien in an attempt to win her back. They reconciled and traveled together to Lesbos, where they lived happily together for a short time and discussed starting a school of poetry for women like the one which Sappho, according to tradition, had founded on Lesbos some 2,500 years before. However, Vivien soon got a letter from her lover Baroness Hélène van Zuylen and went to Constantinople thinking she would break up with her in person. Vivien planned to meet Barney in Paris afterward, but instead stayed with the Baroness. This time, the breakup was permanent.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Vivien's health declined rapidly after this. The author Colette, who herself had an affair with Barney in 1906, was Vivien's friend and neighbor. According to Colette, Vivien ate almost nothing and drank heavily, even rinsing her mouth with perfumed water to hide the smell. Colette's account has led some to call Vivien an anorexic, but this diagnosis did not yet exist at the time. Vivien was also addicted to the sedative chloral hydrate. In 1908 she attempted suicide by overdosing on laudanum and died the following year. In a memoir written fifty years later, Barney said, "She could not be saved. Her life was a long suicide. Everything turned to dust and ashes in her hands."


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: In 1949, two years after the death of Hélène van Zuylen, Barney restored the Renée Vivien Prize with a financial grant under the authority of the "Société des gens de lettres" and took on the chairmanship of the jury in 1950.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Barney purchased and read "Opals" in 1900, a debut collection of poems by Olive Custance. Responding to the lesbian themes in the poetry, Barney began corresponding with Custance and exchanging poems. The two met in 1901 at Barney and Vivien's home in Paris, and they soon began a short romantic relationship. While Barney's infidelity aggravated Vivien, Custance was also pursuing a relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, who she would later marry.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: In 1900, Barney published her first book, a collection of poems called "Quelques Portraits-Sonnets de Femmes" ("Some Portrait-Sonnets of Women"). The poems were written in traditional French verse and a formal, old-fashioned style since Barney did not care for free verse. "Quelques Portraits" has been described as "apprentice work", a classifier which betrays its historical significance. According to biographer Suzanne Rodriguez, the collection's publication meant that Barney became the first woman poet to openly write about the love of women since Sappho. Her mother contributed pastel illustrations of the poems' subjects, wholly unaware three of the four women who modelled for her were her daughter's lovers.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Reviews were generally positive and glossed over the lesbian theme of the poems, some even misrepresenting it. The "Washington Mirror" said Barney "writes odes to men's lips and eyes; not like a novice, either". However, a headline in a society gossip paper cried out "Sappho Sings in Washington" and this alerted her father, who bought and destroyed the publisher's remaining stock and printing plates.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: To escape her father's sway Barney published her next book, "Cinq Petits Dialogues Grecs" ("Five Short Greek Dialogues", 1901), under the pseudonym Tryphé. The name came from the works of Pierre Louÿs, who helped edit and revise the manuscript. Barney also dedicated the book to him. The first of the dialogues is set in ancient Greece and contains a long description of Sappho, who is "more faithful in her inconstancy than others in their fidelity". Another argues for paganism over Christianity. After the death of Barney's father in 1902, his approximately $9 million fortune ($ million in 2018) was left in trust with annual income to be split equally between Barney, her mother, and her sister. His death and the money freed her from any need to conceal the authorship of her books; she never used a pseudonym again. She considered scandal "the best way of getting rid of nuisances" (meaning heterosexual attention from young men).


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: "Je Me Souviens" was published in 1910, after Vivien's death. That same year, Barney published "Actes et Entr'actes" ("Acts and Interludes"), a collection of short plays and poems. One of the plays was "Équivoque" ("Ambiguity"), a revisionist version of the legend of Sappho's death: instead of throwing herself off a cliff for the love of Phaon the sailor, she does so out of grief that Phaon is marrying the woman she loves. The play incorporates quotations from Sappho's fragments, with Barney's own footnotes in Greek, and was performed with ancient Greek-inspired music and dance.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Barney did not take her poetry as seriously as Vivien did, saying "if I had one ambition it was to make my life itself into a poem". Her plays were only performed through amateur productions in her garden. According to Karla Jay, most of them lacked coherent plots and "would probably baffle even the most sympathetic audience". After 1910 she mostly wrote the epigrams and memoirs, for which she is better known. Her last book of poetry was called "Poems & Poemes: Autres Alliances" and came out in 1920, bringing together romantic poetry in both French and English. Barney asked Ezra Pound to edit the poems, but ignored his detailed recommendations.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: For over 60 years, Barney hosted a literary salon, first in Neuilly but mostly at her home at 20, Rue Jacob, in Paris. Her salon was a weekly, Friday gathering at which people met to socialize and discuss literature, art, music and any other topic of interest. Though she hosted some of the most prominent male writers of her time, Barney strove to shed light on female writers and their work.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: In addition to its focus on women, Barney's salon was distinguished by its deliberately international character. She brought together expatriate Modernists with members of the French Academy. The salon Biographer Joan Schenkar described Barney's salon as "a place where lesbian assignations "and" appointments with academics could coexist in a kind of cheerful, cross-pollinating, cognitive dissonance". The range of sexualities welcomed at the salon was also uncommon in Paris, and Barney's openness with her own sexuality made her salon comfortable to homosexual or bisexual attendees.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: In the 1900s Barney held early gatherings of the salon at her house in Neuilly. The entertainment included poetry readings and theatricals (in which Colette sometimes performed). Mata Hari performed a dance once, riding into the garden naked as Lady Godiva on a white horse harnessed with turquoise cloisonné. The play "Equivoque" may have led Barney to leave Neuilly in 1909. According to a contemporary newspaper article, her landlord objected to her holding an outdoor performance of a play about Sappho, which he felt "followed nature too closely". She canceled her lease and rented the pavilion on Rue Jacob in Paris's Latin Quarter, and her salon was held there until the late 1960s. This was a small two-story house, separated on three sides from the main building on the street. Next to the pavilion was a large, overgrown garden with a Doric "Temple of Friendship" tucked into one corner. In this new location, the salon grew a more prim outward face, with poetry readings and conversation, perhaps because Barney had been told the pavilion's floors would not hold up to large dancing parties. Frequent guests during this period included poets Pierre Louÿs and Paul Claudel, diplomat Philippe Berthelot and translator J. C. Mardrus.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: During World War I, the salon became a haven for those opposed to the war. Henri Barbusse gave a reading from his anti-war novel "Under Fire" and Barney hosted a Women's Congress for Peace. Other visitors to the salon during the war included Oscar Milosz, Auguste Rodin and poet Alan Seeger, who came while on leave from the French Foreign Legion.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Ezra Pound was a close friend of Barney's and often visited. The two schemed together to subsidize Paul Valéry and T. S. Eliot so they could quit their jobs and focus on writing, but Valéry found other patrons and Eliot refused the grant. Pound introduced Barney to avant-garde composer George Antheil, and, while her own taste in music leaned towards the traditional, she hosted premieres of Antheil's "Symphony for Five Instruments" and "First String Quartet". It was also at Barney's salon that Pound met his longtime mistress, the violinist Olga Rudge.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: In 1927 Barney started an "Académie des Femmes" (Women's Academy) to honor women writers. This was a response to the influential Académie Française (French Academy) which had been founded in the 17th century by Louis XIII and whose 40 members included no women at the time. Unlike the French Academy, Barney's was not a formal organization but rather a series of readings held as part of the regular Friday salons. Honorees included Colette, Gertrude Stein, Anna Wickham, Rachilde, Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, Mina Loy, Djuna Barnes and posthumously, Renée Vivien. The academy's activities wound down after 1927.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Other visitors to the salon during the 1920s included French writers Jeanne Galzy, André Gide, Anatole France, Max Jacob, Louis Aragon and Jean Cocteau. English-language writers also visited, including Ford Madox Ford, W. Somerset Maugham, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, Thornton Wilder, T. S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams. Barney also hosted German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore (the first Nobel laureate from Asia), Romanian aesthetician and diplomat Matila Ghyka, journalist Janet Flanner (also known as Genêt, who set the "New Yorker" style), journalist, activist and publisher Nancy Cunard, publishers Caresse and Harry Crosby, publisher Blanche Knopf, art collector and patron Peggy Guggenheim, Sylvia Beach (the bookstore owner who published James Joyce's "Ulysses"), painters Tamara de Lempicka and Marie Laurencin and dancer Isadora Duncan.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: For her 1929 book "Aventures de l'Esprit" ("Adventures of the Mind") Barney drew a social diagram which crowded the names of over a hundred people who had attended the salon into a rough map of the house, garden and Temple of Friendship. The first half of the book had reminiscences of 13 male writers she had known or met over the years and the second half had a chapter for each member of her "Académie des Femmes".


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: In the late 1920s Radclyffe Hall drew a crowd reading her novel "The Well of Loneliness", recently banned in the UK. A reading by poet Edna St. Vincent Millay packed the salon in 1932. At another Friday salon in the 1930s Virgil Thomson sang from "Four Saints in Three Acts", an opera based on a libretto by Stein.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Of the famous Modernist writers who spent time in Paris, Ernest Hemingway never made an appearance at the salon. James Joyce came once or twice but did not care for it. Marcel Proust never attended a Friday but did come once to talk with Barney about lesbian culture whilst doing research for "In Search of Lost Time", though he ended up too nervous to bring up the subject.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: "Éparpillements" ("Scatterings", 1910) was Barney's first collection of "pensées"—literally, thoughts. This literary form had been associated with salon culture in France since the 17th century, when the genre was perfected at the salon of Madame de Sablé. Barney's "pensées", like de Sablé's own "Maximes", were short, often one-line epigrams or "bon mots" such as "There are more evil ears than bad mouths" and "To be married is to be neither alone nor together."


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Her literary career got a boost after she sent a copy of "Éparpillements" to Remy de Gourmont, a French poet, literary critic, and philosopher who had become a recluse after contracting the disfiguring disease lupus vulgaris in his thirties. He was impressed enough to invite her to one of the Sunday gatherings at his home, at which he usually received only a small group of old friends. She was a rejuvenating influence in his life, coaxing him out for evening car rides, dinners at the Rue Jacob, a masked ball, even a short cruise on the Seine. He turned some of their wide-ranging conversations into a series of letters that he published in the "Mercure de France", addressing her as "l'Amazone," a French word that can mean either "horsewoman" or "Amazon"; the letters were later collected in book form. He died in 1915, but the nickname he gave her would stay with her all her life—even her tombstone identifies her as "the Amazon of Remy de Gourmont"—and his "Letters to the Amazon" left readers wanting to know more about the woman who had inspired them.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Barney obliged in 1920 with "Pensées d'une Amazone" ("Thoughts of an Amazon"), her most overtly political work. In the first section, "Sexual Adversity, War, and Feminism", she developed feminist and pacifist themes, describing war as an "involuntary and collective suicide ordained by man". In war, she said, men "father death as women mother life, with courage and without choice". The epigrammatic form makes it difficult to determine the details of Barney's views; ideas are presented only to be dropped, and some "pensées" seem to contradict others. Some critics interpret her as saying that the aggression that leads to war is visible in all male relationships. Karla Jay, however, argues that her philosophy was not that sweeping, and is better summed up by the epigram "Those who "love" war lack the love of an adequate sport—the art of living."


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Another section of "Pensées d'une Amazone", "Misunderstanding, or Sappho's Lawsuit", gathered historical writings about homosexuality along with her own commentary. She also covered topics such as alcohol, friendship, old age, and literature, writing "Novels are longer than life" and "Romanticism is a childhood ailment; those who had it young are the most robust." A third volume, "Nouvelles Pensées de l'Amazone" ("New Thoughts of the Amazon"), appeared in 1939.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: "The One Who is Legion, or A.D.'s After-Life" (1930) was Barney's only book written entirely in English, as well as her only novel. Illustrated by Romaine Brooks, it concerns a person who committed suicide, known only as A.D., who is brought back to life as a genderless, hermaphroditic being and reads the book of their own life. This book-within-a-book, entitled "The Love-Lives of A.D.", is a collection of hymns, poems and epigrams, much like Barney's own other writings.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Despite several of her lovers' objections, Barney practiced, and advocated, non-monogamy. As early as 1901, in "Cinq Petits Dialogues Grecs," she argued in favor of multiple relationships and against jealousy; in "Éparpillements" she wrote "One is unfaithful to those one loves in order that their charm does not become mere habit". While she could be quite jealous herself, she actively encouraged at least some of her lovers to be non-monogamous as well.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Due in part to Jean Chalon's early biography of her, published in English as "Portrait of a Seductress", Barney had become more widely known for her many relationships than for her writing or her salon. She once wrote out a list, divided into three categories: liaisons, demi-liaisons, and adventures. Colette was a demi-liaison, while the artist and furniture designer Eyre de Lanux, with whom she had an off-and-on affair for several years, was listed as an adventure. Among the liaisons—the relationships that she considered most important—were Custance, Vivien, Élisabeth de Gramont, Brooks, and Dolly Wilde. Many of her affairs, like those with Colette and Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, evolved into lifelong friendships.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Élisabeth de Gramont, the Duchess of Clermont-Tonnerre, was a writer best known for her popular memoirs. A descendant of Henry IV of France, she had grown up among the aristocracy; when she was a child, according to Janet Flanner, "peasants on her farm ... begged her not to clean her shoes before entering their houses". Her father's ancestors had squandered their fortune and he married into the Rothschild family after her birth; she did not have any access to her step-mother's wealth. She looked back on this lost world of wealth and privilege with little regret, and became known as the "red duchess" for her support of socialism. Encouraged by her father to wed into security, she married Philibert de Clermont-Tonnere and had two daughters. He was violent and tyrannical.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: The poet Lucie Delarue-Mardrus introduced Barney and de Gramont in 1909 or 1910. The couple shared academic interests and attended Remy de Gourmont's salon together.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Barney wrote an unpublished novel inspired by their early relationship, "L’Adultère ingénue" ("The Adulterous Ingénue").


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: De Gramont accepted Barney's nonmonogamy—perhaps reluctantly at first—and went out of her way to be gracious to her other lovers, always including Brooks when she invited Barney to vacation in the country.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Though the two conducted their affair clandestinely, de Gramont's husband found them out and attempted to stop them from seeing each other. He was unsuccessful, and he divorced de Gramont in 1920 after a period of separation. In 1918 she and Barney wrote up a marriage contract stating: "No one union shall be so strong as this union, nor another joining so tender—nor relationship so lasting". The relationship continued until de Gramont's death in 1954.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Barney's longest relationship was with the American painter Romaine Brooks, whom she met around 1915. Brooks specialized in portraiture and was noted for her somber palette of gray, black, and white. During the 1920s she painted portraits of several members of Barney's social circle, including de Gramont and Barney herself.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Brooks tolerated Barney's casual affairs well enough to tease her about them, and had a few of her own over the years, but could become jealous when a new love became serious. Usually she simply left town, but at one point she gave Barney an ultimatum to choose between her and Dolly Wilde—relenting once Barney had given in. At the same time, while Brooks was devoted to Barney, she did not want to live with her as a full-time couple; she disliked Paris, disdained Barney's friends, hated the constant socializing on which Barney thrived, and felt that she was fully herself only when alone. To accommodate Brooks's need for solitude they built a summer home consisting of two separate wings joined by a dining room, which they called "Villa Trait d'Union", the hyphenated villa. Brooks also spent much of the year in Italy or travelling elsewhere in Europe, away from Barney. Their relationship lasted for over fifty years.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Dolly Wilde was the niece of Oscar Wilde and the last of her family to bear the Wilde name. She was renowned for her epigrammatic wit but, unlike her famous uncle, never managed to apply her gifts to any publishable writing; her letters are her only legacy. She did some work as a translator and was often supported by others, including Barney, whom she met in 1927.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Barney's support of Wilde included occasional permission to stay for a few weeks at Rue Jacob. Brooks' disapproval of the relationship increased over the years, aggravated by Wilde's presence in Barney's home. Wilde, the only of Barney's loves to share her enthusiastic rejection of monogamy, strove conscientiously but futilely for Brooks' favor. This culminated in Brooks' ultimatum, delivered in 1931, in which she described Wilde as a rat "gnawing at the very foundation of our friendship". Barney chose Brooks and separated from Wilde; Brooks later allowed Wilde to return and became less critical of Wilde's ways.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Like Vivien, Wilde was intensely self-destructive and struggled deeply with mental illness. She attempted suicide several times, and spent much of her life addicted to alcohol and heroin. Barney, a vocal opponent of drug use and alcoholism, financed drug detoxifications several times; to no avail. Wilde even emerged from one nursing-home stay with a new dependency on the sleeping draught paraldehyde, then available over-the-counter.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: In 1939, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and refused surgery, seeking alternative treatments. The following year, World War II separated her from Barney; she fled Paris for England while Barney went to Italy with Brooks. She died in 1941 from causes never fully explained; with one of the most common speculations being a paraldehyde overdose. Her will, written in 1932, named Barney as her only heir.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Barney's attitudes during World War II have been controversial. In 1937, Una, Lady Troubridge, complained that Barney "talked a lot of half-baked nonsense about the tyranny of fascism". Barney herself had Jewish heritage, and since she spent the war in Florence with Brooks, was investigated by Italian authorities because of this; she was able to escape their attention after her sister Laura arranged for a notarized document attesting to her confirmation.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Nevertheless, she believed Axis propaganda that portrayed the Allies as the aggressors. Therefore, pro-Fascism seemed to her to be a logical consequence of her pacifism. An unpublished memoir she wrote during the war years is pro-Fascist and anti-Semitic, quoting speeches by Hitler, apparently with approval.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: It is possible that the anti-Semitic passages in her memoir were intended to be used as evidence that she was not Jewish; alternatively, she may have been influenced by Ezra Pound's anti-Semitic radio broadcasts. Whatever the case, she did help a Jewish couple escape Italy, providing passage on a ship to the United States. By the end of the war her sympathies had again changed, and she saw the Allies as liberators.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: "Villa Trait d'Union" was destroyed by bombing. After the war, Brooks declined to live with Barney in Paris; she remained in Italy, and they visited each other frequently. Their relationship remained mostly monogamous until the mid-1950s, when Barney met her last new love, Janine Lahovary, the wife of a retired Romanian ambassador. Lahovary made a point of winning Brooks's friendship, Barney reassured Brooks that their relationship still came first, and the triangle appeared to be stable.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: The salon resumed in 1949 and continued to attract young writers for whom it was as much a piece of history as a place where literary reputations were made. Truman Capote was an intermittent guest for almost ten years; he described the decor as "totally turn-of-the-century" and remembered that Barney introduced him to the models for several characters in Marcel Proust's "In Search of Lost Time".


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Alice B. Toklas became a regular after her partner Stein's death in 1946. Fridays in the 1960s honored Mary McCarthy and Marguerite Yourcenar, who in 1980—eight years after Barney's death—became the first female member of the French Academy.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Barney did not return to writing epigrams, but did publish two volumes of memoirs about other writers she had known, "Souvenirs Indiscrets" ("Indiscreet Memories", 1960) and "Traits et Portraits" ("Traits and Portraits", 1963). She also worked to find a publisher for Brooks's memoirs and to place her paintings in galleries.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: In the late 1960s Brooks became increasingly reclusive and paranoid; she sank into a depression and refused to see the doctors Barney sent. Bitter at Lahovary's presence during their last years, which she had hoped they would spend exclusively together, she finally broke off contact with Barney. Barney continued to write to her, but received no replies. Brooks died in December 1970, and Barney on February 2, 1972, aged 95, from heart failure. She is buried at Passy Cemetery, Paris, Île-de-France, France. She left some of her writing, including more than 40,000 letters, to the Bibliothèque littéraire Jacques-Doucet in Paris.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: By the end of Natalie Barney's life her work had been largely forgotten. In 1979, Barney was honored with a place setting in Judy Chicago's feminist work of art "The Dinner Party". In the 1980s Barney began to be recognized for what Karla Jay calls an "almost uncanny anticipation" of the concerns of later feminist writers. English translations of some of her memoirs, essays, and epigrams appeared in 1992, but most of her plays and poetry are untranslated.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Her indirect influence on literature, through her salon and her many literary friendships, can be seen in the number of writers who have addressed or portrayed her in their works. "Claudine s'en va" ("Claudine and Annie", 1903) by Colette contains a brief appearance by Barney as "Miss Flossie", echoing the nickname she had earlier been given in de Pougy's novel "Idylle Saphique". Renée Vivien wrote many poems about her, as well as a Symbolist novel, "Une femme m'apparut" ("A Woman Appeared to Me", 1904), in which Barney is described as having "eyes... as sharp and blue as a blade... The charm of peril emanated from her and drew me inexorably." Remy de Gourmont addressed her in his "Letters to the Amazon", and Truman Capote mentioned her in his last, unfinished novel "". She also appeared in later novels by writers who never met her. Anna Livia's "Minimax" (1991) portrays both Barney and Renée Vivien as still-living vampires. Francesco Rapazzini's "Un soir chez l'Amazone" (2001) is a historical novel about Barney's salon. The English translation by Sally Hamilton and Suzanne Stroh was published as an audiobook read by Suzanne Stroh under the title "A Night at the Amazon's" (2020).


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Barney appears in Hall's "The Well of Loneliness" as the salon hostess Valérie Seymour, a symbol of self-acceptance in contrast with the protagonist's self hatred. Hall wrote: "Valérie, placid and self-assured, created an atmosphere of courage; everyone felt very normal and brave when they gathered together at Valérie Seymour's." According to Lillian Faderman, "There was probably no lesbian in the four decades between 1928 and the late 1960s capable of reading English or any of the eleven languages into which the book was translated who was unfamiliar with "The Well of Loneliness"."


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Lucie Delarue-Mardrus wrote love poems to Barney in the early years of the century, and in 1930 depicted her in a novel, "L'Ange et les Pervers" ("The Angel and the Perverts"), in which she said she "analyzed and described Natalie at length as well as the life into which she initiated me". The protagonist of the novel is a hermaphrodite named Marion who lives a double life, frequenting literary salons in female dress, then changing from skirt to trousers to attend gay soirées. Barney is Laurette Wells, a salon hostess who spends much of the novel trying to win back an ex-lover loosely based on Renée Vivien. The book's portrayal of her is, at times, harshly critical, but she is the only person whose company Marion enjoys. Marion tells Wells that she is "perverse... dissolute, self-centered, unfair, stubborn, sometimes miserly... [but] a genuine rebel, ever ready to incite others to rebellion... [Y]ou are capable of loving someone just as they are, even a thief—in that lies your only fidelity. And so you have my respect."


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: After meeting Barney in the 1930s, the Russian poet Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva addressed her in a "Letter to the Amazon" (1934) in which she expressed her conflicted feelings about love between women. The result, according to Terry Castle, is "an entirely cryptic, paranoid, overwhelming piece of reverie".


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Barney and the women in her social circle are the subject of Djuna Barnes's "Ladies Almanack" (1928), a "roman à clef" written in an archaic, Rabelaisian style, with Barnes's own illustrations in the style of Elizabethan woodcuts. She has the lead role as Dame Evangeline Musset, "who was in her Heart one Grand Red Cross for the Pursuance, the Relief and the Distraction, of such Girls as in their Hinder Parts, and their Fore Parts, and in whatsoever Parts did suffer them most, lament Cruelly". "[A] Pioneer and a Menace" in her youth, Dame Musset has reached "a witty and learned Fifty"; she rescues women in distress, dispenses wisdom, and upon her death is elevated to sainthood. Also appearing pseudonymously are de Gramont, Brooks, Dolly Wilde, Hall and her partner Una, Lady Troubridge, Janet Flanner and Solita Solano, and Mina Loy. The obscure language, inside jokes, and ambiguity of "Ladies Almanack" have kept critics arguing about whether it is an affectionate satire or a bitter attack, but Barney herself loved the book and reread it throughout her life.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: On October 26, 2009, Barney was honored with a historical marker in her home town of Dayton, Ohio. The marker is the first in Ohio to note the sexual orientation of its honoree.


title: Natalie Clifford Barney

text: Barney's French novel, "Amants féminins ou la troisième", believed to have been written in 1926, was published in 2013. It was translated into English by Chelsea Ray and published in 2016 as "Women Lovers or The Third Woman".


title: How to Make It in America

text: How to Make It in America is an American comedy-drama television series that ran on HBO from February 14, 2010, to November 20, 2011. The series follows the lives of Ben Epstein (Bryan Greenberg) and his friend Cam Calderon (Victor Rasuk) as they try to succeed in New York City's fashion scene. The show's second season premiered on October 2, 2011.


title: How to Make It in America

text: On December 20, 2011, HBO announced the cancellation of the show citing failure to generate a large audience and buzz. Executive producer Mark Wahlberg expressed hope in an interview for "GQ" magazine in January 2012 that the show would return on another network.


title: How to Make It in America

text: "How to Make it in America" followed two enterprising twenty year olds hustling their way through New York City's talent show, determined to achieve their vision of the American dream. Trying to make a name for themselves in New York's competitive fashion scene, Ben Epstein (Greenberg) and his friend and business partner Cam Calderon (Rasuk) use their street knowledge and connections to bring their ambitions to fruition. With the help of Cam's cousin Rene (Guzman), who is trying to market his own high-energy drink, and their well-connected friend Domingo ("Kid Cudi"), the entrepreneurs set out to make it big, encountering obstacles along the way that will require all their ingenuity to overcome.


title: How to Make It in America

text: Ian Edelman wrote the pilot, which the "Entourage" crew of Mark Wahlberg, Stephen Levinson, Rob Weiss and Julian Farino executive produced. Edelman and Jada Miranda were also executive producers. "This show is a fun ride through the downtown scene, examining the cross section of people and how they relate to the relevant subcultures in NYC," Weiss, who was executive producing the pilot, told the Hollywood Reporter.


title: How to Make It in America

text: HBO made a free early online-only premiere available on various video sites including iTunes and YouTube. Season 2 premiered on HBO on October 2, 2011.


title: How to Make It in America

text: The opening title sequence was created by Isaac Lobe and directing duo Josh & Xander and produced by @radical.media. The theme song, "I Need a Dollar", was performed by Aloe Blacc of Stones Throw Records. Shot in New York City, the sequence comprises a video and photography montage, bringing together the show's underlying themes of "grit, hunger, ambition, the multicultural whirl of New York and the culture-transcending pursuit of the almighty dollar".


title: How to Make It in America

text: The first season received mixed reviews. On Metacritic it has a score of 60% based on reviews from 26 critics.


title: How to Make It in America

text: David Hinkley of the "New York Daily News" gave the show a positive review, giving the show 4/5 stars, and calling it a "winner". Brian Lowry of "Variety" was doubtful of the series, stating "barring a dramatic leap in quality" it probably wouldn't last on pay cable. Mark Perigard of the "Boston Herald" wrote critically, saying "this sad sack of a show plays like an East Coast, economically challenged version of his HBO hit "Entourage"." Randee Dawn of "The Hollywood Reporter" said the show "isn't as textured and riveting as it thinks it is". Other reviews favored the show in comparison to "Entourage".


title: How to Make It in America

text: The second season did not get much positive reception. On Metacritic only two reviews are listed but both reviews are positive. Maureen Ryan of "Huffington Post" wrote the show has "a little more discipline and focus than they did in season 1." Phillip Maciak of "Slant Magazine" also added that the show is "anchored by gorgeous production design and the pop naturalism of its performances, How to Make It in America dramatizes this particular cultural moment with uncommon style and a little grace as well."


title: Isabel Wilkerson

text: Isabel Wilkerson (born 1961) is an American journalist and the author of "The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration" (2010) and "" (2020). She is the first woman of African-American heritage to win the Pulitzer Prize in journalism.""


title: Isabel Wilkerson

text: Wilkerson was the editor-in-chief of the Howard University college newspaper, interned at the "Los Angeles Times" and "Washington Post", and became the Chicago Bureau Chief of "The New York Times". She also taught at Emory, Princeton, Northwestern, and Boston University.


title: Isabel Wilkerson

text: Wilkerson interviewed over a thousand people for "The Warmth of Other Suns", which documents the stories of African Americans who migrated to northern and western cities during the 20th century. Her book "Caste" identifies the racial hierarchy in the United States as a caste system. Both books were best-sellers.


title: Isabel Wilkerson

text: Isabel Wilkerson was born in Washington, D.C. in 1961 to parents who left Virginia during the Great Migration. Her father was one of the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II.


title: Isabel Wilkerson

text: Wilkerson studied journalism at Howard University, becoming editor-in-chief of the college newspaper "The Hilltop". During college, she interned at publications including the "Los Angeles Times" and "The Washington Post".


title: Isabel Wilkerson

text: In 1994, while the Chicago Bureau Chief of "The New York Times", she became the first woman of African-American heritage to win the Pulitzer Prize in journalism, winning the feature writing award for her coverage of the 1993 midwestern floods and her profile of a 10-year-old boy who was responsible for his four siblings. Several of Wilkerson's articles are included in the book "Pulitzer Prize Feature Stories: America's Best Writing, 1979 - 2003", edited by David Garlock.


title: Isabel Wilkerson

text: She has also been the James M. Cox Professor of Journalism at Emory University, Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University and the Kreeger-Wolf endowed lecturer at Northwestern University and Professor of Journalism and Director of Narrative Nonfiction at Boston University's College of Communication. She also served as a board member of the National Arts in Journalism Program at Columbia University.


title: Isabel Wilkerson

text: After fifteen years of research and writing, she published "The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration" in 2010, which examines the three geographic routes that were commonly used by African Americans leaving the southern states between 1915 and the 1970s, illustrated through the personal stories of people who took those routes. During her research for the book, Wilkerson interviewed more than 1,000 people who made the migration from the South to Northern and Western cities. The book almost instantly hit number 5 on the "New York Times" Bestseller list for nonfiction and has since been included in lists of best books of 2010 by many reviewers, including "The New York Times", "The Los Angeles Times", "The New Yorker", Amazon.com, Salon.com, "The Washington Post", "The Economist", "Atlanta Magazine" and "The Daily Beast". In March 2011 the book won the National Book Critics Circle Award (Nonfiction). The book also won the Anisfield-Wolf Award for Nonfiction, the Mark Lynton History Prize, the Sidney Hillman Book Prize, the Heartland Prize for Nonfiction and was also the nonfiction runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in 2011.


title: Isabel Wilkerson

text: In a 2010 "New York Times" interview, Wilkerson described herself as being part of a movement of African Americans who have chosen to return to the South after generations in the North.


title: Isabel Wilkerson

text: Wilkerson's book "" argues that racial stratification in the United States is best understood as a caste system, akin to those in India and in Nazi Germany.


title: Isabel Wilkerson

text: A 2020 review in "The New York Times" described it as "an instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far." "Publishers Weekly" called "Caste" a “powerful and extraordinarily timely social history.”"The Chicago Tribune" wrote that the book was "among the year’s best" books. The book peaked at number one on "The New York Times" nonfiction best-seller list. On October 14, 2020, Netflix announced Ava DuVernay will write, direct, and produce a feature film adaptation of "Caste."


title: Nikola Milenković

text: Nikola Milenković (, ; born 12 October 1997) is a Serbian professional footballer who plays as a centre-back and right-back for Fiorentina and the Serbia national team.


title: Nikola Milenković

text: Passing the youth categories of Partizan, Milenković was loaned to Teleoptik for the 2015–16 season. At the beginning of 2016, he joined the first team of Partizan under coach Ivan Tomić and signed a five-year contract, but also stayed with Teleoptik on dual registration until the end of season. Several days after debut for U19 national team, he made his debut for Partizan in a SuperLiga match against Mladost Lučani played on 10 April 2016. He started in a match against Čukarički in round 32 of the same season and received a red card for a brutal foul on Petar Bojić, which resulted in a suspension for the next four matches. Milenković scored his first senior goal for Partizan in the last fixture of the 2015–16 Serbian SuperLiga, against Vojvodina, which was the hundredth goal of the club for the season.


title: Nikola Milenković

text: Milenković started new season pairing with Cédric Gogoua for the second qualifying round of the 2016–17 UEFA Europa League against Zagłębie Lubin. He also started SuperLiga competition in the first fixture match against OFK Bačka before spending the following two rounds on the bench. After several bad results and some injuries of the players in defense, Milenković started playing continuously from the fourth fixture against Javor Ivanjica onwards. He scored his first season goal in a match against Rad, played on 27 August 2016. He also made his Serbian Cup debut in the first round match, against Napredak Kruševac on 21 September 2016. After Miroslav Vulićević's injury in a cup match against Žarkovo on 25 October 2016, Milenković wore the captain's armbrand. In February 2017, he was listed as one of the 30 best youth footballers in the world by the Italian newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport. he scored his third goal for Partizan as a senior in 27 fixture match of the season against Voždovac, played on 18 March 2017.


title: Nikola Milenković

text: On 27 May, in his last match for Partizan, Milenković scored a header against Partizan's biggest rival Red Star which won the game and clinched Partizan's double of the season, winning both the league and cup competitions.


title: Nikola Milenković

text: On 24 May 2017, Partizan president Milorad Vučelić confirmed that Milenković would be joining Serie A side Fiorentina in the summer. The transfer fee was reported as €5.1 million. Milenković made his debut for Fiorentina in 1–0 away victory over Cagliari on 22 December 2017, having played 84 minutes of the game. During the first few months, Nikola was getting used to his new environment and that's why Viola coach Stefano Pioli didn't often include him in the starting line-up. However, the tragic death of the team captain Davide Astori made Pioli change his mind and include Nikola in the starting eleven more often.


title: Nikola Milenković

text: At the start of 2018–19 Serie A season matchday 2, Milenković scored his first goal at Stadio Artemio Franchi in 6–1 win over ChievoVerona.


title: Nikola Milenković

text: Milenković was a member of the Serbia under-19 team in early 2016. Later the same year, he was called up to the Serbia U20 national squad by coach Nenad Lalatović, and made his debut for the team in a match against Montenegro. Milenković was called up to the U21 squad by Lalatović in March 2017. He made his first appearance at U21 level on 28 March 2017, in a friendly match against Slovakia.


title: Nikola Milenković

text: Milenković made his debut for the senior national team in a friendly 3–0 loss to Qatar on 29 September 2016.


title: Nikola Milenković

text: In June 2018 Serbian head coach Mladen Krstajić included Milenković in the final 23-man squad for the 2018 World Cup. He played in all three group stage matches. He is widely considered as the best performer in the World Cup 2018 squad, with 34 successful tackles (the most in the group stage), and some great positional play.


title: Nikola Milenković

text: In November 2022, he was selected in Serbia's squad for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. He played in all three group stage matches, against Brazil, Cameroon, and Switzerland. Serbia finished fourth in the group.


title: House of Vasa

text: The House of Vasa or Wasa (, , ) was an early modern royal house founded in 1523 in Sweden. Its members ruled the Kingdom of Sweden from 1523 to 1654 and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth from 1587 to 1668. Its agnatic line became extinct with the death of King John II Casimir of Poland in 1672.


title: House of Vasa

text: The House of Vasa descended from a Swedish 14th-century noble family, tracing agnatic kinship to Nils Kettilsson (Vasa) (died 1378), "fogde" of "Tre Kronor" Castle in Stockholm. Several members held high offices during the 15th century. In 1523, after the abolition of the Kalmar Union, Gustav Eriksson (Vasa) became King Gustav I of Sweden and the royal house was founded. His reign is sometimes referred to as the beginning of the modern state of Sweden, which included the King's break with the Roman Catholic Church during the Protestant Reformation and the foundation of the Church of Sweden.


title: House of Vasa

text: However, his eldest son and successor Erik XIV of Sweden was overthrown by Gustav's younger son, King John III of Sweden. John III married a Catholic Polish princess, Catherine Jagiellon, leading to the House of Vasa becoming rulers of Poland.


title: House of Vasa

text: Their Catholic son Sigismund III Vasa, then ruler of a short-lived Polish–Swedish union, was usurped in 1599 by John's Protestant brother King Charles IX of Sweden in the War against Sigismund. The dynasty was then split into a Protestant Swedish branch and a Catholic Polish one, which contended for crowns in subsequent wars.


title: House of Vasa

text: The involvement of the famous Protestant general and King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden in the Thirty Years' War gave rise to the saying that he was the incarnation of "the Lion of the North" (German: "Der Löwe von Mitternacht"). Yet, notably, his daughter and heiress Queen Christina of Sweden (1632–1654) abdicated in 1654 after converting to Catholicism, and emigrated to Rome. In Poland, John II Casimir of Poland abdicated in 1668. With his death, the royal House of Vasa became extinct in 1672, though the current King of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf, is descended from Gustav I through his paternal great-grandmother, Victoria of Baden, a descendant of Gustav I's great-great-grandson Adolphus Frederick II, Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.


title: House of Vasa

text: Gustav Eriksson, a son of Cecilia Månsdotter Eka and Erik Johansson Vasa, was probably born in 1496. The birth most likely took place in Rydboholm Castle, northeast of Stockholm, the manor house of the father, Erik. The newborn got his name, Gustav, from Erik's grandfather Gustav Anundsson.


title: House of Vasa

text: Since the end of the 14th century, Sweden had been a part of the Kalmar Union with Denmark and Norway. The Danish dominance in this union occasionally led to uprisings in Sweden. During Gustav's childhood, parts of the Swedish nobility tried to make Sweden independent. Gustav and his father Erik supported the party of Sten Sture the Younger, regent of Sweden from 1512, and its struggle against the Danish King Christian II. Following the battle of Brännkyrka in 1518, where Sten Sture's troops beat the Danish forces, it was decided that Sten Sture and King Christian would meet in Österhaninge for negotiations. To guarantee the safety of the king, the Swedish side sent six hostages to be kept by the Danes for as long as the negotiations lasted. However, Christian did not show up for the negotiations, violated the deal with the Swedish side, and took the hostages to Copenhagen. The six hostages were Hemming Gadh, Lars Siggesson (Sparre), Jöran Siggesson (Sparre), Olof Ryning, Bengt Nilsson (Färla) – and Gustav Eriksson.


title: House of Vasa

text: The election of Gustav Eriksson as a regent made many Swedish nobles, who had so far stayed loyal to King Christian, switch sides. Some noblemen, still loyal to the king, chose to leave Sweden, while others were killed. As a result, the Swedish Privy Council lost old members who were replaced by supporters of Gustav Eriksson. Most fortified cities and castles were conquered by Gustav's rebels, but the strongholds with the best defenses, including Stockholm, were still under Danish control. In 1522, after negotiations between Gustav Eriksson's faction and Lübeck, the Hanseatic city joined the war against Denmark. The winter of 1523 saw their joint forces attack the Danish and Norwegian areas of Scania, Halland, Blekinge, and Bohuslän. During this winter, Christian II was overthrown and replaced by Frederick I. The new king openly claimed the Swedish throne and had hopes Lübeck would abandon the Swedish rebels. The German city, preferring an independent Sweden to a strong Kalmar Union dominated by Denmark, took advantage of the situation and put pressure on the rebels. The city wanted privileges on future trade as well as guarantees regarding the loans they had granted the rebels. The Privy Council and Gustav Eriksson knew the support from Lübeck was absolutely crucial. As a response, the council decided to appoint Gustav Eriksson king.


title: House of Vasa

text: The ceremonial election of Gustav as king of Sweden took place when the leading men of Sweden met in Strängnäs in June 1523. When the councilors of Sweden had chosen Gustav as king, he met with the two visiting councilors of Lübeck. The German representatives supported the appointment without hesitation and declared it an act of God. Gustav stated he had to bow to what was described as the will of God. In a meeting with the Privy Council, Gustav Eriksson announced his decision to accept. In the following ceremony, led by the deacon of Strängnäs, Laurentius Andreae, Gustav swore the royal oath. The next day, bishops and priests joined Gustav in Roggeborgen where Andreae raised the holy sacrament above a kneeling Gustav Eriksson. Flanked by the councilors of Lübeck, Gustav Eriksson was brought to Strängnäs Cathedral where the king sat down in the choir with the Swedish privy councilors on one side, and the Lübeck representatives on the other. After the hymn "Te Deum", Andreae proclaimed Gustav Eriksson king of Sweden. He was, however, still not crowned. In 1983, in remembrance of the election of Gustav as Swedish king on 6 June, that date was declared the National Day of Sweden.